Chapter 37 – Aurora

Doc worked quickly, minute threads of vivimancy twitching beneath his fingers. Cat groaned and tossed while two revolutionaries held her limbs still. There hadn’t been any time to numb her body.

It wasn’t his best work. Amyra would have called it sloppy. He had already thrown ‘good’ out of the window. He would have to settle for ‘alive’.

The bullets had been extracted. Now it was only a matter of halting the bleeding and stitching up the wound.

Frost shifted from foot to foot, anxiously glancing around. Imwe was trying to herd her army back together, but a large portion had already dispersed. Not only that, but a web of lightning had just danced across the clear sky.

“Um, maybe I should go check on the others,” Frost said. “What if they’re in trouble, y’know?”

“Yeah, sure,” Doc grunted. He didn’t have the focus required to pay much attention to what the lubbard was saying.

Frost ran off. While Doc was still working on the first wound, at the base of her stomach, the army began to move.

“Sorry, guy,” said one of the revolutionaries holding Cat. He let go of her and stood. “We’ve gotta keep moving.”

“Yeah,” the other said, joining his comrade.

“Wait!” Doc said. “Just a few more minutes. I need you to hold her down so she doesn’t hurt herself.”

The revolutionaries looked at each other and shook their heads. “Sorry,” the first said.

They started walking away, and no manner of pleading would convince them to stay.

“Futs it all,” Doc muttered under his breath. He put a knee over Cat’s legs to keep her still as he continued working on her.

He finished with the first wound, leaving an ugly scar, as the last of the revolutionary army disappeared from sight. Looters were already digging through the piled-up corpses, and lesser demons had crawled out of alleys and sewers to feast on the abundance of dead flesh. Small, twisted creatures with a variety of extraneous organs and limbs, lapping eagerly at the freshly spilled blood as they giggled with glee.

He hoped that neither party would turn their eyes to the living next.

One of the looters rolled a corpse off a pile a few meters to Doc’s left and began picking at an Ironheart.

Suddenly, the construct came to life and grabbed the looter by the throat as it rose to its feet. With a quick twist and a nasty crack, it broke the man’s neck, then threw him aside.

Doc let out a low gasp as the construct scanned the empty battlefield. He let himself slump over Cat, playing dead.

I can’t let this thing notice me, he thought. Cat’s in no position to fight, and I’m useless.

The construct noticed a revolutionary who was slowly crawling away. One of the man’s legs was shredded from half-a-dozen bullet wounds. The construct calmly approached him and stepped on the man’s back, crushing his spine.

Then it began walking away.

Doc let out a breathless sigh.

Cat whimpered with pain, her eyes screwed shut.

The construct turned with a whir of machinery and began limping back towards the two of them.

“Oh, frick,” Doc whispered.

Sensing that the ruse was up, he stood, blocking the thing’s path to Cat with his own body. He looked around for help, but all nearby looters were running for cover, and any revolutionary still well enough to stand had already gone.

The construct was only meters away, getting closer. Doc looked pleadingly back at Cat, but she was barely conscious. She wouldn’t be getting up.

“I can’t fight,” he said. “I can’t. I took an oath.”

The Ironheart didn’t carry any weapons, but Doc had just seen it kill two people without one. He’d never outpace it, either—not while carrying Cat.

He knelt in front of the fiery-haired girl and weaved a spell, quick as he dared. He made a field of glowing green energy between his hands and tied it to a beetle scuttling nearby. He set the beetle atop her wound and disabled all three legs on one side of its body so that it dragged itself in circles on her skin.

An automated healing spell. Sort of.

It would take a little while to work. He had to buy some time.

Doc stood up and let out a big, weary sigh.

“I’m sorry, Amyra. I wish there was another way.”

The construct was almost on top of him.

“Groa, Rova, Bloki,” he said.

His senses flooded with new information, his muscles strained with new strength, and his doubts were lost amid a flood of new conviction.

The Ironheart threw a punch. Doc caught it in the palm of his hand, twisted the robot’s arm around so that the joint popped. It stumbled back, its arm dangling uselessly, and let out a low, garbled growl.

Doc raised his fists. “Come on, you metal mothertrucker. Show me your worst.”

***

Cat struggled to stay conscious.

She tried to roll over onto her hands and knees but could only wriggle uselessly. She tried to move her arm but managed only a twitch of her fingers. Pain coursed through her entire body. Doc’s glowing spell eased the pain in tiny increments, second by second.

She watched uselessly as Doc fought the construct in front of her. He was big and strong, but he was on the defensive as the Ironheart rained kicks and punches. The man had barely fought anyone in his life—he was too raw.

I need to get up, Cat thought desperately. She wanted to cry out, cause a distraction, but managed only a hoarse whisper.

The construct feinted with a left hook. When Doc went up to block, the construct lashed out with a swift kick that took him in his midsection. The big man doubled over, mustaches quivering. The construct walked over to a pile of dead revolutionaries and pried a fallen rifle from the grip of a cold corpse.

Cat rolled over, crawled towards the robot.

“No…” she whispered.

The Ironheart unloaded half a magazine into the old man. He fell forward, riddled through. He breathed raggedly for a few moments as a pool of blood grew underneath him, whispered a few words that she couldn’t decipher, then went still.

“No!” Cat screamed.

The Ironheart turned the gun on her.

She rose up and stumbled towards the robot. She shoved the gun upward just as it opened fire, causing the bullets to go uselessly into the sky.

“Hryna,” she growled, sticking her hand to its chest.

Superheated plasma dug through the chassis all the way to the core. The Ironheart shook spastically, trying to aim the gun at her. Its grip slackened, and the weapon slipped from its hand. It fell backward, landing on the ground with a dull thud.

Cat stumbled. She fell on one knee, crawled over to Doc, got his blood all over her clothes. She rolled him around on his back, took the healing spell he had given her, and set it on him instead.

The bug crawled around on top of him surrounded by its green glow, circling his wounds and slowly repairing the flesh. He still wouldn’t breathe. She blew into his mouth and pushed on his chest as his wounds closed up, but he just wouldn’t breathe.

She kept it up for several minutes. No change.

Cat let herself rest on his rapidly cooling chest. She sobbed amid a sea of corpses while demons feasted.

“You did good, old man,” she whispered. “I should have saved you. I’m sorry. So so sorry.”

***

Aeva put her hands on Linton’s shoulder. A gentle light enveloped them, and when she pulled back, the nasty stab wound was replaced with smooth, unbroken skin.

“That’s some power,” Linton said, sitting on a wooden box. He reached up and touched Aeva’s forehead. “That’s different.”

Aeva touched the Crown. It did feel different. She took it off to look at it and found that it had become a band of thorns, dark wood flecked with green moss.

It felt right.

She put it back on.

“Guys!” Frost called in the distance. They both watched him approach from the other end of the street. He was breathing hard when he reached them. “Deep Gods save me, too much… too much running today.” He took a moment to catch his breath. “Something’s wrong.”

“What do you mean?” Linton asked.

“Something big. Coming this way.”

Linton closed his eyes and folded up his legs. Aeva craned her neck to see whatever Frost was talking about, but the skies were clear.

A low, distant rumble sounded, even, sustained. Growing louder.

“Oh, fuck…” Linton mumbled. “You weren’t wrong, Frost. That is big. That must be…”

A massive silhouette came into view overhead, gliding in from the west. Aeva slowly became aware of its true scope as the thing sailed over them, throwing everything into shadow. It was some sort of ship, surely hundreds of meters from bow to stern, exquisitely crafted from silvery metal, without any seams as if it was all one piece. It was curved and fat like a whale, with a flat top. Numerous slots and gun ports breached its hull in the lower sections, too many to count.

“The Flagship Aurora,” Linton said. “Codes, I never thought he’d be so bold.”

“What is it?” Aeva asked.

“Trouble.”

The great guns of the flagship swiveled and opened fire, carpeting an area a few blocks ahead in explosions that rocked the ground and threw up clouds of dust. Screams could be heard in the distance. Smaller fighter ships launched from the flagship and zipped down into the city.

“Imwe’s people won’t survive that for long,” Linton said. “Aeva, you just killed a god. Think you could take care of that?”

Aeva looked down at her hands, electricity dancing between her fingertips. “I… I do not know. That is awfully large. It would take time.”

“Give it a shot.” Linton was already half-jogging down the street. “Couldess just put us on a tight schedule. That ship is your priority now. Frost and I will go ahead, hopefully make it to the Arcanex in time. If you see Cat, point her in our direction. If you sink that thing, consider the promise you made me fulfilled.”

Aeva nodded. “I can do that.”

After Frost and Linton left, Aeva made it up to the roof of a nearby three-story building by clambering up the side. It gave her a good view of the carnage unfolding below, a ragged army of revolutionaries battered by explosive missiles, cowering under a ragged shield of hardlight and starry fabric. Entire buildings had been blown to rubble. She saw civilians amid the ruins.

Aeva set her jaw and began gathering energy from the skies, the Crown acting as a perfect lightning conductor.