[So, what’d you do?] Raaz asked, sitting on the bench opposite Cecilia, a small mana crystal in one claw as he wrote in the air with the other.
She turned to him, looking up from her fancy new twin daggers, and rolled her eyes, “If you must know, I tried to make a gang in the city limits. Stupidly tried to go after a skiff owned by that lich everyone’s talking about, and got my ass handed to me. Why? What’d you do?” she asked, looking back down to her daggers.
The mantis insectoid in front of her shrugged, visibly drinking filtered mana through the crystal, [Tried to raid a treasure hunter’s skiff,] he wrote back, [Turns out he was also a mechamancer.]
“Ouch,” she replied in a dispassionate voice, “Makes me wonder how you’ve still got all your limbs.”
“Agreed,” the orc beside her grunted, “I’ve seen the crap those maniacs make.”
[He was well adjusted,] Raaz replied, [They had enough knock out gas to down a wyrm. Or a dragon.] They all shuddered as loud booms erupted from the front lines just a few hundred yards away, [Damn, they’re not leaving anything for us, huh?]
The orc nodded, along with the colorful assortment of criminals in their little skiff, “Yeah! I didn’t sign up for this so I could just go around putting broken bots out of their misery!” Most of them laughed, including the Chaotic Disciple driving the assault skiff. The only one not laughing was Cecilia, who calmly sharpened her daggers once more. The orc noticed her silence, nudging her with her elbow, “Oh come on, new girl, what’s crawled up your ass?”
Cecilia sighed, petting her bone-hawk on the head and turning to the overly loud idiot beside her, “What’s caught my attention,” she said, ignoring the insult, “Is that none of you are taking this seriously. This is likely the biggest Hive ever seen, and you are acting as if it barely concerns you. My Trait is telling me that we’re going into the most heavily defended part of the Hive. I doubt most of us’ll survive.”
The orc laughed, soon followed by the others. Even Raaz made inhuman screeches slightly resembling laughter. He soon calmed and placed a hand on her shoulder, “Ah, well, have you ever heard of an otherworlder concept called Gallows Humor?”
Cecilia had heard of it before, “Making fun of the poor bastards on the chopping block in public executions. So what? We’re all about to die, so we make fun of each other?” she asked with an edge to her voice. She could somewhat see the appeal, but was not in the mood to joke about her chances of meeting with the Creators.
“Ehh, close enough. More joking about something real messed up, but you’ve got the spirit!” As he laughed again, five deafening roars cut through the air, drowning out the warskiffs’ artillery fire. The small skiff lurched forward, nearly throwing Cecilia out of her seat. “And off we go!” the Chaotic Disciple cackled with mad glee. Cecilia had met a few of those types and they were always unhinged. There was something fundamentally wrong with them in the head, even before they took [Chaotic Adept].
No matter what Cecilia thought of their skiff’s driver, they shot forward through the ranks of the warskiffs and made a beeline for the wall. She spared a glance behind her when the shells from the sky guardians arced above them, wincing as they turned a few dunes into a pile of powderized glass.
They continued forward, dodging the Sniper fire coming from Creators knew where. Eventually, a mage, who she gathered tried to make drugs from sand or something similarly idiotic, stood and cast a shield around their skiff. The shield was not a moment too late, as well, since the thaumotoxin pouring from the wall had just washed over them like a high tide. Just as she began to see through the green cloud of toxic smoke, fire bathed their shield in orange fury. The mage, not expecting the attack, let a small portion of the shield near the back fall for a split second. The man standing there was bathed in flames so hot that not even she was willing to go forward to quell the flames.
A young woman threw a clay pot at the chimeric, quelling the flames with some sort of red liquid. With a flick of her wrists, the liquid seeped into his burns, glowing red and mending the charred flesh. The man breathed a sigh of relief, slouching on the bench when fully healed.
Cecilia turned to the white haired woman, noticing the long ears protruding from her shoulder-length hair. The elf noticed Cecilia staring and gave a sultry, playful wink. Cecilia dutifully ignored the stimulating stare the elf was giving her, petting her bone-hawk to keep her mind occupied. She turned to look at the source of the fire, eyes widening when she saw the Strangler staring down at her. Breath catching, she tried to think of some sort of plan that could save her life, but she came up with nothing other than letting the mage sort it out.
Just as she gave up, a salvo smashed into the Strangler, sending it sprawling back into the thaumotoxic cloud. The next minutes were a blur of fire and explosions, but the Stranglers were eventually turned to scrap metal, along with a Mini-Goliath she had not seen until it fell.
“We’re going to the wall now!” the Chaotic Disciple yelled, still grinning like a madman. Cecilia nodded to herself, sheathing one dagger and putting her bone-hawk on her right hand. The bird emitted a dull glow, mana condensing around it, until it had a feather-tight mana shield around it. It took to the skies, flying through the thaumotoxin without taking any of it in.
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[Odd little bird,] Raaz commented, pulling out a revolver from his holster.
“I’ve had him since I was a kid. He’s a smart little guy, too. Learned that shield spell in a few days,” she replied, pulling out her other knife.
The orc laughed, “You sure he ain’t uplifted? He’s got the look in his eye that I’ve seen plenty of. He’s a killer, plain and simple.”
“Of course he is. He’s my little hawk after all.” They all went silent as the sunlight streaming through the gas suddenly ceased. They looked up, staring at the monolithic wall in front of them, feeling the shaking ground as the Guardians fired. The skiff they rode in parked itself next to the wall, hiding itself as best as it could. The group of reformed convicts leapt out of the skiff, landing in the sand with an inaudible thud over the echoing cannons.
Raaz grinned with his mandibles as they came up against the wall, taking out his mana crystal and painting an odd shape on the wall with mana filtered through it. Cecilia knew very few people who used pure mana runes, but she suddenly realized how useful they could be for things like that. The shape looked like a dozen concentric rings, all less than an inch between each other, with a vertical line connecting them all. He then drew a line of mana with his finger, the mana coming out white rather than red, and led it a few dozen feet away. As the convicts stood behind him, he sent a spark of mana into the white line.
The little spark of mana burned its way through the white line, white motes of mana being released as it burned, until it finally reached the red rune. A fiery explosion tore into the wall with fury, sending shrapnel flying all around and pinging off of the shield. As soon as the blast began to fizzle out, Cecilia poured mana into her three main abilities, [Simulation IX], [Enhanced Mind X], and [Explosive-Power Muscles V (+10)].
The world around her slowed to under a twentieth of the normal speed as she was used to. She was able to predict the likelihoods of almost everything around her happening with barely a glance, through focusing on them hurt her head a little bit— she used to be nearly incapacitated by it, but her run in with the lich taught her was real pain was. Her muscles contracted at an explosive rate, bursting with power and speed at a small mana cost and sending her forward.
Despite the amount of Trait slots she sunk into her muscle system, she was only able to move ten times as fast as she normally could, putting her mind at nearly double the speed at two thirds the cost. She could only guess that it was a physical limitation of the world around her.
Inane thoughts cycled through her head as she, in her perception, slowly made her way into the breach. The inside was far worse than she had expected. Through a solid three feet of Clocksteel she found hundreds upon hundreds of Clockwork Soldiers, Scouts, Snipers, and others standing in holding bays. Most of them were in the process of turning their heads to the disturbance, others already firing their bullets at her.
While using her Traits, bullets were not slow, but they were not instant death either. She dodged out of the way of the few bullets coming towards her and began to put what she learned over the previous weeks into practice.
She dove behind a Scout to put something between her and the various models ready to fire at her, cutting its neck with a simple movement in an instant. As the bot fell, she drew in more mana to keep her Traits going for a while longer and got to work. By the time she saw the first signs of her fellow former convicts, she had already killed a dozen Clockworks and was being shot at by at least fifty of them.
She slit the throat of another Soldier when she felt something tear into her lower back. She barely paid it mind, making sure she was not paralyzed before making her way to the offending Sniper. She leapt up to the Sniper’s nest, at the top of a tower of holding bays. She divorced the thing’s head from it’s body. Turning back to the room in an instant, she searched for another target, finding only Clockwork husks all around her.
She let the Traits bleed their effects off, sighing as she found no one other than her group of ex-convicts. “Hey!” the white-haired elf shouted, “You got shot, didn’t you?” The elf barely waited for an answer before throwing a clay bottle at her, hitting her in the chest and spilling down her body. With a flick of her wrists, a spark flew from the elf’s hand to Cecilia’s body. She hurriedly dug out the bullet with her dagger before it could heal over the wound and seal the piece of metal in her body. “It was coming out!” the elf shouted to her, “Ten outta ten for technique, though!”
Cecilia grumbled as she leapt from the tower of holding bays, shooting a burst of mana into her legs to soften the impact of landing on the cold, hard clocksteel floor, “I would have liked to have known that before I mutilated myself.”
“Pfft, if that’s mutilation, then I’ve straight up flayed myself,” the elf laughed, noticing the sudden silence descending over her teammates, “What?”
[Don’t tell me you’re a masochist…] Raaz wrote out, widening his compound eyes when she tilted her head, [Oh by the Creators you are…]
“No. Why would you think I’m a masochist?” the elf asked, genuine confusion in her voice, “I only cut myself to test out new potions. What’s wrong with that? I can’t just use the actually wounded! That would not be proper medical practice!”
“Alright,” the orc said, “What’re you in for again?”
“Oh, I got sent to jail for not disposing of my potions properly. I think I turned a bunch of rats into mana beasts. It was scary, looking at them! Their beady little eyes!” she shuddered, “Urgh, just looking at them made me want to change my ways!”
Cecilia gave a deadpan look, “So amongst thieves, killers, and gangsters, you’re here because of… that?”
[It does seem kind of stupid,] Raaz added.
A chimeric woman poking at a dead Clockwork turned to the elf, “Yeah… Why are you here? Those types of punishments only have a two-month sentence.”
“And it was two months too many to be away from alchemy! Just the feeling of setting mana into blood or whatever is divine! I should teach it to you all! Maybe Raaz can get something out of it!” she excitedly yelled.
The mantis insectoid shook his head, [Sorry to tell you this, but most people don’t want to drink a mana type that is literally just explosions.] Cecilia sighed as the same confused expression appeared on the elf’s face. It was going to be a long day. Not just because of the world-ending threat, either.