Chapter 16: Mind Meld Thingy

I found a news holovid in a hallway nearby, and I saw the devastation that raked our former sanctuary. Our government had mobilized the whole of our military infrastructure in preparation of an attack. All of humanity’s technological progress, accumulated over thousands of years of development, had been laid to bear in a single showdown.

They still believed that the Sages were just trying to trick us into giving up our main means of defending ourselves. They thought we’d be fighting an enemy on relatively equal ground. They were wrong. It was no alien fleet that assailed our ships, no armada that took the brunt of our nuclear weapons and missiles.

It was a massive Golden Dragon even larger than the first two. Instead of coming from outer space, it had dug itself out from beneath the ground, causing earthquakes all over the planet. The first thing it did was go straight for the fleet that had gathered in orbit in anticipation of an interplanetary invasion. The creature knocked our capital ships from the skies as if they were gnats. Countless nukes were launched, but the explosions raking the creature’s body might as well have been raindrops for all the harm they did. I watched in horror as the outraged beast broke our planetary defense systems in only a few short minutes. With the armada destroyed, it landed back to the ground with a deafening roar. Our day of judgment had come at last. Humankind would have to pay the price for their sins.

Only one thing went through Ryan’s mind while being propelled up the side of a six-mile-high building by a pair of glowing orange boots that left streaks of fire on the walls: pure unadulterated terror. Not even dangling off the edge with Éclair and hanging onto life by a vine that quickly became a twig even came close. The ‘holding Éclair’s hand’ part was pretty cool, but the ‘nearly falling to his doom’ part ... not so great.

Ryan forgot how to think ... forgot how to breathe. Soon, the ground faded away, and the clouds above became his only reality. He clenched his eyes shut and blocked everything out. Then a voice brought him to his senses. It sounded like Zand’s voice at first, and then it slowly converted to Leon’s voice.

Wake up, Grunt! screamed Leon into Ryan’s, his annoyingness giving Ryan a reason to feel anger rather than fear and helped focus him. We’re not out of the woods yet! Turrets up ahead at 300 yards! We’re closing in on them at a quarter mach speed!

“Why the hell do you think I know what that means?” replied Ryan, opening his eyes.

The roar in Ryan’s ears nearly drowned out all his other senses, yet somehow, he still managed to spot the turrets up ahead as the distance between them rapidly closed. Leon summoned his dual swords to his hands, and Ryan pulled out his sword and iron claws.

The turrets fired all kinds of weapons. Some shot out spinning blades that followed Ryan after he dodged them. These he had to swipe out of the sky with a back slice from his fiery sword, causing the metal disks to explode.

One grazed him a little before Leon came in for the rescue with a gust of wind that sent the rest of the little tops of doom plummeting to the ground. Some turrets even shot electrified nets which were even more difficult to dodge and less likely to explode when having contact with a fiery sword.

Ryan wasn’t sure how he did it, but he somehow dodged or blocked the thousands of projectiles that came at him from almost every angle. He twisted and swung his sword like it was an extension of his arm. He weaved and ducked under missiles, lasers, and bullets just before they turned him into sushi.

He almost moved as fast and gracefully as Leon. In fact, the two became close to mirror images of each other as they zipped up the wall and sliced at turrets and projectiles in their path. Then Ryan heard Leon’s voice in his head again.

You’re doing good, Ryan. You have a surprisingly receptive mind. I’m easily able to upload commands to your cerebral cortex so that you can move a little more like a pro.

“Get the hell outta my head, Leon!” screamed Ryan as he dodged under a barrage of red-hot lasers without thinking and sliced through an auto turret as if it were jelly.

I’m just giving you a little help. Focus on the battle, not me. Your form is starting to get sloppy.

“It’s a little hard to fight pretty while being propelled thousands of feet into the air! In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not very good at multitasking!”

Ryan slid under a steady stream of electro nets that almost wrapped him up in their deadly embrace. He missed his footing for a split second and almost lost control of his propulsion boots. Ryan waved his arms frantically and barely regained his balance, avoiding certain death in the process. However, he nearly made a skid mark with his face on the metal surface of the building.

Stop flapping your arms around like a stunted duck! It creates more air resistance, ordered Leon into Ryan’s mind. Haven’t you ever skated before?

“Dude!” shouted Ryan over the roar of the wind. “I didn’t even know what ‘skating’ was until a few seconds ago!”

Just do what I do. Quiet your thoughts so that the bond can be complete. Remember the bond I had with Tork? This is the same thing. It doesn’t work if you keep fighting me.

Ryan mentally felt Leon in his mind - felt his own mental defenses subconsciously trying to block the intrusion. He didn’t know he even had the ability to combat telepathic intrusions. Forcing his mind to relent its counterattack on Leon’s mind wasn’t easy; many parts of his subconscious didn’t want to be unraveled.

God gave us the ability to keep our thoughts private for a reason, thought Ryan to himself, hoping Leon didn’t hear him.

Finally, after much effort, Ryan let the bond between his mind and Leon’s mind be complete. Now they were in perfect sync - mirror images of each other as they skated up the wall of the mountain-sized skyscraper with agility and grace.

With a combined sword slash, Ryan and Leon cleared the last of the wall’s defenses. At last, the top of the building came into view. Ryan almost passed out from relief.

We’re almost to the top! We’re going to make it! We’re going to save Éclair! Then Ryan had a thought that he found quite disturbing. What if we run into Galzar?

Remembering that Leon could only imprint thoughts, not read them, Ryan shouted to Leon. “Hey! What if we run into Galzar?!”

“What?” shouted Leon.

“I said ‘Hey! What if we run into’-”

An explosion detonated in their path. The violent blast made Ryan lose his footing and the psionic skates separated from the wall, leaving Ryan at the mercy of gravity. However, Ryan got off easy compared to Leon, who was ahead at the time, so he met the brunt of the explosion.

Leon crossed his swords together and attempted to create an air bubble shield like the one that Ryan had seen the Minister create with fire and lightning. However, Leon’s shield proved less effective than the Minister’s. Even from a distance, Ryan could see Leon get knocked unconscious from the blast and go into freefall.

Ryan had only a few seconds to interpret all this information at once before an image popped into his head - an image of Thisy showing Ryan a few tricks that his gauntlet could do.

The hook thingy!

Within the span of a few short milliseconds, Ryan sheathed his sword, grabbed onto Leon with one hand, and raised his iron-clawed gauntlet with the other. Thisy had told Ryan that if he ever found himself falling to his death, this trick might come in handy. A strangely specific statement at the time, but now it made perfect sense, almost as if Thisy had given Ryan a prophecy.

Ryan curled his fist, causing the claws to extend out farther. Then he pressed a switch in his palm with his pinky just as Thisimius instructed him to do. Raising his fist toward the hole that’d just been blown from inside the building, one of his claws shot out of the gauntlet with a metal cable attached to it. The claw penetrated the steel wall, stopping their fall. Ryan felt like his arms might be ripped from their sockets as the line hoisted them up to the hole like a bass on a fishing line.

Ryan threw Leon onto the edge of the recently made hole before dropping down himself. Leon quickly regained consciousness and coughed. Before Ryan could feel any relief, he noticed a crouching figure. A sinister-looking creature stood in the room with black knives covered in a dark mist that floated around him like satellites around a planet.

He had green skin, long ears, and yellow eyes like Silvia, but the resemblance ended there. His face was distorted and gruesome, not like the fair and elegant face of his daughter. His bearing was a mask of controlled rage and the intent to kill.

Swallowing hard, Ryan said, “Hi.”

Eramar barely had time to teleport out of the way before another barrage of heat-seeking water missiles converged on his position.

I underestimated Konamay. He’s tracking my movements ... learning my patterns. Between the fog of mist surrounding him and that bubble shield he’s erected, just landing a blow on him will be tricky, and I’m using full firepower now. I could use my trump card, but I want to see if he’s got anything else up his sleeve.

The battle had started off well enough. Konamay used the same basic attack patterns as before. A cloud of hot, acid mist followed by repeated ice attacks, all of which were easily avoided by Eramar’s teleportation and acrobatic prowess. Eramar figured that if he just let Konamay wear himself out with his predictable attacks, he could batter away at his defenses until an opening presented itself.

But then, just as Eramar teleported right above Konamay and prepared to deliver the final blow with a pinpoint stab to the head, the bubble shield appeared as a last line of defense and things got complicated. This shield was clearly much more powerful than the thin layer of water over Konamay’s skin that Eramar had encountered earlier. Eramar probably would’ve been able to blast his way through the shield eventually, but Konamay got wise and started changing tactics.

Instead of charging head-on as he normally would, Konamay concentrated most of his efforts to defense and counterattacks. He sent giant lances made of ice from his hands towards Eramar, then a second volley of water by swiping the air with his scythe and sending a tsunami hurling across the square. A whole city block was swept away and at least three smaller buildings capsized under the waves of water.

Eramar had to propel himself into the air with fire jets from his boots to hover over the flooded floor. He made a clearing for himself by vaporizing the water with a blast of heat. Before he could mount a proper counterattack on solid ground, Konamay concentrated his strength into his legs and jumped out of range.

It was a technique almost as effective as teleporting since one of Konamay’s physical jumps usually took him well over a hundred meters. He even laid a few traps for Eramar when he pursued, leaving behind floating bubbles in the air that exploded if Eramar got too close. The bubbles were powerful and barely visible, making it quite a chore for Eramar to avoid them.

Dozens of bubble mines exploded all around Eramar as he zig-zagged past them, creating a dull, drumming noise in his ears and drizzling him in deluge. All in all, Konamay proved to be every bit as tough and wily as Eramar suspected he’d be.

Maybe if either of us survive through this, we can trade techniques ... that is assuming the Ministries aren’t still at war.

Eramar decided to up the ante. Summoning the element of magma deep within the earth’s surface, he put a hand to the ground until a geyser of lava erupted from a building at the edge of the square, turning it into a mini volcano.

Eramar carefully directed the pyroclastic material of the apartment-turned-volcano he just created to land on or near Konamay’s bubble shield. An orange, eerie light bathed the square as the molten liquid spread over the block, melting a nearby convenient store into a puddle and disintegrating any water that remained into steam, including what was left in the fountain.

Konamay responded by sending ice blasts to solidify the molten lava into solid earth, creating a loud hissing noise and making the air hot with sulfuric ash. Steam mixed with Konamay’s mist, causing the smokescreen to become denser than intended and momentarily breaking eye contact.

Just to throw his opponent off even more, Eramar flared his teleportation past its normal limitations, allowing him to do a flurry of jumps from right to left so fast that the afterimages made it look like he was in several places at once. Eramar had to be careful using this technique as it cost a lot of psions, but it was worth it since Konamay had already gauged that most of Eramar’s jumps had a half-second delay.

And then Eramar struck. The lava caused much of Konamay’s water barrier to evaporate, weakening it enough for Eramar to punch through with his fiery fist. Breaking through the water barrier with his free hand, Eramar then stabbed with his thin sword as quick as lightning.

Despite being taken off guard, Konamay still blocked Eramar’s first attack with his scythe, but he wasn’t completely prepared for the second or third attacks. While feinting a frenzied sword assault, Eramar summoned a psionic knife behind his back.

The knife glowed with the same orange energy as his sword and had been designed to phase through even Psionic Armor like the kind Konamay wore. However, instead of throwing it at Konamay, Eramar threw it behind him into a small portal that he just created which teleported the knife to a portal he sent behind Konamay.

The knife appeared and it pierced Konamay’s shoulder blade. Psionic Armor was tough, able to withstand a slug from a low-yield tank, but the blade still phased through it straight into Konamay’s skin like Eramar knew it would. Unfortunately, it hit neither a vital point nor the spot that Eramar had aimed for.

Konamay grunted in pain and surprise as the knife buried itself through his armor. Enraged, Konamay pulled out the knife and took a swipe at Eramar with it, almost taking his head off.

Eramar cursed while jumping out of range. “I was sure that one would work. I used so many feints and fake outs, I didn’t think you would see it coming.”

Konamay’s helm vanished as he inspected his wound, so Eramar willed his helmet to do the same, allowing the combatants to face each other unmasked. “I didn’t see it coming,” admitted Konamay as he threw the knife away. “I just kept my water skin technique going even after I had erected the bubble shield. The liquid membrane automatically shifted your Psionic Dagger off course so it wouldn’t hit a vital.”

“Clever,” admitted Eramar, saluting with his sword in respect.

It was as Eramar had suspected, but he just wanted to make sure. A mutual pause settled over the battlefield as both combatants stood in a very different arena, one covered in black, solidified magma still smoking with heat amongst dozens of ruined buildings.

Konamay glanced at the knife on the ground briefly, but still kept his guard up. “How did that knife penetrate so deeply into my armor, anyway? My suit hasn’t taken that much damage, so it should’ve absorbed the attack better, even from a Psionic Weapon.”

“Well, since you humored me with an answer, I guess I’ll do the same,” said Eramar somewhat hesitantly. “I spelled the blade with a phasing spell. It’s designed to phase through Psionic Armor.”

Best not to mention that I can only use that trick sparingly. I have to be close in order to pull it off. Plus, Those knives are difficult to forge, and they fade away with time. Even I don’t know where they vanish to, so I can only keep a limited supply.

Konamay rendered a respectful nod. “Crafty technique. It would seem that we balance each other perfectly.”

He’s holding something back, I just know he is ... otherwise, he wouldn’t look so confident after that attack.

“So, is that really all you’ve got Grim Reaper, or are there more moves to this dance?”

Konamay smiled slyly. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, come on. We’re both professionals. We’ve been around. What’s your trump card? Every Wielder Level Elemental has one. A Wielder’s ultimate technique for termination, called upon only as a last resort.”

“Well, perhaps you simply haven’t pushed me far enough to use it,” taunted Konamay.

This guy’s good! I started talking to get his goat, but he’s managed to turn it around on me to see if he can gauge my response.

“In that case,” Eramar said with a grin. “It’s only a matter of who’s willing to resort to his trump card first. I just wanted to give you the opportunity out of courtesy.”

“I appreciate the sentiment, but it’s unnecessary. You’ll be dead before you even get the chance.”

Konamay floated off the ground with a cloud of mist at his feet. Dozens of smaller water bubbles started spinning around him. The scythe in Konamay’s right hand became coated in ice until it grew to at least twice as large as its original size. Konamay hovered above Eramar’s head with a smug expression on his face.

A display of all three water elements at once. That is powerful Elemency, and it requires extremely delicate psionic control to be able to alternate between so many differing frequencies. Controlling water is very different from controlling ice or mist. To summon all three simultaneously is a skill reserved for a rare few, even among the Wielders. Could this be his trump card? It must be! But if so, then why do I still feel like I’m missing something?

Eramar whistled at the sight of Konamay standing on a cloud of mist with water bubbles surrounding him and a layer of ice reinforcing his double-bladed scythe.

“Water, ice, and mist at the same time. All three water-type elements at once. Not too shabby, even for a Wielder.”

“It’s one of my specialties. Partially the reason I was chosen as Sorric’s righthand man,” said Konamay none too humbly. “Now, I’ll make it simple for you, Demon Slayer. Surrender yourself, and on my honor, I will let you live. We’ll use you as a bargaining chip to get back the prisoners you wrongfully took at the peace talks ... the peace talks that your people put an end to when you killed Randals.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“Maybe not from your perspective, but that doesn’t mean your superiors are any less corrupt. I’ll find out the truth soon enough, after the Fire Elementals surrender and give over half of their territories and resources to us as compensation for their betrayals.”

“That’s ridiculous! That would leave us at the Emperor’s mercy! We’d be slaughtered within a month!”

Eramar started getting genuinely angry with Konamay’s prattling. He wondered if Konamay really cared whether or not the Ministry of Fire was behind Randals’ death, or if he just used that as an excuse.

“Not my problem. You once said that no price is too high for peace. Well, that’s my price!”