Chapter 14 - Ignition
“What
do you mean the place blew up?!” Glo shouted, running down the street alongside
Izzac.
“I
mean the lab blew up!” Izzy replied, bounding along the ground to try and Apparently some of the
Smoke
was rising into the air ahead of them, singed carbon floating on the currents
of air heated by the blaze below it. The fire was started by a group of the
Abstract inmates in an attempt some of the
Glo
had only been back on Nova a day and he was already running off to sort out the
mess some other Noble had caused, he could never seem to catch a break. Izzy
bounding along beside him made him reminisce about their times when they used
to romp about as something of a team; Glo, Izzy, Cat and Shure. They’d roam the
universe, causing problems and generally
The
pair of nobles ran into the street where the laboratory turned detention centre
was burning, through the high fence surrounding the grounds of the building Glo
could see some of the
Glo
couldn’t spot Svari in the chaos, probably for the best. Glo glanced at Izzy
and felt his body lighten, the pair jumped high over the fence, assisted by
Izzy temporarily lowering the gravity around them so they could leap high
enough to clear it in a single bound.
Now
the pair of Nobles got a proper look at the battle going on around them, especially
at the Abstracts fighting in the courtyard. They didn’t look like they were
trying to battle their way to victory, most of them looked like they were
fighting for survival. Very few of them were wearing anything besides a ragged
pair of unwashed trousers, many of them had gruesome-looking burns across their
bodies that looked too controlled to be from the inferno lighting up the
battlefield.
“Not
fighting to kill, just incapacitate.” Glo shouted to Izzy before running off
into the fray, his arms crackling with his characteristic blue lightning and a
pistol in his hand.
Izzy
nodded and bounded into combat, her Nobility was pulsing across her as well.
The black energy rolled across her hands and up her forearms like sleeves of a
jacket. Izzac really wasn’t dressed for a fight, she’d heard the explosion from
her house and immediately run off to find Glo.
The first
Abstract swung a metal baton at her head, she caught the blow with a wet thunk
on her palm. Jumping high, she rolled over the Abstract’s shoulders and flung
the Abstract into the ground, there was a horrible crunching sound as Izzy’s
gravity-enhanced throw shattered their arm and rendered them unconscious.
She
sighed, not liking to hurt the Abstracts but she did know that it was a
necessary evil. She was set upon by another pair of the interdimensional
creatures, one armed with a baton, the other with one of the razor-sharp swords
characteristic of the Abstract soldiers. She jumped back away from the swipe of
the sword, kicking off the baton swing and flipping back through the
lowered gravity field she had created to cushion her.
They
weren’t wearing shirts, and while only the Abstract wielding the sword had the
horrible burns across his exposed skin, the other looked like he’d had hundreds
of incisions all over his body that had been quickly healed over with
heatherpruse oil.
The
pair of Abstracts bared their needle-like teeth at her, raising their weapons
in a challenge. Izzac rolled in the air and gently touched down to the ground, raising
her gently glowing hands to the pair of Abstracts threatening her.
“You
really don’t want to do this.” Izzac warned quietly, taking a step back into a
stance where she could better leap over a sword-swing.
The
pair of Abstracts didn’t listen to her warning and instead broke into a sprint
right at her, from their standing positions, speed like that was rather
surprising and took Izzy off guard. She only just had time to leap backwards
and slide along the ground, even then she didn’t get away without injury. A
thin line of red had opened on her shoulder and was slowly dripping down her
arm. It stung, but Izzy brushed off the pain, she’d been through far worse than
this.
The
Abstracts launched their attack again, leaping at her with their weapons raised.
It was only because of her Nobility that Izzac stood a hope of dodging the
flurry of blows that came down upon her, her hands glowed brighter and she strained
with the effort of flinging herself through the air so much.
Izzy
felt sweat roll down her face as she reduced the gravity around the sword
wielding Abstract that was leaping at her, they began to panic and thrash as
their momentum didn’t stop and they kept flying into the air from their
powerful jump. Izzy let them drop and didn’t want to watch as they dropped,
screaming, out of the air and hit the hard ground with an unpleasant, wet
crunch.
The
other Abstract bared his teeth but didn’t advance on Izzy anymore, after watching
the Noble decimate his companion like that, he was too frightened of the Novan
woman to try anything more. He didn’t surrender though, simply holding the
baton in defence of his person. Izzy couldn’t bring herself to hurt the scarred
man more than he already had been, so she leapt away from him and threw herself
back into the battle.
Glo
was fighting back to back with one of the Novan security guards, a glowing
shield made from blue lightning stretched across his arm while he held one of
the security batons in his free hand, also crackling with Glo’s blue lightning.
The
guard behind him was just armed with the baton but was fighting furiously in a
grand display of self-preservation. The Abstracts around them were almost continuously
battering the pair of Novans with countless blows. A sword flashed and Glo
managed to drive his shield between the guard and the Abstract’s deadly-sharp
blade, parrying the strike and forcing the blade out of the Abstract’s hand to
clang against the ground.
The
Abstract who’d been wielding the sword skittered away from the Noble, probably
for the best as Glo’s baton cracked the stone ground where the Abstract had
been standing a moment before. The metal rod bent a little under the power of
Glo’s blow, the swing would have surely pulverised the Abstract’s skull had he not
leapt away across the ground
Glo
grit his teeth and turned around just in time to receive a dizzying kick from
another Abstract, it nearly smashed his jaw and sent the Noble reeling. The
Abstract who had kicked him was one of the lucky few that was still wearing her
own clothing and although she was still suffering the ill effects of the
blocking band around her ankle, she looked ready to slit Glo’s throat at a
moment’s notice.
She
was wearing similar armour to the set Ukedideka had been wearing the night he
had attacked Glo, something in the Abstract’s cold, angry eyes told Glo that
this Abstract knew who he was. Glo’s suspicions were answered when she snarled
his name through sharp, clenched teeth and launched at him. He parried
innumerable thrusts and slashes from the sword held in her hand, this woman was
good with the sword and fuelled by fury. Her only issue was that Glo was bigger
than her and he had access to his temporal abilities.
He
concentrated for a moment and slowed time to a crawl, just like he had done
when he had helped the Abstract girl out when she was being accosted by the
group of self-proclaimed heroes. Glo glanced around himself before launching
his attack on the Abstract hanging in the air before him, she was a perfect
statue of fury and violence all balled up into the admittedly rather cute face
snarling at him.
Glo
cursed himself before slamming his baton into her chest and then on her back
before letting his concentration break and time around him resumed its natural
course. The girl howled and dropped, going still almost immediately. He’d hit
her too hard; the Abstract was undoubtedly dead on the ground, her chest was
still and her eyes closed. It wasn’t a peaceful or pleasant death, but one that
he hoped the Abstracts around them would take as a warning and that they’d back
off. Unfortunately, they took it quite the opposite way, redoubling their
brutal attack on Glo and the unfortunate security guard. The other
Novan screamed as he was cut down, a crushing blow to his knees followed up by
his neck being skewered on a sword. Glo cursed again, deflecting blow after blow
from Abstract steel. Airborne sparks
from the impact pirouetted across the ground in a fantastic light show, quickly
cut off by the stamping of feet and cries of the wounded.
Glo was being battered, barely able to withstand the
tide of Abstracts constantly streaming over him, with fists, nightsticks and
swords. He would have been overwhelmed, then Izzac dropped out of the sky,
almost evaporating the Abstract she landed on. Her dramatic entrance threw up both
clouds of dust and a rivulet of crimson from the corpse now lying crushed
beneath her feet.
“About time you got here, Izzy.” Glo panted, glad for
the brief respite his fellow Noble had granted him.
“Don’t get too happy yet, Glo, Now we’re both
surrounded.” Izzac reminded him, reigniting her connection to her nobility.
Glo nodded, he’d decided to screw his non-lethal
policy against these Abstracts. If they made attempts on his life, he’d be more
than happy to lend them the same courtesy. The two Nobles braced themselves for
the oncoming onslaught of Abstracts. Glo couldn’t help but feel some semblance
of guilt as he fought, he had seen what these people were like when they
weren’t being forced through the wringer of war. His short time with the
Guardian, Quizzical, had taught him that the Abstracts he was killing had the
ability to be good people.
On
the other hand, the numerous bodies kept falling down upon Glo and Izzac,
tremendous skills of swordplay was displayed that day. Glo’s skin was split,
cut and scratched from the onslaught of Abstracts, crimson dripping down his
body from the numerous wounds now covering him from head to toe. It was only by
his Nobility that he managed to keep himself safe.
Izzac
wasn’t faring much better than Glo. While he was simply suffering ragged lacerations
and grizzly stab-wounds, the unfortunate Noble of gravity had suffered a
devilishly harsh break in her arm that had left a horrific mountain-range of
bloodied bone protruding from her crimson-dripping skin. Both of the Nobles had
withstood so much violence that they had both lost too many drops of blood than
any human could have handled, Glo could feel his arms becoming heavy and his legs
becoming sluggish.
“Where
the hell…” Glo began to slur his sentence to his companion behind him. He took
a moment in the middle of the few words to steady himself before managing to
mumble the rest of the words, “Are the rest of us?”
“Nobles
you mean?” Came the slow response from Izzy, “Most of em’ didn’t care enough to
help. Or they were busy with their own shit.”
“You’re
telling me that Shure’s busy?” Glo breathed, wiping blood from his eyes.
“Shure’s never busy!”
“Apparently
yes, couldn’t reach him.” Izzy replied before screaming into the smoke-laden
sky as she twisted the splintered bones in her arm back into place.
Glo
was going to make a snarky comment to the pained Noble behind him, but kept his
sarcastic lips shut in respect to the woman’s pain. She was doing the same for
him as she knew just how badly he was injured too; she could undoubtedly feel
the blood dripping from his body as gravity willed it down to splatter against
the now red-stained ground.
Giving
up seemed so easy now, he still had strength in him to run away from the fight
and let others deal with the small army of furious Abstracts that had recently been
set free on the planet-city. Instead of following his instinct to run and hide,
Glo leant down and picked up a dropped baton and brandished it at the next
oncoming Abstract. The reddened sword held in the woman’s hand clashed against
Glo’s quickly raised shield, it scratched across the surface of the shimmering
blue and narrowly missed cleaving the Noble’s hand from his body. Instead, it
opened a line of streaming crimson, blood viciously sprayed from his slashed wrist and
the Abstract backed off, having thought he had already won the confrontation.
The
Noble stumbled and fell to his knees, his strength waning as his blood leaked from what felt
like thousands of slashes and stab wounds across his body. Trying to stem the
flow of blood from his wrist, Glo struggled back to his feet, leaning as gently
as he could on Izzac behind him.
“Enough.”
Glo managed to murmur as he sank back down to the ground, all of his energy
vanishing from his body as his knees hit the suddenly cold stone. Izzy tried to
steady him, saying something that he just couldn’t hear in the roar of the
battle around them.
Inky
unconsciousness threatened to overtake him, swirling around the edges of his
vision alongside a vast plane of kaleidoscopic shapes made from an infinite number
of indecipherable colours.
----------
As
Glo was trying to remain conscious, Ukedideka had reached Perception in
Imagination. He was practically leaping through the streets like a deranged
rabbit late to its own wedding, he was on his way to the Poltergeist’s guild as
fast as his already fading strength would take him.
That
massive burst of adrenaline had been sustaining him since Svari had tried to
blast him for the first time and now it was waning, Ukedideka was now beginning
to feel the full effects of his withdrawal from whatever the hell the Novans had given him. The pain of it was becoming grating, sparks of agony
writhed their way up to his legs with every footfall. Then there was the craving,
the Abstract knew that he couldn’t stave it off forever, at the moment he had a
greater purpose than looking out for more of the mystical fluid but he would
have to find more, steal it if necessary .
He
stepped briefly into the candelaum again, stepping another few streets closer
to the Guild hall , the exertion was terrible and left him shaking and sweating
in the street. The weather was not helping either; the sweat running down his
uncovered chest and back was plastered against his skin by bitter gales.
Even
through his exertion and the uncharacteristically harsh weather of Imagination,
Ukedideka managed to get to his guild, shocking the few members he passed on
the way to the guild master’s office. They all thought him dead, and to see him
in this state was as if to see him having just crawled out of a shallow grave.
He
was here now; he could send news that a battle had started on Nova and that
they needed to get their comrades out of there as soon as possible.
----------
Svari
clicked his tremoring fingers, the small sound echoing throughout the dark room
carrying with it a wave of gentle light. When the laboratory had exploded, the
power had gone out almost immediately and Svari had been thrown against the
wall of the empty cell by the shockwave . He’d cracked his head on the sheet
metal and been knocked unconscious, it obviously hadn’t been very long as he
could hear the roar of fighting pounding the burning building he was sitting in.
Now
illuminated, he could see enough to struggle to his feet by leaning against the
wall. The damage the explosion had done to the lab opposite him was extensive.
The glass had been completely blown
Svari
slowly made his way over to the window frame to knock the few remaining shards
of glass from the square hole with his black sleeve, the semi-transparent
shards hit the floor with a comparatively loud noise to the silence drowning the
rest of the room. He vaulted carefully through the window before concentrating
and dissolving himself into naught but light.
The sudden appearance of a Noble within their tightly packed ranks shocked the group of Abstracts, even more so when they were blinded by a
flash of bright light accompanied by a noise akin to a crack of thunder. Svari
walked out from the small crowd of stunned Abstracts, ignoring their grasping
hands and whines at their sudden blindness.
Another
Abstract was practically vaporised on the spot when it leapt through the air
like a tick, driving a serrated dagger’s jagged blade down towards Svari’s shoulder to
drink his blood. Svari’s reaction to the crunching leather was cat-like and
faster than anyone could have reacted to. The Noble dipped on his knees and
rolled beneath the vicious attack, this threw the Abstract off balance and gave
Svari a key moment to connect with his Nobility and click his fingers.
The
resulting laser was completely invisible but ripped through the Abstract’s
skin, leaving a great bleeding hole in it’s now ragged and torn chest. The poor
Abstract dropped to its shaking knees before the Noble and dropped its bloodied
weapon on the ground with a quiet clattering of metal on stone. Svari hadn’t
had the time or strength to stand up and was still half sitting – half kneeling
on the ground when the Abstract keeled forwards in a final display of death,
impacting the stone with an unpleasant wet noise as if something horribly
organic being dropped into a pit and left to wither on its own forever.
Svari
stood up again and turned to survey the battlefield, undoing and shrugging off
his now ruined jacket. His trousers weren’t faring much better, but he had the
decency and common sense to keep those. He balled the pile of cloth up to drop
it purposefully at his feet before rolling his thick shoulders and striding
forwards towards the surrounding fray.
He’d
let the Poltergeist escape, a mistake he knew would come around to bite him in
the ass at some point. Even in the state Ukedideka had been in he would have
the sense and the willpower to get to whoever’s in charge over in Imagination
and tell them what had been going on here, undoubtedly bringing a furious army
back with him.
The
Abstracts and Novans were slowly separating to either side of the large
courtyard, small bubbles of fighting were still going on and the dead were
innumerable. Littering the ground were hundreds of bodies of both Novan and
Abstract, Svari shook a little at the sight. He’d never seen such death before;
of course, he’d seen death in amounts nobody should have to witness and even then,
this was horribly overwhelming to the tall Novan.
In
the middle of the fighting, he could see two faces he recognised. Glo and Izzy
being battered by a group of Abstracts, each of the alien creatures leaping
around the pair of Nobles like an insect feasting on a carcass. Svari thought,
just for a moment, that he should leave them for dead. He didn’t like Glo… not
just ‘didn’t like’. He hated Glo with a burning passion fuelled by jealousy and
the endless years of being in the younger Noble’s shadow. Svari
saw an opportunity here he didn’t think he’d ever had before, the chance to
save Time and possibly even have the blue-haired man begin to harbour some
degree of trust in him.
The
plan crossed his mind and was put into action almost immediately, Svari leant
down and picked up one of the Abstract swords that had been thrown down on the
ground in the midst of the fighting before breaking into a purpose-filled run
across the courtyard-turned battlefield towards his kin.
Chapter 15 - The Beginning of a War↦
Chapter 15 - The Beginning of a War↦
Comments
Post a Comment