Spark of War (Progression Fantasy)

El focused on the two people on either side of what she believed to be Dayne—Are they… blue?—before the magically forming fog was thick enough to obscure her sight. They shouldn't be able to get far in the minute it would take her to get there.

"Nidina, I'm going after Dayne. You good to handle the seawyrms and hangnails?" El asked.

"As long as they don't start attacking the prisoners, I'll be fine," Nidina said.

"Maybe I should…" Laze started, but seemed to cut herself off. "No, never mind. They're going to need an exit strategy, and the ship is it. I'll work my way back to you after it's clear."

"Both of you, watch out for those seawyrms," El said. "I don't think any of us can straight up take one. Fight around them, if you can."

"Understood," they replied.

"Good. Here we go," she said, changing her angle and flaring her wings. If the enemy thought they'd be able to predict when she'd arrive by her earlier speed, they were in for a rough surprise. El's speed more than doubled, frost armor glowing softly as it repelled the wind shear, and she streaked down toward the fog. Targeting ahead of where she'd last seen the person on the nearest side of the street, she cut her flare, flipped in the air, then flared again right as her feet touched the hanging mist.

Blue flame washed out beneath her in a wave as the reverse thrust torqued her body—injured arm screaming in pain the whole time—and slowed her enough she barely had to bend her knees before lunging forward again. The two large wings on her back vanished, replaced by the four smaller versions, and gave her extra oomph as she charged into the mist flowing back around her.

A shape on her right—opposite where the line of prisoners had been—and she lashed out. Resistance told her the blade had met something, but she was already past as the dull thud hit the ground. Where are you? Another shape in front of her, and El's wings pulsed with power to hop her up and over. She needn't have worried, the frozen form of the hangnail not even shifting as she passed it. Feet touching down again, she still didn't see the person who'd been tethered to the ball of fog, but the mist itself shifted on her left.

El flared her wings, rocketing her straight ahead, just in time as the stone behind her cracked from the force of something slamming into it. So we're playing that game again. Try to keep up.

She cut her first flare, brought her feet forward, then flared again, shooting her straight up and out of the fog. No sooner had she left, than she cut the flare again, rolling in the air until she was shooting up feet first. A quick check of her frost armor gave her a general idea which direction Dayne was relative to her—down and ahead to the left. Which meant if the person was still in the same position as before, they would be…

There!

El twisted and flared again, driving herself back down towards the fog. Her sword whooshed to triple its normal size as she fed power into it—not quite as strong as flaring it, but it'd last longer—then swept it around in a wide arc from left to right as she entered the hanging mist. She had to be careful about hitting any of the prisoners, but…

"Grah!" something shouted in pained surprise.

El took note of the direction of the resistance to her strike and the sound, then cut her flare and rolled with the momentum of her own swing. The tight somersault got her feet under her—though she almost overbalanced without the aid of her other arm—and she stumbled forward a step on the landing. Still, with the lift of her wings reigniting on her back, she kept herself upright.

Sword extended wide out to her right from the swing—she had to be close to her target—she stepped forward and twisted at the waist, hauling her weapon around with her. Blue flames lit up the hanging fog, freezing the closest mist as it moved, and El lashed out. Unless she'd already cut the person in half, she couldn't possibly miss.

WHAM, and her sword struck something hard enough the air vibrated—but her swing—stopped. The momentary surprise of something blocking her weapon—something it couldn't cut through—lasted until the fog above her seemed to compress. Knowing all too well that that meant, El buckled her left knee, dropping her shoulder, then flared her wings hard.

More blue flame gushed on the ground behind her as she shot up at an angle and out of the hanging haze a split second before the condensed fog smashed to the ground. So they can summon fog and then harden it into different shapes—kind of like how we do with flames through electrum foci. Thin streamers of the mist clung to her, while flashes of red from Nidina's battle burst along the line. This would be going much better if they had Dayne helping them—assuming he was in any condition to fight.

No, he's fine, she told herself, cartwheeling through the air from her own flare, and checked her armor for her friend's general location. Almost directly below her, which probably meant the person holding the other tether was straight to her side. By now, the fog below was much thicker, an almost impenetrable white to her eyes without the color of the Firestorm's attacks. It had to be more than ten feet deep too—judging by how high she was—in most places, and had even crawled up the buildings on the sides of the street. Were they planning to blanket the entire city in fog?

El couldn't let that happen—they'd never get the prisoners away.

Which meant she needed to kill the two seeming to control it.

Small wings forming on her back, El extended her hand and ignited a long whip of flame, then dove back into the fog. A snap of her wrist lashed the thirty-foot whip out and around. Resistance, but no cry of pain. Maybe she hit it, or maybe it was just the wall of a nearby building. Spinning on her toes, she lashed out once, twice more in the direction she figured the fog-controller had to be. Still no cries of pain or lessening of the fog.

Was she wrong about where they were? Well, obviously. But where could they be? Where would she be if she was in their shoes? The fog was their biggest advantage. She couldn't see them, and they could attack—another compression of the fog to her side and El flared ahead to evade it. Case in point.

Wait, she couldn't see them, but they could obviously see her somehow if they were attacking so accurately. Could they see through the fog, or could they feel through it? Either way, another major advantage, and probably why they were hiding in it. El spun, lashing out in a wide circle with her whip.

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Or are they? There was another place they could still be in the fog without being on the ground.

El sidestepped a crushing hammer of fog, then flared her wings and launched toward where she thought the top of the nearest buildings were. The fog had grown even deeper in her few seconds down in it again, and it practically ran down off the rooftop like a waterfall.

But, just off one rooftop.

Getting level with it in a heartbeat, the mist up there was just as thick as down below, while a quick glance at the other roofs showed it wouldn't be much deeper than her knees. Got you.

El cocked her arm back—whip in hand—as she continued her angled flight past the lip of the roof. Then she twisted at the hip, and flared her right wing and whip at the same time. Roof, sky, roof, sky, roof, sky, the scenes whipped past El's eyes at a frantic pace, the flare turning her body into a deadly, flaming top. The long whip in her hand followed her rotation, growing in width, length, and power by the flare.

The whole thing only lasted two seconds at most, but in that time, she absolutely scoured the rooftop. Her fires scored stone while slate shingles exploded until midway through, when the whip parted the fog to reveal a person standing in shocked panic.

El only had the briefest glimpse of the enemy before she rotated past. Standing easily six feet tall, the person was lanky but muscular, with blue skin and an angular face. A large fin stood tall in place of hair on the top of their head, but looked to continue down their neck and back. More fins protruded from their arms and legs, though these seemed smaller, while a ball of thick fog wrapped around their right hand and extended down into the street.

Then her whip caught up to her spin, and El watched as if it was a slide show. The first image had the whip taking them through the ankles, the blue flames shimmering off what appeared to be tiny scales in place of skin. The second scene sheared through their knees, while the third was their thighs. Waist, abdomen, chest—though they tried to bring up their arms to protect themselves. It did no good. The shoulders were next, and then finally, the lifeless eyes as her final spin pulled her whip through their head.

The pieces fell to the roof at the same time the tether of fog faded from the thing's hand, and El touched down nearby. Blue blood—like the hangnails had—oozed out of the body's horrific wounds, vanishing under the fog that was already thinning. One down. Now she just had to…

WHOOSH, red flames exploded from the middle of the street, and something shot straight up into the air. A hundred feet up in a second, flaming wings spread wide to the sides as Dayne ignited a sword in one hand and a shield in the other.

"Good to see you, Dayne," El said into the magic of her communicator. "You good?"

Dayne looked in her direction, and she could almost see his eyes go to the arm she still cradled against her chest.

"Better than you," he said, his voice hitching. "Don't worry, though, they didn't find your spices. Didn't even look."

"I'm… glad?" El said, but then she understood. He still had the Ember safely tucked away in his pack! Burn it, what would happen if these things managed to slip an Ember into the rings? How much power would that…?

El's mind trailed back to the explosion that had sent a streamer of energy straight into her chest. That pulse of power had been significantly larger than anything else they'd seen before. As in, exponentially larger. She'd been wondering how many people they'd sacrificed for that, but what if it wasn't people?

Could they have gotten their hands on an Ember?

She shook her head. Whether they did or not—or where it could've come from—wasn't the problem right now. Keeping the Ember Dayne had out of their hands and rescuing the prisoners was.

"Where do you need me?" Dayne asked, pulling El's attention back to the battle at hand.

"Help Nidina with the prisoners," El said, looking down at the street. The fog was thin enough she could make out the people huddling in the middle of the road while Nidina clashed with hangnails and avoided the seawyrm roaring after her. She'd managed to draw it away from the people, but there were still enough monsters to keep the crowd from making a run for it.

That said, even as El watched, shapes dashed out from the huddled crowd to crash into the guarding hangnails. Tas and Macer, El realized as she spotted the familiar uniforms. They didn't have their usual guns, but had pulled knives out of somewhere. More of the soldiers quickly joined in, but they were still at a disadvantage.

Until Dayne arrived the next second, hitting the line of hangnails like a meteor from behind. Whether he had some pent-up aggression from being trapped within the fog-ball, or he really just disliked hangnails, he tore into the monsters with a vengeance. The first group got blasted away by his explosive landing, their scorched bodies thrown into the backs of their comrades. By the time any of the monsters realized what was happening, Dayne's sword was already chopping through them, each swing cutting down two or more of the closely packed creatures.

When they finally turned to engage him, they found his shield batting aside their claws with pinpoint precision, and his sword slipping underneath to introduce their insides to the outside world. And that just sent the hangnail defensive line into chaos, with Tas and his soldiers cutting into them from the other side.

"Laze, how it's looking back there?" El glanced back down the road in the opposite direction.

"Ship is clear. Just mopping up the ones on the dock. I'll work my way to you next," Laze responded. Small flashes of red from the distant port showed the Firestorm doing just that.

Which just leaves…

El turned her attention down across the street. There was still one more of those blue humanoids down there. She was sure she'd injured it, and it'd lost its hold over Dayne, so it couldn't be doing well. No reason to leave a hidden enemy behind, though, and El scanned the fog for where it was thickest.

The street below her was still shrouded in a haze, blurring shapes and muting sound, but it wasn't nearly as dense as it had been even a moment ago. There, she spotted a pool of what had to be blue blood, and a trail of it leading away to… yes, an alley between two low buildings. The fog was thick as soup in there as well, almost like a wall itself.

It could be a trap, or the humanoid could just be really bad at hiding. Injured and suddenly losing the fight, it wouldn't be a surprise if it was panicking. She wasn't going to risk it, though. Especially when she wasn't in top shape with her arm the way it was. Instead of diving down into the alley with her swords slashing—like she normally would—El ignited a lance of flame in her hand and leapt above the melee in the street.

Two can play at misdirection.

Hovering in the air and watching the continuing fight, the blue flame spiraled outward in El's hand. Bigger and bigger, it grew to eight feet in length, and strained against her control within a few seconds. Monster heads looked nervously in her direction—opening them up to attacks of opportunity for Tas's soldiers and the two Firestorm—but El continued to push power into it. She'd only have one shot. Finally, the spear bordering on going rampant, she cocked her arm back like she was going to hurl it straight down. Monsters scattered in different directions, the previous results of her blue flames now visible as frozen corpses along one side of the street. Many of them didn't make it, cut down by attacks from behind, but that didn't stop them from running. Even if she didn't throw her spear, she'd made a difference.

Except, she was going to throw it. Just not right there.

Whipping around in the air, El flared her wings to take her directly above the thickly fogged alley.

Surprise!

Down went the spear. Up came a sphere of flame so deep and blue, it filled the alley from end to end and exploded above the buildings to splash across the rooftops.

Hah, hide from that…

"El! Look out!" Nidina's voice suddenly shouted into the communication magic, and El spun in her direction.

Just in time to see a chitinous, shell-plated fist streaking straight for her.