Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 4

War Cry

Sunny met her mother in a clash of steel just as the two armies rammed together. The sound was incredible, like the crunching metal of a car collision amplified a thousand times over. The Spartans roared, the void roared, the Drev roared, and every other sound was drowned out as the symphony of war rose high into the sky like thundering waves in an ocean.

Orange light glowed down on them from the sky above where Apollyon and the Architect were making their last stand, two gods tearing each other to pieces across the stars. In moments the air was filled with the smell of copper and bile as bodies were ripped open and cast aside.

Adam's shield met with Everett in a clash that shook the ground, but even as Everette tried to batter through, the shield wall held too strong. For now, the line was holding, but there weren't nearly enough soldiers trained in formation combat for that to last long. Above them, artillery whistled through the air in brief arcs before coming down and erupting violently to shower the earth with bodies.

The void army was larger, but their side had the advantage of Maker shields, which managed to deflect the worst of the incoming artillery.

Everett snarled voice lost in the roar of bodies. Beside them, Kanza's golden eyes burned with loathing as she strained against her daughter. In a battle of strengths, one-to-one sunny was no match, but braced behind her, Lanus and Dzara helped to hold the line, their combined strength keeping Sunny planted firmly against the ground. Kazna's eyes burned with hatred, and she mouthed something though her voice was lost just as Everette's had been.

Though, it didn't take a genius to guess what Kazna would have to say to her most loathed daughter. And Sunny didn't bother to try and parse it out, instead opening her mouth and dredging up a war cry powerful enough to rattle the ground under Adam's feet and the bones within his legs.

Emboldened, the Maker side roared with her, creating a wave of sound that could be heard even over the whistle of artillery.

Adam's legs strained against the ground, his shield burning gold with immense pressure. Beside him, metal screeched in protest as energy-reinforced spartan shields began to give, ever so slightly, against the pressure

"NOW!" James, king of the Neospartans, shouted, his voice artificially projected over the coms.

Adam's muscles strained under the horrific pressure, but somehow, he managed to find the strength, spurred on by the roaring of the crowd, the roaring of his brothers in arms, he thrust his shield forward, throwing all the power in his legs and back into the maneuver.

Energy began in the balls of his armored feet and roared up his legs.

Iron Eye Sang and his steel eye leg sang with it.

His entire body became one with the machines both outside and a part of his body.

For years Adam had held back, always knowing what the steel eye armor could do, but before this, situations had not called for full steel eye strength, or... he had been too afraid to deploy it and of what he might feel when he did.

Many people thought, or at least Adam allowed everyone to think, that he was afraid of Steel-eye and what it had done to him, traumatized by the things he had been forced to do, and the things he had seen. He allowed them to think that, while he was afraid of it, he was also slightly dependent on it to feel safe and in control.

People had bought it because Adam was, at his core, a raging control freak, and it was easy to believe he was willing to return to Steel eye or its cousin if it meant he could be more in control.

That was all true.

But it wasn't the entire truth.

Adam