Chapter 24 #3
Desperate to protect his brothers, North threw his voice into the ether.
Even as he gathered his energy into the great plains herd, he screamed everything he knew down the brotherhood bond, broadcasting the horrific data profiles of the four mutated assassins, and prayed to the Great Spirit that it would be enough.
* * *
North's warning hit the brotherhood bond with enough force to stagger Fly in mid-flight.
Fly banked hard above the tree line, his kite vision sweeping the rebuilt realm. The castle sat ahead, black against the stars, but movement erupted from its foundations.
The four assassins came at them together, and the ground broke first.
A low groan rolled through the Veil and spread outward in widening fractures. Trees split. Stone shattered. Entire sections of earth collapsed into themselves as Avalanche thundered down the slope like a living landslide.
At the same time, the sky twisted and Fly lost the horizon. One second he was banking left. The next, every direction changed. The stars spun. The terrain folded. His stomach dropped as the world lost all orientation.
Maelstrom.
Left. North’s steady voice penetrated the disorientation. Fly trusted it without hesitation and rolled hard. The world shifted again. Climb. He climbed. The spinning eased for half a heartbeat. Hover. Fly held.
The horizon snapped back into place long enough for him to see Bondo plant himself in the middle of the chaos.
The massive rhino dug his broad, padded digits into the earth and lowered his horn.
Around him, the team reoriented. The impossible pull of Maelstrom dragged at them, but Bondo held the line like a mountain.
Anchor on Bondo, Fly ordered. The team adjusted immediately.
Easy flowed low and fast through the grass. Shark cut a wide arc. Twister swept overhead. Dagger burst upward in a plume of fire.
Maelstrom howled. The pull intensified. North's voice cut through it. Straight ahead.
Bondo charged and the others followed. The assassin tried to drag them apart, but the team moved tighter.
It tried to twist the battlefield. North fed them bearings faster than it could corrupt them.
Fly finally saw the opening. Flash. Lechuza. Easy. Eleven o'clock. The white owl folded her wings. The eagle dropped beside her. Easy exploded from the brush. Maelstrom never saw it coming. The cougar hit first, the owl followed, and the eagle finished it.
The assassin came apart in a violent collapse of wind and pressure. The spinning sky vanished.
Fly got the horizon back as his wings gave him the altitude.
The battlefield unfolded beneath him. Avalanche drove toward Tex and O-voo.
Void spread across the center of the field.
Doom waited beyond them, motionless and patient, as if it already knew how this would end.
Fly's eyes narrowed.
Tex. O-voo. Avalanche is yours. Shark, you're with me. Everybody else push center. We're ending this now.
The assassin wasn't attacking the team. It was feeding on them.
Every charge. Every impact. Every attempt to stop it head-on rolled into its mass and came back amplified. Trees exploded outward. Stone shattered. Entire sections of the Veil collapsed under the force of its passage.
Tex saw it at the same time. Flank him. Pincer move. The message snapped across the bond.
The massive stallion planted his back hooves and reared, calling to the wild wind of the plains, the empty sands of the desert, the green grasslands, and the herd answered, its ghostly steeds closing in from behind.
On the left flank, O-voo's enormous elephant wheeled right.
His ears flapping, tail raised, he charged, trumpeting in short bursts, sharp and bright.
The massive wall answered in such a deafening blast, Avalanche paused.
Tex struck from the left, O-voo from the right, and North’s buffalo herd slammed into its flank while the elephants drove into its rear quarter.
Avalanche tried to redirect the force and found nothing lined up.
It could throw power back where it came from, but it couldn't answer force arriving from every angle at once.
Avalanche rolled forward, trying to absorb momentum and redirecting it toward the source.
The assassin fractured, cracks racing through its enormous form. The entire construct collapsed inward under its own momentum and came apart in a deafening landslide of stone, dust, and broken force.
Void struck, and the battlefield below him dissolved into nonsense.
Distances changed. Shapes lost meaning. Friend and enemy blurred together.
Every tactical model he tried to build unraveled before it finished forming.
The world became noise. For one terrifying second he understood how Null had almost taken him.
Meaning wasn't disappearing from one mind anymore.
Void was stripping it from reality itself.
His kite eyes tracked Shark cutting through the center of the distortion. The great white didn't care about the confusion. He followed instinct, turbulence, pressure changes, and the simple certainty that something hostile occupied the center of the field.
Shark fed him certainty. Increase your turbulence and hold him. Void tried to attack the connection. The connection answered by tightening. The assassin expanded, swallowing sound, light, and orientation.
Twister rose into the air. The swan's song rolled across the battlefield.
This time it wasn't one sacrifice. It was all of them.
The brotherhood. The Shadowguard. The people waiting for them at home.
North holding on in the Veil. Every reason they had chosen to fight.
The meaning struck Void from every direction at once.
The assassin convulsed. The field collapsed.
The impossible absences snapped shut. Reality rushed back into the space.
Void folded inward on itself and vanished.
High above the battlefield, Fly finally exhaled.
Only one assassin remained.
Doom.
Fly drove his thoughts home. Flash and Lechuza, he’s yours.