Chapter 28 – Life 6 – The Idiot

I snapped my helmet shut. The armor, working as an extension of my will, moved the locking mechanism into place, to ensure that the face-piece wouldn’t come undone during the battle. “Ready?”, I asked my team-mates.

Silvie raised her hand, clad in more of my living armor, and gave the ancient sign of a ‘thumbs-up’. The twins gave a simultaneous nod, the pair appearing striking with the red highlights that the Caster’s new Redsteel abilities helped add. Lambert, ever enthusiastic, pointed his greatsword up at the sky. The thing was too big for him to handle outside of the strength-enhancing armor, but currently he wielded it like a champion.

“Then let’s go.”, I declared. With practiced ease, Silvie shaped the earthen platform beneath us into a slope. Our boots shaped themselves to have spikes on the bottom, to help us climb down the slope without fear of slipping. Below us was a team of warriors that had been commissioned to contain the problem until we got to it. They appeared beleaguered and did something in between retreating and collapsing when they saw help had arrived. “Armor, mark these people as friendly!”, I shouted. I felt some internals shift and heard the slight, grinding sound of ‘grrrr-yesssss-grrrr’ in my ear. Figuring out how to translate human speech into a pattern of metal was an ongoing process.

Then, I heard something else. Something that I had been sort of expecting, but still wasn’t used to after years of monster-fighting. Laughter. *Human* laughter.

“HAHAHA! WOO! I guess those fuckers finally decided to bring in the cav… calv… backup! What the fuck are you, anyway? Some kind of Knights of the… of that fucking, Table, thing? You think a bunch of metal will stop me from tearing you all to itty bitty pieces?! I’m an unstoppable force of nature! I’m an invincible guy with… invincibility! I can’t lose, is what I’m saying!”

I sighed. ‘*This* is the guy?’, I thought. They said he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the armory, but this was just painful to listen to. If it wasn’t for his record of death and destruction – not to mention the unheard-of power he supposedly wielded- I would have happily turned around and left this asshole alone.

“Okay… Brendon, was it? You’ve been causing a lot of problems, lately… and the nice people of DeeCee have asked us to bring you in for questioning. We think you might actually be in quite a bit of dange-“

“Oh, you’re a chick? Why didn’t you say so? You sound hot, too. Listen, how about you take of all that armor and you and me can get out of here… I promise you, I’m the best catch you’ll meet in your lifetime!”

I tried to give a withering look to the 9-foot-tall pile of muscles, until I remembered he couldn’t see my face. This day was getting worse by the minute. “Not happening, big guy. All we want to know is what turned you into this. We can do this the easy way, or the hard way.”

A face filled with veins gave a sickening grin. “Oh, I am all *about* the ‘hard way’, sweetheart! If you wanna know about my incredible powers, then let me *show* you!”

At that point, he rose up to an even taller height – apparently, he had been slouching – and charged right at us. Silvie, ever quick to react, summoned an earthen wall in front of the man-thing at just the right height to trip him up. To his credit, he was able to use his momentum to switch to a cartwheel and was quickly back on his feet. The Redsteel Caster twin shot out a dagger, just like I had taught him, but somehow the mountain of a man’s bulging skin was barely cut. It did grab his attention, though, so he proceeded to lumber over to my red-armored team-mates.

Lambert took this opportunity to run forward. He had recently figured out how to use the living armor to enhance his leg movements to their peak, allowing him to move at speeds that only particularly quick monsters would have. He swung his greatsword out at the misshapen arm that was about to attack our teammates. But… Brendon had a few more tricks up his nonexistent sleeves.

A gout of fire came out of his hands, in a blue color that only very powerful Fire Casters could manage. At the same time – impossibly - a burst of fierce wind moved the fire around Lambert, allowing it to dance around his armor, allowing it to melt parts all over. The melting was superficial, thanks to the inner shell of Redsteel, but it still showed how this giant man became so important.

While I had been making sets of armor for my friends, there had been strange rumors plaguing the territories on the edge of the Five States. Rumors of people with *multiple* Low Elements under their command. I didn’t put too much stock into it until the mayor of Bayou, a decently sized town in a swamp down south, was killed by one of these people… who happened to also be said mayor’s own brother.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

The killer became a self-styled warlord, which wasn’t completely unknown in the less stable territories, except this warlord announced he could use Earth and Water at the same time. Completely unheard of, since it was common knowledge that those elements should have merged into the Darkness element. Oh, and he was also physically massive, in the way that only a rare, illegal type of Healer could manage. That meant access to *three* elements.

If that wasn’t strange enough, the story didn’t end there. This new warlord fell as inexplicably as he rose. No-one was entirely sure how he died, only that there was a large cloud of Fog element that settled over Bayou for some time. In fact, any place that was said to have one of these impossible multi-element Casters was soon rumored to be covered in a mind-addling Fog for days on end. When the clouds were gone, so too were these people of interest. It seemed a powerful Fog wielder was hiding what, exactly, was going on.

And that was why, after I finished my team’s armor, we were asked to travel to DeeCee, the first of the Five States proper to see one of these people. Several of the suburbs around the Old Capital were wrecked by this man, Brendon, and everyone wanted to know what was happening. Ideally before a burst of Fog obscured everything.

We struggled against Brendon for some time, needing to contend with two elements at once. Still, we weren’t considered one of the better teams in the Five States for nothing. Silvie eventually got him trapped in an earthen pit, which she then tried to fill as much as possible. As he struggled to get out, shouting obscenities all the while, it gave Lambert time to make some decently solid metal shackles. We weren’t used to capturing our combatants instead of killing them, but I think we were making a good showing of it.

“You fuckers… you haven’t seen *nothing* yet! The warm-up’s over! Time to show you what makes me *really* unstoppable! GAHHHHHH!”

The grotesque man became covered in a dome of swirling flames, blasting away the earthen trap keeping him in place. On top of that, I could hear strange sounds, like bones cracking. It brought me back some bad memories of the creature that killed the Swordsman. We threw everything we had at the center of this fiery storm, but nothing seemed to take. The sounds grew louder, and more… inhuman.

Eventually, something shot out of the flames. It was the same size as Brendon… but it was covered in black… armor? No… scales, like a lizard. And from his back, emerged two giant bat-like wings. He flew up into the air with a burst of wind. What the hell *was* this guy?

“A-HAH, HAHAHA! You see now?! I’m a fucking dragon! No, a fucking GOD! Someone who’s gonna rule this fucked up world! And now, I’m gonna… gonna… urgh…”

I could barely make it out in the distance, but it seemed like the scales on Brendon’s skin were… in motion. They kept churning around, sometimes layering on top of one another, sometimes revealing the veiny skin below. He began to shrink back down to a smaller size. His wings changed and morphed in ways that couldn’t possibly support flight. He came crashing to the ground.

In a distorted voice, he yelled, “Wha… why’s it HURT?! Those fucking… guys, they didn’t say it would HURT… I’m gonna kill them! I’m gonna kill allllll of them! Guh, why’s it… why’s it… gotta… hurt… so bad… GUHHHHH!”

The self-declared ‘god’ then proceeded to vomit up a massive puddle of blood. His scales and wings were long-gone, and his veins began to recede into his body. I didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on.

It was at that point that a cloud began to block the sunlight. The area all around us was plunged into shadow. The air began to thicken. No, not a cloud… Fog. A group of silhouettes began to form in the distance. The fog thickened further and further, until I couldn’t even see my team-mates anymore, just these shadowy figures. Where… who…

A whispering voice emerged, seeming to come from all of the figures at once, or perhaps none of them. “Another failed experiment… ideally the last one to make it this far…”. I gulped. “Who are you? Why did you… do this to him?”

I felt the sensation of countless eyes watching me at once. “You remain aware? Interesting… No, Armorer, we did not ‘do’ anything to this misguided soul. His maker is a cruel man, one who seeks an alternative path to power. One that requires the death of many for the mere possibility of success for a few. He has made an… agreement, to keep his distasteful work contained within his territory. An agreement that he will have to be… reminded of…”

I was shaking. The shadowy figures began to change and alter. At some point, the body of Brendon (Alive? Dead? Who could say?) faded out of view. I was alone in the world, save for my armor. I pointed a dagger at one of these figures, not that I thought it would do me much good. “W-who are you people?”

Amusement could be heard in the voice. “There are many secrets in this world. The man we speak of is one. We are another. Perhaps you will learn some secrets of your own, someday. Perhaps not. Continue your work, Armorer of Living Bronze. When unbound from distractions such as this… Brendon… your work is of interest. We eagerly await what you may uncover…”

After some amount of time, which could have been days or minutes, the Fog receded. I was laying on the ground, though I didn’t remember why. Getting up, I could see my groaning teammates, who were similarly laid flat. There was only one thing I didn’t see.

All traces of Brendon, including the pool of blood he vomited up, were completely gone.