FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter -13- Battle of Warriors

Sunday, December 27, 2049 - Midnight Local New Atlantis ...

James, Evan, and Kalen dove for cover behind the enormous vault door.

A creature in the vault, resembling a giant snake but with surprisingly intelligent eyes, slithered out of the vault door. The serpent hissed softly and rammed its head against the vault door, pushing it open on its hinges.

Kalen, Evan and James were thrown onto their backs. The vault door creaked open until pressing up against the outer wall, fully opened.

The serpent reared up and opened its jowls. A syrupy liquid, akin to saliva, dripped from its fangs. "Which one of you brought the final artifact?" it demanded. "A seed from the fruit of a worldly tree," the serpent added.

James held his cane aloft and ready. "Back up. And what seed? We didn't bring a seed."

"Ah." The serpent darted its tongue out. "No matter. It is near, which is all that matters."

"I've seen a lot of weird things thanks to Falcon," Evan said, "But I've never seen a talking snake. That's definitely a new one."

James glanced back at Evan. He turned back to the serpent that slithered across the floor. It was fast and it was fearsome. "Guys, if that's Falcon's defense system, he chose that thing for a reason."

Kalen eased his jacket off and hung it over the handle of the large vault. "After a hundred fifty years of fighting 'things' for the Esoteric Council, you learn not to question - just fight."

"That is a really big boss," Evan whispered.

James clenched the Nehushtan in his fist. He addressed the serpent in a calm, clear voice. "We don't want to fight you. You're sentient. But we'll do what we have to do in order to take the relics in that vault."

Kalen opened the top button of his shirt. "James, snakes cannot hear. How that one can speak, well, that's..."

"I hear quite well," the serpent said to the group. "You are ignorant, horssseman."

Evan deadpanned. "God, it talks like you would imagine an anthropomorphic snake to talk. Why do some stereotypes always play themselves out?"

"You mean like a nerd always quoting meme jokes and calling snakes a level 'boss'?" James glanced back at Evan with a brief smirk. He turned to the creature again and said, "Pardon our ignorance. I did not know snakes could hear."

"I hear noises," it said, accentuating the 's' sound, "which pass through my skin and muscle to the bone of my inner ear. Humans value knowledge yet they never take time to look up the topics about what they speak."

Even held his hands outward and created lightweight sapphire blades with small shaped gaps in the blade. He opened his stance. "Alright, we're here to separate those artifacts. Are you going to get in our way? If you know so much, then you know they shouldn't be together."

"You have no idea who I am, do you?" said the serpent. "I am the seducer. I am the bringer of truth and knowledge. I punish the wicked."

James looked back at Evan, expectantly.

Even looked far from impressed. "He claims he's Satan."

"No," said the serpent. "I am symbolic of revolution. I am change. I am transition. Others embrace ignorance and peace. I encourage truth and conquest! I am temptation and the hunger for what humanity desires. I have no name!"

Evan grimaced. "If he's Lucifer, he can't die."

James rubbed his thumb along the shaft of the Nehushtan. "If you're really the antithesis of God, shouldn't you be roasting people over the flames of Hell?"

"You are an ignorant fool," the serpent said. It went up the wall, with part of its body still on the floor. The serpent paused, blocking a central air vent, enjoying the warm air coming from the register. "There are no pits of lava in hell. Hell is where you burn to know God. It is place of yearning. The human concept of Satan is a creature of evil and unrequited temptation. I am not evil."

"That's a matter of opinion," said James.

"No, it is a matter of truth," said the scaled creature. "You, man with the stick," it said to James, "What did the first creatures of humanity take when they indulged on knowledge?"

"Original Sin."

"Yes," the creature replied, ending on a soft hiss. "God placed the balance of Good and Evil into the fruit of a tree. Only the Adam and the Eve," he said, as though the names were plural, "partook of God's gift. Therefor, the Adam and the Eve are good or evil. I existed before evil was released unto the world. Motivation to take what you want is not a sin. I have never sinned. I punish the wicked, a task that God deems unnecessary to do Himself."

Evan touched James' elbow and stepped forward. "So you reward those who are motivated to take what they want?"

"The Adam and the Eve traded me for what _I_desired at the time. I wanted God's creations to myself, intimately. The three of you have nothing I want."

Evan thought of the first thing that came to mind. "You want companionship or something? We have a succubus, but she's taken."

"She is not a succubus. She is genetically repaired, and does not require sex to remain ageless. It is an addiction, and certainly not the first addiction that foul creature has had."

"She's not foul," Kalen snapped. "She is intelligent and fights for exactly what she wants. You're wasting our time. Either fight us or move aside."

"You have not given me what I want, and you have nothing to trade for the objects within the vault. I want the seed from the fruit of the Tree of Life, and the seed from the Tree of Knowledge. In return, I will stand aside to give you what you desire."

"Reno has it," Kalen said. "And why would we give you that? You would have the collection. You're the reason Falcon has been collecting artifacts all this time, aren't you?"

"I gave Aris what he most desired. It was an exchange."

Evan leaned in close to James and whispered, "You got the staff of Moses, man. It turned into a snake that ate all the snakes of Pharaoh's magicians."

James looked down at the rod in his hand. He looked back up at the enormous snake, whose long body and tail still blocked passage into the vault. James look backed at Evan and Kalen.

Kalen nodded.

James turned back to the enormous serpent. "I'm going to have messed up dreams about this."

The serpent gazed down at them from where its head was overtop the heat register. "God is not a forgiving being. The Son of God is forgiving, but God Himself is far from it."

Kalen narrowed his gaze. "Really ... prove it?" He nodded discretely to James, buying Jaye the time to figure out how to turn his staff into a serpent.

The large snake said, "The bible of man describes the trials and tribulations of Moses, one of the most famous humans to hold that very staff." A pause, then the snake continued. "God commanded Moses to strike a rock with his rod to bring up a spring with which to quench the thirst of the Israelites during the exodus."

"I've heard the story," Kalen said. "What of it?"

"God has already asked so much of Moses. Moses has given so much of his life in devotion. He struck the rock and water did not flow. Perhaps Moses doubted himself. Perhaps Moses doubted that he performed the task in a satisfactory manner. So Moses strikes the rock a second time."

Kalen tilted his head.

"God decries Moses for a lack of faith for striking the rock twice. It is said to be symbolic of Moses losing faith, and so God punishes his servant by not allowing Moses to enter the Promised Land. God does not forgive, God does not forget. God punishes, and demands penance, yet often times does not relent after his servant has made even one small mistake. Therefor, God must be rebelled against. I am that rebellion. I am helping Aris and Loki to bring about the Day of Judgment. And the two percent who survive will be given truth, wisdom and knowledge by me. And they will live in peace for a thousand years."

The staff in James' hand began to transition. Scales formed on the surface. He dropped it on the floor and it grew in width, length and mass. The head of the staff formed into a head.

Kalen moved in front of Evan and James, guiding them back.

"You_fools_!" The serpent roared. "You would attack me with this ... creature? From a cane that was already said to have been destroyed?! The bible took away its power when claiming Hezekiah destroyed it!"

James looked up wide eyed at the second snake, which grew to the same size as the Lucifer serpent. "I've parted the sea with this. It turned into a snake. You really think the bible took away its power?"

"You are fools," said the first serpent.

Kalen smirked. "Moses' staff ate the Pharaoh's sorcerer's serpent rods. You want to quote the bible? We can play that game, too."

The serpent hissed in anger. It came down from the wall, coming face to face with the enormous serpent of James' staff.

Lucifer exclaimed, "It was Aaron's staff that ate the serpents of Pharaoh's sorcerers! Again with your ignorance!" The creature's tail came the rest of the way out of the vault. It moved directly into the path of the other scaled creature.

Kalen shoved James and Evan into the vault. "Move," he exclaimed in a soft voice. "Let them fight."

"I think he's right," Evan said. "There's no way James' staff can fight that thing and we'll have lost the Nehushtan."

Kalen shook his head. "It doesn't matter. The Bible already said this staff was destroyed. Let it be destroyed." He began gathering artifacts from a shelf. "Find something to put these in."

James grimaced. "If that thing eats my staff, what's going to stop it from eating us?"

Kalen looked back at them for a moment. "No offense," he started clearing a shelf. "But I wasn't one of the Four Horsemen because of superior strength or other physical prowess."

"I don't understand," said James. "It's because you're shrewd in a pinch?"

"Something like that," said Kalen. "If I'm right, we'll be alright."

James found satchels used to bring some of the artifacts into the vault. He passed one to Kalen and one to Evan. "Let's hope we can fit everything between the three of us."

Evan glanced out through the vault and grimaced. "They're actually battling out there. Jesus, they're both huge."

Kalen ran his thumb over an ancient spearhead. It wasn't as beautifully cut as the pieces displayed in various European or Eurasian countries claiming to be the spear.

Evan held up a set of pearls, labeled Pope Joan. He put them into one of the extra bags, folded it over several times, and placed the bag with the pearls inside of his satchel to keep them from being scratched by other relics.

A tail lanced in through the vault door, cracking the frame. Kalen moved protectively in front of Evan and James. The tail tip struck him, sending the vampire to the floor.

In one swift move, the tail came free of the vault, as if the occurrence had been an accident.

Kalen sat up with a grunt, watching through the large round doorway as the two snakes hissed and lunged at one another.

"Jesus, Kalen, you're bleeding." James knelt besides the vampire and reached down. A brown piece of metal jutted from Kalen's gut. One of the edges was corroded but the object was largely intact.

James eased the first three inches of the spearhead from Kalen's new wound. "You're going to have to feed or whatever. That's a pretty deep puncture."

Kalen brought his hands up to his face and drew his knees inwards.

"He's in a fetal position," Evan said. "Something is wrong."

"Kalen?"

The vampire groaned softly in anguish. "Leave me," he said in a soft tone. "Take the bags."

"It's too much for us to carry," James said. "You have to pull through this."

Kalen rolled onto his side. "Tell Carmen I love her." He grew still.

James set down his bag and placed his hands on Kalen's face.

The vampire was silent, cold, and motionless. The blood on his wound rapidly coagulated, cutting off the blood flow.

Evan rolled Kalen onto his back and examined the wound that broke the fabric of the vampire's shirt. "I ... I don't know for sure but I think this is the spear that pierced Christ. It would have the blood of Jesus on it. Maybe that's somehow deadly to vampires."

James snatched the rock-like spearhead from Evan and glared at it. "He was a friend. He wasn't evil. He wasn't ... dammit!"

Evan looked over his shoulder. The first serpent was using its fangs to slowly force the body of the other snake into its wide mouth. "I have more bad news. That thing out there ... Lucifer if you want to call him that ... he won."

James moved to the vault doorway and looked out. He sighed in frustration and went back to the bags of artifacts. "Our only help was killed by the blood of Christ. Tell me again how God works in mysterious ways so I can have a proper freak-out."

The lights flashed and went out. "You've got to be kidding," Evan whispered.

Emergency power flood lamps came on. The ones in the vault created a soft lighting, not nearly as bright as before.

"Hey!" The voice came from the vault doorway. "What are you three doing? Let's go!"

Albert DeLioncourt stood in the doorway. The were-lion glowed in the light of an emergency floodlight out in the hall. The high intensity LED lamps caused his tan fur to glow in an ethereal manner.

Albert came into the vault and knelt besides Kalen. "Shit. Miss Kincade won't like this..." He shook his head and sighed. "This guy's girlfriend is gonna have a fit, too." Albert picked up Kalen's body and set him on a shelf where the artifacts were once located.

"We can't carry the bags and him," James said.

"He has to stay," said Albert. "How did it happen?"

Evan picked up one of the satchels and eased it over his shoulder. "He was holding the spear that pierced Christ. Those snakes were fighting one another out there. The bigger one's tail swung in through the vault and Kalen put himself between it and us..."

James approached Kalen. He saw a staff, fairly different from his own, on the shelf, sticking out beneath Kalen's right leg where he'd been placed.

Evan picked up one of the empty satchels in the pile from the corner. He created a glass dagger and cut it along the sides, so that it was like a blanket. Evan respectfully laid the open bag over Kalen's body. "He would want us to finish what we started."

Albert turned to James. "I want to keep fighting down here but ... my kid is up there on the surface. She's following around that stupid boy. I kind of like him but he's still a piece of shit. Everyone thinks he's some sort of messiah and he ain't shit. I need to be up there."

James nodded. "I could use your help returning these things around the globe if you're willing to help."

"Yeah I guess." Albert leaned in close to look at the new staff James found. "That isn't the one you had before."

"No, it's a little different," James agreed. "But something is telling me that I should return it to Ethiopia in place of the Nehushtan. I have to give them something."

Evan bit his lower lip. He sighed. "We have to fight our way out of here now. Let's get ready, you guys."

Albert glanced at Evan, brows furrowed. "I'm hoping you only said that because you haven't looked out the door. Or are you really just a dumb...?"

Evan dropped his bag and stepped close to Albert, coming face to face with the large were-lion. "A dumb what? I'd love to hear the very next noun out of your mouth, Mr. DeLioncourt. Please, by all means, finish your thought."

"Pick up the bag, kid. We have to move."

"Evan, buddy, I don't have powers, and I don't have claws," James said. "You want to fight the snake? Go right ahead."

Albert rolled his eyes. "Quiet, you two dummies. Look at it, out there. That snake ain't moving for days."

Evan furrowed his brows and stepped back. He picked up his satchel, keeping his glare on Albert. "Why not?"

"Just go look and stop being a dick." Albert picked up another sack. He filled it with the last of the relics on the remaining shelves.

Albert shoveled everything into the bag uncaring of the contents. He picked up Kalen's satchel and shouldered both. "Let's get out of this shithole."

Evan grimaced. "You are one of the most offensive people I've ever met. And you think I'm a dick?"

"You got in my face," Albert said nonchalantly. "That makes you a dick. Did I get up in your face? You're just trying to show how macho you are. I've met lots of people like you who want to display your dominance or whatever. Your wife is a lot nicer than you are."

Evan cocked his head, brows arched. "Are you even for real?"

"No, I'm an astral-fuckin'-projection," said Albert, making his way to the opening of the vault.

"I'm surprised you know what that is," Evan retorted. "Let alone that you used it correctly," he added as an afterthought.

Evan considered telling the man not to mention his wife, but he didn't want to add to any tensions, combined with the fact that the man didn't say anything mean about Patty.

"Look, there's your stupid snake." Albert approached the massive over-stretched creature and kicked its scaly hide in passing. "Totally harmless." He turned and moved behind the vault door.

James came out with a satchel over one shoulder, and the new staff in his other hand. "It's a shame he ate the Nehushtan." Jaye sighed softly. "I hope this one will make due as a proper replacement."

"I doubt they'll notice," said Albert. A smirk tugged at the corner of his large feline maw. "Let's be serious, it's not like they open the ark of the freaking covenant and just polish their goodies every day. It's easy to con most people."

Evan stopped to look at the enormous serpent, lying still, digesting the other large snake. He glanced over at Albert and sighed. "No wonder Natalia made you stay outside most of the time. You're an animal, and an animal's proper place is outside of the house."

"Think whatever you want." Albert heaved the vault door shut. "There. We don't want anyone getting to Kalen's body. We'll come back in a few days and take him out of there for a proper burial."

James nodded. "Understood." He turned to Evan. "Can you handle it? I'm taking Albert with me to the surface right away. We're going to get these things as far away from Falcon as possible."

Evan nodded. He turned back to the giant serpent. "How long before he finishes digesting? I don't want to come back and have to face him again."

Albert rolled his eyes. "I once seen a constrictor take six months to digest a meal. If he ate anything near as big as him, he won't be going anywhere for a long, long time. Let's get this crap to a sub and go. Evan, I meant what I said about Patty. She's a great girl and you don't deserve her if you act like that all the time. All the other times I've seen you, you're all right. So try and relax. I get it, you're upset your friend died. That's no reason to take it out on other people."

Evan stared at the closed vault for a moment. "James, how do I get back in?"

"Forget about breaking in the second time," said James. "Just turn the triple-bar tumbler to sand and pull the door open on its hinges. It's balanced to open easy."

"Alright." Evan glanced at the snake and followed James and Albert out of the tallest tower in the city.

X

X

Nearly three miles below The Lost City ...

Reno traced his fingers over ivy growing up the side of a building. "It's petrified. I thought things take millions of years to petrify?"

Vincent approached. "I think if the conditions are right, like a lack of oxygen and maybe a presence of silica at some point, things can petrify a lot faster. When this place was discovered, Falcon had to pump oxygen down here before we could come down."

"How do you even know this stuff?"

Vincent shrugged. "Remember when I worked at the Honda Dealership when I was a kid?"

"Yeah."

"There was girl I asked out and she shot me down hard. I was pretty upset at the time. Anyhow, she went out with this guy who started his own company making 'real hardwood floors.' The company petrified the wood commercially with some sort of process."

"How do you even remember that? It's been a lot longer for you than it has for me." Reno stepped back from the building. He went inside an empty doorway and looked around the foyer. "This place is unbelievable."

Furnishings in the room seemed oddly modern. A table in the corner had a glass surface with a metallic body beneath.

Reno placed his hands on either side of the glass, trying to see through the cloudy, opaque surface. "How old is this stuff supposed to be?"

"Older than you," said Vincent with a grin, adding, "big brother," in a playful tone. "I've only been down here a handful of times. It's amazing. It's nothing like what people imagine when you say 'Atlantis.' This place feels as modern as the surface."

"Actually," said Reno, "It feels futuristic." He lowered to one knee and squinted at the side of the table. "I think this is more than just a decoration."

"How do you mean?"

"Have you met Steven?"

"Yeah, a little bit. He was eccentric and liked to make things."

Reno nodded in agreement. "That's him, alright. Well look at this." Reno shimmied a panel loose beneath the table. Inside, a thin panel with objects attached to it appeared to have the basic design of an electronics board.

Vincent leaned in close. "It looks like the inside of a computer. Just a little different, but there are lots of similarities."

Reno grinned. "I have an idea." He poked around inside the table's belly for a moment. "I'm willing to bet this, right here in the back corner of the cavity, is the power supply or battery." He reached in and touched the textured box. "And I bet this is mold. Petrified mold or something. That's why it has this weird..." he trailed off, feeling around inside the unit.

The table illuminated. An image displayed in the glass. There were words comprised of glyphs and mathematical-looking code. Vincent tilted his head. "It's ... booting up."

Reno kept his hand on the little box inside. "Let's see what it does."

Small components on the adjacent panels, near Reno's hand, sparked and burst. The image went dark. A hint of smoke rose from the cavity beneath the table.

Reno looked up at his brother with a shrug. He got to his feet and dusted his hands. "The damn capacitors overloaded. Either I gave it too much juice, or it's because they're too old to hold current anymore. I'm surprised it even worked at all."

Vincent nodded. "Shows how well these people made their technology. It lasted thousands and thousands of years. It weathered an absence of oxygen, petrification, and then when oxygen was reintroduced, it still held together fairly well. Some of the stuff down here has been nothing short of amazing."

"I doubt any of it still works." Reno brushed a dusty layer off his shirtsleeve. "That thing sure as hell didn't work."

"Actually," said Vincent, "Some of it never stopped working."

"What?"

"You heard me." Vincent walked back outside the structure and turned to face a temple on a hill in the distance. "Up there. That's where Falcon will be hiding out. You should know that I've seen him fight, Reno. Dr. Falcon can handle himself. Plus he's old. He's been stealing powers for a while, and he's been searching for this place most of his life. He's obsessed with it."

"What's this place called?" Reno followed his brother out. It was strange to see his little brother with the face of a man in his forties.

Vincent shrugged. "If Steven and Peter won't say, then the original name is lost to time. Maybe they don't remember. I don't remember the zip code for my first apartment in San Francisco. I'm sure it would look familiar if I saw it on an old piece of mail, but I can't recall it otherwise."

Reno gave his brother a firm slap on the shoulder. "It was 94134. I remember where my brother lived. I also remember it wasn't the nicest neighborhood in town."

"It wasn't horrible," Vincent said. "My neighbors usually turned off their TV before two or three."

"Two in the morning," Reno said with a shake of his head. "I'd have cited them for noise ordinance if you told me."

"Nobody messed with me because they knew my brother was a cop, who'd been in the paper twice."

"Three times," said Nevada with a grin. "I got a story about how I was fired while trying to solve the Golden Gate Park murders. But it was in the lifestyle section near the back. It was all but overlooked completely."

Vincent grimaced. "I was assumed to be dead by then. I never saw the third story. The other two articles called you a hero. The second one was on the second page of the newspaper, Reno. You solved some homicide case at a night club."

"Yeah. Trajen's club. Little did I know at the time that it was burned down by other supernaturals."

"What? It was attacked by Specials? Why?"

"Trajen was involved in an Esoteric Community turf dispute. At the time, he was like Karla - he felt he did not answer to any faction because he predated both. One of the factions wanted to bully him for selling information to both sides."

"I don't know Trajen."

"He's an interesting character," said Reno. "I keep getting the feeling like Trajen is more important than things might seem."

"What can he do?"

Reno shrugged. His gaze lifted, eyeing an enormous gap at the end of the street. "His power? He creates illusions or something. But his real power is the illusion of infinite knowledge. The guy knows just about everything about anything. It's a little weird."

Vincent stopped at the end of the street, looking down into the outer ring of a large empty canal. "I bet it looked amazing with water and ships at the height of its day."

Reno peered over the side. "Damn that's deep." He swiveled his head from left to right. "So, what way?"

Vincent pointed straight across. "I've always wanted to do the lightning thing. You can take someone with you, right?"

"Yeah. But before we go over there and wind up fighting a bunch of goons ... can you fight without radiating the area?"

Vincent nodded.

"How do you do it? Throw punches, what?"

"I take radiation out of my attacker."

"What?"

"I can absorb the natural radiation from someone attacking me. Their body shuts down because things start breaking down on the inside."

"Jeeze, have you always been able to do that?"

"No. If I could, I would have done it to Laura to stop her from attacking Topaz. Then Laura would have died, and she wouldn't have been able to help Nichole and me with the first bomb in San Francisco."

"I thought she couldn't die, no matter what."

"Nobody can live without radiation," said Vincent. "I would rather let her think she can't die. But no one comes back from complete vaporization, or from having all radiation removed from your body."

"How do you vaporize someone without heating up the air to do it?"

"Think of a microwave burst. I release a pulse of high intensity energy. Heat is created when molecules bounce around, right? Well, if you cause enough energy that those molecules bounce around, they heat up. And if you focus enough energy, they come apart. If an attacker comes apart at a molecular level, they're reduced to energy and a few base elements. Even the water in the body is broken down into base elements. It's not mess or anything, it's just ... sad. In the end, people don't amount to much. It's the accomplishments of people that make a difference in the world."

Reno grimaced. He looked down into the deep, empty canal again. "That's ... I don't know what to say to that. You've grown up a lot, Vincent. Have you killed many people?"

Vincent looked down into the empty canal along with his brother. "Not unless you count all the people I didn't save in San Francisco when that second bomb went off. I should have found it. What's the latest casualty estimate from the surface?"

"Nine thousand."

"I could count the number of deaths on my conscience on one hand until that bomb went off."

"You're not at fault."

"I_choose_ to take responsibility," said Vincent. "I should have been born sooner. If our parents got back together, or never broke up at all, I would have been born sooner. I would have had the maturity to use my ability better, and I would have saved all those people."

"What?"

"Nichole has the ability to slow down or speed up time. But she can't move through_time. Maybe she just needs to evolve the power or something. Maybe, one day, I can go back and talk my parents into _not getting separated for a few years. Then I would be born sooner. I would have been older, and I would have..."

"You're_not_ serious," Reno said. "Are you? So you want to be in your fifties, like that would make a difference?"

"I haven't plateaued my abilities," Vincent said. "I could grow up hanging out with my big brother instead of having a peer-group of one as a kid."

Reno reached for his brother's forearm and ... in the blink of an eye they were on the other side, followed by the fading thrum of thunder.

For Vincent, it happened in a flash. He saw the fading flash of lightning reflection off nearby objects. He heard the fade of the sound created by superheating the air. He looked around and realized he was on the other side of the massive canal.

"If I can turn into a product of my power, I don't see why you can't do the same."

"Turn into radiation and float through the air?"

Reno frowned. "When you put it that way ... maybe that isn't a good idea."

"Yeah, that's what I'm thinking," Vincent said in agreement. He started walking again. "That was pretty cool. A lot less of a big deal than I'd hoped; it seemed instantaneous. I'd imagined you would fly through the air like superman but faster, with a lightning bolt for legs."

"Maybe we really did look like that," Reno said, amused. "But it happens so fast we don't get a chance to enjoy it unless I'm going long distances."

"I like that notion." Vincent looked up a mountainside. "We'll need stairs."

"You want to do the lightning thing again?"

"No, it's my turn to show off." Vincent motioned for Reno to step back. He rubbed his palms together and said, "Now you'll get to see what your little brother can really do. Watch this." He stuffed his hands into his pockets.

"You don't use your hands for your powers?"

"I can channel it with my hand or without. I've been working on doing things without using my hands." Vincent glared at the steep precipice.

The solid rock heated up from within. After two short minutes, the rock began to come away like sludge. The surrounding area shook from the shifting of the solid rock.

As the molten rock pooled at Vincent's feet, he absorbed the energy within the molten rock, causing it to cool rapidly. It cracked in some places, as if becoming brittle.

Vincent withdrew his hands from his pockets and tensed his upper body and arms. The molten rock continued to pour down, pooling and cooling rapidly.

Vincent rapidly repeated the process in layers, so that it resembled natural stairs.

He moved to the left, guiding Reno back, and continued to work on the side of the mountain. Vincent drew his hands and clenched both into fists.

The side of the mountain shifted rapidly down, until the lumpy staircase reached to the inner ring of the empty canal.

Vincent stuffed his hands back into his pockets. The stairs cooled rapidly, having the energy drawn back out instantly.

Vincent climbed up onto the side of the staircase. "It's not hot. I took all the energy out of the rock. C'mon. Haven't you ever wanted to go rock climbing?"

Reno stared at the naturally formed rock stairs. They were uneven and lumpy and disfigured but ... Reno stared. "What if we destabilized the side of the mountain?"

"Then Falcon's stupid building would collapse and he'd never get what he wants in there."

Reno laughed. "Good point. Maybe we should just do that regardless."

"Maybe it's just me, but I'd feel bad about destroying the world's possibly oldest museum."

"You just defaced it," Reno said with a grin. He climbed up onto the stone staircase, surprised that it had cooled so quickly. "I thought energy has to go somewhere? Like, it has to be transferred. Where'd the heat go?"

"I absorbed that energy," said Vincent. "I'll vent it later. Right now, I might need it to fight. And for the record, I can excite molecules inside an attacker without irradiating the area. It's like putting a pumpkin in a microwave until it pops. That ... that isn't very pleasant, though. It's better to vent my stored energy by disarming them."

"Christ..."

Vincent took the stairs in a different way than Reno. He hopped from ledge to ledge, careful not to lose his balance. It resembled the way Fox or Topaz would have scaled the staircase, using only their balance and their feet to do the work.

Reno grunted, pulling himself up the cooled stone. It was particularly cool to the touch. So much that his fingers stuck to the stone as though it was frozen. A piece of skin was pulled from the bottom of one of his fingers, but the tissue regenerated with fresh, pink skin.

By the time they made it to the summit, Reno's fingers had a mottled look of pink and tan. His hands resembled raisins as though having been in a pool for a long period of time. "I should've worn gloves, huh?"

Vincent shrugged. "Just so long as they're not leather. Skin comes apart on these stairs. That's why I try not to use my hands."

Reno held his palms out. "You could've warned me."

"You heal, right? Sorry, I wasn't thinking."

Reno grinned. "I'm fine. I'm just pissing on your parade." Reno looked around the summit and lifted his gaze to the temple in the distance.

The cluster of temple buildings wasn't far.

The summit of the immediate area was for homes that once belonged to the rich or powerful. A collapsed house was nearby, where the load-bearing walls had shifted along with the side of the mountain.

Vincent frowned. "Well, I guess you're right. I did a little more damage than I intended, huh?"

"You won't see me complaining." Reno gave Vincent's shoulder a firm slap. "C'mon. Let's find Falcon and finish this. Then we can tromp around and explore all we want before we leave."

"We should agree that nobody takes pictures down here," said Vincent. "Else more people, perhaps even people more motivated than Falcon, will start looking for this place."

"I guess." Reno started walking in front of a row of what would have once been beautiful homes. "It's strange how they look so ... modern."

"Yeah. They were advanced people."

"Yeah." Reno grimaced. "Let's go kick this guy's ass, then I want to look around and see the sights."