The statement—and realization of the truth of it—was enough to shut everybody up, at least for the moment. Would they be dooming the entire universe, a vast number of worlds—if Tomorrow was to be believed—by freeing Genesis from the dungeon. Then again, if Terminus was any indicator, that had already happened.

  Instead of dooming the universe, would we—and everybody else—have a chance to save it?

  Hiral didn’t have a chance to pose the question to the rest of the group, however, with Yanily speaking up.

  “Something’s moving through the clouds,” Yanily said. “Approaching fast.”

  “Squids?” Seeyela said at the same time Seena asked, “From where?”

  “Not squids,” Yanily said, his arm lifting his spear to point directly ahead of them. “The storm isn’t any dirtier than usual.”

  “I didn’t know you could feel things through the storm clouds,” Hiral said while his attention scanned the surface of the clouds ahead. Eyes and sensory domain both swept back and forth, but the floor of clouds blocked both of those senses as sure as stone would.

  “Neither did I,” Yanily said, his face serious. “Whatever these are—more than one, I’m sure of it—we’ll see them soon. They feel strong.”

  “Path of Butterflies,” Hiral told the double seated behind him, and the party had the pink energy freshly flitting around the bottoms of their feet a second later.

  Also, not a second too soon, with four shapes bursting out of the clouds a mile distant.

  “Contact,” Hiral said since the others didn’t have his level of Atn. “Straight ahead, one mile. Coming right for us. I’m not getting friendly vibes from them.”

  “Got them,” Seena said, her eyes quickly finding the racing shapes leaving canals in the surface of the clouds as they raced toward the party. “Too fast for our mounts to outrun. Dismount and wait for them to come to us. Hiral, if we need to leave, get us out of here.”

  “Got it,” Hiral said. Beneath him, Drake slowed before dispersing into a forward-flowing cloud of bone-colored fog, leaving Hiral and his two doubles jogging across pink planes in the sky. At his sides, the party likewise dismounted—though the Skybikes took a few seconds longer to vanish—while they all stood watching the four coming their way.

  Forged of crystal, the image of the construct that had originally Separated Hiral came to mind. However, these things would stand twenty feet tall—if they weren’t flying horizontally—with a long, thick tail trailing behind. They also had six arms instead of four. Two arms from the shoulders, as normal. Two more from the sides of their ribs, reminiscent of a Pilgrim or the crystal golems Hiral was familiar with. The final set of two arms, though, originated from around the shoulder-blade area, bending first back before stretching straight above the shoulders. These arms didn’t have hands, either, unlike the others, but instead ended in what unmistakably looked like Hiral’s RHC barrels, albeit somewhat larger. As for the heads of the constructs, they reminded Hiral of Yanily’s Aspect in a way. Somewhat draconic, but with a maw too narrow to really be the same. Maybe a cross between a bird’s beak and a dragon’s mouth, all made of crystal?

  Whatever way he looked at it, they weren’t smiling.

  “If they try to talk to us…” Seena started.

  They didn’t.

  Barely a thousand feet away and moving fast, the four constructs opened fire with their shoulder-mounted weapons. Blasts as big as Hiral’s fist rocketed from the cannons, the air around them rippling from the sheer power, directly for the flat-footed party. The barrage even made it a solid two hundred feet before they crashed into a wall of Rejection to splash their payloads across open air. The constructs weren’t far behind, though their combined weight and force shattered the quick shield in a scene like shattered glass.

  “S-Rank,” Hiral said, his own RHCs in hand and aiming at one of the four streaking toward him. Fingers on the triggers, he didn’t wait for Seena’s command to counterattack—it would be coming any second now—and opened fire with his Edict-empowered weapons.

  Shots with the appearance and power of his previous A-Rank death beams lit up the sky with tunnels of white and black. At a speed even Hiral would have trouble dodging—without his pseudo-aspect—the bars of light connected with his target within a single, racing heartbeat.

  With the constructs at S-Rank, a single blast from one of Hiral’s RHCs would be uncomfortable, though not particularly dangerous. Two, painful. At four, some of the forward momentum fell beneath the barrage. Six formed hairline fractures, while the seventh knocked a tiny fragment of crystal flying free.

  Too bad for the construct, Hiral fired ten blasts. From each RHC. Per second. All of them striking true, even as the beast realized the danger of face-tanking them, and tried to evade. To Hiral’s increased Atn—his pseudo-aspect activated in a whomp of power—and his even higher Dex, there simply wasn’t any dodging. Every single blast hit its target, the construct’s attempt at dodging even exposing it to an extra second of damage as it stopped to evade in the other direction, while its allies bull-rushed into the line of the party.

  Romin in his powerful Onslaught mode still got pushed back by the even-larger construct towering above him—for the moment—while Yanily and Right moved to intercept the other two. Neither of the warriors could match the constructs for size, but all they needed to do was put a layer between the titans and the backline casters of the group.

  An Aspect gripped spear parried a powerful claw swipe, before Yanily ducked to the side to dodge one shoulder-blast, then another. Two more parries successfully deflected another pair of claws, but even Yanily could apparently only have his spear in so many places at once, the fourth and final claw streaking for his head.

  For the spearman’s part, it was like he didn’t even see it coming, his spear moving from defense to offence in one fluid motion. Or, maybe he was ignoring it? Hoping for mutual destruction.

  Turned out it wasn’t either of those things, with a Bamf depositing Seeyela and her crossed Fangs of the Lady in place to block the strike. With the woman standing less than six-feet tall, and likely weighing less than a wet towel, that particular method of defense didn’t seem the wisest. Except, as a curved buckler of black formed in front of her crossed weapons, it was the towering giant that came to a grinding stop. It’s claws, S-Rank and forged of a crystal similar to Hiral’s weapons, shattered against the incredibly dense barrier Seeyela had erected.

  At the same time, Yanily continued forward, body relaxed like he was taking a leisurely stroll across the open sky. Along his arms and shoulders, lightning coiled before racing down the spear twisting in front of him. When he struck, it wasn’t a Skyfall or Dragon Breath, but instead a simple, lunging thrust.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Tempest Roar, an S-Rank existence itself, pierced the crystal shell of the construct to drive three inches deep. A bare, shallow wound to the twenty-foot monstrosity casting a long shadow. Then the lightning came. Not from above, since there were no clouds up there, but instead from below.

  Dark storm clouds bubbled and then burst, releasing a forty-foot-wide bolt that unfurled into a scaled claw of pure electricity. It covered the distance in the same time it took Yanily to withdraw his weapon, both him and Seeyela vanishing into curtains of black an instant before the claw struck.

  Reaching the construct, the powerful fingers enveloped it, crushing it beneath its digits as violent lightning cascaded within. The whole sky lit up in a kaleidoscope of light, the constant energy flashing out from between the fingers, or refracting through the one, crystal arm extended out at an odd angle.

  Nearby, Right had delayed another construct long enough for Left to arrive and offer his assistance. One armed with the Spear of Clouds, and the other his Auroran Conquerors, the pair bobbed and weaved around each other, deflecting claws and countering with blows that boomed like thunder.

  One, two, Right’s left-right combo blasted away two streaking claws, while a wheel-kick smashed the whipping tail back the way it’d come. Left slipped into the opening, the tip of his spear jamming into the open palm of the next sweeping claw. Arcs of lightning snaked up the arm, holding it in place firmer than even Tomorrow’s brass could hope to. Behind the double, the other claw came, only to get intercepted by a pack of S-Rank, spined wolves emerging from The Pack tattoo.

  Powerful jaws lined with dagger-like teeth closed on the streaking arm, more pink planes ready and waiting to receive the wolves holding back the strike.

  There, with all five attacking limbs accounted for, Left extended his free hand toward the vulnerable—and very close—chest of the giant construct. Around his spread fingers, a nimbus of color glowed fiercely, before dozens of beams of piercing light practically sprayed from his hand.

  Way of Light struck the construct point-black with nearly forty-beams of thumb-thick energy. Empowered by the Seeker’s Regalia and its ability to increase the power of Left’s tattoo’s, the beams struck like angry drills, boring into the crystal laid bare before it.

  Further off, Romin had used his ability to match his opponent’s size—something he didn’t need Hiral’s help for with something this… small—and went in swinging. Relying entirely on his powerful defenses, Romin wasn’t bobbing and weaving like Left or Right. Nor was he using agility and skill to effortlessly deflect every blow coming his way. No, Romin, he took it on the chin, literally in some cases, and just kept going.

  With the powerful natural hide of a Reinforced Runeocerous and the added protection of his Armor of Tomorrow’s Sentinels, the construct might as well have been hitting a wall with a paper bag for all the good it seemed to do. Still, even Romin was taking damage from the pummeling, which only fueled his The Best Defense… and turned his hooks into devasting blows.

  “I won’t even try to block, but you will fall first,” Romin promised, his Lost Chord of the Primal Oath taking the words as his bond. As long as he held to his promise, he would see increased power. Breaking it, however, would come with drastic consequences.

  If the construct understood the Bonder’s words, it didn’t show any sign of it, laying into Romin with four arms and two cannons. Even its tail swept around to slam into Romin’s ribs, sending the Onslaught staggering to his side. One step, two, three, then Romin turned and charged back in, showing why his form had the name it did.

  Horn laced with Impact and fists the size of boulders—and twice as hard—hammered into the construct, staggering it back. And that was just the opening act, one more uppercut blasting it a dozen feet away. The perfect position for an orange mist to wash over it. Then, before the construct could even wonder what it was, the mist ignited into a roaring, sticky flame.

  Completely coated, the construct erupted from tip-to-tail, consumed by the Pollenuption. Not that that was any reason for Seena to see if she couldn’t make it burn more, the sky around her filled with lances of fire compressed to plasma. Chained behind her, the full-size Ur’Thul bestowed his power upon his Mistress, and with a flick of her fingers, the lances rushed forward.

  The cacophony of explosions shook the sky while Hiral continued to pound his target with blasts from his RHCs. Every pull of his trigger connected him to his target like a string was attached for the full three seconds it took the construct to reach him. By that time, it had lost both of its cannon arms—Hiral having specifically fired his own shots down their barrels to rip them apart—along with its left foot, one of its right arms, and several of its clawed fingers. There were also chunks of its torso missing big enough Hiral could stick his hand in and rummage around.

  That damage didn’t seem to be enough to stop the thing, though, and it arrived in front of him with a sweeping claw coming down at him like an avalanche.

  Sheathed in his pseudo-aspect as he was—more than doubling his attributes—Hiral let go of his RHCs and reached up with his palm swirling with runic power. Gravity in the opposite direction took most of the bite from the blow, while Impact and Decrease reduced the power of what was left, letting him outright catch the thing’s wrist. In the second it took to process how something as small as Hiral could match its strength—not that he actually did—his other fist lashed out.

  This one coated with Impact and Increase, along with an unhealthy amount of Piercing, Vibration, Compression, Expansion, and Breaking, slammed into what would pass for the construct’s gut. A line of resonating force plunged directly in where his fist connected, tiny blades of Separation shredding everything along the path, to blow out of its back. Crystal shards soared into the air in a wide arc, but—again—damage didn’t seem to slow the thing.

  Despite having one arm held firmly by Hiral, another claw came from the other side. Ultimately, it had more hands than he did. He wouldn’t be able to catch them all.

  He didn’t even try. Holding one of the right hands with his left, he lashed out with a side kick, meeting the incoming strike with the same cocktail as before. Even as the limb got repelled, Hiral pivoted to use the same leg for a front kick to deflect the next claw coming from the thing’s right side. No sooner had it also been blasted back, than Hiral brought his foot up, tucked his knee, then struck out with a third kick.

  This one, following the same path as his punch had, doubled down on that same runic cocktail as the previous blow. With the second impact, so much crystal exploded off the construct’s back, Hiral could’ve gotten inside and ridden it around like a suit of crystal Mecha-Armor.

  That damage finally seemed to be enough to make the construct stumble. To pause. Just for a second. Which was exactly half-a-second more than Hiral needed to appear in front of the construct’s face and slap his hands on either side of it. As soon as his Seeker’s Gloves touched the crystal, he let loose with Vibration, Increase, and Breaking. For the other half-second, the construct tried to resist the power not just of his runes, but also of the Edicts he’d called on.

  Tried, and failed. Spectacularly.

  There was a whine, a crack, and then the entire head exploded in a shower of crystal fragments Hiral rebuked with a casual flex of Rejection.

  With the decapitation—could it even be called that?—the construct’s whole body went slack, then began to drop from the sky. It wasn’t the only one, with three others also falling. One still on fire. One sparking with electricity and trailing thin lines of smoke. And one that looked like the cheese Seena liked so much that was full of holes. And, did it have a black eye?

  “What am I even doing here?” Laseen said with a cackle, though she had needles and thread connecting to both Romin and Seeyela. Pulses of solar energy from the healer took care of the small wounds the pair had.

  “Were those the Raze?” Yanily asked. “Fits what we saw on the stage, but, uh, if that’s all they’ve got, I don’t know what we were worried about.”

  The words hadn’t even left the spearman’s mouth when Hiral felt a surge of energy beneath him. Not just the solar kind, either, with runic energy rushing up and meeting the four falling figures. No sooner had it reached them, then all the damage the party had just done vanished in a heartbeat.

  Cracked crystal mended. Holes filled. Shattered sections regrew. One even had a previously missing head regenerate out of its neck. Just like that, the four constructs were perfectly whole once more, and they shot at the party for round two.

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