Dazephyr

That was the last of them. Vost wiped the dust and sand off his hands onto his dark maroon robes and took a step back, sweeping his gaze across the ruins as he looked around for Swen. The entire temple looked like the maw of the earth had split open and swallowed different sections of the temple, thoroughly chewed and grinded the parts, before finally spitting it back up. Massive wooden columns were broken in parts and strewn far away from the structures they were supporting. Furniture was splintered in a hundred directions, crushed either by roofs, walls or other furniture. Even the holy statues were not spared, the stone sculpture of Abbott Tysk mercilessly decapitated and his limbs shattered to shards.

Vost had not seen such a catastrophic ruin in all his twenty years of life. Yet strangely, they had not felt any tremors on their way here. Their velocycles had only shown a tiny bleep of seismic activity. An earthquake of such magnitude would register significant shockwaves both physically and electronically.

He spotted a slight rippling in the air around the disfigured remains of one abbot’s room, momentarily betraying the slender, toned silhouetted of Sven. She was crouched over, digging intently through the shattered remains of a wooden cupboard. Her skinsuit that covered her entire body from the neck down had taken on the earthly brown tones of her surroundings, providing an almost perfect camouflage. The illusion was broken only by her electric blue hair that shaped into a spiky bob. She wore her translucent face veil as always, concealing the shape of her facial features from the sight of others, including himself. From where he was, her floating head provided an eerie yet comical contrast to the wreck that surrounded them.

‘Swen, come over and let’s finish the rites,’ Vost beckoned to her.

Staring back down on the ground at his simple handiwork, Vost sighed. A wasted trip. Elder Kia had not given them much to work with before he passed on. And now, there lay three freshly covered mounds marking the graves of the elders whose bodies they had found in the rubble. Atop each grave stood a small rock, inscribed with the elders’ sigil names to mark their headstones. Vost had hoped that the elders here would clarify things and make this tiresome task a little easier. Wishful thinking, he mused. Figuring out where to go next was going to be a pain in the ass.

‘Swen, hurry up!’

His impatience was gradually bubbling to the surface. He could not understand why the elders had to build their temple here. It was remote, backward and prone to natural disasters. Earthquakes posed little danger in the cities thanks to anti-gravity buildings developed in the last century, but these stubborn old fools were probably too resistant or too ignorant to get with the times.

Suddenly, he pulled his thoughts to an abrupt stop. He casually shifted his weight and darted his eyes in Swen’s direction. She was still crouched in the same position, examining a piece of debris she had salvaged. Outwardly, she seemed engrossed in her task, unaware of her surroundings as she fiddled the item in her hands. Yet, Vost could sense the slight coiling in her legs, ready to spring into action in a moment’s notice.

Swen smoothened her fringe with her fourth finger.

One…

Two…

Three.

Three seconds.

Three targets approaching.

‘Take your own sweet time will you, Swen?’ Vost yelled, reaching for the handle of one of his danjos holstered on the leather straps running across his back. ‘Bloody hell, I missed a detail in the stupid sigil anyway.’

He crouched down beside one of the elder’s makeshift headstones and flicked the danjo on. The beam emerged with a soft transparent hue, all but invisible to the untrained eye. Danjo came from an older tongue many centuries ago, meaning broken stick. It was apt given the nature of the danjo, essentially a handle the length of his palm that emitted a plasma beam the length of a short sword, allowing it to be wielded like a stick with an all-round cutting edge. The ‘broken’ part of its name came from how danjos usually came in pairs, referring to the broken timing its wielders often employed when wielded separately, as well as how the handles of the two ‘broken’ sections could be joined to form a beam staff.

Vost had used many danjos before, but this particular make was by far the most superior, customised to his own specifications. In this respect, Master Olr was unrivalled in his manufacturing abilities. Unique to this pair was a set of gyroscopes built into the hilts that adjusted the beam length when they were used as a staff. Unlike traditional solid matter staffs that allowed users to shift their grips along the length of the staff to adjust the striking length, danjo staffs could only be gripped centrally at the hilt, with beams emerging at both ends. The gyros allowed him to simulate the changing lengths of a traditional staff by rerouting the power in the hilts to shorten one side of the staff and increase the other, keeping his weapon unpredictable.

Picking up one of the elders’ makeshift headstones, he switched his danjo into a reverse grip and placed the tip of the beam against the rock. A soft hissing filled the air, the tip of the beam sparkling as it made contact with the rock, sending a thin wisp of white smoke trailing skyward in front of him. He could not detect any significant heat signature beyond Swen’s in the vicinity and there was no overt movement in the vibration of the air.

From the corner of his eye, Swen tapped her knuckle to her chin, her fourth finger pointing downward.

The ground.

The earth started to rumble, hinting at another possible earthquake. Both shifted their weight slightly to accommodate the increasingly violent shaking of the ground, but continued their tasks quietly.

‘Funny eh, Swen. We’re ill-prepared for earthquakes outside of the city. Seems like the aftershocks are coming in.’

Vost casually sprung himself upwards, drawing his legs into a mid-air squat as he dropped the rock he was holding and drove the beam of his danjo downward, left palm against right grip, into the same spot he was crouched in just a half-second ago.

At the same instant, the earth burst forth in a spray of sand and stone as a circular obsidian shape emerged, launching itself upwards at Vost.

The two collided.

The hilt of Vost’s danjo slammed down hard against the obsidian object with a bright flash. His feet crashed against it in loud thunder. There was an audible hiss but his beam did not penetrate the object. He could feel the force of the object unfazed by his weight, shrugging off his kick nonchalantly. Borrowing the vector of the force, he sprung nimbly to the side in a somersault to land five paces from his adversary.

Just as abruptly, the circular object stopped its upward trajectory. From the side, it became clear to Vost that it was some sort of disc, its underside fused to the forearm of a humanoid figure by skin and veins that extended from the base of the forearm like creeper vines. His other forearm had the same obsidian disc, the dark sheen and colour reminding Vost of the Kilax beetle. Kilax carapaces were notorious for their heat and energy resistance, impenetrable to even Class 5 energy weapons. The disc itself had a diameter that matched the length of the figure’s forearm, smooth and shiny, lightweight and strong despite its size, carrying a thin, razor-sharp edge.

The figure itself was a hulking giant, a head taller than Vost and twice as wide. His shirtless torso was bulging with muscles almost bursting out of its skin and veins that snaked themselves visibly about like scars. His head was a shining bald scalp, black at the top, no doubt of Kilax in nature as well. Though his lower limbs were covered by a dusty, camo-patterned cargo pants, Vost suspected that the steroid-infused figure probably had further panels of Kilax fused somewhere on his legs.

The extensive body modification could only mean one thing – modders. They were the foot soldiers of the religion of Man, or more commonly referred to as ROM. Curious. Vost was not aware of any conflict between his elders and the leaders of ROM.

The modder turned wordlessly towards Vost, levelled the flat of his right forearm disc like a shield in front of him and charged at Vost again. His left arm was raised overhead, the disc’s razor edge aimed right at Vost’s eye line. For his size, he moved with surprising speed and alacrity. Vost had barely enough time to duck and dart in a diagonal line to his opponent’s right, swiping his danjo at the knee line of his opponent. His opponent casually dropped the position of his right arm, the danjo beam sparkling harmlessly as it hissed across the disc’s surface.

Anticipating the movement, Vost made a half-twist as he slid past his opponent, drawing his other danjo from his back with his left hand and slicing it in a diagonal arc in one fluid motion. The beam flickered and a pungent stench of burning flesh shot into Vost’s nostrils. His opponent’s right arm detached and fell limply to the ground, leaving a smoking black, cauterised stump at the shoulder.

In the same instant, his opponent stopped mid-charge and reversed direction, pushing off his muscled legs at an inhuman speed to slam his body into Vost. There was no expression on his face to indicate that he had just lost an arm, and his sudden switch in direction caught Vost off-guard, knocking him into the ground. The razor edge of his opponent’s left disc followed dangerously close towards Vost’s eye, nicking him across the temple as he barely rolled away in time. A cloud of sand bloomed upwards as the disc sank deep into the earth where Vost’s head was half a beat ago.

Vost could feel his breath getting heavy as he vaulted backwards onto to his feet, switching his right danjo to a forward grip to match his left. The modder’s speed, strength and lack of pain made for a dangerous foe. Another close call might leave him with more than just a trickle of blood running down the side of his face.  He shifted to an open stance, feet apart, both danjos readied at his side, and slowed his breathing, bracing himself for another skirmish.

To the side, Vost could hear Swen locked in battle with two others. He could not help feeling somewhat slighted that they considered her the bigger threat. On impulse, he considered going to her rescue, but the rhythmic clash and the sound of her calm breathing told him that she was taking things quite easy. The Kilax giant in front of him would probably cut him off even if he tried.

The modder straightened himself and squared his hips, staring expressionlessly at Vost as the sand cloud between them started to clear.

Vost sprang off his feet and launched himself diagonally upwards at his opponent, his figure a blur silhouette kicking up more sand behind him. The modder stood his ground and waited. Vost coiled his legs in mid-air and exploded them outwards at the modder’s head, expecting him to raise his disc to block. Instead, he simply lowered his head like a battering ram, his shiny Kilax scalp a sinister reflection of Vost’s expression of shock. Pain jolted up from Vost’s feet to his knees and hips at the force of the impact – the modder had leaped upward to crash into his kick.

A silent whistling in the air was the only warning Vost received to draw his feet just as the disc sliced narrowly passed his ankles. Ignoring the pain in his knees, Vost tilted his body forward and rested his right palm lightly on the disc as it passed the top of the modder’s head to leverage a turning vault, dropping himself behind his adversary as he swiftly slashed both his danjos vertically downwards before crossing them horizontally in a scissoring motion. The disc swung backwards to shield his adversary’s back, but it only managed to protect the upper back before the bright flash against the disc gave way to a dim searing of flesh in the lower back.

Both of them landed on their feet with a heavy thud. The modder’s upper torso separated from his hips, falling to the ground, leaving his lower torso still standing eerily upright. Even in death the modder showed no sign of yielding. Vost winced as he dropped to his knees to reduce the pain shooting up his legs. His victory had come at a cost – his injury would reduce his agility and make him a burden now if he were to join Swen. She would have to manage on her own, which, he supposed, would pose no problem for her.