The baleful lights emerged brighter in the fog as the convoy pressed forward. GalvanGal used lightning strikes to intercept each one, but the fog was no thinner than when she started. She nullified the arcane barrage, but she in turn was paralyzed from doing anything else. She could only listen to the grueling endeavor her comrades endured.
Comrades… just the other day, they trained their guns on her. She was just another mutant. Part of the problem. Even as they needed her, they would not trust her.
But she could not close her ears, or her heart, to the pain of her allies or her enemies. People were being maimed and killed right beneath her. Her friends were in danger behind her. She could hear the gunshots and explosions.
This was all to see one man. She hoped that this time he would answer all the questions she had.
New toxic spills on the currents of life appeared. They were much alike the discordance of the armor the immortals wore, but their animation could only be that of monsters. Back at the docks were flying things, smaller than the chupacabra. Below, ape-like creatures leapt out of the water and she did not need heightened senses to smell the stench of rot. That putridness stunned the knights and left them open to be pummeled down by inhuman strength.
GalvanGal could not let things continue like this. She stayed in the sky to protect the others, but if the immortals kept launching unpredictable attacks, there would be no one left to protect. She had to take a risk: neutralize the source of the magic missiles.
She bolted ahead of the convoy toward the final destination. The interference from the overflow of magic there would be so thick that her electroreception would be unusable. She would be going in blind. They could have prepared something for her just as they did in California. But in her mind, there was no other option.
The lights had stopped appearing and the sound of battle was distanced into silence. She drifted alone in an endless cloud. She considered if this itself was a trap.
A giant serpent head lurched out of the fog to snap its jaws onto GalvanGal. She held its mouth open but another head appeared before she could push herself out. Light came from both their open mouths and blasted her point-blank.
She spun out of the air and bounced across the flooded ground. She yanked her head out of the water to see six lights bearing down on her from above. Electric charge glowed within her until a skunk ape grabbed her from behind. Six arcane blasts landed together in an explosion that reached above the fog and disintegrated the skunk ape.
She crashed down into the crater where marsh water rushed back in. The heads relentlessly blasted the position, covering the area in strobe light.
GalvanGal erupted out of the earth under the hydra’s body to haul the monster into the sky. They burst out of the fog into the clear blue only to disappear into the clouds. Past the troposphere, she only gained speed: electricity trailed down her body until her whole body glowed as a comet rocketing away from the Earth. At the edge of the exosphere, she reformed to hurl the hydra out of orbit.
The charge she built up spilled out in amethyst prances. A lightning strike brought her from the heavens back to the convoy and the thunder and flash silenced the thick of the fighting. Electricity sparked all around, and an amethyst glare pierced through the fog and the armor of the immortals to chill their hearts.
Unencumbered, she continued where she left off with far more fervor. Constant amethyst lances cleaved a path for the convoy to push forward. The knights stopped firing their cryoguns as there was simply no need to.
They had to load onto the boats just to keep up with her. They drove past the destruction left in her wake: unconscious bodies that floated in the water and were strewn over broken trees. A boat fell into the crater but GalvanGal bolted back to catch it. One arm held the boat over her head, and the other glowed purple neon to gesture OK.
If there were any immortals or monsters left, they were no longer attacking. With all resistance smashed, the convoy arrived at the epicenter where the energy flowed. They fanned out to search the fog. The boats panned the sawgrass for anything they could find while GalvanGal landed on a tree island. She came to power down, but she found a dead generator connected to flood lights and a console.
One of the boats bumped into a pod and GalvanGal bolted over with a force that rocked the tides. She ripped the pod door off its hinges and pulled out a lifeless, breathless corpse.
Tyler Deimos was dead.
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Kenny and Todd Nguyen were brothers. Streaker and Srenika were enemies trapped together in a bubble in the midst of a battlefield.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Kenny!” Todd went for a hug but was shoved off, “What was that?”
“What was that?” Kenny stretched his arms out, “What’s all this!? You expected a hug after you came to kill us?”
“We didn’t come to kill you, just delay you. Once unc—once Tejieue returns, this will all be over. Everything will get better. You won’t have to take orders from these guys anymore.”
“You’re boss is the reason people are killing each other,” Streaker clutched his chest, “I killed people. For what!?”
“We are going to rejuvenate the Earth: restore magic to the world so that something better can bloom,” said Srenika.
“How many more have to die to make the world a better place?”
“This is going nowhere slow, look, it doesn’t matter. You, nor anyone else, can stop what’s coming. Surrender now and this will end.”
A slag of ice pinned Srenika to the wall of the bubble. Only after did he see that Streaker had drawn his cryopistol.
“I guess you can’t miss at this range.”
“Just stay down. I don’t want to do this.”
The cold steel of the pistol began to burn in his hands. As he dropped it, so too fell the ice from Srenika’s. Streaker blurred but was knocked down by concussions.
“Those were just air bursts to stop you from moving. There’s nothing you can do so just stop before you get yourself hurt.”
Streaker pushed himself off the ground and the back of his parka was burst open to knock him on his hands and knees. He stepped a heel forward and pushed on his knee to stand. He continued to push even as bursts racked his body and tore holes in his suit. Every step forward was a cluster of mines that detonated all over him, like being punched a dozen times at once; however, none of them hit as hard as Immortal did.
It was only a few feet but Streaker marched for every inch. Eventually, he made it face-to-face with Srenika. There stood a torn-up parka capped by a fractured helmet. That haggard breath belied the damage that the Streaker tried to push past. Srenika removed Streaker’s helmet and unzipped his jacket to let him breathe easier.
“How weren’t you burning up in this costume? It’s like 90° humid out here.”
“I know you didn’t really want to hurt me,” said Kenny.
“Obviously,” said Todd, “there’s no point to this. Like I said, this will soon be over.”
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“That is a generous proposal,” said the younger board member, “but you have already tied up our business in this. With the threat of this display, and the terrorists under your command, you put us in an untenable position. Even for those who want to move forward, there is little guarantee that they would remain partners.”
“Yes, that’s true,” answered Xiu Chen, “I’m going to rule the world anyway, so you’ll all serve me one way or another. In the upheaval to come, there will be many changes in how the world works. I am offering all of you the certainty of a position at my side. You will help me manage colonial endeavors to a world of pure magic. From there, you will find more opportunities: governing your own cities and states, resources alien and untapped, and power you never knew existed.”
A building next to the hospital had a clear view of Chen through the windows. A sniper took aim and fired. This distance, against a stationary target, would be effortless for a professional. But that outdated expertise could not predict that the window would spit the bullet back and blow his own head off. Most of the boardroom fell out of their chairs and trembled while Chen was calm as ever. The rest of the hospital and, likely the surrounding area, was sent into a panic over the gunshots. The only other one who remained seated was the young man.
“Well, that didn’t work,” said Chen as she held her daughters at her side, “do you have anything else to show me?”
“A few things,” said the young man. He raised his fist with his thumb up then clicked it down. He exploded in a fireball consumed the room and the floor and blew out the windows. Any confusion that remained over the lone gunshot was fully converted to pandemonium over the sound of a bomb. The staff desperately began to evacuate the building, especially for critical patients.
The smoke rose from the crater to reveal the mangled corpses of board members and a cracked, jagged sphere of ice. Inside, Lanying and Letiche huddled up with their mother. That sphere fell apart just in time for WhiteOut to reform. The sprinklers from far above rained water onto them. Chen sniffed the air and snapped her fingers. A green orb sucked up all the smoke and toxins in the air.
“A chemical bomb? In a building full of civilians? How very unheroic; truly, I’m flattered. But it’s not nearly enough. Lanying, if you will.”
Lanying bore her sharp teeth in a wild smile. With a lick of her lips, she lunged her full body weight onto WhiteOut and got a shock baton to the gills for her trouble. White pulled the rest of the baton out of her wrist as Lanying scurried back to safety.
“I guess that one was my fault. As much as I enjoy this, I can’t let his go on any longer than it has to.”
WhiteOut began to sink into the floor. The sprinkler water that pooled beneath had its reflection turned into a portal. WhiteOut tore her head off and tossed it into the hall to escape, much to the terror of those still evacuating the building.
Chen had begun to use a portal of her own to escape but a baby rhino leaped in to smash the embrittled floor to dismantle the water and make them all fall another level. Without the ice to cushion them together, Chen’s family fell hard and apart from each other.
She was dazed, too dazed to lift herself up. Too dazed to react to WhiteOut pulling a gun out of her skull. Between the convulsions that coursed through and the fall, Lanying was practically knocked out.
Letiche was barely conscious herself, barely able to keep her eyes open, but she saw enough. She saw her mother was in trouble. Her own pain subsided as every neuron in her body coursed with one impulse: I have to help her. With fluttering petals, her hand touched the tiles and a chunk of the hospital was engulfed in a rhodonite meadow.