THE LAST GUARDIAN OF GREYFENWOOD

Chapter 14: Temporary Ceasefire

"The enemy of my enemy is not my friend," Finnian muttered as he adjusted his stance. "He's just bullet fodder that happens to breathe."

The Aethelgard Stone Circle had turned into a cosmic gladiator arena. Dozens of Dimensional Creepers pitch-black, living two-dimensional shadows, began to rise from the ground, from cracks in the rocks, and even detaching themselves from the shadow of the iron tower itself.

The purple sky above them rumbled, soundless lightning flashing like ruptured veins in the eyeball of a god.

The Iron Fang soldiers trembled. Their advanced plasma rifles, designed to penetrate tank armor, felt like water pistols against these creatures.

"What are your orders, Lieutenant?!" shouted one of the Iron Fang sergeants, his voice cracking as he watched his comrade turn into dust blown away by the wind.

The Iron Fang commander, Lieutenant Kael, stared at Finnian with a mix of hatred and desperation. He swallowed his bitter pride.

"Do what he says!" Kael shouted. "Focus fire to... dammit, just distract them!"

"Good," Finnian grinned, his eyes glowing wild green. "Make some noise. I'll do the hitting."

One shadow creature darted forward. Its movement was strange, glitchy, as if skipping several frames of animation at once. Suddenly, it was right in front of a young soldier on the left flank.

SHRRAACK!

The shadow swung a void claw. The soldier's rifle rusted instantly into red powder. The soldier screamed, scrambling back, tripping over a generator cable.

"Hey, Flat Face!"

Finnian lunged in. He didn't punch the creature physically but slammed his left Gauntlet into the empty space right in front of the shadow's chest. White energy from the Verdant Core exploded.

BOOM!

The shadow creature screeched with a high-frequency static sound before disintegrating into black smoke.

"One down," Finnian counted, his breath heaving. "Only... fifty more?"

"You heard him?!" Lieutenant Kael shouted, directing his troops. "Form a V formation! Cover O'Connell! Use phosphorous grenades! Bright light slows them down!"

For a moment, an impossible scene unfolded. The world's most wanted fugitive and the forces hunting him worked together like a well-oiled machine.

Phosphorous grenades detonated. Blinding white light seared retinas, forcing the shadow creatures to retreat, hissing in pain as intense photons disrupted their body structures.

As they retreated, Finnian advanced. He became the sole striker on the field. Every punch, every backhand chop, erased an existence from this world. But the cost was high. Every contact made Finnian's Gauntlet hotter. The black metal began to glow red, burning the skin of Finnian's arm beneath it.

"Damn, Finn, the temperature..." Elena shouted from behind a rock, reading the indicator on the back of Finnian's hand that started blinking a danger red.

"Don't worry about my hand, Doc!" Finnian retorted while kicking (with an energy-coated leg) a Creeper's head until it dissipated. "Worry about that generator!"

Three Creepers ignored the troops and darted toward the main diesel generator powering the floodlights. They knew: kill the light, and dinner is served.

"They're going for the lights!"

Finnian turned, but he was too late. He was too far away.

One of the Creepers touched the generator.

HISSS...

The metal generator aged a hundred years in a single second. The machine crumbled, its oil dried to dust, and POP... the floodlights across the entire site died completely.

Total darkness engulfed the Aethelgard site.

Panicked screams of Iron Fang soldiers erupted everywhere. Without light, shadows became kings. The hissing of the creatures came from all directions, overlapping with the sound of brittle bones and bodies turning to dust.

"Turn on Night Vision!" Kael ordered in vain. Their NVG goggles only displayed white static.

"Back to back!" Finnian shouted in the darkness. He ignited his Gauntlet to maximum intensity, becoming the sole source of light a green lighthouse in a black sea. "Get close to me!"

The remaining soldiers ran to crowd around Finnian and Elena. They formed a pathetic little circle. Twenty men left out of fifty.

The shadow creatures surrounded them. Hundreds of nonexistent eyes stared hungrily from the dark. Finnian's circle of light was shrinking. His Gauntlet started emitting black smoke that smelled of burning ozone.

"This is a bad end," Finnian muttered, feeling his energy draining away. "At least we die with the enemy."

Lieutenant Kael, bleeding from his temple, reloaded his pistol. "It's been an honor fighting with you, O'Connell. Even if you are a bastard."

"You too, fascist," Finnian replied.

The Creepers prepared to lunge all at once.

Suddenly, a strange humming sound cut through the air. Not organic, not static shadow noise.

Pure, clean high-tech humming. Like the sound of a giant MRI machine powering up.

A bright purple beam as thick as a coconut tree trunk, shot from the dark forest on the other side. The beam wasn't a laser, but compressed particle waves.

VWOOOM!

The beam swept through the swarm of shadow creatures on the left flank. Whatever the beam touched didn't explode, but solidified. The shadow creatures were forced to condense into black crystal statues, then shattered into pieces.

"What is that?" Elena looked up, squinting.

From behind the fallen trees, a walking machine stepped into the stone circle area.

It wasn't a Walker Tank. It was an armored Mobile Platform carrying a throne-like seat on top. Hovering on its left and right were two giant combat drones carrying Anti-Entropy Cannons.

And sitting on that throne, with a fresh glass of wine in his hand, was Colonel Elias Thorne.

His face was calm, unaffected by the small apocalypse around him. He pressed a button on his armrest. The drones fired purple beams again, wiping out the remaining shadow creatures surrounding Finnian's group in seconds. Precise, lethal, and arrogant.

The cosmic threat vanished, replaced by a far more sadistic human threat.

The floodlights from the Mobile Platform turned on, spotlighting Finnian's exhausted and burned face.

"Field note number four," Thorne's voice sounded clear through the loudspeakers, his tone like a lecturer giving a class. "Rift entities appear susceptible to stabilized Tachyon particles. Fascinating. Truly fascinating."

Thorne stepped down from his seat, walking casually across the battlefield filled with the dust of his own dead men. He didn't even glance at the remains.

Viper appeared beside him, her weapon aimed straight at Elena's head.

The surviving Iron Fang soldiers, including Lieutenant Kael immediately knelt in salute, trembling in fear.

"Forgive our failure, Colonel!" Kael shouted.

"Failure?" Thorne smiled thinly. He stopped five paces in front of Finnian. "You succeeded in drawing the rat out of his hole. That is a success."

Finnian stood tall, though his legs shook. The Gauntlet on his left hand was dead silent from overheating. Smoke billowed from the metal. He was defenseless.

Thorne looked at Finnian from head to toe, then his gaze fell on the black Gauntlet on Finnian's left hand.

"Ah," Thorne sighed, his eyes gleaming with greed. "Commander Cian's glove. He stole it from me twenty years ago. You've taken poor care of it, Finnian."

"Go to hell," Finnian spat.

"Always rude," Thorne shook his head. He made a hand signal.

Dozens of red dot lasers from snipers in the dark forest instantly appeared on Finnian and Elena's chests.

"Game over, Warden," Thorne said softly. "The ceasefire ends now."

***