Devin studied the two sides of the conflict. The party of Lord Malcolm was down to seven – the Lord, a level nine sword wielder, four with chaos bolts, and a final level eight with a chaos bolt. It was a powerful group hampered by the loss of their chaos bolts.
On Hector’s team, there were eight combatants, most facing limitations. Devin himself was dangerously low on legal energy. Piercing no longer had a rune-reinforced blade that could deliver supernatural damage, meaning his contributions against Xian would be meaningless – the man's sword externality would have no more than mundane durability. Ajax wasn’t suited for distance attacks. Darius and Riley were being restricted by Hector’s blanket denial of chaos bolts. That left Isabel and Esther with their weapon externalities. Devin wasn’t sure how much Hector could do in direct combat against people at his level, especially given the need to tame chaos.
At first glance, it wasn’t a terrible match-up for them. Hector’s team had less reliance on chaos bolts. Yet the non-Xian elements were all low on energy. The Xian, other than Hector, were all under-leveled compared to their opponents. If this devolved into a battle of domains, as appeared likely, Devin didn’t like the odds. They would all die from cable strikes. Except Hector, of course. Lord Malcolm seemed determined to enslave him instead.
Devin maintained an active connection to Cruiser Erin, so he knew what was coming before it arrived. Everyone else was caught by surprise as Conflagration shot through Lord Malcolm like a burning meteor. An inferno consumed the Lord in an instant, incinerating every bit of the man. Devin’s lips firmed in a brief criticism of the sub-optimal choice made by the Sage. Surely he did not expect a Lord to expire so easily? The same attack could have instead eliminated two or three of the level nine retinue they faced.
Conflagration braked frantically like a rocket and managed to slow enough to not break any bones on landing. The Sage had spent himself down to almost nothing in his reserves, though. As he lay in a heap, Conflagration gasped for air without attempting to sit up.
While the enemy Xian were still reacting to the flaming attack, Devin wasted no time. He didn’t expect their opponent’s disorientation to be anything more than momentary. He supercharged another plasma beam with the very last of his reserves and put it through the eye of the level nine sword wielder. Considering the impact of Hector’s realm on chaos bolts, that man’s externality was their greatest problem – excluding the Lord, of course.
The Reality of Lord Malcolm’s death unwound before their eyes as the enemy swordsman dropped dead. An angry glow appeared in the shape of a man, then dimmed into the proper tones for flesh as the Lord reconstituted his body. Malcolm floated before them once more, unclothed and snarling in the rage one would expect from his sort. “You dare! I am five hundred years old! I was a founding member of Amarat! You dare strike at me? I will mount the skull of a Sage next to the Principal!”
The calculus of their fight was not hard for Devin to compute. Hector’s forces were at a severe disadvantage even with their foes no longer possessing weapon externalities and having their chaos bolts disabled. Once Xian cables came out, things would get nasty fast.
Fortunately, Hector wasn’t napping. He lifted Devin and Conflagration and shot backwards, calling for Isabel to get Ajax. His Xian allies skimmed the ground as they flew backwards. It was a standard retreat strategy they employed against troublesome monsters. Devin doubted it would be very effective against their current opponents, but they had to at least make an effort to avoid being encircled.
Sure enough, Lord Malcolm blasted past them to cut off their escape. The man’s retinue spread out to cover the flanks as well. Quick as that, they were caught.
Cables formed and swung down at them. Everyone was shouting, meaning the only person who could make sense of the cacophony was Devin himself, whose audio filters were able to separate out the various voices. Surprisingly, the team performed more or less perfectly for the situation – though due to the strength disparity, perfect was not good enough.
The blade of Esther’s sword was pointed down and away at a forty-five degree angle as it swung around their group, dispersing most of the cables whipping towards them. Isabel’s spear whirled like a fan above them, serving a similar function.
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Had their foes not numbered a Lord among them, the strategy might have worked. Instead, Lord Malcolm’s cables refused to disperse upon contact with either externality. Those powerful cables fuzzed slightly on contact with the weapons but continued downward to whip with vicious intensity. At the same time, the Lord’s underlings kept up such a volume of attacks that occasional strikes managed to sneak past the defenses. The results of those combined attacks were devastating.
Hector shielded the weak Conflagration with his own body. Devin sensed the shift of conceptual weight and understood Hector was reinforcing his physical form in a way that typically only Sages could manage prior to level ten. Even still, Hector’s flesh split open in bloody rents every time Lord Malcolm landed a blow. Nearby, the hardened skin of Ajax handled the strikes even worse.
Devin might be down to just fumes in his energy reserves, but his untiring mechanical body moved at superhuman speeds by virtue of its technology. He threw his entire weight behind his superconducting realm. Ultra efficient electric motors propelled him at speeds his cognition unit could barely manage to follow, allowing him to dodge everything coming his way. On occasion, Devin managed to strategically bump into teammates to move them out of danger as well.
It wasn’t a game they could play for long. Under the influence of his realm, Devin’s batteries stored absolutely massive amounts of mundane energy that could power his extreme level of activity for days. The others would not last that long.
Before desperation could drive Devin to extreme action, he noticed Hector making a move.
“Darius, remember how you handled One-Shot Jerry? Be ready in three.”
Then Hector counted aloud. Darius, ever a scowling cipher, gave no indication he understood the enigmatic statement in the slightest. Devin continued to dodge and weave through the battlefield, wondering if he should be prepared to back up whatever their leader planned. Hector, though well-meaning, was not a keen mind.
At the count of three, the thunder of a chaos bolt rang out. Devin caught the purple afterimage of the line extended from the palm of Darius to the chest of the weakest man on the other side – the level eight chaos bolt wielder. When the enemies attempted to shoot back, their own chaos bolts were nothing more than brilliant light shows, Hector having resumed the action of his realm.
The man who’d had a hole put through his chest fell from the sky outside of their attacking range, where he pinched together his flesh in what may turn out to be effective triage for a Xian. Whether that one lived or died, though, he was definitely out of this battle. That reduced the enemy forces to a Lord and four level nine wielders of chaos bolts.
Still too much for them.
A cry sounded as Ajax lost an eye. The Titan was a mound of minced meat seeping blood, one arm held pitiably over his face while the other hung over a gut wound that looked deep. Devin put the fate of Ajax from his mind. All that mattered was ensuring Hector escaped. This kind of confrontation was exactly why the retinue existed in the first place – so they could lay their lives down to give the Lord Dragonbane a chance to avert the doom of humanity.
Devin sent a coded broadcast on the channel with Cruiser Erin. “The situation is untenable down here. I am taking drastic action. My recommendation is for the Lord Dragonbane to escape by transit sphere. You will have to rendezvous as able.”
“Understood, Captain Devin. May your sacrifice never be forgotten.”
Hector and his retinue were soft, sentimental people. They would remember his act if they survived. If they did not survive, then the multiverse wouldn’t last long anyway. He had done his best for his entire career. When given the option to place humanity above the interests of Mercom, he’d made the fateful choice that could only end with him killed in action or executed as a traitor upon his return to Terra. Martyrdom was the less unpleasant outcome.
Devin dipped beneath one cable, side-stepped a second, and hopped over a third. As he landed, he squatted deep and then launched into the sky, becoming a projectile. In the blink of a mundane eye, he was on top of one of the four actively fighting level nine Xian in the Lord’s retinue. Devin slapped his palms onto the temples of the man’s head, extended the metallic spikes from each wrist, and fired a tenth of his remaining battery reserves while juicing his superconducting realm. His reserves were essentially empty, but Devin damaged his body aperture to liberate enough legal energy to make the attack really count.
Xian were unreasonably sturdy, so his victim would wake up in a bit, experiencing no lasting harm. For the moment, the enemy forces were down to one Lord and three supporters. Devin kicked off of the enemy who was dropping to the ground, spinning mid-air to wrap his arms around the next person in line. He fired ball bearings from each forearm turret as a distraction, bouncing the projectiles off the man ineffectually.
When the return strike came, Devin’s head flew off. That should cause the Xian to relax. Their kind never realized a mechanized cyborg had the thinking bits in the chest cavity. He engaged his self destruct function and willfully tore apart his body aperture further to donate a massive amount of legal energy.
His first opponent almost certainly survived the electric current through the brain. It would be poor odds to bet on this second opponent ever drawing breath again.
