novelzi Chapter 402 – The Death Warrant of Ordeaux
Chapter 402 – The Death Warrant of Ordeaux
Lyca stared up at Anarchia. The Goddess of Anarchy loomed over him as the fog of dust settled down. She carried no blade or weapon, no firearm in her hand, but those dark eyes of hers stared down at Lyca with cool, calculated hatred. His head only reached her hips, clothed in black, with a red shirt above it.
Lyca suddenly stopped caring about the world around him. There were heroes nearby, he could smell them, but that didn’t matter. Eliza was in his arms, Anarchia was almost brushing up on him. Fleur had just fainted. Edmonton was throwing her onto his shoulder. Something in Lyca said to run. Something in Lyca said to push onwards. Dust settled, Lyca saw a drop of sweat fall between him and Anarchia.
A single heartbeat passed.
All Hell was unleashed.
Lyca kicked back immediately, he didn’t bother making any motion to summon his sorcery. An unfinished red sword, a crimson drawing painted onto reality by an artist, opaque save for the sharp edges, launched into Anarchia. The sword, only the blade and without a handle or hilt, struck the Goddess and impaled into her as Lyca jumped backwards immediately. A massive blast of red light came from Edmonton, a pillar that reached up to the sky and engulfed Anarchia.
The Goddess lunged through the sorcery, her skin regenerating faster than Lyca and Edmonton could do damage. If he wasn’t in a backwards roll already, Anarchia’s closed fist would have struck him across the shoulder and probably knocked him out. He sent another spell into her, this time there wasn’t even time to picture the sorcery. A red square struck the Goddess in the forehead. It buried a centimetre into her skull, and then it disappeared.
“RUN!” Edmonton’s scream awoke Lyca from that confusion. He couldn’t believe what just happened. His sorcery had been drained as if he had just run out of energy. It wasn’t the feeling that Anassa created, where she simply ripped control from him, it was.. Lyca launched into the air as he stopped relying on sorcery and decided to focus on his magic instead. He followed Edmonton up into the hole they had fallen through. Lyca blasted away in a burst of flame, making sure to hold onto Eliza even though lost control. The heat created a draft underneath him, it blew the dust away as he landed on a higher floor. And then he jumped again and it took him twice as long to cover half the distance. The building crashed around him, dust once again filled his mouth, his ears began to ring and he looked backwards, down the hole he had just escaped through.
And then Lyca felt it. He saw Anarchia pointing a single finger at him, he saw her stare daggers with those brutally cold eyes, and he felt his powers wain.
“RUN!” Edmonton shouted as he threw Fleur across his shoulders like a sack of potatoes. “RUN LYCA! RUN!” He screamed again as they raced down the corridor. “SHE STOLE MY SORCERY LYCA!” Lyca tried blasting off into the air using sorcery and realised it barely threw him up. It was still there, but far, far weaker. Barely as powerful as when Anassa had first awakened the power within him.
“USE MAGIC!” Lyca shouted as the two men raced down the corridor. “USE MAGIC AND HOLD ONTO FLEUR!” They turned down a corridor. “NOT THE STAIRS!” The building shook again. Another wall collapsed into another cloud of white-grey dust and to the sound of screeching pipes being twisted. And then another of Anarchia’s superheroes burst out from the floor ahead of them. A man in a yellow jumpsuit, with a cape, with an eyepatch over his face and a scar running down his cheek. He raised his hands, Lyca had been in enough fights to know the man was getting into a striking posture.
He snapped his fingers and the man combusted in fire. Anarchia had weakened the sorcery, she had stalled the magic, but it was still more than enough to put someone like this down. The superhero began to scream as he lost control of his flight and slammed into a wall. Through he went, like a cannonball striking a house of straw. Lyca and Edmonton jumped over the hole he had made on his entry, turned down a corridor and were staring at the end of a corridor. It was doors on either side, and then a window which looked out over the town square. Edmonton must have noticed Lyca start to flag.
“DON’T SLOW DOWN, I’VE GOT IT!” Edmonton shouted and threw his hand forward. The bottom of his watch was glowing blue as water concentrated in the humid air. It formed a razor-thin barrier that was almost invisible to the naked eye. It slammed against the masonry and blew the entire wall out like a wrecking ball swinging from the inside of the building. Edmonton jumped out without so much as slowing down.
Lyca followed him out without a moment’s hesitation.
Lyca and Edmonton both soared through the air. The former rode a mad snake of flame through the air with Eliza sleeping in his arms, the latter carried by a cupped hand of water with Fleur on his back. People looked up at that them from the square. Some pointed, others gazed in awe. A few of Anarchia’s heroes launched from the ground and into the air. The Goddess herself emerged from the crumbling hotel. Lyca braced himself to lose strength, but he must have put enough distance between himself and her to be out of range of that power.
The two men flew upwards, then down as Anarchia’s heroes started to give chase. Lyca did not even bother blasting them away, instead he forced all his magic into a great wall of fire around him that would do the same of a smoke grenade. Both him and Edmonton landed on an empty street on the other side of the square as flames appeared all around Lyca. If these men called themselves heroes, he would make them choose. Contain the city’s fire or give chase to them. “RUN!” Lyca shouted.
And so the two men ran as fires spontaneously appeared around them. Around cars and through windows and on doors. The heat cracked stone and devoured cloth and plastic as the flames began to spread. Hopefully it was enough. Hopefully Anarchia had a soft heart that would make her try and save this city rather than give chase to them.
Lyca looked up at the sky with Eliza in his arms. All the movement in the city seemed to come to a pause for a single moment save for the roaring flames that were engulfing an entire district of the city. People heard it first, although it wasn’t difficult to see either. From the north, a dozen black, V-Shaped arrowheads in the sky. From the east, another fifteen. They flew in a line, their engines as loud as a storm even though the air hot summer air was still.
Anarchia’s followers looked up. Men who had been chasing Lyca gave up and launched into the air. Others drew their rifles and pointed them up. Others still retreated back into the buildings. Lyca squinted as the planes in the air. Maybe the Anarchians didn’t know what they were looking at, but he had seen these in Kirinyaa. Not on this exact type of plane, the ones in the past had been smaller. Flaps opened on the plane’s undersides.
Bomb bays.