56-A Thousand Suns

James and the cultists stood transfixed, the fighting on pause for the moment, as the prisoners slowly approached the battlefield.

James didn’t mind the pause, since he was still charging Mana as they all stood there. But the moment of reflection was dispiriting. The escaped prisoners’ postures said everything. They were slumped, defeated. Any resistance had broken.

They gave in so quickly, James thought. Then: I guess I shouldn’t have expected more out of people who allowed themselves to be held captive pending human sacrifice. It’s my own fault for thinking they’d liberate themselves if I just distracted most of the cultists. Shit! I didn’t help anyone by coming here, except maybe Isabelle. I wasn’t prepared for this at all. Got cocky.

A few other figures, including Officer Ross, stood guard around the prisoners, but they didn’t appear to have much agency in this situation anyway. As James watched, the slowest one of the prisoners, a man with a bad limp, almost fell behind. When he did, he struck the yellow wall, and the yellow light dragged him forward like it was a solid moving structure.

It’s like a Green Lantern construct or something, James assessed. This group has way too much power for so early in Orientation! I guess I understand why the prisoners gave up. He quietly gave up on freeing the prisoners. There was no way out for them. At least I didn’t try to bring Alan or Mitzi or any of the Rodriguezes. I would’ve led them straight into a massacre.

He glanced down by his foot for a moment, just to make sure Isabelle was gone. And she was very clearly dead.

Now to figure out my escape, or how to keep them from killing me while I finish charging my attack.

James only had a fraction of a second’s warning from Predator’s Instincts. And he couldn’t move quite fast enough to dodge completely. A bullet careened through the corner of his mask as he threw himself to the side. It missed his head completely, but the fact that it penetrated through the spider exoskeleton boded poorly.

So guns aren’t useless yet after all.

He saw the smoking gun in the distance, a police service pistol. Officer Ross was the shooter. James grimaced behind the mask. I guess False Impression isn’t going to work to mimic his identity anymore. That was fun while it lasted.

He didn’t bother changing the name that displayed, though. Instead, while he was down, he grabbed Isabelle’s body and pulled it close to use as a human shield.

He felt a little bad desecrating the body, but not enough to stop him doing it. She was level 9, after all. There would surely be some defensive value.

Then he rose, effortlessly holding her up in front of his body with one hand. Sure enough, he heard another couple of shots, and the corpse shook slightly in his hand with each impact, but he didn’t feel anything go through and strike him.

She was tougher than the average spider, James assessed. She would’ve probably done well here if she wasn’t in their hands. But his attention was drawn to his sides. With the ring of the first gunshot, the other cultists around him had started moving again too. On his right, the first mover was almost close enough to grab James.

The cultist was holding his knife hesitantly, pointed at a low angle toward the ground, as if he really didn’t want to fight. James assessed the man wasn’t a true threat. Just an obstacle, with that golden glow surrounding him and making him unkillable. James stuck his dagger in his belt and leaped the short distance toward the man. He grabbed the surprised cultist and dropped Isabelle as he landed.

Now I have a completely bulletproof human shield, he thought. He turned and held the man up like a shield. A couple of bullets immediately pinged off of the cultist’s body. The golden glow around him didn’t go away. James’s shield was clearly unharmed. He didn’t think there was any chance a weapon would pierce through his hostage’s body and get to him.

James assessed again. He was almost surrounded now. Almost enough Mana to blow them all away, though, he thought optimistically. The plan wouldn’t be escape now. He’d had a moment’s doubt, but now he knew. He had to kill these people and stop what they were doing.

Another shot rang out, and James felt it hit his mask and penetrate right through, striking him in the center of the forehead. The mask began to fall away in pieces around the hole, the impact to his head hurt like hell, and he thought he might have a concussion in the morning.

But the bullet only barely broke the skin, a trickle of blood falling across his nose the only clear indicator of damage.

If the mask hadn’t hidden his face, the cultists might have paused at the sight of their enemy grinning like a madman. Good shot! But I really am almost bulletproof now. Just a little more Fortitude, and shots from pistols will bounce right off like I’m Luke Cage or Superman!

Then the pounding headache wiped his smile away, and he held his hostage up a little higher to try and prevent a recurrence. The man in his grip wiggled and writhed, trying to get loose, but James was using both hands to hold him, gripping him by the arms, and in a Strength contest, no one here was likely to beat him.

“Grab him! Pull him back toward the tablet!” Rostov’s voice echoed through the camp, and the cultists began to move a little more quickly.

Just need to stall a little longer, he thought. Blow them all away. His body glowed brightly now, rivaling the bonfire at the center of the camp. Brighter than any glow of Mana he’d ever prepared before. Once this was over, he’d have next to nothing left, but he wouldn’t need anything more.

He hoped. If he had the chance to charge enough Mana.

But the cultists were getting closer and closer now, perhaps emboldened by the fact that his hands were occupied.

Pressing at his sides and back, everywhere he wasn’t blocking with the hostage.

It was like “Night of the Living Dead.”

Dead, hostile eyes surrounding him.

He could feel at any moment, the crowd would swallow him whole.

And then they started grabbing onto him.

Hands clutched at his arms, his legs, and the sides of his clothes. Unarmed hands, so there was no weapon for him to fear. They were just trying to hold onto him, secure him for their leader. For their god.

Over two dozen hands latched onto James. He was finally forced to release his hostage, because the sheer number of people grabbing onto him made it difficult to move and exert himself, and he needed the hands free as he resisted the pull of the hands.

The man turned around as soon as James let go, and he grabbed for James’s mask.

James had to duck and dodge despite the hands holding him. Above all else, he couldn’t let Rostov figure out who he really was.

If he had to run away instead of wiping the cultists out, that was fine. Just so long as Rostov didn’t know where to go for revenge.

As he danced in the grip of the cultists, trying not to be publicly unmasked, James caught sight of what was going on far behind the man grabbing at his head. Officer Ross and another servant of Moloch were leading the prisoners back to the underground prison.

That wasn’t so bad. As long as they were underground, James imagined the explosion he planned to unleash probably wouldn’t kill them. He was already prepared for collateral damage, and the cultists were unknowingly minimizing it for him.

But something else was happening that gave him pause. The woman with the flower wreath was moving her hands, and the glowing yellow wall she’d placed behind the prisoners previously was growing. No longer behind the prisoners, now it blocked the direction James had come from.

And James saw two other figures attired similarly to that woman walking in opposite directions away from her. A man and a woman, also wearing flower wreaths. James could guess what they might be doing.

If they have the same ability as her, they could cut off my retreat entirely. No way out of their killing box except by killing all of them or running deeper into the forest, away from the direction I came from.

A disturbing thought occurred to James. Do they know which direction I came from? Or are they just blocking the directions the prisoners were running towards?

As he had this thought, the cultists who gripped his arms and legs lifted him bodily of the ground and began pulling him forward.

“Secure him to the tablet!” Rostov was shouting. “We will give him to Moloch at sunrise. He must not escape!”

Escape?! James thought. He almost wanted to laugh. He must be incredibly confident in this magic aura he’s surrounded everyone with. At this point, James glowed so brightly that he thought he rivaled the sun himself. And with Apophis’s power multiplying the effectiveness of his Mana, he imagined that the camp would be completely destroyed when he unleashed his power.

They’re the ones who should be worried about escape! He felt it then, as the cultists had dragged him back almost to within touch range of the tablet, the Moloch statue, and the bonfire.

I have enough.

And James released the fire Mana.

A massive explosion originating from his body burst through the air in all directions. In an instant, James felt no more hands gripping him, no more bodies beneath him. Only fire and flame as far as the eye could see.

He fell from where the human hands had held him, above their heads, but he smiled as his body came crashing down

I did it, he thought. The light of his own flames was so blinding that he had to rub and blink his eyes for a minute before he could see properly again.

The visual that presented itself before his eyes was an astonishing one. A column of fire bursting forth in all directions. At its inception, it had blinded him. The brightness reminded him for a moment of Oppenheimer, who had compared his atomic bomb’s brightness to the radiance of a thousand suns.

James had expected the insane power of the explosion to ripple through the forest, destroying everything in its path for a mad radius all around.

And the flame was wreaking havoc. It had destroyed the tablet in an instant. It continued pressing forward, destroying trees in its path in all directions except where it was blocked by human figures or the statue of Moloch.

But most of the human figures themselves, James saw, were still very much alive.

Many of them looked almost unharmed, in fact.

The golden glow around them had completely dissipated. A few of them who had been the first to be hit by the explosion were actually dead, horribly scorched. But most of them had only minor burns. People who had been further away were completely unharmed.

James saw, after a moment’s visual searching, that Rostov lay on the ground, either unconscious or dazed.

I can’t believe Moloch’s barrier was that powerful.

One of the cultists raced toward Rostov and began shaking him.

And the yellow barriers that he had anticipated the two other flower wreathed individuals would erect suddenly blazed into life.

There were now three walls all around him, and James knew he had to get out of there before he was cornered on the fourth side.

He was all out of Mana. Surrounded by dozens of people, several of whom were close to him in level, who wanted nothing more than to see him dead. And his best trick hadn’t killed more than a few of them.

Rostov stirred. He blinked his eyes open. He turned his head. His and James’s eyes met.

“Get that bastard!” Rostov yelled.

James turned and ran.