Threads of the Soul

Chapter 508 - 508: A New Challenger Approaches

Neptune shuddered with fear as he stared at the glowing orb hovering so peacefully above Astra's hand, as she inspected it like it was nothing more than a cute little firefly, and not a destructive force similar to that of a small nuclear bomb compressed down to the size of a marble.'Star child?! How could there be a Star Child on this backwater planet. It's impossible! Literally, impossible! There is no way they have the technology to reach their star and...'

His panicked thoughts halted as his eyes drifted away from the glowing woman and up to the ship that hung in the air. His eyes widened more and his borrowed heart nearly stopped in his chest, as he realised what they had done.

'It's all that damned Lizard's doing! He gave them his ship and birthed the Star Child. That means... He must be responsible for the trickster. I thought they were lying when they said he died for good...

Oh Master... They've found a way to kill us for real. I need to... I need to get out of here!'

He had absolutely no thoughts of fighting left in his mind. Star-children were named so literally, as they were physically born from stars. The natural birth of a Star-Child was an incredibly rare event, so much so that in the entire history of the universe so far, there had yet to be more than fifty born.

They were so truly rare that some people believed that they were not just children of Stars, but of the universe itself. The one true Celestial, that never had to question their place in the universe.

For Eons the Master had been trying to figure out the right conditions to consistently replicate them, so that they could be turned into the ultimate weapon.

They got close, but they never lasted and the process always made it impossible for them to be brought back with the Masters methods.

They were valued because of their near absolute control of energy. Stars were energy furnaces, living fusion reactors, so their children naturally had domain of it all. Heat, Electricity, Light... even Divine Energy. All of it could be harnessed by the Star Child.

The level of that control and the skill behind it depended entirely on the Star-child themselves. But Neptune was in no mood to wait to see how well this one did.

At his mental command, more Pegusi dove from the skies and began to swarm around him, obscuring him from view before immediately dispersing, moving in all different directions and taking Neptune with them.

Hiding his body behind the flying steeds and obscuring himself from view, Neptune smirked to himself.

'Exactly as I thought. She only has one shot, and she's saving it for a kill shot. If I can just make it to the ship, I just know she won't shoot that down. It's too valuable to these plebeians and I can use it for my escape.'

In the skies above, Astra narrowed her glowing eyes as her featureless face contorted in anger. She whipped her head back and forth, scanning the flying horses for the signs of which one was hiding.

Her vision flitted between thermal imaging and electrical signal sensing as she tried to sort through the noise, and not just the constant flapping of wings.

She pointed her finger at one of the Pegusi, a bolt of lightning streaming from her fingertip and striking the little pony square in the chest. It let out an agonising whinny before it plummeted to the ground, leaving a trail of smouldering and blackened feathers in its wake.

She pointed and pointed, sending bolt after bolt, as she tried to whittle down the numbers. All the while she kept the marble hovering over her other hand, focusing part of her mind on keeping the wild, volatile energy under her control. There were a few times she could sight of him, but the bastard was moving too fast. Even if she could find him, then there was still the fact of actually hitting him.

A still target would be best, but he was unlikely to just stand still and let her hit him.

The sky rumbled and thundered with every jab of her finger until there was a terrible rumble that did not accompany the point of her finger.

The glass flooring, which the sand had been turned into after repeated lightning strikes, shuddered as it was struck from beneath. Hairline cracks manifested across its surface, which shattered immediately at the next unseen strike and spread across the entirety of the glass ground.

An entirely metal fist, large enough to crush a grown man like a toothpick, erupted from the ground in a hail of glass sand and stone.

More glass, sand and stone shattered and was thrown across the desert as a metal colossus, styled after a European knight of old, clambered from the centre of the shattered glass. It shook itself off, dislodging the sand that covered it, before its head turned slowly until the horizontal slit of its visor locked onto the cloud of Pegusi fluttering in the air, and the figure hiding within them.

Neptune might have been shielded from Astra's point of view, but that left him completely exposed to the colossal knight.

The newcomer drew a broadsword from his hip so large that it was more like a hunk of metal that vaguely resembled a sword, before Runes engraved onto his armour started to glow. Specifically the ones underneath his boots, and on his back.

Flames spewed from these Runes the next second, launching the knight into the air. He heaved his sword above his head and cleaved it downwards as soon as he got in range.

If it only it were not for the glint of the sun off of the edge of the blade, perhaps it would have hit true. Instead, the swords edge cleaved through the Pegasus Neptune had been hiding behind and sent the flying steed crashing into the ground as two separate pieces.