Adam was surrounded by a bursting red-white light followed by an excruciating heat. He had barely noticed the floating ring of fire turning over his head before it dropped like a bomb around him. Though the fire itself wouldn’t burn him as it was one of his teammates skills, he could still be affected by the heat, and felt like he was almost cooked alive inside his armor.
The impact was immediate. The wave of fire burst in all directions, relieving the mounting pressure that the ants had put on him. The few survivors of the fiery attack were left dazed, burning, and vulnerable. Adam knew to never let an enemy recover from a momentum shift and lashed out with his hammer, finding the carapace shatter much easier beneath his blows than before.
Caius had done the same and flashed between ants, his swords moving with a deadly grace. He only needed one stab per ant, expertly placed and quicker than anything Adam had ever seen. He was on to the next enemy before the last had even hit the ground, his every movement a picture of confidence. It wasn’t long before they were the last ones standing on the smoldering ground, little black particles of Primordial Energy rising all around them.
Caius came to his side and patted him on his back. He looked up at Adam as Adam was still twice his height. “Seems like you…”
He was cut off as the very air vibrated with a pained screech. Adam felt his body tremble inside his armor. He looked up to see an ant that was the size of a house. Its shiny black carapace exuded malice. On the back end was a stinger he was sure would pierce straight through his armor at this point, especially after taking so many hits already. It was flanked by two others that looked identical to it but were the size of the other ants they had fought.
Adam could feel an increased pressure coming from the smaller ants. The ground around their feet fluctuated as if it was switching between states of hard and soft. Even more pressure was exuded from the big one, and the very air warped around its mouth when it let out another ear shattering screech.
“The Queen.” Caius said. His tone grim. “Those ants beside her are Guardians that are both Knight tiered, and the queen herself is a Baron.”
“What do we do?” Adam asked.
“We need to take out the guards first. Just try and keep some pressure off me, but don’t take any direct blows. That Queen is going to be powerful.” Caius burst forward toward the guard on the right, slashing his swords on the ground in front of him as ran, the lightning stored in his swords building with each slash.
One of the ants stomped a pointed leg into the ground at his approach. The earth responded as a line shot toward Caius, the ground rippling underneath. Caius leapt before it got to him, a spike shooting up through the earth just below where he had jumped from. He landed in a roll and came out of it slashing, his swords colliding with the front leg of one of the guards in an explosion of electricity that sent dust billowing around them.
Caius disengaged to stand twenty yards away. When the dust cleared, the three ants still hadn’t moved, and there was rock encasing the leg that Caius had attempted to strike. The ant stomped again, the rock returning to the ground and shooting toward Caius who had to dodge out of the way of another rock spike.
Adam cursed. If one of Caius’s attacks couldn’t leave so much as a scratch, they were in trouble. Thankfully, his armor had maintained its size from the previous fight. He could still feel it drawing in the motes of dissipating Primordial Energy, but he had no idea how long that would last for. He needed to do something before it was too late.
Adam tightened his grip on his hammer and charged the ant on the left who had taken a few steps forward. It seemed the queen was content to sit back while her subordinates handled the situation. He wouldn’t complain about that.
As he charged, the ground beneath his feet shifted causing him to stumble. It was awkward running in this titanic form, and the shakiness was just enough for Adam to lose his balance and fall flat on his face a few yards short of the ant. Before he could get up, another ripple through the earth sent a stone spike shooting through the ground and into his breast plate. Thankfully, the armor held, and he was pushed into the air. It had actually helped him stand up, but his chest throbbed from the impact.
The ant charged him then, antenna stabbing forward like swords. He caught one on his shield, barely deflecting it to the side, but the impact pushed him back another step and jarred his shoulder. If his shield wasn’t locked into place on his arm through his skill, he would have dropped it.
He stepped forward, swinging his hammer wildly in front of him. There was no control behind the swings, they were the errant flailing of a downing man, and the Guardian ant easily blocked or sidestepped his attacks. Only one out of every six wings of his hammer even made contact, and when it did, the ant had managed to shield itself with stone.
The strikes only ended up only leaving him more out of position that the Guardian ant capitalized on. A spike jutted from the ground and hit him directly in the side, sliding just beneath his shield as he let his arm get too far extended. It cracked his plate – piercing his lung with an explosion of rock. He wheezed and stumbled back a ways. The ant chittered at him as if it was laughing at him.
“Don’t forget your training.” Ava called from behind. A warmth enveloped him a second later, easing the pain in his side as his breathing steadied. “You don’t have to finish the fight. Just lock them up and let Caius deliver the final blow.”
Adam spun the massive war hammer with a flick of his wrist like he was spinning a tennis racquet and reset his stance. He glanced to his right, where Caius was furiously ducking and dodging bursts of stone coming from the other Guardian ant. He also wondered what the hell Finn was doing. He hadn’t seen a single fire ball since the start of this fight.
He couldn’t focus on that now. He had to find a way to relieve the pressure on Caius. Their only saving grace was that the Queen had decided to sit the fight out. If she hadn’t… well Adam didn’t want to think about that. He realized he wouldn’t be able to take out the Guardian ant by himself. He was just too slow, too unpracticed in life-or-death battles like this. It was as if the Guardian had a shield of its own, only it was the very earth beneath their feet.
If there was one thing Adam had learned through his years in the SEAL’s, it was that hesitance often brought ruin long before decisive action would. He couldn’t sit here and try to work out a plan. So, he trusted his gut and turned away from the Guardian he had been fighting and sprinted toward the other that Caius was fighting. The only way they were getting out of this was if he could open up the Guardians defenses for Caius to deliver the final blow.
An angry chitter sounded from behind followed by the grating sound of pointed legs digging into the earth. Adam noticed the ground shift in a line beneath his feet and swung at the ground without thinking – his hammer connected with a rising spike of earth and shattered it. He side stepped another and before the third could come, he had made it to the other Guardian who was wholly focused on Caius.
Adam guessed he was about twelve feet tall right now and the ant’s back was at eight feet. He could sense the earth moving behind him, surely a spike of stone heading directly for his back. That was okay, he had to trust Ava would heal anything that broke through his armor. He brought his shielded arm up and gripped the hammer in two hands, swinging at the ants back as if he was hitting the high striker at a carnival.
The ant spotted his swing just as he was the blow fell and the rock around its feet responded immediately. In an instant, the ants back was covered in stone, all of its attention trained on Adam. The onyx head struck with a thunderous boom, shattering the rock on the ants back and crushing it into the ground. An instant later, Adam was flung forward has spike erupted into his back.
The air erupted from his lungs as he tumbled over the flattened ant before him. Ava’s touch of healing stream already on him before he stopped rolling. Adam peeked at the durability function of armor, seeing the outline of it appear as a hologram in his helmet and smiled when he saw his armor had held against the attack. The back plate glowed a soft orange where the majority of his armor was still yellow with a few spots of green and a few of red.
He looked up to see Caius capitalize on the opening that Adam had provided. It appeared Caius had saved all the stored energy he had built to this point. His new skill was already explosive, and when he let it charge, well, the payoff was even more spectacular. Caius stabbed forward into the Ant’s head while the rock that it had used was falling off it’s back. An explosion of electricity erupted through the ants body, followed by the crack of thunder as its body exploded, black ichor and rock blasting out.
The queen bellowed another screech upon seeing one of its Guardians go down. The air reverberated around Adam, causing his vision to blur and a terrible pain erupt in his ears. He felt a hot liquid stream out of his ear and down his neck, the only sound a loud ring in his ear. The Queen charged forward along with the other Guardian. It seemed fighting two on one had broken some sort of rule, and the Queen wasn’t going to sit by any longer.
***
Finn puked again, his stomach emptying itself of anything that even thought about entering his body over the past days. Energy deprivation could be quite… unsanitary. His Primordial Energy was down to 7/305. If he had gone down to zero, he would have completely blacked out. His head throbbed and his entire body felt it was covered in those gravitational enhanced weights that Caius used to train with. He tried to stand but swayed and ended up falling directly on his face.
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“Do something you idiot. Can’t you see what’s happening?” Ava yelled at him. Though it sounded muffled.
A ringing filled his ears and heaved again. He didn’t know why he had to be so impulsive all the time. They were doing just fine whittling the ants down and he was barely using more Primordial Energy than he was regenerating until his ridiculous gambit at the end. Sure, it was powerful - but at what cost?
He looked up to see the Queen advancing on Caius and Adam. Blood dripped from Caius’s ears and he had a few scrapes. Adam was still the size of a giant, his armor covered in black ichor. At least they had taken down one of the Guardians.
“I’m burnt.” He said. Though it came out as a raspy whisper.
“Yeah, no shit.” Ava said.
Finn reached a hand in his waist secured dimensional storage sac and pulled a vial of purple liquid. When Adam had asked if they had anything like Primordial Energy potions to help restore their stores, they had laughed at him. What a ridiculous idea that was. You couldn’t just drink something and regain Primordial Energy in an instant.
At least so he had thought. That all changed when they found the stalks of massive purple corn filled to the brim with Primordial Energy. He had been working on squeezing the juice from some and into these little vials he always kept with him. It had been surprisingly strenuous work, but he didn’t have much else to do over the past few days while they were preparing Adam.
He hadn’t gotten to test his new delivery method yet. Eating the corn did increase your Primordial Energy levels to a noticeable degree, but he couldn’t hold anything down right now and the effect was slow. That left him with the only other option he had left.
Finn dumped the vial into the syringe of a meat marinade, his arms shook causing him to spill some on the ground. The thick needle was much larger than he would have preferred, and he would have much rather attempted this in a controlled setting with all of Ava’s attention focused solely on him. Still, there was no time like the present. If there was one thing he learned from his father, it was that sometimes the best ideas were forced from moments of extreme need.
He rammed the needle into his chest and directly into his heart. A tearing pain followed by a hellish burning sensation as he injected the purple liquid directly into his blood stream. There was no way he was going to hit one of his veins in his current state, so this was the next best option.
A wave of energy like nothing he had ever felt followed. Sure, he felt like his entire body was on fire, but he was ALIVE. Finn jumped to his feet and checked his Primordial Energy, seeing the level steadily increase to well over 200.
He conjured a fire ball, noticing that it didn’t burn quite as hot as his others had. Still, nothing to be done about that now. He could run some diagnostics later regarding intensity and thermal output. For now, he wanted to burn some ants.
He hurled the ball of fire at the Queen, the flames bursting over its head. The Queen glanced at him before refocusing on Adam, largely unaffected. She opened her maw and a current of air erupted from it, sending Caius tumbling over the ground. Finn threw another fire ball, this time at the Guardian ant, but was left with the same result.
“What the hell are you doing, Finn?” Ava snapped. She was sweating, her face starting to grow pale as she was clearly starting to flag from the amount of healing she poured into Adam and Caius. “Adam and Caius need some relief, get your head out of your ass.”
She wasn’t wrong. Adam had attracted both the Queen and the one remaining Guardian and he was getting pounded on all sides. He wasn’t able to attack any longer, barely able to get his shield in place or set his hammer to intercept blows. More often than not he wouldn’t be able to block in time and Finn could see cracks forming on his armor.
Caius did his best to relieve pressure, slashing at the Guardian and Queen with reckless abandon. He flashed between attacks, eruptions of lightning following in his wake, but the Guardian was always ready to cover the Queen and the Queen ready to cover for the Guardian. He couldn’t get anything more than a superficial slash across armor like carapace.
Finn hurled a few more fire balls, but every attack was left with the same disappointing result. The Queen and Guardian had long since ignored his attacks, just allowing them to bounce off. The infusion of corn juice Primordial Energy had allowed him to get back in the fight, but his attacks were useless.
Finn racked his brain. He had to help someway. There had to be something he could do to at least give Adam and Caius more time. He had spent his entire childhood being disregarded and tossed to the side. He was smaller than most, with no physically abilities and no talent for the sword – the preferred weapon of most human factions. It had always been his mind that had saved him, and Caius had trusted him. He couldn’t let him down.
He noticed the ground ripple in a straight line heading toward Caius from the Guardian before erupting in stone spike. The same with the Queen, though she was able to manipulate both earth and air, small disturbances in the dimensional integrity formed around her mouth before she released those sonic waves. He could use that.
Even though air and earth were those most difficult elements for him to work with, he could perhaps disrupt the Queen’s and Guardian’s abilities. He waited for another ripple in the ground so he could test his theory. When it came, he focused on the earth in the path the ability was taking. He willed the earth not to change. To stay as solid and immutable as it had for thousands of years. He wasn’t the best at controlling the earth, but perhaps he could force it to stay the same - act as a counter to the Guardian’s skill.
A small sigh of relief escaped from Finn as the Guardian’s skill was stopped in its tracks. The ripple of earth coming to an abrupt halt as the earth refused to comply. It was much easier to make nothing happen than to force a change. Afterall, skills were a direct opposition to the natural order of things. That’s why using an existing source of fire was so much more energy efficient than creating your own.
The Guardian looked confused, if an ant could be said to look that way. Where an eruption of stone should have altered Caius’s path, he was left free to slash at the Queen’s legs. He took full advantage and struck at the joint of two hind legs, completely severing the lower portion and stabbed into the queens underside - black ichor poured from the open wound.
The Queen crouched and leapt into the air, jumping fifty yards back. The ground shook beneath her as she landed. She leveled a malevolent glare at the Guardian who had allowed her to be maimed in such a way.
Caius and Adam noticed their opportunity to strike and rushed for the Guardian, now left open by the Queens withdrawal. Adam interrupted multiple attempts of the Guardian to send waves of earth to hit Adam and Caius. He noticed the Queen charging something up, her head raised to the sky as the dimensional integrity around her mouth fluctuated ominously.
Finn tried to interrupt that skill as well. He willed the air around the Queen to flee, to do anything other than respond to the furious will of the Queen’s skill, but she was too powerful. A sonic boom erupted from her maw that sent a shock wave over the battlefield, flinging Adam and Caius through the air and tumbling toward Ava and Finn. The Guardian had dug its feet in and withstood the attack.
The Queen bellowed again, this time its glare focused on the sole Guardian remaining. It trembled at the roar, its head dropping low to the ground before it scurried over next to the Queen. The Guardian looked terrified as it knelt before its queen, its legs shaking. The Queen stood tall, extending its remaining four legs to their full height, the razor sharp stinger on its back end extended.
With another bellow, the Queen rammed her stinger into the body of the Guardian knelt before it. The Guardian shriveling as the Queen pulsed, seeming to absorb the life and energy the Guardian once held. A palpable aura exuded from the Queen, growing in intensity with each passing second. Its back legs regrew and two curved mandibles sprouted from its jaw. The Guardian left as nothing more than withered husk beneath it.
Adam stood and looked back at Finn, his armor torn open in multiple places and his shield dented. Dried blood stained his shoulder from a wound that Ava had already healed. “What the hell is happening?” He asked.
“Sacrificial growth.” Ava said. “The Queen commanded the Guardian to sacrifice itself so the Queen could grow more powerful. Her hive is destroyed, so now she’s consumed the last of her children to destroy us.”
A cocoon of stone had enveloped the Queen and pulsed with an odd white light. Something big was happening inside. They could feel errant stands of energy escaping the stone and washing over them. Whatever was happening, it wasn’t good for them.
“She’s almost at the peak of Barony.” Caius said. His face was stoic and confident, as he always was, but Finn had known the man long enough to recognize when he was worried. And if Caius was worried, they were in trouble.
“Should we make a break for it?” Ava asked.
Caius shook his head. “It would just hunt us down. That Queen is faster than us and at least here we have a large clearing to work with where we can all see each other.” He said. “Also, Finn, what’s going on with you? Your attacks feel hollow. Almost like they are void of all Primordial Energy.” Caius asked. “We’re going to need some fire power if we’re going to make it out of this alive.
Finn grimaced. “I… Umm.”
“He stabbed himself in the heart and injected that purple corn juice because he overdrew himself too early in the fight.” Ava said. Caius shook his head as if he was tired of telling a child the same thing over and over, but Adam looked intrigued.
Caius reached in his waist secured dimensional storage device and pulled out a dark crystal triangle. It pulsed with hues of black and tan in a twisting vortex of colors descending into a void.
“Where did you get that?” Ava asked, a hint of longing in her tone.
“I picked it up during the fight. It’s from the guardian we took down earlier.” Caius said. “And now we need to figure out who to use it on.” He looked between each of them. “Adam, you holding up okay?”
Adam nodded, his eyes steely and determined. Finn was truly amazed by the man. Thrown into a world completely opposite of anything he had ever known, and he had embraced it without a complaint. He was eager to be of use and willing to put himself in harms way. If he survived this trial, Adam could truly be a special talent given enough time and training.
“The cooldown on my [War Regalia of the Primordial Titan] skill reset during the battle because I had summoned this set yesterday. I’ll summon a new set.”
He dismissed his armor and appeared as a normal size human again. He looked at his arms and legs curiously before the dimensional layer around his body shifted and he was encased in a new set of gleaming golden armor with onyx accents.
Caius nodded and turned to Ava. “You doing okay?”
“I’ll be fine. May need to space the healing out a bit more to conserve some energy, but it shouldn’t be a problem. We don’t need more healing abilities right now. That idiot needs a reset.”
They turned toward Finn who looked paler by the second. The artificial injection of Primordial Energy clearly passed its peak efficacy and into the terrible side effect stage. Caius just shook his head and tossed the crystal over. It went straight through Finn’s hands and hit him in the chest. He bobbled it for a second longer before it fell to the ground.
Finn hurriedly picked it up, his stomach twisting with nausea that was threatening to send him back to his hands and knees dry heaving. Hopefully there wouldn’t be any side effects to using the skill crystal in this state. He loved science, and they were in new territory with a compound never before studied, but he didn’t relish the idea of being a guinea pig.
“It’s an arm skill.” Caius said. “Hopefully you get an ability that will be helpful to our current situation. Regardless, the pure Primordial Energy contained in the crystal should be enough to fix whatever you did to yourself.”
Finn put the crystal to his left shoulder, his arm trembling as he did. He felt so weak. He forced his mind to fight through the fog and accept the crystal. A flash of light erupted from the crystal as it sunk into his skin, followed by an immediate sense of relief. His body felt lighter, his mind cleared, and the nausea turning his stomach over subsided. Thick black liquid poured from his pores a moment later. It had a rancid smell, like rotten meat that had been left in the sun for weeks.
“Oh, dear Lord.” Adam said as he stepped back a few yards.
“And that’s why you shouldn’t do stupid impulsive crap, especially in the middle of a fight.” Ava said.
Finn didn’t care. He felt incredible. It was as if he had been revitalized in a moment, the skill crystal completely ridding him of all the toxins in his body. He opened his skill screen.
Arm: [Elemental Rings]: Ten rings. Five Elements. One wielder.
Channel the forces of the elements from the rings worn by the user. Only one element can be used at a time at a time. Cost of skill based on a variety of factors.
Arm: [Pact of the Elements]: To understand the elements is to control them.
Summon an elemental guardian of your choosing for a high Primordial Energy cost.
Earth. Fire. Water. Air.
Elemental guardian will last for one hour or until drained of all vitality.
Body:
Leg: -
Leg: -
Domain: -
Primordial Energy: 375/375
Finn laughed, a maniacal sound coming from someone covered in a foul-smelling sludge. He held his hands in front of him as the instinctive knowledge of the skill filled him. Torrents of flames burst from his chest and wrapped around his body in ropes of fire. They snaked down his legs and into the ground. A spinning vortex of flames rose from the earth a few seconds later.
It appeared to be a vague copy of him, only wreathed in flames and there was no set outline. Where its eyes should be, two burning white flames shifted in the otherwise orange and red body. There was even what looked like an approximation of glasses on the elemental – swirling red flames that danced around the white fire of its eyes.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Finn.”