Airith- the Kentilan War Read online

Mother stepped forward, her legs moving all at once, and grew taller. The Emperor looked up into her gaze, expectant. Her features were soft, almost truly feminine, and her eyes softened at their corners, depicting grief. This man stood before her and did not fear her. He did not fear the evil she had become. How? Why? Her emotions battled underneath the surface and her breath crawled down her windpipe.

  “Is she going to cry?” The Emperor cocked his head.

  “I will wipe you clean from the face of this planet, like the disease that you are.” The words whispered softly in a thousand soothing voices. It washed over the Emperor in blotches of red and his nostrils flared. She had hit close to home. He turned his back to her and headed back the way he had entered, his generals quick on his heels. He paused at the shimmering wall and waited for it to part. It did not. His generals exchanged nervous glances.

  “You gave me your word.” He glimpsed over his shoulder, back to her.

  Silence.

  “I did,” she snickered as the barrier parted for them.

  *

  Mother watched the Emperor leave, caught between anger and amusement, and then commanded her many legs to move her forward to the same opening. Ducking under the shimmering curtain of the Live Pool, she stared out at the horizon.

  The Emperor, she saw, was already strapping new guns to his armor, stretching taller in it as if he could become more of a man. He had been a fool not to bring all his gun when he faced her. Perhaps if he had, she would have given him more respect.

  Then again, perhaps not.

  She allowed her eyes to travel over the machinery he had strapped himself into, taking note of its weaknesses. It looked more like metal boxes stacked on top of each other than anything else, though he was now strapping guns to his shoulders as well and growing several inches. His generals strapped another gun—perhaps something that could shoot bigger missiles—to his right hand.

  Once he was arrayed in his weaponry, he turned toward her and screamed. And at that, she stopped staring and began moving.

  “Mechs, airships, cannons, battle Valdovas at the read,” she snarled, scuttling out of the tower toward where her army had been gathering. She wrapped pieces of the Life Pool around her as if it was a shelter and moved into the midst of her armies. “Lines!” she screamed. “Mechs first. Airships, into the sky! Valdovas, we lead with you.”

  She watched as they all rushed to follow her orders, the half-human half-machine Valdovas drawing up in ranks in front of the other machines while the mechs stood together in a group. Behind them, the airships were taking to the sky and hovering, awaiting her orders.

  Turning, she glared at the Emperor. Yes, his army was larger than hers. Far larger. But she had the essence of the Life Pool and… Her gaze slipped to the ground, wondering, but she looked up again a moment later, her Sadness climbing up the legs of her arachnid lower half and winding around her in threads.

  Yes, he had more men and machines than she did. But she had weapons he could only dream of.

  *

  Airith stared at the battle forming before them, her mouth gone dry, as if she’d been sucking on the sand beneath her feet. Mother had gone absolutely crazy.

  “The Emperor must have twice as many soldiers as she does,” she gasped.

  “Three times as many, is more like it,” Rapha snorted. “She is sure as shit done for.”

  “She has the Life Pool,” Phara broke in. “And the Sadness. He has nothing to match her. Her power is far greater than we could ever dream.”

  Before them, the Kentilans broke and rushed toward Mother’s Valdovas, and Airith sucked in another breath—then bent over and coughed at the sand that had actually entered her mouth. When she rose back up, the armies were within thousands of feet of each other. Then hundreds. Then tens.

  They came together with an inhuman roar and a boom that must have sounded out for miles around them, and Phara took several shocked steps back.

  “So many dead already,” she breathed.

  “Not as though any of them are our friends,” Airith bit out.

  “But we need Mother to survive if we’re going to live,” Rapha noted. He threw his eyes to the left and let out his own gasp as he caught sight of the Emperor. The man’s armor had been impressive before. Now it looked as though he’d become part machine. He’d grown several feet in size and somehow come by more guns, plus a helmet Rapha had never seen before.

  “Mother is coming,” Phara said calmly, breaking into his train of thought.

  Airith whirled on her, her face contorted in rage—and a fear that made Rapha take a step back. “What do you mean she’s coming?” Airith shouted. “And how the hell can you sound so calm about it?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Phara said, infuriating Airith still more. “Come. We must go to battle.”

  She didn’t wait for them, but began rushing forward in her fluid, floating motion. Airith stared after her, then yanked out her sword’s hilt, engaging its blade and rushed down the hill, screaming.

  Rapha grinned at the sight of Airith’s enthusiasm—though he suspected it was more to do with showing Phara up—and then slammed down on the button on his right forearm, bringing music roaring into his ears. Eighties Hair Rock, he thought. Perfect.

  He sprinted after the two women, his feet skimming over the surface of the sand.

  Within ten minutes they were on top of the armies and cutting through them, killing both Valdovas and Kentilans without mercy. Airith’s sword flashed back and forth, slicing through her foes, and Phara was using her energy to throw some up into the air, while crushing others with her indigo tentacles. Rapha with rage in his fits, connecting deadly blows with the Kentilans and Valdovas he came across.

  Behind them, a bloody line of fallen soldiers stretched into the distance. Ahead of them, he saw the Emperor. And the Three.

  “Straight ahead!” he screamed, stopping to put one fist through a Kentilan’s eye, and yanking it back out as the men fell, screeching. “Get to the Emperor!”

  The three of them rushed toward the enormous machine that encompassed the Emperor—and the two of the Three who were trying to fight him. Rapha could see already that they were outmatched. Martus was injured and limping, and when the Emperor swung for Vidmantas, Martus foolishly stepped in front of him and took the blow himself, straight to the head.

  “Weakling!” snarled Vidmantas. “Stop interfering! I can handle the Emperor on my own.”

  Martus dragged himself to the side, where the sand was littered with dead royal guards. He left Vidmantas on his own. And at that, Rapha saw his chance. He’d seen the tower on the way to this battle, and he knew that Mother had a problem. A problem that the Three evidently didn’t know about yet.

  “Get to Mother!” he screamed at Vidmantas. “The Kentilans are near the Life Pool! She’s in danger!”

  Vidmantas whirled on him. “And what do you know about it, little brother?” he sneered.

  As much as Rapha would have loved to break Vidmantas’ nose, it wasn’t the time for a pissing contest. Even between these two. “Your job is to protect her,” he growled. “I suggest you do it, before it’s too late.”

  The two locked gazes, burning with hatred.

  “Don’t worry,” Rapha added. “I’ll be coming for you when you’re done… little brother.”

  “I’ll be waiting,” Vidmantas replied. Then he turned and ran for the tower, leaving his brothers behind.

  “What’s the move?” Airith asked breathlessly as the monster that held the Emperor turned on them.

  “Skyfire,” Rapha answered immediately. He held out his hands and clinched his fists, initiating the Skyfire, and watched the blackness melt over him, becoming the armor he so desperately needed right now. Beside him, he could see Airith going through the same transformation.

  Between the two of them, he hoped they would have enough power to take that monster down. Because if they didn’t, they were going to be in big trouble.

  Rapha and Airith fle
w forward as if they’d planned it, their feet flying over the sand, and leapt toward the Emperor. To Rapha’s surprise, the machine/man caught them both by their throats and threw them back into the sand.

  “I want you alive,” he said, in a voice that was obviously coming through some sort of speaker system.

  “Over my dead body puto,” Airith mumbled, jumped to her feet and rushing at him again.

  Rapha paused a moment to watch her body as it slid toward the monster and then rushed after her, already counting the moments. How long had they had their Skyfire ignited? How much more power did either of them have? And most importantly, why did his armor reflect the time warp shield given out by their Skyfire? Then his feet were swept out from under him, the Emperor’s hand flying along the ground at a quick rate of speed. Rapha went flying to the side and ended up with his head buried in the sand. By the time he got right-side up again, and looked up, the Emperor had Airith by the foot and was dangling her over the sand, jerking back and forth as she tried to strike him with her sword.

  When she finally got smart and speared the sword straight up into his arm, he dropped her on her head.

  A mass of his army began to swarm toward them. Phara was doing her best to hold them off, building a shelter of glowing indigo around the three of them, but Rapha knew that would only hold up for so long. She was only one woman, and there were thousands of soldiers out there. Soldiers who wanted them dead—or worse, wanted to take them prisoner for the Emperor to experiment on.

  At that moment he felt his Skyfire starting to give way. One glance at the panicked look on Airith’s face told him that she’d felt the same thing, and his stomach dropped into his feet. The black shell liquified and began to slowly retreat into their bodies.

  With their Skyfire they’d stood a chance. Without it they were in big, big trouble.

  “I cannot hold this shield much longer,” Phara said, her hands up in front of her and braced as if she was holding the thing against the soldiers with her physical being. “We are going to need to think of something better.”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t think there is anything better,” Airith answered. She cast a glance out of the corner of her eye. “Rapha, this would be a really good time for a bright idea of some sort.”

  “I’m fresh out of bright ideas, unless you want to bring up your shoes again.” he retorted, though he plowed through his brain, looking for something—anything—that might get them out of this mess.

  Beyond them, thousands of Kentilans were practically foaming at the mouth for a chance to take them down. And for once he didn’t have an answer.

  Phara stiffened, then let out a screech and dropped to the ground, her invisible barrier dropping with her. Airith settled into a fighter’s stance and brought her sword up in front of her, and Rapha reached for his knives—though he didn’t think they’d be of much use.

  Then, out of nowhere, Mox appeared, dropping to the sand with a swing of his cane, his bodyguards right behind him. He brought his staff down hard into the sand, and a new barrier shot up in front of them.

  Rapha watched the soldiers crashing into the barrier, too shocked to move for a second, and then whirled on Mox.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” he asked.

  Mox grimaced. “You pissed the Virginity off with that little stunt you pulled during the race, and I haven’t been paid any of my winnings. This piece of shit—” He pointed at the Emperor as if the man wasn’t worth the sand he was standing on. “—Didn’t pay me either. So, I’m here to protect the weapon until some mother fucker pays me for it.”

  “What the fuck do you mean, weapon?” Airith shouted.

  “Never you mind that,” Mox cooed. He started typing madly into his staff. “I can use the energy from my staff to give you two one short run, and that’s it. You better end this shit show, or we’re done for!”

  Energy shot out from his staff, hitting Airith and Rapha, and a moment later their Skyfire had reignited. The two shot toward the Emperor.

  “Come at him from opposite sides this time, genius!” Airith shouted.

  She didn’t wait for his answer, but broke left and shot around the Emperor until she was at his back. The big machine twirled on its toes, trying to follow her, and Rapha saw his chance. He hurled himself onto the thing’s back and started punching at it, screaming. The Skyfire allowed him to actually dent the armor, and within moments he was through it and reaching for the wires he saw in the next level.

  “Airith, get out of there!” he shouted. “Protect yourself, I’ve got him!”

  He didn’t have time to see whether she obeyed him. When he yanked at the wires, the world around him exploded.

  *

  When Rapha woke up, it was to see Mox standing over him, shaking him.

  If there was anything that would get Rapha moving, it was the sight of that man standing over him.

  He scuttled backward, gagging, and came up hard against Airith’s legs. When he glanced up, he saw that she was staring into the distance, a hard look on her face. One look in that direction showed him the Emperor limping away, still in his armor. A group of guards surrounded him, while his generals were heading toward the Life Pool, no doubt to kill Mother.

  “You three go after him,” Mox said quickly. “I’ll hold the bastards off while you finish your job.”

  Rapha, Phara, and Airith ran after the Emperor without question, and Mox watched them go, a wistful look on his face. Then the soldiers arrived, and he whirled into the face of battle. But this wasn’t the sort of battle Mox had ever been built to fight, and one swing of a sword brought him to his knees. He glanced up and saw that there were hundreds of soldiers still on their way.

  There was no way to win this war. There was only a choice for how to get out of it.

  He used one of this guards to climb to his feet, then grinned at the soldiers in front of him. “You have no idea who I am,” he said, his breath rasping in his ruined throat. “I’m the greatest, sexiest, and most beautiful mother fucking rock star on Homecity.”

  He hit a button on his belt and then let his hand drop to his crotch and started motioning as if he was masturbating.

  “And I’m fucking all of you tonight.” He winked and blew the world around him a kiss as if he planned this all along.

  A second later the bomb from his belt he’d ignited detonated, taking him, his guards, and both armies on the battlefield into oblivion.

  THE GLITCH

  A irith raced after the Emperor and his guards, leaving Rapha and Phara to follow after her. She didn’t need to look back to see whether they were there. They would be.

  And if they weren’t, she would deal with the Emperor on her own. She was, after all, the one with the training to kill with no mercy. Sure, Phara had some tricky magic, but Rapha only had been a bodyguard and brawler modified now with Skyfire. Which, she thought with a smirk and one lifted eyebrow, she had as well.

  But they needed to catch the Emperor if they were going to do anything about anything—and that was going to be tough on foot.

  “He’s heading for the Old District!” she shouted over her shoulder. “And we’re never going to catch him on foot!”

  Ahead of the Emperor, she could already see the Old District rising up out of the desert. The Creator’s first attempt at Homecity, it was now nothing more than a group of crumbling buildings, none of them inhabitable. The sand was reaching up what was left of the streets, these days, and each of the buildings had lost its roof, leaving them open to the sky.

  Whoever had lived there was long gone. Probably a good thing, since Airith had no doubt they were going to have to destroy the place if they wanted to take out the Emperor.

  She put on a new burst of speed, her feet clawing at the sand under her, and her breath started coming heavier. Then, much to her surprise, Rapha pulled even with her—and he was wearing his Skyfire armor.

  “What are you doing?” she screamed.

  “It’s called running!”
he shouted back, his voice joyous and over exuberant.

  “With your Skyfire?”

  He darted a look out of the corner of his eye. “How else do you suggest we catch him?”

  Well, it was a good point. That didn’t make it the right answer.

  “And what are you going to do when we catch him and must fight him again, and your Skyfire is finished? Didn’t think about that did you?” she asked, her voice sharp.

  His footsteps faltered at that, and though he didn’t answer her, he did drop back out of her vision. She smirked and then put all her energy into running. They needed to catch the Emperor and figure out what he was doing—before he killed Mother. Because that would take the rest of them out.