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Chapter 13: Not In This Alone, Kad
Praetorian Earth, five minutes later
“I-I’m telling you the truth! His
fortress is just two miles that way! I swear it!” The Praetorian
soldier shouted, dangling several hundred meters above the bay where
Valor Bridge was on Primal Earth.
The man in brown, holding him by his right ankle,
stared at him intently. He wasn’t lying, which was a plus.
However, Kadmon was hardly in anything that could be considered a good
mood. “I believe you. However, you know that I’m here, and
the last thing I’d want would be more of Tyrant’s men
coming to interrupt my job here. I would hope you understood, but in
truth I don’t care either way. Goodbye.”
A look of pure terror spread across the
soldier’s face, “No! Please!” The hero’s arm
swiftly elevated above his head, then shot back down, catapulting the
helpless soldier into the water below. Without even looking back, he
took off to the east. He would storm the fortress, kill anything that
got in his way, and return with Sera before the night was out.
Kadmon stood in the ruins of Praetorian
Earth’s Kings Row. A large raised portion of Oranbega had gutted
the district’s center. It clashed against the more modern
architecture of the zone around it, sticking out rather plainly against
the destroyed buildings. His eyes burned with brilliant green flame as
he looked upon it. Sera was in there, he could feel her mind reaching
out, trying to find a means of escape. Ombra was there too, but no
longer did his force cause that sickening sense of vertigo. Now it
awakened a terrible rage deep within the hero, one that he struggled to
suppress just enough so that he could think clearly. Between him and
his friend, there were scores of armored ghost warriors. Lightning
struck into Kadmon’s hand, and Sturm gained form from it.
From within the citadel, Kadmon could hear
Sera’s mind calling for help. He could hear her crying, wishing
that she had the power to resist the spell she was being used to fuel.
Across the expanse of the psychic plane, the swordsman did his best to
answer her. “I am coming. Nothing can or will stop me, of that
you can be certain. I need only for you to hold on, Sera. If I know
that you have hope, it will give me all the power that I need to tear
this place to pieces.”
Though quiet at first, her answer came to him.
“Kadmon, I don’t have the strength that you do. With what I
have I can’t hold against Ombra’s magic.” He could
hear her sobbing against the background noise of her troubled mind,
“I have faith, though. I believe in your strength, and that is
all that I need to continue on.”
“That knowledge brings me no end of joy. I
will give you a gift, something to help you hold onto your faith. Open
your mind to mine, allow my thoughts to mingle with your own, let my
strength sustain you. Have no fear, take all the power that you need
from me.” The instant his message reached her, there was an
interruption in the flow of power exiting the ancient walls of the
risen city. Prima Ombra could tell something was wrong. No, he knew
that more than simply a vague ‘something’ was wrong. The
monster that was Kadmon’s duplicate could feel that his plan had
just run into a major snag, to say the very least. From the mound of
rubble where he now stood, Kadmon counted a dozen armors guarding the
entrance. The only thing that stopped him from charging then and there
was the familiar crack of a portal opening nearby.
“You didn’t think we were going to just
let you do this alone, did you?” The familiar snarky voice of
Jack Zodiac came out over the portal, “Seriously, why would we
just up and let you have all the fun?” Behind him stood Feral
Kat, Tayuya, Stampead, MadBorg, Thomas Vesper, Atomic No. 90, Max
Kampfer, Miss Informed, Icey Guy, Mjolnir, Dbomb, Thor’s
Assassin, and no fewer than a dozen other heroes. “Honestly,
storming a fortress by yourself? That’s reckless even for a
Scrapper!”
Kadmon didn’t acknowledge him for a minute. He
was still thinking of the best way to get in there by himself.
Unfortunately for him, ignoring the people behind him wasn’t
going to make them go away. “I don’t need help.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve got it now,”
Stampead said, slapping the shorter hero’s shoulder, “This
is one of those once-in-a-lifetime fights, Kad. I don’t know
about all of these guys, but you know I can’t pass up violence on
this scale!” There was a grin with a touch of insanity on
Stamp’s face. This, he knew, was par for the course, of course.
Kat stepped up next to Stampead, “That’s
right! Besides, I love these hopeless causes. So you should just stop
being so dramatic about this and lets get on with it!”
Behind his muffler where he knew no one else could
see it, Kadmon smiled. It was good to have friends. “All right,
fine, if you guys really won’t leave, I guess you can come along.
He only has until the full moon drops behind the horizon to complete
the spell, and I’ve already tripped him up.” He looked up
at the sky. Cloudless. That would have to change. “I expect the
inside is going to be just as well guarded as the outs-“
“Blizzard!” All eyes turned to D, who
had run forward and cast a storm of ice spikes onto one of the guard
groups. Understandably, they weren’t happy about that. As he was
leaping away, Dbomb caught a fair amount of fire and fell to the ground
not far from Kadmon’s feet. “Hey! Throw me back in there, I
wanna show them one of my other tricks!”
A vein popped out of Kadmon’s forehead.
“Well, there goes any semblance of surprise.” With no small
amount of annoyance, he picked up the fallen blaster, “Believe
me, I had every intention of throwing you back in there whether you
asked me to or not. Happy landings!” His throw was spot on,
landing D right in the middle of them. What happened next, though, he
didn’t expect. A fiery bird exploded toward the sky, and where
its tail feathers brushed the ground, he saw Dbomb running out of the
mass of now-melting armors. Kadmon blinked in disbelief at what
he’d just seen, but decided to simply forget it for now and get
back to the task at hand. “Alright gents, lets have at ‘em!
I have no regrets!” The mass of heroes rushed down over rubble,
scything through whatever armors remained. The ones stationed
outside, they discovered, weren’t bound to a summoner, and as
such, when destroyed, stayed that way.
Chapter 14: Earth-Shaking
The ones inside were a different story. Several
heroes broke off and engaged the minions while others, led by Kadmon,
continued on through the fortress. Four summoners barred the path,
complete with their array of armored fiends. Tom stepped forward and
created a trio of explosive semi-sentient energy balls. In a flash of
blinding Kheldian light, three summoners ceased to exist. Both
Thor’s Assassin and Mjolnir electrocuted the last into submission
simultaneously. Two more summoners came out behind them, but were
brought down in a hail of gunfire by, what looked to Kadmon, like
Council troops.
“I just seem to be getting all kinds of
support from sources I never asked.” Kadmon grinned at the Nictus
leading them, “Why did you decide to help me, Requiem?”
Requiem looked at him and shook his head,
“I’m not here to help you, hero. I’ve come to make
sure that your other self doesn’t make it back to my Earth.
Allowing him to do whatever it is he’s planning is certain to be
detrimental to my plans.” He gestured to his soldiers, many of
which were carrying large backpacks, “My men will be destroying
this fortress. If you value your continued existence, I’d advise
doing whatever it is you came here to do within the next hour and a
half, or so.” With that, the Nictus walked away, and Kadmon
double-timed it down the next corridor. “Alright, get those bombs
set near the power crystals, teleporters, and anything else that looks
important! Get to it!”
A man in a white mask appeared from nowhere to block
their advance. “Just as I expected, here you are, Kadmon.”
Before his sword was even drawn, a boot to the head sent the wraith
flying to the other side of the room. “Kampfer!” Garlanus
shouted, “If you wish your own total destruction, you
should’ve just said so!” The ground around the Ordinator
caught fire. A blast of dark energy flung the assassin into a wall.
“I don’t have the time to waste on a
small-time assassin, so I’ll let Max have your head for a
trophy,” Kadmon continued on his path, an unstoppable force of
devastation, followed quickly by half a dozen more heroes. Garlanus
attempted to teleport after them, but was quickly knocked down to the
ground again by Max’s titanium foot.
In the casting chamber, Sera took in her
surroundings while considering her options. Kadmon was decidedly closer
now than he was before, and the flow of power to her was now
substantially greater than the energy being sapped. The chains that
bound her arms didn’t feel very heavy at all anymore. Beyond
that, the only truly threatening being in the room with her was Ombra
himself. One of the wizards walked over to her with a ceremonial knife.
If she was going to act, now was the only chance she would have. Sera
took a deep breath then exhaled the loudest scream she could. The
entire room shook under the force, and the wizards around her were
thrown from their feet. The knife clattered to the ground, and was soon
smashed by the pylon that had once held the chain around her left
wrist. The chains themselves had shattered under the force of her vocal
cords.
As the nearest wizard moved to stand again, the
singer planted a foot squarely in his chin. The force of the blow
rocketed the unprepared wizard skyward, far higher than she knew to be
physically possible for herself. By now, two other wizards had gotten
to their feet in spite of the rumblings. With a grin and a laugh, Sera
put her training to good use. The one on the left found himself flying
into the sacrificial altar. There was enough power behind the kick to
send him flipping over and off a sizable cliff into the water below.
The other had enough time to summon one of his armored minions.
Unfortunately for him, another shout from the singer removed all the
structural integrity from the animated suit of armor. A solid kick
turned it into shrapnel. Two more rose to take its place, but were
drained of all semblance of life as Sera unleashed a wave of black
energy, disintegrating some of the surrounding ground and killing the
wizard from the shock alone.
“My, my. Something has lit a fire under you,
hasn’t it?” Ombra hovered down from his high pedestal,
“Where was all this fight earlier, I wonder?” His feet
touched the ground, and black smoky energy curled away from where he
landed. Each step toward Sera produced more, “Do you think I
don’t know where it came from? I’m not so dim as you might
think.” He stopped for a moment and looked around, “What
the HELL is that noise?” The ground under him convulsed under the
force of a second Liquefy, and launched him high into the air. Instead
of crashing back to the ground as his wizards before him, Ombra hovered
in the air a moment and waited for the rumbling to subside. “I
hope you realize I’m going to have to hurt you badly for that
one.”
“You were going to kill me anyway, so I figure
I don’t have all that much to lose here,” Sera quipped,
picking up a chunk of the pylon she was chained to mere minutes earlier
and throwing it at Ombra, “Just what are you trying to do,
anyway? Why is it so important for you to get my blood?”
Ombra caught the rock, and hovered down to a few
inches off the ground, “You’re standing in it. This room is
actually the cockpit of an old Mu airship. It has the destructive force
to bring almost anything to its knees.” He began laughing a bit
at this, “It is my desire to use this to take your world before
that fool Tyrant can marshal his forces for a full invasion.” He
crushed the rock then landed. The air near his hand became colder than
solid nitrogen for a moment then formed into his sword, Garm.
“Anything else you want to know before I slice you to
pieces?”
“Just one thing.” She said.
“And that is?”
“How does the ground feel when I do
this?” A third casting of Liquefy rocked the room, bringing parts
of the ceiling crashing down and forcing Ombra from his feet a second
time. Through the new holes in the roof, she could see clouds forming.
It looked like a storm was brewing.
Chapter 15: Tastes Like Burning
Max tossed his undead opponent through a stained
glass window, and followed quickly after. Garlanus swung his katana to
meet the leaping hero, but was stopped as the zombie jumped off of the
sword, kicked off from the ceiling, and smashed the wraith into the
ground with his own weight. “Don’t you ever get tired of
getting beaten up? Honestly, I don’t really where you learned
your assassin skills, but whoever taught you them, well, they
must’ve REALLY sucked at what they did.”
The Ordinator teleported out and away from the
soldier, stopping atop a statue, “My master was one of the best
killers of men ever to walk the face of Primal Earth. Unfortunately,
dying doesn’t do much for retaining one’s skill.” He
leapt from the statue just before Max turned it to rubble with a
hydraulic-powered kick. “How did you die, if you don’t mind
my asking?”
“I stayed in an exploding volcano.” Max
responded, just before throwing the statue’s head right where
Garlanus was standing, albeit hidden by magic, “The rest of my
team fled the instant the self-destruct siren went off. I wasn’t
exactly superhuman, so I wasn’t fast enough to reach the exit,
and I knew it. So, I stayed there and stood my ground to the bitter
end.” A sword blocked his titanium foot this time, “Perhaps
you should’ve trained harder when you were alive. You
might’ve retained something more when you came back.” The
other came up and over, striking the assassin’s head and knocking
him clear through the wall. “How did you die?”
He stood back up from the impact, dusted himself
off, then collected his sword, “I was killed fighting a demon.
The monster wasn’t exactly corporeal, so I couldn’t hurt
it. Unfortunately for me, it could hurt me.” His sword swung out,
but was caught by the flesh-and-blood hand of Max, who quickly pulled
it from his grip and threw it away, “Well, I came back as you see
me, was released from my place of death by a wandering spell caster,
and was promptly picked up by Ombra during his very first excursion
into our Earth.” He vanished and quickly dove past the martial
artist, “I do not intend to stay Ombra’s servant. There are
hundreds of people who would’ve filled the role that girl is in
perfectly, but she has something special,” As swiftly as he
could, Garlanus collected his sword, “She has a guardian angel
who is willing to swim through a sea of blades for her!”
Max’s titanium fist rocketed through the air, smashing fully into
the wraith’s face, but not before the katana pierced his chest,
“Kadmon is Ombra’s match. Their battle will tear this place
apart more surely than any amount of explosives. I would advise
returning back through the portal that brought you here. I’ll be
taking my chances with it myself.”
Elsewhere, a blast of Nictus energy tore through
several armors, sundering them with its awesome force. Requiem’s
soldiers were notably uneasy being surrounded by as many heroes as were
in the room, but a temporary cease-fire was in effect between them as
they worked toward a common purpose. A Warwolf pounced on one of the
summoners, tearing him to shreds with its powerful claws. Several of
the wolves had been let loose, and they had served their purpose
admirably thus far. Those few that actually got past them were
destroyed utterly by Requiem’s own dark power. The bombs were
almost all set now. Then it would be time to pull back his soldiers to
fight another enemy another day.
“Kadmon, none of us can see in there.”
Atomic No. 90 said, doing his best to peer down a totally lightless
hallway, “Are you sure she’s down this way?”
Kadmon ignored him for a moment. He, unlike his
companions, could see perfectly in the dark. He thought a moment on
what he could do. “Aidan, give me your lighter.”
“Err… All right…” Aidan
eyed him suspiciously, “Wait, you’re not going to set
yourself on fire, are you?”
The swordsman turned to him, “What in the name
of heaven would make you think I would set myself on fire?”
90 scratched his chin, then said, “Well…”
A party three months earlier
“Hey guys, come here!” Kadmon yelled,
waving his armored arm in the air, “All right Jack, light
me!” The wizard shook his head and tossed a fireball at his
friend, as requested, “Hahaha! That was friggin’
AWESOME!” The fire didn’t last long, and everyone looked
like they were about to return to what they were doing. “Do it
again! Let’s try to make it last twice as long this time!”
This went on for two hours.
Present time
“That was at a PARTY, Aidan!” Kadmon
growled, “I just want to light a torch with it so I can lead the
way! I’m NOT going to light myself on fire!”
His fellow hero, though skeptical, complied,
“Be careful with it, it was a gift from-“ Before he even
finished, Kadmon grabbed his hand and forced the lighter into his own
chest, setting his costume aflame. “I thought you just said you
weren’t going to light yourself on fire!”
“I said I wouldn’t light myself on fire. From my point of view, YOU set me on fire!”
Atomic No. 90 groaned and looked at Tom, who simply
shrugged his shoulders, “Fine, it doesn’t really matter.
Just don’t expect me to ever loan you my lighter again.”
Kadmon chuckled, “I’ll just have to take
it next time. Anyhow, follow me, we’re going in.” The
hallway illuminated as the burning hero walked through it, some of his
closest friends trailing not far behind. With his mind, he was probing
the area ahead. Sera was close now, but she was in more danger than
before. “Just hold on a bit longer,” He thought, hoping it
would reach her.
Chapter 16: Dark Armor’s Limitation
Blasts of negative energy, Sera discovered, were of little use against
one who could mold darkness around himself as armor. The only time she
could get close enough to use the Nacht Fist combat style to fight
Ombra was when she could muster the magical energy for Liquefy. Her
right arm was bleeding badly from one attempt to plant a foot in his
chest. Of course, Sera knew to count her blessings that her arm was
still attached at all. If she hadn’t dove backwards when she had,
there was a good chance Ombra’s Garm would’ve sliced her in
two. That didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt terribly,
especially because the sword splintered off some razor-sharp ice shards
that had served to make the wound that much worse. Already the blood
loss was making her lightheaded. She could swear she heard Kadmon
calling to her, but couldn’t tell from where.
“Your bleeding like this doesn’t do me any good if you don’t at least try to
get some on the altar,” Ombra grinned maliciously as he walked
slowly over to his injured prey. By now, the wind was whistling loudly
through the holes in the ceiling. “I will admit, you’ve
fought admirably, but you knew as well as I did that it was in vain
from the beginning. Just give in, you’re only causing yourself
more pain.”
Sera fell back against a large stone block. Giving
in, she knew, would bring an end to the excruciating pain, but it would
also end the lives of many others. “That’s an interesting
deal you’re offering me. An end to the pain you’ve
caused.” Her right hand slipped to the block behind her, and she
smiled, “Too bad I don’t like what the fine print
says.” A faint blue glow was visible emanating from her eyes.
Ombra stopped a mere four feet from the wounded singer, “Sorry,
Prima Ombra, but a girl needs her space.” Waves of imperceptible
sound shot from the stone, blasting the construct away, “So shove
off!”
Kadmon’s increased regenerative powers were, unfortunately,
largely absent from the powers he was transmitting to her. It was a
very good thing, she decided, that she remembered to lift his Medic
device before going out for training. With her captor temporarily
unable to reach her, Sera took the time to stem the flow of blood from
her arm. It still hurt like hellfire, but there was no mistake that it
was better than bleeding to death. Maintaining the sonic repulsion
field that was presently preventing Ombra from getting close enough to
hurt her was somewhat more taxing than Sera had originally anticipated.
She hoped that her last thought as she drifted from consciousness would
reach Kadmon. It consisted of just one word. Hurry.
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