The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

Fire and Blood

The brief flight abruptly ended some five metres through space later, gravity overcoming inertia to bring him back to earth with a heavy 'crunch'. The man in black bounced once before tumbling to a halt, his head whirling as his body screamed in pain.

But, knowing that he had a massively powerful Reaver, complete with psionic ability, standing just a few metres away as he waited to finish him off, Mordecai couldn't take the luxury of laying there and taking inventory of his injuries. He had to get up! Or he was as good as dead.

Groaning against the sharp stabbing pain in his side that spoke of a broken rib or two, Mordecai rolled onto his hands and knees and carefully levered himself up, fighting the need to vomit against the pain that ripped through his body with every motion. That psyken blast had hit him hard and had done some serious damage. As he came to his feet, he swiftly ran an internal diagnostic, relying on his skills as a hardwire instead of the god fire to put Caiphus back together in one piece.

And immediately he winced as his scan brought back a veritable litany of internal damages, of which the broken ribs were the least of them. He quickly sent a pulse of healing energies through his body, sealing up torn and shredded tissues, repairing perforated organs and binding together broken bones. At the same time, he sent a wave of endorphins rushing through his blood stream to calm his screaming nerve endings and strengthen failing muscles.

"Didn't like your taste of real Reaver power, did you, little man." The Reaver laughed mirthlessly, a third psyken blast hovering over a gauntleted palm as he advanced on the crouching Mordecai.

"And I caught you a bit by surprise with it, I'd say."

"A bit," Mordecai admitted with a grimace. They want to play that sort of game, do they? Fine by him! He slammed personal shields into place with enough force that his Quaydrim armor quivered. There was no way in hell that another one of those blasts was going to kick his ass!

"But now that you've opened that little bag of tricks for everyone to see, are you willing to play by the rules?"

A thought pulled the extinguished fire sword that he had dropped, through the air and into his gauntleted palm with a loud 'crack', sending an uneasy murmur rippling through the crowd. Did this pup of a knight-protector have even more powers up his sleeve than he had first shown with the advent of the god fire?

Flipping up his visor, Mordecai sent a hard look in the Reaver's direction as he slowly and carefully pressed the fire sword's hilt to his belt. Then, with another thought, his yellow shield was gone and his armor was folding back into its crystal.

"Are you mad?" the Reaver hissed in response, his eyes narrow slits through the aperture of his visor as he tried to sort out what the lean young man in front of him was up to. "Without your armor, you stand no chance against my mind fire!"

"Who says I'm not wearing armor?" Mordecai quickly replied with a tight grin. "Just because you can't see it."

Snarling silently, the Reaver slung the psyken energy ball at the lean man. And, much to the big man's chagrin and surprise, Mordecai made no move to avoid it. This time, he simply braced himself and waited for the raw energy to hammer into his body.

Which, after darting across the intervening space almost too fast for the naked eye to follow, it did, striking the lean man in black directly in the chest. This time, however, it was Mordecai's massively powerful psionic shields that bore the brunt of the energy discharge, not the sturdy Quaydrim armor. And, as tendrils of force discharged into the ground, the ball of energy was spent against the shields until it was gone.