Aetherios System: Whirlwind

Chapter 74: Devastating

The battlefield cracked open like the gates to hell parting to reveal the suffering within.

The first daughter-queen, covered in molten armor, dropped like a meteor into the field, the ground blistering beneath her splitting open and appearing just like her magma-lit skin. She was bulky and each swing of her arms scattering armored men like dolls. Her molten claws cut through steel and bone as if both were paper tissue.

Beside her landed another of the daughters. Silvery white chitin plates covered her body in ways that was sleek and predatory. Her body giving the appearance of all lines and speed, with legs bent backward like a hunting cat’s and a thick tail for balance and force. Her arms gleamed in the red light given off by her sister and ended in claws as long as swords.

She darted through the ranks as a blur of silver, the air bending around her passage. It was like watching Holly’s wind manipulation twisted from graceful and beautiful, to something violent and terrifying.

A third daughter reached the chimeras at the frontlines instead of joining the other two. She spread her arms and began pouring light aether from her form in a radiant halo. Dozens and dozens of beasts glowed in answer to her, their forms charging forward faster and stronger than before. Alex could see that it was a group buff spell, see it plain as day. It was just like Peter’s spell, except this one didn’t just strengthen a single squad. The queen's turned almost a whole entire army into boosted rage monsters.

And then the fourth came down like the shadow of an executioner's axe.

Her body gleamed black, like living crude oil. A curved blade extended where one arm should have been, the other hand eerily human was tipped with claws. Within moments, her eyes locked onto Selka. Alex felt his gut twisting, a dreaded certainty hitting him like a hammer: predator to prey.

He looked at the dark figure as it seemingly melted into the earth. One moment it was there, then just…gone.

Alex’s [Aether Sight] and instincts screamed a warning in his mind, but he was too far away. He was too slow.

The black Queen rose from Selka’s shadow, blade-arm already driving forward, Selka never even saw it.

But Sarson did.

He moved without any apparent hesitation, putting himself between them. The curved blade of the Queen’s arm punched through his armor and flesh without any real effort. Then she vanished back into the ground, melting away like smoke.

Selka turned, confusion flashing across her face.

Just in time to see Sarson’s body split open. His torso slid apart, blood spraying across the ground as gravity finished what the daughter-queen's blade had started. Alex’s breath hitched. His mind refused the image even as his eyes burned it in to his psychi. The blood pool, the shocked expression on Selka's face, Sarson's glassy, vacant eyes.

Sarson was gone.

Selka screamed.

Her voice released a sound that wasn’t a battle cry, but a desperate, heart tearing, clawing grief. She dropped to her knees, clutching what was left of Sarson's upper half. His head, slack and limp, collapsed into her arms and she sobbed huge hitching gasps followed by roars of anguish.

The sound that left her throat made Alex’s ribs ache just hearing it, something far too human for a battlefield like this.

He wanted to look away. Gods, he wanted to. But he couldn’t.

There was a flicker of movement and the shadow stirred behind Selka once more. Alex’s feet were moving before he realized what he was doing, [Aether Burst] cracking beneath his feet to push him, rocketing him forward. He hit the ground at Selka’s back just as the Queen’s blade arm arced downward again.

“Move!” he roared, slamming a kick into the shadow’s side.

The impact sent the Shadow-queen skidding across the ground. Alex landed behind Selka, but he didn't dare take his eye's of the dark black figure in front of him.

“Selka, move!”

“He’s gone…” Her answer was a whisper, her arms refusing to let Sarson’s body go.

“Selka!”

The shadows shivered, and she came again. Alex spun, aether flashing as [Shield] formed into place just in time. The Queen’s curved blade screeched against the aether, sliding past his arm instead of through it, he still received a cut along his shoulder, but it was shallow, a graze.

Yet even with that small cut, dark insidious aether crept from the wound into the rest of his arm, eating at his veins and aether channels. His wyrm-blood, and the aura of his [Demon Asura Style] fought it back, consuming it with angry retribution as he grunted from the pain of his body fighting a war inside his own flesh.

In response to the poisoned wound, Alex countered by kicking out at the Queen, only for her to catch his foot mid-snap with her humanoid hand. Muscles strained as the two pressed each other, strength clashing against strength. Then Doran appeared with his hammer crashing down like an avalanche toward her head. The Queen dissolved into blackness at the last possible instant, avoiding the blow.

“Take her!” Alex yelled.

The dwarf didn’t argue with him. He shouldered forward, trying to drag Selka, and what remained of Sarson, back.

The Queen rose again. Her blade flashed, but this time a wind-tipped arrow pierced the shadow by her feet, forcing her to recoil. A second arrow hit her in the arm, jarring it backward. Another arrow followed that, and then another, each striking a limb or her torso.

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Alex turned toward the archer. Rynel stood a dozen meters back, bowstring singing, as arrow after arrow loosed with impossible speed at the shadow-queen. Each one landed with perfect precision, pinning the Queen in place and breaking her rhythm. His hands and fingers were glowing with energy and moved far faster than he had ever seen the archer manage before. Alex himself wasn't sure he could do move his hands that fast.

Alex's stomach filled with emotion, awe. For a middle-stage Adept, even more than Ghrukk or Doran, Rynel had the makings of a legend. After all this, he could push to Solid Core, maybe even—

A ripple of wind crossed the battle field. Alex’s stomach dropped out from under his lungs entirely.

The Silver-Wind Queen emerged behind Rynel, but he never saw her, his focus was locked on to the shadow-queen instead. A blade whispered once from the Queen’s hand, followed by a crimson arc spraying the air.

Plop. Rynel’s head touched the grass before his body did.

And just like that, another of their team was gone.

“Everyone, get the fuck back! NOW!” Alex’s shout thundered across the battlefield, carried by an [Aether Burst] shockwave that hammered the Wind-queen sideways, her body careening across dirt and grass in a mad tumble.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Doran still hauling Selka, with Myrae rushing in to help. Henry, Garret, and Eric dragged Cole out of the melee—Cole’s face wet with tears, his head twisted back to look toward where Rynel’s corpse lay. Rynel’s wide, unblinking eyes stared back at them.

There was no time. No room for feeling grief, not right then.

The Shadow-queen was on him again. Her curved blade slammed against his [Shield], a burst of sparks and shattered aether followed. Another strike meant another broken energy barrier. She came faster, both claw and blade, unrelenting in her aggression. Alex retreated between the blows, each step dodging, deflecting, twisting away as Obby’s predictive overlays flickered in his vision. Red trajectory trails traced her past movements, with green projections mapped her next attacks.

There. He saw it.

Alex ducked a blade swipe, hips shifting to the side, and drove a punch into her shoulder. Her glossy black skin cracked, bursting open with a spray of purple ichor. He gave no mercy and followed up the punch with a kick that sent an [Aether Burst] through her abdomen, leaving a puncture wound three inches in diameter. He wanted to press more, but by then the other chimeras had swarmed in, their bodies glowing with the augmenting radiance of the Light-queen’s spell.

He drew on the aether from one of the gems in his bracer, burning it dry in an instant. Symbols sprung in his mind, spellwork woven tighter and tighter until his veins buzzed with fire. He waited, timing the spellcast it until the last possible moment, until their many claws nearly closed on him. Then thrust out his palm and released.

[Aether Burst]’s cone of force fired like an arcane-cannon. The air ruptured with a deafening crack ripping across the field, every chimera in front of him was shredded with their flesh, chitin, and bone torn apart in a storm of force. Purple-black blood splattered across his robes, the ground quaking beneath the recoil of his own spell.

His eyes flicked back to the Shadow-queen.

She was already rising back out of a shadow, the Silver-queen standing beside her.

He glanced over his shoulder. The others were already halfway up the mountainside, Worldstriders and Empire alike were retreating in unison, their animosity forgotten in the face of a greater enemy. A temporary truce carved in the motivation of survival.

He turned back.

The Shadow Queen hadn’t pressed him. She stood in the churned dirt with her head cocked, eyes locked onto him with something almost human in her stare, maybe curiosity or plain interest. Alex met her gaze.

A few days ago, he would’ve run. A peak Liquid-stage Arcane Beast would’ve broken him like kindling just as the Queen had in the dungeon. But that was before. Before his breakthrough, his meridians being branded with two new imprints, and of course the Heavenly Tribulation. Before he learned what he could endure.

Now… he could take her.

But his eyes drifted past her to the right, where the Silver-queen stood, then to the horde that came surging through the treeline. Dozens of chimera, all burning with the white-gold glow of the Light-queen’s blessing. And beyond them, the Light-queen herself, radiant, her eyes gleaming with predatory delight. Far off, the other daughter that was coated in rock and fire was still rampaging along the field against the straggling Empire soldiers.

This was a fight he couldn’t manage. Not alone, anyway. And further still, past all of that, Alex’s gaze found the Original Queen.

She hadn’t moved at all during the entire fight. She stood still as the trees around her. Watching him... only him. Her lips peeled back into a smile full of sharp teeth and even sharper malice.

Under her gaze, every hair on Alex’s body stood on end. His spine twitched in revolt, his instincts screaming even as his mind tried to calm itself.

He wasn’t afraid of the Shadow Queen. He wasn’t afraid of the Light Queen. But her? She terrified him.

Alex and the Original Queen locked eyes.

For a heartbeat, nothing moved except for the wind and the smoke. Then one of her hands twitched, a lazy little gesture, and a ripple of aether spilled out from her like a tide. Every chimera halted, even the other queens. Mid-step, mid-snarl, mid-swipe, no matter the action, they all stopped.

His brows furrowed. What the hell was she playing at? Was this some sick game? Did she want another one-on-one like before? Maybe she just wanted to savor the moment.

Then her voice rolled over the battlefield. Her voice had changed since he last heard it, no loner shrill or bestial like in the dungeon. Now she sounded far, far too human. “I owe the freedom of myself, and my progeny, partially to you, dear Alexander.”

Alex’s teeth ground together at hearing that. The way she said his name made his skin itch. How the hell did she even know his name? Why was she still alive to speak at all?

“Your delicious essence was the key to my evolution… and my new daughters, after all. So I give you a gift.”

A gift? He didn’t like the sound of that. Not one bit.

Three figures broke from the ranks and pulled back, the Magma Queen, her molten flesh glowing as though her veins carried fire; and the Silver-Wind Queen, sleek and predatory, her air-bending presence making the world around her shiver. They flanked the Shadow Queen, forming a triad, their gazes all spearing into him.

Alex shifted his stance and forced aether to simmer along his skin in preparation of an attack. His pulse was a hammer in his ears as he waited.

“I will hold back my offspring—keep them by my side—for one cycle.” The Queen said it like it was a blessing, a gift wrapped in silk and tied with a bow. The most precious present in the universe. “You may flee. All of you. Friends and allies alike. Leave this mountain, this territory to me, so my children may thrive and live free.” She swept her hand wide, as though showing him the entire range like a magnanimous Empress displaying her lands. “After that time, any who remain… will become our food.”

Alex’s throat convulsed painfully as he swallowed. He didn’t answer her. What could he say? This wasn’t a negotiation. He had no leverage, no blade at her throat, and he had no bargaining chip that she wanted.

He glanced back over his shoulder, his people were gone from sight, already pushing higher up the mountain. Good.

His eyes snapped forward again. “I have your word, as a Queen, that you and your offspring won’t come after us if we leave?”

The daughters hissed at that, there's claws twitching and wings flaring. Alex ignored them, his focus was on the mother, the Original Queen.

Her lips pulled into a smirk and showed a flash of fangs. “I give you my word, as monarch of the Hive.”

That was good enough for him. It wasn’t a System oath, nothing bound her but her pride. But it was all he had, and he’d take it.

He nodded once and turned. Aether ejected beneath his boots, [Aether Burst]s tossing dirt and rock into the air as he launched himself uphill to catch his squad.

Behind him, Sarson and Rynel’s glossy eyes watched him go in ghostly reproach.

He had to get to his squad, get to his friends, and tell them their options. Cowardice, or revenge.

Alex already knew what they’d be choosing.