Spark of War (Progression Fantasy)

Laze pushed herself from her knees to her feet in the small crater she'd made colliding with the ground. A slight wobble, then she jerked to the right and launched away, the stone behind her fragmenting as it got blasted with dark water. Out of the open and into the ruins of an empty building, a part of her hoped it would buy her some breathing room.

It didn't.

Spears of the liquid shredded the stone like wet paper, and Laze was forced to swerve left to avoid the barrage, then right again to dodge a support pillar. With stone, dust, and death raining around her, Laze eased off on the power of her wings to rotate in the air, then planted her feet against the next pillar. A bend of the knees – along with her body straining from the stop – and she pushed off again while reigniting her wings back to full power.

The whole building shook as the pillar where she'd just been blew apart from the spears chunking through it, but Laze blasted down a long hall for another window at the far end. With a few extra feet of a lead, she ignited her bow and began splitting the arrows along its string. The burning clicker general hadn't been giving her much of a chance to attack back – instead using her for target practice – so she needed to take advantage of every opportunity she had.

A quick look behind at the angles of the spears punching through the building, then she twisted in the air, leveling her bow at the ceiling of the hallway. Holding the arrows, holding… holding… holding… she blasted out of the open window into the falling rain. It sizzled and popped as it met her flame armor, though thankfully the magic kept it from blocking her vision, and her eyes scanned the sky for… there!

As soon as she spotted the clicker, Laze released her barrage of eight arrows, then darted into the next building over. Already with more arrows forming and out of sight, she willed the initial salvo to explode. Whether they reached the clicker or not, the building shook from the blast, and Laze again cut power to her wings. Without a conveniently placed pillar to use as a rebound point – not that her knees could take more of those – she dropped to the floor. Boots skidding through the dust, she turned sideways and pushed more power into her wings just as she reached the hallway intersection.

The timing on the move wasn't quite perfect, and she careened off the wall, wings chewing into the stone and leaving a black scar along the surface, before she got control. Again, she rolled in the air, so her back was to the floor, and drew her newly ignited arrows as she popped out of the next window.

Flames still lingered in the sky from her last attack on the general, but she had a pretty good idea where it was. With the hanging fire hiding her, Laze released her second shot, the arrows twisting together tightly to flash towards where she'd seen the monster. Still, she didn't wait to see if they hit, rotating back around and then zipping into a nearby alley.

"Status?" she asked anybody who could answer. Anybody who was still alive.

"Half my wing is down," Nidina said. "General lost a finger. Maybe two."

"Lost three here," Dayne added. "Firestorm, not fingers."

"These burning bastards just won't die," Nidina said. "But we're holding our own as best we can. Few reinforcements have shown up, but we took care of them."

"Keep it up," Laze said, checking her armor's own magic to pinpoint her wingmates. Using the communication magic's ability to locate allies, she saw nine of them still engaged with the general she'd been dodging. As for the rest… there was no signal.

Burn it.

"Sol?" she asked while ducking out of the alley and lobbing a volley of four arrows up towards the general, the rest of her team likewise taking evasive actions and potshots when they could. "How much longer? We can't hold like this."

"I wish I could tell you," Sol said. "I wasn't given instructions on how to do this, and I'm running into… issues."

"Issues?" Laze almost choked. "What kind of issues?"

"The ring is like a fuel tank, and I've been filling it with my power. However, as I've gotten to around eighty-percent full, I can't seem to get it to go any further. Like my power isn't… compatible," Sol explained. "It might be better for me to disengage, deal with the generals, and then come back to this after."

"No," Laze said immediately. "More generals could be on their way, and you may never get back to this. Figure it out. We'll keep them busy."

"Busy killing us," Nidina said on a private channel. "We're barely scraping by here."

"We need to change things up," Laze said, altering her communication magic to include all three wings. With that, she got a decent picture of where everybody was. "Whose general is in the worst shape?"

"Dayne's," Nidina said immediately.

"New plan," Laze said on the open channel. "All Firestorm target Dayne's general. Put everything into taking that one down!"

"On me," Dayne said.

Laze was already igniting a new volley of arrows as she tracked the flyers changing direction without question. The evasive maneuvers had basically vanished, while the Firestorm all moved in a beeline on Dayne's direction. If they could overwhelm one, that should give them an advantage over the others.

If.

That also meant they needed to buy a few seconds reprieve from the other two generals, so Laze twisted in the air and released her arrows. Letting these eight bolts fly wide instead of twisting around each other, Laze put them between the target and the other two generals. Her shots probably wouldn't hurt them, but hopefully they could at least delay them.

Exploding in a series of flashes along a straight line, the spheres of flame obscured the path between the target general and its two allies. This would be the best chance they…

A trident appeared in front of Laze's face, streaking in with the inevitability of the setting sun.

She didn't have time to wonder where it'd come from before it reached her flame armor, sparks flying at the contact.

Jerking her head back, she blinked. She was still alive? How…?

A heavy-plated gauntlet held the clicker's wrist, preventing – at the last second – the trident from continuing through Laze's flame armor and straight into her head.

"Sol?" she asked, and the man nodded, before bringing his greatsword down on the general.

Dark water rushed up to block the blow, but it still fell on the creature like a mountain. Though the liquid took the worst of the initial impact, the clicker's arm snapped as Sol held it firm. Then the man just hammered the dark water shield over and over.

Finally, the sword smashed through to the general beneath, and one more chopping strike ended the fight. Sol's plated hand released its hold on the clicker, and the dead body fell to the ground with the rain.

"Sol, what are you doing here?" Laze asked. "I told you to keep charging the ring."

The heavy, ice-rimmed helm turned to look at her, and Sol spoke without the aid of the communication magic, his voice hollow. "It's impossible. I can't close the gate."

***

Below where Nexin stood on the rim of the massive ring, the Depths streamed out of the partially open portal. Still coming in the dozens, from hangnails to seawyrms and clickers, their numbers continued to surge. Then immediately get cut back down as the Boomers did their job.

General Cannon's elite wing was living up to its name, with their Sergeant Esis in particular scything her way through the opponents. They were doing exactly what they were sent there to do.

Too bad they were the only ones.

No matter what Nexin did, he couldn't get the portal to seal the rest of the way. He'd been pushing his Spark into it since he'd been forced to leave El alone with that monstrous avatar, but he couldn't get it all the way. And it made no sense!

The mechanism – if it could be called that – was almost intuitive. As soon as he'd touched the ring, he'd understood how to channel his Spark into the electrum to fill the runes. Once they were all ignited – no different than igniting an electrum focus – the key would turn, and the gate would be sealed. In theory.

In reality, he could get about eighty percent of the runes to ignite no problem. The last twenty percent, though, seemed impossible. No matter how hard he pushed, or how he wormed his Spark through the runes, it was like there was a wall up preventing him from going any further. His gut told him there was some aspect of his power missing. Something that would let his energy pass through this barrier uncontested.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Was it because he wasn't an avatar himself? That was the only thing he could think of. He had the power of multiple Embers, though, and he could feel where that advantage had paid off. Without the Embers' touch, he would've gotten stalled at the thirty-percent mark. He'd even noticed another threshold around sixty-percent, but he'd gotten past there as well. Again, his gut had guided him through that, almost like the whole ring had been built to make the process easy.

So, what the Blaze was wrong?

Taking a breath as he watched the Boomers engage yet another wave of monsters flooding out of the portal, Nexin pushed his Spark into the ring again. Power flowed through the runes, igniting them like they were written in plasma, and lighting the script up along the inner ring. Then, just the same as before, at about the eight-percent limit, his power hit a wall. Twenty'ish runes remained unlit, and no matter how much Nexin flexed and strained, he couldn't get even an ounce of power to leak into the next rune.

High above him, even through the thick stone of the cavern where the ring was buried, he could feel El battling the avatar. Back and forth the two went, explosions rocking the sky even after something titanic had come crashing down. That was where he should be. Protecting his sister and killing that monster he hadn't been able to beat before.

Except… the ring was where he needed to be. This was his task. A simple one, and yet he couldn't do it.

Why?!

Nexin took another breath and pulled all his power back into himself. Panic and anger wouldn't solve the issue.

"How's it going up there?" Sergeant Esis asked. "If this pace keeps up, we're going to get overwhelmed."

"Working on it," Nexin said, then blocked out whatever the woman's reply was. Instead, he focused on his power as he slipped it into the ring. On his power, and on his gut. The ring wanted to be used. It wanted to seal the Depths back into their little corner of the In-Between. That was why the Pyre and Rime had built the rings in the first place. How they got the Fathom and the Depths into them was a whole other question, but not one he had to answer right now.

No, now, he just needed to know why it wasn't burning working.

Calm down. Focus.

Blocking out all external distractions, Nexin followed his power as it lit the runes, one at a time. He moved slowly, working to let understanding from the intrinsic use of the rings flow into him. Like that, without racing to fill the runes as quickly as possible, things started to make sense.

The first thirty percent… yes, anybody with a Spark could do it. Most wouldn't be able to do it by themselves, but with enough people, anybody could do that. It was… generic, like Sparks were. Almost a blank canvas.

To get past thirty, it took the touch of an Ember. It made the power more refined, more pure. The runes between thirty and sixty percent required this higher tier energy, or they wouldn't fill. It wasn't that his pure-Spark-energy wasn't reaching these runes, but more like it was falling through it like a sieve. The denser energy associated with an Ember didn't slip through.

Going beyond that sixty-percent mark, though, did indeed need overlapping Embers. He could feel his power settling on the bottom and building up. And, it was exactly like what an avatar would've been able to give. Nexin himself wasn't an avatar, but at least for the sake of the ring, he could act like one.

But, when he got to eighty, his power wouldn't take hold. As he focused on its movement, he realized he'd been wrong before – his energy was leaking through to the next runes. It just wasn't pure enough to take hold there. They required a denser power than he was able to provide.

How could that be? What was there above an avatar…?

Nexin froze where he stood atop the ring as he thought back to Dayne's words – the Rime and the Pyre sealed the Fathom and its Depths away. He, no, all of them, had taken it to mean the forces of the two gods. But, what if… what if they'd personally done it?

What was above an avatar?

A god.

The rings needed the power of the two gods to seal them.

Nexin and Sol wouldn't be able to seal their rings. In fact, nobody would.

"It's impossible," he whispered quietly to nobody in particular.

***

El ducked under the avatar's massive claw as it swept out for her neck. Closing like a vise that would've decapitated her, the air seemed to snap from the movement, before it jerked to the side and the beast's other hand came down in a powerful punch. Well, it was probably powerful, but El didn't stick around long enough to find out, darting around to its side and slashing at its exposed midsection.

Another long scar seared the white-stained shellplate as El's plasma-edged sword passed across it. Those spots where her plasma bomb had bleached the shell were definitely weaker than the rest, and she continued past to spin and launch a detachable blade. Blue flames splashed across the avatar's blocking claw, and El lunged back in to keep the pressure on.

Two slashes sparked off the thick claw – but they were mainly for show – before she aimed at her true target, and drove the sword down into the white shell of the avatar's elbow. There was a satisfying crunch as the blade bit deep, blue blood gushing out even as dark water sloshed down the arm to reinforce the limb.

As soon as the liquid got close, small streamers of it got sucked into the sword, further reinforcing her Spark. No way the avatar would let that continue, and El pushed harder to drive the sword deeper. Maybe if she could even cut through to…

But, then the avatar did something El didn't expect – it bent its arm, clenching the blade in place, locked in its joint. Despite the sword drinking its power, literally, the avatar clutched her sword and ominously drew back its other hand.

Blasting a flare of power, El hauled on the sword with everything she had to free the weapon. White-stained shell cracked and broke, more blood leaking out even as the plasma edge sliced through muscle and tendon underneath, but the sword didn't move more than an inch. And the avatar's fist was coming in her direction. At the rate she was going, she'd never get the sword out in time, which meant she either needed to give it up or get punched into oblivion.

El flared her wings and sword at the same time before letting go, blasting away from the avatar a hair's breadth ahead of its punch, while also ruining its left arm in the process.

Let's see how you like it!

The avatar screeched in pain and outrage, white staining the entire left side of its torso-shell and arm. Blue, pulsing cracks seemed to pulse along that limb where the shell even remained, though most of it was simply mangled.

Despite the injury El had inflicted, it had cost her as well, with the avatar reaching its other hand over to grasp her triple-forged electrum sword in its hand. Without her powering the blade by touch, the plasma edge and runes had faded, and the monster squeezed as if to crumple the weapon.

Somewhat surprisingly, that didn't work, and the avatar instead snapped its arm to the side to fling the weapon far down into the writhing sea of Depths below.

El's eyes traced the trajectory of the sword, but it went too far and too fast – even for her – to catch before it hit the ground.

Guess we do this the old-fashioned way.

Blue flames sparked around her hands, forming into thick, heavy gauntlets with spiked knuckles. Veins of darker, almost-liquid fire ran through the material forged by her will, and she flexed her hands before flaring straight back in at the avatar.

With it's left arm bleached, cracked, and broken in places, the beast predictably spun to intercept her with a haymaker from its right fist. Tentacles, simultaneously, shot up like spears to box her in and force her to meet its punch head on.

El's lip curled as she stepped, the world slowing and then elongating, while she slid around to the back of the avatar, her fist coming around as if in slow motion. The second she finished her step, El flared power from the back of her right elbow. The thrust from the burst of flame magnified the supernatural strength provided by her frost armor, and her rocket-punch slammed hard into the avatar's back.

A concussive wave rippled outward from the blow, blasting away the rain, but the fight was far from over, and El followed up with a combo of punches. While the sequence of blows didn't have the same jetting power from flares at her elbows, they still rang across the sky like an answer to the thunder above. With a building staccato, El pummeled the avatar's hard shell even as it spun to face her, tentacles stabbing from below with enough speed to snap in the air.

Lightning seemed to flash in time with the spearing strikes, while El bobbed and weaved around them. Flashes of blue flame kept her moving in all three dimensions, her senses warning her even before the tentacles – and then lances of dark water – whipped out in her direction.

Is it my connection to the Current? I can feel what the avatar is going to do before it does it…

El's senses became razor focused as she concentrated on the attacks from below while peppering the avatar with her own assault. Pieces of its bleached and broken left arm shattered and fell to the ground as she connected with it, and every strike and move got her further and further ahead of the avatar's attacks. She practically danced around it as she…

… glanced up to find the avatar's fist coming down at her like a meteor!

She'd gotten so focused on the attacks from below, she'd completely ignored the anything from above. And, even though she'd dodged everything, she actually had gotten boxed in. The thing had played her…

Worry about that later!

With nowhere to really go, El instead snapped her arms up to cross in front of her, and flared the strongest shield she could. All she could do was hope it was enough.

WHAAAM.

The avatar and the clouds shot away from El – no, she shot away from them – so fast her stomach turned, but her flight didn't last long. A second WHAAAM cratered the ground like a fallen star, rain, earth, and monster parts rolling away from her on the shockwave of her impact. Ice coated the ground in its wake from the kinetic conversion of her frost armor, and then the pain rushed in to fill the space.

Ow…

And that was an understatement. Everything hurt, with her left arm actually being the least painful part of her body.

Rain pattering her face from the downpour, she hauled herself out of the El-shaped impression she'd left in the ground, rolling onto her hands and knees. A hack spit crimson from her mouth, while a mix of saliva and blood dribbled to the ice between her hands. Even breathing hurt, like her ribs were poking into her lungs, and after that blow, they probably were.

One punch. That was all it had taken to even the fight. The avatar was a monster. More powerful than any of them.

"It's impossible…" she muttered, lifting her right hand up to find it shaking within the triple-forged electrum that'd probably saved her life. Without it, would anything be left of her besides a fine, red mist?

If she sat there for more than another second, the avatar would probably come down and finish the job. Which would hurt less. The only reason it hadn't was likely because it couldn't believe she was still alive any more than she did. She wasn't strong enough to beat it.

Except…

El tightened her shaking fist.

Except…

Blue flames sparked to life across her clenched fingers.

Except… that'd never stopped her before.

Body outright trying to reject what she wanted to do, El denied it and forced herself to her feet, then turned to look up at the avatar of the Fathom hovering no more than a hundred feet above her. Her wings snapped about behind her, more blue flames igniting between the electrum frame and feathers, and she slowly lifted off the ground.

Almost as if in disbelief she was still in one piece, the avatar let her rise to the same height as it, and she ignited a pair of flaming hammers in her hands. Dark, liquid fire swirled around the weapons as El stared at the avatar, while Nexin's voice crackled through her communication magic.

"El, I'm sorry," her brother said. "I can't close the gate, and I can feel it connected to the one Sol was working on. He's having the same problem. It needs the power of a god to close. It's… impossible."

"The power of a god?" El asked, crooking her neck to look at the avatar. "Connected?"

"Yes… I… "

"No problem," El said, fingers tightening around the hilts of her hammers.

"Pardon?"

"I've got a plan."

"… is it a good one?"

"Maybe not, but it's going to be burning dramatic if it works."