by Sterling on Tue May 01, 2012 10:39 am
Meanwhile Romero had found the scroll he was searching for in his satchel. He unrolled the top of it and looked over the runes that glowed there in blood-red ink. He spoke a brief incantation and the runes flashed then he threw the paper toward Sterling. It unfurled, lengthened impossibly, and shot forward to wrap around Sterling like a binding bandage.
“What!?” Sterling shouted, looking over at Romero as Akiyama seized upon the opportunity and charged.
Sterling flexed against the parchment and his chains sizzled along the inside of the binding, shredding it to pieces just as Akiyama struck with a vicious thrust that caught him straight through the midriff.
“Ki-AI!” Akiyama punctuated the strike.
“Hrk... UNF.” Sterling answered, blood showing at his mouth from the impaling.
“YES!” shouted Romero.
The blade sang, vibrated with the pure power of Order, and burned inside Sterling like fire. Akiyama turned it upward, angling it to slice up through Sterling’s vitals. He was sure of his victory and had forgotten what and who it was he faced.
“No...” Sterling growled in Akiyama’s face, bringing a knee up into his crotch with an impact hard enough to lift the smaller man a foot off the ground. The shock of it froze Akiyama in place for a moment.
A moment was all that was needed.
Sterling reached back with a fist then punched Akiyama hard in the face, knocking him back and pulling the sizzling sword free. He followed this up by stepping fast forward, using his supernatural speed, and hit him twice more in the chest and stomach, each impact punctuated with grunted words as blood flowed freely from his the wound in his stomach.
“Still.” Punch. “Just.” Punch. “Human...”
With the last word Sterling kicked Akiyama hard in the chest, his chains lashing out over his shoulders to slice into Akiyama’s upper arms. Bones cracked and flesh tore. Akiyama dropped his sword and flew backward, sliding to a halt and laying motionless, his blade ten feet away from him on the ground.
Romero watched in horror as Sterling turned his baleful and glowing gaze to him, unable to comprehend that Akiyama had been defeated so quickly and completely after striking what should have been a fatal blow.
“Gaia... no...”
“Yes,” Sterling growled, striding steadily toward the kneeling archivist.
Romero had the good sense to try to run but before he could rise to his feet and bold Sterling was there, standing behind him as he turned, claws glistening with his own blood in the light and sparkle of the Static Field.
“Worse for you, troublesome wretch.” Sterling said, his voice full of hate. “Interfering like that... you get life, not death.”
“N...” Romero began, but he didn’t even have time to finish the short word.
Sterling slashed him deep across the chest, shredding his robe and flesh underneath down to the bone, but the wound was not fatal. The blood on Sterling’s claws was a mixture of his own and Romero’s now as he reached forward and gripped the remains of his robe and hauled him up to press his nose against the man’s.
“Feel the curse of eternity.” He said with finality, then threw Romero back into the ruins of the tavern with a crash that knocked him unconscious and caused the remains of the wall to fall over and cover him.
Akiyama moaned, drawing Sterling’s attention. He walked over to the prone man calmly, knowing he was no longer a threat wounded as he was and without his dreadful weapon.
“And you,” he said looking down at the fallen warrior. “You fought with honor. You get a choice. Life or death.”
Akiyama looked up at Sterling with a mix of admiration and hate but with no trace of fear or dread. He’d always known he’d fall in battle sooner or later and was, in a way, proud that it had been to such a monster as this instead of to a lucky assassin or of old age.
“Death,” he said with finality. “A clean death.”
Sterling nodded down at Akiyama, his expression one of respect for an equal, then knelt beside him. His chains writhed around his body one of them coming forward to poise the blade at the end directly above Akiyama’s heart.
“Respect, Master Akiyama.” Sterling said, then plunged the blade into the man, ending him quickly and cleanly.
Din Tau watched all this silently, unable to do anything to aid his companions from inside the circle he’d drawn to protect Torra and the Field Generator. He took in every detail, every nuance, and every word he could hear and see, his mind storing it all to be processed later. When Sterling stood and turned toward them he ducked back behind the wall.
“They’re dead,” Din Tau said to Torra. “He’s coming.”
“What do we do?” Torra said, her eyes wide and cornered with tears. “He’ll kill us too! Oh NO.”
Something else had drawn her attention. The Field Generator was glowing azure instead of red now, and one of the rings was slowing and appeared to be out of balance. Small sparks began to issue from the device.
“It’s absorbed too much energy,” Torra said, beginning to panic. “The field is going to collapse. It’ll explode!”
Din Tau looked from the woman to the device, then had a thought.
“Explode?” he asked.
“Yes, all the energy it has stored is going to be released! Din Tau, we have to do something!”
“Right.” He said as the idea clicked into place. He picked up the device and threw it over the wall toward Sterling.
“NO!” Torra screamed and tried to scramble out after it.
The device bounced once, twice, then fell to the ground half way between the smithy and Sterling with a clattering pop.
The collapse of the Static Field was spectacular. First the outer edges of it shimmered blue, then red, then it began to contract slowly like a deflating soap bubble. Every time a piece of suspended material from inside crossed the threshold of it the lost energy that it had was regained and it flew up and away, shattered, or burst into flame, or a combination of all three. The contraction of the field accelerated as it drew inward, first at a crawling pace, then at a faster clip, and finally as a rushing wave of inverse force.
Din Tau hauled on Torra’s back, trying to pull her back into the circle, but couldn’t get her completely inside before the field intersected the malfunctioning generator.
Sterling wrapped himself in his chains and crouched down low to the ground, bracing for the inevitable.
There was a deafening boom, one that rattled the ground with a force like an earthquake, one felt on more than one plane of existence as the generator shattered and released all of its stored energy. The outgoing shockwave caused vapor to materialize in the air, forming a solid wall of white as it expanded first slowly, then faster, then blasted outward with the force of tons of explosives. What was left of Bezonvaux was obliterated in a matter of moments.
As the shockwave crashed over Din Tau’s circle it tore off both of Torra’s legs that were outside the edge, and one of her hands. The circle itself flashed into a protective and impermeable sphere, the devastation washing around it like a stone in a stream. Akiyama’s body was blown away, Farstadt’s was shredded. Waseem, saved by the shielding paper, lay burned and unconscious in the middle of the blast area. Romero, saved by the fact he was already buried in rubble, lay unconscious in a cairn of stone.
It was a full two minutes before the sound of the explosion had died away, and rubble rained down for another two.
Din Tau opened his eyes and took in the sight. Everything was destroyed, either blast cleared or rubble. But one thing still stood. Sterling.
The creature stood, and walked toward Din Tau, limping slightly at first but straightening as his regeneration took hold and repaired his legs. He came to the edge of the circle and stopped.
Sterling stood before the wounded Torra and defiant Din Tau in his glowing sphere. He tapped on it first with a claw, then with a chain, and found it completely impervious to his touch, harder than stone or steel, and unbreakable as the will of the young mage that had conjured it from the circle on the ground.
Sterling smiled, wide and awful in his full form, at the boy.
“Nice work you did,” he said, true admiration in his voice for the talent that the mage possessed and the mind driving it. “You’re gonna go far, kid.”
Sterling turned away from the glowing sphere and began walking west through the wreckage of the town.
“Hopefully we won’t meet again.” he said over his shoulder as he walked away.
“Don’t count on it, Kinsmir.” Din Tau said evenly.
Sterling vanished into the smoke and fog carrying Akiyama’s sheathed sword.
---
Early the next year Sterling was working on a freighter. Not a large ship but not a small one, and fast. It brought him back to his earlier sea-faring days in mind but that wasn’t the important thing. What was important was the destination of the boat; Japan.
Once again Europe had become too hot an area both in terms of the Mages’ influence and looking for him and in the area of the normal human condition. War may be where he excelled and what he was built for by the powers that be but it wasn’t something that he was prepared to actively seek out again just yet.
Hopefully the ship would be undetected by the ever patrolling U-Boats as it left Calais under blackout and steamed through the straight and into the Atlantic. It would be a long journey. He began to sing, softly, one of the old sea shanties he used to sing with other shipmates long, long ago.
END
~
Sterling
"Naive wishing for peace is the surest possible way to invite an aggressor."