Chapter 11B: Castle Made of Dirt

The world returned to life when we were just a few blocks from the shore. The stars twinkled in the sky and sent a shudder in the shadows that scattered the street. Only two pedestrians stood in our area, but they stood at a distance from fear of plague. They had not even noticed that we practically appeared to emerge suddenly into the street from thin air. We ran past the ashen cinders of the buildings we had burned. I stepped in the place where we made love for the first time on the body of an enemy who had dared to attack us. But in the moment that we crossed from the ash-stained asphalt onto the sand of the quiet beach, a silhouette emerged from the steaming shallows. His hands glowed momentarily, and then a small wall of rock suddenly ascended from the sand.

“Asivario, look out!” she yelled with a sudden shout.

And though Aeliana was quick enough to brace herself and slam her forearms upon the rock wall, I crashed into it at full speed. She unsheathed her daggers in the same moment that I stumbled from the pain, but then another rock wall appeared to my left. Afraid that we would find ourselves boxed in, Aeliana wrapped her arms around me and then kicked off the wall. We flew just past the edge of a third rock wall which would have enclosed us, and then I aimed my left hand at the silhouette in the shallows. Fire spiraled across my arm and summoned a sphere of searing flames. I then unleashed the fireball straight at our attacker, but he crouched down and summoned a rock wall to take the hit. The fiery sphere engulfed the rock wall and crumbled it in an explosive shockwave, but our enemy stood unfazed in a shower of scarlet sparks and gravel. The glow of fire illuminated the waves which washed ashore.

“How did you know we would run away to this place?” I asked as Aeliana wiped a drop of blood from my face.

But our enemy drew his sword as he spoke, “Because Hayatama said you would run to this coast. Our attack force at your home was intentionally small. He knew that this was your escape ever since the moment you killed that Astrodeus in the street.”

In that moment, a blast of plasma struck us both from behind and shot us into the sand with a smolder. Smoke plumed from our clothes, and the thunderous shockwave shook the shore. Though Aeliana had been hit harder by the blast, she jumped upright to see our second enemy underneath a streetlight, just a few feet from the place where I killed a witness with a fireball. Still reeling from the last attack, Aeliana offered me her hand. With her help, I stumbled upright and unsheathed my chipped sword.

Aeliana steadied her daggers and whispered in my ear, “The worst thing we can do is both stand right here. If we stay in place, the man with the rock walls can lock us in place. I think we should both go on the attack and target the man with the plasma blast. He has no weapon. He has no way to defend himself. You run in front, block his blast with a decoy, and I’ll tear him down.”

Aeliana always had a proclivity for viciousness, and when we first met, I confess that it disturbed me at the time. Not because I thought of her as a savage or considered myself civilized, but instead because it meant that the brutality of the badlands branded her brain just as the savagery stained her skin with scars. I hated seeing the evidence that she had suffered so much just in trying to survive. But by this point, I had relinquished any reservations that repelled me in the past. We had only made it this far because she is mercilessly determined to survive. It is only because of her savagery that we will force our future onto this world by striking down anything in our way. Just as we are cosmic gamblers who exchange our memories for another lifetime at the end of each cycle, she gambles her body with her life as the stake just to exert her will upon this world.

I agreed to her plan and then took off running. We sprinted together toward the enemy in the street who had attacked us from a distance, and exactly as we predicted, this enemy unleashed a blast of white-hot plasma to impede our assault. Aeliana jolted behind me for protection, and I invoked the power I had stolen from Kalairo. I summoned a decoy in that moment and held it out front with both hands. And while it successfully shielded me from the scorching strike, the impact stopped us both in our tracks. The shockwave sent tremors through my arms as I dropped the smoldering remains of my own substitute. Our enemy appeared taken aback by this, but he lifted his left arm and prepared to unleash a second blast. In the moment that he forced particles in the air to come crashing together in a white-hot burst, Aeliana pushed me to the right with all her strength. The recoil of the push threw her to the left, and then the calamitous attack shot directly through the space between us.

“Asivario, please look to your right!” Aeliana said while we were blinded by light.

As plasma came crashing down upon the shore of Ember Bay, I swerved to the side and saw an enormous figure tear across the sand. He crashed into me with so much force that he sent me slamming to the sand with a violent roll. Even when I stopped, the stars seemed to spin and sway in the sky above. I climbed into a crouch and saw that he had already knocked Aeliana to the ground in the same way. He swung his sword straight down at her, but she threw herself into a backward somersault across the sand and narrowly escaped. But to my horror, this third attacker tore across the sand and struck her with a full-force kick that launched her into the air. Before she even came crashing down to the sand, I retaliated with a fireball which struck him directly in the chest. The sphere practically detonated with a shockwave of spiraling fire which bathed the beach in light, but he emerged from the scarlet sparks with his sword held high. His skin and clothes smoldered slightly, but my strongest attack had not even knocked him down.

The swordsman said as the sparks danced between scarlet and blue, “It is an honor and a shame to be the man who kills you. You are an anomaly of which I never thought possible. Hayatama warned me that he did not know your power, but now it is clear that you are unbound by singularity. Your soul can summon a shield and a sword. It’s such a shame that you dared to cross a city leader. I would have loved to fight beside you.”

As Aeliana stumbled to her feet in the background, I threw myself at the swordsman with my sword set to strike. I ran at my fastest speed, but right before I would have reached our enormous enemy, a rock wall ascended from the sand between us. Instead of stopping or slowing down, I accelerated and slammed the butt of my sword against the rock wall. Despite all my strength, I was stopped in my tracks. I slammed against the wall, and then the swordsman struck it from the other side with a full-force slash. His weapon transformed the rock wall into a scattershot of gravel; his sword struck the edge of my forearms and splashed blood into the air. The impact sent me reeling backward, and I nearly fell into the sand.

This enemy then slammed his way through the swirling dust and swung his sword in a speedy slash, but I sidestepped his strike and then counterattacked with a slash of my own. He twisted himself to escape my slash, but then I lifted my left hand and counterattacked with a sudden sphere of spiraling fire. And even though I unleashed the fireball with all my strength, he still managed to swerve and jump backward in the air. My incendiary sphere struck him and detonated with a full-force blast that launched him a short distance away. He crash-landed in the street without ever dropping his sword, and he executed a quick double-roll to extinguish the flames which clung to his clothes. The towering swordsman then jolted upright beside our other enemy, almost as if he would personally defend the man with the plasma blasts.

Note: There are still 2 more parts to this chapter