Author's Nightmare: Chapter 131 (Patreon)

Solitaire POV: Day 104

Current Wealth: 222 gold 0 silver 37 copper

I almost forgot to make sure I took most of the fall, which was dangerous for Phelia given that she didn’t have superhuman strength. Fortunately I was quick witted enough to avoid turning my sister in-law into a particularly sticky piece of modern art.

Ridiculously, Phelia screamed and hit me. Her fist bounced harmlessly off my face- forget the strength of a woman, most men couldn’t have even made me flinch anymore- but it did a fine job of distracting me while I tried to locate the source of our enemies.

“Stay down you stupid cunt.” I snapped. “Someone’s trying to kill us.”

No sooner had the words left my mouth than they tried again. 

First rule of getting jumped; don’t. Second rule, be clever. I knew their target was Phelia, I thought back to the attack they’d tried. Solid, notable travel time, massive and large enough to leave a sound in the air as it whipped by. Probably, it could be blocked. I rolled off my sister in-law and froze the air above her by banishing away all the heat. Steam erupted in a great torrent over the slab of ice just as it came to rest atop her.

Phelia was completely flattened under it, screaming and weakly flailing below the freezing mass. She’d probably live for a while underneath it, and that was a damn sight better than if she was exposed. 

Besides, it served her right for acting like I was some sort of psycho. 

I didn’t need vindication for that, but if I had it would’ve come a moment later when something- the same attack which had almost killed her- smashed downwards on the ice. An instant slower, a quarter-second more hesitant, and I’d have watched Phelia die. As things were, the bar of iron hit the barrier, left a metre-wide crack across it and rebounded with about as much control as a tazed drunkard.

The iron rod bounced away, towards me. Pure luck, and I capitalized on it fast. I grabbed the thing, concentrated, felt all of the rust spreading as oxidation stripped the metal’s strength far in advance of its age. Then I quickly let go as a telekinetic force tore it from my grip, dragged it a metre away and sent it spinning back.

A few weeks ago, I’d have been in trouble. I still was, being fair, Beam’s growth was far beyond anything I’d gotten. But I had an edge over my old self, and I recognised the prick attacking me now. Knowledge was power and all that. Well, power actually was power. 

I twisted aside, then heard something else. String twitching, bolts moving. The crossbows caught me dead on- a dozen projectiles slamming into me from the side. Skull, neck, kidneys. The wind was punched out of me and I fell, head ringing, life over.

Well, that was a hell of a way to die.

And apparently not mine, because I was still alive. The dirt tasted bitter, I spat it out, frowned. Got up. My ears were still ringing and the battle had changed in those brief moments of confusion- Magnus and Alora were throwing themselves into it now. And I still wasn’t bleeding to death. I looked around.

The bolts were right beside me, and they had blunt heads. I thought about it for all of a second before stumbling onto the obvious.

Apparently our attackers, the Dead Edge based on the return of the Iron Bar Fucker, knew who was responsible for our technology and wanted to take me alive. Well I wasn’t complaining, I was alive after all.

I turned, scanned the fight. 

Twenty men, on the dot. Most moved like normals- people without the strength-augmenting powers native to Redacle. One I recognised. The Iron Bar Fucker, keeping his distance this time and standing behind a big man with a big hammer. Alora sent her chained blade spinning out, its recently-finished tool-steel-edge opening a man’s throat up down to the bone and braining another as she dragged it back. Magnus fell in before her, making himself the vanguard and raising his shield high to block a volley of crossbow bolts. 

These ones were pointed, I saw. Six shooters, fast at reloading and nicely accurate, hanging back. Fortunately all our enemies seemed to have bunched in at the same side. Amateurs- we’d be dead to rights if they’d surrounded us with this number. 

Well, their mistake was my fortune. I got moving. 

I dragged the heat from a section of air in front of me, chilling it to ice. Then I tried something new. The ice had been made with a hollow, airtight section sealed at the top, which I synthesised nitroglycerin into. Then I changed a section of the back to steam, leaving a rim protruding up around it. The effect was just as I’d have hoped. Explosive. 

Steam was less dense than ice, by a factor of…Oh, around eight hundred times or so. Turn the latter into the former while something solid was pinching it, and it wanted out. The steam shot away like the jetstream of a rocket and threw my makeshift projectile as fast as any arrow could have gone. Faster. It was inaccurate, missing its intended target by a good few metres, but that didn’t matter much. I’d left around a hundred grams of nitro in there, and when it went off it sent splinters of ice shooting out to lance through its poor victims. 

Aiming is a bit redundant when you’re throwing frags at people.

I watched the closest man keel over, another just seemed to fall. The rest only stumbled. Mixed success, I’d say, but not bad for an experiment. I was almost disappointed to be on them before getting the chance to shoot off another. 

The first one I punched, using every bit of my now considerable strength. It was like hitting…Well, something less durable than a skull, that was for sure. I felt it crack, the bone shifting under my knuckles with a felt displacement. He dropped like a sack of shit, and I stepped over him to reach the next. 

He was ready for me, abandoning his crossbow for a knife. I have a rule about people who try to stab me, I put the metal deep into his guts once, twice, three times. He dropped, hands tight around his ruined belly as I whirled and dragged the stolen edge across another man’s face. It was a good swing, timed well. Split the bastard up right before he could stick me. More were coming. Coming slow, but coming in numbers. If I backed off they’d swamp me, so I charged instead.

The paranoia saved me, as good at preserving my life as it was at ruining it. If I wanted to smash someone fast enough to dodge my weapons, how would I do it? Wait for him to get focused attacking someone else, then hit him in the back. And I kept ducking under, so the bar would come low. I was already ready to move when the wind first pricked my ears, and I did with a jump. 

With both hands, nitro congealed in the air before me. I let it form, focused again on ice, had a platform right below me just as the mass of liquid exploded. I’d leapt as high as I could, and the concussive force gave me an extra few feet even as it snapped my makeshift platform in half. I cleared the heads of the idiots in front of me, watching the bar sweep their legs out from under them with a few sickening cracks. Then I landed.

A glance showed me that Magnus and Alora’s situation had deteriorated. Good fighters- great fighters- but four to one odds were four to one odds. I resisted the apish urge to help them and made myself act a bit more constructively, heading for the Iron Bar Fucker.

Well, he was expecting me. The weapon came up just in time to miss my hastily cast shield of ice. It hit my ribs, hard. I moved with the impact, leaning back, twisting. Angling and shallowing it as much on instinct as anything else.

Had I been as tough as I was when I first arrived, it probably would’ve broken several ribs like kindling. Lucky me, then, that it only partially cracked one. I wheezed, breaths suddenly coming hard, eyes suddenly watering, pace slowing. I thought things through. 

Alora and Magnus were losing, but they were…Fast. Faster than their enemies, that was sure. We could run, thanks to that. The one complication to a sudden flight would be the Iron Bar Fucker. I saw his weapon readying itself for another strafing run, and knew I could stop it. But not physically.

If I exposed Phelia- their first target- and bolted in the other direction, what would they do? With a dozen men already dead or dying their little ambush had already lost its teeth. Keep fighting us, maybe they’d win. Maybe they’d lose, maybe they’d all join their friends. Humans were stupid for the most part, but I thought even the average idiot would be capable of that basic arithmetic.

And I knew that Phelia would be a tempting target, even without it. She was our in to the nobility, the source of our connections. Shango could work around her sudden loss, I knew, and in fact her death might even benefit us in the long term by letting us keep the title and free him up use marriage as a political offer once more, this time from the seat of nobility. But they probably didn’t know that- else they wouldn’t have attacked her first. 

I would condemn a woman I didn’t like, I would buy my allies and myself the chance to flee, and I would preserve the most valuable asset we had all while strengthening our position long-term and bloodying our enemies’ noses with a petty victory. It was the smartest choice.

Shango loved her. It hit me like a stiletto to the scrotum, as the truth tended to. He’d been more than just morally disgusted with me, and he’d not just lashed out because I’d egged him on. The rift between us- the ruination our friendship had become- was caused because there was an emotional element to this marriage. It hadn’t taken long, no doubt the relationship would go up in flames as so many fast loves did. But it was there. It was strong enough to hurt him if Phelia died.

The Iron Bar Fucker struck, weapon flying like a thrown javelin, heading for Alora. Everything slowed, my brain quickened, my mouth moved and my words shot out with a volume to match their mountainous power. 

“I surrender!” I called out, almost buckling under the strain of even saying that much. The world froze.