A Dent in the Record

Joren forced himself forward, slipping into step with Willow and Gus. His body still ached and his other methods of stars and pebbles were now abandoned. If they wanted even the slightest chance at beating him, he had to throw himself into the fray like the rest of them, using one of his other methods of attack.

Coral welcomed him with a smile so wide it looked like he might be a carved pumpkin. His cabinet rattled at his side, drawers trembling as if eager to be used. All of that was happening while he was fending off three people at once.

Coral moved like routine. His short sword intercepted Willow’s strike with a shower of sparks, the cabinet swiveled on groaning wheels to meet Gus’s fist once again, and Joren’s first lunge was met by the sharp edge of Coral's heel.

“Better,” Coral crooned, pivoting on his heel, monocle swinging. “Closer. Bolder. Your revisions may yet be legible.”

Joren grit his teeth and pressed again. This time he swung his leg into a gravity-assisted kick, forcing more weight into the strike than his body should have handled. The blow cracked against the steel face of the cabinet, rattling its frame hard enough to echo. Coral barely budged.

Willow snarled and cut low, her blade sparking across his thigh. For a moment, it looked like she’d gotten through, until blood started showing. She had a huge gash on the part of her arm not morphed.

“Willow!” Joren screamed, but she only shook her head, her blade-arm reforming.

Gus lunged immediately after, fists snapping out in rapid rhythm. One struck Coral's shoulder, to which he was then hit with a barrage of drawers, one sending him flying out of the fight and into one of the circle's walls. They also did not budge at the hulking man slamming into them.

Bart had been circling wide, muttering to himself like he was building up courage. “Just need the right opening. Sneaky little jab, catch him off guard…”

His fists flailed once, twice, in some bizarre imitation of a martial stance. He lunged in with a wild haymaker.

Coral barely turned his head. A single drawer slid open and caught Bart full in the chest. The sound was like a door slamming on kindling. Bart wheezed, legs flying out from under him, before he smacked flat on the dirt with a groan.

“Filed under comic relief, notation found lacking.” Coral murmured with a pleased tilt of his head.

Bart coughed and rolled weakly, one arm wrapping around his ribs. His voice cracked, but he tried to make it sound noble. “Still counts as… resistance…”

Willow staggered, clutching at her bleeding arm with her human hand. The morph flickered as she tried to steady it, her blade trembling instead of cutting clean. Gus groaned from where he’d crashed, dust rising around him, his chest heaving as he fought to push himself back up. Bart lingered at the edges, pale and jittering, fists half raised like a child imitating a brawler.

Willow darted back in, teeth clenched, fury blazing in her eyes. Her blade-arm carved a sharp arc toward Coral’s neck, to which he parried and sent his blade into her other arm, gouging flesh in one strike.

At the same time as Willow's strike, Gus found himself behind Coral. His fists cracked against Coral’s side and shoulder, each blow thunderous, each blow doing damage to the Harbinger wall of a man. One caught him square in the gut, another clipped his jaw, and then Coral spun the cabinet into Gus as a battering ram once again, bashing him with the side this time.

These two-sided assaults gave Joren the opening he needed to try one of his most potent methods.

He poured every ounce of gravitational centricity into Coral's head, tethering it to his fist. He would collide the two objects with astounding force like planets colliding from being caught in each other's orbit. It would be inevitable that Joren’s fist would collide now.

The collision came with a sound like the sky tearing. Coral's quick thinking saved him from a near-dooming fate. Joren’s fist hammered into the cabinet’s face now blocking Coral’s head. Steel shrieked and crumpled, a deep dent formed into the once perfect surface. Dust blasted outward from the blow, the cabinet actually lifting off two of the wheels.

For the first time, Coral’s grin faltered and his mouth started to gape like a fish. His monocle swung violently as his head snapped to the impact site, cabinet skidding half a step on its shrieking wheels.

But triumph never reached Joren.

Agony screamed through his arm. His hand shattered on impact, bones cracking like glass under the weight of his own power. He screamed and dropped to his knees, clutching his nearly ruined fist as blood streamed from torn knuckles. He felt like he was passing out from all of the energy he had used this far.

Coral stared at the dent, his grin frozen halfway into something unreadable. For a heartbeat the yard went still. Even the soldiers gasped, some murmuring between each other. It was known far and wide that Commander Coral's cabinet was impenetrable, no foe ever landing a blow that shown afterwards.

“You…” he breathed, not with anger, but with genuine astonishment. “You dented it.”

The words slipped out flat, stripped of his usual sing-song cadence, a tone of normal that didn't fit his persona. His hand pressed against the warped steel, fingers tracing the bend like he couldn’t quite believe it was real. His jaw clenched a few times, no words following.

Then the grin snapped back into place. Hungry.

“Marvelous,” he hissed, his voice laced with a manic reverence. “A true annotation! A scribble in the margin, but the record persists.” His tone swelled, the cadence of authority rushing back in. “This is one file that can't be redacted, one that can't be corrected with whiteout markings!"

The cabinet shuddered at his side, drawers rattling open and shut in rhythm like a beast flexing its claws. Coral stepped forward, the dent already forgotten, his confidence rolling back over them like a tide.

Joren fell backwards into the other three on the ground, his broken hand clutched to his chest, blood dripping into the dirt. The pain blurred his vision.

Willow pressed her better arm against the other to stop it from bleeding, which was a vain effort in hindsight. Gus heaved from the battering he endured, his body bruising heavily. Bart was in a similar state as Gus, his body not being able to take such potent blows from the cabinet or Coral.

Coral rolled the cabinet forward with a casual shove, the drawers slamming open and shut in sync with his steps like the ticking of a clock. His grin stretched wide again, restored, the earlier flicker of shock buried beneath his usual mania.

“Look at you,” he crooned, voice rising over the hush of the yard. “Margins smudged, pages torn, the book itself falling apart. Not one of you could back up your duty."

The soldiers ringed around them didn’t move, but their stares weighed heavy. Some shifted uneasily at the sight of the dented steel, whispering low, yet none dared speak against their commander’s authority.

Willow could no longer maintain a morph, Gus and Bart couldn't stand up, and Joren kneeled on one knee in front of them all, himself being the last line of defense for his friends safety. The weight of Coral’s presence pressed on them all, as if the dent Joren had left only proved how untouchable he truly was.

Coral stopped only a few paces away, his cabinet looming beside him like a silent beast. He tilted his head, monocle glinting in the firelight, voice dropping low.

“A chapter’s end is not always grand. Sometimes it is a footnote. Sometimes... they get erased entirely. Which one will you be... hmm-hm-hmm?"

The soldier murmurs grew louder, and they began shuffling around now. The reason why they started doing so was the far stranger part.

Soldiers who had stood rigid only moments ago were shifting, glancing backwards in one section of the ring. A few even looked away from Coral, their gazes drawn towards something approaching, pushing itself through soldiers.

Coral’s grin twitched, the first thread of irritation showing in his features. His monocle swung as he glanced sharply at the ranks, as if daring them to move again. “Eyes forward!” he snapped, a sharp edge breaking into his sing-song. “The page is not yet finished.”

But the air itself seemed to shift. A new figure pushed through the haze, stride unbroken, voice carrying with a tone of even greater authority than the commander.

“Enough.”

Nyra Braye’s voice cut across the yard, steady and unyielding, every soldier turning to hear it.

She stood tall amid the smoke and commotion, framed not by shadows, but by the raw blaze of her demeanor. Though not truly a tall person, she held a commanding presence and tone that expected your attention and cooperation.

“Commander Coral,” Nyra called, her chin lifting, “stand down. These five are under my jurisdiction, and you know full well what it means when Continuity gives its order. Release them.”

The murmurs thickened again, soldiers shifting, uncertain about what to do. Coral’s smile twitched back into place, too wide, too sharp. His laugh rattled across the yard like loose pages.

“Continuity?” he mused, monocle swinging. “Ohhh, but this is not your filing cabinet, my dear Nyra. This is mine, everything follows my hand in this department."

The soldiers stiffened at his words, some casting nervous looks at Nyra, none moving. They weren’t her men, and Coral scared them far more than some leader of another branch they have never met.

Coral leaned forward slightly, his cabinet groaning at his side. “Your voice carries, but not here.”

Nyra’s jaw tightened, her hands clenched into fists at her side. For a moment, the blaze in her voice almost broke through the ring of silence as she moved herself next to the group. “You’re out of line, Coral. This is not what a commander should be doing."

The commander only chuckled, dragging one hand across the dent in his cabinet as though petting some loyal beast, his head resting on the other side like a pillow. “Ohhh, but it is. Every file that passes through this archive ends with me. Even Continuity… can be misplaced.”

The murmurs died again, soldiers locking their eyes on Coral as if his words alone cemented the truth. None moved to obey Nyra. That was their commander's order.

Coral rolled the cabinet another step forward, the wheels groaning, drawers snapping open and shut with the rhythm of his laugh. “Yes… order restored. A messy page, but every chapter finds its ending.”

Joren thought to himself for a moment.

I haven’t had anything to eat or drink all day. I've been out here for hours, watching the base and then having to rescue Willow. Now we had to get stuck in this fight?

Willow, Gus, Bart... they are all counting on me to lead them to victory with my level-headed thinking. They look to me for answers, but I don’t have any left.

I might have powers, but I can't even begin to hope to measure up to this monster. I never asked for this. I never asked to be someone they believed in. Why me? Why couldn’t it have been anyone else?

He isn't even tired after all of this fighting, but I am. I’m hurt and I’m tired and I want to go home. I want to sleep, I want to breathe, I want to rest. I don’t want to be here anymore.

I want to shut my eyes and let it all fade. Just one time where we don't have to fight some uphill battle that we should have no right to win. I just want to go back to when I was just a boy wiping down tables in a saloon and feeding farm animals. I want to just look at the stars and fall asleep outside.

Coral raised his short sword lazily, the tip gleaming in the firelight. He treated this as though it were nothing more than signing another signature at the bottom of a page.

Joren shut his eyes for a moment, long enough to feel the tremor in his legs and the sting in his chest. Long enough to admit that part of him truly wanted to lay down and let it all end.

Then he felt Willow’s presence at his shoulder. Gus’s labored breath. Bart’s restless shifting. They were still here. They were probably just as scared as Joren, but they believed in him, no matter what happened.

I’m no commander. I’m not the King, not Nyra, not some legend out of the Auspex journals. I'm no hero, but even so, I can't let my friends down. They put their trust in me to lead them until the moment I die. I can't let it end here, not without a fight.

Joren staggered to his feet next to Nyra, blood dripping from his ruined hand, watching helplessly as their last hope faltered, but filled with a sense of duty now. He forced himself in front of the others despite the agony tearing through his broken fist. His chest heaved, his legs shook, but he didn’t let that stop him from being their shield.

Willow tried struggling to rise, her wounded arms shaking, ultimately falling down to her spot again. Gus and Bart didn't move from their sitting position, too exhausted to try.

The soldiers held their breath, waiting. None challenged him. None moved for Nyra, or the other four. Even the Continuity planted soldier held his breath, no longer struggling to break free from the grasp holding him.

As hopelessness blossomed inside them, smothering, heavier than the smoke or the bruises or the blood, reality started to settle into all four of them. It was the dread of knowing that no one here could stop what was about to happen.

Then the air shifted.

It was not sound, nor sight, nor even smell. It was pressure. A crushing weight descended over the yard, pinning the world into a standstill.

The heat of the fire, the stench of smoke, the sting of blood — all of it seemed to vanish under the sheer gravity overtaking them.

One by one, soldiers buckled. Some dropped to their knees with strangled cries, others toppled forward onto their stomachs, gasping as if the air had been stolen from their lungs. Many others simply passed out.

Even Coral froze. His manic grin stiffened, his monocle stopping its swinging as if it too were yielding to the presence. The cabinet began to shake as well, then groaned downwards until it stopped rattling.

Nyra’s lips curled upwards, a breath escaping her like she’d been waiting for this moment.

Joren felt it crash down on him as well. His knees threatened to give, not from pain, but from the sheer certainty that he was standing before something absolute.

"My my... what in the world have I walked into?" A man said, stepping over fallen soldiers.

The King had arrived.