Chapter 144: The Warlord’s Cage
Chapter 144: Chapter 144: The Warlord’s Cage
Chapter 144: The Warlord’s Cage
"Deploy."
The single, cold command from Draven Mordis hung in the humid air of the open balcony. The Eclipse Hunters immediately shifted their stances, preparing to dive into the apocalyptic warzone below.
The sound of that single word snapped Cassian Stillbane out of his sobbing panic.
The traitor looked up from the floor. His tear-stained face twisted into a sudden, desperate rage. He scrambled to his feet, his lavish military uniform wrinkled and disgraced.
"Stop!" Cassian screamed, his voice cracking with hysteria.
"What do you think you are doing? I am your employer! You work for me!"
Draven stopped at the edge of the balcony. He slowly turned his head. The featureless white mask stared at the trembling mastermind.
"Your mission is to kill Gunther!" Cassian yelled, pointing a shaking finger at Draven.
"Ignore the civilians! The Null-Fiends are the perfect distraction! You will sneak down there, you will assassinate my brother, and you will stay here to protect me!"
Draven fully turned around. He began walking slowly back into the VIP command center. His Warlord aura leaked out of his body, suffocating the ambient mana in the room.
"We are not your rats, Cassian," Draven stated, his voice completely devoid of respect.
"We do not scurry in the dark for your scraps. The people of this city are dying. They need a Vanguard, and we will answer to them."
Cassian gritted his teeth, his eyes bloodshot.
"I paid you!" Cassian roared, backing away as the masked Warlord approached.
"I gave you the Platinum chips! I gave you the Vault access! You are nothing but greedy mercenaries! You belong to me!"
Draven let out a low, chilling laugh. It was a dark, mocking sound that sent a shiver down the spines of the Cultist aides standing near the walls.
"You truly believe you were the one pulling the strings?" Draven asked, tilting his head slightly.
"You are pathetic. You are just a jealous, bitter little brother hiding in a glass tower. You sold your entire city to a doomsday cult because you were too weak to earn the throne yourself."
Draven took another step forward, entirely invading Cassian’s personal space.
"You spent your whole life hating Gunther because he is a powerhouse," Draven taunted ruthlessly, hitting the exact center of Cassian’s deepest insecurities.
"You think you are a genius. But the truth is, you are a worthless coward who could not even awaken a Seed of Valor. You are so weak, so entirely insignificant, that the Cult used you as a disposable pawn and you did not even notice."
Something inside Cassian’s mind violently snapped.
The sheer humiliation of being looked down upon by a mere mercenary shattered his fragile ego. Cassian’s face turned purple with pure, unadulterated fury.
"I will kill you!" Cassian shrieked like a madman.
Cassian lunged toward the heavy titanium desk. He slammed his hand down onto a hidden biometric panel. A red holographic terminal sprang to life. It was the master detonator for the silver collars.
"Die!" Cassian screamed, smashing his fist directly onto the detonation button.
CLICK.
Nothing happened.
Cassian blinked. He smashed the button a second time.
CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.
The command center remained completely silent, save for the distant screams echoing from the city below. The Eclipse Hunters stood perfectly unharmed.
Cassian looked at the silver collar around Draven’s neck in pure disbelief.
Draven raised his right hand. He looked at Cassian, his eyes burning with total supremacy behind the white mask.
Draven snapped his fingers.
SNAP.
Using his Event Horizon, Draven applied a hyper-focused kinetic vibration to the molecular structure of the collars.
The silver metal bands around the Eclipse Hunters’ necks instantly shattered into a million glowing particles. The red terminal under Cassian’s hand simultaneously disintegrated into fine gray dust.
Cassian stumbled back, his mouth hanging wide open in complete shock. The lethal trap he had relied on was erased from existence like it was nothing more than a cheap parlor trick.
"Kill them!" Cassian shrieked, pointing at Draven.
"Vane! Kill them all right now!"
The four Cultist aides immediately drew their hidden, poison-laced daggers. The dark tattoos on their necks glowed as they channeled their corrupted mana. They lunged toward Draven from all four corners of the room.
Draven did not draw a weapon. He did not even look at them.
He simply willed it.
CRACK. CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
Four distinct, sickening sounds echoed through the room simultaneously. The kinetic vectors inside the Cultists’ cervical spines were violently twisted.
Vane and the three aides dropped to the floor, their necks completely broken. They died before their daggers even came close to Draven’s white coat.
Cassian backed up until his spine hit the reinforced graphene wall. His legs gave out. He slid down to the floor, shaking like a terrified child.
Draven walked up to the fallen traitor. He leaned down, placing his masked face mere inches from Cassian’s trembling eyes.
The Warlord’s demeanor completely shifted. The calm, calculating mercenary vanished.
In his place was the maniacal, terrifying Warlord Zero who had once slaughtered the Beast Wave at Bastion Seven.
A monstrous, bloodthirsty Warlord aura flooded the room, making Cassian gasp for air.
"I am going to keep you alive, Cassian," Draven whispered, his voice dripping with pure, undeniable malice.
"I need you to sit right here. I need you to look out that window and watch me take everything you ever wanted. Watch me save your brother. Watch me steal your kingdom."
Draven stood up. He turned around and walked toward the heavy titanium doors leading out to the hallway.
Using his Vector Manipulation, Draven seized the colossal weight of the metal doors.
With a sickening screech of bending steel, he crushed the titanium frames inward. He fused the metal together, completely sealing the command center from the inside.
Cassian Stillbane was trapped in a cage of his own making.
Draven walked back out onto the high balcony. The Warlord looked down at the blood-soaked plaza hundreds of stories below. The Null-Fiends were tearing through the Vanguard Knights. The city was burning.
"Positions," Draven ordered his squad.
"Ready, Captain," Aegon replied, spinning his Blood Fire Spear.
Draven raised his hands. He tapped into his Event Horizon.
A glowing, translucent sphere of pale blue kinetic energy manifested around each member of the Eclipse Hunters. The spheres hummed with intense gravitational power, acting as flawless kinetic shields.
"Aegon, Bram," Draven commanded.
"You take the central plaza. Reina, Lucien, sector four. Estella, Natalie, the highest vantage point. Cole, Lyra, the eastern industrial alleys. Nyx, the shadows are yours."
"Yes, Captain!" the squad replied in perfect unison.
"Go," Draven declared.
With a massive surge of kinetic force, Draven propelled the protective spheres off the edge of the balcony.
The Eclipse Hunters shot down from the artificial sky like nine brilliant shooting stars. The kinetic shields completely negated the wind resistance and the terminal velocity.
They plummeted hundreds of stories in mere seconds, their trajectories perfectly calculated by Draven’s Warlord intellect.
Down in the central plaza, a massive Null-Fiend raised its four jagged arms, preparing to crush a group of trapped civilians.
A roaring streak of crimson fire and a massive titan-stone shield slammed into the beast from the sky.
BOOM!
The concrete plaza shattered under the impact. The Null-Fiend was violently thrown backward, skidding across the pavement.
The dust cleared. Aegon and Bram stood tall in front of the terrified civilians. The kinetic spheres faded away. The Eclipse Hunters had arrived on the battlefield.
High above, Draven stood alone on the balcony. He looked at the chaos spreading across the megacity. He cracked his knuckles, the sound sharp and crisp in the humid air.
It was time to hunt.