Threshold City

1:00 PM

The 1911’s slide locked back just as Tantalus’s eyes returned to their natural blue color. The Second Dark Apostle laid prone on the ground. Everything above his nose had been turned into a liquid, rendering his face essentially unrecognizable. Tantalus slowly looked down at the empty handgun before dropping it to the ground; he still had a few more magazines in pouches on his hip, but they were for the now-destroyed Luger.

Tantalus paused for a few seconds, looking down at the man he had just violently killed. Perhaps it was because he had killed before or perhaps it was because of the deterioration his mental state had suffered over the past decade, but the act of murder didn’t register emotionally for Tantalus in that moment. He felt no guilt. Rather, he just felt a subdued sense of pride at the caliber of the great enemy he had just felled.

“Tantalus!” Pixie shouted. “Izanagi is dying! Help me!”

The Captain turned his head and looked briefly at Pixie. She was kneeling next to Izanagi’s eviscerated body and fishing through her satchel. Most of Izanagi’s upper torso was missing. Tantalus could see Izanagi’s weakly-beating heart at the bottom of the hole Talwar had torn in his chest. After a moment, Izanagi’s Rapid Healing had progressed enough to wrap some protective flesh around that most vital of organs.

Tantalus grit his teeth. Revenants could survive most lethal wounds, but Izanagi had simply taken too much damage. Tantalus knew that he would run out of blood long before he could heal himself. The very fact that he was even still conscious spoke to Izanagi’s impressive mental fortitude.

Tantalus peered over at Talwar’s slowly disappearing body. There was still one thing that he had to retrieve before he could do anything else.

“I’ll be there in thirty seconds,” Tantalus said to Pixie as he walked up to the Dark Apostle’s corpse. He slowly withdrew his combat knife as he placed a knee firmly on Talwar’s stomach.

Tantalus firmly drove his knife into the corpse’s chest. The flesh yielded readily to the Captain’s knife. It felt like cutting into overripe fruit or a corpse that had been decaying out in the open for several days. Tantalus withdrew his knife and stabbed back into the corpse’s torso several times before he finally felt his blade strike against something metallic. He felt around with his fingers before grabbing a long oblong shape. The process became easier with every passing second as Talwar’s body turned into ash, and Tantalus was able to easily tear the object out.

Out of the corpse, Tantalus pulled a black key with two stems and six rudimentary bits. It was a large key that would not easily fit inside of someone’s pocket. Looking at it, one would expect it to open a castle gate. Every square centimeter of the key was covered in silver glyphs, and a large silver numeral adorned the key’s bow: II.

With the key still gripped tightly in one hand, Tantalus ran over to Pixie and Izanagi. Tantalus heard small bells twinkling behind his ears as he walked, the sound that the System used to indicate that something on the player’s Character Sheet had changed. He ignored the sound.

Tantalus knelt down next to Pixie. Izanagi’s wounds were healing at a good pace. As he healed, however, his skin grew ever paler as if he had been stretched too thin and his internal systems were struggling to keep up. Just when Izanagi’s organs had been covered with a layer of protective muscle, the healing abruptly stopped. Izanagi had run out of blood to heal himself, but he was still bleeding heavily from his chest.

Pixie frantically withdrew a blood bag and a phlebotomist’s kit from her satchel. As she brought a syringe toward Izanagi’s arm, Tantalus spoke. “Don’t. You’ll just put him in more pain before he dies.”

Pixie’s arm halted in mid-air. The Captain’s words shook her from her stupor. They both knew the nature of Revenant blood.

“I assume that isn’t his blood?” Tantalus said in an exhausted voice. The slightest spark of hope turned the sentence into a question at the last moment.

“No, it’s yours,” Pixie responded.

Tantalus chuckled darkly before saying, “Do you have anything in there for easing the pain?”

The half of Izanagi’s face that wasn’t covered by the mask showed a tension borne of pain and a powerful resolve to stay awake. Tantalus got the sense that, under the mask, Izanagi was gritting his teeth hard enough to crack them.

Pixie fished through her satchel. As she did, Tantalus lightly patted Izanagi on the knee and said, “I don’t know if you saw, but we got him.” He held up the key for Izanagi to see. “He was so busy with you that he didn’t even notice me until I was basically pressing the barrel of my gun to the back of his head.”

From the satchel, Pixie withdrew a military-grade auto-injector with Iron Script on the side. Tantalus didn’t have to translate the script to know that it said “morphine.” Pixie moved the auto-injector toward Izanagi’s arm.

Weakly, Izanagi raised a hand in a symbol of denial. The auto-injector halted in the air, and a look of confusion passed over the two other Revenants' faces.

“You don’t want it?” Pixie asked, prompting a weak shake of the head from Izanagi. “Okay.”

Izanagi held a hand out and began to gesture slowly with his hand. One of his eyes was closed, and the other was half-lidded. He was using his Menu, Tantalus realized.

Tantalus gritted his teeth to hold back tears. Izanagi was still fighting. He was still looking for a way to survive. “No one else on this server could have done what you did, you know? You can be proud of that.”

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Pixie hid her face behind her hand and tried her best to choke back sobs. Soon they would grow accustomed to watching people die slowly, that was the nature of Revenants. Their Rapid Healing skill meant they were very difficult to kill. On the other hand, this meant that, when they did die, it was rarely a quick process.

Izanagi brought his hand to his demon mask, and he slowly removed it. He placed the mask on the ground, and he closed his eyes.

A faint wind brushed Izanagi's hair aside. His hand still tightly gripped his sword.

Izanagi was dead.

Tantalus placed his hand over his eyes to cover the tears streaming down his face. Pixie cried openly. Another man was dead. Another man had been taken unjustly by the cruel machinations of GM.

Soon, the sound of warfare quieted to a distant roar, and the other Greycloaks present in the town square approached Tantalus and Pixie. The nearby gunfire had been silenced, leaving only the violent staccato emanating from the direction of the train. The danger had not been completely eliminated, but those Revenants in the town square were no longer in immediate danger.

"Terra vivificare," Tantalus chanted numbly, causing a hole five feet wide by fifteen feet long to open up in the ground. You weren't supposed to use Earth Pillar that way, but Tantalus didn't particularly care for convention in that moment.

Tantalus looked around at the battlefield around him. The dense cloud of smoke that had covered the Greycloaks’ movements a few minutes prior had just begun to dissipate. FullDan was crouched down near Colonel Feldrast, wrapping a layer of gauze around a wound on her arm. Based on the newly acquired bloodstains on FullDan’s cloak, it was clear that he had taken a few bullets himself. GatorKing, on the other hand, was upright. He stood in the center of a crescent of ash and disintegrating Deluvians. GatorKing took a moment to catch his breath before he returned his sword to its sheath.

All of the other NPCs had been killed. Some of them, like General Dogwood, had been cut by Talwar’s spell while others had been killed by gunfire when the Deluvians attacked.

Off to one side, Tantalus saw a group of eight Greycloaks approaching his position. One of the Greycloaks was being supported by two others. Due to their distance and obscuring cloaks, Tantalus could not make out their features. Despite this, he knew exactly who they were.

FullDan jerked into movement a moment after Tantalus saw him. He brought his rifle to low-ready before realizing that the figure looking at him was Tantalus rather than a Dark Apostle. Sheepishly, FullDan waved at Tantalus before continuing to aid Maria Feldrast.

Thus, GatorKing was the first of the Greycloaks to return to Tantalus’s side. As he approached, Tantalus held up the obsidian key.

“Is that the…?” GatorKing asked.

“Yes," Tantalus said. He should have been happy, but the sight of an old friend dead on the ground killed his mood.

“What happened? How did you kill the second one? What happened to the first one?” Gator asked. The Knight paused as he saw Izanagi laying on his back with most of his organs torn out.

"We won," Tantalus said. He clapped Gator on the shoulder as he walked passed.

The eight approaching Greycloaks reached Tantalus and GatorKing. Now that they were so close, Tantalus could confirm that they were the Revenants of Squads T1 and T2. Redgrave was being supported by Elias and Grim as they walked. Once they stopped, Redgrave removed his arms from the other two Greycloaks and sat down on the ground. One of Redgrave’s feet had been removed just above the ankle.

“Nice shot,” Tantalus said, outstretching his fist toward Redgrave.

Silently, Redgrave returned the fist bump with a smile.

"By the way," Tantalus said, "why are you guys here?" He looked over at the majority of the Greycloaks who had just rejoined the group.

“Come on,” Jessica said, “we couldn’t let our squad leaders fight by themselves.”

Gator stroked his chin thoughtfully before saying, “The Deluvian attack that FullDan and I had to fend off was weaker than usual. I was wondering why.”

“Yeah, many of the Deluvians were attacking us,” Redgrave said. “Don’t be too harsh on them, T, they helped me beat back the Deluvians that were drawn to my position by the shot.”

Tantalus did not mention that Redgrave probably wouldn’t have been forced to engage the Deluvians directly if he had been alone. It would only make everyone feel worse. The plan was for Redgrave to regroup with the negotiation team after the assassination. The presence of eight other Revenants with much lower skill levels disallowed Redgrave from extracting before the Deluvians reached his position.

“Whatever," Tantalus said. "We might need more soldiers now, anyway."

The Greycloaks turned toward the prone form of Izanagi. They couldn't hold a funeral. They had no time. Instead, FullDan and GatorKing lowered Izanagi's corpse into the hole that Tantalus had so recently created with magic. As Izanagi's corpse was moved, his katana fell out of his hand.

Redgrave picked the katana up by the hilt once Izanagi had been lowered into the impromptu grave. He asked, "Should we bury him with the sword?"

"No," Tantalus muttered. "The fact that he didn't have a death grip on the damn thing means he wants us to have it. That's his way of communication."

A long moment passed as Redgrave retrieved Izanagi's sheath and Tantalus closed up the grave.

“So, what do we do now?” Gator asked.

“I was going to ask the same thing,” Elias said quickly.

Tantalus looked toward the train and the unceasing patter of gunfire coming from that direction. “I’m still thinking about that. Give me a few seconds of silence, and I’ll have an answer.”

The Greycloaks immediately fell into silence. Tantalus took a few steps away and knelt down. With his eyes closed and hand pressed against the stone ground at his feet, he remained still for several seconds.

Visualization of a battlefield had long been Tantalus’s specialty. While InfiniteRecursion was better at most aspects of strategy, Tantalus was leagues better at using sound, sight, and deductive reasoning to determine the precise location of enemy soldiers and their future actions. Most other strategists in high level Ninth Oasis play had to rely on drones or security cameras to determine enemy troop position, but Tantalus could do it on the fly. It only took him a few moments to listen to the symphony of battle and come up with the best plan of action.

Tantalus stood and walked over to the pile of equipment and grey ash that lay where Talwar had been a few moments before. He withdrew two pistol magazines from the belt that no longer girded anything. Seconds later, eyes still locked in thought, he picked up the Glock pistol that had been dropped so carelessly on the ground. He loaded a new magazine into the Glock and chambered a round before returning to the other Greycloaks. By this point, FullDan had returned to the group supporting Colonel Feldrast as he walked.

The group of twelve people looked at Tantalus in silence for several seconds. Tantalus broke the silence.

“We need to retreat away from the train.”