Spark of War (Progression Fantasy)

"Where do you need me?" El asked, the triple-forged electrum blade tearing out of its In-Between sheath as she rocketed towards the two clickers on the north side of the battle. From the looks of things, the Pilish were vastly outnumbered, though the scene of the battle showed the scars of just how ferociously her two friends had been fighting.

"You just be you," Laze told her, and El couldn't help but smile at the relief in her friend's voice at their arrival. "Who is commanding the others with you?"

"You are," El replied, her voice steely so her friend didn't question it. At that point, she reached the two dark-water clickers, and there was no more time for talking. No more time for smiles.

It was time to show these bastards why they were called Firestorm.

El flared her wings to more than double her speed, rocketing at the nearest clicker like a blue comet, and its abyssal eyes widened a heartbeat before her sword split its head open. Like a hot knife – or a powerful, flaming sword – through butter, the creature's skull put up barely an ounce of resistance, and El was past. Flames churned at her feet and on her shoulders, stealing her own inertia as she whipped around in the air.

Scars of fire traced her heels like the sky was solid, and the second clicker spun to try and keep her in front of it.

Good luck with that.

El stepped to the side before she'd even completely stopped, the whole world stretching around her. Distance vanished with the single movement of her foot, and suddenly she was right beside the clicker, looking it dead in the eyes.

Its mouth moved as if it was going to click something at her – Probably something rude – but whatever it was going to say was lost to the screech of pain it released.

Her sword slid between them, opening up the monster's stomach like she was gutting a fish, and in a way, she was. Gruesome as the wound from hip to hip was, it probably wouldn't be fatal to the clicker… until the blue flames spread.

What had been a thin – though terribly deep – cut, suddenly expanded as El's coldfire simultaneously froze, shattered, and broke down the base components of the monster's flesh in a spreading flame. Even as El took her second step away, almost the entirety of the thing's midsection simply ceased to be, and the body fell from the sky while El looked for her next target.

That seawyrm looks like it could use some company.

Stomping out of the pond like it owned the place, the massive beast had to be close to seventy feet long, from nose to tail, making it one of the biggest she'd ever seen. Thick scales covered the writhing body as it moved, claws longer than swords tearing up the ground with every step. Its head swivelled from left to right, with jets of pressurized water bursting rapid fire at the circling Firestorm joining the fray. Unlike the previous seawyrms El had seen, this one didn't use concentrated streams of cutting water, but instead shot arm length bolts, somewhat reminiscent of the bullets Tas had shown her.

The strange technique would make it more difficult for Firestorm to track the trajectory of the shots – and in turn make them harder to dodge. Yeah, this thing needs to go.

Target chosen, El cut in the air and flared her wings, shooting her straight towards her next victim. Normally, with an opponent likely to be as durable as the wyrm would be, she would've opted to soften if up with some arrows first. Bows were tough to use with only one hand though – Maybe I should get a gun like Tas… – and the distance was too short to put the sword away, form and throw a spear, then redraw her sword.

But, did she need to sheath her sword to ignite one of those spears she'd used before? The sword acted like a conduit for her flames, with the glyphs etched along the blade helping her refine and empower her flames. The result was almost like having a permanent plasma-state sword. If she could…

El stopped thinking about it, and instead pushed her Spark further into the sword, visualizing what she wanted her flames to do. Instinctively, she felt a small burst of inspiration from what she'd seen Nexin do in the past – forming flames separate from his body – but she could immediately feel she didn't have the same level of control needed to do that. Her inspiration was barely a thread compared to the complete tapestry that was his power.

With the sword, though, she didn't need the same level of strength. That thread was enough, and she wound it around and around the blade as she flew, time seeming to slow for her as her Spark expanded in her chest. A small part of it, barely a lick of flame within the raging bonfire, seemed to separate from the rest. Almost a different color, as she focused on it, it leapt through the channel she'd opened to the sword. A line of searing pain shot from her chest and down her right arm, out the palm of her hand and right into the sword's pommel.

The pain was almost enough to make her lose focus on what she was doing, but the sudden flaming edge that leapt out from the sword's blade pulled her attention right back in. Twice as long as the sword itself, the new edge hovered a scant inch away from the blade, loosely connected by thin streamers of blue flame. From the way the flames twitched, they wouldn't hold their shape for long, but they held an impressive pressure.

Letting her instincts continue to guide her as time suddenly snapped back into normal speed, El whipped the sword around in front of her, even though she was still a hundred feet from the seawyrm. Streamers snapped at the motion, sounds like the Pilish gunfire echoing from her sword, and the flaming edge shot ahead of her, a crescent of blue, fiery death.

Well, maybe her immediate impression of it had been a slight exaggeration, the flying blade slamming into the side of the seawyrms neck without completely beheading the thing. Still, the long line of blue blood that suddenly gushed out from the shattered scales – along with the bellowing roar of pain – signalled the attack hadn't gone unnoticed.

With the distance between them closed to fifty feet, El repeated the channel from her Spark to the sword. No pain came with the procedure this time, like the first usage had seared open a new pathway of some kind for her power, and the second crescent launched ahead from her backhand swing. The poor seawyrm turned its head in her direction just in time for the attack to slam into the side of its face.

More blue blood exploded out, though most of the injury was just superficial – the beast's thick skull somehow even stronger than its scales. The same couldn't be said about its eye, however, and the second bellow of rage and pain seemingly shook the entire battlefield. Enraged at the injury, the monster flexed its massive body to turn directly towards El.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

While the move brought El into its now limited field of view, it also devastated the hangnail forces immediately around it. Small, grey bodies were crushed by the dozen, or speared on its long claws, while desperate clicks shouted commands at the thing to restrain itself. The seawyrm was beyond reason or command, though, pure rage guiding its every step and motion. Every ounce of its being was focused on utterly destroying El for the pain she'd caused it.

If it could catch her.

Practically right in front of it as it opened its mouth to spew those bullets of pressurized water, El simply stepped past it. The seventy-foot-long body stretched even further as time paused, extending her movement until she appeared midway down the monster's body. Before it had a chance to figure out where she'd gone, El flared her wings and darted towards its back. Landing between the wide fins that ran from shoulder to tail – almost like two massive wings – El ignited the soles of her boots. Blue flames fanned out, corroding the scales as it broke them down, but also freezing the air around and locking her in place, at least for the moment.

Then, while the massive head spits balls of watery death where she'd been, El began hacking away at the seawyrm's back. Across and back, across and back, across and back, her blue-edged blade chopped through sapphire scales until her fourth strike cut more than a foot deep. The whole serpentine body twitched and spasmed as she hit something important, and she raised her sword to finish things off.

A hint of movement directly ahead of her sent her gut screaming in warning though, and El aborted her strike to instead flare her wings. The ice at her feet shattered in a violent crack before the wash of flames rocketed her straight up. And not a moment too soon, with rapid-fire balls of water slamming into where she'd just been.

Where the water met blue flames, thick chunks of ice formed to pummel the seawyrm's own body. More scales cracked at the impact, and even El winced at the punishment it inflicted on itself. One of its fins got completely ripped apart as the jagged ice punched through it, and gobs of blue blood leaked from beneath the broken scales.

Even with all those wounds – on top of whatever El had chopped into – the seawyrm was far from dead. And really, really pissed off. An enraged step forward crushed another pair of panicking hangnails beneath its claw, and then suddenly the huge beast completely lunged forward. Moving at a speed El had never seen from the monsters, it snapped towards her like a coiled snake, jaws wide but closing fast.

Step, the world slowed and stretched around El as she moved just a single pace ahead and to the side, her sword swinging horizontally beside her. The instant her foot landed, and time moved back to normal, her triple-forged electrum sword cleaved into the fleshy spot where the seawyrm's upper and lower jaws met. Scales and flesh parted, but El wasn't aiming for a superficial wound.

A flare of power shot blue flames out of the back of the sword – which in turn thrust the sword even harder forward. Scales, muscle, flesh, and bone parted beneath the blue edge of the blade, while flames gushed out of the side of the monster's mouth. White shards exploded as El tore her weapon free, another keening cry of pain echoing up the seawyrm's throat as it jerked away. Anything to get its increasingly injured head away from the terrible blade.

Which was completely fine with El. Sword still out to her side, she flared her wings and sword at the same time.

Seventy feet long and practically standing still compared to El's speed, the monster's long body was an almost perfect target, and she took full advantage of it. The plasma-like edge of her sword drove into the seaywrm around its front shoulder, just the tip of the blade managing to pierce the scales. At first. With the flare powering her ahead with enough force to go through a seawyrm if she needed to, El dragged her sword down along the entire length of the monster. Every inch she moved forward stabbed her sword deeper into its side, so that she was hilt-deep in the creature by the time she reached its rear leg.

Another heartbeat later, and El burst past the end of the seawyrm's spasm-locked tail, then arched her back and shot into the air. Even as she turned, she forged another of the detachable blades to the sword, then swept her arm around. Blood like a waterfall poured out of the side of the seawyrm, its right legs shaking and giving out to topple it to the side. Her extra attack hardly seemed necessary, but that didn't stop it from gouging into the back of the monster's neck.

More spraying blood joined the growing pool. The seaywrm's left legs clawed at the ground like it was trying to right itself, but they held no strength, and did little more than gouge the dirt. That enemy wouldn't be getting back up, so El turned to the next clicker in her line of sight, another detachable blade igniting on her sword.

From its place on its dark-water throne, the black and white humanoid snapped its head first left and then right, looking for back up. There wasn't any. At least none close enough to save it from El, and it seemed to realize the same thing as she launched forward.

Having seen her speed already, the monster had to know it couldn't outpace her, and its throne of dark water predictably warped up into a sphere to completely surround it. As El arrived dozens of spikes burst out of the liquid, the monster obviously hopeful El would impale herself before she realized they were there.

That didn't happen, and El instead carved straight down with the extended, detachable blade growing fiercely. Except she didn't detach it. Instead, holding the image firm in her head – and pushing the power of her Spark into it – she compressed the flames to their plasma state, though only for a split second.

Which was all it took for her slash to part the waters, and the monster within.

"Who's next?" she shouted, blasting her wings out twenty feet wide to make herself the center of attention. All around her, the Firestorm reinforcements tore into the hangnail and seawyrm forces, Laze guiding their actions like a conductor at a symphony. It hadn't been a lie when the other woman had said she had a plan to save the people. Firestorm and Pilish soldiers moved in concert to decimate the ambush party, monsters already beginning to flee back toward the safety of the ponds.

Until they realized Laze had planned for that too. Five Firestorm hovered above each pond, raining destruction down on any monsters trying to make it to cover. A few got through, but more and more body parts littered the ground dirty with blood.

"Laze, you want me to close off those exits?" El asked when none of the clickers or seawyrms took her up on her challenge.

"Can you?" Laze asked. "Your arm…"

El looked down at the still-bandaged arm bound tightly to her body. Laze was thinking she needed her bow.

"I got this," El said, lifting her sword straight up above her head. Turning her attention from the carnage of the battlefield, El pushed the power of her Spark up along her sword and towards the tip of her sword. She'd created a detachable blade which had proven just as useful as the arrows, but it wasn't sturdy enough to stay in the plasma state. Too thin. She needed something that could contain the power longer. Something like…

Her eyes glanced to the sun closing in on the horizon in the distance.

That should do it.

Instead of igniting a new edge along the blade of her sword, El coiled the power out of the tip, directly above where she hovered. Over and over, around and around, the flames streamed off from the sword, growing into a ball of fire the size of her fist. Her head. Her body. Bigger and bigger, until it was twice as tall as she was.

"Aaaaand she's going to do something dramatic," Nidina mumbled over the communication magic.

El couldn't stop the corner of her mouth from twitching as she imposed her will on the fireball, condensing it to a terrifying plasma state. The temperature around her instantly dropped, the air misting over and small snowflakes materializing as the cold, blue sun formed.

Then, without fanfare or drama – despite Nidina's words – El slashed her sword down, dragging the sun to follow, before it snapped away and launched towards the first pool.

That should…

El's eyes widened at the impact – and result – of her attack, the whole battlefield stained in blue light, and ice climbing to the sky like a thing possessed.

Okay, maybe that was a bit dramatic…