The Golden Hope
by Elliot Bowers
Chapter One
Gally sat cross-legged atop a cushioned metal block. Her friend Padraig was in another room and was trying to wake the princess from a late-day nap. Gally was far too on edge to do anything that required both patience and kindness at once. She could very well end up yelling or slapping. She wanted to do something else, was stuck staying here.
As for why the princess would nap at a time like this, it was not too hard to understand—given the degrees of sunlight. Most of the time, the low sunlight tended to make it always seem late day—the sun being more of a soft golden tone. Sunset was indeed supposed to be a time of relaxation. That was, though, the opposite of here and now. So much was going on outside—too much going on outside. There was going to be a fight with muties. She just knew it and wanted to be part of it now.
Despite the frenzy of chaos and activity outside of this house, people running and yelling and kicking up gritty sandy dust from the road, Gally was still able to stay put right here on this cushioned metal block that served as a chair. Yes, indeed—sitting around, just sitting, that took a great deal of control and discipline while so much else was happening outside. Yes, there was a hot and exciting fight about to happen. And yes, there was going to be plenty of fun to be had—the thrill of chaos and obliteration of things to kill.
But…no. For Gally to leave the girl she was charged with protecting would add to a feeling of loss and hopelessness that had been plaguing her these past few years, since coming into this other reality. This world was only occasionally violent. The rest of the time, one could simply stare out at the wastelands and not see or do much. That, and there were other dangers besides the malformed, other-worldly creatures that attacked human settlements such as this one.
Or perhaps those muties appeared in the same way she had—out of nowhere. Gally did not exactly know how she herself came into this strange and dying world. There was just no reason for her. And the cyborg-girl thought that just perhaps not even computer-minded thinkers from a certain floating city would know—not even perhaps the likes of Dr. Nova. And somehow, that flan-eating bastard was in this world as well. Of all the other people that Gally had ever known, the worst sort of person followed her here.
Strange world, strange circumstances, and there was no way to get back as far as she could tell. At the least, Gally had been able to retain her physical capabilities in transitioning from her previous existence. She was still of small stature compared to most everyone else: just under five feet tall, a lean and lithe body befitting a dancer. Worn over her body was her one-piece bodysuit of synthetic leather that fit to all the curves of her physique, knee-length boots protecting her calves, an open trenchcoat thrown over for a degree of modesty. Her dollish face was just as befitting: a pale and delicate face was a contrast to the dark hair that framed it—night-silk hair radiating from her scalp and staying at just shoulder-length.
As petite and dollishly beautiful and wonderfully sleek as Gally was, she was not at all a helpless waif. Her body was electromechanical, a body of machinery that was manufactured to have a young woman's shape. Beneath her face of synthetic flesh was a metal skull—one to protect her human brain. Her body was not simply electromechanical for any random sake; it was designed for fighting—a killing machine designed for interplanetary warfare. Gally was capable of encountering and defeating entire platoons of flesh-bodied humans and their armored weaponryIn turn, it was almost impossible to kill her. Even if her body was severely damaged, it would repair itself—slowly but surely, by way of the supply of microscopic robots that flowed through tubes inside of her body.
Her mind was human. Or at least the cyborg-girl supposed her mind was still human regardless of what some had said—especially when it came to her love of battle, that time when everything seemed to go bright-white and there was nothing to be had but the destruction of her opponents. Moments like those made her feel oh-so-intensely alive.
Of course, her large dark eyes were electronic—large inhuman eyes looking out at the world, looking at a wall…while townspeople outside were going crazy. Gally so wanted to be part of that craziness, using her body for which it was designed! Sitting here was something more befitting a plaything or item of display, not a machine of warfare.
To worsen things, to deepen the temptation, things were getting hot and exciting outside. The female cyborg heard and felt an increase in the shouts of the townspeople outside of this old house—a typical, one-story sort of brick affair with four rooms. Most everyone in this walled-off town lived in such houses. Since the temperatures seldom varied, it did not take much of a house to keep a person sheltered. It also let in all the sorts of tempting sounds one could hear.
Since so many of the townspeople were killed off in periodic attacks by random creatures from the wastelands, there were plenty of free houses in which strangers could stay, the cyborg-girl and her friends included. Strangers are usually welcome in settlements as extra company is always interesting. That, and strangers were expected to have gossip of the larger world outside of settlement walls.
Now those settlement walls were sure to need all the extra hands available to defend this town—and were getting those extra hands. That was obvious to anyone who existed in this land for even a day. There were "muties" coming to attack this town, and everyone physically capable of holding some kind of implement, they were rushing to the town's defense. And given the high level of alarm brought up by the townspeople, there was likely to be quite a crowd of trouble to be had. Probably, muties would not get through the town wall. Yet the term probably was not a guarantee. Muties sometimes did get through walls of towns and settlements.
What was once a great land of prosperity had become a lost wasteland of scattered, isolated settlements and crumbling towns. These places surrounded themselves with walls, trying to keep out the larger reality of the things which roamed the lands. Gally wondered how people could live in such a land, darkened by living nightmares. She also wondered how long they could hold out. So she had heard, there were more muties from the wastelands all the time—even while the people grew fewer and fewer.
There were footsteps coming along a short hall in this house, the steps stopping at the doorway to this sunlight-illuminated room. Said a somewhat tired male voice, "I awoke the lass. Aye, the girl's an especially sound sleeper. One would joke about the likes o' her sleepin' through World War Three. But one glimpse at this land will tell ye that sort o' thing has come to pass already."
Gally turned her head to regard the man who now stood at the open doorway—a man named Padraig. Looking at him, one would presume the appearance of just another human being. He was a lean sort of man, the thinness of his physique defrayed by the well-tailored clothes of green he wore: a business suit of emerald-colored business jacket, a buttoned starched-white shirt worn beneath, and—of course—green slacks to go with it. His tie was green, of course. Not green, surprisingly enough, were his polished black shoes. In contrast to the outfit of deepest green was his pale, lean face and his red shock of hair above it. Then there were the daggers, worn on a bandolier that went diagonally across his business jacket-covered chest: three daggers…
Those three daggers were how Padraig could survive alongside Gally and the princess through the random times of physical danger and frenzied violence that troubled them in their journey, with more troubles all the likely being ahead. Additionally true was how Padraig was able to know a little about a lot very quickly—a very observant sort of person. She thought that to be strange: how another stranger to this world could quickly come to quickly understand the various machines and social contexts of this world, though he often expressed contempt about them.
That was not all. What about that green business suit of clothes? Just as Gally never found out how Padraig came to possess those three amazing daggers, she never could figure out how his suit was always so neat, clean and flawless despite their prolonged travels. Even Gally had to wash road-dust, smudges and sometimes blood from her trenchcoat whenever they came to a place of refuge that still had running water from faucets. Gally's synthetic leather bodysuit and boots were treated with stain-resisting chemicals that allowed her to brush off blood and other spattered life-fluids easily, but not her trenchcoat. Padraig's entire outfit seemed immune to dirt and, more often these days, splatters of blood and other substances.
Given how Gally had to clean her trenchcoat often, it was a good thing that most every building they went into had running water along with occasional appliances and machines of technology that had her amazed—a testament to the technical greatness that once existed in this land. There were indeed relics of a civilization that had just recently fallen and faded, the people of the land living in the shadows of a great past, not sure of the future. Someone was coming.
There was not even the slightest whisper of footsteps when the princess entered this room. And when Gally looked at her, the sight of her always stirred some kind of feeling within her. That was because the princess was beautiful.
Princess Kyrie matched Gally in stature and body-shape, being herself something under five feet in height and with a slender look to her physique. The young woman of royalty had that lithe look of artistic grace worth thousands of paintings of elegant dancers and agile gymnasts—lean legs and flat abdomen, lithe arms and a graceful neck, her face matching in delicate beauty. From her head flowed long and glowingly pale-blonde hair, monsilk hair that cascaded behind her back as well as curtaining the sides of her face. It was lengths of hair that flowed behind her, gracefully going down to the shape of her hips. Her outfit consisted of silk shorts and midriff-baring top along with riding boots of leather that fit her legs to beneath the knees, a diaphanous open long-coat worn over. Like Gally's trenchcoat, the princess' long-coat of thin material made for a degree of covering to what would have otherwise been something far too revealing for Padraig's tastes. No matter how much of her body was exposed, one would not be able to know the true nature of the princess' physiology—her surface appearance merely a covering for what lie beneath the skin.
The princess was just as much a cyborg as Gally—if not more so. Her smooth skin truly was too smooth to be human, synthetic skin of a smooth and elastic material. It covered her myogel muscle tissue: artificial muscles over a titanium skeleton augmented with super-conductor motorized tubework. Within her torso were the components that powered her body as well as that which processed carbohydrates and nutrients for her living brain as well as reprocessing the chemical wastes in the synthesized liquid that served for her blood. Her entire body was powered by a heart-sized metal sphere that contained a microfusion reactor—similar to the very same source of energy that powered stars. Both Princess Kyrie and Gally were cyborgs, but Princess Kyrie's artificial body was of a type that looked human.
Yet to merely be a princess could not be enough—especially for a princess. For what was a princess in a time of war without magic? It may or may not be rightly called that, but the princess had certain energy-manipulating capabilities that could keep her party of fellow adventurers safe.
The technicians of long ago who designed the princess' body had integrated the ability for her to summon and manipulate massive amounts of energy. When necessary, Kyrie could reach through the fabric of reality to summon vast and concentrated amounts of nuclear-bright energy and destruction. Gally once had a similar ability with just nuclear plasma. But the princess' ability was beyond plasma. The princess' ability was also something worse, with the potential to be something far more dark and chaotic. In that her body's energy-manipulation ability came from distorting the fabric of reality itself, there were dangers in tearing holes in that fabric—the risk of opening the way for even more…things to enter this world.
There was also another cost—a cost to Princess Kyrie herself. Summoning such amounts of energy also overheated Kyrie's body to the point that the internal components would have difficulty providing enough oxygen and nutrients to her brain—making for her going into a state of befuddlement at first, then leading into unconscious.
It ought to be scientifically applied technology. But Padraig called it magic, saying that Princess Kyrie had magic. Both Gally and Kyrie knew better than to say that—how summoning incandescent amounts of energy and using it was based upon knowledge of science and applied technology. There was nothing magical about it.
Sure, Padraig knew it in a way. But he said that Kyrie's ability was the equivalent of magic and—by way of the logical rule of transition—still counted as magic. If a equals b and b equals c, then a equals c. If the princess had the ability (a) summon amazing energy (b), and summoning energy from beyond the fabric of reality was magic (c), then the princess' ability (a) was magic (c). Sometimes, Gally had the idea that Padraig just brought up that argument to try to get Kyrie flustered.
But Kyrie—Princess Kyrie—was never was flustered. The princess always had an ineffable ambiance of calm refinement in even the most trying circumstances. Yet Gally could sense an undertone of sadness and a just-so-slight quiver to Kyrie's voice when things were at their worst. For example, there was when the princess told of her father's death and how her sister—Princess Dahlia—began a harsh regime of madness in seizing power just around the time that Dr. Nova appeared.
Dalia was the other princess. Yes, Kyrie had a sister—the one who sat as the head of government. Dahlia was the one who made circumstances so difficult that Kyrie had to flee the palace upon the mountain, then having to escape the capitol city. Now they were out here and roaming the wastelands.
How long, they were not sure. Months of roaming turned into years of such traveling. Yet they were not exactly fleeing forever. They were actually out in the wastelands to search for something. Now here they were—Gally, Kyrie and Padraig.
Kyrie's eyes were looking in the same direction as Gally's—looking through glass to see what was happening again. "So it seems, we come to the outset of yet another attack upon a settlement. Gally, I again insist that there was once a time in which such uncouth and atrocious acts of wanton savagery were kept to a trifling minimum in the land." Kyrie looked out the window. "Once upon a time, threats such as those upon this settlement would not have existed."
Said Gally, "That fails to matter at this time. I said it to you many times before this moment. I continue to hold to a strong belief. It is the belief that there are some kinds of trouble can be destroyed by fighting." The cyborg-girl's eyes seemed to glint in looking outside—seeing a few more straggling townspeople running along the street, townspeople carrying long copper pipes, titanium-headed jackhammers and odd-looking shotguns. They were all going to the fight—where she wanted to be. "To fight…" she voiced. Again, she so strongly wanted and craved to run from Kyrie's side and join the fray that was no doubt going to happen at the town's walls if the muties broke through. Even if they did not, Gally would be there to do something. But for now, Gally would say nothing and await what Kyrie would say. And finally, there would be the chance to get into the fight.
…
2.
…
It was the princess who broke their quiet impasse. Said Kyrie, her voice sounding as gentle as usual, "We shall ally ourselves with the townspeople. Then we shall exterminate the wasteland trash, the muties, for everyone knows that muties are the parasitic and destructive rubbish that must be dealt with accordingly to make better this world."
That was all that Gally needed to hear. A quick nod of her head made for the slightest ripple in her silky dark hair, and then she was at this room's doorway in three quick strides. It was what the cyborg wanted to do all this time and was barely holding back. Now that it was time to move, time to kill and destroy, now was the time to live for the fight.
Kyrie moved just as quickly—a girl-sized blur that trailed a green coat-tail and a streak of pale-blonde hair… Her blurring speed came to a dead stop just at the doorway. "Do not tarry, Padraig! Battle is at hand. Have pride in your skills of warfare!" A pale-trailing blur, and the princess was gone—the agility of a ballerina with a nuclear-powered body.
I'm only human, thought Padraig as he ran for the door at typically human speed—his shoes pounding on the floor and his arms swinging. It was going to be another fight. Though he wore his three blades always at the ready, he was not always mentally ready to use them. He did not want to kill. But he had to kill the muties, kill all of them, killing forever.
Fighting did not happen every time that they took refuge from the wastelands. It only seemed to happen that way. Or so Padraig liked to think. Even as he ran outside of this house, he knew that having his mind wander was not the thing to do. This was not the time to have one's thinking going elsewhere besides the battle to come—running outside into the warm orange-reddish daylight of near-sunset time, light from what seemed to be a dying sun in a fading land beyond its prime.
…
The house in which they had been resting was located near the edge of town as it was where strangers were usually allowed to stay, so there was not far for Padraig to run. Only the most trustworthy and valued of townspeople and settlers were allowed to stay near the center, where it was presumed to be safer—farthest from the walls of the town. At least this made for there not being too far to run when approaching the town wall. And the most brutal coincidence of this situation was in how the worst of this latest mutie attack came from the section of wall closest to the house.
While he was physically running with the townspeople, he was still mentally taking strolls back and around to the rest of his situation in thinking about it. Nowadays, it was getting to be as if every settlement they went to was one that came under attack from those damned things—those muties that roamed the wasted landscapes between the towns and settlements. Forget about most all of the cities, forget about factories, and forget about places of technological development; those places had fallen to the muties long ago. And so long as there were settlements still around, the muties would just keep attacking… They would keep attacking until every place where people lived was overcome and obliterated or until the people became muties themselves.
…
The city wall itself was only half a story tall and made of bricks, but that was usually enough to keep muties out—since those deformed beings were not often smart enough to contrive means of going around or over such obstacles. Muties were as physically grotesque and as malformed as their minds, or what they had for minds: seldom able to think beyond destruction, even if some of them could talk in some kind of rudimentary language.
A person could say that muties were generally human in appearance. But that was the same as saying that a fried piece of six-month-old steak had a generally bovine appearance. Muties, they were something different. They had two arms and two legs, again generally speaking. And they tended to have heads, just as humans would. But that would be it. More than a few people saw muties with an occasional extra limb or two growing out of where it ought not, growing through the tattered clothes they still wore as if still human. Some muties had heads that looked squashed down and sideways or necks with extra organs of sight. Then their was their skin: often thick and looking a ridged and crusty appearance, chunks of lumpy skin, sometimes looking grayish and dead as if cancerous and decomposing. If muties still had brains or some other organ that served the same purpose, the trauma of being so deformed would have challenged their sanity and what little humanity they had left.
If luck was at all merciful in creating muties, then it was in how they had almost no minds beyond a core urge to kill everything that was not them. Then there were times when muties did show something like thought processes beyond kill-kill-kill. With all the sounds of violence happening outside the town walls and people getting ready, there was plenty of noise to be had, filling the ears and the mind with the idea that ultra-violence was going to conquer the situation.
And finally, Padraig's slow human-meat speed brought through the crowd and over to where the cyborg-girl and the princess were standing: at the large metal sliding-doors that served as the town entrance. Then again, the princess was also a cyborg; Padraig sometimes forgot about that. Ah, but soon enough, he would be brightly reminded of that fact—the fact that Kyrie was also a machine—with all the abilities of a synthetic body. Gally would be doing more of the same, dashing madly about to obliterate her enemies while Kyrie resorted to her energy manipulation abilities.
All Padraig had to rely upon were the three blades, set in the bandolier worn diagonally across his chest. He sucked in a few quick breaths before trying to talk to Gally and Kyrie. Though taller than both of them, the two were due a great deal of respect and permission. "So… 'Tis to be the usual plan, eh!" shouted Padraig above the noise. Then he remembered, again, that Gally and the princess had hearing that went somewhat beyond the human range. "We go out and slaughter the whole lot?"
"Violence is necessary! It is certainly the only plan for this situation!" shouted Gally above the noisy chaos. The loud enthusiasm of her voice was even more than a bit for carried. And the toothy grin on her face matched her desire for what was going to pass, a dazzling sort of desire for the violence sparkling in those big eyes of hers.
Padraig did not necessary like that sort of look. Nevertheless, Gally was right. Violence was the only plan. When it came to muties, there was no such thing as negotiation—even in cases when they demonstrated a rudimentary intelligence enough to speak just a little. He had the idea that some groups of muties were maybe people at some point before something happened to them.
The princess' beautiful and sonorous voice then sounded out. "To the front, lieges of mine! We shall make glory of this day yet. Kill them all!" Then there was the shape of her and Gally leaping upwards to land perfectly atop the wall. There Gally and the princess remained standing in waiting for the third member of the party.
Padraig had to do things his slow meat-bodied human way, climbing up one of the bolted metal ladders set in the town wall while the synthetic-bodied females had gone quick way. He still felt humanly inadequate in not being able to leap like Gally and Kyrie. Nevertheless, living in this strange and physically demanding land for some time now gave him the physical strength and agility to quickly clamber up the ladder easily enough. There was one way in which living in this strange land did not strengthen give him, however: He still took to having some kind of shock upon seeing muties.
When atop the wall, he saw them—about twenty of them. There they were, all along the ground and in their malformed non-glory. Their chunky, miscolored flesh and assymetrical bodies were all in frenzy as they hobbled about, dressed in the ripped remains of human clothes, bashing at the wall with improvised implements. Some of them were using those rusty pipes and tied-off lengths of thickly heavy cable from who-knows-where, using those for cudgels while others had sharpened pieces of bone. Dead bones would not likely do much damage to the brick-work of the walls… Again, muties were not exactly the brightest creatures in the land. A motley kind, the muties were parodies of humanity, physical mockeries of the people that they sought to destroy.
Not today, though. Gally took off her trenchcoat to let it go fluttering down behind the wall. Doing this exposed her slender body, outlined with form-fitting synthetic leather—a figure of deadly grace as a mad gleam came to her large dark eyes, her mouth making for a toothy grin. She leapt down from the wall. Of course, the cyborg-girl did so in a way that killed at least one of the muties—landing squarely atop the shoulders of one of them while kicking downward with her footwear. That maneuver obliterated one of the muties in a splash of dark fluid that spattered against the wall itself.
While several other muties stood around surprised, Gally did them the service of blasting open their chests with several kicks. The way she saw it, muties were not even people. Muties were just creatures to be slaughtered, and the cyborg-girl was acting appropriately.
But not for everyone. In that muties looked like distorted versions of humanity, it at least gave Padraig some pause. Well, Hell, he thought, going into the mercy train of thought, I'm just putting the ugly bastards out of their mindlessly painful existence. The man in green business suit then lowered and dropping himself down from the wall. When he was able to stand again, he was sure to begin moving well away from Gally. The way she became sometimes, she could easily obliterate him along with the muties.
Speaking of obliteration, Gally's attacks were beginning to rack up heaps of kills. Her legs kicked this way, arcing that way, and sometimes there were sharp lunging movements in which her fists and arms were through muties. The cyborg-girl was now a machine of killing and destruction of life—mass producing death in clusters of two and three now. There had been just about two dozen muties around here. Now the cyborg girl was rapidly making it to just about a third of that number—thinning out the crowd pretty quickly.
She truly was a machine of death. It almost resembled dancing how her body moved, kicks and graceful sidesteps, leaning punches that involved movement of the entire self. It was a reminder of why it was called martial arts—beautiful but warlike. Now Gally truly was a machine of fighting, of warfare. Every one of her movements resulted in at least one mutie being made dead in a very horrible way. Chunks of flesh and spatters of dark mutie life-blood spattered and splattered every which way, bodies falling a-plenty. For every two that tried to get at her, at least three more were turned to butchered meat. A human being would have easily taken on some kind of exhaustion from crushing and mutilating, murder and slaughter. Not Gally.
Twelve yards away, Padraig was just then squaring off against some of the muties himself. "Do ye want to tangle with me?" he asked, regarding the muties that began to close in. "Do ye truly want this?" Of the three daggers in his possession, he only drew one of them—the right-hand blade. Doing so suddenly made him feel slightly electrified—as this particular one always did. The feeling began to build… "Then ye want death!"
When he whipped the blade across in a horizontal slash, he did not actually touch any of the muties with it, because there was no need to do so. Matching his slashing motion was an arc of florescent green energy. That slash of energy fluttered brightly and hotly in the direction of some muties.
Suddenly, four muties facing him had their torsos burnt carbon-black and stiff. Their legs collapsing to the dirt while their heads and upper bodies were still alive, for now. Smoke from charred flesh hung in the air over them.
Now he would have to wait for the blade's potential to build, that electrifying feeling beginning to build again. While that electrifying feeling was building up again, Padraig drew a second blade with his left hand and began to approach more muties. Now the second blade could not perform distant attacks, but the person holding it was able to cut faster than an eye-blink.
In fact, it barely seemed as if Padraig moved. It seemed as if he merely twitched his left shoulder. But suddenly, there were two muties with their heads sliding off of their bodies. The other ones looked confused before two more had their own heads fall off of their necks, dark oily fluid jetting from the neatly severed neck-stumps.
Ah, but the battle had just freshly begun. Gally was continuing to decimate small crowds, turning and kicking, lashing out and almost dancing through the gore and slaughter. Padraig took to slashes of the blades. They were well on their way to having a victory.
This vicious frenzy of pain and death attracted even more muties from elsewhere along the town's wall. They came in all sorts of way, hobbling and trampling, whooping and hollering in all kinds of ways. "Elkric, oblamah! Orp-orp-tantafallap! Elkyakraha!" they went, snarling and growling in that gibberish. If it was ever a human language or even a language that ever belonged in any known world, no one really knew. "Gonfle-e-e! Pu-u-lg!"
God damn this, thought Padraig even while his right-hand blade filled him with a feeling of power and strength beyond what he ought to have as just a meatbag human. He made a movement that just looked like a flinch, his left shoulder just barely moving. Almost instantly, the three hobbling freaks running at him became separated at the waist.
That was because the second of Padraig's blades was a time-cutting blade. People always talked about cutting time for one thing or another. This blade actually did that, slicing through the fourth dimension. Padraig had the idea that it was made from the metal of a starship but could not be sure.
A glance to his left showed Gally sitting astride one of the fallen muties, her thighs clasping the fallen victim's torso while her deceptively slender arms moved to r-r-rip off the head—the dark oily fluid of mutie lifeblood spattering and spraying from the neck stump to wet the earth. She threw it, the severed head being hurled to strike another mutie that still had its head—temporarily. The impact of the hurled object resulted in that mutie's head exploding in a spray of contaminated flesh and dark life-fluid.
Unfortunately, Padraig so happened to have seen that particular development. He did not need to see that, just as he did not need to see the very ugly man-like creatures beginning to rush at him when he was not paying attention! Then he felt a wash of uneasy warmth coming from behind, making him give pause. It also made most all the muties give pause.
The princess was beginning to summon that energy—as was done to finish off most every battle. It began as a slight feeling of heat at the back. The already slow-warm air had just become a bit warmer. A flash from above, and a bright-hot flare of ragged energy flashed diagonally downward from above and plowing right into about six of the deformed enemies moving in this direction…turning them into tumbling chunks of burnt corpses.
It was Kyrie, standing with feet apart atop the wall, her lithe arms outward and her hands stilled in a gesture of thrown energy. The princess then began moving her fingers in a complicated way that made for slow blurs as the fabric of reality was being warped and manipulated—a strange sort of feeling overcoming oneself as the air heating up, a glowing sphere of energy that swirled with eerie energies… Kyrie then shoved with both hands, and there was yet another outwash that flared downward.
Something about the flaring blast of energy made Padraig feel deathly afraid. That brightly intense flowing energy was as beautiful as it was deadly. Wherever it would touch, it would incinerate. And it was far too bright for him to look at for even part of a second, making him look away and cover his eyes.
Similarly, the muties were shocked and stunned by this show of energy. If they had brains enough to run, intelligence not quite being their strong suite, they would have. They should have. Of course the dumb idiots stayed there. Most of them were just standing there as they were overcome with the wave of intensely burning energy. The six remaining muties still alive and dumb enough to keep running in this direction were suddenly not alive. Well, they were running.
Now they were dead—no doubt about that. Chunks of charred mutie flesh crumbled and tumbled to the hard grassy ground which was—strangely enough—untouched by the intense heat. Amidst the broad swaths of mutilated and charred bodies, there were now even more dead. Gally stood there grinning, her hard little teeth glinting. Padraig stood there and was feeling slightly sick.
Atop the wall, the princess lowered her arms. "It is…done…" came her weakened voice, her words almost lost to a sudden breeze. This princess then did her best to land gracefully from a leap down, getting down from the wall. Standing again and beginning to walk on weak legs, Kyrie went towards where her allies stood. But it was not even six steps before there was her falling to collapse on her left side—her thin long-coat blanketing her body, her long pale-blonde hair splayed out like a white shawl.
The safeties inside her body had forced her into shutdown to deal with the severe overheating. Those safety measures always activated whenever her energy-manipulation abilities were over-used—or simply activated when there was no longer seemingly in danger. So far, almost every fight fought by Gally, Princess Kyrie and Padraig was met with success. It was success and victory that came at a price. For being able to summon beautifully terrible flares of energy that heated the air and disintegrated enemies, it in turned cost Kyrie her consciousness. Then it almost always sent her into a faint of temporary death.
While Gally was just beginning to snap out of her battle frenzy, blinking and looking somewhat lost, Padraig was already running to Kyrie's aid, running at that pathetically slow human speed. He sheathed the two blades and snapped the sheaths shut before going to his knees next to her. His fingers shook as he carefully spread lengths of her hair away from her face, her mouth parted and very hot breath coming from her mouth. It would not be safe to touch her body with bare hands for more than a little while. Even brushing her synthetic skin with his hands made for searing hotness along his fingers. "Somebody! Draw water, please!" he shouted over the wall. The stress of the situation thickened his brogue.
Both Kyrie and Gally could recover from the most terrible damage to their bodies thanks to the billions of nanobots flowing through tubes in their bodies. Still true was how Padraig was always deathly afraid that Kyrie would push herself too far. Or the stress alone from seeing Kyrie do that to herself would kill Padraig.
The first shouts came from the wall from which the people watched the ending of the mutie invasion. "Witch!" shouted some of them. Now that started up an entire mess of jeers and chants of hatred agasint Kyrie. "It's a witch! World-destroying power! Witch! Witch! Witch…" Thank goodness Kyrie was unconscious and unable to hear the hatred against her.