“Valexar. The battle is already lost.”
“Tell me who they sent after me!”
“What of the Versal? Where is he?”
Valexar grit his teeth, staring daggers into the space in front of him, as if his wrathful thoughts could harm the Sovereign on the other side.
The battle with Iron Legion only continued to devolve. Sure, they managed to kill plenty of those soldiers and Flickers, but it was clear that ‘plenty’ was all they were gonna get. It was the most losses that Iron Legion had ever sustained in frontal battle, not counting those that had been killed by the Sovereign at the Line. Unfortunately, topping their previous record of near zero carried no pride.
The soldiers were just as unrelenting and sturdy as those tanks. They had managed to destroy 14 light tanks and 2 Superheavy Tanks. There were still another several thousand light tanks and another thousand or so Superheavy Tanks, and all of them continued to fire at full force, never once being disturbed. It was impossible to pry them open, impossible for anything less than an Authority 10 to do damage to its exterior. There were entire feet of reinforced enchanted steel to get through and the only reason two had been destroyed was because one of the Marshals had taken them out with its death throes.
It wasn’t even enough to dump poison and acids on them. The acids would turn inert after merely taking off the finish on the metal, and poisons couldn’t seep through since the tanks were equipped with environmental protections.
Valexar knew Iron Legion was difficult to deal with. He had seen memories of many hundreds of battles with them. He understood full well what he was facing long before they had shown up at his doorstep.
Seeing it in person made him realize how naive he was. Nothing could prepare him for the sight of them obliterating an actual army of Royals and Corrupted. He had thought he could break Iron Legion’s momentum with them. Even if not defeat them, at least wound them.
Now he knew they would leave this battle with nothing more than a few extra battle scars.
That wasn’t mentioning the Sovereign currently seeking his head.
Valexar checked the status of the aforementioned Versal. The half of his head that was blown off had already been healed, but he had remained entirely catatonic.
Valexar could admit some fault for that. He hadn’t checked the Versal for a while after he was teleported back to them. And it was only after he had been unresponsive for some time that he finally scanned him mentally.
That revealed the gift John Cooper had left behind, some neural stimulators especially targeted at pain receptors. His brain was lit up like a star. Even if he wasn’t at risk of death, Valexar quickly understood that he had experienced pain and sensations comparable to those delivered by a Death Shrine.
He felt pity for the Versal while wiping out the arrays, an emotion that was so foreign to him that he almost didn’t recognize it. Nevertheless, it faded as quickly as it came. It served that Versal right, being as arrogant as he was despite being from another world.
Perhaps it was poetic that it was another Versal who did that to him.
“The Versal is fine. So tell me which Sovereign is hunting me!”
“We believe it’s one of the Paladins. John Cooper likely got help, so long as your worries are actually founded and not just misplaced paranoia.”
“To call it misplaced paranoia is to believe John Cooper is less intelligent than our fodder monsters! Not even they would willingly enter a battle without at least comparable odds!”
“Well if you’re so concerned about there being another Sovereign, then leave your filthy fucking chambers and go find out. Hurry up and get the teleporter functional so the Versal can leave. Don’t drag the battle on so long that they manage to learn things they shouldn’t.”
With those words, the communication line cut, Valexar radiating such violent Psyka that some organic processor nodes outright exploded nearby.
He checked the progress on the teleporter. It was almost ready, not yet sabotaged and would likely be able to get at least one load sent off before it was detected and destroyed.
Unfortunately he wouldn’t be on it. Another reason why he crushed any possible pity he felt for the Versal experiencing the worst pain an organic body could feel. That arrogant prick would get to leave, and he wouldn’t.
He quickly redoubled his efforts, scanning through every inch of space around the Nexus to find that Sovereign.
He also let out massive pulses of Mana, driving some of the defensive enchantments once more. Although he couldn’t step out directly, putting more pressure on Iron Legion through the constructs around the Nexus was indeed possible. After all, he was a Sovereign of Mana first and foremost, not Psyka despite it being an expertise of his.
So long as he didn’t allow the enchantments to trace back to him, he would be safe.
Unfortunately, a sudden translucent blade of Vigor disagreed. Valexar raised every possible defensive barrier around himself, and before he knew it, everything exploded into severing lacerations of raw, cataclysmic power.
……
“He’s making his move!”
Umara shouted through the TACNET as the Nexus exploded with a dozen blades of Vigor, slicing the city into multiple pieces as if it were one large whole. Buildings fell with the sheer cuts, and behind the attack came a bursting source of Mana that flooded the entire battlefield.
Two more Sovereign Auras split the skies, Umara glancing to the side and seeing John cackling at the sight of their blossoming battle.
She tuned out his maniacal song and took stock of the battlefield. Losses had been sustained, but after eating the barrage of damage the Royals and Corrupted were able to dish out, they were able to break their momentum and dish it right back. The tide was returning to their favor and Iron Legion had long gone on the offensive.
Even before Anderson made his move, the Nexus had been falling apart. Now it was in literal pieces. The bombers and artillery were unrelenting, pounding buildings to rubble and rubble to dust. Ordnance fell from the skies unceasingly.
She didn’t have to worry about victory anymore. Ironheart was winning his battle, as expected, and the Generals knew how to take care of things themselves.
No, she had to figure out what she would do when everything ended.
She refused to look at John, shutting her mind to his Song and any other influence he may have over it. She knew he would be aware of any machinations she would devise if her attention was on him. Simply shutting her mind out was suspicious in itself but she hoped that he was still giving her grace as his wife.
She couldn’t be sure anymore though. She couldn’t be sure of anything with him. She didn’t realize how thoroughly his mind had been tampered with. She should’ve guessed it when he exposed to her the voices of the world. His mind was resonating with a layer of reality it shouldn’t be, opening itself to words and tongues his ears shouldn’t have ever heard. At the very least, it seemed he was right about one thing. They couldn’t get to her unless through him by virtue of their marriage. Still, that meant he was taking the full brunt of what could be considered a spiritual attack, despite its form being wholly incomprehensible to her.
She needed to get John to Maxwell. If that’s what he told her to do in his moment of mental respite, then she’d do everything in her power to do so. Hopefully Maxwell would be able to help him. If not, he’d probably know people who could.
Only issue was getting John there without a fight. The thought of actually subduing him gave her more stress than the two ongoing fights between Sovereigns right in front of her.
Their attacks rent the sky and turned the ground to putty as they drew scars in the world. Mana was so overflowing that Umara could barely sense hers, the Conceptual aspects lacing their powers stinging her senses. She could feel them knocking against her Great Barrier, could feel the pull of her own Conceptual affinities coaxing her into finally bringing down the last obstacle between them. Still, as she learned more about what was beyond the Barrier, she was able to feel the threat that lay beyond.
Not a threat in itself. There was nothing threatening about the Conceptual or the Horizon. No, it was the entities that resided within, both spiritual and physical. She had already outgrown the sea she was in, but jumping into that ocean meant she would open herself up to ‘interference’. She would instantly go from being an inconsequential ant to a genuine threat to those that mattered, and she couldn’t handle that at the moment.
Yet John had already opened himself to everything that she was avoiding. Somehow bypassing the protections of the Great Barrier, he tapped into the spiritual layer of the universe and listened to the sounds of power being spoken by beings they had no right communicating with. It affected him in ways he couldn’t understand and changed him without him realizing.
In a way, it made him significantly more powerful. But that just made what she had to do all the more difficult.
The battles raging around her seemed to fade from attention, even if she continued to participate. She killed anything that came near while doing her best to conserve energy. At the same time, she reached out to the others with some air magic, avoiding the TACNET as she used some special sound magic to speak words directly into their ears.
She made her plans, hoping that she’d be able to rope one of the Sovereigns into helping her. Like that, another couple hours passed.
Anderson was the first to make his kill. Although she noticed that a teleportation platform went off, likely sending away some of the more high value targets, that Sovereign wasn’t one of them and Anderson was free to slaughter the thing as he wished. The battle was short for one between Sovereigns, and Ironheart fought with even greater ferocity after seeing Anderson work.
Well, seeing was a bit of a stretch. The man couldn’t actually be observed, only his effects on the surroundings. Even after that Sovereign was killed, he never stepped out to be seen. He continued to hide, likely sifting through the Nexus for anything that could be of interest to the Order.
To his credit, Ironheart wasn’t far behind. It was only a handful of hours later that he finally managed to deliver the killing blow. He even managed to rebuff the attacks they left behind with their death throes, preventing any catastrophic damage to Iron Legion.
From there, it was just cleanup. The armies were obliterated and cut down by armored soldiers and raging Flickers in equal measure. The Scourge never had the advantage, only moments of greater resistance. The battle thus ended quickly.
But Umara’s heart never calmed. As Iron Legion stormed into the Nexus to continue annihilating everything that stood, she spotted Ironheart heaving for air off in the distance, resting and recuperating from nasty wounds across his body and armor. His battle was hard fought. He hadn’t even been injured like that during his debut battle.
That wasn’t good for her though. She spotted John riding a tank, about to enter the Nexus so he could scan through things. Umara was sure that the Nexus was a treasure trove, or at least before it had been leveled. She wasn’t sure how much actually remained. Even if John could recover some data and find inspiration in how that Sovereign’s Psykic fortress was constructed, it couldn’t be any better than what he had.
Most importantly, she couldn’t allow him to escape her and bury himself in work. Giving the signal to the others, she flew over there with some air magic and caught his attention.
“John!”
“Umara! Care to join me inside? I’ll need some help with some of that Sovereign’s constructs. Most of it is still driven by Mana.”
“I could help, but I need yours first. Come down here for a second.”
“What do you need help with?”
The Tank slowed as if he were controlling it. Umara could feel his Song exert its influence. The troops around him were moving by his will without either party even realizing he was doing it. It was uncanny how he moved in Umara’s eyes, the speed of his movement as he stepped off the Tank matching its treads.
He hit the ground with an easy hop, walking up to her. With every step he took to approach, Umara’s Mana circulated with greater force, her heart pounding in her chest. She did her best to prevent her anxiety from leaking, her face completely neutral, but she should’ve known better than to think she could hide anything from him.
“What are you so nervous for? We’ve just won the battle. I can assure you no Sovereigns are hiding in those ruins.”
“It’s not that…”
She muttered, seeing the other Desert Eagles rush over. John noticed too, of course. His head turned to them as they surrounded the two.
She looked up at him, feeling the difference in their sizes more than she ever had before. As her intentions toward him shifted, so too did her perspective. She didn’t think she had ever felt so threatened by him. That was despite having felt true anger from him before, and despite him holding none of it toward her in this moment.
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More Mana was wrapping around her brain than what was circulating throughout the rest of her body. She didn’t know if it would ever be enough, but it would at least buy her time.
She finally decided to speak, after he had already noticed something wrong.
“John, I think we should head back to the Capital. The Generals can wrap up the rest, and Sector 4 can sift through the ruins. The Scourge will need time to recover from this battle, so that gives us a window. Polly even sent a helicopter.”
He remained silent for several moments after she spoke, his gaze returning to her.
“...You know I can’t do that right now. Maxwell is more powerful than I can deal with. I need to prepare before I allow him to see me.”
“Honestly John, that’s exactly why we need to go, right now. He can help you. There’s no way you haven’t realized how much you’ve changed, and I refuse to believe you don’t remember what you just told me only a few hours ago.”
“...”
He didn’t respond, his head turning imperceptibly as Marshal Boulund arrived.
That’s when Umara noticed how quiet it was.
No bombs were dropping, artillery had stopped, there was no shooting or fighting.
Not even rolling treads. Umara glanced to the side and noticed all of the tanks stationary, all of their troops facing them.
It sent chills across her neck, her eyes finding John, still quiet.
“John, please. I’m your wife, and I’m trying to help you. If there was ever a moment you needed to trust me, it’s now. Come back with me to the Capital so we can see Maxwell.”
“...I’m sorry, Umara. I’m afraid I can’t do that right now.”
“I might be pleading, but that doesn’t mean I’m asking. You’re coming with me to the Capital. The only question here is whether we’re going to be cordial about this.”
“Hmm…”
He hummed, and suddenly, Umara felt his Song retract. He went completely silent, not a drop of Psyka flowing off of him.
His eyes met hers, and she noticed some arrays flickering in his pupils, dense with runes and sigils she couldn’t understand.
Until a helmet appeared on his head, making her body tense up. It was at that moment that John’s body twisted, his hand grabbing the tip of a spear headed for his abdomen. It stopped dead in its tracks, causing Feiden’s eyes to widen.
“Still too predictable, pretty boy.”
“Fuck, let’s do it then!”
He shouted and ripped his spear back out of John’s grip. At the same time, Blackblood jumped in with a cackle.
“We finally get to do it!”
“Umara, it’s a fight!”
Umara heard Tana’s shout, she and John glancing at each other one more time before she brought up her barrier.
“Fine. It’s a fight.”
“Our first as husband and wife.”
John chuckled while twisting his body. His leg spun around like a whip, slamming into Blackblood and sending him flying.
Before he could soar into the distance though, a massive dome of ice was suddenly conjured around them. It surrounded their area of battle, blocking out every tank and soldier in the area.
Umara silently thanked Marshal Boulund. He was capable of seeing what was wrong as well, and thankfully decided to help her, if only indirectly. She couldn’t blame him for not being comfortable with taking down John directly, especially in front of the Legion.
As Blackblood hit the dome of ice, John spun Totenstahl around. Finger on the trigger, his sights trained on him.
But then, nothing happened. Not a bullet was fired, and he cursed.
“Stupid. They’re fighting me and yet you won’t let me shoot them.”
He sent Totenstahl away after the weapon refused to fire, bringing out another. A model of shotgun she didn’t recognize aside from how high tech it looked, he dodged an attack from Tana before placing the barrel against her back.
She barely managed to twist a bit when it fired. An entire chunk of her armor was blown off with the blast, leaving behind a wound that made her scream as it festered with Psykic power.
Frozen in pain, he punted her away and reached out a hand, Blackblood flying back in.
As if he were delivering his axe to him, Blackblood’s weapon was gripped by John’s metal hand. He received his metal boot next, Blackblood forced to release the axe as he went flying once more.
That’s when Aria dove in, conflict all over her face as John swung his new axe down, clashing with hers.
“Stay out of this, girl. You can’t handle my attacks like they can.”
“Let’s see if you’re really able to kill me!”
Aria unleashed a flurry of Vigor and chops, and Umara joined her as soon as she found an opening. Multiple complex spells of water and spatial magic were woven together to form a flowing distribution of disruptive energy. She couldn’t use her normal methods of attack. They were far too lethal and she wasn’t trying to kill her husband outright. Nevertheless, getting him out of that armor first was their objective, and she needed to do enough damage to it to accomplish that.
She launched her attack at him, the bundle of energy snaking around his body and corroding his armor with micro-fissures and twisting space. Some of his armor outright disintegrated, but as she quickly found out, it was packed with so much Psyka that even that attack of hers was fast to fizzle out.
Ponteck jumped in right as she started preparing another. Building off of Aria’s attacks, he added in his own element of misdirection, bringing down his sword from multiple angles, anything to land a hit and catch John off guard.
It was a feat proven impossible when John used it against him. Releasing a clone, John raised two shotgun barrels and placed both of them against Ponteck and Aria’s heads, forcing both to dodge.
None of them realized that both ‘Johns’ were clones, and as they dodged, the actual John appeared above Aria.
He swung down atop her with both fists, slamming her into the ground before grabbing her neck. With his metal hands he ripped her helmet off her head and delivered a punch straight into her temple.
The clash of Psyka and Vigor that they both released created a shockwave that made John’s fist recoil. Seeing that, he simply brought his fist down again. And again. And again.
Completely ignoring Umara’s spells, he punched Aria in quick succession until Katta suddenly dove at him. He reacted by throwing Aria to the floor and spinning around to meet the crazy woman head on.
Katta had a wide smile as she threw her own punch, John meeting it with his fist, the two crashing against each other. It was clear John won by the way Katta was blown back, but with a laugh, she simply brought out an injector and stuck it into her neck.
The effect was immediate as her body was flooded with Vigor and Psyka. She dove back in, and Ponteck joined her.
One swung her fists, the other tossed aside his tricks and simply moved his sword as fast as possible. John weaved through all of their attacks like a choreographed dance, delivering his own blows with uncanny speed that should have been impossible for a summoner.
Even when Feiden joined in, using spatial folding to his advantage, John seemed to be clairvoyant. He used their habits, their little idiosyncrasies, and everything he knew about their relationship with him against them. There were no tricks before his intellect, no amount of feints they could perform, no level of technique they could apply to break through his defenses.
Even as Jaya, Ilinca, and Umara all slung their spells at him, even when Kwon and Song started chaining their attacks, even when the knights tried to dogpile him, he resisted everything with reactions and a flow of battle that they couldn’t understand.
And all the while, Umara felt his Psyka silently pervade all of their bodies. They all instinctively resisted, but she knew that he was utilizing powers beyond him. She could feel the Conceptual, the only reason she even detected his Psyka in the first place.
She didn’t know that was possible, to use the Conceptual without having broken the Great Barrier. Perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps he was being lent those powers. She knew his mind wasn’t exclusively his own, but she also didn’t want to believe he had made any deals either.
Or maybe that was simply a consequence of being exposed to what he had been. He had been observing powers beyond even the Great Barrier. That was bound to come with something, though she couldn’t understand how he had actually learned to wield it.
She didn’t know what he was preparing or what function that Psyka was serving within their bodies. Not until he finally spoke again.
“Drop it.”
Two words, and she saw Ponteck suddenly let go of his sword. Using that opportunity, he placed the barrel of his shotgun against Ponteck’s leg and blew a hole clean through his armor, causing the man to react with screaming, as Tana had.
Umara felt her neck tingle, John faking an attack toward Feiden with a clone, who reacted by zipping a dozen yards away.
With him out of the way, John aimed his actual shotgun at Jaya, letting loose several slugs. Somehow, his shotgun was automatic, and for a few seconds Jaya was occupied using all her mana to deflect his slugs. Even then, her barrier was shattered, both Umara and Ilinca saving her with their own.
They barely resisted his shells, and yet he was already onto his next attack. Perhaps his most diabolical move yet, she saw the glint of his SEER Knife as it sailed toward Kwon.
She couldn’t even shout toward him. The knife moved too fast, and Kwon was already committed to an attack he thought was going to catch John off guard. Before she knew it, his knife was buried in the other’s chest.
Kwon froze for a split second, Song following up by driving a knife into John's leg using all his power. The blade pierced through his armor cleanly, John speaking once more.
“Freeze.”
Song obeyed like his mind wasn’t his own, freezing for a split second, long enough for John to place his barrel against his chest. With a pull of the trigger and a burst of slugs, Song was sent flying. Thankfully it looked like the projectiles didn’t pierce his body, but when Umara saw him slump against the ice dome, she knew the consequences of tanking that couldn’t be good.
That’s when she saw movement though. She glanced back, and to her shock, saw Kwon reach up and grab John’s neck. Ripping the intangible blade out of his body, he slammed John into the ground with all his strength. Umara cringed at the impact, silently reprimanding Kwon. She didn’t need her husband to die, but then again, he did just stab Kwon with his SEER Knife. She expected him to go catatonic, not recover himself. She knew the pain was unfathomable.
Yet he shattered the knife and, like John did to Aria, ripped off his helmet. John’s neutral face was exposed, not a single emotion on it as he brought up a grenade between them.
The pin fell to the side, John’s hand releasing the trigger, the live grenade made of technology beyond their time hovering in front of their faces.
Kwon cursed, jumping away, yet John predicting just that. The grenade followed Kwon as John turned away, Kwon mobilizing all his vigor to resist as the explosion went off.
“Unlucky.”
Umara quickly cleared the dust, John standing with a new hole in his abdomen. Not even the exosuit could resist the shrapnel, not that her weakening the armor helped.
She grit her teeth, calling out.
“John! There’s no way you aren’t running on fumes now. Are you planning on killing yourself just so you don't have to go and see your mentor?!”
“I told you I’m not going, dear. I’m going to do what I need to so that I don’t.”
“So that’s a yes, then. You’re fucking impossible sometimes.”
She grit her teeth, genuinely angry now. He knew they wouldn’t deliver a killing blow. It limited the vast majority of their firepower. Exosuit or not, he was still a summoner. Hell, he was actively dying even now, a large hole in his stomach that he didn’t even care was there.
She still had plenty of Mana, hadn’t even used a fraction of it. The others were mostly fine as well. Perhaps wounded, but their energy pools combined vastly surpassed John’s, especially since for the most part, all of them were an Authority higher than him.
That he could fight them off like he had was asinine. It wasn’t like he was going for lethal blows either. Thankfully he retained enough of himself to spare their lives. If he were trying to, at least a few of them would die in this battle. He could’ve killed Aria while he had her neck in his hands, that much Umara knew.
She cursed before shouting.
“Just pin him down! I’ll handle his explosives!”
Feiden was right at John’s throat with her words. If they had to brute force through his protections, then Feiden was prepared to do just that. He drove his fist into John’s chest with all the power he could muster. John couldn’t completely dodge in time, eating most of the force and having no choice but to reinforce his crumbling exosuit with Psyka.
It was weaker than before. His reserves were dwindling. Umara pressed harder with her spells. She might wound him, but that could be healed. So long as he wasn’t dead, she could heal him herself later.
She continued to annihilate his armor bit by bit, spatial fluctuations shattering it on an atomic level and turning it to dust.
Feiden wasted more of his energy with constant attacks, as did Katta and Ponteck. Even Song joined back in the fight after recovering, working with Kwon and refusing to give John even a tiny fraction of a second of breathing room.
If not for the situation, Umara would think that John’s way of weaving through their attacks and still managing to dish his own was an art in itself.
But she was too pissed off with the grenades he threw out. They threatened to remove either his head or theirs. She was forced to wrap each of them in barriers, either trying to destroy them first, contain the explosions, or simply chuck them out of the fight. Unfortunately his timing was always perfect. She managed to save everyone, but not without wounds.
Still, they wore him down before he could bleed them out.
Feiden threw yet another punch, and this time, John went flying instead of staying rooted. Tana caught him before pinning him to the floor, giving him a few good punches to the head when he tried to resist.
Umara ran over, seeing John barely conscious. Despite how much it pained her though, she still brought out a grenade of her own.
Specially designed with John’s own psychic formations, it was built for this explicit purpose long ago. John knew the kind of threat he posed. He gave it to her just in case she ever needed to put him to sleep the hard way, like she did back at the Island of Continuance.
Only issue was that he could resist it now, requiring her to burn through his energy first.
He stared at her, still struggling as she pulled the pin and placed it next to his head.
They met eyes before it went off, his body suddenly going still.
“Thanks, babe.”
It detonated right after his words, a small, localized wave of Psyka snapping through his brain and knocking him out. For good measure, it left behind an array around his head, one that displayed an easy to read clock that ticked down on a timer.
According to it, she had about 30 hours before his natural regeneration gave him enough power to resist the array as it weakened. She had to get to the Capital before then, which wouldn’t be difficult.
And with him finally asleep, everyone sighed. Umara looked around, seeing all the wounds everyone sustained and thinking it was the best case scenario.
“Hehehehe, nice fight, young ones.”
All their heads snapped to the side, seeing Anderson standing there, clapping and grinning. She sighed again, still on a hair trigger.
“You couldn’t have helped?”
“And rob you all of the chance to fight him? Please, it’s about time you understood how weak you all are. He gave you all this much trouble, by himself, while being an Authority under the worst of you. Do you have no shame?”
Umara’s mouth snapped shut. Well when you put it like that…
“Just get the kid to Maxwell. Seems that set of arrays will keep the voices out of his head for long enough, so I don’t need to help. Now, I need to clean up. Two Sovereigns dying in a single day doesn’t happen very often, and I didn’t exactly tell the Pope I was helping out here…”
Umara stared at him flatly.
“I didn’t see anything.”
“Eh, I’m getting chewed out anyway. You kids have fun.”
The man disappeared with that, Umara sending a signal to Marshal Boulund and having him release the ice dome.
Having Feiden carry John, she headed toward the incoming helicopter set to take them to the nearest teleporter.
“The rest of you, get healed up and stay with the Brigade. We might be gone for a while.”
“Punch that asshole for me when he wakes up.”
She smiled a bit at Kwon and nodded, boarding the helicopter with Feiden and Tana, all four of them taking off.
