Sleet flurried underneath Sansir’s feet, sending chills up his bones. No one spoke. Nearly a thousand people were gathered about him, yet not a single one opened their mouths. The quiet only seemed to reinforce the tension.
The entire war party felt like a warp-tethered bursting with power had just walked into the room. For thirty minutes, they’d waited. Yet it only grew worse. The indistinct sounds of powers at the ready were the only relief. The various noises of the Triplet Goddess gifts chipping at the edges of worry.
Yet even those noises had mostly subsided. Obsidian now held quiet, their forms altered to perfection. Light had no more grass under their feet to burn. Ice fell off as discomfort grew — only four of them persisted.
Sansir looked to his left. Commander Tulaiha, hazy with smoke, stood firmly at attention, eyes locked on the horizon. Behind her stood Idrees, the second-in-command, his warp energy simmering quietly. Unfazed by the wear of tension, Asmar al-Firman stood as their general and commander. Frost gathered underneath his feet, ready at a moment’s notice.
Each of their regular units were outfitted fifty regulars and ten tethered. Each group tied to a master, who was tied to one of the three commanders in Sansir’s group. Outside of command, yet centered in each group, stood a single tethered. Space rippled as their fingers flexed, eyes closed, waiting.
One raised their hand, then another, and another. Soon, all stood with an arm lifted and Asmar spoke. “Begin.”
Purple light flashed, lines of space enveloping a unit. Sixty-one men and women vanished. Again. And again. The field came alive with powers renewed, swords loosened from their scabbards, spears thumped on the ground. At last, purple light enveloped Sansir.
They stood on a hill of loose torn up soil, obsidian dust, and ripped stone. The protrusion and its many cousins hadn’t been there yesterday, yet now turned the terrain against the army gathered between them.
Already units were charging, spears lowered against the unprepared enemy. The Purists were milling about, looking on confused. The first spears lanced into them. Wood broke, people screamed, blood sprayed, and power pulsed.
One tethered among the beset Purists released a wave of power. They’d moved too fast to control their release. There was more fear than wrath in the attack. That didn’t stop the wave of rainbow light from washing over ally and enemy both.
Sansir had seen combat, he’d been fighting with the Sleeping Sons for most of the time he’d been a tethered. He’d seen when it got dirty, when people got pushed too far. Nothing could ever match the horror of a warp-tethered cutting loose indiscriminately.
Men and women on both sides fell over. Bared bone, blood mists, severed limbs, and torn apart armor. The tethered was struck down in moments, but not before they’d decimated the attacking unit. Twenty, maybe less, soldiers survived to push back to their feet and stagger away. Almost as many Purists writhed on the ground, hot-blooded already softening the cold soil into mud.
“Sansir!” Commander Tulaiha seized his shoulder. “Unit five needs your help.”
Blinking, he nodded and rushed away. Pushing against the images in his head. One soldier, Purist or Sleeping Sons, he knew not, lying on the ground. He’d been flung twenty feet in their direction from the blast. His dark hair had mostly gone gray, one dead eye staring into the sky, blood leaking from his mouth. The other half of his face cut to completely it appeared as mincemeat.
Sansir shook his head, joining to support his new unit. A glint of copper shimmered beneath his shirt. Had that been a memento? A souvenir? Perhaps a gift. Gather your control. Sansir bit his tongue till he tasted blood.
Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!
Noises crashed over him, the stench of fear as thick as blood. Almost immediately, he fended off two strikes from enemy tethered and the fighting was joined. Hiding within the back lines of the men, he lashed out against the opponents. Flurries of snow to obscure vision, shards of ice to bend armor. Chill to freeze and kill.
Each descending chill sent a shiver down his spine and an image of the man through his head. Too old to still be a soldier. Too old to not know better.
And what am I doing?
An orb of obsidian fell from the sky ten feet from him. An arm’s length above the soldiers, it tore apart. Shrapnel flew in every direction. Chunks slammed his helm, ringing his ears. Sansir blinked as he scurried out on his back. Others were getting up as well. Whether the detonation had knocked them over, or the surprise had, he wasn’t sure.
“Sansir,” Commander Tulaiha appeared before him again. How long had it been? He glanced at the sky. It seemed minutes had taken the spot hours should’ve had. “You have obsidian in your helm.” She cursed loudly, seizing a chunk of black glass.
The taste of blood intensified as she tore it loose. The blaze of pain felt distant despite the emergency it sent through his system. Sansir formed a dozen tiny stars of chill death, ready to lash out the moment they needed. He spat blood from his mouth, but more came.
“It tore through, shit.” Commander Tulaiha hauled on him, dragging him back to their command. “Get his cheek healed up.”
Power was flaring higher and higher deep within the fight. Sansir looked over as a medic took his helm off and hissed. Distantly, he felt him place something across his face before returning the helmet.
The obsidian strength grew too strong and too far away. The tethered Purists were realizing how badly outnumbered they were. Some tried to flee, but they’d prepared for that. Ritual-enhanced lances of obsidian tore fist-sized holes into them. The ones who didn’t run grew more dangerous. Their workings less controlled, more violent.
Collateral damage was growing, yet so long as they killed more of the enemy than themselves, it was ostensibly ‘worth it.’ And behind them all, inside the building, power flared the highest. Pure white-hot heat, and cold many-fold obsidian.
Space flashed and a hill not too distant, dozens of new appearance showed themselves. Bloody and exhausted, one and all, Sansir took a moment but recognized them. “My friends,” the words didn’t come out right. His jaw barely moving, held into rigid place.
Implacably smooth, cold, and slimy, he couldn’t get a hold of whatever covered his face.
“Don’t take it off!” someone dressed in a medic outfit yelled, pulling his hand away. “Did you hit your head elsewhere?”
Sansir shook his head and hurried over to the command. “Are you going to help?” he asked, seeing some of them getting ready to approach. Es fell past Dhaakir, a block of ice pounding his torso. Yet, Es managed a faint graze, his fingers across the toe of Dhaakir’s boot.
Tightly controlled, and rigidly uniform, warp energy raced up his leg, ending just below his knee. Fleshy dust and bone intermingled with blood and Dhaakir screamed. The triplet master looked horrible, burnt, and severely injured.
Sansir turned to Asmar, their strongest tethered. “Join them. You can fight him. You can win!”
Cold yellow eyes turned on his green. “Can you not sense him?” Asmar’s voice was as distant as his gaze. “Feel the mania coming over him. He has nothing left to lose. If he survives, he’s a cripple. If he can kill even a single valuable asset of the Elusrians with him, he will.”
“He’s already set his eyes on my friends. They are winning.”
Asmar refocused on the fight. “I never thought they’d be this strong. They aren’t losing.”
‘They aren’t losing.’ Sansir sneered, fingers twitched. He wanted to reach for the man. He had the power to end it. Right at his finger-tips. Tricks he and Es had worked out. Discipline and Concept interwoven so tightly they became indistinguishable.
“They could be winning.” Sansir turned away and started towards his friend. Someone followed behind. A heavy hand seized his arm.
“Don’t go, Sansir.” Imploring green burrowed into him. “It’s suicide. None of them, not even that light-tethered, have the strength to survive him. You will only join your name to the tally.”
“Let go.”
“Brother.”
“I have no father,” Sansir snarled, pulling his arm. Idrees’ eyes hardened, taking on a glittering light as Sansir’s no doubt reflected equally. “I have no father. So I have no brothers.”
“Let him go, Idrees,” Asmar said. “If he has to fight, then so be it.”
Idrees glared at Sansir, but finally nodded. He turned away, returning to focus on the armies clashing next to the school.
Ice launched Sansir through the air towards Dhaakir, when he noticed someone who didn’t belong.