“This is going to be messy. Remember the last time we pushed on the Queen?” muttered Flash.
“The Monarchs are confident. They’ve killed worlds, so they say,” said Evie.
“They aren’t even all going to deploy! Frost is off dealing with Laos now, Liberty is in New York, much to Belisarius’ annoyance. It’s just going to be War, Death, Life and Magic. Sure they’re high level but the top wasps are in the 90s!” grumbled John.
They were floating far above the ground, several miles up, directly overhead of the Spire the wasp Queen had built, and rebuilt in days every time they’d knocked it down. John was excited at the prospect of finally dealing with this cancer that had lingered on Earth for far too long. The retreat of the Wall had been gradual but they had lost a substantial percentage of the surface of the planet to these monsters.
Most of the Council was present, the only exceptions being Owain and Claire. Cloaked drones down below were monitoring the wasps and would provide accurate information on the powers of the Monarchs.
“This is foolish. They want to abolish the Proscriptions! What will happen when one of the Minders gets into their heads and takes control?” snapped Mindscar.
“I assume they will deal with their colleague,” said Belisarius in a mechanical voice. His remote controlled battle suit floated on actinic beams of fire coming from its feet and back.
“How many will die until they can manage that?” asked Breaker from Evie’s platform.
“Maybe we should give them the implants to block psykers?” said Evie. “One of the reasons we’ve all got them, with one notable exception-” she nodded at Mindscar, “-is to avoid that kind of problem.”
“No way. The only control we have is me. Make them immune to pskyers and they won’t be Kings and Queens, they’ll be gods!” snarled Mindscar. The new balance of power had greatly disturbed her but the realisation she was perhaps their only counter to the newly returned warriors had left her adamant that the Monarchs not be enhanced and augmented.
“It’s time,” said Bob across their implants. “They’re at the pickup location.”
John vanished to the tiny village on the Mediterranean coast in Northern Italy. He found three people waiting for him. War and Life greeted him warmly but Death just eyed him coldly.
“Where’s Magic? I thought there were going to be four of you?” he asked as he looked around the quiet cove overlooked by a fortified town.
“I’m all around you,” came a whispering voice from every direction. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, John Borrows. Are you aware that in magic, knowing the true name of a person or thing gives you power over it?” John blipped backwards and scowled at the empty air.
“Quit fucking around! You’re not reassuring me that this is a good plan,” John said quietly.
A cloaked figure, ten feet tall, appeared next to War and Life. The cloak was a deep crimson and the face within the cowl was lost in shadows.
“Apologies. I couldn’t resist!” laughed Magic, the cloak shaking and fluttering as though it was more hollow than not.
“Magic, no illusions. Show him the truth, please.” Life's question was framed as an instruction.
Name: King of Magic
Level: 73
Ability: Archmagos
“Why? You know-” Magic began.
“Just do it. We need him and his team. We need to be honest with them,” said War, backing up the smaller man.
The cloaked figure shrank down until the hood was hovering six feet above the ground. Then the cloak faded away and John recoiled. Magic was less than half a man. His body ended in a ragged diagonal line running from his left armpit down to the level of his navel on the right side. His flesh was bubbled and scarred as though he’d been burned by napalm and it had eaten deep into his skin. Beneath the terrible wound tendrils of flesh hung down like a grass skirt that glowed faintly golden. His right arm was completely missing and the left ended at the elbow.
“Happy now?” the pallid face, with a permanent rictus grin due to damaged muscles, demanded before a cloak reappeared to hide the monstrosity.
“What happened to you?” asked John.
“Off-world is no joke, Traveller. I gave it my all, or at least two thirds of my all!” cackled the floating figure. “Our last mission before we came home was rough and I had to leave a little skin behind!” There was a giggle from this remnant of a person that left John with ice water running in his veins.
“The Void can deal damage that cannot be healed. Between Magic and myself we were able to stabilise what remained of him,” said Life.
“I did my part too,” snapped Death, striding over to the main group. “Let’s go. I want to get this pest dealt with then set up my Necropolis.”
“Your what?” John glared at the man. So far the Monarchs were all too human from his perspective. War was brash and prone to lose his temper. Death was arrogant and coldly distant whereas Magic seemed like a madman. Only Life struck him as vaguely well adjusted.
“Like your Dragon I’m best off operating from a base tailored to my needs. It will be a dumping ground for killed monsters as I build my power to face the Void.”
“That will come later, Death. Now we need to deal with the wasps and other threats, then we begin fortifying the world and unleashing humanity to grow,” said Life. “John, a portal please? Half a mile up would be about right.”
“The Spire is almost a mile tall. You only want to be halfway up?” John asked.
“That will be fine. Please stay with us as we work. I’m sure there will be drones but human eyes, or your no-longer-merely-human eyes at least, will catch so much more of the detail. If you’d be so kind?” Life waved a hand towards the dirt next to the four Monarchs. John glanced at the four mismatched team mates. With a mixture of fear and excitement he opened a portal to put them a short distance away from the spire, nearly halfway up its towering height.
“Life, make me dead things,” rumbled Death as he floated off to one side.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Life and War floated on a golden cloud but Magic and Death were able to fly themselves. Magic, once again in his shapeless cloak form, drifted to the opposite side Death had chosen.
“The irony hidden in our powers is a source of much black humour to some of us,” said Life as he looked down. “There’s a lot of them, these haven’t been weakened for days like the Thing. The lower levels are dying now but War, you’ll need to get in there to deal with the toughest ones.”
The swarms around the Spire were falling to the ground. Life could snuff out the spark in anything lower level than himself and the swarms of wasps in the fifty to seventy level range, that had caused so much trouble the last time humanity had dared to confront this threat, were chaff in the wind. The bodies fell like rain, splattering across the rocks far below them.
“War, you need to go there!” said Life, pointing to an opening in the hive that seemed to vibrate with the thrumming of wings, a deep hum issuing out from the darkness inside.
War vanished. John would have been convinced the fat man had teleported but the blast of dust exploding from the side of the hive as his body rockets through the Spires outer layer put the lie to the idea. The fat man was faster than any speedster John had ever met.
“That’s better material,” muttered Death, who didn’t appear to have been doing anything so far.
Look down, John. He’s building a blob, sent Bob.
John followed the advice and zoomed in down at the bottom of the spire with his no longer human eyes. The dead wasps were crawling and writhing together into a… well, blob was about the right word. An amalgam of corpses was growing into a mound that gradually began to refine itself. Parts and bodies melted together to make something new. Within thirty seconds a titanic beetle shape, carved from dead flesh, emerged and began burrowing into the base of the spire.
More bodies fell, or wriggled, out of the entrance War had created as he flew into the structure. They splattered on the distant ground and the bits then slithered after the death beetle, presumably to reinforce and enhance it.
That’s not right, sent John. The stuff is dead!
Seems Death is aptly named, mate. There’s some kind of summoned element in the corpses that he uses to influence them. I’d love to get him in a lab and do some proper tests. Pete might be able to replicate it.
Don’t even mention it. Death seems as badly adjusted as Magic! John replied.
Magic grew to the ten foot form he had assumed when he first met John and raised his hands. He began chanting and for a few seconds nothing happened, then the world shook. Even miles above the Spire the reverberations echoed past the Carnival and the council. Then the entire structure began to collapse.
Slowly at first but with rapidly increasing speed it settled down into its footprint, the cloud of dust spread gradually when viewed from above but with a little perspective it became clear it was moving at hundreds of miles an hour backed by hurricane force winds.
“I’m going to join Death’s pet,” said War, who had reappeared on the golden cloud next to Life.
“Careful. She’s extremely angry now. She’ll- oh shit! War stop her!” snapped Life as something broke through the ground below. John blipped closer to get a better impression of the Queen he had briefly glimpsed all those years ago.
She was twenty metres long, dull black bands separated by blood red stripes. Six long, translucent wings flickered on each side of her body as she tried to take flight only to be slammed back into the dirt as a silver streak fell from the sky. The soil, recently disturbed by the fall of the Spire, was loose and the wasp vanished into the mud and dirt.
A moment later a silver streak shot back out, tumbling wildly through the air, and the wasp shrugged her way back to the surface.
Teamchat:
Traveller: We might need to help them out here. Reg, you can hamper her flight, I’ll bring you down. The rest of you, descend slowly. If we need to chase her you’ll need the altitude.
John blipped Reg in above and behind himself.
“Fecking stupid idea this!” chortled Reg as bars of his power created a net around the wasp. As she lunged upwards she suddenly slowed and struggled to gain any more altitude. Her multifaceted eyes scanned the sky. There didn’t seem to be any spark of intelligence in them to John. Just shiny fractured mirrors that gave no glimpse of the soul behind them.
The Death beetle emerged from the dirt and transformed. Long tentacles of putrescent flesh lashed out and grasped at the wasp, dragging it back to the ground where it was absorbed into the body. The wasps killed in the collapse, as well as the nearby swarms flowing towards the fight that were killed by Life or Magic, were dissolving and flowing towards the beetle-thing to bolster it as the wasp thrashed and bit the inside of its prison.
A tiny crack appeared in the bulging beetle's torso, a flash of shiny black and red visible for a moment through it. Then a leg struck through, driving the gap wider. With a horrific detonation the wasp shattered her prison, her wings beating madly and scattering black and grey ichor across half a mile as she launched back to the sky and the freedom it represented.
War came hurtling back down, laughing like a lunatic as he slammed back into the wasp once more. She was braced this time, wings working overtime to propel her forward into War’s embrace. With a resounding ring of steel of chitin they met and both fell back, stunned. War bounced and landed untidily on the rocks below, shaking his head as he stood up.
The wasp screeched, a piercing noise that must have travelled for miles and miles, but she managed to continue to gain altitude.
More bars of Reg’s power appeared but she bulled through them, forcing the old man to constantly throw up new ones as she passed. She was still being slowed and rather than try to gain more height she began to drop forwards, gliding towards the wasted lands in the west where her children already ruled.
As her feet brushed the ground she jumped back up to glide again. Life and Magic were shadowing her from above while Reg and John floated along in her wake, careful to avoid drawing her attention.
Magic began another chant in some alien language that seemed to be gutturals linked by fluting, rolling exclamations that sounded like the language Angels might use.
A series of runes appeared on the ground just before the wasp landed and as her feet hit the soil they exploded into a blinding conflagration, a sphere of fire that completely swallowed the wasp.
“That won’t hold her for long,” came Magic’s voice from all around. The empty cloak floated down next to John and Reg. “It might be an idea for you to move it to space?” he giggled manically. “Otherwise we might have to break the world to kill it!”
“You want me to portal it out? I can’t even see it!” snapped John. The cloak raised an arm and John felt a burning pain around his eyes, across his cheeks and over his brow. The smell of cooked pork filled his nose and he blipped away, pulling Reg through a microsecond later.
“A harmless gift for you John,” came Magic’s voice from behind him. He spun but the space was clear.
“What did he do to me?” John muttered as Reg floated round to see his face. John could see everything. Matter was like misty glass. He glanced down at the contained nuclear explosion and marvelled at the flows of destructive energy that were woven in on themselves, feeding the fury at the heart of the sphere and stopping it from spreading.
“You were ugly anyway, Sassenach. I’m sure you’ll get used to it,” said Reg in a worried voice.
John reached out and opened a portal inside the sphere of annihilation, letting it last just long enough to strip three legs from the wasp's right side. The sphere contracted slightly as that energy was sucked out into the void. Another portal took a pair of wings. Then a chunk of abdomen. As the glowing sphere contracted John took apart the Wasp, piece by piece. Finally he sent the head five million kilometres away from the Earth. The sphere suddenly vanished and a perfect glowing bowl was left melted into the landscape.
John raised a hand and marvelled at seeing through his own flesh. His veins made a river system laid over the metallic bones that had long since replaced his natural ones. The structure of his wrist blades imposed unnaturally down his forearms. His muscles moved like mechanical slugs seen through damp paper. He summoned a mirror and turned his new vision on himself. At first he just saw through the mirror but with some concentration he was able to perceive his reflection.
Shining ruby gems now occupied his eye sockets, surrounded by intricate lines of burned flesh that glowed a dull red. The letters, runes, whatever they were made no sense to him and he let the mirror drop, turning his new eyes to the sky. Hovering far from the illusory cloak was the ruined upper torso that was Magic’s real body. No illusion would stop John ever again, he was seeing the underpinnings of matter and energy.
He blipped up behind Magic and a blade slid out of his right wrist as it swung round to bisect the mad remnant and punish it for this mutilation. As he watched the blade slice through the air his arm suddenly cramped and with a howl he fell, the world fading to black.
Team Report:
1 Megavespid killed (level 93): Essence per kill 3500000
Essence gained per team member: 3500000