Web of Chaos - Chapter 28: A Thousand Blades - Part 2

Akari stood with her back to Kalden’s, cycling spacetime mana through her channels. The snow stung her bare feet, while her dark hair thrashed in the mountain wind. Puffs of white air blew out through her nostrils.

‘They’re trained to work as a team,’ Kalden said through their bond. ‘We need to separate them.’

He was right. She’d been ready to gang up on Thorne or Knox, but the others wouldn’t twiddle their thumbs while that happened. Several more images flashed through her mind as Kalden showed her where to place her portals.

Akari stretched out her arms, unleashing a hail of spacetime Missiles like silver sparks. The sparks formed domes around her teammates; three-dimensional portals that swallowed them whole.

Arturo moved deeper into the forest where he could cause trouble with his weapons. Kalden appeared by Knox, while Akari and Zukan emerged a few paces behind Thorne.

The red-haired woman whirled to face them, unleashing a blast of stone mana from her hand. Space warped in front of Akari as she caught the projectiles and sent them toward Knox on the other side of the battlefield. She never could have kept these angles straight on her own, but Kalden fed her a constant stream of intel, and she knew exactly where to aim. 

“We’re gonna do a Portal Slam,” she told Zukan as she blocked two more attacks. “I’ll distract her while you sneak around.”

“Copy that.” The dragonborn slipped between two thick pine trees, leaving Akari alone with the stone artist.

Thorne raced forward in a blur, covering the space between them with terrifying speed. Clouds of dust gathered around her, pressing against Akari’s portals, worming through the gaps.

Not good. Clouds like that could blind, deafen, or suffocate a person. Akari knew that from personal experience. And Thorne was a Master; her clouds were big enough to bury buildings.

Akari stretched her portal wider, but the dust slipped around the edges, attacking her face like a storm of razor wasps. The grains burned her skin like sandpaper, while more threatened her eyes and nostrils.

She cycled spacetime mana through her channels, activating her father’s Cloak technique. Space warped around her body, and her head flickered like a broken computer screen. The dust swirled around her in a thick brown haze, but it couldn’t make contact.

Her opponent closed the distance an instant later. Stone mana grew around her body like volcanic skin. Spikes of jagged glass jutted from her fingers as she slashed at Akari’s stomach.

Akari’s body flickered again, and the claw passed through her like smoke. Thorne attacked three more times, faster than a hummingbird’s wings. The claw slashed Akari’s leg, her shoulder, then her throat. 

Each time, her opponent hit empty air.

Talek, but she loved this technique. A month ago, she never could have gotten this close to a Master and survived. Now, her opponent couldn’t land a single hit. But Akari couldn’t keep this up forever. Space warped in predictable patterns, and her teammates had adapted quickly. She had to assume Thorne would, too.

Akari stretched out her right hand and launched a dart from her wrist launcher. She appeared between a cluster of pine trees, twenty yards from her opponent. Then she cycled battle mana to her belt pouch, visualizing the item she wanted.

A katana appeared in her right hand, reinforced with Master-level blade mana. She still couldn’t do much with Kalden’s aspect, but she’d spent hours practicing with the belt pouches. 

Pulling weapons from thin air was just too much fun. 

Her opponent released another volley of stone projectiles. One Missile slammed into the nearest pine tree. The trunk broke in half, sounding like a gunshot. Another Missile struck the ground in front of her, sending up a cloud of snow and soil.

Akari dropped her space Cloak and cycled her mother’s technique instead. Time softened, and the world blurred like ink in water. A ghost of Thorne charged ahead of her physical body—a shadow that walked ahead of its future self. The real Thorne followed in the ghost’s footsteps, copying its exact movements.

In other words, Akari saw the future just before it happened.

She shot a pair of spacetime Missiles, opening a portal on either side of her opponent’s path. The shadow veered left so Akari leapt right, emerging behind the real Thorne. She drove the katana between the woman’s shoulder blades.

Clang! Vibrations ran up her arms, and it felt like hitting a cavern wall. The charge faded from the blade; twenty thousand espers down the drain.

Oh well, this was always a long shot.

Thorne’s shadow whirled around, striking Akari hard with her elbow. The real blow didn’t land, of course. Akari sidestepped it before it could. Several more strikes followed, but she dodged each one in turn. At one point, Thorne’s shadow conjured another cloud of blinding dust. Akari switched to her space Cloak before it came, letting the dust warp around her skin. Then she switched back to her time Cloak, and the fight continued. 

Portals and stone flashed between them as the future blended with the present. It was a stalemate, and her teammates hadn’t fared much better across the battlefield. Dain countered Arturo’s traps, and Kalden’s blades were useless against Knox’s wind mana.

Just need to keep her busy until . . . there! A ghostly image of Zukan charged behind Thorne. The future stone artist must have sensed him coming, because her own shadow whirled around and impaled Zukan on a glass spike.

Just like Elise. That wouldn’t do at all. 

Akari formed a portal around her opponent’s feet, distracting Thorne while Zukan made his move. The future changed, then it played out a second later. 

Zukan grabbed Thorne around the waist and tossed her a dozen feet into the air. She might be a Master, but the dragonborn was still twice her size. 

Spacetime Missiles flew from Akari’s hands as she formed a cocoon of portals around Thorne’s flying body. The woman destroyed several of these, shattering them to silver mist before they formed . She dodged several more with quick blasts of mana, struggling to seize control of her flight path.

It wasn’t enough. Akari saw each move before it happened, and she adjusted her own moves accordingly. 

The last portal swallowed Thorne. The woman vanished from the sky, and it snapped shut like a dragon’s jaws. 

Akari dropped the technique an instant later, trapping her opponent inside a pocket dimension.

“Nice work,” she told Zukan. “Now let’s—”

Zukan’s future self leapt forward, tackling Akari to the ground. Kalden sent her a mental warning in the same moment, and she let herself fall back into the snow.

A pure Missile soared straight over their heads. Akari felt the wind shockwave, and the ground shook as it destroyed another pine tree

Talek. That was another problem with time Cloak’s—you couldn’t block what you couldn’t see.

She formed a portal around herself and Zukan, catching two more techniques and hurling them back at her attacker. They both sprang to their feet just as Dain charged forward with his red plasma blades. 

Then a broad-shouldered man stepped between them and Dain. His dark jacket billowed in the mountain wind, and his shaved head shone in the moonlight.

Rosintar. 

The cultist opened a portal, catching Dain mid-lunge and hurling him across the field.

“Where the hell have you been?” Akari demanded.

“Getting the others to safety,” the man said in his Cadrian accent. More blades of trueflame mana closed in, but he responded with his own blades of space mana.

“What happened?” she snapped back. “You forget about us?”

“Yes.” Rosintar blocked another technique. “You come and go so much. I didn’t know you were sleeping downstairs.”

Yeah . . . fair enough.

“The others are in the bunker.” Rosintar raised a hand, preparing a space technique. “I can take you—”

“Not without my friends,” Akari cut in. “Can we break that Construct?” She gestured up at the semi-transparent dome that surrounded the compound. 

“Too strong,” Rosintar said with a quick shake of his head. “There’s—”

Dain cut him off with a cloud of burning gas. Rosintar blocked the attack, and Akari leapt through a portal to flake their opponent. Dain spun to face her, expanding his gas cloud and directing a good chunk of it toward her. Akari wrapped herself with portals, then she flared her space Cloak.

It didn’t work. Dain’s mana ate through her portals like acid, burning them into silver mist. Even her space Cloak buckled against his technique.

Akari teleported away to Dain to buy herself more time. There, she switched to Kalden’s aspect and retrieved another weapon from her belt pouch. This hadn’t worked against Thorne, but Dain was more of a glass cannon than a tank.

Rosintar rushed to her aid, and the two Masters exchanged several more attacks. Unfortunately, Rosintar wasn’t much of a fighter. Like most space artists, he played a support role in battle. He could keep himself alive, but he couldn’t actually deal a killing blow. Not against a trained fighter like Dain.

Akari cycled her time Cloak again, falling into the space between heartbeats. She stretched out her hand and unleashed a hail of silver spacetime Missiles at Dain. Her opponent destroyed most of these with his gas cloud, but that didn’t matter. Akari put her full power into the attack, releasing several dozen Missiles at once. They struck from every possible angle, landing on his torso, limbs, and head.

Finally, she opened a dozen small portals around her opponent. The last portal appeared near her hand, swallowing her weapon like a sheath. She bound this single portal to all the rest.

Most portals were a one-to-one link between two points in space. A person or object went through one side and popped out the other. Anything else would violate the laws of mass conservation. You couldn’t send one blade through the portal and have twelve come out. That would be like turning one coin into a dozen without paying the price.

Akari knew that. So did every other space artist

But Akari wasn’t just a space artist. And this technique wasn’t about copying. It was about timing.

Each portal was staggered by a fraction of a second, spread across micro-windows in causality. Her blade passed through the first, then the second, then the third. It was still just one blade, but her eyes saw a web of silver steel, surrounding Dain’s body like a cage.

Akari twisted the weapon with all her might, cutting through her opponent in a dozen spots—one after the other, too fast to see. It severed his arms and legs. His head rolled off his shoulders, while another blade slit his helmet down the middle.

Puddles of dark crimson stained the snow around Dain’s broken body. Rosintar staggered forward, dropping his own techniques.

He glanced down at their fallen opponent, blinking several times as if he couldn’t process the sight. Then he looked up at Akari in wide-eyed horror.

~~~ 

Kalden’s aspect screamed a warning, and he spun toward Akari. She’d beaten Dain, but it took her full concentration. Now she’d left herself exposed with no Cloak.

Knox must have realized the same thing, because he shot toward her with a burst of wind mana. Clouds of snow erupted around him as he flew, shrouding the compound in a blizzard. 

Kalden couldn’t see anything through the chaos, so he relied on his aspect to guide him. He switched to spacetime mana at the last second, opening a crude portal and putting himself between Akari and her attacker. 

His opponent landed in the snow, unleashing a volley of pure Missiles through the white haze. 

Two blades formed in front of Kalden. They spun like propellors, cutting through the first few strikes. Then something slammed into his legs, hard enough to shatter his bones. A blade struck his back as he fell, sending a wave of agony through his body.

Kalden had been stabbed countless times throughout his life, but Master techniques were different. This brought a wave of primal fear, as if his brain expected him to fall apart at any second.

Was this what dying felt like? If not, it was the closest thing.

Tendrils of wind mana wrapped around his ankles an instant later. His legs flew skyward until he hung upside-down, several feet above the snow. More tendrils grabbed his arm and neck until he couldn’t move a muscle.

“Zeller!” a woman’s voice shouted. 

Kalden turned toward his left where Naomi Thorne stood behind Arturo. She held one glass blade to his throat, and pressed another into his stomach. Zukan hung in the air behind them, caught in a current of Knox’s wind mana.

“We have orders to take you and Trengsen alive,” Thorne said. “But your friends are irrelevant. Surrender now, or I’ll cut the boy’s throat.”

Kalden’s eyes darted back to Akari. She and Rosintar stood a few paces away from Thorne, but they made no move to fight back.

‘Is he bluffing?’ Akari asked through their bond.

‘I can’t tell,’ Kalden said.'

‘Then what do I do?’

‘Get her talking. Let me think.’

Akari asked a question about trust, and Kalden closed his eyes and cycled his battle mana. 

The displacement darts were the obvious choice here. Akari could get the team free, but where would they go? Everyone was injured and exhausted. They couldn’t keep fighting like this, much less escape the compound. Kalden couldn’t even stand or sit up.

Should they surrender before things got worse? 

No. his instincts told him to dig deeper and find the path to victory. The Honor Guard were strong, but they weren’t invincible. Akari had already proven that by killing Dain.

And they were missing something here. Kalden felt it in his bones.

He slowed his breathing, ignoring his wounds, and the adrenaline in his veins. He cut deeper with his battle mana, past his surface thoughts. How had Moonfire known they were the Soul Reapers? How had he found the Solidor’s safe house? How had his minions gotten past the wards without detection?

The answer was obvious when he thought about it: the cultists had a traitor in their midst. That would also explain the empty cabin; someone had evacuated the others to keep them safe from the fighting.

Relyn Solidor had the skills of a dream artist, and she could read lies like words on a page. Despite that, she was still just a human, and humans made mistakes. Especially when they didn’t want to find the truth.

With that in mind, Moonfire’s spy must be invaluable to the Cult. Someone the Solidors were afraid to lose. Someone who could sneak hostile forces through the wards. This person might even stay behind, putting on a show to maintain his cover.

Kalden sent his thoughts to Akari. Her eyes widened in realization, then she stepped up behind Rosintar.

“Fine,” she said with raised hands. “I surrender.” Paradigm shifts always took a second to process, and even Masters were no exception to this rule.

Rosintar relaxed and turned to face Akari. A storm of spacetime Missiles shot out from her hand like silver sparks, swarming around the Master’s body from a dozen angles. Rosintar blocked most of her attacks, but not all of them

A Master-level blade appeared in Akari’s right hand. A portal swallowed the weapon up to its hilt, and the blade stuck out from the traitor’s windpipe a second later. Blood spilled from his open wound, and he collapsed to his knees in the snow.

Knox hit Akari with a burst of wind mana, but he was too late. The silver Construct faded from around the compound, revealing the night sky above. 

Akari launched a volley of metal darts from her wrist launcher. The steel projectiles soared over the pine trees, and they all warped away.