The Dawn of Destruction, Chapter 20 (clean)

                                The Dawn of Destruction

Interitus 1 – Book One

            Chapter Twenty

 

            Large waves scattered the ocean as bursts of rain and wind flooded the sky. Seth raced toward the island on his jet ski, but the falling rain flew so fast that he had to lower his head. As far as he could tell, the sisters of Creation could not tell their attackers apart because of the storm, but this also meant that he could not tell the sisters apart. The rain was just too strong. For this reason, the vessels of Naomi did not attack all at once. Seth knew Felix and Zheng were relying on him to guard from projectiles, so he stayed near them as he approached. And because the Creation sisters stayed motionless, Zheng, Felix, and Seth organized a three-pronged attack. Before long, the heavy rain, the darkness, the waves, and the howling wind created the ultimate veil; Seth could hardly see his friends because of the storm.

            Due to the defensive nature of his power, Seth decided that he would be the first to attack Naomi. After all, he could protect himself from most attacks, unless there was gunfire from multiple directions. And if they chose to attack him this way, then the enemies would have to be focused solely on him, meaning that Felix and Zheng could take the sisters by surprise. As he planned this out in his mind, Seth used his jet ski to surf through the waves in a serpentine motion, dodging the eruptions of breaking waves. When Seth was thirty feet from the island’s shore, he saw that one enemy stood guard while the others watched from a distance. They could clearly see him, and they were prepared to fight back.

            The woman on shore raised her left hand to the sky and activated the Creation of energy; this caused an unearthly glow in the thunderhead. Seven strikes of sudden lightning shot between the ocean and the dark clouds like a scattershot. The seven bolts struck so close to Seth that the image of the lightning was temporarily etched into his eyes, causing a blind spot so deep that he saw it when he closed his eyes. The lightning strikes were faster than his reflexes; it was not an option to block these attacks. The barrage of lightning also diverted his eyes from the boisterous sea, and so two strong waves slammed into him from opposite sides. They crashed together and threw his jet ski into the air.

            Because the sky was alive with thunder as the sea raged below, Seth kept his head low and tightly clenched the handles of his jet ski. Another flash of lightning shot through the sky and illuminated the ocean; Seth saw that he and his airborne jet ski both raced toward shore. He realized that he was flying straight toward the Creation sister who waited at the edge of the wet sand. As gravity started to pull the jet ski down, Seth leaned forward in his seat and stretched his arms so that his hands touched the front of his airborne vehicle. He then began to Destroy the wind which slowed him down; it therefore looked like he accelerated at the startled woman. She scrambled to prepare for battle, but Seth flew too fast for her to stop him now.

            Seth Destroyed his kinetic energy right when his jet ski flew over the enemy’s head; this caused her to miss when she tried to jump up and touch the airborne jet ski. The energy that she Created instead diffused harmlessly into the air. Seth suddenly let go of his energy Destruction, and so the weight of the jet ski dropped upon her. Bones splintered and cracked as she slammed into the wet sand. Capitalizing on her paralysis, Seth kicked her crushed body in the head with enough force to dent her skull, and then he descended for a Destructive finish with his right hand. But before he could Destroy her, three other Creation sisters began firing at him with semi-automatic weapons.

            Seth knew that if he Destroyed the enemy beneath him, he would not have enough time to protect himself from the storm of bullets. Therefore, with a rush of adrenaline, Seth grabbed the jet ski and flipped it on its side. He then heard countless bullets crash into the jet ski, but he stayed safe behind this temporary barricade. He hid behind the overturned jet ski, breathing slowly as the rain poured around him. His knees dug into the wet sand, and his hands pressed on the jet ski as bullets continuously battered it.

Seth peeked his face around the edge and saw that only two of his three enemies were firing; the third reloaded her gun by Creating more ammunition. Between the heavy rain and the pressure of battle, Seth kept his eyes and ears trained on the gunfire. He could hear his jet ski breaking apart from the endless barrage. At the same time, he saw his original target lift her head from the water-logged sand. She was bloody and wounded, but then she placed her left hand onto the jet ski. She then Created a stream of kinetic energy that launched the jet ski into the nearby water, but Seth did not watch where she threw it. Since this left him exposed and defenseless, he threw his right hand on the sand and made a cylinder-shaped crater. He fell into this hole, milliseconds before he would have been shot.

            During this gunfight, Felix had spent minutes transferring thermal energy from the battlefield. All at once, the island and the water froze into a world of ice. The mountainous waves froze over; Felix and Zheng’s jet skis became lodged in the ice and threw the drivers across the ice at a violent speed. The rain transformed into hail and pelted the icy island with a menacing clatter. The waves that had swept ashore a moment earlier, including the one that barreled over the crater carved by Seth’s destruction, froze as well. This meant that Seth was trapped in this crater beneath a thick veil of ice. Seth limited his breaths to conserve oxygen, since he would not be able to escape without the help of his friends. After all, if he Destroyed the frozen sand beside him, thick ice would fall and crush him from above.

            Zheng, having previously been launched by his jet ski crashing into ice, slid onto the crest of a wave that was 16 feet over sea level. As his feet met the ice in a ski-like stance, he tried to ride the slope to the frozen shore. His frost-covered hair danced through the air as he slid to an impressive speed. Zheng steered his body toward the crushed woman on the ground, just beside Seth’s iced-over crater. Her arms and one of her legs were trapped beneath the ice, so she did not pose much of a threat. Nevertheless, the girl tried desperately to flail her arms free from the ice.

            “Stay the hell away from Mortality,” one of the women demanded, using her left hand to Create a slanted downdraft.

            The hail changed direction almost instantaneously, accelerating toward Zheng at a dangerous speed.  However, he chose not to slow down; he instead let the falling ice shards bombard his torso and arms at full speed. Blood dripped from his lacerations, but he still did not stop; he was determined to take his enemies down. Despite this perseverance, the pain eventually became overwhelming, and Zheng released a roar as he raced toward the enemy named Mortality. She finally broke free from the ice by Creating an explosive shockwave. Cracks in the ice scattered for tens of meters in all directions from the epicenter of this energy; the cracks both tripped Zheng and broke the icy seal that imprisoned Seth in the crater.

            “This whole fight doesn’t make any sense. Why do the Creation sisters have these weird-ass names? When she split herself into all these different women… did she split up pieces of her actual personality? Nah, that doesn’t make sense, either. I wouldn’t think so. I mean, don’t all those traits kinda overlap? Something’s not quite right,” Seth whispered to himself as he Destroyed the falling ice before it could kill him.

            After the ice was gone, Seth Destroyed several chunks in the icy walls of the cylinder. He knew that he had to move quickly, so he climbed up the cylinder wall by using the footholds he created. When he poked his head out of the crater, he saw Mortality lunge at Zheng. At that same moment, a group of three enemies suddenly burst into flames. They quickly dropped onto the ground, helplessly rolling to extinguish the fire that Felix had used. Their skin was burned, but the damage was not extensive.

            Seth pulled himself onto the icy sand and quickly rolled to his feet. He jumped between Zheng and Mortality, and he quickly pulled his hands upright so that he could protect his friend. However, Zheng was unconcerned with his own well-being; he jumped past Seth and threw his left first forward, striking the right hand of the woman named Mortality. She grinned with a peculiar and beautiful grin; she clenched her fingers together and dodged a swift swipe from Seth’s right hand. Mortality activated Creation and made many steel bars burst through Zheng’s arm, penetrating through his skin, bone, and muscle. He instinctively attempted a counterattack with his powerful right arm, but she caught it with her left hand.

             This was the moment that Seth realized the true danger of the Creation power in this diverged state; he finally understood why Naomi had split herself into these many parts. Their incomplete powers left them in an incomplete state, but it was the process of reassembly that made each vessel so dangerous.

            Zheng’s body radiated with an ominous purple light. His face and body fell motionless, and Seth felt time slow to a crawl as Mortality practically absorbed Zheng into himself. It was like his body had transformed into energy, and she devoured his whole being through her enchanted palms. He was imported into her body almost like a partial fusion. Since Seth knew that Destroying her would mean Destroying Zheng, he chose to run away instead. And as he tried to get away, the force of defeat began to press into his mind. Once again, Naomi had taken another friend, but this time it felt different.

            Seth wondered if it felt different because he had not known Zheng long, or perhaps because he had become accustomed to defeat. But either way, it somehow felt like Zheng would not be gone forever, or at least that he was more like Naomi’s hostage than her victim. After all, Seth knew that the matter and energy which constituted Zheng had not just disappeared, though it was strange that Mortality did not look larger. He wondered if Zheng had been compressed and then absorbed, or transformed to energy and then absorbed, but he had no reason to waste time on a hypothesis.

            Feigning a crippling spell of sadness, Seth threw his arms at his sides and unleashed an intense wail. At this same moment, the sisters of Creation exchanged wary glances because they felt a sudden change in temperature.

As if everything defrosted all at once, the waves restarted their torrential torment. The storm resumed its deafening downpour; the precipitation quickly transformed from ice to rain. The clouds had accumulated pressure from the time spent in Felix’s world of ice, and therefore the rain now fell like a waterfall. Seth sprang on the opportunity that this blinding downpour gave him; he sprinted through the rain toward another enemy because he could hear the patter of rain falling on her shoulders.

            Seth planned to Destroy her as quickly as possible, but it was clear that the woman had heard his footsteps as he raced through the downpour. She lifted her hands and prepared for battle, but when Seth got close to her, he thrust his right foot out front and struck the side of her knees, violently sweeping her off her feet. In a continuous, fluid motion, Seth pulled his right leg up and kicked it toward her right arm. His heel hit her body and threw her backward with a tremendous impact. In a rapid follow-up attack while she was dazed and falling, Seth grabbed her right hand with his right, slammed his eyes shut, pulled his fingers together, and concentrated only on her right arm. Destruction activated, annihilating her right arm altogether.

            The woman shrieked as blood splashed from her right shoulder. She fell onto her knees as she lost the power to Create matter. Seth knew that her screams would attract the attention of the other Creation sisters, and so he sprinted toward the edge of the island. As he crossed into the water and waded toward his overturned jet ski, he felt the downpour begin to weaken. The waves were still strong enough to knock him down, but the sisters of Creation saw Seth’s outline through the lighter rain.

The sisters Created a series of explosives and launched them at Seth, but he managed to dodge each attack. When he finally arrived at the overturned jet ski, he pressed his momentum into his hands and stuck them underneath the seat. In the exact moment that it flipped upright, Seth jumped into the seat and pressed the accelerator, surprised that his jet ski could even work in this state. The waves and the rain and the howling wind tried to pull him back, but he sped away from the island anyway. As lightning illuminated the sky and the sea, Seth saw the silhouette of Felix on his jet ski on top of a large wave.

            The wave looked menacingly tall, but it would not break any time soon. For this reason, Seth started climbing the slope of the wave while lightning flickered in the background. However, Seth quickly noticed that this wave was abnormal; it moved very slowly. Every wave south of the island appeared to barely move at all. But since this meant that the wave was not pulling him back, his jet ski easily traversed its slope.

            “Do you think Zheng is dead?” Felix shouted across the wind and rain.

            “No! I am certain that we have not seen the last of him,” Seth yelled, watching Felix concentrate upon the three closest enemies.

            Faint screams arose in the distance. Felix grinned with satisfaction, but Seth saw no reason to celebrate. Because the sisters of Creation could easily regenerate damage, unless Felix’s attack destroyed one of their right hands, this attack did not do anything but inflict pain. Even though he had adamantly insisted that God was his only reason for fighting, Felix appeared to thoroughly enjoy boiling the rain as it descended upon the sisters. Nevertheless, Seth tried to peer through the storm and see the results of Felix’s onslaught. After several seconds, he saw no signs of discord. Lightning flashed again, and Seth saw an enemy lift her hands toward the clouds.

            As one enemy’s hand glowed purple, a deafening roar suddenly began. It did not start as a gentle howl; no admonition came from the sea or the sky. Pillars of rotating wind and water ascended from the ocean’s surface, and then they shot toward the clouds above. In mere seconds, dozens of cyclones and dancing shadows fell upon the ocean. The howling gale transformed into a pull toward the nearest of these water tornados.

            “Felix! Can you freeze that? It’s coming right at us!” Seth shouted to his friend as the pull of the wind overpowered the jet ski.

            “No! The rotation makes it hard to focus; I don’t know how to stop it!” Felix said as his jet ski succumbed to the pull.

            Seth determined that he only had one option, and even then it was merely a gamble. He threw the bulk of his body over the wheel and used his left hand to Destroy the wind that pulled on his jet ski. He held his hand in a constant state of Destruction, hoping that the slope of the wave would pull him away from the tornado. When Seth gave up on Destroying the wind, the suction ripped him out of the jet ski and sent him flying through the air. He shouted in terror as he was thrown closer to the center of the storm. As sharp raindrops pelted his face and torso, Seth crashed in through the northern wall of the tornado.

            With water surging around him cyclonically and pulling him skyward, Seth’s brain gave up on even trying to escape; he had no way to free himself from this tornado. Instead, Seth extended his hand outside of the furious spiral, but the outside air did nothing to save him. Instead, it merely provided a familiar sensation.

Trying to force himself to peace, Seth remembered back to his childhood when his mother had brought him to a park along the Colorado River while on a cross-country vacation. While she was sleeping, Seth wandered in through a hole near the bluffs and canyons. He explored narrow and winding caverns for nearly half an hour, until he slipped on some wet rocks and painfully fell down an offshoot in the caves. He had landed in a pool of water between the orange rock caves and the river which raged through the canyon. The speed of the shallow pool was negligible compared to that of the outside river, though it still had a gentle tug with a clockwise rotation. Seth swam to a small opening in the cavern that basked in sunlight, gleaming with orange light. When he reached that destination, Seth crept onto the narrow shore while staring at the river’s grandeur; he wondered if he was the only person who had ever stood in that very spot. In curious bliss, he dipped his fingers into the Colorado River and felt a pull so powerful that it could have swept him off his feet.

What Seth felt now, with his fingers piercing the boundary between the tornado wall and the outside air, reminded him of what he felt that day. However, he had still not been thrown from the top of the waterspout. Even with this comforting memory, he dared not surrender to the swirling cyclone. He wanted to save himself with Destruction, but the tornado spun too quickly for him to focus on any one part of it. And since he had been without air for so long, Seth’s lungs demanded breath. He refused for as long as he could, choosing instead to fall unconscious in the oceanic vortex.

            After seeing Seth get swallowed by a water tornado, Felix turned his attention to finding a path down the large wave. He rapidly decreased its temperature to form an ice path down the slope. Although the approaching tornado intensified with each second, his jet ski slid down the ice path and escaped the twister, but several other funnels began to approach.

When his jet ski splashed off the ice path and into the saltwater, Felix accelerated, maneuvering carefully between the currents and waves so that he could dodge the tornados. But as he charged toward the island’s shore, the light of the sun finally pierced through the storm. Felix slowed down and cautiously glanced around, watching the tornados fade into stumps of rising water. He calmly waited at a safe distance to watch them peter out. In less than two minutes, the ocean became relatively calm. The wind subsided, and the waves grew weaker with every crash against the shore; the sisters of Creation had evidently stopped supplying energy to the storm.

            But because Felix was focused on the storm and his enemies, he did not realize that his jet ski drifted closer to the island. When the bottom of his jet ski scraped against the sand, he cautiously disembarked into the knee-deep water. Eight sets of eyes stared as he focused his heat-potential on the air in front of him. He planned to heat up the air enough so that he could unleash a heat explosion at a moment’s notice. But then, a loud crash emerged from his jet ski, startling Felix and forcing him to prematurely spring his wall of fire. The jet ski also burst into flames; he was nearly struck by his own explosion. When he looked up to see the source of the loud crash, he saw an enormous reptile snapping its jaws through the burning jet ski. The creature then turned and glared at Felix.

            The crocodilian creature was so tremendous that it shocked Felix into stillness. He watched in silence as the monster’s jaws effortlessly tore through the flaming jet ski. Fearing for his life, Felix activated his power and forced another heat explosion directly upon the creature. But the beast was partway underwater, meaning that the flames barely touched its scaly exterior. The sisters of Creation watched from a distance as their creature then lunged at Felix; its snapping jaws missed because Felix jumped backward. As he flew just over the water, Felix saw the crocodile prepare to lunge a second time. But then, he remembered that his power worked better on liquids than gas.

Since he only had a split second before he would fall into the water, Felix froze the surface of the ocean. The crocodile did not understand ice, so it slammed its face into the ice right when Felix landed upon it. The thin ice shattered and broke on the creature’s head; the blunt force to its nose sent it into a furious rage. The crocodile unsprang its legs and lunged through the saltwater, but Felix was ready. He suddenly pulled to the side and grabbed the soaring monster by its right arm with his only hand. Felix pulled his weight backward and dropped his center of gravity, swinging the spinning monster into the sand on its back.

            The writhing reptile swiftly turned around and counterattacked by lunging its mouth forward, crunching its teeth through Felix’s right leg. His body seized as he dropped into the water, dangling from the predator’s mouth. With no other choice, Felix froze the water around the crocodile. The temperature became so cold that his body started shaking; his bloody leg lost heat by the second. However, the coldness seemed to stupefy the reptile.

            Felix stumbled away from the island and into deeper water. He collapsed in it and started swimming, though he felt the saltwater burn through the countless cuts on his broken leg. As he tried to swim with one arm and his eyes closed, his fingertips struck a floating object. It was Zheng’s jet ski, which had been batted around by the waves. Before trying to board it, Felix turned around and saw that one of his enemies stood on shore with a rocket-launcher. She quickly adjusted her barrel and aimed for the jet ski.

            “No, Malevolence, do not kill him. If we absorb him, we can reclaim the thermodynamic element of Creation,” Intelligence said to her sister.

            “We should focus on finding Seth! If we obtain Destruction, then won’t Naomi become a complete god?” Malevolence asked.

            “That is true, but we have no idea where he is. Last we saw, a tornado threw him into the sky! He could be dead by now.”

            Overhearing this conversation, Felix knew his only choice was to escape; he could not let the sisters of Creation reclaim the ability to Create heat. As he boarded the jet ski and accelerated toward shore, he focused a portion of his power on the ocean before him, creating a path of ice. The jet ski slid onto the ice, and so it glided along at a satisfying speed. However, even as he extended this path of ice, Felix concentrated primarily on the air in the seat beneath him. He did this so that he could make it burst into flames at any moment, so that he could destroy his own power as a last resort.

            As Felix’s jet ski slid across the ice path at an impressive speed, the sisters of Creation prepared to stop him. They first launched a rocket-propelled grenade that crashed into the right half of the ice path. The detonation launched chunks of ice and splashes of saltwater into the air. Felix did not have time to dodge this breakage; half of the jet ski dipped into the water, sending the machine into an uncontrollable spin. And though the spinning watercraft continued to slide, it slammed into the edge of the ice beyond the breakage. The force of this impact threw Felix into the water, hurling him beneath the surface.

While his one arm pulled desperately through the water, Felix saw an enemy dive into the water above him. As she ferociously swam toward him through the water, her hair funneled behind her horrifying face. Felix tried to reverse his motion and swim deeper into the abyss; he fought his instincts by inhaling as much of the saltwater as possible. It was the only way to destroy his power before she could reabsorb him.

            But Felix could not descend quickly enough through depth or death. Her warm hand fastened upon his shoulder, and she pulled his convulsing body into a horizontal orientation. Moving her right hand against his forehead, she seized his life force and energy, his determination and ability, and absorbed them into herself, leaving no trace of his broken body in the icy water. While they had not found Seth, this was no insignificant success for Creation.

            “And just like the giants who wander beneath starlight, I have transformed someone’s very life force into the fuel that makes my power strong. Surely this is no coincidence. It is a cosmic inevitability.”