--donation bonus (day #30, post 2/5)--
Roman was already covering himself with a fiery shock wave as he swerved right. Fire and lightning clashed. The explosion rocked the air and threw sparking embers across the sky, obscuring Roman’s view of Karkash.
Karkash veered around the explosion. Roman expected more lightning to accompany the man and so immediately launched another shock wave at him, but perhaps Karkash had anticipated as much, because there was no such lightning to be found. Instead, Karkash flew up and over, avoiding the shock wave before raining blue bolts from above.
A branch of lightning caught Roman’s left arm, making him grit his teeth and muscle through the seizure. In an instant, he swiped the air with his right arm and returned an enormous shock wave. Karkash must not have expected such a quick response, because it barreled into his torso.
Both men lost aerial control and started falling. Roman’s body seized up as the electricity coursed through it, and Karkash’s chest had caved in on itself.
They recovered nearly in unison, and abruptly found themselves staring each other down.
A tense quiet arrived as they got a good, long look at one another, both reluctant to make the first move again. Roman might have guessed from the man’s name that Karkash was different from the other Abolishers present, but the attire made that point rather clearly. The long, slender coat with a black sash was certainly not Atreyan fashion, nor was it something Roman had seen any of the other Abolishers wearing--though admittedly, he’d only seen three, and perhaps Desmond’s butler disguise didn’t quite count.
‘Still okay back there?’ said Roman, eyes still locked on Karkash as he floated.
‘Yeah, don’t worry,’ said Voreese.
Hoyohté, the crow on Karkash’s shoulder, took the lull in combat as an opportunity to speak. ‘Who are you people? Why must you stand in our way?’
‘Why do you have to fuck with our country?’ said Voreese.
‘We are honor-bound,’ said Hoyohté. ‘We are all servants of the Void--even you, though you may refuse to acknowledge it.’
‘OH!’ yelled Voreese, reaching for that obnoxious tone again. ‘WELL, OKAY, THEN! IF THE VOID WANTS EVERYONE DEAD, THEN THAT’S FINE!’
A dark serial novel. Set in a modern fantasy world called Eleg. Mature language. Updates every night at midnight PST by ~400 words.
What, Voreese has to "reach" for an obnoxious tone? I thought it came naturally!
ReplyDeletewhere next chapter?
ReplyDeleteRan into a bit of a hitch, but I'm working on it. Check back tomorrow. I'll have have a bunch more new pages up soon. Got some catching up to do.
ReplyDeleteReally enjoying this. Btw, I was wondering why you never explored the 'iron brainsplosion' attack more? I think you established that he could accumulate iron in the blood vessels, and those exist in the brain. So he should be able to pierce the brain from the inside (from the vessels) in the same way he destroyed the aberration, by starting a spike in the vessel and then expanding it from the base. I'm envisioning something like a jack (from the game), or a lot of them, and some servant just getting a funny twitchy look on his face before iron thorns burst out all over his skull :D Obviously the big trouble is getting iron in there in the first place to start from, but it seemed like putting it in the veins wasn't the problem so much as making it do anything useful. This would be a fun (and appropriately horrifying) tactic when someone is still for one reason or another, like when the crazy half of Abolish's members are trash talking and monologuing.
ReplyDeleteHe might also be well served to start layering his battlefields with belowground iron nets. Once he starts a spike in he should be able to pierce through the dirt all through his sphere of influence like mycelium, lots of thin strands everywhere without using much actual mass, and this would allow him to more or less instantly pop out soul-infused iron anywhere in that area by sending a spike to touch his flesh from the network where he is standing. At least this would be good for when the enemy reapers didn't immediately go way up in the sky (or instead went underground) and aberrations.
Finally, really looking forward to when he gains more control over his element. Was already thinking before that was mentioned that he would be set if he could create liquid iron (or even just really hot iron, I think it's like 700 or 800 degrees C) to attack Karkash with, sailing right through his magnetic fields. Or even better, when he gets REALLY powerful, iron plasma :D Terrible for getting through magnetic fields, of course, but unbearably awesome for any other application. Though even gaseous iron would be so hot as to be overkill on flesh. Also once he can manage the impurities, he can create basic steel just by reducing the percentage of carbon in it, assuming what he's creating is natural or pig iron.
Sorry for the WoT, just really enjoying this story. One small website suggestion to make it easier on new readers, though, is that it would be awesome if you could switch to the next page by pressing the right direction button on your keyboard like you can on a lot of webcomics. Other than that loved everything about it.
Actually, getting the iron in the blood WAS a problem, since Garovel noted it would require exceptional precision from Hector.
ReplyDelete@George M. Frost: I hope everything is working out.
Great to have you. Thanks for reading. :)
ReplyDeleteI'll look into that directional-key-navigation.
<3
ReplyDeleteLol I love when Reese gets loud. It'd piss anyone off
ReplyDelete