by Frank Morin
That time, he felt something, an eruption of energy at the moment the bridge sundered, as if the affinity required an enormous pool of energy to maintain, and that energy was all released in the moment he broke the connection.
Even more interesting, the invisible blast of energy seemed to knock Water and Fire down deeper into the abyss. Fire shouted angrily, and Water exclaimed, “You’ve been keeping secrets from us?”
She seemed to believe he’d hurt them intentionally, her tone suggesting that fact worried her.
Evander appeared beside him on the softly glowing, green stone island. Connor blinked, for a second surprised by the unexpected appearance of the giant, but then he shrugged. Evander was already walking some pretty weird roads. They shared the same mind, so why not share the queen’s affinityscape?
“I have never studied affinity connections like this, but access to this mental place sheds light on heretofore shadowed realms of theoretical thought.”
Connor chuckled. “Even when you’re speaking plain Obrioner, I can’t understand you.”
“You felt the release of energy when you sundered the bridge, yes?” Evander asked, gesturing at the broken anchor points with one huge hand.
Connor nodded. “It was like the bridge tied up a lot of the affinity’s power.”
“Exactly,” Evander said, smiling as if Connor had made a remarkably brilliant point. Connor hoped he’d continue because he had no idea what point that might be. Luckily the big man said, “The power of fission proved ineffectual against a strumbound elfonnel due to the similarity of power structure of the monster compared to the weapon you wielded against it.”
“Yeah, I wish I’d listened to you. It was less effective than stabbing a metal building with a sword. I only managed to push the queen over the brink,” Connor admitted, feeling sheepish.
“And yet, you identified another point of energy that may prove vital in accomplishing our ultimate goal.” Evander gestured again at the bridge. “I sensed with the release of this energy an increased distance between the elementals and this place.”
“I felt it too,” Connor agreed, tapping obsidian again, hoping to figure out how to utilize the surprising information.
“It is possible the sundering of bridges offers the kind of fission we require to split the elementals from my grandmother’s mind.”
Connor seized upon the thin shred of hope and grinned. “Creative destruction is one of my specialties. Let’s find out.”
He launched across to the sandstone island, and Evander offered no objections as he smashed apart the triple-layered bridge between sandstone and the joined elemental islands. Again an enormous wave of energy was released, and this time he felt more clearly how it rebounded across the breaking bridge, then across the elemental islands to slam into Fire and Water, knocking them back even farther.
Fire shouted, “You bring down wrath and ruin upon yourself and your family, boy!”
“You cannot stop us. We are linked too intimately with the queen,” Water added. “This delay will only make our vengeance the sweeter.”
“Keep talking,” Connor shouted back. They might be right, but he was hurting them, delaying them. He wasn’t about to stop.
In quick succession, he smashed through the rest of the queen’s secondary affinities and started across her final set of bridges from her primary affinities to her mainland lab. Evander followed, expression thoughtful, hands held before him, as if toward the warmth of a hearth.
Connor stopped when he reached the mainland lab, at the end of the bridge leading to obsidian, her first-ever affinity. The island looked older than the others, its edges more rounded, but the entire island gleamed like a polished mirror. It might be older, but Connor felt the power of that affinity far more clearly than any of the others.
“Wait,” Evander called, flying across the distance to land beside him.
“What? This is it. Every bridge hurt them and pushed them away,” Connor replied, feeling so relieved that they’d discovered the way to beat the elementals and prevent their rising into the world.
“They have pushed them, hurt them, but not stopped them,” Evander said grimly. “The mighty oak blackens in the fire, but new buds bring renewal of life in the springtime.”
Connor groaned and rubbed one hand across his face, feeling exhausted and annoyed. “Are you saying this isn’t enough?”
“I do not believe so,” Evander admitted.
“Then what else can we do?” Connor demanded.
“We must destroy the vessel and break their connection to her,” Evander stated.
Connor tried to bottle his frustration, to think clearly. They’d bought some time, but Evander was right. He could feel Water and Fire creeping up those tendrils connecting them to the queen’s mind. They would pull themselves out of the abyss and reach freedom, even after he broke the final bridge.
He paced the edge of the cliff, max-tapping super obsidian, considering everything they knew. “Breaking these bridges helped. Their connection to your grandmother is weaker, but not gone.”
Evander nodded. “I do not believe we can block them from entering the world until that link is destroyed.”
“If we kill her, can we break it then?” Connor asked.
“She is already consumed by the strum elfonnel. We must destroy that, but is that possible when the elements are still connected to this world through it?” Evander asked.
That was a scary thought. Could the elementals regenerate their monster through that tiny connection through the queen’s mind? She had regenerated from a scorched skull, so it might be possible.
Evander gestured toward the last bridge. “This affinity fission power has the potential to sever the link.”
“Maybe, but I’ve only got one bridge left to break,” Connor objected. “And breaking each bridge only pushed them back. It didn’t sever the link.”
“Perhaps instead of simply releasing the energy from each sundered bridge, it may be possible to gather it.”
Connor groaned. “Why didn’t you suggest that before I broke all the bridges?” It was a good idea, but he only had one bridge left, and he doubted that would be enough to stop them.
“Get out of my mind!”
The shrill, screaming voice of Queen Dreokt surprised Connor. He and Evander turned in unison to look back into the decaying lab of her affinityscape. Queen Dreokt indeed stood there, marching toward them. She looked . . .
Old.
Her hair was gray and wispy, her face lined like a sheet crumpled into a ball. Her eyes had a wild gleam in them, and she swayed as she walked. Connor realized with a start that she no longer enjoyed the longevity and strength of her affinities. He’d destroyed them all. She was nothing but a weak mortal woman.
Evander bowed to her and said softly, “Grandmother, I reverence the days of your youth before you broke with sanity.”
She started, as if seeing him for the first time. Squinting up at him, she exclaimed, “Am I dead already?”
“It’s complicated,” Connor said, uneasy in her presence. He felt confident she posed no direct threat, but he wouldn’t underestimate her ever again.
“You vile boy, stop torturing me! I’ve lost everything but this place, and now you take it from me too. Have you no shame?”
He glared. “I don’t think you can talk about shame.”
She marched up to him and tried punching him. The blow was weak and slow, and he easily caught it. Even in her mind, she lacked potency. She really was fading. She gasped, staring at her fist held helpless in his grasp and recoiled from him. Tears stood in her eyes and she cried, “No, I cannot end this way.”
“Everyone has to end,” Evander said simply.
“But not me, not like this!” she shrieked, recovering some of her strength through insanity. She wagged a finger at Connor. “Get out of my mind! You are the only one who understands me. We are linked, and you walk as closely with the elementals as I do. Leave me!”
Conn
or’s obsidian-enhanced mind snatched a new idea from her rambling and he gasped with realization.
“I know how to do it!”
63
Painful Choices
Kilian dodged sideways, tapping super-fracked speed, moving so fast that to others he no doubt appeared to teleport away from the enormous leg of the earthbound elfonnel trying to squash him. He stopped a hundred feet to his left and unleashed a barrage of ice daggers at the monster’s five huge, black eyes on the near side of its massive head.
The eyes exploded under the barrage, but Kilian waited three heartbeats before allowing himself to celebrate. Just as he’d feared, the eyes began reforming. He growled a curse and ripped the new-forming eyes apart again for good measure.
The monster turned after him, biting down at him with its enormous jaws, its long, serpentine neck flinging that head down like a whip. Kilian easily dodged it again, shifting around the monster to stop below its second head. He’d never fought an earthbound with four heads, one on each side of its body, and it was proving interesting.
That monster smelled of deep earth and mold, and it had a permanence to it that was growing annoying. Kilian had never fought an earthbound that wouldn’t die. Despite the united attacks of two hundred Spitters, it had only continued to grow. Its armored body was now over three hundred feet in diameter, and it had sported several additional legs. They’d inundated it with water, frozen its legs, and filled its throats with ice, all to no avail. Nothing seemed to damage it.
Kilian was starting to fear the elfonnel would not die unless Connor somehow defeated his mother. That didn’t bode well for any of them, but he didn’t share his dark thoughts with the others. His men and women were fighting valiantly, and they believed him when he promised they would win the day.
So he had to figure out how.
The monster’s second head noticed him and lunged, enormous maw opening wide enough to swallow an acre of land. Kilian dodged, and when its beak smashed into the ground where he’d been standing, he filled that mouth and throat with water, then turned it all to ice, sealing the beast to the ground with an unbroken column of ice that momentarily held it prisoner.
“Shatter it!” General Rory shouted from high on the monster’s back where he led a futile assault by several hundred insane bash fighters. They swarmed the monster’s back, pounding at its armor to no effect. If they ever figured out how to break through, he bet Rory and Anika would lead the charge into the belly of the beast to try breaking it from the inside. Luckily the monster hadn’t even seemed to notice them yet.
Rory leaped high into the air from the monster’s back in an impressive display of granite-enhanced leg power. He smashed down onto the monster’s frozen neck like a living meteor, every ounce of his granite power focused on the great hammer he swung with a two-handed grip. The hammer blow landed like an explosion, and the monster’s stony neck cracked.
Anika and Erich and two dozen Boulders and Rumblers followed Rory in a wave of screaming insanity, raining down over the frozen neck like death hail, every single one of them striking in the exact same place. The crack spread, the neck fractured, and Kilian sensed the ice underneath crumbling. On any other elfonnel, they’d be severely damaging it.
Not on this one.
All three of the other heads trumpeted in anger, and the monster shifted, twisting to the right. The move ripped the ice tether from the ground, and a moment later it spat the ice out, despite Kilian’s best efforts to keep it in place. The shattered neck healed, within seconds looking like it had never been touched.
Rory trotted over to Kilian, glaring up at the beast. “Not fair, healing like that.”
No, it wasn’t. Kilian glanced up and his sense of frustration grew. The airbound elfonnel had scattered the Battalions and had caught Battalion One in one of those infernal tornado clouds. The great air ship was spinning dangerously fast, and no doubt would soon splinter apart. He hated that he couldn’t help, but he had to figure out how to stop the earthbound first.
“Look!” Anika shouted as she caught up with Rory.
The great earthbound monster stumbled, and the recently-healed neck shattered again, the head falling free and crashing to the ground nearby with a fantastic boom.
Ivor skidded to a stop nearby, gaping at the severed head. “I thought it just healed.”
“It did,” Kilian said, feeling the first rays of new hope.
“What did you do?” Rory demanded.
“Nothing.”
In the sky, the airbound hissed like every cat in the kingdom got stepped on at the same time, and dropped a hundred feet toward the ground. The funnel cloud holding Battalion One captive dissipated, winds rushing away in every direction.
“It’s got to be Connor. He’s hurting them!” Kilian shouted. He raised his hand high and shouted, “Hit him while he’s distracted!”
Rory grinned and raised a fist for Anika to punch. “That’s more like it!”
They charged.
Connor shouted as he smashed his curse-laden fist through the anchor points of the queen’s bridges to obsidian. Raw energy exploded from the breaking stones, far more powerful than any other broken affinity. Instead of hitting the elementals with it, Connor caught it and drew it in. He wasn’t sure why that bridge contained so much more. Maybe since it was her first it had taken more energy to establish.
It didn’t matter. All he cared about was that he’d managed to take the energy from the explosion. It flowed through him, an energizing wave that was fundamentally different from the strum and magnis he’d been wielding. That energy had been used to create the affinity, and as he studied it, he sensed that it was a higher form of obsidian, like pure, distilled sylfaen, released by the process of shattering that link.
He grinned. Evander was right. All he needed to do was somehow amass enough of that affinity-fission energy to create a death beam strong enough to snap the elementals’ link to the queen’s mind, and destroy her elfonnel at the same time.
Except, he could only think of one way he might be able to do that, and he really didn’t want to do that. There had to be a way, though. He let his fear and worry fade away under new confidence. He would not fail again.
Queen Dreokt dropped to her knees, as if that last bridge had been fueling her strength. She wailed like a lost child, devoid of hope. Her eyes shone with madness, and she shrieked wordlessly as she pulled clumps of her thin hair from her head.
Connor refused to pity her. As the connection to her broken mind faded, he said, “Don’t worry. It’ll be over soon.”
“I’ll kill you!” she shrieked, and disappeared from her affinityscape.
Evander said, “If you have a plan, I suggest you hurry.”
Connor willed himself awake. Back in the enormous rampager body, his senses felt supernaturally sharper than ever. He still stood in the air, high above the plateau, with the queen lightning elfonnel higher still, wreathed in black storm clouds, surrounded by pelting snow and ice. The monster rotated to look down at him, and her features now looked exactly like Queen Dreokt’s. Her insane eyes were black, and her features twisted with hate.
She might be all but lost to the elementals, but somehow she seemed more in control of the elfonnel than ever. She shouted in a voice like thunder, “Face my wrath, wicked, unworthy child!”
She swooped toward him, lightning arms thrown wide, her writhing, lightning torso sprouting dozens more arms of living lightning. She clearly meant to smother him in strum and burn him to cinders this time.
In Connor’s mind, Porphyry howled a challenge and said, “Let us hunt and rend together, Pack Leader!”
“Soon,” Connor promised him. “I have one last thing to do.”
He willed himself into his own affinityscape, grateful that time moved far faster in there than in the real world. Otherwise, the queen elfonnel would rip him apart long before he could attempt the desperate plan he’d just come up with.
Despite the urgency of his mission, he
paused for a second to stare out at his affinityscape, to enjoy the floating islands and multi-leveled bridges of his affinities. His Petralist powers had come to define him.
Now they offered the one chance at salvation. Tallan spank the queen for a century for forcing him to this point.
Evander appeared beside him, looking confused. “What are you planning, Connor?”
The fact that he’d figured out something before Evander made Connor smile. Surprising enemies on the field of battle was one of his strengths. Hopefully this move would surprise the elementals.
And not simply destroy him.
He gestured toward his floating islands and bridges, and sighed under a weight of onerous responsibility that he could not escape. “We need more power. There’s not enough left linked to your mother’s mind for me to gather enough to snap the connection between her and the elementals. I can’t use fission from the physical world because she’s a lightning elfonnel. I need affinity fission.”
“Indeed, but that is the challenge,” Evander said.
Hating the words he had to speak, but not seeing any alternative, Connor sighed again and gestured once more at his precious affinities. “There’s only one place where I can access more affinity-fission power.”
Evander’s eyes widened with understanding. “You mean to sunder your own bridges and steal the energy released by sacrificing them?”
Connor nodded and looked to Evander with a last flicker of hope. “Can you think of another way to get the power I need?”
Evander hesitated, and Connor held his breath, desperately hoping the brilliant old Dawnus would save him from making such a terrible sacrifice.
His hope fizzled when Evander shook his head. “I see no other alternative, but can the sundering of your bridges affect the connection between my grandmother and the elementals?”
“I believe it can. Didn’t you hear her? I’m connected to her with chert, but also connected to the elementals through the third threshold. I’m the only other one who is. If I break enough bridges and collect enough energy, I should be able to destroy her elfonnel and snap their hold over her.”
