Chapter 33

Rone stood next to Keiara, their hands entwined with each other. He glanced over at her, marveling at her beauty. The sun made her hair shine brilliantly, almost giving it a red-like hue. Her bronzed skin seemed to glow and she looked like she’d been made to bask in the sunlight. There was something else he noticed about her as well.

She looked deadly.

It was in the way she stood. It was in the way she watched the Blak Soldiers. It was in the intensity to her gaze.

“Are you ready?” he asked her.

“I wish it didn’t have to come to this,” she whispered. He could sense the sadness in her voice.

“This wasn’t our choice,” he told her, squeezing her hand.

“I know.” She squeezed his hand back and smiled at him. “Whatever else happens, I’m glad that I met you.”

He didn’t say anything back. There was no need. She knew how he felt about her. She’d known it since that day he kissed her in the Qarri Forest.

Flyers screeched through the air toward them. Rone watched them come. They were sleek machines with a single Rook piloting them. They could fire the deadly beams of energy and they also had very powerful missiles. Both of these were now streaming toward them.

They let go of each other’s hands and stood with their feet slightly apart. Keiara focused on the beams of killing fire and Rone turned his attention on the missiles racing toward them. As one, they lifted their hands.

Keiara concentrated. She could feel the magic surging to life. She felt that pull inside of her mind again but much stronger now. Energy whirled around inside of her. There was so much of it that she thought her body would burst apart. But she knew it wouldn’t. She controlled it now.

She spread the fingers of both hands out wide. She could feel the energy beams’ heat. It felt like they were an extension of herself. She reached out, focusing intently, and all of a sudden, every last ray of energy stopped in mid-air. They hovered there for a moment, looking menacing and deadly. Then Keiara brought both of her hands crashing down. Immediately, the captured blaster fire from the flyers rushed to follow her commands. They flew through the air again, but this time they weren’t headed for her or Rone. This time, they came smashing down on the Rooks themselves.

They were incinerated. Huge swaths of men and women were there one instant and gone the next. She could see one of the Rook vehicles. It was a bigger one with a large barrel jutting off its front. Only half of it was left standing and the edges glowed bright red.

Rone, meanwhile, had complete control over the missiles. A pocket of air surrounding each one guided and directed them back to where they’d come from. There were several huge, coughing booms as Rook flyers fell out of the sky in several pieces. He could hear faint screams from the men piloting them as they were killed. He tried hard not to think about that fact as he focused on the remaining soldiers.

The Blak Army was gathering up their forces, getting ready for an all-out attack. There were so many of them it seemed impossible to Rone.

Where did they all come from? he wondered absently.

There were shouts and yells coming from all the Blak Soldiers as they hurried across the desert. The Terras behind them also yelled, but they stayed where they were. Each one present stared in rapt attention as they watched Rone and Keiara unleash their power.

The first wave of Rooks hit them. They fired their weapons, but Keiara took care of that. Not one beam of blaster fire ever touched them. Each one was deflected or thrown back at the enemy. Scores of Rooks died but they just kept coming. None of them showed any trace of fear now. They all had those eerie, blank eyes.

They were surrounded. The assault vehicles and tanks pounded them. Blaster fire seemed to rain down from everywhere at once.

It was chaotic. It was intense.

But Rone merely smiled.

With a shout he flung out a hand. A huge, gale force wind came out of nowhere and picked up several hundred Blak Soldiers like they were paper dolls. They flew through the air and landed in boneless heaps. He flung out another arm and another wind came screaming through, throwing even more soldiers through the air. He repeated the process another eight times.

They fought like that for a long time, but they didn’t notice. They were lost in the battle and in their own power. Rone would unleash a cyclone of pure devastation while Keiara would stand there, flames whirling around her only to shoot out and engulf anyone that got near her.

More flyers raced through the skies, dropping their weapons. They were just as useless as the first time. Rone and Keiara stood together and unleashed a combination of both of their power. Soon, a whirling vortex made of fire was sweeping the area in front of them clear.

Flyers dropped from the sky.

Blak Soldiers died.

Rone and Keiara stood and continued their assault.

“How is this possible!?” Wilhelm screamed. His anger was so intense that it affected the power he controlled. The Blak Soldiers he commanded suddenly went stiff. Their movements turned from graceful, trained combat maneuvers to awkward and clumsy jerks. More of them were slaughtered by the power of air and fire.

Control yourself, the demon hissed. Or I will do it for you!

There was a sudden fire in his head and he clamped his hands to his temples, crying out. He was alone now, except for the mindless Terra, so no one came to his aid. Out on the battlefield, the Blak Soldiers seemed to get better. The awkwardness to their movements was gone, replaced by the smooth, effortless techniques they were trained with.

I warned you, the demon purred.

The pain in Wilhelm’s head finally abated. He stood to his full height, breathing in short gasps for a minute. He swallowed the saliva in his mouth and felt it slide past the lump in his throat that had replaced his vocal cords. His eyes burned with anger.

“We will not be able to destroy anything if we keep fighting against each other,” Wilhelm growled.

The demon didn’t answer for a long time, making Wilhelm grow increasingly nervous. He’d been so entwined with the alien presence that he knew its habits and ticks.

I agree, the demon purred.

Wilhelm was about to respond, but fire enveloped his head. He cried out soundlessly. Everything was pain. His head throbbed and pulsed. His eyes bulged and felt like they were going to pop out of his head. The tendons in his neck stretched taut uncomfortably. It felt like iron bands were clamping down on his chest. His hands turned to claws that scratched uselessly at the sand.

“Wh-what...,” he tried to say, but he couldn’t focus on the rest of his question.

Your usefulness to me is at an end, the demon answered, knowing what his vessel was going to say even though he never got the chance to finish speaking. It is time that this world bows down to Blak.

Wilhelm struggled against the demon. He put his considerable force of will behind it but in the end it was useless. The pain had evolved. Now he felt like he was being burned alive again. In his mind, he was back at Ledun. He was falling out of the trees only to be embraced by a wall of flame. He could feel it as it scorched and burned his skin. It felt like it was something alive and crawling, trying to devour him.

He writhed and twisted, his back arching. There was nothing he could do, however. The pain kept coming in increasing waves of intensity. Soon, it reached his mind. It ate away at the core of who he was. It ate away at his memories. It ate away everything until Wilhelm Coran was gone.

The only thing left was Blak.

The Blak Army was massive, but Rone and Keiara were slowly leaching away their colossal numbers. Bodies and pieces of machinery were strewn all over the desert. Bright metal glinted in the sunlight next to charred and twisted lumps of military-grade body armor. There were huge tracks of sand that had been turned into glass by the heat of Keiara’s fire. Whirling tornados and billowing sand storms were still tearing across the battlefield, eating up Blak Soldiers and flinging them to their deaths. Behind them, they could hear the Terras cheering and shouting. They bashed their weapons against their shields or clapped loudly.

Rone was actually starting to get tired. His muscles felt like they were getting weaker by the second and he was having trouble breathing. Sweat broke out on his forehead and kept falling into his eyes, stinging them and making it hard to see. His hair was plastered to his skull and he could feel his stump aching and tingling uncomfortably. It definitely made it awkward to keep fighting like that. The subconscious part of his mind dealt with it however. Nanos surged into his flesh surrounded his nerve endings and abated some of the pain. It only took a moment for him to notice the difference and it helped him keep his focus where it was needed.

A squadron of Blak Soldiers rushed the two of them but Rone blasted them back with a torrent of wind.

Before Rone and Keiara could even catch their breath, even more soldiers came rushing in. They were about to attack when all of them jerked to a stop at the same time and just stood completely still.

Keiara looked at Rone, confused.

Rone shrugged back.

“What are they doing?” he asked, breathing hard.

Keiara looked at the Blak Soldiers. Every single one of them stood there with slack jaws and empty stares. They watched Rone and Keiara impassively, as if the fact that the two were single-handedly destroying a great deal of their army was no big deal.

“It looks like they’re waiting for something,” Keiara said.

She watched the halted army, a feeling of unease fluttering around her stomach.

“I don’t like this,” she said and saw Rone nod.

All of a sudden, every Blak Soldier opened their mouth. A horrible screeching wail erupted from them.

Rone screamed out in pain, his ears bleeding slightly. It felt like someone was drilling holes through his skull and directly into his brain.

Keiara didn’t fare any better. She screamed in pain also and even the Terras behind them were dropping to their knees.

Just as suddenly as it happened, the screeching sound stopped.

On their knees, Rone and Keiara watched as a torrent of black, mutated spiders erupted out of every soldier's open mouth. Each of the nasty little creatures was covered in slime and they all looked twisted and misshapen. They crawled toward them on eight, stubby legs. Huge, inch long mandibles jutted out of their beady little heads.

There was a literal flood of them. They just fell out of mouths and onto the sand only to get up and scrabble over each other as they made their way toward Rone and Keiara.

“Don’t let them touch you!” Keiara screamed, needlessly.

“I wasn’t planning to,” Rone shouted back.

They got to their feet and stood next to each other, watching the spiders. They were swarming over everything and while most of them were headed their way, tons of them were also walking around them and toward the unprotected Terras. They had to stop them and they had to do it fast.

Keiara’s form suddenly shimmered. A second later, a massive dragon took her place. Her gigantic head swiveled around, focusing on the disgusting creatures. With a great big wash of flame, she set them on fire. There were ugly hissing and popping sounds as their insides boiled and then exploded.

Rone followed her lead. He reached for the magic and felt a sudden whirl of energy hit him. His form shimmered and a beautiful roc took his place. Immediately, he took to the air. His wings blotted out the sun as it threw his enormous shadow on the ground. He focused on the creatures crawling toward the Terras. The winds surged to new life, throwing sand and spiders around. Tornados whirled, sucking up the mutated things like a vacuum.

But, unfortunately, there were too many of them. His power couldn’t quite catch them all. His sharp eyes picked out the forms of several mutated spiders escaping his net. They crawled along the sand, but there was nothing he could do.

They had already reached the Terras.

One of the spiders found a Terra that wasn’t paying close enough attention. It crawled up her leg before she even knew it was there. It got to a point right above her spinal column, near the brain stem, and sunk its mandibles into her flesh. She jerked, her eyes growing wide. There was clearly some sort of internal struggle she was fighting, but it was a losing battle.

Within seconds, her eyes grew blank and the muscles of her face became slack. Then, without warning, she turned on a warrior next to her and gutted him with her sword. The warrior’s body fell to the ground, his blood seeping into the sand.

Seven other Terras succumbed to the spiders and attacked their own people.

Rone saw all of this and quickly flew off that way. He wasn’t worried about leaving Keiara alone. Fifty-foot tongues of flame were expelled from her open maw, incinerating hundreds of the things at a time. She didn’t need his help.

But the Terras did.