CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

NO REST FOR THE WEARY

----------------------------------------

Theo

Despite the utter devastation the meteor wrought on the Knight’s now-disintegrated corpse, not to mention the entire entrance to the prison, it didn’t seem to have even shifted the ground near the others. Rio was staring wide-eyed at the Wizard while I was too busy groaning in pain to care.

The man had the grace to look sheepish.

“You ahh… okay, Mr. Grizzly? Sorry about that,” he said.

I groaned. I was alive. Probably. My chest and back hurt like hell, but by some miracle, the sword must’ve missed my lung.

The fight appeared to be over. The entrance was open, and all of the imps, gorillas, jailers, and even the knight were dead. Which was great because I couldn’t muster the strength to move a muscle. I felt the shift happen this time as my adrenaline faded and bloodlust died with it.

Human once more, I nearly gagged at the absolutely disgusting taste of blood in my mouth. My bear form, or perhaps the adrenaline, had hidden how much pain I was in, and now I was certain that the sword had gone straight through my lung as my breath began to catch the moment I reverted. My healing was not strong enough on its own to fix those problems.

“P-potion?” I wheezed.

“Teddy!”

Rio was already moving, but the Cleric got there faster. The ray of light that he’d somehow used to patch up the Barbarian from damn near being cut in half was suddenly directed my way, and the relief that flooded my system was better than sex.

Well. A close second, anyway.

I gasped as the pierced lung was mended, wondering if these healing effects were able to replenish lost blood. They must be able to. The potions didn’t work on any logic that I understood, and it seemed like the Cleric’s healing skills were even more bullshit than they were. No matter what injury we’d sustained thus far, potions had been able to handle them.

It was enough to make me wonder how the hell the Valam, or whatever Rio called them, had lost to these things.

“Hey, you…” Rio said fondly as she reached me just as I was sitting up.

I grinned up at her, feeling better as the Cleric’s skill returned me to functionality. It did nothing about the bloody taste in my mouth though.

“So, that was the knight you were talking about, huh?” I asked. “He was a pushover.”

She laughed. We were both okay, and we were one step closer to getting all those people out of here. After that, maybe we could be done with this place.

The Cleric’s light faded at that point. I turned toward him but found he was already rushing over toward the rest of his teammates. The guy had prioritized me over his teammates. That… wow. Two others had fallen to the Knight before they could engage, and one hadn’t managed to get up from the nausea attack.

I hoped he was okay.

The Barbarian was freshly fixed and still looked as shocked to be alive as I was. The moment he realized the danger had passed, he rushed over to the first of his fallen comrades. I realized suddenly that the trooper in question was a woman.

He cradled her, a look on his face like he’d never see the sun again. He shook her gently. Once. Twice. He pulled off her mask, heedless of the bile inside it, as he wiped her face clean, sobbing desperately.

“McCarthy is… Is she…?” the Wizard asked fearfully.

“Wake up, c’mon, wake up Layla…” the Barbarian crooned as he rocked her, sobbing. “Wood, get the fuck over here! She…!”

Rio helped me to my feet. I finally realized what had hurt the trooper as we slowly approached. Blood soaked into her black uniform where a grievous gash had sliced down her chest. The blood was no longer pumping. Her head lolled toward me, and I shuddered as I saw her lifeless open eyes.

“She’s… she’s gone Mac…” the Wizard said, putting a hand on the Barbian’s shoulder.

“No, she’s not,” the Cleric – Wood? – said as he finished healing his other two teammates before bending over and picking up one of the hordes of mana potions scattered everywhere. He unstoppered it and poured the contents down his throat.

“What you mean, Wood?” the wizard asked.

“After the bullshit I’ve seen today, I’m ready to believe just about anything. Even… even this,” he said. “I got a level from that fight and a new skill.”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Rio and I were as curious as the Wizard, but Wood didn’t explain. Instead, he reached out a hand towards the fallen girl. Bright as the meteor had been but warmer, a light burst inside the room.

An angelic chorus sounded in my ears as twinkling starlight fell down through the beam of radiance, encasing both the McCarthy and Layla. The twinkles seemed to land on the girl as waves of warmth filled the bloody cave. Rather than guts and death, for a moment, I smelled cherry blossoms and summer air. The scent of a new computer just out of the case. Rio’s shampoo. The old wood of a church pew. Thanksgiving Dinner with my parents. All the things my mind had ever associated with goodness compounded into a divine feeling that swept through me.

The wound closed, the same as the Barbarian’s, but when the girl’s eyes fluttered open, all of us gasped anyway.

The… the Cleric could bring back the fucking dead. I was absolutely certain his mana pool was completely spent after that, but with all the drops lying around, it didn’t seem like it would even be hard to recover.

All of these classes were broken.

“M-Mac? Mac! Oh fuck, I thought I was a goner!” Layla joked, not realizing the gravitas of the situation as all of us stared between her and the tired Cleric who decided to plop his ass down right into the bloody stone entrance to the prison.

“W-well. Thank… thank fuck Nico picked Cleric, eh?” the Barbarian said, tears in his eyes.

I suddenly felt like an intruder. The moment should’ve been private. The two of them seemed like they wanted to kiss. Did that happen between troopers? It probably wasn’t supposed to, but that didn’t seem to matter much.

Even if I did feel like an intruder, I was resolved to attach myself and Rio at the hips to that Cleric. He could revive the dead.

…

He could fucking revive the dead! I’d thought the Rio’s Frostbite Trap was broken, or even the Meteor. Bearform was no slouch either but…

Could it be used on the elderly? Could it… I mean. I didn’t really personally know that many people who had died but still! This was… this was like… Lazarus shit.

“Uh… c-could you let me go?” Layla said with a laugh. “What’s going on you all? We won, right?”

“Y-yeah. Sorry, yeah,” McCarthy said with a laugh. “Just… found out that these abilities are a lot more bullshit than we thought.”

At that, one of the unnamed troopers turned towards us. Apparently, it was time to address the bear that was no longer in the room.

“Not that we’re ungrateful – we were in a pretty tight spot there – but can you tell us… who you are and what you’re doing down here?” he asked. The man had short black hair and no obvious indications as to what class he’d picked.

Always on the back foot in social situations, I turned to Rio, who gladly jumped in.

“I’m Rio Tande, and this is my husband Theo. If you don’t know that, I guess that means you’re not with the feds who cordoned off the cave on our property?” she asked.

“No, Ma’am. By your accent, I’m guessing you’re from the Missouri breech?” he asked, his own accent heavily northern but hard to place beyond that.

“Uhh that’s right. How… how many breeches are there?” Rio asked.

“Four that we’re sure of. Florida, Missouri, Montana, Indiana. I’m sorry. Don’t often interact with civilians. I’m Nick Wyatt, a special agent with the CIA, and we’re trying to gather intelligence on what’s been going on down here. You’ve already proven more than willing to help us, so we’re hoping you might tell us what you know about this place?”

"You're... missing at least one. I'm almost certain there's one in Honduras," Rio said.

"Shit... that's going to be tricky. Still, good intel. It's going to help with the report," he said.

He always spoke with “we” and “us.” It struck me as odd as if the organization had seeped into and become a part of his identity. That happened in cop shows too. Then again, he might just be referring to his team.

“You’re… not here to get the prisoners out?” Rio asked, sounding disappointed.

“We definitely are, but we’re an intel team. We're almost out of ammo and water, and we've been down here longer than we intended already. If I have my way, which I probably will, they'll be sending a whole damn army down here soon, but we're tapped.” he refuted.

"Intelligence? How'd you end up at the damn front gate?" I asked, butting in. "We're at the end. This is where they were keeping the prisoners! You want to turn back now? What gives?"

He sighed. “We got cocky. Ended up digging a little too deep trying to figure out where all of these dead imps came from."

I blinked, but Rio asked before I could. "You mean... it wasn't you who killed all of them?"

He shook his head.

"We took care of everything that was left with a lot of help from you two, of course – And thank you! – but the vast majority of the bodies in here were already dead from bullet wounds. We were concerned another military power might be down here. Honduras though...?” he said somewhat doubtfully.

My eyes widened. I’d thought something was odd about just how many dead imps and guns there were here, but I’d chalked it up to another group that had possibly been captured, but a new possibility hit me.

“It's not another military. The demons are trying to use guns. But they gave them to the imps,” I breathed. "That's why there's so much gun-related crap. They've never seen them before."

Nick’s eyes shot toward me. “That… could be a good thing. The imps are idiots. They might kill each other entirely.”

Rio shook her head. “No. That… that won’t happen. The big guy creates all the lesser demons, but he does it passively. He doesn’t even think about it. They just form inside his domain. I don’t think he cares how many of them die. It was described to me that he makes demons like we make sweat.”

“Well... you seem much more informed than we are. Who told you that?” he asked.

Rio sighed. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

The man turned a narrow eye over to Layla, who was busily gathering up potions with the others, blissfully unaware of her death. I thought Rio was equating it to restarting a heart with a defibrillator or something, but I was convinced.

"My capacity for crazy has drastically increased over the past few days. At this point, I'd love any explanation."

A sudden groan hummed through the halls. The fires dimmed. Like the knight’s voice had silenced all noise, whatever that monster was silenced everything. A demon, unconcerned with the squabbles at its gates. A dragon snoozing in a lair far beneath us.

“Uhh, Earp?” came a worried question from Layla as she pointed. “We got incoming.”

Through the meteor-torn entrance to the prison, I could see skeletons.

A lot of skeletons.

“Almost there…” Rio breathed.

----------------------------------------