Spark of War (Progression Fantasy)

Too fast to possibly dodge, El brought her arm up instinctively and ignited a shield. Her bad arm, and a shield with about as much strength as a wet paper bag that somebody dropped a grapefruit into.

Blinding pain exploded in her arm as the punch connected, her already tortured limb without the musculature—or anything, really—to absorb some of the impact. Sure, her frost armor flashed in a valiant effort to protect her, but it didn't do nearly enough. A stomach-curdling series of simultaneous cracks came with the blistering agony, and then El was moving.

She hit something, the other side of her frost armor flashing to life while fresh pain flooded through her. It didn't stop there, though, the impact powerful enough she bounced and then continued to roll at breakneck speeds. Hit, flash, pain, bounce, hit, flash, pain, bounce… she continued the pattern for several very long—and very painful—seconds. Eventually, the bouncing turned to skidding, which really didn't hurt any less since she was on top of her bad arm the whole time.

When friction finally overtook inertia, and El came to a stop, she couldn't stop the contents of her stomach from plastering the cobblestones in front of her face. Blood mixed with the vomit, along with a wordless gasp of agony. Her arm… burn it… her arm felt like… like… like it'd been torched, broken, and flayed, all at the same time.

Lying face down on her left side, she put her good hand on the street and struggled to push herself up. Squelch, a mix of blood, torn flesh, and sinew peeled off the roadway as she lifted herself up, and another powerful wave of nausea threatened to force its way up El's throat. Her arm shook, ready to collapse again, but the imagined pain of coming down on her bad arm again was just enough to hold her up.

Which left her in a very awkward position as a leg-thick tentacle snaked out of her peripheral vision to slam into her exposed ribs. WHAM, the threatening vomit came out in a red spray as El left the ground again, rolling in the air to crash back to the stone roadway thirty feet distant. What little air she had in her lungs—and it wasn't much—ejected as her back hit the ground.

At least it wasn't my arm again, her addled brain thought. Without much strength in her body, she rolled her head to the left to see what had hit her. She knew—what else would be shell-covered with tentacle legs?—but she still had to see it. And there it was, the avatar-like monstrosity that'd come out of the ring. It'd caught up to them, somehow.

Behind it, the street was dotted with small blossoms of frost from where El's body had bounced. Further still, the prisoners had beaten back the hangnails, but stared in shocked silence at the monster tentacle-walking its way down the street in El's direction. In morbid, befuddled curiosity, she watched the tentacles work in perfect unison to pull the creature forward, though it stayed completely upright with a back so rigid it was practically standing at attention.

Its left arm—the large crab-like claw—dragged along the stone, a distinct scraping sound droning and growing louder as it got closer. The inside of the claw looked bladed, and El held little faith in her frost armor protecting her for long if it managed to get a hold of her. Even the single punch had been enough to knock her straight out of the sky.

But, it wasn't like she could stay there lying on the ground. Except her body wasn't exactly responding to what she needed it to do. Her lungs spasmed as they tried to suck in enough air for the rest of her body. The pain of her left arm was so bad, it practically paralyzed that entire side of her, leg included. Her right side, well, her ribs ached something fierce and made even lifting her arm a monumental effort. At least her right toes didn't hurt… much.

If she couldn't count on her body to respond to her will, what could she…?

My Spark. Oh, this is… going to hurt… which is nothing new right now, I guess.

Igniting her wings beneath her back, El popped off the ground like a doll got its strings pulled on, her limbs dangling the entire time. With her left side practically useless from the numbing agony, she turned all her attention to her right. Blue fire swirling in the palm of her right hand, then ignited out into the shape of a loose blade. Not her best ignition, but it would have to do.

The strange avatar's green eyes narrowed like it was surprised to see her upright—You're not the only one!—but it didn't stop its advance. If it felt threatened by her sloppy sword, it certainly didn't show any sign of it.

C'mon, then. Let's do this, El thought at the creature because she couldn't quite get her mouth to form the words.

She forced a blink as it slithered closer—even her eyelids weren't working like they should—and then her eyes widened as she spotted the two sets of flaming wings racing at the avatar's back.

No! she tried to say, but her voice came out as little more than a croak of pain.

Nidina reached the avatar first, her flaming sword whipping around in a wide arc that left a trail of fire in its wake straight for the monster's neck. There wasn't a flare in her swing, but that didn't mean it was lacking in power. It washed around and hung in the air as it went, and it seemed for a second the avatar wouldn't even realize she was there before she struck.

Seemed.

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A plated forearm came out of nowhere to block the sword like so perfectly it was like the arm had been there the whole time. Blade against shell, the two held firm until the avatar seemed to flex. Whoosh, and Nidina shot to the side into—then through—the stone wall of a nearby building.

Dayne arrived a second later from the other side, his first back-handed strike likewise getting parried by a claw that practically teleported in front of his blade. Red sparks flew at the contact, but Dayne had either seen the results of Nidina's attack, or he'd planned for the contact. As the claw moved to push his sword away, Dayne stopped resisting, letting the blade spin him in place, wings acting like a pivot-point. WHAM, the shield on his other arm came around to smash into the avatar's face.

A small shockwave rolled out from the force of the blow, dust rising in a ring around the pair, and the open claw came sweeping back. Dayne had already been on the move, though, dropping down before the deadly appendage could bisect him, and his sword went to work on the monster's exposed abdomen.

A quick one-two combo drew a line of fire across the monster—the dark water endlessly running across it turning to steam—then power pulsed from Dayne's wings and darted him out to the side to evade the haymaker that came his way. Though the blow didn't connect with anything—barely—it created a vacuum behind it, pulling on Dayne's wings and stopping the man's escape just short.

Luckily, Nidina hit the avatar at that moment, an arrow of flame as big as her leg bursting out of the building's interior to splash across the shell covered face and four green eyes. The beast took a tentacle-step back at the sudden flames rolling across its head, and Dayne took the opportunity to sneak back in, sword going back to work.

Two more arrows splashed in quick succession against the avatar's chest, turning the water to steam, and keeping it on the defensive while Dayne chopped away. The two Firestorm were making progress, but from where El watched, she could see they weren't hurting it. And once it stopped reacting to the surprising flames, the tides would change.

She couldn't let that happen.

Most of her body still verging on useless—or ridiculously painful—El lifted her right arm. Sure, her ribs hurt from the movement, but she could do it. And though she probably couldn't stand, she could fly. Which meant she could fight.

Laze is totally going to lecture me later.

El flared her wings and shot forward, legs and left arm swinging lifelessly as she went. Fwoosh, and she was right up beside the avatar—opposite Dayne—and she lashed out. Gritting her teeth at the pain of her own movements—and generally regretting every choice she'd ever made—El cut hard into the avatar's lower back. With its arms lifted to protect itself from the seemingly endless arrows, it had practically invited her right in.

Where Dayne's sword burst the rushing water in a blast of steam with every strike, El's sword cut and then froze it, quickly building up restraining ice on the beast. One slash, two, three, four, she rapid-fired her attacks to cover as much area as possible, but movement below her sent warning bells off in her instincts.

Trusting her gut, El flared her wings and launched up, narrowly avoiding a pair of tentacles that whipped in her direction. No sooner had she gone from waist height to shoulder height on the avatar, than it spun around in place, a backhanded claw coming straight for her. No way I can take another one of those. El flared just her left wing, body going from straight up to a hard ninety-degree angle to the side.

She grimaced at the pain in her flailing limbs, but the flare kept her ahead of the swinging arm. Another application of power to her wings rolled her up and over the blow, and she countered with an attack straight across the monster's face. After getting hit over and over by Nidina's red flames, the thing recoiled—more in annoyance than pain, apparently—at the hit.

Wings her only real source of movement, El continued down, dragging her blade across the torso and then the tentacles of the monster as she shot toward the ground. A last-second change in her wings snapped her body around, arm and legs slapping into the ground with a flash of her frost armor as she did it, and then El zipped away. Behind her, tentacles smashed into the ground where she'd been only a second before, shattering stone with the pair of strikes.

It'd been too slow, though, and more arrows whipped directly above El as she flew towards the building Nidina was in. Having learned from how her limbs and momentum interacted without her intervention, El cut her forward momentum well ahead of the stone wall, then twisted and flared straight up the side. As soon as she cleared the roof, El doused her flare and twisted in the air to look down again at the avatar.

Except it wasn't on the ground.

It was right in front of her, standing on a ball of water, completely defying the laws of gravity, its arm already cocked back.

With her flare ended to let gravity take hold of her and spin around, El was basically flatfooted, unable to react as the fist started to move. She couldn't take another hit like the one before…!

Before she even had time to panic, something hit her square in the chest, and the avatar grew smaller in her vision as she jerked away from it.

But… its fist was still swinging…?

El's eyes snapped from the avatar to Dayne, just in front of it, his arms extended as if he were pushing something. Or had just pushed something out of the way.

"No…" she breathed at the same time the avatar's fist slammed into Dayne's side. The big man—the constant and sturdy backbone of her team—bent around the fist, his flame armor and bones unable to block the titanic blow. And then he was gone, shooting like a flaming comet off to the side.

Straight toward the electrum ring in the town square.

The ring would suck up his Spark as soon as he passed through. Worse… he still had the Ember in his pack. If that power reached the gate in the center of the island, the avatar could be the least of her worries.

El went to push power into her wings even though she had no hope of catching him. She had to try.

Two things happened before the energy of her Spark reached her wings.

The first was a comet of frigid ice that smashed into the avatar and took it to the ground with an earth-shaking, cataclysmic impact. Buildings crumbled while wide cracks rent the streets in every direction, and fallout erupted back into the air.

The second was the appearance of a pair of flaming wings in front of the ring. Out snapped an arm to snag a rocketing Dayne before he could flash past. Barely a breath, then both of them vanished, and El heard the faint sound of a footstep on the building behind her.

Warmth like the summer sun washed over her as she turned, her brother lowering Dayne's unconscious form.

When Nexin looked from the injured Dayne to the even worse El, his eyes first widened then hardened. The stone in a ring around the two men began to bubble ominously, and the six small wings on his back snapped from flame to the plasma state so abruptly, the air around him burst away.

"Took you long enough," El said.