“If we’re going back to the ship, we need to hurry,” Avalon announced, her voice tense as she looked around. “I don’t know how long it’ll be before those things down there make their way up, or another group finds us.”
Jophiel was already nodding. “Yes, the… she’s right. We need to be quick, but also careful. We’ve already tried transportation magic and it’s still not working, so we’ll have to go the long way. If everyone ca– down!”
In mid-sentence, the woman interrupted herself, suddenly diving toward me. Her hand snapped up, throwing some kind of round, ping pong ball-sized object over my shoulder. In the next instant, the ball exploded, but almost all of the force and heat of the grenade (I supposed that’s what it was, anyway) went in one direction, away from me. One more instant passed, and I half-felt the presence of something there before Jophiel was yanking me out of the thing’s way and shoving me over toward Elisabet while leaving herself in the spot where I had just been.
“Go!” she was shouting, “get ba–” Then she stopped talking. Or rather, her words turned to a gurgling sputter. A figure, previously invisible either through magic or through some other genetically tinkered camouflage, rose up behind her through the heat and smoke of the explosion she had just set off. It was a good seven-feet tall, its bulbous head an awful grayish-green color. The thing’s black eyes were much too large for its face. There were six arms on the thing’s torso, each a slightly different size and length, with different numbers and types of fingers or claws. One of those arms had a jagged sawblade attached to it, and that blade was currently shoved into Jophiel’s back as he tore her backward away from us.
“Why leave so soon?” the actual, full-strength Fomorian demanded. With a contemptuous toss, he hurled Jophiel to the ground, where she lay, still alive but horribly wounded. Elisabet was right there on top of her an instant later, using some kind of power or spell to stop the bleeding.
The Fomorian continued in a voice that sounded darkly amused. “It seems to me that you just got here. And we have so been anticipating entertaining guests.”
Sariel, Tristan, Vanessa, Avalon, Shiori, Elisabet, and me. Those were who we had to face this Fomorian. Oh, and Jophiel, though given the wound she was suffering from, I wasn’t really counting her in this. And Elisabet was iffy too, given it looked like it was taking all she had to keep the woman she loved alive. There must have been some kind of special poison on that blade of his, because it had clearly done a lot more damage than a simple stab should have. I could hear the woman stammering about how her healing power wasn’t working right.
So basically I couldn’t really count Elisabet or Jophiel (especially since apparently neither of them had access to the Committee-level powers, which would’ve been pretty useful then). Which left Sariel and us teens. Yeah, not exactly a winning combination against a full-strength, fully-aware Fomorian. Especially considering we’d already been told in no uncertain terms to run the fuck away if we ever saw one of these guys. Specifically, we were supposed to use the escape spells to get back to the ship (or, failing that, the ones that would just send us away). Or even the rock Mom had given me that was supposed to take me to her if I got in trouble.
But would they even work? We’d already established that transportation magic was down. That had to mean the emergency escape spells too, right? And if they did work, would we have actually listened to that rule? Would we really have abandoned Sariel to fight the Fomorian practically alone? Would Tristan and Vanessa, or Tabbris inside of me, have accepted that in this particular situation regardless of what we had agreed to earlier?
I didn’t know, and we didn’t have the chance to find out. Before any of us, even Sariel herself, could move, the monster slammed two of his hands together. The instant he did, what looked like large boils or something on his palms, like enormous zits or puss-filled… bubbles were popped. Instantly, the air was filled with a thick cloud that smelled sickly-sweet before I even thought about holding my breath. At least it wasn’t poison, according to my power. But what did it–
“No magic,” the Fomorian was saying. “Let’s have a clean fight now. No cheating, with–”
A knife abruptly appeared in his eye, where Sariel had thrown it. It didn’t penetrate the eyeball itself, which I was sure was protected somehow. Instead, the blade found the space between his skin and the ocular orb, embedding itself in that infinitesimally small area. It still didn’t seem to do a lot, but it shut him up for a second.
“Kids, get out of the way now!” There was absolutely no room for debate or argument in Sariel’s voice. It was so forceful, so commanding and intense, that we were already moving by the time she finished speaking. But we weren’t just running away. By mutual, silent agreement, we threw ourselves to where Jophiel and Elisabet were. Tabbris was screaming in my head about not leaving her mother alone, while Vanessa and Tristan were saying the same thing outloud.
“We’ve got her!” That was Avalon, snapping at the hysterical Elisabet. She reached out, grabbing the much-older woman’s arm to get her attention. “We’ll keep her alive, I promise. But everyone’s going to die if you don’t help Sariel!”
Meanwhile, the Fomorian had rocked backward, hand snatching up to yank the knife out with a scowl at being interrupted. Even as we were diving over to where the two women were, he crushed the knife in his hand, snarling something in Latin that my still-not-perfect understanding (Tabbris wasn’t auto-translating for me) said was something like ‘if the prey insists on stinking.’
Elisabet didn’t respond immediately. She’d only just been reunited with the woman she had loved for so long and now this happened. Plus, if that gas stuff really had stopped magic in the area from working, it probably wasn’t doing any favors for trying to keep Jophiel alive.
But the Fomorian wasn’t waiting for her to work through her shit. Annoyed by Sariel’s attack, he’d already cracked his neck (by turning his head in a full three-sixty) and was stalking toward her. Beside me, Tristan tensed and started to pick himself up, but Vanessa grabbed his arm. “We’d get in the way,” she snapped, sounding like she was pissed at herself for even saying it.
“What’re we supposed to do then?!” Tristan blurted, while Sariel back-pedaled a few steps from the Fomorian. She was pulling him just a little bit further from us, making every step count.
“Trust our mom,” was Vanessa’s retort. “And get her some help that’s actually help.”
Unfortunately, she followed that up by suddenly calling, “Uh, and speaking of help, we might need some!”
Sure enough, looking the way the other girl had turned, I saw a dozen or so Fomorian creations coming our way. Of course, the monster wasn’t content to just let us sit here and deal with the wounded Jophiel. He had to sic more of his pets on us.
My mouth started to open to say we had to cover the injured woman. But my head abruptly snapped back toward Jophiel and Elisabet. Shiori, Avalon, and even Dexamene (who had spent more time with her over these past months) had been trying to talk to her to no avail. But they suddenly got some help, as a glowing figure appeared in front of me. Tabbris. She stepped free, form solidifying just as her small hand lashed out to slap Elisabet across the face.
“Hey!” the kid blurted. “My mama’s fighting the guy that hurt Jo right now, and those other monsters are coming! If you don’t help, we’re all gonna die! Now pull yourself together and go do something useful!”
It was enough. Finally, Elisabet’s frantic gaze seemed to focus. She looked over to where Sariel was seemingly effortlessly dodging and avoiding everything the Fomorian threw at her while equally unable to actually do damage to him. He clearly wasn’t kidding about halting magic in the area. Whatever that gas was, it really did the trick. Sariel was fighting without any spells, while the Fomorian still had all his bio-tricks. Only the fact that the Seosten woman was really hard to hit, thanks to her accuracy power extending to making her own body move, was keeping her alive.
“Watch her. Do what you can.” Elisabet’s voice was strained, but far more in control than it had been a moment earlier. “Please.” That was the last thing she said before pushing herself up, gaze locked on the Fomorian who had done so much damage to the woman she loved. Without another word and without glancing their way, she gave a dismissive wave of her hand toward the incoming monsters that were bearing down on us.
In response to that wave, the ground seemed to open up around us. Several massive holes appeared, as more Fomorian horror-show creatures clambered out. Which panicked me briefly. Yet there was something different about these ones. They weren’t totally biological. Rather, pieces of them were covered in gold. It wasn’t just golden armor, it was like parts of their skin, shells, or scales had actually been replaced with gold. The altered Fomorian creations rushed to meet the incoming regular ones, both small armies colliding.
Elisabet. Somehow–she’d taken control of some of the Fomorian’s own monsters, and had them buried under the sand waiting to ambush them.
As that realization came to me (and the others), the woman was already launching herself at the actual threat, the full Fomorian himself.
Which left the rest of us sitting there with a critically wounded Jophiel and no idea what to do about it. Well, most of us anyway. Dexamene and Avalon both seemed to be more ready for this, each checking the entry and exit wounds. Avalon produced prepared and medicated bandages from somewhere, while Dex had a small vial of liquid that she hurriedly said would slow and dilute any poison. They worked together to apply both, while Shiori and I carefully held the limp Jophiel up. Elisabet had already torn the shirt open to reveal the wound, right in the stomach and back. It was… it was awful. It was terrible. Without spells to heal, and or regeneration, or… it was just bad.
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Speaking of bad, my gaze kept snapping over to see what was going on with the fight. Sariel and Elisabet versus a full-strength Fomorian. If Elisabet had been connected to the Committee, it really would’ve helped. As it was… with Sariel cut off from using spells, I had no idea what was going to happen.
“Tabs,” I started, looking that way.
“C-can’t,” she answered my unspoken question about her wings. Her voice was weak, the intense fear she was feeling written across her face. “Too soon. I can’t… I can’t do it yet.” She sounded miserable, as though terrified that something was about to happen to her mother, something she couldn’t stop just because she was too weak to use her wings again.
She couldn’t use the doom wings, and the rest of us–the adults were right, we’d just get in the way. Which meant the only thing to do, the only thing we could do, was sit here and try to do what very little we could to keep Jophiel alive while Elisabet and Sariel faced that monster by themselves.
Which was exactly what we did. Kneeling there around the too-still form of the Seosten woman, all of us stared that way, taking in the scene.
The Fomorian lashed out with one arm, the saw-blade on the end cutting through the air just as Sariel ducked under it. He was trying to follow up by lashing out with every other arm together to force the woman backward, where a scorpion-like tail that had simply popped out of his back was already lashing downward, right where she would need to retreat.
But Sariel didn’t retreat. Instead, she lunged upward out of her duck, somehow managing to twist her body just enough to barely slip through an incredibly narrow space between two of his arms. Her foot planted against one of those arms as she drove a knife sideways into his opposite eye. Again, she hit the space between the skin and the eyeball itself. It looked like she was attempting to cut the whole eye out or something.
Either way, using the foot she had against his arm, Sariel abandoned the knife there and hurled herself up and over the monster. She caught his bladed tail as it lashed out, using her own momentum to pull it over and down with her as she landed behind him.
The Fomorian started to turn. More precisely, his upper torso simply rotated to face behind him a hundred and eighty degrees while he reached up for the knife still in his eye. Before he could grab it, however, an invisible force seemed to grab the knife and shove it in even deeper. That made him reel, though he gave no audible sign of pain.
It was Elisabet, marching that way while holding her hand out as she took control of the knife and used it to carve all the way around his eye socket. With her other hand, she kept punching the air. And with each motion of that fist as she slammed it forward, I saw a distortion shoot that way before slamming into the creature, along with the sound of miniature sonic booms. They hit with enough force that each strike literally sheared little pieces of skin and muscle away from the monster. Not that it seemed to slow him down at all, though he did pivot to react, snarling a little as his mouth opened far wider than it should have to reveal a miniature spear-like construct inside where his tongue normally would have been. That spear shot outward with lightning-speed toward Elisabet. Fortunately, Committee-level powers or not, she was faster, snapping her arm up. Instantly, a wall of gold rose to block the spear, catching it with a loud clang. On impact, the spear disintegrated into a cloud of gas. But the wall of gold had already reshaped itself into an orb around the gas, containing it before any damage could be done.
Even as the glittering orb fell to the ground and rolled away across the sand like a giant beach ball, Elisabet had drawn that golden sword. With a sharp swipe of the blade, she summoned a four-foot tall gold vice-structure out of the ground. It clamped onto the Fomorian, pinning three of his arms tightly. At the same time, the woman thrust her free hand forward, palm out. The sand itself reacted to the gesture, rising up into the shape of a battering ram. An instant before colliding with the briefly trapped Fomorian, it visibly hardened and was sheathed in gold. Then it slammed into the monster with enough force that the entire thing shattered apart. As did the vice holding him.
It was enough to draw a hint of blood, the Fomorian staggering back a step just as an arrow clipped past his neck. Sariel. She had her bow drawn and had sent the shot directly through one of the tiny wounds that Elisabet’s earlier sonic-boom air punches had created, opening it just a few more millimeters.
Now the Fomorian had Elisabet on one side of him and Sariel on the other. But if he was worried at all, he didn’t show it. Which was fair, considering these guys were supposed to be able to take on a lot more than just a single high-end Heretic and one Olympian Seosten. The Hiding Man back at Koren’s house had needed Deveron, Nevada, Katarin, Dare, and (a secretly-possessed by Manakel) Kohaku to deal with him. And he hadn’t even been geared toward straight combat at the time, but rather stealth. This… this could be bad. This was bad.
At least Elisabet’s stolen and controlled creatures were holding their own against the ones the Fomorian himself had sicced on us. A quick glance that way revealed that fight was still going on, but was under control.
Sariel was already moving, sprinting forward toward the monster as she loosed three rapid arrows from her bow, one after another. At the same time, Elisabet closed the distance from the other direction. As she ran, the ground tore itself away from him, leaving a deep pit everywhere aside from the exact spot where he was actually standing. Then even that vanished, dropping out from under him.
The arrows that Sariel had fired sailed past the monster without even touching him. Because they weren’t supposed to. Instead, as Elisabet threw herself right over the open pit, she did something to freeze each arrow in place, walking across them like they were steps. While the Fomorian was just starting to fall as the ground opened up under his feet, Elisabet lashed out with her sword. And it wasn’t just a normal (though gold) sword at that point. In mid-swing, the blade suddenly began to glow brightly. So bright it almost hurt to look at. It sliced through two of the monster’s raised arms, cutting all the way through them.
Elisabet kicked off that last arrow, launching herself upward over the now-plummeting Fomorian as one of his hands narrowly missed her leg. But she wasn’t in the clear, as a little… slot in the creature’s wrist opened up to shoot out what–well it looked like a thick, dark-green tongue. Yeah, a tongue from his wrist. Either way, it acted like a rope, wrapping around her ankle to start dragging her down into the pit with him as he fell.
But Sariel was there. She had just reached the edge of the pit on that side, loosing a quick shot from her bow before launching herself up. The arrow cut through the tongue-rope thing to free Elisabet. Sariel, meanwhile, had clearly boosted herself because her leap took her a good twenty feet into the air. As she crossed the middle of the pit, the woman inverted herself to face downward. There were already three arrows nocked and ready, and she shot them straight down toward the still-falling monster (all of this was literally happening in the span of time it took him to fall out of sight into the pit).
Those three arrows shot downward, but they weren’t alone. In mid-flight, Elisabet abruptly did something with her hands, and three suddenly became a hundred. All followed the same path as the ones Sariel had loosed, cutting through the falling Fomorian over and over again. Arrow after arrow after arrow, like an entire storm of sharp hail, sliced through him.
By then, he was mostly out of sight, falling into the pit. But that wasn’t enough for Elisabet. As a glowing forcefield appeared under both her and Sariel’s feet to hold them in the air, the woman snapped both arms up. In response, the sides of the pit rose a good ten feet. I caught a brief glimpse of the Fomorian perched between two eight-foot tall gold spikes that had clearly lined the bottom of that pit. In the next moment, the walls were covered with those same spikes, and all four sides of the pit came together to slam shut on the Fomorian. It was like an iron maiden device closing in on him, spikes hitting that monster from every side and angle as the pit itself closed to trap him within. Once closed tightly, it left a fifteen-foot tall, six foot thick pillar sticking into the air. A pillar that was sheathed in gold to hold it steady and firm against the Fomorian’s attempts to escape.
Sariel, by that point, had produced what looked like two small metal orbs. She flicked her thumb against either, and they abruptly started to glow. Just as the thought ‘more grenades’ came to mind, she chucked both together. They arced up and over, falling toward the pillar. At the last second before they would have bounced off, Elisabet opened a tiny slot, allowing the two bombs to pass through.
They detonated then, exploding with so much force that the pillar itself blew apart in every direction. The Fomorian’s burning body was sent flying, hitting the ground and rolling several times before it lay there smoldering.
And… and then it got up. With a grunt, the creature put two of his remaining arms down, pushing himself up to a kneeling position with a cough. He was burned, charred, bleeding, but it wasn’t enough. He rose, giving a soft chuckle. “This…hehe… this has been fun,” he informed us all. Despite his words, it was clear that he had been hurt. Very hurt, not that he really seemed to care that much. I had the feeling the concept of pain didn’t mean much to these guys.
With a glance toward the spot where what remained of Elisabet’s captured creatures were finishing off the last of his own creations, the Fomorian gave a low snarl. “Very fun indeed. But I feel it’s time to tell you I’m not here alone.” His eyes (well, eye, the other one still had the knife embedded in the side of it) narrowed. “Your turn.”
He said those two words dramatically, yet… nothing happened. I could see Elisabet and Sariel tense, watching for the incoming threat. The rest of us twisted around too, scanning warily. But there was nothing.
After a brief pause, the Fomorian spat some kind of acidic blood at the ground and raised his voice. “Take them!”
Again, there was nothing. Well, almost nothing. After a few long seconds, there was finally a response, but it clearly wasn’t what he was expecting.
“I’m sorry,” Larissa suddenly spoke, appearing from behind one of the nearby dunes. She was bloodied, bruised, burned all along one side of her face to the point that it hurt just to look at her. Her voice sounded strained, yet… cheerful. “Were you talking to this guy?” She was dragging a figure behind her, abruptly snapping her arm forward to hurl what turned out to be the massacred, dead figure of another Fomorian out in front of her.
“Cuz I don’t think he’s gonna be answering you anytime soon.”
“Yeah, you might need to get him to a doctor or something. He doesn’t look so good.” That was Haiden, who came into view following her, looking just as beat. He too, however, sounded cheerful despite his appearance. And Kohaku was right with him as well. All three emerged together, having clearly killed that second Fomorian while he was waiting to ambush all of us.
“Neither does this guy!” Lillian Patters called. She, Deveron, and my mother came out from the opposite side, the two women dragging another body of one of those monsters behind them before dropping it unceremoniously.
Now the already-injured Fomorian was left staring at two of his dead brethren while he was surrounded not only by Elisabet and Sariel, but also Kohaku, Larissa, Haiden, Deveron, Lillian, and my mother.
Suddenly, he didn’t exactly look quite as confident as he had a moment earlier. Which was a look he kept for the rest of his life. All three seconds of it, before every single adult Heretic there hit the monster with a barrage of fire, lasers, ice, blades, and everything else they could throw at him.
Finally, he was down. The Fomorian collapsed in a broken, half-melted heap before being thoroughly disintegrated by one last blast of energy from a vindictive-looking Larissa.
With one quick glance my way to assure herself that I was okay, Mom called out, “Someone conjure a stretcher for Jophiel!
“We’re getting the hell off this planet.”