Chapter Sixteen

Okembe

He was no stranger to battle. Violence and conflict had marred much of Okembe’s life, young and old. The Tower was a new environment, many of its threats new and unfamiliar, but the threat of savage thugs who saw others as nought but playthings and obstacles was as old as humanity itself.

His Squad had been tasked with locating and freeing the Denizens that were known to be trapped within their village. According to the scouts, the people of Flowerpatch Village had been attacked in the night by the bandit Climbers and those that were not slain were forced into a small section of the village’s residences under permanent guard. With the chaos of the battle, Okembe’s team would be able to overpower the few men left to keep the Denizens in line and get them out to safety. A small mercy, perhaps, given that this was the only Village with anywhere close to a full population left alive.

He spoke silently inside the head of his forces, linked to all of them via the Telepathy Skill. They were not all Psions like himself, but enough were to cover for the rest. They moved with quick precision under his guidance, arranged in a tight formation and pushing their way through the winding dirt roads of the village. Tall trees and leafy green foliage tried to obscure their vision, but two of his Squad were at the edges of the formation with shears and similar tools floating and cutting back what encroached on their movement.

Contact in five seconds, right alley.

A silent thanks in reply to the teammate who’d sent the message, and Okembe was turning to face the newest threat. He’d split his focus evenly between nets and spears for this operation, covering both incapacitation and death. The nets surged forwards, over the heads of his allies and a group of advancing thugs found themselves tangled irreparably just seconds later.

Stoney and Kuldra, both Psions he’d personally instructed through the early stages of developing their Telepathy and Telekinesis, were the next to act. He didn’t even need to send the signal, as they reacted to his intent and sent forwards their own telekinetically controlled bindings to further secure the enemies. So far, his Squad had killed just two, and seriously injured only three more.

Progress had slowed as they drew closer to the area where the prisoners were being kept, as more and more of the bandit Climbers found their way to Okembe’s Squad and went for blood. He’d been periodically updating a mental tally, and already they’d personally taken down more enemy forces than the projections for the operation had expected across this entire Village. Something was rotten, and long-formed intuition told Okembe that they would not find just the token guard that they were expecting when they arrived at the Denizen holding area.

Still, they had their orders and Okembe would see them carried out. He had chosen to place his trust and his loyalty in the boy, Will, and that was not a decision taken lightly. Even before learning of the young man’s first life, the secrets he held and the burden he bore, Okembe had known that there was a special quality about him. Call it emotional thinking, but there was a reason he’d offered himself as an ally against the Floor 1 Boss beyond Will’s intervention against Jackal. Even letting the criminal go with no semblance of justice and a hasty excuse had been calculated on Okembe’s part. A test of moral character, albeit a flawed one in retrospect.

Even though Will had a greater degree of Tower experience and knowledge, he was not yet of Okembe’s years even with both lives accounted for. To some that may have chafed, may have spurred them to attempt to control or coup the younger man. Okembe was not stupid, not vain, not naive, however. He would offer his advice, and he would step away if Will truly could not be reasoned with, but he would not attempt to usurp leadership. It helped, he supposed, that so far he had agreed with the bulk of Will’s decisions.

One more street and you’ll be in the centre. Be careful, there are a lot of them.

Those he’d sent ahead transmitted their thoughts, and everyone else shot into action. To an outside observer, it would have been eerie. Nine people, all moving in a bizarre synchronicity and none making so much as a peep of sound. Any of the group who would be inclined to such thoughts, though, had forgotten them much earlier in the day’s activities. Now they were a unit, and they burst into the small cluster of homes with hastily barred windows together.

As expected, there were more than a handful of guards. On top of that, judging by the size of the men in the clearing and the quality of the armour and weapons they held, these were some of the better fighters in the opposing group. It was immaterial, though. Nets fell to the ground as Okembe darted forwards, his Spatial Bag opening to allow another six spears to fly out into his orbit. Around him, the rest of his forces followed as he sent a chain of simple mental instructions.

Two dead, three injured. That had been the total before this engagement, and in the first few seconds of fighting it was already dwarfed. With great pain, Okembe felt two of his own squadmates pass out of the link, either dead or so close as to make it irrelevant. His spears were like water, flowing around the battlefield blocking attacks and skewering bandits, but many of their foes were high-levelled Barbarians and simply waded through the damage.

He lashed out in a dozen directions at once, the pain of splitting his focus so harshly and widely sending spots across his vision. He felt, rather than saw or heard, the impacts and adjusted, bringing some of his spears up for additional strikes while the rest flew back to his side ready for action. He’d already disconnected the telepathic link, given that it had become incomprehensible and distracting as his forces lost their discipline in the face of real resistance. Still, they weren’t folding completely and he was able to re-establish the connection and assert some control.

Stoney, one foot up two left. Ben, drop the axe and go to two shields, cover Lance. Martine, pull back and heal.

Instructions blurred across the link as fast as he could have the thoughts, his spears stilling as he focused entirely on wrangling his Squad back on task. Immediately, it began to pay off, and the enemy forces started to be pushed back against the buildings they were defending. He stopped giving direct commands, letting them once again rely on their own instincts.

His tally of enemy casualties had grown much longer by the end of the fight, but only one of his Squad had been lost. Kuldra, the first student he’d taken, at Will’s insistence. She was only a few years younger than Okembe himself, a widower who’d entered the Tower after seeing it in a dream. He cried for her openly, but didn’t let the tears streaming down his face stop him from moving about the scene and continuing to do his duty.

It would have been okay, overall, if not for what they found as they broke open the doors and entered the buildings that they had fought for. Barely half the Denizens they expected, most badly beaten and injured and several catatonic from whatever horrors these thugs had inflicted. He sent the required messages to the required people, and then went room to room personally handing out what healing supplies, food and water he had to the pitiful number of victims they’d saved. Transport Corps members began arriving eventually, as Okembe busied himself with moving about the village clearing up and dealing with the tail end of the wider battle.

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By the time he left, the Village had been emptied completely. Those who could be moved had been, and Okembe had received word that the rest of the battles had finished. He was not the only one who had sustained losses, not the only one who had faced unexpected numbers. Will’s last message had been worrying, a cold bitter anger underlying the words even in the impersonal format of the Chat. Okembe would reflect on his part in the battle later, once he had done his duty and counselled Will as best he could.

Metrodora

Panic bubbled inside Metrodora’s chest as she tipped back the head of a Towerfall soldier and poured her Improved Health Mix into his bloody throat. He immediately began to shake, but thankfully one of the novice healers Will had given her Squad was there to hold him in place and watch over the recovery. Pushing away the panic, Metrodora turned back to the rest of the tent and scanned the beds inside.

She was an academic, not a doctor. There were far more trained, more qualified, people in Towerfall (most of whom were busily moving around the tent and the outside camp) to lead this Squad. Will hadn’t listened when she tried to argue it, though, and had instead just promised that she’d be okay. Easy for him to say, when he wasn’t the one looking at the ruined faces and bodies of men and women they had sent into the proverbial meat grinder. She didn’t envy his role on the frontline, didn’t particularly enjoy the violence and combat even against monsters, but it was tough to keep that in mind while surrounded by so much pain and suffering. So much more pain and suffering than they’d planned for, even. It seemed like their forces were hitting twice the resistance that Will’s scouts had warned them about.

Her new arm ached, throbbing softly as a reminder of her near-fatal mistake with the Drake Denmother. Even as she moved to a trolley and pulled a pair of potions from its shelves, darting through the crush of bodies to administer them to a woman who rolled and screamed at the influence of invisible flames eating at her skin, her hand fumbled and she almost smashed a vial.

Though she hadn’t nearly spent more time one-armed than whole, the weeks of practice at negotiating her surroundings with one limb and a pseudopod interfering with her muscle memory. Transitioning back to using both arms for manual tasks was irritating, but she pushed the annoyance down with the panic and kept herself moving.

It felt as though the assault had been going for days, even as the more logical part of her brain pointed out that it had in fact been far less time, and a tiredness that went beyond the need for sleep had already begun to seep into her bones.

“New batch! Two red, three amber!”

Her head snapped to the voice, seeing one of the Transport Corps waving his hands frantically and pointing down at a row of stretchers. As he’d called, there were red tags attached to two of them while the others had tags in an orange-yellow colour. The triage system was well-established on Earth, and thankfully it had taken Metrodora and the professionals little time to explain it to the few among them who had no prior medical experience. Red meant almost dead, amber meant they could survive a bit longer, green meant they just needed a healing potion and a lollipop.

Wordlessly, she moved to the side of the first red-tagged person and fought back the urge to recoil in disgust. She could make out Towerfall colours on the man’s armour, but his face and upper torso were utterly ravaged. Even as she started sifting through her potion list mentally in search of the best option, his flesh continued to bubble and warp.

“Some sort of acid vial! He was the only one still breathing when I got there!”

She thanked, and then waved away, the teleporter. Though the information was useful, if depressing, his panicked voice and the stricken expression on a far-too-young face just made Metrodora’s job harder. Better to send him to find more injured, or at least to rest for another attempt somewhere else.

Her tentacle peeked over her shoulder, wrapped tightly around an Alchemist’s Swab [E] which she took in her new hand and carefully swiped across a puddle of red-green fluid that had collected in a divot of the man’s breastplate. Faced with someone right on the precipice of death, the co-ordination issues she’d faced with using all three limbs together melted away and her body moved as if on autopilot.

A vial came up in the left hand as the right inserted the swab. The tentacle, meanwhile, was reaching onto the nearby shelving unit and pulling back bottles and flasks with precise motions. Her left hand placed the now bubbling vial on the floor beside the stretcher, while with pseudopod and right hand in perfect harmony she began to mix the various ingredients and monitor the reactions.

There’s more of them than we expected here. Daphne

She’s right, we’re in the village and there’s at least double the fighters we expected. Unk

We have noticed the same. Okembe

She fired off a reply and then mentally dismissed the Chat. Nothing in there could be more important right now than what she was doing. The vial with the swab had finished reacting, and as she brought it to her mouth and took a swig she kept all three of her limbs working on the solution at her feet. Now sat cross-legged, the world outside had completely faded away and she revelled momentarily in the trance state.

Although it tasted like every poison mixed together, as soon as the liquid from the swab vial had passed her lips she felt knowledge cram itself into her head.

Emerald Asp Ichor [D]

Effects: This highly corrosive acid is particularly effective against organic matter, and causes rapid breakdown of the cellular boundaries to disfigure and destroy.

Obtained via: Emerald Asp Roaming Miniboss [Floor 2]

“Shit!”

The dying man groaned softly, but Metrodora was already fixing her mistake. She’d assumed whatever acid the man had been hit with was crafted by another Alchemist, not that it was a natural product of a Tower monster, and so half of the ingredients she’d put into the neutralising elixir were actively harmful. Cursing more, she began mixing a new batch actually geared for the task at hand, somehow finding the energy to work even faster than she had been before.

She pushed harder on the knowledge gained via the Alchemist’s Swab, letting more detailed information about the Emerald Asp Ichor scroll across her mind’s eye. Distantly, she noticed that the other stretchers had been moved away and that the other red-tagged man was now black-tagged and covered with a sheet. There was no time to let herself react, though, so it was discarded as quickly as it was noticed. She began injecting a syringe into the man’s arm, an elixir that Researcher Jen had helped her create that would keep him away from death’s door long enough for her to work.

Time ceased to mean anything, as she hit the full throes of her Alchemist’s Trance [D], the Skill activating itself without conscious thought. Bolstered by its effects, she was able to put together a concoction that would neutralise the acid and begin to rebuild the cellular damage that it caused. Using the Alchemist’s Swab had been the right call. Applying the mixture with utmost care using a combination of a syringe and cotton ball, the soldier shuddered in relief almost instantly and knocked Metrodora back out of her Trance.

There was a hand on her shoulder by the time she’d finished her work, and looking up she saw the wide tanned face of Dane, Will’s Head of Security. He’d removed the thick, norse-inspired helmet that he usually wore, and his face was lined with dirt and blood. Despite that, he had an expression of calm reassurance, and he spoke in a way that seemed too soft for the huge man.

“Most of the teams have finished their assaults now, just Pioneer’s left to go. We’re transporting the rest of the wounded back to HQ or the other outposts, and we’ve called in favours from EuroClimb and the others to access more healers. Me and my men will stay here, guard you and the others while you wrap up here. Anyone who can be treated elsewhere, will be. We don’t want to stick around this close to possible enemy territory now we’ve achieved our goals.”

She nodded, eyes flicking across the much emptier tent at the two dozen or so injured still left in the space. More than half were not in Towerfall colours, and she took a perverse pleasure in realising that the Towerfall Transport Corps had (much as she had throughout the day’s work) prioritised their own and let the thugs they’d come to stop be dealt with last. Though not something she would often publicise, her own view on the morality of killing criminal Climbers was more extreme even than Will’s – and he’d lived through more than a decade in a world where it was standard policy for everyone.

The acid-damaged soldier had fallen unconscious, now that the pain of having his body broken down from the inside was no longer overwhelming, and it was with satisfaction that Metrodora saw parts of his face start to reform themselves. She set up a drip feeding him enough health potions to keep him stable, and then stood up to see what else needed doing.

There would be time to rest, to cry, to shout at Will and then forgive him, but for now there was still work to be done.