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BII: Chapter Thirty-five
🕑 Added 2023-05-10 16:43:25 +0000 UTCMaeve weaved and bobbed around as she hurled lightning spears through a planeshift to rend anything that drew near. She fought with the intensity of a thunderstorm. Once the press thickened, she dumped Eli to the slick muddy ground.
Roman stood a few feet away from Eli. His armor was splattered with pulped leaves, sap, and bark. Not to mention the molten ichor that gushed from his fists after he exploded the iron hornet that had attacked him. Dents smoothed over his chassis where it had gotten him in between its mandibles.
Eli laid nearly flat as he fought to stand up.
Astral Starspace fluttered around him, uselessly. Pincers of agony clamped around his every nerve. Space refused to listen to him.
All he could do was sense the frenzy of spawn constantly moving everywhere.
Treelike limbs bore down on him as a spider-legged greant skittered toward him. Aurora Stardust twinged laboriously as he tried to vaporize it. Only a wisp of glowing cloud spilled out of his trembling hand before his concentration shattered.
Barbed twigs raked across his face with a surprising lack of pain. A twisted, vile ooze seeped from its bark. Eli struggled to free himself as roots knotted over his legs and the sludge dripped onto his chest.
Clouds seethed out of his pores as a twin of him appeared with blazing eyes. Nebulous fingers melded into a blade that scythed through the great with a smoldering crash.
It dissipated.
Shrub-sized greants and metallic insects swarmed toward him.
Eli blinked drowsily as he pushed through Nimbus Sentinel again, while keeping it close to him. A shroud of radiant cloud pulsed out of his arm rolling him over.
He couldn’t help like this.
Maeve blasted the line apart while Roman spun. Smoke vented from his exosuit as numerous guns fired endlessly. Legion of One multiplied each bullet into an artillery of metal.
More pushed forward filling the gap.
Eli swapped out Astral Starspace with Vigilant Revelation with a flicker of hope. It had taken him at least an hour, probably longer, to create and stabilize the portal even if it felt like it had happened quickly. He needed it to be off cooldown.
The swap worked.
Most of his gut wrenching vertigo vanished the instant Astral Starspace unplugged from him. Wisps of cloud flooded around him as he let Vigilant Revelation guide his use of Nimbus Sentinel.
Eli doubled as the radiant cloud of Nimbus Sentinel swaddled him like a suit of armor. Weakness throbbed from his heart to his fingertips as he fired and shaped a bar of Aurora Stardust into an axe. Power vibrated through his cloud gauntlets as he tightened his grip on the blade.
Fog burst from the soles of his feet as Eli launched himself into the hedge of greants. He swung limply, but Nimbus Sentinel and Aurora Stardust turned his feeble gesture into a devastating blow. Wood split easily as the axe blade sheared through the trunk of the greant’s body.
Cinders danced from the bisected body as Vigilant Revelation warned him to step back.
Tree branches raked across the space where he had been a moment before. Each supple branch led to a bulbous trunk laden with mushrooms. Swathes of mold wept beads of moisture as the greant Eli just felled turned into mulch.
Energy vanished from the destroyed greant corpse into the rotting tree. It felt almost like sunlight to his Stellar Body. A quick glance around the battlefield showed that this opportunistic fucker wasn’t the only one.
Eli threw himself forward as he devoured it.
The smallest twinge of restored strength flooded his limbs. Into his Stellar Body, still tapped out from when he used nova form in his delve in the Devil’s Forge.
***
A greant’s trunk shattered beneath her heel. Crystal grew from the silenced impact. Lightning strobed from her in a suggestive web to numerous spearhead points. The next volley blitzed into any of the fuckers who threatened her family. Maeve let herself slip into her role as Starbreaker.
Spawn lunged at her with ineffective attacks.
Starbreaker threw herself backward.
Lightning flashed around her again instantly.
Tension throbbed at the nape of her neck as she molded the raw primal rage of Storm Regalia into another round of artillery.
Roman wrestled with another of the metallic insects beside her. Ichor pasted over his armor with a squelch as he plunged his bladed fist through its shell. Eli dispatched a large waterlogged greant behind both of them.
Good. They’re okay.
She fought for a glimpse of Herbert, but she only saw glimpses of cold plasma in the sky. It was too dangerous to allow herself to be distracted. At least Eli and Roman were okay. Thriving, even.
Relief sang through her with a sharp exhale.
Starbreaker suppressed a shudder as her breath carved through the sickly version of trolls from this dimension. Blood gushed from the gash as it stumbled back. She used the injection of her breath to coat the wound with jagged crystals of Sonomantic Cryst that vibrated.
Now.
Each crystal burst with the sound of a lingering gong as a fine red mist drifted around her. A twist of Luxurious Domain turned each droplet as comforting as warm rain.
Thank the Savior, Bane had helped her make it to her when she first started working with the DRC.
One of the metallic insects, a horrendous golden ant this time, skittered right toward her. The carpet of bodies crunched beneath each of its spindly limbs.
She summoned and jabbed a thunderous sword straight through one of its beady eyes. Instead of slicing off its nasty antenna off and juicing whatever it had for a brain, her sword bounced off its carapace with an electric arc.
It bowled into her with a crash of breaking armor, thunder, and golden chitin.
Mandibles opened, then shut around both sides of her helm with a screeching click. Warmth sluiced down her cheek from the line of joy. Pleasure spiked through her nerves for a split second before her Recursive Stockpile stored the experience. Wounds and aches condensed as her Transcendent Body restored her.
Starbreaker slammed her fist into its dazzling golden skull. She expected more resistance, but had underestimated how strong it really was without the top up from her power.
Sonomantic Cryst seeded its corpse with growths of crystal before she planeshifted it. She launched it through the Stillness before dropping it into the crevasse where not-Rick held the line the best he could.
Thunder rumbled in the distance shaking the earth.
Mind of Clarity helped her not only process, but sense the tumultuous battlefield all around her as she continued to micromanage it. Every spawn was coordinated as they focused most of their fodder in an endless horde toward each of them capable of fighting back.
The rest headed deeper into town where two girls that could’ve been Maeve’s sisters or cousins held the line.
Planar Will flickered.
Hundreds of spawn weak to her, but lethal to the town, vanished as she hurled them into the Plane of Fire.
Pure barbed unadulterated agony gnashed into her with malice at the forced planeshifting of sapient beings with power. Minute trembles only she felt quaked into her from her violation of the universe. She was jealous at the ease Eli had with his spatial powers, every time she planeshifted something else the backlash was tremendous.
Emotion threatened to calcify, leaving her as nothing more than an overextended husk. Before she slotted it, Planeshift had been useless outside of the black-and-white void of the Stillness.
Now it was simply unwieldy.
Transcendent Body spiked alongside Mind of Clarity while she ducked under a wild thrust of a steel wasp’s stinger. Her hand squeezed around the stinger as she broke it off and thrust it into the gut of a troll. Electricity crackled through the improvised blade and into its body before a sheath of sonamantic crystal spiked through it.
All her stockpiled experiences vanished as she wrung them dry for power.
Starbreaker continued her lethal dance with the spawn. She used everything she had to track the battlefield. Every action helped her monitor the people she cared about along with the other armored fighters.
She needed to be ready to step in if anything truly threatening appeared.
While Starbreaker did what she did best, Maeve couldn’t help but watch Herbert. He scythed through spawn with the grim certainty of winter.
***
“Nice one, Rome,” said Les over the crackle of their comms. Roman dodged back from his most recent kill with a tapered flare of his jets. He twisted with the motion, redirecting all the force into another one of the fucking metallic insect spawn obsessed with him.
“Thanks. Any new updates?” Roman pulsed his thoughts through his AI letting it speak for him. He and Les had been talking ever since they stepped through the portal with Eli.
Romulus’s freak out about someone operating an exosuit broadcasting on the same frequencies as him would’ve been funny in another time and place. But at least it gave them a modicum of a chance to communicate.
Les had told him that Cyrus was sheltering at town hall with the other children, but Roman worried his youngest brother would sneak away to fight anyway. He was even more worried about what he would do if Theo appeared here. Was this the army they saw him amassing or was it somewhere else?
“Herbert and Addy have frozen out most of this wave leaving only the strongest or the stragglers. Rick is doing alright, but we haven’t been able to talk to him with all the interference from his tornadoes and thunderstorms. Lyra and Lana have been doing a lot better at holding the line ever since you all arrived.”
“Good. Out,” Roman grunted as he focused and amplified the sound with Legion of One. It became a guttural chant carried hundreds to thousands of times. He shoved the Dreamed sound into the copper ant’s exoskeleton with a shuddering boom.
Shrapnel thudded into greants and the other metallic shells of other insects.
Roman grinned wolfishly as he let Legion of One march onward. He confirmed the series of lined up targets his AI presented to him. Bullets churned into spawn with a hail of impacts that only grew as Legion of One filled the air with booming grunts, cracking bullets, and explosions of copper shrapnel.
Oil bubbled out of his carefully crafted faceplate as his optics crackled.
The notification he had been waiting for finally appeared.
Defend me.
Roman commanded his AI while he navigated through status screens and updates. Servos twitched as his armor fought by itself.
<Congratulations, Roman Anders! You have leveled up Legion of One Ev. 1/Lv. 9 -> Legion of One Ev. 1/Lv. 10>
<Congratulations, Roman Anders! You have maxed out the following power:
Legion of One Ev. 1
You may now select from one of the following options:
Evolve Power
Slot Power into Stat
N/A
N/A>
It was finally time for him to slot one of his powers.
He had already maxed out and evolved Gearshift Constitution and Phantasmic Fabrication to evo-2, but he could tell he needed more of an edge. With the full confirmation that upgrading stat powers, he was ready to slot his own power.
Roman was done struggling to keep up.
<Slot Legion of One into one of three stat slots.
WARNING: This is a permanent selection and may not be changed later.
Select one of three following choices:
Body of Imperial
Mind of Imperial
Will of Imperial>
He had been pretty sure he was going to choose Imperial Mind. Legion of One would greatly enhance his thinking capabilities on every level, but he felt a slight warning from the visions the System provided.
Every single thought he had would echo for the rest of his life. Every action would repeat itself into eternity if he let it. He’d be a true empire onto himself, but fear strummed through him at the concern of losing himself in a sea of his own echoes.
Imperial Body held little value to him. It would only make him physically stronger and let him scale up his physical actions. Unlike Imperial Will which at least provided the ability to echo his thoughts. It’d be powerful, but Anatomical Engine was better for his Body and Phantasmic Magitech could fit nicely with Mind.
Imperial Will was the clear winner.
Roman felt how it would give him infinitely more control with Legion of One. Turn it from a tool into a perfect extension of himself. It felt a bit vague, but he knew that this would have the most impact.
It was time.
<WARNING: This is a permanent selection. No other powers will be able to slotted into the Will stat. Confirm: Y/N>
Confirmed.
<Congratulations, Roman Anders! For slotting a power into a stat, you have unlocked an option to obtain a special power. You may now select from one of the following options:
Cybermancer’s Respite
Metallic Mantle
Chimeric Adaptation
Dreamer’s Knowledge
Imperial Omniforge>
Roman dismissed the rest of his notifications.
He found himself in a defensive fight against three horned beetles armored in gold, silver, and iron respectively. Apparently, his AI was still disinclined to fight aggressively.
Webs of chipped cracks blemished the shell of each spawn from bullets, arrows, or even the swords he kept sheathed along the arms, legs, and back of his exosuit.
Iron Beetle lowered its horned head before it charged at him. Roman blinked as moments from Imperial Will beckoned him.
Memories from his life screamed for his attention. Demanded to be summoned and used. He blinked, transported through time.
Roman remembered burning himself on the stovetop when he was three. Details screamed into him.
Their babysitter had cooked a pot of macaroni. It seemed like hours had crept by while he watched her stir the pot while she talked into her cellphone. He still felt the intensity of his hunger and the weight of his impatience.
Finally, she served them before she left them alone.
Roman had devoured every macaroni shell off his plate in a minute of euphoric toddler bliss. Theo kicked his feet in the high chair. Tossed his pasta on the floor. Roman called out to get Sasha’s attention.
Didn’t she know Theo was making a mess? That Roman was being good?
No one came.
Roman pushed himself off his chair with all the dignified poise he could muster. He was big enough to sit at the table and eat without spilling anything. He could get his own seconds.
So, he dragged his chair across the tile and climbed up to scoop up macaroni onto his plate with the ladle left in the pot. Searing agony burned into his palm where he touched it.
Forgotten wails tightened his throat as he blinked back in the present. Echoes of sweltering heat blazed around him as he flicked Imperial Will across the beetle’s shell. A haze of resistance stopped him from burning it inside out, but he enveloped it in his memory.
In his Will.
Distortions crackled in the air from the focused memory of his pain and neglect. Molten tears bubbled down its runny shell as the beetle gave into its base instincts and tried to run.
Roman fired a single round from one of his guns through its weakened shell. It fell over in a deluge of molten metal and ichor. Imperial Will coalesced around him as he melded the beetle’s burning demise with his gunshot.
Incendiary bullets drilled into greants, metallic insects, ghouls, and trolls with escalating ease. Each echo built off the last.
Shockwaves of emotional recoil battered him.
Oily tears ran down his faceplate as he lost himself in the roar of burning cannon fire. Something dwindled inside of him with every use of Imperial Will. Some semblance of control as feelings of resentment for himself, his parents, siblings, and Eli built up inside of him.
Sensors blare from his AI as Rick’s torrent of thunderclouds ease. Two figures climbed out of the crevasse.
Optics fuzzed as Roman zoomed in.
A massive tree fern greant climbed out of the crevasse. Verdant needles swayed like feathers as hundreds of fronds unfurled. Branches split out of its narrow trunk as sap bled out of cracks in its bark.
Chunks of solidified amber sagged around Rick. Bonelike quills jutted out of his chest.
Theo stood nestled in a living suit of armor eight feet tall. Gristly plates nestled together in a slick exoskeleton. Claws jutted out of his armor’s forearm like barbed swords, both glistened crimson with blood.
Rage and regret filled him as he ignited his propulsive jets and flew forward.
***
Theo was the center of an ocean full of thudding heartbeats. Twitches of impulses through synapses. Life ebbed and flowed around him everywhere. Constantly. Both the monsters from his and Fern’s army rushed past them leaving them alone.
Overwhelming anxiety racketed his heartbeat up, tightened his lungs. Breath hitched in his throat. Trembles threatened to shake his hands.
He manually slowed his heart while he eased his breathing. Hormones and chemicals tweaked to his liking until he felt calm.
If he failed, everything would go from bad to worse.
“I give honor to kill the Companion’s father, my father’s Creator. If you would?” Fern gestured with a sweep of emerald fronds. Theo winced at the bloody sight of Rick. Sheets of sticky sap oozed over his body trapping him in Fern’s crimson amber.
“Of course.” Theo forced a smile while he ignored the horror, fear, and overwhelming tide of anger in Rick’s eyes. A twitch of Primal Will showed him that his virus hadn’t settled deep enough in Fern and the other monsters.
It would take longer for it burrow into their cells before he could activate it. All of his forced soldiers that he had offered to join Fern’s army were carriers for it.
“We must continue your deception. Coma?” Skeletaur buzzed throughout his skeleton. Theo had created and then compacted a biometal that he had threaded through the core of each of his bones and cartilage. It wouldn’t do to let Skeletaur puppet his bones again.
Theo hefted his arm so he could line up the sharp swordlike blades attached to his exoskeleton armor. Quills of bone grew out of gaping holes throughout his armor already wet with a neurotoxin.
Betrayal shadowed Rick’s eyes.
Memories of how Lana’s family had taken him and Cyrus in shuttered through his mind. For a whole year, they had included them in every event as the world went to shit.
Because of the strict martial law that had slipped further out of control every day until the military withdrew. Because of the monsters he made.
Still, they opened their hearts and new home to him and Cyrus.
Theo couldn’t imagine attacking any of Lana’s family. Muscles tensed as he pivoted on his foot to swipe his bonesword through Fern’s trunk.
Something arrested his momentum inside of him.
Layers unsheathed from Theo’s exoskeleton as spurs of bone split through skin and muscle. Bone and cartilage reformed en masse in a towering skeleton form. Skeletaur Prime thrust its honed claws toward Rick’s throat.
All of Theo’s wounds knit shut.
Rigid barriers of absolute defense snapped into place in time to catch Skeletaur’s claws. Unrelenting Aegis glowed with a chime as it absorbed, then reflected the damage back onto Skeletaur with a resounding crack.
Heat flooded from his veins as he vented his blood. It coalesced into a shiny black steam of pressurized blood. Its composition was closer to acid. He injected marbles of Aegis into each droplet. “Fuck you, Skeletaur,” Theo snarled at the traitor.
“Qui—“
Glossy droplets of blood hammered into Skeletaur’s armor with a rattling cascade of chipped bone. Each bubble of Aegis redirected the damage it suffered into Skeletaur with wet cracks. All blood that missed curved right back into any gap already dissolved open. Chunks of gristly white sloughed off as it darkened.
Porous holes steamed as acidic blood bubbled from the reaction of touching organic matter. Skeletaur wobbled. Stains of obsidian saturated its skeletal body even as growths of new bone struggled to grow.
Theo didn’t even smile as he reduced his creation into a pile of sodden dust that rapidly dried.
“Good help is so hard to find, isn’t it grandfather?” Fern chuckled even as his emerald leaves bristled. Branches speared through his bark in a flurry of blows that clanged off of Unrelenting Aegis. Stress fractures throughout the structure threatened its integrity from the onslaught. Theo hadn’t expected Fern to be so powerful.
Each echoed gash that tore across Fern glowed with regrowth, stronger than it had been before. Roots of intangible power snaked through each of the greants in a grand overarching web with Fern at the center.
Power funneled back into their leader as Fern doubled in size.
Theo suppressed a chuckle as he activated the latent virus he had spread into every greant. Which had in turn focused and condensed inside of Fern. Harmless pathogens turned lethal as the virus blighted all of Fern’s nutrients. Roots squirmed, bark fuzzed, and branches sagged from rot. Death ran rampant through Fern even as its scars flooded with new life.
Fern hadn’t weakened at all.
“Gratitude,” Fern laughed as the seeping wounds bloomed with new growth. A storm of dead yellow needles buzzed out of the ground into Theo’s ankles.
Theo toppled over without even a hiss as detached the nerves. His eyes widened as the needles thickened into the same amber sludge on Rick. Primal Will pulsed against it, but the wounds refused to heal.
Aegis flickered in front of them.
Needles droned against the shield for a second before it shattered, unleashing all the absorbed hits back into Theo. Primal Will threaded through him healing any damage before it took hold.
Engines roared as an unmanned mechanical suit of armor crashed into Fern.
“Leave my brother alone!” Romulus’s voice growled. Glowing metal plates retracted so blades could whip out to hack into Fern while numerous guns poked out of hiding places. Theo watched desperately as the flurry of attacks escalated.
Gunfire roared into Fern as fiery blades and cannon shots blasted into the greant monarch. Embers fluttered on the air as Fern stumbled back before the smoldering craters and gashes resealed with a surge of regrowth.
That wasn’t Romulus, it was Roman.
Sobs wracked his chest and tears rolled freely. Roman was alive and back.
Roman continued unabated as the heat mounted.
Yet, Fern didn’t stop healing.
Theo suppressed his heartbeat while he surrounded him and Rick in Unrelenting Aegis’s protection as well as he could. He had hoped to fix this all by himself, now he needed his brother to save him once again. Each iteration of his shield weakened, but it was the best he had.
***
Eli bounced off of the next heap of felled greants with a gust of nimbus. Streams of sunlight radiated into his Stellar Body as he zipped through the air to plant his aurora axe into another foe. As his physical prowess recharged Stellar Body, so did the magnificence of Aurora Stardust.
He spun on the landing as waves of radiant crimson aurora glowed through the vapor of Nimbus Sentinel.
Maeve flickered across the battlefield all around him hundreds of times a second ever since Roman flew off. Flashes of shadow and lightning were the only hint to her presence as she tore through the spawn army.
Vigilant Revelation whispered a warning even as Nimbus Sentinel lashed at the vague threats all around him. Limbs of radiant cloud warped through space to strike the three greants and single troll that snuck up to him. A pulse of Aurora Stardust slew each of them even as he guzzled their Strength, Perception, Stamina, and sunlight out of them.
Eli let Nimbus Sentinel reflect beneath him as he created another instance a dozen yards back into the clump of molten centipedes and spiders. He warped through space into the radiant clone of himself as he flipped to stake the steel spider beneath him.
Metal carapace crunched.
An aurora spear vibrated beneath him as he twisted with a reflection to slam an aurora hatchet into and through the centipede to his right. Multitudes of legs spasmed as he reflected off his nimbus armor to skewer another steel spider with a reshaped aurora rapier.
Eli flexed Nimbus Sentinel around him with a flare of Stellar Body to stretch and warp space so he tunneled through the spider. He landed on his feet in a rolling gush of radiant vapor. He glanced around himself as he drained what he could with Stellar Body and Aurora Stardust.
Streams of sunlight and broken down stardust poured into him as he noticed the diminutive shapes of Lana and Lyra grinding their spawn into corpses. Sadness twinged his heart as he took a step forward to help.
Explosions clapped rapidfire as sudden daylight strobed in the distance. Shockwaves snapped through the air and earth. He stumbled with a displacement of nimbus to keep his balance.
Roman wailed on a gargantuan greant that swelled to greater sizes under the barrage. Wood split as the monstrous tree turned into two.
Thunder rattled the earth as branches or roots whipped into Roman. Metallic debris sprayed everywhere as Roman hurtled away from the impact.
Nimbus Sentinel split a dozen times in a second as he warped through each one in a chain until he appeared behind him. Aurora Stardust crackled out a domed shield. Roman ricocheted off of it and into the ground with a blur.
Half of Roman’s left shoulder and side had flattened from the impact while a long rip sundered from his right hip to his collarbone.
Eli warped beside him with a flicker of nimbus. Aurora Stardust surged out of his hand into Roman’s wrecked body. Clouds rippled from his broken body as wounds fluffed up back to their original state.
Electromagnetic light flashed. Shattered gears, severed wires, and crumpled plates winked back to whole flesh and blood as he transformed.
Roman gingerly pushed himself up to his hands and knees. Eli bent down to help pull him up to his feet.
They stared at the now trio of greants that closed in around Theo and Rick. No, they were back home. That was Dad.
Jagged barriers fizzed in front of Dad and Theo even as monstrous roots swished toward them. Nimbus Sentinel separated in a chain as Eli prepared to warp forward despite Vigilant Revelation’s insistence he wouldn’t make it in time.
Tides of black and white flashed as Maeve planeshifted in the attack’s path. Lightning roared from the twin impacts as she stumbled a step backward. Three other people rushed out of the retreating wave of monochrome planar space to intercept the greants.
Herbert charged into one with a glacial thrust of ice. Sheets of frost twinkled off of it. Beams of plasma scorched the subzero wood with an explosion of steam and pulp. Before wooden shrapnel finished breaking, its wounds were already restored with green wood.
Romulus turned from a knight in futuristic plate armor into a giant. An oversized bow fell into his hands as it grew even while he drew it without an arrow nocked. He let go of the string unleashing a kinetic blast that threw his greant back into the crevasse with a crash.
Mom rushed past Theo to Dad where she broke him out of his shell of amber. She pushed her hand into his mouth while she cradled him to her. Her head hung over his shoulder while she laid him flat on the ground. Thorned vines shrouded in frost of her own grew in wreaths around her hands as she stood back up.
“Let’s join them,” Eli spat as he warped forward with Roman hot on his heels. Nausea twanged through him as he transformed into an aurora armored in a radiant nimbus.
Heaps of corpses and patches of still moving spawn flashed beneath him as he flew deeper into the fray.
It was time to finish this.
Comments
weas97
TFTCThanks for the chapter , it was good to see that Theo is not completely lost and to see what could be the consequence of some powers in Roman , good luck with school :) .
Steven Beal
thanks for the chapter
Corbin
This is a *long* chapter, but damn it was a blast to write. Sorry for the delay, things are still kicking my ass a little, but it's all good. Planning some changes school wise that I'm really excited for, but still gotta finish this year first. I'm hopeful this book will resolve in five or less chapters. Haven't decided if any epilogues will happen, but if they do it'll probably be Lana/Lyra/Cyrus since their perspectives likely won't show up during this. Anyways, I hope you enjoy and I'll see you next week!
