The portal behind Rebecca snapped shut as she flew into Brockton Bay.
She couldn’t help but pause at the sheer pandemonium spreading out in front of her.
She was no stranger to the chaos Endbringer battles brought with them. Ruined streets, smoke-choked skies, capes scrambling to keep the damage from spreading. She had seen it all before.
But usually, the Endbringer was the one causing it.
A gigantic explosion of fire bloomed across the bay, the blast booming loud enough to shake the air around her. Even from this distance, Rebecca felt the heat wash over her face and armor. A strange sense of wrongness filled her head as those flames burned bright.
In the sky, tinkertech beams and missiles streaked past in every direction.
The Simurgh flew through the storm of attacks without any of her usual grace. There was no calm, no serene drift through the battlefield. She was moving rapidly now, her body constantly twisting and jerking aside as attacks closed in from every angle.
Scrap, wire, and shredded metal fell from the sky, raining down over the bay as something tore through the debris field around her.
A black form descended on the Simurgh in a storm of attacks.
Rebecca narrowed her eyes, trying to focus on it, but the thing cutting around the Simurgh refused to settle into a shape. Looking at it made her skull ache, forcing her to turn her gaze aside before the pain could sharpen any further.
Whatever it was, it moved fast. It pressed the Endbringer relentlessly, striking from above, below, and every blind spot in between. It was forcing the Simurgh back in ways not even Alexandria had ever managed.
“Report, Dragon.”
“Brockton Bay’s evacuation is already underway,” Dragon’s voice answered through her earpiece. “My drones and suits should have most civilians in shelters soon. The call for heroes and villains to gather has gone out as well, but it will take at least ten minutes for useful capes to reach Brockton Bay. I’m sortieing my Dragonflight now. I’ll arrive in five.”
Rebecca grunted in acknowledgment as she watched the calamitous fight unfold above the bay.
“Is Flechette with you?”
“She’s coming along with the Dragonflight,” Dragon confirmed.
“Good. Make sure she stays protected.”
“Understood.”
Another portal opened nearby, and Legend shot through in a streak of light before slowing beside her. He turned toward the battle and went still for half a second.
The black form reappeared in the sky again, and the Simurgh twisted away from it, her wings snapping out as she hurled a wall of tinkertech between them. The barrier lasted less than a second before it was carved apart.
“Who do we go for?” Legend asked, his expression grim.
Another pillar of strange fire erupted below, bright enough to wash the underside of the clouds in burning light. The heat reached Rebecca even from this high up, and something about it made the skin along her back prickle.
She forced herself to ignore the instinctive shiver and looked upward.
“The Simurgh.”
Legend gave a sharp nod.
Together, they raced toward the Endbringer.
Their ascent didn’t go unnoticed. Pieces of metal, broken machines, and missiles were hurled their way, turning the sky ahead of them into a wall of death. A giant cube of tinkertech screamed into Rebecca’s path.
She slammed through it shoulder-first.
The tinkertech construct folded around her with a scream of twisting metal. She caught the ruined machine in one hand, swung it around, and smashed it through the core of another construct rushing in from her left.
A beam struck her in the back.
The impact threw her forward several feet, heat crawling across her armor as the weapon tried to burn through. She ignored it, twisted in midair, and drove her fist through the machine that had fired. Its outer casing caved in around her arm. Sparks burst across her knuckles as she ripped out the central components and hurled the remains toward the bay.
More tinkertech weapons opened fire on her.
Rebecca went through them.
The first lost its head to a backhand. The second tried to unfold some kind of restraint field, only for her to grab both sides of the device and crush it before it could activate. The third fired point-blank into her chest, bathing her in blue-white light for half a second.
She punched through the beam and crushed the machine behind it.
In the distance, Legend circled high above the battlefield, firing in controlled bursts. Red, gold, and violet beams lanced through the sky, cutting apart guns, missiles, and constructs before they could reach her. He never stayed still for more than a second, shifting from one angle to another as he kept pressure off her flanks.
Rebecca pushed through another wave of incoming fire, eyes locked on the battle above even as she batted aside more tinkertech weapons.
This was different from every other Simurgh fight she had ever seen. The Simurgh usually controlled the rhythm.
Almost as if she held the entire battlefield in the palm of her hand.
Now though… Rebecca wondered if the Simurgh was panicking.
The figure in black vanished again.
A second later, it appeared above the Simurgh and struck down with a sword. The Endbringer snapped one wing up to block. Scrap and machinery surged around her, trying to form a barrier, only for the black figure to disappear again before the defense finished closing.
It reappeared behind her.
The Simurgh twisted, barely avoiding the next strike.
Rebecca stared despite the pain building behind her eyes.
Every time the Simurgh adjusted, the figure was already attacking from another angle. Again and again, it pressed forward, each strike aiming for something specific.
Then Rebecca noticed something else.
The Simurgh was cradling something.
Her arms were held close to her body, one wing curling inward whenever the black figure came too close. The motion was small, almost hidden beneath the storm of attacks.
Rebecca’s stomach tightened.
She blasted through another machine, tearing it in half as she pushed closer. A missile detonated against her side. Another beam struck her helmet, forcing her to blink through the glare before she sped forward and smashed the cannon apart with both fists.
Then she saw him.
Eidolon floated near the Simurgh, covered in a kaleidoscopic aura that shifted with every passing second. Barriers hovered around him in uneven layers, each one shaped differently, each one moving on its own pattern.
Rebecca already knew.
Dragon had said it. The reports had said it. Every piece of information they had pointed to the same conclusion.
Still, she felt a twinge in her chest when she saw David with her own eyes.
Eidolon’s head snapped toward her.
The barriers around him disappeared.
Rebecca barely had time to react before a purple chain shot across the distance between them.
She moved to dodge, but one of the broken tinkertech machines slammed into her from the side, knocking her off course.
The chain struck her chest.
It sank in without breaking her skin.
Shit, what power was—
Rebecca stiffened.
The battlefield blurred around her. The screams and explosions twisted beneath a flood of noise that filled her head, until Eidolon’s voice cut through it all, louder than everything else.
“ME! I WILL SAVE THE WORLD! MY DESTINY! I HAD TO! I HAD TO! I HAD TO—”
The thoughts hammered into her skull, rabid and desperate, each one trying to force itself deeper. Rebecca grit her teeth, her body locking in place as the chain pulsed against her chest. She tried to move, tried to tear it free, but her hand would not obey.
Her vision flickered.
For one terrible second, she felt herself start to agree.
Then she saw it.
A sword.
It descended above Eidolon, its edge shifting through impossible angles. Its shape changed hundreds of times in a single second, never settling into anything her eyes could fully understand.
Eidolon’s voice thundered through her skull.
“I’M THE STRONGEST—”
The sword fell.
His mask split first.
Then the line continued down through him without pause, without strain, without even the slightest resistance.
For a long moment, Eidolon didn’t move.
Her old friend hung there in the air, perfectly still, the last echo of his scream still ringing inside her head.
Then his body came apart.
Two halves drifted away from each other and began to fall.The Simurgh screamed.—[Feat Achieved! Death of the Strongest]
[+1 Diamond Ticket]
Haha!
Eidolon was dead.
I grinned as another wave of fire answered my call, raining down across the valley toward Leviathan. The slippery bastard sped through the broken terrain, dodging and weaving through the onslaught with infuriating ease.
Water fell from the sky, pulled straight from the clouds above.
It crashed into the flames.
Mundane water failed to douse the Frenzied Flame, but the explosion of steam swallowed everything in front of me. My sight vanished behind a wall of white, and by the time the vapor began to thin, Leviathan was already moving under its cover.
I seethed.
Of course the bastard ran.
Fine.
If I couldn’t kill him with just this…
[Rolling Diamond Gacha Ticket]
[Lord of Magic]|Mythical Trait|Your talent in magic is one in a trillion. Magic is as easy as breathing. You can learn even the most complex of spells in a hundredth of the time it would take the average “genius.” You can come up with spells on the fly. Your talent is practically unrivaled.
Something welled up in my soul.
My mind churned as if the world itself had opened before me. Lines, laws, forces, and patterns snapped into place all at once. The shard of divinity inside me stirred, and in that instant, I understood where my power had come from.
I knew whose divinity I had inherited.
My head burned as the Frenzied Flame writhed and screamed inside me, raging against the new presence rising from the depths of my soul.
The shard of Order.
I laughed even as agony tore through me.
My new talent made it all so clear.
The Frenzied Flame. The Greater Will. The truth of the universe.
The answer to it all.
All of it was mine.
“CHAOS AND ORDER BOTH BOW TO ME!”
Reality screamed.
***Going on break. Chapters will return the week after next. Happy weekend everybody!