Chapter Fifty-Three: ‘Under mayhem’s gaze...’

Hector enacted Garovel’s plan. He stopped running and made a soul-empowered dome around himself. Then, he extended the dome out in four directions at once, suddenly creating an above-ground tunnel--one with an intersection, no less. He ran in the tunnel to his right while still adding on to all four directions.

He could already hear Karkash ripping up chunks of metal, searching for him, but the odds were in Hector’s favor. And he meant to increase them even more.

Each of the four tunnels forked off in two more directions, and then those forked off again. They began to converge with another, creating a symmetrical maze, of sorts. And Hector just kept on adding to it. The metal tubes were all hollow, so he wasn’t concerned about reaching his volume limit anytime soon.

It wasn’t easy to keep all the branching paths coordinated in his head, and he was pretty sure he’d mucked it up in a few places, but it didn’t need to be perfect. Karkash was going to rip it to pieces, anyway. He just needed a means of getting Karkash’s eyes off of him.

And then Karkash did the obvious thing. He pummeled the tunnels with lightning, sending a strong enough current through them that Hector could see sparks flashing across the ceiling.

‘He’s on your left now,’ directed Garovel from underground, ‘and still above you. About five meters or so.’

‘What’s Lynn doing?’

‘Waiting, I think. Probably wondering what the hell you’re trying to do. The other two are closing in, though. And since their reapers can’t sense you at the moment, I expect they’ll come for me.’

‘Let me know when they get too close.’

‘Oh, Lynn is engaging them now. Ten troa says she kills them both without you.’

And despite the circumstances, despite being worried about her, Hector couldn’t help smirking at that.

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A cloud of purple hit the ground before her and softened her landing. She was glad that worked the way she thought it would. Jumping off a four-story building would have looked really stupid otherwise.

Her ribs throbbed, but she didn’t have time to worry about it. A gigantic crystal wall barreled toward her. She gripped her sword with both hands, coloring its blade violet. The shadow extended the sword’s reach by a good two meters, and she swung vertically. The wall cleaved in two, but it went deeper than she realized, and she had to bring her sword back down for a second slash to finish cutting through.

Desmond was already there to greet her with a thrown, sizzling hand.

She raised a purple shield just as it exploded. She toppled back but caught herself with a bed of shadow.

The pain was back, stronger now, and she had to clench her jaw. Perhaps another rib had just broken.

Her opponents attacked in unison. The flurry of yellow crystals came first, obscuring her view of Desmond, and she figured that was probably their real purpose. She had no intention of allowing herself to be pinned down again, so instead of blocking the crystals, she chose to avoid them. She thrust her gauntleted fist toward the ground, and the purple flooded forth, sending her up and over Andres’ attack. With her ragged cloak flourishing behind her on the way back down, she whipped the shadow around to lash at Desmond, who lost an arm in order to avoid losing his head.

A bed of crystal spikes rose up to meet her as she landed, and she narrowly retrieved the shadow in time to stop herself from falling upon them. The spikes tried to rise up higher, but the shadow slashed them down, allowing her to reach the ground safely again.

And by now, with this being her third fight against the man, she had a good idea of what Desmond would do. Her back was to him at the moment, and she fully expected him to have already thrown another explosive at her, so she spun around in order to swat it right back at him. And sure enough, her prediction proved correct. The purple shadow slapped the sizzling forearm away, and the subsequent explosion knocked Desmond off his feet.

She pursued him, somersaulting with violet over the crystals that tried to bar her path, and as Desmond was struggling back up again, her sword fell upon him, goring him through the chest.

He met her gaze, and Lynnette could see the flesh of his face begin to darken.

She yanked the blade upward and cut straight through the man’s neck and skull, splattering the grass with blood and brain. His remaining flesh ceased its darkening.

That was one down, but Andres didn’t give her a chance to breathe, and the sky above her dimmed as a gigantic crystal appeared over her head.

The shadow flexed and spun around her, becoming a swirling drill, and as Andres’ crystal drew closer, Lynnette leapt up to meet it head-on. She pierced through, and even after losing her initial momentum, the ridges of her drill allowed her to keep climbing. And she arrived at the top, regaining her footing.

A small crystal pegged her in the shoulder, making her wince and stagger back a step. Then a second one, but when she staggered back this time, the crystal beneath her was suddenly destroyed, and she instead fell toward another bed of spikes. She grit her teeth, annoyed, and smashed them with a purple wrecking ball. Yellow shards flew everywhere as she landed.

She threw a glare at Andres, who was already shooting more crystals at her. The shadow deflected them as she ran straight for him.

Abruptly, a massive chunk of iron crashed between her and Andres, forcing her to stop and look toward Hector and Karkash.

Hector’s network of metal tubes was no longer grounded. It hovered in mid-air, fraught with blue flashes of electricity. The tubes continued to grow, however, bending and spiraling and reconnecting with one another just as quickly as Karkash was ripping them apart.

She would have liked to ignore them for the moment and focus on killing Andres, but a dozen more car-sized lumps of metal were already flying in her direction.

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It was a giant mess, now. He’d completely lost track of what went where, but he just kept adding more iron to everything. At the very least, if even he didn’t know where he was anymore, then Karkash certainly didn’t.

‘Up and to your right,’ said Garovel, apparently still able to make sense of things.

Hector curved his current tube as the reaper directed, and there Karkash was, facing a different direction. The man seemed reluctant to move around too much, probably to ensure Hector didn’t get an easy shot at his reaper, who remained by his side at all times.

Hector launched himself out of the tube, and Karkash didn’t see him until the last moment.

Hector caught him with a full bear hug. At this range, the magnetic field around Karkash was too strong for Hector’s metal to accumulate properly, and he didn’t want any metal that he could’ve made beforehand to be suddenly turned against him here; so he was weaponless, and rather than pin all of his hopes on landing an instant deathblow, the plan was just as Garovel had told him earlier. He felt for the metal under Karkash’s coat, and indeed, found it there.

Karkash thrashed, zigzagging in the air and trying to fling him off, but Hector had a solid grip on him. Hector ripped the metal undershirt out, and they were suddenly plummeting together. Karkash grabbed Hector’s arm and finally yanked him off, following up with a flash of lightning that cut through Hector’s stomach. Then they both hit the ground.

Hector struggled to stand but wasn’t yet able, as he was fairly certain that his spine and hip were both broken. Only a few meters away, he could see Karkash having similar difficulty. They were immobilized for the moment, but both men still had their arms.

The lightning came, and Hector was ready for it with a pair of iron spires. The force of the impact caused the base around each spire to explode, pelting Hector with globs of grass and mud, but the spires themselves remained standing. He didn’t bother trying to make them larger, because he knew Karkash could rip them to shreds at any moment, so instead, he went to work on something he’d cooked up over this week past--something Garovel had thought of for him.

Directly above Karkash, Hector materialized a gigantic, vertically-long chunk of iron--a mostly cylindrical tower. And at the top, where Karkash wouldn’t be able to see, Hector created a similarly giant, downward-facing spike. And what Karkash wouldn’t be able to tell while he was shredding the bottom half of the cylinder, was that the upper half of the cylinder was hollow and that an enormous spike was already falling toward him at a much higher velocity than the cylinder had been.

By the time Hector completed the trap, his spires were both shredded, and he had to eat another lightning bolt. It sent him toppling backward with a smoldering chunk taken out of his neck and shoulder, very nearly decapitating him. Fleeting sparks leapt across his flesh as he fought the muscle spasms throughout his body, still struggling to stand and keep his eyes on the enemy.

Karkash received the surprise with a scowl. The shirtless man couldn’t stop the spike, but he still managed to slightly alter its trajectory. Instead of crushing his entire body, it tore his legs off. The spike’s impact made the ground bulge up around it, flipping Karkash into the air.

And Hector had a few moments to breathe. As he recreated his lightning rods, his gaze turned to Andres and Lynnette. Huge pieces of twisted iron littered their battlefield, but that didn’t seem to have slowed them down any.

Andres had built a tall, crystal platform to elevate himself out of Lynnette’s reach. She was busy trying to destroy its foundation while having to avoid a constant barrage of crystals. So while Andres’ eyes were on her, Hector encased him in metal. It was enough of a surprise to make the man have to pause before crystals could tear him free again. It was only an instant, but Lynnette didn’t need any more than that. She smashed one of the platform’s legs, making it tilt over. Andres tried to rebuild it, but Lynn just smashed another one, and he fell. His crystals couldn’t protect him as her violet sword cleaved him in two.

Hector, however, had turned away by then, having to deal with Karkash again. The stalemate had more or less returned, but Hector had his legs back, while Karkash didn’t, so he was trying to press closer and making slow progress.

‘Behind you!’ came Garovel’s warning, but it didn’t matter.

Hector turned in time to see his own iron boulder hurtling toward him but not in time to annihilate it. It barreled into him, and again, he was sent bouncing across the ground. When he tried to stand up again, he was greeted with more lightning.

He fell back again, grounded and smoldering. He struggled to raise a fresh spire, but his arms fought him, still buzzing with electricity. He knew the next lightning strike was imminent.

And then Lynnette was there, standing over him. She took the flashing blue bolt in his place.

But the lightning broke through her violet shield.

She shrieked in sudden agony and crumpled to the ground.

“What?!” said Hector, eyes widening. “How did--?! No!” He finally raised another spire, stopping a second bolt from reaching her.

Garovel floated behind him. ‘Get up, Hector,’ he said. It wasn’t encouragement. It was a command. No room for refusal or excuses. ‘Get up and get to the bike.’

His body wanted to argue. It wanted more time to regenerate. But it wouldn’t get it. He climbed to his broken feet, ignoring his shifting spine, and scooped Lynnette up in his unsteady arms. She was still conscious but looked in too much pain to know or care what was happening.

He didn’t want to look at her wound yet. It wouldn’t help anything now. He merely stomped onward, creating more spires as he went, and finally left the immobile Karkash behind.

The crowd outside the castle fled at the mere sight of him, which was handy enough as he made his way to the motorcycle. He mounted it and made sure she fit snugly behind him with a body-fitted metal seat.

They roared out of the city.