Eye of Ra (22 page)

“Well it looks like he’s taking this fight serious now,” Laurence gritted his teeth.

Anubis wasted no words propelling himself toward him. Laurence strafed away once again, starting another aerial chase.

“Don’t get into a dogfight,” Laurence nervously said to himself. “Do not get into a dogfight …follow the plan.”

It was difficult to stick to his plan with Anubis hot on his heels, lighting up the sky to blow him out of it. During his prep time he had practiced flight, especially at high speeds. But he could barely keep pace against Anubis, who’d had a couple thousand years to make the art of flight as natural as breathing. 

The abandoned buildings did very little to halt his enemy’s momentum. While Laurence used what little skills he had to maneuver through the openings of the buildings, Anubis simply shot through them as if they were made of glass.

“Okay, dogfight it is,” a frustrated Laurence snorted. “I’m going to have to Top Gun it!”

“Top Gun it?” Asked his confused familiar.

Slowly he extended his hands.

“Laurence Danjuma, why do you slow down?”

“To do this!” He roared. “Armor cut power!”

As the Awakening power within his armor went dead, only his momentum kept him airborne as he came within less than a yard of cutting distance from Anubis’ khopeshes.

“Armor! Full power now!”

He kicked his feet out, angling his body in the opposite direction. Life came back into his armor as the power of the Awakening sent him in reverse, whizzing past a stunned Anubis. Before he could put on his own breaks Laurence took aim as his familiar fired the equivalent of a ten-ton nuclear volley to blow Anubis out of the sky.

Or so he thought. Anubis leaped out of a portal on Laurence’s blindside with the blades of his khopeshes dripping with the Awakening. Employing a dual sword slashing technique, he smacked Laurence’s attempted staff block upward with his first sword strike, leaving him open to the second follow up swing, which sliced into his Menos-protected left side.

Laurence didn’t have the time to scream as he plummeted to the ground. The god of the underworld immortalized by Egyptian mythos went into a dive as well to finish what he started. Laurence increased speed as he clutched his side.

“The wound has caused damage to the visceral muscle located on the left abdominal area,” diagnosed the familiar. “Menos has sealed the wound area and applied pressure to slow the bleeding.”

“How big …can you make a …dimensional portal?” Laurence gasped.

“Size is dependent on the amount of energy used to power it.”

“Good… Because payback is a mutha!”

Five seconds before he impacted the ground, Laurence dove into a portal and disappeared, while Anubis slammed on the breaks, cratering into the ground and sending seismic chunks of rubble and dirt everywhere.

“Coward!” He roared as he rose back to his feet.

His remark was made in haste, as a massive shadow cast over him. He looked up to see that he had dropped right into the middle of Laurence’s hare-brained trap. 

Dropping half a building on him.

A dimensional portal the width of an aircraft carrier expelled almost three quarters of an abandoned structure to crush Anubis like a gnat.

The gnat showed that he would not be crushed as he fired an Awakening powered sword swing projectile that sliced the building in half, detonating it in midair.  Debris and dust rained down all around him as Laurence dived out of a portal behind him, swinging the blade end of his staff charged with the Awakening to cut Anubis’ head off.

It would have worked if the alien god hadn’t used his cat-like reflexes to block the swing with one of his blades. Laurence, fighting to maintain his steel, jumped back to take aim and blast him again, but Anubis quickly closed the gap between them, booting him in the chest and knocking him several feet away. Laurence hit the ground on his back, and  tried to roll back to his feet as if he had taken a shot from a defensive lineman. There was just enough time for him to raise his staff with both hands and block an incoming Anubis with both swords raining down to slice his arms off at the shoulders.

 Indestructible metal met indestructible metal as Laurence, holding his ground, sunk a good foot and a half into the soil of Corazal from the impact. A growling sound came from Anubis’ helm as he used his inhuman strength powered by his armor to slowly force Laurence’s arms downward. Close combat was the last thing he wanted to get into with Anubis.

But his plan was finally being executed.

In the middle of Anubis’ attack, while Laurence went on the defensive, his familiar went on the offense. It controlled the Alder-enforced, scorpion-like tail attached to his armor to strike Anubis on his right side, piercing through his own Menos.

“Impossible …” the Annunaki warrior gasped.

“Now, familiar! Now!” Laurence yelled.

On command his familiar transformed into its serpent form, ensnaring both of Anubis’s khopeshes and giving Laurence the split second he needed to spring to his feet and retaliate.

And retaliate he did in the dirtiest way he knew. A swift, high-powered kick between the legs took Anubis from a godly status to his equal as he doubled over.

Laurence’s familiar opened a portal that transported it and Anubis’ familiars to the other side of the planet, where it increased its size to keep both of them ensnared as they transformed into their scorpion modes, fighting to escape and get back to their master.

“I have isolated Anubis’ familiars,” Laurence’s familiar’s voice came over his helm. “His advanced conditioning and immune system will be fighting against the sedative I injected him with. You must capitalize now while he is in a compromised state.”

“Got it!”

Laurence roared as he exploded with a textbook football sack enhanced a billion-fold by his armor.

Both relieved of their weapons, the playing field was still in Anubis’ favor even in his weakened state. With this clear knowledge, Laurence resorted to the only tactic he knew to combat a highly-trained Annunaki warrior, hood combat.

He started off with a distraction. Grasping the heaviest boulder he could find, he hurled it at Anubis, who stood his ground and shattered it with one well-placed fist strike. What he didn’t know was that as Laurence fired the massive stone at him, he followed up with another charge, slamming into him again. The force of the second tackle took Anubis off his feet, plowing him into a nearby structure.

Knowing what giving him an inch of breathing room meant, Laurence wasted no time as he let his fists fly, assaulting the son of Set with a flurry of lefts, rights, uppercuts, and body blows.

Although Anubis possessed superior armor, it still had a limit against the destructive power of Awakening energy which Laurence also possessed within his own armor. Channeling it into his gauntlets, he made his strikes even more powerful as he hammered away at Anubis, forcing him retreat to a defensive stance, covering himself up and protecting himself with blocks. Laurence hoped his barrage of cosmic powered fists would either beat him into submission or knock him out.

“What now bitch?” He roared a taunt while letting his fists fly. “What? What?”

Anubis weathered his powerful assault and reached out, grabbed him by the throat, and lifted him into the air.

“Aw … aw shit!” Laurence gurgled.

The Annunaki warrior whipped him around and slammed him back first like a rag doll into the abandoned temple that he had him up against. He repeated this act several times until he smashed a hole in the wall where a battered Laurence could now see the inside of the temple.

Anubis, not finished with him, ripped him back out, tossed him up like a soccer ball, leaped into the air, and unleashed an armor-boosted spinning roundhouse kick to swat him out of the sky.

The force of the kick fired him further than three football fields with no sign of losing momentum. He crashed through a smaller building and came out the other side. The weakened structure came down on itself, unable to withstand the mountainous hit. Small indigenous wildlife scattered, running for safety as Laurence awkwardly bounced across the ground, making several dirt craters before coming to a painful stop.

“Ska, Azkra, to me,” Anubis extended his hands commanding his familiars.

“We are unable to, master,” they responded in unison. “The half-breed’s familiar is evenly matched with us, and has us both ensnared. We are attempting all measures to come to your aide, but they are unsuccessful.”

“What did that filthy half-breed inject me with?” He snarled clutching his side.

“A synthesized version of Samba Nectar,” they answered. “A very powerful sedative from the home world …it will work faster if your adrenals are elevated.”

Anubis spat a curse in his native tongue.

“Further combat with the half-breed will cause you to slip faster into unconsciousness. We advise against this.”

“Negative,” he barked. “I just need remain calm as I kill him.”

 He then powered up and leaped, rocketing off to where Laurence landed.

A downed Laurence slowly fought to his feet, wracked with pain after finally coming to a stop. All of his belief in his armor’s invincibility ended after that nasty bump. The whining sound of a bomb dropping filled the inside of his helm, forcing him to dive out of the way as the hunter came down in a planet-shaking attempt to crush him.

Laurence quickly scrambled to his feet and threw his hands up. He nervously settled into a street fighter boxing stance as an unimpressed Anubis advanced toward him.

“If you think by neutralizing my familiars and poisoning me has gained you some kind of advantage, you are wrong.” Anubis growled. “I will tear you apart with my bare hands before I fall.”

“Armor,” Laurence yelled. “Power up fists!”

On command, his armor channeled raw Awakening energy into his bracers and gauntlets again as he prepared to throw hands with the Egyptian god once more.

“Come and try bitch,” was all Laurence had to say to him.

Anubis slipped into a fighting stance of his own, which seemed to be an amalgamation of the softness of Wing-Chun and the rigidness of Karate. He did not power up, which rattled Laurence a bit and slowly suffocated his confidence.

Anubis went on the offensive first, exploding with a swinging hammer fist from his left hand to remove Laurence’s head from his body, then following up with a right haymaker cannon shot to put a hole in his chest.

Laurence barely evaded the attack and came back with an assault of his own, firing a flurry of jabs and tank-crushing left and right hooks. Anubis stood his ground, blocking and swatting away Laurence’s punches. Finding an opening, Anubis slammed him with a powerful shoulder charge, taking him off his feet. He cratered into a towering stone statue from the planet’s previous ancient civilization. With no time to recover, he barely dived out of the way as Anubis’ jackal helm opened its mouth while its eyes blazed with raw Awakening energy. It unleashed a destructive blast from its mouth vaporizing everything in its path for several miles.

Laurence looked at the path of obliteration Anubis had left in the attempt to kill him. For a split second chilling fear washed over him; what came after that split second was uncaged rage.

“Really son?! Now you on some Godzilla shit? Well here comes mufuckin King Kong!”

Laurence rushed him with fists up and began to throw bombs that shook the area around them. Although Anubis stood his ground and was unimpressed by his threat, Laurence’s enraged blows forced him to switch up his stance as well as evade some of his shots. Laurence was running off anger and adrenaline. Anubis was just another bully, another Coach Patterson who took pleasure in picking on him and watching him fall. A Brick Bear who berated him and took advantage of his broken spirit, a murderous horde preying on innocent children. At that moment, in the middle of a desolate planet, he decided he was not going to fold; he would not roll over and let himself die like he had done four years ago. He was going to stand, fight, and beat the hell out of a god.

Through his flurry of Awakening-infused punches, Laurence finally realized why Anubis was both calm and unimpressed that he was channeling the energy that birthed the universe to enhance his blows. The trained Annunaki warrior was also using Awakening energy; however, instead of using a charged attack like Laurence, he waited until the last microsecond to send a pulse charge through his armor, negating most of the force Laurence struck him with. Laurence sprung backwards, executing a boxing leg shuffle in an attempt to confuse him as he came in for another assault, only to walk into his own destruction.

It started with a right cross from a fist or forearm that he did not see, and ended with him being barraged with blows that could bring down a mountain. He felt each one of Anubis’ blows charged with Awakening energy through his armor. A dazed Laurence attempted to retaliate by swinging for the hills, but a massive Anubis performed a textbook leg sweep, knocking him into a mid-air tailspin. He finished his devastating assault with a lightning fast reverse roundhouse kick, swatting him out of the air. Laurence gurgled as he crashed to the ground several yards away, revealing that as devastating as the kick was, Anubis had held back, not wishing to chase him across the planet again.