Thunderbolts and lightning

‘I am not going down like this!’ Oscar’s mind screamed at him.

He was flat on his back, at the center of the stage at the palace Garnier.

He did not know what day it was. ‘That’s not good.’ he noted as his mind reoriented itself.

‘Ok I got hit in the head. Hard! And the Fallen, the blue one… he hit m-‘ Oscar thought again as everything came flooding back.

Oscar rolled backwards and stood up quickly. His muscles seemingly operating independently of his brains current condition.

Though his legs were shaky, he managed to jump backwards a few steps.

A huge chunk of sharp metal pierced the ground he was just lying on, going through the stage and sending splinters everywhere.

The crowned Fallen tilted its gold and blue covered head to the side, grabbing an injured and bleeding shoulder

Before the Fallen managed to raise his hand, Oscar jumped behind the curtain of the opera house.

Oscar could hear the shriek of the creature from the other side, running while processing his surroundings.

The whole back of the opera house was destroyed.

The walls were shattered, leaving the area exposed to the elements, the ground filled with corpses.

‘It was a bloodbath. Whatever fight happened here.’ he noted as he jumped above a corpse filled with red crystals on its ribs. Singed cuts were on every surface, as if something cut through stone and metal in one swing.

Many of the corpses were various Devourers in different stages of evolution, but among them were some Relentless lying with singed necks or cleaved in half from top to bottom. All of the injuries he could see seemed to have been burned into the victims.

Many of the streets were destroyed with piles taller than Chestnut made of debris and bodies lurked in every direction, leaving little else to go other then deeper into the carnage. A flash of light illuminated the battlefield, coming from behind him.

The sound of thunder interrupted Oscars thoughts, one leg outside of the building as the crown bearing Fallen stepped out of the now destroyed stage. Its injured shoulder simmered as its wound was singed shut. In the same injured hand, the Fallen held his scepter and extended his right hand forward and swiped at the air.

Oscar felt a tug as Chestnut seemed to be pushed to the side, flinging Oscar into a large piece of debris. He slid and rolled, lessening the blow, jumping out of the building and breaking eye contact.

The monster started to run, each step more than twice the size of Oscar’s.

But Oscar was determined to not end his story yet.

He rolled and dodged in zigzag, breaking the line of sight as often as he could, trying to get enough time to hide or lose the creature.

He did not know if it was skill or luck but every time Oscar let his instincts take over and his training kick in a serpentine arcing light missed him by a thread, melting the stone and bones of the battlefield and sending shards of metal flying in all directions.

The path ahead seemed to be strategically made.

As if the stony terrain seemed to funnel all of the corpses and signs of battle to one point.

A mound of corpses leading to one of the spiral highways connecting New and old Paris.

Oscar’s memory flooded him with the remembrance of the evacuation he could not reach in time. All because of the same monsters who’s bones he was walking on .

‘They closed the damn path too early. I was so close to getting out of here but…. Damn these monsters! Now I’ve been stuck here for almost a month!’ Oscar thought while running to what he knew was a dead end.

He hoped he could find a way to hide there, hell he’d take another route to run to.

A sharp metal pipe popped into Oscar’s view from his right, flying towards his head.

He rolled forward as fast as he could, missing the metallic pole by lowering his head.

As soon as Oscar stood up, he felt a force hold him in place.

It was like every piece of metal in chestnut’s body was held by the invisible hand of some god.

The firefighter was then slowly lifted into the air, kicking and screaming as he desperately tried to aim his left hand towards the crowned Fallen.

The monster laughed.

A slow, deep laugh that was filled with malice.

The streetlight in his hand lit up as electricity ran up the makeshift scepter.

“Leave me alone!” Oscar yelled, unleashing a torrent of flame right into the monsters face.

The crowned Fallen immediately raised his hand to his face, dropping Oscar on a pile of corpses.

While the monster was busy extinguishing his face Oscar rolled on the pile of Fallen bones to get to a small open area. The destroyed path to New Paris at its center, a collapsed spiral road.

At the front of the now unusable spiral, on top of the last mound of bodies stood two ten-meter-tall shadows, seemingly grappling.

The Monster screamed as lightning started to crackle around its crown.

With both hands on its head, it wailed around, sending a spiderweb of lightning in every direction; all of its body discharging light and sound.

While some of the bolts of lightning hit Chestnut in the back, that was exactly where the Mech was most protected. So, although his suit got awfully warm all of a sudden, the man was temporarily untouched.

He ran towards the shadowy unmoving figures, his eyes recognizing a picture he saw in a comic book once. ‘It’s the Gawain frame!’

The mech was on its knees, one hand missing and the other holding a bladeless hilt.

The hilt itself went through the skull of a Relentless who appeared to have stabbed through the cockpit of the frame with his hand.

Oscar could see the decomposing body of the pilot who got ripped in half along with the cockpit itself. He could recognize the weapon the pilot used to defeat all of those monsters. The Excalibur weapon system. This gave him an idea.

By the time the giant monster smothered the flames the man in front of him already had the hilt of the weapon in hand, closing the cockpit around himself once more after quickly connecting the last few wires of the sword to where his spinning blade once connected.

“I hope this works” Oscar said aloud as his opponent raised both hands towards him, charging up arcs of lightning between them.

Oscar flicked the switch that should have spun the saw, hoping to see the crystal at the center of the hilt react to the electrical stimuli.

“C’mon! C’mon! Work!” the man screamed at his new weapon.

The crowned monster spread its hands to the side, creating a huge arc of lightning between them

The light seemed to grow in size and length with tremendous speed as the string of plasma arced out like a solar flare, hitting Oscar head on.

In a huge booming sound, Chestnut flew across the battlefield, only stopping once a building collapsed on top of it.