Chapter 24
Kokoda, the First Pillar
I sped back to my brothers just as the large form of Kokoda leaped over the wall and landed several hundred feet in front of us. He was just as imposing as the first time we encountered him. A loud rumbling sound came out of Kokoda’s chest. Like stone being crushed.
“Hahahahaha, so it’s you three again?” he looked around and gestured to the others from Sanctuary. “I see you have found more, insects, for your pointless and asinine cause. What do you hope to accomplish in fighting a force as strong as ours?” he seemed so nonchalant and carefree. “You vermin are not making a difference.” He smiled and looked directly at my brothers and I. “You three however, intrigue me. I will make you an offer, once and only once, join me be my lieutenants. I will grant you power like you’ve never experienced and training in things none of your kind can even fathom.”
I looked at my brothers and smiled. “You hear that he wants us to join him.”
Baker picked up on my sarcasm and continued, “Yeah almost like he knows we are more than just some puny humans.”
Shyft hit the final nail in the coffin with, “I think he is afraid of us and wants to remove us from the board.” We said these loud enough out loud and through the link so everyone in Sanctuary heard us openly dismissing Kokoda’s offer. Kokoda’s face grew angry, and he roared across the field while flaring his aura.
“I am Kokoda, the Devourer and the Destroyer, I am a force to be reckoned with and you will do nothing but perish in a fight with me, no matter how many insects you have at your beck and call.” Kokoda was fuming mad at being talked to like that by mere human. I linked to the members of Sanctuary.
She answered with a shaky voice, “C..Cop…Copy that.” My brothers and I steeled ourselves and moved toward the large entity. The fact that we were not backing down seemed to make him slightly nervous. I flared my aura to its fullest extent. My brothers did the same. This was the first time we had ever let the entirety of our true power come forth. Doran linked me,
“You three are just full of surprises, well it seems you are going to have one more surprise today.” I felt a weird pulse of energy, at first I thought it might be Kokoda trying something but it was coming from my bag back at the building I left my rifle in. It felt almost like a heartbeat. Baker and Shyft felt it too.
“What is that?” Shyft asked me.
“I don’t know brother.” I answered honestly. The pulse grew stronger and stronger and then stopped. Nothing happened.
Kokoda chuckled “It seems your secret weapon was a dud.” Pushing that out of my head I turned back to Kokoda and prepared to attack.
Through the link and earpiece, I yelled, “Now.” Within seconds Kokoda was being barraged by Arcanium rounds and explosives from the Organization and Sanctuary members using weapons and energy attacks from all of the long-range users in our command. While Kokoda was busy I nocked 5 arrows and crafted a spell, designed to take down his shields. I fired the arrows and when they hit, I could see Kokoda’s shield start to unravel. He noticed almost immediately, and I could see his energy flair to start rebuilding his shielding. I let several extra volleys of arrows meant to destroy his shielding before my brothers took their cue to start attacking. Baker and Shyft ran at Kokoda, and I saw them flare their energy and mix it together to create a molten metal cone in front of them. They stopped short of Kokoda and launched the cone of glowing blue, liquid metal at Kokoda. He screamed as the attack made contact. Kokoda swung his large fist attempting to backhand my brothers, but Baker’s immediate shield caused his hand to glance off and miss them entirely. I reached back to nick another arrow to find my quiver was empty. I dropped my bow and pulled out the two pieces of my naginata and fitted them together as I ran to join the battle.
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I came to Shyft’s side and nodded to him. Kokoda had recovered from the molten metal attack. He unhooked his mace from his belt, and it covered with his ink black energy. He swung at Shyft knowing that Baker was too protected. The mace screamed through the air at Shyft’s head but seconds before it connected a pillar of earth erupted from the ground and pushed the mace just high enough to miss its target. Shyft swung out with his sword with lightning quick and landed several hits on Kokoda’s forearm. I felt a bloom of energy in Kokoda seconds before he launched a blast that knocked the three of us off our feet and pushed us back several yards. My head rattled from the hit, but a quick check of my body revealed that there was no other effect of the energy.
I felt Doran and his team coming to us.
“Guys are you ok? I thought I had stopped that mace hit.” I looked at him as I got up, but Shyft spoke first.
“You did brother, Thanks.” Doran helped Shyft up, saying.
“No problem, brother.” The 6 of us squared ourselves with Kokoda. He was patching up his shield. I couldn’t be certain, but my best guess was that his shield was down to about 50 percent and holding. He was breathing heavily as were the three of us. We went in to strike again. Baker took a few swings with his bar mace, Paige launched her spear converting it into a streak of light, Doran advanced with his shield raised and sword ready, Shyft had his sword out and covered with his blue fire, Jasper had his short sword in hand, but the blade was almost completely invisible because it was covered in his wind energy, and I had my naginata poised to attack. We surrounded Kokoda and attacked him from all sides. His shield was effective and blocked most of our attacks, but I used my strikes to continually break the nexus points on his shield making it weaker and weaker. Shyft also used his fire to help weaken it as well.
Kokoda started to collect his energy for another attack. This time however we were ready for it and shielded ourselves well enough to avoid any damage. The strike did back us up from him though. I felt another pulse of energy come from behind us again this time it was moving. I turned back to see an unnaturally large white bear, barreling across the field toward us. I thought the bear might be an attacker, so I got ready to defend but it went around us and straight for Kokoda. Raising up on its hind legs made the bear stand just a few inches shorter than Kokoda and the hit was so solid Kokoda lost his balance.
This bear took the advantage to bite Kokoda's leg creating deep wounds. Kokoda yelled in pain and kicked the bear off him. The bear tumbled and fell close to us. I rushed forward and got between the bear and Kokoda. My brothers and sister joined me instantly. The bear got righted and looked at me with emerald eyes. Its head bowed and in the minds of those close by we heard a female voice full of wisdom.
"Lord? Huh?" I said out loud extremely confused.
By this time Kokoda had stood up. His leg was a mess luckily. We all took the chance to strike. I launched 2 saw blades of ice. Baker reinforced them with his energy. Doran stomped on the ground and make !000s of pea-sized metal bits rise. Jasper crossed his two blades and sent a high-speed gust of wind accelerating the metal at Kokoda extremely fast. Shade lands on Paige's shoulder and they fired a beam of intertwined light and shadow energy. Shyft covered most of his body in fire and condensed it into a whip made of deep cobalt blue flames. He swung the whip so fast it made multiple hits before the sound of the snap happened.
Kokoda was blindsided by the immense attacks we unleashed. His left arm was perforated by metal pellets, his right arm was smoking and seemed to not be working, his chest was simultaneously being sawed into and blasted by light and shadow. Kokoda was pushed back, and he fell to the ground. Uruz ran up and slashed at Kokoda while he was down, tearing huge gashes into his flesh.
"We almost have him." Paige yelled
As she said that a huge amount of energy started to build in Kokoda's body. His form seemed to start shriveling and growing smaller.
"At least I will take you ravel with me. " Kokoda coughed out
"Everyone on me, share some of your energy with me, I have an idea." I said quickly knowing we had no other option
Everyone quickly got to me and place a hand on my back, Shade landed on shoulder and Uruz wrapped her large, pawed arms around us all. I felt wind, light, metal, fire, earth, shadow energy entering my body. I placed my hand in front of us and created a custom spell. I used the concept of the 8-gram ward we had encountered before.
As the energy I had accumulated surged from my hand a wall of prismatic energy formed slowly encasing us in a box of the multicolored energy. The shield finished forming as backlit cracks started to form ok Kokoda’s skin.
Seconds later a purple and black explosion tore out of Kokoda's body. As the wave of destruction hit the colorful wall its spread around us for a mile or so. For several seconds the world didn’t exist just this black and purple swirl of death. Soon it started to die down. After it was completely done, I released the barrier I used and collapsed to the ground.