Affinity:Chaos

Of the four Gnomes about to attack Reynolds and the injured Ninth stage Sovereign, one recognized Grey’s voice the instant it cut through the noise of battle. The sound struck him like a physical blow. For more than ten minutes he had been moving carefully across the battlefield, not in search of Grey, but in a deliberate attempt to avoid him.

At the beginning of the fight Grey had made his existence a nightmare. The human had danced around him with effortless ease, intervening in every nearby clash while the Gnome was left to endure the angry curses of his own companions for failing to pin the troublemaker down. When Grey suddenly vanished from the Ninth stage battlefield, it felt like the rays of the heavens were shining on him.

The Gnome seized the opportunity and joined hands with two others to kill the first human Ninth stage Sovereign. He had been on the verge of getting the second kill when that same cold eerie voice sounded again.

He spun and pointed frantically at the newly arrived figure.

"Kill him first! He’s far more difficult to deal with than the others!"

He had already fought Grey once and knew how slippery the young man could be. Grey’s sudden reappearance also confirmed something the Gnome had only suspected earlier: the human was also a Space Elementalist.

The other three Gnomes had no particular reason to prioritize one target over another. In their minds every human on the field would die eventually, so the order hardly mattered. Still, they redirected their puppets without argument, turning the full focus of their assault toward Grey.

Grey glanced sideways at Reynolds.

"Can you kill two with one move?"

Reynolds gave a single, confident nod.

"Go."

The word left Grey’s mouth at the same moment his mental sense expanded like an invisible net. In an instant the connections between the four Gnomes and their puppets were severed. The puppets froze in mid-motion, suddenly useless.

Reynolds moved the moment the links broke. Still wrapped in his crackling lightning armor, he shot forward in a blur of pure speed, slipping past the now immobilized puppets. His lightning sword punched cleanly through the heart of the nearest Gnome. With his free hand he hurled a spear of condensed lightning at the head of a second Gnome.

Grey did not remain idle. The two Gnomes closest to him were his targets. His figure flickered once and then seemed to occupy two places at once, appearing in front of both opponents in the space of a single heartbeat. From a distance it looked as though two identical Greys had struck simultaneously. His attacks were precise and merciless, leaving the Gnomes no room to respond.

A second later the Gnomes regained control of their bodies, but the damage had already been done. The injured Ninth stage human standing nearby had been too battered by the earlier assault to be of help in this attack. He also had no knowledge of Grey’s abilities, so he could only watch in stunned silence. All he registered was Grey’s quiet question to Reynolds, a sudden rush of fearsome mental pressure, and then a series of explosive impacts. When his vision cleared, the scene before him left him speechless.

Three of the four Gnomes were bleeding profusely. The fourth had a lightning spear buried in his left shoulder; he had twisted aside at the last possible instant and avoided a fatal strike.

Panic seized the Gnomes at the same moment. All four attempted to retreat. One of them simply stopped moving halfway through the motion. His body went limp and plummeted from the sky, striking the desert sand with a dull, final thud. He was already dead.

The remaining three only halted after putting nearly a kilometer of open air between themselves and their attackers. The Gnome with the lightning spear still lodged in his shoulder wrenched the weapon free and stared at Grey with naked fear. This was the same Gnome who had chased Grey across the battlefield from the opening moments of the war. Frustration had consumed him earlier, yet he had never connected the slippery Ninth stage Sovereign human with the infamous name that circulated among the Gnomes. Only now did the pieces fall into place.

It was Grey Dawson.

The realization sent a cold shudder through him. The news of Wilmot’s death at Grey’s hands was widely known. A Peak Sovereign had fallen to this young man while he was still only at the Ninth stage. The thought that he himself had spent the early part of the battle pursuing such an opponent made beads of sweat form across his forehead.

The other two survivors reached the same conclusion the moment they felt the unique signature of Grey’s mental energy attack. Terror replaced every other emotion. Escape became their only coherent desire.

Grey and Reynolds drifted back to the side of the injured Ninth stage Sovereign.

Reynolds turned to the man, paying no further attention to the distant Gnomes.

"Are you all right?"

The Sovereign remained frozen for several heartbeats before managing a shaky nod.

"Yes... yes. I can still fight."

"Good." Reynolds studied him briefly, then shifted his focus back to the three surviving enemies.

Grey’s gaze never left the Gnomes. Of the four, the one who had fallen dead was one of the two he had personally targeted. A faint dissatisfaction lingered that the second had survived. The man had managed to raise a hasty defense in the final fraction of a second. Although both of Grey’s strikes had appeared simultaneously, a minuscule delay still existed, and that delay had been enough.

"Kill them," Grey said calmly to Reynolds and the recovered Sovereign, "then help the others."

Without another word the three humans shot forward toward the fleeing Gnomes.

The Gnomes, still in a frightened state, scurried to defend themselves. A few seconds ago the current situation never crossed their minds, now that they were in it, they were unsure of how to react.

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