Chapter 26 A Rage Fueled Tsunami
A Rage Fueled Tsunami
Asudden freezing, cutting wind blew into Idan, whipping sand over his face in a cold reminder of the stakes.
Taking a deep breath, he sheathed the Sun Eater and the Caelum-Sunderer and touched a button on his sleek jumpsuit to hide them from view.
Beside him, Molan gathered the glowing, heavy fetters of the Chains of the Old King.
Mo wound the shimmering metal around his midsection, the ancient links pulsing with a rhythmic, golden luminescence.
With a grunt, he swung the Staff of Mortis to his rear, stealthing his weapons from sight.
The siblings exchanged glances, tipped their chins, and braced.
The violet streak in the sky expanded into a colossal wedge of obsidian and light.
Sulfiqar’s presence breached the lunar horizon, its gravity-wells distorting the silver dust into miniature cyclones.
Seconds later, the God-King of Sacra blasted onto the silt of Mortuusvlei, draped in silks that shimmered with the trapped luminosity of a nebula.
Constellations traced his dermis like scars, some fading, some fresh, all ancient.
A crown of thinning comet-fire hair clung stubbornly to his skull, and behind his gaunt, sagging cheeks, his eyes still blazed like collapsing stars.
His lips, dry and cracked, carried the burden of galaxies, each word like gravity made sound.
Yet the immortal fokker he held on to life like the ghost of a sun that refused to go out, Idan thought.
His once-mighty body was smaller, wrinkled, skin dimmed to a burnished, bruised gold, as if the cosmos was giving up on him.
His expression, however, remained a mask of raptorial arrogance.
His eyes blazed with the hubris of a man who believed the universe was a mirror for his own reflection.
‘My sons, prodigals united in the dirt of a backwater moon,’ Sulfiqar’s voice boomed, dripping with a condescending, honeyed venom. ‘I knew the chance to reclaim glory would eventually drive you back to the heat of my shadow.’
Idan forced himself to kneel, descending into a calculated, humiliating kowtow alongside Molan.
‘The throne is yours, Father,’ Idan rasped, the lie burning in his throat. ‘We were fools to think the galaxy held anything but ash for us without your grace.’
‘A predictable epiphany,’ Sulfiqar gloated, his silhouette stretching across them like a stain. ‘Prostrate yourselves to take the Oath of the Hollowed Vessel. Bare your souls to me to join me in the battle of an epoch, for the crown of Sivania.’
As Sulfiqar stepped within the reach of their shadows, his focus occupied by the theater of his own triumph, Idan sensed the microscopic shift in Molan’s posture.
In lethal synchronicity, the brothers surged upward.
Idan’s hand locked onto the hilt of the Caelum-Sunderer, the blade erupting in a roar of white-hot psychic fire.
Molan unleashed the chains, waving them above his head and flinging them in a lasso toward his father.
Sulfiqar at first jolted. ‘The fokk?’ he growled.
He recovered with a speed that defied physics, his form fracturing into a swirling vortex of pressurized shadow and lightning as he dodged the shackles.
‘You fokkin’ double crossers!’ the God-King roared, his voice the sound of a mountain collapsing. ‘How dare you betray me!’
The deity transformed, expanding into a storm of obsidian clouds and violet electrical arcs that tore at the lunar crust.
But Sulfiqar made a fatal error in his vanity: he was a creature of command, not combat. He’d spent eons behind the safety of legions and proxies, while his sons’ battle thirst had been forged in the red-hot furnace of a thousand front lines.
Idan brandished the Caelum-Sunderer in a brutal, rising arc.
The sentient blade recognized the divine essence of the target. It aimed a bolt of lightning at Sulfiqar with a discharge of kinetic energy that sent a shockwave through the ridge.
Molan sheathed the Chains of Saitoni and changed tactics, closing the distance from the flank, the Staff of Mortis igniting in his grip.
He wielded the spear with a grunt of focused rage, the weapon’s head smashing into the core of the storm.
The staff ignored Sulfiqar’s immortality hexes, the blunt force tearing through the shadow-form as if it were parchment.
Sulfiqar shrieked, a sound of grinding tectonic plates.
His spectral configuration part-splintered, and half of his corporeal body reformed, his hand reaching for Idan’s throat, but Molan was already in motion with the Iris-Cleaver.
He swung the massive axe in a full-body rotation, generating a prismatic wave of destruction that smashed through the God-King’s shoulder.
The arc of energy was so potent it sheared the top of a distant lunar ridge, sending a cascade of rock into the void.
Idan stepped into the void and drove the Caelum-Sunderer through the center of the swirling vortex, where he sensed his father’s heart.
The edge met resistance, the dense, pressurized essence of a god, then slid home.
Aureate, viscous blood erupted from the wound, boiling in the emptiness and spraying the astral dust in gruesome gore.
Sulfiqar, the supposed indestructible architect of their misery, collapsed into his humanoid form.
He hit the silt with a heavy, ungraceful thud, his face contorted in a mask of genuine, agonized disbelief as he clutched at the gaping ruin of his chest.
Sulfiqar’s physical appearance flickered like a dying star, hemorrhaging aurous ichor into the lunar sediment.
He surged from the ground, his fractured silhouette igniting with a desperate, violet radiation that scorched the vacuum.
A roar of static erupted across the psionic bands as the God-King turned his gaze toward the distant, shimmering dome over Eden II.
‘You think your puny attempts can end me, the architect of your existence?’
Sulfiqar’s bellow echoed through the emptiness surrounding them. ‘Perhaps if I burn your precious city sanctuary and all you claim to love to the bedrock, you will heed my command. I will cinder your women and turn that den of mortals into a monument of ash!’
He leaped into the sky with his remaining power, reaching the upper thermo-sphere.
With a fling of his arms, he launched a surge of energy at Eden II’s protective dome, his rage morphing into a terminal, genocidal spite.
Still, the force stuttered, and Sulfiqar seemed to stagger as his power bled away. This meant the wave was not as potent as it might have been.
However, the unleashed, massive wavefront of roiling indigo force was still a celestial tsunami with the force to shatter the vault, flatten Eden City, and incinerate every beating heart within.
The two brothers locked eyes and launched themselves into the cockpit of the Xáashìi.
Molan’s fingers flew across the haptic interface of the console as the engines roared into life.
Beside him, Idan’s face was a mask of chiseled obsidian, his hands gripping onto the primary weapon systems.
A cold iron band of terror seized Idan’s chest for the woman he loved and her family. Hell, for all Edenites who were at his juncture unaware that a vengeful, rage-filled deity had unleashed the ultimate retribution.
‘Zane! Kainan! Sulfiqar is going after the dome!’ Molan growled as he linked into the Sable network. ‘The lunatic is launching a terminal-level energy wave right at you. Given Sulfiqar’s injuries, it’s moving slower than usual, but you’ll need to intercept the pulse or the city is gone!’
The brothers pushed the skiff to its absolute threshold, the hull groaning as they hit the maximum speeds in a friction-heated blur.
Idan kept his eyes on the sensor display as the violet wall of vigor roiled closer to the metropolis.
He poured every ounce of his own Sacran reserve into the ship’s thrusters and sent a silent prayer to the dark heavens.
Hoping to reach his woman and save Eden II before the God-King’s tantrum erased this world.
The twin suns of Alpheratz dominated the midday sky, burning through the atmosphere until the glass skyscrapers of Eden II resembled glowing neon bars.
Down in the Central City District, the streets buzzed with the usual lunchtime hustle; people crowded the plazas, the street cafes did a brisk service, and the ice cream carts were almost selling out.
Sheba stood in the lobby of the Joint Pegasi Hospital Administration Complex at One Seven One Liberty Avenue, smoothing her blazer and checking her hair.
Her thoughts strayed to Idan, wondering how he was doing, meeting his father on the desert sands beyond the metropolis.
She whispered a quick prayer for he and Molan’s safety, calling on the guardian spirit of Dunia to watch over them.
Tamping down her concern, she turned her mind to her upcoming appointment, her second interview for a Head Nursing Director role.
Despite her experience, a tight knot of nerves twisted in her stomach.
‘Ms. Munene? I’m Sonia,’ a young woman said, hurrying in her direction.
She wore a crisp charcoal suit, and her silver ID badge identified her as an Assistant to the Senior Executive Team. ‘The board is ready for you. We’re heading up to the forty-fifth floor.’
‘Sante, Sonia,’ Sheba replied, falling into step. ‘Is the panel always this punctual?’
‘Only when they’re impressed by a candidate’s first round,’ Sonia chirped, offering a professional smile as she motioned at the elevator bank. ‘They were particularly interested in your off-world mercy hospital experience.’
Sheba followed the friendly, chatty young woman towards the opening doors of the lift.
With no warning, a thunderclap, one so loud and booming, sounded. It pierced eardrums, causing her and everyone around her to stagger in agony.
Jolting in astonishment, Sheba clapped her hands to her ears, her auricles ringing. ‘The fokk?’
She managed to raise her eyes to the view outside the floor-to-ceiling windows just in time to see the sky turn black.
What she saw next made her stomach churn as a massive, indigo energy storm slammed into the city dome.
A collective gasp rippled through the lobby, followed by frantic whispers and screams.
A shock wave went over the building, and seconds later, there was loud crackling and the shattering of plexiglass as the lobby’s facade fractured under the atmospheric pressure.
The overhead lights flickered once, buzzed with a dying electrical whine, and then blacked out.
The elevator doors lost power, slamming together and apart in a violent, mechanical stutter.
Sensing danger, Sheba lunged forward and grabbed Sonia by the shoulder.
She twisted the smaller woman out of the path of the snapping metal barrier just as they jammed shut with a shower of sparks.
‘With me!’ she shouted to the dazed assistant.
Taking Sonia’s hand, Sheba surged toward the street exit, her sensible heels crunching over broken glass.
Yells and screams followed them as people poured out of the building.
A second, enormous, tectonic crack sounded.
Above, the city-wide canopy screeched under the heft of the massive surge of spectral tsunamic force.
A fracture raced across the sky like a glitch in the matrix, and then an immense section of the dome imploded.
Sheba’s new Ssignakht sensors went into overdrive, and time slowed to a crawl.
She tracked huge, shimmering slabs, each one the size of a transit bus, free-falling toward the streets below.
Her reflexes kicked in before her brain could process the trajectory.
She dove behind a thick titanium support pillar, shielding Sonia with her own body, just as the lobby evaporated in a roar of pulverized concrete and shrieking metal.
Shards buried themselves in the ground inches from her feet, in tumultuous, crackling thuds.
As she choked from the swirling dust, she peered up at the sky as another massive piece of the dome aimed straight for what was left of the edifice.
‘Fokk, nada,’ she whispered.
It was going to flatten the entire ground floor and all adjacent structures.
Then, it just stopped.
The shard hovered in mid-air, quivering with a gold hum.
A silhouette dropped through onto the square outside the building in a blur of Sacran rage. His aura was so bright it burned the dust out of the atmosphere.
Idan?
He flicked his wrist and sent the multi-ton slab flying into a nearby park, where it detonated into the trees.
Up in the clouds, Sheba detected Molan’s energy.
He was holding the dome’s skeleton together with his pure psionic willpower, his psychic roar vibrating in her teeth.
But above him, she sensed Sulfiqar, his hands extended toward Eden II, recharging, drawing every watt of power from the city’s electric grid to fuel another onslaught of his rage-fueled tsunami.
Sheba? Idan roared into her mind as chaos unleashed around him.
I’m here.
He swiveled to gaze into the wreckage of the building. Where, salkia?
Follow my neural signature, she suggested.
Sheba discerned him lock onto her as he ripped through twisted steel columns, searching for her.
He reached her, lifting the pinion over her and setting it down with care.
She launched herself into his arms, and he held her tight.
His face was a storm of gold, glowing fury, and terrified aggression.
‘Are you hit?’ he growled, his timbre thundering and echoing off the few walls still standing in the ruined square.
Sheba slid a hand over his fast-beating heart.
‘I’m fine uso’m,’ she murmured, her calm cutting through his worried rage. ‘My senses kicked in, and I was able to get out of the lobby before it completely disintegrated.’
More dome shards fell close by, and Idan cursed.
‘Fokk, I need to get back up there to kick Sulfiqar’s ass.’
‘Naam, finish it!’
She caught the hesitation in his eyes, sensing his primal instinct to whisk her away to safety, but she wasn’t having it.
‘Go!’ she ordered. ‘This place is a mess, and I have people to rescue. Move!’
Idan pressed his forehead against hers for one hard, bruising second, a silent, desperate promise.
He gave her a heated, scorching kiss before he turned and launched himself back into the sky.
As he did, he swept his arms wide, deflecting any last falling dome fragments away from the city centre.
Sheba kept her gaze on his ascent until he disappeared, then pivoted toward the wreckage and casualties.
She soon co-opted Sonia to help the injured as air ambulances rushed into the fray and chaos.