Weight of Worlds

Above, the platform shattered with a flare of mana, and everyone scattered. Chill winds, richly flavored with biting rains, and a touch of snow whipped at eyes as everyone descended in free fall madness. Sand-dusted snow approached at deadly speeds and at the pinnacle of their group were Saleema and Orulf.

Dovar felt the flare of power sustaining the old master’s physique as he held off her sword arm. Whether she fought against him, Dovar could not tell. Her eyes were still locked on the people above them. On Master Stjarna and Kanaan, the triplet master.

With a pulse of light, she vanished from the ice-generator’s clutch and he slammed into the frozen ground on his own. Ice rocketed him upwards a moment later, but he could not match the instantaneous movements of the space-tethered.

Catching himself on gusts of air, Dovar reversed direction. Rain snapping harder against him as he pushed upward.

“—you alive?” Saleema’s cry was muted but the roaring in his ears and the air thick with opposition. “I cut you. In half, both of you!”

Even from this distance, he could see her wide-eyed snarl as she waved the sword about. Kanaan lay pale-faced and groaning on a tiny ice boulder, the healer next to him cowering in fear. Dovar couldn’t find Master Stjarna, which hopefully meant he’d been hidden and taken care of.

“Answer me!” she yelled, and they vanished. Healer, triplet master and Saleema swallowed by her power.

Everyone froze, uncertain what to do next. Orulf burst through the space where they’d been, his cursing vaguely audible over the wind. More people spun up power as the first strike force joined them.

Esmund arrived. His eyes shone rainbow and wide, as if he sought to take the entire world into him. Power flickered in razor movements up and down his arms, cuts marring his skin and uniform irregularly.

Purple crackled and snapped as Saleema appeared, bodies dropping to either side of her. Kanaan, leaking more than bleeding, dropped from the sky and empty husk. The healer who’d gone with them fell from her sword, the tip slipping free of his chest.

Saleema’s purple eyes raked over the rest of the crowd. Glaring at everyone. Noise grew distant to Dovar as her eyes licked across him. It felt like the graceful kiss of the sword-mystics of Vargish. Supposedly, they trained with honed blades, requiring perfect precision as they danced. Choreography rather than fighting, yet no less deadly for it.

Why did we ever think of coming here? What could we possibly do? Gods are fighting and we thought to meddle? Oh, Asny, forgive your foolish older brother one last time. Then her gaze passed, Saleema’s focus elsewhere. The sword’s tip slipping past his neck, leaving a minute gap.

“Which one of you?” She asked, her voice booming through the storm winds. “Which one?” No answered, all standing at the ready.

“Now!” Someone yelled. Esmund? Dovar couldn’t believe it. Insanity had struck root in his friend. To think all that kept his sanity anchored was his relationship with Kirs. Dovar licked his lips, and bowing his head and eyes in shame, fled.

Power blew past him as everyone attacked at the same time. Sudden force took hold of Dovar, turning his flight into a rocketing descent. Air roared. The wind seemed to strike him like a physical wall. Then he hit the actual ground.

Groaning, he attempted to straighten, only to suddenly be lying face-first in the snow again. He hurt somewhere. A part of him ached terribly. Putting both hands on the ground, he saw where. His right hand had folded over itself, mangled and twisted fingers resting against his wrist.

Gasping, he turned in the snow to look at the others. The rest of him had escaped unscathed, somehow. People were wheeling about, pinpricks in the sky. She compressed space.

Blinking tears from his eyes, Dovar watched a couple light-tethered, Ayvir among them, attack her. Saleema, eyes roving the bands of tethered making their approaches, never even looked as she fended them off with wild slashes. One of them screamed suddenly. He fell one way, his leg the other. It soared in a lazy arc into the compressed space, blasting into the distance.

The light-tethered did much the same, except he slammed into a cloud of snow and dust. His screams died in the noise and didn’t start up again.

Dovar clutched his hand to his chest as he slowly sat up. Rising into the air, he retreated toward the city. The strike forces sent waves of projectiles after Saleema. She stared through them a moment longer before snarling something lost to the storm.

Shivering, Dovar attempted flight, though he was not the only one hoping to flee into the city. Soon they were all among him. He fought desperately, keeping people away. The hum and snap of Saleema’s sword cutting flesh, bone, and disintegrating rain sounded ever as if laid against the base of his neck.

She followed relentlessly, and the tethered fought as well. Esmund suddenly blew past him, and spikes of pain radiated down his uninjured arm. Blood misted the air before whipping away.

Rainbow light erupted behind Es, stopping him mid-air. The rain was churned to mist, and the sound was loud enough to overpower both the pounding of Dovar’s heart and the churning cry of the wind.

Es straightened, lifting his head. Dark blood painted his features. He appeared a decade older in the harsh morning light. Tiny cuts were spaced regularly wherever skin was exposed and Dovar saw two larger ones on either side of his lips. His jaw was forced tight as he stared down Saleema.

He pulled something blood spattered and off-white from his mouth. The tip of a — Dovar whipped around. She was right behind him. Close enough to touch. He could have caressed her cheek, and she appeared not even to realize he was there. The tip of her sword was missing and about an inch below the broken point was missing the chaotic mana.

Flee, flee, flee. Dovar’s mind chanted to the drumbeat of his fear, his heart. He lifted his left hand, the good one, which now also bled profusely. Pain churned his gut as his weight shifted and his right hand had to carry itself.

Shaking, he touched her cheek. His fingers were reddened from cold and numb, only vaguely recognizing the touch. She blinked and looked at him, her eyes widening. A spear of rainbow warp took her in the back, shoving through her chest and nearly piercing him as well.

A black bar struck her in the throat, charred ash rising instantly from the connection, then burning through. More attacks, but Dovar fell away, unable to follow the flurry. Hands caught him.

Orulf, the ice-generator, was battered but had no cuts. It seemed he’d avoided the blade. For now. He cannot stand against her. None of us can. Dovar looked up as she threw something. Small rocks arced outward.

The air snapped, and he blinked as people fell out of the air. Blood spattered his face as something tore through the muscle between left shoulder and neck. He jerked and Orulf clutched him tighter. The master’s fingers squeezed him rhythmically as they descended. Constant in speed. Slowly, lowering onto the ground.

Dovar watched as people dropped silent and limb from the air. Close by, one had his spin severed, bodily ‘stuff’ hanging from a hole in his chest. Steady descent. Many were falling in completely quiet, but more were screaming and clutching at their injuries.

A good thing. That she left this many alive. Orulf squeezed Dovar again as they descended. “Perhaps we should run,” he muttered, though avoided saying anything too loudly.

Above them, Saleema had been consumed by clouds of smoke. Two distinct mana-typings. A fiery one, embers churning throughout, another darker and poisonous. Then she and the two Masters of Flesh vanished again.

“Run, Master Orulf,” Dovar said, the admission like a knife in the stomach. “We can’t fight-“ the air was torn from his lungs. Orulf, still clutching him rhythmically and lowering steadily, had a hole in his head. His left eye was gone, and Dovar could see the city beyond it.

Screams now filled the air, and people were staggering about. A man staggered up to him, one arm around Master Ayvir. The light-tethered’s ear had been shorn, his skin peeled back to hang loose against his neck. Dovar blinked as he recognized the old veteran.

“We’re retreating. Everybody’s going. Back to the city.” His voice felt as dead as Orulf should be. “Grab him and go.”

Ayvir was thrust into Dovar’s arm and he cradled him in the wind. Dovar didn’t acknowledge the Korfiyan, instead taking the shocked master in arm and staggering away from the depression Orulf’s ice platform had created. He took flight carrying Ayvir. Grevor floundered in the air nearby, eyes wandering over the people. “Sansir?” he asked, voice forlorn. “Sansir?”

Dovar stopped, still looking toward the city. Sansir was on a bit of ice, carrying another toward the dome. Master Stjarna? It seemed to be the old healer on the block with him. “He’s here, Grev,” he said, surprised to find his own voice painful and raw. Had he been screaming?

He looked down at the ‘strike-forces.’ They’d been kidding themselves. They all lay mewling and crying on the ground, no better than babes. With a twist of wind, he seized Grev, who still searched the dead and dying for his lover, and pulled him along. He didn’t even seem to notice.

Another floated past on, on the verge of tilting off his lop-sided obsidian. Dovar simply towed him along as well.

He was grabbing a fourth when the scent reached him. Burnt clothes, ash, and smoke. He turned, unable to muster more fear or more speed, as Saleema appeared once again. Though without sign of the smoke-tethered.

Her eyes whispered across and this time, Dovar felt the blade touch. Purple blazed above her hand as she counted rocks falling into her palm. She threw them and the air cracked.

Dovar flinched, finding a bit more terror within himself after all. Yet, the strike didn’t come. She stood blinking at the stump of her arm. Her skin was raw and friction burned around the injury, sand still swirling in the air.