Chương 58: 50: Tower Onslaught

I was relaxing in a steaming hot bath after another long day when the earthquake struck. Everything started shaking in slow motion, cracks inching across mortar and brickwork with dull snapping sounds like crumbling chalk, the single restored electric light flickering and bursting in a shower of sparks. A brick came off the ceiling, tumbling end over end through the air until it disappeared into the water with a plop.

Groaning at the disruption I floated out of the pool, bathwater and soap bubbles sliding off my skin as I negated friction. More importantly, the dust kicked up by all the chaos failed to cling to my everything and was pushed back from my face before it could become an irritation; best use of superpowers so far by a significant margin!

Unfortunately I'd only been in the pool for five minutes, not the sixty-five it had felt like thanks to the dilated perception afforded by Forced Acceleration, and my costume could not be reformed for another fifty-five. I hastily caught one of the towels before the stand was crushed under a quarter-ton piece of falling masonry, wrapped it snugly over everything important and made it cling with Proximakinesis then deemed myself adequately prepared; time to see what all the screaming was about.

A Chronal Leap and I was already in the mess hall. Dozens of survivors were already in the middle of activating defensive powers or trying to disappear under the tables. Most of them would be fine; even older people that hadn't been active in the fighting had grown powerful enough to survive the odd brick to the head.

Aunt Sarah was a whirlwind of what had to be repair magic, distortions traveling outwards from her in spirals and where they struck widening cracks closed up, buckling supports straightened, even a crumbling staircase reformed after being hit by several of her spells. But no matter how quickly she cast, she simply couldn't keep up with the amount of damage that was being done by the earth suddenly deciding to tap-dance.

The inevitable happened; a crack went through the ceiling all the way from end to end, the weakening pieces beginning to buckle. Our temporary home had been built under more than twenty feet of concrete, soil and bedrock back when the buildings above had been intact and various disasters had reduced those to another ten feet of rubble.

Earthquakes could quickly turn soil to quicksand and this one was worse than the region had seen in recorded history; Force Awareness revealed that even bedrock had been reduced to pretty much mush and all those hundreds of tons of loose earth were all pressing down on the failing ceiling.

Another leap and I was under the widest point of the crack, pressing upwards not with my arms but with Proximakinesis, spreading the force as far as I could even as Force Adjustment prevented the ceiling from simply shattering under the strain. It wasn't enough. My strength had increased by leaps and bounds with all the fights but a ten-yard cube of earth still weighed three thousand tons; even a fraction of that weight was still beyond me... but not nearly as much as it had once been.

Name: Maya Wennefer Bio: female human, 17y3m15d Word of Force [41 pts] Force Adjustment III, Force Awareness II, Forcefield Creation II, Forced Acceleration III, Greater Proximakinesis IV, Immutable Force II, Lasting Force II Other Powers [24 pts] Chronal Leap I, Empowering Regeneration IV, Focused Invulnerability I, Instant Action II, Retributive Defense I, Super Suit I, Spatial Distortion I, Spatial Leap I power points: 7/72 Attributes [7/72] Might 33, Agility 16, Reason 6, Vigilance 9, Ego 16, Luck 2 Everyone using my empowered weapons to kill things had granted me a very nice power boost on top of what personally stopping those sword-demons and skeletal mages had - more than I'd expected, even.

It still came a point short of getting the next rank of Force Adjustment and there was nothing that would change that right that moment. The ceiling groaned and fell an inch while I was considering my options so really there was little choice. A point into Might pumped more power into my every muscle, a feeling akin to an adrenaline surge or a serious performance enhancer. My body strained, changing even as the extra power was realized.

The second point doubled the effect and my palms became a hair wider, my fingers longer, my arms thicker. Not quite visibly so but I was already at the upper bounds of my preferred body size and I had no idea how much stronger I needed to become. The third point brought the struggle to hold the enormous weight of the roof closer to success, but I was still slowly losing ground when Aunt Sarah focused every last of her repair spells at the problem.

The aging hedge witch might not look like much but as her magic got to work fully a third of the strain was taken off my shoulders. Hurrying so the mutable state of my body would not have time to settle, I spread the remaining points between Agility and Ego and the outward changes began to revert. Muscles that had swollen with power were now pressed down to their prior sizes, their density increasing both physically and metaphysically so they remained relatively balanced between superhuman strength and flexibility.

Bones and ligaments followed, then the softer tissues. I was fairly certain I now weighted twice as much as a human of my body type and size should have and were doctors to take a proper look at my biology they'd probably freak out. My tissues were as flexible as ever - more in some ways, even - but they would react to incoming force as if they were tougher than steel. A similar hardening to non-Neutonian fluids, though how much the effect was due to physics and how much it relied on magic was anybody's guess.

I didn't feel any different, in fact after some minor adjustment to my skin, hair and facial features I felt better than ever. My arms and hands holding the ceiling overhead no longer looked like an airbrushed supermodel's; they were so symmetrical and flawless they would have strained the skills of any cosmetics experts and photographers to grant to the greatest beauties on Earth. The ceiling shook once more in an aftershock, but held.

Burning through my stamina reserves, I enchanted the ceiling with Proximakinesis to hold it up. Then I slid a few feet down the crack, added a second Proximakinesis effect and a third. Only after ensuring it would hold up on its own did I let go and land down in the thoroughly messed mesh hall.

"What?" I asked, catching just about everyone staring. About half the soldiers whose weapons I'd empowered were actually gaping too.

"You held up a falling building while looking like an angel, dear," Aunt Sarah told me, nodding sagely.

"While everybody else now looks..." she gestured at the dust-covered, sweaty, bruised and occasionally bloody people around us, "... like this, you don't have a hair out of place and you're still wearing a rather... small towel."

"Well, it wasn't intentional," I muttered, blushing fiercely but still pleased at the compliment.

"Can we go kill whoever cancelled our morning off, now?" xxxx"I fucking hate those bastards," Mandy growled, a crackle of flame accompanying her words.

"Couldn't they have waited to summon their new overcompensation project for a few more hours?" Looking up at the two-thousand-foot-tall, glowing, lightning-wreathed tower looming in the distance and remembering my interrupted bath, I immediately agreed with the sentiment. From the dust clouds rising in the air all across the city, about half the remaining buildings must have collapsed.

It was the final nail in Destiny's coffin, even the most stubborn of us seeing any hope something of the city would be recovered or at least rebuilt snuffed out. It had been the work of hours to recover everyone and everything we could from our destroyed base; at least I was back in costume and no longer drawing gaping stares like iron filings to a magnet. Low on the horizon, the disc of the sun was barely visible behind a thick layer of rain, black clouds delivering their load with shower-like intensity.

What tunnels had not collapsed were quickly filling up with mud and rainwater as many groups like ours did all they could to deal with yet another disaster. Of all those gathered around the sinkhole our headquarters had turned into after my and Aunt Sarah's efforts had finally failed, only three of us seemed entirely unaffected. Raindrops turned to steam before even touching Mandy and mud baked beneath her boots. I just had a force-field deflecting everything annoying.

As for Verity, the midget walked literally through everything as if she were a ghost, not even sinking into puddles. Not for the first time, I wondered if she was even there rather than one of her illusions. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"How long is this going to last?" I asked nobody in particular, shooting the sky another scowl.

"Indefinitely," Verity answered, pulling an ebony lock behind an ear in what would have been a cutesy little affectation if she hadn't been an alien interloper that probably didn't look like an old girl at all. Then what she'd said caught up to me and I turned to stare.

"Come again?" Because that had not sounded right.

"I meant the rain. How long-""Indefinitely, as I said." She closed one eye, bit at her lip in concentration, then used her right thumb, middle and index finger in right angles to measure something only she could see.

"Not happening just nearby, either. It extends in all directions for a hundred and ninety-eight Milin. That's a hundred and sixty two and a quarter of your miles."

"That's... it reaches beyond Jacksonville?!" Probably beyond Miami to the south, too. It covered the whole state.

"Wait, if it reaches that far how are we seeing the sun?"

"Lensing effect," she muttered and smirked.

"Oh Mot, you've been a bad, bad boy."

"I thought that was a given, seeing as he's responsible for all the monsters that have been attacking us," I said but nobody paid much attention. All of us were a bit overwhelmed by the situation even after everything we'd had to face to survive. A week before which of us would have thought that continent-spanning effects were even possible?

It had to be the half-mile-tall eyesore boosting that guy's power, somehow because I refused to believe he was so powerful without it; he could have simply crushed us if he had been.

"Hmm... where's all the water coming from?"

"That's yer concern, lass?" Dallas demanded, bushy grey eyebrow rising in incredulity.

"Not the giant tower of metal and lightning?"

"The giant tower of metal and lightning can't kill most people in the state so..." This thing would make the flooding of New Orleans look like a hiccup. Plus the sheer amount of energy it unleashed, the disruption in the local climate-"You're so wrong it's not even funny," Verity interrupted, her momentary humor gone.

"That abomination needs to go posthaste before it can kill everyone."

"In the state?" The Midget didn't reply; that wasn't at all reassuring.

"No, doesn't matter, we'd need to bring it down anyway. How long do we have?"

"Forty-nine hours from the moment it appeared; down to forty-three now." Word was being passed on to the rest of our group. I could tell when everyone knew just from their reactions. Incredulity, panic, resolve but mostly resignation and relief. If Verity was right - and by this time everyone knew she was always right - then this was the enemy's endgame, the final card he had to play. We'd either beat him by tomorrow night or he'd win and... somehow kill us all?

We were rather light on details but then again, the important bits had been covered. Most of them, anyway.

"Will the tower blast us-" KRACK-THOOM! KRACK-THOOM! KRACK-THOOM! KRACK-THOOM! A tremendous bolt of lightning tore through the sky with such ferocity it hit the less powerful members of the group like a punch in the gut. Its tremendous brilliance turned the gloom of the cloud-covered sky brighter than the midday sun and the shockwave of its passage blasted raindrops out of the sky three hundred feet from the bolt itself.

It was glorious and terrifying in equal measure, enough power to vaporize anyone in the group, even me. Then it happened again and again and again every few seconds... hitting nothing nearby.

"What the hell are they aiming at?" Mandy amplified her voice with magic to be heard over the tinnitus lingering between bolts.

"Is it even in the city?"

"It's shooting down missiles," Verity talked in her normal, even tone, somehow blotting out even the thunder itself without a change in intensity.

"Fifty, sixty miles out, sometimes above the clouds but also below." Jerry's eyes widened at that, took a careful look around that was nowhere as stealthy as he thought it was, then tried to draw both my and Mandy's attention with exaggerated gestures. We both smiled at the silliness, but it only lasted until he spelled one word for us; N-U-K-E-S... well, I couldn't fault whoever was in charge for using the big guns.

Not with this charlie foxtrot of a situation, as I'd heard Jack Everyman mutter a couple hours before. It just meant we had to bring the tower down ourselves after the government ran out of missiles but before they tried something else equally destructive. Now, what accessories did one bring when crashing a party at a wizard's tower? xxxx"I say we skip the entrance and break straight into the upper floors," I suggested when my Force Awareness bumped against a wall and refused to reveal anything further.

"Avoid whatever defenses and traps the bad guys set up and skip straight to the end." After hours of preparation, a last meal and as much rest as we could afford, our group of twelve had snuck up to the massive metal bulk in the center of the city under whatever cover we had found. The few monsters we'd seen we'd stayed away from to remain undetected by the enemy commander for as long as possible.

Then old man Dallas, Mandy, Jack Everyman, Sergeant Sorensen, troopers Miles and Josh, every survivor who'd killed at least a fire demon and could get to us in time and Yours Truly had stumbled upon the first problem; the tower had no windows, no other doors and a single gate with neither key nor other way to open from the outside.

"We might have to," Mandy agreed after sending several spells at the gate "because I can't find how this opens. It looks like a total void to all detection magic I know."

"Go ahead and try," Jack said, black eyes scanning everything in sight but finding nothing.

"No traps, hidden switches or panels, nothing mechanical at least at ground level." Nobody else had an idea except trying to blow everything up, but given the sheer bulk of the black edifice we couldn't have gotten anywhere without a nuke. At its base the Mavethan monstrosity was as wide as a football stadium and though its pyramidal shape tapered off the higher up one went it still was far bulkier than any comparable human building and made of a solid black metal nobody could identify.

Symbols as large as cars had been carved on its matte black surface, each one glowing an ominous, sickly crimson and as incomprehensible as the next. They became progressively smaller the higher up I flew so there were always seventeen on each side's row, becoming brighter yet darker at the same time as they both emitted light and drank it in from their surroundings. Trying to read them had my eyes slip aside and sting at the same time as their shapes refused to make sense, their angles failing to add up.

By the time I was two-thirds up the tower's full height the constant crackle of lightning bolts kept batting me back like physical blows. The tower had yet to stop firing at distant targets, its tip now an incandescent red from the waste heat. I realized climbing any higher would be useless; the soldiers would die to the shockwaves and heat. So picking a likely spot and pulling back my left fist, I hammered at the tower's surface as strongly as I could.

It rang and shook like a giant gong, though still barely audible on the outside but otherwise refused to budge. Then the backlash fried every nerve up to my shoulder and knocked me out of the air like a cruise missile...

"Let's not do that again," I told everybody else after I climbed out of the small crater I'd dug with my landing.

"Up there it's shielded strongly enough I'd need a fifty-mile lead and a giant ram to punch through."

"Let's table that for Plan D," Mandy replied and planted her four-foot staff on the ground.

"I think the shielding is weaker down here, weak enough to cut through." She closed her eyes and leaned heavily on the staff, like an invisible fore pressed down on her shoulders. Maybe it actually did.

"Does Plan D come before or after running like hell?" I opened and closed the fingers of my left hand, trying to get the numbness to go away. Regeneration was fixing the damage but some issues lingered more than others.

"After. Now shh, I'm trying to concentrate." Mandy's staff had started as a rod of metal as black as the tower but the longer she focused the brighter red it got. At the same time, mud, puddles of water, even soil and rock frosted over in an ever-increasing ring from it and everyone's breaths came out in frozen paths. The flash-freezing expanded further and further, though thankfully it didn't affect anything above-ground.

The rod's tip kept getting brighter and brighter, first a dull red, then fiery orange, then shining yellow followed by blinding white and onwards through the spectrum until it became a violet painful for even me to look at. A violet beam lanced out and the air tore and shook like in a thunderbolt, then the tower's wall hissed and bubbled like ice touched by molten metal.

A near-white molten fluid oozed down and through the ground leaving behind an ever-widening hole as out resident sorceress melted deeper and deeper into the tower's side. After a full five minutes of blasting the beam pierced through to the other side, after easily fifty feet of wall. Mandy staggered back, normally immaculate red hair bogged down with sweat half-frozen into crystal, gestured at the still glowing-red hole and ripped the heat out of it in an instant.

What was left was a tunnel through which two men could walk abreast.

"After... you..." my best friend panted and fell on her backside.

"I'll need a minute... it took... a lot out of me." One of the troopers jumped in, took a few steps, then his boots started smoking.

"I thought you cooled it," he demanded accusingly after his retreat, his footwear still warping.

"It's not heat," I told him. Then I blurred forward and tore the compromised boots off his legs.

"Wha- you crazy bitch!" Yeah, I didn't like him anyway but that didn't mean I'd leave him to die. In lieu of an explanation, I picked a wooden plank from a ruin not far away then touched the by then melting boots to it.

"The hell?" The smoking, blackening effect expanded from the boots to the plank, the wood burning away to ash much faster.

"It looks like acid damage to my sight," I warned everyone off the deadly bit of magic.

"Except without, you know, the acid. Things corrode away without any corrosive substance applied and it spreads."

"Wonderful," sergeant Sorensen shook his head in disgust.

"How are we getting it?"

"You aren't." I threw another plank straight down the tunnel. After it touched down it started smoking and in half a minute it was reduced to ashes.

"Only four of us could get through it without dying."

"You cannot know that," the same idiot protested then turned to Jack.

"She's lying! She has to be lying! I gave up everything to be able to help!" He was actually shouting now.

"You can't leave me behind, Captain, you can't."

"Shut up, Willis," the tall black man grunted.

"Anyone who can't bounce a rifle round stays out here. Find good cover, fort up, and when Engineer Norris gets here with Plan Omega, you guard his back until he can set it up." Not everyone liked it but really, what else could we do? At least deaths had been averted so far. With that thought Mandy, Jack, Dallas and I delved into the gloomy interior of the enemy's fortress...