The sound of cultivation blasts thundered downstairs as more Navy men took out Tommy’s thugs. As for the second floor - several gunmen and cultivators shifted their attention towards the newcomer. Isaac kept calm as Tommy raised a finger in his direction.
“Navy’s crazy,” he muttered. “I got people in the junta protecting me. Whatever you do to me, they’re gonna do back to you tenfold.”
Isaac must’ve gotten stronger since the last time I met him, Lysandros realized. I can feel the power radiating off of him. It’s at least equal to Tommy.
The hallway had gotten chillier - breath started condensing in front of people’s faces, vapor trailing like clouds. Their was a window behind Tommy and his men at the other end of the hallway; frost appeared at its edges. Perhaps their heartbeats were getting louder as well, or maybe that was just Lysandros.
Isaac tightened a fist. “We live in crazy times,” was all he could say, his face displaying a sad sort of truth to it. “Filled with crazy people. Am I one of them? At this point, I very well might be.”
Another man in a naval uniform came running up the stairs. Scarlet lights around his arm tightened and hardened into an iron spike covering his whole fist. When he saw Tommy, he immediately took aim and fired, but to the shock of everyone in the room, the spike never made it. Right as it passed Isaac, he swung a backfist and knocked it out of the air, sending it flying into a wall.
“We need him alive,” Isaac hissed at his comrade. But the Naval cultivator simply didn’t care - he powered up another iron spike, this one bigger than the last. Before he could fire, Isaac raised a leg and spun backwards, knocking the cultivator off his feet entirely. The spike collided into the floor and stayed there.
That’s when Tommy made his move. His fingers conjured a letter E, its ends sharpened to skewer Isaac wholesale like a kebab. But then, before he launched the E, there was movement outside the window behind him. Someone had repelled down from the ceiling to the second floor, swinging themselves in a big arc toward the window. Lysandros saw the sword in the woman’s hand before the sound wave came out - it felt like a tightly-wound wail of a guitar when it smashed through the window, taking out the enforcer standing right in front of it. The woman came crashing through the remaining glass afterwards, brown hair done up in a bun, the Navy greatcoat billowing behind her.
Her movements were blurry as she worked her way through her opponents, her sword blasting off sound waves or cutting through men entirely. Splashes of red covered the walls as she made light work of the enemies in front of her. Cultivators moved to stop her, but then the ice building up on the ceiling of the first floor broke through to the second. Pillars of winter blasted upwards through the floor, the thick fog covering cultivators before turning into a fine ice. These frozen men could only watch as the swordswoman cut through their friends.
Tommy started sweating, but the Rddhi activation at the front of the room caught his attention. Isaac had revved up his own powers, a flare of energy shooting upwards from him like a volcano, blasting a hole straight through the ceiling. Tommy rolled up a sleeve then fired off a quick succession of letter I’s, simple letters but no less deadly. Isaac knocked several away with his fists, the I’s careening into the walls.
The mob boss followed up with a barrage of spinning pair of X’s, all ends sharpened, but Isaac ducked underneath the first one and then sidestepped the second one. But while he was distracted, Tommy shifted his aim, pointing his fingers right at Lysandros and Keti. Lysandros rose to shield Keti, knowing his own power to produce light would do little to stop Tommy’s most powerful attacks. But he would try anyway.
He didn’t need to. When Isaac dodged the second X, he wound up and kicked the iron spike out of the floor. It didn’t go near Tommy, instead just hitting the wall near him, but the sudden projectile out of nowhere made Tommy stumble. Isaac rumbled forward, dodging a desperate letter T, and arrived in front of Tommy. He conjured an X, blocking Isaac’s next strike, then grinned. He used his powers to spin the X as fast as he could, forming a shield like a rotating fan in a ventilation duct, sharp enough to chop off any arms that dared to venture too closely.
With all the attention on the upper body, Isaac went low, delivering a roundhouse kick to Tommy’s ankles below the X. When Tommy buckled, the X slowed down, giving Isaac just enough time. He swung with his right fist, but Lysandros’s stomach churned, because the X started spinning faster again, and surely Isaac’s arm would get caught.
It didn’t. Instead, Isaac halted his punch just before his arm got turned to paste. Instead, all the energy in his arm surged into the leather bracer he wore and then exploded outwards, an electric blast straight from his knuckles. It moved forward in a solid column, past the X, right into Tommy’s face. The letter disintegrated and disappeared; the mob boss fell on his back; smoke rose from his charred face.
Isaac gripped Tommy's collars and pulled the mob boss to his feet. The defeated gangster could only groan when ropes tightened around his arms and ankles. Behind them, the swordswoman stood in a pool of blood surrounded by frozen pillars of frozen men. More Naval cultivators swarmed up the stairs; a pair took away the cultivator who tried to kill Tommy back downstairs with them, while a tall man similar in age to Isaac approached him, a large strand of jet-black hair jutting out down his forehead. Waves of cold rolled off the man - he must be the ice cultivator.
The tall man in the Naval uniform shook hands with Isaac, then took Tommy off of him. He and the other naval operatives led their prisoners downstairs; Isaac approached the swordswoman, who had a pained expression on her face.
“We were supposed to capture as many as possible,” Isaac reminded her.
She surveyed the damage. “Sorry, don’t know what got into me.” She rubbed her forehead - much of her face was a slightly discolored gray. “Maybe I’m still pissed off about getting my face burned off, or breaking both of my legs. You work up a lot of energy when you’re stuck in a wheelchair for over a month.”
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And speaking of legs - hers buckled, and she ended up sliding against a wall. She swore and her face grimaced. “Tell Coleridge I’m gonna need my crutches. He’s gonna be pissed, I wasn’t even supposed to rappel in like that.”
That’s when the two remembered Lysandros and Keti in the corner. Isaac tilted his head back. “You guys alright? Looks like you’ve seen a ghost.”
For a brief moment, Lysandros imagined if he had Isaac with him during the attack on Four Eagles. When the State Police burned out every street, one block at a time, the defenders simply had no answer to the cultivation powers facing them. But if they had someone like Isaac - not just his cultivator strength, but simply being there, simply seeing somebody part of the junta taking their side for once - it might have been enough to move mountains. Lysandros’ people were only going to be safe tonight thanks to the efforts of Isaac, after all.
Isaac helped Lysandros to his feet; his grip was strong. Keti was already standing, and she offered a shoulder to the swordswoman to lean on.
“Don’t like touching people,” she mumbled, but ended up taking Keti’s offer anyway.
“Why did you need Tommy alive so badly?” Lysandros asked. “Just information, or something more?”
Isaac helped Keti with the woman down the stairs. “You’ll see in a second.”
On the first floor, other naval operatives were mopping up, escorting captured prisoners outside and helping any wounded civilians. A few agents that looked even younger than Isaac were raiding the bar behind the counter.
“Hey!” the swordswoman barked out at them.
One agent had a sheepish look on his face, then tossed a bottle of liquor at her. She caught it, examined the alcohol content on it, and nodded with satisfaction as she stuffed it inside her greatcoat. She then proceeded to look the other way as they continued stuffing bottles into the pockets of their coats. Isaac was more focused on getting all the prisoners and wounded out of there.
Once they stepped outside, Lysandros understood what Isaac meant. Up above, in the dark sky, a dozen planes flew overhead, flying low to the city. From their backs, instead of bombs, they dropped leaflets, thousands of them. The swarm of papers swirled downwards, covering this side of the capital, up and down the West River. All across the Army industrial district, leaflets settled onto the streets.
Lysandros plucked one of the air.
ARCADIAN NAVY NEEDS WORKERS
HOT FOOD - HEATED HOUSING
REPORT TO BAYSIDE RAIL DEPOT
ENTIRE FAMILIES WELCOME
“Tommy is no doubt connected to Sloan,” Isaac explained as papers fell around them like winter snow. “We expose that corrupt connection, we take away the Army’s workers, that weakens the Army, that weakens the faction within the junta opposed to the Navy.”
Then he narrowed his eyes. “But it’s more than that. People aren’t just pawns in these political games. The Army’s making people suffer, and we’re gonna build something at the Navy for everyone. Otherwise, people will die this winter.”
Lysandros turned and faced Isaac. “Thank you, my friend. When we first met in Four Eagles, you told me you wouldn’t stop until you make things right. You really mean that, don’t you?”
Isaac laughed. It sounded a little bittersweet. Lysandros had been through his own horrors - the destruction of Four Eagles still kept him up at night. He wondered what Isaac had seen in these recent months.
“Somebody once told me I’d be fighting my battles forever," Isaac said, a distant look in his eyes before he returned to the present situation. He placed a strong hand on Lysandros's shoulder. "As long as there are battles to be fought, that’s what I’m gonna do.”
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Isaac directed the truck out of the Navy-occupied street. With one wave, he disappeared into the night as the vehicle carrying Lysandros, Spiridon, and Keti headed down the avenues of the capital. This late at night, the time was nearing the curfew, but there was much more activity than usual in the capital. Naval cadets and operatives patrolled the streets, outnumbering the actual cops on their beats, most of whom could only shake their heads and watch from their posts. All civilian police departments had recently fallen under State Police control - based on Lysandros’s sources, morale was low, since many had to either sign an oath of loyalty to Chief Amien himself or lose their job. So the cops remained quiet tonight as the Navy occupied a line of streets connecting the Army factory district to the rail depot.
Lysandros couldn’t believe his eyes as the truck got closer. Hundreds of families, many of them migrants or refugees, lined the streets, heading toward the depot, which was illuminated by roaming spotlights shining upwards like beacons. Naval men and women directed them towards their new home.
“Do you think the Navy will really be better?” Spiridon asked from the driver’s seat.
“I’m not sure,” Lysandros admitted. But then his eyes caught the spotlights again and the bands of people on the streets. “But I think we’ll get the chance to make things better. We couldn’t say that before.”
Keti nodded back from the backseat. Her hand reached forward to hold Lysandros’s.
A trio of cultivators stopped the truck at a checkpoint. One girl with dark eyes and a snake closely coiled around her neck, along with a man with a staff, watched the truck while a muscular cultivator approached the driver’s side window.
“You with the Atalantans?” he asked in a slight accent.
The trio in the car all started smiling. “Yes, yes, Atalantans,” Lysandros said breathlessly.
“My brothers and sister,” the big man said. “Welcome!”
He directed them to a parking lot, then showed them to where the entire population of their barracks had ended up. Inside a large warehouse, when a few men from his faction spotted him, the word spread quickly. Families rose from their barrel fires and cheered for Lysandros, cheered for the return of Keti, cheered for Spiridon the ox. Pavlos emerged and hugged his sister, who simply sighed in relief.
“You did it,” Lysandros encouraged his friend. “You got the barracks to leave the Army district for here.”
“Not everyone,” Pavlos admitted. “There were a few holdouts. But something in you inspired me. I convinced them the best thing to do was find work with the Navy. The leaflets helped, too.”
Pavlos ushered them around a barrel fire. “We’ll be getting new housing soon,” he explained. “That’s what the Navy told us. And they even gave us food tonight without needing a ration packet.” He held up a bowl of stew; the smell made Lysandros’s mouth water.
Spiridon swung an arm around Lysandros’s neck. “To the future?”
Lysandros looked all around him - to the woman he loved, to his two best friends, to the people of the warehouse, to all those lost in the struggle for Four Eagles.
“To the future, my friends.”