Page 101 of Fatality on the Field

The caladrius flaps above him, it’s sharp vision looking for openings to do… something big, I assume. It’s snowy white, with wing feathers so big they could hide a Prius. His gaze moves, locking onto the center of the field, where a mess of mist and bodies is thickest. Now I get it; he’s not looking at the shadows or the threats; but for casualties, wounded, and liabilities below. That doc isn’t dumb—he’s keeping his altitude, circling in a pattern that keeps him out of any easy strike zone while scouting for triage.

A loud snarl draws my attention and I bank right when I see my future mate. For a moment, I almost don’t recognize her. Her skin is the color of smoke, full snake hair writhing with her giant gargoyle wings flapping like she’s planning to fight the fucking moon. She’s not as fast as our Fae or me, but she’s flexible and her darting hits are surgical. My heart sinks when she drops through the falling bodies like a fighter jet, not touching any of them but just barely missing them as she heads for her next target. The look in her eyes isn’t rage—it’s focus, cold and absolute, and it makes my spikes stand up taller on my tail.

She’s met by the harpy eagle big enough to knock a man off his feet and I snort when I see the goddamn monkey riding on its back. The monkey’s holding onto the eagle’s neck and, if I’m reading the motion right, it’s—fuck me, it’s manipulating the wind itself on a small-scale with laser precision. Every time a body falls near someone below them, it veers off course to hit the ground instead. Every time a person on the field tries to move, the air seems to clear a path for them.

That’s… okay, that’s really fucking clever.

Even in dragon form, I have to respect a strategy that good, especially from familiars. I bark a laugh, but the sound comes out as a thunderous bellow, rattling my own eardrums as I head for the darkness in the sky again to give a full force blast a try. Glancing down at the ground before I do so, I see a thin golden line open on the turf and, just like that, the rest of the ground team is in play.

Doyle’s portal drops them right where the mist is thickest, each member deployed with perfect instinct. Lucas is a full bear, covered in polar white fur and twice as big as one would expect for battle. It stands on hind legs and uses a broken goalpost as a club to sweep aside the shambling bodies that move like drunken bar flies. Next to him is Benjy, who seems to be enjoying the hell out of punching his way through the nearest cluster with open-fisted King Kong-esque glee. Briarton is busy kneeling on one knee, inscribing something in the air with a metallic object I can’t see clearly. The effect is immediate, though—a halo of light bursts free that burns back the fog around him. It’s not enough to stop the attack, but it’s buying time, which is helping the others fight.

The falling bodies aren’t random; this specific attack was coordinated to show yet another murder on a much bigger stage than the past two. Not only that, but whatever is controlling the bodies has them driving the crowd toward the far end zone where the shadow mist is thickest and, I suspect, most dangerous. This is not a mindless slaughter—no, it's a harvest of live supes for something much worse.

We have to stop it before they get enough people to accomplish… whatever the fuck they want.

As someone who’s served a magical court for my entire life, I know there’s a cost to any magic of this scale. Even if the fucker running this show is god-tier powerful, there’s a limit on how much energy you can process, and that limit gets tight when you start using proxies. They’re using bodies, not magic, to corral the crowd instead of just nuking the whole place. That means there’s a reason, and if they have a reason, we know their weak point. Now, I just have to strike it so the others see what we have to do to defeat this bullshit.

The core of the shadow is on the fifty-yard line, just above the trampled logos and the twisting mass of mist no one’s touched yet. I climb a bit higher, building as much charge as I can before the static in my scales feels like it’ll split me open. My plan is simple: go high, come down hard, and let the enemy try to adapt to a concentrated force of nature powerful enough to fry the grid for miles. The higher I get, the more the cold cuts through the updraft, and the more the storm inside me builds. Electricity pools in my horns, runs down my neck, and waits for the moment to release as I finally pause well above where humans can breathe. Taking a deep breath, I go into a dive so fast it might break the sound barrier, heading for the ground like a missile.

When my body hits, there’s an almost sonic level boom that causes an earthquake to shake the ground in the entire arena. Screams echo as I right myself on the field, ignoring the tumbling debris and bodies as I look at the writhing core of power and darkness settled there. Opening my mouth, I let loose a roar that splits the air like a samurai sword. It’s not a warning; it’s a challenge. The sound rips through the sky, and I watch as the shadow thing draws itself in to avoid the hit.

Unfortunately for whatever it is, it’s too slow to avoid what’s coming.

My eyes cut to the sky and I note that Li picks up on my cue immediately. His voice booms out, amplified by every trick he knows, cutting through the panic and the terror below: “Clear the field! Down and away, now! Move!”

I don’t even have to check to see if people are obeying—I guarantee the bear, the mage, the siren, and the jock are shoving the nearest stragglers toward the best cover using their own bodies as shields. They’re all hero material and when a royal Fae screams to move, it’s important. The stadium lights flicker as the mist tries to choke them out, but it’s not going to deter me. This is my moment to fix this shit and I’m going to take it down or die trying.

The first bolt strikes into the heart of the shadow, white-hot and jagged, and it shreds the outer layer into a million filaments of raw energy. There’s a coppery taste to the air now, but beneath it, I smell something else. Rot, grave dirt, something like formaldehyde, and evil come from the struggling mass of magic and shadow. That smell is always a tell—the fucking thing is a necromancer of some foreign species I’ve never encountered and it’s using the shadows as a feint. The bulk doesn’t die from my blast, though; it pulls back, regroups, starts to build itself anew.

For fuck’s sake, where in the name of Brighid is this goddamn thing from?!!

I don’t let up, so the next shot goes deeper, carving a hole through the middle of the thing so big you could fly a semi through it. The noise it makes at that injury is so loud the windows in the rest of the VIP boxes above shatter, raining safety glass onto everything inside and below. The seats underneath are empty, thank fuck, but I’m betting a bunch of rich fucks inside have now shit their designer outfits. They all thought money and elite connections would save them, but that’s clearly not a concern for this attacker; in fact, it doesn’t seem to care about anything but destruction and snatching up its targets.

Looking around at the field, I see the others look up as the falling bodies finally pause. I wonder if I’ve actually done it as the attack seems to freeze in place. Every reanimated corpse on the ground goes still as well, and I almost breathe a sigh of relief. But it doesn’t last and the fucking thing at midfield regroups, dragging the mist and every free element into a new, denser nucleus. I realize it’s smarter than I thought and definitely not giving up. The dragon in me wants to finish it, but I can’t—not yet, at least.

Roaring, I take to the air, pulling up to gain altitude and distance from my target. I have to leave the others to do their jobs, while I amp up. Despite my dragon’s internal drive, I let the static build, curling in my gut like a storm front, as I get ready for round two. Below me, the field is a maze of chaos, but I know now that this is a fight we can win. I’ve seen worse odds, and I’ve survived all of them. The only question now is how many of the others will make it out with me, if they can’t hold the line while I prepare for another assault.

Looks like we’re going to find out what those Hollow guys can do.

As I do a lap around the stadium, I watch the battle on the ground carefully. Boone is the size of a cargo van and twice as fast in hellhound form. He tears through the reanimated assholes like they’re made of cheap insulation. His jaws swing bodies left and right with a precision that says he’s done this before and didn’t hate it. When he gets within arm’s reach of a cluster, he grabs two by the legs and reduces both to paste in a spray of black goo and bones.

I like seeing someone who kills the enemy without hesitation, no drama—just efficiency and rage.

Behind him, the golden-aura’d demigod is simply smashing everything dead in his path. He doesn’t even bother punching; it’s more like he walks forward and everything in the path gets pancaked by the force of his presence. The mist doesn’t want to touch him, and for a split second, I see the shadow thing above twitch, as if it’s recalibrating for this anomaly. That’s interesting to me, especially because no one’s mentioned who his naughty parents were yet.

I look past that curiosity, seeing Ignatius surrounded by a knot of zombies that keep collapsing and reforming as they try to get to him. He’s running some kind of interference spell, but the strain is obvious—his hair is wild, eyes bugging, and he’s sweating. I watch as he holds his hands out, palms up, and mutters something. The air ripples and five more bodies drop, twitching on the field, but the effect lasts maybe half a second before another wave surges in. I recognize the look: he’s running out of gas, and he needs some help.

Luckily, Slade sees it and if I didn’t know better I’d think he’d been holding back some of his power for this exact moment. The siren immediately moves through the mob, his mouth open as he sings something in a frequency that shakes the bones of everything around him. The sound seems to scramble their enemy, and every time he gets close to a body, it shudders and folds, bones liquefying on the spot. I’m surprised to see him use that like a surgeon, targeting the densest knots of the reanimated and clearing the way for the other ground fighters to get closer. I see him smile when he gets to Iggy, then pivot and unleash a sound so sharp that I feel it even in dragon form. Three heads explode and even my dragon finds that beautiful.

No wonder those assholes who birthed him want this guy back—he’s got serious firepower.

Now that the mage is covered, I look for Lucas. He’s a walking tank and still using the field goal crossbar like a baseball bat to swing at anything that gets close. The hockey player gives a huge bear grin as he launches a stringy corpse clear into the bleachers, where it explodes in a cloud of bones and rags. When the kid looks up, he catches my eye, and gives me a huge pawed version of a salute before going back to the carnage. I guess even the happy frat boy enjoys a bit of carnage once in a while, which I find a lot more appealing than the golden boy routine.

None of this would matter, if the thing controlling all this shit decides to focus on the ground team time while they’re clearing the survivors. I have to help them finish moving what’s left of the regular supes out of range, so our big push won’t hurt people without combat training. That’s when I drop my wings and freefall, rolling at the last second to flatten out and create a shockwave that slams into the edge of the stadium. The structure vibrates and the shadow seems to sense a challenge. Mist and darkness pour out from the core thicker and faster, trying to outpace my descent, but I let them chase me as I maneuver around the oval arena.

As it attempts to close in, I spot a pair of bodies—athletes by the look of their track suits—desperately trying to make a break for the tunnel. They’re moving too fast for the reanimated, but not for the mist. It claws at them, tendrils wrapping legs and arms, dragging them back toward the pile at the fifty-yard line.

Not on my watch.