Chapter 270 Well.

Chapter 270: 270 Well.

"Shit!" I swore.

The high-voltage lightning violently cracked and spat off the dense, black stone currently engulfing the demon.

Legion let out a booming, overlapping roar. His heavy, spiked tail lashed out blindly, smashing completely through two of the massive Tesla coils.

The heavy machinery shrieked as the metal crumpled, the electric charges fizzling and dying as the grid was abruptly severed.

"He can do that?" Rhea gasped in my ear, her voice spiking in panic. "He kept the rock armor from his last host?"

"Apparently!" I growled. I quickly switched my helmet’s external speakers back on to project to the room and the camera. "Demon!" I roared, hovering higher into the air and gesturing sharply toward Glacia. "You will obey my commands!"

"Master Polaris has given you an order!" Glacia shouted flawlessly. She threw her hands forward, sending a massive, concentrated blast of freezing, absolute-zero wind screaming across the gym.

The blizzard crashed directly into Legion’s burning, stony hide. The demon howled in fury.

The violent clash of extreme heat and arctic cold caused the volcanic rock covering his body to loudly snap and fracture, which was a solid start.

But it also instantly wreathed the massive bastard in a blinding, impenetrable curtain of thick white steam.

"Now do you see that you cannot control this beast?" Vanessa demanded, floating up right beside me, perfectly hitting her cue. "We must destroy him before he escapes!"

Good girl. Stick exactly to the script.

"Fine," I growled, projecting my voice so the microphone would pick up every word. "So be it. A rabid dog that refuses to obey must be put down. We will cooperate for exactly five minutes, Hex. But the second this creature is dead, we are enemies once more!"

"I wouldn’t have it any other way!" Vanessa declared boldly.

A sudden, roaring blast of hellfire cut off any further theatrical banter. I violently jerked myself backward in the air as Legion’s dragon breath ripped straight through the steam cloud, completely incinerating the floorboards and the wall where we had just been floating.

Glacia was forced to tuck and roll, riding a blast of cold air to the far corner of the bleachers before the inferno could crisp her white coat.

Well, I had really been hoping Rhea’s oversized bug-zapper would do the trick, but as the old industry adage goes: no plan survives first contact with the enemy.

Fortunately, I never walked onto a set without heavy contingencies.

I dropped back down to the floor. I raised my hand, triggering a magnetic pull, and the heavy, custom-built revolver I had holstered at my belt snapped directly into my armored palm.

I locked my grip around the handle and took aim. Thick copper rails clamped along the oversized barrel began to vibrate.

I hadn’t used this specific trick since my run-in with General Winter, but Legion’s stolen granite hide was definitely going to require some massive kinetic overkill.

The copper bars began to aggressively hum, glowing with a fierce, blue magnetic charge as I funneled my raw power directly into the firing chamber.

Across the gym, Legion snarled. His heavy tail whipped around, and he unleashed another massive gout of fire at Glacia.

His aim was completely erratic, entirely thrown off by Psyren standing near the bleachers, rapidly unloading psychic barbs directly into his fractured minds.

Vanessa touched down right beside me, brilliant, glowing crimson runes blazing around both her hands.

"Ready?" I asked, bracing my boots against the floor and locking my armored elbow.

Vanessa raised her hands, weaving the arcane magic directly over the barrel of my gun. "Ready."

The mechanical hum of the magnetic field rapidly escalated into a deafening wail, easily overpowering the sounds of the burning gym.

The noise finally grabbed Legion’s attention. His massive, horse-like skull snapped in my direction. His dozens of burning eyes shot wide open in realization.

His chest expanded as he inhaled deeply, preparing to flood the entire half of the room with magma.

"Too late," I said.

I pulled the trigger.

The physical recoil of the railgun was so violent it nearly ripped my shoulder completely out of its socket.

The heavy slug hit the magnetic field between the copper bars and broke the barrier inside the gym.

Brilliant flares of Vanessa’s arcane magic spiraled in the bullet’s wake as it ripped through the air.

The resulting kinetic shockwave rippled outward, instantly shattering every single remaining pane of glass in the building.

The projectile hit Legion dead center in his massive chest.

The impact rocked the demon backward. His impenetrable, stony hide violently shattered under the force of the slug.

His skull snapped back, and his heavy talons tore deep, jagged trenches into the hardwood floor as he desperately sought purchase.

But there was absolutely no way his armor could resist the combined physics of magic and a railgun.

The hyper-magnetized, rune-coated bullet cored him like a rotting apple.

It tore straight through his back in an explosive hail of broken stone, blasted a massive hole cleanly through the brick wall behind him, and kept going into the night.

Fortunately, I had carefully calculated the trajectory. I fired at a steep upward angle, ensuring the slug would punch into the upper atmosphere before it hit anything in the city limits.

But either way, the primary damage was done. A hole the size of a basketball had been punched completely through Legion’s torso.

Thick gobbets of molten, glowing blood oozed out of the catastrophic wound, splattering onto the floor and loudly sizzling against the wood.

"You..." Legion’s overlapping, nightmarish chorus of voices gasped.

He fell forward onto his knees. The impact was so heavy the entire gymnasium floor violently shuddered. Then, with a grinding scrape of stone, the massive demon slumped forward, face-first into the dirt.

Dead.

I dropped my arm. It hung like a dead weight at my side, my shoulder throbbing intensely inside the iron plating.

Ow.

"Holy hell," Psyren breathed softly from her corner.

I glanced over at her, then back to Vanessa. The young heroine was standing completely frozen beside me, a look of absolute, unfiltered shock plastered across her face.

"There," I announced, casually tossing the ruined, warped gun aside. The copper rails had completely melted into useless slag from the extreme heat and friction of the shot.

"With this, our temporary alliance ends, Hex. And make no mistake!" I growled, pointing a heavy iron finger at her for the cameras. "When next we meet, we shall be mortal enemies once more!"

My aggressive tone broke her out of her stupor. Vanessa visibly startled, quickly clearing her throat and puffing out her chest. "Y-yes! And next time, I will show you absolutely no mercy, villain!"

Nice. Flawless execution.

"Kill the feed," I hissed into the private receiver in my helmet.

"Broadcast cut. We are dark, boss," Rhea confirmed instantly.

I let out a massive, heavy sigh of genuine relief and shook my head. Goddamn, what an absolute pain in the ass that had been.

Vanessa dropped her aggressive posture, staring down at the massive, smoking corpse in grim awe. "It actually seems to have worked," she noted quietly.

"Looks like it," I said, rolling my aching shoulder to test the joint. Oof. I was definitely going to feel that one tomorrow morning. "Good work on the assist. You kept him distracted."

"It was sufficient," she replied stiffly, still trying to process the violence. "I—"

"Uh... boss?"

The subtle, creeping alarm in Psyren’s tone made me snap my head in her direction. The pink-haired psychic was staring in absolute, wide-eyed horror.

She slowly raised a shaking arm, pointing directly at the pile of shattered rock that used to be Legion’s body.

It was still moving.

What in the actual hell?

I watched, utterly gobsmacked, as the grotesque, fused faces covering the broken chunks of Legion’s body began to writhe.

Deep, glowing fissures violently crackled along the seams of the fragmented stone. Then, like a massive porcelain vase dropped from a great height, the chunks violently shattered again.

The fragmented pieces of the demon thudded heavily against the ruined floorboards. But they didn’t just lie there.

Where they hit, they began to unfurl.

Dozens of them. Jagged arms sprouted from the broken rocks. Clawed legs violently split free from the slag. Tattered wings of heavy stone burst from tiny backs, and the warped faces elongated into horrific, nightmarish dimensions.

Oh my God.

I stood completely frozen, staring at the swarm of demons now aggressively filling the far half of the gymnasium floor.

There were dozens of them. Each one was a perfect miniature clone of Legion, standing roughly the height of an average man. Their stony skin was deeply fissured, bleeding blinding, molten light from within.

In terrifying unison, dozens of horse-like skulls snapped in my direction. Their eyes burned with unholy hellfire that was already licking up their rocky forms.

Well.

That wasn’t fucking good.