Jacob gritted his teeth. He warred within himself between the completely rational urge to flee and the unreasonably naive fancy to stand and fight.
Naivety won. He worked his way back up with a grunt, struggling as if against arms holding him down. Not everyone managed it. Along the line, he saw Towman and Bang Boom turn and run. Almost instantly, they fell down dead like puppets with their strings cut.
Fuck.
There went his ticket off-world. Didn’t even make it to the actual fight. It didn’t matter now—he could figure out what to do about it later.
The sky lit up gold and orange as Paragon and Akor-Goram began their rematch. Paragon threw off beams of light and birthed smaller glowing spheres that orbited her and cast smaller precision beams of their own. Akor-Goram absorbed the projectiles without any visible effort or movement, all light dying abruptly just before it reached him. In return, he vomited oily black snakes that darted across the sky in jittering, unpredictable patterns, and threw curving angry fireballs from his hands and feet. Prismatic shot back and forth to tank the hits for Paragon, stopping a good percentage of the dozens of projectiles against his own body without any visible damage. The rest were burned up in Paragon’s golden aura.
Jacob had no idea who had the upper hand, and the sheer brightness of Paragon’s assault burned his eyes, so he looked away, letting their battle fade into a background lightshow, an insane lightning storm with all the light and none of the lightning.
Instead, he turned his attention to the incoming hordes of gibbering devils. They wielded axes and blades and even crude cannons of black iron, and they wore random pieces of sharpened, jagged scrap as armor strapped to their mostly naked bodies. More of them were still coming out of the fortress. Jacob could not begin to estimate how many there were, but it was a lot.
System, can you tell me how many targets there are?
[CALCULATING…]
…
…
…
[NO. OF VALID TARGETS, ESTIMATED:]
[32 118]
[NO. OF VALID TARGETS UPDATED:]
[33 435]
Ah.
Five to ten thousand, they said. I guess a slight miscalculation.
“Get ready for fireworks!” Drakemyth shouted, voice booming with the speaker amplification, and he thrust a fat mechanized finger high. “Three! Two! One! Perfection!”
Four streamlined missiles broke through the cloud cover above the growing tide of infernal warriors, racing towards the ground in tight formation. When they were maybe two hundred meters up they broke apart simultaneously in a spray of metal parts, and out of them were birthed multitudes of little warheads that came to life and lit up with propulsion of their own. They spread out in a wide cloud, hitting the ground and blanketing the demon-infested earth with a sweeping wave of staggered explosions, misting a great swathe of them and sending limbs and gore flying in every direction.
The sound reached them a moment later, a booming cacophony of overlapping bangs that came together into one great roar. The blastwave hit with a surge of hot air and shoved Jacob back, tugging at his clothes.
A field of drifting dust clouds lingered behind from the detonations, and black demon blood began to rain back down, even reaching the line of heroes half a kilometer away. The substance sizzled on the skin where it landed, the demons’ hatred manifested even in their very fluids.
The enemy broke through the dust clouds and bounded forward, undeterred, letting out guttural war cries in their own terrible tongue.
[NO. OF VALID TARGETS UPDATED:]
[23 088]
All right, I’ll take it.
Thanks, Drakemyth.
Fenris joined Jacob at his side, waiting for the order to attack. Ever since Jacob had come to an understanding with him, he had been an obedient and loyal beast.
Excelerate darted forward, a gray streak zipping through the demon ranks that left a trail of crackling electricity at his heels. Starman was right behind him, his armor materializing around him, this time with a curved greatshield held high before him. He charged ahead with no fear, a shining paladin.
The five support workers gathered around Crux at the back of the line, and they began a whispered chant while they drew lines in the ground. Their words made the hairs on his neck stand up.
The demons were getting closer.
Guess I’d better get involved.
It was time. Jacob discarded his sunglasses and tied on the blindfold. With a deep breath, he reached for the death sense that waited eagerly at the back of his mind. It washed over him like oil spreading on the surface of water, and the world lit up around him. It became clear to him.
His vision was much greater than it had been the first time he used it. He was not sensing bacteria and tiny insects dying, but the deaths of hulking soldier demons in their hundreds and in their thousands. He sensed each of them, vibrations in a web with him at its center.
He saw everything.
“Okay, Fenris. It’s time.”
They shot forward alongside the three Trodvis giants and a handful of others. Jacob fell into a dead sprint, and was amazed by his own speed, eating up ground so fast it dizzied him.
They were close now. Only now did he realize how big they wore, towering above him. Even the smallest of them were taller than him, and the greatest of them were nearly a match for Titaness. Their eyes were wide with battle glee, their weapons already baptized in the blood of innocents. Their roars became so loud that it was the only thing he could hear.
And then he was among them.
With a running leap, he bore into the first demon, feet first, caving in its big ugly face. Bouncing off, he leapt onto another, tore out its throat with one raking motion of his hand. One swung a cleaver and he glided out of its path, retaliating against the offending beast by jumping high and putting his thumbs through its eyes. Its screams of pain were beautiful.
The entire field was clear to him. Not only that, but he sensed its billowing. It was the current of the battle, and he floated on it like a feather in the wind, allowing it to tell him where to step, where to roll, where to duck. He cannonballed through the disordered ranks of the enemy and carved flesh like butter with his bare hands.
There was no point in keeping track of the number of demons he killed. They swept by so fast, each one only relevant to him in the short moment before they died. As his focus expanded, it also infinitely narrowed. He became only a collection of body parts in constant motion. There was no conscious thought or effort—he trusted his entire being to the intuition of his sight beyond sight. His flow state was bolstered with every kill, and he rejoiced when he sensed his allies slaughtering around him.
Drenched in smoking blood, he pressed on. His hands found new targets. A wordless cry escaped him, a vocalization of pure emotion—fear and rage and joy all at once.
He was vaguely aware, through his sight beyond sight, of a demon fouler and greater than the others who separated from the others and flew up into the air, a long trailing parasite that spread a biting plague with its very thoughts. But he had only just discerned it when another shape collided into the greater demon and knocked it off course, sending them both hurtling towards the ground a great distance off, away from the rest of the battle.
Steelfeather, he surmised.
Suddenly Jacob found himself with Fenris, the two of them back to back against the advancing crush of infernal bodies. They fought them off, each with his own fangs and his own claws. Then the current carried Jacob away, leaping and bouncing and swinging from bodies soon-to-be-dead, and he was separated from the wolf.
He felt heroes die, too; their deaths tasted different from the others, both cleaner and sadder, like the long, mournful stroke of a stringed instrument. There were several of these fatal pings, but he could not tell who they belonged to. He let their deaths flow over him; he could not allow them to disturb his trance.
Jacob shouldered into a demon and cracked its ribs, tore its weapon free of its hands and sank it deep into its skull. A flurry of blades came at him from every angle as soon as he slowed, and he contorted his body so that they passed harmlessly around him with only a finger’s breadth of clearance. He weaved, dodged, ducked, tore out the back of one demon’s knee and punched the throat of another, forcing a stream of black blood out of its toothy maw.
Then, with so many billowing streams in the battle current, he missed one. And suddenly, he found himself staring right down the dark mouth of a demon’s cannon.
Aw, fuck.
His consciousness cut out in a snap before he even felt his head explode. Time warped and stretched, and there was only blackness for a time.
Then he found himself not in the middle of a barren field, but a sun-soaked meadow. His death sight was gone. He only had his regular eyes, but he was still overwhelmed by the beauty. Flowers grew in every color of the rainbow amid a sea of vibrant green. The clamor of war was replaced by blessed silence and the soothing buzz of bumblebees that drifted lazily hither and thither.
The sky was clear and blue, with the sun a jolly father smiling down on him. He hadn’t seen the sky in so long it almost brought him to tears.
In the distance, standing on a low hill, there was a splendid hall with walls of white wood and a roof of golden scales and probably a hundred windows along the length of it. The great doors of dark wood were wrought with fine silver ornamentations that depicted dragons and ships and warriors.
Before the hall there stood a woman. She was tall and beautiful, radiant; with hair in the sun’s own color. A white dress fluttered about her legs and left her smooth arms bare. She smiled a kind smile and beckoned him to come with open arms.
Jacob was not the only one there, he realized. Looking around, he saw Union Man standing only ten meters off, turning in a circle with just as much bewilderment and confusion. Then, just past him, there was Searchlight with his lantern.
The two of them eventually noticed the smiling woman and began to wade through the grass towards her without a moment’s hesitation.
Jacob didn’t. He couldn’t.
I can’t stay here. I have to go back.
He screwed his eyes shut and willed himself to return.
I have to go back.
Let me go back.
The world shifted under him and he lurched backwards, as though gravity itself had flipped. Waves of death battered against him, and he sat up in a restored body. He rolled straight away to avoid being trampled under demon hooves, and after only a few moments of reacclimation he resumed his trail of butchery.
Jacob sensed the deaths of two more heroes. He took out his vengeance on the wretched enemy, cutting down ten for every one of theirs he felt gutter out.
He kept moving, Dashing every so often for greater momentum or to escape an imminent blow. His reinforced knees and ankles took the strain well, and there was no loss of function even after he had Dashed somewhere around a dozen times. He moved well.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
But there were so many of them. It was an endless raging sea of tainted meat and rusted metal, and a new creature stepped into the gap left by each one he killed.
One demon caught him by the ankle as he attempted to leap past, slammed him into the ground. Dazed, Jacob crawled away and scrambled to rise, but a falling blade met him on the way up and cleaved him in half at the waist. He landed back on the ground face-first, and all he saw was dark earth in the few seconds before he bled out.
Jacob found himself in the meadow again. The sun was warm on his cheek, taking a bit of the grave chill out of him.
This time, it was Flicker and Samson who were there. They were already making their way towards the hall, where the woman laughed and beckoned them. She had the bearing of a mother, and Jacob instinctively knew—though by what means he did not know—that she would take good care of him, and that he would be happy in that hall.
But it didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered.
Only keeping her safe.
Jacob shut his eyes and wished to go back.
The world shifted, and he sprang back up into himself. Though his body was whole, his clothes had fallen to tatters and his blindfold was long gone. He carried on.
Titaness and White Wolf fought somewhere off to his left, throwing demons aside or crushing them with their great strength. They stood guard over their fallen relative, and did not err in their watch.
In the distance, there was an echoing thunder of guns fired from inside the fortress, their burning projectiles lobbed high towards Paragon. All the shots from the first volley missed, but a few got close. Someone would have to take those guns out, but he imagined everyone already had their hands full and then some.
There was another death. This one he recognized, tasted it in the air. Magpie. He spared a moment of sadness for the man who was fast becoming his friend. That was one moment too many, and his lapse in attention cost him an arm, sheared clean from his shoulder by a wicked axe.
The pain was a distant thing, and he didn’t bother with it. The loss of an arm slowed him down, but he managed. A row of dead demons down the line, Jacob got near to one of the greater ones, a hulking brutish form with a long, serrated spear in one three-fingered hand. The other clutched the leg of a fallen hero. Excelerate, his gray robes fallen to tatters with all the infernal fluids that had stained him.
He struggled weakly against the demon, kicked at him with his free leg and sent out a wave of arcing electricity that webbed across the enemy’s chest but did not prompt more than a twitch of its heaping muscles and a stoic grunt.
Jacob braced and sprang forward in a Dash, shouldering into the greater demon with his intact side. He knocked it off balance enough that Excelerate could scrabble free and struggle back to his feet, though his leg was obviously mangled.
“Can you still run?” Jacob asked, keeping his focus on the monstrosity towering over them.
“Yes,” Excelerate panted.
Jacob searched his death sense until he found Superglue, still by the vehicles all the way in the distance. He pointed in that direction. “Go. Get healing.”
Excelerate nodded and sped off. Even slowed by his injury, he was almost too fast for Jacob’s perception to keep up with.
The demon said something in its own language, and the underlings scrambled to clear a circle around Jacob and itself. One of them was too slow, and the greater demon beheaded it with a flick of its spear. The head sat on the flat of the blade for a few moments before he tilted the weapon and let it slide off.
“I know who you are,” Jacob said with a joyless grin. “Suttrakk, the Perfect Destroyer. Is that right? Keep him busy, they said. Well, all right, let’s do that then.”
They paced around each other. Suttrakk was surely over four meters tall. The head of his spear alone was nearly as big as Jacob’s whole torso. He wore no armor or clothing, entirely naked. The demon’s manhood was a rather disturbingly barbed thing.
Suttrakk, upon spotting that Jacob was missing an arm, folded its off-hand behind its back and returned Jacob’s grin with one of his own, showing triangular teeth like a shark.
Despite the overwhelming difference in size, it was clear that Suttrakk didn’t take him lightly by his careful movements and single-minded focus on Jacob. He tested a few jabs with the spear. Jacob backed away, backed away, then saw an opening and ducked under the weapon, coming up in a high jump. He kicked off the demon’s torso, which carried him up past the head, and concentrated a Dash in his right leg to launch into a spinning kick that would ring the demon’s head like a bell.
But Suttrakk’s big maw yawned open and snapped shut around his leg with a crush force that, from personal experience, felt remarkably similar to the teeth of a bear trap. Jacob was left dangling, scrabbling uselessly for something to grip onto.
Rather than finish him off, Suttrakk relinquished his hold and let Jacob fall to the ground. It took an inordinate effort to get back up. He’d been bleeding a lot from his severed arm, and his leg was no good, dragging with each step.
Suttrakk went back to carefully circling. He thrusted with the spear and Jacob was too slow to dodge. The serrated edge cut into his side like a saw, biting through muscle and bone alike.
Jacob backed away, at the end of his rope. He had no way of winning this, and Suttrakk clearly intended to toy with him until he was completely incapacitated.
Fuck that.
Jacob funneled all of his new sense into anticipating the demon’s next attack. A light stirring on the winds of death, a putrid exhalation, barely perceptible tugs on the creature’s muscles. When the spear came at him, Jacob had already seen it coming, and though his movements were sluggish, he had started dodging before the attack began. The blade slid right past his face, and Jacob pushed off into a Dash, throwing himself once more against the greater demon.
He dug his fingers into Suttrakk’s chest, snapped bundles of muscle fibers as he raked across his chest, drawing deep lines of black blood.
Suttrakk threw him off with little more than a sharp shrug. When Jacob landed on his back, the demon stood over him and laughed, little affected by his wounds.
It had begun to rain. A dirty sulfur rain; at first only a light drizzle, then growing into a hard shower of heavy, hot droplets falling from the light-streaked sky. It burned just as bad as the demon blood. Drops bounced and scattered off the flat of the readied spear, point angled at Jacob’s neck.
The spear came down, and Suttrakk parted Jacob’s head from his shoulders.
Magpie was there in the meadow, but he paid the beautiful woman no mind. As soon as Jacob appeared, he whirled around with a flutter of black feathers and hurried over to him.
“Jacob!” he shouted urgently. “Jacob, please, you need to do something for me.”
He grasped at Jacob’s clothes, pulled him close.
“It wasn’t supposed to end like this. But it doesn’t matter. You need to find my daughter, Jacob. You need to—”
Jacob shut his eyes and stopped listening.
I don’t have time for this.
Suttrakk had just turned to leave when Jacob came back into his body. With the demon’s broad back presented to him in a perfect opening, he launched into a Dash the moment he’d rolled to his feet. He sailed high and slammed into the demon’s spine, its sharp bumps visible through his greenish skin, and one of the vertebrae slipped out of place with a satisfying click.
Suttrak roared and clutched at his back, but Jacob had already come away, landing on light feet. The enemy wheeled around to face him, struggling to keep his posture with his spine compromised. Rather than rage, his face was twisted in a delighted ear-to-ear rictus grin.
“Yeah, buddy,” Jacob said. “I’m the gift that keeps on giving. You get to play with me as much as you like.”
Suttrak wrenched his torso around and realigned his back with a shuddering groan, eyelids flickering. Then his attention returned to Jacob, and he spoke a few words in his own language.
System, any chance of a translation?
[PROCESSING…]
…
…
…
[ERROR: INSUFFICIENT REFERENCE MATERIAL]
All right. Thanks anyway.
Jacob and Suttrakk resumed their dance. Jacob gave more than he got, but the demon was so damn tough, and every lucky cut from the spear slowed him down. At least one of them was having fun. Suttrakk laughed with every other lunge, and his movements were becoming loose, effortless. He was on a roll, entering a flow state of his own.
A whirlwind of black fur tore through the nearest soldier demons and barged into the clear circle. Fenris caught Suttrakk by his spear arm and worried at it, his teeth sinking deep into green flesh.
“No! Jacob shouted. “Go, Fenris! Go away!”
The wolf wasn’t listening.
Jacob swore under his breath and shot himself at the demon. If they worked together, maybe they could…
Suttrakk smacked him out of the air and spiked him straight into the ground, bones crunching. Then he turned on Fenris and went in for a bite of his own, claiming a hairy chunk of Fenris’s neck that he promptly chewed and swallowed. He opened his mouth wide and stuck out his tongue as though to say ‘See? All gone’.
The wolf whimpered and leapt back. Jacob struggled back up, but Suttrakk was faster. He swung his spear in a wide arc, the haft secured in the crook of his arm, and Fenris’s right front leg came clean off with a spray of blood.
Fenris collapsed onto his side with a pained howl. Suttrakk raised his spear high in both hands with a great cry that matched the wolf’s. He wasn’t playing—he was going in for the kill straight away. Maybe he resented the wolf for interfering.
Jacob scrambled towards them. He Dashed as the spear fell and, in the last second, put himself between the wolf and the weapon. The spear pierced straight through his raised guard and his torso, too, cutting him nearly in half. Even for him, that hurt bad, dimming the death-soaked world around him to a flickering haze of lights and impressions.
Using his last bit of strength, he reached up with numb, bloody arms, grasped the spear haft, and twisted the black wood until it snapped in half. Suttrakk backed away, laughing, and threw away the useless stick he was left with into the roiling battleground.
Jacob’s heart beat spastically; once, twice, thrice, then it failed. He fell forward, dying soon after he hit the ground.
Crux, Superglue, and all five support workers were in the meadow this time. They had made it all the way to the hall and the woman was ushering them inside, opening the gates for them.
Magpie was still there, lingering by the doors. He threw a glance back at Jacob as the others entered; then, quickly as though it pained him, he turned and followed them inside.
Jacob willed himself back to life.
Though his body had healed, the spear head was still stuck in his body. He rolled over onto his back and yanked it out in one go, blood welling out all across his torso. His flesh knitted together with the foreign object removed. Not perfectly, but enough that he was functional.
Interesting. Looks like I get a few seconds of regeneration after I come back before it stops completely.
He first used the spear as a support to stand, then hefted the bulky thing like a greatsword. The demon was right behind him, his hands around Fenris’s throat, choking the life out of him. The wolf’s one eye stared lifelessly ahead, and his tongue hung limp from his open mouth.
Jacob wasted no time. Holding the spear in a two-handed grip, he swung it at the Sattrakk’s knee. It bit in deep. The demon backed away in pain, tearing the weapon free of Jacob’s grip. His leg gave way and he fell to one knee.
Suttrakk yanked the spear from his leg and tossed it aside. He called to his subordinates, and they threw him a pair of heavy, single-edged blades—more like long butcher’s cleavers than swords—that sank into the ground before him,
Jacob ran at him, but something shifted. The death currents distorted and shifted oddly, and he suddenly found himself somewhere completely different than he’d expected, right at the edge of the circle. Looking back, he saw the sweeping blade just in time to duck out of the way.
Suttrakk came after him with a furious series of attacks, pressing his advantage. His movements were slowed because of his injured leg, but he positioned himself efficiently to intercept Jacob’s attempts at evasion.
Jacob managed to stay clear of those blades, but only just barely, and only by focusing completely on defense. The death sense was all wrong. It kept distorting, showing him currents that didn’t exist, or ones that moved completely differently in reality. He suppressed the sense and opened his eyes, but that was no different. Even after he’d spent a few moments getting used to regular vision, there was something wrong. The enemy kept jittering all over the place, like a movie skipping frames. Dodging attacks he could barely see required all his deductive ability.
He engaged the death sense again since that was clearly not the problem.
Crux and the support workers are dead, which means their ritual isn’t up anymore. This might be Akor-Goram’s reality manipulation I’m seeing. I guess that means I’ll just have to live with it.
Somehow.
Suttrakk bent low and scraped one sword against the other, producing a shower of sparks that hit Jacob all over and made him jerk back, more with surprise than pain. When the follow-up attack came, he bent back just a bit too slow, and the blade shearedoff his nose.
Jacob stumbled away. The pain was keen, but manageable. The real problem was the blood washing over the lower half of his face and down the back of his throat, making it difficult to breathe. He gagged on it, spat out a big gob of it, only for his pharynx to fill right back up.
It wasn’t looking good.
Then Jacob looked up and saw the shining form of an unpleasant savior.
Starman bashed into Suttrakk’s injured leg with his silver greatshield, putting his whole weight against it. The knee socket collapsed where it had already been compromised, and the leg buckled sideways, giving way completely.
Suttrakk fell back down. He swung one of his swords at Starman with a furious howl, but the weapon glanced off the shield with only a shallow notch in the luminous metal.
“Need help, friend?” Starman asked, his voice echoey through the helmet.
“Yes,” Jacob admitted. He Dashed into the air and kneed Suttrak in the chin going up, crushing several of his teeth to splinters. Coming down, he caught one big eyeball with his index finger and ruined it as he raked through it.
The demon swung for him wildly, but Starman reared back his shield and thrust it forwards, forcing it into his side. Suttrakk’s attacks fell short, losing steam. When the next one came, Jacob caught the wrist on the backswing and allowed Suttrakk to carry him into the air. He wrapped his limbs around the arm, squeezing and twisting and digging his fingers in. His arm went pop, pop as the bones in the forearm snapped. The demon released his sword, and Jacob tumbled away, flipping backwards and landing on his feet.
Starman had allowed his shield to dissipate and was hitting Suttrakk with combinations of brutal punches, each one sending ripples through his green flesh.
A gang of the lesser soldiers, noticing that their commander wasn’t doing so hot, rushed in to help him, and the dueling circle was compromised as others poured in.
Starman called his shield back and charged into the encroaching demons, tossing two back and reflecting hits from the others. They jittered about sporadically, and an axe caught him across the back. He recovered with only a stumble, barely a dent in his armor. Even reality warping against him didn’t matter much if he couldn’t take damage in the first place.
That guy is freakish strong. I wonder what he could do if he wasn’t dumb as a brick.
With Starman buying him a bit of time, Jacob climbed up Suttrakk’s arm, hissing through the blood. The greater demon swatted weakly at him, but Jacob danced out of the way. Sprinting into a Dash up the shoulder, he threw himself past the head, grasping under the jaw with both hands, and let his momentum do the work as he snapped the ponderous lump all the way around.
Jacob was thrown clear and landed on a soldier demon’s face a few meters off. He went to the ground and incapacitated the fellow by tearing out the back of his knee.
Suttrakk had fallen forward, and lay dead on the ground. Finally.
Starman leaned back to avoid turn a direct hit into a glancing blow off his helmet, breaking the offending blade in half. He threw Jacob a thumbs up, barely watching as he batted another demon away with his shield. “Excellent work, bestie!”
Jacob ignored him and rushed to Fenris’s side. He picked up a fallen demon blade along the way and hurled it at an odious brute who was standing on the wolf’s chest. The blade cut right into his face and snapped his head back, and he fell backwards off the wolf.
Jacob got on a knee next to Fenris’s great head and put a hand over his snout to check for breaths. Mostly out of habit, since the death sense showed exhalations clearly even from a distance.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Then one weak puff of air.
Good enough.
Jacob stood. “All right, you ugly mutt. Guess I’m staying put here. If you die, I’m disowning you.”