The rain comes down in sheets.
It is a freezing, relentless deluge that turns the world into a blurred watercolor painting of grey and black. It soaks through my clothes, plastering my hair to my skull and running in cold rivulets down my neck, but I don't feel it. I don't feel the cold. I don't feel the fatigue of the hundred miles I've run today.
I feel only hate and a cold simmering anger. It is a cold, white-hot knot of rage sitting in the center of my chest, fueled by the images burned into my retina from the city of Nimorael. The boiled babies. The buried men. The river of blood.
Helix has regrouped.
We are crouching on a about twenty miles outside the main town of Oakhaven we were instructed to clear of enemies.
"Town" is a misnomer. The Empire's maps are outdated, or perhaps they just refuse to acknowledge the growth of the Western territories. Oakhaven is huge. It is a sprawling urban center that spreads out across the valley floor like a dark stain. It isn't as vertically ambitious as Grevona there are no crystal spires or magnetic tram lines here but it is massive in footprint. It is a maze of timber, stone, and low-rise industrial buildings, surrounded by a collection of satellite villages that have all but merged into the main city.
"That's a lot of people," Vini Lopez rumbles next to me, wiping rain from his strawberry-red eyes.
"That's a lot of targets," Vihaan corrects, his voice a low purr.
I had explained the status of Nimorael to them ten minutes ago after we finally regrouped. I didn't use flowery language. I gave them the report. Massacre. Desecration. Total purge.
There was a silence after I finished. A heavy, suffocating silence that was louder than the thunder rolling overhead.
Now, there is a cold anger bubbling across my new cohort. Even the markless soldiers Rook, Max, and Ivy and Hudson look grim. Their jaws are set. Their hands are white-knuckled on their weapons. They know what we are fighting now. We aren't fighting soldiers. We are fighting monsters. Maybe they really are corrupted by Chaos, because I still can not rationalize how they are so evil how they could inflict such cruelty.
I glance at Lucian.
He is staring at the city, his face pale.
When I first returned, I made the mistake of opening the bond fully. I wanted him to know. I wanted him to see. I pushed the memory of the river and the corpse pyramids into his mind.
His reaction was immediate. His horror spiked so hard it felt like a physical blow to my own psyche. I felt his bile rise, his anger spike to such levels I had to slam the connection shut to not vomit.
Now, he just looks hard. My lackadaisical friend has abandoned his bit replaced for now by the soldier.
On the way to this ridge, moving through the outskirts of the sprawling Oakhaven complex, we systematically wiped out about twenty Federation soldiers who were patrolling the perimeter.
It wasn't a fight. It was pest control.
We moved like ghosts in the rain. We left the bodies in the mud, throats slit, eyes wide.
I hope they won't be missed. Not until it's too late. Not until we launch our attack.
"Colonel," Sola whispers, her yellow eyes glowing in the gloom. "The wind is peaking. If we're going to do this, we do it now."
Lieutenant Colonel Caldera stands up.
He doesn't look like a commander. He looks like an executioner. The rain slicks his leather armor, making the black material shine. He looks down at Oakhaven, at the warm lights of the buildings that the Federation turned into barracks clustered in the center.
He nods.
"Helix," he growls. "Mission is a go."
The plan we quickly went over snaps into motion.
I sit back on my heels, watching the stars who will set off our opening act. The hammer of justice will swiftly crush the enemy into a bloody pulp.
Three figures step forward to the edge of our little ridge. It would be ambitious to call it a hill but it works for our purpose.
Imara. Lopez. Sola.
They stand in a line, overlooking the sleeping city.
"Blessed be Aren," Imara whispers, clutching her pendant.
She reaches out with both hands. She doesn't aim at a person. She aims at the city itself. She aims at the stone, the mortar, the foundations of the district directly below us.
I feel the shift in the air. It is a heavy, sickening sensation, like the gravity of the world has suddenly tiled on its axis.
Down in the city, the physics of architecture begin to fail.
Stone becomes too heavy for itself. Wood becomes too soft to hold a roof. Foundations that have stood for a hundred years suddenly groan and buckle, unable to support their own mass.
CRACK.
The sound is like a gunshot, magnified a thousand times. A watchtower on the perimeter crumbles, folding in on itself as if it were made of wet sand.
Lopez grunts and mutters "May the gods have mercy on their souls"
He steps forward and stomps his foot.
It looks like a simple gesture. But Lopez bears the Mark of Kinetic Reinforcement.
BOOM.
The ground shudders. But the force doesn't dissipate into the dirt. It multiplies. It ripples out from his boot, a shockwave that gains power as it travels.
It hits the weakened, density-altered structures below.
Usually, a building absorbs a shock. It sways. It settles.
But Imara has robbed them of their structural integrity.
When the kinetic wave hits, the buildings don't sway. They shatter.
"Gale," Sola hisses.
She throws her arms wide, her eyes blazing like twin suns.
She catches the kinetic force Lopez released. She catches the debris falling from Imara's crumbling towers. And she pushes.
She spreads the amplified forces laterally. She creates a wind tunnel of destruction, carrying the shockwave, the rocks, the bodies, and the pressure deeper into the city. She prevents the damage from remaining localized. She smears it across the districts like a giant hand wiping a slate clean.
And the rain.
The rain intensifies the chaos. It saturates the softened wood. It slicks the streets, making the debris slide faster. It turns the dust into mud, clogging the drains, flooding the basements of collapsing houses.
The result is not a single explosion. It is not a clear frontline.
It is a cascading breakdown.
It is a domino effect of catastrophic failure.
I watch in awe as an entire city block simply... disintegrates. A warehouse implodes. The street buckles, throwing paved stones into the air like confetti. The sound is deafening a roar of grinding stone and screaming metal that drowns out the thunder.
Motion, weight, and gravity no longer behave predictably.
"Move," Caldera orders.
Helix descends.
We slide down the muddy slope of the ridge, riding the landslide of our own making.
We hit the streets of Oakhaven.
It is chaos.
The air is thick with dust that turns to mud in the rain. Alarms are blaring sirens that wail with a mournful, undulating pitch.
Soldiers are pouring out of the barracks. They are half-dressed, confused, terrified. Some of them think they are being bombed by siege machines. Some of them think it's an earthquake. Others a tornado.
They don't know it's us.
"Kill them all," Caldera shouts, his voice cutting through the din.
The fight begins in earnest.
A squad of markless Federation soldiers rounds a corner, swords raised. They see us. They hesitate.
"Contact!" one screams in horror
Lopez charges. He doesn't dodge. He puts his shoulder down and runs straight through a brick wall, catching the squad in a shower of masonry.
He hits the lead soldier. The man doesn't just break; he explodes. The kinetic reinforcement turns the impact of Lopez's shoulder into a cannonball strike. The soldier is misted.
Imara walks through the street like a ghost. A few soldiers raise crossbows and fire. She waves her hand. The arrows become heavy so heavy they drop out of the air three feet in front of her, clattering uselessly to the cobblestones. She points at the soldiers. Their clothes and armor suddenly weighs a ton. They collapse, crushed by their own breastplate, screaming as their ribs snap.
Sola is floating above the street, riding an updraft. She sends blades of compressed wind slicing through the enemy lines, decapitating men before they can even fathom what is happening to them.
"Rook," Caldera barks. "Go."
Rook grins. He peels off from the main group, vanishing into the smoke and rain.
His job is to start placing explosives. He targets the support pillars of the remaining buildings. And we don't have to wait long for his work to start.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
Flashes of orange fire light up the greyscale world of my vision. Rook is igniting them as he goes, turning the city's remaining infrastructure into shrapnel.
But the enemy is waking up.
They are coming from all over the city. They are pouring in from the surrounding towns, drawn by the noise and the light.
Hundreds of them.
And among them, the Elites.
To my right, Vihaan is laughing.
It is a high, manic sound that chills the blood.
He is engaged with a massive soldier. The man is roaring, his body twisting and bulging. Fur sprouts from his skin. His jaw elongates.
Transformation Mark, I analyze instantly. Not entirely sure of the type though.
The beast-man swings a clawed hand the size of a shovel at Vihaan.
Vihaan doesn't block. He ducks. He dances. He moves with the fluidity of water.
He spins inside the beast's guard. His karambit flashes and he lands a glancing blow.
It looks like a minor wound. A scratch across the femoral artery.
The beast roars in triumph, thinking he missed.
Then the blood starts.
It doesn't trickle. It sprays. It erupts like a geyser.
Vihaan's Mark turns the scratch into a fatal hemorrhage. The beast stumbles, clutching his leg, confused as his life force paints the walls red.
Vihaan is already moving to the next target, spinning his knife, laughing.
I turn my attention forward.
I am radiating hate.
It isn't the hot, flashy anger of the arena. It is the cold, abyssal hatred I found in the river of Nimorael.
I see a line of markless soldiers setting up a barricade.
"Fire!" their sergeant screams.
A wall of metal flies toward me.
I don't slow down.
Fearmonger.
I push the aura out. I slam it into their minds.
Panic.
They flinch. Their aim wavers and multiple arrows go of course veering harmlessly away from me.
I am among them.
My sword is a blur. I don't use fancy techniques i have no need they are animals it's not even a fight it's a slaughter. Throat. Heart. Lung. Eye.
I strike down ten men in three seconds. I move through them like a reaper through wheat. The rain washes the blood from my blade as fast as I spill it.
The city falls apart around me. A building to my left groans and collapses, spilling rubble into the street. I leap over a falling beam, using it as a springboard to launch myself at a poor terrified soldier on a balcony. I cut him in half before his body hits the ground.
Then, I feel it.
A spike of danger my fearmonger highlighting the power approaching me at a rapid pace.
I land in a crouch in the middle of a ruined intersection.
Two figures burst out of the smoke.
One is a woman with pale skin skin and hair that flows like water. She is surrounded by a swirling vortex of liquid.
Water Mark.
The other is a man, crackling with energy. Arcs of blue electricity jump between his fingers.
Lightning Mark.
I snarl.
Water and Lightning. A conduit and a source. It is a classic, deadly combination. Especially in the rain.
Behind them, a platoon of markless soldiers at least thirty of them rallies. They take heart in the arrival of their demigods. They raise their weapons, shouting war cries.
"Die, Imperial trash!" the Lightning user shouts. His voice booms like thunder.
I look at them.
I look at the water pooling around their feet. I look at the rain connecting us all.
I smile and It is not a nice smile.
"Die?" I whisper.
I glance across the city square.
I see Lieutenant Colonel Caldera.
He is surrounded.
Two enemy Elites one with a Stone Skin mark and another wielding fire are pressing him. Dozens of soldiers are trying to stab him with spears.
But the Colonel does not hold a sword.
In his hands are two chains.
They are dark black, made of a metal that seems to absorb all light that hits it. They are covered in wicked, hooked spikes.
He spins.
The chains uncoil from his arms like living serpents. They extend, lashing out with terrifying speed.
CRACK.
One chain wraps around the Stone Skin Elite. The spikes bite deep, finding the cracks in the armor. Caldera yanks. The Elite goes flying, smashed through a brick wall.
The other chain sweeps through the markless soldiers. It creates a zone of death ten feet wide. Men are torn apart. Limbs fly. Weapons are shattered.
Caldera is a machine of death. He is a whirlwind of black steel and grey eyes.
He laughs, a deep, resonant sound that challenges the thunder.
I look back at my own opponents.
The Water Mage raises her hands. The rain gathers, forming a massive serpentine dragon of water above her head.
The Lightning Mage charges his hands, sending volts into the water dragon, making it glow with lethal electricity.
"You demons deserve to die !" she screams, sending the electrified water crashing toward me.
I don't move.
I focus and my Shadow Dance. I relax my muscles. I accept the fluidity. I try to chanel the grace of the slave girl dancing controlling 10 shadows.
You want to see a monster? I think. I'll show you a monster. I try to focus on my illusions, ignoring the fearmonger urge to use their fear I channel my own illusion.
To their eyes, I am standing in the same place. The water dragon crashes down. The lightning strikes.
BOOM.
Steam rises. The ground is scorched and cracked.
"Got him!" the Lightning Mage shouts.
But as the steam clears... I am gone.
"Where is he?" the Water Mage gasps, spinning around.
"Here," I whisper.
I am standing behind the formation of thirty soldiers.
I didn't dodge. I didn't run. I simply made them believe I was where they aimed, while I walked right past them.
I raise my sword.
"Fear is the mind killer," I recite and finally I release the full weight of the Fearmonger.
The thirty soldiers freeze. Their eyes roll back. They start screaming, clawing at their own faces.
The two Elites turn, horror dawning on their faces as their own troops turn on each other in a frenzy of terror.
I smile again, the rain dripping from my nose.
"Two down," I say to the empty air.
I lunge.
The Water Mage tries to summon a shield, but her concentration is broken by the screams of her men. My sword pierces her barrier like it is made of paper.
I slash her across the chest. She falls back, water splashing.
The Lightning Mage aims a bolt at me but I jump backwards sliding slightly on the slick ground.
I narrow my eyes and try to focus on my illusions straining my brain trying to channel my veilshaper. I make him see another copy of me running across towards his left and he turns unlashing a massive bolt of lighting on top of it then following up with more vicious blasts.
I sneer as the real me launches towards him catching him off guard.
I don't kill him instantly. I want him to feel it.
I drive my knee into his gut, doubling him over. I grab his hair.
"For Nimorael," I hiss in his ear.
I slit his throat.
I drop him and turn to the Water Mage, who is trying to move away, clutching her chest as she uses her power to stem the bleeding as best she can.
The thirty soldiers are almost all dead. The remaining few twitching on the ground experiencing their worst nightmares.
I walk toward the Water Mage.
She looks up at me and tries to stand as she knows there will be no mercy
"How," she gasps. "What are you creatures? You are all evil just like he said!"
I stand over her and cock my head. 'Is this the first time you've lost at something?' No answer. I frown. 'Well, that must be embarrassing."
I raise my sword and rer head rolls into a puddle.
Across the town, I hear Rook detonate another charge.
I hear Sola screaming as she conjurers a tornado in the middle of the town.
I hear Lopez shouting as he weaves a line of destruction everywhere he goes.
Helix has arrived.
And Oakhaven is burning.
My bloodlust sings. The voices in my head are a choir of ecstasy.
"Fear is the mind killer, it is the little the death that brings total obliteration" I recite once more as I rush back into the fray.