Stronger Together chapter 121 (Patreon)

It felt like I watched Raven's body fall in slow motion, but somehow  instantaneous at the same time. All I knew was before she even finished  hitting the ground Lord Raith had stepped over her, casually strolling out into the crowd of Black court and up to the altar. He accepted a  handkerchief from Mavra and started casually cleaning my girlfriends blood off his fist. River had crossed the distance to Raven when I  glanced back and was working on healing her but it looked bad. I could  only hope her half demon physiology was resilient enough to handle the  damage.

Lord  Raith chuckled at my expression. He had a really dickish chuckle.  "Really boy, treachery? I was turning against my allies before this  country was founded. To thing you would dare even allude to a plot  against me in public and expect no retribution. But don't worry. I  forgive you. After all, so many of my people saw how special your young  ladies are. Now that the Crown has dimmed their radiance I can take my  time breaking them in properly, and one of the Summer Queens as well,  what a remarkable day for me." His smug voice was bland and upbeat as he  discussed psychically enslaving my girls and my blood boiled.

Raven  had started to breathe weakly, which I took as a positive sign, and  something in my gut unclenched. Unfortunately River needed to stay by  her side it looked like so that left only me, Harry, Ebenezar, Lily's  scary magic user guy, and possibly Lara assuming we could even trust  her. Barb was standing protectively over Raven while River worked and  that was where I wanted her. I sneered over at the bastard and his  buddies. I may be a little worried but I sure as hell wouldn't give him  the satisfaction of showing it.

I  used that iron control I had over my godsteel weave body and made sure  there was no tremble in my voice as I blustered, hoping to buy time  while I worked out a plan. "You think it'll be that easy? You may be  pretty tough and have a bunch of groupies but we have some of the  strongest wizards on the planet, not to mention a fae caster on par with  the Summer courts best and several faerie knights who are still in  play. And if you think I'm not going to personally cave your simpering  gigolo head in like an overripe melon with my bare hands after what you  just did to my girlfriend then you're as stupid as you are evil. And  that's a high fucking bar."

As  soon as i finished talking I triggered my lightning and force aspects  through my godsteel weave. With the two of them acting on me I felt the  world slow to a molasses like crawl even with the enemies around me  moving so much faster than humans. As I saw earlier I was hands down  faster than anything else I'd seen before. Sadly I hadn't seen Mavra. I  rushed at the bastard like a charging train, activating my Aura with a  force spell to multiply the impact. Before I even reached him though  Mavra blurred into existence. I didn't remember how fast she was  supposed to be but regardless of what happened in the books she could  actually keep up.

Her  fist met mine, and i felt that her strength was terrible and unnatural  and would have been enough to stop me even with my force aspect...if I  hadn't been punching her with a force multiplier on an arm made of  divine metal. She shrieked and hissed, dissolving into mist as her arm  turned to ash under the influence of the power of my godsteel limb.  Sadly Lord Raith's did not. The bastard was glowing bright silver and  just caught the limb in one hand, stopping me cold. His hungry silver  eyes looked furious. "You insignificant little cretin. You think you can  raise a hand to ME?"

He  backhanded me and I was pretty sure the godsteel in my skull was the  only reason my head didn't explode as I streaked back down the aisle and  smashed into the wall above the door. I fell to the ground like a piece  of baloney peeling itself off a surface it was thrown at. I coughed up a  little blood but otherwise held up. Lord Raith was radiating power. It  occurred to me that in the book Lara had taken him down in a psychic  fight, but we'd never seen him in battle really. We never got to see  what that deal with Outsiders really bought him. looked like I was going  to find out.

He  began to walk toward me, slowly. The Black Court vampires and thralls  scurried to move out of his way as he approached me actually scowling  for the first time. "Do you know what a waste of power this is? What an  embarrassment it is to me to be forced to use my true strength against  some little teen aged nobody? But no, you can't just die like a good  little kine, you have to drag it out, have to play tricks with holy  metal and force me to act personally. I'm going to make you suffer  whelp." Apparently the Black Court vamps extreme reaction to my godsteel  had ruined his plan to sit back and be a smug jackass about this whole  thing. Good.

Honestly  I hadn't known it would affect them either but if it ruined his day yay  me. Unfortunately I was now fighting an outsider powered vampire Lord  (albeit one with a very limited energy reserve) so I did what any good  hero does when a sociopath is coming to kill him. I tried to get him to  monologue. "Please, like I'm going to apologize for putting some  daughter raping psycho in his place? You know Inari almost didn't  believe it when we told her? She thought her daddy would never do that  to her. You're a sick fuck for raising her up to adore you like that  knowing what you were going to do to her."

I  expected a denial or some rationalization, but what I got was so much  worse. He smiled. Actually grinned. "I like to try different flavors.  The sheltered ones usually either break or get all defiant. Inari would  have been the first kind I think. She always was a little soft." He  laughed at my disgusted expression. "Oh did you expect me to deny it. To  stammer and whimper? I am a predator, and all lesser predators are  prey, that is the natural order of things. Inari will learn her place,  just like her sisters did, and now I can take my time teaching her  little soulmate too. I'm not sure what she is but she looks delicious."

I  hurled myself at him again, layered in soulfire infused lightning, and  he just rolled his eyes. At least until a cannonball of force smashed  into him from where Ebenezar was standing. He let the energy wash over  him and then smiled. "Sorry old man, your magic doesn't work on me." He  turned to face Ebenezar and i cast the strongest force spell possible  into the metal of my arm, cocked back and punched the smug bastard in  his pretty face. His head snapped to the side and his eyes widened in  pain and rage as he turned back to me.

The  Black Court was staying back, content to watch the white king pummel  me. With magic ineffective and all my girls down and out my only play  here was just wail on the bastard. But my strongest punch hadn't worked.  What the hell could I do? I needed way more power, but I didn't have  any way to...wait. I did have a way. I darted back and took a stance. A  familiar stance I'd taken dozens of times before. The White King looked  at me, amused. I began my form, same as always, and I felt my power  begin to build.

My  pain wasn't all encompassing this time. The godsteel seemed to form a  circuit inside me for the energy to travel. Not grounding it but keeping  the power from frying me like an egg and setting my soul completely on  fire. too fast. It was building though. Lord Raith waited for a minute,  then got bored and attacked. My arm snapped up in the next movement in  the form, blocking his attack as if I'd predicted it. Klurkor was made  for battle not just for training. It was a combat style above all else.  He lashed out again, faster than before so fast that I couldn't track it  even with my lightning aspect.

The  blow was smashed aside by my metal arm. He got faster, and so did I, my  body flowing through the motions of the forms, so often practiced,  faster than I ever could have made any independent movements. It was  like a dance his blows coming at me faster and faster and I was meeting  him without even understanding what was happening. The forms became so  much more, each movement having a unique use but somehow also being  useful for other things. Each strike was a block was a parry. Each punch  was a grab. I wasn't doing anything different than usual but I was  somehow growing within my usage of the style.

Everyone  had backed away and Lord Raith was unleashing everything he had. No  worrying about his reserves or being unable to feed, he was worried  about surviving. Raith was old and strong and fueled by forced from  outside reality. But I was smiling. I'd learned about Klurkor more  during my little accidental power up, but only the spiritual parts of it.  I hadn't understood the physical. As I fought though I learned, I grew,  not just in power but in skill. I found new ways to use the same  attacks. My building pain was at the back of my head but my growing  power fueled my muscles, making me faster and stronger as my abilities  evolved.

Unfortunately  Lord Raith wasn't exactly getting pushed back, he was pulling more and  more on his hunger but the outsider gifts was getting stronger within  him, making him more powerful. I saw something unsettling in his shadow.  In the shimmering light of my blazing soul as I immolated myself for  power I watched a sneering disgusting dark shape glare up at me. I  understood now. Lara had avoided the outsider because it hadn't wanted  to draw attention but Lord Raith wasn't working for He Who Walks behind.  He was PART of it.

The  ability to resist magic was an outsider specialty. Lord Raith though He  Who Walks Behind had given him a trump card when it had only planted a  seed of itself inside him. The more he tapped his hunger and lost  himself the stronger it would grow. It would hollow him out every bit as  much as Nemesis could, and then it would be him. Maybe it wanted a body  for this world, maybe that would let it break all the rules. But it  didn't matter why. I said Lord Raith would die tonight, so he would die.

I  felt the peak of my power, the awesome might of my soul converting  fully to fire but feeding itself through the art too fast for me to lose  any of it as it burned, once again becoming a man on fire. I might have  been able to survive it this time, to process or refine it and make  myself more than what I was. But that wasn't the point. The point was to  do exactly what I'd done last time. I shoved every drop of that power  into my right arm at the last second as I punched the bastard one last  time, and he fucking exploded.

The  screech of otherworldy hate confirmed I'd just pissed off the outsiders  but oh well. With the godsteel in my I wasn't in nearly as bad of a  condition as last time I'd done this, and I celebrated inwardly despite  being exhausted and sore. I turned away from ash shadow that had been  Lord Raith to look at the others. As the ash rained down on us,  sparkling with soulfire like gruesome snow, I made a realization. Lord  Raith was dead, but we still had the Black Court vamps to handle, plus  possibly the Wampires. And I was wiped. Fuck.