227 - Disarming

Mane gave Lexie an indulgent smile like one would give to a kid who’d just said something silly.

In fact, a few of the staff did the same thing, and Theo even ruffled her hair as Mane said, “Let’s go inside. The cook made some apple pie, plus that custard you like.” 

He turned away toward the door, and the staff started to disperse. Theo whispered in Lexie’s ear, “We’ll talk later,” even as he started shepherding her inside. 

They'd instantly dismissed what she said.

Only two people seemed to be taking Lexie seriously. Her father and Torin.

Her father gave her a look of caution. 

Torin was staring at her… well, like Torin. Like he was trying to see through her skull. 

“I’m serious,” Lexie said loud enough to stop Mane in his tracks. “Where is Stella right now? Or when you spoke to her at least?”

Mane’s eyebrows raised. “Last I  knew, she was in The Shatters. That’s where the worst of it is.”

Lexie knew where that was.

The Shatters, also known as the Shattered Expanse, was a city in the country of Burel, which was in District 4.

District 4 was the smallest of all the Districts, but it had once been the bedrock of civilization thanks to its numerous dealings with the Guardians. It was said that the District was protected by the most powerful of the Guardians: the Guardians of War, Guardian of Wealth and Commerce, and also the Guardians of the Sky. The leaders of the major tribes were said to have had dealings with those Guardians since the beginning of civilization.

The issues started, though, when the very Guardians began to fight with themselves and used the humans in their proxy war.

Tribes like the Kippas, who were mostly the inhabitants of Burel, and Hunts, who were in neighboring Carel, continued to worship and do the bidding of the Guardian of War, while others splintered between the other two Guardians.  

The Fae coming to Earth and locking away the Guardians was meant to put an end to conflict, but that was like putting a Band-Aid on decades of hostility. It remained, simmering under the surface, resulting in a tenuous truce between tribes that now found themselves as part of the same national identity.

As the tribes built into countries, the region was peaceful for some time, but it was constantly threatened by famine, high corruption from the officials who had been busy robbing the state coffers while everyone was distracted by war, and rampant tribalism.

Even as time passed, a new ideological split began to form within the countries between those who wanted to return to the old ways of magic and those who preferred the cleaner, though less powerful, Fae magic.

The ideological differences were compounded by all the other factors, and smaller disputes had broken out in different countries. After Burel had followed the regional trend of outlawing all occultism (any non-system magical or religious practices), there were routine bombings of different governmental areas in protest.

It culminated in a highly destructive mana-bomb, which was dropped in one of the biggest outdoor markets in Burel. Though they eventually suppressed the rebellion, Burel never quite recovered from that, and the city had been mana-poisoned ever since.

What was once a busy, high commerce area now had abandoned buildings, with the ground showing cracks everywhere, earning the name the Shattered Expanse. 

The Shatters was not a place for a regular mage to go to. Due to the mana-poisoned atmosphere, it affected many heroes’ powers, and only tech-based heroes and powerful Elementals like Stella Firebringer could operate there.

Nevertheless, that much mana poisoning for that long could not be good for anyone, not even Stella. Mane was right to be worried, not to mention Stella had probably been working hard for months now.

Lexie had enough power to solve the problem. So why not just do it?

The issue was that she didn’t know exactly how to get to the Shatters. The way her teleportation card worked was similar to how Cece’s teleportation worked. She had to run calculations and figure out variables, which meant that she needed to first have a clear image of where she was going.

She’d seen the Shatters before, in pictures while in school, but she didn’t have a clear image of it in her head. It wouldn't have been a problem if she still had access to Yasycht because then she would just use Stella's essence to find the place, but until she found his access point in this world, she was out of luck. 

Maybe Mane would know.

“Have you been to the Shatters before?” Lexie asked him at the same time she heard her father speak in her mind.

Lexie, what are you doing?

She ignored him, listening for Mane’s answer. 

“I have,” he said. “Once. I accompanied Stella there on a peace-keeping mission. 

Absolutely not. Do you hear me? You’re not going to that place.

“Interesting,” Lexie responded to Mane. “Do you by any chance have a picture of the place in your head?”

“Wait, you’re serious?” Theo’s jovial expression dropped. “Are you seriously thinking of teleporting to the Shatters right now? Because that's not happening.”

“Don’t you want to see your mom? What if she’s in trouble?”

“She’s not.” Theo, like Mane, sounded very much like he was trying to convince themselves more than he was trying to convince Lexie. “I’m sure she’s fine, but you're going there…you realize the entire atmosphere in The Shatters is poisoned, right? The air isn't good for mages, and my mother is there because she's a Firebringer and a bit less susceptible to the poisoning than others." Because the Firebringers and other Elementals were amongst the only mages who did not need external mana, and could produce mana solely from their souls.

So could Lexie.

“I’ll manage,” she said. "Now, Mane, if you could just picture the place while I form a small connection with your mind–”

“No," Aiden spoke up for the first time, his tone final.

Leixe sighed and turned to him, “Dad–”

“Dad nothing. The answer is and will forever be, no.” 

Lexie didn’t like hearing that word directed at her. She bristled underneath her father’s bossiness, but she resisted the urge to stomp her feet.

That would only make him see her as even more of a child. 

Instead, she tried to reason with him. I want to help Stella. It’s okay if I get in a fight. It's good, actually. For my Eldritch side. 

He frowned at her, and the murmurs around them started as the spectators realized that Lexie was actually serious about what she said, and she wasn’t joking. 

Aggression and violence all feed my Eldritch light, she told her father. Makes it stronger. Whereas, I can use my soul card to make my human stronger, so I don't go fully Eldritch. Both sides have to be balanced, I think, for me to become what I have to be. So this is one way to feed my Eldritch in a way that doesn’t get me in trouble. I get to beat up bad guys, and Stella comes home. Isn’t that a win-win?

I doubt Vacek will see it that way. 

I think he will. But we don’t have to tell him 

Aiden arched an eyebrow.

“Why are they just staring at each other?” Nathan murmured to Mide.

“It’s a battle of wills,” Mane said. “Seen it many times between my wife and our little Thor. Stella has only won an astonishing three out of ten times.”

“That’s better than your loss rate of five-nothing,” Theo quips and whistles when his father shoots him a look. 

Aiden finally released a breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fine. I’ll show you, but you have to take me along.”

Lexie had no problem with that. "Do you know where it is?”

He nodded reluctantly. 

A beat of silence followed, and Mane stared at the two of them, shocked. “Wait, you two are serious.”

"Apparently." Aiden met Mane’s gaze. “I’ll explain everything when we get back.”

"Hang on, Aiden–"

They didn't wait for him to finish. Lexie held her father's hand, and they both disappeared. 

It was actually Aiden doing the teleporting, but Lexie knew that the others would assume it was her. He even had an accompanying Light show that mimicked her card magic.

They disappeared and appeared somewhere that was ungodly hot.

Right in the spray of gunfire.

Lexie instinctively activated <All Around Shield> before she could even make sense of the situation.

She took note of the environment, the gray sky, the foggy, choking atmosphere amidst the rubble that was ripe with humidity, the thinness of the air, and the mana.

What little mana there was felt sharp and almost stinging to her pathways.

It wasn't enough mana to activate half the cards she had. She had to pull on but the mana within, so she turned down her mana-reduction card to accommodate it.

But Lexie also realized something.

She didn’t feel like she was dying. Even as she turned up her Eldritch mana to at least the midway point, she didn’t feel that sensation of breathlessness…interesting. 

But also, that made this more exciting for her. 

Lexie glanced around at the assailants hidden behind debris and the ruins that were likely once buildings. They were dispersed on both sides of her, probably representing two different teams. There were more bullets than people she spotted, until she realized some of the assailants were hidden by invisibility mechs, but not very good ones, because they glittered and Lexie could see their obvious outline. 

"We should go," Aiden warned her. “If I attack, I'll risk getting exposed."

“Don’t worry,” Lexie said and smiled at him. “I’ll protect you.”

She was about to activate her VOID FLAME to clear the entire area when Aiden held her shoulder. 

“Don’t kill anyone yet," he said. "Not until we get a read of the situation and know what’s going on. If I'm right, this is a scuffle between the Asmadi's and the Hunts. But we're not sure yet what led to it."

Lexie glanced around. It seemed pretty easy to read. Two sides were shooting at each other. They wanted each other dead.

But how was she supposed to know which side Stella was on?

"Who are the good guys?" Lexie asked Aiden.

"It's war, Lexie. There are no good guys." He cocked his head. "Conversely, there may also not be any bad guys."

"But which sides are the Heroes on?"

"I don't know. I'm guessing, in a way, both."

Well, that didn't help her.

Old Lexie would have started attacking and asking questions later, but she didn't want to do that, at least not with her father here.

Lexie decided to ask the good old-fashioned way. 

She activated <Can I Have Your Attention> as well as <Return to Sender>, using the latter to freeze all the bullets in the air. She expanded the influence, stretching across the entire expanse she could see, up until the point where the ground gave away into a giant gorge.

The card heated up to the breaking point, but it didn't break. Not yet, anyway.

"Pushak?"

Lexie's earth translator wasn't working yet, but she picked up the shock in the stranger's voice. He was one of the ones wearing the mechs, and shouting began as people finally stopped to take notice of her. 

“Have any of you seen Stella Firebringer?” Lexie asked, quite politely, she might add. “Her children are looking for her. Also, her god-daughter. Who is me.”

That only triggered more aggressive shouting.

One side started shooting at her madly as though she wouldn’t just freeze their bullets too. 

She returned some of their bullets at them, but only to their feet to appease her father. The men jumped back when the bullets exploded at their feet, hissing as they oozed poisonous substances. It got on someone's boots, and he screamed as it burned through.

Oops. 

Lexie turned to the other side, who hadn’t been shooting. Some of them wore military uniforms. Stella was probably with them if they were official military. Right?

“Where is Stella Firebringer?” Lexie asked. 

One of them said something, and Lexie turned to her father to translate. Her father translated and said, “They're asking who you are."

"I'm Lexie." She turned back to them. "Take me to Stella."

The group replied even more aggressively.

“They said no,” her father said.

Lexie stared at her father as a grenade was thrown at her.

She caught it with her forcefield, splintering it with Pvilycht's power before it detonated.

She learned she could do that with mechs once she interacted enough with the item or with the users of the item.  

As she had more things thrown at her, she focused on the mech suits some of them were wearing. She dismantled them so they fell around their feet.

She also systematically shattered their guns.

One by one, she trapped their attacks and disarmed them. The whole thing took less than two minutes.

That shocked everyone, even Aiden.

She stared back at the men.

The men pulled swords and daggers, but they didn't yet seem to have the boldness to come close.

"Where is Stella Firebringer?" Lexie asked, adding some authority to her voice. "And keep in mind, everything I did to your weapons, I can do to you, too."

They looked to each other, talking and gesturing wildly, some making religious gestures on their chest and forehead. Lexie sighed and wondered if she should just unleash the V'Sala to scare them a little into compliance.

Finally, one of the men in a military uniform pointed to the left to the gorge. 

“See? That wasn’t so hard.”

With their stupefied silence in her wake, Lexie floated with her father above the rubble, over to the gorge that was pointed out. From her vantage point, she saw the fighting was spread out farther than she'd anticipated over what looked to be half the entire city.

But the chaos seemed centralized in the gorge.

It was difficult to even make heads or tails of the skirmish. At least five giant mechs walked through the crowd of colliding bodies, clashing weapons, guns, and forcefield shields.

The giant robots were rolling slowly, but every once in a while, they would target in the distance and shoot a bomb that would rip through the atmosphere and make the mana in the atmosphere even more painful to use, not to mention destroying the Earth itself.  

One of the mechs was on fire, but it wasn't being burned. The other was systematically being trapped by the earth, but it kept breaking through. A huge, muscular, dark-skinned man leaped into the air, roared, and tossed a series of large boulders at the mech's head, followed by a thunderous punch.

It was a bad idea to get in close contact with the robot because it backhanded him across the field.

Ouch.

"Groundsmage!"

The hero gave a thumbs-up even as he crashed onto the ground.

The scream came from the center, and Lexie finally spotted Stella. While she was keeping the flame going with one hand, she was engaging in combat with at least five other men.

Lexie analyzed the scene and decided it was pretty clear that Stella was fighting on the side of those in the military uniforms.

The problem was that they were outnumbered.

Their magic was limited by the atmosphere, and their enemies had more numbers and weapons, which, while old-fashioned, were deadly effective.

"Systems communications down,” Aiden said. "Which means they can't call for help."

"So I was right,” Lexie said. Stella had been in trouble, and if Lexie hadn’t come here, Stella would have been dead. 

Or maybe not, because despite the lack of mana in the atmosphere and being outnumbered, Stella was raining fireballs at her enemies. She was maintaining flames in more than a dozen locations, driving back the skirmish.

She was being conservative with her attacks, though. Lexie could tell because she knew Stella could do more than this.

Lexie didn’t know if it was because she was conserving mana or if she was trying to limit the casualties. She was also shooting with a gun at the same time, so there was that. 

Lexie was eager to jump in immediately, but she took a second to consider what the best course of action would be here. 

She could probably decimate the enemies using void bullets, but maybe there was a good reason Stella and co were mostly focusing on destroying the mechs.

Lexie couldn't interact with them from this distance. So she simply created five huge balls of void, pointed in the right direction, and blasted right into the center of the mechs.

It phased through with a little echo.

The mechs froze with the craters in their chest. They died without any warning.

The fight didn't stop yet, though.

A few people glanced at the mechs in shock and confusion, but they continued their skirmish until Lexie started disabling their guns one by one.

She was simply pointing and dismantling them in their hands, and at first, people would stop and stare around them, but after it happened enough times, they finally started searching for the source of the confusion.

And they spotted Lexie floating above with Aiden.

The fight slowed down and then came to a screeching halt as more and more people stared up at Lexie.

Lexie continued dismantling weapons, somewhat disappointed with this kind of resolution. It wasn’t as much violence as she wanted, but it would have to do for now. Maybe if things escalated, and once she figured out who her enemy was, then she could go full out.

Then again, maybe not.

Humans were more fragile than all the other creatures she'd faced in the dungeon. She might have to do something else to fulfil her Eldritch side.

"Lexie?" Stella finally called out amidst the yelling, and she used fire-fllight to zoom up so she could meet her in the air. "Is that really you?"

"Yeah." Lexie focused on disabling the guns, feeling a little awkward now that she was facing her godmother. "Mane and the kids want you home, so I came to get you."

"Oh, Lexie." She grabbed her close and hugged her tightly. Her suit smelled like dust and blood...but also like her perfume. "I'm so happy to see you! Even if I'm very confused as to why and how you're here. And how you.." She looked back at the mech. "I thought that a Shadowbane had shown up or something, but the mechs...that was you, wasn't it?"

Lexie nodded.

Her eyes widened. "And the guns?"

"Also me."

"Amazing." Stella shook her head, then she ran her hands over Lexie's cheek. "I can't even ask how you–Oh, you look awful. You need to eat something, hon, and this is no place for a child. And you're so..." Her eyes teared up, her smile watery. "I'm just so happy to have you home."

Lexie nodded, and the Groundsmage yelled something at Stella.

"Yes, it's him," Stelle said to answer. "It's the Archmage. He's here with his daughter."

The man said something else that made Aiden almost smile, and Stella glare at him.

"It's not his power. It's hers," Stella said. "Listen, Lexie, I'm happy to see you two, but you need to get out of here."

"Not without you." Lexie spotted someone who looked like Flora.

"You don't understand. Things have gotten out of control."

"All the more reason for you to come with me."

She shook her head and gestured to the ground. "I can't leave them. They have no one left."

Lexie looked. The people had stopped fighting without their weapons and were now looking at each other and Lexie in confusion.

"If I ended the fighting in, say, the next hour or so, would you come with me then?"

"Yes but Lexie..."

"This isn't something you can just blast your way out of," Aiden continued. "This is centuries of conflict boiling over. You can't just disarm everyone and call it a day."

"I know," Lexie said. "Just stay put. I'll be back."