Aetherios System: Whirlwind

Cole launched himself forward and swung his hammer deep into the chimera beast’s side. It erupted with a wave of water aether that sent the queen's minion flopping over the ground, end over end. Zach and Ghrukk went in after it, tearing the chimera apart in a savage frenzy.

Cole dropped his weapon and skidded to Lance’s side, his hands were already glowing with pale light as he stared a healing spell. His pulse thundered in his ears as he pressed down over his friend's stomach, fighting against the gush of blood.

“Stay with me! Stay with me, damn it!”

Lance coughed, crimson bubbling from his lips. His eyes fluttered, but Cole poured everything into his healing spell. Light and Water aether fused together, a mixture of intent and energy flooding the wound. The glow seared his vision and his body shook from the strain.

The hole in Lance’s stomach slowly started to knit together. The effect was sluggish and imperfect, but it slowed the bleeding and helped with the worse of the organ damage. Enough to keep him breathing.

Cole sagged, gasping. He nearly blacked out, but forced himself to keep going until the bleeding had stopped completely and Lance’s breathing steadied. Only then did he collapse beside him, drenched in sweat, his heart still hammering.

They were alive.

The Light Queen was dead.

***

The Magam-queen’s many slashes, claws, bites, tail-whips and wing buffets were like that of a wild animal being cornered. Every motion was feral, and she came at them as if the battlefield itself was her body, her molten rage made flesh.

Aburi’s blue-black aura rippled off his frame, water and shadow folding together, as if the ocean was a creature and the tides its muscle. His greatsword spun and carved lines in the air, each motion unbreakable as a dam against a flood. Every strike he intercepted shuddered through the ground around them.

Tom-Tom had abandoned his usual barrage of conjured ladles. Instead, he focused on his spell casting. He expended his aether, the earth cracking and erupting at his gestures. Razor sharp stone lances shot up beneath the Queen’s limbs, hemming her movements and forcing her to either tear her flesh on their edges or stumble into angles that left her open.

Holly and Selka attacked through those openings. Wind wrapped Holly’s body, her sword cleaving forward with the speed of a spinning engine propeller. Selka’s blade danced with lightning, in tandem with her. They struck and withdrew, then struck again, carving bleeding wounds across the Queen’s armored body one slash at a time.

The Queen realized what was happening of course, she was losing through a battle of attrition. Death, literally by a thousand cuts.

Heat spiked around her like the opening of a forge door. Fire-aether poured off her in sheets, becoming a blast furnace that washed over the team and staggered them back. Her frame glowed until the shell of her exoskeleton blistered then cracked, and sloughed off in slabs. Beneath it, her body was sleeker, with toned muscle and burning with an orange brilliance.

She blurred forward faster than before. Her claw aimed straight for Aburi’s throat.

Aburi slammed his greatsword down, point-first into the earth. Water erupted in a geyser, bursting from dry soil as if he’d cracked open an ocean vein. A cyclone swirled around him, walls of liquid spiraling up his frame. Droplets lifted into the air, then shot out like bullets, hammering the Queen in front of him.

Still she advanced, shrieking as the water battered against her form and slowed her down. Tom-Tom tried to throw walls of stone in her path, but her claws tore through them, even melting the stone at the points of contact. Spikes jutted, barricades rose, but she smashed them apart, step by step breaking into Aburi’s storm.

That was when Holly and Selka closed their eyes and joined their power to his.

Wind gathered into storm clouds above them, and lightning began threading their black underbellies. The water cyclone fed into the brewing tempest and feeding each other. Vapor spiraled upward as Aburi’s abyssal tide became the storm’s lifebreath. Holly’s wind drove the clouds down toward the Queen as Selka’s lightning charged them, and together with Aburi’s torrent, they shaped a rolling maelstrom above the battlefield.

The Queen clawed forward, shouting her rage into reality. But then the sky answered her anger with its own.

The storm cracked open with a detonation. A lightning bolt as thick as a tree trunk speared down, ripping through the cyclone’s center and slamming into the Magma-queen. The explosion thundered across the field, a wave of heat and force blasting outward. Another bolt come down soon after, creating another wave of force. Another bolt, then another, as if they had created a miniature Heaven Tribulation for the Queen herself. And the Heaven's were angry.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

When the shockwaves finally cleared, silence followed.

The battlefield was washed clean from the downpour of rain, leaving mud over the ground, and steam hissing from scorched rock. At the center stood the Queen, her lean body smoking black. She turned, eyes burning with hate, and locked on Aburi. For one breath, it seemed she might lunge again and continue the fight.

Then her body failed. She staggered, the molten shine leaking out of her frame, and collapsed forward. Her claws hit the ground, her head bowed low, and then she stilled.

The storm above them unraveled into fading wisps, leaving only the quiet of dripping water and the pounding hearts of the victors.

***

The Shadow Queen hunted them like a phantom.

She flickered in and out of sight, her body dissolving into shadow with every blink of the area’s dim light. Myrae’s glow kept the worst of it at bay by sending radiant bursts chasing her in the dark from one shadow after the next, but it was never enough. Each appearance the Shadow-queen made, carried the threat of looming death. Her scythe-arm aimed for throats, her claws poised at their hearts. A single misstep would mean blood, and maybe worse.

Garret’s shield slammed sideways to catch another scythe-blow. The impact rattled his arm up to the shoulder. He twisted, sword flashing in his other hand to turn aside the Queen’s claw. He couldn’t attack her back, as he couldn’t afford the time to do so between defending himself. Every second was survival, buying precious moment’s for his allies to attack in his stead.

The tail came next, a barbed lash aiming for his legs. It never landed. Henry’s halberd swept through the shadows, cleaving at the limb, while vines writhed up from the stone and dirt to bind and slow the Queen’s movements.

Henry's control was impressive, the earth and sky itself answering to him in concert. Soft rain poured down around them in shimmering veils as the conjured waters changed from soothing drops to a compressed current and forming thick liquid barriers almost at random, even as the battle pressed harder.

But the Queen never let up her assault.

Myrae raised her staff high, light flaring from the jewel at its head. Starbursts scattered from her in every direction, detonating into radiant sparks on the ground. Each burst forced the Queen to swerve as the shadows began narrowing, her choices shrinking with every flash of glittering light. Myrae guided her like a shepherd, funneling the monster into the one space left open.

Eric’s space.

Lightning burned across his arms, crawling to his fingertips, until they twisted together into a single shaft of writhing plasma. The air screamed around him, the molecules of gases breaking down in every breath. He hefted the plasma-spear of crackling energy like a knight at joust, the lance of thunder braced in both his hands. The Queen flickered toward him.

Henry’s vines erupted at once, snapping out of the wet stone and winding around her legs, her tail, her wings. For an instant she was bound, scythe-arm hacking against restraints that they all knew wouldn’t hold for long.

Garret was there next, shield smashing against her torso and arresting her momentum entirely. The seemingly unstoppable Shadow-queen was held fast for a bare instant. But an instant was all they needed.

Eric roared and thrust the lightning lance forward just as Garret ducked and turned sideways, leaving an opening for him. The spell punched out, white-blue brilliance spearing across the field. The bolt tore into the Queen’s chest, vaporizing chitin, flesh, and bone alike. Her scream and the thundercrack afterward were mudled into the same sound, and light swallowed the shadows.

When it cleared, the Queen sagged in place. The vines uncoiled, her body slumping free, a gaping hole burned clean through her torso. She staggered once, her scythe-arm twitching weakly toward Garret’s throat, but then her weight dragged her down.

“Yes! We fucking did it!” Garret bellowed. His grin was wide, stupid and bright. His relief spilling out of him all at once. He turned, throwing a thumbs-up toward Eric.

“No, Garret!”

The warning came too late. The shadows behind him twitched and moved suddenly. The Shadow Queen was still alive, and Garret had turned his back on her. Her bladed arm whipped forward. He never saw it coming.

Eric slammed into him. The force sent Garret sprawling across the dirt, armor scraping earth.

The Queen’s strike landed on Eric instead.

The sound was wet and final. Blood sprayed in a wide mist, shadow-tainted aether crawling like worms through the wound. His chest was opened from collar to hip, blackness already festering across muscle and organ, the skin curling back in scorched flaps.

The Queen shuddered, as she raised her arms again, ready to cut Eric in half completely. Her eyes still blazed as her head fell from her body, Henry’s halberd finally finding its mark and landing the true final blow.

“Eric! Eric!” Garret’s voice cracked as he scrambled to the captain’s side, his shield abandoned on the ground behind him.

Myrae was already there with a potion which she forced past Eric’s lips, her free hand glowed bright blue with healing light. The wound knitted only in part, the black rot of the Queen's aether still ate through his insides faster than her magic could mend.

Eric’s breath rattled. His eyes found Garret weakly. “Garret… look at me.”

“No, don’t. Don’t you fucking talk. This is my fault... I turned around and celebrated too early. I shouldn’t have—”

“I don’t… blame you.” Eric coughed, blood streaked his teeth. He smiled faintly. “I’d have saved… any of you. Every time. No matter what.”

“I know. And you’ll do it again, too, you hear me? Just stay with us. Myrae, cast another spell! Something!”

The healer’s hands trembled as her aether flickered uselessly across Eric’s chest. Her head shook once, her eyes refusing to meet Garret’s stare.

“Another spell, damn you!” Garret screamed.

Henry’s heavy hand landed on his shoulder. “Garret.”

“Don’t touch me!” He shrugged Henry off, leaning closer to Eric, desperation flashing over his face. “You don’t get to leave us, Captain. Not like this.”

Eric’s hand rose slowly and he held a single shaky open palm up to Garret. His bloodied chuckle was barely a sound at all. "You...earned it."

Garret brought his own palm up against Eric's. Then he clutched Eric's hand, forcing his lips into a trembling grin. “High-five,” he said.

“High-five,” Eric whispered. His smile lingered only a heartbeat longer before his hand went slack in Garret’s grip.