The first shot hit dead on. It had come from a grenade launcher, and had squarely struck the spot I's said to aim for. Now that the first shot had come, tons more had followed. The sound of heavy objects and explosives hitting the outer wall rings in my ears.
The quicker soldiers are out first, getting ready. Jason knows the outer wall won't last long under constant fire. I have to say, I'm impressed with the students of wind. They work fast and efficiently, and in a few minutes, the outer wall is all but gone. That out of the way, us ground troops move in.
As according to plan, I move towards the front gate, while the majority of the troops sneak around back. As soon as our sides meet at the front door, I get into a fight with somebody, but he's only got a knife. A single shotgun shell is all I need. That was a human, but now there's the more powerful shadow monsters coming out the door. These things are basically masses of shadow that Jason personally controls, and are in a kind of human shape. The only way to kill one is to use your element. I destroy one with a fireball, and then Batholith comes out. Of course, now that I have to focus on something besides him he's here. Almost immediately, he attacks Chris, who just finished off a shadow monster with the help of a student of wind. He can't kill shadow monsters.
Chris pulls out the claymore, and starts fighting. I'm busy fighting my way to the front gate, and I can get glances of him. He's good with the weapon, not because he can swing it easily though. A grown man couldn't do that. He's good with it because the blade is of course metal. The blade twists out of shape and stabs Batholith, but I know that won't kill him.
You see, Batholith's insides are literally molten lave, and his skin is a tough crust around it. The only way a person could kill him is if they could control fire, so they could draw all the lava out of him after getting an open wound. I nearly did this once, with my friend Grace's help, but Jason found us and basically recharged Batholith. From then on, Batholith serves Jason personally.
That's why he's here. I manage to catch Chris' attention, and he nods. He didn't forget about helping me inside. He manages to get Batholith away from him, and fights his way to the door. I'm already there, and Sandra comes out of nowhere right up to us. We don't say anything, and go inside.
"So where do you think Jason's hiding?" Sandra asks.
"Probably in one of the pre-made rooms. He likes luxury, and shadow isn't good at that."
We start looking around, and the crashes of the bombardment echo through the place. Eventually, we come to a large set of double doors. I motion for them to stay here in case I needed backup, and head into one.
There, looking out a window, is Jason. He turns when I walk in.
"Well, look who it is." He says. He sounds...what's the word... Amused, I guess.
"Where's Cade?" I ask, trying to stay on topic.
He pulls out a small map, marks a spot on it, and shows the chart to me.
"If you can beat me" He says "I'll give this to you. It'll tell you where she is."
Of course, the first thing I do is pull out my sword. Bullets can't hurt him, but I can block the scythe with a sword. I try to think of a plan. I remember once, Right after he got the shadow eye. Shadow covered his body, but after fighting him for a few minutes, he got exhausted and half his body lost it's shadow covering and became vulnerable again. If I can do that again, I'll have him beat.
Then, without any warning, Jason lunges forward. A scythe seems to grow from his hand, and it comes straight at me. I block it, and blast him backwards with an explosion, followed by a fireball. The flames engulf him, but he doesn't even seem to care. Still on fire, he comes at me again, and I block. I grab the handle of his scythe, and give a stab, straight for his left eye. Jason's hand instinctively comes up to block it, but the sword goes through anyway, and hits it's target. He shakes my hand off his weapon, and gets a good-sized cut on my leg, and I fall back. Then his gray aura thing comes on. It forms into six points, and those points come at me like spears. I block the closest one and the second one with my sword and kick the third one, blast the next two away with an explosion, and dodge out of the last one's way before smacking it with my sword. Then I lunge for Jason, but the grayness hardens into a shield and blocks my sword. The shield grows spikes and then widens until it makes a deadly wall that spans the room. It flies at me, and I barely have time to blast a hole in the plaster wall and get through, with a slash on my foot. I crawl back in, and blast fire at him while the shield's gone, and it hits him.
At this point, I can tell he's getting a little tired, but only a little bit.
He once again rushes forward, and we do a series of complicated sword fighting moves that I barely think about. Then, our blades lock above our heads, and Jason uses his supernatural strength to press down wit the scythe. I have to use two hands, and while I'm keeping that blade away, Jason's fingertips grow pointed and he nearly stabs me in the chest with his claws. I ducked out of the way, and feel my back hit the door I came in through.
I'm getting tired at this point (Overusing your element physically exhausts you like working out) and am panting hard. Jason's just getting started. That's when I remember Sandra and Chris. As soon as Jason's blade hits mine, I call for them, and the door behind me opens. A short sword barely misses me, and hit's Jason's chest. He looks surprised for a moment, but then feels Sandra grab the flat of the blade and electrify it. He staggers back, but then pulls the blade out and sends a shockwave of pure energy out in every direction. It sends all three of us flying backwards, and I feel stunned for a second. That seems to be all Jason needs, because he appears in front of me, ready to run me through, but Sandra blocks his blade. She knocks his blade backwards, and I stab his eye again, but this time with my knife.
Jason pulls it out, but after fighting all three of us for at least twenty minutes straight, plus the twenty I spent fighting him alone, he's getting tired. He keeps fighting us though. I have to admit, Jason's a good fighter. The three of us are supposed to be some of the most powerful students of fire, and he's not only fighting all three of us at once; He's holding his own. He blocks my blade, kicks Chris' claymore into the air, and knocks Sandra backwards with that gray stuff all in the same instant. But in the next second, he hits a pitfall. He used as much shadow as his body can allow, and shadow starts seeping off the right side of his body and going towards the shadow eye. His human form shows up. As a human, Jason has dark brown hair, almost black, metallic gray eyes (Which oddly enough, I have too)and a few burn marks from the last time this happened. Now he got a few more. The minute his human half showed up, I blasted it with fire. I can't imagine how painful that had to be, and he started retreating to the shadow dimension where he could heal. But before he left, he dropped the paper with the hand that wasn't on fire. I picked it up as soon as he was gone.
That's when I heard cheering outside. I looked out the window, and saw that no more shadow army members were left. They were gone with Jason.
Following the directions of the map, we found our way to the basement.
The second I opened the door, I saw Cade. She was wearing the same clothes as when she'd gotten taken, but was otherwide unhurt. I immediately ran to her, and we basicall locked onto each other. We stayed like that for a bit unti Chris said
"Why don't we unchain her first?"
He tapped the chain, and it broke at her ankle.
As soon as we had finished hugging, the four of us went back upstairs. The soldiers waited for us outside, and we all traveled back to our homes. The battle was over.
