‘Barzal, return to me.’ She whispered, her hands raising toward the churning clouds above. ‘I do not want you injured.’
~‘Understood, Master.’ ~
Outside the stadium, cars rocked violently in the parking lot, their alarms wailing as the tornado attempted to lift them.
Within a 1.5-kilometer radius, anything unsecured—hanging laundry, billboards, loose trash—was drawn into the cyclone’s swirling vortex. Even as the Chinook flew over the E94 and the grid locked traffic below, the crew could see the raging cyclone expanding, consuming what remained of the stadium.
The wind howled with such force that the Drow struggled to maintain his footing, while the Witch clung tightly to his shirt, her fingers digging into the fabric to avoid being swept away.
Several stories above, Leta surveyed the ruined building as Barzal settled comfortably onto her shoulders, forming a pair of imposing pauldrons.
‘Yes.’ she hissed as she felt the storm above and around her building to a crescendo. Like a boat just at the edge of a waterfall, she was ready to tip into oblivion and let the chaos and destruction that yearned for the potential above be unleashed.
It took her a moment for her to register the pain in her stomach.
[Warning! The Host has taken piercing damage from {unknown}]
[Warning! {unknown} has released malicious coding into The Host’s nanites. Malicious coding is corrupting nanites in the vicinity of The Host’s abdomen. System firewall protocols have contained the infected nanites, but containment will fail in twenty-three seconds.]
“What?”
Leta blinked as she looked down at the arrow sticking out of her abdomen, her mind trying to process what had happened.
[Warning! The Host has twenty-one seconds until containment fails.]
She could feel the pain now - the hot burn of nerve endings severed and the iron taste of blood in her mouth.
[Nineteen seconds until containment fails.]
~‘Hurry, Master!’ ~
A primal scream erupted from Leta, a sound that echoed for kilometers. In the nearby church, those seeking refuge crossed themselves and fell to their knees and clasped their hands in prayer, convinced they had heard the voice of an angry god.
They were not mistaken.
Leta grasped the storm above, wrenching it downward and unleashing the combined fury of the tornado and cyclone upon her target.
The resulting boom shook the very foundations of the surrounding area, shattering glass as far as the Acropolis, some nine kilometers away. The 100-meter-wide sphere of lightning vaporized the concrete structure almost instantaneously, the force of the blast tearing the roof off the adjacent Athens Olympic Museum as if it were tissue paper in the wind.
For a brief, terrifying moment, Leta had managed to compress the plasma energy of lightning with such precision that she generated a miniature star within the shattered remains of the Olympic Stadium. The heat from this explosive event was so extreme that the asphalt of Olympian Spirou Louis Avenue, bordering the stadium, began to melt and bubble, and the tires of the abandoned cars burst with sharp reports as the gases inside them expanded violently.
Those still in their vehicles screamed as their skin flushed crimson with instantaneous sunburn.
The instantaneous flash blinded thousands, some permanently deprived of their sight. Kilometers away, the wyvern, sensing a disturbance in the air, had raised its head, only to be met with the full force of the explosion’s aftershock. Before its brain could even register the horrifying spectacle, the searing light burned into its sensitive eyes, causing the blood vessels to rupture in a gruesome display.
Then came the thunder cap.
The water in the swimming pools of nearby homes, already beginning to boil from the unimaginable heat, was now unleashed with the force of a raging tsunami, a wave of superheated steam and water crashing outwards. Cars were tossed aside like toys, trees snapped like matchsticks, and solar panels, ripped from their secure mountings, became deadly shrapnel, tearing through any remaining windows and embedding themselves deep into the concrete siding of buildings.
The mundane humans instinctively covered their ears, but for some, the silence that followed was absolute and terrifying—they had been deafened by the blast.
The void left by the star’s disappearance created an unnatural pressure, a silent, invisible force that pulled back towards the epicenter anything that had been flung outwards by the thunderous explosion, as if the very air itself was trying to reclaim what it had lost.
“Gods above.” John crossed himself as they watched the ball of lightning fade from existence, leaving behind rubble and a large crater several meters deep.
Without the cyclone to keep them airborne, debris began to rain down in a deadly rain over the city. A profound silence descended upon the city, a silence so complete it felt unnatural, as if the entire population held its breath in terrified anticipation of what might come next. Those who had found shelter in their homes cautiously peered out their windows, like children hiding under the bed from lurking monsters, praying that the nightmare was truly over, but fearing that it might only be a temporary reprieve.
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High above the wreckage, Leta’s tornado sputtered and died, leaving behind only a fading echo of a debris cloud that soon scattered, sending fragments of concrete and glass raining down onto the ruins below.
Leta drew a ragged breath, as if finally breaking the surface after a long, underwater struggle, just as the shock wave from Storm’s Hammer disappeared into the distance. Sweat trickled down her forehead, stinging her eyes as Gada’s voice, laced with urgency, reminded her that time was running short.
[Ten seconds until containment fails.]
“Fuck!” Leta bared her teeth as the indifference of the storm that had suffused her faded to the rage of an Atlantian. “What do I do?”
[The Host must dig out any infected tissue. Eight seconds until containment fails.]
With a low, pained grunt, Leta snapped the arrow shaft, then splayed her fingers wide, her eyes fixed on the wound, and dug them into the raw, exposed flesh.
A guttural scream of pure agony tore from her throat, locking her jaw and straining her vocal cords to the breaking point as she grasped the embedded arrowhead. Ignoring the white-hot pain searing her hand, she yanked with desperate force, tearing free muscle and tissue with a sickening rip, as if she were tearing out a part of herself.
[Five seconds until containment fails.]
‘There’s still more in there!?’ Leta cried out as she clawed at her abdomen until finally, Gada alerted her that her abdomen was clear.
Taking deep breaths, she tried to get her heartbeat back under control when Gada suddenly alerted her of another problem.
[Warning! The Host has taken slashing damage from {unknown}]
[Warning! {unknown} has released malicious coding into The Host’s nanites. Malicious coding is corrupting nanites in the vicinity of The Host’s right hand. System firewall protocols have contained the infected nanites, but containment will fail in twenty seconds.]
“Fuck! What do I do?!”
[Host must sever the hand just above the wrist. Eighteen seconds until containment fails.]
~‘Master!’ ~
Barzal melted down her left shoulder and coiled around her arm to form a small dagger in her grip.
~‘I will castrate the wound. There will be pain.’ ~
[Eleven seconds until containment fails.]
Leta blinked the sweat from her eyes as she held the blade over her wrist. Taking a deep breath, she gritted her teeth as the weapon bit into her skin.
“Argh!”
She felt the sickening crunch of bone giving way, the pressure making her teeth grind together as she relentlessly sawed through her wrist. As promised, Barzal flared with heat in her hand, cauterizing severed muscle and blood vessels with a searing touch, a desperate measure to prevent her from bleeding out and succumbing to her wounds.
“Fuck.” Leta had almost no energy left as she watched her severed hand drop to the rubble below.
[Corrupted nanites have been purged. Utilizing inert nanite pool for healing.]
[Warning. The Host is experiencing extreme nanite fatigue. It is of utmost importance that The Host makes landfall and rest to avoid further mental and physical strain.]
Her vision was beginning to fade in and out as movement to the side drew her gaze.
Clutching a radiant rock above her head, the Witch pushed her way through a narrow fissure in the concrete, her persistence akin to a cockroach surviving a nuclear holocaust. Covered head to toe in dust, she appeared more ghostly than alive, yet she moved with a surprising nimbleness for someone who’d had a building dropped on their head twice.
Her partner, though, was not so fortunate.
Leta’s blast had reduced the Drow to a grotesque parody of his former self, a charred and smoking corpse barely sustained by a faint flicker of life. His clothing had been completely vaporized, and the remaining skin was blackened and cracked, resembling brittle parchment.
With a weak, jerky movement, he turned his head towards the Witch, his sole remaining hand reaching out in a silent, desperate plea.
The Witch, however, recoiled in disgust, her face contorted in an expression of cold indifference as she turned away from the gruesome remains of her former ally, as if he were nothing more than a discarded and unwanted burden.
She retrieved the last arrow, her gaze cold as she examined its fletching before snapping her fingers with a sharp, echoing sound. A Wraith emerged from the shadows at her side, its spectral form chilling the surrounding air as it enveloped her in its void.
The Witch took one moment to look up at Leta’s floating figure and, with a manic grin, gave her a military salute goodbye. Then, without a backward glance at the dying Drow, the Witch and the Wraith vanished.
Leta gasped, coughing up a dark clot of blood, the spasm in her abdomen twisting her with a sharp, agonizing pain that nearly sent her spiraling down from the sky.
“Where’s the crew?”
Her wavering vision circled the skyline until she saw the taillights of a Chinook and Apache heading northwest.
“That’s them.” She breathed as she pushed herself forward, her movements more like stumbling through the air than flying.
She was so weak that her light had all but vanished to the point that the Chosen didn’t even see her approaching until she was meters away.
“Holy shit! It’s the Queen!” someone shouted into the headsets as the rest of the team snapped around.
At first, their faces were split into triumphant smiles at the sight of their returning Queen, but their expressions of joy swiftly vanished as the red interior lights of the Chinook outlined the dark, gaping hole in Leta’s abdomen and the bloody stump that had once been her hand.
“Oh no.” Atreus breathed on an exhale as her feet touched down on the lower door. She swayed on her feet and was close to falling backward into the abyss when one of the tethered guards stepped close and pulled her forward, signaling to the pilots to close the door.
Leta’s vision came in and out as the team circled around her, asking questions and shouting for the Healer to come over.
She felt the press of Allister’s big hand on her forehead, his soft words barely registering over the surrounding clamor.
“What happened, lass?”
“Killed… the Drow….” She wheezed. “Witch… got away.”
“Shhh… you’re alright. You’ll bounce back. You always do.”
Her lips twitched in a half grin.
She didn’t have the heart to tell him that she almost didn’t this time.
Cool hands prodded the hole in her kidney as the Healer tried to force the wound to close without success.
“Tell him… not to bother… I’ll heal… eventually….”
“What do you need?” Atreus’s face crowded her vision. His usual scowl was gone, replaced with wide eyes that beseeched her to be well.
“Rest…” She closed her eyes as she lost the battle with consciousness. “Rest… and then… to feed…”