“Ah, so you’ve actually met your grandfather in person?” asked Miles.
“Yes, sir.”
“Must be a different guy, then. The man I’m thinking of died about forty years ago.”
‘Unless he somehow survived,’ amended Overra.
Miles laughed lowly. “That would be awkward, wouldn’t it?”
Dunstan was curious now. “Who was the man you were thinking of?”
The Cpt. General took a second to respond. “He was a lunatic. The kind of person that the world is better off without.”
The abrupt severity in the other man’s voice did not escape Dunstan’s notice. “What was his name?” Dunstan asked.
“It’s not important. Best to just forget about people like that.”
Dunstan sensed something contradictory in that statement, but he decided to keep his mouth shut. Miles acted like the most laid back boss in the world, but the fact remained that Dunstan didn’t know the man very well. He’d rather not get on his superior’s bad side by asking too many questions.
Finally, something new caught his eye. Another figure darted across the street in the same location as earlier. Dunstan raised his binoculars in time to see it happen a third time.
“You see that?”
“Yes, sir.”
They waited, but there was no other movement.
Such was the thrill of being a watchman.
Personally, Dunstan didn’t mind the long periods of nothingness. Coping with tense downtime was a skill, like anything else. The trick was to think without getting lost in thought, to wonder without daydreaming.
And in spite of the man’s earlier claim, Dunstan could not imagine Cpt. General Miles doing this job. And this notion was soon reaffirmed for him.
“They could be luring us into a trap.” Miles allowed a beat to pass. “I’ll go check.”
Overra melted back into his body, and then Parson leapt away in a gust of wind that made the armored walls shudder.
Dunstan could see the man going to work, tearing through the air like a missile and falling upon the enemy’s location with just as much force. An explosion of air crushed four buildings at once and flung their remains up from the ground. Broken trees and vehicles and slabs of concrete tumbled down the road together, and Miles just hovered there in the middle of it all, waiting.
After a weighty pause, the storm hit him. Crowds of metal spikes, audible gunfire, visible distortions in space even from this distance, and all manner of flaming chaos came for the man at the same time.
A dark serial novel. Set in a modern fantasy world called Eleg. Mature language. Updates every night at midnight PST by ~400 words.
"a the storm hit him"
ReplyDeleteOoh, exciting!
Got it, thanks.
ReplyDeleteI was kind of wondering whether that would happen when it mentioned him dropping down. I would think they wouldn't start the fight leading with anything but destruction or something else to quickly kill a servant.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I notice that if servants could ever learn to use multiple hyper states, mass powers that do that would be ridiculously overpowered, because they could use Pan-Rosum and Pan-Zwrozt (I probably mangled that spelling, too lazy to find it) to get all the metals. Now that I think of it, couldn't collision powers pan-Rosum to materialize anything in their repertoir?
I think that might be limited by their losing the ability to actually become their element, or having to focus pan-rozum on a single element per use.
ReplyDelete...he just stuck his leg in a bear trap because he wanted to see if he could bend steel teeth.
ReplyDeleteI sincerely doubt you could use pan-rozum to get hyper states outside your power, or to use ANY material/energy you aren't already attuned to.
ReplyDeleteAs for destruction and the collision abilities, I imagine that pan-rozum would take a significantly different form for them than for the users we've seen so far. Maybe integration users absorbing useful traits from things lying around, like Minmax's sword from Goblins, or mutators being able to use things like bioluminescence or electrocytes as high-energy weapons. There may even be be multiple ways to use pan-rozum for one ability, like a transfiguration type using alteration on a radioisotope's emissions instead of becoming their element.
If the above turns out to be wrong, I will vehemently deny I ever said it, and insist that this post was typed up by my evil twin.
I am now waiting on him producing a flurry of iron filings with kinetic force sufficient to cause friction enough to ignite them giving him a fire attack.
ReplyDeleteHector I meant, obviously.
ReplyDeleteOr he could just heat them to the ignition temperature of powdered iron.
ReplyDeleteHe is not yet able to manipulate the temperature its created at, that is more advanced than he is able to do yet.
ReplyDeleteTyped by your evil twin? I have my own account, silly.
ReplyDelete