Page 6 of Souls of Steel
As it turned out, I’d been worrying about nothing. The moment the metal made contact with the powerful blaze, the fire began to decrease in size. It stopped advancing and rushed straight at the Sphinx, then vanished harmlessly as soon as it struck my chimera’s body.
The Sphinx crowed victoriously.“Ha! I knew that would work! Take that! Tartarus prevails again!”
I was so confused. What had just happened?
“The Tartarus diamond core absorbs heat,”the Sphinx explained.“Well, to be more specific, it emanates a pulse that manipulates the thermal conduction of the environment around it.”
Now I felt like a fucking idiot. Of course it did. I knew that. It was how chimeras had managed to last in battle with the Sun-Dwellers for so long. When active, the gigantic machines weren’t just resilient to heat. They fed off it, in a way that was, ironically, similar to the habits of the Sun-Dwellers.
Of course, it took a lot for a chimera to feel an effect from ‘feeding’ off a heat source, so the fire vanished without me noticing any change in my handling of the mecha. It took only a couple of seconds, really, but those seconds were enough for my foes to realize something wasn’t right.
“There!” I heard a female voice shout. “Someone has the chimera. Now’s our chance.”
Blue-green strands of magic zeroed in on us like malevolent tentacles and the systems of the Sphinx began screaming in protest. The screens started to flicker and a deafening alarm echoed in the cockpit. At the same time, a jolt of electricity ran through my body and I cried out in shock and distress. It didn’t hurt, but it was overwhelming and it shattered my focus. Clutching the controls, I tried to get a grip and maintain my connection with the Sphinx.
The bands around me tightened as the chimera attempted to do the same. I began to have trouble breathing and my head hurt so much it felt like my skull was being split open.
“They’re trying to capture me,”the Sphinx yelled.“Do not let them, Selene.”
A strange desperation echoed inside me, and in it, I found strength. I had to remember one of the first lessons my mother had taught me. Tartarus and Gaia weren’t actually opposites. They were two entities and primordial deities who had worked together to save Earth. At one point, that had been forgotten, but right now, it was important.
Chimera nobles and royals, who didn’t have a deep connection to Mother Earth, were vulnerable to magic. I, on the other hand, had been born from one of Gaia’s priestesses. I might not have been able to use magic myself, but my mother had done it around me all the time. The magic the terrorists were using to hijack the Sphinx couldn’t hurt me.
I focused on that thought and on the simple determination that had made me accept the offer of the Sphinx in the first place. These people didn’t understand the severity of their own actions. A lot of innocents were dying because the extremists had lost control of Gaia’s power, and I had to stop it.
The Sphinx’s systems returned to normal, the displays no longer affected by the power of the terrorists. “What are you doing?” the same voice from before shouted, outside. “Tame it!”
“I’m trying!” another woman replied. “It doesn’t work!”
The exchange allowed me to track them down. The group of terrorists was in a small bubble of green magic that kept them afloat while they attempted to claim the chimera for themselves. The ground beneath them had collapsed, but their power was preventing them from falling into the dark depths of the earth.“We should just crack that damn bubble and let them die, suffocated by the force they have corrupted and defied,”the Sphinx said, her voice tinged with bloodlust and the desire for revenge.
A part of me couldn’t blame her for her reaction, since they had tried to enslave her. But on the other hand, it wasn’t my place to deliver justice onto someone who’d committed a crime. That wasn’t why I’d gotten into this machine. I had no idea what reasons these people might have had for their actions, but The Grand Judiciary and the High Priestesses of Gaia would deal with them. My job was to stop their rampage.
“We’re not killing anyone,” I told the Sphinx. “They’re children of Gaia, just like us.” Well, like me. “We’re ending that spell, immobilizing them. Someone else will decide their fates, not us.”
“You’re far too soft, young Selene. That might get you killed one day. If you have foes, you must consume them.”
Despite the reprimand, the Sphinx obeyed me. We didn’t have time to fight anyway, since the civilian population was still in a lot of trouble.
The situation was so bad that I ended up having to ignore the group of terrorists altogether. While they kept assaulting me with magic, the building to my right crumbled to pieces and the stone came raining down upon the screaming crowd.
I didn’t think. The Sphinx’s wings fanned out and expanded, and before I knew it, I was above the terrified people, shielding them from the danger.
It should’ve been impossible for me to protect them all from the damage, but a chimera wasn’t a simple mechanical creation. The Sphinx contained the power of the gods and that of two entwined souls. I didn’t even feel the side-effects of the crumbling building as it came down on top of me.
I stalled long enough for the people to flee. Once I ascertained the immediate problem had been solved, the Sphinx landed on the sole spot of steady ground we could see and buried her claws deep within the earth.“This will hurt, young Selene,”she warned me.
“Yes, I know. You already told me that. Let’s do it. We have no other choice.”
A chimera was powerful, but it was, in essence, a war machine, and it had never been built for rescue operations. The original Sphinx, whose soul the mecha held, had been a hunter, and the metallic version was no different. I’d gotten lucky earlier, but I couldn’t hope to save too many people with just one robot, not when the whole place was crashing down around us.
But Tartarus was a deity aligned with earth too, the primordial god of the underworld. My hope was that we could use the energy within the Sphinx to stop the aftershocks of magic that were making the ground crack.
It worked far better than I expected. I sensed the moment the energy coming from the Sphinx’s core connected with me, but it didn’t hurt, not like the earlier process had. “There’s been enough death today,” I said. “No more. Stop this.”
The Sphinx’s claws came alive with crimson magic, and the violent flare of energy burned with the desire to hunt, to hurt. I willed it to settle down, to anchor Gaia’s power instead. Tartarus’s fire protested at first, not appreciating my desire to go against its nature. But in the end, it complied, tempering the wild, out of control power the strange terrorists had used.
The ground stopped shaking. The waves of green slowly dissipated, tempered by the energy of the chimera’s core.
