The second wave was close to arriving now. Its faster members were prowling the street, leaping off walls with feral bounds. Ironbolt had to be careful not to be caught off guard by the unpredictable spread of Powers they showed. His speed was not enough to rely on alone in this situation. One wrong move would have his head torn from his shoulders or put him into the way of some crazy blast of Power.

He was expending his energy far quicker than before now that he had a weapon which his Power could fuel. It was a great thing to have in his hands, directing and focusing his strength into deadly strikes at a distance. It kept him safe and made him more useful. But it was spending days’ worth of his Power in the span of minutes now. His meter had already been nearing empty, and it was racing towards the bottom of the well.

Once he’d caught up with Avenger and his remaining fighters, Ironbolt found himself dangerously out of breath. He was sucking for air, his eyes darting over the group to count heads.

Avenger knew the paleness in Isaac’s face for what it meant. “Conserve your energy!” he barked, not an ounce of sympathy in his tone. He didn’t mean to be cruel, but there was no time for pleasantries. They’d both seen war before and they found themselves amid it once again.

So few were left of their numbers, Ironbolt saw. In Avenger’s company, he had just six Heroes, including the Elementalist, the Technicist, and a few more heavy hitters. All the rest were scattered and on their own, including Fortitude and Dupe.

If they’re alive, Ironbolt thought. He immediately shut the idea down. He couldn’t stand to believe it was possible. He’d known them for years now. He’d seen them grow into their roles. They were just… kids.

They weren’t ready, and you brought them anyway, his inner voice accused.

No! Ironbolt shook his head. The Technicist was still alive, and he had his briefcase. He could still open the portal and finish this thing, once and for all. A decisive strike against Seraph.

Suddenly, a figure rose above the nearby building top. One of his two heads had eyes that glowed a deep red, locked straight onto the Speedster where he stood. Of its four arms, two were overheated and out of use. But it had used the Power of its eyes to track Ironbolt, and he had led it right to the rest of them.

“Oh shit,” he whispered, too fast to hear. Then he forced himself to slow down and bellow. “Run!”

“No!” The Elementalist shouted back. He leaped to the front of the group and heaved his arms skyward. Every muscle in his body trembled with the weight of his task as his Power brought up a shield from the Earth. A solid wall of concrete and bedrock rose a hundred feet high.

Ironbolt couldn’t see what Power the Great Thrall had used, then. He only heard the horrible, high-pitched whining which followed. Cracks lanced through the barricade, and he wasn’t sure for a moment if it would hold. But the entire group stood its ground. They managed to hold on to their position.

Avenger pointed to two of his men. “Take that fucker out of the sky!”

One of them was able to jump straight from his position up and over the barricade. The next followed with an invisible tether, which he shot and used to draw himself up and over. Much shouting and noise followed and Ironbolt had to force himself to break his focus.

“The second wave is almost here,” he said.

Avenger nodded. “We’ve drawn them out. Now, we can’t just wait here anymore. We must fight our way into the dome. In the confusion, we can slip through.”

It was crazy, but it might just work. Only… Ironbolt cast his eyes back at the barricade. It’d gone silent behind it. He didn’t think the Heroes were alive anymore. In fact, he was certain of it. “Not if that thing is following. He’ll lead the whole horde straight after us.”

“We have to kill it, then,” Avenger hissed. He readied a knife in each hand.

“Bullets didn’t work. Even with your Power guiding your aim to the perfect pressure points, your knives won’t work, Avenger,” Ironbolt said. He hung his head. “That thing’s eyes are focused directly on me. I think I’m the one who it’s locked onto.”

The Brit knew what the Speedster was thinking, and he wasn’t having any of it. “It won’t keep falling for the same trick, you bloody bastard. If you just keep running it in circles, it’ll come back after us. We have to face it head-on!”

“Which is why I won’t run.” Ironbolt tore off the gloves of his suit, exposing his bare hands. They sparked with electricity. He was curt as he spoke. “I’ll kill it.”

“You can’t.” Through his mask, Avenger’s eyes narrowed. He stated it as a fact. “You’ll die first.”

“Then I’ll buy you all some time to get ahead. If it can’t lock onto you, it can’t follow you. Use the Elementalist. Tunnel in as fast as possible. Finish the fucking mission.”

“We could kill it together…”

“Too many have died already,” Ironbolt said. “Just go. If I make it through, I’ll find the Wards. I’m sure they’re still alive. And they deserve my help if I can give it to them. They deserve better than to be left to die in this godforsaken city.”

Unexpectedly, Avenger fell forward, his arms wrapping around his friend. The hug lasted only a second. Then, he was completely calm as he backed away and put a hand on Ironbolt’s shoulder. He stopped himself from saying goodbye or anything so final. He just wished the man luck.

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Ironbolt turned his face away. “Thank you.” And with that, he disappeared on a burst of wind. Gone.

He had to steel his mind. There was nowhere to retreat to, now.

Once Ironbolt had broken away from Avenger’s group, he found himself in a sea of chaos. As his Power reached the end of its rope, it did not begin to dwindle. Instead, it became unstable. His hands were filled with trembling and, for a time, it almost felt like he had more energy than ever before. Volatile and dangerous energy. But this was merely the first sign of his total collapse. The nuclear meltdown just below the surface.

If he kept pushing like this, Ironbolt would find himself passed out. Or worse.

The second wave had now arrived in full force, however, and he couldn’t slow down. As he was sprinting down one of the alleys, an undead Thrall leaped down in front of him. It was moving too fast to simply ignore. Its squirrel-like tail flicked and its grotesque, fanged face sneered.

Reaching back and withdrawing his gun once again, Ironbolt blasted the freak back. Its hair lit up and it screamed, but it did not die. It stumbled forward. So, he blasted it again, this time watching as the lightning bore through its body and burst out at its foot, practically exploding the appendage. That time, it stayed down.

He couldn’t take any more chances, so he went straight up to the nearest roof. He was both horrified and glad to see that the Greater Thrall had followed him. Just as before, it was in no hurry. It moved with inexorable certainty that its target would die. Its red eyes still glowed, focused solely on him.

“Good,” Ironbolt said, feeling the sag sink into his shoulders. Nonetheless, he faced the beast. He dug to the very bottom of his reserve and summoned the last ounces of Power he had.

Hovering above with its gaze set to kill, the Ultimate Thrall had all its hands back and ready to use. Predictably, it started with overwhelming force. It raised up the same Power it had used to devastate half a city block and leveled it straight at Ironbolt.

His legs cocked into place and tension readied the muscles. Just as the blast ripped out, he raced it to the finish line. In one blast of strength, he sidestepped across the street gap between the building he was standing on, landing safely all the way on the next roof over. An almost forty-foot leap.

Three moves left, he counted, estimating his reserves.

Without wasting a single second, Ironbolt raised his gun and pumped so much energy through it that, once the sky was clear of the thunderous, blind flash, the gun was reduced to slag. Completely overwhelmed.

“Die!” he roared.

The Thrall came shakily floating down to the roof where it landed on its feet, steaming and white-hot all over. Its exposed skull was expressionless as deep plumes of vapor huffed out from the recesses of its lungs. Its legs wavered, but it refused to fall. Though it was undead, its body was in a listless fight to restabilize. It had no idea what to do to regain its composure but struggled anyway.

Two moves left.

“I said...” Ironbolt grit his teeth and flashed forward, "die!" Before it could follow up with the next attack in its sequence, his hands fell into a death-grip around the beast’s throat.

He could feel the bones almost snap in his fingers as he ripped in. Ironbolt squeezed until even the bulletproof, impenetrable flesh of the Thrall ripped and tore. He caved in its windpipe with his bare hands, trying his damnedest to crush the spinal column as he did.

Its eyes bugged out, but it did not feel pain. Only the urgency of the need to kill before it was itself killed. And so, its second hand fell on Ironbolt’s chest, and sparks began to dance around its fingers. He would be torn to shreds.

Just as he was about to blackout from strain in his Power, Ironbolt gave his last.

The entire sky turned white with a flash of energy. Rogue tendrils of electricity exploded across the rooftops, jumping from one surface to the next. Down below, stray Thralls too close to the fire sizzled and burned from the inside out. The whole world shook with thunder and blue flashes and wind rippled over him in a torrent of Power.

It was visible for miles.

Ironbolt’s own eyes dimmed as the light grew brighter. He had to hold on and shut off the flow of his electricity before he passed out. Otherwise, it could go nuclear.

The last thing he saw was the skull of the Thrall, stripped of flesh and charred to nothingness. Its brains boiled and its skin burst off. Lights danced through its skull with every pulse.

It was like his hands were stuck in place. Burnt to the surface of its spine, which his fingers now fully wrapped over. The bones had superheated and they were about to explode.

“Gah!” Finally, he ripped his hold away, and then everything went quiet. The last rumbles of Power faded into the distance as thunder settled.

Before Ironbolt stood a perfectly white, glowing skeleton.

Suddenly, he stumbled back. Ironbolt fell unconscious against the surface of the roof, there. For the first time in so many long years, his mind went completely blank. For decades he had worked, night and day. And, at last, he slept.

Darkness was a soft bed for his aching body. Time passed and there was nothing but his still mind.

He only hoped the Wards were still okay.

He wanted to lie there forever, free from the trap of his own long life. Free from all the days which were never divided by sleep or rest. An endless stream of stress and moral strife.

But slowly, Ironbolt realized he wasn’t dead. He wasn't quite ready to call his work done.

So, his eyes inched open. The sky which had before been clear and blue was now full of stars. An entire day had passed while he slept and the fight was over. The streets were quiet now. Except, there were lights in the distance. There was the smell of rotting corpses high on the air, and great towers of smoke rising into the atmosphere.

As he stood up and went to the edge of the roof, he could see them. The giant piles of bodies that had been placed by the city outskirts to burn. Placed there by the hundreds of Heroes which had come through the Gate to fight. Their camps, he could also see, were arranged along rooftops and on streets.

It wasn't hundreds, he counted. But thousands. Tens of thousands, still pouring out from the domed building.

What all of Seraph combined could not do, they had done. They had opened the walls of the Great Storm and brought an army into the heartland of the Undead King, ready to change history and put an end to his reign of terror. Though, Ironbolt wondered how much sabotage had played into earlier failures. Seraph, after all, was in league with the Lich.

Belatedly, he realized his Power was so drained that he was seeing this all in real-time. It was not slowed to a crawl like it usually was. Yet, it all felt dizzyingly fast by comparison.

He enjoyed the effect while it lasted, but he knew he would soon be back to himself. He'd only ever pushed himself this hard once before, and to a similar effect. Honestly, he hadn't really expected to survive this time. Not with how close he came to losing himself in the fire.

In his mind's eye, he could see the core of his Power. He could see exactly how close it had come to going out of control.

After having passed out for untold hours, he remembered the Wards. He turned back towards the rubble from the Great Thrall's first attack, and he felt a chill. He had no choice but to go and look for them like he'd promised. His great fear was that he was just looking for bodies. At this point, that was the only help he could offer them. A burial.

He started down the fire escape, feeling weak and dazed.

He was off for the pile of dead. He had to count the limbs and see if he could find the Wards. Maybe he could lay them to rest if they were there. Only then could he move on and do what had to be done.

The height of the war was still ahead.