Okay, so there was a way to stop the army of Revenants from rampaging all over the planet. Unfortunately, to get to the off switch, we were going to have to fight our way through other Revenants who were guarding it. And our ridiculous secret weapon, Sun Wukong, was off delaying the main body of the things so they wouldn’t do as much damage. Which was too important to pull him away from. Besides, I didn’t even know how to do that if I wanted to. Which meant it was absolutely up to the rest of us to actually go through the Revenants who were left and get to that switch. Or the crystal, as the old man had called it.
We all would’ve liked to get a lot more information out of these people, but there wasn’t time. Sure, Wukong was out there and had already proven himself more than a match for these Revenants, but I didn’t think even he could be everywhere at once to stop all of them. At least not before they managed to kill a lot of civilians.
But we also couldn’t just leave all the villagers. There was no telling what they might do behind our backs while we were gone. Fortunately, Judas’s pocket greenhouse was more than big enough to hold them. Denuvus ordered them inside, before the man closed it up. We’d deal with that whole thing once the bigger situation was dealt with. Assuming we were all still alive. And yes, the thought of what would happen to those guys in the garden if we weren’t around to get them out again did make me blanch a little. Even if they were celebrating the fact that they had unleashed a horde of monsters to genocide an entire world, I was pretty sure they didn’t really know any better. Their entire culture and history revolved around this.
Still, they were a problem right now. So they could just stay in time-out until we were ready to do something about them. Otherwise they would almost certainly end up making the situation worse.
Once they were out of the way, we were running again. This time, Persephone and the others led us back in the direction of where the Revenants had been locked up. They’d managed to find their way back to familiar territory near that village area, and now they knew exactly where we were going.
The rest of us trailed behind them, even as they in turn kept shooting glances toward Denuvus. As did the rest of Miles’ team. We’d given them the quick explanation about why she was working with us, but I was pretty sure they were still convinced she’d find a way to fuck us over. Which was fair, considering the not-insubstantial part of me that felt the same way.
Then there was Trice. He was only around to stay close to Denuvus, which… was he actually loyal to her? She hadn’t been using her power on him in all the time since we’d run into her, but did she have some longer term method of control? Or was this all by his choice?
Maybe he just knew we were his best chance to get off this world in the long run.
Soon enough (even if it felt like an eternity), I didn’t have time to wonder about his motivations, or anything else aside from what was right in front of us and what we were going to have to pull off to fix this situation. With every step as we ran along the tunnels and caverns, the terror I felt about what was going on out across the rest of this world got worse. As absurdly powerful as Wukong apparently was, there were too many of them. They were too fast, too strong, too… dangerous. Even if he was fine, even if he could survive and triumph over the entire swarm, all they had to do was spread out. Even with duplication, he certainly couldn’t stop them all, and even a single one could utterly devastate an entire village on its own incredibly quickly. The longer this took, the more innocent people were going to die. And it had already taken entirely too long. I kept imagining that every time my foot hit the ground, another person was dead. Another ten people, another fifty. How many would it be in the end, by the time this was over? How much death and tragedy had these people unleashed on a world that had already been through more than its fair share?
On the way there, we talked about what we would find. Apparently, the way to the chamber where the Revenants had been imprisoned wasn’t just an ordinary door. According to Judas and the others, there had been what looked like a large sarcophagus mounted to the wall. When they got there with the tribals, the eyes lit up and it scanned Persephone before opening to reveal a dark void beyond. Unfortunately, they never got further than that. As soon as it was opened, the tribals who were with them had shouted something triumphantly, just before that swarm of Revenants had all flown out and taken off through the walls. When they realized what was happening, Robin, Persephone, Judas, and Stasia had tried to do something about it. But the leader of the tribals had teleported them off to the trap room we’d found them in.
Percy, for her part, visibly flinched at the reminder that the rest of the Revenants had been released when she stood in front of the sarcophagus thing. She started to offer another apology, but I reached out to squeeze her arm. “It’s okay,” I assured her while we continued to run. “You didn’t know!”
And yet, even as I said that, I couldn’t help the shot of guilt that rushed through my own system. I hadn’t known what would happen either, but still. I had brought her here. Everything would’ve been fine, generally speaking, if we stayed on that station. The only reason these monsters were even a threat right now was because I brought Persephone here. Little things such as the fact that we were coming to this world anyway and she would’ve ended up here even if it was after the Denuvus situation was resolved didn’t stop my stomach from churning. Yes, we would have come to this world, and yes, it was likely that we would have checked this place out, considering the whole Fossor thing. But still… yeah, but still.
As for Persephone, she still looked torn and disgusted with herself, but gave me a very slight nod. “Whatever it takes, I will make this right, Felicity Chambers. I will help you stop my people. But be careful. They are very strong. I… I do not want any of you to die now.”
Mom spoke up before I could respond to that, even as we rounded a corner at a full sprint and started descending through a slightly more narrow tunnel. “No one’s dying. We just have to lure them away from the crystal. I doubt we can get them out of the chamber, but we should be able to present a pretty good distraction.”
Mercury gave a short nod. “Of course. Remember, we don’t have to win any sort of fight with them, just distract them enough for one person to get to the crystal and activate it. You all remember what our elderly friend said about how to do that.” His voice caught a little on ‘elderly friend.’ I was pretty sure he was still trying to cope with the idea that these tribal people were all descended from ancient, pre-modification Seosten. Even Tabbris was clearly reeling from that whole thing, and she hadn’t actually grown up within their civilization the way he had.
Asenath, clearly doing her best to roll with the revelation that the man who had screwed up her father’s memories was already dead (killed by the man responsible for so many of my own family’s problems, even), found her voice. “Sure, just get everyone to play ‘neener neener can’t catch me’ with the Revenants until one of us can get to the crystal and call the whole thing off. We know how to do that.”
Despite my fear and revulsion about how long it was taking and how many people would have been killed in that time, we reached the spot in question in what had to be record time. ‘The spot,’ in this case, was an ovular chamber, just barely large enough for our rather numerous group to fit within. There, just in front of us, was the sarcophagus, just like they’d said. It was open, revealing the promised black void beyond. A black void through which we would apparently be able to reach the room with the crystal, where we could put a stop to this whole thing.
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As soon as we stopped, I peered into that darkness ahead of us. I felt… something. It was dangerous and powerful, enough to make me shudder a little as sweat dotted itself across my forehead. “Right, so the room’s right through that doorway?”
“It’s not just a doorway,” Mom announced. She paused, squinting closer at it before adding, “It’s a portal of some sort. Wherever the actual chamber on the other side is, it’s not right there. Probably much deeper underground.”
Oh, right. Yeah, of course. If this thing was just a normal door leading to the Revenants those guys wanted to unleash, they probably could have found a way through at some point in all these years. It being a portal that had to be activated made a lot more sense.
“Sure, magical portal somewhere else, great.” Muttering that, I added, “No wonder we can’t see anything. But I’m pretty sure I can still sense the Revenants through that portal. They’re uhh…they’re in there, and they’re staying on the far side of the room, probably near the crystal. At least, as far as I can tell. It’s hard to make out specifics.” I swallowed. “And for the record, they’re not a cheerful bunch.”
“My people never are,” Persephone noted a bit sadly. “These ones are no exception.”
Stepping right next to her, Mercury put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it. “They are not your people, Persephone. We are.” With those firm words, he added, “Everyone knows what to do now, how to start the crystal if you’re the one who gets to it?”
“Yeah,” Trice was muttering, “and we know it takes at least a full minute of focus. A full minute where the person doing it can’t react to anything or defend themselves. I don’t know about any of you, but that screams suicide to me.”
With a small smile, Denuvus agreed, “Which is why I am certainly not going inside.” When everyone looked at her, she shrugged. “I am a survivor. You don’t become a survivor by intentionally putting yourself into enclosed spaces with creatures who could kill you. If you all succeed at this little endeavor, I shall applaud you. If not, I shall find some other method of leaving this world and achieving my goals. There are always options. Oh, and good luck to you.”
“Yeah, what she said.” Trice stepped over closer to where the woman was standing. “Good luck, have fun, try not to die.” His eyes found mine as he added in a flat voice, “I’d hate to have to give your other girlfriend that news.”
Ignoring him, because he was irrelevant and we didn’t have time, I squeezed Shiori’s hand and looked back to the opening. “Right, well everything else about those two aside, I think it’s fair that anyone who doesn’t want to go in there with those Revenants doesn’t have to.”
“Felicity’s absolutely correct,” Mom agreed. “The creatures in that chamber are some of the most dangerous in the universe. If they have bodies right now, as we suspect they do, they could be nearly unstoppable in a pack like that. Anyone who doesn’t want to go in there, you don’t have to. No one is going to look down on you for it.”
We all looked at one another then. I was going in. So was my mother, and Mercury. Shiori, Asenath, and Twister would be there too. Nevada had already begun pulling new weapons out of her bracelet-box thing. Robin’s eyes had switched over to red for Brawl, with Judas and Stasia on either side of him. They were going in too.
The only real question, in the end, was Miles and his team. They had been talking amongst themselves the whole time we came up here, and even more before then. I kept hearing him apologize for his part in getting them caught up in the whole Denuvus situation, and they continually told him to knock it off because it wasn’t his fault. That, of course, had been accompanied with lingering, dark looks toward the woman whose fault it actually was. Not that Denuvus paid any attention to them, or seemed to care in any way what they thought of her.
After a quick few words exchanged among themselves, Miles turned back and gave a slightly shaky nod, his voice cracking. “Not really time for any grand speeches or promises, but we’re going in.” His eyes shifted toward Denuvus once more as he added a bit pointedly, “It might not be our fault that this happened, but we were still involved. So we’re gonna help fix it.”
“Yeah,” the Caucasian boy with light brown hair whom I thought was named Jason (was it me, or were there a lot of those?) agreed. “People are dying out there, and a lot more are gonna be right behind them. We can’t just let that happen. Besides, isn’t saving innocents from monsters the whole Heretic thing?”
“Okay.” I could tell that even saying that single word hurt my mother. The last thing she wanted to do was let us go in there. Not just me, but everyone else too, especially those of us who were still students. Unfortunately, there was nobody else. There weren’t enough adults here to distract the Revenants and use the crystal. Especially not with Trice and Denuvus both backing out.
This was what my mother had done for a long time, back in the first rebellion. She knew that some of the people she sent on various missions would not come back. She knew she couldn’t be everywhere at once and couldn’t do everything that needed to be done. Even during the time that she’d had Committee level powers, she was only one person. Being the leader of the Rebellion had meant sending people to die. And knowing her, she remembered all of them. Hell, it hadn’t been that long since we lost Tribald Kine, one of her oldest friends.
I just hoped we could get through this without my mother being forced to put any more of those tallies on her board.
With everything settled as it was going to be, we lined up, and I took a look at this group that was about to try to take on a small army of Revenants long enough to shut this whole thing down. I wished Avalon and the rest of my team were here. I wished Vanessa and Tristan were here. I wished–well, wishing wouldn’t really do anything. Besides, as much as I wished they were here, I was also glad they weren’t. If this went wrong at all, it was going to go very wrong.
Ready, partner? I asked Tabbris, feeling her reassuring presence within me as I pushed those thoughts out of my head.
Um, as ready as ever, she managed. I could feel her uncertainty. Are we sure this whole thing isn’t just an elaborate trick Denuvus set up just in case? You know, make this whole thing as a trick in case things start going wrong for her so she can send us through that portal to some prison she’s set up or whatever.
Wincing a bit inwardly, I replied, Trust me, I thought about that too. But I don’t think even she’s that good. She hasn’t had time to set that up, and there’s a few too many pieces involved. Plus, we saw those other Revenants.
Yeah, I know, she agreed hesitantly. I just needed to hear someone else say it.
It was time. With Denuvus and Trice standing out of the way and watching us like they thought we were idiots, the rest of us took a deep breath. Metaphorically in Robin’s case. Then they and Persephone lunged through the hole.
The portal through the sarcophagus was only wide enough for a couple people at a time. Those two went through first, with my mother and Nevada right behind them. Mercury was possessing Mom to make her stronger and faster. After those four were in, Stasia and Asenath jumped through, with Judas and Twister right behind them.
Only once all of them were through the portal did the rest of us go. They would be attracting the first reaction and initial attack from the creatures inside. I didn’t like my mom being in that position, to say nothing of everyone else. But someone had to.
Tabbris and I were next through the portal, with Shiori at my side. Going into the opening felt like stepping through some sort of oil bath. It felt sticky and cold. My stomach twisted, no I had no idea if that was just an effect of the transportation magic or simply a psychological reaction to the idea that we were about to be face-to-face with a group of creatures who could tear me apart in an instant.
Either way, the cold, oily feeling faded immediately. The second we were through, Shiori and I both darted to the side so the others could follow us. Then we looked around, quickly taking things in. Which was when the surprise hit. We weren’t just standing in a normal room. It was a cavern with dirt under our feet, dotted with glowing stalactites and stalagmites that were giving off enough light for us to see. All of which was fine. But then there was the size. This place was enormous. It was a truly massive chamber. The width by itself was at least three football fields. And the length? I literally couldn’t see the other end of this place. Far, far in the distance, I caught a glimpse of something bright blue. The crystal, presumably. Too bad it was apparently like a mile away, instead of what we thought when the guy said ‘the other side of the room.’
Then there were the Revenants. My mother and the others were already engaged with them. All eighteen of the things. Not a few, eighteen. And yes, they already had corpse bodies, meaning they were at full strength. Three more than had been in our way before, and this time I didn’t have a pocket Wukong to jump in.
“Oh,” I managed while the others came through behind us and took in what we were seeing.
“Fuck.”