Wyrm Lord of Brockton Bay 19 (Patreon)

Wyrm Lord of Brockton Bay
Chapter 19

-VB-

A moment of silence settled over the battlefield before -.

Armsmaster gasped as he pushed his arms down to stand back up, but the hydraulics servos on his power armor creaked and groaned. His helmet’s HUD blared in red, showing his armor’s structural integrity in red without exception. If that wasn’t all, then the software monitoring his body also blared in an even deeper red.

All but one of his ribcages had fractures, if it wasn’t outright broken. The kinetic dampener made after observing Assault’s power had done its job, though, because the HUD was reporting that he should be dead otherwise.

Because a human shouldn’t be able to survive an explosive hydrojet dragon punch equivalent to a one kiloton of TNT.

His power armor hissed before it collapsed, and brought him back down to the rubble littered ground.

Armsmaster - no, it was Colin since he was useless now - groaned as he laid there on the ground.

‘Fuck.’

One punch.

That was all that damn dragon needed to take him out.

-VB-

“DAMN IT!” Triumph roared as he dodged another spike of earth trying to skewer him. “We can’t win this!”

“We’re still goddamn trying!” Battery shouted back at him as she tanked an explosive fireball. She only had one minute left in her charge. They had to finish this now!

But Wyrm was already over a hundred meters. He punted Armsmaster in one hit!

The dragon hissed from the center of the warehouse where he’d cornered the last of the Merchant goons. “Taking Armsmaster out should have told you all how seriously I am taking this. Get out before one of you dies.”

“We’re heroes,” Battery replied back sternly. “We can’t.”

“Heroes?” the dragon laughed. “What about as a wife?”

For a moment, she looked at him in confusion before -.

“BLLLAARRRGGHHH!”

She whirled around and saw Ethan’s head encased in a sphere of water.

“Assa-!”

BAM!

She whipped her head around again, and saw Triumph lying in a small crater, bleeding but not dead. Also, definitely unconscious.

Ethan fell to his knees as he slowly ran out of breath.

Battery glared at the dragon, who smirked back at her.

“Kinetic Redistribution doesn’t work so well against water,” he crooned. “Surrender and leave. Or stay and die as heroes.”

Her fists trembled in rage but … Her husband’s life came before the lives of criminals. If she was to be punished for this, then so be it.

---

Battery kowtowed, pushing her costumed forehead against the concrete floor.

“I surrender,” she declared with a rage-filled trembling voice.

I stared at her for a moment before releasing the sphere of water I had coated to Assault’s head. As the water fell away, the man gasped loudly as he collapsed to the floor before coughing violently. Battery was quick to be at his side, glaring up at me.

“Leave,” I cackled. “Next time, come with all of your members to try and inconvenience me. This three person show is an insult to me, which I repaid with mercy.”

Battery spared no moment. She grabbed Assault and Triumph and sped out.

I turned back to the Merchants I had cornered in a warehouse.

And grinned.

I opened my maw and breathed fire.

Their dying screams made me happy.

-VB-

Skidmark coughed up blood as he laid on the ground powerlessly. He didn’t even have the strength to open his lips.

But death didn’t come.

“Do you like it?” a voice asked as its owner stepped into field of vision. “Hello, I suppose that introductions are in order. I am one of the Dragonteeth, Major Stasis.” The masked man, a blank grey mask showing no feature whatsoever, loomed over him. “And like my name, I have the power to maintain something at stasis… of a sort. What you are feeling is what I do. Living yet so close to death. Unable to pass through.”

The cape crouched down. “I’m a doctor, you know. A doctor with a lot of biases, who broke the Hippocratic Oath, but a doctor nonetheless. I’m also a husband. Well, a widow. Your girlfriend killed my wife.”

He brought out a knife and stabbed it down into Skid’s chest. He coughed up even more blood.

“I used my power to keep people alive until they could get help. Wyrm helped me become good. He brought me and my wife together. She was the first good thing in my life.”

He stabbed again.

“And you killed her in your drug-fueled mania.”

Stab.

“I got permission from Wyrm. Service until death for your life.”

Stab. Stab. Stab.

“There are consequences, Skidmark, and you’ll be everyone’s example of why. Do you know what that means? I get to play with you! I get to show the city and the world what happens to those who mess with Wyrm and his people…”

Skidmark wanted to cuss out the fucktard, but didn’t have the strength to do anything but glare balefully but tiredly at the cape.

“I hope you have a religion, Skidmark, because your ass is mine.”

-VB-

Not all men were created equal.

Some were born poor. Some were born strong. Some were not even born at all.

This applied to women as well.

Some women lived happily ever after. Some women just had shit luck.

Squealer had the shit luck, and now, her corpse and that of Mush hung at the end of Boardwalk’s street along with still dying Skidmark.

The Merchant Purge, however, was not done.

“Has the Coalition acted?” I asked Lisa as we watched the scene with our civilian clothes and far enough from the crowd and the “posts” of our work.

“You ended the Merchants way too fast for them to do anything about it,” she replied with a hum at the end. “But they are still gathered.”

“How many of them?”

She glared at me. “Stop asking questions you know I can’t answer. I haven’t had the time to actually gather that much information, at least not without breaking my head.”

I let her rudeness pass. She did have a big headache after all because of what I told her to do.

“Tell me about it as soon as possible. I want them gone.”

She snorted at me even as she nursed her temple. “You’re going to blow up the city at this rate. You know that capes don’t do well to pressure like that.”

“I don’t care. Whether they break or bend is on them. Inability to bow to my righteous casus belli is not my fault but theirs.”

“And you keep forgetting that you are scary as fuck.”

“That’s not my problem.”

“That is certainly your problem!”

And another day passed like that.