I carve into a mandible with my blade, the spider quickly twisting to keep me from cutting its head in half. Green, sizzling venom pours out of the mutilated organ, and it screeches in pain.

  It lashes out with a leg, slamming into my chest and throwing me back. I quickly stab my blade into the dirt. I slide back several yards, my boots and sword digging trenches into the lawn.

  As I pull my sword out and charge back towards the spider, a tank from behind fires a round into the spider’s head. With a whistling scream, the round ricochets, flying off into the city. It digs out a huge gouge into its head, and blood the color of rust seeps from the wound.

  The spider screams again in agony. It shakes, slinging blood and venom everywhere. A soldier goes down, screaming in pain as he gets splashed with it.

  Fuck!

  I launch forward again, and while it’s distracted, carve through a leg. It slumps to the side. I raise my blade to cut its head off when it lunges forward again, slamming me down and landing on top of me. I lose my grip on my blade and it goes flying away. It starts to gnaw at me, venom covering my armor.

  I grab its head and rip huge chunks of concrete and rebar away. It backs up and hammers me with a massive foreleg again, driving me deeper into the lawn. As it goes to leap on me again, another tank fires.

  The round slams into its abdomen, and gets something good. It blows a massive chunk of concrete and guts out, throwing them out in a gruesome fan. It keens in pain.

  Good, suffer.

  Blood pours out of the gaping wound, but the spider refuses to go down so easy.

  It leaps unsteadily towards the tank that shot it. I hear an explosion as the reactive armor plates blow out, the impact of the spider setting them off. I struggle to pull myself out of the hole the spider dug with me. I hear screaming over the radio from the tank, from the soldiers around it, and even more from the other Fractures in the city.

  It takes me nearly half a minute to get up. Once I do I’m greeted by the sight of the spider gnawing on the smoldering tank. Bodies lie unmoving on the ground. One Bradley was flipped onto its side, knocked away by the giant arachnid. I look for my blade but I can’t find it, but I spot something on the flipped IFV.

  I sprint to it, and rip the tow cable off the front of it. I quickly spool it out. I grab both ends of it, and dash for the spider, still gnawing away the Abrams. Green venom sizzles and pops on the armor. I toss the tow cable under and around the spider’s thorax, and with all my weight behind it, pull back.

  It flops off the tank and onto its still bleeding wound with a hideous shriek of pain. I don’t stop, and I pull it into the center of the lawn, dragging it away from everyone. By pulling it up and nearly onto it’s back, I expose the soft underbelly.

  “HIT IT! HIT IT!” I yell out.

  “What about you?!” One of the tank commanders replies on the radio.

  “FUCKING SHOOT IT!”

  Every vehicle and soldier unloads onto the exposed flesh. One Bradley dumps an anti-tank rocket into it, and both tanks open fire with HEAT rounds. The spider screams and twitches as they detonate inside its abdomen. Autocannon rounds smash into its head, and its squeal is cut short with a sickening squelch.

  An officer calls for a cease fire, and I drop the corpse and step away. I’m covered in the strange rust colored blood of the spider and fiber-glass insulation-like guts. Molten copper boils the blood and sizzles before hardening.

  I look around for my sword, and walk over to Sergeant Callisto.

  “Sergeant, did you see where my blade went?”

  She pulls her helmet off, her brown hair sticking to her sweaty, tanned skin. She shakes her head.

  “Naw. It went up but I never saw it come down. Looked like it vanished?”

  She grimaces at me.

  “Fuck, you’re gonna need a trip through a carwash. Or five.”

  I nod.

  “Yeah, later. Work to do first.”

  She nods and turns back to corralling her squad for post-combat clean up.

  I reach out with my senses, looking for my sword. And I find it… nowhere. Or rather, it’s just not here. I reach into the fire again, and like before, blue fire roars out from my faceplate, from under my armor, and races down my arm.

  The hole-in-space turned sword rests in my hand once again. I’ve never wielded a sword before today, but something about it feels right. I let the fire go, and the sword vanishes back into the star deep inside me.

  Screams come over the radio again, and I take off running for the Capitol building. As I get close, I’m glad to see that the soldiers here have held better. These monsters seem to be huge beetles the size of tanks with heavy steel armor, but even from a hundred yards away I can tell they’re slow things.

  Dozens of dead beetles cover the ground. Abrams tanks and Bradley IFVs slowly retreat, keeping the beetles just ahead of them. One tank spits fire and the round punches a neat little hole right in its skull before blowing it in half. A pair of Bradleys hammer another into paste with their autocannons.

  The Fracture heaves one last time, and a massive four legged rock monster steps out. The sight of something so large managing squeeze out of a Fracture half of its height would have been eyewatering, had I still had eyes. In my case it was merely mind bending.

  At its full height, the monster was close to twenty-five feet tall, and looked like something gave a boulder four thick, trunk-like legs and four long arms. Each arm is long enough to drag on the ground and has three stubby fingers with what look like short claws on each one.

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  Four huge glowing holes in the boulder that makes up its body look like eyes. A gash across its body resembles a crude mouth, large enough to swallow a car. Broken, serrated crystals lining the inside look like teeth.

  It stomps forward, chasing the tanks. The tanks fire for its legs, but they only chip away at it. Six feet of concrete and steel is still six feet of concrete and steel, I guess, but I’m still surprised.

  I charge in, no blade for now. Mid stride I land a punch onto one of its knees, dumping all my momentum into it. With a massive boom that shatters a few windows in the Capitol Building, I blow out its entire knee, sending rubble fanning away. I watch as it chips away at the Capitol Building and skitters off the armor of a few vehicles.

  The rock monster screams, sounding like an avalanche mixed with a hundred angry bears. If there were any windows still intact on the Capitol Building, there certainly aren’t any more after that.

  Despite the loss of a leg, the living mountain continues to stay on its feet, though its speed is much slower. One long arm reaches down, and rips out a massive chunk of concrete the size of a smart car. It tosses the concrete at one of the tanks.

  The tank’s engine roars as it quickly backs up, knocking down and crushing a tree in the process. The boulder barely misses, shattering into shards that bounce off the tank’s armor. I summon my blade again, blue fire rushing down my arm, and the goliath looks at me. Four glowing eyes, each one filled with rage stare down at me.

  I leap for a leg, first slamming into it with a fist, and I shatter a chunk away. Gripping the blade with two hands I carve into the weakened joint, and it glides through the concrete, rebar, and steel conglomerate. The monster screams again, and it finally falls, catching itself with two arms.

  The tanks split up, two going for each arm. Bradley autocannon rounds roar out in mechanical hatred, and join the tanks in hammering at the elbows.

  We can sit here and sever limbs all day and it’s not gonna die. Fucker doesn’t even bleed. Gotta find something juicier.

  As I circle around it, looking for a weak point, I notice a shape flying in from the direction of Lincoln Park. At first I’m worried it might be an enemy, but with my vision I’m quickly able to see that it’s a… woman?

  She’s wearing a long deep green greatcoat, heavy black boots, and lighter green fingerless gloves. Her long, red hair flows back in wind. She hovers high above the monster’s grasping arms. Her arms blur as she draws out a sun, the static image detailed enough to imagine the roiling of plasma.

  The strange mist I’ve seen pouring out of the Fracture reverses course, flying up instead of pouring into the earth. It’s sucked into the drawing, and it begins to glow.

  Once it reaches a crescendo, the once-still image dances, and for a brief instant, it becomes the sun. She speaks a word of power more felt than heard, and it reverberates silently across the city.

  SOLAS A’ LOSGADH!

  A column of fire six feet in diameter lances down from the circle, and starts to bore into the creature’s rocky, bulbous body. The beam of plasma blots out the sun, and I watch as soldiers duck away and shield their eyes. Dead and chewed up plants dozens of yards away burst into flame. I can feel the immense heat wash over my armor.

  It roars in agony, and tries to turn over to keep the burning beam from coring it out. I drop my blade and it returns to the fire deep inside me. I sprint for the closest tank, Nice Try written on its barrel.

  “Nice Try! I have an idea!”

  The woman high above grimaces and tries to keep the beam on target, but even hobbled as it is, the creature is just barely nimble enough to shake the beam. Instead of coring it out, she carves huge molten gouges in it instead.

  It still howls in pain as it writhes, sending molten rock everywhere. She cuts the beam and ducks to the side as a glob of lava sails through where she was a moment before.

  “Nice Try here! Talk to me!”

  “We tie it down with tow cables and let her core it out! We can rip limbs off all day and it won’t die! Fucker doesn’t even bleed! I’ll hold it down from the other side!”

  The tank commander pops up the hatch and looks around, first at me, then the goliath. He winces at one of its ear shattering roars.

  “WE’LL NEED ALL THE TANKS AND IFVS!” He screams. “GET THE CABLES! I’LL TELL EM!”

  He drops back inside, and slams the hatch closed.

  The tanks spread out around the monster in a half circle, and the four Bradleys circle to the other side.

  “Nice Try! What are the IFVs doing?”

  “You toss the cables! They’ll anchor! They’re real fuckin’ heavy sons of bitches!”

  “On it!”

  I grab each tank’s tow cables in sequence and throw them over the monster. The woman notices what we’re doing and flies over to me.

  “What are you doing?”

  “We’re gonna hold it down for you! Core it out!” We both watch as the armored vehicles spread out. An errant swipe by a long arm sends one Bradley tumbling, a huge dent in the side, one track knocked off the front sprocket wheels.

  “Shit!”

  A squad of infantry, who’ve been mostly keeping out of the battle between titans, rush over and start pulling out the injured crew.

  She looks back at me.

  “Hurry!”

  I toss the last cable clean over the monster, and some more soldiers sprint out of cover to hook them up to the three remaining Bradleys. I sprint to the other side, barely dodging another errant swipe. With the fourth Bradley out of action, I’m forced to hold the last cable down myself.

  Nice Try’s commander calls out over the radio net.

  “ALL VEHICLES, ADVANCE!”

  I march forward in step, trying to keep up with the Bradleys. For once, my two-ton weight is too light, and I slide back. I slam my boots into the ground, embedding myself shin deep into the concrete around the Capitol Building, and pull on the cable.

  Despite the creature’s bulk and strength, it’s not capable of fighting against four M1A2 Abrams, the heaviest active duty tank in the world, and three M2 Bradleys, the heaviest Infantry Fighting Vehicle in the world. Between the three Bradleys, four Abrams tanks, and myself, we have a combined weight of over 350 tons.

  We pull the chains tight, and despite the goliath’s rage, it’s stuck. Again, the woman draws the sun, and the mist dives into it once again, like water down a drain.

  SOLAS A’ LOSGADH!

  The lance of fire roars down, boring into the goliath, and it screams in pain. It twitches and tries to fight, but to no avail. The tanks’ and Bradleys’ tracks dig deep into the ground and cracked concrete, and pull the monster even further down. I roar with the engines.

  With a thunderous crack, a burst of mist geysers out from the goliath’s body. The hateful, glowing eyes go dark, and it falls limp to the ground. I drop the cables to the ground and pull myself out of the hole.

  As I look around at the destroyed Capitol Grounds, and the battered Capitol Building, the red-headed mage drops next to me, panting. On the ground, she barely comes up to my upper chest.

  “That… was something.”

  I slowly nod.

  “Yeah. Good work.”

  She gives me a tired grin. Despite the sweat, grime, and soot covering her pale skin, she looks like a supermodel.

  “You too. I’m Morgan le Fay. Most powerful Sorceress on Earth.”

  She gives my form a curious look, her vibrant green eyes dancing over my armor.

  “I think we have a lot to talk about.”