Chapter 239

Colonel Landers slapped aside a rock that one of the civilians threw his way as the boos and roars of disapproval echoed in his ears. The press conference was not going well, and his strike against the Thanes by taking down General Bruner and the mayor of Chicago were being seen by a lot of the population as a power grab by a tyrant - even despite the world-ending potential the two Thanes had. Two of the news stations were even openly painting him as a villain without even attempting to hide their disgust - with calls for the people to rise up or wait for Riven to arrive and reclaim the city.

What shortsightedness.

It appeared that there were still just as many supporters of the Thanes as there were people scared enough to want this rebellion, and his orders to block off the wormhole had led to a bloodbath between groups of their own people as firefights erupted across dissenters and loyalists that still remembered how Riven had saved them all during the Azag Hive Cluster’s attack. That same picture was being painted here to a lesser extent between people in the crowd and news stations, with many small fights happening within the crowds and guards needing to take many people away in handcuffs over the immense amount of angry shouting; smack dab in the middle of downtown Chicago.

Many of these people also still had family on the other side that were now changed into undead themselves, who’d even managed to contact their family one way or another, and the blockade had seen many of those same people trying to get home jailed or outright killed in the small battles or firefights at the wormhole’s entrance.

His plans were not unfolding as he’d intended, but thankfully he’d been planning for this moment a very long time. Rebellions were not born within hours, and Colonel Landers had been preparing this one ever since realizing his fellow citizens of Earth had been led down a spiraling, sinful path.

A path led by monstrous vampires.

By bloodsucking abominations, and his assumptions on the two Thane siblings had only been recognized by how brutal Allie’s actions concerning the Tereen elves had been - or how Riven had taken the side of overgrown rats over the more human-like dwarves. Allie was even called ‘The Butcher of Carnis’ after wiping out an entire army of high elves, not taking any prisoners, torturing their officers, and burning down the entire town of Carnis as the elf civilians inside screamed and begged for mercy.

She was evil, and back on Earth this kind of behavior never would have held water in any civilized country. She needed to be put down.

The balding man turned around and left the stage without looking back, realizing that his attempts to calm the populace by public opinion weren’t going to work - and that he’d have to resort to more violent methods after all.

Not that it mattered. He was doing this for the good of the planet, and for his children’s children. He would not let Panu fall into the hands of treacherous monsters such as these, especially now that Allie had sped up that timeline of world-wide disaster to the 9th degree when she gained the ability to terraform the world.

Adjusting his nano-tech armor suit that looked like it was straight out of a space-related sci-fi warrior mixup, Colonel Landers was flanked by four other cyborgs carrying guns - walking past a guarded perimeter and into one of the downtown buildings that he’d been using as a base of operations to plan this rebellion. Others just like him, ones that’d joined his cause over the past months, had been recruited to help organize what he’d already known was coming.

A woman in uniform saluted at his approach near an elevator going up as other military personnel walked back and forth or through the halls, adjusting her posture to be even more straight than it’d been before. “Sir! The Romanovs are waiting for you upstairs.”

“Thank you, private.” Colonel Landers didn’t even look her way and continued onto the elevator with the five other people escorting him, before hitting the button and clasping his hands behind his back as the elevator doors shut.

Ten stories later and with a ding, those same doors opened up into a long hallway leading directly to a set of double doors. Six of his own men were positioned on the left side, while six other figures dressed in familiar black sunglasses, trench coats, shortly cut uniform sets of hair and dark purple vests. None of them carried any weapons, or at least they didn’t APPEAR to do so, but he knew better. These Russians weren’t anything to mess around with.

The doors swung open, and inside a pristine white room with silver furniture and a sky top view of the city were two more men and a woman wearing similar trench coats. They were some of the higher-ups of the Romanov Mafia family, one that’d excelled in the integration and had landed them a solid foundation for a budding empire of their own further down the southern coast. They’d conquered a small kingdom from one of the other two merged worlds already, and had two of their members in the Paragon’s Top 1000 Ranker list - both of which were standing here in this very room.

These were Colonel’s insurance policy against the Thanes. He only needed to catch one of the Thane siblings alone and isolated, while the other was away.

It was possible.

[Vilari Romanov, Level 119 Arcane Assassin, Human. ELITE.]

[Helena Romanov, Level 123 Arcane Assassin, Human. ELITE.]

[Brutis Romanov, Level 108 Arcane Assassin, Human. ELITE.]

Vilari had distinctly chiseled features and a scar running down his left cheek, sitting on a couch with arms folded in a leaned-back position. His sister Helena Romanov had long brown hair with a tight-lipped demeanor while sipping on a glass of vodka. Brutis remained hunched over, hooded, and appeared to be half-asleep - though Colonel Landers was pretty sure this was to put people off their guard rather than it truly being a case of exhaustion.

“You’re late!” Helen muttered irritably in a heavy Russian accent, setting down her crystal glass of alcohol and spitting to the side. “We’ve prepared months for this and NOW you decide to become lazy? Do you realize what kind of prize Elysium will grant us if we’re able to kill a Legendary Ranked World Boss? We don’t know when Riven will teleport back in, but we can assume it will be astronomically good. Please do not jeopardize our plans by stalling because you want to maintain a good public image.”

Colonel Landers glared at the woman, but then remembered who it was he was glaring at and quickly took a seat across from her. The eyes of the three Russians followed him, and his escort took up positions behind him on the back side of the silver couch. “You were right, I should have made the call sooner. Be assured that before you leave here today, the men under my command will make quick work of whatever naysayers remain on this side of the portal.”

“And Brightsville?” Helena asked curiously, twirling a strand of her dark brown hair between two fingers while crossing her legs.

“It is already done.” Colonel Landers confirmed with a curt nod. “The bombs all went off as expected, we massacred all of the undead around the opposite side of the wormhole. We also left Bruner’s head as a warning with an attached message for whenever Riven’s locked ability teleports him back. It should be enough to enrage him and force him to act, he’ll be coming across soon enough.”

“Any VIP’s killed?”

“By the blast? No one else in their leadership was confirmed dead outside of General Bruner when I shot him dead, but Allie is far underground at this point and has lost contact with anyone topside and Riven is sure to come barreling through that wormhole as soon as he figures out what happened.”

Vilari Romanov chuckled in a deep, masculine growl. “You are pretty brutal, Colonel Landers. I did not truly expect you to follow through on your end of the deal.”

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Colonel Landers gave the other, bigger man a deep set scowl. “Unlike you three, who are in it for the power and treasures Elysium will grant you for the kill, I am in it to save our planet. I am fighting for the very right of our species to live on Panu. Of course I would hold up my end of the deal.”

Helena rolled her eyes. “You’ve been playing this game of betrayal far too long to claim that, we’ve been planning this for months now. I think you may just find vampires and undead as sub-human creatures not worthy of you, or perhaps it is the negative charisma everyone on the forums keeps talking about. But truthfully it doesn’t matter to me, concerning the reasons why. Even if I do think you’re just like us in many ways.”

Colonel Landers flatly ignored the woman, turning his head to Vilari Romanov - the leader of their group and the other Paragon ranker aside from Helena. “You guaranteed me that you’d be able to finish Riven off whenever he comes through. Are you sticking by that?”

The Russians all snorted simultaneously, and Vilari sat up straight from where he’d been in a leaned-back position. “Of course. We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t think we could do it, obviously. It is known that Riven is weak against rogues and assassins, and we are some of the very best. Do you have the wormhole locked down?”

“No, there is some infighting going on between my men and the loyalists, but they’ll be crushed soon enough. Most of the ones standing in our way are either being dealt with now, or are already imprisoned or dead.”

“Will you be able to activate the seclusion rune to lock him down?” Helena asked, pulling out a silver-infused dagger the size of her forearm and licking one side of the blade with a giggle. “I’d rather he not try to run!”

Chuckles from her two comrades echoed in the pristine white room around them, and Colonel Landers gave her a nod. “We’ve had it functional for a long time now, we integrated it into the defensive measures originally set up under the guise of additional monitoring enchantments. Some of our very best mechanics were in on the job. When he arrives, the trap will trigger. You’ll be notified and you’ll be able to take him out without much of a fight…”

Colonel Landers narrowed his eyes in concern when he saw Helena’s left eye begin to collect a tear of blood underneath the eyelid, before it dripped down her pale white cheek. Nothing else seemed amiss though, and she didn’t even seem to notice. “Helena, are you alright?”

Helena’s eyebrows furrowed, and another dagger flipped out of a sheath along her hip. “Of course I’m alright!”

*CRUNCH*

Simultaneously both of her arms swung back, crashing each dagger through the throats and into the cervical spines of both Vilari and Brutis with the activation of a piercing martial art. Both immediately went limp, wide eyed, and crumpled to the floor as the thuds of bodies hitting the floor behind Colonel Landers sounded out as he attempted to scramble back in shock.

However, he didn’t make it more than a couple of inches off the couch before a thin red thread was wrapped around his neck and yanked back - choking him, pulling him onto the couch, and cutting deep into his skin.

He flailed, using his abnormally high strength to try and peel away from whatever assassin was attempting to strangle him - and his stamina channels flared while attempting to activate various abilities.

Not only did he not succeed in peeling away from the massive amount of strength behind that abnormally reinforced red thread digging into his windpipe, but not a single one of his abilities activated before being snuffed out by a localized and overwhelming aura of dread.

He coughed, choked, flailed and spluttered, as the room around him began to change.

Instead of what had once been a pristine white room was now covered in blood. Tables at the far end were overturned, and the guards in the hallway that’d been there earlier were now disemboweled, nailed to the walls, or hung from the ceiling in death.

Along with the change in the red-splattered room came the figures of two very recognizable demons and a third woman Colonel Bruner did not recognize. On one side of the opposite couch was the blue-skinned succubus, Fay, who had a mischievous grin on her face while her slender black tail slapped against the cushions to the right of Vilari’s twitching body like a dog’s would. Behind her was Azmoth, who looked rather bored with all four arms folded in front of him. Then, lastly, there was a hooded blonde woman with crimson tattoos - wearing a red metal headdress over a formfitting black robe - sitting in a meditative pose further beyond the couch while some kind of blood-based ability was being channeled around her.

The succubus whispered something into Helena’s ear, and the woman responded in kind by answering her as more blood continued running out of her eyes - a wide smile plastered across her face.

Fay and the arcane assassin continued speaking in hushed whispers for a couple minutes, until she eventually nodded and looked across the room to a hooded figure standing next to a window - looking out at the crowds far below where brawls and acts of unrest were continuing to break out.

Colonel Landers wasn’t being completely strangled yet, given that the person behind him was letting him gasp from time to time, but he was still in a state of panic. However he felt himself go absolutely cold upon seeing Riven Thane turn his gaze, and the colonel began to fight even harder to try and squirm out of what was essentially an unbreakable wire cutting into his neck.

“We’re finished obtaining your requested information.” Fay stated, standing up and bowing to her master with an elegant swish of her long white hair.

Riven didn’t reply, but nodded and began walking their way. His bootsteps clicked against the white tile floor, before splashing in puddles of blood, until he came to a stop in front of Helena Romanov with a stoic expression. Raising one hand, claws of crystalized blood began to form over his fingers and he gripped the assassin’s face while lifting her up off the floor.

She continued to bleed from her eyes while her body hung limply in his grip, but Colonel Landers could tell she was now regaining some of her own functions back from whatever spell, ability or ritual these people were casting by the way her muscles started twitching and she began to hiss between bouts of seemingly random jerks.

His eyes flicked towards the meditating woman channeling some kind of ability on the couch nearby, an elf by the looks of it, and then he went back to staring at the scene in front of him.

Riven’s single, clawed hand began to grip harder, and a loud whimper began to come out of Helena’s lips when his fingers started digging into her skin. Cuts turned into deep gashes, and Helena let out a muffled sob while her body continued to jerk as something in her jaw-bone snapped.

*CRUNCH*

Helena’s eyes went wide, and with a shriek her head exploded in a shower of gore.

The assassin’s body dropped to the ground like a rag doll, and joined the other two Romanov’s to add to the dead bodies littering the room.

“Mr. Landers…” Riven stated calmly, taking a seat where Helena had been sitting only a minute ago - and scooting her carcass over to make way for his legs with a few pokes of his boot-covered toe. His red eyes calmly evaluated the partially asphyxiated military man while his fingers interlaced. “It appears that we’ve come to a conclusion concerning your attempted rebellion quite a bit faster than what General Bruner had anticipated. I must admit, I hadn’t expected Allie to transcend like she did - but assumed whoever you were working with would likely take the opportunity to show themselves as soon as I saw the world-wide notification. It would be now or never, so to speak, because you wouldn’t risk taking us both on at the same time after Allie’s power up. Oh no, that’d be too risky and you’d all prepared for it for so, so long.”

The door to the room opened up again, and the familiar form of General Bruner stepped inside - accompanied by a couple of the elites of the Necropolis. A couple cyborgs, death knights, deathtouched enlightened with gray skin and neon-teal eyes that’d once been human, and necromancers flowed inside to silently wait on the sidelines while Colonel Landers just gawked.

“Look-alike zombies can be a tricky thing to distinguish from the real deal, if your necromancer is good enough. You never actually killed General Bruner to begin with.” Riven stated flatly, stifling a yawn and shaking his head. “It really is a shame that people had to die for this, but your actions would have likely caused far more deaths if we’d just killed you and didn’t put this situation with the Romanovs down early. They were very sneaky bastards. Even when they arrived here and fell into our own trap it took quite a bit of time for Genua to possess the woman. Fay had to work extra hard to keep the hallucinations around all of you going, and the combination of Fay’s silvertongue plus Genua’s possession allowed us to dig through Helena’s mind quite easily. Thank you though, for delivering them right to us. Now that they’re out of the way, I think I’ll be paying the rest of their mafia family a little visit as a reminder to the world that I am not above killing thousands of people to get a point across. Not anymore, anyways. Now…”

Riven gestured the Colonel’s way, and strings of blood snaked their way through the air before tightening around Colonel Landers’ phone. The threads plucked the phone right out of the man’s pocket, and it was set on the table inbetween the two couches where Helena’s half-finished glass of vodka still rested.

With a single finger, Riven pressed the button to turn the phone on - and he turned it around for Colonel Landers to get a good look at the screen.

“Call off your men, and publicly surrender. People are dying needlessly right now. Athela, you can let up on the string.”

Immediately Colonel Landers gasped and began coughing violently when Athela’s thread retracted, and the archdemon lowered her head to whisper a chuckle into the pale man’s ear.

“I will do no such thing!” Colonel Landers hissed, shaking in his seat. “You are an abomination! Your sister will lead us into disaster! We cannot-”

Riven interrupted him with a flick of his wrist, and a spike of crimson ice tore through Colonel Laner’s right knee.

The man screamed, dropping to the ground and writhing in pain while Riven stared emotionlessly down at the man.

Riven glanced down at the time displayed on the other man’s phone, then let out a soft, slow exhale. “General Bruner, bring his wife in here. I’m sure once we start prying off her fingers one by one with pliers, he might be more willing to cooperate with us.”