Kyle the Apprentice Warlock

Chapter 45

1:15 PM September 13th 2026

The Ice Bubble outside New York Preparatory Academy

The now clearly class four monster had lost all resemblance to whatever it had manifested from. Nearly completely organic, only the tough metallic segmented hide hinted as to its possible vehicular origins. The thing resembled a giant millipede now. Four clusters of too many legs to count lined its body. The eyes were bright glowing orbs that flashed off and on in time with its attacks on the ice shield, as if it was blinking to protect its vision of the shards that it sheared off the dome.

The first two clusters of legs lifted up every time the millipede, as big around as a bus, reared up. Then the dozens of limbs came down on the cracking and weakening shield pummeling away as much of the ice as possible. Each blow was backed by the weigh of its massive upper body. End to end, it could have stretched the entire three block gauntlet that Kyle and Jones had just fought their way through.

Somehow, Anna was holding off the mass of about a block and a half of a New York City Street. But she wasn't enough. And the monster could tell it was going to win that fight eventually if nothing changed. There was an evil gleam of delighted anticipation about it, as if it was already imagining the taste of those refugees.

Why it was so determined to breach the school's defenses when there were so many easier to reach people in the surrounding buildings, Jones didn't know. Before he could say anything to deter him, or even just confer about their plan of attack, Kyle took off. Once again, the force of his launch into flight cratered the ground around his boot prints.

This was no semi-controlled skimming of the street like his previous careful attempts at flight had been. No. This was a full-on flight. Like a missile, the armored warlock shot straight for a point in the center mass of the monster. Unerring and determined, he pulled his course up just barely at the last moment before impacting.

In a maneuver that he couldn't possibly have ever practiced before, Kyle flipped around and shoved the blazing arc of his lightning wand-sword into a junction of the overlapping steel plate segments on the monster's body. A high, multi-voiced scream came from the monster's head as it whipped towards the searing pain that an angry big brother was dishing out. It was fast.

Faster than Kyle had anticipated.

In a flash, and distressingly soon after the start of the battle, Kyle found himself caught between the crushing mandibles of the monster. Sizzling and popping, the monster's venom ate away at Kyle's protective shell everywhere it splattered on him as the enraged monster shook him like a dog shaking a toy it was having a particularly great time destroying.

"Ha, ha. This is not good." Kyle coughed, immediately regretting the loss of space in his deflating lungs. How to get out of this little pickle? How to get out of this? He didn't know. Being shaken was making it a bit hard to think. And Kyle was more of a reader than a fighter. An eater, really, if he was honest about it.

The monster finally stopped shaking Kyle. While the creature worried him in its jaws, Kyle had a moment to think. His eyes focused on Jones down below him. Not nearly as far down as Kyle had thought he was. The soldier hadn't cut and run like Kyle half expected him too.

Instead, he was charging. His yellow Magicorps beret a bright beacon of hope to those who saw it. Mainly Kyle. Sporadic bursts of precisely aimed alchemy ammunition were wreaking carnage on the millipede legs supporting the behemoth. But it wasn't enough. Not for as many legs as this creature had. Jones would run out of ammo long before this beast ran out of legs.