Chapter 684: Doom Executioners
The twelfth day of the Mountain event began with an announcement.
It rang through the perception of every soul on the field at once, the same way the event’s notices always had. But this one carried a weight the others had not.
[Final Wave incoming.]
[The Doom Monarch has committed his elite. Five Doom Executioners advance on the Star Mayhem Mountain. Each Executioner carries one and a half billion combat power. Each will hunt the strongest powerhouse of an allied force directly. All forces are warned. This wave will decide the event.]
[Estimated arrival: five hours.]
The notice faded.
On the southeastern arc, the Suryax-Regalon leadership gathered around the command projection. The numbers from the last battle still glowed above the Mountain, with Suryax-Regalon in first place. The Titans had been eight hundred million each. These were nearly twice that, and there were five of them, and they were hunters, not siege engines.
"One and a half billion," Aryan said. He had run the comparison already. "Each one is worth almost two Titans. And they will not march. They will pick a target and go for it."
"The strongest of each force," Big D said. "That is how the notice reads. Five Executioners, and they each pick the strongest powerhouse on a force and hunt them down."
Marcus frowned. "There are only four forces left."
The room went quiet for a moment as the math settled.
"Five Executioners. Four forces," Rudra said. "One of them has nowhere to go."
"It goes to first place," Lily said. "It goes to us."
Almond nodded slowly. He had already reached the same conclusion. "Thalmyr gets one. Virexion gets one. Celestara gets one. And we get two. Because we are at the top, and the event is making the top pay for it."
"Double pressure," Aryan said. "While the other three each handle one, we handle two at the same time."
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then Almond looked around the gathered leadership, and there was no doubt in his face.
"Then we plan for two."
---
They had five hours, and they used every minute.
The plan came together fast, because the leadership had been fighting together long enough that it did not need long. Two Executioners meant two kill teams, but two kill teams against one-and-a-half-billion-combat-power hunters meant every member of the alliance had a role, and the role had to hold even when people started dying. Because people would die. Against this, no one pretended otherwise.
That was where Almond mattered most.
"You all know what I can do," he said to the assembled commanders, the Suryax generals, and the Suryax King himself, who had come to the front for this. "If you fall, I bring you back. It is not free, and it is not instant, but it works. So I need you to fight like you can afford to fall. Do not hold back to stay alive. Hold nothing back. Falling is recoverable. Losing is not."
The Suryax King studied him for a moment. Then he nodded.
"My people will fight the same way," he said. "We awakened our Geneline for this. We will not waste it standing behind walls."
The two kill teams formed.
The first team would take the first Executioner. Almond would anchor it, with his Grimblades and Spirit Lords, supported by Lily’s debuffs and Dreadlings, Silvester and Hiroshi on the flanks, and Maya hunting for the openings. Natalia and Kayla would run the predictive and thread layers across both fights at once.
The second team would take the second Executioner. Rudra would anchor it, with Ainen’s flames, Marcus holding the line, the Suryax King and his strongest generals channeling their awakened Geneline, and the ten Asura Executives committing fully.
Saffa, Clovelle, and Fraisea would not just run support this time. They would fight. The wives had spent two months building the kingdom’s war machine, and they knew its systems better than anyone. Saffa would turn the defensive grid into a weapon, Clovelle would bring the Skydread fleet down into the fight directly, and Fraisea would deploy the captured-and-rebuilt enemy technology the alliance had been hoarding. Gopu would hold the command platform and the engines, and if either Executioner came near it, he would fight too. He had trained Vokren. He was not weak.
The army would hold the Doom tide that would come with the Executioners, the same way it had held the tide beneath the Titans.
The Discord Bloom weapons stayed in the vault. Even now. Even for this. Three rival alliances were watching, and the weapons were the one secret worth more than this single event. The alliance would win this with everything else it had.
The five hours ran out.
---
The Executioners came over the ridge alone.
No tide preceded them this time, though one followed. Five figures crested the inland ridge and stopped, surveying the Mountain, and even at that distance their presence pressed against the entire field like a hand laid flat against the chest.
They were not giants. That was the first thing everyone noticed. After the Titans, the mind expected something enormous, and the Executioners were not. They were humanoid, medium-sized, no taller than a large man. They wore close-fitting dark armor with no wasted bulk, and each carried a single weapon, a long blade of dark metal that drank the Mountain’s light. They looked almost ordinary.
They were the most dangerous things anyone on the field had ever seen.
For a moment they stood at the ridge, and then they moved, and the moving was wrong. They did not march. They did not charge. They simply crossed the distance, each one streaking toward a different point on the field, and the speed of it tore the air.
One went west, toward Thalmyr-Ronethis and Tessovaen Ire.
One went east, toward Virexion-Kezryx and Jaskrit Kezinos.
One went northwest, toward Celestara-Dravokh and Joaka Nel Fein.
And two came southeast.
Toward Almond.
---
The first Executioner reached the southeastern arc before the dust of its approach had settled.
Almond met it in the air.
His Grimblades came up in a wall, dozens of them, and the Executioner went through the wall like it was not there. Its blade moved faster than the eye could track, splitting Grimblade after Grimblade, and it closed the distance to Almond in the time it took him to register that the wall had failed.
He brought Abyssbreaker across to block.
The two blades met, and the force of it threw Almond backward through the air, his arm screaming from the impact. The Executioner pressed in, relentless, its blade a continuous line of dark motion, and Almond gave ground for the first time in this event, the wall of Grimblades reforming around him only to be cut down again and again.
This one was fast. Faster than him.
"Lily," he said.
She was already moving.
The first Executioner’s blade carried it forward, and as it pressed Almond, the Wheel of Achromatic Shade turned behind Lily. She had been watching the Executioner since it crested the ridge, perceiving the way it moved, and now the Wheel reached out and stole the one thing that made it lethal.
It stole its speed.
The Executioner’s next strike came at a fraction of the velocity. Almond blocked it cleanly this time, and for the first time the hunter was the one forced back. Lily took the stolen speed and gave it to Maya.
Maya became a blur.
She had been waiting for an opening, and now she was the opening. She crossed the arc faster than the Executioner could track, her exotic ice driving into the gaps in its armor, frost spreading from every wound. The Executioner turned to cut her down and she was already gone, already behind it, already striking again.
Silvester and Hiroshi closed from both flanks, their blades crossing through the Executioner’s guard, and the Spirit Lords’ domains pressed down on it, and Almond’s Grimblades stopped trying to wall it and started to converge instead.
The Executioner fought all of them at once, and for a while, it held.
