Affinity: Chaos

Chapter 2127: Shifting Tide(GT Bonus Chapter)

The noise across the Ninth-stage battlefield had begun to thin. Explosions no longer overlapped quite so constantly. Longer gaps of relative quiet opened between clashes, filled only by the dry wind scraping across the sand and the occasional grunt of effort. Human figures pressed forward more often than they were driven back. Gnome auras flickered and went out one after another, each disappearance leaving a small, visible hole in their formation.

When the fifth Ninth-stage Sovereign Gnome collapsed and did not rise, the remaining Gnomes faltered in a way that needed no announcement. Shoulders hunched. Steps became shorter. Eyes flicked toward the open desert as if searching for an exit that no longer existed.

Grey felt the change in the pressure of the battlefield. The humans here could finish the rest without him. The Peak Sovereign battlefield still needed him.

He appeared at Reynolds’s side, who was locked against a single Gnome. The instant Reynolds registered Grey’s presence he drove a sharp surge of lightning into his opponent, forcing the Gnome several paces back across the cracked ground.

”Going back?”

Grey gave a short nod. ”Handle things here.”

His figure dissolved into empty air, leaving only a faint shimmer that the desert heat quickly swallowed.

The Gnome facing Reynolds watched the departure with narrowed eyes. For a heartbeat his hand twitched toward the space where a puppet would normally form. Then the memory of the day’s losses stopped him cold. Too many companions had fallen to that same silent, invisible strike. He kept the puppet sealed and returned his full attention to Reynolds, who was already pressing forward again.

...

On the Peak Sovereign battlefield the air still carried the sharp scent of scorched earth and residual elemental force. Heat shimmered above the sand even at this stage of the fighting. With Grey gone, Odelia stood alone against two Peak Sovereign Gnomes. Every movement pulled at the ruined flesh of her right arm. Pain flared white-hot whenever she raised the limb, yet she kept it moving, using it only when absolute necessity demanded.

At first she managed to answer their attacks with equal force. After several minutes the balance tipped. The two Gnomes began to dictate the rhythm, driving her steadily backward across the cracked desert floor. Her breathing had grown ragged. Sweat mixed with blood on her skin and dripped onto the sand, where it dried almost at once under the relentless sun.

One of the Gnomes carried a pale scar above his right eye. The other, the same Gnome Grey had been fighting earlier, wore a long, dark trail of blood across the front of his robes.

”Kill her quickly before the boy returns,” the blood-stained Gnome said. His voice was tight with urgency. ”He’s too difficult to deal with.”

The scarred Gnome’s gaze lingered on Odelia’s face and form. ”I want her.”

”I’m not interested in arguing over who makes her a puppet. Just end it.” The blood-stained Gnome lifted one hand. Thin black tendrils extended from each fingertip. He flexed them in a short, rhythmic pattern.

At the spots Odelia had stood a moment earlier, long tears opened in the air itself, invisible blades that sliced through space with a high, thin sound like tearing silk. Any one of them would have bisected her. She twisted and dropped, the edges of the spatial cuts missing her by finger-widths. The displaced air left a faint, cold sting across her cheek.

While her attention was locked on those invisible blades, the scarred Gnome traced a slow circle with his index finger. Wind gathered beneath her feet, spinning faster and tighter until a full tornado erupted. It seized her before she could leap clear and yanked her upward into its roaring core. Sand and debris whipped around her. The world became a howling tunnel of force.

Both Gnomes watched the funnel swallow her. Satisfaction had only begun to settle on their faces when a single snowflake drifted past the scarred Gnome’s eyes. He reached out almost idly to catch it. More flakes followed, soft and silent against the desert heat, settling on his outstretched palm and melting almost at once.

The tornado froze from the ground upward. Ice raced along the spiraling winds, locking them solid in a matter of heartbeats. The sudden drop in temperature was sharp enough to raise goosebumps even on the Gnomes. Cracks spider-webbed across the entire frozen structure. Then it shattered, raining sharp ice fragments onto the sand with a sound like breaking glass.

Odelia stood in the center of the wreckage, chest heaving. Sweat and melting ice mixed with the blood still seeping from her ruined arm. The fight had already lasted longer than her body could easily sustain.

The two Gnomes exchanged a brief glance and struck again without speaking. Wind blades howled toward her from one side, their edges glittering in the harsh light. From the other, a long snake of condensed darkness uncoiled and slid across the ground, fangs bared, leaving a trail of black residue on the sand.

Snow already blanketed the immediate area of their battle, muting the usual glare of the desert. Odelia drew on her water element and the edge of her domain, trying to freeze the snake in place. The moment the snow touched its black scales, a thick cloud of dark gas erupted around the construct, shielding it from the cold and hissing softly as it rose.

She did not pause. A broad blade of ice formed in her left hand. She met the snake head-on while a thick wall of ice rose in front of her to intercept the wind blades. The wall shuddered under the first impacts but held.

The scarred Gnome’s lip curled when the barrier refused to break. A massive arrow of pure darkness coalesced in the air before him and shot forward with a low, hungry whistle. It struck the ice with a dull thud, yet the wall neither cracked nor splintered. Instead the arrow simply dissolved on contact, thinning into a wisp of black smoke that drifted away on the wind.

The Gnome’s smile never faded.

A second later a small hole appeared in the center of the ice wall. The hole widened rapidly, as though something were eating the ice from within. Wind blades that had been blocked moments earlier poured through the growing gap once more, their edges singing through the air.

Odelia’s options narrowed to almost nothing. The darkness snake still lunged for her throat. The wind blades now had a clear path. She could not stop both.

She set her jaw, coated her body in a thin film of protective ice that cracked and reformed with every breath, and committed everything to the snake. The wind blades would have to be endured.

Her ice blade descended in a single, decisive arc. The snake parted cleanly into two writhing halves that hissed and dissolved into black mist. No wind blade touched her.

She turned, chest still heaving, and saw Grey standing a short distance behind her. One hand was raised. The remaining wind blades hung frozen in the air as if the desert itself had refused to let them pass.