Chapter 61: Fury Road

  Angela and Emma made their first kills with shared effort, assisting each other in cutting, blocking, and taunting their opponents. As Angela carved into more and more hide and flesh, the air around the car they were protecting filled with the stench of burnt hair and charred meat as Caliburn seared its victims.

  Emma didn’t kill as many as she maimed, her previous experience helping her aim quick stabs and muscle-deep cuts at the hounds’ weak points, leaving them open for Angela to strike down—the larger Caliburn and stronger woman cut their bones and tendons with little effort, the fire-enhanced weapon carving through the beasts like a hot knife through butter. The quicker and lighter Emma and Mistilteinn excelled at fast-paced combat, her stature and enhanced speed allowing her to dart amongst the hounds, scoring wound after critical wound.

  When Jessie had first summoned the swords back in Africa, Angela had opted for the larger one and Emma the shorter one only because of their difference in build and strength. After their time training with the weapons though, they fought as if the weapons were made for them—Jessie said they were not.

  The sizes were one thing, but the elements that Jessie infused the Schemas with seemed to decide the attributes of the weapons. Not size or shape, but what the weapons could do: Emma was never as quick or as coordinated as when she and Mistilteinn were together, nor was Angela as strong. This seemed to hail from the weapons’ elemental infusion. They couldn’t wait for Jessie to tier the ability up, maybe giving her more Schemas with different elements for them to try out.

  Emma felt the surge of power coursing through her much more than Angela did, her body growing quicker, her reflexes growing sharper, and her mind clearer. She felt like a whole other person, and she loved it. Angela just felt powerful. She was stronger, feeling like no one in the world could take her on.

  As such, Emma was more curious than the rest when Erik had made his own two Schemas after he had stolen the ‘Ease the Burden’ ability from Jessie. As the Titan did not have any connection to fire or wind, Erik had instead infused the Schemas with dark and light, two of the three elements he could use.

  If wind gave speed and clarity to the wielder, and a sharpness to the blade, what did light do? If fire gave strength and a searing edge, what did dark do?

  Emma’s mind snapped back into place as a claw rent the flesh on her arm. She howled in pain yet kept fighting on, her sword arm still unharmed. The bodies were piling up around them and the car they were protecting. It was getting hard to move around, even for Emma.

  Angela kicked the body of a dead Hellbeast back to make some space for herself—it didn’t slide far, nor was the space it cleared unoccupied for long—another grotesque body thumped down on the ground, the asphalt beneath covered in another layer of blood.

  A loud, metallic screech caused both women to turn in shock as a Hellbeast clawed its way through the hatch at the back of the car. The metal ripped clean off the car moments later. Luckily, there was no open path from the boot and into the cabin of the car.

  Jessie approached by falling horizontally through the air, crashing into the offending hound with a powerful kick. The impact flung the beast back, and then a small barrage of scythes tore it asunder. Jessie boomed back towards the larger mass of hounds, leaving Emma and Angela to keep defending the car. While Emma and Angela had killed a dozen hounds, which lay scattered around the car, Jessie and Erik were taking on the brunt of the attack. Not ten metres away from the protected car lay a circle of burnt, cut, and smashed open monster carcasses, the circle being much wider than Angela and Emma’s area to defend.

  Erik jumped around with monstrous talons and massive claws, clamping down on every Hellbeast he landed on, tearing them apart with all four limbs. He was oozing black miasma, covering him like a dusky mist, though the miasma itself was nothing but a misty haze a few metres away from its source, its effect reduced.

  Jessie burst around with her new ‘Jet’ ability in the same manner—the mobility power was fast becoming one of her signature abilities, showing itself as a key skill to have, despite it being only a minor ability—flinging scythe after scythe, casting ‘Scorch’ and ‘Spike’ as often as she could. Along with the semi-random blitzes of lightning from her ‘Enter the Storm’, several Hellbeasts fell from her onslaught every few seconds.

  Jessie missed her Familiar Grace in such an intense battle; the regeneration from their ‘Storm’ doubled when both were using it. All of Grace’s spells would be paid out of the Witch’s energy pool, though, meaning double the cost as well. Despite this, the strategic element of having another spellcaster in the area would more than make up for the loss.

  A round, sharp metal object buzzed past her, blood from the creatures it sliced apart spinning along with it. A hound to her left turned to yellow goo as acid exploded from it, covering both itself and burning through a few others with a collateral splattering of the same acid. The air turned almost sulfuric in its wake; the gases released mixed with the smell of ozone and burnt meat from Jessie’s victims.

  Charging hounds thumped into invisible walls, blue plasma lit up the area amidst the black miasma as the Titan used his Unexpected Arsenal to his utmost ability, though he didn’t have an infinite supply of stuff. Erik stabbed his claws into the neck of a Hellbeast while clutching another in his talons when a third beast leapt across a pile of bodies, its wide-open maw heading straight for Erik’s side.

  A black mass shot through Erik’s clothes, solidifying inside the hound’s mouth. The hound seemed unable to close its jaw and soon started screeching as smoke rose from its teeth and tongue. A violent shake sent Gloom shooting out of its mouth, revealing the sickly sight of melting flesh and teeth turning both yellow and brown as they decayed.

  Gloom joined the fight as an unreadable mass of slime and carnage, tendrils and clumps shooting everywhere, all at once, some distance away.

  “Where did that come from?” Jessie shouted as she sent a ‘Volt Surge’ into a nearby Hellbeast and blew it away with a wind scythe. She could only have one ‘Volt Surge’ channelled at once, but if it touched others, they might get shocked by the built-up current inside it. It would start small—less even than a static shock—but after only a handful of seconds, the charge had built up enough for it to impact their motor functions.

  At the half-minute mark, the prime target was almost ready to blow; the Hellbeasts unfortunate enough to be shocked by it were killed outright as the explosive and sudden shock to their systems more proved more lethal than the building current within the target of the spell.

  “I’ve been wearing him,” Erik answered in a slight huff as the ground beneath him crumbled and rose to cover his arm, raising his defence more than the offensive ‘Unleash’ form.

  “Is it a Venom-type symbiote or something?” she asked a few seconds later, having once more assisted Angela and Emma, this time with a Hellbeast on the roof of the car.

  Erik turned to watch the army of tentacles flailing from a larger centre mass, every beast hit by the fluctuating, sometimes-solid goo breaking bones and corroding away where they were hit. It took quite a few hits to kill a hound, but Gloom was controlling a much higher number of beasts than Angela and Emma did, all by itself, helped by its matter phase-shifting.

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  “Seems that way, doesn’t it?” he answered. “You’re quite Superman-y yourself after that last ability.”

  Jessie flung an earth scythe as she flipped around towards Erik, sending the scythe flying in his direction, crushing heads, throats, spines, and feet on the way.

  “More like Aquaman, but in the air!” she responded.

  “Isn’t water also a ‘medium’ to travel through?” Erik guessed, dodging the scythe by jumping above it, letting it hit a few more beasts before it crumbled to dust and rock.

  “Oh yeah, I guess it is.”

  “Well, I won’t be outdone by you or Gloom!” Erik said with conviction, using a new trick he learned from Jack, his ‘Confiscate’ spirit.

  The ground shook as the asphalt and rock underneath rose in hundreds of pieces of debris—then covered Erik’s entire body—and the Titan fell to his knees. The Hellbeasts around him piled on top of him, tearing at the pile that had eaten their prey, allowing many more to get close.

  Lightning struck, which only added to the piles of bodies already lying around. Erik’s mound then exploded, sending shrapnel and debris flying in all directions, piercing, cutting, and otherwise eviscerating a whole slew of beasts in one go.

  “The fuck was that?” Jessie screamed. She’d only just avoided the blast unscathed.

  “Sorry!” Erik started, his arm once more getting covered in rock-like armour. The Titan punched towards the closest beast a few metres away; a large piece of rock separated from the armour and shot forward towards the beast, lodging itself deep into the hole it made in the hound’s throat.

  “Never seen that before,” Jessie said, travelling upwards into the air to evade a wide swipe of a brutish claw.

  “Jack showed me,” Erik started and rolled under a similar swipe. “The ‘Confiscate’ spirit.”

  “I hate that your abilities are so open-ended,” Jessie said, grimacing as she looked over to Emma and Angela, both wounded and exhausted. “Damn it! I’m taking Sophie out of here!”

  Erik couldn’t believe Jessie’s words. He turned in her direction, seeing her dash through the air towards the car. He clenched his teeth, then followed as fast as he could, his taloned feet carving and ripping flesh on his way over. Jessie unleashed a barrage of scythes, clearing the immediate area of enemies.

  “Get in the car!” she shouted, and Angela and Emma rushed to do as ordered. They ripped the battered doors open. “Drive!” Jessie shouted again, this time directed at Dunham, who followed orders even quicker.

  When Erik saw Jessie gather the rest for an escape rather than picking up her sister and fleeing, he calmed down and refocused on the army of monsters surrounding them. The partial escape meant fewer kills—which wasn’t all that bad as Erik’s ‘Entropy’ could then do its business and wreak havoc inside the survivors’ bodies. Many of them started slowing down, coughing, sneezing, and bleeding from oozing holes, the blood mixing with a black tar-like substance.

  Jessie stood on the roof of the car as it drove off, her feet spread wide to keep her balance. When losing said balance, after falling from the speeding vehicle, she just flew back onto the car with her ‘Jet’ ability. She faced Erik, meeting his gaze with a nod they both recognised.

  She kept flinging spells at the several hounds chasing the car. As she moved outside her own control, and the hounds leaped and zigzagged around each other in haphazard patterns, she missed more than she hit—her scythes, though wide, only hit one or two, a barely sustainable number.

  She had to figure out something else. At this speed, even her Enter The Storm ability was no good, unable to build up enough charge in one area before the field had moved on along with her, its centre. She thought back on Erik’s new Earthkeep trick. What new could she do that was still within the scope of her own abilities?

  Erik met Jessie’s gaze as they left, her standing on top of the banged-up car. He’d stay behind, keeping as many of them away as he could. The flow of new Hellbeasts joining the fray had trickled down—maybe stopped, but it was hard to tell—so this fight seemed to near its conclusion. His own energy levels were getting low, as well.

  Without Jessie’s Enter The Storm’s energy regeneration, or that of her aura trait Surge, he was feeling the constant drain his abilities were costing him. Once the main mass of hounds had split, about a third following the car, Erik let his ‘Entropy’ do most of the work; it was rather cheap and was effective, though slow, against a horde of enemies.

  Keeping only the talons from his ‘Unleash’ active, the drain was noticeable but manageable, at least for now. The Gloom construct was also slowing down, not for lack of energy, but already being beaten and clawed at enough to lose both mass and will. It wasn’t a drain on Erik as he’d paid the cost of summoning already, which made everything it could do before dying essentially free kills.

  Erik jumped around in circles, trying to keep his movements as random as possible while keeping as many hounds as possible close enough for his dark haze. He was soon covered in wounds and cuts, but activating ‘Earthkeep’ would be a bit too costly except in an emergency. Erik could handle a few cuts and bruises.

  As the surrounding air filled with black spore-like particles from the beasts’ decaying flesh, most, if not all, of his enemies’ ‘Entropy’ infection had spread wide enough to kill them. The miasma would keep eating away at their insides even if Erik stopped channelling the spell, using the infected body as energy just like a virus. Still, he kept it up for a few more seconds, just to make sure that every single one of them would fall. He felt Gloom’s presence vanish as he was mid-jump between tall, dog-like backs.

  Jessie’s hands glowed for a moment as she called her two Schemas to her. At a cheaper cost than summoning them, the swords vanished from inside the car only to appear in their true wielder’s hands.

  With both swords grasped in her hands, she sensed a small surge of strength, and her mind cleared. It had much less of an effect on her than on Angela and Emma, Jessie already being magically enhanced, though she still noticed a marked difference. Her power was supposed to be used by herself, after all.

  At first, she channelled her spells through the swords to keep the closest enemies away from the car. She noticed a slight increase in power when using fire spells through her fire-infused Schema, and the same with wind through Mistilteinn. It wasn’t critical, but the scythes were wider, with more oomph. Her ‘Scorch’ spell similarly felt stronger, though it wasn’t immediately noticeable by her as she was hurtling away from the targeted area at high speed.

  Her ability to target and kill the chasing hounds wasn’t much improved, all things considered, and she had to come up with something else to keep the horde at bay. She remembered her swords hovering in the air as she summoned them. Maybe she could mimic that moment somehow?

  She released Mistilteinn, focusing on keeping the sword aloft with her mind, her magic or whatever else could work. It did nothing but fall, clanking against the roof of the car followed by the road in front of her moments later.

  The sword flashed and returned to Jessie’s hand, hovering in the air for just a moment as the sword rebuilt itself. She tried again, this time trying to keep the reconstruction from finishing right away. It seemed she had no way to modulate it. She growled. There had to be something.

  If her ‘Scorch’ or ‘Spike’ could hit a wider area rather than a single point, like a wall of flames or earth, she could at least keep up with the last trickles of hounds, but as it was, some of them had already attacked the car while her abilities were on cooldown or she missed too much.

  Fearing leaving the car in case hounds from elsewhere attacked as well, or she proved unable to keep all the rest in check, she had to figure out something while staying put on top of the car. Despite her energy regeneration from her aura, she would bottom out soon, and only a reduced amount of spell flinging and the deactivation of ‘Storm’ made it possible to last even this long.

  Panting, she fell to her knees, sending another flame scythe as she did. It hurtled forward at a slight angle, hitting a hound’s leg before making a long scorch-mark on the asphalt. The hound fell on its face and rolled around, but was otherwise undamaged—a burn on its leg the only visible damage as it trailed behind the rest.

  A sharp turn on the road caused Jessie to tumble off the car, slamming into the road barrier after rolling on the ground. Fighting to remain conscious, she flung as many spells as she could towards the shadows creeping in towards her before her senses shut off, her consciousness faded.

  Erik stumbled over the piles of corpses beneath his feet. Almost a hundred of them lay strewn all over; what little of the road that remained visible dyed red and black. Erik wandered in the direction he had last seen Jessie and the rest going, the car he had been in before the attack smashed to pieces.

  In his daze, he wasn’t even sure if they had gone back the way they came from or if they had driven onwards, but he was certain he was following them as he saw a trail of carcasses even in the distance. It took him minutes before he even crawled away from the main battlefield, his progress slowed from having to climb a crater formed of monsters.

  From on top, he sensed a familiar aura approaching him. He laid his head down in his arms as he gasped into the stiffening fur of a bloodied beast, not a care in the world how dirty it might be. When the aura stopped advancing, Erik raised his head again, meeting the large, black eyes of a massive Hellbeast staring back at him. Unable to continue fighting, Erik met its swinging paw face first.