Relocation

 Fallen Sunset Part Thirteen

 

“Aelia!”

            Evan shouts by reflex, even as he releases a burst of blue-white fire from his outstretched hands, directing his willpower towards the wretched Seraph. A deep, reverberating sound, like the lowest possible note on a dozen cellos, fills the air, and Noreus is slammed away from Aelia by the torrent of crackling light.

            Not bothering to look for the Seraph’s remains, Evan hurries to Aelia’s side. “Are you okay?”

            “Of course I’m okay, you never let him anywhere near me.”

            Evan looks embarassed. “Just making sure,” he begins to say, but-

            “Look out!”

            Evan whirls at Aelia’s scream, channeling a broad shield of light just before a mangled, angry-looking Noreus rams into it with his jagged spear. The Seraph’s already-suffering skin is bruised, and two of his right ribs look out of line, but he backs away a step and sneers at the pair, looking just as ready to fight as ever.

            “I figured you were dead!”

“I told you,” the static-filled voice wrenches itself from Noreus’ half-ruined throat, “I have a mission. And no infidel human child is going to interfere, no matter how much witchcraft you throw around.”

            “Big words,” Aelia growls, lashing out with her knives, which Noreus leans away from. Her eyes ignite with blue-green shimmering light, and snaking tendrils of conjured water whip out of nowhere at the Seraph’s booted feet, pulling and tangling.

            Evan takes the opportunity to unleash another wave of force, blasting Noreus to the ground and shattering the brittle spear into bits of glittering sand. As Noreus looks up, blinking, he finds the blades of Aelia’s long knives crossed against his throat.

            Aelia smirks. “Witchcraft does just fine, thank you.”

            “We have a craft of our own,” the downed Seraph remarks. His left eye is cloudy and unfocused, but his right eye, liquid black with silver irises, turns past Aelia’s face and towards the sky.

            Evan follows his gaze and gasps a curse. At least five of the green fireballs are plummeting directly towards their little battleground, roaring and twisting through the air, and Evan tackles Aelia away from Noreus’ prone body to save her from being struck by one of them. The Seraph, bearing the full impact, grunts metallically as he’s pounded into the ground, and vanishes in an explosion of earth and sickly fire.

            Evan channels a shield around himself and Aelia, feeling the massive shockwave as an uncomfortable mental pressure. Luckily, it only lasts an instant before the wave passes, and Evan releases his hold on the crackling shield with a sigh of relief.

            Relief that is very short lived. From the searing craters, an assortment of the crystalline, powdery creatures begin pulling themselves towards Evan and Aelia. Pushing himself to his feet, Evan prepares to strike, counting the shambling constructs and trying to spot their misshapen leader, Noreus, among the rubble.

            Aelia pulls herself up, making intricate gestures with her long fingers, weaving something out of conjured water. “More than last time,” she grumbles. “What do you think?”

            “I think they look the same. They probably melt the same. The Seraph is the real threat here. Keep your eyes open.”

            Aelia’s glowing eyes flicker to Evan for an instant. “We took him, easy.”

            “It was just him. He’s got friends now. And who knows, he could have been bluffing, knowing these were about to arrive. Just be careful.”

            Aelia opens her mouth to respond, but whatever she says is drowned out by the deep, resonating thunder of Evan’s power being released. A flash of blue-white light turns one of the creatures practically inside-out, disintegrating it as it curls in towards the initial wound.

            “Huh?” Evan asks, targeting another machine. It’s creepy, the way they just silently walk towards you, he thinks.

            “Never mind,” Aelia mutters, finishing her elaborate channeling. A long-handled axe, more like a spear with an absurdly broad blade, rests in her slender hands. It appears to be made of some kind of ice, although no ice Evan is familiar with keeps flowing even as it holds a shape.

            He raises an eyebrow. “Looks heavy.”

            In response, Aelia grunts and swings the conjured weapon at the closest pair of machine-beings. The first one is very nearly torn in half, crumpling and shearing apart at the point of impact. The wreckage of its body serves as a hammer against the second machine, smashing the two creatures into a single shattered mass. Aelia smirks at Evan. “It’s water. I hardly use my muscles at all.”

            “Clever you.”

            It occurs to Evan, as he pours his willpower out in great blasts, that he’s feeling none of the fatigue that usually comes with his channeling. In fact, with every exertion he seems to grow more invigorated, the light swimming over his skin seems to grow brighter.

            And an almost disturbing rush, a savage pleasure in the back of his mind, accompanies every kill. He can’t help but smile at the satisfaction that comes from destroying the perverse, mechanical beings, and he’s so caught up in slaying the creatures that another dozen fall to the pair before Evan remembers he’s supposed to be watching out for signs of Noreus.

            Aelia seems lost in a combat haze of her own, laying about with the fluid weapon almost recklessly. To Evan, she seems to have forsaken her usual grace and gymnastics in favor of mauling the creatures as savagely as possible. Perhaps, he muses, she’s feeling the same bloodlust (do these things have blood? It seems not.) as he is. She’s visibly panting through a broad grin, showing her teeth and pausing only to brush her long white hair from her eyes after a particularly wild swing.

            “You all right?”

            Aelia snorts and slams a machine into the ground with a sound like a wave against rocks. “These stupid things haven’t even gotten close. You?”

            “Holding up. I feel kind of strange, though.”

            “I know what you mean,” she pants, a look of rapture on her usually gentle face. “I feel like I could do this all night”

            “A w***e’s slogan, if I ever heard one,” comes a grating voice, and Evan rolls his glowing eyes again. Of course the Seraph couldn’t just die like a normal person when hit with a screaming meteorite.

            Evan circles, looking around through smoke and flailing machines for the source of Noreus’ broken voice, pausing twice to incinerate the creatures when they stagger too close. “Come on out, preacher man!”

            CRACK! The Seraph answers with a black energy bolt, firing through the torso of his own creature and battering Evan, even through his bright shield. Evan returns fire instantly, blasting a furrow into the ground as he sweeps a beam of light across Noreus’ general area.

            Aelia yelps, distracting Evan. “You okay?”

            “One of them scratched me. Not sure how.”

            Evan looks, and indeed, a long, shallow cut decorates Aelia’s left arm. There’s a trace of blood on the twitching claw of one of the mangled bodies at her feet.

            It only takes a second to realize how it got her. The pair of them had kept the beings at bay easily, but the moment Evan’s attention turned to Noreus, the entire swarm had focused on Aelia, and quickly overwhelmed her defenses. Evan opens his hands and destroys a cluster of the things, giving Aelia space to retreat from the horde.

            Aelia is no longer smiling. “Guess there really are too many. Look out!”

            Evan whirls to block a swinging, powder-coated set of claws, catching them across a sparking shield, as another pair skitters across his midsection. Crackling blue light arcs over his body with a strange desperation.

            Evan grits his teeth, absorbing another strike on his shoulder, feeling that pressure as his body-shield begins to wear out. “Back!” he snarls, casting his arms out, obliterating the offending machines, but a dozen more surge forward to take their places. “Aelia! We’ve got to get out of here!”

            His concern is more for her than himself, although he’s plenty concerned for himself too. Aelia’s power doesn’t include a body-shield, and sooner or later the swarm of machines will get past her monstrous axe. And Evan knows the damnable Noreus is still stalking around, at the edges of the fray. Somewhere.

            Aelia throws herself away from a tangle of reaching claws, swinging the axe to clear a landing spot, and Evan’s stomach implodes as he watches her trip through a patch of glittering sand, stumbling to the ground and dropping her weapon. The instant it leaves her hands, it splashes harmlessly across the legs of several machine-beings.

            “Aelia!”

            Evan shouts wordlessly, casting his willpower in every direction, blasting the crowd back like a bomb, opening just enough space. He dashes for Aelia’s prone form, muttering to himself, “Need to get away, need to get somewhere else, need to get away…”

            As he gathers Aelia into his arms, rolling to his feet, his voice begins to deepen, seems to echo off itself until a whole chorus of Evan repeats, “Need to get away, need to get away, need to get away, need to get away…”

            At least a hundred machine-beings fill every direction, reaching zombie-like, splinter-sharp claws flexing.

            And of course Noreus picks that moment to push past a group of machines, pointing his twisted little idol, which begins to hiss and whisper and gather shadows from nowhere, and a strange, empty grin covers his sagging face-

            “NEED TO GET AWAY!”

            CRACK! Evan squeezes his eyes shut, ready for the shadow bolt to blast his face off, but only a warm breeze caresses his skin.

            “What the…?” he hears Aelia murmur, hopping from his arms to the grassy ground, and Evan opens his sore eyes to a truly confusing sight. The every-color sunset hangs garishly in the sky again, returned from an hour ago, over a glowing forest not particularly different from Halfmoon Grove… except rather than a blue bioluminescense, the plants here are decorated with softly pulsing spots of bright orange.

            Evan turns a circle, looking for any sign of Noreus or his machine horde. Nothing. Only a warm forest, some extremely bright grass, and Aelia, who looks just as confused as he feels. “What happened? Did we die?”

            “Of course not, we’re both bleeding,” Aelia mutters. “what is this place…?” She stumbles around, looking at everything with a look of suspicious. “Why do I feel like I’ve been here before?”

            Evan shakes his head. “That’s one problem I don’t have. I know I’ve never seen this place. My question is, how’d we get here?”

            “You jumped us, looks like. That’s not what you were trying to do?”

            “Like teleported?”

            “Yeah. Wait, you didn’t do this on purpose?”

            Evan chuckles nervously. “Um… no. I was pretty sure we were toast. I was just whining, to be perfectly honest. Then my voice started getting all channel-y, and we’re here.”

            “Well,” Aelia muses, still examining the clearing with frustration, “You’ve whined us out of a pretty bad situation. Wish you’d whined us somewhere a little less unnerving.”

            A rustle in the trees brings the pair around instantly, blue light flashing in their eyes, but only a single, healthy-looking human emerges from the woods. Dressed in khakis and a saffron sash, (not unlike a Buddhist monk crossed with an Abercrombie model, Evan muses,) he appears to be about twenty, with light hair and startlingly green eyes.

            He smiles at them, holding his hands in a welcoming gesture, and speaks with what is unmistakably an Irish accent, “Hello, friends. Welcome to New Armagh. You’re safe here. I know you’re probably right confused, but…” he trails off as he gets a better look at Aelia’s face.

            “Dierdre? What happened to you?!”

           

            

Reviews

[UponATyme]

"Of course the Seraph couldn't just die like a normal person when hit with a screaming meteorite."

^That was pretty funny. You did an amazing job building up the tension with this chapter. I don't think I blinked once. The dialogue is getting a lot smoother, so I'm happy about that.

The only thing I would say is to watch the tone of your narrations. So far you've given "speaking Evan" and "narrating Evan" distinct attitudes, similar to each other but not exactly the same. Sometimes, however, you cross over and the narrations sound more like dialogue. Sometimes I had to check back to see if Evan had started saying something out loud. This happened in only one or two places though, so it's in no way some huge thing you have to worry about.

Another great chapter! Love it!