Chapter 60 - A Pleiad.
The Golden Desert lay under a low overcast sky, where a solid grey sheet ran from one edge to the other without a single break in it, and the wind dragged low-blown sand across the dunes and carried it off toward the ridge.
The sand around them was soaked in the blood that had filled the cocoon from within, and chunks of biomass thrown out by the burst lay scattered across it as far as the furthest crests.
A soldier of the Ninth Patrol Detachment stood with his head tipped back and a magic blade gripped in his right hand, his face frozen with his eyes wide and his mouth open. Behind him the lieutenant sat on the sand, holding the sergeant in his arms.
In front of them, the thing that had grown inside the cocoon was rising. The creature stood on four limbs, its head reaching some ten metres up, while its front pair of legs bowed outward and braced against the sand on claws the length of a man's arm.
Its whole body was covered in overlapping plates the colour of bone, drawn downward to sharp dripping points and bristling with spines along every edge, while dark ropy flesh showed through the gaps between them.
The head narrowed to a wedge at the jaws, above which a tall crest rose, with clusters of red eyes set to either side of it. Conical teeth two hands long ringed the entire edge of the lower jaw.
The creature drew air into its whole body and let out a low roar that shook the sand between its claws.
The soldier stepped back, feeling his hand shaking, while the monster began slowly raising its huge foreleg, clinging lumps of the cocoon peeling off it and giving off steam.
The soldier leapt back at once, clear of the giant leg as it smashed into the sand. A shockwave rolled out across the whole area, and the lieutenant instantly shielded his face with his shoulder while the ground beneath him shook.
Landing, the soldier lifted his head and saw the risen column of sand, out of which the monster suddenly burst, bearing down on him at speed. He crossed his arms at once, engaging the photocytes on his forearms, and a double layer of magic shield materialised in front of him. The creature struck it with the full inertia of its charge, and the shield shattered in an instant, and the soldier was hurled dozens of metres.
The lieutenant laid the wounded sergeant down on the ground, then took both his magic swords in his hands and turned to face the monster, breaking into a run with a determined roar.
"FILTHY BEAST!" the lieutenant shouted.
But then he stopped short, his face gone pale and full of primal terror, as the monster turned slowly toward him.
At that moment part of the soldier's body was sticking out of the monster's mouth, and the creature crushed it in its fangs and swallowed it in front of the lieutenant.
He gripped the hilts of his blades tighter and, setting his teeth, drove straight at the monster, his voice rising to a furious scream, while the monster held for a moment, watching him, and then came at him in turn.
When it threw its clawed leg forward, the lieutenant lunged ahead, sweeping at speed under the creature's massive belly and striking with successive cuts across each of its hind legs, after which he stopped behind it and immediately jumped onto its back, driving his blades through the creature's bone growths.
Bending his body and bracing a foot against the bone for balance, he pulled the blades free and in the same instant brought dozens of cuts down onto the monster's back. Suddenly a sharp tendril burst out of its back, and the lieutenant managed to guard against it, materialising a small shield from the photocyte on one of his forearms. Then he counterattacked at once, severing one tendril, guarding straight away against the second, then leaping off the monster's back and springing several metres away.
The deep cuts and severed pieces of its back closed over within seconds, after which the monster turned to the lieutenant and let out its deep roar again.
The next moment a cracking sound started up from the creature's body, making the air around it vibrate, and its eyes lit up red. The lieutenant tensed, after which the monster suddenly launched upward in a powerful leap and came down on him in an instant, driving all its weight into the sand.
He managed to leap clear, but before he could get his feet under him he saw the monster draw a deep breath, and together with a deafening roar a powerful shock-energy wave went out from it in the form of a red dome, which struck the lieutenant with an electric shock.
He dropped to the ground, feeling a convulsion run through his whole body along with a searing heat and a ringing in his ears, while inside him everything clenched into a single knot.
The monster straightened up and began lumbering toward the lieutenant, who, barely able to draw a steady breath, shifted his gaze to the monster looming above him.
"N-no..." the lieutenant rasped, seeing it open its jaws wider and lunge at him to devour him.
But suddenly, a powerful energy pulse slammed into the monster’s muzzle and sent it sprawling onto its back.
The lieutenant froze, still trying to understand what had happened, until he felt someone land hard behind him.
“Alive?” a familiar woman’s voice called out.
He turned his head and looked up at Lucia standing before him, his eyes bloodshot.
She loomed over him against the overcast sky, ash and fine debris blowing past her, standing in mechano-magical armour built specifically for her power, which showed in the particular alloy the armour was made of. Photocytes were integrated into the forearms as well, though noticeably larger, while every plate carried visible gold veins of a special material that strengthened the properties of an already unique alloy.
On top of everything else, what drew the lieutenant's attention most were her eyes, shining gold in the shadow of her cold face.
"A-Archon..." the lieutenant rasped, as the monster began rolling onto its side, which made Lucia raise her eyes.
Two captains came up behind her with their own detachments.
"See to the casualties. This bastard is mine," Lucia ordered, stepping past the lieutenant where he lay.
Lucia walked forward while the monster got back onto its legs and its muzzle re-formed. The Archon held a device in her left hand, which she opened at once into a long mechanical shaft with photocytes at either end, and then materialised magic blades from them.
The monster straightened and turned to Lucia, who spun the spear in one hand, stopped, and looked the giant over.
"What a foul thing." she muttered.
The monster made a sharp lunge, throwing its leg forward, and Lucia answered with a lightning shift to the side and an instant surge ahead, sweeping along the creature's body and leaving a deep long cut across its entire flank. Coming out behind it, she immediately delivered a series of hacking strikes, cutting the hind legs into small pieces, so that the monster nearly went down, holding itself up on its front legs.
Lucia was back at the monster's face from the other side at once, leaving a second long cut on its other flank.
She stopped, standing half-turned to the roaring creature and holding the long double-ended spear in one hand.
The monster loosed dozens of spined tendrils at the Archon, which she cut apart in fractions of a second, spinning the spear in front of her, then stopping it sharply and catching the last tendril in her left hand.
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The spined flesh writhed in front of her face while she held it, her eyes slightly narrowed and her head tilted to one side, and then she closed her hand so hard that the tendril burst apart at once with a piercing whistle and snapped back into the monster's body.
Its hind legs restored, the giant charged at Lucia at once, and she in turn split her spear into two separate blades, then made a sweeping surge along the monster's attacking leg.
One second, and a net of dozens of lightning cuts came down across the whole of the creature's giant leg, turning all of it into a rain of chunks of flesh in an instant.
Finishing her pass, she did not stop, using the inertia of the halt at the creature's shoulder to lock the hilts back together at once and return the spear to its whole form.
Feeding more energy into one of the heads, the blade on it grew with a crack to six metres in length and a metre across, after which a powerful discharge of energy burst from the photocyte integrated into her elbow, driving her arm with enormous explosive speed and carrying the blade with such force that Lucia severed the creature's neck in an instant with an elegant turn.
The huge blade returned to its original form at once, while Lucia stood with her back to the creature, whose head separated slowly from the body and fell behind the Archon.
Less than seven seconds had passed from the moment Lucia charged the creature to the moment she took its head, and the detachments of soldiers watching from a distance stared at the Archon in undisguised shock.
But the monster's flesh began knitting back together, and its second leg lashed out at once at the Archon as she turned, and she sprang aside, watching pieces of meat fasten onto the severed head and drag it back to the neck.
"Tsk… so you're not so simple after all." Lucia muttered, and landed on the sand.
The monster threw itself at her at once, jaws open, letting out a deafening roar.
Lucia lowered her face slightly, keeping her eyes on the charging giant, until the crystal set into a round housing on her back began to charge, giving off a rising light.
The next moment the Archon bent her knees, tipped her body forward, and with a powerful jet impulse of energy released from behind her back and from her feet, she flew straight at the creature, leaving a shockwave behind her.
The monster had no time to react before Lucia had already swept beneath its belly, cutting through each of its limbs and halting behind it in a single motion, which produced a reverse shockwave that carried her upward until she was directly above the creature.
Lifting its muzzle, it saw the Archon's silhouette against the overcast sky, and in all that dark and grey picture three sources of light stood out, namely the spear, the armour, and the menacing shine of her irises.
She came down on the monster with another hail of savage cuts, driving its belly into the sand and arching its back, carving her way through its entire body as she went, until she broke out in front of it, leaving behind a rain of blood and chunks of flesh, and limbs severed from a body cut into small pieces.
The whole biomass drew itself into a single lump at once, and a huge tail of flesh shot out of it, while Lucia went clear with a turn, cutting it away in one motion as she passed. Then she activated the mechanical pauldron, out of which small photocyte crystals flew, and she caught them in one fist, saturated them with energy, and threw them into the forming heap of biomass.
The shards flew into the flesh, their glow strengthening, while the whole biomass absorbed them, and then massive spines of magic energy burst out of it in every direction, tearing the heap apart from inside and dissolving.
Lucia straightened, watching even the finely cut pieces of the creature crawl back toward the large remaining clot of flesh.
"There's something in there…" she thought, narrowing her eyes and then readying herself for another jet surge, but unexpectedly she threw up a magic shield formed from the photocyte in her forearm, because one of the pieces of the creature lying off to the side had attacked her with a bone spike.
Cutting it apart at once, she looked round and saw that the monster had almost fully restored its body, and so she drove straight at it immediately.
Suddenly red sparks ran across the creature along with a strengthening aura, at which Lucia's brows went up and she stopped, springing back, while the monster let out a powerful roar again and released a shock-magic wave that nearly reached the Archon.
Landing and straightening, she looked at the restored monster, which came racing at her again.
The bastard attacks without thinking… but it managed to buy itself time to recover… instinct or brains?… Pf, doesn't matter, went through Lucia's head, and she gripped the spear's shaft tighter.
You don't want to die the easy way… then it'll be the hard way.
The creature launched sharply upward in a powerful leap, swinging its leg back.
Oh… so you can jump as well? , she thought, and flew vertically upward on the energy impulse from the crystals in her soles.
The monster struck the sand with all its weight, raising an enormous cloud of sand around it, while Lucia hung above it and then saw huge membranous wings burst out of the cloud as the creature flew up to meet her.
Lucia instantly fed energy to the photocytes in her soles and flew away, while the monster pursued her with a deep roar.
She looked back as she flew over the desert, while the monster opened its jaws, in which a sphere of red energy began to form, and it fired that sphere straight at Lucia.
Another surprise? , went through her head as she turned her body and drove vertically upward, evading the attack and spinning back the other way as she went, and then driving downward, straight at the creature.
The monster loosed dozens of tendrils at her, which she cut through on her way, and finally drove the spear between its eyes. Then she fed energy into the embedded blade, and it grew to an enormous size straight through the monster's head, and she swept her arm with such force that she cut its body in two.
She did not stop after that, returning the blade to its previous state and then splitting the shaft into two blades, going straight back to cutting the whole body into pieces until they fell with a heavy crash, throwing up a column of sand.
Lucia straightened, standing in the settling sand, her eyes fixed on what was left of the creature, and among it she noticed a glow.
She tilted her face slightly down, lowering her brows and gripping the hilts of her blades.
In the middle of all the biomass a spherical core was visible, shimmering with many colours, and within a moment it was covered over by a layer of flesh.
I see…
The monster had not finished forming its body and muzzle before another charge of red energy was already building in its jaws.
Lucia in turn stretched the spear out in front of her, after which the housing at the base of the blade transformed into a double ring, and the blade began strengthening its energy sheath.
The creature fired a powerful energy charge, while Lucia waited a fraction of a second and immediately fired a powerful magic beam from the spear, which met the monster's charge, and a powerful explosion broke out between them, covering the whole of the battlefield.
The next second Lucia burst out through the smoke thrown up by the explosion, and the monster had no time to react before she delivered another series of lightning cuts, carving the flesh into a chaotic mesh. The flesh was gathering to knit together behind her, but she immediately threw round photocyte crystals at it, saturated with energy, which landed in among the biomass as it drew together.
The next moment the multiple glows of those crystals showed through the flesh, and then the crystals tore it apart with powerful successive explosions, laying the core bare for a brief moment.
And that moment was enough, because Lucia was at the core at once, her blade already swinging, after which the magic edge cut through the coloured sphere with a crack.
From the final strike the broken core burst into bright light, and Lucia flew clear of it at once, activating the photocytes on her feet, while a powerful explosion with an energy discharge went off where the core had been.
The crash rolled out across the whole desert while the soldiers watched from a distance, frozen, staring at the thick and black cloud of smoke.
Every one of their eyes went wider still when Lucia's figure began to show through the smoke, walking out unharmed and looking at the soldiers.
"So that's what she's like in a fight... " one of the soldiers began.
"The Archon of War..."
Another swallowed and drew a short breath before adding.
"One of the six Pleiades."
Some time later, medics and transport flyers arrived at the site, and the wounded soldiers and their companions were loaded aboard them.
Lucia stood at the remains of the cocoon with her arms crossed over her chest, until Admiral Vern came up to her.
"None of this looks any better than it smells..." he said.
Lucia gave no answer, still looking at the remains of flesh and blood, among which one could pick out noses, eyes, teeth and other body parts that had belonged to someone.
"It... came out of there?" he asked.
"According to the half-dead lieutenant's report — yes."
"You think it's the Erz?"
"I don't know, but they're first among the suspects."
"What are your orders?"
"To begin with, get samples to Dexor and examine the wounded."
"It will be done."
Lucia raised her head, then walked past the Admiral.
"Follow me."
Vern hesitated a moment, then went after her.
They covered several dozen metres, climbing the dune, until they stopped at the place where Lucia had dealt with the monster. Vern stopped sharply, his brows going up and his mouth opening, while Lucia went on looking at the place, until the desert wind lifted the strands of her hair slightly.
"This appeared right after I destroyed that core," she said.
Within a radius of about seventy metres, all the sand where the creature had died was covered in a dark, dense aura.
"That's..." Vern began.
"A dead zone. Step into it and you get Exdurum," Lucia finished.
"So the thing is even more dangerous dead," the admiral answered.
"Yes. And now think about what happens if it isn't the first, and isn't the last."
Vern drew a breath and shifted his gaze to Lucia, seeing in her profile a deep cold, underscored by her shining yellow eyes in the shadow of her face.
Then the Archon turned and started down the dune toward the rest of the soldiers, while Vern looked back at the dead zone.