Calamity (Reckoners, #3)

“I’m going to kill Calamity,” I blurted out.

Obliteration opened his eyes. The heat dampened. “What did you say?”

“Calamity,” I said. “He’s an Epic, and he’s behind all of this. I can kill him. If you want to bring about Armageddon, wouldn’t that be the perfect way? Destroy this terrible…um, angel? Creature? Spirit?”

That sounded religious, right?

“He is far away, little man,” Obliteration said, contemplative. “You will never reach him.”

“You can teleport there though, right?”

“Impossible. Calamity is too distant for me to form a proper picture of its location in my mind, and I cannot go to a place I haven’t seen or cannot visualize.”

How did you get in here, then? Sparks. Had he been watching us somehow? That didn’t matter. Hand still trembling, I reached into my pocket and unhooked my mobile. I brought it out and turned to him, displaying Regalia’s image of Calamity. “What if you have a picture?”

Obliteration whispered softly, eyes wide. “?‘And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition….’?” He blinked, looking at me. “Again you surprise me. If you defeat your former master, and impress me in so doing, I will grant your desires.”

He exploded into a flash again—and this time he didn’t immediately return. I groaned, leaning against the wall, shaking my burned hand.

“Calamity! What is up with that man?” Mizzy asked, sliding her sidearm into its holster. It took her three tries, her hand was trembling so much. “I thought we were dead.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I half expected him to murder me for the audacity of claiming I wanted to kill Calamity. I figured it was even odds that he worshipped the thing instead of hating it.” I peeked around the corner, looking down a tunnel that shone with rents and rips into other dimensions.

“Abraham just went down!” Knighthawk said in my ear. “Repeat, Abraham is down. Jonathan sheared his arm off—rtich attached—with a forcefield.”

“Sparks!” I said. “Megan?”

“Hard to see,” Knighthawk said. “I’ve only got two crab cameras left. I think you’re losing this fight, guys.”

“We were losing it before we started,” I said, turning and crawling to the tensor suit. “Mizzy, some help.”

She looked at the suit, then at me, eyes widening. She scrambled over, then helped me start putting it on. “Cody should be stable now; that harmsway is something.”

“Unhook it and attach it back to the tensor suit,” I said. “Knighthawk, how much can your drones lift?”

“About a hundred pounds each,” he said. “I work them in tandem for heavier things. Why?”

“Bring some down, grab Cody, pull him out. Is Abraham still alive?”

“Don’t know,” Knighthawk said. “His mobile is still on him though, so I can show you his location.”

I looked at Mizzy and she nodded, plugging the wires from the harmsway into the vest of the tensor suit, which I was now wearing. “I’ll find him,” she said, “and stabilize him until you can get back with this.”

“Get the drones hooked to Cody first.”

“Assuming I can get drones in to you,” Knighthawk said. “Jonathan’s military has the place surrounded up above. They don’t seem too eager to come down and join the fight.”

“And get between two High Epics?” I said. “They’ll stay back unless directly ordered. They know what happened to the soldiers at Sharp Tower. I’m surprised he was able to get even Loophole to come down here, after that.”

“Yeah,” Mizzy said. She looked overwhelmed, hand still trembling. I didn’t feel much better myself, though with a jolt I felt the harmsway engage. My pains faded.

“Get out of here, Mizzy,” I said. “You’ve done what you can. Try to get Abraham and Cody to safety; I’ll bring the harmsway for Abraham as soon as I can. If I don’t make it, set up with Knighthawk.”

She nodded. “Good luck, David. I’m, um, glad I didn’t shoot you in Babilar.”

I smiled, yanking on first the right tensor glove, then the left.

“You going to be able to make it work?” Mizzy asked. “Without practice?”

The lights on the gloves lit up a deep green. I felt their hum course through me, a distant melody that had once been precious to me, yet one I’d somehow forgotten. I released it, reducing the stone wall nearby to a wave of dust.

“Feels like coming home,” I said.

In fact, I felt almost good enough to face a High Epic.