Chapter Ninety-Two: The Red Miles
The sky was falling.
Waves of destructive red lightning ripped across the sky of the Obsidian Moon, illuminating the smoky lunar night with a hellish glow. Helplessly from his place of cover behind the husk of a capsized bus, the Wrathful Veteran witnessed the apocalyptic spectacle, and for a moment he was in awe of the sheer power of the fully prototyped Black Queen's fury.
Looming in the center of the lightning storm was the fully prototyped Black Queen, over a thousand feet tall and barely recognizable. The Queen's ring of power blazed like a star upon her clenched fist, and from that ring surged each new jagged barrage of lightning, escalating the deadly chaos.
A wayward bolt of red lightning speared through the apartment complex which had served as the Wrathful Veteran's headquarters, raining down debris upon the entrenched dissenter fighters.
Blood spattered across the Veteran's face as the fighter huddled next to him was brained by a chunk of falling masonry.
"What are your orders?!" shouted Burnless, who was crouched on the Veteran's other side. "Should we fall back?"
Another bolt of the red lightning punched through the office building which had stood next to the ruined apartment complex, ripping apart the building's support structure, causing it to sag sideways and crash into two neighboring skyscrapers.
"We can't stay out here!" another fighter exclaimed. "We need to take cover!"
"It is no use," replied the Wrathful Veteran, watching the collapse of the two afflicted skyscrapers. There was no hiding from the Red Miles. He then looked at all of his nearby fighters, still hunkered down behind their wrecked cars and piles of rubble, and the Veteran was surprised to find himself expending considerable energy to keep from crying. "I have led you to your death."
"Better to die free," Burnless replied, which did not make the Veteran feel any better.
"Better to not die," murmured the Veteran, too quiet for anyone else to hear.
Searing white light suddenly filled the entire world for the briefest of moments, and a deafening explosion rocked the entire district, shattering windows and shaking everyone in proximity to their very core. As the Wrathful Veteran's vision returned, he saw huge pieces of burning wreckage falling from the sky. One of the four Dersite Royal Navy battleships hanging in low orbit over the battlefield had just been gutted by the red lightning, and the other battleships were about to be next.
As the three remaining battleships were ripped apart by the Red Miles, the Wrathful Veteran could only screw his eyes shut and clap his hands to his ears to keep himself from going temporarily deaf and blind. While the world collapsed around him, the Veteran reflected bitterly on the Black Queen's willingness to kill half of her entire kingdom to hold onto power. Something was profoundly wrong with the Black Queen's brutality, but what the Veteran struggled to understand was the willingness of Existence itself to allow such transgressions against fellow living things to occur without any manner of consequence.
Well, perhaps that wasn't fully true. "I am the consequence," the Veteran murmured, flinching as another battleship met its fiery end under the Red Miles. Caught up in the end of the world, after millennia of ceaseless struggle and defeat, the Wrathful Veteran finally realized that justice was created, not inherent, and that even if he died today, others would continue what had already been set in motion.
The Veteran found himself suddenly outflanked in his battle to keep from crying, and he had no choice but to surrender. Tears streamed down his face as he opened his eyes and saw that the commandos further down the road had stopped firing on the dissenter position, thrown into disarray by the sudden loss of their naval support.
As the military's tanks tried to retreat, they were blocked by the wreckage of newly collapsed buildings, and then one of the tanks was struck by the red lightning. The Red Miles tore through the tank's metal like paper, causing the vehicle to immediately brew up in flames. The hatch popped open and a crew member staggered out, completely consumed by fire. Several nearby commandos hurried over to try and save their burning comrade, but they were too late.
The Wrathful Veteran was already breaking cover and vaulting over the ruins of the wrecked bus. "Forward!" he screamed as he sprinted into the no-man's-land separating the dissenters from the disoriented commandos, bringing his radio up to his mouth and repeating the order to everyone who was listening. "All units, forward!"
Having no desire to die huddled in fear, the dissenter fighters emerged from their crumbling hiding places, taking up the Wrathful Veteran's cry as they followed him into hell.
Dawn wasn't far off, but it was still very dark, and our ascent was illuminated only by the gentle red light emanating from my sprite body.
"Fuck!" Adam swore as he stubbed his toe on a rock and tripped, falling to one knee. "Ow! Fuck you," he said to the rock, whose only reply was to give him the silent treatment. "Stupid fucking rock."
"It's clearly out to get you," I remarked.
"This whole mountain is out to get me," Adam retorted, getting back onto his feet and dusting himself off before rejoining our hike up the steep wooded slopes towards the mountain's summit. "This entire planet has been out to get me since the beginning."
"Watch your balance, Little Knight," cautioned Inuyyak. "It'ss a long way to fall."
Inuyakk wasn't kidding. Behind us, the mountainside fell away into open air. It wasn't as sheer as a cliff face, but it was still steep enough to make falling a potentially deadly mistake. Once falling, it would be hard to stop, resulting in a long tumble all the way to the bottom, unless we smacked into a tree or broke our skull on another stupidly placed rock.
At least, that would be true for me if I wasn't a weightless sprite. It amused me to no end that I still thought like someone who was bound by gravity. Some core assumptions about reality are hard to shake.
"I know how to walk, Inuyyak," said Adam.
"Walk?" rumbled Inuyyak. "Walk. What iss thiss word? What doess thiss mean?"
Adam stared at Inuyyak like he was looking at the dumbest motherfucker in the whole wide universe. "Really?"
"They're cobras, dude," I reminded him. "They're not big on leg lingo."
"God damn it. Okay. Walking," Adam glanced over at Inuyyak, "is when you move your legs to throw yourself into a state of stable imbalance which carries you wherever you want to go. Anywhere within walking distance, at least."
"That ssoundss sstressful at besst," remarked Inuyyak.
"I think that ssoundss fasscinating," said Glimmering Scales. "Can you desscribe what it iss like to have legss?"
After a moment of what I'm sure was Socrates-level pondering, Adam answered with another question: "What's it like to have no legs?"
Scales thought about it for a moment, and I've never seen a cobra look so confused.
"As someone who has experienced having both legs and no legs," I chimed in, "let the record show that you don't need legs to be a whole person, but damn legs are great. If I had my legs back, I would caress them. And kiss them. When's the last time you've shown your legs some love?" I asked Adam, who frowned when he realized the answer was 'I have no idea'. "That's what I thought. Give your legs a kiss."
"Quiet back there!" hissed Xolotl, who was further ahead than any of us. "We are too closse to the ssummit for mindless banter."
"It's not mindless banter," countered Adam. "We actually put thought into the things we say."
"I do, at least," I said, earning a glare from Adam.
"Mindless." There was no arguing with Xolotl when he was in a mood. He'd been acting weird ever since our conversation outside the council tent. "Mindless and inane."
We made the rest of the climb in mindful silence. Mindful to some of us, at least. By the time we reached the summit of the mountain, dawn was fast approaching. Thunder growled in the distance, a low and sprawling rumble which sounded like a deity's subwoofer, and the drizzle of rain intensified into a sterner shower.
"What iss thiss?" Xolotl had stopped at the summit, and it took us a moment to catch up and see what he was looking at.
The very top of the mountain was flat and roughly circular, around fifteen feet in diameter. A cracked stone slab rested in the center, and etched onto the surface of that stone slab was the symbol of a crashing wave. Four small spires rose from each corner of the slab, each spire capped by an orb of something black and glossy which resembled obsidian.
"I'm ssure the elderss would know," said Scales.
"Or our resident sprite?" Adam raised an eyebrow at me. "You know what this thing is?"
"Um." Yes, I knew what it was, and it made me very uncomfortable. "It's unimportant."
"Unimportant?" Adam made a face while he tapped one of the quest bed's obsidian-like orbs. "Sure, some kind of altar was placed at the summit of the mountain overlooking Hyperion's Palace, and it's unimportant."
"You catch on quick." I floated past the quest bed and looked down the far side of the mountain, studying the thousands of distant points of lantern light decorating the interlocked stone dwellings forming Hyperion's Palace, carved into the mountainside. The thick stone wall protecting Hyperion's Palace, which seemed so small from way up here, was brightly lit, and I could even make out the figures of Dersite sentries patrolling the ramparts. I wondered if they had any idea what was about to hit them.
Thanks to the dense cloud cover, dawn arrived not with an infusion of color to the eastern horizon, but rather with a gradual brightening of the night into a dull gray morning light. I could hear cardinals singing to each other in the distance. All the winking lanterns made Hyperion's Palace look like a haunt for fireflies. It was beautiful, and I made sure to soak in the view before people started dying and the beauty vanished.
Nothing ruined a stunning vista like gore and screaming.
Adam joined me at the edge of the summit, followed by Scales and Inuyyak. "Now, would you look at that? Good ole' Hyperion's Palace. What a view."
"It iss a dissgussting place," grunted Inuyyak. "Our people have ssuffered greatly becausse of it."
"You suffered because six hundred years ago the Black Queen and the Black King decided you were too great a threat to Dersite supremacy to be left alone," I interjected. "All Hyperion's Palace did was sit around being Hyperion's Palace."
"Nonssensse," said Glimmering Scales. "Hyperion iss our enemy. Ssince the Time of the Firsst Ssongss, and perhapss even earlier, Hyperion hass ssent his underlingss to kill uss. Thiss iss the way it hass alwayss been."
"That may be," I replied, "but Dersites aren't Underlings. Dersites are sentient, they think like you and me, and they come from a faraway world. They don't have anything to do with Hyperion. They are here carrying out the wishes of the Black Queen and the Black King. They are just a tiny piece of a much more powerful military."
"You failed to mention any of thiss at the war council," Glimmering Scales accused me, before turning his attention to Adam. "Or during our month together. What elsse have you been hiding?"
"Remember that time when we first met and you wanted to kill me?" Adam reminded Scales. "The only reason I'm still alive is because I convinced you and your clan that I was a figure of your mythology. The Knight of Force. And you're asking me why I didn't suddenly start critiquing the mythology which was keeping me alive?"
"You tell the truth when it iss convenient for you," accused Xolotl. "Or by accident."
A deep THOOM sounded from the forest beyond the wall of Hyperion's Palace, interrupting our discussion and sending thousands of cardinals streaming from the forest canopy into the sky, frightened off by the sudden thunder of a thousand drums. Or perhaps a hundred drums. I honestly didn't know how many drums the united Cobra army possessed, but they clearly were not suffering from a drum shortage.
The Dersite sentries on the wall sounded the alarm, and nearly two hundred soldiers emerged from within Hyperion's Palace, hurrying across the inner yard to the base of the wall, streaming up the staircases and onto the ramparts, where they took up firing positions and waited for the order to engage.
The drums THOOMED again, and the first warriors of the united Cobra army emerged from the forest.
"Here they come." Adam stretched his arms and legs, preparing to jump. "Time to go."
"Not yet," I said. "Remember what Burning Dusk said? Wait until they engage each other. Let the fighting draw more of the Dersites onto the ramparts."
The Dersite firing line blazed to life, spitting a blistering hail of searing energy bolts into the advancing cobra warriors. Many of the charging consorts fell to the opening volley, and some did not move again after they hit the ground, but hundreds more Cobra warriors were already emerging from the woods to reinforce the forerunners. They grouped up into clumps of no more than seven, pooling together their telekinetic strength to shield themselves as best they could.
"Here come the sharpshooterss," observed Inuyyak as a loose group of more than twenty Northerners rocketed out of the woods, flying like sidewinders across the grass, each individual warrior splitting off to take up a firing position behind a chosen group of shielded warriors. Once they were in place, the sprinters opened fire with their captured Dersite energy rifles, salvaged from dead Dersite soldiers after the Northerners' uprising which I'd helped spark. Which Adam helped spark.
Dersites began to collapse on the ramparts, bleeding from their newly acquired wounds, calling out for medics while many of their luckier comrades were forced to duck behind the battlements for cover.
As the Cobra army continued to advance, teams of warriors emerged from the woods, each team carrying one of the army's tall, thick wooden poles which were to be used as siege ladders.
"Wake up!" Xolotl snapped, jarring me back to reality. "Our time iss now."
Realizing I'd been staring for several seconds without speaking or moving, I looked away from the unfolding battle and floated over to Adam, presenting my back to him. "Hop aboard," I said.
"Don't say that ever again," Adam grumbled as he climbed onto my back, wrapping his arms around my chest. "Like, never again."
"Everyone else, hop aboard!" I gestured for Scales, Xolotl, and Inuyyak to follow suit, ignoring Adam's groans. "Coil up. Let's go." Glimmering Scales slithered up to me, and as he coiled himself twice around my torso, binding me and Adam tightly together, I was grateful that in all my life I'd never picked up a fear of snakes. I was also sure to take a deep breath, so that Scales was constricting himself around a fully expanded ribcage. Being able to breathe was nice. "Just like that. Wonderful."
Xolotl wrapped himself twice around me, Adam, and Scales. All the while, I kept us floating several feet off the ground with Force, and when Inuyyak added his weight to our big awkward group hug, the strain of keeping everyone levitated grew to be too much. My wounds from Gino's black fire attack stung ferociously, and I felt like they were spreading, eating away at the surrounding healthy body mass.
"Adam," I sputtered, trying to keep my breathing level. "You gotta pitch in and help me, here."
Adam took a deep breath, focusing on his own connection to the Force Aspect, and relief surged through my body as Adam took up his fair share of keeping everyone afloat, lightening the load.
"Everybody ready?" I asked, bringing our motley group floating over to the edge of the mountain summit.
"Our people are dying," Xolotl reminded me.
"Point taken. Here we go!" I unfolded my wings and leaped off the edge of the mountaintop, sending us hurtling into open air.
"Keep moving!" yelled the Wrathful Veteran, whose lungs were on fire as he sprinted through hell. "Keep moving!"
As more than five hundred dissenter fighters charged down the blood-soaked road towards the disorganized military position, a few of the commandos were able to recover quickly from their surprise, and it was not long before energy bolts were streaking through the air once again.
The Red Miles continued to rip the sky apart while burning fragments of the four exploded battleships fell from orbit and pounded the city below. Part of a battleship engine slammed into the ground less than two miles away, leaving a trail of fire and embers across the sky in its wake, and the shockwave from the impact was powerful enough to knock everyone off their feet.
The Veteran was thrown sideways into the side of a ruined car, shattering one of its windows. He barely noticed as jagged glass shards pierced his carapace, drawing blood.
Burnless, passing by, stopped to help, extending his hand to the Veteran.
"Thank you, Burnless." The Veteran accepted Burnless's hand.
As he helped the Veteran onto his feet, Burnless opened his mouth to reply, but before he could say anything, he was struck in the back of the head by an energy bolt, which exited gruesomely through his face, barely missing the Wrathful Veteran's own head, splattering the Veteran with the blood of another person who'd placed their trust in him.
Without a word or sound, the Veteran gathered up his rifle and ran, abandoning Burnless's faceless corpse. There was no time to wipe away the gore. Some of it had even gotten inside the Veteran's mouth. Millennia of warfare had taught the Veteran how to compartmentalize, but the taste of someone else's blood and brain tissue was a very visceral experience which compelled his stomach to accept the horrible truth.
Vomit spewed from the Veteran's mouth as he ran, splashing onto his clothing and filling his nose with burning stomach acid. Refusing to succumb to his body's best efforts to sabotage his progress, the Veteran spat out as much puke from his mouth as possible, and then he took aim with his rifle at the first commando he saw, squeezing the trigger.
The commando targeted by the Wrathful Veteran did not have time to fully embrace their mortality before the Veteran's energy bolts ripped through their neck and helmet.
The Red Miles suddenly struck the ground barely twenty feet away from the Wrathful Veteran, incinerating five dissenters unlucky enough to be caught directly underneath. The blast sent the Wrathful Veteran flying forward, over the burning wreck of a gutted car, onto the bodies of three of his own fighters who'd been shredded hours ago by the shrapnel of an artillery blast.
The corpses were not in good shape. None of them were still in one piece. More vomit cascaded from the Veteran's mouth and nose as he scrambled away from the bodies and returned to his feet.
As he picked up his rifle and rejoined the push towards the military's position, the Veteran could only wonder why he was having so much trouble. It's not as if this was the first time he'd crawled through body parts. He hadn't succumbed to nausea in battle since the final days of his Birth Campaign, as a commando in the Black King's army, when he witnessed thousands of his brethren die in the Prospitian Royal Air Force's only use of nuclear warheads. While watching the expanding mushroom cloud, the Veteran had reflected on his participation in Derse's eternal war against Prospit, and for the first time in his life, he wondered why.
A bolt of the Red Miles pierced through the front façade of a nearby hotel, and when the lightning fragmented into three separate branches while passing through the building, the hotel vanished in a roar of fire and red light which left the Veteran's eyes burning and his ears ringing. He ducked, covering his head with his arms, rifle clattering to the road as the world around him was pummeled by deadly chunks of pulverized brick and ruined masonry.
The Veteran looked up in time to witness two nearby fighters getting crushed by a large piece of what had once been an ornate carved pillar. One of the dissenters vanished underneath the masonry with a sickening squelchy crunch, painting the street with blood. The other dissenter screamed for help as she tried to free her mangled leg, but even the Veteran could plainly see that it would require amputation.
Nothing to be done.
The Veteran picked up his rifle and continued, reminding himself to keep breathing as he left his wounded fighter behind. No time to dwell on it.
Light suddenly exploded in the sky, bright blue light which reminded the Veteran of the Skaian sky on a cloudless day. As he looked up to investigate, the Veteran witnessed a second beam of blue light streak across the sky, striking the distant Black Queen in the shoulder. The Black Queen was knocked several paces back, nearly losing her balance, but was otherwise unhurt.
Out of the smoke and ash choking the sky burst a ghostly figure composed entirely of shimmering blue energy. This creature appeared to be wearing some kind of antiquated diving suit, and one of its arms had been replaced by a deadly looking drill. Instead of having legs, the light creature's lower body tapered away into a wisp.
A sprite.
What was a sprite doing here?
Four additional sprites emerged from the smoke, following closely in the wake of their blue counterpart, giving the Veteran no opportunity to process his surprise. He could make out a green sprite which resembled a mouse, as well as an indigo sprite and an orange sprite, both of whom seemed to be elderly humans, although the orange sprite was far more festively dressed than its indigo counterpart.
The final sprite was yellow, and much to the Wrathful Veteran's bewilderment, it appeared to be a flying pizza.
All five sprites flew in tight formation, loosing another spectacular multicolored volley of laser-like energy blasts. The combined firepower of all five sprites was enough to catch the Black Queen by surprise and push her off balance. She struggled for a moment to stay on her feet, but it was no use. The ground shook as the Black Queen fell to the city below, disappearing in a cloud of wreckage, smoke, and flying embers.
The Red Miles did not relent. If anything, even on her back the Queen seemed to be attacking with more of a vengeance.
"Keep moving!" roared the Veteran, galvanizing every nearby fighter mesmerized by what had just happened in the sky. He ran as fast as he could, quickly passing the few fighters who'd managed to get ahead of him, taking the lead once more.
The Black Queen's intervention had not been kind to the commandos. Over a third of their number had already been slaughtered by the relentless red lightning, and the traumatized survivors' morale was approaching rock bottom. It was the commandos' duty to fight to their last breath, but inspiration was difficult to find when their own Queen was butchering them with the Red Miles.
The Wrathful Veteran was fired upon by two commandos hunkered behind the smashed remains of a military tank. He threw himself to the side, diving for cover behind a scorched metal public garbage can, which buckled under two commandos' firepower. Each time the Veteran tried to emerge from behind the garbage can, he was forced back into cover by the commandos' suppressing fire.
Determined to make a better end for himself, the Veteran slung his rifle over his shoulder, picked up the garbage can, and rushed the commandos' position, holding the garbage can in front of himself like a shield. A very short-lived shield. Pieces of the metal garbage can were already flying away as the commandos focused their firepower on the Veteran, who realized he had only seconds until his protection was blasted away.
Sweat poured from the Veteran's face as took three final running steps, each more powerful than the last, and with all his strength the Veteran hurled the ruined garbage can at the two commandos who were shooting at him.
The garbage can completely missed the two commandos, clanging harmlessly onto the cobblestones several feet away, but the two commandos had nevertheless not expected a garbage can to come flying their way. They'd ceased fire for a moment, backpedaling to avoid a death so absurd and infuriating as getting brained by a public garbage can.
Already the Wrathful Veteran had whipped his rifle off his shoulder and taken aim, firing several rounds through one of the commandos' faces, shattering the unlucky commando's reflective goggles and blowing out the back of their helmet in a spray of red. The second commando was struck in the leg, clutching their bleeding wound as they crumpled to the ground next to their dead comrade. The surviving commando's training kicked in, helping them to recover quickly from the shock of getting shot, and they reached for their rifle.
The Wrathful Veteran kicked the commando's rifle away, planting a boot on the commando's back and aiming his rifle at the back of their head. He looked up for a moment and witnessed his fighters catching up and falling upon the surviving entrenched commandos' positions. The commandos, outnumbered and demoralized, quickly began to fold against the dissenters' onslaught.
Within the span of two minutes, the military's situation had turned into a rout. The Wrathful Veteran's fighters had no qualms about killing any commandos who refused to retreat.
In the near distance, the Black Queen rose slowly from the ashes and smoke, picking herself up from the devastated city block she'd fallen onto. As she returned to her feet, the Queen swiped at the five sprites, forcing them to scatter.
"Surrender," the Veteran ordered the commando underneath his boot.
The commando said nothing, and the Veteran did not have time to deal with someone who did not want to be taken prisoner.
"Surrender," the Veteran pressed his boot down even harder, "and live."
The commando, facedown, hocked up everything they could muster from their throat and spat on the cobblestones. "You are a traitor."
"Please surrender." The Veteran, fully aware the spit had been intended for his face, touched the barrel of his rifle to the back of the commando's head. "Last chance. You do not need to die today for a Queen who has just tried to kill you."
"You deserve a traitor's death," the fallen commando maintained. "I only regret failing to give you what you deserve."
"I am sorry." The Wrathful Veteran fired a single round and moved on, stepping over the commando's body. "There was more to life than what you knew, and no time to show you."
"HOOOOLYYY FUUUUUUUCK!"
Was that me screaming, or Adam?
Wind ripped at my face, making my cheeks ripple and balloon outward as we rocketed through the sky down the mountainside, suspended only by our collective Force. Glimmering Scales tightened himself around me, and I was grateful I'd thought to take a deep breath beforehand.
While falling at terminal velocity, I was only able to catch disjointed glimpses of the charging united Cobra army as they rushed their siege poles towards Hyperion's wall. I wished them luck. They would have to hang in there for a hot sec until we could blast open the gate.
Flashes of light zipped through the air around us as we were spotted by some of the soldiers on the wall below and fired upon. Our screaming sustained us all the way down the mountainside, across the inner grounds separating the Palace from the wall, and towards the heavy wooden gates of Hyperion's wall, which were locked in place by a thick metal bolt.
I slammed on the Force brakes, throwing myself against our established momentum, which brought us to a less-than-gentle halt and left me feeling exhausted. Scales, Xolotl, and Inuyyak immediately unwrapped themselves, dropping to the ground.
"Oh fuck, this is it!" Adam sprang off my back and onto his feet, hurrying over to the gate and examining the sturdy metal locking bolt. "Cover me!"
Scales, Xolotl, and Inuyyak fanned out, forming a protective semi-circle around Adam as he conjured a formless concentration of fire and hyperfocused it into a white flame which made my eyes water. Adam applied the white flame to the main gate's locking bolt like a welding laser, sending sparks flying as he got to work searing through the metal.
I rested on the ground, trying to catch my breath as some of the Dersite soldiers garrisoning the ramparts above the gate hurried down the nearest flight of stairs and engaged us, filling the air around us once again with bolts of superheated energy. Scales and Inuyyak focused on redirecting most of the incoming energy bolts with Force, while Xolotl used his mental grip to pick up rocks, firing them at the soldiers with deadly skill.
A couple of energy bolts made it past Inuyyak and Scales' defenses, barely missing Adam, who was still hard at work burning through the locking bolt, which was my cue to act. Help was needed.
I allowed myself a deep breath and rose from the ground. I blew past Inuyyak and Xolotl, charging the attacking soldiers headlong, maintaining a protective shield of Force to deflect the Dersite firepower. Several of the attacking soldiers broke off and ran for their lives, which saved them from my counterattack. With the reserves of strength still available to me, I unleashed a blistering wall of fire which consumed any of the soldiers who made the unwise choice in that crucial moment to stand their ground.
As the Dersite defenders on the battlements realized what was happening behind their wall, some of them began to open fire on me from above, forcing me to break off my attack. I flew back to our defensive position by the gate, where Adam had nearly finished burning through the main gate's locking bolt.
Dozens of Dersite reinforcements emerged from within Hyperion's Palace, no doubt expecting to bolster their comrades' defenses on the battlements. Instead, they were faced with the very real danger of losing the main gate. It was not long before the soldiers had accurately assessed the severity of their situation and opened fire on us, advancing towards our position instead of helping the defenders on the wall.
The air quickly became saturated with deadly energy bolts as the Dersite reinforcements bore down, forcing me and Xolotl to double down on maintaining our invisible shield with Scales and Inuyyak. Together, the four of us were struggling to keep up our shield, but it was impossible to maintain an airtight defense. Every now and then, a stray energy bolt slipped past us, putting Adam at risk.
"Open the gate!" Xolotl howled, furiously pushing against the pressure of the Dersite firepower. "Do it now!"
Adam's fire burned through the last of the locking bolt, causing it to fall away, leaving the gate doors directly exposed. "Here we go," he said, taking a few steps back from the gate, then charging it with all of his physical and psychic strength, plowing into the gates with enough force to rattle the entire gatehouse. The gate buckled and even bent outward in several places, but it just barely managed to hold.
I noticed the sound of screaming and clashing metal wafting down from the ramparts overhead, which probably meant the Cobra warriors had successfully deployed their siege poles and were attempting to storm the battlements. We needed this gate open, and we needed it open right now.
"One more ought to do it," Adam gasped between breaths, hungrily sucking air down his throat as he tried to recover from burning through a great amount of his energy all at once. He took a few more steps back, preparing for a second attempt at the gate, only to fall flat on his face when a stray energy bolt slipped past our shield and tore through his left thigh.
Even the roar of battle was drowned out by Adam's earsplitting screech.
"OWW!" Adam rolled onto his back and clutched at his bleeding leg. "Oh my god, oh my fucking god, fucking motherfucking FUUUUUUCK!"
"You need to calm down!" I hollered over my shoulder. "Stay calm, and put pressure on it!"
"FUCK YOU!" Tears streamed from Adam's eyes as he pressed a hand to the wound, slowing the flow of blood. "I just got fucking shot, like, holy fucking fuck this hurts, I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, how the fuck do people in movies get shot and do anything after except scream and throw up?! Hollywood is fucking bullshit, there's a fucking surprise for you-"
"Can you still break the gate?!" I shouted, recognizing that Adam was slipping into shock and in need of something to snap him out of it. "You don't need to be standing for that!"
"I need help!" Adam replied. "I need to see what I'm doing!"
"Keep your sstrength here where it iss needed," Xolotl said to me, breaking off and slithering over to where Adam lay, using his telekinetic grip to help Adam sit up and face the gates directly.
"DO IT!" I yelled, fighting to keep my breathing stable as my strength failed. "This year, please!"
Adam closed his eyes, breathed in a deep and gentle breath. On the exhale, he opened his eyes and thrust forward his fists, delivering a second powerful psychic blow to the damaged gates, blowing one of the doors wide open and ripping the other door off its hinges, revealing the carnage just outside.
Dozens of dead and dying Cobra warriors lay sprawled on the battlefield outside, bloodying the grass and the ferns, cut down by the Dersites during the initial charge. I forced myself to look away, focusing instead on the Northerners, Sand Dwellers, and Treefolk who were coiling their way up the thick siege poles which had been leaned against the wall, flinging themselves with reckless abandon onto the battlements, where they did their best to wreak havoc on the Dersite defenders.
Only one cobra could ascend each pole at a time, and they died too quickly to establish a viable foothold on the battlements, leaving the rest of the army bunched up against the base of the walls with nowhere to go. I could see hundreds of Cobra warriors huddled underneath their invisible self-generated Force shields, pummeled mercilessly by the withering firepower of the Dersite military.
The united Cobra army's dire situation shifted dramatically the moment Adam blew open the gate, offering the warriors a very literal path towards victory. Letting out a thunderously jubilant cry, the nearest warriors surged through the ruined gate, eager to get as far away as possible from the blood and chaos at the base of the wall. Their cries spread through the rest of the army as more and more consorts realized victory was now attainable.
"Thank you, Knight," Xolotl said to Adam, drawing his knife. "Now we are free." Before Adam could react, Xolotl shot his knife forward, burying it in Adam's chest.
Adam's eyes widened as he processed what had just happened, his expression shifting to one of profound confusion before slackening. His eyes rolled back as he lost consciousness.
I was in shock as the first of the charging Cobra warriors arrived to relieve Inuyyak, Scales, and me from sustaining our shield. Xolotl's actions had been lightning quick, and none of the arriving warriors had noticed. I released my psychic contributions to the defensive shield, making my way upstream towards Xolotl through the surge of bloodied and battered warriors. Xolotl saw me approaching and bared his fangs.
"What have you done?!" I screamed, nervously eyeing Adam's sanguine chest wound. It looked fatal. A surgeon might have disagreed, but even a nonfatal wound would be fatal here. I couldn't exactly fly Adam to a hospital on a planet full of primitive telekinetic cobras. And this time, Tami wasn't on hand for an emergency healing. "What the fuck is wrong with you?!"
"What iss wrong with you?!" Xolotl shot back, yanking his knife out of Adam's chest and sending it shooting towards me, but I managed to deflect it before it got too close. The knife clattered to the stone floor. "You tortured me, you and the SSeer, you watched me for yearss! You watched me find love and family in the darkesst corner of exisstence, only to rip it all away!"
Xolotl charged me suddenly, which I hadn't been expecting. He caught me off guard, tackling me and pinning me to the ground with his Force.
"That wasn't me, that was him!" I pointed at Adam, lacking the strength to break Xolotl's grip. Dozens of Cobra warriors were sprinting past us, laser focused on pushing through the gate and living to see tomorrow, and none of them slowed down enough to notice what Xolotl was doing, leaving me at his mercy. I wasn't above debasing myself to stay alive. "I was going to arrange a sit-down between you and him after the battle," I gabbled, eager to keep his attention fixed on me, shamelessly trying to buy time, "and we were going to hash everything out, like, every single ruffled feather in the equation, we'll find a way to smooth it all out-"
"You've demonstrated clearly, time after time, that the line between the Knight'ss identity and your own iss blurry at besst," interrupted Xolotl. "At the council, you demanded to be placed on equal sstanding with the Knight, the Knight vouched for you, and the council accepted, which meanss you are alsso entitled to your fair share of guilt for the Knight'ss crimess. Thiss iss a debt you are honor-bound to pay."
"Okay, you're pissed, and I totally get that, but that doesn't mean killing us is the right thing to do!" I exclaimed, keeping the panic from seeping into my voice as Xolotl's telekinetic grip around me began to squeeze around my throat. "C'mon, Xolotl, old buddy, old pal, let's at least talk about this before we do anything we can't take back-"
"No." Xolotl's grip cinched tightly around my throat, cutting off my air. He retrieved his knife and pointed it at me. "No more talk. No more mythss. No more Knightss."
In that moment, strangely enough, the foremost thought on my mind was whether or not, as a sprite, I actually needed air to survive, but Xolotl had no intention of allowing me to find out.
Xolotl's knife sped forward toward my throat.
Even as the Wrathful Veteran's fighters drove the surviving commandos into a haphazard and costly retreat, there was no stopping the Red Miles.
There were now fewer intact buildings on this side of the Obsidian Moon than there were collapsed mountains of rubble, and none of the surviving buildings were undamaged. It would take decades to rebuild, which almost made the Veteran chuckle. It was amusing, sometimes, to muse about a fantastical future in which all of this damage might one day be healed.
A lightning bolt from the Red Miles struck the ground not too far behind the Wrathful Veteran, killing several of his fighters and setting several more on fire. The Veteran sprinted over to help the nearest of his burning fighters, tearing off his jacket and using it to smother the flames, although it did nothing to stop the fighter's screams.
While the other wounded fighters were tended to by their comrades, the Veteran aimed his rifle and fired, perhaps uselessly, at the distant Black Queen's face, keeping his trigger squeezed until the rifle's battery cell ran out of power and recharged. Then he fired again.
Several nearby fighters joined in, hurling obscenities at the Black Queen as they shot at her face, attracting the attention of even more dissenter fighters who were further away. Within a minute, hundreds of fighters were discharging their weapons towards the Black Queen, eager to celebrate their victory over the commandos and voice their hatred of the Queen in what may very well have been their final moments before the Red Miles incinerated them. The defiant barrage was not enough to wound the Queen, but it was certainly enough to sting her and capture her attention.
Slowly the Black Queen turned, and then she took a step forward, walking towards the Veteran and his fighters, shaking the ground and destroying more of the city's infrastructure with each devastating footstep. After seven paces, the Queen closed the distance and stopped, towering over the blood-soaked road, her gaze icy with contempt.
The Black Queen pointed her clenched ring-bearing fist at the Veteran and his fighters, intent on wiping them all out with a concentrated blast of the Red Miles.
The dissenters braced for the end, but as the next few seconds crawled by, the end did not come. Hearts continued to beat. Many who had squeezed their eyes shut opened them once more, only to find that the Black Queen was no longer interested in them. Something new had captured her attention.
Deep violet light blazed from the sky behind the Veteran, powerful light which diminished the fires and dispelled the Red Miles. The Veteran whipped around, expecting to see another sprite, but what he saw instead was enough to root him to the spot, silently in awe.
"The Sylph lives!" cried one of the dissenter fighters.
Cass Galavis hovered in the sky, cocooned in her aura of powerful violet light, wearing a hooded Sylph's robe emblazoned with the shrinking spiral-within-a-circle symbol of Death.
"The Sylph lives!" The cheer was taken up by others, and it quickly spread through the ranks. "THE SYLPH LIVES!"
The five sprites re-emerged from the smoky haze choking the sky, making a beeline for the Queen, but they were too late to stop her from unleashing upon Cass the attack she'd been saving for the Wrathful Veteran and his fighters.
A torrent of densely concentrated red lightning bolts burst forth from the Black Queen's ring of power, searing across the sky overhead, prompting the Veteran and all of his fighters to instinctively duck.
Cass inhaled deeply, and her powerful violet aura solidified suddenly into a nearly opaque sphere of light. The Red Miles struck Cass's light and immediately fizzled away, dispersing harmlessly throughout Cass's aural sphere.
In the moment taken by the Black Queen to process that her unstoppable Red Miles had been stopped, the sprites attacked. The beams of sprite energy were not intense enough to seriously injure the Queen, but they were substantial enough to manipulate physical objects, and together the five sprites focused their energy beams onto the Black Queen's hand, the one which bore her ring of power.
With all their strength, the five sprites threw themselves into an abrupt vertical ascent while maintaining their beams, dragging the Black Queen's arm behind them, which, humorously enough to many of the Wrathful Veteran's fighters, made the Queen look like she was raising her hand to ask a question.
In the distance, the Veteran heard a loud detonation which sounded less like another explosion and more like a massive weapons discharge. He barely had time to process the sound before a blazing white projectile, which reminded the Veteran of a shooting star, burst forth suddenly from the veil of smoky clouds, screaming across the sky and slamming into the Black Queen's upstretched arm, ripping through her elbow and completely severing the Queen's lower arm.
The moment the Queen lost her arm, the Red Miles mercifully ceased, running their course and dissipating into the smoky night. A new quiescence descended over the ravaged Obsidian Moon.
Separated from her ring of power, the Queen abruptly morphed from her grotesque, mountain-sized prototyped form, back into her human-sized true form, finding herself surrounded by a lot of people who were very angry with her, and for the first time in her life the Queen felt truly vulnerable. Ignoring the blood pouring from the stump of her severed arm, the Black Queen drew her sword, wielding it in her remaining hand, silently daring the surrounding fighters to attack.
"Stand down!" shouted the Veteran when it looked like a few of his fighters were about to take the Queen's bait. "She's a wounded animal backed into a corner. She's finished. Keep your distance and stand down! I'll take care of-"
"No," interrupted Cass, who the Veteran was surprised to find standing behind him. He hadn't even noticed her land. "You've gotten us this far, but you have farther to go. Dark days are coming, and your people will need you," she said to the Veteran, walking forward to approach the waiting Black Queen, eyeing her warily. "This miserable cunt belongs to me."