Chapter 228: An Enemy Worth Fearing (2/2)
These Hybrids acted as the ground force, several gialgathens in view pinned down. The Hybrids infested these restrained gialgathens with wires, organic tissue, and the carrot-colored organ sacks. Still alive due to their natural hardiness, these gialgathens groaned out in agony for help.
Other Hybrids investigated buildings with the assistance of espens garbed in their symbol of a hanged gialgathen. If they found a Hybrid pinning down a gialgathen, then they used a hoverpad to lift them up and carry the mass. After lugging them beneath one of the dreadnoughts, the gialgathen floated into the waiting abyss.
There was no doubt in my mind that the ship was taking them to hell.
The other method of capture involved massive spires composed of Hybrid flesh and metal, the orange cysts spread throughout the city. Towering and tall, these twitching monoliths wobbled in the wind, sensing disruptions on the surface.
Below one of these spires, a smaller gialgathen attempted darting from one building to the next. As it did, the giant pillar of cords and entangled wires and slammed downwards, mauling the poor creature. Many of its limbs broken, the green gialgathen was lifted up before being deluged in a sea of cables.
The metal twine swarmed into the flesh of the gialgathen, piercing skin, flooding its mouth, and digging into its eye sockets. Still alive, the gialgathen was pumped to the base of a spire, a bulging mass of other collected gialgathens there. Getting the gialgathens out of there was a high priority. They deserved a better death than that at the very least.
Those pillars extended well beneath the surface, roots extending outwards. They dug deep, cutting off an underground escape. The entire event reminded me of Springfield's utter destruction by Yawm's plague. I empathized with how these guys were feeling, watching their home and society crumble.
I shook out my own jitters before breaking the ice. I turned to Krog,
”Those pillars are another reason we can't burrow from below. Good decision on the sky attack.”
Krog took a few deep breaths, his composure shaken. The other gialgathens mirrored his unease, many of them remembering their other battles. They reminded me of when I first saw Springfield torn apart by Yawm's plague. I remembered deformed faces running at me, wanting to tear me apart.
I was afraid and alone. I wanted someone to come down and save my ass. No one came though, and I had to save myself. Not everyone could do that though. Right here, right now, I could be that guy saving people. People who were just like me five years ago.
I took a few deep breaths, thinking of what I would've wanted to hear when the plague hit its fever pitch. I envisioned the kind of person I wanted to arrive and save me. Using that imaginary guy, I faced forward, encompassing The Rise of Eden over my allies.
I did my damndest to be that guy I as I said,
”It's time to fight. No more hesitation. No more fear. If I were down there, I'd be praying for help. We are that help. We'll drag our brothers and sisters out of hell. We'll give them a second chance, just as they'd do for us.”
I waved my allies forward. They listened to me, stepping forward into a line with wobbling steps. In the telepathic conversation, I thundered,
”Come on now. Instead of fearing what may happen when we dive down, fear what will happen if we don't. Everyone down there will all die horrific deaths.”
I turned to the soldiers, ”In our hands is the power to stop that. In our hands is the power to enact justice.” I grinned a thrilled, wild smile while spreading my arms,
”Think of it this way. Would you rather live in a hellish world like this, or would you rather die fighting against it?”
The trembling stopped as I turned around.
”I don't need to hear your answer because my decision has already been made. Has yours?”
I waved them forward, and they stepped up with a renewed bravery. They lined up beside me, and I turned to them as I said,
”Let's show them hell.”
They let out a telepathic roar as I ran forward, accelerating towards the hellscape. The other gialgathens followed me, keeping a fair distance. Using the Rise of Eden, I kept my mass high as heat built over the surface of my skin. I jumped forward, riding down the edge of the mountain by generating a trail of hardened ice beneath me.
Once I gained actual speed, I shifted to Event Horizon, gravitation expediting my body to the speed of a bullet. A visible pathway of destruction formed as I channeled my anger into a frenzy for havoc. They would regret doing this, making me their enemy. I'd make sure they'd tell their children stories of what happened here to scare them.
They would remember this day.
As I sped down, trees ignited, the ground giving way in my wake. Boulders and rocks ripped from the ground as I bolted near the mountain's surface. A shockwave rippled out from a sonic boom as I drilled forward. My skin shined yellow, the heat of a star building over my skin. Red lines formed over my runes, my armor grinning wide with jagged teeth.
Comfortable and focused, I willed myself forward faster. Uprooting entire oaks, I tore a gash of devastation across the forest as several Hybrids stared at me from below. One of the five smaller starships turned towards my incoming assault, the gialgathens far behind me ignored.
How could they be expected to notice the dragons when a sentient meteorite was coming at them?
Trees exploded beneath me, the water within evaporating at my passing. I molded myself into a spear shape, accelerating myself further. Two of the starships now faced me, one lined up behind the other one. Their gravitational drives fired as the plasma engines flared. The sound of ripping steel echoed across the mountainside as they charged their cataclysmic weapons.
As if wielding the might of the stars, the first ship launched a bolt of purified energy at me. It ricocheted off the surface of my skin, deflected by my slanted and narrowed shape. The deep burns across my side healed as a portion of the mountainside disappeared behind me. The blinding light behind me flashed, but it carried with it no sound.
I was faster than sound.
The clouds near the ship shout outwards in a circle before I rammed into the first ship. As I did, I outstretched tendrils of my armor, ripping the innards out of the fighter. At the same time, Event Horizon culled much of those onboard. I killed their bodies and their minds, the mana of life siphoning into my frame as I passed out the other side of the ship.
The next ship behind the first fire its own blast. It collided with my head, the impact direct and on point. A white light blinded me, a third of my health disappearing instantly. I let out haunting laughter as the ionized, misted air caved around me in one motion.
I hardly slowed down.
I turned and dropkicked towards the ship with both my legs outstretched. Just shy of contact, I used an enormous bout of telekinesis. Converting the force of my travel into a direct kinetic bullet, the lower belly of the ship exploded in a grand plume of orange fire. A rain of steel assaulted the city below, crushing the stone to powder.
I bounced backward, my legs broken. They shifted back into working limbs as I fell downwards. I enhanced this loss of levity, my stomach rising in my chest. Beneath me, a spire whipped towards me. It made contact, my body too dense and too hard for it.
I impaled the tentacle, metal debris falling from the sides of the living spire. Like a juggernaut, I crashed through a stone building before landing atop two Hybrids carrying a kidnapped gialgathen.
They pulped under my heels, splattered into a fine mush from the kinetic blowback. The crater around me vaporized the espen carriers, their forms nothing more than red mist. The paralyzed Hybrid holding a gialgathen spiraled through the air, whipped into a barrel roll. It left fractures in the stone building. Slabs of stone collapsed as I walked towards it.
I reached out an arm and jerked it back. The holding Hybrid unlodged from the wall, the building collapsing in a plume of dust. I waved my hands outward, the brown cloud blown back by the wind. I reached out my hand, catching the incoming Hybrid and gialgathen.
The massive ball ceased moving the moment it met my palm, cracks erupting outwards beneath me. It's orange capsules pulsing, the head of the Hybrid remained. It let go of the Gialgathen, crawling out and away from the poor beast.
The Hybrid attempted dragging itself away from me. I walked up and stomped its chest, caving it in and into the dirt beneath me. Its head remained while gurgling orange blood. I reached down and grabbed the head. Wrenching it from its body, wires snapped and veins split.
I popped the skull of the monster in my hand, orange blood splashing over me. My armor devoured the blood as I peered towards one of the fighter ships. I roared for all to hear, my voice like a talking mountain,
”So you all want to pretend you're monsters?”
A singularity charged in my metal blood, energy emanating from my frame,
”Then let me show you what a real monster is.”