~~
Maya opened by landing amongst the Disciple in a cataclysm: she stopped flapping her wings, using them only for guidance, and dive-bombed into their lines. The Disciples saw her coming and took quick evasive action, so only four were destroyed by her violent entrance. The rest turned and clawed at her, dodging and diving in complex patterns that made them difficult targets.
Maya hurled pillars of fire at them in retaliation. Sometimes she'd take two out, but often she only struck one. As the Disciples' numbers dwindled, so did her hit-rate. They stopped running around and stood to face her, performing high-speed and infuriating dodges at the last moment. To make up for this new tactic, she increased the width of her attacks, burning through more of their Cyrus Force reserves.
“We should slow down, you'll be helpless soon,” Applekill warned.
Maya broke her rhythm to look around: her Spirit was gone, had returned to her sword.
“What do you suggest we do? I need to kill them quickly, while I still can.”
Applekill flinched. Maya sounded again like she had when she'd been... Tainted. The transformation must still be affecting her. That's all that could explain this lack of finesse and control. The Spirit knew she'd have to be careful. “You're not doing this right! Remember our conversations, our lessons and use your–”
A bullet pierced their defensive shield, whined past Maya's ear before escaping out the other side. She doubled the energy in the shield, protecting herself, and went to counter-attack.
But nothing came. She built her Cyrus Force up again and aimed to melt even more of their hateful bodies, but there was nothing. She... she was too tired, had gone too far on fresh parts of her being. She was left with just her physical strength... and Applekill's personal energy.
Ten Disciples remained. Two still had working guns.
“Concentrate, care, you win if you dare,” Maya whispered.
Applekill did not join her in the mantra. And she felt no rush of Cyrus Force at the end of it. She was in the right state of mind, she was sure of it, but Applekill was not present.
“Applekill, lend me your energy.”
No response.
A set of golden claws bounced against her defences, just inches from her face: to rebuild her shield, she made it smaller. Her heart rate rose to a furious thudding. “Apple... Applekill, this is no time to fuck around. Lend me your energy.”
Silence. Another bullet ripped through her failing defences.
“Applekill!”
“No, master, I can't. You'll just squander it again. You're going to drain me at this rate.”
“What?”
“You're not thinking right, Maya. Your battle mind is compromised, and you've wasted your reserves. My energy is the last resource we have, and I won't let you squander it.”
For the first time, Applekill's physiology made sense: guilt and fury fought in Maya as flesh and fire did on her Spirit. She felt that Applekill was wrong. She knew that Applekill was right.
Then Applekill wasn't her pressing concern. The Disciples sensed the change in her and the rate of their attacks doubled. Then tripled. They aimed their shots and blows at one point, draining the energy there, then move to another area after she'd fortified.
Maya frantically redistributed her energy. Very quickly she had to worry about where she to move her Cyrus Force from. The Disciples surrounded her, five before and five behind, so she struggled to keep herself safe. She definitely didn't have enough energy to think about moving or fighting back.
Applekill had abandoned her. She was alone.
First she shrunk the shield, so small it hugged her body like a second skin. But the Disciples continued firing, their weapons turning white with the effort. Each impact took just a little more out of her, like five minutes of heavy climbing weighing into her body. Impassive, the Disciples watched her tire, watched her energy drain away, continued killing her.
Her next step was to remove the protection above her head and below her feet: it was small but it allowed her another lick of energy to protect herself.
Still the Disciples attacked. The two with working guns turned their weapons white-hot as they reached their limits. The others clawed at her, their expressionless and merciless faces level with hers.
With a deep breath, she prepared to make a tactical retreat, to push the last of her shield to her back so she could tap Aureu for some Cyrus Force. At this point, Applekill gave her some extra energy. Apparently she approved of Maya's thinking.
After a bitter laugh, Maya bolted.
Two Disciples moved to block her passage. Maya turned, but she was blocked off again. They wouldn't let her out. And they kept firing, kept wearing her defences down.
Two of them ceased, lowered their almost-melted arms, but the rest continued to pummel her, merciless.
“Fuck!” Maya had no choice but to prioritise body parts. She exposed her unfavoured hand first, then that whole arm. The Disciples didn't aim for this, though, interested only in the inevitable kill.
Panicked, Maya threw herself down and fired the last of her energy at the Disciples, hoping to destroy their weapons. There was a soft implosion as the shock wave approached them, a final, defiant burst.
She rolled over, half-prepared to die. Applekill covered her in a new shield with her hoarded energy, and they waited for a fresh attack. But there was no attack. Only silence.
The Disciples had stopped. Leaping to her feet, she looked round. The blast had knocked the Disciple back, sent them to the floor. They each began the slow process of standing up, which would take minutes.
“Maya, will you listen to me now?” Applekill whispered.
“I will. I'm sorry,” Maya said. She maybe hadn't been thinking straight. After all, this was her first fight with the Disciples. On the Front, a new Contegon was partnered with a senior Contegon for their first battle to help them cope with the horrors.
“Use my sword. I can empower it better. They have no ranged weapons now, so it will be a fair fight.”
“Ten against one, fair?” Maya asked.
“They'll just have to cope with so few, won't they?” Applekill joked.
Maya smiled. Deliberately, she drew Applekill. Her real test began now.
46
Snow put his hands over his eyes to see what was happening in the fight between the... He didn't even know what to think of them as. The fighters? Anyway, dull though the day might have been, it still cast enough light that Snow had to shield his eyes to see the fighters well. The fiery one and the watery one. The defenders of Aureu, partners of the strange creature on the Cathedral.
What they were and why they were helping, Snow didn't know. But as he stared at them, he heard Chain's final words to him.
“Don't deny yourself the possibility of recovering what you've lost.”
He and the other refugees were lucky they weren't further north as the Cathedral would have completely blocked their view then. They currently shared an unoccupied building in southern Sol's Haven. It was abandoned like many of the buildings in Sol's Haven. They'd been funnelled in, having been given blankets and old mattresses to sleep on, and told to wait until the Bureau had made a decision on what would happen to them.
But shortly after they'd settled, a Cleric had come and informed them of a battle and of Sol's Haven going into lockdown. Young, plain, she had given them the message and raced along to her next port. There would be many people to inform of such a plan.
Curious, he and some of the survivors stood on the roof, trying to watch the battle. They were huddled together, for warmth and for comfort, and it was debatable whether each shiver was from the cold or from fear of the monsters out of sight, the ones who had followed them all the way from the Front.
And they weren't the only ones craning to watch the battle. Across Aureu, people littered the roofs. They all watched and thanked Sol for the fighters he had sent, hoping they would be protected. No one ran to escape because... well, what would be the point
? If it were Sol's will, they would be saved. If not, they would fall with the city, with their homes.
Home. What a strange thought. All of Snow's current problems had started at his home and now he didn't even have a home, not really. He owned a building and had no family.
Aureu cheered as the fiery and watery fighters rained destruction down on the Disciples. Trawl, a young boy with dark hair and several teeth missing, shouted “Yeah! Do you see that? Did you see that, Snow?”
Snow smiled and ruffled his hair. “I saw. Pretty cool, huh?”
“Yeah!”
Maybe he did have a family...
Snow had to admit, it was almost fun to hear Aureu roar with every attack, but this quickly faded when thousands screamed at the death of one of Sol's fighters. Electric panic and fervent joy then mixed to fill the air with a strange atmosphere. Even when one of the fighters was killed, the whole of Aureu shared the experience, and there was a catharsis in their joint pain and worries.
It didn't change what they were seeing though: the fighters were dominating the battle. There didn't seem to be many Disciples left if the reduced fire they were under was a good indication, but Snow had to wonder how long they could maintain such spectacular fighting.
Longer than he'd thought, it seemed. The other fighter reigned pure destruction down onto the Disciples after throwing its compatriot away – a strange act, but one that Snow had no doubt would be explained in time – and then it fired down to presumably meet the remaining Disciples in melee combat.
“What's happening, Snow?” someone asked.
“I can't see. The other buildings are in the way...” He stood on his tiptoes, tried to see down to the Planted Forest, but no matter how he contorted himself there was something blocking his view. He went from one end of the roof to the other, hoping to find some obtuse angle through, but found none.
“No,” he said, finally giving up, “we can't see. We'll just have to go by everyone else's reactions.”
“That's not very good, is it?” Element asked. “Let me on your shoulders, maybe I can see then.”
“Leave him be,” Branch said, holding a few of the more timid children close to her. “Snow would have to be fifty feet tall for it to make any difference. We'll just have to accept whatever happens.”
“But I want to see!” a boy said. Snow hadn't learned his name yet. He didn't know most of them yet, but he imagined he'd come to see them all as siblings. “Sol is saving us!”
“Come on, Snow: let's go get a better view!” Element demanded. She stamped, acting childish. It made him feel better to see her like that. With any luck, he would be the only one who was unduly aged by the horrors of the Front.
He shrugged. “How? We can't leave Sol's Haven, and the roofs to the west are packed.”
“We can't leave?” Branch asked, surprised.
Snow pointed over to the walls around Sol's Haven. “The gates are all barred and only Contegons can pass them. I haven't seen the Council or the Guardian leaving, though, so I assume there's another way out of Sol's Haven. And no Element, before you say it, we're not going to go find the secret exit.”
Element pouted.
“You've been watching the gates?” another boy asked, incredulous.
Snow looked over the devastation to the west, the chaos that the Disciples had left in their wake. “I've been watching everything.” He paused, lost in thought for a moment. “But for now, I'll have to make do with listening, as we all will. We've got to have faith in that fighter to save us.”
“Why?” Element asked.
“Don't deny yourself the possibility of recovering what you've lost,” he heard again.
Snow didn't reply. He didn't want to tell them that nothing else could save Aureu.
47
Babbage swore. They had been so close! The woman/creature was on its last legs... but she had knocked them over. The Disciples took a while to right themselves and that gave her time enough to regain her composure.
He ran a diagnostics check on the Disciples and found that the impact had also destroyed the guns of the final two Disciples capable of firing. More specifically, the miniature Matter Generators that created their bullets had shut down to prevent the Cyrus Force shock from causing a catastrophic rupture. Each one cut out as late it could, having taken several overrides already, but they were inert now and would be for days.
Not only that, but each Disciple was dangerously low on power. He knew that fighting would drain them, but they hadn't expected to come up against... Oh but it was so infuriating. Overwhelmingly so. He roared and raged within the General Suit, issuing no sound, but filling whole files with his abuse. The AI then had his Disciple in the mountains destroy some countryside. The feedback of melting rocks and snapping trees felt almost like he was doing it himself. It pleased him. It made him smile.
His emotional nanny weave reported that he was in quiet contemplation.
Back in the General Suit, he watched as the woman... No, the girl, she couldn't be far beyond pubescence... The girl drew a weapon. She was one against ten, and she drew her weapon. Was she taunting them?
How pathetic. Ten Disciples would be more than enough for now.
He ordered the Disciple with the highest power reserve to attack and watched, eager for blood and eager to use this girl's strength against her.