by Frank Morin
With his eyes glowing with mixed water and fire, his hair disheveled from his long run, Kilian slid to a stop and gave his mother a cocky salute. “Sorry I’m late. Looks like I broke another of your toys.”
50
It’s Not in Wielding the Most Power but in Knowing How to Apply It
Queen Dreokt’s initial rage flipped to a girlish giggle. Connor couldn’t keep up. She pointed at the broken remnants of the elfonnel. “Either you did not recognize your precious nephew, or you simply chose to cast aside his life as you have so many others.”
Kilian blanched and looked back down at the destroyed elfonnel. His shoulders slumped, and for a second he really looked three centuries old.
“Don’t let her get to you,” Connor shouted. “She already killed him. That monster was just an empty shell.”
The queen scowled at Connor and muttered, “Your entire goal in life is to spoil my fun, isn’t it?”
“Someone has to, you psycho lunatic,” Connor retorted, wishing he could explain to Kilian that he’d saved part of Evander, but he didn’t dare mention it yet.
Kilian sighed, grief plain on his face, but his expression hardened. “Yet again you murder your own blood, mother. It will be the last time.”
Her good humor flipped to rage again and she shrieked, “You insolent boy! I will break your mind, and you will take your nephew’s place as my servant.”
In response, Kilian leaped into another super-fracked sprint, moving faster than Connor had ever seen. He crossed the distance in a blink and slashed his mother across the face with another blade of intermingled fire and water. The blow turned her head, but left no mark.
“Tag. You’re it.” His voice hung in the air as he shot past and banked around for another pass.
The queen struck out with every element and shrieked in rage, clearly intent on ripping out Kilian’s life as she just had Evander’s. Grasping hands of earth rose all around him while pits dropped open and walls of earth reared up to block him, but Kilian sped around them all. Sheets of flame and battering rams of water smashed down all around, but he sped through them unslowed, moving like a shooting star. She might be the dread queen of all things, but Kilian was the master of fire and water and somehow he slipped through her grasp.
For a few seconds, Connor could only gape at the astonishing display of pure speed, coupled with incredibly fine elemental mastery. Kilian could never hope to beat her with raw strength, but she seemed unable to overwhelm his finesse.
Maybe with Kilian’s help, Connor could finally figure out a way to hurt her. She was momentarily distracted by the effort to catch Kilian, flinging elements around in an intense display of fire and water, howling winds, and smashing earth. Somehow he stayed just ahead of her wrath or slipped through it, surrounded by a protective coating of mixed fire and water.
The air boiled, one second searingly hot and stinking of melted stone, then switching to such absolute cold it stabbed at Connor’s lungs. The ground roiled, and the air seemed to scream as the other elements ripped it asunder.
With his own elemental affinities, Connor defended himself from the glancing effects of the queen’s overwhelming onslaught. Just those collateral strikes would have destroyed any non-ascended Petralist in a heartbeat. He also tapped limestone, summoned a globe of bright light, and compressed it with all of his strength. It took precious seconds to create a death beam, but Kilian was providing that time with unrivaled style.
A death beam alone wouldn’t kill her, so Connor wrapped it with the deadly external sandstorm power of sandstone, then managed to add some internal-focused sensory deprivation from limestone for good measure. He needed to hit her hard, and that combination might just do the trick. The abrupt, brutal attempt to murder Evander filled him with rage and cold, hard determination.
In the seconds it took to prepare the strike, the queen ripped apart the lands all around them in her rage. She gouged crater-sized holes, cast up huge hills, and scoured the lands down to bare rock. Her will whipped the air into a frenzy. Storm clouds roiled and grew darker in the sky, reflecting her anger.
Kilian skidded to a halt fifty paces from her just long enough to flip her an obscene gesture.
She yanked on the clouds and Connor felt her will forming a great charge. He instinctively tapped basalt and obsidian, hoping to speed up his reaction time enough to cry a warning.
Too late.
A great bolt of lightning ripped out of the sky. Time seemed to slow as Connor’s mind and reflexes accelerated. The jagged, incandescent bolt of destruction crackled down from above, tearing through the air, aimed for Kilian’s head.
He dodged it.
Kilian moved so fast, it made his previous speed look like he’d been crawling. Even with his enhanced senses, Connor could barely track him. With obsidian accelerating his mind, he still struggled to comprehend such speed. Kilian seemed to teleport away just before the lightning struck, as if he’d transformed into a human bolt of lightning himself.
As the lightning drove into the ground, blasting aside blackened earth, the thunderclap rent the air with a boom so loud it shook Connor’s teeth. Kilian appeared beside his mother and slashed his sword across her hand holding the ancient sculpted stone, concentrating all of his speed and momentum into that single point of impact.
The blow caught her by surprise and the sculpted stone tumbled free. Time continued moving at glacial speed for Connor, and Queen Dreokt turned in slow motion after the precious stone, her hands reaching to grab it, her expression horrified.
Kilian snatched it away, moving ten times faster.
Connor unleashed the death beam.
She was so distracted by the sculpted stone that she did not register the new danger in time. The death beam plunged into her left eye and ripped through her skull, exploding out the far side in a spray of gray matter. Not even Queen Dreokt could ignore getting most of her head blown apart. She convulsed and actually toppled to the ground.
Sandstorm clawed through her skull, melting flesh and bone, and Connor focused on the gruesome task with all his will. She’d regenerated from a single, blackened skull before. Could she do it if she had no skull left?
He planned to melt all of her bones to sludge. He also struck with the elements to keep her distracted. Earth speared into her back in a hundred spikes, while fire poured into the broken remnants of her mouth and down her throat, heated to such intensity it could have instantly melted steel. Blades of water slashed every joint, attempting to sever her limbs and separate them to make it easier for sandstorm to tear her apart. He added waves of paralyzing sound and hit her with more sensory deprivation, then added stilling, and even struck at her mind with chert.
When he did, Connor touched her mind, and again felt awed by the connection. Despite the horrible damage to her body, she felt no pain, but only seemed extremely annoyed. Connor broke through her defenses and touched her thoughts more deeply. As he had the last time, he was sickened by her lack of humanity.
It helped reinforce her inhuman resilience, and it made her really weird. She hated regrowing new bodies because she always felt her nose was never quite perfect, and she agonized on rebuilding each one. And she hated deciding how long to make her toes. Longer toes offered better balance, but then she had to wear huge shoes, and that looked undignified.
Where had that come from?
Connor tried to push farther, to find her weakness, but got trapped again in the weird labyrinth of her inhuman mind. She had suffered mental fracturing after having to put down her husband and destroy her beloved daughter, suffered anguish of heart and soul when her son betrayed her, and terrible depression when Tallan rose up in rebellion. Then she lost much of her remaining humanity during the long sleep. Even though she wore a human form, she was still more elemental than human. That part of her did not need a functioning physical body to remain completely potent.
They were grouted, Tallan curse it. Connor tried to ignore that new-found truth and continued sa
vaging her body, ripping chunks of it away, and melting the rest. She might not need much of a body, but could she really return if he denied her any flesh to rebuild?
“You begin to see the full scope of my power,” she said, her voice soft, as if hoping to teach him.
“You might be inspiring if you weren’t so criminally insane,” Connor shot back.
“Join me, and I will teach you to harness your strength. Together we can decide how to best rule these lands.” She sounded sincere, and for a second Connor actually considered her offer. If he couldn’t kill her, could he at least soften her tyranny so people didn’t suffer so much?
He might have hesitated, but Kilian did not. He stopped nearby and hurled the sculpted stone with superhuman speed high into the sky. It shot upward, soaring hundreds of feet.
Verena swept out of the sky, the Swift’s camouflaging screens flickering with the speed of her dive. She had drawn far closer than she had promised, and she expertly pivoted the tiny craft and caught the sculpted stone as it flew in through the window.
Kilian shouted, “Get that out of here! We can still use it to defeat her armies or destroy slate!”
Somehow the queen heard those words, even though Connor had melted her ears off and was holding her with every possible affinity. She screamed into his mind, so loud he staggered, clutching at his head, and for a second his connection to his affinities flickered.
That was all she needed. A second blast of pure will toppled Connor and sent Kilian skittering across the ground in an out-of-control tumble. Her limbs snapped back together and seemed to fuse instantly.
That was so incredibly unfair.
And freakishly terrifying. Fleshcrafting would soon run out, but he was starting to realize he would most likely be the one caught off guard by it. Queen Dreokt rose to her feet and swept an arm into the sky. A fresh bolt of lightning blasted out of the roiling clouds, aimed directly at Verena.
Still wrapped in obsidian and basalt, Connor easily processed the danger. Through his elemental senses, he felt the charge build and release, and he reached out with magnis to deflect the lightning bolt away from Verena.
Almost.
He pushed it some, but not quite enough. The lightning bolt struck the Swift a glancing blow, shattering the shielding. The tiny craft exploded under the impact, wings and canopy splintering under the intense barrage of pure strum. Deadly mechanicals ignited under the onslaught, adding secondary explosions that seemed to multiply over each other.
Verena did not even have time to scream.
She tumbled away, but her body shifted into the perfectly sculpted lines of max-tapped granite. Her armor blackened from the blasts and was shredded by a storm of deadly shrapnel that tore into her, despite her granite-hardened skin, spraying her blood in every direction. Without granite, she would have disintegrated.
The sculpted stone tumbled away in a different direction, somehow still intact. Queen Dreokt seized it with air and drew it back down to herself.
Connor didn’t care. He was too focused on Verena. His entire body trembled, worse than when the queen had ripped off his arms. He panted, but couldn’t seem to breathe as he caught her with air and pulled her down to him. Tears blurred his vision, even though he pushed them aside with water. His heart hurt, as if the queen had shoved her arm into his chest and squeezed it.
Verena looked dead. She was limp, her granite spent. All of her limbs were bent in unnatural angles, broken bones protruding. Her armor was shredded, and she was covered with blood from countless injuries. Connor wanted to scream, but could barely whisper her name over and over as he searched for some sign of life.
He barely registered the fact that Kilian had returned to his feet and again attacked his mother. She deflected him away somehow and elements clashed around them, but Connor didn’t care. He wrapped Verena in a cushioning blanket of air so no part of her broken body had to touch the ground. Then he placed a trembling hand on her cracked forehead. Barely able to think, his thoughts a torrent of grief and fear, he braced himself and flicked his healing senses through her, terrified he’d find her gone.
She was not dead.
She was not very alive either. She’d been broken almost as badly as he had been moments before. Her heart still beat weakly and he sensed that her mind was not broken.
Sagging with relief, Connor redirected every bit of the healing power from Sucker Punch that was still thundering into him back into her. With fleshcrafting he swept away the worst of her injuries. It would take precious minutes he didn’t have to heal her completely, but he could dare the seconds required to guarantee he’d saved her life.
He set the worst of the broken bones and realigned the rest so that the healing power pouring into her would do most of the work until he could return. Then he touched her mind with healing and with chert. He sensed her in there, still Verena, still herself. She felt the connection, and her mind awakened, still sluggish, but whole. “Connor?”
“Rest. I’ve got you. I’m healing you,” he urged, feeling overwhelmed with relief. Verena would survive. They still had a chance.
Queen Dreokt suddenly shouted, “Enough! I will have order! I will have perfection and obedient servants!” She raised the sculpted slate high, and Connor sensed she planned to use its awesome power to destroy them.
His heart sank. If she unleashed the might of that ancient sculpted stone like he she had done with serpentinite and with marble, there would be no stopping her this time.
Across their mental connection, Verena exulted. “Got her!”
“You mean?” Connor watched the queen, wishing with all his heart that Verena was right, that the trap would work.
Queen Dreokt glanced at Connor, then at Verena and frowned. She lowered the stone a fraction, and Connor clearly sensed her sudden hesitation.
“No. She can’t back out now. This is our only chance,” Verena cried.
51
No Regrets
Ilse slipped aside just enough for a battering ram of earth to scrape past her. Driven by two Sentries, she never could have stopped the blow from crushing her. Why stop it when she could use it?
As she expected, as soon as they realized the blow missed, they loosened their hold on that ram of earth in preparation for launching their next attack. She struck in that moment, piercing their control and pushing the earth hard to the left. It still held a lot of momentum, and with her extra push, it shot past Anton’s tower, crossed thirty yards of broken, open ground, and smashed into another enemy Sentry, knocking him flying.
She could almost hear the two Sentries look at each other with chagrin and say a fittingly-obtuse translation of, “Oops.”
The battle for earth raged all around, with her fifty surrounded by twice as many enemies. Well, there had been twice as many, but Ilse’s teams had defeated a full dozen, either killing or disabling them for the Crushers to bind. They’d lost three Sentries of their own, but as long as the enemy numbers didn’t swell further, Ilse felt confident her strike teams would eventually prevail.
Around their ring of embattled earth, the Crushers fought against three entire companies of enemy soldiers. It was a wild melee, full of screams and shouts, the heavy groaning of earth, and thuds of tremendous impact. Anton held one entire side of their lines, supported by Ilse and Fogwatt, while the rest of their Sentries worked in four-man teams on the other sides.
The air was so saturated with earth, Ilse could cast her senses through the air as easily as through the ground. She used that floating dust in her response to the two Sentries targeting her, pressing it together into two dozen earthen spikes. They formed in the air behind the two men, and she yanked them hard.
One of them felt her influence and turned to see what she was doing. The other never noticed, so focused on blocking the ground between them from any potential response. The spikes rained down over them, piercing their armor and scraping stone-hardened skin. Such a weak attack would not kill them, but it toppled them both from their t
owers.
The more observant of the two maintained his contact with earth and wrapped himself in a protective layer. As soon as he hit the ground, he slid through it as if it was a pressurized tube, rising twenty feet to his right a couple seconds later.
That was two seconds too slow to help his partner, who momentarily lost his connection. He hit the ground hard and rolled to his hands and knees. Ilse appreciated him making it easy for her to slam his head between two walls of earth. The man collapsed, twitching, and she surged the ground beneath him, sending him tumbling into the Crusher lines. They would ensure he didn’t awaken any time soon.
“Ilse!” Jean’s voice surprised her, sounding through the speakstone worked into her collar. Jean sounded more panicked than Ilse had ever heard, and immediately she feared something bad must have happened. Had Ivor’s forces been overwhelmed, or Rory’s bash fighters overrun by enemy Sentries?
“I’m here,” she said as she focused on the other Sentry, who was slamming earth at her from three sides. She threw herself into the air so his three crushing walls smashed into each other, then landed atop them and wrenched control over them, creating a tower for herself. She usually preferred fighting on the ground. It allowed her more flexibility of movement, but she’d take a tower when it was so conveniently handed to her.
“Aonghus has Nicklaus!” Jean cried.
“What?” Ilse rarely felt surprised, but those words shook her to the core. She lost focus for a moment, and the enemy Sentry nearly ripped her head off with a flying spear of earth. She only barely ducked it in time.
Then the ground under her enemy buckled, sending him tumbling. Ilse sensed Anton’s will there, glowing in her mind like a Solas lantern. He glanced over at her, a questioning look on his face. “A flock of tiny sparrows can overwhelm even the hawk, but the torc crushes the nuall in single combat.”
