Chapter 256

The dust settled between them.

Bodies on the ground. Wands scattered across the metal floor. The wizard stood with his back to the sealed gateway, staff floating at his shoulder and spellbook turning pages in front of him. His broken arm hung limp. His good hand was raised, palm out, fingers spread.

A gesture of parlay.

Alexander left Droney above the fortress. He’d felt the anti-flight ward tugging at him before passing through the roof. Sustained flight was out, unless he wanted to split his attention.

He didn’t need to fly. Throwing himself worked just fine.

“I am Keda. You must be one of—”

Metallokinesis seized every plate of the OACS and hurled him forward. His body left the ground, rotated mid-air, and his feet swung ahead of his center of mass as the courtyard spun around him. The acceleration slammed him against the inside of the suit. Feet forward. Arms tucked. Bodies and debris blurred beneath him as he crossed the distance in a fraction of a second.

The wizard vanished.

One instant he was there, hand raised, mouth open around the word he’d never finish. The next, the space ahead was empty.

Alexander hit the gateway feet-first.

The impact rang through the courtyard. The sealed surface held, dark and inert, but the frame shuddered. The OACS absorbed most of the deceleration. His knees took the rest. Pain stabbed through both legs, sharp but brief, already fading as he pushed off the gateway’s surface and landed. He raised his head and took in the courtyard.

Keda stood at the opposite end. Exactly where Alexander had been standing a second ago.

His staff still hovered at shoulder height. The spellbook still turned its pages. The wizard’s eyes had narrowed, shoulders tense. But his posture remained upright and controlled.

He opened his mouth again. “Are you not Flashpoint’s—”

Alexander raised both hands and fired.

Electrokinesis poured from his Core into the arms of the OACS, the ionization pathways aimed at the wizard’s face. Twin bolts of lightning crossed the courtyard in parallel, the air between them splitting and crackling, ozone flooding the enclosed space.

They reached the wizard and bent.

Both bolts curved inward as they entered the space around him, pulled off their trajectory by something Alexander’s senses couldn’t identify. The lightning slowed. He could track the leading edge of each bolt as it warped around the wizard’s right side, coiling behind his back, the twin streams merging into a single helix that grew brighter as it wound tighter. The power was building. His own power, twisted and compressed and amplified by whatever the wizard’s enchantment was doing to it.

The staff tilted forward. The merged bolt erupted from the wizard’s left side and screamed back across the courtyard.

Alexander was already moving. Metallokinesis hurled him forward, closing the distance, the return bolt racing toward him at the same speed he was crossing the gap.

He raised his left hand.

The combined bolt hit his palm. Current slammed through the gauntlet, through the cybernetic arm beneath it, and into his body. His teeth clenched. The power was his own, but doubled, compressed, carrying a secondary resonance that buzzed against his nerves. The arm’s capacitors drank what they could hold, as did the OACS, but the rest flooded into his body.

It stung.

He kept moving.

The wizard’s eyes widened. His good hand came up, fingers already tracing a symbol in the air, but Alexander was closing at a speed that left no time for whatever he was casting.

The wizard vanished.

Alexander’s momentum carried him through the empty space and toward the far wall. Metallokinesis reversed hard. His boots scraped across the metal floor, carving furrows through the dust and debris, bodies shifting in his wake. He arrested the slide an inch from the wall and turned.

The wizard stood where he’d started again. By the gateway. His staff settled back to its resting hover. He straightened, and his chin lifted a fraction.

Alexander studied him. The teleportation was fast. Maybe instantaneous. And the redirection of his lightning had been automatic, requiring no incantation or visible effort.

The wizard watched him as well. Waiting. Confident, despite the broken arm. Despite being cornered in his own slaughterhouse.

Alexander reached out a hand. Metallokinesis flooded the floor, reaching into every panel, every seam, every structural joint.

He ripped it upward.

The floor erupted. Metal screamed as sections tore free. Keda catapulted toward the ceiling as debris and bodies slid off.

His second mental thread noted that the anti-flight ward ignored both the wizard and the panels chasing him toward the ceiling.

Keda vanished mid-tumble. Metal panels slammed into the ceiling hard enough to embed themselves into the structure above. Keda reappeared on the ground, exactly where he had been.

Alexander was already running. Metallokinesis propelled him forward across the torn floor. Then he leapt, hands clenched, ready to bring them down with maximum force.

But Keda’s good hand was already sweeping sideways in a wide arc.

Bodies moved.

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Six of the dead wizards shot from the floor, robes dragging, limbs slack. They tore toward Alexander from multiple directions. The first two crashed into him head-on, their limbs snapping into action, wrapping themselves around him.

They blocked his vision.

He felt the others slam into his side and legs, limbs coming alive to grab him. Then a force pulled him downward, and he crashed to the ground.

A burst of Metallokinesis tore through the downward force, spinning him upright, back to his feet.

Dead eyes stared into his through the HUD.

Enough.

Alexander closed his eyes and exhaled. Will followed by power. The same way he’d done it earlier, when the anti-flight ward had been his target.

This time he kept it simple. The Machine God stood here. And everything that was metal belonged to him.

The floors, walls, and ceiling, of course. But everything else, too. Including the buttons sewn into the dead wizards’ robes, held there through some form of telekinetic control. Jewelry. Coins in pockets. Wands in holsters.

Filings in teeth.

One mental thread caught on that. Almost lost his focus. Surely wizards didn’t need medieval dental practices?

The other stayed in the moment.

He could feel the subtle control he held over every piece of metal. Something he’d never been able to achieve before. Raw power was what Metallokinesis represented.

Except here, at the edge of his Domain. Here, metal answered his call.

Alexander pushed. The wizard’s control over the corpses broke as metal pieces shot free, tearing from pockets, through dead flesh, and firing toward the wizard in a hail of metal shrapnel.

The staff flashed with light. The shrapnel slowed as it reached the wizard, caught by the same redirection that had taken his lightning. Metal fragments orbited his body in a tight spiral, accelerating, glowing faintly as whatever enchantment powered the effect compressed and amplified them.

The staff tilted forward. The shrapnel fired back across the courtyard.

It stopped five meters from Alexander’s chest.

Coins, buttons, filings, the shattered remains of wand fixtures. Every fragment hung in the air at the boundary of his presence, trembling between two competing forces.

Keda raised a hand, trying to push them forward with whatever telekinesis he possessed.

Alexander cocked his head.

The metal chose.

And the fragments dropped to the floor at his feet.

Across the courtyard, the black-robed wizard stared at him.

His staff had drifted backward. The spellbook’s pages had stopped turning. His good hand hung at his side, the telekinetic gesture abandoned.

His eyes were wide.

“Archmage?” The word came out hoarse and disbelieving. “That’s impossible. You’re not—”

Alexander raised both hands and reached for the walls.

Metallokinesis flooded outward in every direction. Into the courtyard walls. Into the ceiling supports. Into the structural beams.

He pulled.

The courtyard answered. Walls buckled inward. Ceiling supports bent, groaned, and folded toward the center. Structural beams tore free from their mounts and joined the collapse, everything converging on the spot where Keda stood.

Keda shouted a word. The translation matrix didn’t touch it. Raw syllables, guttural and sharp, that resonated against Alexander’s teeth.

A sphere of energy erupted around the wizard. Pale gold, translucent, expanding outward in every direction until it filled a space ten meters across. Every piece of metal that touched its surface locked into place. Walls mid-collapse froze. Beams hung at impossible angles, suspended by whatever force the sphere projected. The collapse stalled, tons of alloy held motionless against Alexander’s pull.

Alexander slowly clenched his fists.

The metal inched forward. The sphere compressed, its surface dimming as the boundary shrank. Eight meters. Seven. The beams groaned, vibrating under the strain. Keda’s good hand was raised, fingers splayed, his staff blazing with light. The spellbook’s pages tore past in a blur.

Six meters. Five.

Keda turned. Met Alexander’s eyes through the courtyard’s worth of suspended metal between them. He glanced up at the hole in the ceiling.

Keda grinned. Then vanished.

The sphere collapsed the instant Keda disappeared. Every beam, every wall panel, every structural support Alexander had been pressing inward tore free of resistance and slammed together. The far end of the courtyard crumpled like a crushed can, metal folding over metal, dust and debris erupting upward through the gap in the roof.

Alexander looked up.

Keda hung in the sky above the fortress, framed by the torn edges of the ceiling. A word left his lips, and light gathered beneath his feet, holding him aloft.

Alexander watched him for a long moment.

He was flying really slowly.

Alexander glanced to his right. His senses swept through the walls and found the Restorium. The jade pod. And the woman still inside, bioelectric signature pulsing stronger than it had been.

The walls further in were still stable. Whatever else the wizards were capable of, they knew their construction.

She’d be fine.

Alexander pushed back against the enchantment with his presence. The power it had originally contained had drained considerably, and its resistance faltered immediately.

He launched upward through the missing half of the ceiling.

Droney beeped as Alexander cleared the rooftop. A sharp, eager pulse through the bond that carried the drone’s excitement at getting to join the fight.

“Yeah, buddy. I know.” Alexander accelerated, Metallokinesis pulsing in waves as the fortress shrank beneath him. Keda was steadily shrinking against the pale sky ahead, staff glowing. “I have no idea why wizards fly so slow. I almost feel bad. It’s like I’m about to bully the guy.”

Droney beeped again. The bond carried something that Alexander had learned to interpret over months of partnership. Amusement. The little drone didn’t feel bad at all.

Keda glanced behind him.

His eyes widened. His staff flared brighter, and the light beneath his feet intensified. He picked up speed, pulling away toward the treeline, robes snapping in the wind of his own acceleration.

Alexander watched him go.

Two times really slow was still pretty slow.

He reached into his spatial ring.

Drones poured out. Combat drones, blades extended. Mace drones, their tungsten heads gleaming. Shield drones slipped into flanking positions. They filled the sky around him, falling into formation under Droney’s direction.

Fifty-three machines hung in the air around the Machine God.

Alexander leaned forward, and the swarm moved with him. He closed the distance steadily. Each wave of Metallokinesis built on the last as he cut through the air faster with every second.

Keda was trying. His staff blazed. The light beneath his feet burned brighter, robes whipping behind him as he squeezed every bit of speed his flight magic could produce.

The gap shrank anyway.

Keda looked back. The gap shrank further. He looked back again.

Then he stopped.

Keda turned in the air, robes settling around him, and faced Alexander. His staff floated to his side and the spellbook drifted higher. His good hand came up, and light began gathering around his fingers, forming runic symbols.

Alexander raised his own hand. Animachina flooded from his Core into as many drones as he could empower. More than half, but still not all of them.

Something rose into the sky behind Keda. Far in the distance, beyond the treeline, past the rolling grassland, from the direction of the village Alexander had seen burning from high altitude.

A fireball. Climbing in a long arc, bright enough to reflect light off the clouds above. It reached the top of its arc. Hung there for a fraction of a second.

Then it turned toward them.

Alexander clicked his tongue.

That’s what he got for trying to do the right thing.