Stronger Together chapter 243

The outsider creatures were...awful. They looked sickening, like a  mix between black sludge, bugs, soldiers, and some kind of cancerous  growth. The things were all pitch black and covered in sickening green  veins. As I watched, I saw them fall upon my forces, some of them  stopping to tear into Draugr on the way. I spun to glare at Loki, the  mad god was still laughing his ass off and I just about lost my mind. I  cranked my klurkor state to the max I could handle, eleven, and shifted  most of it to my lightning aspect.

With  my perception enhanced I was able to output substantially more power,  burning off the klurkor energy before it had a chance to metalize me as I  fell on Loki like a rabid dog. I rained down blows on the god, my  strength boosted to an insane degree from synergy between my armor, my  aspects, and the triple stacked force blows I was putting out from both  hands. The air cracked around us as my punches tore the sound barrier  apart like paper, and even the cackling lunatic turned serious as I fell  on him with a ferocity he hadn't seen yet.

Being  at eleven in my klurkor state for long periods of time I felt something  in me begin to shift. The purification my flesh underwent seemed to  increase to an even higher rate of improvement than I'd had in hell,  something I hadn't noticed before. Sadly it became clear pretty quickly  that Loki absolutely could not keep up so he slipped back into the crowd  of outsiders and I lost him in the seething mass. I tried to follow  him, but his path was swarmed by outsider soldier, and I had to clear  them out as I walked. They died nearly instantly at this rate, I was  killing dozens of them per second, but there were so fucking many it  hardly seemed to matter.

It  felt like I was punching individual grains of sand during a snowstorm.  My friends weren't doing as well as I would have hoped. The outsiders  were a big problem for them and they had slipped back into groups to  support each other. I felt my heart break as I saw Henry die, the kindly  old wizard disembowled by an outsider foot soldier, only to be avenged  by a murderously angry Calliope, and Fix had his throat slit from behind  as one of the smaller quicker soldiers that were coming out under the  cover of the other armies jumped on his back and rode him to the ground  to be trampled among the throng.

Lily  howled with rage and grief as she unleashed her power on everything in  range, and Cinder, who had broken away from her previous partner, stood  at her back hurling her flaming apple, which kept returning to her hand.  It was a sight to behold, the fall maiden and the summer lady scorching  the armies of the outside. Aiden had made his way to where Raven was  and the two dark attuned  warriors were working together, Raven's magic  torch held high as she unleashed waves of power on the outsiders, no  longer holding back in the face of our true enemy as Aiden danced among  the writhing shadows, his own dark claws reaping the lives of the  soldiery.

Kara  was in the air now, bow out and firing rapidfire into the crowd,  vaporizing packs of the damned things as Flamebird floated nearby  intercepting attacks on her "mother" from the ground. The knights were  all together, a bastion of shining light in the middle of a sea of  darkness, tearing through the enemy as if they were paper. Across from  the the hungry silver glow of the white court devoured the bastards as  the vampires tore them apart with long beautiful fingers. Dalton was  with the rest of Marcone's thugs emptying enchanted rounds into the  monstrous horde with the darklings circling them like sharks.

That  moment, ironically, was when I noticed the shift in the army. A slight  lull in the attack that I took advantage of to slaughter another few  dozen of the things. It was ironic because the reason for that was also  sharklike, and I could see easily why Harry had nicknamed the robed  figure stepping from the fleeing crowd of outsiders Sharkface. The first  of the Walkers, the Harbinger, the Gatebreaker. He Who Walks Before had  arrived. I shifted down to my tenth form, my body already adapted  enough that shunting the power into my armor at that level could keep me  biological. The vicious sharklike teeth split as it grinned at me  maliciously.

As  Harry had described him he was tall and lanky, his eyeless hairless  face was somehow smug as his disgusting mouth leered at me. The battle  seemed to fall away, not for lack of worry or trouble, but because I  could feel his power, even greater than Loki in quality if not quantity,  and I knew this would take all my focus. His voice slipped out, somehow  a whisper and a roar all at once, low and sickening but easily heard  over the blare of the battle. "You." The word contained serious depth.  Layers of hate and rage and glee and amusement stacked on top of each  other, making it clear he thought me nothing, thought me garbage, but  still reveled in my part in causing this nightmare.

I  rolled my eyes. "Yeah fuck you too buddy." He jerked back a bit,  seemingly startled. "What? Were you expecting me to cower? Or maybe feel  guilty? You fucks were planning this shindig long before I showed up, I  just pushed up your time table. Am I sad? Fuck yes, I just watched two  of my friends die, and I'll probably bury more of them before this ends,  but I don't blame myself for this mess. I blame you. And I'm going to  take that fucking bill out of your hide too. They're going to have to  invent new words for the shit I'll do to you tonight. But please, by all  means, give the mind games your best shot, I want to see what you have  in you."

Sharkface  snickered. " You seek to shift the blame? This need not have happened.  We had plans, ways of insinuating ourselves over time. Painless ways  that would have allowed for a swift and peaceful death for those who  resisted, and even perhaps survivors among those who took up our cause.  We are not so antithetical to this world as some say. We seek only to  come in, out of the cold and the dark, and once we arrive, we need not  fight or kill. We would have ruled you all benevolently once the strong  were done away with, would have let you keep your foolish society under  us. Perhaps a bit of obeisance paid and a sliver of worship here or  there, but nothing painful or untoward."

I  just laughed at that. "Wow. You don't get humans at all huh? Everything  you just said is fucking untenable to me. But hell, lets go down the  list in order. First, fuck you, the outside is a nightmare because you  made it that way if you weren't all monsters I'm sure you could carve  out somewhere decent to live. Second, fuck you twice, I would rather die  than lick your shitty outsider boots and everyone I love feels the  same. Third, mega fuck you, we know about the old ones and if you're  implying like I think you are that you wanted to use us to wake them  there was no way we would let that happen, they would crack our minds  like eggs. Are you done with you "we're not so different you and I"  speech or is there more?"

Sharkface  hissed in anger, the ragged strips around him roiling like a mixture of  cloth and smoke. He cranked his shitty despair aura and I took that as  an invitation to commence the asskicking. I cranked back up to eleven  and hurled myself forward, enjoying the slight pause I clearly surprised  Sharkface by bearing him to the ground. His shitty rags tried to buck  and tear at me, but my armor protected my vitals and my arms were  defended by godsteel. My legs got a bit torn up but they healed even as  it happened from the sheer power flowing through me so I ignored it and  started beating the outsider violently about that head and shoulders.

I  expected even an outside to crack like an egg under my blows but to my  annoyance it didn't turn out that way. He flesh was almost gummy under  my punches, giving and stretching and slightly diverting the force so  none of my hits landed properly. I snarled and cranked myself to twelve,  pouring out almost a hundred triple stacked force blows per second into  his shitty face. As I rained down punches I considered what I was  doing, how I was doing it and how it wasn't working. My arm wouldn't  find purchase, it was slipping off his disgusting slick flesh. I felt so  in touch with my body, godsteel and flesh alike, and it was a matter of  a slight thought to reshape my metallic limb, coating it in sharp  abrasive edges.

The  bucking under me redoubled, the strips of cloth trying to cocoon and  restrain me and being torn through like tissue paper by my enhanced  muscles. I had to shift back down to the eleventh form as I fought, the  energy was overwhelming even my power drain, but the shift in my limb  had changed the game, and even deflected hit were starting to shred the  garbage entity as as my blows scored lines across his skin and tore  chunks from his nonsense robes. I howled with glee as I poured out my  anger and frustration onto the abomination, losing myself in the power  and the destruction as I tried to rip him apart.

Sadly,  I didn't sense the enemy coming up behind until it was too late, but  fortunately for me the monster ignored my armor. Terrible claws scraping  off my defenses but hurling me from my perch atop the outsider and  sending me tumbling across the clearing created by the fleeing outsiders  as their knight was brutalized by me. I was on my feet before I even  finished flipping, sliding smoothly to a stop opposite the attacked as  it stood over the walker. It glared at me with hateful orange-red eyes  as it snarled.

I'd  never seen this thing before. It was human sized, or thereabouts, and  covered in a misshapen gestalt of fur and scales in no logical order or  structure that would imply a natural being. More like patches of empty  flesh with scaly spots between disgusting tufts of matted hair. Despite  all of that though, the way it's body seemed to warp and shimmer,  avoiding my gaze and making it harder to track made me well aware of who  or what this was. After all, it had attacked me when I was on top of  the walker, driving me off the creature and clearly coming to it's aid.  Which meant it was an outsider, and if it was this strong I was pretty  sure I knew which one too.

Because  the way this thing looked twigged a description I half remembered from  my least favorite Dresden Files book, about a monster who couldn't be  properly seen, with long human shaped limbs covered in fur and scales. A  monster that had hunted and toyed with my mentor for years, had made  his life a living hell. Sharkface climbed to it's feet, giving me it's  usual unpleasant grin as it stepped up next to the other being. 

The  misshapen stealth freak smiled widely with jagged broken glass teeth of pitch black. "So, you're the child's protege. I suppose your death will  disturb him greatly. Joy." It was hard for me to disagree with that  sentiment because it probably would, but I wasn't letting it find out  for sure. It wasn't escaping anymore than it's buddy. He Who Walks  Behind died tonight.