by Frank Morin
“I am so tired of boys who refuse to listen,” she spat with a mouthful of dirt.
Water materialized around Evander, forming a sphere of ice. Connor hurt too much to intervene. All he could do was sense what she was doing. A hundred daggers of ice formed within the sphere and plunged into Evander’s body.
Kilian turned, extending a hand, and the ice melted away from Evander, who staggered, covered in blood. But the distraction cost Kilian, because earth rose up on either side of him, forming cresting waves that smashed together with overwhelming force and a thunderous boom.
Connor cried out in despair, fearing Kilian was obliterated. The earth melted back into the ground, revealing nothing. For a second, Connor feared Kilian’s body had been dragged away forever, but then he appeared again, racing by so fast Connor thought he must be hallucinating. Not even in his fastest fracked sprint had Connor reached half that speed. Kilian shot by his mother, sword whipping out, and severed her hand even as she raised it toward him.
She frowned and picked it up, then waved it at Kilian, who was banking around for another pass. A funnel of air intercepted him, sending him tumbling hundreds of yards away. His angry curses drifted on the wind back to Connor.
The queen was terribly injured, but she was still winning. Connor needed to fight, but oh, he hurt so badly. The injury sapped his strength and left him wanting to cry from the pain.
Then healing power roared into him from the small sandstone pendant Verena had given him. Like a flood, it washed away his injuries and filled him with health. He sagged with relief and grinned up into the air toward the Swift in silent thanks. It looked like their amazing Builder cleverness would indeed tip the balance of the fight in their favor.
The enormous healing power restored Connor almost instantly and he leaped back to his feet. He again max-tapped granite and tried to apply even more to protect himself from another surprise attack. He wasn’t sure it would work, but it made him feel less nervous about resuming the attack.
Queen Dreokt stumbled, almost falling, looking weak for the first time. Her gaping wound was still closing, but slowly, and it was finally beginning to take a toll on her. Their eyes met, and he could tell she recognized the truth. She would not be able to regenerate fast enough this time.
Behind her, the dozen Juggernaut spheres were rapidly twisting around each, interlocked, outer plates sliding into new positions, forming into one giant whole. Within seconds they would rise as an interconnected construct seventy feet tall. Not even she’d be able to ignore the combined might of all those mechanicals. Connor had never seen them actually assemble into Ilse’s Revenge, and was eager to see its final form, although he was not sure they were going to need it. He would rip the queen apart and toss one piece of her to each of his friends to pound into dust or melt into its component parts.
Mistress Four and Commander Six leaped out of the Hawk high overhead, starting a fast descent. Connor would catch them so they could participate in the final destruction of the dread queen and exact vengeance for the destruction of their people.
The Juggernauts completed the interlocking process faster than Connor had expected, and rose in the mighty form of Ilse’s Revenge, towering over the battlefield with a fantastic creaking of steel and roaring of engines.
Connor blinked in astonishment and whispered, “Whoah.”
The mighty construct had formed into a towering humanoid shape, the spherical Juggernauts flattened along the edges, huge outer plates formed into armor. Hamish’s sphere formed the head, and it looked just like Captain Ilse.
“Did the viewscreen projections work?” Hamish asked via speakstone. “The only form we tested so far was the octahedron, but for this, we had to go full Ilse.”
“It looks just like her,” Connor said, recognizing the slight shimmering of the image. They were projecting her face onto the head of the giant mechanical. It looked fantastic, and it was so perfectly fitting. Queen Dreokt gaped at the enormous mechanical, looking truly astonished.
Armored plates all along the front side of Ilse’s Revenge slid aside and it unleashed intense gouts of fire, along with hornets from eight oversized speedslings. The streams of deadly projectiles slashed into Queen Dreokt, puckering her stone-hardened skin, while the many diorite-tipped ones exploded with a satisfying chain of thunderclaps and blasts of white-hot fire. The explosions charred her skin and she stumbled back, looking actually afraid, clutching hands over the open wound in her chest. Some of the exploding hornets made it through and detonated inside her chest cavity.
She actually grimaced in pain and turned away, eyes wide with terror. The vile Builders were hitting her with their mechanicals, and that frightened her more than anything Connor had yet done. He exulted, feeling a sense of anticipation. They were going to do it! They were actually going to beat her. This battle was almost over!
Except the queen pulled out of a deep pocket a long, sculpted stone.
She started to laugh.
88
Burned Cookies
Sculpted stone!” Connor shouted as he threw himself into the air toward Queen Dreokt.
The sculpture she held was long, just like the other ancient sculpted stones he’d seen. It was exquisitely carved into the shape of a skeletal human hand clutching a billowing flame.
Marble. She held the ancient sculpted stone that controlled affinity with fire.
Icy fear drove Connor on and he hurtled toward the queen, who lifted the sculpted marble high, her expression turning victorious, even though her ghastly chest wound was still not closed. Despite his many bloody wounds, Evander began sliding across the ground toward the queen too, but he was even farther away than Connor.
Kilian leaped forward, again moving so fast he seemed to teleport across the distance to his mother. He struck with diorite fists right in her wounded chest. The explosion ripped her in half in a second spray of blood and gore, tossing her legs and hips away and toppling her upper torso and arms to the ground at Kilian’s feet.
This time she did scream. The sound started as a shriek of absolute pain, but continued to grow, building in strength far beyond the limit of human lungs. It tore at Connor’s ears and he grimaced, but still dove the last few feet, planning to crash-tackle her and rip the stone from her weakened grip. Kilian also reached for the sculpted stone grasped in her hands. If one of them could get that stone, they’d have her.
Earth erupted under Kilian, tossing him high overhead. He twisted in the air, cursing in Havaen, blasting fire out his feet to reverse course. Connor reached for the stone as he crashed onto the queen’s bloody form, and his fingers touched it just in time to feel a tidal wave of energy erupt from it, so strong it numbed his senses.
White-hot fire erupted from the stone in a blinding wave. Even though Connor walked with fire and no longer feared heat, the sheer magnitude of the onslaught still catapulted him away so hard he nearly blacked out. Fire boiled around the queen in a column so dense it completely obscured her. Connor reached for the flames, hoping to wrench them away, but only gasped in new fear.
The energy contained within that sculpted stone eclipsed anything he’d ever sensed. It felt like all the fires of the entire world were bottled up in there. And they all belonged to the queen.
In Connor’s mind, Fire grinned at the still-expanding fireball. “Now that’s a sight, that is.” He held his hands toward it like an old gaffer warming himself before a stove. “She’s stepped into the flames, boy. No way you can pull her out alone.”
“What can we do?” Connor shouted.
Evander retreated from the intense heat that was starting to melt the ground. He looked worried, and not even in an inscrutable confusing way. He just looked afraid.
Not good.
Kilian plunged down into the firestorm, and Connor clearly sensed him tap blind coal. One second he blazed in Connor’s marble senses like a descending meteor, and the next he simply disappeared. Connor lost sight of him as he plunged into the fire, but he did s
ense another explosion of diorite.
He expected to see the queen tumble away, even more broken, but gasped when it was Kilian who careened out of the flames, face bloodied, one arm twisted into a crumpled ball. Queen Dreokt must have broken the bones in twenty places. He smashed into the ground and kept tumbling, either unconscious or suffering such extreme shock that he couldn’t react. Connor had never seen Kilian so beat up.
They were out of time. Connor used the rage he felt at seeing Kilian so broken to push back his rising fear, and threw himself into a fracked sprint. Just as he reached the crackling, intense column of the queen’s firestorm, he drew deep from marble, and tapped both pumice and blind coal.
The slippery feeling of blind coal wrapped him in its strange embrace, and he plunged through the impenetrable wall of fire. Queen Dreokt stood in the center, wrapped in white-hot fire that held her legless torso off the ground. Her expression was exultant as she held the sculpted marble stone high in her right hand.
Connor needed more primary affinities, so he tapped them all. Obsidian activated, melding with the already-tapped basalt and pumice, accelerating his mind and his ability to manage his movements. He was already tapping blind coal, and gulped down the snake, applying it to his bones just before activating diorite. Its lightning-like power ripped through him just as he finally tapped granite.
Then he curse-punched the queen in her still-gaping chest wound, hoping to rip her torso in half. His fist plunged deep into her and exploded with diorite fire. The blast shook her, but didn’t rip her apart.
Instead of squishy organs, it felt like her torso was filled with granite, and the intense eruption of power he released barely cracked it. Connor slammed right up against her, their faces inches apart, and his fear spiked again. He’d known she possessed very little humanity, but now he wondered what she was, and how he could kill her.
“It’s too late for you, I’m afraid,” she told him, her expression sad, like a grandmother speaking to a sickly child. She seized his face with her free left hand, her fingers stronger than steel, digging in and threatening to crush his skull. He grunted from the pain and grabbed her hand, trying to wrench it free, but couldn’t budge her. How could she still be so much stronger?
She winked at him, and that shook him more than any of the terrible injuries she’d dealt out to them all. She added in a pleasant tone even as her fingers ground against his skull with ever-increasing strength, “Nice hit, kid. You may be ascended, but you’re still just a child.”
Connor tried switching blind coal externally again, but she was already holding him, her fingers digging into his skull, and it didn’t help him slip free. So he tapped porphyry, and the beast leaped into his heart and appeared in his mind among the elements, who all backpedaled away from it, looking startled.
“We hunt!” Porphyry roared, but before Connor could unleash the beast, Queen Dreokt threw him away so hard his neck almost snapped.
He tumbled hundreds of yards across the rough plateau, the world spinning crazily around him, crashing right through mounds of rock that got in his way. When he finally stopped, body aching, stomach lurching in reaction to his fear, he felt deeply rattled. He was ascended, was supposed to be as strong as her, but he felt like a toddler trying to fight the Ashlar.
He couldn’t focus on the fear, or he’d end up totally useless. So Connor forced himself to stagger back to his feet. He tapped obsidian, accelerating his thoughts, trying to think of a combination they hadn’t tried yet. With a flash of insight, he realized he’d been focusing most of his efforts on fighting her with tertiary powers. He’d fallen into the same trap she had, leaning almost entirely on the vaunted elements, but he could never beat her that way. He had to fight smarter.
Queen Dreokt had expanded her column of fire, and to his marble senses, it seemed completely impenetrable. The distant flyers had launched another volley of missiles, but she completely ignored them. They detonated against the inferno with no visible effect. She was sealing them all out, right when they had finally injured her. It was so infuriating! Why wouldn’t she just die?
Ilse’s Revenge charged in, its feet rolling it across the ground, arms extended to either side to reveal eight sets of missiles hanging beneath them. They fired too, and actually plunged into the firestorm before exploding, but Connor couldn’t tell if they accomplished anything either.
“Pumice coating should have done more,” Hamish said to his team, sounding as frustrated as Connor felt.
They might not have accomplished much, but they did infuriate the queen. Ropes of combined elements erupted from her firestorm toward Ilse’s Revenge. Hamish activated pumice in time, and they slipped through, sliding closer still. The queen might be well concealed in that pillar of impenetrable fire, but the towering form of Ilse’s Revenge, with Ilse’s face scowling down at the flames was still awe inspiring.
Connor tried focusing his rattled thoughts to rally to their aid. He was still pretty far away, but he could help shield them. Ilse’s Revenge was barely a hundred feet from the queen’s fiery pillar, pushing forward against the elemental onslaught. He poured every bit of shielding into the effort, but the queen only intensified her attacks. She unleashed a barrage of elemental fury so raw and wild, it eclipsed anything he’d ever experienced.
Hamish and his crew fought forward valiantly, activating blind coal and pumice again and again, but she hammered them with all of the elements and shifted tactics faster and faster. She really was a master of the elements. The giant mechanical staggered under a barrage of huge earthen chunks that she hurled at them. Apparently she released active control just before they struck, nullifying the power of pumice. Blind coal still saved them, but her onslaught forced them to tap it constantly. It wasn’t designed for such prolonged use, and they’d run out long before reaching her.
Fire and water boiled around Ilse’s Revenge, striking from every side like a thousand angry snakes. Long spears of earth, hardened to stone, drove into joints and tried clobbering the head, but the mechanical continued its dogged advance just like Ilse would if she was really there. Against any other Petralist, they would have posed a dire threat, but they would never succeed alone. Connor redoubled his efforts to help, while both Evander and Kilian charged in again, running right next to each other, their shielding merged together in a way Connor had never imagined possible. Connor’s hope soared again. If anyone could get through, it was those two.
Queen Dreokt hammered them mercilessly, even as she kept battering at Ilse’s Revenge. Elements flashed back and forth across the battlefield, igniting it in rainbow colors that would have been beautiful if they weren’t so deadly. Connor broke into a run as well, but most of his efforts were focused on trying to shield Ilse’s Revenge from her attacks.
It wasn’t enough, and the individual Juggernaut spheres start running out of blind coal.
The left arm were severed cleanly away by a giant blade of air, and the two spheres comprising it were seized before managing to transform back to their original shapes. Intertwined fire and water slammed them into the ground that gave way beneath them. They sank out of sight, and the hole snapped shut with crushing force, squashing the hapless Juggernauts like bugs beneath a giant heel, cutting off the pilots’ panicked cries for help.
Connor gritted his teeth with frustration. He should have been able to help, but his entire focus was consumed trying to fend off the queen’s continuing overwhelming assault on the rest of them. He needed to give the rest of Hamish’s team a chance to escape, but with that sculpted stone in her hands, Queen Dreokt was accessing far more power than he could, and she swatted aside his best efforts.
A sheet of water struck next, barely one compressed droplet thick, but fifty feet long. It slashed across the topmost junction, severing the head, sending Hamish’s Juggernaut tumbling away. Connor seized that one with air and hurled it farther, determined to protect his friend from getting crushed like the others.
Hamish was shouting, “Retreat! Fi
re anything you’ve got left and get out of there!”
Too late. More sabers of water slashed home, slicing apart the arms, then the legs. The central torso tumbled to the ground with a resounding crash. They didn’t give up, though, and the remaining Juggernauts shifted again, forming one great sphere.
The sight enraged Connor so much that he planted his feet and raised his hands, filled with unshakable resolve. “Give me everything you’ve got,” he told the elements riding in his mind.
They didn’t argue, but joined hands, their powers flowing unrestricted into his mind. He wrapped them together, then added serpentinite into the mix. Queen Dreokt hadn’t done anything with serpentinite during the entire battle. Did she still think it was useless, beyond even her reach? It was one option that might help tip the balance in their favor. She was hammering the remaining bulk of the Juggernaut, and their last bits of blind coal would surely run out soon.
Connor shouted, “Fight someone who can hit back!”
He hurled all of the intertwined elements straight at Queen Dreokt’s firestorm. The five-elements spear plunged into it and pierced it, but missed the queen by a handspan. She severed it before Connor could redirect his powers, but now he knew where she was positioned. He would not miss again.
The elemental barrage ceased against the broken Ilse’s Revenge. It looked like he’d drawn her attention again, or maybe she figured the Juggernauts were no longer a threat. She rose to the top of her billowing firestorm. It now stretched over thirty feet and reared more than twenty, a dense column of pure white heat. Connor couldn’t see her lower torso, but she didn’t look troubled by the fact that she’d abruptly gotten three feet shorter. Her voice boomed like a thunderclap.
“Fools! You threaten my rule without understanding the powers you wield. Witness the power of the ramverk!”
