“People of the Lead Cave.” A loud, booming voice traveled through the air as though spoken by the very thunder. In fact, judging by the flashes of lightning preceding every word, they may very well have been. “I come with one and only one offer. Your leaders have attempted to ambush my army without so much as pretending to offer diplomacy, but unlike those cowardly fools, I am a most generous lord! Give up your masters, prostrate at my feet, swear fealty and release your secrets freely from your tongue and you will live equal as any under my great Khanate! Refuse and your very memory will be as much slag as your pathetic little hill!”
It left no room for questions, a demand that squeezed out all room for doubt until one suffocated in the measly crack left behind. Surrender or die, in somewhat prettier words.
“I give you three hours to make your response, do not make any foolish choices. Do not think me soft for granting you this mercy.” The voice concluded, shaking the very air around the Sect.
It was an equal combination of blessing and curse, it offered vital time to set up and actually plan out the harebrained evacuation scheme that Elder Aurelium, Magni and Roan seemed to have cooked up. But at the same time, it sowed the seeds of division where nobody could truly afford it. Pride, honour and loyalty rarely truly held up underneath the spectre of total annihilation, a lesson all of humanity learned as bombs scoured the Earth and reduced the world to cinder for centuries of darkness. In that time it was said friends and family would routinely tear each other apart, mankind’s truest enemy proving once more to be itself. Already Elder Aurelium’s tendrils writhed angrily through the air, his countless eyes twitching towards some unseen treachery to everyone except perhaps Magni. Silence ruled for a moment, before the sound of fighting erupted elsewhere in the Sect.
“Shit! Cobalt’s still Spirits knows where! And we are having a fucking civil war? Everything has been bombed to bits…” John swore.
“The plan is still in place, just with an additional layer. We need to restore order to the Sect, we cannot afford to let this warlord break us!” Elder Aurelium ordered. “Cobalt is strong, she can take care of herself!”
“She’s clearly not in her right mind old man!” John snapped. “You saw how she trembled! You saw how she just ran! And you know how she sometimes does things without thinking!”
The irony of that last statement was not lost on him, but his thoughts did not have the luxury of lingering on it as more and more raw panic flooded his mind. This was real. Everything he had, it could all be lost now and the prospect of saving everyone may as well have been an unassailable mountain.
“She’s running towards the edge of the Sect.” Magni’s voice cut through the tension like a well honed blade. “I have no idea what she is thinking, her thoughts are loud and incoherent, but it may as well be suicide at this rate.”
Before any more words could be said John sent a thought to ARTOS. How fast can we run?
[HOW FAST DO YOU NEED?]
Do you need to ask?
[AFFIRMATIVE. PLEASE CONFIRM: REMOVING SAFETY PROTOCOLS.]
He nodded his head once and the world became a blur. Magni tried to reach forward to him but only managed to touch an afterimage of slime and displaced air, followed by a deafening sonic boom.
“JOHN!” Magni screamed before a solid tendril touched his shoulder. Elder Aurelium stood over him with uncountable emotions pouring off his inhuman form like water through a cracked dam.
“As much as it pains me to say this, we still need you for the plan.” Elder Aurelium ordered. “The survival of the Sect is at stake, pray for him if you must. But we have a civil war to nip in the bud.”
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Cobalt was knocked flat on her face by the sheer force of that voice booming through the air just a few yards from the front gates of the Sect, vibrating the very fluid inside of her extremely sensitive ears and sending her world spinning mid step. She was vaguely familiar with this technique, spoken of only in the highest of Cultivation scriptures, something that was to an average Aberrant Realm cultivator’s manipulation of radiation what the crude unconscious flesh-shaping of a first step Mutant was to them. By all conventional wisdom this mass manipulation of the Atomic Spirits at this range required power and control over Si that could only be achieved at the highest pinnacle of the Aberrant Realm… and the way Supercriticals communicated with the world. A casual display of sheer brute force of will that could power cities and melt mountains. Even if this was a crude replication of the real deal, the fact it was achieved physically rather than a more typical psychic broadcast made a very effective statement. This Iktain had power, was not afraid to flaunt it, and was only not exercising its full brunt on a whim.
“What in the kracked up hells are you doing?” The voice of Moss cut through her tangled thoughts like a meticulously sharpened blade.
“I am going to give those bastards out there a piece of my mind!” She growled.
“And condemn the rest of us to death? I knew you usual young master types were arrogant and all, but this is a new low.” The greenhouse boy snarled. “What the fuck are you thinking? Are you thinking?”
“You won’t understand! I need to do this!” She practically screamed.
Moss let out a long, drawn out sigh. “I had hoped we would have this match under better conditions. But very well, if you must have this dance… I will happily oblige. After all, unlike you, I need to fucking survive.”
Just like that a tidal wave of hair thin fibres erupted from his body like a whirlwind of razor-whips. The worm-like extensions turning the air around her into a kaleidoscope of gory ribbons and cutting fury. Her reflexes were good, nigh unrivalled for her age group in fact, save for Magni, but she wasn’t that good. Despite her best efforts the fibres found their target and immediately began to cut deep even into enhanced flesh.
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“BASTARD!” She screamed as the distinct, foul, metallic tinge of gore filled the air.
Her stomach growled and she tried hard not to rest on the thought.
She summoned her reserves of strength to create a radius of searing heat around her to singe away the cutting flesh, and then in the distraction caused by blinding light and choking smoke shifted her skin to match the background. Better to flee in this instance than do something she would possibly regret.
Unfortunately, Moss seemed to be too perceptive for his own good and fired another round of bladed sinew towards her, each strand tougher than steel cable and fast enough to crack through the air like a bull-whip. With so much of his flesh being used as writhing weapons, it was remarkable he was even alive even considering the often impossible effects of Cultivation Mutations, but nonetheless, the mocking pseudo-smile on the still moist skull drilled into Cobalt with horrific intensity.
Instinct took over all at once, washing over her body like a flash flood from a burst dam. To the battle drum of her own roaring heartbeat and distant explosions she had not cared to contemplate she lunged forward into Moss’s form, cutting where she could with fully extended claws and wings uncaring of the injuries sustained to her own form, and bit into the nearest mass of exposed flesh that had not yet been reduced to fine strings.
Shock was the only word that could describe the lidless expression glued on her opponent’s face as Si flavoured blood poured down her jaw. Idly the remnants of her conscious mind wrested enough control to cause her to spit out much of the solid contents, and part of her knew she must have looked quite the part of a monster. Before Moss could say anything though she grabbed a handful of cutting hair and used it to throw his body like a living cannonball, sailing through the air at absurd speed straight over the Sect walls. To her, this was an exhausting exchange, but she knew through experience that in just a few moments the battle was already over.
There was a distant thud, and suddenly it sank into her that in her attempt to absolve herself of the guilt of tearing him to shreds, she may have well condemned him to death regardless. It mattered not however, she was going to join him anyway.
Suddenly, soundlessly, a flash of light and a stench of ozone filled the air as a terribly familiar figure made itself known, heralding a colossal sonic boom that knocked her flat on her ass. Similar explosions seemed to rattle throughout the Sect in the delayed aftermath of John’s passing, telling the tale of a frantic sprint forwards. How did he even get enough air and Si to fuel his body through all this?
It mattered not. Growling she demanded. “STEP AWAY! LEAVE ME BE!”
John, evidently exhausted and overextended, bleeding from all facial orifices and leaking such a thick coat of mucus-like sweat that it did in fact appear he was only breathing by the virtue of new gill slits decorating his neck made a gurgling sound that was surely a response. It didn’t matter, she could probably guess what it was.
“I don’t want to fight you…” She admitted. “But I can’t let you stay near me either… sorry John…”
She tried to fade out of the visible light spectrum and run away to the front gates, so close now, but was immediately knocked to the floor with a tackle of speed and power she didn’t know her friend could produce.
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It was utter pandemonium in the courtyard. Civilians were hiding in the solid walls behind abandoned camps and stalls as loyalists and opportunists scrambled at every opportunity to take the edge over one another in vicious combat. Not at all helped by the series of sonic booms that had rocked the Sect, apparently convincing quite a few mortals and no small sum of cultivators that the end was already here. The Wolf Creek Sect and Dustrider Elders remained dedicated to keeping the peace, but the Greenhouse leadership seemed to have been convinced survival came in surrender, and made more than evident their displeasure in what they viewed as a suicide by any other name. And naturally, their entourage and those closest to them were swayed too by the hysteria.
He was never one for raw physical or psychic strength, those came from his siblings in all but blood, but Aurelium knew what he was doing. Besides his skill as an administrator and spymaster, however, there was one thing he did always excel at when it mattered. Drawing forth his stored power, a painful process at the best of times with the calcified tribulation scars marring his meridians with channels of molten flesh, Rusty Aurelium summoned forth the power of all of the eyes he had to spare blinding the few low resolution severed orbs he had scattered from his body as he drew back in every last ounce of psychic power… and let out a massive illusion.
A towering image of wrathful tentacles and towering black limbs filled the sky, all other sound drowned out by the projection of his own voice. None became able to see anything except the very picture of his displeasure as he roared. “WHAT ARE YOU CHILDREN? DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE THE PROMISES OF A PETTY TYRANT? A WANNA BE RED STAR? DO YOU REMEMBER WHY OUR FATHERS REBELLED? OF THE MOUNTAINS OF TORN HEARTS AND BLOODY SACRIFICE!”
“That was centuries ago! This is not the Red Star’s army! And a chance to live however slim is always better than a futile fight at the guaranteed cost of hundreds of mortal lives!” A particularly brave cultivator rebuked him.
“FUCKING LISTEN!” His illusory voice boomed. “THERE IS A WAY OUT, PLANS TO EVACUATE WERE WELL UNDERWAY BEFORE YOU BLITHERING DOX-SHIT FOR BRAINS CHOSE TO DISINTEGRATE UNDER THE FAINTEST PRESSURE! SO IF YOU WANT TO AT ALL LIVE LISTEN CLOSE!” He demanded.
“THERE IS A CAVE UNDER THE SECT THAT CAN LEAD STRAIGHT TO GREYWATER AND BEYOND, WE CAN ONLY FIT PERHAPS ONE PERSON AT A TIME AS IS THROUGH THE CURRENT ENTRANCE AND AT MOST WE CAN ONLY EXPAND IT A BIT FURTHER, HOWEVER WE CAN CREATE A FORMATION THAT WOULD HIDE THE LOCATION OF THIS ESCAPE ROUTE AND MOST OF THE IMMEDIATE SURROUNDINGS FROM PERCEPTION FOR LONG ENOUGH TO MATTER.” He explained. “NOT EVERYONE WILL BE ABLE TO MAKE IT, I PERSONALLY WILL STAY BEHIND TO POWER THE FORMATION UNTIL THE VERY END, AND IF WE DON’T WANT TO RAISE SUSPICION THERE MUST BE THOSE WHO FIGHT TO BUY TIME. BUT YOUR FATES ARE NOT SEALED SO LONG AS YOU ARE WILLING TO TRY!”
A chorus of silence followed this statement. Drained of energy he let the illusion dissipate and collapsed to his knees, or rather his anatomical equivalent. A little rush of disappointment filled his mind as a fish-headed Cultivator bearing the robes of the Greenhouse started to move as though ready to provoke violence again, before he was knocked down with a deafening gunshot. Not quite lethal for a cultivator, but enough to keep him from getting up and drawing the attention of all towards the shooter.
Alexander, the son he rescued from a burning hole in the ground so many decades prior, the boy he had failed his whole life, blew out the smoke from the barrel of the gun and placed it back in its holster. His third eye on full display twitching violently in all directions as he met Rusty’s own countless eyes.
“You gave the kids a damn fright pops, I get it, but don’t do that again.” He said in a truly exhausted sounding voice. “Before you ask, the plan is shit, but it is clearly the best you got. I just have one problem… where is John?”
“About that…” Rusty wheezed, wincing. He truly wished his answer was satisfactory, even knowing deep in his heart it was not.
It was a truly brilliant time then for a flash of lightning to illuminate the distant sky near the edge of the Sect, with only one possible suspect.