NOVEL NEXT 291 – Firefly Thundercannon
The flash of steel was too fast to see, and beyond even Ubul’s ability to react to. In a single slash, a cut whose speed surpassed sight and sound while being elegant enough to not produce a thunderclap, Makhus severed a chunk of Ubul’s upper-left torso alongside a third of his core and half his head, only for the general to appear unfazed as he spun around and kicked the swordsman in the side with such force that his armor crumpled and he was sent careening across the ground. As if nothing had happened, Ubul just raised his remaining hand and the severed pieces of his body floated back into place, bands of iron plating from a nearby tank pulled to him as well, split apart, deformed, and used as giant staples to fix the pieces back in place while the stone and crystal mended. The seething magic of Makhus’ sword had worn away at the crystal of Ubul’s core and the stone of his body alike, leaving a gaping gash in it even in its rejoined state, despite the apparent lack of lasting effect. It was a wound that Ubul couldn’t fully mend, at least not nearly as quickly as others, thus being forced to devise this crude solution.
Zelsys had landed in a trench, doubled over and cautiously taking shallow breaths as she meticulously forced her body to form itself back into shape, plunging her hand into her own chest and forcefully pulling her sternum outward with a sickening crunch. The very muscles and blood surrounding her broken ribs were made to realign the bones, internal hemorrhage repurposed as a stabilizing agent; imbuing the blood with the essence of Iron, she selectively made it congeal around and within the fractures to act as cement, both for now and for later when the bone began to heal properly, while the excess she simply commanded back into circulation so that it might go where it belonged. She loaded a Type-2 round and poked her head out of the trench as she once more began the labor of gathering Fulgur in her second stomach, met by the sight of Ubul simply pointing his arm, causing a torrent of boulders to form out of the dirt to fly at his target, smashing apart dozens of flame-possessed skeletons at once. The Mercenary fired a smoke cartridge at him, obscuring the general’s vision, then near-instantly followed up with what seemed to be an ice bullet, considering the fact that when Ubul jumped out of the smoke cloud a moment later, he was covered in ice.
His eyes locked directly onto Zelsys, anger flashing within, the man emitting a bestial growl… Only for Jorfr’s frost-wreathed greathammer to smash him sideways in the knee, forcing his leg into the mud and making it buckle a bit, but not nearly enough to break it, much to the norseman’s wide-eyed concern. So concerning was it in fact, that Jorfr exhaled a great gust of what must’ve been air near absolute zero, for it froze Ubul’s raised punching-arm stiff just long enough for Jorfr to get out of reach, only to jump back in moments later with his hammer encased in a man-sized, rune-etched hunk of ice, one which shattered upon impact with the general’s mach-speed fist, erupting in an expanding ice mass that entrapped the general, if only for a few more moments.
The norseman erupted with a belly laugh at the general’s infuriated howling, even as his imprisonment was shattered with minimal effort.
With the amount of Fulgur in her system sufficient, she compressed it and kept going, balling up more and more while also drawing a bit on the spirits, blending Metallum into the composite in the hopes of improving the anti-material properties of her next Thundercannon. Simultaneously, she built charge around her skin, leaping out of the trench, allowing herself to bleed onto the Butcher’s flat, even willing it to subtly alter its shape so that the recessed lightning etch upon its flat could hold more blood, even if only a small amount in the grand scheme of things.
Thundercannon always gave off a tremendous amount of excess energy, and that was energy wasted if she didn’t use it, as pretty as it was. So, instead of going through the trouble of manifesting Fog-beads and then charging them, she would just use her own blood as the medium, just as she had done precisely once before in the dungeon.
She lifted the blade above her mouth, consuming her own vital essence and filling her mouth with it, before she finally jumped out of the trench and took off sprinting in Ubul’s direction, the general now busy fighting a monstrous beast built from dozens of flame-possessed, who had taken a lesson from their clay counterparts and composited into a four-legged, landbound dragon, their collective flame gathered in the beast’s ribcage made of twisted-up human skeletons, directed as huge blasts of the baleful substance that were sufficient to burn even Ubul, or so it seemed, as he deemed them worthy of dodging. The small company of sparklock-armed skeletons that poked out of the beast’s back and rained down fire upon him certainly had an effect as well, forcing him to not only dodge, but to KEEP dodging.
It was clear he knew she was coming by the time she reached him, but it didn’t matter; the bone-dragon had sacrificed the coherence of its form for a surprise attack, its constituent skeletons erupting out through its maw, starting with those at back of its body functionally being shot forward through the mouth to grab at the general and maybe, perhaps, possibly scorch him even a bit, or get him with a flaming war-knife. The act was not fruitless, for it bogged him down long enough that she could actually get a near-perfect shot set up, jumping into the air directly overhead him after she had already marshalled all the necessary energy, spraying blood from her mouth on the way up to form a cloud, one which she aimed through and fired.
Click. Click.
“FIREFLY THUNDERCANNON!”
