Sunny met her mother in a clash of steel just as the two armies rammed together. The sound was incredible, like the crunching metal of a car collision amplified a thousand times over. The Spartans roared, the void roared, the Drev roared, and every other sound was drowned out as the symphony of war rose high into the sky like thundering waves in an ocean.
Orange light glowed down on them from the sky above where Apollyon and the Architect were making their last stand, two gods tearing each other to pieces across the stars. In moments the air was filled with the smell of copper and bile as bodies were ripped open and cast aside.
Adam's shield met with Everett in a clash that shook the ground, but even as Everette tried to batter through, the shield wall held too strong. For now, the line was holding, but there weren't nearly enough soldiers trained in formation combat for that to last long. Above them, artillery whistled through the air in brief arcs before coming down and erupting violently to shower the earth with bodies.
The void army was larger, but their side had the advantage of Maker shields, which managed to deflect the worst of the incoming artillery.
Everett snarled voice lost in the roar of bodies. Beside them, Kanza's golden eyes burned with loathing as she strained against her daughter. In a battle of strengths, one-to-one sunny was no match, but braced behind her, Lanus and Dzara helped to hold the line, their combined strength keeping Sunny planted firmly against the ground. Kazna's eyes burned with hatred, and she mouthed something though her voice was lost just as Everette's had been.
Though, it didn't take a genius to guess what Kazna would have to say to her most loathed daughter. And Sunny didn't bother to try and parse it out, instead opening her mouth and dredging up a war cry powerful enough to rattle the ground under Adam's feet and the bones within his legs.
Emboldened, the Maker side roared with her, creating a wave of sound that could be heard even over the whistle of artillery.
Adam's legs strained against the ground, his shield burning gold with immense pressure. Beside him, metal screeched in protest as energy-reinforced spartan shields began to give, ever so slightly, against the pressure
"NOW!" James, king of the Neospartans, shouted, his voice artificially projected over the coms.
Adam's muscles strained under the horrific pressure, but somehow, he managed to find the strength, spurred on by the roaring of the crowd, the roaring of his brothers in arms, he thrust his shield forward, throwing all the power in his legs and back into the maneuver.
Energy began in the balls of his armored feet and roared up his legs.
Iron Eye Sang and his steel eye leg sang with it.
His entire body became one with the machines both outside and a part of his body.
For years Adam had held back, always knowing what the steel eye armor could do, but before this, situations had not called for full steel eye strength, or... he had been too afraid to deploy it and of what he might feel when he did.
Many people thought, or at least Adam allowed everyone to think, that he was afraid of Steel-eye and what it had done to him, traumatized by the things he had been forced to do, and the things he had seen. He allowed them to think that, while he was afraid of it, he was also slightly dependent on it to feel safe and in control.
People had bought it because Adam was, at his core, a raging control freak, and it was easy to believe he was willing to return to Steel eye or its cousin if it meant he could be more in control.
That was all true.
But it wasn't the entire truth.
Adam
Craved
Steel Eye.
Never in the history of his lifetime, the lifetime of any human had there ever been a feeling so intoxicating and so incredible as being a steel-eye soldier. With the drugs running through their systems and the armor augmenting their every movement, they had been gods of war, destroying angels sent down from heaven to rain hellfire upon the wicked.
If not an angel, then a demon birthed from the belly of the beast to pave the way for the devil himself.
They had been unstoppable.
Unkillable.
It was never truly meant for human use.
But when it came to the apocalypse, they didn't need humans anymore.
They needed gods and the destroying angels that came at their call. Once upon a time, Adam had vowed that he would never again take up the call of Steel Eye and expose himself to that sort of power, but.... The world was about to end, and if he was willing to vanish from existence then he was more than willing to return to the creature he had once been.
Deep inside the armor, Adam's med-system engaged, delivering the cocktail of toxins that would either kill him or make him a god.
It was unclear which, but the feeling was instantaneous.
Pleasure and fire roared through his body, filling his legs and muscles with a sudden and overwhelming sensation of strength.
With the feeling came a shout of glee, and with a roar, he continued through with his push. Power and energy roared up from his feet, into his legs, through his back, across the blades of his shoulders, and then down through his arms. The push was so powerful, it threw Everette back several feet slamming him bodily into the bodies that clustered in a group behind him, knocking them to the ground and shattering the enemy line.
Kazna screamed, pushed back initially by only a few steps.
But that is when Conn came in.
Adam was unaware of when the order came but was certainly aware of the aftermath.
When the Neospartains called for a push, Conn called for their first psychic attack, bringing the starborn together in one massive, sentient wall that pushed forward in tandem with the Neospartans. As shields hit their enemies, so did a psychic wave, so massive, so powerful, it was like watching the enemy army become overwhelmed by a rising tide.
Void soldiers fell to the ground, screams rising into the air, hands clutched to their heads.
Others staggered back.
Even Kazna buckled, her feet slipping as Sunny lunged forward again.
Lanus pulled up behind his daughter, bracing his body into the dirt adding his strength to hers, and with a roar, they flooded forward spears thrusting through gaps in the shield wall.
Sunny took Kazna through the gap between her shoulder and chest plate painting the ground orange beneath their feet. Kazna screamed knocking Sunny aside as the Void line dissolved around her.
Inevitable.
Adam snarled passing his spear through a gap, and straight through the center of Everett's chest, punching through his decorative armor and straight into his heart. Makers don't have blood, but tarnished gold icor stained in rust orange spattered Adam's spear when he withdrew, the barbs on his spear ripping a jagged hold on their way out.
Though he was not dead, the corrupted Maker collapsed in pain.
The edges of Adam's vision blacked and then went red.
A familiar feeling flooded his body, hungry, ravenous.
Murderous.
A feeling he had feared and missed.
As the line before them shattered, the Spratain shield wall dissolved and reformed into a wedge that tore into the army's forward ranks. Just then, Adham and two battalions of Makers roared in from either side of the Void army taking the place of what might have, historically, been a cavalry charge.
Corrupted makers rose to meet them, clashing in bright flashes of golden and orange light, while others took the opportunity to dive downward in swarms to disrupt their artillery positions.
Kazna staggered back, folding into the line behind her which rose to meet Sunny.
She had no time for this, raising her lower right hand and shooting one enemy combatant straight through the face.
Two spears, two blades, and several guns.
Sunny would not play her mother's game.
She was done.
And so was Adam.
They roared, and together they plunged into the failing first rank of the enemy army. Adam did not hold back, crushing an enemy helmet, skull still inside, punching through the chest cavity of another, and withdrawing his hand spattered in stringy chunks of red. Music began to play in the back of his helmet, for if he was going to be a monster, he would at least do it to some music.
This may be his last chance.
He spun trusting violently forward with his spear, taking an enemy combatant through the soft tissue of their belly before withdrawing and grabbing another by the face plate of his helmet.
Maker power surged through his chest and down into his hand, blowing the faceplate, and the face from his target.
Celex roared into the fray, landing not a few meters ahead of Adam, and blowing a ten-foot diameter of the battlefield clean with one sharp pulse of golden energy hair whipping around his face eyes glowing with golden light.
A movement to his left, but Adam didn't bother to turn as Fealty marked the friendly in green.
Ramirez skidded past him on the blood-soaked dirt, between the legs of a towering Drev warrior firing upwards with his rifle and stitching a rather unfortunate line of bullets up through it, vertically. Ramirez, used to skidding on slick surfaces, brought himself to his feet on the other side.
And came face to face.
With Maverick.
The void-corrupted, construct wore no armor, tawny hair hanging around her face in a ragged halo. She raised her arms out to either side as if inviting Ramirez to take the shot, but Ramirez couldn't have fired even if he wanted to.
His hands trembled, and his trigger finger failed.
Spidery protrusions burst from the skin of her back slamming spiked ends into the dirt and raising her off the ground. Orange light glowed behind her eyes.
Her voice was not audible over the roar of battle, but her words were easily read on her lips.
"This ends here."