Spires

Alcaestus, the Eidolon of Adras, exerted a gravity of his own.

Alin used it to speed his approach.

Hardlight blade shrieked against lavender skin, leaving the former chipped and the latter unmarked.

An arm as thick as a light pole lashed out, shattering the blade and forcing Alin to hit the ground.

He rolled as the earth shook at the eidolon’s stomp.

“A new opponent? You interrupt an honorable duel.”

Bei flashed in with blurring feet against Alcaestus’ huge head.

Once again she danced just out of his reach.

“You’re tiring, tiny woman of the lightning fists and fire feet. Yield and I guarantee your safety.”

The cultivator didn’t waste breath on a reply. She drew what meager Qi she could from the environment.

“As for you, hidden warrior. Will you not announce yourself? There is no honor in hiding one’s countenance. Your armor appears of greater quality than those brave warriors I have fought thus far. Are you perhaps a champion?”

Alin had no intention of speaking.

His dad had gone through the trouble of altering their memories in the wake of the Slashers’ Spree.

He was a nondescript fighter in their thoughts. One with a face and voice of such unremarkable quality that it wasn’t worth remembering.

To alter was better than erasure.

The latter left gaps that drew questions.

Thus, he kept his faceplate dark as he circled warily with the point of his hardlight longsword between him and Alcaestus.

“Bei? Can you hear me? Comms only. Don’t let him hear.”

“I do, Boy.”

“We have a plan.”

“Good. Mine has proved a complete failure.”

“Yeah, bad matchup. Don’t worry about it.”

“It just means that I have to train harder.” She sighed. “This plan? Does it involve Sticksies?”

Several javelins had already appeared as if they had spontaneously sprouted out of the asphalt.

If Alcaestus noticed, he gave no indication.

“Yeah. We just need to stay at least 2 meters away from him.”

“I would’ve already retreated much farther than that had I been able.”

Honorable duels in the middle of a battle seemed dumb, but like anything it could be turned into an advantage.

Case in point…

The lack of soldiers around Alcaestus because he had ordered them elsewhere.

Plus, tying him down at the cost of a less impactful fighter. Not to say that Bei wasn’t deadly in her own right. Just that Alcaestus could’ve already torn an opening in the building’s armor-covered walls had he not been been busy.

Alin shot the eidolon in the face with a containment bullet from his gauntlet.

Sticky foam ballooned, engulfing Alcaestus’ head.

Underslung flamethrower deployed and bathed the eidolon.

Nothing burned.

Not the sculpted breastplate, nor the fur cloak, not even then plain-looking man skirt. At best, the white cloth smudged a bit.

The air thrummed. Like standing next to a speaker. It reached into his core.

“Watch out, Boy!”

The inexorable pull of gravity seized them.

Foresight and the perfect person to practice against had prepared them well.

Alin angled his body and fired his thrusters.

Instead of careening into Alcaestus solid rock of a body, he whipped to the left like a space shuttle around the moon.

Bei did the same on the other side by kicking off the asphalt with a burst of explosive fire.

The only problem was that they were going to meet on the other side.

Fortunately, Bei had the reflexes of a master cultivator and she could fly.

She twisted with the grace of a hunting falcon, using Alin as a springboard and temporary distraction to swoop in and land a dozen lightning-aspected punches to the eidolon’s face in the moment it took to zip past him.

Alin twisted without nearly as much grace, but he managed to land two containment balls close enough to those massive sandaled feet.

Odd that.

He remembered Alcaestus wore boots when in combat.

Not that footwear of any type was necessary when one was as durable as the 8 foot tall mountain of muscle.

The eidolon finally pulled enough of the sticky foam off his face to reveal a baleful stare.

Alin hit him with strobe lights from his helmet.

The pattern and intensity made people’s brains seize up.

Naturally, it was ignored.

He could’ve escalate his way up the toys in his kit, but winning the fight wasn’t the plan.

Flamethrower again.

Alcaestus moved fast.

Alin wasn’t a fan of superstrong people also moving much faster than him.

The hand engulfed his left arm from elbow to wrist.

The flamethrower and every weapon and defensive system in there died with a crunch.

“You fight like a trickster.”

The other hand engulfed his head including the helmet.

A sudden fireworks show surrounded them.

“Ow.” Alcaestus released him.

Alin scrambled away.

The eidolon massaged his wrists.

“Stings like a Verdinian Mangler’s ass quills.”

Alin had no interest in finding out more about whatever those things were and why they had quills in that location.

A red dot disappeared and reappeared on Alcaestus’s goo smeared forehead.

Up on the rooftop, silhouetted by the sun, Marloes held her wand of laser pointer steady without even a hint of a tremble.

A flash, point blank against the eidolon’s forehead rocked his head back. Violet mane of luscious hair swayed violently.

2 meters.

Alin scrambled out of Drake’s imposed radius.

Bei had already cleared the distance.

Drake chose that moment to pop out of nowhere hand on a nearby planted javelin. He pointed his spear.

“The Silver Forest of Saint Matracyn.”

Copies of his spear erupted out of the ground beneath the eidolon.

Gold dripped down gleaming silver.

Alin had seen the Skill pierce monsters with thick armor plating that shrugged off hits from an anti-material rifle.

The best it could do to the eidolon was cut.

Where points pressed flush against the lavender skin only the tips broke through.

The eidolon strained, muscles bulging, but the silver spears trapping him held.

No one knew who Saint Matracyn was, but they made educated guesses based on the Skill given their name.

“Now!” Drake said.

A portal opened.

Jayde leapt through with a whoop.

She punched the ground, launching Alcaestus on an earthen pillar.

Alin’s eyes narrowed.

Jayde was showing.

The noticeable bulge of her armor-covered belly… their third little one about halfway through the baking process, as she liked to say.

Desperate times…

But… pregnant women shouldn’t be on battlefields.

Safer in the underground bunker.

Granted that level of safety decreased in proportion to how far the enemy penetrated their defenses.

“Okay, nicely done, honey, but let’s get you back—”

A shadow fell over them, slapping the rest of what Drake was about to say out of his mouth.

The eidolon hovered over them on winged sandals.

“Those weren’t in the scouting reports,” Jayde said lightly.

“The duel has ended. Battle remains. You,” Alcaestus thrust a meaty finger to Jayde, “are with child. Depart this field.”

Jayde threw her hands up. “Um, yeah, where exactly am I going to go?”

“I will allow you to cast your gateway spell.”

“Yeah, that wasn’t mine.”

“Well… use that stone I see in the spear mage’s hand.”

Drake thrust it into his wife’s hand.

She scowled. “I’m not leaving you to fight him!” she hissed under her breath.

“This isn’t the time,” he hissed back.

“What do you mean? This is the time. This is the only time! No way you’re going to die without me!”

“How about no one dies! Especially… our baby. Do you remember her?”

“How dare you imply I’m not thinking of our precious!”

Alcaestus cleared his throat.

“I’m loathe to harm a mother—”

“Yeah? You sure about that?” Jayde challenged. “I can name several mothers that you assholes have already harmed.”

“I can only control my hands. What others do, though I find distasteful—” he shook his massive head. “I’m bound by honor and my very nature to obey the will of my God.”

“He ordered you to kill mothers?” Jayde raised a brow.

“Enough! You may leave. The rest I’m bound to fight. I will accept surrender. I will shield your honor on mine.”

“Just do it!” Drake snapped.

“Fine.” Jayde squeezed the stone. “It’s not working.” She shrugged.

“What do you mean?” Drake said.

“The hunter’s hounds tighten their cordon around the herd,” Alcaestus said. “I will attempt to subdue you without unnecessary injury. However, you are dangerous foes and I can’t stay my hand at risk to duty.”

“Irony,” Drake sighed. “That’s sort of how we’re approaching you.”

“Such largesse isn’t needed. I welcome your best.”

“Get to the roof, I’ll keep him busy.” Drake twirled his spear.

“Nuh uh,” Jayde said.

She brought her armored fists together with a crack that cleared the dust and smoke.

Glowing arcane circles appeared around them, multiplying up her forearms to her elbows.

Tension wound like a spring, neither side willing to move first.

A high-pitched whine cut through.

Alcaestus turned, catching the bright beam in his palm like a catcher’s mitt does a baseball.

Reon’s chain whipped out.

The eidolon caught it with his other hand.

Engine roared.

Rear tire squealed.

The tug of war lasted but a moment before Alcaestus whipped Reon, motorcycle included, into the side of the armor-plated building.

“Aww shit,” Drake said.

“Someone please get my wife to the roof and inside. And no fighting the harpies!”

“Apologies,” Bei said as she swept Jayde off her feet.

“Hey! Put me down this instant young lady! Honor your elders! Or something like that!”

Her protests fell on deaf ears as Bei soared.

“Good,” Alcaestus said. “Such deeds must be kept amongst warriors.”

The eidolon cast a wide shadow.

“How about no.” Dayana flickered into existence, stabbing a knife into Alcaestus’ shadow. “Stay there for a bit.”

“You’re supposed—” Drake began.

“No time. Wasn’t going to watch you die for no reason. We’ve got a better idea,” Dayana said.

Tabitha climbed out of a shadow on the wall next to the downed Reon. She melted back into it with the young man in tow.

Rupert appeared between the blink of Alin’s eyes, standing near Dayana.

The wizard eyed the immobile eidolon hovering above them and gulped.

“Too close, way too close,” he muttered.

“No rush, but don’t take too long.” Dayana’s face betrayed nothing, but her fingers were crushing the hilt of her knife. She caught his eye. “Lucky we saw you from up there. Sensors are all messed up. Just like comms. Teddy Bear’s going to open a portal for you first.”

“Where’s it taking me?”

“Not a safe place.” Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Witches have been saying you need to be out with the team defending the front for the last half hour or so. In a terrible coincidence, the magus just requested your presence. She didn’t explain. And I hate to send you into a huge unknown, but time is an issue. Like I said, when comms work, they aren’t working well. We’ve been sending messages the old fashioned, slow way.”

“What about him?” he regarded the eidolon.

“We’ve got a murder of wizards link-casting. It’ll be enough to overcome his resistances. We’re going to send him far away.”

“There.” Rupert opened a glowing portal that took the shape of an open door, perhaps a copy of the kind the wizard was most familiar with.

Alin hesitated.

“Go. Don’t worry about us,” Drake said.

“Yeah, you’re heading into something worse. I’m sorry,” Dayana said.

He stepped into hell.

Shouts and screams mixed with the sounds of bullets and spells smashing into shields, of explosions swallowing people in blooming fire.

A monstrous eye bigger than his head floated above, swiveling every direction with frantic desperation. Long lashes blinked in time with the faint pulses of green light that settled over his side.

Injured men and women healed just enough to keep them in the fight or send them back into it.

It was cruel in a way.

Soothe the pain just enough for them to suffer it again.

The Magus of the Twelve Eyes floated above it all. Monster eyes orbited around her, firing spells at the enemy while blocking theirs in turn.

The best of the old government’s armed forces had been committed to the frontal attack.

Animal hybrids, hulking supersoldiers, a handful of low-level superhumans like his mom and the feral-types like Howard.

Their highest leveled soldiers.

Men with white beards and lined faces.

A map etched on their flesh tracing their path back to the beginning in a world that had died. A world that they had been unable to leave behind.

He saw the death in their eyes.

Their eagerness to meet it with open arms.

He was taken aback, but only for a moment.

Turn the tide.

He could do it.

Death’s Dancer and Alcaestus were on a higher rung of the ladder than these men and women.

Captain Patriot was higher still.

He did what his true nature demanded.

What he despised.

The gray spread quicker, responding to the eagerness he wished he didn’t feel until it engulfed all of them.

He reached inside and pulled.

Mt. Rushmore, Spring 2053

“When the mighty battle, the world is made to feel pain,” the demigod intoned. “When the self-righteous struggle, only the just remain.” Eyes blazed with golden fire.

The forest fire vanished as quickly as it had spread. All of the energy flowed back into its source.

The orb Aehrone cupped in her palms shined with the intensity of a second sun.

Golden light scoured all that it touched.

Hundreds of meters of forest below and clouds above vaporized with a shriek that shook Cal’s soul.

The energy pulsed in time with the demigod’s heartbeat. An ever-expanding sphere that turned the forest floor into glass.

The true sun shined through the gaping hole in the roiling darkness high over her head.

He flew back with each pulse, staying just out of reach.

The air droned with divine power.

The saturation was so thick that looking through it with his extra senses reminded him of swimming in murky waters or slurry.

One last pulse left nearly a thousand meter diameter circle of glass where there was once a green forest teeming with life, dangerous as it was.

Now?

Empty.

Two minds left all alone.

The demigod’s form was a sliver of darkness in the epicenter of blinding intensity. But only for a moment as even the light couldn’t resist the inexorable pull of the orb she held to the heavens.

The orb vanished next. Absorbed into the demigod.

Dark clouds quickly filled the gaping void, shrouding them in darkness once again.

Aehrone flew like a shooting star across the night sky.

Cracks leaking gold light had formed on the surface of her adamantine armor and spear.

The latter vibrated, struggling to contain the power.

Her thrust shattered 7 layers of his telekinetic shield while he stripped layers of adamantine, leaving the stout spear as thin and brittle as a thin bamboo stick.

He caught it half an arm’s length in front of his face. Left hand just behind the spearhead.

Warnings flashed.

Threnium weave glove smoked.

He felt the heat radiating to his wrist, down his arm. Just like accidentally grabbing a cast iron skillet’s handle back in the days before the spires. That had ruined the camping trip well-beyond the lack of showers and flushing toilets.

Even with his extra sensory powers he could see nothing inside Aehrone’s helmet slit except blazing gold light.

The divine power surged from her core into the spear.

He reinforced his hand and increased his physical strength to keep it from continuing its journey.

“Aehrekpryvutai!”

Her words reverberated.

Many voices in one mouth.

His hand vanished.

Threnium.

Magitech prosthesis.

All vaporized in an instant.

Even the magic in the prosthesis ceased to exist.

The spear tip glinted.

He slashed with his right.

Telekinetic forcefield formed into a molecule thin edge along his hand.

Spearhead skipped off the side of his helmet, taking bits of Threnium with it.

The severed haft sprayed gold energy, knocking him back.

Aehrone cursed, casting her ruined weapon down.

He reached for her thoughts.

What he found horrified him.

It appeared that her physical brain was disappearing by the second.

He scanned the rest of her.

Like before, the divine energy resisted his touch like a slimy eel in a vat of lubricant.

He spoke into her ears.

“You’re losing your biological bits.”

She replied with a golden blast, wrapping around his bubble.

It overwhelmed his armor’s instruments and disrupted his extra sensory perceptions.

His bubble burst under a flurry of gold-sheathed fists.

The demigod produced a short blade mid cutting motion.

Its surface cracked instantly, then shattered against his hasty shield.

She struck in a blur alternating strikes with each hand.

Weapons appeared and broke with each.

Unlike the spear they couldn’t hold the divine power for longer than a moment.

A normal person watching from a safe distance would’ve seen nothing but blurs, punctuated by flashes of golden light and shockwaves briefly clearing an enormous spherical area free of the rain.

They wouldn’t hear the thunderous cracks for many seconds. Such was the safe distance.

To be closer meant death from overpressure. Broken bodies and pulped organs. Like those of monsters and animals as far away as the remains of Mt. Rushmore, perhaps even a handful of kilometers beyond that point.

Blazing hands grabbed the back of Cal’s head, pulling him into an adamantine-armored knee.

Cracks spider-webbed across his faceplate.

Too fast to counter.

A second knee strike boomed against a telekinetic shield.

He flowed with the strength of her hold, planting his armored shoulder into her armored gut, tackling her to the ground.

Over a hundred meters straight down.

Mach 2 on impact.

Glittering shards exploded into fine dust closest to the epicenter.

Further out, jagged shards, some as large as a human being launched like missiles.

A lucky mountain lion many kilometers away blinked as one such shard sheared through a deer’s neck.

An instant meal without any of the effort.

He was, however, unlucky when he failed to realize that another stealthier hunter was also on the prowl.

Toothy shoulder tentacles struck from concealment.

Two meals for the price of one made for a pleased monster.

Aehrone was less pleased.

The divine power consumed her.

Thoughts in her dwindling brain burned away one by one.

It wouldn’t take long until only one remained and at that point she’d have two paths left to her.

Oblivion in an explosion to rival the Tsar Bomba or… ascension?

As least that’s what Cal thought he picked up in his futile attempts to sink his hooks into what was left of her psyche. As far as he could tell, with no confidence, there was some kind of residual consciousness or memories within the divine power. Like pieces of a person’s genetic code, but infinitely more complex.

A map of sorts for her to follow?

Yet, she had no idea it existed within her.

He supposed the so called gods wouldn’t make the process an easy one to follow.

Sharing their divine essence with demigod children and drops of their divine blood with eidolons created useful tools.

Creating new gods split that power and made potential usurpers.

It took a certain mindset to seek that kind of power.

He snapped a telekinetic hand over a knife blade before it could stab him in the side of the head.

He forced the explosion away.

Aehrone pushed his face back.

Much longer arms meant he couldn’t hit her despite having transitioned into a mount.

Fortunately, physical limitations didn’t matter.

Telekinetic punches buried her head into the glassed forest floor.

It went deep.

They were already in a crater and he still wasn’t hitting dirt.

She bucked her hips, but he pushed down with several hundred tons of force.

Glass gave way to earth and stone.

The lip of the crater loomed high above them.

Options flashed through his mind.

None of them particularly desirable.

A nascent god or the mother of all explosions?

The latter would be ironic considering Aehr’s portfolio.

It seemed a little unfair.

One could claim motherhood for actual babies to abstract concepts and everything in between.

She had her fingers in the nearly infinite pie of existence itself.

That meant strength to put it mildly.

Rain fell and ran down the sides of the crater before evaporating in the heat of the demigod’s golden aura.

A thousand tiny rainbows glittered around them.

The demigod roared with many voices, sweeping and reversing their position.

Hundreds of tons flipped over as easily as a small child.

Punches rained down around his face with machine gun rate and bunker buster power.

Shields cracked and shattered.

Stabby knives poked and prodded, but Cal replaced each shield quicker than Aehrone could break them.

Her psyche slipped further and further away.

Could he help her regain it?

The possibility intrigued him, but it wasn’t the time to experiment.

Thighs around his waist crushed armor against armor.

Divine energy continued to leak from the cracks.

It was beginning to affect the compartments of holding.

He couldn’t be sure, but it felt as though the golden energy was simply erasing the enchantments, like the fires had scoured the forest of everything from the largest tree to the smallest blade of grass.

The earth swallowed the two of them at the speed of thought.

Deeper and deeper they went through several strata.

A thousand meters? Two?

He finally succeeded in freeing himself from her mounted position.

He pushed her away, encased her in a seamless tomb.

The earth rumbled.

He wished he could say that it was just the natural grinding of tectonic plates and so forth.

But he knew better.

He flew, parting the earth above him with a thought until he emerged back on the surface.

Aehrone was a split-second behind. Her arrival heralded by a bright golden beam shooting up from the ground, parting the dark storm clouds to reach the heavens.

He hammered her from a distance with invisible force powerful enough to carve his likeness out of a granite mountain.

She answered with golden beams to wipe said mountain clean.

They weaved together beneath dark clouds.

Rain turning to steam in her aura.

Bright gold streaked into invisible shields at hypersonic speeds.

While kinetic force did the same to adamantine plate.

He turned brute bludgeons into surgical blades and spikes.

Edges and points smaller than a molecule slipped through armor and enchantment, but what did divine energy have to fear from physical force?

The demigod continued to shed the last trappings of her humanity.

There was a sense of sadness in the knowledge that her last mortal thought would be a single desire.

His destruction.

After that?

He couldn’t say.

Would the divine energy consume her completely? To disperse across the environment, creating whatever effects it may? Or would she do the impossible? To go beyond the limits, ascending to godhood and reclaiming her sapience.

He emptied the compartments around his waste before the enchantments failed.

Grenades and glass containers, vials and baubles, filled with every type of ordinance and alchemy he had access to.

He sent them to her from every angle.

Incendiaries, acid, concussion, sticky foam, hardening foam, disorienting light and sound.

She vaporized all of them in her aura.

He sent the rest of his weapons to the ground.

They were useless against her.

He tried to confuse her, planting thoughts and images in what was left of her brain.

Dozens of him flying all around her.

A snap blast splashed against his shield.

He ripped a terror from her childhood. One of the last memories remaining from those days. A monster with many mouths and long tongues, dripping with slimy saliva.

She didn’t hesitate flying through the image only the two of them could see to blast him in the chest.

Armor systems began to fail.

The heat and impact took their due.

HUD went dark.

Shield generators overloaded, forcing him to jettison them.

Since she had made them do that it seemed right to gift them to her.

Her aura ate the explosions.

Released energy became absorbed energy.

The immense amount she spent with each blast was akin to a day’s output for one of the old power plants they used back in Southern California.

Yet, she wasn’t running low.

In fact, it continued to build.

What she stripped from the environment wasn’t nearly enough to account for the increase.

He couldn’t tell how.

It was par for the course since the spires broke the laws of physics long ago.

Why would a demigod need to obey thermodynamic rules?

It wasn’t like he hadn’t done the same.

A beam thicker than he was tall scorched the rain-filled sky.

The impact would have rocketed him close to escape velocity, The cue ball to her giant cue, had he not pushed back long enough to slip beneath.

He hit her from below, punching her into the dark clouds.

Two paths?

In truth, there was only one and he couldn’t allow her to walk it on his world.

The defunct American government had created the problem.

It was only fair that they played their part in the solution.

He pushed Aehrone higher, tanking her blasts despite the figurative knives in his brain stabbing and twisting.

One path.

And it lay in the bright blue skies beyond the storm.