Centuries of erosion and layers of lakebed algae had turned the once pristine steeples and towers of Kitezh into a decayed city. Broken cobblestone pathways, caked with snow and ice, trailed off between empty foundations and ruined stucco buildings. Only the the stone towers, belfries and steeples of tarnished bronze, stood watchful.
As the audience members took their seats in the stands located in the central plaza (brought in and built special for the occasion) the once-excited spectators grew uneasy with the eerie surroundings. It was a lot like watching a spellbreaking match in a cemetery. The lost city, which had sat at the bottom of the lake since Koschei's failed ritual several hundred years ago, carried a lonesome, funerary atmosphere that was nevertheless brimming with old magick.
Colt--wearing his best suit and bolo tie--took his skybox seat and looked up from the ring in the center the plaza. The church steeples around the city resembled upwards daggers, or the fingers of a dead, skeletal hand clawing at the sky. Something about this configuration bothered him deeply.
Hell of a lot of church towers, Colt thought. Guess they were really religious back then. He remembered the legends speaking of how the faith f the citizens of Kitezh saved them, preserving their souls and their city at the bottom of the lake--but Colt knew better now. Nobody had survived the massacre, and if anything, Kitezh's vanishing was the result of divine punishment, not salvation.
"Ladies and gentleman and everyone in-between," Boomer Harlow howled from his spectator table. If anybody was most excited about the world championships, it was him. "Get ready for the first match of the night! And it's a doozy. These two big boys are ready to show you what spellbreaking is really about."
Titan and Bear Mischa. Colt watched the two enter the ring from separate sides. Boomer was right--they were big. Titan, dressed in just his gladiator-inspired, leopard print gear, stared down Bear Mischa, Firebird's biggest bruiser--clad in a solid, red 'strong man' singlet. It was like looking at the good and 'bad' versions of the same warrior, Colt thought (though he heard Bear Mischa was actually a huge mama's boy and an incredibly softie).
With a roaring grunt, the two beasts locked up, commencing the world championships in earnest. The crowd hollered. Colt, scanning the excitable audience, wondered how many of these spectators were secretly Aradia peace keepers in disguise. He faked scratching his ear, tucked beneath his white cowboy hat. Really, he triggered his ear-piece, sending out a 'ping' to the other magi positioned strategically around the ring.
Sitting in the same position on the stands on the other side of the ring, Lily Suarez, dressed in an blush-coloured pantsuit, pressed her hand to her sunflower pendant, sending back a signal to both Colt and Slayer. "Are we in position?"
The later agent, positioned high atop the bell tower, with a trained sniper at his side, tucked his ponytail beneath the collar of his skin-tight body suit, and adjusted his sunglasses. The enhanced lenses zeroed in on the ring, scanning the audience for threats.
"Confirmed. No sign of Semyon," the former soldier, and current (non-participating) Firebird spellbreaker huffed. Down below, Titan picked up Bear Mischa and slammed him into the mat, setting off the audience.
Slayer, a trained soldier, looked out and over the crowd. He detected movement, somewhere beyond the bell tower. Just as he did, his eyes glossed over the faded symbol--worn away by years of water erosion--on the side of the belfry. Slayer recognized it as a glyph--specifically, the Glyph of Shadow, Tenebreus.
"Tornasol," Slayer said into his headpiece, calling for Lily's codename, "mayhaps you've noticed the symbology on the city steeples."
"Glyphs. Yes. I'm looking into it..."
Down beneath the Tower of Shadow, Deadboy Daemian (dressed in a black pea coat for the wintery weather) ran alongside his demonic companion, Brax (who needed no additional protection from the elements). The two stopped at an intersection, a promenade flanked by the broken statues of cherubs, and tilted, rusted lamps that hadn't been lit in centuries. The demon huffed, his breath a visible vapor in the cold air. He pointed in the right direction, and Deadboy followed.
The twenty-one belfries of Kitezh were somewhat anomalous, to the untrained eye that is. Aside from the belles they house, they all housed nothing but a small antechamber, open on all four sides, and a winding staircase leading to the the belfry beneath their steepled roofs. It was in one such chamber that Daemian, breathing heavily, came upon his Auntie Jacinda.
However Semyon had moved her and Uncle Daniel, he hadn't given them proper clothing for the weather. She was still in her nightgown. Cradled and manacled in the arms of an enormous, largely featureless statue --an anthropomorphic lump of clay, with the vaguest suggestion of eyes and mouth--the unconscious woman's head drooped to the side, her curly, white hair tumbling over the statue's arm.
Rage and loss shot through Daemian's heart. He held his hand up to his foster mother and activated his glyph, immediately relieved to feel her pulse of life. She was alive. But why was she here? What the hell was the point of any of this?
"Daemian!"
Deadboy had been so lost in thought that he failed to pick up on the sound of heavy stone against the earth coming up from behind him. He turned his head, just in time to see the stone against the chapel at his back come to life--take shape--and entangled itself around Brax. The demon roared, summoning chains of living shadow to try and pry him loose, but it was all in vain. The liquid stone took the form of the same type of statue-entity gripping Auntie Jacinda. Daemian marched forward to try and do something about it--nobody messed with his found family, after all--but found his leg suddenly caught.
The earth, the concrete beneath his boots, had grabbed hold of him. A shape rose around him; a prison of stone. He blinked, and found himself embraced by the tight arms of the golem, being dragged off to an uncertain end...
He was not on the only one. While all attention focused on the action in the ring, spellbreakers and magi alike, watching from the wings, found themselves in similars predicament.
This city was alive, and it was moving against them.
---
Colt, and the audience too, for that matter, wince and groaned as Bear Mischa dropped all 400 pounds of himself from the top rope, onto Gio, flattening the muscle man out. The three count was crisp. The bell rang.
The Titan had fallen.
"This ain't good..." Colt muttered under his breath. Of course, Gio would be fine, physically. He could brush anything off, and had a solid-ego to boot, so one loss wouldn't chip away at his self-esteem. Mischa, despite his bombastic roaring, was gracious, and even helped his defeated opponent limp away from the ring.
"Colt."
The cowboy pressed his finger to his earpiece. "We not doing the fun name thing for me? Come on. You know how much I love that."
He could barely identify Lily in the crowd across the way. "I was just down by the changing area. We can't find Deadboy or Brax anywhere."
As Colt processed this, he looked over to where Gio and Mischa had been standing, seconds before. They were gone. He swallowed, uncomfortable. "Little lady, I got a bad feeling. I know when a storms' comin' on. This is a big one. Somethin' ain't right."
"Stay there," Lily said, sharply. "Don't move. Pretend like nothing is wrong. Leave this to Aradia."
Colt sighed and said nothing more. Down by the ring, Boomer Harlow set the stage for the next match. Mr. Iron vs Ivan the Wolf, Firebird's baby face champ. The handsome, smiling Russian with the intimidating muscles shook John Henry's hand. Colt almost didn't notice Mr. Iron was sporting some non-traditional gear--a silver, body-clinging singlet that showed off his massive physique quite nicely. The big man easily won himself a few wolf-whistles from the crowd.
Sandra would be so jealous, Colt thought to himself, enjoying this brief moment of levity. The bell rang, and the bruisers went at it, channelling both magic and muscle into their craft. Ivan had the athleticism, Mr. Iron had the brawn and momentum. It was anybody's guess who would come out on top.
Meanwhile, atop his perch, Slayer St. George adjusted his binocular sunshades, this time zeroing in on Icewolf and Iggy Astro, who had volunteered to monitor the adjoining street outside the plaza, in search of Koschei or any of his underlings. As they conversed, Slayer caught a glimpse of two of those oversized, walking statues barrelling towards them from opposite ends of the ancient street.
"Tch." Slayer made a motion with his fist and pointed in the direction of the enemy. The Aradia sniper locked his rifle and aimed his crosshairs at the golems. Just as he did, the gargoyle atop the steeple above them reached down and grabbed the sniper by the collar, hoisting him into the air.
"GAAAH!" He didn't even have time to pull the trigger. His magick bullet casings clinked to the ground, and he was lifted off into the sky.
"They have flight capabilities?" Slayer grunted. Gritting his teeth, he looked down at the ground and unzipped the back of his skin-tight suit. "Someone must be controlling them." He pressed his ear piece. "Tornesol--"
"I know," the woman said, already excusing herself from the excited audience, watching as Ivan dodged Mr. Iron's haymaker. The light magi pushed her way down the stairs. "They're golems. Invention of Czech alchemists. Sev, do you see any sygils or engravings atop their heads? Any markings?"
Slayer leaned forward and tossed his shades aside, hands gripping the edge of his perch. The skin on his muscular back rippled, and then split open, two leathery wings--like a dragon's--sprouting from his back. The burst of pain caused him to break out into a sweat. It had been awhile since he'd used his glyph for flight.
"Not that I can see," Slayer wheezed. He took a deep breath. "I'm going after one of our men. I--"
He was cut off by a sudden blow from the right. An unseen gargoyle knocked him clean off the roof. Slayer recovered mid air and fought back, kicking off the steeple and accelerating into the cold, Russian sky. He watched in dismay as his earpiece fell faster and faster towards the Earth. All around him, a swarm of stone golems, winged gargoyles, centered in on his target.
"Wyvern?" Lily whisper-shouted into her earpiece. No response. She pressed her back to the bleachers and winced, just as the crowd reacted to another move. She ran past the barricade towards an archway, hoping to stop the golems from grabbing her companions.
By the time she reached the snowy street, Iggy had collapsed. The pink-haired spellbreaker in the fuchsia leather jacket, looked up at the three golems who had kicked him to the ground, and smiled.
"I've been shot before," they said, conjuring up a javelin of light and shooting it at the golem who had raised its foot to try and kick him. "You think I'm afraid of a bunch of tacky statuary?" The spellbreaker whipped their head towards Lily. "Oh good, another Light user. What we gonna' do, bicha, dazzle them with a laser show like we're at the damn planetarium?"
Lily ignored the sass and extended her threads of golden light around the golem's legs, binding them together fast and knocking him down. "Where's Icewolf?" she shouted.
Iggy's eyes bugged out from their attractive face. "Did you just pull off a double-leg takedown with light magick?"
Lily smirked. "Feel free to steal it for your next match."
Of course, Iggy's own brand of luminous enchantment didn't work the same way--such was the spectrum of glyphology. Still, this wouldn't stop them. The golem to Iggy's left went to try and grab the rock star stud, pull them in for a tight embrace--but the spellbreaker was quicker. Trained in capoeira, Iggy pivoted on their boot heel and pirouetted around the golem, keeping out from its sight.
"They got Robbie," Iggy said, joining Lily's side. "Nearly crushed my guitar too," they said, pointing to a pink case, covered in star stickers, laying up against a wall.
Lily brushed her hair back, confused. "You...brought your guitar?" Her focused was on the golem she felled, who had snapped free of her luminous threads, and was presently rising back onto his feet.
"I'm a musician, of course I did. Oh...hello, sexy."
Lily was taken aback, thinking Iggy was talking about her, when she noticed the large, muscular man (inappropriately dressed in snake-skin, hot pants and a half buttoned, purple shirt) bounding towards them like a luchador about to take a dive off the ropes.
Which was an apt comparison, as the man was, in fact, a luchador about to take a dive into the golem. El Amante Intoxico had stormed into the frey!
"He's not going to try to hurricanrana a ten-ton statue," Iggy started. "Is he? Oh, of course he is..."
"TAKE THIS, RUDO!" El Amante shouted, missing the golem's attempt at grappling him, and flipping into the air. El Amante's legs caught the golems bulbous neck. He hung there, inverted, his long hair tumbling down into his face. "Err...I thought that would work."
The non-plussed, masked man flipped down and landed gracefully, standing upright and blowing a kiss towards Lily, who, despite her professional decorum, swooned right into Iggy's arms.
"Mi amor," El Amante said, facing the two golem looming above him, "where is the excitable Canadian?"
"He got got," Iggy replied as he helped Lily back onto her feet. "These things are damn tough."
El Amante's response was to remove his his shirt, showing off his eight-pack abs and heaving pectorals.
"Tougher than...the power of seduction?" He said, bounding his pecs hypnotically.
Lily fell back into Iggy's arms. The pink-haired heel frowned. "Babe, they're made out of rocks. Also, stop doing that to Lily. She doesn't have the same immunity towards your powers that I do."
El Amante pointed to his partner ad winked. "You ain't seen nothing yet, chico." He turned to face his stoney opponents. "Now, my love....musica!"
Iggy glanced between their guitar and his himbo, hunky boyfriend. "...Viki, are you serious?"
El Amante snapped his fingers. "Musica, ahora!"
Lily shook the stars out of her eyes. "He said 'music, now'."
"I UNDERSTAND SPANISH." Gnashing their teeth, Iggy kicked open their guitar case, sending forth a plum of star dust. They slung their hot pink guitar over their chest. "Okay. You may want to avert your eyes, Lily. This is about to get...spicy."
The three golems corralled the handsome luchador, who waited for the first few strums of his lover's melody before he broke out into a slow, seductive, hip gyrating dance. The golems stopped, confused, and looked at each other. El Amante placed his hands behind his head (deliberately showing of his bi's and tri's) and swivelled his pelvis with erotic aplomb. The golems stopped in their tracks.
And then, blowing them a kiss, El Amante tore off his snake-skin pants, revealing tight, purple, silky briefs (any further description thereof would require this chapter to be moved to the After Dark section). The golem's followed his hips with their eyes, unable to tear themselves away.
And then, El Amante thrusted.
All three golem's heads split open with a burst of light, before they crumbled into massive piles of dust.
Lily and Iggy were left dumbstruck. "Are all...of your pants tear-away?" Iggy asked.
"All pants can be tear-away," El Amante said, flipping his gorgeous hair back, "if you're brave enough." He winked.
Snapping out her distraction, Lily shuffled around the pile of ash, examining it for signs of enchantment. "Most golems have a carving or seal on their head that's used to control them," she explained. "But not these. Which means there must be some object, or charm, that their controller is using." She sighed. "I should have paid better attention in my 'Intro to Alchemy' course."
As Lily continued to speculate, a shadow fell over Iggy and El Amante, who looked up just up in time to see two enormous, winged statues descend. The gargoyles extended their concrete talons and grabbed Iggy and his partner, painfully, by the shoulder.
As the took off, El Amante called back. "RUN!"
In shock, Lily nevertheless did as told, just barely managing to avoid another gargoyle as it went to strike her. In that split moment, an idea came to her--and knew she would have to commit to it. It can take me to the one controlling it.
"If these hunks can be brave," Lily said, throwing a lasso around the foot of the soaring gargoyle, and tying the other end around her waist and underarms, like a harness, "I can be brave too."
The harness of golden light jerked Lily back, and then she was flying upwards, her legs flailing beneath her as the ground fell further and further away.
"Never mind--this was a mistaaaaaaaaaaaaake!"
---
"Aaaaand...three!"
Mr. Iron, covered in sweat and bruises, held his arms to the air in triumph. "YEAH!"
Poor Ivan, despite his best, had to be dragged out of the ring. It was knock out! The crowd went wild. As did Boomer Harlow. "Folks, this is a story nearly two decades in the making! Mr. Iron is now positioned to go up against the world champ!"
But Colt was nowhere near celebratory. Lily was nowhere to be found, nor Slayer. As the next match--between Reina Ros and Yaya Baba--set itself up, the president of the GSA slunk out from his skybox (protected by Aradia security) and travelled down to the other side of the VIP section, where Cian and Spike waited, watching the fight in uncharacteristic silence.
They looked up at their boos. "You look like you're gonna ralph," Spike said dumbly, to which Cian cuffed him in the arm. "OW! Whaddya' do that for, ya putz!"
Cian stood. "Sir?"
"Something's up," Colt said, eye on the ring, where Rosa had just gracefully dodged one of Yaya's massive chicken feet kicks, moving to wrap up the other leg with her rose thorn vines. "We need to get down there."
Cian looked toward the ring. "Respectfully, sir, this feels like a trap. I think we're...being gathered."
Spike thought back to his vision of the past. "There's a big church-like place where Semyon's probably hiding," he said. "If we find that, we can take him out." He pounded his fist inside his other hand for emphasis.
Colt tipped his hat. "Quick thinkin', son, but Cian has a point. Why throw ourselves into the spider's nest when we can lure the spider out?" He pointed to Cian. "Sorry to do this to you, sport, but I'm gonna hafta ask you to get very ugly."
---
"You came here, willingly? Of your own accord?"
Salim tugged on his golden robe, his jackal mask tucked inside his giant hands. He stared down Semyon, or what was left of him, sitting on the throne. Recida, standing at his side, scowled at the massive spellbreaker.
"One of you looks like beef jerkey left out in the sun too long," Salim sniped. "And the other looks like they've been irradiated pretty badly by a lovely Aboriginal woman."
Recida glared, going for her snake pendant--curiously to Salim, she wore a new medallion alongside it. He hadn't seen that one before.
"Please," Salim said. "I can freeze Goddess-damn time. I could snap both your necks in less than a split-second. Instead, I am here to offer my magick." He looked up at Semyon and bowed his head. "Well played, Koschei. You knew there was no way I would pass up the tournament, or even better, a chance to kill you."
"This throne is made of material that siphons magick," Koschei carefully explained. "If you so much as come close to it, you will end up in far worse shape than even my present appearance. That said, there's nothing you can do. You presence alone provides me the power I need. Unlike the others, I don't need to situate you in one of the belfries in order to channel your glyph."
Salim shrugged. "So I thought. I just wanted to ask you what you intended to do with the Glyph of the Goddess. A simple ques--"
"Ugh!" Recida suddenly bent forward, clutching at her neck.
"You okay there, sis?" Salim asked.
She shot the giant a venomous look, but addressed Koschei. "Someone's destroyed my golems. I'm afraid I'll need to investigate." The woman tugged at her oroboros charm, tearing it from her neck and slicing her hand open without so much as blinking. A spray of blood solidified in t he air, becoming a scythe of crimson light.
"Blegh," Salim said, making a face. "Alchemy is so gross."
"Exercise caution," Koschei said, as Recida marched out of the room. "Do not underestimate these fools."
When she was gone, and the two immortals could speak at last, Salim placed his mask over his head, taking on the form of King Anubis. "Well? I know what you're doing. Why?"
Koschei glanced over at the stone basin, reconstructed and reinforced. Around it sat the Seven Divine Chalices, in a ring, all of them having their crystalline liquid poured into the pool. The basin cycled through the colors, radiating the blessings of the Goddess.
"Simply to take back what's mine by divine right alone," Koschei said. "It's so amusing, and ironic, my dear Sarapis. The night that scheming prince disfigured my sex--"
"You mean tore your d*** off? Like, it's an a jar somewhere. I've seen it." He winked. "Not bad at all. I can see why you got so much a** back in the day, you dirty old man!"
"Be...that as it may, my predilections and desires blinded me to my true calling. Removed of carnal need, I could see far more clearly as Semyon Grigorivich. This world is full of pettiness, weakness, discord. My father put lesser men to the sword for stepping out of line. But the problem, as any Tsar or ruler can tell you, is that...the will of the many outweighs even the strongest ruler. Even you, with your power, were thwarted by a select few, I am told."
"News flash, weirdo, the War began because one man--one Emperor--tried to make the world his. What makes you think you'll fare any better?"
Koschei smiled. "Because the Alban King did not have the magick I am about to make mine."
King Anubis didn't say anything for a moment. "So, you mean to tip the scales at last? Become...what, king of the world? Shape everything to your whim? God King Koschei, is that it?"
On the throne, Koschei narrowed his eyes and smiled.
"That's really it!?" the world champion said, bursting out laughing and slapping his knee. "Six arcs of content and the best you can do is pull of this...early 90's JRPG villain schtick?"
"Even you will bow to me," the baled, scabbed Koschei said, raising their head.
"Nah! You know what this game needs, my friend? A much more interesting final boss..."
Pressed up against a pillar just outside the audience chamber, Spike--who had heard everything--bit his lip. I really, really miss when the worst thing that could happen to me was getting a friggin' steel chair up the side of the head.
----
Recida smiled, satisfied, as she turned away from Kuma Kengo, caught in the stone giant's embrace beneath the belfry. "All in their place," she said to herself. With blood scythe in hand, she walked among the golems, who each bowed to her as she passed.
Situated at the tallest tower, overlooking the city below, Recida had a perfect vantage point of the ring. White Tiger and Vahni Rage were about to come to blows, deciding who would go on next to face the world championship.
These little boys and their stupid games, Recida thought. Suddenly, the golems guarding the staircase leading downwards pulled back. She glared and pressed her hand to the medallion around her neck. "I didn't say you could..."
She stopped. There, coming up the staircase, was Semyon, the only other soul she'd given command over her stone sentry. Lily Suarez, Aradia's brat, struggled as he tugged her along towards the top of the tower like a father pulling along a misbehaving child.
Recida narrowed her eyes. Something was off...
The golems stepped aside. Semyon threw Lily to the ground in front of Recida. She collapsed, pathetically, with her long hair draping her face.
"I thought I'd give you her to you as a gift," Semyon said, with a wide grin. "After everything she's done to us. It seemed fitting."
Recida looked up from Lily at the gaunt figure. "Quite right," she said, slowly. "And...I would have almost been fooled, Cian Enbarr."
She threw her scythe forward, nearly slicing into Semyon's neck.
Fortunately, Cian was quicker. He 'threw' the illusion forward, like tearing off clothes, and stepped back, looking over his shoulder at the sheer drop below.
With a devilish, mad look in her eyes, the wily Alchemist chased him down, slicing and slashing. "I'LL KILL YOU FOR WHAT YOU DID TO MY FAMILY'S HOME!"
"Damn, she's good," Cian snarled, projecting illusory clones of himself to try and throw the woman off balance. "Gee, you burn down a lass' castle and suddenly she think has a right to cut your feckin' head off!"
"AAAAAAGGGH!"
The crazed alchemist jumped into the air, just as Cian tripped and landed on his butt. Behind him, a golem came up the stairs, blocking his way. He was trapped.
Just as Recida fell forward, ready to bury her scythe in Cian's chest, she found herself abruptly yanked backwards. He neck pulled back. "Whaa...what!" she snarled.
Cian looked over her shoulder. "Holy crap."
Hair still half in front of her face, Lily tugged her golden string, pulling Recida back. The Alchemist cracked her head to the side, trying to see who dared to impede her progress.
"YOU TREACHEROUS SKANK!" she roared. "I'LL CUT YOUR DAMN HEAD OFF."
Lily looked into her eyes. "Nope."
Cian watched in awe. Recida's body went sailing behind her, as Lily whipped the woman over her shoulder--almost, Cian thought, like a suplex. The woman landed with a sickening crack, somewhere behind Lily. Her scythe melted into a pool of blood. She didn't move.
Lily acted quickly. She tugged back her thread, Recida's medallion coming with it. Safe in Lily's hands, she opened the locket open and found the piece of ancient parchment. She ripped in two.
As she did, the golem behind Cian--ready to crush him with its fist--split down the middle with a fissure of light...as did the golem sentry surrounding the belfry. In seconds, they'd crumbled into dust, leaving Lily and Cian safe.
The Faeblood Brawler wobbled onto his feet, trying to catch his threat. "Lady and Mother, Lily Suarez--you sure you don't want to try your hand at spellbreaking yerself, lass?"
Lily nearly fell onto her knees in exhaustion. "Buck would think I was so cool but...no. Never." She caught her breath, and tried to think of what to do next. Just as she opened her mouth, however, the bell behind her rang with a thunderous toll--making her and Cian jump. They looked up at the swaying bell, then at the steeple. The engraving of its glyph, same as Kengo's, glowed an eerie blue. Cian and Lily looked out over the fog-shrouded city, at the other towers. All of them, all of their bells ringing in tandem, glowed the respective color of the glyph carved into their side.
Lily was so entranced by this thunderous uproar of bells, and the shimmering towers, that she failed to notice that Recida's body was longer laying in a heap behind her. All that was left was the stain from her scythe...and her ouroboros necklace, broken in two.
---
White Tiger flipped backwards as Rage tried to hook him with a fiery jab. Landing on his feet, Joseph spun around and launched a round-house kick--not to hit Rage in the head directly--but launch a might gust of icy wind. The energy shaped itself into the head of a roaring tiger, its jaws wide open.
Rage reacted. He threw his hands out, creating a wall of fire to incinerate Tiger's attempt. "Very good," Rage sneered. "I would expect nothing less of the GSA's...huh?"
His ears had picked up a low, rumbling chime. It was most definitely not the crowd. When his flames died down, and he could see his opponent clearly again, he found the sweat-glistening White Tiger just as perplexed as him.
The audience looked around at each other, joining in the fighter's confusion. The earth beneath their feet seemed to glow, and particles of light had appeared in the air like fireflies. The disguised Aradia soldiers--those that hadn't been dispatched by Recida's golems, anyway--placed their hands on their guns and dampeners, ready for the attack.
"Uh...folks," Boomer Harlow said from his seat ringside. "There seems to be some sort of disturbance. The ref is calling off the fight. Looks like we're gonna..."
But even spellbreaking's loudest mouth was cut off by the sharp sound of bells. Though incredibly loud, they caused no percussive pain on the audience's ears, or even the two fighters standing in the ring.
The twenty one towers around the city lit up, fountains of light, in a spectrum of colors. All magi among the audience felt a tingling in their chests, as if their glyphs were reacting.
Then, as quick as it came on the light subsided. The bells stopped. In the twenty one towers surrounding Kitezh's central chapel, the spellbreakers and magi captured by Koschei and his accomplices suddenly came to, with a swell of magick.
Joseph and Vahni looked to each other, silently acknowledging a truce. There were greater matters that needed their attention. As the two men moved to exit the ring on their respective sides, their eyes were drawn to the familiar face running towards the ring.
The two men said the name at the same time. "...Spike?"
The blonde man in the navy jacket politely excused himself past the bewildered ref, and stumbled into the ring. "Guys," he wheezed. "Koschei's done it. He's completed the ritual. Ryan Hartley is in one of those towers, with the symbol of my glyph. Do you...do you remember him?" He collapsed, breathlessly, at Joseph's feet.
Vahni Rage immediately stepped forward and picked Spike off the ring. "My lion, what do you mean?"
Before Spike could explain further, the audience gasped. Walking slowly towards the ring, the tall man in gold and black robes shimmered with the rainbow's spectrum, his aura all colors and hues.
"My old friends," Koschei, grinning wildly, said. His eyes were hollow white, like white fire.
Spike, Joseph, and Rage stood back and watched Firebird's president heal his skin in rapid time, hair re-growing, singed beard returning to his face, well-trimmed. His gray skin became a more lively luster, and he even appeared to de-age, in rapid time, as he stepped to the ring's edge.
"Turn your gaze upon me!" he commanded, just as loud as Boomer Harlow. The audience fell silent. They waited. Koschei heled up his hands in the air, and in the space between them, an explosion of rainbow-colored light radiated outwards.
Spike had to put his hand up. It was like the sun. But, as the light faded and the symbol in the air remained, the young spellbreaker's jaw slowly drooped. "That's..."
Almost everyone in the audience recognize the symbol, naturally. It was the shape worn around the necks of the Goddess' believers, the symbol that adorned almost every Central Church steeple throughout the world. It was the glyph of the Goddess herself: Genesis, the Glyph of Creation that only the Prophetess' Leithe, daughter of Mother Aethrin herself, had ever wielded.
And now, that self-same glyph was in the possession of Koschei, the Deathless.
"It worked," he said, laughing with glee. "The ritual worked! For centuries, I've waited. Now, the mistakes of my youth are amended. The Chalices were indeed the key! 21 glyphs of might, to unlock the gift of the Goddess Herself!"
Nobody dared move. They were all in far too much shock. Koschei extended his hand, and a tree--in miniature--sprouted from his palm, cycling through its season before wilting into dust. The tall magi pointed to the ground, and the stones beneath his feet turned to solid gold. He stepped back, and the golden bricks became goldfinches, taking flight, then breaking apart into a swarm of monarch butterflies.
Smiling, Semyon held his hand to the air as the bullet from Slayer's rifle turned to water. Atop the tower, some distance away, Slayer sucked his teeth and pulled back, just as a bolt of crimson lightning ripped the steeple off its hinges and sent it, and the bell beneath it, towards the audience stands.
The crowd screamed. Tiger jumped forward, sending out a spiral of wind and water, and manging to cushion the bell as it fell, knocking it of course and sending it safely to the ground with a resonate thud.
This transgression was all that Aradia's disguised soldiers needed. The security force stood up in the audience, the crowd around them panicking and making for the exit.
Rage growled. "It's going to turn into a stampede," he said. He nodded to Spike. "You. Go help Colt."
"What about you?" Spike asked, suddenly terrified. He moved closer to Joseph, who placed his hand on his shoulder, assuring.
Rage shook his head. "Do not worry about me, my lion." He looked at Joseph. "Or my Tiger. Go be good little boys and play hero. Let the villain do what he does best."
Joseph's eyes softened, a flash of empathy, before they narrowed into resolute focus. "Go, Spike," he said. "Control the crowd. I'll stay and fight."
The soldiers stormed over the side of the barricade. Koschei, enraptured with his own power, was ready for them. He flicked his hand at one broad-shoulder man, whose scream was cut off by his sudden transformation into a cube of solid gelatine. Next to him, his companion became a pile of salt. The hail of gunfire converging on Koschei transformed itself into confetti.
"I have...waited...so long," Koschei said, in rapture. He watched, with mad joy, as his arm transformed into a sharp blade, like a spear or pole, and shot out at the battalion of soldiers racing towards him, skewering them all through the chest.
Only the sound of mocking applause, from a single source, cut through the screams of the audience. Koschei, metal hand still embedded in his would-be usurpers, turned around and glared at the tall figure in the golden mask currently applauding his efforts.
"Bravo!" King Anubis called out, standing atop the turnbuckle. Rage looked up at him in confusion. "I love your new look. You've really gone full anime now!"
Koschei sneered. "You're finished, Sarapis. I am Creation!" He tried to pull his hand back, retract the blade, and release the twitching corpses from their misery.
He found himself unable to do so.
"True, true." King Anubis shrugged. He crossed his arms over his massive chest. "But...can you control it? Life and Death are your glyphs, right? Seems like a pretty unstable combination, if you ask me. I bet all of that power is gonna' absolutely rewrite your DNA in rapid time. Oh wow, look at your hand! You should probably get that checked out, K-man!"
Koschei thought of barking back, but his attention was on his hand. The metal had fused with the array of corpses, integrating flesh and viscera into a mass. He screamed in terror and looked down at this other arm. It has split in two, becoming two distinct appendages, which in turn, sprouted--root-like--into another sent of arms. He tried to shake them away, control his glyph, but this only exacerbated the surge of energy within him.
From the stands, Spike, helping to coordinate the audience into a safe, controlled exit, looked over his shoulder. "Oh my Goddess..."
Koschei's bearded face elongated, his skull distending and becoming double size. "AhhhhgnnnGGHAAAAAAHAHHHH!!!!" Even Rage, normally unbothered, reeled back in disgust. A pile of flesh, and half-formed appendages, organs, eyeballs, spilled out from beneath Koschei's robes, and doubled in size. Tentacles of flesh arouse from the blob and threw themselves outwards, grabbing screaming Aradia guards and pulling them into its visceral mass, which absorbed bullets and lobs of fire and lightning shot out by Aradia's trained elemantalists.
King Anubis, watching with amusement from his perch, continued to commentate--Boomer Harlow now having (wisely) fled the arena. "Oof. Typical Akira-style downfall. Nasty stuff. Real Cronenberg shit, Koschei."
It was when the Koschei blob's tentacles began plucking screaming audience members out of the crowd that White Tiger jumped forward, ignoring Rage's protest. He jumped onto the tope rope and balanced, throwing out his arms and calling forth a torrent of water and a jet-stream of arctic wind. He converged the two streams on the hideous mass, freezing it to the spot.
"GAAAHAHHHHHAAAA!" the monster gurgled, Koschei's enormous head sinking into its amoeba form, pulsating with nerves and veins.
Joseph sealed the mass with his ice, but it only seemed to prevent it from spreading outwards, anchoring it at best. "There's no way to stop it," Joseph said to Rage.
King Anubis looked down at the GSA's champion. "Pretty defeated talk from the babyface. Here, pussy cat. Let uncle 'Nuby give you a hand."
The massive spellbreaker in the golden gear snapped his finger. The tumescent mass suddenly stilled, unmoving.
"Hurry up, hot-stuff," the giant in gold said to Rage, "You've got less than a few second."
The hot-headed heel answered the call. "I have some feedback for you, boss..." Rage seethed, eyes glowing like embers. "For years, I was your cash cow. A fight dog content for his master to keep throwing up fresh meat."
Rage charged forward, over sheets of ice and membrane. King's spell faded, releasing its temporal hold. A massive eye-ball, blood shot and hideous, erupted from the pulpy mass and glared at Rage. The monster shot a tentacle towards its aggressor.
"In less than a day," Rage said, catching the squirming tendril in the air, "those oversexed and overpaid idiots at the GSA showed me more kindness than you ever had. I thought them weak for it."
Rage brought the tentacle down across his knee, igniting it as he did. A burst of flame severed it into two, causing the amorphous blob to writhe in torment. Rage grinned. "Then, their cutest, shortest star kicked my ass--and told me that one can be kind and strong. Well, I still think that's all bullsh**. But...I've learned to hold a small amount of respect for the men who can be both strong and kind. And real, vicious bastards like me have a place to support them....GETTING OUR HANDS BLOODY WHEN THEY WON'T."
Rage threw his burning punch forward, into the bulbous mass of living gore. It burnt away flesh, creating a hole. Rage reached into to Koschei--Joseph looking on in horror--and pulled back.
Koschei's still-beating heart pulsed in Vahni Rage's blood-soaked hand, for but a moment, before it burst into flames and became nothing but cinders.
The blob creature that was Koschei began loosing form, melting into puss, blood, and fluid. The Aradia soldiers and audience members, all miraculously still alive (and covered in gore) sprung from from the amoeba, gasping and clawing their way towards safety.
All that remained, a beautiful contrast to the melting aberration below, was the Glyph of Creation, a construct of radiance and energy, pulsing in the air above. Both Rage and Tiger watched, frozen in shock, as King Anubis stepped forward and touched the shining glyph, hesitating only slightly. It fractured into particles of light, merging into his hand.
The giant, masked spellbreaker sighed, contented. His muscular body radiated with the same shimmering aura as Koschei. Unlike his predecessor, however, he was not transformed.
Wreathed in rainbow light, King Anubis turned around and faced White Tiger and Vahni Rage. But it was Spike, standing ringside, on whom he trained his gaze.
"Oh, you boys didn't know?" The massive man, the First Spellbreaker, laughed hollowly. "I'm the final boss."
To Be Continued....
