“Take this,” Jerome said to Selene when they were out of hearing range from the others and handed something to her.

Selene looked at the large chunk of metal Jerome dropped in her hand. She watched as a small piece of it broke off and slithered up her arm, settling around her right bicep. It flowed with her muscles as she flexed them, not constricting her at all.

“This is amazing, Jerome!” she said in awe. “When did you learn to do that”

“It’s like you said. Each and every one of us went through great transformations after the Tower of Solon,” Jerome smiled at her. “When you’re with your teammates, the steel would split into tinier pieces and do the same thing. Just let them know it’s from me…a sort of protection.”

“Thank you, Jerome. Though I can’t help but think this would better serve our flank as we go into the belly of the beast,” Selene said worriedly.

“Don’t worry. The metal would do its job. I must keep it a secret, however. The more eyes see it the more they’ll know it's tied to me.”

Selene gave him a nod and raced away to join her teammates. Jerome watched her go, hoping that she wouldn’t lose another teammate today. There was no guarantee for that, though. The Children may be able to reach those who would be in the middle of the group of Sprouts as they broke through the blockade. They had to watch out for unforeseen elements.

Jerome sighed. He had done all he could for them. They would see on the other side. He covered himself in metal armor before taking to the skies and flying in the direction of the blockade at an angle different from that of the Sprouts on the ground. The Children in the air noticed him just as Lang had predicted. They started for him, closing any gap in their ranks that he might be able to squeeze through.

Smart, Jerome thought as he saw through their plans. The Children acted like they had no intelligence but as a group, they fought with intelligence.

Jerome thought about the Mother he had heard about but decided to shrug off the thought for later. If the Children were being controlled, it would be right to say, it was being done by a being much more intelligent than they were.

Jerome flew toward them readying his blades behind him. More than ten three-foot-long blades were hidden in his wings as he rushed toward the Children. The first one to come close was severed in two before it got within five feet of him. More of them rushed him but Jerome was unflustered. He could hear the sounds of battle coming from below now and could sense his many slivers of steel acting to protect his friends and the Sprouts below.

Jerome focused on his fight cutting down Child after Child, their numbers seemingly never-ending. He whipped out with Suzie from time to time, pulverizing those that were unlucky enough to be touched by the sizzling tip of his whip.

Some of the Children tried to grab hold of his wings so they could cripple him in the air, but their hands exploded every time they touched them. For some reason, their exploding limbs triggered a memory in Jerome from when he first entered Terra Praeta. He tore through Child after Child as the memory of how the Feis used Sword Force resurfaced in his mind.

Jerome formed a spear in his hand and spun in the air. Three heads were severed with that action. The Children rushed him like a stampede as he stopped spinning, but Sword Aura spiked in the air around him. With a wave of his spear, the invisible force blasted out like a pulse with a metallic ringing sound cutting everything in its path.

A roar broke through the air a moment later as one of the colossal Children started to wake up from its slumber to join the battle. It would be hard to get around a creature like that. It was slow but its roar caused shockwaves that could cause damage to them.

But they said they slept throughout the day, Jerome thought as he stared at the rising giant from the sky. With that little distraction, the winged Children barreled into him like a giant tide as they pushed to overpower him.

~~~

“Hold the line! Hold the line! Don’t piss ya pants coz of these wankers,” someone shouted at the Sprouts fighting off the Children on all sides.

Selene looked at her teammates and smiled lightly as they moved forward. Everything was a joke to them. She released the three arrows nocked to her bowstring, taking down almost six Children with one strike. Some fire-wielding sacred artist shot a few balls of fire at some of the Children she missed. Giving her the split moment she needed to nock more arrows to her bowstring.

House Tarmin, she thought as she saw the crest on their armor. It was the carving of a flaming hammer. She smiled and shook her head to stop herself from comparing their flames with Jerome’s. Jerome was the odd one compared to them—a maverick.

The Children were a lot more ferocious now compared to before. They were doing everything in their power to prevent them from getting through the blockade. Selene could feel the intensity of the Sword Aura from up ahead. She knew the fight would be very brutal in front.

An earth-shaking roar broke through the air and the group began to tilt right as they moved causing a stir among them. Selene tried to get a glimpse at what was happening ahead but she wasn’t very tall and could only see the top of the heads of those directly in front of her.

“We’re speeding up!” a shout came from the front just as something red and shiny slithered past her.

Selene smiled. Jerome’s little technique was a lot more useful than she had expected. The crowd of Sprouts sped up instantly. Bodies dropped around them and yellow stinky blood splashed everywhere but they rushed through the stench. No one wanted to remain in this part of Terra Praeta anymore.

“Blimey! Look at that,” one of her teammates said as they rushed forward.

Selene chanced a glance at the sky and wished she hadn’t looked up. Jerome was being overwhelmed by the sheer force and number of the Children in the sky. The fact that he was alone up there ate at her heart.

A blue beam of light suddenly tore through the children, reaching over two hundred paces in length before dissipating. The Sprouts who were still looking upwards exclaimed in surprise. Never had they witnessed something like that. Some of the Itakars chuckled and shook their heads.

“Focus on the foes in front of you!” Selene screamed at the group of Sprouts looking up. She had to have faith that Jerome wouldn’t go down so easily.

“What’s going on?” She asked someone in front of her.

“Bad news!” The Sprout said. Selene could hear the fear in his voice.

The Itakars refocused their sights ahead of them. Firing rapidly at the Children attacking from all sides. The sounds of weapons clashing against bone and rending flesh could be heard from the front of their group as those spearheading the charge cut down the Children.

The ground shook with a booming sound the next moment, answering her question for her: the colossal Children were waking up to take action against their group.

“How many of them are headed for us?!” she asked in a panic.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Just one, but it’s enormous up close!”

Selene grunted and took a deep breath to calm her nerves. A shadow blocked out the rising sun up ahead and she looked up to see the silhouette of the colossus. Its right arm was swinging forward from below with a giant club in its hand. If the club raked the ground toward them, the shower of rocks and dirt it’ll throw at them could kill them all.

“How the hell did we miss this?!” Nia asked from beside her.

“It was lying down. The rising sun blinded us from seeing it!” the Sprout in front of them said.

“Get ready for impact!” Lang’s voice came from the front and everyone took out helmets from their spatial rings. They hastily fitted it to their heads and kept pushing forward.

Some of those on the periphery of their groups were unfortunately cut down by some Children—the little distraction costing them their lives—and others quickly defended themselves.

Just as the colossal Child’s club hit the ground, a lance of blue flame shot through the sky and pierced through its shoulder, causing it to drop the club. Many of the Sprouts who were keeping their eyes on the Child shouted in joy as they saw this.

The colossal Child roared in pain, causing shockwaves to spread out across the landscape once again. The Sprouts on the ground were thrown back with only a few of them being able to withstand the force of the shockwaves.

Hedon looked up at Jerome almost unable to keep the shock from his expression. If Jerome could shoot such powerful flames—from such a distance at that—they’d have to rethink their plan and maybe restrategize. He shook off the thought and got to his feet.

Jerome had saved them all, but their formation was ruined.

“Form up!” Lang roared at the top of his voice even as he cut down Child after Child that came at him. “We push through. Remember what’s waiting for us on the other side!”

The Sprouts roused themselves at his words and steadily tightened their lines, screaming at the top of their lungs as they charged forward again They shot and cut down the Children in their path as they moved, picking up speed in the process. Even the ambient essence around them was beginning to become chaotic.

“Don’t we have any other person proficient with the fire element?” Someone asked. “It’ll be nice to have someone else who can do something like that.”

Every one of the Sprouts around knew he was talking about the bar of blue flame Jerome used to stop the colossal Child.

“House Tarmin has many fire-wielders,” another said. “Maybe some among them are as proficient….would make charging through a lot easier,” he muttered the last part of his statement.

The Sprouts of House Tarmin all looked around them frowning as they moved forward. They were mostly weapon smiths who spent the majority of their time in their clan's forge.

“We’re not warriors like him,” their leader said. “And even if we were, there’s no way we can produce that kind of flame…it should be beyond impossible for a Sprout—and a young one at that.”

The rest of the Sprouts grumbled in displeasure to themselves at that. They had all heard about Jerome from Pilgrims’ Keep; some of them had been there when he beat Hedon to a pulp. Many had concluded long ago that the kid was an anomaly. A cycle-old Blank beating up a three-year-old one should have been impossible.

A small flame erupted on the leader of House Tarmin's Sprouts’ palm as a demonstration. It was weak compared to Jerome’s flame and was red-orange in color. He shot the flame at one of the Children a few feet away from him, but the Child knocked the glob of flame aside with its bladed arm and charged him.

“You see…weak,” he said backing up as an axe materialized in his hand from his spatial ring. “Only Spirit Realm artists should normally be able to do something like that…the very powerful ones I mean.”

The Child was almost on him when its head was cut off and a red blur slithered away causing all Sprouts around him to let out a sigh of relief.

~~~

The fight raged on down below and Jerome could hear Lang spur on the Sprouts from above. He had reduced the number of Children in the skies and the few that remained were easy pickings but he waited, not wanting to make the Sprouts below think fighting off the flying Children was a walk in the park. In fact, it was more challenging than it initially appeared.

Since he didn’t want to show all he could do, he had to work really hard to thin out their numbers to get this result. The colossal Child that made him reveal his prowess with fire essence was unexpected. Jerome had wanted to surprise Hedon with that, but there was nothing he could do about that now.

He saw that with the way the battle was going, the Sprouts wouldn’t make it except they all took to the skies. But Jerome knew they would be completely focused on their battle. Their plan was for him to distract the winged Children, but little did they know that he had thinned out their number.

And it was easy to forget one could fly in the heat of battle. The other colossal Children were already waking up. Soon, there would be nowhere for the group on the ground to run to and their window of escape would close completely.

Jerome turned to face the Children in the sky and rushed at the nearest one. The moment he moved, those behind him closed in, intending on causing harm from his blind spot. Little did they know that he had no blind spots. He snatched the Child out of the air and broke its wings, swinging it around to hit the others coming for him.

The Child wailed from the pain of its broken wings. It hit those behind Jerome the next moment and Jerome rushed back the way he came, snagging two of the Children out of the air.

~~~

Lang didn’t know what to do anymore. The colossus Jerome had injured was down for which he was grateful. But its roar must have reached the others which means four more colossal Children were headed their way. They had been watching the colossal Children for days as they investigated their habits. They slept throughout the day and only moved around by night. If all of them were awake now there was no way they could get past them.

Lang cut through the Children as he rushed forward with the rest of their group following closely behind. If they wanted to get past the colossal Children, they had to be fast. The Children were already overwhelming them to prevent them from passing through as it was. It wouldn’t take long before they saw more mountainous silhouettes rise up into the sky. If as a leader, he lost everyone here, he would be a failure of a leader.

One of the winged Children slammed into the ground in front of him and then another causing him to stop and look up. He saw Jerome waving him over and almost shouted at the kid to continue distracting the winged Children. But then he noticed the few Children in the sky and his brows went up in surprise. Their numbers—previously in the hundreds of thousands—had dropped drastically.

“Take to the skies!” he roared and all the Sprouts poured essence into their flight artifacts.

The moment they were in the air, they saw the other colossal Children rising from their slumber.

“We charge through the winged Children. Everyone charge!” Hedon screamed and the crowd of Sprouts roared behind him.

They charged forward into the winged Children, easily decimating their ranks. Since Jerome had wilted down their numbers, it was easier to break through.

The Alvrics were the first to cross the distance, their attunement to wind essence making them better users of their flight artifacts. The moment the dark clouds receded, Murray shouted.

“Lookout!”

Silver-red blades the length of a grown man’s forearm came at each and every one of them. They scattered in different directions but the myriads of spinning blades chased after them, boxing them in and almost pushing them down from the sky, into the hoard of Children they had just left behind.

“Where’s Hedon?” Arkesha asked.

One of their teammates gasped and pointed ahead of them. They all followed with their eyes and saw Jerome bearing down upon their charge with a sly grin on his face. Arkesha screamed and shot forward, followed by Murray who overtook her. They disregarded the spinning blades as they shot forward but it was still hard to move swiftly as they were not used to blades impairing them in the air.

Jerome was just a few dozen or so feet away from Hedon, who had been injured and bleeding. The Alvric Sprouts, on the other hand, had been pushed back a good hundred feet or more. Hedon was trying to right himself in the air but found it difficult.

“His flight artifact is probably damaged. Arkesha speed up!” Murray called from ahead of Arkesha as he noticed Hedon spinning in the air. But they knew. From such a distance it would be impossible to catch up before Jerome.

Jerome was now much closer. He was even faster in the air than the Alvrics. Arkesha looked between him and Hedon. She could almost see Hedon’s death as Jerome drew back his right arm and made a fist. The flowing steel extended out of his fist and curved downward with the blade glinting in the morning light.

Just before Jerome stabbed Hedon, he disappeared on the spot. Murray caught Hedon a few moments later and steadied him.

“Easy, Hedon,” Murray said.

He examined Hedon and found that the side of his neck was where he was injured. The wound should close up in a few moments but for now, they had to leave this place. Their charge had lost a lot of blood.

“The others have disappeared as well,” someone called out as the Alvric Sprouts gathered together. They looked all around them but found no other team.

“Could be the earth shifted…or moved them. Let’s get out of here,” Murray called out. He held the bleeding Hedon and rushed Eastward followed closely by his teammates.

The moment they cleared a few hundred paces from the Children, they disappeared as well.