Technomancer: Birth of a Goddess

Chapter 122 – The Fall of a Family

Emily finishes casting sky step and springs forwards, closing the gap with the third circle woman in front of her, the strongest of the three other mages in the room, before she can finish her own casting. Emily’s mind registers the golden crest pinned to the woman’s chest as she thrusts a Claw through her throat, but she barely spares it a second glance before ripping the blade out again and letting the woman drop to the floor clutching at her neck.

A blade of fire and a rippling orb of water fly at Emily as she continues towards the Patriarch. She sidesteps the former and spins, whipping out her lightning-wrapped leg to shatter the latter. The two gold-crested men each frantically start casting another spell, but Emily kicks off, discharging some of the power built in her legs and flashing forward, closing the distance in an instant to drive her knee into the fire mage’s face. His skull cracks and his head snaps back as it’s engulfed in lightning.

Emily raises her hand and fires a blade into the chest of the other without looking at him, ripping through his heart as she slows down and approaches the Patriarch, slumped against his throne, in an intentionally calm manner. The snarling expression of rage on his face brings Emily a sick sense of satisfaction.

“Monster,” he hisses.

“Ha,” Emily scoffs. “You killed my family and you ca-“ she cuts off as she notices him twitch his fingers and her instincts scream a warning.

Her mind falls into full assistive processing as she leans to the side, narrowly dodging an invisible blade that slashes past her cheek, carving a deep groove through the bone below her right eye. Her rage flares, lightning flickering out of her mouth and across her face as she lets out a guttural growl.

Fuck you! You don’t get to mark my face too!

She activates half of the injectors of healing serum along her spine as her patience runs out, dashing forward and smashing her fist into his head, slamming it back into his wooden throne, shattering his nose and cracking the seat. Emily pulls her fist back before driving it home again repeatedly, pulverising the bones in his face and spattering blood, gore, and fragments of wood and bone across the floor as his head crumples along with the top of the backrest behind him.

She pulls back after a few moments and drops her bloodied fist, looking at the slumped body hanging backwards over his chair while letting out a crackling breath, a tiny fraction of her rage quelled. A quick glance at her system’s progression requirements confirms his death, so she turns to leave the hall as the flesh on her cheek knits itself back together. She hears a commotion outside as the guards rush to check on the sounds of combat within the building, and breaks into a sprint towards them, building up more charge in her legs and flying through the open doorway just as the guards arrive at the top of the stairs.

Emily runs through them, slashing at their vitals with her Claws faster than they can react, sending sprays of blood flying as bodies drop behind her. Her secondary cores start casting detection spells, locating the few scattered people, most of them unawakened servants, moving within the building. She sprints through the corridors, kicking down doors and slicing apart everyone bearing a Mandrago crest while wreathed in wrathful lightning, leaving a trail of death in her wake.

She feels nothing as she kills mages and servants alike, the lack of resistance only adding to her frustration and anger, leaving an unsatisfied, bitter taste in her mouth. Deep into the main building, Emily bursts into a room to find a familiar face, Elder Santiago, standing with his unsettling ivory cane pointed at her, wrapped in a milky-white magic circle as he mutters an incantation. She feels his spell trying to stab at her mind, but it bursts against her cortex without even making her flinch. She drives her foot into his chest, pinning him to the floor and slowly flooding his body with electricity that rips him to shreds as he screams in anguish.

Emily grabs his cane after his howling finally stops and sends it into her storage before she moves back into the corridor to kill the last few survivors in the main building. As she clears out the mansion, she can feel a group of mages and guards gathering outside from the other two wings and the rest of the estate, preparing to intercept her as she leaves, so she slows down as she makes her last few kills, giving them time to gather and prepare.

By the time the last body falls from her blades, only a couple of minutes have passed since she fired the first shot, and the gathered enemies have finished getting into their formation. Emily returns to the entrance hall, the charge in her legs buzzing violently, built up to the maximum, and runs through the air towards a window high above the door.

She crosses her arms in front of her and leaps through the glass, shattering it and drawing all eyes of the gathered group to her. She notes their formation in groups of ten with a mage casting a defence spell in the centre of each, a few guards surrounding them with guns raised, and two or three mages preparing attack spells.

Emily creates a platform of crackling lightning and freezes for a moment, casting rock body in preparation as her gaze scans the scene below. Ideas on how to break their formation or use it against them quickly form in her mind thanks to her flow skill, but she dismisses them after judging the battle too easily winnable, channelling her raging emotions instead and choosing to let them guide her in a dance of brutality over efficiency.

Emily locates four third circle mages as her eyes scan the crowd, and she quickly locks onto the group with two of them near the back: Diego and his goons. Her emotions spike, the buzzing in her mind rising to a deafening crescendo, and the clouds overhead let out a thundering roar in response to her rage.

I’ll leave you for last. I want to make sure you suffer.

“Attack!” Diego screams a moment after Emily appears.

Dozens of gunshots go off, and an eclectic mix of elements shoot up towards her in different forms, but Emily vanishes before they can hit her. With a small flex of her legs, she appears above the group, twisting and flying through the air upside down before kicking off an invisible platform and shooting down towards the ground, joined by several bolts of lightning striking from the looming clouds above.

She spins and slams, feet first, into a barrier of wind, ripping it to pieces in an instant and continuing down to the people within without further resistance. She cuts through the third circle defensive mage with her heel, killing him instantly and smashing into the floor with a shocking boom, releasing all the built-up charge in her legs. Lightning erupts from her, disintegrating the people nearby as the force of her impact cracks the ground, creating a small crater. Half the barriers covering the groups shatter, only those further away or cast by a third circle mage survive, and all the exposed people are burnt or worse by the flood of electricity.

The bolts falling from above finish off some of the survivors before stopping as Emily rises up and switches off the pain receptors in her legs to ignore the ache resulting from her immense impact despite reinforcing them with a spell. A lance of wind collides with her chest as she stands up, creating a small crack in her body armour and making her take a small step back. She looks up and sees a mage shiver under her glare, frantically sputtering out another chant to repair the dome of rock between them, the only nearby barrier that didn’t break in her initial impact, to close the hole in the side exposing him.

Emily bursts into motion again, silver runes flowing out of her body as she dodges a few more bullets fired at her old position and tanks the few that catch her. The bullets dent her armour and bruise the flesh beneath, but Emily barely notices, taking the pain in her stride. She slips inside the earth barrier before it can close and delivers a blade to the wind mage’s throat. She fires the other Claw at one of the guards as he points his rifle at her and fires, his shot digging into her thigh and getting stuck in the reinforced flesh.

The other three guards within the barrier shoot at her as she pulls her blade from the mage’s throat, but she finishes casting guardian and spreads the liquid metal out in front of her, catching the bullets. They barely have time to process their loss as Emily whips the blade out of their companion, charging it full of machina and slashing it across their chests, slicing them all open and wrapping the cable around the third circle earth mage now standing defenceless in the middle of their encirclement. She feels an unstable build-up of mana begin in the mage’s chest, but it ends the moment she pulls on the wire with all her strength, breaking their focus and lacerating their flesh.

The mage cries out in pain, and Emily ends their suffering with a lightning-charged boot to the face. The barrier around them falls, allowing a few spells and bullets through, but Emily kicks up into the sky, avoiding them before picking a new target from within the four remaining barriers. She rips through a barrier of water with ease and starts shredding its inhabitants, but she’s surprised as a crackling orb of fire lands on the group before she can even finish.

Her guardian wraps around her in an instant absorbing most of the heat and force, melting a little as she pours mana in to maintain it, taking a few small burns as some of her skin is exposed to the immense heat. The earth around her bubbles and erupts in a move she recognises all too well, several spikes of rock rising towards her on all sides.

I shouldn’t be surprised Diego would attack his own family to create an opening. I guess that fireball was Carlos.

Emily grits her teeth, sweeping her leg out to shatter the spikes coming from one side before kicking up and stepping off the top of another, rising into the air away from the attacks. Several bullets hit her shield as she exposes herself above the flaming mass of mana, as her enemy begins to recognise her pattern and predict her movement. The softened guardian lets several shots through, but the weakened bullets harmlessly knock against her armour and reinforced skin, rock body still in full effect.

Emily kicks off the air again, backing away from the three remaining groups. She lands on the ground a short distance away and breaks into a sprint, circling around them. The guards try to shoot her, but they struggle to track her inhuman speed which quickly increases as the charge in her legs builds again. It only takes a few moments for her to become so fast she is impossible to track, so she kicks off, quickly changing angles and ripping through one of the three remaining barriers. She slices through three people who thought they were still safe as she passes through them in a straight line before twisting and kicking off another invisible platform to change direction in an instant to target another barrier.

She charges through a swirling dome of fire, stabbing its creator in the chest and drawing her blade through her, practically ripping her in half as she bursts out of the other side of the dispersing barrier. Emily repeats this a few times, shooting across the battlefield in a dizzying display of speed as she picks off everyone outside of Jose’s barrier of ice.

The moment the last guard falls, Emily turns her full focus onto the remaining group, noticing a layer of earth now coating the inside of the ice, reinforcing it against her approach.

Like that will work.

Emily jumps towards the barrier at full charge, unleashing everything built up in one leg to gain a ridiculous burst of speed towards it before releasing the other leg in a mighty kick that shatters both layers of protection along with her boot. A spray of lightning, ice, and rocks flies out, smashing into the side of the servants’ wing and bringing the wall down. Emily stops completely, standing still and looking down at the four mages lying on the floor before her, battered and bruised, with a vengeful glare twisting her features. She pulls the Spitter from her thigh and quickly finishes the five guards lying with them, not even sparing them a glance, as she slowly approaches the mages. She fires a shot into Miguel’s head and heart as well, to prevent him healing himself, and shoots Jose three times in a line from his stomach to his chest, leaving him to succumb to his wounds.

Diego tries to push himself off the floor with one arm, the other twisted at an awkward angle beside him, but Emily presses her foot into his chest, forcing him to lie back down. She cancels all her spells other than guardian, bringing the small mass of metal to float in the small of her back as she purposefully ignores Carlos trying to stand up behind her.

“Hello again, Diego,” she snarls, watching anger and confusion mix on his face as he recognises her.

“You!” he snarls back. “How are you attacking us? You’re under our control!”

“Ha,” Emily scoffs, raising her still-whole boot to stomp on his healthy hand as he starts trying to twitch out gestures for a spell. “You scum could never control me.”

“ARGH!” he cries in pain as she shatters every bone in his hand, releasing the spikes from the sole of her shoe and grinding his flesh into a bloody pulp.

Carlos stumbles to his feet behind her and pulls the knife from the small of his back, slowly approaching her while treading carefully, trying not to make a sound. Diego groans pathetically as Emily eases off on his hand, looking past her and noticing his approaching comrade. A glint of hope appears in his eyes as he gasps for breath.

“Maybe not,” he sputters between breaths, trying to ignore the pain as a twisted grin distorts his face. “But I could certainly kill your sister.”

Carlos lunges forward to stab Emily, and a triumphant laugh leaves Diego’s lips, but Emily calmly moves her guardian without looking back, having followed Carlos’ every movement through her spatial awareness, and quickly shapes it into a spike that he drives through his own chest with his momentum. He freezes, his blade dropping from his hand as he looks down in disbelief at the spike through his heart.

Emily crouches down, cold wrath burning in her brightly glowing eyes as she enjoys the look of horror dawning on Diego’s face as the last of his hope is crushed before his eyes and he realises, no one is left to save him.

“So… it was you, was it?” Emily whispers with a spark of machina distorting her voice, her inhuman hiss ringing in Diego’s ears like the call of the reaper as she presses the blade of her Claw to his face and slowly traces a deep line across it.

She pulls the guardian from Carlos’ chest with a light flex of her will and instantly wraps it around Diego’s limbs to hold him still as he tries to squirm away from the pain.

“You should’ve stayed quiet.”

Carlos’ corpse drops to the floor with a thud and the battlefield goes still, not a soul left to hear the harrowing screams of Diego begging for release.