Chapter 41
Dock fight
Bianca turned from the City of the Dead back to the river. She waded back to the other side, skirting the edge of the ice floe that encased Martius. He didn't show any sign of breaking out so she had to assume the spell was doing its work and preventing his healing from working. She checked in on the mana reserve she had been tapping. A lot was gone. But at this rate there should be enough to finish them off. Probably.
The Ævatar reached the far side and Bianca hauled herself up. Almost immediately something smashed over her head and sent her flying headfirst into a warehouse. She righted herself quickly and spun around to find The Harper there, with the broken remains of a galley in his hands. He dropped the ship and put up his fists. With no weapons, a brawl was about all Bianca could manage anyway. It would conserve mana in any event.
She stepped out onto the docks to meet him. Suddenly a large wave of water rushed up, enveloped her, and dragged her into the river. Bianca cursed herself for being drawn so easily. The water started to solidify into ice in imitation of her own trick. The difference was that she was not incapacitated. She crafted a return spell that would follow the trace of the mana to its source. There it would blossom into myriad magically resistant palms, each with independent motion trying to cover the target's eyes. It was one of Jacques hallmarks, bearing both multiplicity and inanity. But she judged it would keep Water Bearer busy for a while.
With another burst of mana, she shattered the ice and leaped from the river bottom back onto the docks. The Harper put up his fists again but Bianca was not so foolish to fall for it twice. And, with a roar, she wrenched up the heavy stones of the quayside and flung them at him. Under cover of that she closed and tackled him. He went down easily. Too easily it turned out, for he just rolled and came up on top of her. She brought her knee up sharply between his legs, not knowing if gods were as sensitive as mortals. It certainly caused him to roll off. As she came up, though, he hit her full in the face with something dark and sticky. Probably the dung heap of the market.
This was dirty fighting. But, in a strange way, Bianca reveled in it. Of all the gods, she would not have expected this from the effete Harper. But this was his other aspect: the patron of drinking and excess. And they were on the dockside, so it was fitting. She really missed her knife as he grabbed her in a headlock and repeatedly punched her nose. But she had her own tricks, gouging his eyes.
She tried to keep the presence of mind and to remember to keep a scanner going for The Waterbearer. When it triggered Bianca yanked The Harper's head up by his hair and let him take the blast of steam to his face. He back-pedaled away and fell next to the mercantile exchange. As she leaped for him as he grabbed at one of the columns from the exchange to snap it off and use as a dagger. However, that building was a classical one, where the column was made of many pieces and it fell apart in his hand. It did, however, make a good imitation of brass knuckles and sent her reeling.
Bianca knew the city better. The harbor tax office was new construction. One solid piece of stone extruded and hardened by new magic. She grabbed it, poured mana into her muscles, and lifted it as one piece and brought the whole building down on Harper. That, at least, knocked the wind out of him.
She hunched down behind it, out of line of sight of Water Bearer. Ultimately, she considered, this was not making progress. The fight would not be won with fists. Her mind kicked into overdrive once more as she considered the possibilities. She readied her spells and stood, looking down at Harper. He was pretending to still be winded, but was really biding his time to jump her. But Bianca wasn't concerned with him; she was presenting herself as a target for Waterbearer. Not failing to take the bait, a wave of magic shot from the warehouse district at her. Bianca's seeker spell reported that Water Bearer had learned from the last blast to put a directive trigger on her magic, so that it hit the right target. Merely interposing Harper or something else would not deter this. Bianca was pleased that she was learning, and more pleased that she was one step ahead of The Waterbearer. She took a readied pattern of her Ævatar, set it to project and targeted it at Harper. Symmetrically she projected Harper's pattern over her own. Lastly as the spell came grounding in, she applied a variation of the magic she had used on her dagger on the spell itself. All of its damage would be reinforced by anmanic growing fields.
Apparently Water Bearer had felt Jacques multitude of hands also worth copying. She chose for her spell a horde of magically reinforced crabs, each independently attacking and inflicting its own wounds. Harper's melodic voice screamed through all the notes of the scale as they tore into him.
Bianca pumped more mana into her legs and immediately sprinted off in Water Bearer's direction. Tiles ripped from roofs in the wake of her passage and cobbles were flung up like pebbles from her feet as she raced at her. Water Bearer stood there, uncertain of what had just happened and not yet reacting to Bianca bearing down on her. As she closed, Bianca leaped in the air, and struck her, magically supplemented feet first. The impact split her rib cage, and knocked her backwards through two warehouses. Bianca hit her immediately with a stasis field before she could dissolve into water.
Bianca shook the rubble off and started off, at an easy jog, back towards the slums.
The flattened bit was easily recognizable, as were the three figures in it.
Sky Father lay where she had left him. He thrashed occasionally and his hands clawed the ground. Hearth Mother stood above him, eyes glowing with rage and her poker shaking in her hand. Weaver stood next to her, at an angle with her leg wrapped in a woven cast.
“What have you done to him!” screamed Hearth Mother, stepping forward a pace. Weaver reached out and touched her arm, but Hearth Mother brushed it off. “What have you done?”
Bianca stood, mute. Lilly had not hooked up her power of speech. She wasn't even sure if the Ævatar could speak; or had lungs. But she didn't think she had anything to say.
The gods were parasites. The sucked the mana from the world and spent it on themselves. They kept to their cozy little worlds shielded from the dirt and dung of reality. Through their priests they threw a few crumbs to the masses, in exchange for more fervent worship. It was the biggest con-job ever.
She often advocated a stricter approach for Romitu. Mana harvesting from the armed forces. Suppression of priests. But she wasn't Queen, and wouldn't be. She would find it difficult to suppress her personal motives for the good of Romitu. But the gods were not so restrained. They were free to act out their personal whims. Their foibles. Their individual dictatorships.
And here, when that was threatened, they were pathetic. They bickered, they fought. If they had stood shoulder to shoulder from the start it wouldn't have been a contest. And this wasn't even all of their gods. Some still cowered in their homes, belying further internal divisions. Their time was over.
Bianca pointed forcefully to Hearth Mother's poker, and then to the ground. In deference to Gwendolyn it was only reasonable to try to not drain every last erg from the power they had been loaned. Bianca was unsure what Jesca had promised. But she didn't want to add burdens to Romitu unnecessarily.
“Surrender? Surrender!” shrieked Hearth Mother. “Why you...” she lunged forward with her poker.
Bianca side stepped easily, grabbed the poker and wrenched it from her hands. She backhanded Hearth Mother's face on one side with it, then immediately forehanded her other side. While the goddess was stunned, Bianca swept her feet sending her to the ground. Once there, the Ævatar's boot stamped her stomach. As Hearth Mother arched forward Bianca bent the poker around her neck, wrapping it around three times tightly. Hearth Mother rasped out a breath, and then immolated, sending raging fire at Bianca's Ævatar, and forcing her back several steps and burning her severely. Mana fixed that quickly enough, and then wrapped Hearth Mother in stasis as she writhed on the ground, clutching at her neck.
Lastly Bianca turned to Weaver, perched on her cast, swaying amongst the rack and ruin.
Bianca made her the same offer, pointing to her net, and the ground. Weaver inclined her head and looked her with disgust and defiance. Bianca wrapped her in stasis where she stood.
After a time of silence there was movement. A squad of soldiers emerged from the edge of the flattened space carrying her sword. She bent and retrieved it from where they left it, and moved to Sky Father.
He looked up at her from his pain. The wound she had made was a simple knife thrust to gut. It hadn't been debilitating until their healing magic had grown the spell and wrenched it through whatever internal organs he possessed. His eyes met hers and his brow furrowed. Defiant to the last, Bianca thought. The tree that does not bend in the wind breaks. Flexibility is a survival trait. She cast the standard soul harvesting spell on the sword and lifted it up.
Then she heard horns.
They echoed from the seven hills of the city.
She turned. Figures stood high on the foothills that lead to Romitu. Her eyes zoomed in and she saw Clan Father, War Lord, and the other Orcish gods.
A bright light surged from the south of the city. The colorful gods of the south stood there in war raiment.
Beneath her feet, the ground surged. Tendrils of stone with hands at their tips squirmed quickly up her body. The coal black eyes of a Dwarven god she did not recognize pierced into hers.
At once they were all upon her. Her magical defenses held up, briefly, but were hemorrhaging mana at a rate that would drain all that was left in seconds. Her mind raced looking for a solution but found none.
“No!” she screamed, forced back to the operational sphere. “It can't end like this. It can't end!”
Darkness surrounded her. Only the dull thud of whatever the surrounding Ævatar body was being subjected to.
She reached deep within her and found the shield protecting her Soul. The Ævatar craved a Soul. With its own Soul it could direct its own Will. To what end no one knew. But all was lost.
“No,” she said a final time. “It cannot end like this.”
She dismissed the shield.
A deep coldness filled her, and she knew no more.