The Fusionist Book 5 -- Chapter 20

Chapter 20

“I don’t know what it is, but we can’t allow them to get to it first.”

Marteena, or as she preferred her friends to call her, Teena, hurried after her boss as he rushed out of the headquarters building. She grabbed her staff where she had left it near the door before she was nearly blinded by the bright afternoon sun, which was intense after the relative darkness of the building. Thankfully, her eyesight adjusted fast enough that she didn’t trip over her robe as she managed to catch up to the growing group of Mages and Martials that had joined the throng following the head of the Strike Faction, Jack.

Otherwise known as her boss.

Teena was jostled from the side as someone hustled up next to her, and the familiar voice of her friend whispered a question to her. “What happened?”

She shook her head, as she wasn’t exactly sure herself. “The scouts saw something coming this way, but no one is sure what it is,” she explained. “Jack wants to get out ahead of it before the ‘cowards’ from the Defend Faction get word of its presence. His words, not mine, Chardine,” she clarified for her friend, which was likely unnecessary.

Everyone in the Strike Faction knew their leadership’s viewpoint toward the other Faction, as it was completely contrary to their own. Most of their members held the same viewpoint, of course, but the contention between the leaders of the two Factions was something else entirely. She was surprised that the two Factions hadn’t yet come to blows over it, though she knew it was close; tensions had been at a boiling point over the last week or so as various issues came to light.

Of course, she wasn’t supposed to know about any of that, but she just happened to be in the right – or wrong – place at the right – or wrong – time.

“What do you think it is?” her friend asked, huffing a little to keep up. “It’s got to be pretty important if Jack’s in such a hurry.”

“Don’t know, exactly – but whatever it is apparently closed a few Apertures on its way here – or so the scout report said. Perhaps the SIC has gotten its act together and sent a relieving force?” Teena hazarded.

Chardine barked a short laugh. “Ha! You know more than I do that it’s unlikely to happen. The Corps is so disjointed now that I doubt they even know we’re here. They only care about keeping the Academies and Forts open for the influx of new Mages and Martials that have appeared among our youth.” She hesitated for a moment, before adding, “Unless they’re here to gather up the children? That would be just like them, taking our future away while abandoning us to our fate.”

Teena hushed her friend. “Shhhh… you know you shouldn’t talk like that. There’s too many that still want to restore the SIC structure here that you could cause problems for yourself.”

“Oh, no, whatever shall I do?” Chardine whined dramatically, before snorting in disgust. “If they hadn’t been the ones to cause the Calamities in the first place, we wouldn’t be in this mess—whoops! Looks like the word got out faster than Jack thought.” The other Mage looked pointedly in the distance, and Teena followed her gaze.

Coming out of the southern gate of Warshdin, the city where the two Factions were stationed, was another group of Mages and Martials that were approximately the same size as their own. She thought that her own group had a few more, but the quantity difference didn’t really matter when it was obvious that the Defend Faction had somehow learned of their scout report and were marching out to meet whatever it was just the same as her own Faction. Unless they have their own scouts out that far, which I suppose would make sense if they did.

“Jack’s not going to be happy about this—” Teena started to murmur, and she was proven right a second later.

“Damn it!” her boss shouted as he caught sight of the other group. “How did they learn of this? Everyone, speed up; we have get to whatever this is before they do!” At his command, everyone in the large group sped up so that they were practically running, and Teena found herself unable to talk with her friend any further, as it was all she could do to keep her legs pumping and her breathing steady. Fortunately, she—along with everyone else in the Strike Faction—had become quite fit over the last few years, as they no longer could sit behind city walls and fight from the relative safety of their heights when Scissions appeared; with how much they were on the move, traveling from one Aperture to another to close them, they had naturally developed their bodies in ways that would allow them to run faster and longer than they thought possible.

Of course, that only applied to the Mages that were part of the Faction, as the Martials didn’t really have this problem with their normal stats. Lucky bastards.

Unfortunately for the now-running group, the other Faction didn’t seem to have any problem keeping up with them. Neither group pulled ahead of the other, so they were neck and neck as they ran over the cleared plains and abandoned farmland toward a point in the distance. She wasn’t exactly sure where they were going or what they were heading southwest to meet, but she figured that Jack had more information and unerringly sent them toward their destination.

They kept running for another 10 minutes before she began to feel a stitch in her side, which she attempted to rub away as she ran. Jack was really pushing them to maintain their current mad dash across the ground, but she wasn’t the only one that seemed to be already flagging; they might be in better shape than they were years ago, but their speed was currently a flat-out sprint instead of a mile-eating run that they could maintain for much longer.

Thankfully, this wasn’t a normal occurrence for them, as their main duties were to venture into the territory of the Calamity and kill as many monsters as they could find before retreating. Such goals didn’t require them to run flat-out like this very often, unless they were being chased by more monsters than they could handle, but that was rare. Though, if the Strike Faction got their way, such occurrences – for good reason – would become more frequent.

As it was now, it was all they could do to maintain the status quo, which unfortunately played into the hands of the Defend Faction. Teena understood their reasons for not wanting to change the current situation, but she couldn’t understand how they didn’t comprehend that doing nothing would only lead to their doom in the future. They had to strike soon, or they might not have the opportunity to do so.

Just when she thought she would have to slow down and recover from the pain in her side from running, she saw something far ahead of the group, hovering in the air approximately 15 feet above the ground. She couldn’t quite make it out at such a distance, but it looked like some sort of bluish, glowing box that appeared quite out of place. Especially when it appeared as though someone was standing inside the box.

Actually, there appears to be a pair of someones.

As an Aeromancer, Teena could fly with her Flight spell, and she knew that there were a few other non-air spells that would achieve the same function, but they were seen as wasteful and weren’t utilized very often. The reason for that was because those spells were channeled, constantly burning through Mana that could be used for something else, and even the strongest of Mages could only maintain their flight for a few minutes before having to set down again as they ran out of Mana.

She knew this from firsthand experience, as she could get about 30 seconds of flight before she was forced to land again, and it also wasn’t very fast. She could practically run the same distance as she could travel through the air with her spell, and she also wouldn’t be dangerously near-empty of Mana when she arrived, either. It was also uncomfortable, as it literally forced her upwards with a bubble of hardened air, which pushed roughly against her body to achieve the spell’s effect.

Nevertheless, Flight was a good emergency spell to have in her back pocket, allowing her to escape from danger along the ground if it was necessary, but fortunately she’d never had to utilize it in a fight against monsters.

But what she saw ahead of them didn’t look like Flight or any of the few other similar spells she knew of that were less effective.

In other words, it was something entirely new – and that made her realize why Jack had been so insistent in reaching whatever this was first. Anything new and obviously powerful could be the exact thing they needed to strike down the Calamity; at the other end of the spectrum, it could also be exactly what the other Faction would need to solidify their stance in maintaining their defense around the Calamity’s borders.

Glancing over at Chardine as they continued to run towards the floating people in the distance, who appeared to have stopped moving, she could see the same thoughts playing over her friend’s face. She didn’t envy whoever this was that they were approaching at a frantic pace, because they were about to have two very insistent Factions demanding their attention.

And if she knew anything about Jack, which she did, she knew that he was not a patient man. Neither was Olivia, the leader of the Defend Faction; if they got into an argument, it wasn’t likely to end well with the current tensions between the two Factions.

It felt like they’d been running for hours before they finally began to slow down as they approached the floating bluish box. As Teena got closer, she could make out that the figure she had seen earlier was a man, a tall man at that, and her natural inclination when seeing him was one of disgust and hatred. He’s one of the Gergasi! Having grown up as the daughter of a baker, she’d heard stories of the giants that had enslaved her people over a thousand years before; the recent developments that revealed that they hadn’t stopped enslaving them all had only heightened her anger toward them. And now there’s one here—

“How dare you show your face here, giant! We’ll kill you and take whatever it is that is allowing you to hover like that, using it to lead the Strike Faction into the Calamity and finally close it!” Jack shouted at the front of Teena’s group. Her boss was an imposing man, standing 5 feet tall and nearly that same wide, and he was equipped with a full set of plate armor that gave him an even more intimidating aura. Unlike most Martials, he hadn’t invested much into his Agility stat, making him only slightly faster than most of the Mages, but he made up with it due to his amazing strength and resilient body. The Aeromancer had no doubt that he could back up his claim.

The problem she saw with his stance only became clear once she actually got an up-close look at the man and his companion, a woman with reddish-gold hair that put her as a foreigner. Contrary to what she expected, she could sense a great reservoir of power within the man that she identified immediately as him being a Mage, and one that was likely more powerful than her. More powerful than anyone in the area, in fact. If that had been it, then she would’ve dismissed him because they had numbers on their side, but she also noticed something strange about his clothes, her robe, and the staves that they held upright by their sides. She wasn’t an expert on such things, but even at a distance, she could identify that there were some extremely potent Fusions on them, to a degree she didn’t think was possible.

And then there was the floating box. It didn’t seem to be made of any recognizable material, as it simply looked to be constructed of blue, glowing light – and yet it was familiar somehow. It wasn’t until she really stared at it and strained her eyes to figure out what it was that a sudden realization shocked her so much that she could only stare at it with her mouth open in speechlessness.

“No! We will use this to defend the border with the Calamity to ensure it doesn’t spread any further! There is no reason to risk our lives when we can easily stop its advance from claiming any more land! Besides, it supplies us with the food that you all enjoy so much, so there is no reason to threaten the people with starvation!”

The voice of Olivia, the Defend Faction’s leader, cut through Teena’s shock and she blinked a few times as her mind started to function again. She looked again at the floating box, completely ignoring the people inside of it, as she whispered, “That’s Pattern Cohesion. Pure Pattern Cohesion. But how?”

“What did you say?” Chardine whispered the question next to her.

Before she could answer, the man in the box spoke for the first time. “No, I don’t think you’ll be doing any of that. If you can’t even recognize that I’m not one of the Gergasi, then I’m not going to bother helping you – especially since you blatantly said that you’re going to kill me just for being tall. That’s a shame, too, because it looks like you need some help with the Calamity, but I suppose you’ve made your choice.  Goodbye.”

“Wait! How did you make that out of Pattern Coh—” Teena reflexively shouted after the man said goodbye, but it was already too late. The box suddenly shot upward a few hundred feet and moved past the two groups, heading straight east instead of angling on its original northeastern course. She could only watch in despair as it took off, before it suddenly disappeared from her vision somehow. Searching for it, she realized that there was a small distortion in the space where she saw it disappear, which moved at the same pace as the box had moved previously. Some sort of illusion? she questioned to herself. Regardless, it was quickly out of her sight even if she could follow the mobile illusion, which became nearly impossible after a few seconds as her vision lost it among the sky above.

“What was that all about?” Chardine asked her, adjusting her grip on her staff as she looked nervously at the other Faction group that had gotten closer to them as they converged on the strangers.

“I don’t know, exactly, but that box was made out of Pattern Cohesion. I’m sure of it.”

Her friend scoffed. “Impossible. It isn’t possible to use Pattern Cohesion outside of a Fusion or for casting a spell. You must be mistaken.”

She shook her head, unsure of anything anymore. On the one hand, she agreed with Chardine, as using Pattern Cohesion like that was impossible; on the other hand, her eyes and her senses were telling her that it wasn’t only possible, but the proof of that was staring her right in the face. How does he do that?

Sadly, she couldn’t contemplate it any further than that as the leader of the Defense Faction strode out from her group, the multicolored Mage robe displaying her accomplishments in learning multiple elemental Specializations, making her an Elementalist. From what she knew of the woman, she had studied hard and long enough to learn the required number of spells in six different elements, giving her anywhere between 36 and 60 different spells that she could cast, making her a true threat to almost any monster they encountered. Of course, with such a wide variety of disciplines, Olivia wasn’t an expert on any of them like Teena was with her air spells, but it was the variety and unpredictability of her casting style that made her so effective.

“You! Foolish imbecile! You’ve ruined any chance of using whatever that man had to help defend against the Calamity! You’ve doomed us with your words, chasing away what could’ve been our salvation—”

“Shut it, woman! It’s better this way, as having to deal with one of his kind is more likely to bring misery down upon us rather than help. You should be thanking me—”

“Thanking you?! You’re crazier than I thought – which is why we’re never going to risk going far enough into the Calamity to close its Aperture. You’d simply lead us all to our deaths and say it was better that way!”

The verbal fighting continued on from that point, with accusations and threats being thrown around with no end in sight. Teena started to back up to get away from the confrontation, as she could see that it was starting to escalate to the point where something other than words would be exchanged soon. While she really didn’t want to fight the other Faction, she would defend herself – but any type of internal conflict wasn’t good for either Faction, especially if anyone was killed. That would simply lead to having fewer people to help keep the Calamity in check.

They weren’t the only group doing so, of course, but even one weak link in the chain of cities surrounding the Calamity could cause their defense to collapse. This was what the Defense Faction didn’t seem to understand, because eventually something would break down; the way those in the Strike Faction saw it, it was only a matter of time before it was too late to hold it all together, which was why they needed to coordinate and strike together, where they could close the Aperture at the center of the Calamity and give them some room to breathe and reorganize.

Thankfully, both Jack and Olivia seemed to sense that the inevitable conclusion of their argument would be it becoming physical, so they both agreed to back off and head toward Warshdin. They marched back to the city at a much slower pace, defeated and disappointed that they hadn’t acquired some new weapon that they could use against the Calamity. Teena, on the contrary, was lost in contemplative thought as she considered what she’d seen.

Using Pattern Cohesion outside of my body as a material? How does that even work? She had no clue, of course, but now that she saw that it was possible, she knew that she had to try.

If she could figure it out, then perhaps they didn’t miss out on a method to combat the Calamity, after all.