Chapter 6: Help Incoming: Part One
The punch hit Kali with enough force to shatter a mortal ribcage and pulp the organs within. Not nearly enough to hurt her though.
Violence wasn’t just Kali’s duty, it was her domain, her life, the very air she breathed. She had no talents for anything else, not really. She had been conceived for war and slaughter, and though she tried to keep a tight rein on her bloodlust, violence was never far from her thoughts.
Kali felt the demigod’s knuckles dig into her skin as his blow struck home. It wasn’t a bad effort for an opening, enough to drive her back a step, since she hadn’t bothered to set herself.
The Hindu goddess felt her grin widen as Adam fell back a few steps himself, opening distance between them, his wings half folding at his sides, their undersides facing the ground as she tensed. Good, he wasn’t just going to stand there after she took his punch, he was going to get ready, remembering that this wasn’t just her taking his attack to see what he could do.
This was a sparring match.
“My turn.”
She didn’t use anywhere near her full speed or strength, but she still closed the distance between them before Adam could react. Her fist came up, finding her target in more or less the same place that he’d hit her. Unlike her though he couldn’t tank her blow. Adam folded up around her fist as she kept pushing, then flew backwards as the force finished transmitting into his body. He hit the ground, rolled a few times then came to a stop, a cloud of dust kicked into the summer air as his wings flopped down around him.
For a moment he just lay there, then with surprising speed, he heaved himself up, finding his way onto legs that, though unsteady, still supported him.
Good, Kali felt her grin turn less feral and more pleased. It looked like Adam really did have some backbone to him. The punch she’d hit him with had been strong enough to kill a normal person, but she’d known he was tougher than that. Still, she hadn’t expected him to get up quite so readily.
The goddess’s eyes narrowed slightly as she watched her charge’s halo appear above him in a series of metallic snaps and pops. She’d thought that she had a decent grasp on how strong he was, so that should have let her gauge his durability as well. With demigods, there was normally a balance that existed as their physical abilities developed. Durability naturally came with strength so that the demigod didn’t shatter their own bones or tear their ligaments with their new brawn, just as strength grew as the body became tougher. Reflexes and agility increased as senses became keener, just as senses sharpened to account for increased speed and dexterity.
Adam seemed . . . off, unbalanced. His durability and strength were out of harmony. That wasn’t too unexpected. Rama had been a demigod strong enough to lift Shiva’s bow, yet he had still been partly vulnerable to mortal weapons. Karna had been strong, but his greatest asset had been the golden armour he was born with, an armour that made him all but invulnerable. Western mythology had other heroes whose resistance to harm outstripped their strength, such as Achilles or Siegfried, so it was not as though there were no precedents.
The problem was that this didn’t feel like that to her. This wasn’t a specialisation, rather it was an aberration. Adam’s recovery and growth were incorrect, lopsided, and that was something she was going to have to deal with at some point.
Right now, she had other concerns though.
She’d given her charge enough time to recover, it wouldn’t be any fun if she let the fight’s tempo drop. With her feral grin back Kali closed in again, using the same speed and the same strength as before. She even swung at the same place on his torso, wanting to see how he adapted.
And she wasn’t disappointed. Adam threw himself backwards, his flight pushing him faster than his muscles could, and his wings snapped shut around him, their hardened outer feathers coming between him and the goddess like a pair of oversized shields.
Good. It wasn’t so much that he was reacting faster as it was that he was taking the right actions to buy himself the time he needed. Her fist slammed into the wings, but because he was already retreating some of her blow force was bled off. Still, the impact accelerated him backwards again, though this time he managed to stay on his feet as he came down, though he did have to frantically stumble backwards to do it.
“Nice, but you can do better.”
She was on him again, faster this time, giving him less time to gather himself. He managed to turn this time as she swung, dodging the main force of the attack. He didn’t come away unscathed, the force of what clipped him enough to send him spinning. But as he did so he was able to counterattack for the first time, his left wing coming down in a chop, the sharpened feathers as deadly as a descending guillotine’s edge.
Well, they would have been if she had been mortal anyway.
Her right arm came up in a lazy blocking motion, and the sword-like feathers stopped as though they’d run into the armour plating of a mainline tank. Still, she wanted to play the part, so Kali let herself stumble back slightly, as though the force were greater than it was.
Adam took advantage with decent speed, twisting to face her even as he moved back and up, taking to the air as he tried to open more distance. For all her power she didn’t have any direct flight abilities, not that it mattered really, not when she was capable of jumping over tall buildings if she wanted to. It had been a good move though, and she rewarded it with another couple of seconds of hesitation before she went after him again.
Her charge hadn’t used those seconds only to retreat though. His hands had been cupped before him, colourless energy gathering and condensing into a swirling mass the size of an orange. Just as she spotted it, he released the mass of energy, firing it at her like a shot from a cannon.
Kali could have dodged it, but she restrained herself, keeping to the limits she’d set herself as this match began. While keeping to them she wasn’t able to get completely out of the way, but like Adam, she was able to turn it from a direct hit into a glancing blow.
She let herself stumble back a few steps before catching her balance. All in all, it hadn’t been a bad attack. It certainly packed more power than his barehanded punch, but it wasn’t enough, not to end this match. Adam was more than twenty feet up in the air now and gathering more power for another bolt of that colourless magic. Good, he wasn’t letting up. Still, she couldn’t let him win that easily.
Her legs tensed under her, then launched her upwards, the ground she’d standing on caving in under the force of her leap. Her charge just had time to widen his eyes in surprise before she slammed into him, a knee digging into his stomach even as her hands grabbed at his shoulders for purchase. The air left his lungs in a coughing gasp, but to his credit, he managed to hold onto the energy he’d gathered.
Well, she was going to see if he could keep that up. In a single brutal motion, she drove her head forward, slamming her forehead into his with as much force as she could while keeping within her limits.
In a real fight, a headbutt was usually only used against an enemy’s nose, at least as long as it was executed properly. Slamming your skull against someone else’s was a move of desperation, given that it normally hurt the user just as much as the target. As a master of the art of violence, Kali was well aware of this, but she also knew that with supernatural combatants the rules changed.
Her head was tougher than Adam’s so she could take it, but he couldn’t.
They fell from the sky in a spiralling tumble. Her charge winced in pain and his eyes unfocused as the collision of their skulls had scattered his wits. At the last moment, Kali brought up her boots, pressed the soles to Adam’s chest, and kicked off in an acrobatic flip that would have made gold medallists weep with envy. As the demigod came crashing down the Hindu goddess landed as perfectly poised as a dancer on a stage.
“Come on Adam,” She began to circle the slumped form of the winged man as he tried to rise once more. “You can do better than that. You know you’re stronger, smarter than this. Come on! You fought that monster in the woods, did you really beat it like this? By just blindly messing around with your power?”
She got her answer as a spherical shield flaring out around her charge. It started close to his form, but spread out in a rush, doubling in size again and again in less than a second. Kali saw it coming but couldn’t react fast enough without breaking the limits she’d set herself for this match. As it reached its full size the spherical shield slammed into her like a runaway train.
This time she wasn’t able to brace herself and the impact sent her flying back. She landed on the grass and dirt with an audible thump, but even as dust rose up around her from the impact she smiled.
“Better.”
She was on her feet in a second, a move that looked oddly like breakdancing helping her flip upright in a single movement. In that time Adam was already retreating again, his hands out towards her, his fingers tensed into claws. Kali had just enough time to wonder what he was doing before dirt erupted on either side of her and hands made of stone reached up to grab at her legs and ankles.
Okay, not bad. The goddess was able to break free easily enough but it still took time. Time her charge was able to use to open more room and prepare another attack. Stalling her had been the right move, rather than immediately lashing out since it bought him more time.
Kali was starting to get a better feel for how the young demigod thought and fought. He looked to be a bit too much of a thinker, not relying on instinct and reflex enough. Still, they could work on that.
The last of the rock hands gripping her broke apart and she was moving again. Grinning savagely, she grabbed one of the remnants of the stone arms in each of her hands, then threw them straight at Adam with as much force as she could within her limits.
Her projectiles struck the shield like cannonballs, and she saw the sphere flicker and shrink after each impact, the power draining as it resisted the impacts. Not wasting a second she was tearing after them, her boots digging craters into the ground as she forced herself forward.
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The shield cracked as she slammed herself into it, her very body being used as a battering ram as she leapt at Adam. The sphere of protective power buckled and cracked, but still held, keeping her away from him.
Kali was in her element, feeling the blood start to sing in her veins.
Her fingers dug into the shield, nails that looked like they’d just been manicured clawed into the colourless energy, finding purchase, keeping her from falling. Feeling her face spreading into a wild grin she swung with her other arm, hammering her fist into the shield again and again.
Through it the Hindu goddess could see Adam’s face crease in concentration as the shield healed, but it was already too late. The protective sphere broke, and Kali came through like a wolf into a chicken coop, teeth bared as she swung at Adam once more.
One of his wings folded in front of him, taking the blow and saving him, though the impact still drove him back and down to the ground. Her smile grew as she kicked off the fading remnants of the shield, driving herself towards the demigod once more.
Was she using too much strength? Was she breaking her earlier self-imposed limit? She wasn’t sure, but at that moment she didn’t really care. This was the most fun she’d had in months! Since fully regaining her divinity things had been boring, every fight too easily won, every exhilaration left hollow by her effortlessness. This . . . this was fun!
She moved to charge again, only to be met by an oncoming torrent of flames. But flames such as these couldn’t harm her! They were little more than an annoyance.
Her bull rush continued, her form charging through the flames as though they were nothing more than the air from a heating fan in winter. Not even her clothes were singed as she burst through the last of the fire . . . only to see that Adam was no longer in front of her.
She just had time to blink before another bolt of colourless energy slammed into her from the side. This time she wasn’t braced for it, this time she was off balance and the sheer kinetic force of the impact took her off her feet and sent her tumbling to the ground. Quickly she got to her feet, a small part of her impressed by Adam’s efforts.
That assault of fire hadn’t been meant to hurt her, it had just been meant to stall and blind her! Behind it, the young demigod had been preparing, then moved to the side in an explosive rush even as she pushed through his flames. That hadn’t been all he’d managed though. He’d also been able to pull together another one of those arcana blasts, one strong enough to take advantage of catching her by surprise.
This was fun. This was fun! THIS WAS FUN!!!
Her control slipped. It was not by much, but for a moment the power she’d been keeping down escaped the leash she’d tied about it in her mind and lashed out. Darkness and Destruction were tools that had always served her well, and they responded to her instincts before she could stop them.
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The Golem sensed the conflict almost immediately.
Though it had been designed as a weapon it had still been granted additional abilities in order to excel at its task. The manner in which it perceived the world was different from the way a mortal would. Its eyes were glowing pits of semi-liquid metal, not organs designed to absorb and analyse light. It had no ears on the sides of its head, only smooth metal. It had no nose, it had no tongue, it had no nerves. The senses of a human were as alien to it as the surface of the sun.
Instead, it had other abilities, other senses. One was in some ways a crude and limited version of the omniscience that some powerful gods could use. It simply knew the shape, sound and feel of the area around itself, and that knowledge was constantly updating, remaining accurate to the millisecond.
Another was a sensitivity to the local currents of power. Mana, chi, magic, all of them differed in their essence, all of them as clear to the Golem as a rainbow in the sky would have been to a child. It could sense where the energies hovered sluggishly, where they were being influenced by external forces, where they rushed if they were being drawn upon.
Additionally, it had been forged of metal and stone, and then given life, so a link remained to these elements. Vibrations through the ground were as clear and distinct to it as the light was to an eye, each tremor and echo serving to paint a picture in its mind to further highlight the awareness that was built from its other senses.
It could also perceive the presence of divinity, the pressure of such power beating down upon it as potently as the summer sun shining down on a plant. The Golem could measure that pressure, and estimate the strength and rank of the source.
As a result, it sensed when the conflict began, and it could sense the combatants.
One was known to it. it belonged to the same small candle of divinity it had been sensing since it had recovered enough to ‘think’ once more. That small spark of divine power was multi-hued and small still, though it was slowly growing. There was power in it, but it was like a seed when compared to a flower in full blossom, a promise, an unrealised potential.
The other source of divine power was greater in virtually every respect. So much stronger, purer, more vital, fiercer. Had the Golem been a poet then it could have waxed eloquently about the greater divinity for hours, if not days.
The ancient construct had been aware of the arrival of the two new powers to the local area, but until now that had simply been background information. Both had been powerful, enough so that they could be grave threats, but until they had become relevant their existence had carried no greater weight in the Golem’s mind than a blade of grass in the field beside it.
Now that changed.
Until this moment there had been no impetus for the Golem to move, to act, to fight. Its recovery had been a success in almost all regards, but the standing commands that had once driven it were among what had been lost due to its damage.
Heat surged through it as its core roused to full wakefulness. Across its body lines of dull orange began to glow as magic animated the construct. Lastly, eyes that had once been little more than extinguished embers flared into life, the red shine of a forge fire kindling within them.
The first step was accompanied by a groan of metal as limbs and joints that had been immobile for days, that had recovered from being blasted and melted, moved once more. The earth shook slightly under the massive weight of that step, then again and again.
Slowly at first, but then picking up speed, the Golem entered the fray once more.
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Fight Kali was something like a combo of the world’s worst rollercoaster and being thrown into a blender!
I was tough, my fight with Etienne had shown me that, and I was powerful, probably more so than I’d really had a handle on, but right then I was really starting to get just how far real godly powers were above me. She was strong, she was fast, as she seemed to be everywhere at once. She came at me so fast that all I could do was throw up anything that came to mind, no time for planning or set up, it was all just force and speed. Fire, arcana, earth, air, all of it was thrown around so frantically I was losing track of what I was doing.
Honestly, I think the thing that most surprised me was that I was still managing to resist, rather than just turtling behind my shield. I was just about resisting her attacks, and that was something worth noting, or so I kept telling myself.
“Come on! Give me more!”
Kali’s exclamation was unsettling. There was exhilaration there, as well as something darker, something hungry.
“Is this it? is this the best you’ve got?”
I think it was the easy way she was speaking, even as she dodged fireballs, blades of wind and shards of stone. Seeing someone talking while in the middle of such high-speed acrobatics, I had a hard time wrapping my mind around it, and it made me feel as though I didn’t quite have a grip on reality.
Maybe that was why I made a mistake, why I wasn’t quite fast enough. I got distracted and didn’t vary my attacks enough. Kali must have seen an opening and slipped through.
The punch caught me in the stomach, just above my navel. The shield I’d been maintaining while throwing as many attacks as I could, shattered like fine glass, nowhere near as strong as it would have been if I’d been more focused on it. Maybe it bled off some of the blow’s force, but it certainly didn’t feel like it. I folded up over the goddess’s fist like a cheap cardboard cutout. All the air was driven from my lungs and all thoughts from my head. On top of that, I was fairly sure I felt something crack in my torso.
I didn’t go flying back though. My mind might have gone blank as I tried to heave air back into my lungs, but the training Joan and Hadriel had pounded into my muscles wasn’t as easily scattered. I hadn’t been floating too far off the ground, and as I folded up my wings stabbed down driving into stony soil and anchoring me in place.
This . . . turned out not to be a good move.
I barely had time to get my thoughts together before Kali was back in my face, this time swinging a kick that came at me like a cannonball from the side. I just didn’t have time to react, the foot slammed into my upper-left arm, and I was sent spinning through the air, my wings wrenched from the ground in a shower of dirt and stone. The world spun, and then I was crashing down again, grass rushing by, my wings awkwardly flailing, bending and folding as I rolled several times before coming to a stop.
Still too dazed to do anything else I stared up at Kali as she stalked over to me. The way she moved . . . for a moment even though she was on two legs there was very little that was human about it. she made me think of a lion, or a tiger, stalking towards prey.
Then she looked disappointed, but there was also something . . . well, ‘thwarted’ was the best word I could come up with. Crazy as it was she reminded me of a guy that had just been about to score with some hot chick, only for someone else to swoop in and steal her at the last second.
“So . . . that’s it? That’s all you’ve got?” She sounded frustrated. “I guess I shouldn’t be expecting too much, you’re young. You’ll get stronger. Now . . . on your feet! We’ll go again!”
All I could do was stare up at her. Was she serious? Joan and Hadriel hadn’t been exactly gentle when training me, but the Hindu goddess had just thrown me around like a ragdoll! Did she think I could do it again?
“NO! None of that!” Her sharp tone cracked like a whip, cutting through whatever fog was left in my head. “Get up! Do you think you can just lie back in a fight?! Get up now!”
Somehow, I managed to struggle my way back to my feet. There was just something in Kali’s tone that wouldn’t let just lie there, not while my muscles were at least semi-functional. My addled mind vaguely noted that she’d probably have made a magnificent drill sergeant, but most of my attention was fixed on the way she was drawing back her fist in readiness to start the spar again.
The blow was being deliberately telegraphed to make it easier to block or dodge, but it didn’t matter. At that moment it was taking everything I had just to stay standing, anything else was just beyond me. I was fully expecting to go down when it hit.
Instead, the dark-haired goddess suddenly vanished.
All I could do was stare at the spot where she’d been standing. I was vaguely aware of something that might have been noise, of the world seeming to shake, of dust and dirt being kicked up by some huge force, but none of it seemed to be registering with my muggy thoughts. Instead, all I could manage was to keep blinking to try and clear my vision, anything more complicated was beyond me. Still, it must have worked, because something that I hadn’t noticed before swam into focus off to the side. Though exactly how I’d managed to miss it until then confused the hell out of me.
It took me a few seconds to recognise the hulking figure that stood just beside me, fist extended. It looked slightly different from how I remembered it, the design of the armour slightly shifted, the carved and moulded musculature a bit heavier, the spikes of the crown above the helmet-like face altered into a different configuration, but it was still unmistakable.
The problem was that the last time I’d gotten a good look at that form, at least when it hadn’t been a semi-melted ruin, had been when it was fighting Joan and doing a pretty good job of overwhelming her in her angel form.
Letting out a startled yelp I stumbled backwards, only to trip and fall as my wings drooped and caught in the soil. Unprepared for the sudden resistance I lost my footing and fell on my arse, my wings propping up on either side of me like half-collapsed tents.
However, much to my surprise, the hulking figure didn’t advance upon me. Instead, it turned its back to me and faced away, leaving me staring at it in bemused confusion. What was going on? The last time I’d seen this thing it was working with those monsters that were trying to drag me through the portal, so why . . .
My eyes widened as I spotted something in its stance. I wasn’t the best at reading body language, but in that moment, it seemed so obvious that it might as well have been spelt out in ten-foot-tall neon letters.
It was protective.
The way the huge figure stood, the set of its shoulders, the part open state of its hands, everything about it was defensive, not for itself, but for me. It was protecting me!
“YEAH! THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!”
My eyes were torn away from it as I saw Kali get back to her feet beyond it. the expression on her face . . . well, I don’t think it could be considered entirely rational. There exultation, hunger, joy, excitement, it all blended into a weird cocktail of emotions I could barely make out. One thing I was sure about, the bright crazy look in her eyes didn’t bode well for me.