”You and your sister give the nicest gifts.”The sword’s hilt touched her left palm and her fingers closed around it with ease, despite the use of her off hand. Not optimal, but she wasn’t dueling; a deft touch was not needed. Her right quested under the mattress where directed, and a smile broke across her face when her fingers brushed metal. In a single smooth motion she withdrew a gas-operated, stainless steel-constructed mechanism of divine judgement dispensed through thirty two 12-gauge shells contained within the first of two drum magazines. On an intellectual level, the Auto Assault-12 was a marvel of mechanical engineering suitable to bring a tear to the eye. It delivered its payload with borderline
negative recoil, would never need to be lubricated, and would only require cleaning after ten thousand rounds. If you felt like it. You could drop it, wade through an ocean, drag it through the muck, and it’d still roar to life to fulfill its function.
On a visceral level, it was the most satisfying way to bring a tear to someone
else’s eye with a twelve gauge.
What came next was the most precise of juggling acts, tossing the rapier up with her left, looping the firearm’s sling over her neck, transferring it to her left and sliding the drum magazine into place with a satisfying click. Braced against her hip, she racked the bolt once with her left hand to ready the mechanism while the rapier’s hilt again found her palm, though this time the right. To the naked eye it was impossibly fast. Fast enough, for certain, to bury the point of her blade in the first of the creatures to reach the truck. Jonas was keeping them busy, for sure, but the disordered beasts still needed addressing. They moved in slow motion to her eye, little more than composition assessments and patterned movements. Academic. It was almost boring with the son of Ares occupying so much of their attention, there was nothing to fill her mind.
The beasts themselves were such a letdown.
”They’re shadow,” She relayed in the same tone as someone discussing their cooking, idly kicking the mutt’s corpse away from the truck bed.
”Certainly not natural beasts. Personally I’d advise fire.”Though, their multiplication was slightly more distressing. Rather than stay down, a single slain creature seemed only to become more. It wasn’t an outright
magical feat, she would see the workings of such like strands in the air, but perhaps a natural attribute to their existence? Further observation should tell. The tip of her blade whipped out, here and there, to end a foe when they wandered within her reach. She
felt her brother before she saw, or even heard him; a shot of pure positivity to the soul, a swelling of focus deep in the chest. Raw conviction in every thought, tenacity in every flex of a muscle. It was a feeling she occasionally wished she could figure out how to bottle, as the traditional liquid courage was not
quite the same. This one didn’t cost her lucidity, too.
”Glad you could join us, brother.” She greeted, directing a glance off to her left. Another smile graced her features, a touch less restrained than usual.
”I was beginning to think you would miss it. Watch the left flank, if you please. One less front for me to consider.”The next ten minutes was an exercise in probability, not even approaching the definition of strategy. It was a matter of force calculation, nothing more. Her own blade flashed in the dim light to punctuate simple instructions that amounted to little more than directing one of her compatriots to an impending flank. Even with their increasing numbers, the forces leveled were laughably imbalanced. It was like a swarm of ants trying to overrun a military compound. The amount of force that
could be exerted was so many times more than needed that it actually took
more work to hold them at bay than simply wiping the grid coordinates off the map. An exaggeration, but an apt comparison. In time there might be enough of the beasts to overrun their position, given their ludicrous rate of procreation, but it would be many hours before anyone began to tire. It was simply a matter of determining how to stop their spread.
In time, however, something approaching counter strategy began to occur. Directed flanks, not mindless exploitation of an opening. Groupings approximating battle lines began to emerge like an infant hitting on a plan.
But before that could amount to more, the whole scene changed.
The creeping morass of shadow looked like something out of one of Dana’s animes, the swarm giving rise to a voice of the legion. A bishonen line, if you will. The more human it appears, the stronger it is. Strange but simple. She watched in slow motion as it formed, grew, the way the energies involved interplayed and interlocked to create a monster among monsters. Considering its height, probably a bit too much for a rapier.
But historically, fire is a cleansing force. Prometheus’ gift to humanity, harnessed to propel mankind to dizzying heights. Fire, that in Norse myth cleansed the world to begin anew. The enemies of humanity truly despise fire and this towering evil could not more clearly an enemy of humanity be.
It would die in fire.
”Marcy, I’m going to need more magnesium. And I’m going to need you to toss it to me with this.”The daughter of Athena casually tossed the second mag in her friend’s direction, and pulled a road flare out from the same place she’d grabbed the shotgun. It turned to dust in her hand at a mere thought, flowing through any opening down into the AA12’s magazine. Though she could not
see, she could feel and know how it mixed with the shells within. There wasn’t enough in the flare for every shell, but Marcy would see to that. Alternating the thirty shots would work for now.
”And you.”Deigning to address the hulking shadow as she hopped down off of the truck, moving the shotgun off of her hip and into her hand. Her walk had all the assuredness of a victor, emanating from every swaggering step.
”Shut up. Highwind, danger close.”The normally passive demigod blurred into motion, actually catching up with her more martial friend though she started later. While Jonas cut into the creature, she pulled the trigger and felt the satisfying
thunk of the bolt action as a lance of white-hot fire a hundred feet long stabbed into its form. A round of military buckshot followed a fifth of a second later, then another flame, and so on. Never once did the mechanism stop, nor did the demigod. She kept running full-out in strafing loops too quickly for the monster to every hope to keep up with.
If it hadn’t died after thirty two shells in the next fifteen seconds, Marcella would have her next salvo locked and loaded.
Kill it with fire indeed.
Plank Sinatra
Snowdrops
FlappyTheSpybot
The World
Forsythe
