The bird spread its fiery wings wide and streaked through the air like an asteroid. In preparation for the impact, the sand colossus began to gather sand to its chest, thickening it and sharply improving its defense.
Under the Queen’s control, the phoenix began to corkscrew through the air as it charged at the colossus, ultimately ramming into the beast like a flaming drill. Despite its enormous size, the torrent of fire forced the beast back, overwhelmed by the energy brought to bear against it by the phoenix. A pit was carved out in its thick chest.
Cloudhawk grit his teeth, narrowed his eyes, and made some last-minute adjustments to his aim. He strained against the heavy war machine until the black barbed head of the arrow was right where he wanted it. Hitting the creature anywhere but this one small target was useless – more difficult than finding a needle in a haystack, he had to hit a relic in a sandstorm.
He needed perfect control, precision, and calculation! And this was his first time using a ballista!
The phoenix was releasing more and more of its energy as it drilled deeper into the monster’s chest. It was now almost completely buried in the sand from head to tail. Instead of detonating as it had in its previous uses, it just kept trying to push itself deeper through the creature, fighting for every inch. Unfortunately, it simply wasn’t strong enough, and although the scorched cavity it made was deep, the damage didn’t reach the monster’s core.
Sand from all around rasped as it began to fill in the hole. Cloudhawk knew this moment was his only chance – if he missed his target, all of the Queen’s efforts were wasted.
But he couldn’t figure out how to aim!
Cloudhawk had impressive control, but manipulating a ballista with such precision was no easy task. He didn’t know the weapon’s speed, range, damage, or his enemy’s reaction speed. What hope did he have of confidently hitting his mark from hundreds of feet away?
“Do it!”
His eyes weren’t helping, so Cloudhawk shut them to lock out distractions. Without the chaos of vision, he could feel every hissing grain of sand within the colossus. They danced to the flows of energy that pulsed around them. It formed a sort of tide, a force field that created the monster’s figure.
The sand was simply molded into the shape desired, so attacking the shell of the monster was useless – like swiping at fragments of metal gathered by a magnet. Although you might temporarily clear away the shards, the magnetic field remained. It would only gather them up again.
So the goal had to be destroying the magnet!
Once he shut his eyes, Cloudhawk could feel the fount of the colossus’s energy more clearly. It fed energy to the monster like a torch exuded light, spreading it all throughout the colossus’s body. Just like a torch, the light was brightest at the source.
This is it. This is the place!
Cloudhawk screwed all of his concentration together and focused on that single point. That single flickering point of torchlight got brighter and brighter. And then, he fired.
The bowstring was let loose!
The seven-foot-long spear cut through the air with a harsh whistle. Straight and true, the bolt buried itself into the hole carved out by the phoenix with a thud.
The sand colossus stopped, frozen still.
The humans stared at it with bated breath.
Eventually, cracks began to appear along its sandy surface, and like a nightmare lost to the sands of time, it began to crumble apart. Grains of sand were swept away on the wind and vanished altogether.
They did it! The monster was defeated!
A raucous cheer went up among the outpost defenders. The monster was completely destroyed!
“Cloudhawk, we got the motherfucker!” Artemis shouted at him, full of joy and relief, “One hell of a shot! How the hell did you do it?”
Cloudhawk could no longer feel the suffocating energy of the monster. The beast was no more and crumbled away before them. But when he listened closely, the young wastelander could still hear something in the piles of sand.
His eyes grew hard. “Don’t celebrate yet!”
Artemis and the other soldiers stopped their jubilations and followed Cloudhawk’s eyes to the piles of sand. At first, all they could see was the sand shuffle and slowly dissolve…
…and then, a dark figure appeared before their eyes.
The figure held the ballista bolt between two fingers. They pinched, and like a bolt cutter, his fingers sliced through the several-inch-thick metal like butter. The bolt clattered to the ground in two pieces.
The shadowy figure slowly raised its head, completely unscathed. He paid no mind to Artemis, Cloudhawk, or the others, and immediately focused his attention on the Bloodsoaked Queen. When he spoke, his voice was strange and unsettling.
“You’re weak, even compared to your father.”
88 Disastrous Defeat
When did he come to the wastelands?
Why did he come to this rotten place?
What was his real name?
How old was he?
These were all mysteries no one knew the answers to.
All they knew was that he held sway over an army of sweepers and that he was one of the most powerful beings in all the wastelands. Everywhere he went, sandstorms followed, so the people had come to call him Caliph of the Sands.
Since ancient times, demons had been synonymous with chaos, war, turmoil, and death. A thousand years ago, they were locked in conflict with the gods and were defeated. However, although they were never able to recover, the forces of evil were never completely eradicated. They waited in the darkest corners of the earth, and wherever they emerged, strife and disaster followed.
One of those legendary creatures stood before them now. It seemed so surreal. The demon’s voice was strange, and though they saw where he stood, it was difficult to tell precisely where his voice was coming from. It echoed over itself like it was being folded over and over, as though calling at them from the depths of a quiet valley. It sounded as though it were coming from every direction at once.
He was a little over six feet tall with a typical humanoid silhouette: a body, head, and four limbs. Only, the surface of his body was savage, hideous, and pitch black. Coarse threads of crimson were etched along his skin that seemed to glow and pulse like blood vessels. It was a grotesque and uncomfortable sight to behold.
The beast’s face was covered in a red mask – or, could it be called a mask? It wasn’t placed on his face but rather seemed to have grown naturally over it. Except for the eyes, there were no holes or cracks in its smooth surface and the beast’s silvery hair framed it, creating a strange contrast. A cloak covered most of his body. Probably his most striking feature was a pair of scarlet eyes, for when they fixed upon you, it felt like they pierced through your soul.
When Cloudhawk looked at him, he didn’t feel like he was looking at a demon. It didn’t feel like this was a living thing at all, but a doorway to the old times from whence issued a frigid breeze – like a portal to the depths of hell. That sinister and desolate sensation made all the humans shiver.
No wonder the living feared these creatures so completely. Looking at it was like peering into one’s own nightmares.
The demon didn’t carry any visible relics, but Cloudhawk could feel the resonance of them radiating from him. They appeared to be coming from his body, something that was starkly different from demon hunters. Perhaps demons were capable of empowering themselves in such a way that they didn’t need relics to wield supernatural power?
Anyway, that didn’t matter right now.
Now that the demon had appeared before them, it didn’t take someone with keen senses like Cloudhawk to know what they faced. Even Artemis, dull as her special senses were, could see how massive the monster’s strength was.
Hostility poured from the Bloodsoaked Queen. Countless days and nights had passed since she began searching for him, and in the process, she’d suffered many tribulations and hardships. Yet despite setbacks, her determ
ination had never wavered and had instead grown day by day.
She couldn’t remember how many times she fantasized about the moment she found him. She’d imagined cutting him down with her holy sword again and again, and now, here he was in front of her. He was stronger than she’d expected, but that was no excuse to back down.
She was a demon hunter! To her kind, there was no greater glory than to sacrifice oneself to destroy evil!
When she left the Elysian lands, she never expected to return alive. Victory or defeat, battling this tyrant of the wastelands was her fate.
Hummmmmm! The Queen’s hands shook, and a sword of holy splendor emerged!
“Ah, a sacred crossblade of light. That brings back memories.” An expression of nostalgia crossed the demon’s eyes. He gazed at the wrathful Queen, himself perfectly calm. “I can feel your hatred. But you are too weak, young demon hunter. Your father couldn’t defeat me. What do you expect to accomplish?”
Cloudhawk couldn’t see her expression behind the mask, but he could sense the surge of murderous intent emanating from the Bloodsoaked Queen. It was stronger than he’d ever felt before, vast and boundless like a storm, as potent as a thunderbolt.
The Queen made her move. A resplendent light burst forth from her hands, and her holy sword audibly tore through the air. As she chopped her weapon in a vicious attack towards the demon, its roaring passage left a trench in the ground as it passed.
Everything within thirty feet was swallowed up in blinding light. The force ejected by the sword was like a furious rolling wave that threatened to obliterate anything in its path.
Young as she was, the Queen was a high-class demon hunter. There were few creatures alive that could withstand this attack. However, the demon was calm in the face of her lightning-fast onslaught. He raised his right hand, where hundreds of thousands of sand granules had begun to gather into the shape of a dull, golden sword. The weapon’s metal-like surface was covered in strange archaic symbols, and a cutting wind surrounded it.
Clang! The two swords met. At that moment, there was an intense release of energy that burst out all around them. Their clash persisted for three seconds before the Queen’s sword was knocked into the sky and detonated. It fractured into countless twinkling lights like a sea of stars, or fireflies floating in the breeze.
Cloudhawk’s face darkened. Although he’d always known there was a significant power difference between the Queen and the Demon, it was worse than he’d thought.
The Demon knocked her attack away like it was some insignificant task. His red eyes swept over the remaining human forces as fast as lightning and spoke to them in a calm and even cadence, “You have a choice. Submit or be destroyed.”
Before his words could fade into the wind, the Queen soared through the air, wielding her dazzling sword anew. She swung it at her foe with unbelievable speed and power.
He stepped nimbly to the side like a specter, and her dazzling sword of holy light struck nothing but air. The Queen swung her blade around and pummeled him with four or five more strikes that were almost too quick to follow, but the demon saw her every movement perfectly clearly. Dual swords of sand and light met again and again, and each time, they erupted in flares of pure energy and deafening blasts.
The spectators looked on in slack-jawed shock. Was this what it was like when the world's supreme powers battled each other? The wars of the wastelands were child’s play in comparison!
Swinging her holy sword with unbridled rage, the Bloodsoaked Queen poured every ounce of strength she had into the attacks. Once again, her sword was blocked, and as the blasts of energy cast the monster’s sand about, they bit into the soldiers’ faces like windswept daggers.
The Queen was already fighting with everything she had, but the demon deflected her blitz with just his hand, easily and proficiently. “If you’d trained for another five years, perhaps humanity would have a great young demon hunter. Alas, you are left wanting!”
No matter how hard she swung at him, the Queen’s sword couldn’t break his defense. This creature’s grainy sword was as impenetrable as an iron curtain. It easily blocked and parried the Queen’s rage-filled assault.
When the monster spoke, his voice did not contain any enmity or anger. Instead, it almost sounded like pity. His tone did more than make the onlookers uneasy. The Bloodsoaked Queen was a demon hunter! What was a demon hunter? As the name implied, they were masters at eradicating these evil creatures. Could this unholy monster feel pity for one determined to kill him?
Not only had the Queen been hunting him for a year all across the wastelands, but she’d also killed all seven of his disciples! To her ears, his disparaging temperament was an affront! A latent power burst out from within her, and her sword gleamed ever brighter. It was a blaze of daylight that threatened to cleave the night in twain. Cracks began to appear in the demon’s weapon. The Queen’s sword might cut through his at any moment!
Just then, the vein-like channels along the demon’s left arm flared with ominous light. Sand began to gather. As his sword threatened to give way, he thrust his palm towards the Queen, and a dozen dagger-like shards were whipped together into a deadly tornado heading her way. It struck with enough force to blow her backwards, while the cutting sands dug into her flesh, leaving a bloody fog in its path.
Thud!
By the time she hit the floor, the Queen was a bloody mess. She didn’t even have the strength to stand. The pure white cross necklace lay three feet away from her, but all its energy had dissipated. Inch by inch, she groped for it, crawling piteously along the ground.
The demon heaved a sigh. He’d spent more energy today than he’d anticipated. However, the Queen was now spent. She could no longer fight. She was so young and full of potential, but coming out here on her own was foolish. How was this any different from suicide?
The others watched in horror and alarm. Cloudhawk, in particular, couldn’t imagine seeing the Queen so thoroughly beaten. In all the time they spent together, no one had been able to stand in her way!
The demon brought his eyes around to the others once again. “What is your decision?”
“We surrender!”
“Don’t kill me!”
One by one, the doughty outpost warriors dropped their weapons. Seeing the strength of their foe, Artemis had also lost any taste for conflict. She spoke almost before she could think, “I surrender. This wasn’t my decision – it was all the demon hunter’s plan! Isn’t that right, Cloudhawk…?”
There was no way the Bloodsoaked Queen could win. Other than surrender, what other option did they have?
Artemis turned to hear Cloudhawk’s answer but was surprised to find that he wasn’t there.
What was going on? He was just next to her. How could he just disappear?
Suddenly, something snatched up the bloodied Bloodsoaked Queen from the ground and ran off with her. She was spirited away as fast as the wind, and in a blink, she’d been carried dozens of feet away.
“Another demon hunter? No… no, that’s not right. This one is too weak,” the demon muttered to himself in bewilderment. What wastelander had the capability to use relics? As Cloudhawk fled, the demon paid him little mind. There was no rush to follow, since, with the monster’s capabilities, he could catch up effortlessly.
89 The Showdown
The demon was too strong for the Bloodsoaked Queen. Cloudhawk’s best option was to create as much distance between them as he could. He considered submitting before making his decision, though. He thought maybe he could beg for his life – he was no hero, no powerful warrior. He was just a scavenger who wanted to live.
But then, a series of faces emerged in his mind from his memory: Slyfox, Mad Dog, Woola, Cooke, and all the rest of the Tartarus mercenaries.
Mad Dog had given his life so that they would have a chance.
Slyfox made Cloudhawk promise to avenge them moments before his death.
But now, the one who was responsible stood before him – co
uld Cloudhawk get that vengeance? The answer was clear: No, he could not!
Ten Cloudhawks, a hundred Cloudhawks together wouldn’t be enough to defeat this demon. But he couldn’t bring himself to bend his knees and ask for mercy. He couldn’t watch the demon murder the Bloodsoaked Queen before his eyes.
Artemis wouldn’t understand his thinking. It was what made him different from every other wastelander – he couldn’t ignore what was in his heart. He’d rather risk his life to save the Queen than to sell his soul. He would have his revenge. The Queen couldn’t die!
Cloudhawk poured all of his psychic energy into the invisibility cloak, which in turn boosted his speed so that he could attempt to escape the demon’s grasp. Only, as Cloudhawk ran, he could feel a sinister gale whip around him. Suddenly, a dark figure blocked his path. The young man paled as he rushed headlong towards the monster’s groping hand.
The demon was too fast. Cloudhawk couldn’t get out of the way.
Cloudhawk could feel the power pulsing from the creature before him. It washed over the boy and permeated every corner of his body, threatening to change every fiber of his being into grains of sand.
This power was several orders of magnitude stronger than the Queen’s so it was impossible for Cloudhawk to resist. Yet, just as he was about to succumb, something the demon did not expect occurred – a strange vacuum force emerged from within the wastelander’s body.
“Hm?” Confusion flit across the demon’s eyes as he examined what appeared to be a black hole drawing in his power from within the child. It began rotating just as he was about to transform the child into a pillar of silt and drank deeply of the demon’s power, even drawing energy from the demon’s own body.
A demon’s eyes could see through clothing, so those hideous red orbs picked out the stone against Cloudhawk’s chest through his armor. The previously ordinary stone was now bursting with blinding light as it neutralized enough power to kill Cloudhawk ten times over.
The Wastelander Page 63
