“Prepare.”
The single Glish word rumbled through the air above the Toro Rojo, carried by the psychic equivalent of delivering a message by carving it into the dirt with a hammer. Still, the brute-force approach had one undeniable benefit, all who heard it immediately understood. Even those who did not understand the language of the Jackalope Empire could sense the warning carried in its tone, and quickly all hands began moving at breakneck pace.
But in the ramshackle medical tent, little more than a tarp built off the side of one of the many platforms hanging off the Toro Rojo, there was only so much that could be done to react to the new threat. Faith rubbed the sweat off her brow with her free hand as her other remained firmly on the torso of the leader of this band of refugees. The Curse was difficult to treat at the best of times, even with the tireless aid of the bear-man next to her applying his ointment with practised care she could not so easily heal the damage to the body when the cause of it was still rampant. And he had recently left too, dragged off to help the others prepare for the possibility of the worst occurring. Dangerous levels of Si literally burning through flesh too weak to contain it, something that could only be delayed, but won’t be stopped until either they gain the strength to overcome it…
Or end up like so many others, an empty corpse.
She remembered her ascent to the Mutant Realm as the Jackalopes called it, but to her it was always the Recognition of Heaven. How she had been in so much agony she could not even move, every part of her inflamed and weeping. It was no secret that many who chose to walk the Heavenly Path faced the ultimate punishment for their hubris. But there was no reason to give up, there was never a reason to give up, not if she could save just one life.
The woman beneath her hand coughed herself back to wakefulness, seemingly stirred by the commotion around her. She swore in a language she couldn’t understand and immediately tried to get up.
“Not right now! No!” Faith told her in Glish, as there was almost certainly no way they would understand the tongue of the Blessed Tribes.
“What else is there to do?” The Captainina grumbled. “Our ammo reserves were limited from the start, if they are truly preparing to attack now our bluff will fall apart soon too. We have yet to trade for fresh horses either… best we can do then is buy time. My ancestors have all died fighting for that madman Loco… I die on my own terms. On my own feet, for something worth dying for.”
The conviction in those words, it was… familiar. Like one of the priests back home. Her heart twisted uncertainly, she wanted that too she realised. She wanted to believe in something so strongly she could give up her life for it again. But no matter what she tried, that state of mind eluded her, like a mocking illusion flickering out of view every time she came close to touching it. They may not have shared a faith… but the faithful could always recognise someone with true conviction.
Despite everything she wanted to lead by the front. And that was exactly why she could not let this woman kill herself.
“Have some faith won’t you!” She found herself crying out with more energy than she had intended. Nonetheless, she continued, unable to stop now. “The two who are running to resolve this issue… they are good people, and if worst comes to worst, strong too. Gorekin and I will help where we can as well if need be, but these people need a leader! They don’t need a corpse! I’ll tell you what’s going to happen, you will stay still until I stop the majority of your internal bleeding, and you will focus all your willpower to be there for those who need you!”
The old woman seemed momentarily stunned before choking down a bitter laugh. “This is the second time I have been lectured by children.”
“Well maybe don’t do things that require lecturing then.” She huffed.
“Que desgracia…” The old woman chuckled, coughing small puddles of blood between her laughs. Still, she was not fighting it at least. And while she wasn’t certain, the Si around her seemed a lot more stable, trickling down to reach her core and beginning to be drained from the rest of her.
Gorekin poked his head back into the tent, at first almost looking like there was smoke hanging over his furred body, before she realised… that wasn’t smoke, it was spores. She instinctively shut her mouth and held her breath as the fungal cloud wafted its way over, before she realised the woman who was in even worse shape than her wasn’t holding her breath… and seemed none the worse. Hesitantly she allowed herself a shallow breath in, confirming indeed that the spores were not burning. In fact, she felt calmer and more focused than she had felt… ever since fleeing her home and deserting the Golden Promise.
“Applied hiding rune, from Forest Kin village. Your people help lots, very good work.” Gorekin told the Captainina. “Will allow hide from most thing. Can metal beast move?”
“We have burned most of our fuel reserves on the way North, and what we have left won’t get us far. The reactor is keeping the Toro Rojo powered… but we have yet to understand how to fully replace the ancient engine with it. The loss of our Mustards means that we won’t have anything else to pull it with either.” The older woman answered.
“Well, if no move, can make think we move.” Gorekin huffed, practically barrelling in and grabbing the stretcher holding the Curse-afflicted woman by himself. “All moving now, you go in too.”
“Will it work? Will we be able to convince them they have left? What if they are psychics who can see through it? And surely they will be able to tell there is no way something like… that… could move anywhere without them noticing!” She asked.
“Very good questions. But no time, just have to try. Always part of learning, trying!” Gorekin answered, not quite reassuringly.
Without any real counterargument, she swallowed harshly and nodded, following along as he left the tent. Just in time to see a huge flash of light and power, so potent and blinding for a second she thought she accidentally stared at the sun, appear on the horizon where John and Cobalt had ran to.
In that instant, her heart sank, and wordlessly she and Gorekin ran faster towards the disguised Toro Rojo. The Captainina screaming profanities in her native tongue all the way.
----------------------------------------
John barely listened to half of the psychic conversation before deciding he had enough of this dox-shit. The good of the Empire this, the good of the Empire that… it wasn’t like he hated the Jackalope Empire or anything, he still lived here after all, but it had always been a nebulous thing to him. A distant spectre on the horizon he acknowledged as ruler of the land.
As a Rat one of the first things the Supervisor drilled into all of their heads was the fact that they were by and large on their own. Sure there were places they sold scrap to regularly, there were times they received special retrieval requests from the higher ups, they knew the Supervisor bore the brunt of paying the taxes to the Empire for them all and it was expected that once a Rat got too big to really help out much in the tunnels and found the slightest opportunity at all they would leave to live a life like any other citizen. However a life of constantly moving around the Golden Plains right at the border of the Empire meant what mattered was not some nebulous patriotism, but the people who were just like them. Even during his time at the Lead Cave, none of the tales of glory or elaborate histories truly meant anything to him… what mattered was the family he found there. What little there was left of it now anyway.
And these… bomb-cursed bone-worms. They would talk about people who he knew had their own hopes and dreams as if they were pests to be cleared out. And for what? Simply for the crime of not giving everything up right away after they had already given up so much? They were even dismissive of Cobalt and him… treating the destruction of their home as though it was a forgettable piece of morning news shouted by the town screamer? He did not care if they had authority vested in them by the fucking Emperor himself. He was seeing red.
ARTOS… how fast can we get to their position? He asked the companion in his body.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
[Safely? At current sustainable normal sprinting speed 10.57 seconds.] ARTOS faithfully answered.
I am not looking for safe, I want to kick some fucking asses right now. He argued.
[With Adrenaline Rush, redirecting power to reinforcing tendons, secretion of compound X-130 at 120% can achieve a sustainable top speed of 78 miles per hour without significant drawbacks. Can reach the identified target in 5.82 seconds.] ARTOS answered.
And if I go even further? He asked.
ARTOS paused for a moment, slightly hesitant to answer. [Optimal travel time: 0.67 seconds. Prediction made with assumption combat is imminent, and adjusted accordingly.]
You already know. John said, not needing anything else.
He flexed his legs, felt the familiar pain of his own lightning course through his own body, and he exploded forward in a rush of movement. It was difficult to even see where he was aiming, truth be told, but he saw enough to know where to hit. The air cracked behind him as he found his target, eight hundred feet of movement condensed into a single second and driven into a punch. More than enough to turn an average Wretch into a fine paste, and even with how tough Cultivators are enough for anyone to at least feel it. Everything seemed to wobble as he made impact, the reinforced material of ARTOS absorbing most of the shock not being able to prevent in its entirety the force rippling through his bones. He heard something like the snapping of breaking glass as he rapidly came to a stop, and found himself being knocked back several dozen feet with the recoil of his own movement.
Skidding to a stop, he looked back at the two in front of him. The one he was aiming for was a blonde middle-aged man with massive nostrils and strange bony protrusions barely visible beneath his tunic. The other was a man who seemed to share his same ancestry if the long jet black hair and darker skin were any indication. His mutations giving him jet black sclera and a set of wiry antennae woven through his hair like crimson cords. Both of them seemed rather surprised by the counterattack, though largely unharmed, and if he had to guess the residual steam left behind by his impact in the air suggested a defensive formation of sorts like the one the Lead Cave had. Whatever it was anyway, it was likely shattered now given the sound it made when he hit.
“You imputent, traitorous worms! What is the meaning of this?! You court death!” The dark-haired man yelled.
“Shut the fuck up. Thinking you are so much better than everyone else, talking on matters you have no right on. It pisses me the fuck off.” He growled.
“You… wait…” The blond man started sniffing at the air and made a face somewhere between shock, disgust and horror. “Yes, it was so closely entwined I failed to notice it at first with the range disrupting my accuracy… but there’s a second scent in there. The smell of a machine, what are you? The artificiality of that right arm and those scars lining your body, like you have been torn apart. One of those body snatching abominations from the East wearing the skin of a man from the Empire?”
He actually blinked in disbelief. “What? Are you smoking some sort of street chem?”
“My senses do not lie abomination! We shall not fall so easily to your lies! Die by the righteous hand of the Empire!” The man snarled, cutting open a vein and extracting a long whip made from his own blood. His companion sent a message by pulsing some sort of signal through his hair, and it was obvious very soon the mortals they brought along would get involved too.
And right as things seemed to have escalated as far as they could go, the blond man suddenly sniffed the air again and bareley leapt out of the way of an invisible strike, the only sign anything was there at all being the shimmer of the air as something moved faster than the light could bend around it and the cratering force of the impact. The other refocused his energy onto the invisible target, sending psychic waves through his antenna and causing Cobalt to shimmer into view, evidently furious.
“You are a Spirits damned idiot, you know that John?” She chastised him.
“Your companion here is an imposter! A horrible mockery of the human form! We must work together to-” The blond tried to argue before she cut him off.
“Shut the fuck up. This is the second time this shit has happened now, and he got one thing right at least, you two have a talent for pissing us the fuck off. I suggest you call off your little army and leave, or things are going to get messy.” She snapped.
“Your delusions will not move us. Perhaps after this, you will once more see the light, but stand aside and let us reap the Empire’s justice.” The black haired one countered. “This is your one chance girl.”
“Then so be it.” she declared, swelling to full size as a group of armed soldiers emerged from their tents guns in hand and crested over the hill.
There was the sound of fingers snapping, and suddenly John felt a strangely familiar disorientation set in as the world started to melt. His senses, he realised, were being disrupted by a psychic power likely targeting him and Cobalt. He could barely stand up straight with his sense of equilibrium utterly devoid of function, his vision was blurry and unfocused at best, his senses of hearing and taste were so strong as to be overwhelming and his sense of touch was weakened to the point he only vaguely felt something wrap around him. It would have been a deadly move to anyone else, but unfortunately for them, he had an advantage.
[Recalibrating sensory data… compensating for disrupted neural pathways.] ARTOS explained as the world returned to mostly normal. Just in time for him to see the tendrils wrapped around his waist, Cobalt struggling to hold her own against a bloody whip with herself equally off balance, and a firing line of riflemen aiming straight at them.
Acting faster than he could think, he channeled his psychic power and targeted the metal from the guns, ripping the bullets straight from the barrels and launching them at his opponents. Most of them missed with the haphazard attempt, but it was enough to pepper both enemy Mutants with small wounds momentarily knocking them out of their rhythm. Not letting a second go to waste, he changed the shape of his right arm into a large blade and sliced clean through the restraints keeping him still.
“Damn you, devil… what sorcery did you use to bypass my sensory disruption?” The man now lying on the floor asked.
“Brother Han!” His companion called out, turning around as he realised how the tides had turned on the other side. A terrible mistake as Cobalt, confused and effectively blinded, moved by sheer terrible instinct.
There was the sound of iron jaws snapping in place, and in less time than most could blink the man had lost an arm. A trail of blood flowing down Cobalt’s enlarged chin as she all too gleefully swallowed, and her Si flared.
“Shit… even if you kill us here and now, you will have made an enemy of the whole empire.” The blond scowled, blood flowing freely from the stump left behind before he took control of it and shaped it into a mass of thrashing tendrils, hooks and blades. The very colour of the fluid changing to a deep black as it gained a distinctly noxious scent. “But fear not, you will not have to wait that long, for you shall die here and now!”
“You said it well brother indeed…” The man apparently named Han said with a small smile. “I didn’t want to waste so much with such a risky maneuver… but if it is for the good of the Empire so be it!”
Psychic power flared around him as his tendrils started growing out of control. Glowing organs lit up from within his abdominal cavity, obvious even through flesh and clothing, channeling a burning aura around him which then also latched onto his ally. In comparison to his signal manipulation innate formations, it was evidently a crude mutation, but what it lacked in refinement it would almost certainly make up for it in raw power. At this point, the mortal men, now recovered from the dumbfoundment of their own weapons turned against them, had switched to their melee weapons. Mostly clubs and sabers, things he could likely turn to his side too… if not for the fact his senses once more were hit with a scramble. By the time the world reset to normal with the aid of ARTOS he found a nasty hole in his gut punched straight through with several burning tendrils twisting into a drill. The metallic filaments of ARTOS thrashing desperately in an attempt to close the injury.
“What manner of horror is this inside you? Little matter, when we dissect you the Empire shall thank you for your service, for clearly we have much to learn.” Han said, eyes focused even as blood started leaking from every one of his orifices. On the other side Cobalt was being thrown around by dozens of blood-tendrils, her durability and regeneration barely keeping up with the assault as her own crippled senses left her disoriented and unable to defend. Her aura was flaring stronger than ever and with a strange undertone he didn’t quite remember seeing before but that hardly mattered when she was so badly afflicted that her skin couldn’t even hold onto a consistent colour and texture as it cycled through mimicking dozens of different materials. The pain inhibitors pumping through his system kept his mind clearer than it should have been… but it was hard to see a way to turn this situation around.
There was a blinding light, and for a second he thought either he had died or his senses were scrambled again before it faded and he felt the top layer of his skin start to peel away from burns akin to absorbing too much of the sun’s Si as a Wretch. All at once the flow of Si in the air turned quiet and the tendrils drilling through his body grew limp with an absence of energy. It was like everything had been silenced and deadened, the residual flames cloaking their opponents being quite literally ripped out of their bodies as blue beams of Si ripped from their orifices and into the sky, where an angelic shadow hung floating in front of the sun with crystal wings, drowning out all other powers with the intensity of their mastery over radiation.
He didn’t know if it was friend or foe, but all that really mattered in that moment was that familiar feeling. Of standing before Cobalt’s father, of watching the skies above the Lead Cave bleed. Of a power, once more, truly beyond him.