There was no chatter and no waiting. Everyone simply rushed out of the car and drew their respective weapons, save for Ayna, who simply bolted away. Fredrak slipped his goggles on.
“Squad coming,” he said as they ran towards the opening. “Heavy armour, heavy weapons. We are outgunned.”
“Then we take guns out of the equation,” Saketa said. “Switch to melee.”
“Can you manage it?” Vanaka asked, and unfolded her combat stick.
“I can,” Saketa replied, and proceeded to make good on it.
It was hard. Harder than it had any right to be to a fully-fledged Warden. But she did manage it. She did apply her will to the universe and enforce a simple rule. Her range wasn’t what it ought to be, but as the seven soldiers came into view they were well within it.
They wore hard armour from top to toe, completely hiding the person within, and they wasted no time at all. The soldiers aimed their heavy rifles at the group rushing them, and each pulled the trigger. None of the guns fired.
Saketa had hoped for a moment of confusion or panicked attempts to get the rifles to work, but they reacted like professionals and switched to their swords just before she could close the distance.
They were in formation, forming a deadly wall of blades, but with the guns being discarded for the moment she released her will and Shifted. The rapid move from one trick to the other took a toll, especially through the Exile’s disruption, but she did manage to cross a few steps and emerged behind the soldiers.
She drove Nara’s sword between back plate and helmet, inflicting a lethal wound. Two turned to face her, and her companions crashed into the rest.
A soldier parried Vanaka’s stick-strike, but was completely unprepared for her strength and she smashed him into the ground. Losan came in with a feint at one soldier, then struck at the one next to him. Fredrak was right behind with the twin sticks and attacked the one who had fallen for the feint.
Saketa sidestepped to prevent the two from coming at her from opposite sides. She could not use Nara’s sword to its full effects, but it still cut through a soldier’s vambrace with little difficulty and inflicted a severe wound.
Vanaka parried an assault, and her opponent’s superior skill put her on the back foot for a moment, but she pushed his sword aside and went after him. He knew better than to try and meet her strength with strength and simply fell back, looking for an opportunity.
Twin sticks were a poor match for a sword, and an even worse one for hard armour. Fredrak was fighting for his life, while Losan held his opponent in an even match for the moment, hampered by being far more vulnerable.
Saketa’s injured foe switched his grip on the sword. It was a worthy effort, but the clumsiness of his guard let her slide the sword through the armour joint at his armpit and into a lung. The blade came out as smoothly as it went in, and she hopped back to evade the attack from his comrade.
Vanaka simply smashed into her opponent, using not weight but the sheer strength of her legs. It threw him backwards, into an awkward, desperate dance of trying to stay on his feet. She chased him down and smashed her stick into him, launching him off the ground and into a broken heap.
Fredrak dodged a swing by throwing himself into a desperate dive, rolled, and got his hand on a fallen soldier’s heavy rifle. His opponent closed the distance in a heartbeat, to skewer him. Fredrak flipped on the ground, just enough to escape the blade, then pressed the rifle against the man’s leg and fired.
Losan had managed to turn the sword-fight into a grapple, negating the advantage of armour.
Saketa’s remaining enemy was good; fast, strong, skilled and fearless. He was a true elite soldier. But he hadn’t trained on the peaks of Kalero. He hadn’t faced the darkness in the Valley of Vartana. And he was limited to the mere strength of flesh and bone. Saketa deflected his attacks, drove him back, broke his guard, and struck the decisive blow. The helmet might have stood up against a glancing hit, but not a direct one. The blade cut through and down into his brain.
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Losan had gotten his man on the ground and plunged the sword down into the shoulder-joint. Fredrak then stepped over, pressed his stolen rifle against the man’s head, and fired.
The one who’d take the shot to the leg reeked of scorched plastics and flesh, but he was trying to bring his rifle to bear. Saketa took three steps towards him and clove through another helmet. And that was all of them.
Losan snatched up another dropped rifle and fired an experimental shot into the ground. Saketa paid the scene no more heed and charged on through the entrance.
“Vehicle!” Fredrak shouted at her back.
She emerged from the gateway and into a sizeable grounds area. It was dotted with support walls that seemed to be the sole remnants of bygone buildings, and the trappings of a tourism industry.
She sensed danger from the base of the tower itself, and she reached into the universe again. From around the walls near the base hovered a tank. The main gun swung about, and Saketa felt the deadly shot coming. She hesitated for just a split second, to make her move a sure thing, then thrust her palm out.
The cannon shot met the wave, and burst harmlessly against it. The tank was flung back like a toy, and crushed soldiers that had been using it for cover. It smashed into the tower base and tipped over onto its side with a dead engine.
Saketa went back to sprinting. The tower lit up with another pulse, bathing the walls, the ground, and the crushed bodies in that awful purple. It travelled up into the sky, into the web, and somewhere another several hundred people, at least, were killed.
She spared the Tower of Kanato one upwards look, one quick glance to where her long-sought quarry waited. Then she focused straight ahead again.
A single soldier emerged from the mess surrounding the tank and staggered for the doorway. Their first shot flew at a downwards angle and burst against the ancient cobblestones as Saketa ran across them. The second one came as the soldier took a moment to lean against the door frame to steady themselves. Saketa swung Nara’s sword up and intercepted the bolt. It died against the red blade as little more than a hot puff. The soldier vanished through the opening.
“More inside!” Fredrak shouted.
Saketa reached the flight of stairs leading up the main entrance. They were surely among the oldest parts of the structure, ancient, smooth, and worn down to a very noticeable U-shape. Up at the top waited an equally-ancient doorway, nearly as big as the gatehouse and built with an eye-catching shape that time was only just beginning to chip away at.
Beyond the open double-doors waited darkness and a sense of danger, and it was at the opening that Saketa forced herself to stop.
Do this right, she told herself.
The others caught up. Losan was first, and Saketa noticed that he’d snatched up a grenade belt in addition to the heavy rifle. Fredrak was sweating and panting, but pointed at the wall and slightly upwards, indicating where the rest of them were.
“Stairwell,” he simply said between breaths. “Seven more.”
“I will freeze gunfire again and run in, drawing their attention,” she said. “I will shout when I drop it. Then you burst in shooting. When they try to return fire, I will start the effect again.”
Losan nodded curtly.
“Understood.”
She applied her will again, then charged inside.
The walls of the tower’s lowest level were thick, being a foundation holding up tens of thousands of tons, and so she passed through a bit of a corridor before emerging into open space.
A long set of stairs hugged the wall as it made its way up, and spread out in firing positions on the steps were the seven soldiers. The injured one was near the bottom, while the others were divided up between the first three flights, giving them a wide field of fire.
The dry clicking of triggers started the moment she came into view, and was swiftly replaced by a soft rattle of safeties being checked and backup weapons, as she just kept on running till she reached the centre of the main floor. She was at the swirling middle of some mosaic that was surely as old as the tower itself, illuminated by chemical lights on the outside of the staircase.
She waited for a moment, to let confusion sink further in. One, the sixth from the bottom, had the presence of mind to snatch a grenade from a harness and fling it at her. Saketa simply caught it in her left hand, and it stayed just as inert as the guns. They started switching to swords, and she flung the grenade back as she released her will.
“NOW!”