Spark of War (Progression Fantasy)

El soared through the sky in the last direction Nexin had communicated from, the ground whipping past far below. Without anybody else with her, and her Spark feeling like it was still running in overdrive from the Ember's touch back in Wirock, she pushed her speed as high as it would go.

And it was fast. Easily as fast as her previous flares had been. Was it really just the brush with the Ember? Or, did it have something to do with that one Ember appearing in her memories, the one that seemed to get stronger every time it almost went out?

That's why I'm going to find Nexin now instead of later.

That, and she'd volunteered to explain the plan to him. The one they'd spent another half-day plotting out. Desperate gamble on top of desperate gamble gave them the best chance they could think of, but they needed their key players ready for action. One of them was of course Nexin – who she was on the way to find – while the other was Sol. After she talked to her brother, she'd have to go back to Vestis to see if there was any sign of the man. She'd pick up Dayne and any further information he'd found, but hopefully he'd be healthy enough to support Laze and Nidina.

If everything went as scripted by the generals, the climactic battle of the war would be fought in less than forty-eight hours. If Pycrin and Pili won the battle, that should be the end of the threat – minus some cleanup. If they lost…

El shook her head, she couldn't think like that.

In a way, it was unbelievable this war was really only days old, and yet they'd been pushed into such a dangerous position. Attrition favored the enemy, and even a short-term slip could result in enough captives to sacrifice and throw open the door to the Fathom's prison. There were some theories that releasing the avatar had drained some of the power needed to free the Fathom itself, but Cannon wasn't willing to take that risk.

And El couldn't blame him. They just didn't know.

"El, is that you?" Nexin's voice crackled over the communication magic.

With the connection made, El's frost armor indicated his approximate direction, and she angled that way. "Hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"Depends, you looking for a bit of a workout?" her brother asked, voice playful but strained.

El flexed her right hand, Felps's gauntlet flashing with blue light as her Spark filled the rune. "You know it. If any are even left by the time I get there."

"By the speed you seem to be moving, should be plenty," Nexin said. "You're really not letting me pull ahead, are you?"

"You've already got a big enough lead," El said as a pillar of plasma erupted on the horizon. The burning thing almost seemed to reach the clouds, along with being more than a hundred feet wide. And, was that her imagination, or did it look like a massive sword blade? "Uh… more of a lead than you were letting on, apparently…"

"Been experimenting a bit," Nexin admitted, and two domes of fire erupted further to the north of the sword blade dissolving into flaming embers floating to the ground.

"What are you even fighting that requires that?" El unsheathed the sword from over her shoulder and fed her Spark into it, the blue runes and edge igniting.

"This group wasn't one of the feint forces," Nexin said. "And I'm not letting them get away without bleeding them a bit."

"Don't you mean incinerating? Whatever, point me where you want me?" El added, finally getting close enough to see the battle – and not just Nexin's over-the-top destructive potential. Within view to the north, a fort town's walls crawled with Pilish soldiers standing in a state of readiness in case the army of the Depths made it past Nexin. As for that army, seawyrms and hangnails of course made up the bulk of it, but at least a dozen clickers hovered in the air on their thrones of dark water. More than them, there was even one without a throne, though it seemed to have a cyclone of the dark water from the waist down keeping it in the air.

One of those general clickers that actually managed to hurt Nexin. I wonder how I'd do against it…?

"They're coming out of a river to the west, but I collapsed the entrance, so getting back into it won't be easy," Nexin said, long sickles of plasma slicing threw two of the throned clickers – and the packed forces beneath them. "But there's a group making a run for it. Mostly seawyrms with a few of the clickers that got past me. Might be one of their generals too. If you don't think you're up to…"

"I see them." El spotted the river of sapphire scales smashing through one of the forests of stone spikes, half-a-dozen clickers flying above the pack. Smashed hangnail bodies stained the ground behind the fleeing force – obvious casualties of the seawyrms' uncaring flight from the terror that was Nexin. "They won't get away."

"Be careful of the general if there's one there," Nexin said. "And… El, show me what you can do now."

Those few words of encouragement made El simultaneously blush and push more power into her sword, a detachable edge rippling into being. "Don't you dare miss a thing," she said. "And… after, we need to talk."

"Of course," was all he said in reply, and El turned her full attention to the seawyrms ahead of her.

Back and forth her arm whipped, blade after blade ripping free to cut towards the monsters who hadn't even noticed her yet. The first two went high – aiming to hit a pair of clickers before they had a chance to react – while the next three crashed towards the seawyrms. She'd swung her arm so fast, all five attacks reached nearly at the same time.

Her first target – one of the clickers – took the blade in the back without even realizing it was under attack. The blue flames tore into its body, the flesh freezing and shattering in a snap, before the fire spread outward. Half of the creature's back had been consumed before the dark water beneath it lost its consistency and dropped towards the ground.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

The second target, another clicker, fared a bit better, only losing an arm as it turned at the horrifying screech of its comrade. Beneath it, two seawyrms took the brunt of the other three blades, one of them unfortunate enough to take a blast to the face. That dropped it where it was, though it was tough to say if it'd been killed by the attack or not, with the rest of the pack proceeding to trample right over it.

Taking strikes in its front leg and side, the other seawyrm she hit didn't do much better, likewise vanishing beneath the crowd. One thing that'd become painfully obvious – and an advantage – was the monsters had little love for each other.

With multiple mouths opening beneath her as the heads turned to seek their attacker, it was time to find out if that callousness extended to the clickers too. A flare from her wings rocketed her forward as a dozen streams of water hissed through the air in her direction. Despite the absurdity of spitting to attack, the seawyrms' aim was – as usual – surprisingly good. If she wasn't moving.

A tuck of her shoulder rolled her over the first stream that got close, while a bob-and-weave maneuver slipped her past the next two. From there, three streams cut towards her from directly ahead, like a sawing net, the monsters below showing surprising intelligence as they tried to box her in.

Too bad their coordination wasn't very good, with the left most vertical stream coming at her faster than the other two. With that tiny window of opportunity – all El needed – she dipped to the right, slid her feet around to change her trajectory, then – Now! – flared her wings and the bottoms of her boots. A whoosh of blue flames rocketed her between the first and second streams, up and away, buying the nearby clicker another moment of safety as it twisted in the air to follow her up.

Dark water moved from its throne up to seal the wound in its shoulder spewing blue blood where it was missing its arm as it turned, trying to keep her in sight. Can't use the water in place of limbs like the generals can, huh? Too bad for you.

Another cut-and-push of her Spark flipped El around in the air again. She'd pulled the sharp turns so much by this point, her body barely acknowledged the torque of the maneuver, and she bent her knees as she gushed more flame from her boots just enough to slow her ascent. Then, as soon as she'd 'stopped', El launched off at a brutal thirty-degree angle from her original flight. Extending her sword directly ahead of her, she marginally rotated the positions of her wings so they both pointed slightly off to the side, then flared again.

The world suddenly whipped around her before it vanished in a spiral of blue flames as she turned herself into a rocketing tornado. Ahead, her sword blurred with blue plasma – the tip of the terrible drill as she twisted – before hitting the clicker.

Before going through the clicker.

Despite how durable Pinoa and Cabitz had claimed the clicker bodies were, it didn't put up any resistance as she punched right through its chest. Blue flames cascading out at the initial impact, El barely had the blink of an eye to see only its legs from the thighs down remaining – the rest turned to dust other than a thin streamer of dark water clinging to her – before her next target filled her vision.

WHAAAM, she tore through the back of a grounded seawyrm, the sapphire scales providing little more protection than the clicker's skin had beneath her momentum. A second titanic wham sounded immediately after the first as she cratered the earth beneath it, the resulting explosion producing a dome of blue flames that threw away the now-separated halves of the seawyrm. All around, growls turned to yelps of pain as more of the beasts got tossed aside or consumed by the hungry blue flames.

Rising to her feet, fine, colorless dust swirled around her, the very ground itself still aflame with blue fire. Where those flames had passed, the dust looked almost silky – finer than any sand she'd ever seen – and flitted through the air like a low-lying fog.

That's what my flames do to things they hit?

Somehow, it was the first time she'd had a close-up look at the results of such a display of her power. Too bad she didn't have time to really appreciate it – or collect a sample for Felps, he would love it – with sapphire-scaled monsters righting themselves all around her. Above, two of the clickers who hadn't kept running circled in to join the attack.

Your mistake.

A sweep of her arm produced another detachable blade – this one growing to fifteen feet wide – that she hurled straight ahead of her. Kicking up the fine dust as it passed, the blade took the nearest seaywym at the knees of its comparatively thin legs. While the blade didn't outright chop them off – Too bad – it did enough damage to buckle the legs and make the monster face plant. The stream of compressed water it'd been planning to launch in El's direction instead exploded inside its own mouth, as the tumble slammed its jaws shut.

Shattered teeth burst out of the sides, while water mixed with blood jetted from the seawyrm's nostrils. A wheezing, whine of pain accompanied the pained thrashing, though El flared her wings instead of moving to finish off the beast. A shockwave of colorless dust expanded outward from her as she lifted off, spears of dark water thunking into the ground where she'd just been. Whipping around as she shot up, another detachable blade streaked towards the first clicker, though it managed to get a wall of dark water up in time.

As for the other, El cut and flared her wings a second time after releasing her attack. That slight change in angle jerked her to the side, dodging a second incoming spear, before a third pulse of power into her wings sent her careening right for the surprised clicker. Predictably, the throne of water grew to form a sphere of protection around the monster before she could reach it. Not that it would dissuade her, blade already swinging.

Blue plasma screeched along the edge of her blade – the runes glowing fiercely – and she brought it up in an angled uppercut. As soon as her sword reached the dark water, tendrils of the liquid squirmed out of the sphere, reaching. Stretching. Latching on to her sword.

Again. What is the water trying to…

But, no, she was wrong, everything slowing almost to a pause as she felt the connections stretching. It wasn't the water trying to do anything. It was her Spark. Pulling on the water through her sword. No, she was wrong again. Her Spark wasn't pulling the water – it was consuming the clicker's Current. Ripping it out of the monster, just like what the Stormbearer had tried to do to her.

Another pulse of power within her chest, and she realized it wasn't the same. In the eternity of paused time, El could almost see small arms of blue flame reaching out to snatch tiny pieces of the Current she was touching. And those grasping arms triggered the memory of the Ember from her childhood, the one that constantly seemed to be snapping up pieces of the other Embers in the room.

The same process that'd let her absorb a piece of Sol's Storm was now, here, stealing meaning and power from the clicker's Current. And those streamers of dark water she'd noticed before… it was the same thing!

With that understanding, time snapped back into place just as El's sword sliced through the sphere hastily raised to protect the clicker. Dark water tendrils trailed after her blade as it climbed towards the surprised monster. Its abyssal eyes widened in shock, while it bared its teeth.

Neither of those things slowed El's sword.

Up and past the flying monster she went, her blade passing through its thigh, abdomen, chest, and out its shoulder as she went. When the blade left, she spotted even darker water mixing with the splashing blood coating her sword. Somehow, the trailing taste of the Current was giving her a better understanding of the clickers' power with every encounter, making it easier each time to counter it.

Is this the same thing Nexin was talking about? Being able to sense them?

"El!" her brother's voice came over the communication magic, the urgency of it snapping her away from the questions. "General got away from me. Incoming!"

She barely had time to spin in the air before a trident of dark water lunged straight toward her face.