The heavy fog hung like a thick, suffocating blanket between the towering copper pipelines of the steam city. Nicola sat there still with a nonchalant, almost arrogant grin on his bloodied face. The massive steel cuffs pulled his arms painfully tight against the ice cold brick wall.
While Aurelius, Jane, and Nyx still looked around with tensed muscles and piercing eyes at the threatening shadows, the stomach of Silarias suddenly began to make a noisy protest. The roaring sound practically echoed through the narrow alley. Silarias looked down at his own belly for a moment, rubbed it, and then began to grin broadly. Without a trace of haste, he pulled the heavy bag from his back and let it drop with a dull thud onto the metal grates.
While Nicola looked at him with wide, astounded eyes, Silarias casually began to spread a large sheet over the filthy, rusty floorboards. He carefully laid out the food they had brought along for the journey as if they were chilling somewhere in a peaceful and sunny park.
“I am Silarias, by the way,” he spoke with a full mouth while breaking off a gigantic chunk of bread. “And those fierce warriors over there are Nyx, Jane, and Aurelius. We are on our way with the whole group to the great university to become much stronger there.”
At that exact moment, Nicola’s stomach also began to roar. The shiver that followed went straight through the metal clockwork in his chest. The gears made a skipping, rattling sound.
Nicola laughed hoarsely and shook his head. “Well, we have the exact same goal in mind! My offer still stands rock solid and unchanged. Help me out of these cuffs and you have my eternal respect and loyalty.” His stomach immediately gave another loud growl as perfect confirmation of his hunger.
Silarias burst out laughing and his eyes sparkled with pure pleasure. “Hahaha! My brother needs to eat!”
Without hesitating for even a second, Silarias slid forward across the sheet. He began to personally feed Nicola large pieces of bread and sips of drink directly into his mouth. Nicola was overloaded with everything and anything. While the captured boy greedily chewed and eagerly swallowed the drink, he looked at Silarias with a gaze full of disbelief and deep respect.
“Thank you,” Nicola managed with difficulty after swallowing a gigantic bite. “There were a few of those youngsters here earlier with a big mouth but a very small heart. They also gave me something to eat when they passed by, but nowhere near as extremely much as this right here.”
Silarias abruptly stopped feeding. He let a piece of food drop right out of his fingers onto the sheet and his gaze turned serious in an instant. “Wait a second. That was not by any chance that hothead named Vulkan?”
Nicola burst out laughing and the clockwork in his chest began to tick merrily along with the rhythm of his laughing fit. “Hahaha! Yes yes, that is definitely him! What an incredibly wild kid that is, but he certainly has a heart of gold!”
Silarias shook his head grinning and went back to feeding his brand new comrade. In the middle of his next sentence, he looked Nicola straight in the eyes. “But how do we actually free you from this mess? Just come along with us on the road. I really want to go on an adventure with you!”
At the edge of the picnic sheet, Jane, Aurelius, and Nyx simultaneously burst out laughing. “Hahaha! Yes yes, that is just typical of our Silarias. Making friends instantly anywhere and everywhere within a few seconds!” the three said laughing in chorus.
The whole group looked at each other nodding. The cheerful atmosphere was set and the mutual bond was immediately forged. “So,” Silarias said as he swept the very last crumbs off the sheet and clenched his fists. “What is the master plan?”
Nicola fell completely silent for a moment. The pure sincerity of this group of strangers seemed to touch him deeply. “I uh, are we already starting this incredibly fast? Listen carefully, I am stuck with a very special mechanical lock. Those backward bandits have long since lost the corresponding key somewhere, so we absolutely do not have to hope for that. But listen, somewhere deep in this gigantic building lies a hidden mechanical fragment. That thing acts as a gigantic amplifier for my own powers. If you manage to get a hold of that fragment and activate it, I can ramp up the energy from my chest so extremely hard that these massive chains will simply shatter apart. But watch out! The common bandits are completely stupid, but I can feel with my senses that there are three bigger leaders present with terrifyingly strong powers.”
Nicola then explained flawlessly and in detail which hallways and stairs they had to take to get to the coveted fragment.
Before Nicola could even properly finish his very last sentence, Silarias pushed another whole roll into his mouth with a big grin. With a smooth, catlike motion, Silarias leaped to his feet. Together with Jane, Aurelius, and Nyx, he launched himself with a brutal and terrifying speed through the foggy alley. They ran straight toward the gigantic steel gate that gave access to the enemy complex about 50 meters away.
While the wind cut past their faces and they ran hard toward the gate, Jane narrowed her eyes. A bright yellow spark danced through her pupils as she looked up with a shiver at the gigantic copper pipes above them. “Mmm, what a terrifying amount of ravens are actually hidden everywhere here? They also look totally different from those of Apollo. Very bizarre and sinister.”
Aurelius looked around worriedly while his hand firmly gripped the combat handle of his sword. With a grim look on his face, he looked at the rest. “It seems much smarter to me if we do this via a careful stealth approach to surprise them.”
Silarias looked at him with a faint, mischievous smile. “Uh, take a very good look at the ground beneath your feet, friend. And while you are at it, take a look over there too.”
Silarias grabbed Aurelius’s head with a large hand and turned it very slowly but forcefully in the right direction. Aurelius was now looking straight into the bloodshot eyes of a gigantic horde of screaming bandits who were charging hard at them with drawn swords and clubs.
Aurelius burst out laughing and drew his heavy weapon. “Ahh yes! Way too late for stealth hahaha! So are we going to count down together?”
He raised his heavy sword high in the air and roared with a booming voice: “3!”
Jane let the electricity crackle wildly over her sharp lynx claws, her electric anting pulsing with a crazy energy, and called out laughing: “2!”
Nyx and Silarias combined their powers into a ball of pure energy and shouted at the top of their lungs at the same time: “1!”
In a fraction of a second, all four of them simultaneously unleashed a combined attack on the gate. The gigantic steel doors flew apart into thousands of glowing shards with a deafening explosion. The brutal pressure wave that was released was so gigantic that it immediately blew a gigantic hole straight through the front lines of the charging gang of bandits. Enemies were tossed through the air like rag dolls.
The group stormed inside without mercy straight through the smoking ruins of the gate. Silarias dealt mace blows that sent enemies flying meters through the air against the walls. Jane dashed forward like a flash of lightning, using her electrical lynx speed to blast multiple bandits backward at the same time with shocking discharges from her anting. Nyx moved like an untouchable, deadly shadow across the battlefield and cut effortlessly through the lines with her razor sharp moon energy. Aurelius mowed broadly around him with his heavy sword and cleared the way for the rest of the group. Within a few minutes, the whole gang lay groaning and defeated on the ground.
The way to the stone staircase that led up to the mechanical fragment was now wide open. But just as Silarias wanted to put his foot on the very first step, the passage was abruptly and violently blocked. Two of the mighty bandit bosses leaped onto the ground in front of them with a brutal crash, sending rubble flying in all directions.
On the left side stood a terrifying woman. She was a hybrid creature that had taken possession of the notorious Magpie Anting. Her eyes were pitch black and without any emotion. She wore a glossy plumage over her shoulders that seemed to constantly shift in color due to the reflecting light. Her powers were theft prone in nature. With a simple, fluid wave of her hand, she could steal the luster and energy directly from the attacks of the group. She converted that stolen energy on the spot into razor sharp, reflecting shards of pure glass that she fired back at the group with deadly speed.
On the right side stood a gigantic, towering man with the Raven Anting. He was also a hybrid and possessed gigantic, pitch black wings that flapped slowly up and down. He manipulated the deep, dark shadows on the stone floor with his willpower. He raised dark claws and complete shadow scientific creations from the ground to fight along. It seemed at first glance to be a completely impossible and impenetrable wall of pure darkness.
But Silarias and the rest did not let themselves be deterred by these terrifying bosses. Because of their hard training, they knew exactly how to handle this interplay. Nyx activated her powers and used her bright, fierce moonlight to burn away the shadows of the raven man directly and make his dark claws evaporate like snow in the sun.
At the same time, Silarias managed to melt the glass shards of the magpie woman into harmless drops with the intense and all consuming heat of his sunny aura before they could even cause any damage to his friends. The Magpie woman screamed it out, a shrill, inhuman sound that went through marrow and bone. Her pitch black eyes narrowed as she spread her arms wide. The glossy plumage on her shoulders pulsed wildly, and with a brutal power wave, she sucked the luster and energy directly out of the air.
“Hahaha! Your power is my power!” she screamed crazily.
With a quick hand movement, she threw the stolen energy back. The air immediately filled with thousands of razor sharp, reflecting shards of pure glass, which flew at the group with the speed of a bullet.
At the same time, the towering Raven man let out a deep growl. His gigantic pitch black wings flapped slowly up and down, and the shadows on the stone floor came to life. They crawled up like living ink and formed gruesome, clawing figures and dark, deformed creatures that charged growling at Aurelius and Jane.
It seemed an impossible, deadly trap. But Silarias and Nyx looked at each other for one second and nodded synchronously.
“Nyx, now! Moonlight Synchronization!” roared Silarias.
Nyx closed her eyes and clenched her fists. Her whole body began to radiate with a bright, silvery glow. She concentrated her energy and let a blinding beam of pure, bright moonlight shoot from her palms, straight at the wall of darkness.
The effect was immediate and catastrophic for the Raven man. Where the moonlight hit the shadows, the dark claws and creations hissed and evaporated directly like snow in the sun. The Raven man staggered, his connection to the shadows brutally broken by the bright light.
At that exact moment, Silarias exploded with energy. An intense, all consuming heat pulsed from his body, and his sunny aura shone brighter than ever before. He threw himself right in front of the rain of glass shards.
“Heatwave Absorption!” he shouted, while stretching out his hands.
The scorching heat he radiated was so extreme that the air around him began to tremble and distort. The thousands of glass shards flying at him melted before they could even touch his skin. They turned into harmless, glowing hot drops of liquid glass that shattered with a hissing sound on the stone floor.
“What?! My glass! My power!” the Magpie woman screamed in disbelief and pure panic, when she saw her attack fail.
She was completely distracted by the unexpected destruction of her shards. That was the opening the group had been waiting for.
Aurelius saw his chance. With a brutal primal scream, he leaped forward, his heavy sword raised high in the air. The Raven man, still blinded by the moonlight of Nyx and weakened by the loss of his shadows, could no longer offer any decent resistance.
With a thundering crash, Aurelius let his sword come down. The brutal force of the blow threw the Raven man meters backward, where he slammed unconscious against the stone wall with a dull thud. His pitch black wings hung limp on his body.
At the same time, Jane let the electric power of her lynx anting flash with a wild intensity. Instead of striking the Magpie woman directly, she unleashed a crazy, bouncing bolt of pure electricity that shot through the air and targeted a heavy copper pipe right above her head.
“Greetings from Jane!” she called out with a wink.
The electrical discharge shattered the seal of the pipe with deadly precision. A gigantic cloud of glowing hot steam escaped with a hissing noise, straight into the face of the terrified Magpie woman. She screamed it out in pain and fright, and let her guard down.
Silarias, who saw the cloud of steam, did not hesitate for a second. He charged his fist with a sunburst and launched himself at the Magpie woman.
“This is for Nicola! Sunburst Blackhead!” he roared.
His fist, surrounded by a burning heat, slammed with the force of a sledgehammer precisely into the stomach of the Magpie woman. The impact was merciless and brutal. She was tossed through the air like a rag doll, straight through the smoking ruins of the gate and landed with a hard crash on the ground, completely taken out.
Within a few seconds, the fight was over. The two supreme bosses lay taken out on the ground, their powers broken by the creative interplay of the group. The way to the stairs and the mechanical fragment was now finally open.
“Hahaha! We did that well, team!” cheered Silarias, while wiping the sweat from his forehead and sticking his fist in the air.
Everyone looked at each other grinning, the adrenaline still coursing through their bodies. The victory was finally within reach!
The Platypus boss stood there laughing mockingly, the rattling vault keys held triumphantly high in his poisonous hand. He looked down on the cramped Silarias and the injured Vulkan, his eyes burning with a wild madness that was fiercer than ever before.
“Hahaha! You really thought you could ignore me?!” he screamed with a voice full of pure contempt. “I am the ruler of this hideout! And now I will show you what fear really means!”
With a dramatic, overly exaggerated wave of his arms, he threw his hands wide. The Platypus Anting embedded on his chest began to shine with a pitch black, pulsing and threatening glow. The boss closed his eyes and a creepy, confident smile appeared on his broad bill. He stood there now purely on his other senses, relying on the vibrations of the floor.
Suddenly he took a deep breath, and his chest swelled gigantically to unnatural sizes like a bloated balloon. With a brutal, explosive force, he spat a huge stream of thick, pitch black mud right into the middle of the alliance. The mud splashed apart with a sickening sound and covered a large part of the metal floor.
But it did not stop at mud alone. The pitch black slime began to bubble and pulse as if it were a living organism. Before the eyes of the shocked group, the mud blobs turned into dozens of deformed, growling creatures. They looked like miniature platypuses, but with glowing, poisonous eyes and razor sharp claws that scraped against the metal floor.
“My children! Eat them up!” roared the boss, as the minions charged at the group with a loud, aggressive hissing sound.
The fight exploded directly into pure chaos. The alliance now had to defend itself against an overwhelming force of too many muddy monsters. But the group was faster and more agile than the boss thought. They worked together like a well oiled machine, creating a legendary show of brutal force and perfect coordination.
Lyn Luban swung her gigantic forge hammer, the Lightning Burning Forge Soul, with fierce force all around her. Lightning bolts shot off the hammerhead and turned the minions directly into piles of gray ash. “Hahaha! Is this the best you have to offer?!” she screamed, while hitting a charging monster completely in half.
Apollo, covered in his intense, glowing aura, launched Miki as a living fireball straight through the lines of the enemy. The minions immediately caught fire and turned into running, burning torches before melting away. “Miki, burn them flat!” roared Apollo.
Cilla and Ren, in their leaf and iron modes, mowed through the horde with deadly precision. The razor sharp leaves of Cilla cut through the muddy bodies like paper, while the scythes of Ren left a trail of pure destruction behind him. “They just keep coming!” Cilla cried out, as she cut the head off another monster.
Aurelius and Jane covered the back of the formation. Aurelius held the minions at bay with sweeping blows of his heavy sword, while Jane used her fast lynx reflexes to channel electricity from her anting, sending shockwaves through the metal floor to stun the monsters from behind. “Aurelius, left!” Jane screamed, as she fried a monster through its poisonous eye with a spark.
Despite the chaos, Silarias and Vulkan, who both still suffered from the paralyzing poison, managed to fight their way toward each other in a wonderful way. They came to stand side by side, surrounded by growling minions on all sides. The hard reality of the situation forced them to put their rivalry aside for a moment.
“Damn it, Silarias!” Vulkan growled, as he pushed a minion away with his shaking arm. “I hate to admit it, but we really must work together now!”
Silarias grinned painfully, his side still cramped from the poison. “Hahaha! Who would have thought that?! The hothead and the sun king, shoulder to shoulder!”
With a combined power attack they smashed a large hole in the horde of minions together. The Platypus boss, who watched the scene from a safe distance, started laughing loudly again. “Hahaha! A pathetic alliance of two weaklings! I will break you!”
With a quick, smooth movement he slid over the slippery floor and he brutally tripped the two heroes. Silarias and Vulkan lost their balance and fell hard on the floor. The boss towered above them, his bill wide open in a triumphant grin.
“This is the end for you!” he screamed, as he raised his poisonous foot for a final, crushing blow.
But at that exact moment the air exploded with a deafening bang. Lyn, Apollo, and Nyx had combined their powers for a devastating combo attack. A beam of pure moonlight, mixed with the heat of a sunburst and the brutal force of a lightning strike, shot straight at the Platypus boss.
The impact was gigantic. The boss was blown backward with an all destroying force. With a dull, terrifying thud he crashed head first straight into the massive stone wall at the end of the hideout. The blow was so hard that his head and half his body were completely stuck and embedded deep in the wall. The wall cracked in all directions. Only his legs, with the rattling vault keys still attached to his belt, stuck helplessly out of the stone.
The remaining minions, their creator taken out, dissolved directly into harmless mud blobs. The hideout was dead quiet in one single blow.
“Hahaha! You did that well, Lyn!” cheered Apollo, as he put his sombrero firmly on his head again.
Lyn grinned proudly and let her hammer rest on the ground. “I told you I would wreck him!”
Silarias and Vulkan got to their feet with difficulty, leaning on each other. Vulkan looked at his chained little sister Valeria and his tough attitude immediately fell apart. He ran toward her and pulled the keys from the legs of the boss that were still sticking out of the wall. With shaking hands, he freed Valeria from her heavy cuffs.
Valeria looked at her brother with big, tearful eyes. “Vulkan…” she brought out softly.
Vulkan pulled her into an intense, emotional hug. He held her tightly and his body shook with raw emotions. “Valeria! I am so incredibly happy that you are safe! I really thought I had lost you!”
Valeria clung to him and her tears flowed freely over her cheeks. “I knew you would come, Vulkan. I knew it!”
Vulkan held Valeria tightly, but suddenly his whole body froze. His eyes opened wide as if he were struck by lightning. The emotional mood turned in one single blow when he gently let Valeria go and looked at his watch with a panicked look on his face.
“Damn it!” Vulkan cried out, as he jumped to his feet in pure stress. “I only now realize what time it is! We are way overdue! We have to go feed someone, or all hell will break loose!”
Everyone looked at him with big, questioning eyes. Who on earth did they have to bring food to in the middle of this chaos? But Vulkan did not give anyone the time to ask questions. He lifted Valeria in his strong arms and nodded once briefly to Silarias.
Without saying another word, Vulkan launched himself. A deafening bang sounded that echoed through the entire factory hall and scattered the smoke. The only thing the gang leader left behind was a fierce, bright flash of light. He had disappeared with an absurd, superhuman speed.
Silarias, Apollo, and the rest of the alliance looked at each other with open mouths. The confusion was complete.
“Well I never! That one is gone faster than a falling star!” Silarias finally broke the silence. He shook his head to shake off the confusion and looked at the group. “Come on guys, we have to walk on to that vault!”
Just as the large group wanted to set themselves in motion, they suddenly heard a begging, shaking voice coming from the wall. It was the Platypus boss, whose head was still hopelessly stuck in the stone. He had been scared to death by the loud bang of Vulkan’s departure.
“Please! Please do not play with bombs!” the boss screamed with a voice full of pure terror from within the wall. “Please leave me in one piece! I will do anything, but do not blow me up!”
Everyone burst out laughing at the panic of the stuck boss. He seriously thought the bang from Vulkan was a bomb with which they wanted to execute him.
“You just stay stuck there nicely, duckbill!” Lyn called out laughing over her shoulder as they walked away.
The gigantic group consisting of Silarias, Apollo, Aurelius, Nyx, Ren, Miki, Cilla, Lyn and Jane continued their way to the top floor. As they marched through the hallways, they quietly got to know Lyn better. They listened full of admiration to her stories about how she had smashed that wall to pieces with her gigantic hammer. There was a very good mood in the group now.
Finally they arrived at the massive, iron walk in safe. Silarias stepped forward and pulled out the heavy bunch of keys they had pulled from the legs of the boss. He searched for the right key and inserted it into the deep keyhole. With a loud, mechanical click he turned the lock.
The gigantic vault door began to shake gently. With a heavy, scraping sound the gears turned and the thirty centimeter thick door swung slowly open. The entire group walked into the vault full of suspense, but they truly did not know what they saw.
It was no ordinary vault. It seemed like a hidden museum from another dimension! Everywhere they looked lay priceless gold treasures, strange shining objects that hummed with energy, and gigantic paintings of events they absolutely did not understand.
Their eyes were directly drawn to a gigantic, epic painting that covered the entire back wall. It showed a brutal battle between two gigantic kingdoms. On one side stood a sinister, dark man with an army of shadows around him. On the other side stood a royal lady side by side with a man. Behind them stood a gigantic legion of fighters ready for war.
Silarias and Nyx got goosebumps all over their bodies as they stared at the painting. Their breath caught in their throats. They thought they recognized the faces of the people on that painting from somewhere, but they could not put their finger on it. It felt oddly familiar, as if they were looking at their own hidden past.
Before they could think about it further, they suddenly heard a very thin, odd little voice in the back of the vault. It sounded cracking and mechanical, overloaded with static noise like an old radio.
The sound appeared to come from a small, dark cage hanging in the corner.
“May I come out?” the terrifying, static little voice cracked hopefully. “Master has food with him, right?”
Everyone froze instantly. The hairs on the back of their necks stood up as they stared into the darkness of the cage.