by Dean Murray
Now when I scooped sparks into the reservoir of energy I was trying to maintain in the sky, they all went exactly where I wanted them to go. Even more important, my mental arms moved with the speed of thought and reached further than my natural eyes were capable of seeing.
I was still moving at more than four times normal speed, and I spent nearly eight whole seconds scooping sparks from everywhere I could reach. There was no way to deplete the world around me—I could see new sparks rushing in to fill the absence I was creating—but the results were still astonishing.
I watched with my physical eyes as the boiling, expanding sea of energy was mirrored by black storm clouds that stretched on for dozens of miles in every direction. I finally understood what it was that the Lady had been looking for. This was the physical manifestation of someone who was fully linked with the scepter.
With one hand I continued to amass greater amounts of energy, but the other set about using what I'd already gathered. Lightning bolts started splitting the sky, vast blue flashes that each lasted for what felt like a full second to me.
Each time I launched another attack, one of the enemy Awakened died. There were more of them than I'd realized—far more than the Lady had been expecting—but I wasn't the only one killing them now. The other Awakened who'd chosen to ally themselves with the Seelie Court had joined in the fight for real now, and enemy Awakened were dropping in pairs.
A tiny corner of my mind was shocked that I was wielding as much power as more than two score Awakened, that it took all of them to keep up with the rate I was destroying our enemies, but mostly I was just reveling in the sensation of lightning racing along my mental limbs.
The scepter still couldn't talk—linking with me had changed it in ways that I still didn't understand, but it hadn't gained the power of speech yet. Then again, it didn't need it. I could feel its enjoyment, and the emotion screamed that this was what we'd been made to do.
It was getting harder to find the enemy Awakened. We'd picked off most of the ones in the vanguard and the others were mixed in with the dark mass of Unseelie fae headed towards us. That was concerning to the Awakened part of me, but the artifact—the part that was more and more in control of what was happening—was less concerned about that. It was just happy to kill our enemies. Awakened, fae, humans, it didn't matter, they all died the same.
I picked out a tall, horned figure and reached more deeply into the energy above me. I didn't just brush against the Minotaur with one hand. I grabbed hold of him and exulted in the white-hot charge that connected the sky and ground.
The charges I'd used to kill the Awakened had been nearly an order of magnitude bigger than what I'd used to kill the flying fae, but this was nearly another order of magnitude bigger than that. The arc of blue power that struck the Minotaur was nearly as big around as he was, but it didn't vaporize him like I'd been expecting it to.
It drove him to the ground and left smoke rising from his fur in irregular patches, but that wasn't good enough—not for the artifact, and not for me. I was still raining lightning down on him with my left hand, but I shoved that elbow even deeper into the maelstrom and then sent the other one up to join it.
With both hands wrapped around the Minotaur, the point of impact where the two bolts hit him was nothing less than blinding. I'd closed my eyes in an effort to protect them, but the brilliance of the river of sparks was so intense that it was too much even for my second sight. I turned my head away for several seconds and then let go of him and examined what was left of one of the three most powerful Unseelie fae in existence.
I still hadn't managed to vaporize his body, but what was left was definitely dead—or at least as close to dead as he was going to get without a few hundred more disembodiments. It was a success—if you could call draining the pool of energy above me almost empty to kill a single enemy a success.
It begged the question of how we'd ever managed to kill any of the top-tier fae, but all I could figure was that electricity was kind of a blunt force. It couldn't reach in, carving a tiny path to the vital organs. It had to blast the target's entire body and overwhelm their electrical resistance before it could destroy organs and kill.
All of that flickered through my mind as I reached for more power, pulling it in from more than a hundred miles away in bolts of lightning that flickered between the clouds. I knew that I needed to get back on the offensive, but I was still having a hard time picking out the Awakened from the mass of fae. Even worse, the approaching host had gotten close enough while I'd been frying the Minotaur that they were now enveloped inside of the energy bleeding off of the wards.
I'd been hoping to get another round of lightning bolts off, but it wasn't going to happen, not without risking taking out people from my own side. There was nothing to do but enter the battle and fight the bad guys hand-to-hand. Something made me drag my feet though.
My ability to destroy the approaching Awakened was the thing that was supposed to swing the battle in our favor. Now that I couldn't do that anymore, there wasn't any guarantee we could win. I needed another option, a better way to kill than just wading in and slamming people in the head with the scepter.
As I stood there, desperately looking for a course of action that would save my dad and Ari, something changed in the sky above me. The maelstrom of sparks had become a whirlpool, and the circular motion was pulling in power independent of anything I was doing.
Someone broke through the slowly moving line of Seelie warriors in front of me, and just the fact that they took a swipe at one of the armored figures told me everything I needed to know. Jace and Kat were both engaged with opponents of their own.
I started forward at a run, fully intending on crushing the life from his body before he could make it to Ari or my dad. I was still a dozen yards away from him when a bolt of lightning shot down and wrapped itself around the head of my scepter before racing off and blowing the approaching Awakened into nothing more than smoke and vapor.
It wasn't something that I'd consciously done. Apparently, the scepter had gotten to the point where I just needed to classify someone as a threat in order for it to take them out on its own.
The discharge of energy out of the firmament hadn't stopped. To my second sight it looked like the sky had turned into a terrible blue tornado that touched down in one spot and one spot only. The ball of power surrounding my weapon had grown in size and intensity both. I kept expecting it to electrocute me, but as scary as that was, it was nothing compared to the idea that the scepter had assumed such control over our ability.
I should have been cowering on the ground, desperately trying to shut it all down, but instead I sprinted forward, fighting to get out into a more target-rich environment. The Seelie warriors closest to me had formed a shining wall of flesh and armor in an attempt to keep me safe while I rained destruction down on our enemies, but we were way beyond that now.
They'd closed ranks, plugging the hole that had been left by the Awakened I'd just killed, so I simply threw myself into the air, sailing over their heads with my weapon raised above me.
I seemed to hang there in the air motionless for several long seconds. It was beyond any time amp I'd ever experienced. This was something else, something that came from the scepter, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was the fact that I had plenty of time to look around and pick out enemies.
I hit the ground in a flurry of light and heat as bolts of electricity shot out and skewered half a dozen Unseelie fae and an Awakened who'd been just about to shove a sword into the Lady's back.
I'd traveled so far from the girl I'd been just a few months ago. Learning to burn my memories and amp my body in ways that I never would have believed possible had been exhilarating. I'd felt superhuman dozens of times before this, but this was the first time that I'd ever felt truly godlike.
I tore through the three closest Unseelie fae with three quick strokes of my weapon while it electrocuted a dozen more. I moved forward out of necessity. I'd
cleared an area around me more than two dozen yards in diameter. Jace, Ari, Dad and Kat all hurried along after me, and various Seelie warriors were still moving drunkenly in my vicinity, but none of the enemy figures I'd been able to identify so far still lived.
The battle was as good as ours. The energy from the ward was hitting a crescendo, a buzzing, tingling storm that appeared to rival the destructive bolts coming from the scepter. All of the fae were the next best thing to incapacitated from the effort of harnessing the power being released into the air, and Kyle's Awakened were now dropping like flies.
It was just a matter of time. I would easily carve my way through anyone who tried to stand against me. That was good, that was what I'd started the battle wanting, but somewhere along the way that had changed.
I wanted an opponent who was worthy of me, one who had the ability to give me a run for my money. It was impossible—had been ever since the artifact in my hand had been created—but that didn't stop it from desiring exactly that.
The forest of bodies before me shifted and then I saw what I was looking for. The big, wingless dragon that had given the Lady so much trouble during the last fight shot towards me on an even dozen legs. I threw myself to the side, surprised that it was moving so quickly despite the energy being released from the ward.
Even as I got out of the way, my weapon discharged a single, continuous bolt of electricity into my enemy. The smell of burning flesh assaulted my nose as I reversed direction and slammed the scepter into the Dragon's side, shattering one of the attachment points for its many legs.
The crunch of broken bones was immensely satisfying, but I knew that the real damage was being done by the lightning bolt. That was an attack that would have already killed a lesser opponent several times over, but the Dragon simply roared in pain and whipped its tail toward me. It wasn't going to go down for anything less than what I'd done to the Minotaur.
I leaped over the tail as it whipped by me in slow motion, and destroyed another leg in the harsh, flickering light of the energy sizzling from my weapon. I'd never enjoyed a battle so much.
Under normal circumstances I never would have survived against such a powerful opponent for more than a few seconds, but some combination of the enhanced time sense from the scepter and the unrelenting hiss of the lightning was tipping things in my direction.
We battled for what felt like hours as I dodged blow after blow and slowly destroyed the legs that provided the fae with its mobility. At one point I heard my dad yelling for me as he approached, but I ordered him back.
The old me would have done so out of concern for him; the new me did it because I didn't want anyone to rob me of the satisfaction of destroying one of the four most powerful fae all by myself. The glow from the energy being unleashed from the wards had combined with the light coming off of my weapon to make it impossible to see. I was fighting with my eyes closed, depending on my second sight and the dragon-shaped group of sparks it revealed to keep me out of trouble as I darted in to land another blow.
I was unstoppable, a titan in a war being waged by insects, and then between one heartbeat and the next, the second ward came down and everyone around me sped up until I was only barely faster than them. My mind was still functioning faster than it ever had before, but my body was chained by gravity and slowed by the very air around me. The bonds hadn't been noticeable when everyone else was moving so slowly, but they were terrible indeed now.
I dodged another attack from the Dragon, and then at the last moment I heard something massive running towards me. I spun around just in time to see Fenrir barrel into me, completely undeterred by the bolts of lightning coming off of my scepter.
I was dead—I knew it. There wasn't any way to avoid Fenrir, not when he was moving that quickly, not when I was already committed to moving away from the Dragon. It was only a matter of time. Then suddenly something no bigger than me slammed into Fenrir from the other direction.
No person that small should have been able to redirect more than two tons of raging wolf. No human—or Awakened—could have possibly generated enough force to even inconvenience a fae as powerful as Fenrir, but this wasn't a human, it was the Lady.
She hit with the force of a wrecking ball. It was the kind of impossible collision that made the earth around the point of impact shake, and she was almost successful. She hit Fenrir hard enough to send him careening, but not quite enough for him to completely miss me.
Fenrir hit me with what should have been a glancing blow, but with his preternatural bulk behind it, the impact was anything but minor. I probably should have lost my arm altogether—I would have if not for the fact that my bones, muscles and ligaments were amped up to many times their normal strength.
As it was, all three major bones in my arm shattered. The pain was excruciating, but I hardly even noticed it over the despair I felt as the Scepter of Storms went cartwheeling away from me.
For a moment there I'd been convinced that the Lady had saved me, but it turned out she'd only delayed my execution. She would doubtlessly keep Fenrir occupied, but that still left the Dragon—weakened and slower than normal, but more than a match for me in my current state.
I felt something settle on my left shoulder. It was Bethany. A tiny part of me wondered at the ability of the mind to take in minutiae even in life-and-death situations. Before now, she'd always landed on my right shoulder. I spared a fraction of a second to be grateful that she'd avoided my damaged shoulder, but mostly I was focused on trying to reconnect with the scepter.
I'd been able to feel it hovering in the back of my mind before the link had finished integrating. It only made sense that I would still be able to do so. I reached out for it and tried to summon a blast of electricity of sufficient strength to drive the Dragon away.
I could still feel the scepter skittering around the edges of my being, but now that it was no longer physically touching me, I couldn't bend it to my will. The lightning feeding into the weapon from the sky was already starting to fade away, discharging harmlessly into the ground.
"Save yourself, Bethany. Get out of here—go tell Ari and the others to get out of range. They aren't a match for something like this."
I threw myself backwards, trying to buy myself a few extra seconds of life, and happened to look over at Bethany a split second before I hit the ground. She was bigger than she'd been before—not as big as Kregor, but well on her way. That would have been a shock all by itself, but I was even more surprised to see a silvery, crystal sword materialize in her hand.
The sword wasn't sized for her, it was sized for me—and it landed in my left hand as I hit the ground. My fingers reflexively gripped it before it could go sliding away, and in that moment my entire world changed.
The attack that burst from the end of the sword looked like a sun lance, but it wasn't. There were differences that I couldn't even begin to explain, not the least of which was the fact that it was easily twice as big as anything I'd ever managed before—even when using a peak memory. The attack tore through the Dragon lengthwise, completely vaporizing the first four-fifths of the monstrous fae before it finally expended the last of its energy.
I looked around and saw an involuntary pause in the fighting around me as everyone realized what I'd done. I saw fear in the eyes of Kyle's people and questions in the eyes of everyone on my side.
I wanted to answer their unvoiced questions as badly as they wanted them answered, but I didn't have any idea what had happened. The pause in the fighting had been so brief that I wouldn't have even been able to register it if not for the fact that I'd been amped so far up. Now that everyone was moving again—unrestrained by the energies that had been coming off of the second ward—I suddenly felt much too slow.
I tapped into a wellspring of joy that hadn't been there before I'd grabbed hold of Bethany's sword—a wellspring that was much vaster than anything else I'd ever experienced—and between one blink and the next, everyone slowed down.
In the next breath a
warm pulse of power ran down my right arm, and I'd already shifted the sword over to my dominant arm before I realized that I didn't know how to do either of the things that I'd just experienced. It was all I could do to amp myself up—I had no idea how to layer on additional speed and strength effects while maintaining the first set, and I still didn't know how to work healing effects.
I was moving at something in excess of ten times normal speed—fast enough that even the fastest fae felt like they were moving at half speed. That should have made me all but invulnerable—it would have against just one or two opponents—but the shock of my having killed the Dragon seemed to have worn off.
Every Unseelie fae within a hundred yards seemed to be rushing me at the same time. I knew that wasn't actually the case—the Seelie warriors around me were stepping into the path of that avalanche of darkness, but we were still heavily outnumbered and I'd suddenly become the priority target.
I stepped forward to meet my enemies, and never even considered going back for my scepter. The Scepter of Storms had been an impressive weapon when wielded by someone with more than four times my normal strength, but it was nothing compared to the glowing, crystalline sword that Bethany had given me.
Where before I'd crushed limbs and caved in skulls, knocking massive bodies to one side, now I simply sheared through everything that came at me. I'd hoped to be able to continue to advance, gaining as much ground as possible with which to retreat later on, but that proved an impossibility.
I waged a fighting retreat, slicing nightmarish creatures in half whenever possible, settling for cutting off limbs on the rare occasion when I couldn't reach something more critical, and it wasn't until a dozen of the Unseelie Court's finest had fallen to the edge of my blade that I realized I was fighting with a skill and deadliness that I'd never acquired during my seventeen years of life in this incarnation.
I fought as though a master swordswoman had possessed me. The press of bodies was so thick that I still would have been overwhelmed if I'd been using a normal weapon, but the crystal sword dropped body after body without ever getting caught on ribs—its only failing was that it didn't do anything about the momentum that the fae were carrying into our exchanges.
