Rai, Captain Spiritwalker had once told Alin about his most powerful spell.
The captain had been a bit more loquacious at the time than usual owing to the social lubrication.
It had been during the annual ranger memorial dinner for those that had survived the Manila Quest.
There has been some awkwardness when he had first attended, but since he had technically been present for the Quest there had been no objections. The only real concern beyond that on their part was having a teenager around while they drank and told stories of the dead not fit for the ears of a young person.
Naturally, drinks had loosened tongues, plus he had permission.
Captain Mouthy had proclaimed that his mom and dad couldn't complain after that.
It had always been interesting to Alin. Being able to listen to what it had been like because he had no memories of what the fog entity had done to the people. His parents had resisted at first, but he needed to hear. If only to strengthen is resolve to keep it from ever happening again.
And it had worked as he intended. At least, he had always thought.
Guilt was a good motivator and he had always felt it keenly when survivors told stories.
His only regret was not being able to tell them the full truth of his existence.
A few had suspicions, but never raised them even in private. He had always wondered how much his dad has done to protect him from that.
Alin spread the gray as Captain Spiritwalker's chant hit a crescendo.
What was a summoner's strongest possible spirit summon?
For him, it was all of them… plus one more.
The only issue was that the ranger captain could only do it once.
Alin had always thought the spell sucked.
What was the point of being able to cast it one time?
Spirits of so many different animals emerged all around the ranger captain, but rather than attack the demigod they flowed into their summoner.
Blinding light flashed!
And when it faded the ranger captain's body lay like a discarded doll. A luminous figure in the colors of a rainbow stood over it.
Sad eyes found Alin's.
"Not just for you." The voice reverberated as if spoken out of sync by many. "For my wife and daughter. For everyone. For a future. Tell them that my only regret is I won’t grow old with her and see her grow up."
Alin could only nod.
Not just for him.
He clung to that.
"Such a waste," the demigod said. "Do you see what my father has wrought? Do you see how his existence echoes across the spires? To all the worlds?"
"You did this," Captain Spiritwalker said.
He extended a glowing hand.
It kept reaching toward the demigod, lengthening into a hissing serpent.
Fanged and hooded, a king of serpents from the rainforests of his homeland.
Gold energy blasted it.
Dazzling eagle wings emerged from his back. A powerful beat rocketed him forward.
Thick horns appeared.
The ranger captain gored the demigod in the gut.
Somehow, piercing through the golden forcefield that flickered angrily at the intrusion.
The demigod grasped and punched. Fingers and fists swept through the bright-colored form.
The ranger captain's form proved slightly more substantial than a rainbow.
Colorful arms stretched, coiling around the demigod's entire body. Mouths filled with dozens of ethereal teeth sunk into obsidian flesh as bodies thick around as a grown man squeezed.
A single beat shot them to the ceiling.
Thunder scattered dust and debris.
Gold light flared, eating away at the rainbow.
The ranger captain appeared diminished.
His arms trailed motes of color as he warded off the demigod's strikes as they fell to the floor.
Horse's legs kicked the demigod away and into a downward blow of a mace that struck with more weight than a building, yet moved nimbly in a brawny hand at its natural weight.
Another crater added.
Gold flashed.
Mace met spear.
Impossibly quick on both accounts.
Captain Butcher's Skill pushed Captain Mouthy well-beyond the latter's physical limits.
Aims fired.
12 bullets.
Each striking the same exact spot one after the other in a split-second.
The golden forcefield protecting the demigod's forehead flashed, growing blinding until it exploded into glittering shards like a broken mirror.
Madalena leapt into the opening with both feet, drop-kicking the demigod.
Head rocked back.
Spear became a curved sword mid cut.
Captain Spiritwalker interposed himself.
Golden blade vanished as it passed through.
Once again the ranger captain grew less substantial, duller.
They traded blows.
Demigod…
…cracked glowing spirit and was battered in turn.
Booms and flashes filled the chamber like in the heart of a thunderstorm.
Shockwaves buffeted Alin, forcing him to hunch low to the ground lest he be pushed against the wall like Captain Butcher and Captain Mouthy.
Madalena rushed back into the melee undaunted.
She dipped under the demigod’s suddenly re-formed spear and used it like a pole to vault to his face with another two-footed kick.
He towered like a titan, barely moving, unyielding like a granite statue a dozen meters tall.
Captain Spiritwalker cut thin lines across broad chest with a jungle cat’s claws. Then rammed horns into gut once again.
This time the demigod was prepared.
He plunged a glowing hand into the ranger captain’s back while flicking Madalena into the distant wall with his spear.
The golden light started small within the rainbow colored core of Captain Spiritwalker.
Alin reached out. Desperately trying to push the gray into the cuts and punctures in the demigod’s once impenetrable flesh.
A sudden flash of gold made a mockery of his effort.
In an instant it was over.
Captain Spiritwalker was gone.
Motes the colors of the rainbow fading into nothing around the demigod’s clenched fist.
Alin sought the ranger captain’s body.
There it lay. Crumpled on the dark metallic floor.
He touched it through the gray.
Cold.
Empty.
Aims fired everything he had left.
Physical rounds, Skill-created ones.
The demigod blocked them with a golden shield then returned fire.
Thin beams lanced through the ranger captain’s armor.
“Four remain,” Phosfuriae said.
“Goldenspoon, hide the sausage.” Captain Mouthy ground her teeth.
He thickened the gray.
The demigod’s eyes narrowed.
Please get him, he thought.
Now that there wasn’t a risk of getting in Captain Spiritwalker’s way the echoes were free.
The gray swirled with dozens of ghostly forms revealed solely by their movement through the thick clouds.
Superstrong hands grappled the demigod, battering him with fists, elbows, knees and feet.
Faint colors in the shape of weapons scored thin cuts and shallow stabs.
Golden light burst forth from the demigod, burning the gray and dispersing the echoes.
Captain Mouthy launched herself at the demigod’s exposed back.
Mace crashed with the weight of a building down on his bare shoulder.
The crack echoed across the chamber.
He spun, grabbing her face and slamming her into the floor before she could strike again.
“Madalena!”
Alin saw it coming.
Another undeserved end to a long life lived in the service of everyone else.
He pushed the gray, urging it to re-form faster, for the echoes to return in time.
Madalena leapt with a shout only for the demigod to blast her away with a burst of divine gold from his eyes.
The demigod shifted his grip to press his hand on Captain Mouthy’s armored chest. A hand large enough to cover it completely.
She opened her faceplate and spat in his face.
“We fucked you up, demigod! Cut you up! Busted your face! Broke your shoulder! Where’s your shit divine power bullshit, huh? Not bad for low level humans. You ain’t ever gonna forget the beating we put on you! Rayna’s Rangers forever!”
“May your last defiance soothe your spirit on its journey to whatever comes next.”
The demigod pressed.
“For failure is always a poor balm.”
Armor held for a moment.
Only a moment.
Threnium crumpled.
Artificial muscles ruptured.
Internal protective systems failed.
Captain Mouthy vomited a torrent of blood up into the demigod’s face as one last middle finger.
The demigod rose to his full height.
Broken shoulder healed with a flash of gold.
The ranger captain’s blood covered his face like a mask. He left it to drip down his chest as if it was a badge of honor.
“Three remain.”
Alin decided that would be truth.
They didn’t need to beat the demigod.
Just had to destroy the magic stone.
And that seemed possible judging by the cuts in that muscular chest.
He could do it, but he needed more strength. For himself and the echoes of his relatives.
Thus, he pushed the gray further.
Out of the chamber.
Out into the tunnels.
Out into the city.
So much noise and movement.
It was difficult to mark allies from enemies. People from monsters.
He pulled from the latter.
So many varieties.
Weakening the strongest.
Outright killing the weaker ones.
The flavor of the strength that flowed into him was beyond foul.
Particularly, that of the rabbit people.
Such atrocities they had committed to everyone.
The demigod nodded.
“Good. You’ve suppressed your true potential long enough.”
“What is he talking about, Goldenspoon?” Captain Butcher said.
“Sorry, sir. But you have to go.”
“No. I ord—”
The ranger captain’s voice vanished as superstrong arms picked her up like a sack of rice, superstrong legs carried her out of the chamber to join Galen and the rest of the escapees.
Greater strength meant that the echoes revealed more of the people they had once been before the fog had stolen them.
A cousin of his grandfather had carried the ranger captain away.
Old when the spires had rejuvenated her with a superhuman body like his grandfather.
She had never grown to enjoy the fighting, but did her duty to the bitter end.
Alin thought it good that she could help one last time.
“Boy! What are you doing? Tell them to stop!” Madalena struggled against hands in the gray as they dragged her in the ranger captain’s wake. “Tito Carlos? What the fuck? Let me go, Tito! I’m not leaving him! Boy! Boy! Don’t do this! I can still fight!”
“Galen and the others are going to need your help to fight through the bunker. They’re pinned down. The Americans aren’t being reasonable… when you wake up…”
A fist flicked out of the gray, catching her in the jaw and snapping her head to the side.
She crumpled like a puppet without strings.
Wispy gray arms lifted her gently and carried her away at freeway speed.
He thought he heard words tickling his ears.
Something like… we’re with you, Boy.
“You’ve removed further weakness that I can use against you. But—” the demigod raised a glowing fist, aiming it at the tunnel, “they aren’t nearly far enough from my reach, nor will they be able to escape quickly enough. You can still save them. Join me. We can leave right now. I’ve prepared a portal to take us to the spire, then to my father’s world where you can take vengeance on the one that set all of this in motion.”
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
“You did a lot of the heavy lifting. Killed my friends with your own hands. Killed my fellow rangers. Hurt my cousins. Can’t just blame all of that on your dad. That was all you. You wanted revenge?” He laughed bitterly. “There were so many other ways you could’ve chosen instead of spreading that pain and suffering to innocent people that had nothing to do with your fucked up pantheon.”
“Subsume and destroy my father and I promise you that you will have your vengeance on me. I won’t even resist.”
“I don’t get you, dude. All that power, all those years and this is the best you could make of your life?”
“Your willing cooperation is a gift. I have planned for unwilling cooperation. I only need to keep pushing.” Phosfuriae fired.
Divine energy lanced toward the gaping tunnel.
Only to splash against a teal forcefield that appeared more vibrant and wholly present in reality than ever before.
Three flat panes layered in a row behind which stood a hazy figure.
Alin could almost make out her features as the gray swirled over them.
A smiling face, lines at the corners of her eyes and around her mouth. An older woman, but made vibrant by what the spires had given her.
His grandmother’s cousin.
Lu was her nickname.
Short for what?
He didn’t know.
Shame had made him reluctant to learn deeply about the relatives the fog had subsumed.
He had always thought that he’d ask eventually.
And now it seemed that he wouldn’t have the chance.
Still, he hoped that she, they, didn’t hold it against him.
Mere echoes, more or less than the once-living people, their strengthened presence in the gray brought the guilt back.
The first teal pane shattered like a shower of falling stars.
The second followed.
Then the third.
Yet, a second set of three sprang up before the last fell.
The demigod’s brow furrowed ever so slightly.
He sighed and strengthened the beam.
Pink light suddenly sparkled around his arm.
A rope round the wrist and halfway up to the elbow.
Many hands in the gray pulled, forcing the beam to carved a deep furrow in the dark, metallic wall.
Crimson light flashed behind the demigod.
A human shape outlined by a forcefield.
Tito Novy.
His grandmother’s oldest brother.
The forcefield extended into an over-sized fist punching out at the back of the demigod’s knees, buckling them.
The demigod cut the beam to resist the pull.
A silvery staff appeared, jabbing into his throat, sweeping, swirling the gray to land strikes all over his face and neck.
The perils of an open-faced helmet.
Gold eyes flashed.
Staff and wielder vanished with the gray.
Space cleared in front of the demigod, but Alin filled it with barely a conscious thought.
The echoes fell on the restrained demigod.
Cut his chest!
Sharp white forcefields appearing to line arms and legs drew golden blood until the demigod swept an arm.
Orange replaced them in the form of what looked like over-sized tiger claws. These didn’t slice, but gouged and ripped at the massive pectorals.
Alin stepped.
So much strength taken from his enemies and the monsters.
One step rocketed him toward the demigod.
He stabbed fingers in the bleeding chest wounds.
They broke, but what he had stolen and continued to steal healed them instantly.
The demigod loomed.
Golden eyes shined with delight as a feral grin split his broad, black face.
“That’s a start, but you’ll need more to destroy a God!”
Echoes seized the demigod’s free arm.
Others continued to cut and bludgeon him all over.
All the while the pink rope around his wrist held strong with dozens of hands on the other end pulling it taut.
Help me, please!
Orange tiger paws joined his hands along with others.
Obscenely, it reminded him of making mudpies with his friends back when they were little kids.
Obsidian flesh parted, gold blood gushed as together they tore meat and slowly peeled back muscle.
He touched ivory.
Felt his nails rip. Felt the heat burn the flesh off his fingers. Only to heal before his next breath.
So close.
There!
He saw the stone, glowing with magic script, dripping with gold liquid.
Phosfuriae boomed laughter.
“Not yet!”
The demigod surged with strength.
Pink rope snapped.
Alin thought he heard a young woman cry out.
Arms as thick as tree trunks broke free and snapped together with him in the middle.
Except, he didn’t feel the pulping impact.
A spiked wall had halted the demigod’s right arm, while an ivory-colored round shield had blocked the left.
Teal panes snapped down on the left just as the shield wielder vanished.
The wall lasted longer, but it too shattered.
In its place stood what appeared to be an old man.
His grandfather’s uncle.
Tito Carlos was back from delivering Madalena from certain death.
The echo of his grandfather’s uncle was like a child next to the demigod, but he had the strength to move the massive arm, pushing, pulling, twisting it behind the demigod.
Gold eyes flashed.
Forcefields ate the blast before it could strike him in the head.
Fingers reached the magic stone.
Ripping it out of the demigod might be enough to bring down the ritual keeping his dad and uncle from entering the city.
And once they could then it would be all over.
Everyone would be saved.
If that wasn’t enough then he could crush it with his newfound strength.
“I said…” the demigod ground out, “not yet!”
Gold light erupted and Alin burned.
Hands seized him around the chest and right leg, lifting him high into the air.
“You hide your true self inside weak flesh. The Gods learned this long ago. Apotheosis. To destroy one, you must become like unto one. Sometimes one must help a chick break free of its shell. My mother showed me how. I will help you be born again to your true self.”
Agony erupted at his hip, powerful enough to make him forget the burning.
He stared into the stars.
His body jarred.
Dimly, he realized that the demigod had tossed him aside.
Fingers snapped.
“Do you see?”
Vision cleared just in time to see Phosfuriae holding his torn leg aloft.
It looked so small in the demigod’s hand, like a thin chicken leg.
Instead of gushing red he saw streaming, billowing gray pouring out of the torn end.
A glance down horrified him.
No blood, just gray.
“The real you.”
The demigod discarded his leg as it dissolved into the gray.
“I’m the real me!”
Control it.
Be it.
He wasn’t the monster.
He had a choice.
But the pain, the fear made it so hard to concentrate.
He needed more.
So, he pulled from the living in the bunkers and on the streets as the gray had spread for many kilometers more than he had ever dared attempt before.
Thoughts, hopes, dreams, fears, faces flashed in his head as stolen strength flowed.
Careful, Boy!
The words snapped him from the brink.
He saw it as a gray-shrouded abyss and his toes wiggled over the edge.
Remember what you promised? We said we’re with you. You don’t need to add more to our number. We’re enough. We have to be!
The demigod touched his ruined chest.
Whether he couldn’t or wouldn’t heal it, only he could say and he didn’t seem inclined to be forthcoming.
Was it a trap?
To lure Alin in with the promise of salvation right next to the heart audibly thumping behind its ivory cage?
Pain radiated from his toes all the way up to his hip.
Muscles spasmed, sending bright stars shooting across his vision with each agonizing pulse.
He wiggled his toes—
The left set.
Which was dissolving into the gray a short distance away.
He tore his eyes from his meat leg and forced himself to look at what was surely a gruesome sight.
No crimson gore.
No wet, hanging strips of brown skin, red muscles and smeared ivory.
Gray wisps coiled and streamed from his hip down to his toes.
A constantly shifting swirl that went from near-solid, like dark smoke contained inside a glass bottle, to as ethereal as a light coastal fog on a winter morning.
Up, Boy!
He rose.
First, on his booted foot.
Then, on his bare, gray one.
“Do you see, now?” Phosfuriae grinned as though the demigod hadn’t just maimed him, forcing him to violate his oaths.
Even now, he could feel the strength of so many people flowing into him.
“One must always embrace their truth to reach the ultimate end of their potential.”
“Not worth it.”
He relinquished his death grip on the strands connecting him to the people.
The gray howled in anger at the sudden halt of the bountiful meal.
Other voices struggled to silence it.
“A step forward. A step back. No matter. I need only take your remaining limbs.”
Golden light flared.
Slower than before.
Enough that Alin sidestepped, moving his flesh and blood leg out of the way.
The blast sheared through his left knee.
He buckled, but the gray re-formed before he fell.
Quicker perceptions and reflexes.
How much stronger was he now?
He launched himself toward the demigod, running in an erratic pattern.
Dipping, dodging and ducking the fist-sized blasts of golden energy.
As he neared the obsidian giant, he dived into a roll, rising into an uppercut that launched his target several meters away.
A pained grunt.
A booming laugh.
“I approve. When death or destruction is the wager there should be no rules of conduct or honor. Such nonsense that no one, not even the Gods, follow despite their words to the contrary. I truly can’t abide hypocrisy.”
Hit him with everything you have, Alin thought, everything we have… aim for his junk.
Silver light shined bright through the gray mist.
Long and straight, it lanced below the demigod’s belt, but was caught in one massive, black fist.
Fists and feet followed.
The demigod cursed even as gold light flashed with each strike.
His skin-lining forcefield in effect.
Let’s trigger his trap. Pretend we want the first cheese, when there’s a second cheese that might just be as good. Like my uncle says. He thickened the gray, slipping out of even a demigod’s perceptions.
The demigod swept arcs with a golden axe and sword as Alin circled.
Faint hands lined in red joined wispy gray ones in striking the demigod until the golden forcefield flickered and vanished.
They grasped at his wounded chest
Obsidian skin and red muscle peeled back slowly despite the superhuman levels of strength as if they were titanium rather than flesh.
Alin gathered the gray around the demigod, obscuring godly senses and strengthening the echoes.
Now! The second cheese— I mean, the helmet!
He leapt across the great distance in a single bound, wrapping one arm beneath the demigod’s chin and squeezing.
It felt more like solid metal.
He wasn’t trying to get an actual choke in.
Such a thing wasn’t a huge threat to a demigod.
The older and more powerful they were the less they needed such quaint things as oxygen and a steady supply of blood to their brains.
The divine energy in them was enough to sustain their life functions.
What he wanted as a distraction.
The true attack came from the hands in the gray pulling at the demigod’s long, bulbous, black helmet.
Faint orange light hinting at the shape of cartoon-like tiger paws clawed at the demigod’s face exposed by the helmet’s open face. One paw clawed at the eyes, while the other pulled at the helmet.
It didn’t budge.
Alin added his newly stolen strength to no avail.
He shifted his position, putting both feet on black shoulders large enough to provide a platform stable enough to go for a max squat or deadlift.
In a way that was exactly what he was doing, but instead of weights he tried to lift a helmet.
The demigod laughed as he discarded his axe and sword into nothingness.
The gold light danced like dying fireflies just after the sunset.
“Did you think I wouldn’t have taken precautions? When my plan’s success rested almost entirely on this artifact? You’d remove my head from my shoulders before you’d move the helm the width of an eyelash.”
Black hands seized his arms.
A sudden squeeze bruised his muscles and ground his bones.
“Tougher,” the demigod mused.
Golden light flashed.
Alin registered the feel of the crack and crunch after the sound of the snap.
“But not nearly enough.”
The demigod pulled.
Another flash.
Searing pain a moment late.
He understood that the demigod had vaporized both hands before he saw and felt their absence.
“Now—”
He shut the bastard up by shoving thick gray fingers turned tendrils into that big mouth.
The demigod choked and gagged.
He forced his tendrils deeper.
If the echoes struggled to reach the stone embedded in the demigod’s chest from the outside, then maybe he’d have more luck going for it from the inside.
The demigod gurgled a moment before suddenly stilling.
An explosion shattered Alin’s ears and the unnatural silence within the gray.
He lost it then.
The connection to the gray without, though not within.
The demigod had stomped one foot into the cold, metallic floor, breaking it in a circle that extended all the way to the cavernous walls. Cracks spider-webbed almost to the high ceiling.
The impact drove the gray away, clearing the air from the wide crater.
The demigod ripped Alin from his shoulders and slammed him into the broken floor.
Once, twice, thrice.
Vision darkened.
Concentration waned.
“And so my eyes clear.” The demigod coughed, spilling bile and other things down on Alin. “Apologies. It is undignified, but such is true battle. The historians always fail to mention how much we warriors let loose our liquids during glorious combat. Ha!”
Alin kipped up, narrowly dodging the sandaled foot.
The stomp sent a violent tremor across the floor.
He swayed with it, surfing it like a wave.
No hands became wispy gray hands.
He clapped them together, sending the gray back into the cleared air.
Golden light flared into a thrusting spear that he bobbed and weaved under to close the distance.
Gray fists solidified with instinct more than conscious thought.
They thundered against the demigod’s chiseled abs.
Each hit sent shockwaves radiating through the gray.
Spear became axe as it descended.
Teal panes swallowed the strike.
Dozens of fists and feet in the gray assailed the demigod from all directions as Alin slipped to the left to land a chopping kick to the side of knee.
His leg snapped.
Like kicking a steel pole.
His leg formed again as it passed through to collide with the inside of the other knee.
The demigod chopped down, aiming to bisect Alin.
Faint light in the gray turned into a rainbow of breaking colors as the echoes of his relatives slowed the strike long enough for him to leap back.
The golden axe thudded into the dark floor.
When the demigod swept it up into a long, barbed whip that shredded the metal and send jagged shards flying like bullets.
Alin covered his face as the shards ripped at his clothing and skin.
Gray steamed from dozens of cuts and tears all over his body.
A thought prodded the back of his mind like a needle pushing too close to the bone.
He was losing a lot of his human parts.
And it looked and felt like the demigod was right.
What was he really underneath?
The golden whipped lashed, tearing a chunk out of his cheek.
A second crack aimed at the opposite side of his face wrapped around his raised hand.
Divine energy crackled, burning the gray.
He poured more into the hand, solidifying it and allowing him to tighten his grip on the whip.
The energy continued to flow from the demigod.
“Okay…”
If the bastard was going to give it, then…
“Freely given gifts should be accepted, right?”
“If you can.” The demigod grinned. “However, I’m not going to let you leave the feast to vomit. I’ve seen many a man and woman die from being forced to eat more than their stomachs could hold. Do you have the capacity?”
He did.
The hunger welling up within had no limit.
He was certain of that.
To his fear and regret.
Regardless, he didn’t intend to simply take and keep the divine energy.
It was meant to be spent.
He only wanted to keep it within him long enough to spend it.
Strength flowed from one to the other.
Strength returned in the form of renewed and empowered attacks from the gray.
The demigod clung to the whip stubbornly, while sending out an omnidirectional burst of golden energy that scoured the echoes from existence.
Only for a moment as they returned and renewed their assault.
Alin stopped resisting the taut whip and leapt.
The added momentum of the demigod’s pull turned him into a deadly missile.
Gray fist more solid than his now gone natural fist crunched the demigod’s nose, splattering wet gold across both their faces.
Alin snarled as he wrapped the whip around the thick neck, using it to pull the demigods face into a rising knee.
The whip vanished before he could repeat the strike.
He flurried.
Fists battering the demigod’s grinning face.
“Why are you laughing?” he snapped.
The demigod’s golden eyes glanced down.
He couldn’t help but follow the gaze.
Bright gold light.
A blade in his stomach.
The pain was a distant thing now.
Muted.
Transmitted from a puppet through the strings to the puppet master.
His body—
His puppet.
The demigod cut, pulling the blade out the side.
No blood.
No guts.
Just gray.
“What is left of your humanity?” Phosfuriae sounded sympathetic. “You are losing paths. Soon there will only be two. And, I believe, you wouldn’t want to take the one that remains on this world.”
“You know what? Fine. I’ll go.” He held the golden-eyed gaze. “After you take off that helmet.”
“One makes demands from a position of strength.”
The demigod raised a hand and bathed Alin in gold light.
