Heretical Edge

Camelot. I was in Camelot, where King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, Gwen, where all of them had gotten started. I was in the very heart of the kingdom. Even after everything I had been through in the past, after everything my life had become over the past couple years, that was still enough to make me stand around staring like a gaping fish for a few minutes to take it all in.

Or rather, I would have been doing that, if there was time. But, true to form, there wasn’t. Not when Invidia, who had stolen copies of my powers by absorbing another version of me, had unleashed an entire fucking army of undead creatures all over this incredible city. I wanted to go sightseeing, and she wanted to tear the whole place down while killing every person in it.

Well, maybe after I kicked her empowered ghost-butt all the way back into the present I’d get a chance to do what I wanted. But at least I had a chance for that aforementioned ghost-butt-kicking right now. I could get into that.

Those brief thoughts flashed through my mind even as I was already using my rocket-burst to launch myself straight at Invidia. My ghostfire-covered staff lashed out in a vicious swing. I wasn’t taking any chances or holding anything back. I wanted this bitch to go the fuck down.

But of course it wasn’t going to be that easy. My staff was instantly intercepted by a ghost sword that the Whisper produced from nowhere. I wasn’t sure how she’d made it, or what ‘it’ actually was. If the sword was an extension of Charmeine’s ghost form, my empowered staff should have cut right through it. Instead, they both collided physically with one another before rebounding with a loud crack. Invidia had activated her own rocket-burst, but on the front of her legs angled down so she could launch herself back away from me while I was flying forward.

My Seosten boost kicked in with a thought, as I kept my own rocket-burst going. I was flying up and forward while Invidia flew up and backward, our rockets carrying both of us several feet over the heads of the terrified, panicking civilians. My staff snapped over and down toward her right knee, rebounded off the sword there, spun up and around my head helicopter-style before the right end lashed out toward the right side of her jaw, rebounded once again off the weapon that she was bringing up at a diagonal angle with the blade pointed toward the ground, and snapped around toward the opposite side lightning-quick in a shot toward her left eye. Once again, it was deflected as she managed to continue that same motion of lifting her blade at that slanted angle. She’d started with the sword in her left hand, stabbing it downward toward her right side to catch my staff down by her knee, then raised it up at an angle, getting the blade high enough to intercept the next swing at her jaw, then just a bit further to catch the one that would have hit her eye. Just like that, as smooth as anything I had ever seen. All while she was rocket-bursting backwards through the air. And all while she was also laughing out loud, like this was so fun.

Nor was she playing entirely defensively. Even as all that was going on, Invidia’s other hand whipped out, snake-fast. She must have made herself solid, because her fingernails, drastically hardened with one of my other powers, cut through my shirt with all its protective enchantments. It was enough to draw a line of blood over my stomach. But it would’ve been even worse if Fathom hadn’t taken control of our leg to lash out with it while simultaneously using the instant-inscription power to create and activate the ghost-fire spell on our foot. That meant we could physically kick Invidia’s arm out of the way before she could drive her fingernails deeper.

All of that, all three swings and all three deflections, plus that fingernail stab followed by the kick to get her hand away from us, took place over the course of roughly one and a half seconds. Most of the people scattering in every direction under us as we flew over their heads still didn’t even know what they were running away from, exactly. Just that there were monsters attacking their supposedly safe, perfect city. Monsters that were already tearing into their friends and neighbors. Blood had soaked the ground around us, pouring through the gutters while the sound of screams and teeth ripping into flesh reverberated through my mind. These people were supposed to be safe here. They were supposed to thrive here, not experience something like this. Had this horrible attack always occurred, or was Invidia changing history right now?

Couldn’t think about that. Didn’t have time to think about it. Thinking meant I wasn’t focusing on the fight, and that would mean I would die. If I died--yeah. I had to focus.

By that point, Invidia’s rocket-burst had carried her up to the low, decorative wall structure sticking out from the second level of one of the buildings across the street from where we had started. It was a barely two-inch-wide section of stone that she landed on perfectly before using the fact that she was a ghost to shift back through that wall and out of my sight. She was going to leave me to deal with the attack she had just unleashed.

Orrrrrr she thought she was. Because a second later, I landed on that same decorative bit of stone and swung my staff at the spot where she had been. Just before it would have gone through open air, Invidia reappeared, shoved hard from behind by Seth. I had recalled all my ghosts after instructing them, in those brief seconds when all this started, to tell Aylen, Asenath, Shiori, and the soldiers what was happening. Seth guessed how the bitch was planning to make her exit, and set himself for her on the other side. The second she drifted through that wall, he ambushed her and sent her back through just in time for my staff to collide with her skull.

It didn’t put her down or anything, of course. No way were we that lucky. But I did get the satisfaction of seeing her brief look of surprise just before my staff smacked into her face. It was enough to snap her head back, before she reached through that wall, grabbed Seth, and angrily hurled him out of the way. Between Charmeine’s own power, Invidia’s natural strength as a Whisper, and the boosts she had from my powers, she was easily able to send him clear across the street and through a couple buildings in the distance. But by the time she tried to go through the wall for her escape once more, I’d managed to place several more ghosts to block her.

“What’s the matter?” I found myself taunting even as I was sending as many ghosts as I could to spread out through the city to intercept her own. “I thought you weren’t hiding anymore! You wanted to show me how strong you are now, right? So go ahead and show me something new!”

In the background, this giant zombie ogre thing had torn itself up out of the ground, wrecking the once-pristine street in the process, and was bellowing in rage as it started to lumber after the fleeing civilians. Grover landed on its head and drove a knife repeatedly through its skull, while Chas’s ghost summoned a ball of ice around one of the giant monster’s feet, freezing it to the ground at least for a moment. Just as its hand went up to swat at Grover, the ghost-boy turned himself intangible so the ogre smacked itself in the side of the head. And in that moment, Emily’s ghost appeared near its other foot and used some other power to turn the ground there into some sort of very sticky tar. With one foot caught by that and the other by the ice, the creature had no way to stagger as it smacked itself in the face. A loud bellow escaped the thing as it fell over backwards. Which would have crushed several people, but Fathom had already directed half a dozen ghosts to fly through, grabbing and rushing them out of its path just in time before the ogre-zombie slammed into the ground where they had been standing, seeming to shake the very planet.

“Aww, hiding?” Invidia shook her head. At the same time, that ghost-blade of hers snapped out, narrowly missing my throat as I jerked my head back. My feet were firmly planted on that decorative wall piece while she hovered in the air just to the side of it. “Oh no--” Her sword lashed out again, this time aimed at my heart before I caught it on the edge of my staff. “--no--” Another quick snap of her blade toward my right eye, mostly avoided by jerking my head sideways though it still cut across my temple. “-- little child!” She snarled those words, already summoning a cloud of sand before sending it at my face. At the last second, I managed to split the cloud in two so it went sailing by on either side of me.

“I was giving you a fighting chance to achieve something before ripping even that away from you,” Invidia informed me. “But if you really want to see just how much I’ve prepared for this, then so be it. Children?!” Her voice boomed across the entire city, clearly audible to everyone for miles. “No mercy!”

If there had been any doubt about what that meant, it vanished immediately. I’d thought there were a lot of undead creatures before, but those first few moments had been nothing compared to what appeared when she spoke those words. Invidia had spent years preparing for this, secretly placing all the ‘soldiers’ she needed for this attack throughout the city and the surrounding area. Those ‘hundreds’ of ghosts and zombies I’d felt before were only the tip of the spear. In that moment, literal thousands of the monsters erupted all across Camelot. They were everywhere, dozens of them on every street, in every building, in every garden and rooftop. I had a couple hundred ghosts with me, and they were outnumbered over twenty to one. And because that wasn’t enough, she had clearly placed dozens upon dozens of secret spells across the city that were meant to empower her undead soldiers. So they were even stronger right now than they should have been. It wouldn’t last forever, but it would last long enough to do… fuck, whatever the hell it was that she was trying to accomplish here.

My own ghosts were in trouble, but they did their best, fighting to protect everyone they could. I couldn’t spread them apart too much, not as outnumbered as they were. Being ‘killed’ wouldn’t completely destroy them, but it would take them out of play for awhile. And right now, every single one of them counted. The fewer ghosts I had on the field, the fewer people they could protect.

That ghost sword lashed out at me as I was taking that in, trying to catch me by surprise. But I had been trained much better than that, taking a quick step backwards along the narrow stone outcropping while simultaneously transporting my staff from one hand to the other so it could catch the blade and knock it up against the wall. With her weapon briefly out of the way, I quickly spat a glob of quick-hardening resin at her face. But, naturally, it just passed right through her and sailed off toward the ground in the distance. Which was enough to make her give me a smug look while going on the attack once more. I felt a cloud of that heated sand come flying up from behind. At the same time, the rock outcropping I was standing on started to shake and twist as she used stone animation power. And, of course, she was attacking me head on with four, five, six lightning fast strikes with her sword.

I had thought that it was bad enough that she simply had my powers. But, obviously, it was worse. Not only has she clearly had more time to practice with them, considering she had been hanging out here for years, but she was also a ghost. Or one ghost possessing another one, whatever. The point was, I had to fight someone who had all my powers but could also become intangible and float around at will. Triggering my boost once more, I barely managed to block four of the six incoming strikes, allowing the fifth one to cut through my bicep, sending a jolt of pain through me. Through all of that, it was only my Werewolf-enhanced agility and Satyr-enhanced dexterity that allowed me to maintain my footing on the rapidly shifting and shaking stone. Fathom, meanwhile, was using our own sand control powers to keep the super-heated cloud from reaching us. That took all her focus, leaving me on my own for this bit.

On top of all that, I was caught out of position with that sword coming at my throat for the sixth time. My staff was too far to one side to intercept it, while my other hand was against the wall to brace myself slightly. But just as the blade would have hit me and cut through my jugular, I used my own control over stone to fully push the outcropping under my feet out of the way. Instantly, I dropped, the ghost blade cutting through a bit of my hair as I fell.

Before I could hit the ground, not that it would have hurt much from that distance, I used a blast from my staff to send myself back up. Unfortunately, before I could drive my staff through Invidia, she spoke a single word. Instantly, a set of runic symbols right there on the wall next to where I had been standing suddenly appeared. It was another one of her prepared spells that she had all over the city. I barely had time to register that before the spell exploded in a massive blast of concussive force that ragdolled me and sent me careening and over and through the air before I slammed hard into another wall. It stunned me just as Invidia teleported herself over to the spot right next to that wall. Before I could finish sliding down it, let alone orient myself, she spoke another word and created no less than a dozen hovering ghost-like arrows and sent them flying at me. Ghost-arrows, too intangible for a blast from my staff to affect, but there was no doubt they would be very solid by the time they cut through me. And I was too disoriented in that second to focus on them aside from my brain dully calling out the threat. A threat that was about to turn me into a pincushion.

Fortunately, I may have been stunned, but I also wasn’t the only one in this body. Fathom focused, and an object suddenly appeared between us and the incoming arrows. It was a discarded metal shield, covered in hardened resin. That was what I had been spitting at before. Because a bit of training over these past months had shown us that my ability to instantly move objects around as long as they were touching me also applied to things that were only being touched by that resin. The ‘move objects around instantly’ considered the resin to be a part of my body, so I could hit something with it and teleport it to myself, as long as it was something that would fit in my hands.

Something like this shield, which I had guessed in that earlier moment might just come in handy in an emergency. The trick had been to have it ready without letting Invidia know what was happening. Hence making her think that she was the target.

As soon as the shield appeared, Fathom snapped our hand out to grab it while simultaneously using our image-inscription to engulf the thing in ghost-fire. That was enough to catch the semi-tangible arrows.

I was still upside down and falling, but a quick moment of focus teleported us higher into the air and I used the extra time to reorient myself. A second teleportation sent us to the nearby roof, with that shield in one hand and my staff in the other. But rather than holding onto the shield, I reared back before chucking it as hard as I could at the hovering Whisper-Ghost. As it flew that way like a frisbee, burning with that ghost-fire, I enlarged the thing. Suddenly it was several times bigger than it had been. Big enough to slam into the woman while she was still looking for where I had disappeared to. With the ghost-fire, it was able to physically hurt her, knocking the bitch out of the air and sending her toward the ground.

Of course, she managed to teleport away first, appearing right across the roof from me. Her face was twisted in rage.

No, not her face.

“Charmeine,” I managed while the two of us--errr, four of us, given the extra people involved on both sides--glared at one another, “is this what you want? Do you like being her obedient little puppy, her slave? I thought you were an Olympian. I thought you had some pride. Are you just happy like this, lying back and letting her do whatever she wants with you? What happened, did she smack you around a little and suddenly you just surrendered and let her enslave you?”

There was a moment, however brief, where I saw Charmeine herself. I wasn’t sure how I could tell that she was the one glaring at me, but somehow, it was just very clear. Her head twisted a bit, her expression shifted, and it was obviously Charmeine there.

It only lasted for a second. Then Invidia was back, bellowing out a curse that rocked the surrounding buildings and echoed through the entire city. “Yoooooou are nothing! She is nothing! The only power is Tartarus, and it will wash over this universe to wipe away all that is living. You can’t stand in its way. No one can!”

“Oh,” a new voice announced in the wake of that scream, “I believe we could give it a fair shot.”

A man stepped up beside me on the right side. A man in gleaming golden armor with crimson lining, his black hair cut short and his beard neatly trimmed. His sword, a familiar one, was held loosely in one hand.

At the same time, another figure came up on my left side. A figure in familiar armor, the legs and boots black with hints of blue going up the sides, a dark-blue torso with a white emblem of a griffin in flight starting at the waist and going to the right shoulder. Black gauntlets with blue lines. ‘He’ also wore a hood with a mask over the bottom part of ‘his’ face. ‘He’ and ‘his’ because this was no man, though she posed as one to serve as one of the Knights of the Round table.

They weren’t alone either. To one side, I saw Aylen appear, in her disguise. She had Shiori and Asenath with her. And all around us, on every rooftop surrounding this one, more of the famous Knights appeared. All of them, each and every one, were here, right alongside me.

Arthur Pendragon lifted Excalibur to point it at Invidia while his wife, Gwen/Lancelot, drew her own weapons. “So,” the king of Camelot continued, “I have one order for you.

“Get the hell out of my city.”