novelraw Chapter 220 - The Convergence of Wills, Pt. 9
Chapter 220 - The Convergence of Wills, Pt. 9
Chapter 220
The Convergence of Wills, Pt. 9Alexander seized several of his drones and pulled.
Hard.
Clinging to the side of the tower they were defending, a giant infected superhuman who’d been climbing the building was attempting to pull itself onto the roof.
His two new barrier drones collided with its face, attempting to shove it backward. Meanwhile, the combat drones, shield-blades extended, slammed into the back of the trunk-like neck. Aiming to sever the spine.
Animachina flooded their systems, empowering the machines.
And still the giant’s free hand swung down toward him, completely ignoring its own impending doom.
Alexander threw up his cybernetic arm and locked it in place with a burst of raw Metallokinesis. The hand crashed against it. Bones shattered on impact, the giant’s fingers crumpling around metal that refused to give. The force reverberated through his body and rattled his teeth. He bit the inside of his mouth. Blood filled it.
“Shit,” he spat.
The giant’s head slumped forward, hit the rooftop edge with a crack, bounced, and then the massive body began to topple backward. It fell in silence, disappearing over the side of the building.
“The chains!” Maximilian snapped from behind him.
Alexander spun. His other hand came up, and Metallokinesis surged back into the chains his focus had abandoned for a critical half-second.
They tightened. The Lost Prophet’s blood-form had already begun to bloat, pressing outward against the loosened restraints. Alexander clenched his fist and squeezed until the expansion reversed and the chains bit deep.
The Lost Prophet just laughed. “You’re running out of time. My army is endless.”
Alexander ignored him and took stock, keeping his drones close overhead.
Eight minutes. They’d been holding this rooftop for eight minutes. It wasn’t long now until Augustus finished the long-range portal that would carry them past the city’s edge and fifty kilometers into the Martian desert.
The problem had been obvious from the first portal jump. Every time they landed, the infected found them within thirty seconds. The Lost Prophet was a beacon, pulling every turned superhuman in the city toward his location. Short hops across Dubai had turned into a running battle, each landing worse than the last. Hjordis and Julia couldn’t carry Augustus and Maximilian and fight at the same time. So Alexander had called for height. Augustus had put them on top of one of the tallest buildings at the city’s edge, where the old man could see the horizon and conjure a portal that would take them far beyond the threat.
Alexander had crushed the rooftop stairwell exit within the first minute, then reached into the building with his senses and twisted the stairwell structure several floors down for good measure. That stopped the thousands of normal infected that poured into the building’s ground floor.
It didn’t stop the dozens of powered infected climbing the exterior walls, sniping from adjacent towers, and diving at them from every direction with absolutely zero regard for their own survival.
Dubai. The highest concentration of superhumans on Earth. That had impressed him once. Now he couldn’t help cursing whichever idiot gathered so many other idiots incapable of protecting themselves from being vomited on.
Around him, the team fought to hold what amounted to a concrete island in the sky.
Julia met two infected fliers head-on thirty meters east of the rooftop, catching one by the face and freezing it solid before hurling the body into the second. Both tumbled away, trailing ice and broken limbs. A third came at her from below. She dropped to meet it with a knee that caved in its face.
Hjordis carved burning arcs across the sky to the south, her greatsword trailing fire with every swing. She caught an enemy mid-dive, splitting it from shoulder to hip without slowing, then reversed the blade and took the head off a second that had come in from behind. Each stroke flowed into the next without pause, wings bursting with flames and adjusting her position between every strike.
Sindre held the north side alone. Like his sister, his powers were a mixture of support for others and intense, direct combat applications. Beams of white-hot energy lanced with every thrust, each one precise, each one lethal. He evaded a bolt of energy fired from a nearby rooftop with the slightest tilt of his head. Then he hefted the spear over his shoulder, reached out with his left hand, and hurled it at the sniper.
“Dødskast.”
The spear turned into a beam of light that instantly crossed the intervening space. It struck the enemy, and a hole the size of a fist punched right through him.
Sindre was already turning, but his hand reached out toward the spear, now embedded in the distant rooftop.
“Heimkall.”
The spear snapped back into a beam of light, returning to the Northern Shield’s hand, before immediately being thrust toward the next opponent.
Maximilian’s red dragon, Skar’Vathos, circled the building in a wide orbit, jaws snapping shut on anything that tried to approach from the west. It had been a risky decision, splitting the Dragon Lord’s focus between maintaining the bindings and conjuring the dragon. But they’d needed every asset they had, and that particular dragon, claimed during the solo combat challenge, possessed an intelligence that rivalled a person.
Augustus stood at the western edge of the rooftop, ignoring the fighting, wand extended toward the distant horizon. Light pulsed as the portal grew closer to completion. He hadn’t moved or spoken since he began, trusting his safety entirely to the others, despite one of the Eight, bound as he was, floating nearby.
An explosion in the distance snapped Alexander’s attention east.
A figure had landed on a rooftop perhaps half a kilometer away. The impact had cratered the concrete beneath him, sending debris tumbling over the building’s edge. He stood slowly, arms at his sides, head tilted toward them.
Alexander’s senses narrowed in on the new signature. He recognized the superhuman from Talia’s intelligence briefing before they ever stepped foot in the city.
Naveed. Tier 3. One of Dubai’s guardians. A national hero.
But now with red eyes blazing in the dark.
“We have a Tier 3,” Alexander said over comms, his voice flat. “East side. It’s Naveed.”
Julia broke off from her current fight and spun to look. Hjordis banked hard, trailing fire.
Alexander turned to Maximilian. “How the fuck does a Tier 3 get infected? We’ve all got plenty of infected blood on us. It’s easy to resist.”
The Lost Prophet giggled. The sound was wet and wrong coming from a mouth made of blood. “Told you that you were running out of time.”
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His grin stretched wide across his featureless face. “And it’s easy to infect them when they’re fresh off the serum, bright-eyed and ready to become superheroes. My blood rested inside poor Naveed for years. Through every heroic moment. Every quiet night. When he slept beside his wife. Hugged his kids. Just waiting to be activated.” The grin turned sharp. “And no matter how superhuman you get, your brain is still nice and squishy on the inside.”
On the distant rooftop, Naveed raised his arms to the sky.
Water erupted from the streets below. It surged upward in a spiraling column, wrapping around the building he stood on, climbing fast. More joined it from every direction. Burst pipes. Shattered mains. Fountains. Pools. All of it converging, flowing together into a single massive current that coiled around the tower like a living thing and rushed toward the top.
In Mars’s reduced gravity, the water rose higher and faster than it ever could have on Earth.
Naveed stood at its peak, arms still raised, red eyes fixed on their position. The water crested the rooftop and kept climbing, building into a wave that blotted out the city lights behind it.
Then it began to move toward them.
Julia didn’t hesitate. She launched from where she’d just eliminated another infected, ice rippling across her body in a wave of crystalline armor. Snowflakes trailed behind her like a comet’s tail as she raced across the sky toward the oncoming wall of water.
She hit it head-on.
Ice exploded outward from the point of impact, spreading across the surface of the wave in a crackling sheet. For a moment, the entire mass slowed, the leading edge freezing solid, the momentum dying as tons of water crystallized.
Then the ice shattered.
The water beneath immediately began to spin. Slowly at first, then faster, the frozen surface breaking apart as the current twisted into a vortex that climbed toward the Martian sky. Naveed’s arms moved in slow, deliberate circles, and the water obeyed.
Tendrils snapped out from the spinning mass. One caught Julia’s arm. Another wrapped around her leg. She froze them and shattered free, but two more replaced them instantly, coiling around her torso.
Julia screamed. Then the vortex swallowed her.
Alexander stepped to the edge of the rooftop. His heart hammered against his ribs. Every instinct demanded that he launch into the air. Get to her. Pull her out.
“Portal’s ready!” Augustus called from behind him.
Alexander’s jaw clenched. He glanced over his shoulder and found the Lost Prophet watching him. The blood-form’s head was tilted, amusement painted across its featureless face.
“Feel free to help your friend,” the Lost Prophet said softly. “I’ll wait right here.”
A rush of wind and fire tore past overhead. Hjordis streaked toward the vortex, greatsword blazing, wings folding into a dive. Sindre was right behind her, spear leveled, barriers already forming around his body.
“We’ll get her out!” Hjordis shouted without looking back. “Get through the portal and finish this!”
Alexander watched them close the distance. Hjordis twisted and banked, evading a tendril of water that lashed out toward her, fire hissing against the spray. Sindre didn’t evade. He punched straight into the vortex, barriers flaring as the water hammered against them, driving toward Julia’s last position.
One heartbeat. He allowed himself one heartbeat to watch.
Then he turned away.
Maximilian’s dragon slammed against the edge of the rooftop, wings furled. The Dragon Lord stepped up to it and whispered something. Then the dragon’s form started breaking apart, becoming fragments of light as the conjuration released.
Alexander stepped up beside Augustus, but didn’t meet his eyes. His drones returned, orbiting just overhead. He stared at the inky void of the portal that would take them far beyond the city’s limits. But there was no way of knowing if it would be far enough, not yet.
They’d need to go further still.
He closed his eyes.
Augustus’s hand landed on Alexander’s shoulder. “I’ll stay and help them escape. You and Maximilian won’t need my portals out there.” He headed for the eastern edge of the roof. “Just keep flying northwest.”
Alexander exhaled. “Thanks, Auggy.”
Maximilian stepped through first.
With a pulse of Metallokinesis, the Lost Prophet floated through the portal after him.
The drones went next, as Alexander followed, resisting the urge to look back. He could hear it. Seeing it would just make it harder.
The portal vanished immediately.
Maximilian conjured the sapphire dragon. Built for speed. He straddled the creature’s neck, foregoing the barriers that allowed him to ride standing, and the pair launched into the air, heading northwest.
Alexander seized the chains harder, then lifted into the air alongside the Lost Prophet. Metallokinesis thrummed. He pushed hard, first to catch up to the dragon, and then to keep up as Maximilian opted for speed.
The desert of Mars spread out in every direction, though spotted with the clumps of lichen and moss that were a major factor in the steady terraforming the planet had been undergoing for decades. Something that still would have taken decades, if not centuries longer, but for superhuman intervention.
Nobody spoke for a long time as the city faded behind them.
The Lost Prophet broke the silence.
“You know,” he said, his voice carrying easily despite the wind, “the three of us could accomplish remarkable things together. Two future Divines and one who’s already crossed the threshold. Think about what that means. The cataclysm is coming. You know it. I know it. Together, nothing could stand in our way.”
Alexander said nothing. Maximilian didn’t even look at him.
The Lost Prophet tried again. “I built GOLD. AEGIS. I ran this world’s superhuman infrastructure for nine years, and nobody even suspected. Imagine what I could build for you. What we could build together.”
“You’re beginning to sound worried,” Alexander said.
The Lost Prophet laughed. “Worried? I can still feel every single one of them. The fear. Pouring across this desert to reach me. Just as strong as ever.”
Maximilian spoke without turning from the dragon’s neck. “Is that your superpower? Or is your Divine Will still reaching them?”
Silence.
The wind howled thin and cold across the Martian landscape. The Lost Prophet’s blood-form rippled against the chains but said nothing. His grin had faded.
Alexander and Maximilian shared a look across the gap between them. Neither said a word. Neither needed to.
They pushed harder. The sapphire dragon’s wings beat faster. Alexander poured more into his Metallokinesis, matching the pace.
Minutes passed.
“You can’t keep flying forever,” the Lost Prophet said. The confidence had thinned. “And you can’t kill me without killing innocent people.”
Alexander raised his hand and flexed Technopathy only briefly, reserving as much power as he could. The two shield-emitter drones broke formation and spun into position on either side of the blood-form. Semi-transparent orange barriers flickered to life, sealing together into a complete sphere.
The Lost Prophet’s mouth was still moving behind the barrier.
Alexander couldn’t hear a word. He turned back to the horizon and kept flying. But something had been bugging him since the fight began, all the way back on Earth. Just a scant thirty minutes earlier, though with everything that had happened since, it felt like a lifetime ago.
“Why is a Tier 3 so weak?”
Maximilian looked at the Lost Prophet. “He’s a bureaucrat. And a half-step, without a domain, otherwise he’d have used it already.” He shook his head tiredly. “You know better than most what it takes to develop your powers to be suitable for combat. Without putting in the effort, all he has are better attributes. His Will is strong enough to overwhelm either of us eventually, but not together.”
“It feels bottomless, though. We’re both tiring.” Alexander frowned. “He still looks perfectly fine. If he hadn’t opened his mouth, I’d be worried our plan wouldn’t work.”
“He’s afraid,” Maximilian agreed.
They flew in silence for another few minutes before Alexander asked the other thing that had been on his mind.
“You felt them, right?”
“Yes.”
“They had something to do with being a hero, huh? Felt like fame. Adoration? Something like that.”
“Perhaps.”
Alexander frowned. “Did you… feel your powers reacting to the threads?”
Maximilian nodded. “I did. But only to those closest. Maybe as far as the city.” He closed his eyes. “Do you think Divinity is just…” He hesitated. “Taking power from people? Using them like he is?”
Alexander shook his head. He understood little about what happened, but he knew one thing for certain. “No. I don’t know what my powers were doing, but they were giving. Not taking.” He turned to Maximilian and met the Dragon Lord’s tired gaze. Ambition burned inside. “And when we’re done here, I’m going to figure out exactly what. Because if the blood bag here represents what someone can become when they achieve Divinity, then we need to be what they find waiting for them on the other side.”
Maximilian studied him for a long moment. “Agreed.”
A burst of Will from the Lost Prophet caused them both to turn to where he floated between them, bound and carried along by their combined powers. Inside the spherical shield, the bloody form of the man was raging. Impotently. Barely able to move anything but his head, hands, and legs.
Alexander could feel his own strength was approaching a dangerous threshold though. He pointed toward a rocky outcropping covered in lichen and moss. “Let’s land there. It’s time.”
Maximilian nodded, and together they began their descent.