Aetherios System: Whirlwind

Book 3: Chapter 78: Match-Up

Chapter 78: Match-Up

[Time Remaining: 600 Days, 00 Hours, 12 Minutes]

The mountain ridge was still smothered with old smoke, making the sight line a bit obscured, but not entirely so. From their vantage at its peak, the broken village below lay like a forgotten child’s toy. Roofs had been burned black, while splintered carts were half buried in ash, and the remains of Andreia was a still smoking carcass across the treeline.

Beyond that, the mountain hollows where the hive’s many beasts collected like bacteria in a wound in the earth. The day had bled into late afternoon by now, and the proverbial hourglass the Queen had given them ticked down the same predictable way an injury would heal, slowly, and painfully.

Alex stood with his shoulders squared against the wind. Around him the mixed-force of fighter looked like a hodge-podge of bodies. Urhara banners were to one side, and hastily made Worldstrider standards waved on the other. Everyone’s faces were hard, splotted with dirt and grime from the work done throughout the sleepless night.

On the ridgeline to his right, a few salvaged cannons crouched in their carriages like sleeping beasts. Various rune-smiths checked fuses on the machines and tied talismans in tight knots while healers murmured prayers over bubbling pots.

The plan they had argued over the night before had come to life, and now that the time had finally come, anxiety and worry sat in Alex’s gut like a ball of lead.

No one spoke as they stood on the battle lines. They all simply waited.

When the Original Queen stepped from the trees she didn’t move like an animal or beast. Her movements flowed lithely, the forest foliage clearing before her as if the world parted for one of its one. Her presence changed the mood instantly, the air shifting colder and thicker at once.

Up close the details of the Queen’s visage were worse than memory had painted in Alex’s mind. The crown of horns on her head, the near-human face, the feathered hair, and chitin plating catching the sunlight like glass. Her eyes found Alex and held him with an intimacy that made his skin crawl.

“You decided to squander my gift,” she said smoothly, with no hint of pleasantry. She spoke human syllables laid over a predator’s tone.

Alex walked forward to meet her halfway in the large field. The ridgeline was a thin thing between two worlds, so meeting her there kept his back to his people, and kept his vision on the battlefield clear.

“Running away was never an option,” he said. “Not after Sarson and Rynel. You know that.”

The Queen’s lips curved in a way that was almost a smile, almost. “I had hoped your human attachments would not be so strong. But alas… I will say this: their bodies have been set aside, uneaten so far. In the unlikely chance you triumph today, you may recover them.”

The words caught him off guard. He hadn’t expected the Queen to have such understanding of human sentiments. Even if she did, he didn't think she'd act on them. His throat tightened in a way that was part relief and part nausea at the news. He had thought she would meet him with contempt and gloating. He had not expected that small mercy at all.

“If by any chance we do win,” he asked, because there was a terrible need to put all the grotesque possible futures into words, “is there a specific way you would like your offspring’s remains handled?”

The Queen’s mandibles quivered. Alex could not tell if the motion was amusement, or genuine feelings. Of all the possibilities, none felt safe to him.

“No,” she said finally. “If we perish here, burn it all. Put every body to the fire.”

“Okay.” The answer was a mortuary’s agreement. Alex didn’t know what else to say.

For a brief second they simply looked at each other, two predators acknowledging the rules of the hunt. There was no more negotiation to be had. Alex nodded once, curtly, and turned away. He didn't expect her to strike at him, even with his back turned. Predators that grand had theatre in their cruelty, they did not debase themselves with petty surprises. Especially a Queen.

By the time he reached the allied line again and he told Selka and Cole what the Queen had said he could see slivers of relief in their expressions. But there was no time to celebrate such a small win. Things were coming to a head now.

All around the battlefield, men and women closed ranks. The Urhara soldiers lifted their weapons as though waking up from a slumber, their armor clinking with the sort of small noises that felt like prayer bells at the side of a deathbed.

“Burn them if it comes to that,” Selka whispered beside him. Alex merely patted her shoulder.

Beyond the ridge and across the field, the forest poured outward with the mass of beasts hidden within them. Waves of chimera slid through the trees, bipedal, insectile, bestial, weird amalgamations all of them, their aether signatures a torrent of color in Alex’s sight.

He watched the Light Queen activate her buff, casting it over a large swathe of selected chimera soldiers. The spell-boosted chosen stepped toward the field, their ranks alight with the radiant glow she had granted them. The Magma Queen moved with slow inevitability, the ground under her steps warming and cracking from sheer contact with her body. The Silver Wind Queen was suddenly a dart among the masses, almost impossible to track with the air bending around her passage, like a hand grasping at and passing through smoke. And the Shadow Queen flowed like a moving onyx curtain, waiting to fold over the world.

For a second Alex remembered Terraxum’s trenches. Visions of fallen banners lying in mud, with melee lines breaking under blood. He remembered the way fear tasted cold and acrid in his mouth. He shoved the memories down with grunt. There would be no fear or hesitation today. If he let those ghosts control him, then everyone he loved... they'd all die. He had promised something in that conversation with the Queen; it had been a bargain made from desperation and honor in equal amounts. He had written the cheque with his mouth, but now it had to be cashed with muscle and aether.

The battlefield shuddered and roared life like a car turning on in a cold morning. Signals shone, and flags were waved, as aetheric pings mixed with the horn-calls, all of these moved the armies like a well-aged machine. The cannons on the right side tip-toed forward under measured-out sightlines, their barrels aimed at pre-calculated positions where creatures would be funneled on the field.

Peter’s team moved into the flank position far on the right. Garret, Eric and Henry took the sparce line against the Shadow-queen’s vector, with Myrae in behind them. Devon checked his rifle, twice, while Kate flexed her fingers around her rapier’s hilt. Ghrukk's muscles rippled as he adjusted his halberd.

It was the crowd of the living checking themselves like sheep herds bracing for a storm.

Alex stepped back, finding Malric and Karsali at his side. They were still not a comfortable pair, one the stoic recruiter, the other the hard-assed Knight. But Alex knew both had their own ways of keeping the stress and nerves of the situation at bay. He saw Malric’s eyes run across the field with cold calculation, and Karsali’s posture was rigid and controlled, with just the slight tap of her fingers on her leg.

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“We stand here until the cannons blast holes in their formations,” Karsali said. “Then we push hard into the breaches and spread inward to take their centers.”

“And if they break through us?” Alex asked. It was seen as bad form to ask such things so close to a battle, but he needed the honest truth, the grim realty of where they found themselves.

“Then we fall back to the next kill zone,” Malric said. “We have lines and traps already set in our retreat path. Worry not, worldstrider, we have this in hand. Don’t let fear or revenge cloud your aim, Alex.”

He wished Malric would say less, because he could hear the bare hollowness below their strategy: it was only fight, run, and survive. Malric was speaking the language of logistics because that was what usually kept people coolheaded in the face of death, but the content was still the same. Alex inhaled slowly, the air tasted fowl in his mouth already.

“You could die and be the most spectacular piece of revenge poetry ever,“ Obby began, then quieted as if even he understood the gravity of the moment. “Or, you could die a useful death. No matter how funny the first option is. I vote that you choose the useful one.”

Then the Original Chimera Queen sent a pulse of aether out from her body, that seemed like it was the signal. The queen’s daughters responded as if they’d been waiting for it, each beginning their full march forward.

The first volley of attacks came from the Urhara cannons, firing out lightning-etched metal rounds that punched through flesh and carved grooves in the earth. They left behind craters where entire chimera squads had been only moments before. With every discharge of the seige equipment, explosions ejected geysers of dirt and blood skyward all across the field.

But for every creature felled, two more pushed into the opening, their insect-like bodies moving with the kind of synchronized hive intelligence Alex had come to hate. The loss of chimera soldiers didn't even seem to phase them. They consumed their own numbers like it was a resource.

Alex saw the Urhara soldiers begin their surge forward as well. He thought he barely made out the small form of Kletos marching out with them, just as the had said he would. Everyone choosing to do their part.

And the battle began.

***

The battlefield had become an orchestra of violence that thousands danced to all at once. Cannon fire split the ridgeline with bone-shaking thunder, iron rounds tearing through swathes of chimeras. Arrows whistled, spells roared, and the twang of bowstrings sang. Meanwhile, talismans and scrolls were activated in waves. Screams—beast and human both—rose to fill the space between the thunderclaps of siege and spell.

Still, the chimeras pressed forward, clawing over the corpses of their own, uncaring for the fallen in the slightest. They were a living tide that refused to break.

Steel and claw met in the valley below them. Urhara soldiers locked shields and blades against slobbering maws. Fire spells blossomed in teeth and throats, and the ground itself turned to slurry from the blood pouring out beneath the weight of bodies. For all the cannon thunder and the crashing spell volleys, the war came down to the immediacy of steel biting into flesh.

But at the center, in a clearing surrounded by carnage, none of that mattered.

The Original Queen stood waiting. She had not rushed at all, she simply walking out and claiming the center of the battlefield like a sovereign planting a flag. She stood watching her brood die without the faintest flicker of care. Alex saw her and felt his own pulse sharpen, his vision narrowing. His [Demon Asura Style] sprung to life, purple-blue light searing around his body like an angry halo. [Wrath Siphon] locked onto her with a mental flick, branding her with his fury.

He didn’t wait for Malric, or Karsali, or Symon. He went in ready for blood.

Small pops of aether sounded from his feet as he skated over the heads of the combatants, his eyes locked only on his quarry. He reached the clearing in a matter of seconds and didn't even slow his approach, rushing the queen with his teeth barred.

Energy flushed through his channels as he drove his fist forward, [Aether Burst] crackling around his knuckles and erupting in a condensed violet-blue line. The Queen had seen his new spell before already, and her eyes twinkled at the sight before she moved in a blur, dodging the energy burst.

Dust and debris kicked up behind her, Alex's spell blowing apart the top soil and the rock beneath it. He thought her face moved into a thoughtful or curious expression for a moment before she turned back toward him. He rushed her again, throwing another punch towards her right side.

Her fist snapped up in front of his, and the collision was like two stormfronts colliding. The air screamed as aether from both sides detonated against each other. The ground beneath them shuddered.

Alex’s eyes widened as recognition hit. She used it. My spell. My own custom spell. His mouth scrunched into a snarl, his fury spiking hotter from realizing she was once against stealing his own power.

Malric suddenly appeared at her flank in flash, a conjured aetherblade singing with water and light essence entwined together, the lines of energy spiraling like moving serpents. He slashed at her, but the Queen’s wing snapped outward with impossible force, a wave of aether-laden air knocking him back across the churned ground.

Karsali moved like a spear into the spot Malric had been ejected from as the queen lowered her wing back down. The Knight's blade was on course to take the Queen’s head. But the Queen ducked as though she’d known the strike was coming, her leg flashing upward in a counter. The kick sank into Karsali’s gut with a sickening impact, launching her backward. She hit the ground hard, boots tearing furrows in the dirt.

The Queen turned again, only for Symon’s spell to catch her side. A bolt of fire, tight and blistering, slammed against her scales. The impact left a blackened scorch across her carapace but not much more. Still, the Queen hissed, turning her head to look at the mage.

“Not enough…” Symon muttered, his fingers already moving for another spellcast.

Alex jumped forward to keep the pressure up, his fists burning from small cuts and leaking wyrm-blood. He ignored the pain, letting lose every instinct he had to choke up on his power. He let it all go, his body screaming with the strain of his inflated physical stats.

The Queen caught his strike and twisted, her claws raking outward for his face. He ducked and retaliated with a kick that cracked against her thigh, shifting her balance and letting him land a punch against the side of her head that sent her back a step. She snarled, spinning abruptly and sending her tail into him which he blocked before trying to send a kick into her opposite leg. She looked to anticipate this and check his strike with her own leg.

Alex raised his brows in surprise before he refocused. The queen seemed to somehow know Alex's martial art's training, his experience fighting back home on earth. He wouldn't be able to use that experience to gain an upper hand in the melee combat. So he decided to go with a different plan, to dive wholly into the Demon Asura Style, and trust only his learned instincts from there in Aetherios.

The fight turned savage. Without the flourishes, or posturing of elegant martial arts, both him and the Queen went at each other with just sheer destruction.

Every strike Alex or the Queen attempted was lethal. Every dodge was performed by the narrowest of margins. And during that time Alex’s aura grew brighter, with his [Wrath Siphon] feeding him in surges of power at each contact. The Queen matched him with terrifying ease, her claws glowing with aether in various ways by the second.

Alex assumed each counter she attempted was an echo of some skill or spell belonging to a former human of the battlefield. One she or her children had eaten, and stolen from. SO he couldn't predict them all, nor try to learn to counter them. He could only hold up the pressure on her.

Malric surged back into the fray, this time with his actual longsword drawn for the first time. His blade cut paths of shimmering water that flew with the speed of bullets. They cracked against hard flesh and left blistering welts that hissed against the Queen’s scales.

Karsali recovered as well, her own sword flashing with relentless rhythm matching the Arcanuum mage. The yellow glow of her augmentor boost was also apparent in her movements. Any strike the queen failed to dodge from Karsali entirely earned her line of blood cut into her body. None of them were horribly deep, but they would add up. She couldn't avoid them all, Karsali moved too fast, and between Marlic, the Knight and Alex, the Queen's attention was split too many ways.

Symon stayed at the edges and launched his firebolts expertly between the melee exchanges, the fiery, small detonations timed for when the Queen shifted her posture or one of the others knocked her off balance. The mage's spells burned through the spots left open to him.

The clash became a blur of bodies and sparks. Steel rang, fire seared the air, and the ground quaked beneath the repeated detonations of Alex's [Aether Burst]s colliding with the Queen's. Alex felt the sting of cuts across his own arms, with the start of bruises already forming on his chest. The growing burn of his aether channels began to grow, as the pitched tempo of the fight meant they were not getting a second to rest. But he kept up, kept hammering away at the source of his fury.

She dies here. She dies by my hand. He repeated to himself in his mind.

The Queen grinned at him through the bloody rage he sent her way, her own aura flashing brightly.

And Alex knew, this battle truly was only just beginning.

There were four more Queens stalking the battle field as well.