Savage Awakening 551. Starfield (III)

He was just about to go to town on them when he heard a raspy—“Wait.”

There was Kain, holding up a hand. He was panting a little.

“If you wake them, we’ll have to fight them all at once. Then you’ll swamp the entire field.”

Zane considered that, frowning.

“It’d be most prudent,” said Kain, drawing himself up to full height, “to leave them for the end. That’s all.”

“Fine,” said Zane.

He waited a bit for Kain to finish up his half. Kain was still throwing down Supernova beam after Supernova beam, and he was still one-shotting everything he was coming across. It left them no chance to fight back, and it was clean work. But it was taking a while too.

Eventually, Zane just decided to step in.

It was nice that these Astroliths were so slow and predictable. After you learned their patterns, smashing them was more of a chore than a fight. He started romping in from the left.

Kain frowned. “I don’t need your help.”

“You’re slow,” Zane informed him. “There’s only so much daylight.”

To his surprise, Kain didn’t get all flushed or angry. He just shrugged. “Fair enough.”

Zane ended up clearing about 70% of all the smaller Astroliths.

Then they turned to the four GG Astroliths, sitting squat in the middle. Zane was just now noticing each had a different cannon on its back; some wide, some narrow and long, one pointed directly up like a mortar. One even had a triple cannon.

“So,” said Zane, looking at the guy. “I take those two, you take the other two?”

Zane didn’t really want to work with the man. But so long as they were stuck here, he figured they might as well have a battle plan.

“I’m not interested in making a team.” 

“I’m just splitting up the work.”

“Fine. I’ll do what I plan to do. If you insist on getting involved, do as you like.”

“…” This guy was now on the wedgie fast track.

Kain slashed two fingers. A pillar of Destruction descended and carved right through the triple-cannon Astrolith.

The instant it did, the others burst to life. They woke with bangs—they instantly lit up to full firepower.

One Astrolith groaned, and a giant tapered cannon leveled itself at Kain. There was a roar of starfire blasts but Kain slashed his fingers. An arc of light wrote itself out in front of him, marking a firm line. The blasts slowed down as they crossed that line. The farther they went, the more steam they lost, until they broke up like meteors crossing the atmosphere, burning to nothing. There was some kind of Time or Fate Law in there; Zane was surprised to see it. You rarely saw those in action.

Zane got his share of action too. A glut of starfire bounced through the air, a mortar shot. He dodged it pretty easily, but its splash radius landed wider than he’d thought. The fallout ricocheted, lancing his lower back.

Another Astrolith blasted a beam of pure starfire at him. He just barely rolled out of the way.

He was pretty ticked off at this Kain right now. The guy had just gone for it with no warning. It took Zane a good second or two to get his bearings and take stock of his enemies, and now he had a sore back to show for it.

By then, all three giant Astroliths—beam, machine-gun cannon, and mortar—were recharging. So was Kain, who’d weathered it all behind his arc shield just fine.

Zane went for the mortar Astrolith. He threw in a swift one-two slash, but the Monster managed to catch the blows on its slate armor. It just shifted up its limbs. 

His first blow cracked the armor. His second blow shattered it, then nearly took the rest of the Astrolith down too.

Nearly.

The shield did its job in the end. The Astrolith was smoking, badly cracked, but upright.

He was actually pretty surprised by that exchange. He’d learned two new pieces of information—two things that would prove quite useful in taking them down.

First, that the Astroliths were very slow in normal movement but were shockingly fast to cover their vitals. He’d gone for the weak backsides of their cannons. But in just a blink, the Monster had sunk in its cannon and hulked up its shields.

That still shouldn’t have been enough with how much force Zane had put into those slashes.

It was just that that slate was more special than he’d thought.

Just before the moment of impact he saw it shimmer, as though electrified. The effect was even greater in the Astral Plane. It shimmered with the white of Destruction. And the moment his blows struck, the worst of his own Destruction got canceled out.

He knew some Empyreans could start weaving Laws into your physique. The Sage had some density Laws in his, for instance. It was the first time he’d encountered it himself, though.

He didn’t have time to think much more on it. These Astroliths charged much faster than their lesser counterparts. He was already having to roll out of the way as a beam of starfire lanced for his chest.

He broke out of the roll in a run, but the beam was still on him. He figured he could lose it in the thick of the crystal field.

He regretted this decision almost immediately.

The beam wasn’t blocked at all. Instead it ricocheted. Then ricocheted again, as though bouncing off mirrors. He found himself trapped in a crystal warzone, being strafed by hundreds of shifting bars of starfire split dozens of times.

…In Zane’s defense, there was no way he could’ve known it would do that, he felt. 

He decided to hunker down and just block—throwing up his chains, taking the worst of it on his steels. His chains gave him pretty good coverage.

He figured he could just outlast this thing, then strike back.

He had just one other issue to contend with.

The mortar Astrolith had fired again. This great ball of starfire crashed over his head… he found himself wedged between the blast and the beams. He could only block one or the other.

He heard Kain make a growl of frustration off to the side. They locked eyes, quite improbably.

“This is why I fight alone!” snarled Kain. He turned his fingers to the blast.

But before the guy could bail him out, Zane clenched his fist. A gravity core wrenched the beam cannon down, and the rest of that beam struck hard ground. All the mirrored beams vanished. 

Then Zane whirled and slashed the mortar blast right out of the sky.

“I don’t need your help, either,” Zane informed Kain. 

He turned back to his prey.

Both the mortar Monster and the beam Monster were reloading now. The beam had finally run out.

He made quick work of them.

One slash was enough to finish off what was left of the mortar. He chained his second slash straight into the beam Astrolith. He tried striking at its legs this time, which were less protected. He had an idea about tilting it sideways like a tank in distress. But it still managed to shift down those slate plates in time.

His second slash punched through it and rocked the beast.

It had just about loaded up another beam. But Zane beat it to the punch. One more slash, right down the centerline, and his problem was taken care of.

Even with just two Slashes, his Star-Crushing Slashes were already proving to be his strongest weapon by some margin. He was pretty sure it would’ve taken at least four or five hammer smashes to achieve that same effect.

He turned back to Kain, finally, just in time to catch a pillar straight out of hell strike down the final Astrolith.

Every time he saw that pillar of Destruction, he was a bit baffled. It just seemed a very inefficient way of fighting. You really didn’t have to use that much Destruction to get the same damage. And it had such a long load-up time. It looked like a pure Supernova blast, more than anything—like it’d simply been copied and pasted into reality as a fighting technique, without any real modifications for combat.

Even the way this Kain moved didn’t read like a fighter to him. In that he didn’t really move. He just stood there rather stiffly and directed the fight from there. He didn’t look all that comfortable doing it either.

If it worked, it worked, Zane supposed.

“That’s done then,” said Kain. He took a moment to catch his breath, then regarded Zane again.

“I will admit,” he said, “I underestimated your capabilities.”

“Thanks.”

“But nothing’s changed.” He shot Zane a stern look. “Don’t think this makes us allies or that you’re entitled to my cooperation. I’m interested in nothing of the sort.”

“You’ve made that pretty clear, honestly.”

Kain continued on like he hadn’t said anything. “I would still greatly prefer you leave. Make no mistake. But you have done more than your fair share today. You’ve earned that right.”

With that, the man turned around and marched to his crystal.

…This man really had no shame. Zane was pretty sure he’d done 75% of the work there.

Eh. 

He just went and did his thing. It wasn’t like he had to interact much with the man. And Kain still seemed quite intent on ignoring him. It worked just fine for him.

***

That day, Zane deepened his understanding of the light-like and explosive aspects of Starfire. He still felt like he was skimming the surface of a few deep wells—just getting a broad-strokes sense of this Concept before he really dove in. He could already tell it’d be the strongest Law he’d ever dealt with, at least in terms of pure firepower. 

Kain left without another word again, just half an hour before he did. 

Zane made his way back to his ladder base, got out some popcorn, watched the Stone Axe Sect successfully survive a border skirmish with an neighboring bully bearing a scarred wolf banner, solidified his understanding of his second slash by pummeling a few more Astroliths, and solidified his Law insights by writing them down in his journal, which he decided he’d treat as a log of his discoveries.

He went to sleep that day feeling optimistic.