Cling.
The hammer struck true, sending a musical note ringing through the forge. Fili wiped sweat from his brow and admired the curve of metal taking shape beneath his tools. Not bad for a morning's work.
Cling.
Another strike, another note. The rhythm of the forge was as familiar to him as his own heartbeat after four years as an apprentice.
The wind picked up outside, rattling the shutters with sudden force. Fili paused, hammer raised mid-strike. That was odd. The morning had been still and sunny when he'd opened the forge at dawn.
He glanced toward Master Kern, who sat hunched over her workbench, quill scratching across parchment as she refined a design for a new set of gauntlets. Her gray hair was pulled back in a severe bun, her scarred hands moving with precision despite their gnarled appearance.
"Master," Fili said, setting down his hammer. "I think it's started."
Kern didn't look up from her drawing. "Hmm."
Fili moved to the window, wiping ash from his hands onto his apron. Outside, people hurried through the street, their faces tight with worry. A group of children ran past, shouting something about a storm.
"There's folks saying something happened at the trial," Fili reported, straining to catch snippets of conversation. "And look at the sky."
The clear blue of just minutes ago had vanished, replaced by rolling gray clouds. Wind whipped through the street, sending loose papers tumbling across cobblestones.
Fili chewed his lower lip. "I wonder if Adom's alright."
Kern set down her quill with deliberate slowness. "Back to work, Fili."
"But Master—"
"Focus on what you can control," she said, finally looking up. Her eyes were sharp as flint despite her sixty-some years. "That pauldron won't forge itself."
Fili reluctantly returned to his anvil, but his mind remained on the strange weather and the rising tension in the street. "But what if—"
"He is your friend, yes," Kern interrupted. "And you're afraid for him today. I understand. But it will be alright." A smile softened her face. "After all, he has Wam and Bam."
Despite his worry, Fili couldn't help grinning. "Do you think he'll use them? I mean, really use them?"
"Those gauntlets can stop a charging bull," Kern said, picking up a small hammer to demonstrate. She punched the air twice in quick succession. "One-two. Just like we designed."
"The reinforced knuckle joints were my idea," Fili reminded her, puffing up slightly.
"And a good one," Kern acknowledged. "Though adding the mana conduits was the real challenge."
A bell began to toll in the distance—not the usual hourly chime, but the rapid, insistent pealing of an alarm. Fili tensed, hammer forgotten in his hand.
"Something's happening at the ocean," a man shouted as he ran past the forge. "Magic storm! Come see!"
More people rushed by, heading toward the harbor viewpoint. The wind grew stronger, howling around the eaves of the building.
Kern rose from her bench with a sigh. "I suppose we might as well look."
Fili was already untying his apron. "Really?"
"The metal needs to heat anyway," she said pragmatically. "And I doubt you'll be worth much until you see for yourself."
They stepped outside, joining the flow of citizens heading toward the harbor wall. The clouds overhead had darkened further, swirling in unnatural patterns. In the distance, out over the water, flashes of light punctuated the horizon.
"What is that?" Fili whispered, standing on tiptoes to see better.
A nearby woman shook her head in wonder. "They're saying it's a battle. A mage battle out over the deep water."
"The prince's conspirators," an old man added. "Tried to blow up the Hall of Justice, they did. But someone stopped 'em."
"Adom," Fili breathed, too quietly for anyone but Kern to hear.
His master placed a steadying hand on his shoulder. "We don't know that."
"But... he said there was going to be something today. And the way he said it..."
Another flash lit the distant horizon, followed by a sound that reached them seconds later—a deep, reverberating boom that seemed to shake the very air.
"If it is him," Kern said quietly, "he's well-equipped. Those gauntlets are our finest work."
Fili nodded, anxiety and pride warring in his chest. "He practiced with them for weeks."
"Said his hands felt naked without them, last time he visited," Kern reminded him.
A small smile tugged at Fili's lips despite his worry. "He did."
The crowd gasped as another flash, brighter than before, bloomed over the water. Fili counted silently, waiting for the sound to reach them.
BOOOM!
Fili blinked in confusion. That wasn't thunder.
The actual sound wave hit, rattling windows throughout the harbor district. Kern's hand tightened on Fili's shoulder.
"What was that sound?" he asked, frowning.
Kern shook her head, equally perplexed. "I have no idea."
The bells continued their urgent warning. In the harbor below, sailors scrambled to secure vessels as the water grew choppy. The air felt charged, heavy with the promise of something momentous.
"He'll be alright," Kern said, as much to herself as to Fili. "That boy has more tricks than a traveling magician."
Fili nodded, trying to believe it. His fingers traced the hammer still clutched in his hand—the same one he'd used to help forge Wam and Bam.
"Come," Kern said finally, turning back toward the forge. "Standing here won't help him."
"But—"
"The best thing we can do for him now is to continue our work," she said firmly. "So when he returns, he'll have something new to show off."
Fili hesitated, eyes still fixed on the distant flashes. Then he nodded once, decisively, and followed his master back to the forge.
The wind continued to rise, and the bells rang out their warning across the city of Arkhos. But in the forge, there was only the steady rhythm of hammer on metal.
Cling.
Cling.
Cling.
******
THUNDER SHRIMP.
Wam connected with a force that surprised even Adom. The impact sent shockwaves across the churning ocean surface, water erupting in a thirty-foot geyser as the creature plummeted downward.
Adom stared at his gauntlet, momentarily stunned by the power he'd just unleashed. He hadn't dared use the Thunder Shrimp punch since that first disastrous attempt with Gale almost a year ago. Back then, the resulting explosion had left him with a painful dislocated shoulder and an instinctual pull back from full strength.
But that was before the upgrades.
Before Kern had reinforced the impact distribution system. Before Fili had suggested the flexible knuckle joints. Before Adom himself had grown stronger, faster, more controlled, more durable.
And before he'd discovered what Axis could really do when it functioned as both mana and Fluid simultaneously.
The creature—Kell, if he could still be called that—crashed into the ocean with a sound like a mountain collapsing. Seawater boiled where it hit, steam rising in angry plumes.
Adom hovered fifty feet above, riding currents of raw mana to stay airborne. His chest heaved with exertion, sweat mingling with seawater on his face despite the howling wind. The transportation crystal had worked perfectly—yanking both him and the transforming homunculus away from the crowded square and out over the deep water where collateral damage would be minimal.
Well, except for the increasingly violent storm they were generating.
Kell had changed completely during transport. His body had twisted, expanded, bones cracking and reforming as his homunculus nature destabilized. Now he was easily twenty feet tall, skin like fractured marble shot through with veins of pulsing blue energy. Where his face should have been, there was only a writhing mass of tendrils surrounding a gaping maw.
Worse, the creature was hemorrhaging raw mana, disrupting the natural flow of energy in the atmosphere. The resulting storm was growing by the second—black clouds spiraling overhead, lightning flashing between them, the sea below transformed into heaving mountains of water.
"Come out..."
Adom narrowed his eyes, tracking the spot where Kell had disappeared beneath the waves. Three seconds. Four. Five.
The ocean bulged upward. The creature erupted from the depths, water streaming from its massive form, those awful tendrils reaching skyward.
Adom didn't waste breath on words.
He twisted in the air, narrowly avoiding a tendril that whipped past his head. Another caught his ankle, yanking him downward with terrifying strength.
BAM.
Another Thunder Shrimp slammed against it, the gauntlet's impact severing the appendage with a spray of blue-white fluid.
The creature howled—a sound that vibrated Adom's bones and sent a wave of nausea through his gut. It wasn't just loud; it was wrong, like reality itself was protesting the thing's existence.
More tendrils shot upward. Adom dove between them, using short bursts of Axis to change direction mid-air. One grazed his shoulder, tearing through his coat and into the flesh beneath. He didn't feel the pain—not yet—but warm blood soaked his sleeve almost instantly.
The creature surged higher, half its body rising from the water now. It was still growing, its proportions becoming increasingly unstable. Jagged protrusions of bone-like material erupted randomly across its surface, only to crack and reform seconds later.
A pulse of energy radiated outward from its core, catching Adom mid-dodge. The invisible wave hit like a battering ram, sending him tumbling through the air. His concentration slipped, Axis control faltering. For three terrifying seconds, he plummeted toward the churning ocean before regaining enough focus to halt his fall.
This wasn't working.
Direct attacks only seemed to enrage the thing. And Adom's Axis reserves were not eternal—maintaining flight while fighting would eventually cost him dearly.
A bolt of lightning split the sky overhead, momentarily illuminating the scene in stark blue-white. Adom's eyes tracked it, mind racing.
A thought occurred to him: "A good mage doesn't create what already exists. Why expend your own energy producing fire when there's a torch right beside you?"
The creature lunged upward again, jaws snapping where Adom had been an instant before. He banked sharply, positioning himself between the monster and the heart of the storm.
Lightning answered his call—not a single bolt, but three massive forks that converged directly on his outstretched gauntlets. For a terrifying instant, he was the focal point of enough electrical energy to power Arkhos for a week.
But instead of frying him where he hovered, the lightning coalesced around his gauntlets, drawn to the mana conduits Kern had integrated into the design. Adom became a living conductor, channeling rather than absorbing.
He thrust both arms forward, redirecting the combined force of three lightning bolts straight into the creature's chest.
"AAAAARGH!"
BOOM!!!
The impact was cataclysmic.
Electricity engulfed the homunculus, illuminating it from within. Its monstrous form convulsed, tendrils thrashing wildly as blue-white energy coursed through it. The surface of its body began to crack, light pouring from the fissures.
But it didn't fall.
The creature's maw opened wider, impossibly wider, and it swallowed the lightning—absorbed it into its unstable mass. For a heartbeat, it seemed to calm, the fractures in its surface sealing over, the chaotic reshaping of its form slowing.
Then it grew again, gaining another ten feet in height. The tendrils thickened, multiplied. The energy veins pulsing through its marble-like skin blazed brighter.
It had fed on the attack.
Adom's stomach dropped. He'd made it stronger.
The creature's arm—if the grotesque appendage could be called that—swung through the air with astonishing speed. Adom barely had time to cross his gauntlets in defense before the blow connected, sending him rocketing backward through the storm.
"Argh!"
He slammed into the ocean surface hard enough to drive the air from his lungs, skipping like a stone before crashing through a wave. Salt water filled his mouth, his nose. Disoriented, he thrashed upward, breaking the surface with a desperate gasp.
The creature was coming. He could feel the displacement in the water, see the massive shadow beneath the waves racing toward him.
No time for finesse. Adom gathered what Axis he could and launched himself skyward just as the ocean erupted beneath him. Tendrils grasped at his legs, one wrapping around his calf before he severed it with a quick chop from Bam.
Higher. He needed to get higher, regroup, think.
The clouds churned violently overhead, nature itself responding to the abomination below. Another lightning bolt forked across the sky, closer this time.
Adom's mind raced. If the creature could absorb direct energy attacks, he needed something it couldn't consume. Something physical, overwhelming.
He cast his gaze across the tempestuous scene, searching for an advantage. The ocean itself was a weapon—if he could manipulate enough of it. But that would drain his remaining Axis too quickly. Already at [1200/3067]
The lightning, though...
Not a direct transfer this time. Something different.
Adom shot higher, positioning himself directly beneath the most active part of the storm cloud. The creature followed, its massive form rising from the water like a mountain breaching the surface.
Axis flowed through Adom's body, gathering in his core, then spreading outward to his limbs. He raised both gauntlets toward the storm, but this time with a different intent.
Not to channel. To ignite.
The next lightning bolt struck mere yards away. Adom didn't try to catch it. Instead, he used his Axis to superheat the air around it, creating a pressure differential so extreme that the bolt curved—not toward him, but toward the ocean directly surrounding the creature.
Water conducted electricity far better than air. And salt water conducted it better still.
The lightning hit the ocean and spread outward in a blinding web of energy. The creature, half-submerged, was suddenly surrounded by a cage of electricity. It thrashed, trying to rise further from the water, but too much of its mass remained beneath the surface.
Adom didn't wait to see the results. He repeated the process, bending another bolt, then another. Each strike charged the water more, electricity racing through the ocean in all directions with the creature at the epicenter.
It howled—a sound of rage and pain so intense that Adom felt something warm trickle from his ear. Blood.
Still, he didn't stop. Couldn't stop.
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Another bolt.
Another.
Again.
Again.
The creature's movements became erratic. Parts of its body began to slough off, chunks of marble-like material falling into the electrified water. The energy veins in its skin flickered, dimmed, then blazed with renewed intensity as it fought to maintain cohesion.
Adom gritted his teeth, pushing himself.
Just a little more.
One final lightning bolt—the largest yet—split the sky.
Adom gathered the at least 500 points worth of his Axis, forcing every ounce of will into bending its path. The massive fork of electricity curved dramatically, drawn to the now highly-charged water surrounding the creature.
When it hit, the ocean itself seemed to explode.
Steam billowed upward as superheated water vaporized instantly. The creature's howl cut through the chaos—still alive, still fighting, but clearly damaged.
Adom wiped blood from his ear, breathing hard.
Fighting homunculi was always difficult, but this was something else entirely. Now he understood why Thessarian had earned the title "Mage Killer." It wasn't just skill or strength—it was this ability to destabilize, to warp the very fabric of mana around them and an erratic mana field was a mage's worst nightmare.
He remembered the briefing from earlier that morning.
Thessarian's explained: "Kell is one of our greatest success. Three different mana cores harvested from high-tier mages, perfectly stabilized within a single vessel. No other homunculus has survived the procedure."
She hadn't been exaggerating. The creature below was proof enough of that.
Adom checked his internal reserves: [700/3067]. Less than a quarter of his total capacity remaining.
Obviously not good.
Meanwhile, the creature showed no signs of tiring. If anything, it seemed more enraged with each attack, its marble-like body reforming even as pieces sloughed away. The tendrils had multiplied, writhing more frantically as it searched for him through the storm.
He needed to recharge. And more importantly, he needed to find those cores.
Three of them, somewhere inside that monstrosity. As long as they remained intact, the creature would continue regenerating, continue warping the mana field around it. Destroy the cores, and the whole thing would collapse.
Easier said than done.
Adom weaved [Flight], pushing upward through the storm. He needed height, distance, time to think. The creature bellowed below, but its regeneration couldn't keep pace with his ascent. Its massive body was still half-submerged, tendrils stretching skyward but falling short by dozens of yards.
Up through the rain he soared, past the lower cloud layer into the heart of the storm. Lightning flashed around him, close enough that the hairs on his arms stood on end. Dangerous, but also an opportunity.
Here, surrounded by the raw elemental energy of the storm, he could attempt what he'd practiced in the highlands. Axis absorption directly from ambient mana.
It wasn't ideal conditions. Far from the relatively calm, controlled environment of the Highlands. But as the rules of street fighting used to say: "Rule number 9: If you only practice when conditions are perfect, you'll never be ready for a real fight."
It was odd that he remembered that book now of all times.
Adom closed his eyes, centered himself despite the howling wind and driving rain. He extended his awareness outward, feeling the currents of mana swirling through the storm. Natural mana, untainted by the creature's chaotic influence at this height.
The first trickle of mana touched his core, then converted to Axis. Then another. And another. His reserves began to climb: [720/3067]... [750/3067]... [790/3067].
Not fast enough. The normal rate of absorption was designed for peaceful meditation, not mid-battle emergency refueling.
Adom risked a glance downward. The creature had fully emerged from the water now, its massive form standing atop the churning waves like some primordial god rising from the depths. It was looking up, that terrible maw opening and closing as if tasting the air.
It would find him soon.
Adom turned his attention back to his absorption technique. What if he didn't try to give it time to filter the mana? Just take it raw, conversion be damned?
It was potentially dangerous. He wasn't sure how his new core would react to that. But staying at [800/3067] against that thing was definitely fatal.
He altered his approach, opening his pathways fully.
The effect was immediate and intense. Mana surged into him like a flood breaking through a dam. His core burned with the influx, struggling to convert the raw energy fast enough.
[900/3067]... [1050/3067]... [1200/3067]...
Oh? Nevermind. It was working better than expected.
[1500/3067]... [1800/3067]... [2100/3067]...
A roar from below jerked his attention back to the immediate threat. The creature had spotted him. Worse, it was growing again—stretching upward like a tower of twisted flesh and marble, reaching for the cloud layer where Adom hovered.
No time to finish the absorption properly. Adom clamped down on his pathways, cutting off the flow of mana. His reserves settled at [2200/3067]—not full, but much better than before.
Now he needed a plan. A way to locate and destroy those three cores hidden somewhere within the creature's massive body.
An idea formed.
Adom circled the creature, watching as it tried to repair itself. Without two of its three cores, the process was slow, uneven. Parts of its body were growing while others withered away. The once-symmetrical form was now grotesquely lopsided.
"HELP... ME..." The voice was almost pitiful now. "HURTS..."
Adom pushed the thought away. Whatever Kell had once been, this creature wasn't that person anymore.
He positioned himself directly behind the homunculus, eyeing the final core. From this angle, he could see it clearly—a sphere of condensed mana, twice the size of the others, suspended in what remained of the creature's lower torso.
Adom took a deep breath, centering himself.
First, he needed to get the creature in position.
He flew higher, making sure he was in the homunculus's line of sight. It tracked him with what remained of its sensory apparatus, that awful maw opening and closing.
"COME... BACK..."
Perfect. It was focused on him, not on what he was doing to the water beneath it.
Adom extended one hand toward the ocean, concentrating. Axis flowed from his core, through his arm, into the water below. Not to move it or heat it, but to change its density—to create a column of super-compressed water directly beneath the creature, extending down hundreds of feet.
The ocean's surface didn't change, but beneath it, molecules were being forced closer together, creating a path of least resistance. A tunnel of sorts, though not one visible to the eye.
Now for the hard part.
Adom circled around to face the creature head-on. It tracked him, tendrils reaching out half-heartedly. Its movements were slower now, its form less stable. Without all three cores working together, it was beginning to lose cohesion.
He charged Wam with Axis—not just channeling it but mixing it, combining it with the portion that functioned as Fluid. The gauntlet began to vibrate, runes glowing with an intensity he'd never seen before.
This would be more than Thunder Shrimp. This would be something new entirely.
If the standard Thunder Shrimp borrowed from nature, this was rewriting it. Adom had spent many nights with Sam, theorizing how to amplify the technique, but never had the courage—or desperation—to attempt it.
The standard technique relied on a simple principle: create a cavitation bubble, then harness the force of its collapse. But what if you could extend that effect? What if, instead of a single point of impact, you created a directional vacuum corridor?
In theory, the math worked. Create a temporary absence of pressure not just at the impact site, but along a predetermined path. When reality rushed back in to fill that void, anything caught in the corridor would be propelled with catastrophic force.
The challenge had always been control. Generating a vacuum was easy enough with sufficient power. Controlling where and how it collapsed was the impossible part.
That's where the compressed water column came in. By densifying the water molecules beneath the creature, Adom wasn't just creating a target zone—he was establishing a pressure gradient. Physics always follows the path of least resistance. When the vacuum collapsed, the resulting force would naturally flow along that gradient.
Wam's runes weren't designed for this level of manipulation. The gauntlet vibrated dangerously as Adom charged it with dual-natured Axis—part standard energy, part Fluid. Where standard Axis provided raw power, Axis as Fluid gave control of that power. The combination wasn't just additive; it was multiplicative.
Each rune pattern along Wam's surface began to glow with different intensities. The containment arrays burned nearly white-hot as they struggled to handle the unstable mixture. The conversion matrices pulsed with rhythmic intensity, transforming the energy into something the stabilization networks could direct.
When the standard Thunder Shrimp created a bubble the size of an apple, this technique would generate a corridor the width of a man and potentially hundreds of feet long.
And when it collapsed...
Adom shot forward, aiming directly for the center of the creature's mass—not at the core itself, but at a point that would drive the homunculus backward, into the compressed column of water he'd created.
The creature tried to dodge, but it was too slow, too damaged to move effectively. Adom closed the distance in seconds, Wam pulled back for the strike, blazing with combined Axis energy.
SUPER THUNDER SHRIMP
The impact was unlike anything he'd experienced before.
The gauntlet connected with the creature's chest, creating not just a shock wave but a vacuum, a moment where air and water alike were pushed away from the point of impact.
For a split second, nothing existed in that space—no matter, no pressure, nothing but pure force.
Then reality rushed back in.
The creature was driven backward with cataclysmic force, straight into the column of compressed water. The density differential created a path of almost zero resistance, allowing the homunculus to be pushed downward at an impossible speed.
Adom held his position, arm extended, as the creature plummeted into the depths. The ocean seemed to swallow it whole, closing over the spot where it had disappeared with barely a ripple.
One second passed. Two. Three.
Then the water bulged upward, a dome rising fifty feet into the air as pressure built from below. Adom braced himself, knowing what was coming.