Chapter Eleven: Unleash the Fury of the Djinn
"What is this?" Salt asked. "Kraden's lab is tidier."
"It looks like this is where they store the spare plumbing parts," Eddy added. He had a point; the room Torch's dozen Djinn had entered was mostly filled with long metal pipes, although there were tools hanging on the walls that no plumber would ever dream of inventing, and rather a lot of other components scattered around the room that didn't look like they had anything to do with controlling the flow of water.
"I don't think so…" Breeze said slowly. "I'm pretty sure I saw some of this powder on the floor here in Kraden's workshop for a second or two last year."
"Only a second or two?" asked Core.
"Yeah. Then it exploded."
"Get back!" Torch snapped at Coal and Core. "Whoever was working in this room left in a hurry, which either means they were needed desperately to weld something or there was trouble on the way, which means Djinn. We've got to be close."
"Hold on," Whorl called, flapping by the wall. "This looks a lot like a diagram stuck up here… good lord… this is one devil of a weapon they designed… look, you just pull this bit here and it swings the hammer and a little explosion fires a metal thing out of here, like a blowgun with fire or something…" Whorl noticed no one was paying attention to him.
"Echo, are you out of your mind?" Torch demanded. The Venus Djinni was sitting on top of a pile of the metal pipes, doing something Whorl couldn't see from his position.
"No, just hungry."
"Djinn do not eat iron!" Torch stated.
"Djinn don't eat," Chill added.
"Well, I don't know about you, but I've been mortal for the past few hours and I've discovered just how important meals can be, and I'm quite attached to the earthy things," Echo replied. Metal creaked, and Whorl realised in the near-darkness that he was chewing on one of the pipes.
"Torch, this is a weapons storeroom. No harm in letting him munch a few, if it doesn't kill him, because that's what these would do if they were used right. Or wrong. In both senses of the word." No one blinked, and Whorl suspected this wasn't just because Djinn don't have eyelids. "…Just let him go."
It was Serac's considered opinion that Adavir had completely, utterly, and without any reservations lost it, if indeed he had ever had it, and the chances were good that wherever it was he had lost it, it was now floating out to the Great Eastern Sea, where it would sink to the ocean floor.
Fiery shockwaves ravaged the room, blackening the walls and setting what was left of the carpet ablaze. He was also hurling more of his imprisoning firewalls around the room, sealing Djinn wherever possible and letting powered torches keep them trapped. The most were still caught between the first massive fire-power wave the far wall, where the door had also been sealed off to prevent escape.
Having Psynergy back wasn't doing them any good in fighting Adavir, but at least the Djinn were much harder to hurt now that the source of their life was open to them again. A Djinni with Psynergy was as close to immortal as creatures on Weyard got.
"Isn't there any way we can fight back?" Char roared as she dodged behind the stump of a pillar to avoid another volley of fireballs.
"Yes and no," Geode replied, focusing closely on Adavir's motions.
"What's that mean?" Char demanded.
"It means yes," said Geode, using his shovel-shaped tail to hurl a chunk of stone at the Mars Adept– only to have it blown apart before impact. "…And no."
"If we could just get him to create one of those null-Psynergy torches and douse all the rest…" Gale muttered, swooping as deftly as any Jupiter Djinni ever had in order to avoid the chaotic blasts that Adavir was unleashing at will.
"Oh, yes, that's very likely, shall I ask him nicely?" Dew snapped, waiting in the slight protection of the ruins beside Char and several others. "Why am I even here?"
"Right now," said Flint, morosely, "you're as much use in battle as any of us."
"We can always hope he'll bring the room down on himself," Waft suggested as another Dragon Cloud missed Gale and blasted apart one of the chamber's few surviving pillars.
"At this rate he's more likely to topple the entire fortress," Breath remarked.
"There's got to be a better plan than just waiting around here for that pyromaniac to run out of firepower, because I don't think he's going to!" Tonic growled. "So if we can just–"
"Plan," Dew stated.
"Exactly," Tonic agreed.
"No, I mean I've got one," said Dew, sounding slightly faraway. "Yes… I think Ian would have liked it, too… I'm guessing, but if anything could work…"
"Does everyone have to keep their secret plans secret, or is it a preference thing?!" Lull barked.
"Thanks for volunteering!" said Dew brightly. "And I'm not going to talk about it where our mortal nemesis can overhear, so just help me with this thing and we'll get going."
"Dew, that's one of Adavir's torches," said Lull, eyeing the object Dew had just grabbed with her tail.
"Delicious irony, too," Dew agreed, and with a little reluctance the Jupiter Djinni fluttered up to take hold of it from the top, as it hadn't yet been lit.
"Where are we going?" asked Lull, conversationally.
Dew nodded to the other hiding Djinn in a way that said Distraction, please in a universal language, and they charged out of the minor haven like a multi-coloured avalanche, only louder. "Down, up, and around," Dew replied, and raced for the hole in the floor. They dropped through and Dew didn't let the impact shake her. With Lull's aid, they raced down the hall and further, searching for stairs back up to the throne level. It was a million-to-one chance, and everyone knows those always work.
"Something tells me that this plan isn't nearly as safe as it seems," Eddy remarked.
"It seems safe?" Core repeated. "Wow, you've got no idea what we're doing, do you?"
"Not really," Eddy admitted. "The part about coming back down to this room I get." He glanced apprehensively at the wide dish that had once held a massive fire, the one that had been blocking all their Psynergy. "But why you're packing bags into the hole in the wall, I don't know."
"It's a bit late to be trying to stop the flow of water," Vine agreed. "Partly because there isn't much of one now, and partly because this floor's flooded already."
"It's not like we're going to be able to fix things," Eddy continued.
"You'd be surprised how good Mars power can be at fixing things, Eddy," Torch remarked, checking the line that hung out of their sack-barricade to make sure it didn't fall into the water.
"And the stuff we carried out of the weapons storeroom?" Breeze asked.
Satisfied, Torch turned to smile in a terrifying way at the few other Djinn in the room. "Let's just say that there's a very good reason most of the others refused to come in here, although it's just as well that they're preparing a couple more hallways above us."
"Why can't you say more than that?" Vine asked.
"Because we've got to run very fast now," said Torch, focusing. The end of the cord flared and started burning its way up to the bursting-full bags of black powder.
Eddy grinned in comprehension. "Oh, I get it–"
Torch hit him at a run and kept sprinting, Mercury Djinn in tow. "Now as in now!"
The shocks rolled up through the entire fortress, shaking shields, torches, and tapestries from the walls and rocking the battlements to bits on the highest turrets. Dew was thrown worse than she had been since Venus Lighthouse, and with her feet still gripping the tall torch-bracket, Lull was taken to the quaking floor as well. The glassed windows shattered.
"What in Jupiter's mighty name was that?" Lull sputtered.
"I don't know, but I hope it was one of our ideas," said Dew, rolling back to her feet.
"I hate today," Lull remarked, taking hold of the torch again.
"Almost over," Dew assured her.
"As long as there are staircases to drag this thing up, it's not over enough."
Isaac was lying on his back, wondering if the world had just coughed, when he noticed the chaotic clattering of metal striking stone over and over again coming from a hallway connected to the one Ryan was leading them down. It was hard not to notice it, since the cacophony lasted for at least a minute after the shaking stopped. The Adepts looked at each other in uncertainty– had they just heard a battalion of knights fall down a set of stairs, or something worse?
"How hard – I mean, really – just how bloody hard can it possibly be for you lot to get a pile of Psynergy-strengthened gear from a treasure room to the main floor of a fortress?"
"We passed the main floor, Spring."
"…Really?"
"Yes! About twenty minutes ago!"
"Quiet, Smog, I'm talking to Quartz."
"Hello?" Garet called, and then looked around sheepishly. It seemed like a silly thing to say, but no one could think of anything better.
"Hey, that sounded familiar."
"I think it was your blaze-haired friend."
"Garet!" Corona and Ember came rushing around the corner, dragging armaments with them and leapt into the Mars Adept's arms. "Where've you been?"
"I see Bane managed to not get you killed."
"Which is a good thing."
"You've looked better."
"You've looked less dead."
"And we're including times when you needed Tinder fast or you would have been dead."
"Except for one or two battles."
"Like with Sentinel."
"Anyway, good to see you again."
"Can I keep your boots? They fit really well, or they would if they were twenty times smaller."
By this time, the rest of the Djinn in Spring's group had emerged from the other hall, several of them dragging a sort of sled made from shield on which all their weapons and the rest of the equipment they had brought on this venture were piled.
"It might not have the power it did," said Quartz, stepping up to Isaac with a longsword held reverently on her tail, "but the Sol Blade is yours again, Isaac." He grasped it carefully, feeling the perfection of form even without Psynergy rushing through its edge.
"Ryan? This is the end, right?" asked Isaac, still a little mesmerized by the shining sword.
"Yes it is," Ryan agreed, trying not to sound worried.
Isaac looked at the others. Jenna and Picard looked like they had been reunited with old friends, the Tisiphone Edge and Mythril Blade back in their hands. Ivan, Sheba, and Mia held the Staves of the Fates at the ready, Felix was again the perfect image of dour and reluctant hero with Excalibur, and Garet, his old friend Garet, was ready and waiting to incinerate things with the Fire Brand (despite its plain look when not raging with unquenchable fire). It was time.
"Show me the door we want," Isaac proclaimed.
Ryan looked uncomfortable. "That one," he said, pointing to a door shielded with a sparkling red wall. What little heroic momentum Isaac had gathered deflated.
"Unreal," Ivan muttered, poking it with Atropos' Rod and eliciting a spray of sparks.
"That was one hell of a Nova he just cast!" Char roared, hunching over and trying to cover her horn-ears with her feet.
"I don't think that was Adavir," Breath said slowly. She could feel another rumble now, more than aftershocks, and it was growing in strength.
"Whatever it was, I'm just glad that he's staying by the throne instead of coming out into the room to scorch us at close range," said Geode. "Why do you suppose that is, anyway?" Geode peeked over a jagged block that had fallen from the arching ceiling. The Mars Adept still stood on the low dais at the far end of the hall, hurling fireballs at Gale. Realising that this was an opportunity to do something so selfless it bordered on psychotic and he was letting it go by, Geode leapt out into the blazing clear.
"What on Weyard–?!" Gale snapped, seeing the Venus Djinni leave his cover.
"Distracting him, same as you," Geode replied firmly. "Or maybe wearing him down. What are we doing, exactly?"
"Wearing him down seems to be a losing strategy," Gale remarked as Adavir started a maniacally joyful Heat Juggle. "He's feeding off his own power. The power creates fire creates heat gives him power," she listed darkly.
"Geode, I don't think you should be standing there," Breath called as the Venus Djinni began dodging and rolling to avoid incoming fire orbs. The shaking was really very noticeable now.
"I know what I'm doing," he insisted.
"No you don't!" Breath yelped.
"Breath, don't distract–"
The only comparison Gale could think to make –and she was the only one who could really say what it was like, being above the blast instead of in it– was to say that if Aqua Rock had exploded, it would have looked and felt a lot like the torrent in Adavir's throne room. Water burst through the first hole like a solar flare and blasted it further, until a long canyon was cut through the hall.
The only aspect that could rival that sudden deluge was the steam as hundreds of torches were doused in a hissing storm. The room was thrown into darkness that remained until the final disastrous moment, when the damaged walls, floor, and ceiling began to give way. Light fell in through the broken roof, fragments of wall crumbled, and dust would have filled the air if not for being thoroughly soaked.
Eventually the rumbling ended. Adavir, whose dais remained untouched by the wreckage, let flames encircled his hand, and raised it to search the ravaged room. Little of the floor was uncovered by splinters, shards, and blocks of stone that glistened with wetness in the dim light. The Djinn were nowhere to be seen.
Adavir sighed. "That was worse than I anticipated," he murmured.
"Worse?" as voice groaned. "You… make sound… like it's over." A shape was crawling on top of a smashed pillar.
"Serac, aren't you? Yes, I think it is over. Unless the rest of your friends have survived this catastrophe." Adavir waved at the ruins with a satisfied smile.
"Strange," Serac wheezed. "You sounded brighter before. Your fires are out. We might not be able to cast a thing, but we've got Psynergy. You think a ton of rock is going to kill a Djinni? Or do I have to define immortal for you?"
"Nevertheless, they remain trapped," Adavir countered. "I can deal with them when I see fit."
"Most of us," Gale corrected him, fluttering down from above. "And you've got to handle the two of us now. How long before we recharge enough to really start fighting back?"
Someone knocked at a side door. Adavir gestured at it and the hinges burned red before flowing out of their sockets, letting the doors topple to the floor. A single soldier came through and saluted nervously, seeing the devastation.
"Sir," he said.
"Oh, good. Bring in the riflemen, would you?" he asked pleasantly, smiling like a snake.
Dew and Lull staggered their way down the armor-strewn corridor to the far end, where the main entrance to Adavir's hall was blocked by a rockslide. Several Djinn were staring at the stone in frustration, wondering how to get back inside, but turned as the clattering of a torch approached. "Well," Dew said, "at least we already know walls don't stop it."
"You haven't told me what it is yet," Lull muttered.
"Spark!" Dew called. "Are you there?"
"Here," said the Mars Djinni, still blinking away the shock of the blast.
"I need you to do something… improbable," Dew said, and explained her idea.
"There's no way that could work," said Spark flatly.
"Not really… but if you can even get the tiniest fraction of it started, then that'll give you room for a little bit more, and you'll keep on building on your own power until we've got our own blaze."
"That's insane," Squall commented.
"Like Bane said– at the moment of destiny, no one cares," Dew countered.
"I'm sold," Squall said, nodding.
"All right…" said Spark. "But I'm not promising anythi–"
What surprised him was how fast the process worked. Just as Dew said, Spark tried with all his might to use his Djinni power, though without one of Adavir's torches it shouldn't have been possible. And in some infinitesimal way, the Blaze of Glory began its flickering birth, because he was able to push a little further, which let him push further until a shaft of crimson-white light was shining on the bracket and red angel's feathers swirled onto it before rising up as a red-gold beacon.
Even Dew was ready to treasure this fire.
"There's a problem with the riflemen, sir," said the soldier, still standing at attention.
"What?" Adavir demanded. "The rifles are gone. As is the entire supply of blasting powder."
"What? Where could they have gone?!"
"We think they were eaten, sir." Adavir roared in fury, and the soldier waited until his lord finished before continuing. "I encountered the rest of the troops on my way here, sir. We'd like to ask a question."
"Yes?" Adavir growled.
"They're all outside now, but it's still an important distinction– are we quitting, resigning, or deserting?" Ryan asked in total earnestness.
The ruler of Lunpa turned back to his throne and slammed his fist against the back, knocking open a compartment and drawing from it the most compact blastbow any of them had seen.
"You're dying," he answered, and pulled the trigger. It would have been a supreme evil-villain line, but was rather ruined by the orihalcon blade in the bullet's path, which sent Adavir's shot careening into the darkness.
"Isn't it fun how we just never seem to go away?" asked Garet conversationally as Isaac levelled the Sol Blade at Adavir's throat.
"You're bluffing," said Adavir, not even raising his chin to keep from getting scratched. "You're impossibly weak."
"Try us. Please try us," Felix suggested.
Gale had guessed right, Adavir had been drawing strength from his own torches in a way that made his stores of Psynergy dozens of times greater than they should have been, but even now, he had consumed very little. One more firewall was produced with the flick of a finger. It wasn't strong enough to keep them sealed, but it did blast all nine heroes off their feet and several metres back.
He switched chambers of the revolver and was aiming to finish off the remarkably resilient Lemurian when a spire of ice grew from the floor, nearly capturing him as it did. Serac's Djinni power. With a shock, Adavir realised that someone else had created a Blaze of Glory, close enough that it was affecting the distant half of the hall. He quickly spotted three unbroken torches among the wreckage and lit them, fighting Spark's beacon with his own. They were quick, but Adavir had invented these Psynergies.
"Can the two of you defeat me now?" asked Adavir, though he could no longer see the Djinn. "Do you dare to enter my circle, even to save your friends? …I thought you might not. Alas."
"I will," said another voice, and a small red shape stepped within the light.
"Ah. Shine, unless I'm mistaken," said Adavir, fidgeting with his revolver.
"You are."
"What? But your brave folly gives you away, Djinni."
One of the three torches suddenly darkened as a howling wind echoed about the room. Adavir raised a hand to light it, but the current remained strong, and he had to fight to keep it alive. Another torch frosted over and was encased by ice that threatened to engulf the flame, but Adavir still had the power to try to resist that, too. Serac and Gale were being held at bay.
"One more, Djinni," Adavir taunted. "Can the might of Mars conquer a torch?" He fixed his eyes on the third, still burning strong in the darkness, and smiled.
A shining globe that reflected the ruined chamber obliterated it like a matchstick in an avalanche. "Here's a hint," Geode offered the other Djinn, still dripping. "If Breath ever tells you not to stand somewhere, don't stand there."
Spark's beacon held sway over the whole of the room, now. Adavir let his arms fall, sapped of his strength. "I'll give you a hint to my name, Adavir," said the lone Mars Djinni. "You obviously learned all about us before we ever came here. So maybe you know our battle-cry?" The Mars Djinni leapt into the air and flared, as incandescent as a red sun. "Unleash the Fury of the Djinn!"
Scarlet spirits swirled around Fury like a ring nebula before gathering and streaming forth at Adavir. One by one they dove through the Mars Adept, striking blows that left no mark but were dealt directly to the soul. The fiery wave passed, and still Adavir kept his feet… but one more remained.
As transparent as diamond reflecting the sunset, the spirit of Ian stood before Fury, an implacable champion. He strode forward, over the fissures in the stone without pause, until he faced Adavir. His fear shown in Ian's aura, the ruler shied away, but not swiftly enough. Ian raised his right arm–
Smack!
–And dealt a slap that sent Adavir sprawling. Red sparks seemed to slither out of him and take to the air before bursting like tiny fireworks. Ian turned to face Ryan, who had pulled himself up by then, winked briefly, and then faded into the dark.
The Adepts, who had recovered from the scorching collision, surrounded Adavir's prone form.
"Is he dead?" asked Garet, sounding a bit disappointed.
"No… but there's something strange about him," said Ivan, who had enough strength to use Reveal and see through the gloom.
"His glow is gone," Sheba realised. "I think Ian took his Psynergy. No more Mars power."
"You can do that?" asked Ryan, who had never seen so much power released in one place before, even when Adavir had been making one of his intimidating performances of justice. At that moment, he was trying to decide which of the Djinn had blown up the floor and which had collapsed the ceiling.
"Not that we have ever seen before," Picard replied. "It would have been a useful technique against some of the Mars Clan."
"Don't look at me," said Fury. "I was just itching to try my power out; haven't had a chance all day. That Psy-rip was all Ian."
"I don't suppose any of you know how to contact souls beyond this world? Because–"
Jenna cut Isaac off with one raised hand. "I hear something," she stated. Sheba went skipping across the jagged stones– if she had thought about it, she would have been too tired to skip, but no one was energetic enough to remind her.
At the closed entrance to the hall, she found what it was that Jenna had mentioned. "Hello? Is anyone there? We heard what happened and the blasted torch has been out for an hour at least–"
"It's been about a minute and a half, Forge."
"Do I look like a Djinni aligned with the element of Caring What You're Blathering About, Gasp?"
"There's no need to be snippy. Fury's not the only one who didn't get to use her power."
"You had that platoon back on the fourth floor. Knocked them out cold."
"Oh, big deal, a platoon…"
With a roll of her eyes, Sheba called out to the Djinn behind the collapsed door, relaying them to the proper Adepts as they came through. Another dozen arrived through the floor, having climbed and flown their way up through the variously blasted holes all the way from the flooded basements, and soon all seventy-two Djinn were allied with their Adepts.
Felix nodded at the fallen tyrant. "We should take him outside. The Lunpans are going to have to decide what to do with this one." An unusually severe look on his face, Garet hauled Adavir over one shoulder, then looked at the blocked door.
"Sheba?" he asked.
"No problem, Garet," she replied, grinning. "Unleash Ether!" A charge of Psynergy was returned to the Hero; not much, but easily enough for what his purposes. Garet raised his free hand toward the great crumbled mass of stone and mortar, and looked at the others in a way that managed to relay the statement: I told you right from the beginning this was the way to go.
"Pyroclasm!"
Gale and Geode sat on the roof of a Lunpan home that had been given to the Adepts for the duration of their stay in the city, watching the stars. It was hard to believe that the entire disaster-adventure-revolution-fiasco had fit into a single day. That day had felt longer than a hundred years of peace inside Sol Sanctum… but had been so much better (and worse) at the same time that Geode found himself wondering when they'd get to do it again.
"I'm surprised Adavir's still alive," Gale remarked.
"Killing's too good for him," Geode growled.
"Oh, don't sound like that. We won, didn't we?"
"I guess so… except for that guy Ian. I never met him, but you know how it is." Gale nodded solemnly; the sharing of memories between Djinn could be so strong that it was hard to tell which were your own. They both knew the village leader as well as Flint or Waft or any of the others.
"He did what he chose to," Gale began.
"Don't get philosophical on me," Geode said.
"You make it sound like a condiment. You're talking to me, not standing near Garet at dinner."
"That wasn't much fun either. Did you see the feast those fortress chefs cooked up?"
Gale laughed. "Well, they earned it, didn't they?"
"We earned it!" Geode protested, but his arguments had less and less feeling in them.
"We don't eat any more," Gale pointed out. "And they're still heroes." She looked up at the vibrant sky, purest darkness and light in a strange, imbalanced harmony. "Maybe this is our reward."
"Anyone can see the sky," Geode remarked.
"That doesn't mean they see it like we do," Gale replied. They rested in silence a while longer before Gale again broke it. "You were insanely foolish to go running out in the open back there–"
"All right already!"
"And brave and heroic and selfless," she went on mildly.
"We can wait inside if she hasn't kissed you yet," said Fugue, hopping through the window with Shade following close behind.
"What?!" Geode spluttered. "Jupiter Djinn don't even have lips!"
"Well neither do I," Fugue said, but in some way she still managed to place a kiss on his cheek. "Good performance today. Oh, don't look at me like that, I'm not the one with a crush on you. That's her."
"I do not! …Squall does," Gale added nonchalantly, once she had calmed down.
"Really?" Geode asked.
"No."
"Oh, Spirits above and below," Shade moaned, sagging. "Does this have to go on?"
"If you wanted quiet, why are you out here?" Fugue asked.
"I don't," Shade answered. "I just like complaining about it in the company of friends."
The three of them began chatting about the new governing of Lunpa. There were rumours floating about that Ryan was the popular choice for the village guard captain, and other rumours saying that he had locked to door to his room and wouldn't come out until they withdrew the nomination.
"What is it, Gale?" asked Shade, when he noticed she was still focused on the stars.
"Just noticing the constellations," she replied. "Like Iris up there, and Coatlicue in the north and Eclipse over that way… heroes from ages ago, still remembered today."
"Hey," Geode commented. "That one looks sort of like a Djinni."
"A Mars one, too," Fugue noted.
"What?! It's Venus!" Geode insisted.
"I admit it's the right shape, but that's distinctly my tail," Shade stated matter-of-factly.
"Do I have to toast you to explain the difference between Mercury and Mars Djinni ears?"
Satisfied that she had dealt with the others long enough for an unnoticed moment's silent glorification, Gale looked to the east, where the horizon was beginning to transform from black to faint white-blue. She smiled, soothed by the debating voices behind her, and thought: Unleash the splendour of the dawn.