Psionic Academy

Chapter Seventeen: Soil Swimming

Reinforcements had arrived.

They came not long after the boy Shane had been fighting with had fled the scene of the battle - not long after the Onyx League's child soldier had run away.

Two SCPD hover-ships had soared in, the machine guns on their sides blazing, pumping iron into the sky. Then they had landed, their doors had opened, and a fresh wave of Psionic warriors had poured onto the battlegrounds.

Now, Shane was confident that they could win.

He ran forward, recklessly, irrationally, eager to join his fellow soldiers, desperate to witness the defeat of the Onyx League.

Shane sprinted across the grass; wheezing, lungs burning. Speed failing, he slowed into a jog. There wasn't much energy left inside of him.

The reinforcements ran ahead, a tsunami of vengeance packed into neat lines and clean uniforms and structure and followed orders. They didn't need Shane's meager efforts, his tired anger. The battle was already over for the Onyx League.

Shane slowed to a walk, stopped. He stood, watching.

The first line of SCPD fighters were all Pyrokinetics. Each soldier sent forward a plume of fire. Their individual flames rolled outwards like the smoke of a mushroom cloud. They ate the air, folding into each other, conglomerating, forming an infernal wall.

Onyx League Officers fled, desperate to avoid the flame. They fought with each other, scrambling to escape. A Geokinetic pulled thick sheets of bedrock from under the ground and encased themselves, protecting their squad in a bubble of saprolite. The defensive cocoon of rock then drove itself into the ground, disappearing completely from sight.

A crew of Hydrokinetic Officers combined their efforts, spraying forth a surge of water. It hissed into the fire, killing it, saving them from the angry flames. Spitting tendrils of steam snaked into the air.

But the next wave of SCPD attacks had already begun. A group of Aerokinetics, quick and lithe, flew through the air, blowing harsh winds into the faces of the Onyx League. Electrokinetics fired volley after volley of electricity; lightning struck Onyx Officers in synchronized attacks. Geokinetics were lifting stone from the earth and surrounding landscape, and they flung dangerous chunks of rock into the ranks of Onyx League soldiers.

Behind them all, the hover-ships were already lifting off. Having deposited their elite force of soldiers, the hover-ships flew above the battle, firing down into the masses of Onyx Officers. Gunshots drowned the sounds of combat.

Shane watched the battle with awe, fear, and a strange sense of excitement. He was so engrossed, so consumed with the events of the war unfolding before him, that he didn't notice it.

He didn't notice a faint tremor in the earth.

He didn't notice a line of displaced dirt tracing its way through the grass - a trail of exposed earth where something deep, deep down had pierced the surface soil.

He didn't notice that the trail was moving towards him.

Not until it was too late.

A mountain of rock came roaring upwards from directly beneath his feet. It drove a hole through the trembling ground and vibrating topsoil, like a shark's fin piercing turbulent waters.

It was the Geokinetic who had encased himself in rock. He had traveled through the ground, and surpassed the front line of SCPD soldiers by going under them. He and his team had moved through the earth until they were right below Shane, and now they were resurfacing!

Suddenly, Shane was five feet in the air, lifted high by the sudden ascension of the Geokinetic's rock bubble. The dirt crumbled below his feet. He was no longer standing on stable ground, now he was balancing on the crudely pointed edge of a gigantic boulder. His left foot slipped down the boulder's steep side.

Yelping, he grabbed onto the boulder, fingernails scrabbling on rough rock. But the boulder was shaking violently now, as it rose out of the ground, and he had no grip. His hold on the boulder's point was failing. His feet flailed helplessly. He ran in mid-air, not going anywhere, soles slapping the impossibly steep side of the boulder.

Then the boulder shook again. Shane's eyesight shuddered, his center of mass was thrown into the air. He lost his grip on the boulder and fell:

Down, 

down, 

down.

And then thump.

Pain.

Pain. Pain.

Back aching. Air punched from his lungs. Breathing hurts. Limbs hurt. Fingers stinging. Tongue stinging. Taste of blood.

Ground shaking, the boulder shaking, the boulder rising, the boulder eating up the periphery of his vision.

The boulder disintegrating.

The boulder degrading, flaking, melting away. The detrital stones pummeling his knee, his forehead. A little blood leaking from a gash above his eyebrow.

Three figures emerging from the ruins of the boulder.

Hate in their faces. They're angry at the League's imminent loss. Angry eyes fall on Shane. Hate turns to excitement. Eager. Eager to make somebody pay.

He's helpless. Trapped. Surrounded by his enemies, surrounded by predators. He is their prey now. A sparrow in the gaze of hawks. A mouse, trembling under the eyes of an owl. Their talons glinted, their beaks gleamed. They were hunting.

He lifted a feeble hand. Two sparks fizzled from his index finger.

And then his psi-band began to beep. 

Displaying his impotency. Advertising his powerlessness. 

The Geokinetic laughed. He tapped his palm in a gentle clap, lifted his hands upwards. A jagged fragment of volcanic rock obeyed his commands, lifting itself from the soil. It moved forward, hovered right above Shane's bleeding, crying, leaking face. If it dropped, it would crack his skull like an eggshell, and his brains would slip into the dirt.

The Geokinetic stepped forward. Shane thought that he said something, but the gunshots were too loud. Then the Geokinetic grinned.

Pleasure on the battleground. A violent, cruel enjoyment. 

It was true, Shane realized - warfare brought some people joy. There were some monsters in the Psionic world, some monsters in the whole world, some sickly creatures that relished the smoke and bullets. There were some that truly worshipped the gods of blood and gunpowder, that devoted their lives to them, that made the battlegrounds their temples, that made the corpses their shrines, that made killing blows their prayers.

The Geokinetic lifted a hand, slowly, dramatically. 

The rock bobbed, still hovering above Shane, jagged and solid and the end of him. 

Then he clicked his fingers.

And the rock fell down.