Stronger Together chapter 170

I managed to hurl myself away from another blurring strike by Remus  as he came in with a hard right aimed at my jaw, and it gave Cinder just  enough time to hurl a soulfire and fall maiden infused glass sword made  by her semblance at his back. Unfortunately the bastard had started  getting used to our rhythm and rolled to the side, avoiding the slash. I  dove forward to put my arm in front of Cinder as he threw a kick at her  off balance form, aiming for her stomach and clearly trying to break  some ribs even if he couldn't kill her.

I  managed to catch the kick on my arm, and Remus rebounded hand springing  gracefully back to distance himself with us, though making sure to stay  in range of his brother. What was worse was that my arm fucking hurt.  I'd never felt real pain in my godsteel limb before, I'd been pretty  sure it wasn't even possible, but my forearm throbbed where I'd been  hit. It felt like it was bruised pretty badly but thankfully not broken.  I wasn't sure what the anatomical possibilities of a limb made of  living metal where but the fact that something could hard it was clearly  not good.

Cinder  stepped up behind me and put a concerned hand on my shoulder "Cameron!  Are you ok?" She could clearly see my favoring my right side and was  just as clearly as disturbed by the implications of it as I was. She  seemed at a bit of a loss for what to do, she'd learned a bit of healing  magic from River, but my arm was made of living metal so healing it  wouldn't be that easy, if she could even do it. I cursed, I picked Remus  because as the calmer twin he struck me as more of a speed type  fighter, I figured I could even the odds with my lightning and used the  triple stacked force blow to do some damage, but clearly I'd  underestimated his physical abilities.

Remus  meanwhile was...well I wouldn't call it a grin exactly, he was baring  his teeth at me ferociously. "I have to admit mongrel, you're stronger  than expected. To injure a god within their Authority is no small  matter. But you can clearly tell how this will end. With every blow I  feel your power weaken as you slowly drain it away, while I am at the  height of my strength. I haven't even used any magic yet, and you're  already on your last legs. Just give in and I'll make it quick. I'll  even keep the blonde alive and take her in as a pet after I help my  brother take care of your demonspawn whore." His tone was snide and self  satisfied, and he was right about me weakening.

I  was casting force magic with every blow and it was draining me like  crazy, I was getting weaker and weaker by the second, and I couldn't  keep this up for long. Of course, none of that actually mattered. I  didn't care that I was getting weaker or that I was in pain or that I  couldn't match him. I spread my feet and took a stance, pushing every  ounce of remaining power I had into my body as I began to move into the  first form of klurkor. Remus's smug expression melted away as the power  within my body began to grow.

I  poured the power into my aspects and was about to imbue them into my  godsteel network but I didn't need to. The klurkor energies were  permeating every one of my cells creating that same feedback loop of  power, burning my soul energy to create soulfire and replenishing my  soul at the same time, catching my entire spirit ablaze as the energy  from my aspects poured through me. I felt Gard's defense against the  temporal mechanism shatter, but it didn't matter now, I was more than  fast enough. I blurred forward and Remus's eyes widened just before my  metal fist smashed into his face.

He  still didn't go down, but he did stagger under the blow, and when his  face came up it was a mask of blood as his shattered nose leaked the red  gold fluid down his lips and chin. He bared his teeth in rage and he  was on me. This was not the fight I'd had with Lord Raith, my power was  getting wider but not deeper, I was building soulfire to use but I was  also maxed on actual improvement and Remus was just as strong as I was  even in this state, maybe slightly stronger. We traded blows at top  speed, the lightning aspect making me so fast even time couldn't slow me  down.

A  hundred blows in the span of a second, from both sides, Remus was still  stronger but my martial art was ancient and mysterious, designed by  alien gods to help their descendants become the deities they were meant  to be, and the formless rhythm that accompanied the movements was more  than enough to keep up with the powerful demi god. I'd expected them to  be martial masters, but apparently being stronger than everyone your  whole life wasn't always a good thing, Remus wasn't as skilled as he  should have been, he relied on his godly body as a crutch and it was  showing.

Not  to say he was an amateur, he was still a warrior who'd lived through  thousands of years of battle, his technique was just a little brutish,  and mine had been literally burned into my brain through agonizing  training for the last year. The one upside to martial arts practice  being indescribably painful is that it made retaining what I learned a  snap. I dodged an attempt to hook my leg and drove a blow into his  kidney as I spun around him, getting my godsteel arm around his neck  when he was distracted by the pain. My force aspect, like my lightning,  was in a state of extreme amplification.

I  held him around the neck and tried to keep him still while Cinder  impaled him with one of her glass blades. Sadly he wasn't new at this,  he stomped on my instep and I reeled back enough for him to duck under  my arm, sending the blade slicing right over his head. I had to dodge it  myself so I couldn't follow up an regain the headlock. Remus distance  himself from me again, and it was hard not to smirk as I noticed he was  also favoring his right side. I'd definitely done some damage with that  kidney blow. He was going to be pissing golden blood for a week. Or he  would have been if I wasn't about to kill him.

His  lupine eyes were full of rage "Insignificant maggot! Why won't you just  die like you're meant to?Why is this such a difficult process? Why do  you constantly have to be at odds with us? All we want is to raise the  boy to be the king he should be! We tried to be diplomatic, to give you  respect you didn't even deserve, and you spat in our faces, now we do  you the honor or manifesting our Authority and you don't even have the  decency to die like you're supposed to! Time after time you spit on and  mock us!" He waved a hand and his shadow leapt up, turning into a  massive wolf of darkness jaws open to swallow me whole.

Unfortunately  for him, I wasn't alone. I'd brought Cinder along for exactly this  scenario. The wolf's head was impaled by a fifty foot long glass blade  infused with molten fall soulfire. Because soulfire was the energy of  creation it reinforced both the physical structure of the semblance  glass and the power of the maiden abilities. A physical manifestation  like Cinder's was probably the best medium for either power and the  three of those factors together added up to far more than the sum of  their parts.

It  had taken Cinder months to incorporate her semblance into her combat  style after she fully regenerated the fall mantle but it had marked a  huge jump in her power. She won more of her spars with Raven than she  lost, and my purple haired girlfriend had gotten much stronger in her  own right, having started practicing klurkor a few months ago and begun  refining her mortal blood away. It had been a huge decision for her, but  in the end she wanted to protect us more than she cared about her  issues. Despite taking some time to come to the decision she was already  much stronger.

Remus  was almost foaming at the mouth with rage at this point, and he threw  back his head and screamed. That was when I remembered something one of  our sources had told us in passing. The twins had a second form, and it  was much stronger than their original bodies. The blur of fur slammed  into me and smashed me flat into the stands, grabbing my foot and  beginning to fucking smash me down on either side of him like bam bam  from the flinstones. Cinder swung her massive sword at him, but he just  took the blow on his forearm  and it stopped against the bone.  I was in  a bit of a bind.

I  laid there in the crater blinking up at the sky as i tried to clear the  for from my head from the extreme beating it had just taken. I didn't  know what the fuck this coliseum was made of but whatever it was, it  wasn't normal stone. Granted I probably should have assume after  watching it get laser printed from the sky by the setting sun, but even  the hardest rock should have given under my godsteel infused skull.  Remus let go of me and turned on Cinder, taking a menacing step toward  her. A blur of motion caught my eye and I saw a shape spinning towards  me and I reached out and caught it on instinct.

The  Fang of Hati, glittered in my hand having been hurled up to me by Barb.  Staring at it with a grin I dissolved the force aspect and activated  the power of wind. The lightning speed and ethereal insubstantiality of  wind were perfect companions to each other. And I hurled myself at Remus  with a shout of rage before he could reach Cinder. He spun with a snarl  to bat me away and I had the intense satisfaction of watching his  wolfish eyes widen in horror as his hand passed clean through me and he  saw me sail at his face with the knife.

I  shifted the blade to a solid state as I slammed it into his fucking  throat, and he reeled back, holding his gushing neck with a gurgling  sound. There was a loud crack, and the golden stone of the coliseum  began to fracture as his wound distracted him enough for the Authority  to break down. I grabbed Cinder and leapt down to the others, taking the  knife with me as Romulus roared in fury and charged over to us, bowling  over Kara and breaking free of Raven's shadow manacles as his bestial  muscles tore the magic apart.

Kara  and Raven met us down on the ground with the others as Romulus did his  best to staunch his brothers bleeding. It took a few minutes, which we  honestly needed to mop up the last of the Vukodlak before the twins  could focus on us again, but he managed to staunch the bleeding. Remus  sat up hissing in pain as he started murmuring words of power in a  guttural tongue. The wound under his hand began to glow with a blinding  light and I heard the popping of burning flesh as he fucking cauterized  his own net closed.

He stood up and  took his place next to his brother with a sneer of hate and they looked  at each other before turning to face one another. With a roar they each  bit down on the others neck on opposite sides. I was absolutely floored  as the blood started to spurt out, but nowhere near as floored as I was  when it started to spin around them and weave into a fucking cocoon. It  sat there for a few seconds after it solidified before it started to  crack and fall away, and one singular nearly fifteen foot tall werewolf  rose from the wreckage, roaring with primeval fury. Well, that didn't  seem like a good sign.