Spark of War (Progression Fantasy)

El cursed—several times, very quickly—under her breath as she was forced to back away from the ring, glancing again at the oncoming pulses of light. Then she blinked. And again, when the streets below suddenly looked… hazy. Was she imagining things? No, that wasn't it at all. There was fog—a thick fog—rolling down the streets like a living thing. Already up to the hangnails' knees and hiding the tubing along the road, it was growing with every passing second.

No way that's natural.

Natural or not, though, it was obscuring the tubing she needed to destroy!

Without the luxury of time to think about it—she'd already wasted too much—El ignited a bow in her hand and immediately began compressing the blue flames towards their plasma state. She could only do two, maybe three of these arrows, so she'd need to make them count. Pointing her bow straight down, she hauled back on the flaming string, the arrow already as big as her leg, and pushed even more power into it.

While she could aim her arrows at the base of the ring to try and destroy as many tubes as possible with one shot, there was a risk to it. When that earlier pulse had exploded out of the section she'd removed, it had done so very violently, and if the screams she'd heard were any indication, it'd still possessed the power of the stolen Sparks. An explosion like that, near the vacuum-like properties of the large ring, might still pull the Sparks right in. Or, at least enough of them to trigger the gateway again.

She couldn't risk it. Other options?

Going from memory, the majority of the tubes funneled into a single line in the last block approaching the ring, though those streets were the tightest packed in the entire city. Like the damn monsters were waiting in audience for their boss to make a big speech. Her plasma arrow could probably cut through them just as easily as the tubing. Yeah, that was her best plan.

Another heartbeat tightened the spinning arrow into its plasma form, a blue so bright, it was almost neon. Monsters below swarmed over each other, as if they knew what she was planning, and used their bodies to shield the tubing. Seawyrms on distant buildings hocked their deadly sprays in her direction—Yuck—but they were too far away for the pressure to amount to anything. Little more than a fine mist reached El where she hovered above.

Her arm tensed as she prepared to release her air strike—until a moment's hesitation popped into her mind. Down in the tunnel, when she'd used the arrow before, she hadn't destroyed everything. No, she'd frozen most of it. Sure, it was frozen clean through and practically shattered at a touch, but many of the hangnails had still been whole.

Would the pulse be able to travel through the frozen tube?

She couldn't risk it, but she also couldn't drop down to the ground to shatter the pipe after she fired her arrow and target the other two streets too. She needed…

"Laze, Nidina," El said into her communication magic. "I need you back here now."

"The pulses…?" Nidina asked.

"Now!" El stressed, then released her arrow.

"Coming," Nidina said without questioning again.

"On the way," Laze added, while El's arrow tore screaming through the air towards the monsters below.

The creatures—as if in defiant reply to El's attack—roared back at the plummeting arrow, like the volumes of their combined voices would repel it.

They didn't.

Already immersed in at least five feet of swirling fog, the writhing mass of monsters looked like something out of a nightmare, faces, claws, and shapes rushing about without being clearly seen. Not that any of that mattered to El's arrow. The bolt of glowing plasma tore through the top layer of monsters like wet paper, the fog around them flash-freezing at the same time to form an almost-pretty web of thinly connected ice.

Then the explosion came.

VOOOM, the 'sound'—if it could be called that—didn't reach El's ears, but resonated more as a deep bass in her chest, while blue flames erupted in a sphere that engulfed the entire street. Fire washed up the walls of the buildings on both sides, leaving frosted stone in its wake. Windows that had been left open or broken let the hungry flames into the rooms to consume the furniture. And the monsters? They didn't do any better.

In the moment between the present fog freezing, shattering, and dropping to the ground, and new fog rushing in, El spotted a veritable forest of monsters frozen in place. Claws reached helplessly towards the sky, while eyes and mouths lay open in surprise or defiance. Then, just as a new, thicker layer of fog rolled in, Laze and Nidina arrived at her side—not a moment too soon considering how close those five pulses had to be.

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"Nidina," El said. "Straight below. Shatter the pipes."

"Clean-up duty again?" Nidina asked, but was already diving straight down, catching on to what El needed immediately.

"Me?" Laze asked.

"Follow the arrow," El said, her second arrow already in its plasma state as she aimed back down the southern street in the direction Laze had come from. At this point, due to the fog, she couldn't see the tubing at all. The mist was so thick, it looked like a massive cloud had decided to take a nap in the streets. Even the swarming monsters beneath the surface were little more than vague silhouettes.

The only guideposts El had, really, were the buildings on both sides of the street. If they were there, the tubing had to be somewhere in between. Good thing her arrow was excellent at hitting somewhere.

"Go," she said, releasing her hold on the arrow. Like the first, the bolt screeched out of her hand, leaving a trail of crystalized air in its path, before smashing into the street with a sub-acoustic roar.

Laze, for her part, was off as soon as the arrow left El's fingers, and held up just a heartbeat in anticipation of the arrow's coming explosion. Blue flames leapt for the sky and consumed the roadway, then receded almost as quickly, the gossamer web of ice left standing before it collapsed under its own weight. Flaming axe in hand, Laze dove in immediately, then vanished as the fog swept around her like a crashing sea.

El couldn't spare the time to worry about her friend—or Nidina below her, flames dancing within the hanging mist—and instead turned her attention towards the northern street. As she formed the arrow in her bow, a wave of fatigue nearly made her lose her grip on it. Like before, two really seemed to be her reasonable limit.

Limits are just there to be surpassed…

Gritting her teeth, El pushed back against the burn in her arms—like she'd been doing muscle training all afternoon—and the ache in her shoulders. She'd feel that in the morning. "C'mon," she grumbled at the bow, the arrow taking longer to form than the previous two. Sure, it was probably only a heartbeat longer, but it felt like forever. Her mind's eye played out the packet of Sparks racing down the tubes in her direction, and what would happen if she was too late.

She did not want to find out what was waiting within that giant ring. Not at all.

Another breath, and was that her imagination, or was that a faint light racing through the fog. Probably not, and she doubled down on compressing the arrow. Only half the size of her last one, it was still in its plasma state, and El's limit was quickly approaching. The fire fought against her control, straining to go wild even as she imposed her will on it. Another… no, she couldn't hold it.

El released the arrow, the previous screech that would've rattled doors and shattered glass reduced to the sound of a dying cat. Still, the bolt punched through the air, the fog, and the monsters underneath.

As the sphere of blue flame burst outward—noticeably smaller than before—El flared her wings directly for it. Even that effort had her breathing heavily, and the blue sword that ignited in her hand didn't get anywhere close to being plasma.

It'll have to do, she thought as she dove into the space where her arrow had struck just as the fog rushed back in to bury her. Shapes and shadows loomed on all sides, and she couldn't even see her own hands clearly through the thick haze. The blue of her flaming sword added to the shadows as the light refracted off the mist—and then the frozen bodies as she crashed into them.

With no time to spare, she trusted in her frost armor to take the brunt of the impact—and it did, though it still hurt—while monster-body parts shattered on impact. Claws, faces, legs, and everything else burst into pieces as she hit the ground, the stone street closer than she'd expected, and she stumbled before toppling over.

Slashing as she went, El did a complete somersault, more frozen hangnails breaking with each strike. But the tube, where was the tube? With the fog all around her, she didn't even know if she was still in the middle of the street where it should've been. Burn it, she'd aimed for the middle, but with the fog, it was so hard to tell…

BOOOOM, echoed through the fog, the sound muted despite the blast being strong enough to shake the ground under El's feet. That had to be the pulses headed for Nidina's position. Which meant El didn't have more than a few seconds.

Back and forth, El swept her blade down in front of her, resistance telling her she'd hit something, but not what. How could she…

Her head snapped up as something moved within the fog to her side. A hangnail? She could ignore that and…

WHAAAAAM, her entire body compressed as she got slammed from her right side, whatever it was big enough to hit her from ankle to shoulder. Blue flashed in her peripheral vision—frost armor converting the tremendous kinetic energy to cold—as she was blasted to her left. A second brief flash from her left foot as it caught something, then she toppled hard. The ground came up to meet her with extreme prejudice, blasting the air out of her lungs, and she couldn't stop the groan of pain from escaping her lips.

What the Blaze was that? A seawyrm?

Another shift in the fog, and El rolled to the right, training taking over despite how much everything hurt. A second WHAAAM—right where she'd been lying—shook the ground hard enough her body left the street for a heartbeat before dropping back down. Using the momentum, she continued her roll to the side, once, twice, three times, then got her hands under her and pushed up in a stumbling run.

With her back to where she'd just been, she flared her wings, sending a gush of blue flame towards whatever had attacked her, and vaulted ahead. Her feet landed back on the stone a second later, and her eyes widened as she noticed a growing—and oncoming—glow within the fog. The pulse. And it was that close.

Which meant…

El dove ahead between two frozen hangnails as the fog shifted around her, something whooshing right behind her and shattering the monsters. Another grunt as what little air she'd managed to breathe in got pushed right back out, but there it was, right in front of her.

The tubing. Frozen solid, but still intact. She could literally reach out and touch it, so she did.

At the same time her hand pressed against the oh-so-very-cold metal, the fog to her side twisted around like something very large was coming in her way. Directly ahead of her, the vague glow resolved into a speeding ball of light.

She didn't have time to bring her weapon around before either of those things reached her. So, she did the only thing she could—flared the palm of her hand.

BOOOOOOOM.