A long time ago:
Before his throne of rusted steel adorned with impaled child corpses, in a stronghold fashioned from the ruins of an abandoned military camp, the mutant warlord stood eight feet tall, encased in spiked steel plate of the darkest ebon hue Sadea had ever seen. A cluster of scaled tentacles writhed and lashed where his right arm would have been if his flesh hadn’t been corrupted by mutation, the stigma of the Old Gods. He wielded a massive iron club in his left arm, and his pus-ridden, swollen features were only barely hidden behind the confines of a horned helm.
And now, he was about to kill Doctor Horatius, who was sprawled at his feet, having taken a glancing blow to the temple from the mutant’s club.
“No!” Sadea shrieked, turning her attention from the mutant warlord’s elite bodyguards, muscle-bound abominations armored in dark steel and with claws and tentacles in place of arms and with maws filled with fangs instead of teeth.
Nearly a hundred feet away, there was nothing else she could do but strafe the warlord with a cluster of lightning bolts. He staggered back, grunting, obviously more surprised than hurt. And then Sadea had to lean back as a pair of scissor-like claws closed on where her neck had been a heartbeat ago. Its owner surged forward, trying to swarm her while his fellows began spreading out to her flanks.
Sadea blasted the scissor-clawed mutant with a stream of lightning, hurling him back. She then swept the lightning to her left, beam-like, so that another three of the warlord’s bodyguards were caught in its path and reduced to tumbling, charred lumps of carrion.
Fire, crimson and heady, washed over the four mutants who’d been charging at her from her right flank, turning them into shrieking, humanoid torches.
Arjun roared as he advanced, flames pouring from the head of his war-staff. Over the years, he’d grown taller and filled out his black fatigues. Now, even in the heat of battle and in the face of imminent extinction, Sadea couldn’t stop her gaze from lingering on the swell of his chest beneath the fabric of his combat jacket and the sweep of his jawline.
Not the first time he’s made me breathless, that’s for sure.
“Sadea, cover me! I’ve got him!” Arjun pointed at the mutant warlord, who returned the sorcerer’s regard with a grotesque, mocking grin and an inviting wave.
“Are you sure?” Sadea took her war-staff in both hands. “He looks pretty tough. Maybe we should try to grab the doctor and fight our way free.”
“No!” Fiery wings burst from Arjun’s back. They carried him up and above the horde of the warlord’s bodyguards who’d rushed in to stem the gap he and Sadea had just cleared. “We must purge the impure! Cleanse the unrighteous! Kill the mutant!”
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Sadea swept another beam of lightning through the ranks of mutants who’d cast their gaze upward at Arjun’s flight. Their bodies crumbled just quickly enough to provide a clear view of the sorcerer landing before the warlord.
Arjun wreathed his war-staff in flames and shaped them into the semblance of a curved blade. The warlord swept his iron club down, but Arjun cleaved it asunder with his fiery sword-lance and continued his arcing stroke through the mutant’s breastplate. The dark steel parted beneath the flames, and the warlord staggered back, a molten line across his chest, bellowing for aid from his minions.
Turning from Sadea, the remaining bodyguards rushed to their lord, seeking to pounce on Arjun from behind. Sadea made them pay the ultimate price for disregarding her. Ball lightning disintegrated a dozen mutants. Spiders wrought from electricity sank their fangs into warped flesh and unraveled nervous systems. Disparate bolts of lightning picked off the straggling survivors and those who’d had their spirit broken and were trying to flee.
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Sadea ran toward Arjun and the warlord. The sorcerer might have seized the upper hand at the battle’s opening, but the tide was turning. Kaleidoscopic beams of light poured from the tips of the mutant’s tentacles and tore into the globe of fire in which Arjun barely managed to shield his body.
“Ah, a shame. The merest brush of my blessing would have filled your flesh with gifts like mine,” the warlord gurgled. “Still, it’s not too late. Don’t resist, little one, and join me in eternal joy and slaughter.”
Arjun sank to his knees, his fiery barrier wavering beneath the warlord’s onslaught. “My flesh is God’s domain! My mind is His temple!”
“My hate is His sword!” Sadea cried, as she hit the mutant with a barrage of lightning bolts from five feet away. This time, her lightning had a greater effect. The warlord convulsed from the electrocution, and the beams pouring from his tentacles died away.
Arjun swept his war-staff around and brought forth a column of erupting fire at the mutant’s feet. “Die! Burn in this world and the next!”
Sadea raised her arms, holding her war-staff high. Sparks began to coalesce above and around the column of flames in which the warlord writhed. Her body began to tremble from the effort. They’d attacked the mutant’s stronghold at dawn, and they’d been doing battle for nearly twelve hours. She was nearing the end of her strength.
But she would not let the doctor down. She would not let Arjun down.
Six globes of crackling electricity manifested in the air. As Sadea chopped her war-staff downward, so too did they descend, slamming into the warlord’s body. The mutant gave one final shriek before his unnatural defenses fell apart and his body dissipated into its component atoms.
She fell to her knees, gasping with exhaustion. They’d done it. They’d killed the fiend. They’d enacted God’s will. They’d…
Arjun’s hand fell on her shoulder. His voice rang in her ears. “Sadea? Are you alright? Are…”
She pulled him toward her and pressed her lips against his. Her tongue found his, and for many, many moments, she reveled in their embrace and the heat of his flesh.
Only Horatius’s wry chuckle made Arjun pull away with obvious reluctance.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to interrupt,” the doctor said, trying to smile through the evident pain of his head wound. “But there’s a time and place for everything, right? I’d go on and on about how proud I am of you both, but for now, let’s go home.”
As they helped the doctor to his feet, with each of them supporting him under either shoulder, Sadea’s fingers found Arjun’s. He returned her grasp and her sideways glances, even as Horatius chattered on and tried to make light of his injuries.