Grigora launched herself at Thel, crossing the distance in the blink of an eye. Before anyone else could react, Thel stepped to the side and sliced off Grigora’s head as she passed by him. Grigora’s body flipped over and tumbled across the ground, kicking up a large cloud of snow.
Thel tutted as he watched Grigora roll over and slide to a halt. “Not used to going against someone who can match you like that? What a shame.” He turned back to the remaining Primoi. “Who’s next?”
Saralai growled and leapt into the air, her hands beginning to glow. At the same time, Atenos lunged forward with her fist pulled back.
Atenos struck first. Thel attempted to block her blow, but was still thrown back a hundred feet. With Atenos now standing where Thel had been, she was caught in Saralai’s blast. Saralai stopped when she saw Thel move away, but Atenos had already been badly scorched and fell to her knees.
While Atenos began yelling at Saralai, Zaratos readied his blade. “Gratast, I’ll buy you some time. Get ready.” He jumped forward and landed in a newly-opened hole.
Thel slowly came to a halt in the snow, still trying to regain balance after being thrown away by Atenos. Before he could fully bring his view back into focus, Zaratos jumped up in front of him and slashed him across the face.
His view clouded by golden blood, Thel staggered back and blocked a follow-up swing from Zaratos. “No fair, cheap shot!”
Zaratos pushed harder against Thel’s crossed sword. “Deal with it.” He dropped into another hole. Before Thel could recover from losing the force pressing against him, Zaratos crept up behind him, sliced his exposed calf, and disappeared back into his hole.
Thel felt Zaratos cut him from behind and immediately turned around. Without checking to see if anything was actually there, he thrust his hand forward and kicked up a massive cloud of snow.
Zaratos reappeared next to the main group. Hadras had stepped between Saralai and Atenos and kept them apart as Gratast got to work. Gratast had pulled out a cell-phone shaped device and was quickly typing out commands on the small keyboard.
Zaratos’ eyes darted between where Grigora’s body lay in the snow and the cloud where he had been the moment before. He turned to Gratast. “You’ve got everything set up?”
Gratast nodded, put the device back in his pocket and snapped his fingers.
Thel stepped out of the cloud of snow and began to move towards the Primoi when the ground was shaken by a series of small thuds. All around him, a ring of plumes of snow burst from the ground. Around where the tower had been, hundreds of cylindrical, fridge-sized steel capsules erupted out of the ground and soared through the air, all headed directly towards Thel.
Thel darted between the capsules as they embedded themselves in the ground, blasting several to smithereens as they rocketed towards him. He managed to destroy a good deal of them, but dozens still managed to land around him.
Thel found himself in the rough centre of a field of haphazardly placed capsules. After staring at them in bewilderment for a few seconds, Thel was startled when the tops of the capsules were blasted off to reveal a hollow interior.
Out of every capsule crawled out the identical cold steel automata. A roughly humanoid head and torso was attached to four spindly arachnid legs, and the double-jointed arms ended in two small gatling guns.
Thel looked around as dozens of the automata perched on top of their capsules and pointed their arm guns at him. Thel smirked as the guns began to slowly spin. “Bring it.”
Gratast snapped his fingers and the automata all opened fire on Thel. While Thel blasted the automata with waves of chaotic energy as the automata’s bullets harmlessly bounced off of him, Hadras melted an even larger patch of snow than before and lifted it over his head, forming a massive orb of water.
Zaratos opened up a hole in front of Hadras, who leapt in and pulled in the orb of water behind him. Hadras leapt out of the top of one of the mid-air capsule tops, which he gathered along with the rest of the flying disks using the orb of water as a large net.
Once all of the tops were collected, Hadras took aim at Thel, who was too preoccupied with the automata to notice him, Hadras began launching the capsule tops out of his ball of water like clay pigeons, and started to fall as gravity caught up to him.
Thel’s attack against an automaton was interrupted as the first of the capsule tops slammed into his arm, shattering the bone. He fell to the ground as the tops hurtled into his exposed body, pummelling him into the snow. The remaining automata gathered around him and watched silently as Thel was battered by Hadras’ rapid-fire assault.
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In between getting struck by steel disks, Thel looked up and saw Hadras fall towards him. Picking up his bruised and bent body, Thel slowly stood up and grabbed one of the approaching tops and jumped back into the air.
Hadras barely had time to react as Thel rushed into the air, grabbed him by the throat with one hand, held up the capsule top with the other, and bashed Hadras’ face in with the steel disk.
As Thel dropped Hadras’ lifeless body to the ground, Gratast frantically started to press more buttons on his device and the automata on the ground turned upwards and began to fire once again at Thel.
Thel hefted the bloodied disk in his hand and flung it at Gratast, who was struck squarely in the forehead. Thel flew over and stomped Gratast’s device to pieces, making what few automata that remained stop in their tracks.
Zaratos, Saralai and Atenos, the last Primoi left, stood fearfully shoulder to shoulder as Thel stood up fully and stood to face them. “That was a neat trick that you folks pulled. Real shame that something like that only gets me madder.”
Screaming ferally, Atenos ran forward and slammed her fist into Thel’s chest, throwing him to the ground. Saralai leapt into the air and fired another blast of light at where Thel lay. At the last second, Thel burst into a puff of sand.
Thel reformed next to Saralai from the dust in the air and grabbed her by the face. “That stunt didn’t work last time, why try it now?” He tossed her down into the snow, half-burying Zaratos under a wave of snow.
Atenos leapt into the air and landed an uppercut on Thel’s chin, sending him soaring through the air and crashing into the ground a fair distance away.
Zaratos knelt down and picked up Saralai. She gurgled quietly, golden blood trickling from her nose. Zaratos looked up at Atenos. “This guy is unstoppable. We can’t beat him with what we have now.”
Atenos looked back at the spot where Thel had landed, which was beginning to slowly rumble. “Then what do we do? Run and let him track us down again? He said he only wanted the Egyptian, I say we hand that guy over to him and save whoever we have left.”
Zaratos looked over to where he thought the other Primoi were. “I… Do you think that’ll really stop him? What will he do when he’s gotten what he wants? Nobody with that kind of power is going to be responsible with it.”
The spot where Thel had landed exploded in a cloud of dirt and smoke, reforming into a dimly-glowing funnel of detritus.
Zaratos opened a hole under Saralai and let her fall through to safety. “If we’re going to die anyway, we might as well go down fighting.” He raised his at the growing funnel in front of him. “We’re pulling out all the stops.”
Atenos looked at Zaratos and nodded solemnly, balling her fists. “Wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m happy to die alongside someone like you.”
The funnel reared into the air like a cobra, Thel emerging from the top. He raced through the air to meet Zaratos and Atenos, a whirling tempest of debris behind him.
-
The gathered Primoi looked on in silence as various plumes of snow and dust made themselves visible in the distance. Their reverie was interrupted when Saralai rose up through one of Zaratos’ holes, almost catatonic.
As the Primoi clustered around Saralai and pulled her away to be healed, Hurat stepped forward to address everyone. “Things aren’t going well over there. They can’t be, if they’re sending some of their own number back. We have to help them.”
One of the minor Greek Primoi stepped forward as well. “Are you insane? Our best fighters can’t stand up to that guy, what good could we do?”
Another Aztec chimed in. “We can’t sit back and do nothing, we’ll just be next, otherwise!”
A second Greek spoke up from the back. “At least if we keep our distance, we have a chance of surviving!”
As various voices chimed into the argument, Mark made eye contact with Omet. They looked nervously at the battlefield in the distance before looking back at Mark. Mark nodded.
As the rest of the Primoi escalated their argument, Mark grabbed Horan’s arm and pulled him away from the group. Omet did the same from the other side of the crowd.
The three met up a short distance from the rest of the Primoi. Omet folded their arms and tapped their foot anxiously. “Do you think we have a chance? I mean, things really aren’t looking good for us right now.”
Mark shrugged. “I don’t know, but we have a plan, which they don’t. I came up with the plan kind of a while ago and thought it would just be a last-ditch effort in case our assault on Thel’s base didn’t work. It looks like that’s not gonna be the case.”
Horan held his hands up. “Wait, what plan? You didn’t tell me you had a plan!” He pointed at Omet. “You told them, but not me? What’s the plan?”
Mark put a reassuring hand on Horan’s shoulder. “Look, I’m sorry we’re keeping you in the dark with this one, but it’s important to the plan. So is Omet here. You’re going to have to trust me on this one. Do you?”
Horan looked at Mark for a moment. “…Yeah. You’ve gotten me out of every scrape I’ve been in so far, you can get us out of this one. Let’s do it.”
“Great. First, you need to get Thel to hit you.”
“…I’m already regretting this.”
“No backsies.”