Chapter 153 - One Against Many

The floating lanterns flew through the air, rushing away from the tavern in all directions.

Chief Bear had held back from ordering an assault on the tavern. This was an area controlled and likely prepared by Jintang specifically for battle. He wanted to ambush Jintang as soon he stepped out of the tavern. In that situation his forces would have the advantage of cover, range and angle.

“How’s the perimeter?” Bear asked the lieutenant beside him without taking his eyes off of the wandering lanterns.

“No signs of disruption or planar rifts. The tavern is a closed space.” The officer said. “We didn’t find any secret passages out of the basement, either. We have officers posted at every corner.”

“Then he must still be in there.” Chief Bear muttered.

No matter how he tried, Chief Bear couldn’t understand what Jintang was trying to accomplish with the lanterns. The more time passed, the more he wanted to order his officers to storm the tavern, but that seemed exactly like what Jintang would want and expect.

“All units hold.” Chief Bear gritted his teeth, “Stay clear of the lanterns, keep your eye on the tavern.”

~

The Chief’s words were conveyed through the teams, who were posted in various places around the block. The officers spaced themselves out, hiding around corners or in the windows of the adjacent buildings. A number of the officers were on the roofs, sprawled out on the other side of the triangular peaks with their heads peeking over top.

The lanterns flying around were making the men and women antsy, but Chief Bear’s orders came in clear - Do not engage, stay clear of the lanterns.

Hold.

One officer had his eyes locked on the side door of the tavern, his hand gripping the stone baton in his hand so tightly that his knuckles were white. He was on edge, not just because they were about to engage the highly respected and revered Chief Fang, but because he wasn’t even able to use his regular weapons.

He ducked behind the corner as a lantern flew by in the street, hiding in the shadow of the alley.

Cold sweat dripped down the back of his neck, soaking into his starched shirt collar.

He was so focused on the door and the floating lanterns that he didn’t notice an unlit lantern approaching from the alley behind him until it rounded the corner.

It spontaneously burst into roaring flame, filling the alley with a blinding fiery light.

The officer’s spiritual intuition flared up as he instinctively spun around and opened a rift in space. A tear in space split the flaming lantern in half, but it continued to fly toward the officer in pieces.

He dodged out of the way, pulling out his stone baton to face off against the lantern pieces.

All around the block, the officers found their locations exposed by flaming lanterns as the quiet night suddenly came alive with shouting and motion.

With the lanterns spread out through the alleys, inside the buildings and on the rooftops, the area directly around the tavern was cast in darkness. In the midst of the confusion no one noticed the dark-clothed figure who slipped out of the back door of the tavern.

Jintang Fang moved at calm, but brisk pace through the shadows. His eyes shone with a cold glint as he brandished his black metal nightstick.

Two officers in the sheltered alcove had just dealt with a lantern, when another pair of lanterns flew down from the sky and flared to life. Their eyes whipped up to look at the flames.

At that exact moment Jintang rounded the corner. He whipped his nightstick down at the base of the first officer’s neck. As the officer collapsed, he smashed the jaw of the second one, ducking low to gracefully avoid the rift that sliced open the air at head level. The officer’s knees blew out one after the other as Jintang finished them off on the way past.

An officer was peering out a second storey window when his spiritual intuition rang out. He dodged to the side, shooting his arm out to activate a stasis field just as a metallic spear blasted through the wall. The spear and the splinters around it froze mid-air.

A hand burst out from the floor, grabbing onto his leg.

He let out a cry of fear as he was dragged down through the floorboards.

The lanterns continued their frenzied flight patterns, seeking out the officers and exposing their positions moments before they were taken out by Jintang’s swift, merciless attacks.

In the second storey room overlooking the front of the tavern, a junior officer stumbled through a rift with a frantic look in his eyes.

“We’re being decimated!” He reported without even standing up as he quickly shut the rift behind him, “The traitor is using the lanterns to hunt us down!”

“The lanterns are a distraction!” Chief Bear growled, grabbing onto the arm of the lieutenant and pulling him to his feet, “Get back there and assist your team!”

The junior’s lips quivered as he trembled violently. He couldn’t refuse the direct order, but his body was frozen in fear.

Chief Bear saw the terror in the junior’s eyes and shoved the officer back with a frustrated yell.

“Ignore the lanterns and stick together!” He sent out his commands as he stormed over to the window. He thrust out his palm, causing a number of lanterns rushing at the window to blink out of existence. His eyes darted around the block, but he couldn’t make out anything in the chaotic scene. “Someone get eyes on Fang!”

~

Jintang traveled quickly and purposefully, not wasting a single movement as he cleaned up the rest of the team that was positioned around the rear of the tavern.

Each officer was taken care of with surgical precision. He disabled their limbs with rapid strikes from his night stick, many times incapacitating them before they could react. An ever-growing cloud of shrapnel followed him, cleaning up in his wake. After being disabled, the time-aspected Chroniclers were immobilized with metal bands and stapled to the ground or walls. The space-aspected Astromancers had their eyes sliced out.

Jintang traveled in the shadows, which he controlled by manipulating the lanterns around the area.

After the first eight officers, a number of them abandoned their positions, opening rifts and escaping to a warehouse on the south side of the tavern.

“Clear out the area!” A lieutenant ordered, sweeping his arm dramatically toward the stacks of crates and boxes. They began rapidly disappearing through rifts as he turned to his team, “Spread out, stay away from the walls.”

“We can’t stay here! He’ll just chase us down!” An officer cried out, “C team is already gone!”

“We still have the number advantage.” The lieutenant gritted his teeth, “If he’s coming for us anyway, we have a better chance fighting him together in an open space. One hit from a stasis or rift tear and we’ve got him.”

~

Up on the rooftops, Jintang struck down an officer, sending him tumbling down the slanted roof amidst a rain of clay shingles. The yet untouched Chief ran across the roof, throwing his metal rod out to the side into the night.

He leapt across a gap in the roofs, coming face to face with an officer wielding a stone baton. The officer yelled, rushing at Jintang. Crackling electricity sparked across various parts of his body as he swung at Jintang.

The cloud of shrapnel behind Jintang dispersed in a sphere around him as he dodged the series of attacks, avoiding contact with the sparking officer.

“Got you!” The officer’s eyes lit up with victory as he grabbed onto Jintang’s arm. With a roar, the officer’s entire body lit up with an explosive lightning blast.

The Chief’s skin shimmered like liquid metal as the blast was redirected through his body and out into the widening shrapnel sphere. The impressive attack fizzled out in a disappointing crackle as the officer’s grin instantly disappeared from his face.

On the other side of the rooftop a Chronicler thrust out his arms with his fingers spread to cast a stasis field around Chief Fang, when a black metallic rod arced out of the sky and smashed into his hand. The Chronicler staggered backward in pain as he gripped onto his shattered wrist.

His eyes snapped up as his spiritual intuition triggered, only to see Chief Fang snatch the nightstick out of the air mid-leap and smash it down at his temple.

~

The officers in the cleared out warehouse trembled, their eyes scanning the room franticly as they heard the muffled sounds of battle outside. They hadn’t heard from Chief Bear in several excruciatingly long minutes. Though the thought of fleeing passed through their minds, none of them had the guts to speak out.

“Where’s the Chief?”

“He’s got something planned, I know it.” The lieutenant in charge said with forced confidence, “If he needed us to be out there, he’d have issued us orders, so we’re exactly where we need to be.”

The nine fear-stricken officers glanced at each other with nervous grins as they nodded, “That’s- that’s right. We just need to stay sharp!”

A frantic shout caught everyone’s attention as one officer pointed at the row of windows along the long sides of the warehouse. “The- the windows!”

The night outside lit up with fire as numerous lanterns flew up to the warehouse.

“They’re just a distraction! Ignore them!” The lieutenant called out. “Francis, Sue, I want a slow bubble around us to stop any lanterns or metal that enters the warehouse. Devon and Wing, you’re on sweep duty. Everyone else, focus on taking down the traitor!”

The shadows cast by the window frames began to rotate as the lanterns outside started revolving around the the warehouse. The long, black shadows flickered across the sandy floor, passing over the officers who subconsciously began backing away from the walls toward the centre of the warehouse.

“Steady!” The lieutenant said in a clear voice as he turned around, but he was unable to track any meaningful motion outside the windows.

“Steady!”