EBE Chapter 250 - Monsters
Chapter 250 - Monsters
Chapter 250
MonstersThe fight had been going for a minute, and Ash had already lost track of who was supposed to be winning.
Annie and Alexander were high above, trading blows in the open air above the island’s western shore. Annie’s wings beat in sharp, violent strokes as she circled, darting in and out, gleaming silver from head to toe, one arm shaped into a curved blade that caught the sunlight every time she swung. Alexander floated there, without wings or jets, just dark gray armor hanging in the sky ignoring gravity.
A dark hole in reality opened behind Alexander. A second one appeared twenty meters to his left. Annie shot through the second and erupted from the first, blade leading, the portal turning her wide arc into a straight line at his back.
Alexander was already turning. He caught the blade on his forearm, metal screeching against metal, and drove a punch into Annie’s midsection. Annie folded around the fist. MetaMetal rippled across her torso, absorbing the impact, and she grabbed his arm with both hands and pulled, trying to drag him off balance.
Alexander rotated his whole body, broke her grip, and kicked her in the chest. Annie tumbled backward, caught herself with three hard wing beats, and circled again.
From her right, Davis winced. “Ouch.”
Higher up and to the right, Augustus hovered above the rocky outcropping at the island’s edge. His spellbook floated open in front of him, pages turning rapidly. He swept his wand in a tight arc and the air between him and Alexander distorted, compressing into a visible disk that sliced through the space between them.
Alexander raised his arms and blocked it. The impact shoved him backward several meters, armor grinding against the compressed air. While he corrected, a crescent of pale energy arced up from below and to the left.
Talia swept past on the hoverbike, katana extended at the end of a swing.
Alexander flicked a hand. One of the drones swarming the airspace dove into the blade wave’s path. The crescent struck it and the drone spun away, trailing sparks.
Ash counted the remaining drones. Fifteen. Maybe twenty. They moved in loose patterns around the fight, metallic shapes the size of basketballs weaving between the combatants. As she watched, Alexander flicked his hand again and the swarm split. Two drones peeled toward Talia. Three angled for Augustus. The rest formed a shifting cage around him, cutting off Annie’s flanking routes.
Talia’s katana flashed twice. One drone split cleanly in half and tumbled toward the water. The second veered at the last moment and clipped her hoverbike’s hull. She banked hard, correcting, and the bike dipped before steadying.
Augustus conjured dozens of translucent hands that materialized around the drones coming for him. Massive, ghostly fingers closed around one and crushed it. The other two slipped through. Augustus batted one aside with a blast of force from his wand. The second slammed against his shimmering shield and shattered it. He conjured another before the fragments of magic dissipated completely.
Annie tore through two drones that were blocking her approach, claws ripping through their casings without slowing.
Another pair of dark portals snapped open. One below Alexander, one above. Annie shot through the lower portal and erupted from the upper one, dropping toward Alexander with her blade arm swinging toward his head. He caught her wrist, swung her around his body in a tight arc, and threw her downward.
She flared her wings three meters above the waves and climbed again, spray trailing from her feet.
While Alexander tracked Annie’s recovery, Talia sent another blade wave. He turned, caught it against his open palm, and let the energy wash across his armor. He shook his hand once, flexing the fingers.
One of his drones had flanked Talia while she was attacking. She drew the katana across its trajectory and split it lengthwise.
“Stop killing my drones!” Alexander’s voice carried from the suit. “I need those for Flashpoint.”
Talia’s voice was barely audible from the ground. “Stop sending them after me, and I will.”
Zane laughed beside her.
Ash didn’t. Couldn’t. She was too busy trying to wrap her head around what was happening.
Augustus was casting again. The air compressed into another disk, larger this time, the distortion easily twice the size of the first. He fired it at Alexander, who shot upward, evading the attack.
Behind Augustus, a boulder the size of a fridge rose, gripped by ethereal hands. Then they tossed it over the cliff. Two more portals. One under the boulder. One directly above Alexander.
The boulder dropped through and fell out of the sky toward Alexander’s head.
Alexander twisted sideways through the air. The boulder hurtled by, only for him to punch out with his right fist as it passed.
Lightning erupted at the impact point, and the rock exploded. Fragments sprayed outward and rained down toward the beach. Ash threw an arm across her face. Pebbles pelted the ground around her and the others.
Annie had used the distraction. She’d closed the distance while Alexander was punching rubble, and her blade arm caught him across the shoulder. He rotated with the hit, absorbing the force, and came back with a backhand that she ducked.
They separated. Circled. The drones reformed their patterns between them.
Alexander raised his right hand, palm open, pointed at Annie.
Annie threw up both hands immediately. “Assimilate!”
Lightning erupted from Alexander’s palm. The bolt crossed the distance in an instant, hit Annie square in the chest, and vanished. MetaMetal rippled across her body. Silver turned electric blue for a heartbeat, then settled. Sparks raced across her skin. Electricity crawled along the edges of her wings, popping and arcing between the metal feathers. Sparks flew from the tips of her hair.
For a moment she just hovered there, crackling.
Then she flapped her wings.
The sound hit Ash in the chest. A crack of thunder that rolled across the water and echoed off the island’s cliffs. Annie launched forward so fast she blurred. A shockwave split the water beneath her, spraying a line of white foam across the surface.
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She covered fifty meters before she could stop. Overshot Alexander by a wide margin. Her wings stuttered. She dropped a few meters, wobbling, before catching herself with frantic beats.
Annie screamed. Pure, unfiltered joy. The sound carried across the beach, where Ash and the others stood with their mouths open.
Alexander turned to her and laughed. “Do that again!” He raised his other hand.
Annie threw up her arms. “Wait! I can’t—”
Lightning slammed into her. This time she hadn’t braced for it, hadn’t called the technique. The bolt hit her in the chest and sent her tumbling backward, MetaMetal sparking and smoking.
A pair of portals opened. Annie’s tumbling body fell through the first. She erupted from the second behind Alexander, converting the fall into momentum with a single wingbeat. She raced toward his back, arm swinging at his unprotected neck.
Alexander’s entire body rotated from vertical to horizontal, spinning in place. Annie’s blade whizzed over him. His hand snapped out and caught her ankle.
Annie came to an abrupt halt with a squeal.
Alexander spun faster. Annie was a silver blur on the end of his arm, centrifugal force stretching her body outward. Her wings pinned flat against her back. The screaming shifted register.
“Stop! I’m gonna— I’m gonna puke!”
Alexander stopped, releasing her ankle as he unleashed another lightning bolt into her.
Annie plummeted.
Ash watched her sister fall. The silver figure shrank against the green of the island, dropping like a comet. She disappeared into the treeline. Cracks echoed across the beach. One. Two. Three. Four. Then the slow groan and crash of trees toppling, one after another, branches snapping like gunfire.
Ash was already running.
A hand caught her shoulder. Frank.
“Don’t, kid.”
“But my sister—”
Helen smiled warmly, eyes creasing at the corners. “She’s fine. They’re just messing around.”
Ash stared at her.
Frank was still looking up at the fight continuing above. “All four of them are strong enough to survive getting hit by a truck. Maybe even a jet at this point.”
Above them, Alexander was already engaging Augustus. Shimmering shields layered in front of the old man, while his conjured hands had raced down toward the treeline where Annie had just carved a path of destruction. The hands rose above the canopy, carrying something with them.
A tree trunk lifted from the wreckage. Forty feet of shattered wood, trailing branches and leaves. The hands rotated it, aiming it like a javelin.
The tree shot through the air, straight into a portal that appeared in its path, the exit opening above and behind Alexander. The tree erupted from it, dropping toward Alexander fast.
Alexander didn’t even glance at it. He twisted, barely, and the trunk screamed past him close enough to scrape against the suit’s plating. Bark peeled off against the armor and scattered into the wind.
Alexander continued closing in on Augustus. Drones converged from three directions. Augustus blasted two aside with a burst of wind, then sent a bolt of pure force into the third.
Alexander raised his left arm. Lightning tore across the distance. Brighter than the bolts he’d thrown at Annie.
Augustus’s shield expanded. The shimmer around him grew into a tight sphere, crackling with energy. The lightning bolt struck the shield and merged with it. For a split second, Augustus was encased in a ball of writhing electricity, suspended in the air inside a cage of his own making.
Then the sphere burst. Lightning erupted from behind him in erratic blasts that scored the cliff face and sent rocks tumbling into the water. The shield was gone. Stripped completely. Augustus was exposed, jacket smoking at the shoulders.
He was already casting again. A new shield materialized around him, but it looked thinner even from where Ash stood.
Before Alexander could reach the older man, Augustus fell through a portal and appeared in the distance, still suspended in the air.
Drones raced toward Talia. She cut one, dodged two, but the third crashed against her hoverbike hard enough to wrench her trajectory sideways. Alexander was already closing fast, having switched targets the moment Augustus escaped, crossing the distance in a heartbeat.
Talia didn’t flee.
She launched off the bike.
The hoverbike continued on its path, unmanned. Talia was in freefall, katana overhead, dropping toward Alexander. She swung. The blade wave fired at point-blank range. Alexander crossed both forearms and the energy smashed into him, dissipating against the armor.
Talia fell past him.
A portal opened, swallowing her. She reappeared directly above her still-moving hoverbike, ejected from the second portal instantly. She dropped. Landed on the seat hard, one foot missing the peg, body lurching sideways. She corrected, grabbed the handlebars, and banked away.
Annie erupted from the treeline, legs thick and squat, wings snapping out mid-climb. Leaves and broken twigs tangled in her metal hair and feathers.
She was grinning.
Talia launched a blade wave from behind Alexander. He turned, again catching it against his forearm. The energy dissipated harmlessly across the plating.
Annie raced past Augustus, close enough to touch. Augustus raised his wand and fired.
Not at Alexander.
At Annie.
Annie’s voice rang out. “Assimilate.”
Lightning from the wand struck her in the back, electricity flooding her MetaMetal. Her wings crackled.
She flipped midair, rotating until her feet were first. The borrowed lightning turned her into a silver torpedo that arrived before Alexander could turn back around. Both feet connected with the side of his helmet.
The impact rang across the beach like another peal of thunder.
Alexander launched away, spinning through the air. It was the first serious hit he’d taken in the whole fight.
He tumbled once. Twice.
Ash held her breath.
Alexander came to a sudden stop in midair. Then he rotated upright slowly.
He seized his helmet with both hands and twisted, then slid it off.
The Machine God was grinning.
He tucked the helmet under his left arm and rose higher in the air, above the others, until he was looking down at them.
“That was good.” His voice carried clearly across the water, all the way to the beach. “Now for the final test. If you can’t withstand this, you don’t get to come tomorrow.”
The wind exploded outward from Alexander.
Annie, Augustus, and Talia all threw up their hands.
Sparks danced in the air around him, popping in and out of existence. The ocean beneath him split, waves breaking outward in a ring of white foam. The sand around Ash’s feet began to vibrate. Trees along the shore swayed, branches and leaves straining away from the figure floating above.
Ash’s knees hit the ground. Her hands clenched in the sand. The weight pressed against her chest, though nothing was touching her. Her lungs worked harder. Her vision narrowed.
Around her, the others were down. Allie was on her hands and knees. Zane was on his butt, staring up. Zara had curled up, palms pressed against her ears. Davis and Yuki were holding each other, both having fallen backward on the log. Gilly’s eyes were wide, all of them, fixed on Alexander. Helen was on one knee. Frank held her up with one hand, standing through what looked like pure stubbornness, jaw clenched, staring at the sky.
Alexander’s voice rolled across the beach. “This is a glimpse of what it felt like to face Radiant. We have no idea how strong Flashpoint has become, but if he’s reached Tier 3, then this is what you’ll be facing.”
Above, three figures answered.
Annie worked her wings. Climbing against the pressure with steady beats, each one visibly harder than the last. MetaMetal receded down to her neck as she reached Alexander’s height and hovered across from him. Head raised. Ginger hair blowing wildly. A matching grin on her face.
Augustus straightened slowly, drawing himself to his full height, suit jacket flapping around him. He crossed his arms and stared up at Alexander.
Talia leaned back on the hoverbike and spread her arms out. She closed her eyes and let it wash over her.
Ash watched all of them from the ground. Whatever the Machine God was doing, he wasn’t directing at her and the others on the beach. And still it was enough to put most of them in the sand.
The word surfaced again. The same one she’d used for Annie alone, when her sister had stood over four beaten teenagers with that smile on her face.
Monsters.
All of them.