Artisan's POV
The air split, and the wall of the third floor of the fortress folded inward. The impact flowed around Queen B and her helpers, who still had my dead sorcerer in place, floating.
They turned to me sharply, wearing visorless helmets and tight combat clothes. They looked almost human at first glance, but my X-ray scans revealed they were anything but.
Reinforced bones, dense muscle, and engineered organs that reminded me of the Genomorphs.
"So, this is what Luthor has up his sleeve."
Psychic super soldiers. He was taking a page out of my book. I would have found the entire thing flattering if they hadn't just butchered one of my sorcerers.
"Kill her," Queen B ordered as she bolted deeper into her fortress, passing dozens of dead soldiers, staffers, and two other sorcerers I'd stationed with her. All of the embedded metas were absent.
The Genomorphs made clicking noises and ripped the room apart, sending tables, lamps, debris, dead bodies, and anything not nailed down at me. With a swift slash of my hand, I beheaded both of them with a Dismantle, then switched to Sky Manipulation, redirecting the debris into the ground. I accelerated, appearing in front of a startled Queen B, and grabbed her by the throat, pinning her to the wall.
She clawed at me with her Blockbuster Venom-enhanced fingernails, failing to leave even a scratch on me, and I pressed harder, closing her windpipe and cracking the wall.
Desperate, she tried to assault me with her pheromones. "Release me," she rasped, but found no purchase in my biology. Her gifts were substantially less effective against the fairer sex, and I, of course, had Idle Transfiguration.
My eyes shone red. "It's far too late for that now. Tell me what I want to know, B, and I will not paralyze you and hand-deliver you to General Rumaan to use and abuse."
Her pulse quickened, and she shivered, but her eyes didn't betray her, and neither did her words. "Spare me the threats," she sneered. "You were never going to show me mercy. It's not who you are."
Her brazenness surprised me. "And you presume to know me?"
I loosened my grip on her throat, enough to let her speak clearly. "Of course. I am you. Reckless ambition without a notion of temperance. It makes you formidable, but it also blinds you."
Tilting my head slightly to the side, I unleashed dozens of Dismantles that tore through the fortress, shattering it at its foundations and destroying all of its load-bearing walls and structures. It came down unceremoniously around us, all without touching us, thanks to my expert use of Sky Manipulation.
It sufficiently terrified her—so much so that she lost her composure, clinging to my hand desperately as the building fell away.
"My… my home!" I was surprised she mustered the anger.
"I couldn't risk the boys listening in," I said. And I wanted to make a show of force. "What if I offered to bring you into my employ and arm you with as many soldiers as you needed to conquer Greater Bialya in exchange?"
She blinked, slightly taken aback.
"It is as you said. You are me. And I would never pass up an opportunity like this," I said.
Her lips quivered slightly, then pressed into a fine, firm line. "I am no one's pawn."
"Well said," I replied with a rueful smile before I put her to sleep with Idle Transfiguration. Her words mirrored my sentiment, should the roles have been reversed, but the difference between us was power. I could afford to be abrasive because I had enough of it. She couldn't.
The skin above my wrist rippled, and I tapped a communicator, calling for a teleporting meta. I sent him the geographical coordinates and a general view of the desert where I landed, far away from her panicking loyalists and soldiers, and he arrived to retrieve the unconscious Queen B.
He scooped her up and teleported her to Harlan, where the bulk of my telepaths were concentrated. They would get the answers out of her eventually. The air split as I took off, hurtling toward Australia, where Brain was supposed to be holed up.
—
Vandal Savage
Queen B stepped into the light, wearing a face nearly a decade younger than she used to. She carried herself well, but not perfectly. Her steps were unsteady, and her eyes were filled with uncertainty, likely still considering the hell she had damned her original self to.
But she had been happy to make the trade when I proposed the strategy. With her new meta-abilities, she could step into Artisan's shoes, if a bit ill-fitting.
"How are you enjoying your new body?" I asked.
Better than I hoped.
She spoke telepathically.
"You're the exception, then," I said. "Brain still struggles with the physicality of it all, and well, you've seen Luthor."
She hummed. The man and his obsessions.
"The trap has been baited," I said. "All we need now is to wait."
—
Julius's POV
Our situation rapidly evolved after Constantine's little announcement. We were headed to an abandoned mental hospital in Pennsylvania. It was the last place anybody had seen her.
According to Lucifer, the cultists were doing something to her, and if they succeeded, the town and everybody in it would be swallowed up in darkness—and that would just be the start of it.
Constantine's portal dumped us out at the edge of the small town. Me, Gina, Shelim, George, and a peculiar sorcerer, Nathan.
We passed five whole seconds of tense silence before Nathan, the baby First Grade sorcerer, asked the question on everybody's mind.
"So… who's in charge?"
"Me, obviously," Shelim and George spoke at once, immediately shooting daggers at each other. I suppressed a long-suffering moan.
"You're both going to make this a thing, aren't you?"
And this was just the start of it, wasn't it?
Somebody had to plan and lead every mission, make quick calls, and coordinate our strategy. I'd love that to be Constantine, but he simply couldn't keep up physically.
The boys looked at me. Shelim looked embarrassed, at least. George looked genuinely angry, as if my interruption were some great offense.
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