Eight geysers of blood blew their way out of the ground, each like a firehose of red-stained water turned on full blast. Those eight sanguine jets hardened immediately into long, deadly spikes and rushed toward Shiori, Avalon, Asenath, and me. Two for each of us, and they came in the blink of an eye, faster than most people would have been able to even think, let alone dodge.
But we weren’t most people. Even as my pair of red-tinted spikes were about to shove themselves through my stomach and chest, I was already pivoting while lashing out with my staff. A quick kinetic blast blew the sharpened ends off, making those ends shift back into liquid form to spray off to the side.
Meanwhile, just to my left, Shiori slipped directly between her own incoming spears, catching hold of one before flipping herself up onto it. She then opened her mouth and used the Cù-Sith’s sonic scream, projecting a blast of sound that was so loud and so focused on a very small area, that it literally shattered part of the red spikes a bit closer to the point where they had popped out of the ground, making both fall apart. Shiori, of course, ended up covered in blood as her temporary perch went from solid to liquid.
Avalon and Asenath were dealing with theirs too, but they were behind me, so I had no idea what they did. Only that they were alive and still moving, according to my item sense.
Unfortunately, no sooner had we broken Fossor’s blood spikes and made them turn back into liquid, than they were suddenly solid again. And this time, they weren’t spikes. Instead, dozens of snakes, spiders, and scorpions, all made of solid-formed blood, erupted from those puddles and were set upon us. They were everywhere, dozens of them biting and stinging while we tried to smack them away. But whenever we tried to hit them, they turned back into liquid and just reformed an instant later. It was like trying to punch water. It was all we could do to survive those few precious seconds. Alone, even the four of us probably would have been overwhelmed.
But we weren’t alone. And not only because of my mother and her team fighting Fossor on the other side in a fast-pitched battle I couldn’t even hope to keep track of while in the midst of my own. Virginia Dare was with us too, a fact she made sure to remind the son of a bitch of by appearing directly in between our group, a quick teleport. She had her spell-loaded sword in one hand, already shouting a command word while she drove the blade through one of the blood-formed snakes that had been trying to lunge at me. As the blade passed through the crimson serpent, it turned liquid once more. But then it also turned into powder and dust, blowing apart. An instant later, the rest of the blood-creatures did the same as the spell apparently passed to them. We were clear, for a brief moment anyway.
In that moment, I caught a glimpse of my mother fighting alongside her oldest friends (and first husband). The magical energy blade she summoned extended itself out to be ten feet long for a single swing, cutting through a giant skeletal hand that had been ripping its way out of the ground toward them. Even as the bones fell, Tribald Kine clapped his own hands together, creating some kind of wind-ball that flew out from him, caught the shattered bones, and sent them flying away. Meanwhile, Deveron and Lillian were both dealing with a small army of giant zombified vulture-creatures, and the two Dornan men had a dozen ghosts captured in some sort of energy net.
That was all I was able to see in that brief glimpse, before a backhanded, almost contemptuous gesture from Fossor sent a brand new threat our way. This one came in the form of a deep, incredibly heavy fog. Suddenly, it was all-but impossible to see more than a foot or so in front of our faces. Worse, the fog was cold. So cold I felt ice immediately start to form around and on me. It was an oppressive, magic sort of cold. It made me want to just…. stop, just lie down and stay completely… just… take a little nap, a quick one. It wouldn’t hurt that much in the long run, would it? I could close my eyes, curl in on myself, and then go right back to the important business of… of whatever I was doing. Yeah, it couldn’t be that–
FLICK!
It was Tabbris, screaming in my head as she took over my body to trigger the boost from the staff, launching us upward. We flew out of the magic fog, and I felt the supernatural cold fade, along with the overwhelming tiredness and confusion. I could see Mom and the others on her side fighting Fossor head-on. They hit him repeatedly, but of course nothing stuck. He just passed off everything that could possibly hurt him to any of his billions of magical hostages. It was taking everything they had just to stop him from progressing. They couldn’t actually hurt him. And in a fight like that, it didn’t matter how powerful or skilled they were. Fossor would win through sheer attrition. Eventually they would slip up, no matter how good they were.
Worse, I couldn’t see Dare or any of the other three through that thick fog. I’d only managed to avoid falling to it thanks to my partner. The others didn’t have that bit of help. I had to do something to clear it out. But what?
All of that, taking in what my mother’s group was doing, along with the rush of thoughts about Avalon and the others, came even as I started to fall back into the fog. The blast had only taken me up so far. But I compensated by using the Lemevwik’s power on the feet part of my Seosten bodysuit, freezing their descent. Again, it would only last for a few seconds. But for those seconds, the feet of my suit, and thus my whole body, stopped falling. It was like standing on solid ground.
A few seconds. I had a few seconds to figure out how to get rid of that magic fog. But how? How?! I didn’t have the power to just blow it away, and there wasn’t–
Wait. There. One second into my frantic rush of thoughts, I saw a small hole in the ground just beyond the fog. It would have been impossible to notice from below, but from this angle it was visible. The hole was only a few inches across, and the fog was being projected from it. That was the source.
Without wasting another instant, I shifted my staff back into its bow form. Even as the Lemevwik’s power faded and my body started falling once more, I managed to send a kinetic-energy arrow right at that hole. It struck home, blowing a spray of dirt and rock in every direction and destroying the spell rune that Fossor had apparently placed there ahead of time, no doubt when he was prepping this place for an event like this. And I had no doubt there were more surprises like that all over. After all, the man was annoyingly good at being prepared. A place where he was setting up his final, apocalyptic spell to kill and take over all Bosch Heretics and subsequently all of Earth? After his regular home had been attacked? Yeah, he would have tricks and traps like that all over the place, just ready to be triggered.
This one, however, was dealt with. The instant I blew apart the bit of ground where the spell rune had been, the magic freezing fog vanished like it had never been there. I landed in a crouch, just beside Avalon even as the other girl straightened from where she had been hunched in on herself.
“Flick,” she managed, in a voice that cracked from emotion.
“I know,” I managed, though there was so much more I desperately wanted to say. “Later. This first. This now. We stop Fossor. It’s all that matters.”
She gave a very short nod, a bare acknowledgment. She knew. We all knew. Nothing mattered except for putting Fossor in the fucking ground for good. Ending him before he ended us. That was all there was to it. Nothing else, not my love for Avalon and Shiori, not my desperate need to reunite with my mother, not my relief to have Tabbris back with me, not my worry about Dare being my actual grandmother, none of that held a candle to stopping Fossor right now.
Without another word exchanged between us, Avalon and I ran together toward the monster himself. Within two steps, Shiori was on my other side, joined by Asenath.
An army of undead rose into our path. Hundreds of rotting corpses tore their way out of the ground, forcing themselves between us and our target. I couldn’t control that many, not even close. And fighting them would slow us down. It was too much, this fucker never ran out of troops!
A deafening roar filled the air, and I saw an Amarok–Dare. It was Dare, in her full Amarok form. The giant wolf, bigger than a city bus, lunged over our heads and landed right in the middle of the largest concentration of zombies. She spun, taking half a dozen into her mouth and pitching them away even as her tail and legs knocked more flying. A path, she was clearing a path.
The four of us raced right between the giant wolf’s legs, sprinting together into the semi-open space she was creating.
Semi-open, because there were still zombies around, still undead tearing their way out of the ground and toward us. Dare-Wolf was doing everything she could to clear space for us to move, but we still had to deal with plenty of them ourselves.
Avalon pivoted toward me, Porthos (her lizard-cyberform) in his pistol form clutched in one hand as she fired three quick shots. They came so close that one brushed through my hair, each hitting a different zombie behind me in the head. At the same time, her other arm stabbed to her left, gauntlet manifesting a buzzsaw blade that took the head off a fourth zombie that was coming toward Shiori before the buzzsaw immediately transformed into two horizontal blades faced in opposite directions that extended outward to spear through the heads of two more enemies.
Shiori, at the same time, was hurling her electrified discs through the foreheads of a couple different zombies while simultaneously lashing out with a kick against a third into its chest. That third zombie was sent stumbling backward, just as a second Shiori appeared. But it wasn’t actually a second Shiori. Not in the same way that Miranda duplicated herself. Instead, this version seemed more ghost-like, only partially visible, like a flickering image. It only appeared long enough to duplicate the exact same move Shiori had just done a moment earlier, kicking the zombie further away. Then it vanished and a third Shiori appeared, this one even more indistinct and flickering, kicking the zombie yet again in the exact same way. That continued through a total of five increasingly flickering and gradually almost invisible duplicates, all doing the exact same thing until the zombie was positioned directly under Dare-Wolf’s giant foot just as it came down hard, smashing the undead thing.
Meanwhile, as Avalon fired those three shots past my head and Shiori’s repeated semi-tangible duplicates kicked the zombie into position for Dare, I drove the blade of my staff down through a portal I had created. The other end of the portal opened up behind Valley, sending the blade into the head of the zombie that had been moving up behind her even as she focused on watching the backs of Shiori and me. Just as quickly, I yanked the staff out of the portal, shouting her name as I threw myself that way.
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Avalon reacted instantly, ducking down and bending forward to present her back to me, which I used by planting one hand on it to vault over her while lashing out with my staff. The bladed end cut through two zombies that were coming up on that side, while I simultaneously launched the grapple-end into the face of another one, retracting it to rip the head off entirely.
Behind me, Avalon had straightened in time to switch Porthos to his lizard form, tossing him onto the shoulder of another incoming zombie. Porthos, in turn, pulled his tail free, using it as his sword to stab into the neck of the undead creature he was perched on. With a rush of chittering nonsense words that sounded like his own version of some epic declaration, the tiny cyberform stabbed the zombie repeatedly in the neck, severing the head and riding the body to the ground.
Just beyond Avalon’s lizard, as I shifted my staff to its bow form and fired a shot into a group that was moving to cut us off, Asenath had flipped up and over a zombie that was lunging for her, hurling two daggers into the foreheads of a couple others who were coming toward her. As she landed, the girl produced a third dagger, driving it backwards through the back of the first zombie’s head. Then she pivoted, lashing out with a roundhouse kick that hit the hilt of that last knife so hard, it was projected all the way through the zombie’s head and out the other side to fly into the throat of yet another one.
The zombies kept coming, making us pay in drastic violence for every single inch of ground we gained. Even with Dare-Wolf above us, dealing with the largest concentration of them (and she was doing a hell of a lot more than biting them, actually involving a lot of lightning, fire, and wind in the process to blow them away), there were still a fair number who made it through.
And yet, we pressed on. I took two steps, then ducked and spat a glob of quick-hardening resin against the feet of two zombies who were in mid-lunge. They were stopped short in their tracks, just before Shiori’s hurled discs tore through their necks, leaving the heads to fall to either side. But before the two bodies could drop, Avalon was there. She grabbed both by the chests, disintegrating them into dust the way I’d seen her do earlier. Her hands snapped outward then, sending the disintegrated zombie dust flying onto another pair before it ignited in green flames once more. The zombies were melted by the intense heat.
A skeletal form tore its way up from the ground to grab Avalon’s ankles and bite into her leg, but I was already there. I’d felt the thing arriving, and my hand snapped up, forcing the undead creature to stop in mid-lunge. It released her, and with a quick gesture from both hands, I made it scramble its way out of the hole before sending it running into another of its own kind. They collided violently and collapsed together, leaving a tangled heap of bones on the ground from the impressive tackle.
While I was doing that, Tabbris took control of my right hand, creating a quick portal before stabbing the blade of the staff through it to punch into the side of another zombie’s head just before it could grab Shiori. That girl, in turn, had been in the midst of catching a skeleton’s incoming swinging arm against both of her discs, before she gave a sharp whistle and made the thing’s head blow apart into bone-dust.
A quick burst from my staff sent me flying that way, just in time to put my foot through the chest of a zombie that had been right between my girls. And that was literally through the chest of the zombie. It was gooey.
Even as that one was falling, Avalon blurted my name while seemingly punching right at my face. I ducked, letting her extend the blade to take the head off the thing that had been coming up behind me.
At the same time, Shiori extended her own hand, snapping, “Gun!” Which was all it took for Valley to backhand toss Porthos to her before the other girl snapped him up in his pistol form and fired three rapid shots that took yet another trio of zombies out that had been coming up from behind Avalon.
Kill, punch, stab, dodge, kick, power. It went on and on. Dozens and dozens of the things fell, and yet dozens and dozens remained. There was no limit to them, none. We were closer to Fossor, but he was also closer to the altar, gradually forcing my mother and her team back inch by inch. And we weren’t closing the gap fast enough. It was all Dare could do to keep things as clear as they were so that we weren’t completely overwhelmed. Not to mention everyone else who was here fighting in the quarry. Fossor had billions of forces at his disposal. Even if he could only bring over so many at a time, our small group would have been completely destroyed without literally everyone else who had our backs.
But it wasn’t enough. There were still… fuck, way too many zombies in our way. Fossor had flooded the area between us with another hundred or so, and there wasn’t time to deal with all of them. There just wasn’t time!
Flick! Tabbris’s voice in my head blurted. Tell Shiori to electrocute you, absorb it all, then on the count of three, boost with everything you’ve got. All of it!
I didn’t question it. I had questions, for sure. But I trusted my sister. “Shiori!” I snapped. “Shock me, now!”
To her credit, she didn’t question it either. I felt her slam both her discs against my back, flooding me with electricity while I focused on absorbing everything I could. In the back of my mind, I heard Tabbris counting. On three, I shoved everything I’d absorbed into my boost. I felt Tabbris doing the same, adding her own boost to mine.
The world slowed down dramatically. I saw the incoming horde blocking our way. I saw every detail of their rotting faces. I saw my mother and her people on the far side of Fossor, fighting to stop him from getting any closer to his target. I saw all of it.
My staff hit the ground, slammed down by Tabbris as she triggered the kinetic blast while simultaneously leaping with our feet. We hurled up into the air, just barely missing colliding with Dare as the giant wolf moved aside. The horde of zombies stretched out below us, while more flying versions were already incoming. But for this single moment, we had an opening.
And boy did Tabbris use that opening. As we were briefly suspended there in mid-air, I felt… power unlike any I had ever felt before. Wings made of golden light erupted from my back, extending outward to either side to flare like a literal fucking angel.
Then… annihilation. The wings fired a massive laser, empowered by our combined super-charged boosts, which tore through the line of zombies below and utterly decimated them. There was nothing left but a crater full of random assorted body parts. Nothing.
A second later, we landed in a crouch right in front of Shiori, Avalon, and Asenath, with Dare already reverting to her human form right behind all of us.
I… had questions. God damn did I have questions. But there wasn’t time. All that mattered was getting to Fossor. And right now, the way was open.
But it wasn’t open for long. While the five of us raced that way, more of those undead troops were rising to plug the gap that Tabbris had created. They fell in behind and around us like a flood of water rushing to fill in a brief hole. Even as we ran, they kept coming. Dare pivoted, using a forcefield to block a rush from behind us. With one hand, she tossed something to me. It was a round piece of metal with a rune inscribed on it.
“Get it to your mother! She can use it to break the altar!”
With the enchanted bit of metal in one hand, I sprinted. Avalon shouted for me to keep going, focusing her own efforts to the left side to keep those ones down. Shiori and Asenath turned to the right, repeating Valley’s words.
And me? I ran straight on. Fossor was there, face to face with my mother. Most of the others were caught up, dealing with other things he had summoned. But Mom still stood in his way, albeit barely. They were only a few feet from the altar, and she was faltering a bit. Nothing she did actually stuck. She could kill this fucker a dozen times over or more and it wouldn’t matter.
Then she saw me, and steely resolve returned to her gaze. Her sword snapped up, actually cutting through the one that Fossor had summoned, before she lashed out with a kick that sent him stumbling backward toward me. As she did so, I used a quick portal, shoving my hand through to drop Dare’s magic bit of metal into Mom’s grasp. I felt her fingers against mine ever-so-briefly.
Then my hand pulled back as the portal disappeared. Mom had the thing in her grasp. Our gazes met. We locked eyes. And then my mother did the one thing Fossor never could have expected.
She turned her back to him and focused on the altar itself.
In that moment, at that very instant, my mother… trusted me to handle Fossor for the few seconds it would take. She didn’t rush to protect me. She didn’t focus on keeping him away from me. She trusted me. And she put my fate in that trust, while she herself dealt with the threat to the actual world.
Fossor, taken aback, screamed a threat while Mom raised the enchanted metal disc above the altar. He saw what she was doing, and it was apparently a real threat, because suddenly he was very focused on killing her.
But I wouldn’t let that happen. With my own scream, I launched myself at him. His free hand lashed out to contemptuously smack me away… except I wasn’t there. Instead of blindly flinging my body at him, I had used a short burst from my staff to arrest my motion in mid-leap. Dropping to a crouch just as Fossor’s hand passed right over my head, I triggered the grapple, launching it full-force into the hand that he was pointing at my mother. The grapple itself passed right over his arm, but the energy rope part caught him, yanking his extended hand to the side just before he could finish whatever he had been intending to do to stop her.
And then it was too late. Mom’s hand with that disc came slamming down as she blurted a single command word. With a brilliant, blinding burst of energy and light, the altar literally disintegrated before our eyes. Every bit of magic that Fossor had put into it just… fell apart.
As for the man himself, he… wasn’t happy. To say the least. A deafening scream of rage erupted from him, and he was suddenly moving at me. I brought up my staff to defend myself, but he smacked it aside easily. “You take what I want?!” he bellowed at my mother, while a flickering green forcefield sprang up around us, cutting her off even as she lunged to save me.
The world spun as Fossor easily manhandled me, throwing me against the ground so hard it took my breath away. His foot stomped down on my chest, making that whole breathing thing worse. Then he stomped hard on my arm, snapping it. Pain filled me as I cried out, only for the man to stomp down on my wrist that time. That broke too, renewing my cry. It would heal, pretty fast considering everything I’d gotten regeneration from. But not quick enough for me to defend myself. Beyond the forcefield, Mom was shouting at him.
Fossor didn’t care. A snarl filled his voice. “You take what I want?” he repeated, “I will take what you want. But first, I will… break!” With that word, he stomped on my hand, and I felt something snap there. “Every!” Another stomp, and two more fingers broke. “Bone!” He stomped yet again. My hand felt like he was crushing it. Agony filled my every thought.
Well, almost every thought. I did have one more…
“In!” Fossor continued, his foot coming down once more. Except… this time he didn’t hit my hand. His foot collided with something solid. And as he did, a thunderclap, loud enough to rock the heavens, filled the quarry. A level of power I had never experienced, not even when Fossor had sent me to the future, suddenly washed through the air like a shockwave going in every direction.
He knew something was wrong. He felt it immediately. Doubling over with a gasp of genuine shock, Fossor snapped, “What–what… my world… my world, I can’t–what did…”
Yeah, Fossor’s connection to his own world was gone. He’d triggered the curse that said setting foot on Earth ground without stepping on ashes from his people would sever his connection to his homeworld and all those people. Suddenly, he wasn’t a necromancer who controlled billions. All he had was what was already here on Earth. No more unlimited reinforcements. No more passing off every bit of damage that was done to him to literally billions of hostages.
He was vulnerable.
In his shock as to how that was possible, Fossor lifted his foot, the one he had been using to stomp my hand into dust. Clenched there in my palm, right where he had technically ‘stepped’, was a small… entirely Earth-bound stone. An Earth-bound stone wearing a hat and holding a tiny sword.
“That’s right, you piece of shit,” I managed through gritted teeth.
“Herbie says hi.”