by Frank Morin
“Pack Leader, let us hunt together. We will feast on her life blood.”
That sounded like a good idea, and Connor’s teeth ached, on the verge of changing into fangs.
As if she sensed that thought, or sensed porphyry coursing through his mind, the queen recoiled and snarled with frustration. “You foolish child! I told you to leave porphyry alone. It’s an unstable power that will corrupt and destroy you.”
Connor laughed. “As if you’re planning to do any less. Now get out of my head and let’s see if you actually remember how to fight someone.”
He tapped granite and charged, ringing himself in elements to reinforce his strength. With the life force of all those people he had stilled in Crann helping to drive his fist, he could probably punch her back to Donleavy.
For a second she gaped, looking stunned that he would actually challenge her to physical combat.
And his move distracted her exactly the way he hoped.
The ground to either side of the queen erupted. Spears of earth drove toward her from both sides. She seemed startled by the unexpected attack. Evander really was the master of shielding. The spears of earth struck, but melted away as they touched her.
Evander rose out of the ground about fifty feet to their right, already holding compressed light between his clasped hands, his massive shoulders hunched with the effort. As soon as he broached the surface, he released the death beam.
It crossed the distance in a flash, leaving an after image burning in Connor’s sight. The blast of light pierced the queen, punching cleanly through and shooting out into the distance, barely slowed.
She frowned at Evander, not even reacting to the terrible injury, which immediately began closing. “There you are, you annoying child. Your unruly behavior will only make your punishment worse.”
That’s when Kilian landed like a meteor, striking out of the clear sky so fast Connor barely recognized his approach. He slammed down onto his mother, encased in glittering fire and water, leading with a fist that exploded in a spectacular diorite eruption.
Connor blinked, stumbling in his advance, momentarily blinded by the onslaught. If Kilian had struck him like that, he had no doubt whatsoever that he would have simply been annihilated. But he forced himself to seize the combined elements, striking at the still-exploding cloud where the queen had stood.
He felt nothing.
The cloud dissipated a couple seconds later, revealing Kilian on one knee, fist pressed to the ground. With no sign of the queen.
“Tallan slap me silly,” Connor breathed. He could not imagine Kilian might have actually blown her to smithereens, so he spun, looking for her. Evander was also turning, expression concerned. Kilian rose, actually looking shaken by the brutal strike he had just unleashed.
“Thank you for making this easier for me.” Queen Dreokt rose up out of the earth to their right. She looked unharmed, although her clothing was in disarray. No doubt she had taken terrible damage, but she healed so fast they couldn’t take advantage of any distraction the damage might have caused. She wagged an angry finger at Kilian. “Son, you have corrupted enough of my descendants and led them stupidly toward destruction. You still insist that I destroy you. So be it. I will not allow your insanity to wreck everything.”
Verena had activated Sucker Punch a couple hours ago, but it didn’t seem to be affecting the queen’s ability to heal yet. That meant they needed to hurt her a lot more.
Connor launched into the air toward her, unleashing an intertwined blast of all of the elements. Kilian flung fire and water at her at the same time, while Evander plunged a giant fist into the earth. Connor felt his will surging through the ground like a lightning bolt. Between them all they should be able to hold her off.
Queen Dreokt threw out her hands, triggering an elemental explosion. The ground rippled, the air shook with thunder, and fire and water erupted in spheres of ice and superheated flame. The sheer intensity of the blast knocked Connor tumbling backward a hundred feet, bouncing wildly across the hard ground. Kilian and Evander fared better, somehow remaining upright in the face of the queen’s attack, even though she still drove them sliding back across the hard-packed ground.
The air smelled charred, like burned toast, and the hairs on Connor’s arms rose with a tingling tension as elements crashed and battled all around.
Queen Dreokt started laughing like a maniac, and her hair braided itself. Her expression turned predatory and she cackled, “Before you die, you’ll see firsthand why I am the best battle Petralist who has ever lived!”
87
A Glimpse of Insanity
No way would Connor let the queen see she intimidated him. So he said, “Sure, you dominated so much in the past that you had to nap away three entire centuries. Today you’ve got to learn to adapt.”
Right on cue, Verena joined the attack. Missiles began raining out of the sky by the dozen. High above them, the Hawk, the Swift, and much farther out, the Albatross dropped their invisible shielding and launched a full volley of mechanicals. Connor felt them coming, so no doubt the queen did too. He threw his will into the sky to help shield the missiles inbound, but couldn’t actually feel them with his quartzite senses.
They were coated with pumice dust to protect them from elemental attacks.
The queen indeed glanced up in annoyance and made a shooing gesture. Tornado-force winds ripped across the face of the inbound missiles to drag them off course, but they punched through without slowing.
“So the Mhortair attempt to still thwart me from the grave?” she growled.
Connor unleashed a torrent of intertwined elemental power at the queen, trying to keep her distracted. Maybe something in those missiles could hurt her. Verena had packed all sorts of activated stones among the diorite, hoping they might trigger whatever it was she feared from the Builders.
Queen Dreokt somehow split his elemental assault, letting it pass harmlessly past her. When he tried pulling it back at her, she seized control away from him and sent the elemental barrage blasting out against Kilian and Evander, sending them both staggering.
Connor gritted his teeth in frustration. He loved using that trick, but it really stunk to have it played back against him.
Before he could attack her again, the queen threw up one hand. Rocks the size of her head erupted out of the ground and shot into the air like they were giant hornets, flung from the world’s biggest speedslings. Connor tried to intercept them, reaching out with air senses, but Queen Dreokt wrestled against him for control of the air, blocking his efforts for critical seconds.
Rocks struck the inbound missiles dead on. Since they weren’t being directly controlled by the queen, pumice did nothing to protect the missiles, and they all exploded in a firestorm that Queen Dreokt seized and flung higher into the air, straight toward Verena and the other flyers.
Cold fear reinforced Connor’s need as he bent his entire will into the effort of deflecting those flames and saving his friends from being immolated. No doubt they had pumice active and could tap blind coal as needed, but he worried what else the queen might be weaving into that wall of fire.
Thankfully, at that moment the ground rippled and spat out a dozen Juggernauts spheres, previously concealed by Evander. Hidden in a circle roughly two hundred feet around Connor’s landing spot, they all accelerated toward the queen, thrumming with energy and the promise of violent destruction.
They were an awesome sight, replenishing Connor’s hope. A single Juggernaut had fought Harley almost to a standstill. Sure, Hamish had some help, but he had taken on one of the strongest Petralists who ever lived. A dozen of them, well, a dozen would definitely scare Connor.
They enraged the queen.
She dropped her attack against the distant flyers and spun, glaring at the dozen enormous mechanicals picking up speed as they rolled in, as if Hamish had simply ordered them all to strike her with battering rams from every side.
“Vile Builders!” she shrieked.
&nb
sp; Connor did not give her a chance to wreck them, but tapped the overwhelming energy that he had stolen from her army and poured it all through his connection to chert. He struck at her mind with every bit of that power. He snarled as he drove that power like a dagger, riding the wave of exhilarating energy.
The blow clobbered her like a landslide and her mental defenses actually cracked. She might be the dread queen overlord of mind wiping, but she had never felt anything like that. For a second Connor felt her mind and drove his thoughts into it like daggers.
She shrieked, this time in actual pain, and staggered, clutching at her head. Connor continued to drive into her mind, exulting with a sense of impending victory. He was actually hurting her! She wasn’t invulnerable.
He felt her thoughts, her arrogant overconfidence that had faded to annoyance, given way to battle lust, and finally admitted a spark of fear for the first time in centuries. As their connection deepened, Connor felt a more complete picture of her mind, and although he needed to strike her down, for a second he recoiled.
What he sensed was no longer human. She had lingered in the long sleep for three hundred years, and from all accounts her mind had been broken even before that. She’d raised an elfonnel to defeat her enraged husband and had lost something important when she returned. She’d failed to escape her elfonnel after the Battle of Vallanes. Who knew what getting trapped in that elemental form for so long had done to her? Now that she’d risen again, very little of what remained of her was actually human. She was foreign, unlike anything Connor had ever felt.
If a healthy mind was like a seventeen-course meal, her mind was more like that meal had been eaten, then regurgitated, left to rot, then stewed to boiling.
Then he felt something else, a tiny core of absolute fear, buried deep under the fractured thoughts and jumbled emotions. He sensed fear of the Builders, and weirdly, fear of the very elements she wielded. This was it, the secret he needed to know, to understand. He just needed another second, and he’d understand how to beat—”
Queen Dreokt shrieked with rage and her mental shields snapped back into place, ejecting him. Their eyes met and he saw rage to rival anything he’d ever felt as a rampager burning inside of her.
Although Kilian and Evander continued striking at her with all their strength, she waved their efforts aside like someone brushing at flies. The Juggernauts were still rushing in, but she struck with spikes of narrowly focused will that pierced Evander’s efforts to shield the mechanicals. Earth struck every one of the Juggernauts, catapulting them high into the air.
They all activated thrusters, although half of them reacted slower than the others. No doubt the ones with less experienced pilots, who were now getting their first real taste of battle. Connor hoped they didn’t lose heart, but even Hamish and the others who reacted quicker would take precious seconds to come back around.
Connor clearly heard the speakstone chatter between them. Hamish was shouting orders and encouragement to his people. Most of them seemed determined, if understandably terrified. Tomas and Cameron of course being the notable exceptions.
“She’s very energetic for such an old lady,” Cameron commented.
“I hear higher affinities can do that to you. Bad on the teeth, though,” Tomas responded.
“I bet she fancies soups,” Cameron agreed.
“Probably why she frowns so much.”
Hamish shouted, “Enough chatter! Link up and form Ilse’s Revenge! First form.”
The Juggernauts altered direction, shooting through the air toward each other in a move that might give them enough power to do some real damage.
The queen held Connor’s gaze and said, “Perhaps now that you’ve felt my thoughts you begin to understand the dangers I’m trying to warn you of, as well as the consequences I suffer from rising through thresholds I did not understand that perhaps you can avoid.”
That rattled him. Connor had expected to face a barking-mad lunatic they needed to put down like a rabid dog to save the kingdom. She’d done so many horrible things, but why then waste so much time claiming to want to save him, to teach him? He’d ascended and already sensed dangers in his new powers, but he’d be a fool to think he understood them all. Could he really break his mind and end up like her?
The thought made him shudder, and he refused to accept it. She must be trying to trick him, trying a more subtle form of mind control, but he couldn’t allow himself to get distracted, to waiver in any way. He recalled her barbaric cruelty, her mind bomb that had nearly killed him and Ivor and every Builder. She wanted to murder Verena. She was evil, and he would stop her.
Connor struck at her again with chert, but this time she was ready and deflected his assault. She responded with a dizzying number of elemental attacks, hitting at him from the ground, the air, and both sides with water and fire.
Connor fought back, his concentration becoming complete as he drew deeply upon all of the elements. The queen would usually be stronger, but he was still enjoying an enormous amount of extra energy from stilling, and he burned through it at a staggering rate as he fought to defend himself. He might not be able to defeat her if they fought with elements alone, but he doubted she could fight hand to hand any more. So he broke into a charge, determined to close and pummel her until she couldn’t heal any more.
Earth erupted around him in blinding explosions, the thunderclaps pealing so loud his head rang. Then earth fell away beneath him, yawing into deep, spike-lined pits. She switched up attacks with dizzying speed, changing tactics as soon as he reacted to the last one, leaving him struggling to keep up.
But he still managed to walk through it all. Fire and water churned around him, but he deflected them wide or simply stepped through. Kilian and Evander threw their entire focus into helping shield Connor, and their assistance helped him survive the elemental onslaught like a child clinging to a sledding plank during an avalanche.
Air slammed into him from every side, hardened like invisible blades, tough enough to take off a max-tapped Boulder’s head. Connor gritted his teeth and punched each of them away or deflected them wide enough to slip through. He focused on the queen, advancing one step at a time. He’d crush her with his fists. If only he hadn’t been pushed back so far. The yards between them seemed to stretch like a mile.
His entire reservoir of elemental affinities was completely focused on defense as he made his painfully slow assault, but he wasn’t limited only to elemental powers. While the queen seemed locked into her tertiary affinities to the exclusion of almost all else, Connor felt no such limitation.
Drawing upon quartzite, he struck with sensory deprivation. He was not sure if she felt it before she broke it, but for a second her elemental attacks did seem weakened. So he tapped limestone and seized the air all around them, creating mirages of Builders swooping in and casting mechanicals at the queen.
He was not sure if she recognized the mirages were fake because she felt no movement through the air, or if she had learned his trick, but that approach did not seem to accomplish much. So he grasped water and fire together, reaching for the newfound forces of strum and magnis.
The churning air, so full of elements smashing against each other created a lot of charges, so it took Connor only a second to sweep his magnis senses across the area, concentrating all of that energy into a giant charge.
The queen’s eyes widened in understanding just as he unleashed it.
A lightning bolt crackled between them. In that second, Connor could feel the pull of the force field of magnis generated by the moving strum, and clearly felt the air along the conduit turn into plasma to pass it through. The bolt of lightning struck the queen in the chest, blasting through and exploding out her back, showering the land behind her with blood and gore.
Queen Dreokt staggered, eyes wide in surprise, although she still did not scream. Connor hoped it was because her lungs had evaporated and she had no air.
She stumbled, but did not fall. The ghastly wound immediat
ely began to close, but the healing progressed at a noticeably slower rate than her last injury. She gasped and for the first time he saw real fear in her eyes. Even though he was pretty sure her lungs were destroyed she managed to gasp into his mind, “You wicked boy. How did you weaken sandstone?”
Connor exulted. They were doing it! They were going to destroy her. He threw back the thought, “Maybe even your affinities realize you’re a lost cause. Air said you’re heavy, and Water thinks you smell funny.”
“Beware considering elementals as people, boy. They are slaves whose power we command. They will lure you into destruction if you allow it.” Again he sensed her unreasoning fear.
What did she know? She was so broken, she barely knew them. Connor accelerated his charge, and this time he would curse-punch her so hard he’d finish the job.
Even though she was staggering and seemed to be struggling to heal herself, the queen lashed out with desperate strength. A spear of earth no thicker than his finger erupted out of the ground right between Connor’s legs. It punched through his armor and stone-hardened skin, stabbing deep up through his torso, from his groin up into his guts.
Connor did scream. The pain blanked out all thought, and he fell even as he seized that earth and melted it away. He had been injured badly before, but somehow this was worse. It burned, as if the queen had filled that slender conduit of earth with the concentrated burning ice that Mister Five had tried to kill him with once.
Connor seized upon sandstone, but he too felt the dearth of healing power. It was not nearly as much fun when he was the one being blocked from healing.
Queen Dreokt cackled, although her mouth suddenly filled with sand as Evander struck her across the face. She had to be badly weakened if his attacks were now causing damage. Kilian, his face set in a scowl, was also striking at an ever-increasing rate, wielding whips of white-hot fire, mingled with water. His attacks were drawing closer and closer to her. The air shimmered with waves of heat and icy droplets of water. It smelled wild, like the heart of a thunderstorm.
