Cosmosis

she asked.

He did.

She hadn’t been sure if she could win before. She’d always been ready to try, but she knew all the ways she didn’t live up to the Warlock’s legend. Trying was easy. But it wasn’t the same as believing you could, that you would.

Words drifted into her mind; she was not sure from where.

There is no ‘try’.

There is only ‘do’, or ‘do not’.

She wouldn’t be satisfied with merely trying now.

“I hate that name,” she confessed. “But not from you all. At least, not before.”

She paused, if only because she felt like she should.

“My people call me Warlock, and I hate it when they do. I don’t want them to need me like that. I don’t want to be an icon. But they need me to be that, and there is no one else, so I am.”

Precious few people knew that about her. Three, but she suspected Caleb to be a fourth. He would be the only person to realize whom she hadn’t told.

“I haven’t minded ‘Warlock’ coming from you all though, but I think I might start,” she said. “You gave it to me because enough of you tried to kill me and failed. It made sense. I was your enemy, and you wanted me dead…and I think this might be the first time I take that personally.”

Nai locked eyes with the monstrous Vorak, seemingly in charge of the unit. The one she feared, the beast she couldn’t put down.

“You beat me,” Nai admitted. Caleb hadn’t skipped a beat to disagree, and it brought a smile to her face.

“Vather and the other one? Not so much, but I’ll admit defeat for you. On Korbanok you made me run. And for that, I’ll pay you the courtesy your people showed me.”

Caleb had given her a word from Earth, and Nai repeated the description her…her friend had given.

“In the custom of your home, I grant my foe a name, the word for an ancient and mighty beast from a bright planet none can lay eyes on today. I name you: [Megatherium], may it be written on your grave.”

The fire support might have been waiting for a direct threat, and that had apparently qualified.

Gunshots rang out behind her, but Nai managed to not flinch.

The bullets sparked off the invisible crystal dome she’d built around herself as a precaution.

Vorpal fire is what she was known for, though not by that name. But she knew her fire wouldn’t work against Megatherium. And Vather’s presence prevented her from summoning flames entirely.

So, she’d been giving Caleb some pointers on Adeptry, and in the process helped refine her own perspective a little further. It wasn’t much, but she’d practiced.

Vather fired off two pairs of lasers that also deflected off the invisible dome she was under.

That’s right, she thought. I didn’t just shield behind me.

Megatherium let out a roar and leapt toward her, materializing long clawed gauntlets.

Nai chose to stay on the ground, magnetizing her feet to give her better traction as she broke into a run.

The Vorak moved in leaps and bounds in the low gravity, but she managed to sprint like gravity was almost normal.

Opposing charges materialized underfoot kept her low enough to slip under Megatherium and beeline straight for Vather.

“You’re first,” she decided.

The five other Adepts kept firing at her, one of them even connected. But the bullet bounced off the invisible crystal helmet she’d donned for herself. Most of the rest were deflected before they got close.

She should have thought of invisible armor long ago.

“Cascade!” Megatherium shouted. “She’s made invisible obstructions!”

“Oh you know me,” Nai shouted gleefully, “so shy around gunfire!”

Vather was weak at close range, and he didn’t have the means to evade her long in the low gravity.

He drew a pistol and fired at her, leaping away from the ground. The bullets supplemented the beams he launched, but she was too maneuverable. Shooting in low gravity was not intuitive, and correcting aim even less so. She didn’t feel any of the bullets connect with her armor.

Had Vather become reliant on his beams and neglected ordinary aim?

Nai created a floating mass of arbitrarily magnetized water behind him. He splashed into it and was pulled to the ground by the opposing charge she created beneath.

The Prowler was frantic, firing pairs of lasers at her, trying to catch her at an odd angle. But Nai didn’t need to avoid all of them.

Megatherium’s secrets eluded her, but she’d sussed out Vather’s.

She’d asked herself why Caleb’s fight with the Prowler leader hadn’t started more fires. The battle had ruined the Ecology & Biospheres department. Papers had been thrown everywhere, displays shattered, lights broken, equipment smashed. But for all the beams that the Vorak flung, there were only two or three scorch marks.

“They only really hurt in pairs,” she mumbled aloud as she got close enough to touch him.

Megatherium saved him by materializing a disc and hurling it toward her. It connected with one of her invisible stalagmites instead, sending a spray of debris toward her. Her armor protected her, but Vather levered his body and wrenched her arm.

He spun out of her grip, firing a dozen beams, none of which managed to connect with her simultaneously.

They didn’t do nothing, but one beam alone couldn’t breach her armor. Not even close.

It was, Nai thought, a clever way to save energy. He could fire them off, herding his opponent as he pleased, and finally combine beams when he needed a decisive attack. She didn’t know how Vather could have made the Adept physics work, but unless two beams overlapped, they didn’t particularly hurt their target or exhaust Vather to use.

Coming to Vather’s aid, the Adept Nai had fought defending Demon’s Pit swept around to the side, keeping the Prowler out of their line of fire. They fired a pistol at Nai, but the bullets connected with more of the invisible shards Nai had slowly created while buying time.

Abandoning their gun, the Vorak threw forward both hands and a reverberating ripple thundered forward through the air. The shockwave washed between the invisible shards, finding the gaps like water.

Nai heard and felt some of her invisible fortifications shatter, and leapt upward to avoid the shockwave.

With her own augmentations, she could leap a couple dozen feet into the air in this gravity, but she brought herself back down quicker with more magnetic charges beneath her.

Megatherium was moving carefully in the background. It was his cascade she felt pressing against hers underfoot. He was biding his time and looking for a vulnerability.

Nai’s mind raced.

Megatherium wasn’t wielding a firearm. He’d materialized a thrown weapon instead. Were his hands literally too large to wield standard firearms? She knew firsthand the claws could grow larger…

But the monstrous Vorak hadn’t yet. He was growing, but slowly…only a few inches since the battle started.

An idea formed in her mind.

In that case…

Nai abandoned all subtlety and dissolved her invisible creations, save the armor.

Invisible stalagmites were clever, but she couldn’t make as many of them as a tradeoff. No, she needed proper cover from the five rifle-rak.

She threw her arms out, visualizing the scope of the area she wanted to affect.

Her cascade narrowed as it reached further, and she prepared to create beyond her normal range and mass. The spreading cascade could propagate the growth as long as she put enough into the creation on the front end.

No less than two hundred grey crystal spikes erupted forth in a massive arc before her.

Each one stabbed up through the plaza mosaic like titanic swords, the far ones even connected with the building she’d leapt from earlier.

Not a single one connected with the Vorak.

Megatherium had warned them to keep their cascades wary. They’d sensed her creations coming.

That was fine. It had the intended effect anyway.

Nai sprinted for Vather again, she’d gotten a hand on his jacket the first time, but she wasn’t sure it would be enough. Twice would ensure she could kill him.

Megatherium tried to catch her first. The field of spikes actually made the three close Adepts more mobile, giving them surfaces to push off of in three dimensions rather than only the flat ground.

It didn’t matter though. These spikes were more durable than the invisible variant, so he couldn’t smash through the obstacles so easily.

She ran straight for Vather, physically passing through the spikes in her path.

They wouldn’t interact with her or anything on her person, unless she dissolved the special field her augmentations created. Anything inside the field would pass through the crystal like glass through water.

Her real danger came from the shockwave Adept, whose blasts affected a wide area. Their shockwaves wouldn’t be hampered much, unlike the five rifles now merely attempting to give fire support.

The crystal jungle gym she’d created was primarily cover, to keep them from being able to shoot her. They were arsenal Adepts, and as simple as their abilities were, five guns continuously firing at her would get lucky sooner rather than later.

None of them could stop her from reaching Vather again. She dove into one of her spires, avoiding Megatherium’s lunge, only to pop out on the same side she’d entered.

It put her in a position where the shockwave Adept couldn’t hit Nai without blasting Megatherium too.

The Adept fired the shockwave anyway.

Nai felt the pressure slam into her like a tidal wave. Blood welled up in her mouth and tremors shook her bones.

But absorptive material she prepared in her ears kept her conscious, and magnetizing her feet to the ground kept her from being blown away.

The shockwave subsided and Nai leapt toward Vather, colliding with him midair.

He was ready for her, making four beams at close range. She tackled him the same moment the beams seared into her invisible armor.

The Prowler that got away before did so again. His augmentations were strange. He was durable, but not that strong. Not comparatively.

It hardly mattered though. He was dead now.

Vather’s fear was written on his face, and she knew why.

Her tactics were incongruent.

Back in the Green Complex, she’d been worried about the myriad of personnel that had been in hiding after the Prowlers assault. Even with her flames suppressed, she’d taken care to limit the fight’s damage.

But today she was all out attack.

Caleb’s radar made it easy.

She could keep track of everyone, in three dimensions, in real time. She could sense there were no minds in the building she’d turned into a pincushion. She could sense there was no one below the plaza in the tram station if she decided to collapse their footing.

It was so simple to avoid collateral damage like this.

Vather jumped from spike to spike, putting distance between him and Nai. This time, she didn’t chase.

“You’re different,” Vather got out, face slack with disbelief.

“Like I said,” Nai grinned, “you’re first.”

She extended a palm toward Vather, and the air near him exploded. For Adepts, magnitude was not necessarily power and vice versa. Nai’s massive jungle of crystal spikes here was relatively low energy and power. They were all basically inert, but there was an obscene amount of mass. Caleb’s kinetic bomb was the opposite. The epitome of power through precision.

Nai couldn’t materialize the gasses in such a precise area. But she could make up the difference with sheer quantity. But in exchange for cover, she’d given the Vorak mobility and so needed something to help her aim...

Vather was heeding Megatherium’s advice. Too much. His cascade was concentrated on spreading from his hands and feet. He hadn’t noticed she’d created something when she’d grasped him both times.

It was a simple material infused with her cascade in a way that it would persist for a short while, even while disconnected from her. She could sense where it was in relation to her own cascade. It was just to make sure her kinetic bomb didn’t miss.

Nai’s explosion blasted Vather sideways more than up, but still into the air.

The Vorak was dead even before his body crashed into the gold panels covering the colony.

She turned to the shockwave Adept and Megatherium, looking on, faces slack.

“So who’s next?”

·····

Iras felt the overwhelming dread that could only come from a battle plan splitting apart at the seams.

She’d blinked, and Vather had disappeared.

There’d been no trace of where the Prowler had gone until the colony canopy shattered a hundred feet above their heads. Iras didn’t dare take her eyes off the Warlock, but there was no sound of Vather’s body falling back down. He’d been blasted clean through the paneling—maybe even both layers.

It had been, Iras realized, a pressure bomb.

The Warlock was famed for the infinitely flexible flames she used for both attack and defense, but this battle had seen her use anything but. Selective solids, invisible materials, and now pressure blasts.

It was like the Warlock had dipped into an entirely different arsenal, one virtually no Vorak tactical report hinted at.

Had she copied her compressive material? Her blood went even colder when she realized the Adept might have intentionally allowed herself to be caught in Iras’s shockwave, just for the opportunity to cascade the medium Iras used to shape the blasts.

‘Megatherium’, as he’d been dubbed, did not seem to be as shocked as Iras, but he wasn’t unfazed. They’d known Vather would be one of the priority targets, but Nai Cal-Yan-Ti had reached the Prowler more quickly than expected. The reduced gravity was neither slowing the Farnata nor making her movement more predictable.

Vather’s last words had been a chilling realization, one that Iras was experiencing too.

This Warlock was nothing like the Adept she’d fought in Sassik Province.

Teal sparks flickered behind the Farnata’s poncho. One of the sparks blossomed into a proper flame floating above her hand.

“There we go,” the Warlock smiled. “No more suppressive fields.”

She lazily tossed a tiny flame at Megatherium who made no effort to avoid it. The flames splashed across his chest, charring the uniform under his armor. Iras’s leader didn’t flinch though. The teal fire sputtered out, unspooling into long strands that faded to nothing as they spread out around Megatherium’s body.

He grew several inches as his body drank in the dense energies in the Warlock’s creation.

“What a trick,” the Warlock praised. “You grew so much from just that little…I threw a lot more at you on Korbanok, but you didn’t grow that much more.”

“We need to keep her from attacking our fire support,” Megatherium said to Iras. “We need to maneuver her so they have opportunities to attack.”

“That plan is a whole lot better than your first one,” the Warlock said.

It was too unsettling for her to speak so much. She’d fought Iras months ago and not said a single word. Now she was stooping to idle chatter. If the Warlock hadn’t been so frighteningly destructive, Iras might have thought this was nervous babble. Reconciling the two experiences was difficult.

“Because you and Vather had some negative synergy,” she went on, “Megatherium here benefits from vorpal fire, but Vather kept me from using it in the first place. He prevented you from fully exploiting those utterly fascinating augmentations.”

Vorpal? No, it wasn’t important now.

Iras flexed her fingers, preparing to unleash another shockwave. The Warlock’s gaze wasn’t moving from Megatherium. She could land a blow.

Megatherium moved first though.

His increased size wasn’t for show. His leap was nothing short of explosive.

The Warlock stepped backwards inside one of her stalagmites just in time to avoid his claws.

Even just from drinking that meager mote of flame, he was stronger and faster. Megatherium’s clawed gauntlets cleaved halfway through the pillar, briefly revealing the Farnata inside.

Iras unleashed the pressurized fluid she’d accumulated around her hands, and a new shockwave roared forward where she saw the Warlock emerge from the pillar.

Except it wasn’t the Warlock. It was only her Coalition poncho.

Faint licks of teal flame faded once again as the shockwave made the pillar fall, showing Megatherium on the other side, absorbing the fire’s energy.

Gunshots cracked overhead, and Iras saw the Warlock arrest her fall, clinging to the side of another of her spikes. She’d avoided their attack by exiting the pillar vertically rather than slipping out of it from the side. Going that high had put her in the line of fire of their support, but they hadn’t managed to connect.

As long as the Warlock could keep ducking inside the forest of spikes she’d made, the fireteam wouldn’t be able to threaten her.

“We need to push her out of this bramble,” Iras said to Megatherium.

“I agree,” he panted.

Blood oozed from the edge of his lips. He’d caught some of the shockwave she’d launched at the pillar.

The Warlock noticed it too, her smile melting away.

It had been disturbing to watch the Adept be so animated, but watching all expression wash off her face like water off a stone was even worse.

“Too bad for you,” she said, eerily calm now. “I just figured it out.”

Megatherium took a chunk of the ruined pillar and hurled it at the Farnata.

Instead of simply unmaking the rubble, she pivoted around the pillar she clung to, using it for cover.

“That practically confirms it,” Iras said, dropping her voice. “She’s low precision. She can’t unravel specific creations.” Even as she said it though, she didn’t feel confident. The Warlock had treated the pillar intangibly, seconds ago, but now that it was broken, why wouldn’t the chunk have passed through her?

“She fed me more flames,” Megatherium said warily. “She didn’t have to. I can’t make sense of this.”

“If I accumulate for enough time,” Iras said, “I think I could shatter these spikes—remove her cover.”

“Without the rifle-rak, I do not think we have the offensive flexibility to kill her,” he nodded. “Accumulate. I will attack, attempt to maneuver her, and we will give them an opening.”

Iras did as he said, and began building up layers of exotic fluid around her hands again. This would take time.

The Warlock could make the grey columns act intangible while she passed through them, but she could also treat them solidly seemingly at will. But Iras clutched a small chunk of the fallen spike as she added to the fluid’s resonance.

She cascaded the chunk as she accumulated better and better particles to act as the shockwave’s medium. The chunk was an odd material, more durable than the invisible one before, but not excessively so.

It would shatter as long as she built the wave properly…

Iras didn’t sit idle though. She wasn’t useless while she built up the shockwave. She stomped her foot on the ground and made her own spike emerge from the Warlock’s.

The Farnata avoided the spike by simply sliding downward, but it was Megatherium truly going on the attack.

Another thin ribbon of fire sprang into existence only to be devoured whole by Megatherium’s body as soon as it came into contact.

He swelled another few inches, and smashed completely through the pillar this time. He materialized extra armor on himself, accounting for how he was growing.

Iras tried to ignore the pit in her stomach when the Warlock didn’t even smile.

The Farnata’s demeanor had shifted drastically. She wasn’t being loud and taunting now. She was just quietly focused on evading Megatherium’s brutal attacks.

As large and forceful as they were though, the Vorak monster was not attacking wildly. It had been a mistake to think Megatherium had no ranged weapons. In fact, when he squeezed a mechanism in his gauntlets and hurled their blades at the Warlock, they did decidedly more damage than a gun.

He could add to the material on the fly, changing its physical properties and how it affected what it contacted.

The Warlock leapt aside from the first blade, but Megatherium read her direction and the second blade would catch her midair. But a burst of teal fire melted the blade in two, and both halves flew past her…only to explode themselves in a spray of shrapnel.

She escaped unscathed though. Her armor wasn’t so invisible anymore with the new cracks running through it.

Iras was having trouble keeping up with the layers to Megatherium’s attacks though, because she watched the Farnata dissolve the armor as the shrapnel began to grow like cancers.

And he wasn’t done yet.

Megatherium leapt forward again, springing off Warlock’s bramble of pillars to adjust his trajectory. The Warlock had to be a master of cascading because she kept avoiding him by leaping backwards without looking.

The margin was becoming narrower though. Megatherium had grown fast enough to keep up, if not yet match her.

Iras added to the assault, trying to catch the Warlock where she landed with her own spikes. Megatherium pressed the attack, herding the Farnata toward the edge of her massive bramble.

If pushed beyond it, she would be exposed to five sharpshooters who could make all manner of Adept ammunition. With how creative Iras knew they could be…

If they had more than five seconds of fire on the Warlock? Something would get through. Even as the Farnata rematerialized some now visible armor, Iras knew they had a shot.

For a split second, Megatherium met her gaze questioningly. Is it ready? his expression asked.

She gave a tiny nod, and he pressed forward.

He was ready to be caught in the blast if it would blow away the Warlock’s protective cover. He’d likely grown enough to shrug it off.

He leapt forward, and this time the Farnata didn’t evade.

Iras’s hands trembled with how many resonant particles she’d accumulated around her hands. This was on the very edge of what she could do without risking instant death.

But she was prepared for that risk.

Materializing protection and trusting her own resilience, she unleashed the shockwave.

And the Warlock won.

The very instant the shockwave erupted forth, Nai dissolved every single obelisk herself.

Iras’s blast caught Megatherium with more force than she’d meant. There was none of the Warlock’s bramble to arrest the force before it reached him.

The colossal Vorak was carried forward by the blast.

A teal steam of flame leapt up from the ground, ready to intercept him.

Megatherium really was a monster, because even knocked off balance as he was, he still managed to push off the ground with one claw as he tumbled, ensuring he could leap at the Warlock through the flames.

Only when his body touched the flames, the Warlock dissolved them before he could absorb their energy…and revealed a single narrow spike hidden inside the spurt of fire.

The single new spike was darker than the previous grey ones, almost black.

It jutted up from the ground at a sharp angle and Megatherium’s own momentum impaled him on it.

Iras’s gut twisted as she realized what had happened. The Warlock had seen Megatherium be injured by the smaller shockwaves. His augmentations rendered him nearly immune to certain forms of force, but blunt and sharp trauma could still affect him unless he’d grown enough to withstand them.

And the Warlock had only fed him tiny motes of flame, to slow him momentarily while he absorbed the energy.

Iras tried to take a step toward them, but fell over from the exertion. She tasted blood. What had happened? The shockwave shouldn’t have harmed her like this…

Dimly, she thought of the air a shockwave this strong would displace. A millisecond later it would fill the vacuum…she’d failed to account for the stronger shockwave collapse…she was almost certainly concussed. Maybe worse.

She saw hope when Megatherium lurched, still impaled on the Warlock’s spike.

The bramble was gone, and gunfire followed.

Not quickly enough though.

The Warlock was free enough to erect a new crystal wall behind her. Exotic rounds crashed into the wall though, and it was small. Corrosive bullets started eating into the wall, and others exploded on impact. But the Warlock was still standing.

Iras painfully flipped herself over, grasping at her radio, praying it was undamaged.

She rasped into it, “Move in…stay spread…surround her.” Hopefully they heard her.

Nai Cal Yan Ti wasn’t finished yet, but she couldn't be unscathed. Even the strongest Adepts got tired. Didn't they?

Relief welled up in Iras when she saw two of the rifle-rak begin to move forward, their rifles trained on the Warlock’s crystal wall.

But Megatherium finally got his claws on her.

With an agonizing cry, he pulled himself further down the spike the Warlock impaled him on and grabbed his enemy. He’d grown enough to get a hand almost completely around her torso, but he didn’t get a chance to crush her in his grip.

A muffled crack came from inside his chest, and Megatherium slumped over.

Dark violet blood dripped from the Vorak’s fur and armor as pieces of dark crystal shard poked up from inside his skin.

He’d come so close. A single second more, and she would have died. But the Warlock had detonated the spike inside his torso. Another pressure bomb.

Dread cut through Iras as she saw the Warlock could still stand.

The Farnata was a monster too. Bruised, cut, and exhausted, but still able to fight.

Nai Cal-Yan-Ti cast her attention toward the approaching fireteam and Iras’s heart broke. They couldn’t win. Not against that.

“I surrender!” Iras cried, throwing up her hands. “We surrender!”

The other Adepts halted in their tracks, unsure.

“Surrender!” Iras shouted desperately.

The Warlock’s head tilted the barest fraction, eyes utterly still.

Fear coursed through her bones and squeezed the officer’s lungs.

“Well?” the Farnata called out with none of the previous glee. “Is she surrendering alone?”

“Can’t win…” Iras rasped into the radio. “Waste of soldiers…stand down. Order.”

She was technically the ranking officer here. The only one of the three still alive.

Iras couldn’t see all of them, but one of the fireteam in her view dissolved their rifle and dropped to their knees, calmly clasping their hands behind their necks.

The Warlock did not relax though, and the cold grip squeezing her lungs grew worse.

“You or your commanders committed gross perfidy today,” the Warlock spat. “It wasn’t a false surrender, but it was perfidy all the same. I could kill you all and be well justified, since I can’t really trust your surrenders.”

She held a teal flame in her palm, ready to immolate them all in a heartbeat.

It was impossible to reconcile this Warlock with the frenzied, mocking one from earlier.

Iras felt she was about to die.

“But…I think he and Tasser would disapprove,” the Farnata whispered.

“We surrender…” Iras begged, cursing that her arms wouldn’t stop trembling.

But the Warlock did extinguish the flame.

“That’s right,” she said, “you do.”