Space unfolded in a simultaneously long and short path bridging Farbrook with Anhedonia Prime. Different layers of space twitched around his portal, pulsating with their every step. Spacetime grumbled as it groaned under Eli’s Starspace Nexus, his Stellar Body…
No, those were names for his powers assigned by the System.
Which was fine and all, except Eli decided to think of it as his affinity for space, rather than a bunch of disparate powers. He was unbound, free at last. All of his powers hung in a sort of cluttered constellation around him. Spatial powers shone the brightest and the closest.
“This portal feels different. How long have we been walking?” Roman asked, his voice echoing as if thousands of Romans had repeated him.
“What?” Eli blinked. His portal and spatial bridge loosened, fraying into snagged threads. Each layer of space unspooled. The void tore out large swathes into the portal. Air vanished with a howl.
Their destination shifted to every location Eli’s spatial senses felt, scattered across every type of space he had access to. Pockets of continental America fuzzed with potential, yet only the area around New Faram and Anhedonia Prime were anywhere close to clear.
Local, dimensional, and planar space opened around them like an eldritch maw, beckoning them to their destination everywhere.
\Eli?\ Roman’s voice drifted to him on a tangible, crushing wave of fear and Dream. His body flickered into his robot form, protecting him from the sudden depressurization in the portal.
“It’s fine. I got it under control,” Eli said, clearly despite the vacuum. Profound Erudition spiked into overdrive until violet Dream energy steamed from his ears.
Space straightened the layers of the corridor back into a bridge from Farbrook to Anhedonia Prime. Air copied from his Nexus returned inside the portal with a gentle pop. Starspace flexed, shooting Eli and Roman out of the portal.
Eli landed with a stumble. Broken asphalt clicked beneath their heels. Gravity constricted around him, keeping him upright. Floating pebbles dinged off his skin, leaving welts. Roman leaned, drawn in from the growing gravity well. He transformed back into one of his mech suits to compensate.
“Are you okay?” Eli asked once he cut off his power. Welts scabbed over, expelling the rocks out of him with a clatter of stone on asphalt. Annoyance flashed at how easily he hurt himself. He had to think through using all of his non-space powers.
“Fine. Let us query the environs for our target: Scott.”
“Um, what?”
Roman swiveled, his optical lenses scanned the derelict buildings overrun with greenery. LED indicators along his faceplate blinked. After a moment, he flew off in a flare of Dream from his propulsive jets.
“What the fuck?” Eli teleported, catching up on a stardust cloud. Prismatic light twinkled off every bit of glass or metal debris beneath them from his unignited aurora.
Roman did not respond.
They flew in silence over a wasteland of ruined civilization preserved in half a dozen myriad ways. Eyes from people and spawn followed them on their airborne trek. No one attacked them. It seemed as if a hollow peace kept the situation to a quiet exchange of suffering, if not a ceasefire.
Warriors fought, hunting other people and spawn in the dark, looming skyscrapers stitched to the broken street. Scavengers picked over corpses, tech, and material equally. Spawn did the same.
Wherever Eli looked, he sensed the System’s aegis sheltering people’s powers from his view.
Even Roman’s powers felt alien to him.
Dream roiled off his friend as if he were a steam engine that consumed emotions and something else that Eli did not understand. Echoes flickered in his wake, looping his flight and search until it had the weight of an empire’s legions.
“Companion Elias, have you spotted our target?”
“Nope. Several people have noticed us, though.” Eli narrowed his eyes at Roman. Something was off.
“My assessment corroborates the results of your search. Predictive models suggest that iterating over Anhedonia Prime’s remaining square mileage will take several hours to days to find our quarry. Do you concur?”
“Probably?” Eli manually tapped into Profound Erudition.
“We are in agreement, yes? Please use explicit language to further communication efforts.” Roman’s speakers crackled with no other inflection or emphasis than Eli would expect from a stereotypical robot to have.
“Hey, Rome, don’t you think you should turn back to your human form?”
“I refuse on the grounds that my capabilities as an organic are inferior to what I can achieve as an apparatus. Let us continue sear—“
Dazzling pearlescent shone above them from the heavens, turning everything on the ground a lustrous white. Eli gaped at the plummeting light. What had once been Stellar Body twinged at what felt like a moon falling on top of them.
“Roman, move!” Eli shoved at Roman with space, yet he did not move. Dream hissed at the intersection of their powers. Foreign space elements locked around them.
Moonlight became blinding until it washed out all natural sunlight. Gravity redoubled, stomping Roman into the ground. Eli caught himself with space and gravity. Still, he was trapped. Clamped between his power and whoever wielded moonlight.
They hurtled toward him, and Roman below.
Stardust vapor tore out of his pores with a turbulent gust. He clawed at space, gravity, and every other bit of cosmic makeup under his authority to stop it. Gravity quailed, locked in check. Silver flames roared off whatever fell. .
“No! I. Will. Not. Be. Beaten!” Eli shoved back, arresting the fall of someone else’s moon. Stardust spears teleported into the moon’s body at the same time as crystal crescent blades shattered against his skin.
Gravity twisted on itself, folding into the beginning of a vortex. Air choked with debris swirled between them. Ivory flashed, turning the moon into a young woman close to Eli and Roman’s age.
“Get back, abomination!” She roared, launching crystal stalactites out of her raised hand. Opaque needles pierced past the growing gravity vortex. Torsion spun each projectile into a high-powered drill.
Stardust swelled into a nebulous shield. Eli refused to teleport out of the way. He was the master of space. Nobody else. Starbolts teleported directly into the woman’s side..
Her needles skewered his shield, three of them impacting his chest. Sparks flew off his cracking skin. Eli crashed into the ground. A meteor spiked into the dirt.
“Comrade Elias!” Roman dove, standing over him. Arms raised to ward off the next shower of crystal. White blazed in the sky, a moon aimed at them.
Gravitonic tension flattened Eli deeper in the mound of rubble under his back. He pushed back with all his might.
“Remove yourself at once or we shall strike back in kind!” Roman said.
“You first.” Moonlight vibrated all around them.
“That statement does not make sense.” Roman’s bulky mech suit flickered, replaced with a familiar spatial-dream exosuit composed of starsteel.
She inched closer to them, despite Eli forcing gravity to deny her. Debris whirled into a widening storm of grit. Starspace slapped against her uselessly. He still could not teleport her. Something resisted.
Her or the System’s protection? Profound Erudition whispered, still active.
Roman vanished in a pop of Dream, parodying space. He appeared above the moon woman. Conflagrant electricity bloomed from his metallic hand into a sword. Roman plunged it deep into the rendition of the moon.
Bloody cracks spread across the surface of her faux moon. Roman twisted his sword, igniting it into a violet fantasy. Moonlight howled.
Eli overrode her control over space. Light flashed in the focal point between them. The gravity vortex snapped, spreading dust, debris, and spent stardust everywhere.
With a thought, Eli whipped all the created stardust into the moon. Verdant and crimson plasma engulfed her, launching the woman out of the smoking cloud.
Eli and Roman teleported at the apex of her flight path. Stars popped out of Eli’s knuckles, fist reared back. Roman hefted his sword. Darkness swaddled her, cushioning their blows.
She bounced off beams of light, slowing to a halt. Shadowy scabs stitched her bleeding gashes shut. Her irises blazed a vivid white around the absolute darkness of her pupils.
“Oh, I see.” Her piercing gaze searched both of them. “My name is Steria Lerev. Nice to meet you.”
Huh? Eli blinked at her outstretched hand. Who attacks someone out of nowhere, then turns around and introduces themselves like that?
If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
“Good heavens. You’re helpless, aren’t you?” Steria dismissed Eli, turning to grab Roman’s hand, free of the sword he stabbed her with.
“He is.” Roman’s cracked faceplate flashed with a LED display of an emoji smile. Eli wondered if he had a ‘social communications’ model active that decided an emoji was a worthwhile extra touch.
“So are you, Roman.” She shook her head. “What did you both do? Your auras are… off. I thought you were the System’s latest abominations with how you appeared.”
“Auras?” Eli asked.
“How do you know my name?” Roman squeezed, crushing her shadow-rimmed hand to no effect. Eli narrowed his eyes. She must have a moon-type Body stat if she was stronger than robot-Roman.
“One of my powers lets me see probable events. Past and future. In one future, you were actually polite enough to introduce yourself.” Steria grinned, side-eyeing Eli. “You never seem to. Maybe consider learning some manners?.”
“I’m Eli.” He frowned, immediately trying to prove her wrong. “And—“
“I know. I never answered your question about auras.” Steria blinked the miniature eclipses in her eyes away with a grimace. “Haven’t you ever felt a vibe about what type of powers someone has? That’s an aura. Will stats also give off a unique aura, but that’s different.”
“Huh. Do we even have a name for that?” Eli asked Roman, who shook his head.
“Where are you from? ‘Cause it’s certainly not around here.” She eyed them up and down, her nose scrunched.
“Farbrook. Near New Faram,” Eli said when she frowned with no idea of where that was.
“Gotcha. How did you get here like that, then?” Steria glanced at them, then at the epicenter of their fight. Eli looked around the wreckage, too. A chill darted down his spine at the sight.
A whole block of ruined buildings had been flattened into a mound of rubble. Extreme heat from Eli’s aurora had slagged stone into puddles, while Roman’s Dream left violet shadows that whispered with his voice. Most prominent of all were the ivory white stains where Steria’s moonlight landed, bleaching all color from whatever it struck.
Figures skittered out of a torn open sewer, knives and clubs held in their hands. Giant birds with far too large wingspans wheeled the sky above them. Eli sensed a few people under concealment watching them.
“Shit. Guess we weren’t exactly subtle, were we?” Eli stirred up a cloud of stardust, mixing it with the dirt and dust. Roman transformed back into his oversized mech form, hefting his newly created starsteel sword over his head.
“Affirmative. Shall we initialize the Aggressive Diplomacy protocol, Comrade Elias?”
“Are you both fucking serious? We do not want a fight with either the Land or Sky. I suggest you hide or run.” Steria vanished under a shroud of moonlit darkness.
Eli blinked at her absolute disappearance. He didn’t even sense her through his spatial powers. No wonder she managed to ambush them.
“Do we follow suit?” Roman’s LED face emoji frowned at Eli.
“I don’t know. Teleport?” Eli tugged at space in preparation to open a portal to the Nexus. Resistance grated against his will. Stardust fell out of the air, almost inert.
Earth split apart in supplication for a stooped, elderly woman with manic eyes. She stood on a rising pillar of stone alongside an old man with a leather jacket.
“What have we got here, Ethel?” He smiled, mouth agape in a gummy smile. An eyepatch covered his right eye.
“Apostates who leave shattered stones in their wake. Dirty, groundbreaking sinners.” Ethel spat. Convulsions shook her entire body with erratic twitches. Quakes shook beneath them, nearly knocking Eli and Roman to their feet.
“Don’t mind us. We were just leaving…” Eli took a step back, leg sinking into the sudden quagmire up to his calf.
“Be quiet, worm.” Alfred closed the gap in between them with a flap of supersonic wings. Twisted rebar and other metal trashed in their fight flowed into his hand, in sinuous strands, reforming into a malevolent spear taller than both of them.
“Children these days have no respect for their elders or the laws of land and sky,” Ethel cackled.
“Exactly what I was thinking, my dear.”
“What do you do to ‘sinners’?” Roman said, his voice human once again. He stood trapped in the earth. Regular, dirty clothes hung on his frame instead of creations of metal and technology. Even his starsteel sword was gone.
Eli prodded at Profound Erudition and felt nothing but static. Only Stellar Body remained under his control, except he felt trapped in the embodiment of a planet, and not the entirety of a galaxy. All of his other powers felt far too distant to even touch.
“Feed them to our flock, of course. What else would you have us do?” Alfred dipped his hand into his leather jacket to retrieve a set of dentures, shoving them whole into his mouth.
“Rapture is upon us all. I can see the depravity of your sins clear as day. Atonement is a hard necessity.” Ethel spread her arms wide to encompass the dirty people and spawn behind her.
“You’re crazy.” Eli glared, indignant that they would challenge them. How dare they restrict his powers? As if they had any right to when he had walked other worlds. Fought legends greater than them.
“Ah, youthful pride.” Alfred smiled, his dentures finally set in his mouth. Jagged iron and gold teeth gleamed from his open smile.
“Yes, dear. One of the worst sins of all. You, who reeks of sin, dare act as if you are better than us?” Ethel shrieked. Stone walls rose around them, blocking off any escape routes except for the open sky above.
“Fuck you.” Roman shoved his hands into his pockets. Eli hoped he had some gadget or tool they could use in there.
“Enough.” Alfred slammed the haft of his spear into the ground with a clang. Rusty gold leaked from the tip of the spear, spilling over the bladed edges. Rumbling wings opened at his back, invisible except for the audible pitch emanating behind him.
“I agree. Let the feast begin!” Ethel clapped her hands, setting off another earthquake.
Filthy humans and some type of humanoid mole rat spawn came in. Either phasing in through the walls or rising out of the ground. All of them wore tattered rags and stitched hides. Wicked stone knives or long, cumbersome clubs bristled from their grips. Tarnished gold bled from their eyes, the same as Alfred’s spear. They approached.
Eli’s muscles strained with all the might he could bring to bear with Stellar Body. Nothing happened. Mud anchored him with the insane certainty Ethel bore that they were sinners. None of his other powers took effect through the couple’s resistance or domain. He chanced a look at Roman.
Roman crouched in a squat. Instead of fighting or preparing some great invention to aid in their escape, he busied himself with sticking a plastic pen into the dirt.
What the fuck?
Silent bare feet padded closer. Three diminutive molelings raised their weapons, two knives and one club.
“Come any closer and I will kill you. Scatter your atoms across an infinite void until there is nothing left to mourn. Do not mess with me.” Eli raised his fists, drawing deep on Stellar Body. He might be stuck embodying a planet, but that should be plenty. Right?
“Land say we feast. Hunt start now. You die.” Rodent teeth clicked in a horribly wide grin full of rotting meat scraps stuck in its gums. It swung its club threateningly.
Eli feinted a flinch, then tore the club from its weak rat hands. He reversed his swing, bashing the tip of the rock bat into its cheek, expecting bone to crunch.
His blow bounced off its short fur harmlessly. Chittering laughter echoed on all sides.
“Weak prey!” Someone guffawed.
“Land’s bounty do not hurt us! Stupid prey.” Empty-Handed mole rat pounced. Eli’s left eye twitched with mounting frustration.
Eli clenched his fist tight, shattering the stone club’s handle to dust in his palm. Grasping rodent fingers scratched for his twitching eye. Eli twisted his hips, hard, and punched.
Muffled pain flared from his now broken ankles. Blood splattered over his fist in a pulpy spray full of gray matter. Empty-Handed’s head turned into a reduced mess of bone, teeth, tongue, brain, and eyes.
All of it splashed in the dirt.
Stellar Body fuzzed uncomfortably at the claimed territory of the earth and atmosphere around him. Eli did not care. They could handicap him all they liked. Tie him down with restrictions. He would always fight.
“You’re next.” Eli tugged on Earth’sunclaimed gravity, recalling the headless corpse into his hands. Both knife-wielding mole rats dove at him.
Eli swung their companion into them with a flex of gravity. Three bodies ruptured, slicking the killing field around him. He stopped, his fractured ankles unable to handle the movement or Ethel’s earthen vice grip.
Roman stood beside him with his plastic pen held out point-first. Violet hatred blazed from his eyes. A regal, imperial right to strike all before him down to cadavers. He thrust his pen-hand out, projecting a flurry of echoes into the next rank’s throats.
“Looks like you fell,” Roman snickered at Eli while he flicked and swung his pen around like a maestro conducting an imperial orchestra of death.
“Ha ha.” Eli forced himself upright with a surge of gravity. He snapped out tumultuous waves of primordial gravity, dashing their foes against Ethel’s walls at double terminal velocity. They bounced off the stone unharmed.
“You are both idiots. Don’t forget about Sky’s followers. Or Land and Sky themselves.” Steria sprang out of darkness, standing on beams of light. Pitch black lances of crystal shot out of her hands, demolishing the next rows of fodder.
“I don’t see what the big deal is. This is easy,” Eli reversed their gravity instead, sending them into the open sky. Giant bird people swooped down into them, disintegrating their bodies.
“Yeah, they’re practically fodder,” Roman agreed.
“At least I’m not losing myself in Dreams of power,” Steria spat accusingly at Roman. She pointed at Ethel and Alfred who watched from the sidelines. “These are only the weakest of their followers. Elementals and far worse serve them. Besides, they aren’t a joke either!”
“Thank you!” Alfred roared with laughter at her compliments.
Eli ignored this.
He settled deeper into Stellar Body and the earth itself. Neither the atmosphere or ground complied to his will. Yet, there was more than that composing the planet. Water vapor beaded on Eli’s hand extending into a liquid blade.
“Stop fighting so we can escape! Now!” Steria stole his gravity-water blade and hurled it like a javelin into the air.
Droplets showered upward with a shockwave which did not harm the birds or avian people, but the skyward rain carved them apart. More bodies crashed to the earth.
Ethel’s followers fell upon them instead. Knives and rocks hacked and bashed them into morsels they shoved into their throats.
“Sinners!” Ethel pointed at them all. Stone fingers mimicked her gesture, stabbing them. Eli grunted at the bruising impact, same with Steria.
Roman screamed.
Eli turned toward his friend who curled in on himself, sagging into the spikes impaled through him. A plastic pen landed silently on the ground. Roman bled.
He does not have a Body stat.
“Fuck! We need help. Now!” Steria gathered an orb of dark crystal that brightened like the waxing moon.
“Yes! Come, foul ichor,” Ethel crowed, closing her fist. Roman’s scream heightened into a bestial yelp. Blood arrested its fall to the ground and instead, jerked in Ethel’s direction.
“No!” Eli yanked on Roman’s blood with gravity slowing it until it halted a dozen paces away from her. More spilled past him.
“Somebody help us. Please.” Steria held a tepid sphere of glowing crystal with both hands up. Moonlight burst from it into a beacon.
***
“People are fighting with Land and Sky,” Celi said, pointing toward the Jumbles.
“Sense anyone we know?” Scott asked.
“Not sure.”
Both of them sat with their legs hanging over the edge of their latest skyscraper hideout. Feet kicking in the wind, shoulders touching. Soft firelight bathed their surroundings with Celi’s aura. Scott’s gloom sheltered them from the attention stray light would bring.
It was as cozy as anything else in the apocalypse.
He touched a hand to his throbbing side. Hydra Transfiguration did a lot, but even broken ribs still took a while to heal. Damned Azurites sure knew how to hit.
Blinding moonlight flashed upward in a pillar.
“What the hell is moongirl doing now?” Scott sighed with a frown. Everybody was going to see that.
“Looks like she’s asking for help.” Celi flickered onto her feet on the skyscraper’s exposed girders. Her Inferno Body strobed brighter for a scant few seconds so she could decode the message in the light’s wavelengths.
“That’s pretty obvious,” Scott snorted.
Nobody in their right mind or otherwise would challenge Land and Sky in their territories. Those crazy nursing home escapees were second worst in Anhedonia Prime.
Only the Collector’s atrocities kept everyone else from banding together and ending the couple.
“God-fucking-dammit. Some powerful newbies broke their rules. She's been helping them since she attacked them first.”
“Classic loony moony.”
“Be nice.” Scott’s girlfriend glared at him as if that comment were too far. Even if Celi had been just as rude to her in the past.
“Fine. Are we going in or not?”
“I think we should. Want to lightsurf or shadesteppe there?”
“Both. Let’s race. Last one there has to clean the hideout!” Scott pushed himself off the girder into the looming darkness below. Gloom swallowed him whole, then spat him out across the street into the next shadow.