{Loading…}
{Loaded.}
[>>Now replaying: Log 1.73 - The Eyes Have It
Date: 8.9.175 AA / 4404 LTC
Location: The Bunker at Haven-Of-Progress // Zephyro’s Domain
//”Look here, with your special eyes.” “MY BRAND!”//
//Ocular motion impeded, muscular atrophy detected, re-im(%%$&==)!(//
[>>DATA CORRUPTED]
E1 %We can’t leave it here, Pina. Can’t you see? This is all part of some sort of prophecy! Look, it won’t even hurt me if I—%
E0 %REMOVING SAINTECH DEVICES FROM THE PREMISES IS PUNISHABLE BY DEATH.%
For a while, that was all we needed. The Old Guard charged, hitting the Hunger with everything they had, doing more damage than ever before. It howled and screeched, gnashing teeth as they caved in and rotating eyes as they popped, but for each wound we struck, each gash we scored, another mouth opened, puking more Ferals onto the battlefield. Metal spiders crawled out of eyeholes weeping blood and pus, acid fog poured out of half-buried nostrils, forming into dogs and wolves and hyenas, merging to create more and less of themselves.
The first few hundred weren’t an issue. I marked the ones that looked most dangerous, and they crumbled within seconds, letting us push back against the tide. I didn’t notice that they left no Logic when they died until the Horde started pushing us back with sheer numbers. I didn’t know how the fucking thing did it, but it seemed to have found a way to reproduce endlessly.
Within a minute, we had lost our foothold again. Pushed back and out of range, we had to retreat under Zephyro’s shield or risk getting slaughtered by eyes we couldn’t close fast enough without our close combat fighters.
We gathered within that barrier less than ten seconds later, not having lost a single member. I didn’t know how often the Old Guard fought together given their personalities, but when they did, they were a damn good team. The question was just if it would be good enough.
As the Hunger kept spewing forth its misbegotten kind, the Old Guard kept killing them almost as fast as they spawned, forming a tight line behind Zephyro’s shield. Rockets drew arcs in smoke, punctuated with explosions, swords sang, gauss-rounds sucked air with an anti-bass “whump.”
Nearly every attack hit its mark, and even those who didn’t had their purpose, creating breathing room for another Old Guard to land their own. But while this allowed our side to not lose a single member, the tide of monsters seemed endless, streaming from the Hunger’s mouths like spoiled grain from a silo.
In this chaos, I walked to Zephyro’s side, eying him as he held the shield protecting us from the devastating lasers.
“Tell me what I can do to help,” I said.
“Stay in the shield,” he grunted, too strained to even use my honorific. I didn’t even realize how used I had gotten to it punctuating his sentences until I realized I was waiting for him to continue.
I turned to him, anger and fear and frustration and resolution and hope all roiling inside me, each winning the upper hand for a split second before succumbing to the others, beginning another struggle. I would have said I was at my limit, but perhaps I had crossed that point a while ago. Now all I could do was to act, and pray, and hope that whatever emotion held the reins at the time would not kill me.
It all blended together into a mush, anyway.
“I told you not to smother me,” I said, but there was no bite behind it. Just… friendly camaraderie, both welcome and dangerous.
The corner of the Vizier’s mouth twitched upward. “I… offer… thousand… apologies… Sultana.” A barrage of lasers hit the shield and he grunted, sweat trickling down his soot-stained brow. “Yakhsaf allah bih al’rd…”
I twisted Pharus’ censer to unlock it, unwinding the chain from my arm. As I held it in my hand, dark gold and spikes and all, it ignited, teal flames licking my glove and trailing up my arm. The fine dark cloth of my armor did not burn, did not boil or even get warmer than usual.
Obviously.
It was made to protect me from others, not myself.
My eyes were drawn toward the combat gloves, all padded yet sleek leather, subtly indicating the curve of my arms wrapped in that shock-absorbent fabric I had advanced for Chris’ warcoat because they said armor was “too clunky.” Pharus’ flames stopped at my elbow, trying as they could to lick even higher, up towards the subtle shoulder pads on my coat. It went down to my knees now, and its cut somehow reminded me of that one dress I had worn to the office once. The one that had gotten me my nickname.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
> I am so done. Done with everything and everyone, with bowing and scraping and smiling and…
> I’m crying as I look through my wardrobe that morning. My eyes fall on a long dress that I hadn’t worn since my last boyfriend left me on New Year’s eve. I had been crying then, too, a wobbly mess of confusion and fear as some of the girls had tried in vain to act as though they knew me, even though I squirmed under their touch.
> I am so done. Done with being afraid and trying to be good in the hope that it will keep me safe. I reach for the dress and pull it over my head. It slides over my shoulders and chest and stomach and hips like a sheath over a blade, and when I look in the mirror, hair all disheveled, eyes red and furious, I see someone dangerous.
> I like the look.
> I have matching earrings.
{CPU Load: 85%}
{Core Temp: 76° C}
[DPM integrity]
▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰ 100%
{AVAILABLE LOGIC - 600 LB}
“We’re running out of time,” I said, flames caressing me as I caressed Pharus. The front lines didn’t move an inch, no matter how many weapons the Old Guard brought to bear. Every stray shot that hit the beast instead made it produce more monsters, and no matter how many we killed, there were always more.
One of the Old Guard, a young man in armor I had seen fighting in close combat before, broke the ranks and dashed forward, jumping over several lines of monsters before landing on the back of a scorpion, using its tail like a swinging pole to propel himself forward. He flipped in the air, landed on a wolf, and used its furious rearing to let it throw him further ahead. The Old Guard twisted into a drop kick, his feet punching into an eye the size of a doorframe just as it was about to fire a disintegrating beam at him.
It screamed, the entire fleshy construct twitching and shifting as the eye puckered shut.
“Fuck, we lost our firs—“ I was cut off when a red beam of light erupted from the swollen orifice, and the young man emerged, eyes glowing red in his helmet. He landed in the middle of the monsters and spun around himself, red energy exploding from his eyes and cutting through thousands of monsters at once.
The Hunger screamed like hundreds of petulant children, and we quickly closed ranks around the young man as more monsters spewed out of the abomination than ever before.
I almost thought that was all we’d gotten, a quick charge ahead and a slightly better position, but then I noticed that the eye the Old Guard had kicked in had vanished instead of mutating to spawn more horrors.
I quickly glanced around and found who I was looking for firing ravens from the backline, next to the girl in cat armor.
“Can we even kill it?” I yelled, and he looked up, then at the axe on his hip, then back at me.
“Francois says it’s at 80%!”
That wasn’t going nearly fast enough. But perhaps… I frowned, then began swinging Pharus at my side, letting it gather momentum. I had to wait for the perfect time to… there!
As one of the eyes just within my reach began charging up, I dipped out of Zephyro’s shield into a small pocket left by a young girl wearing flowing robes and wielding a Chinese sword with the grace of a true artist. I yelled and thrust Pharus forward, hitting the eye just as it reached its perfect charging state. It shattered, and the monster screamed, then the stream of monsters increased even further.
Strong hands grabbed me, pulling me back into the formation, but not before several Spiders and wolves could score hits on my armor and face.
[DPM integrity]
▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▱▱▱ 86% ▼
{CPU Load: ▲ 90%}
{Core Temp: ▲ 78° C}
The sudden explosion of violence left me feeling hot and worn, but I suspected it had been worth it. The eye I had smashed didn’t reform, nor did it open to allow even more monsters to swarm out.
“How much health does it have left now?” I asked over my shoulder as an Old Guard wearing Roman armor waved a heavily ornamented staff in my direction, healing the gashes on my face.
[DPM integrity]
▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰ 100% ▲
“78%,” Shellslinger said, firing ravens in a steady beat, only interrupted by that special shot that created another black hole. It sucked in all the Ferals around it, and just like before, the Old Guard obliterated them while they hung in the air, defenseless. Then they went back to firing at the Hunger.
“Fuck,” I mumbled. “I thought that would do more damage.”
“While that attack was indeed only marginally effective, and required too much preparation to be readily repeatable,” the robotic voice coming from the cat-girl’s power armor said, “it did allow me to perform a deep-tissue scan of its wound to prove my hypothesis that the Feral’s mass has decreased noticeably since the beginning of the encounter. Most of this decrease in mass stems from a significant drop in the creature’s density, which I suspect it is using to create the smaller Ferals currently swarming our position.”
The elf went to one knee and began overcharging his rifle. “Makes sense. It’s health has been dropping even without us hitting it. At first, I thought it was DOTs or something, but I was wrong. It’s a horde encounter.” He fired a concentrated blast of dark feathers straight through a mutated wolf, aimed again, and fired another shot. It left the barrel as a rushing screech of darkness.
“Precisely,” said the robot’s voice.
“Sorry, what?” the girl in the power armor said, head craned backwards as she tried to take in the entire building.
“How can I put this in terms you might understand?” the robotic voice answered, faux-ponderously. “It literally bleeds itself. You usually want a monster’s insides to be on the outside. In this case, however, its insides fight back.”
“So… do I shoot it?” the girl asked.
“Yes. Yes, you shoot it until it dies, while making sure it doesn’t kill you back by drowning you in its blood, which also is monsters.”