Spark of War (Progression Fantasy)

Nexin looked at his sister, her left arm hanging mangled, bloody, and broken. Cuts criss-crossed the side of her face, with a bruise coloring her cheek and swelling her eye shut. A flickering sword of flame extended from her right hand, but the blade barely held together, and it was obvious she was literally only keeping herself upright through the use of her wings.

Pride momentarily swelled in his chest at his sister's effort—only El could fight with nothing more than her Spark and a stubborn attitude.

"Your armor is wrinkled," he said, stepping forward to appear right in front of her.

If she was surprised by his sudden appearance, she didn't say anything, though she did practically collapse into his arms. A quick, one-handed hug, then she hovered away a few feet again.

"It's been a day," she responded. Behind her, the dust cloud of Sol's entrance to meet whatever-the-Blaze-that-thing-had-been echoed with a pair of tremendous impacts. Apparently, Sol crashing down on it like an extinction event hadn't been enough to settle the battle.

Nexin would need to step in. But first…

"What happened?" he asked his sister.

"A lot. Too much to explain," El said. "But the rings suck up Sparks to power some kind of giant gate in the center of the island. We did what we could to stop it, but then some huge power surge arrived. That thing came out. I think it's some kind of avatar."

"We know," Nexin said. "Some blue people with fog and water magic stole the Ember from us. Before we could get it back, they threw it into one of the rings."

El's eyes glanced down to her ruined arm, and her face changed like something clicked.

She wasn't the only one. Nexin saw it on her face, clear as day. Whatever had happened from the Ember going into that ring was the reason things were as bad as they were.

Was it his fault she was hurt?

"You didn't do this," El said, reading his face as easily as he read hers. "I made a choice to stop something worse from happening."

"If I'd gotten the Ember back sooner—or never let it get stolen…"

"Doesn't matter now," she interrupted. "Nexin, listen to me. We need to save those people down there. Then we need to get out of here and get back to Pycrin. What's going on here is too big for us to handle."

"She's not wrong," Nidina said, flying to a stop right behind them. "There's a whole mess of seawyrms stampeding this direction from the inner island. If we don't get out of here now, we'll be overrun. Lot of fog coming with them too."

Nexin's fists clenched at his side, while another titanic WHAM echoed in the falling dust cloud. A series of quick smashes followed, like something had been launched straight through a series of walls.

"Sol?" Nexin asked.

"This thing is strong. Get them out of here," the other man said simply. "Now."

"The ship and the route to it are clear, for now. Probably going to be more seawyrms and hangnails on the way too if we don't move," Laze said, also flying over. "Hey, Nexin."

Nexin tore his eyes away from his sister to look at the other two. Neither was in as bad shape as El, but they both looked like they'd been put through the wringer. Laze held one hand against her stomach, blood leaking out from a wound behind it, and more red ran across her face from a head-wound hidden in her hair. Nidina had cuts across her arms and legs, and a long one running down the side of her face from her temple to her chin.

When she saw him looking at it, her lip quirked. "So people can tell me and Teth apart."

"You're still the better-looking one," Nexin quipped to try to keep his own anger in check. "Laze, you mentioned a ship? Can it carry those people down there?"

"That's the plan," Laze said.

"Good. Take them there. Nidina, think you can carry Dayne? He's not going anywhere on his own."

"I'll be as gentle as I can," Nidina said, her face softening as she looked at her fallen friend.

"Good. I'll cover your retreat, then help Sol," Nexin said.

"I'm going with you," El said, her flaming wings practically sputtering on her back.

"No, you're not," three voices said at the same time. Nexin, Laze, and Nidina all looked at El with identical expressions.

"I can…"

Nexin shook his head. "El. Go."

El's mouth opened like she was going to argue again, then something changed in her eyes as she read his expression again. She nodded. "Give em hell."

"They'll wish it was that cool," Nexin said and stepped.

He appeared near the back of the group of refugees, dozens of monster bodies strewn out on both sides around them. The same kind of small, clawed monsters that'd attacked him and Sol on the way over, and who'd been with the blue fog-users when they'd arrived at Wirock. He'd have to ask El more about them after they got away. And for that to happen…

He turned his eyes to the massive fogbank rolling their way from further inland. He and Sol had flown over the mass of stampeding monsters on their chase after the tentacled monster they'd spotted—and the feeling of El's Spark ahead of it. For his sister and the others to escape, this horde needed to be delayed. Maybe horde was an understatement, actually, with thousands of silhouettes shifting within the mist.

There might even be too many for him to handle, with the fog bank stretching on for miles.

Blades of pure plasma ignited in his hands, the air itself around him sparking and sizzling as it caught on fire. Might be. He'd gone easy on the clawed creatures before to learn more about them, but playtime was over.

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Nexin stepped to appear right in front of the charging mass—one man against an army—and swung his sword across in a horizonal slash. The blade in his hand flared with power, and a line appeared along the front of the fogbank. Then, from right to left, as if following the path of his swing, explosions tore out of the cut like he'd ripped a hole straight to the surface of the sun.

WHOOM, WHOOM, WHOOM… the detonations came so fast, they merged into a single continuous deafening eruption. Fog evaporated in an instant—and so did the front line of monsters. Thirty feet in every direction from the cutting line became a field of plasma and death. The ground melted, the air warped, flesh and blood turned to ash and was then consumed itself by the extraordinary heat.

Just as the worst of the hellscape seemed to pass, Nexin swung his other sword, and the scene repeated itself, this time from left to right. Monsters died in droves, and while he could do it again, Nexin's knuckles cracked as he squeezed the weapons in his hand.

No matter what she said, it was his fault El was hurt so badly.

His fault!

Nexin's anger at himself spewed outward in an aura of pure fire, like he was the wick of a world-ending candle. The swords in his hands vanished as he stepped up, appearing five-hundred feet above the suicidal horde. A hammer with a head the size of a person formed in his hands, hardening itself to the plasma state in the blink of an eye, and he looked down at something he could vent some rage on.

This time, instead of stepping, Nexin changed his angle and flared his wings like El was so fond of doing. The hammer came around in time for him to hit the ground a second later. Some kind of forty-foot-long lizard with sapphire scales—must be the seawyrm Nidina mentioned—was unfortunate enough to be underneath his impact point, but it did nothing to slow the descent of his weapon.

Scales, flesh, and bones incinerated as the hammer passed through it, blood boiling and sending the lizard into spasms as it simultaneously cooked alive and died at the same time. Then the hammer head reached the ground with the force of Nexin's plummet, and a tidal wave of flames shot out in every direction. What had survived of the lizard after Nexin's first touch vanished within the fire, and so did everything else in a circle two hundred feet around him.

Ground bucking from his landing, monsters outside the ring of death were hurled into the air, while the hanging fog got blasted more than twice the distance away. A mass of tangled monster bodies writhed as they tried to right themselves, with long, sapphire-scaled lizards crushing many of the clawed creatures between their weight. In gaps between the serpentine bodies, geysers of fog and water lifted blue-skinned humanoids into the air and out of the carnage.

Though the new additions had escaped the pressing mass, they hadn't gotten out completely unscathed, with many sporting painfully bent limbs and blue-blood-oozing wounds. Their eyes widened in rising panic as they looked in Nexin's direction, the corona of heat around him ever-increasing in intensity.

Afraid? Good.

Nexin took his hammer in both hands, then ripped it in two, splitting it down the middle into equal halves. The glowing plasma flowed back towards his palms even as one of the seawyrms at the edge of the ring shifted and spread its maw. A concentrated stream of pressurized water hissed through the air, but Nexin simply stepped back, appearing twenty feet away as the spray carved through the scorched stone. Another spray from the other direction, and another step.

All around the ring, more and more of the monsters shook off their shock at his assault, firing off their own cutting attacks even before completely righting their bodies. Not that they were nearly fast enough to catch Nexin. Each step took him out of the way as more and blasts criss-crossed the circle of clear space. Fog and spheres of water began to form around the humanoids floating in the air, but Nexin wasn't about to let them simply have their way.

With the plasma now shaped into two-foot-wide discs hovering an inch from his open hands, Nexin dodged another stream aiming to cut him in half. Snapping around at the waist, he side-stepped a second stream, and hurled the disc in his right hand towards one side of the monstrous ring. Using the momentum of his own throw, he did a full three-sixty and then backhanded the second disc in the opposite direction.

Monsters' eyes widened as they saw the buzzsaw-like disc rocketing in their direction, the press of bodies too tight for anything to possibly dodge. Still, the disc was only two feet across, so the damage it could do was limited to the poor saps directly in front of them.

Or so they thought.

Still connected to the discs, Nexin flared his power.

What had been two-foot-wide discs suddenly erupted in size, growing to forty feet in the blink of an eye, and radiating terrible heat well beyond the cutting edge. The discs hit the wall of monsters without slowing in the slightest, carving through small and large creatures with equal ease, and spreading carnage deep into the lines.

Hundreds died in the span of seconds, and Nexin sucked in a deep breath. He'd done tremendous damage in less than a minute to the horde of monsters, but thousands more filled the space. With their numbers, he had to admit—despite the anger—even he wouldn't be enough to completely stop them. There were simply too many, and they'd either tire him out or split off into smaller groups.

So, if he couldn't stop them, he'd need to focus on slowing them. Keeping their attention on him. And while mass destruction proved efficient, somebody would eventually decide he wasn't worth the trouble. It was time to take a more direct approach and sow some chaos.

And it didn't have anything to do with the direct approach being far better for venting his anger. No, not at all.

Coronas of heat forming around Nexin's fists, he leaned out of the way of another stream of water looking to punch through him, then stepped. He appeared in front of the seawyrm before it even realized he was there, and his left uppercut smashed into the bottom of the beast's jaw. Bone cracked as his punch slammed the mouth shut mid-stream, teeth shattered at the force. Even as the jaw bent awkwardly from the blow and the head shot up, streams of pressurized water burst through the front of the seawyrm's own mouth.

Nexin hardly paid it any heed, instead throwing a straight punch at the monster's now-exposed throat. Whoosh, and a hole big enough to crawl through appeared as Nexin's punch seared straight out the other side of the seawyrm's neck, scorched the scales down its back, and then speared a line of monsters behind it.

Everything in the line fell dead even as Nexin stepped to the other side of the ring, an axe forming in each hand. Weapons a blur, he hacked a line deep into the monsters before vanishing with another step to a distant section of the monstrous ring. Appearing like he did, he cut apart another dozen monsters before they even realized he was there, not even a single claw scratching his flame armor before he stepped again. This time, appearing in the air above the swarming monsters, Nexin ignited a bow in his hand and then rained arrows down on the horde.

One, two, three, four arrows exploded in spheres twenty feet wide, then Nexin took another step to appear in the space between where he'd just shot. Maces of solid plasma batted monsters aside to smash into each other, breaking bones but killing little. That was fine with Nexin, though, taking another step to continue creating confusion and chaos with each appearance and disappearance.

Within a minute, he had the horde constantly turning on itself, wondering if every sudden movement or flash or red was another of his terrible attacks. Unfortunately, it only took that long for something to take control of part of the mob, breaking off a group to give chase to the escaping prisoners. A step took Nexin right to the center of that group, and a single swing with a flared greatsword cut them in half, though one of the blue-skinned humanoids managed to evade the attack. Carrying itself on a ball of water like a throne, it looked down on Nexin with clear hate, and he was just about the wipe the look off its face when Sol's voice reached him over the communication magic.

"El and the others are casting off," Sol said. "But… this thing, I can't hold it back myself."

An explosive geyser of water twenty feet wide and a hundred feet tall punctuated the point from back in the city.

Without another look at the humanoid, Nexin stepped—appearing halfway back to the city—then flared his wings.

"On my way," he said, a quick glance going to the ship pulling away from the docks. As long as they could at least delay this avatar monstrosity, El and the others could escape.

But, if Sol was struggling, just how powerful was it?