“I’m going to kill you.” The threat came from Lori, who was getting to her feet. She had the gun in her hands again. Her finger was pressed up against the trigger, ready to fire in an instant. Fresh tears were still flowing down her face when she pulled the gun up and aimed it at the knight.
Alex placed his hand on the gun and made her lower it. “Don’t shoot that thing against that armor! Do you want the bullet to deflect and kill one of us?”
“But...but that bastard killed Rory...” Lori said, reluctantly lowering the gun. Her outburst gave me the time to put myself between our enemies and Megan and Rebecca.
“I know he did, but you need to stop and think. Don’t let your anger get your friends hurt.”
“Aw, don’t wanna hurt Ethan and Megan, do we?” the black-haired man said.
“Stop playing with them, Eric,” Heather scolded. There was no way they weren’t twins. “Which one do you want?”
Alex had made his way toward the knight, his fists glowing. I thought about putting a shield in front of him, but that would just get in his way. I put one up in front of myself, which kept Megan and Rebecca somewhat safe as well. At least I hoped it would. Heather could swallow buildings like it was nothing. My shield would crumble like a graham cracker if she wanted it to.
“I think I want blondie there.” He pointed at me, and my heart began to pound. “Although he doesn’t look like much. What do you say, pretty boy?”
I just remained silent and tried to beef up my shield as much as I could. It was hard enough that I didn’t think I’d be able to talk and focus on it at the same time. Since I had never seen him before, I didn’t know what he could do. If he was anything like his sister, I’d have to watch out for even the slightest movement. His finger twitched and I flinched.
“Eyes up, Ethan,” Alex said, looking as calm as ever. At least he was going to get that chance to flex his muscles he was looking for.
“I know. Can you take him?” I asked, meaning the knight.
“Yeah, the knight and the creepy one over there shouldn’t be a problem.”
No one had told me a more obvious lie in my entire life. What those two did wasn’t fine at all. I had to trust how capable Alex was. If Rebecca didn’t have that old bind on her, she might’ve been able to take away one of their powers and make everything more reasonable. As it stood, it was a tall task. Afraid to take my eyes off Eric, I couldn’t turn my head to face the two behind me. “Rebecca, please keep her safe as best you can. I know we just met, but please.”
“What’re you worrying about?” Eric asked. “You’re all coming with me!”
We were suddenly transported to a huge, lush meadow. There were beautiful flowers everywhere, rolling in the breeze along with the bright grass. The sky was a pinkish orange, like the sun was setting, but I couldn’t see where it was. It all smelled wonderful. It was an idealistic place for a picnic. If I wasn’t staring at a homicidal madman, I would have been more than happy to take a few minutes to enjoy everything.
“You’re a teleporter?” I asked, surprised by where he brought us.
“A teleporter? They wish they could do what I can.” Eric snapped his fingers and there were suddenly three of him. I tried to keep up with all three as they moved in separate directions. The one on my right had fire in his hands and the one on the left had electricity arcing between his fingers. “You ever see a teleporter do this?”
He snapped his fingers again and the clones were gone, leaving no evidence behind that they’d ever existed in the first place. He pulled a knife out from his pocket and tossed it around in the air. I prayed he’d slip up and slice a finger or two off his, but I had no such luck, unfortunately. He calmly whistled while he walked back and forth, staring at me the same way a starving wolf would stare at a steak dropped in front of it.
“Well? I’m waiting.” He paused to look at me. I must’ve looked pitiful. Suddenly, he broke into a laughing fit, bending over and grabbing his stomach. “Please tell me you can actually do something.”
I wasn’t one to be provoked, so I ignored him. My focus was all on trying to figure out what exactly he could do. Or maybe I was trying to figure out what he couldn’t do. He teleported us, made clones, and those clones had two different powers. Given how terrifying his sister already was, his array of powers nearly had me shaking. I was sure I was told me that some people could have two powers. Not a billion.
“Not going to do anything? That’s fine. Let’s go to some place with a bit more atmosphere.”
I blinked and we were on a glossy, black surface. Startled, I looked up to my right and saw that there was a huge volcano with lava running down the side, trickling slowly like honey out of a bottle. Most of the sky was obscured by thick, dark, billowing ash. I managed to catch a glimpse of a planet or moon I didn’t recognize overhead. I panicked, making sure I could still breathe properly, which was a mistake.
“Gotcha,” Eric whispered, suddenly to my left. His knife flashed in the dim light, and I tried to put up a barrier on my left arm to avoid the attack while hopping back. “Oh? Maybe you aren’t just dead weight, pretty boy.”
My shield didn’t block enough. I felt my skin split open and hot blood start to trickle down. Then the pain came, and I was grateful that it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I had nothing to compare it to. To me, my arm might as well have been cut off. Physically, it was the most painful thing I’d dealt with. Couple that with the dull tingling in my head from my destroyed arm-shield, I was not starting off the fight in a good way.
“Ethan!” I heard Megan yell out. She started to cry, and I saw Rebecca doing her best to restrain the child out of the corner of my eye. I dissolved the large shield I made before and put a circular one around them. It was the first time I’d done one in that shape, but I found it easy enough. If he could teleport that fast and had all those powers at his disposal, those two needed to be protected from all sides.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Don’t worry, kiddo,” I said, worrying extensively myself. I winced at her, meaning to make it come out as a casual wink. “Just a scratch. I almost got this guy figured out.”
“You have me figured out?” Eric taunted, showing me my blood on the knife. “You did something to mitigate that damage, but you have nothing figured out. But I will tell you something: I’m the strongest of them all.”
We were shifted through various locations, almost faster than I could process. A sandy beach on an alien planet with a green sky, a research base in a frozen tundra during a roaring blizzard, a dense jungle with chirping and chattering animals all around us, before we settled on a skyscraper in a city I didn’t recognize. My brain desperately tried to keep up with all the different scenery. Being near the edge of the roof, I couldn’t help myself. I peered over the edge to see cars clogging the narrow street below. Dizzy, I stumbled back from the edge.
“The entire fabric of reality is nothing to me,” Eric boasted. “I’ve slaughtered people stronger than you by the dozens. Even McLeod is weaker than me. I’m just biding my time until I can take my rightful place on top of the world. Why go through the effort when he’s so eager to get his hands dirty by taking out the garbage?”
“Then why do you use that crappy knife?” I asked, my breath coming out ragged. I said it was crappy. It did a damn good job on my arm.
“To give everyone a sporting chance. Why blow everything I have to kill someone in a spectacular way?” He snapped his fingers and a crowned, angelic figure appeared. It was a bright white silhouette more than a tangible being I could find features in. Light poured out of the feminine figure, making it nearly impossible for me to see. Just as quickly as it appeared, it vanished into nothing. “You like that? I call that one my Flux Queen.”
I couldn’t stress enough how much I didn’t care about the stupid name he gave it, so I just kept my mouth shut. My best wasn’t enough. Eric danced around me, slashing at my exposed skin without a care in the world. I had decent reflexes to avoid the worst of his attacks. It took all my focus just to keep up with those. He didn’t use his clones or the fire or the electricity he showed before. He clearly enjoyed toying with me. Or maybe it wasn’t about toying with me. Maybe he just loved trying to butcher people he just met.
Through the pain and blood loss, my brain was telling me his attacks were predictable. He wasn’t practiced in his attacks. I’d seen a kid at school who could fight get the drop on a bully who didn’t know just what the kid could do. It was infuriating to know that I should be able to break through and hit him with a counter. I just couldn’t get my body to react fast enough. Every time I tried to land a punch on Eric, he would dodge my clumsy strike. If he felt fancy, he’d teleport just out of my reach. It really didn’t help that I had no idea how to throw a proper punch. Throwing on the increasing number of slashes on my body, I wasn’t getting any closer to hitting him.
With every slash that cut through my pathetic attempts at barriers on my arms, I felt myself grow more exhausted. How could people stand getting in prolonged fights? I was gassed and my head hurt. My entire body hurt. Trying to keep the weak barriers up on my arms felt like my head was being pulled in two while I focused on the barrier to keep the girls safe. I almost laughed when I realized I’d probably want to take some kind of kickboxing class if I managed to get out of my fight alive.
After taking a cut on the cheek, I spared a glance at the two girls who were relying on me for protection. Megan was visibly horrified. Rebecca’s eyes were hard and filled with belief. I could tell she thought I could do it. I had no idea why she thought that. I was getting my ass kicked. At least they were still behind my stronger barrier. Seeing those bright green eyes look at me with such belief and determination gave me something of a second wind. It didn’t do anything to help the pain, tragically. At least it helped get some energy back in my body.
I was getting hopeless and desperate, not having any idea how to proceed. The pain from all the gashes was getting worse. Blackness started creeping up in the edges of my vision as I started to feel chilly, sweat running over my body and into my open wounds. Suddenly, a lightbulb went off in my head when I focused on all the pain I was dealing with. It was mostly from instinct that told me something was off. In an impossible world I’d recently joined, his powers seemed too impossible.
Looking around while Eric monologued like an idiot, I noticed a flag flapping in the breeze above me. I licked the index finger on my right hand and held it up in the air. Nothing. No wind despite how high in the air we were. Thinking about it, there had been no heat even though we had been right next to an active volcano. My sudden idea was stupid and was such a longshot, but Eric seemed cocky enough that I might be able to get it to work.
“You know, I’ve only known about my powers for around a month,” I said, trying to stand as straight and look as calm as I could. “It’s sad that you couldn’t get me in one shot. You have all this power, and a measly nobody is still standing right here. No wonder McLeod uses Heather for all the heavy lifting.”
I could see his eye twitch in anger. I knew I had to be careful. It wasn’t just me in danger. Megan and Rebecca were behind me, and I would not let them get hurt. Like when I saw Rebecca crying, it was probably some guy thing to want to protect helpless women. I watched Mom and Dad die as a helpless child. I wasn’t going to watch the two behind me die. I wouldn’t let it happen. I had to make sure Eric was focused just on me.
“Then how about I kill you with just this knife? You can bleed out knowing that you’re lower than shit I wipe off my shoe.” He spat at me. Dodging that nearly made me fall over on unsteady legs.
Eric was in my face without me noticing him move. He had the knife in a reverse grip above his head, ready to stab down on me. I was expecting the attack that time around, so I got back just in time to avoid being fatally stabbed. That didn’t mean I avoided all danger though. The blade cut through my clothes and left a long, diagonal slash across my torso. That bumped the slash on my arm for the most painful thing I ever dealt with.
I reached down with my good hand and grabbed Eric’s wrist. This time, it was my turn to whisper to him, “Gotcha.”
“ETHAN!” Megan cried out, absolutely distraught. At that moment, there was a heavy pressure on my back that brought me down to my knees. Looking at Eric, I saw that it wasn’t his doing, because crumbled too. Maybe it was some kind of defense mechanism his weird Anomaly had.
Whatever it was, I was glad it helped hold him in place, since I wouldn’t need to move for the next part of my plan.
With the wounds and blood loss, I couldn’t focus properly. The pain was paralyzing. I just put all of my remaining power into a baseball-sized orb in front of me and launched it at Eric. There was a sickening crack that I wouldn’t ever be able to forget, and the sky began to splinter and fade away. I struggled to stay conscious while it crumbled around me.
There was the sound of glass shattering and I was back in the Tomb Removed from Time, having barely moved. Eric was launched backward close to the doorway, much to the surprise of everyone else in the room. I saw that Alex was fighting the knight, looking in better shape than myself, but that was a low bar. His scratches were minor compared to the gashes Eric had put on me. He took the chance my distraction gave to punch the helmet off the knight.
What surprised everyone more than seeing me suddenly appear was the long, curly blonde hair and beautiful face that was under the helmet. Strong, fierce blue eyes glared daggers into Alex. The entire time we’d thought the mysterious warrior was a guy. In a true step forward for murderous equality, the black knight was actually a woman.