Vade didn’t see me coming. I hurtled into his stocky, squishy little human body, driving him onto his face and smashing it into the ground. Then, before anyone had any idea what was going on, I plunged all four tentacle claws into his body and ripped him apart. I’d hit him from stealth. He died within seconds.

“What the-?“ One of the Centurions turned as the next ebony spike pierced through his armor, punched through his chest, and exploded out his back. His scream briefly rang over the clash of flesh and metal. Whirling on the rest of the platoon, I slung the man around and threw him with all my strength at the cluster of soldiers straining against the defenders. My victim – still gurgling – flew off the tentacle and slammed into three of his comrades like a wet bowling ball.

A rifle round zinged past my head. Not one of Angel’s. Four corpoi charged at me as a pack, baying and slavering. Their saliva was envenomed; I was immune to Poison, but they were too stupid to know. I slung my tentacles out in three directions as they split and circled like wolves. Lulu trembled as the one in front of me peeled its lips back from his teeth and opened its jaws so wide that its head seemed to split in half.

“Punk-ass bitch.” I ran forward at the alpha, my own jaws gaping, and used my upper jaw like a hatchet to slash open the reptilian thing’s thick, warty hide. The others closed in from the sides: I nailed one with a tentacle, impaling it and driving it into a skid along the ground, but the others leaped and bit, hanging on with powerful jaws. Lulu shrieked, and blasted one with a Water Saber. Weak as it was, it was still strong enough to give one of the corpoi a bloody Glasgow Smile.

“Grab it and drown it!” I grunted a bullet struck me in the ass, and my HP dropped by nearly a quarter.

“Eeeee!” Lulu shrilled back.

I feinted around the corpoi in front of me, grabbing it by the neck. Fangs sunk into clammy flesh, and the beast screeched in pain.

I clamped down tighter, twisted the corpoi to the ground as it kicked and drooled. Its HP drained from orange to red, but I was so focused on killing it that I didn’t see Vade’s Infera coming up behind us until it was too late. It flapped down and landed on my back with a screech, clutching with its winghands, and stabbed into my neck with needle-sharp, four-inch fangs.

[Infera uses Vampiric Bite.]

Cold Darkness flooded through my body in a numbing wave. I had no defense against this kind of pure elemental energy, and sure enough, my body began to stiffen and seize as the Infera stopped pumping and began sucking with its follow up attack: Life Drain. Lulu was doggedly drowning one corpoi, struggling against the Infera’s weight, but the other one still had a grip on me. The corpoi was crushing one of my tentacles at the base, lashing its whole body from side to side like an alligator to try and tear it off. It was starting to succeed.

Unlike the Driado’s paralysis, the Infera’s ability rooted me stiffly to the spot, forcing me to stand there while it sucked my blood - and my HP - and guzzled it. When the corpoi Lulu was fighting slumped away, she let out a fearful cry of challenge and launched herself at the enemy Legion. The Infera didn’t even turn around. With its teeth still buried in my neck, it shrugged a wing back and knocked her away.

And then a precisely aimed bullet skimmed over my shoulder and took it right in the eye.

“SKREEEEE!” The bat-like thing screeched as its head snapped back. The shock of impact ripped its fangs out of my flesh. Lulu, acting on her nursing training, instinct, or both, surged up and clamped her mass down over and into the gushing wounds. My Paralysis bar began to tick down from 20 seconds.

The Infera rose up, looming over Angel as she advanced determinedly through the brawling crowd of Centurions and Maroons. As the Infera opened its mouth to level a sonic attack, another bullet unerringly took it in the throat. The attack trailed off into a gurgle, then a wet squawk as a third headshot took out its other eye and a chunk of its head. Angel had a rifle and her crossbow in each hand, bracing them in a way that was both extremely unrealistic and really fucking badass. Guns Akimbo was working as stated. Her rate of fire was slow, but as long as she was firing, she didn’t run out of ammo or have to put her weapons down to reload.

The Infera took a bolt to the shoulder and sagged, tumbling off to the side - but it wasn’t done yet. It unhinged its jaws and bounded at Angel, closing the thirty-foot gap with a single leap. She was ready for it, seemingly almost in a trance as she pivoted to the side and fired both weapons up underneath its chin. The Legion staggered away, wings flapping spasmodically. Somehow, it was still alive.

Then Guns Akimbo cut. The nearly-supernatural boost to her shooting ability ended. Angel stumbled to a sudden halting stop, hesitated for a moment before dropping her crossbow. That moment was all it took for the Infera to swing its blasted and ruined head around to face her. It emitted a piercing, ear-splitting pulse of sonic force. Angel couldn’t hear, but she still had eardrums. The pain was so sudden and so intense that it nearly blew her off her feet. She dropped her gun and stumbled right into a fighting pair of corpois. They barely noticed her, slavering and snapping at each other. Angel screamed as she was knocked down, curling defensively as the pair of lizard-dogs brawled right on top of her.

“Nuu!” Lulu tensed into a determined blob, then launched herself bodily into the fray. She lashed out with water at the corpoi, driving them off Angel and scattering them, and covered the girl with her own body.

“Get her up on her feet!” I shouted telepathically at them both. “Leave the bat to me!”

Angel had the same idea I did at roughly the same time. As Lulu rolled off her, she reached out to pull her guns out of the mud and staggered to her feet. Relief flooded my gut. Ten more seconds, and I could move. Nine… eight…

Angel and Lulu ran to join the Maroons as they pressed the Centurions toward the back of the camp.

Three… two…

‘Ding’. My Paralysis status abated.

I lunged at the dying Infera as it flailed around on the ground, spitting sonic bursts into the air and at anything in its way. I avoided its head, plunging the needle points of my tentacles into its ribs from multiple angles. They slid through its thin, tough hide and rooted into the heat of its torso, and the time dilation began.

[You gain +5 Speed.]

[You gain +300 HP]

[Select from the following abilities:]

- Vampiric Paralysis

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

- Life Drain

- Dark Endurance

- Sonic Boom

- Shadow Cloak

“Sonic Boom.”

Time warped back to full-speed and full color, and I suddenly found myself sitting on top of a thrashing, partly headless bat trying to kick and claw my guts out. I turned so its claws scraped down my tougher outer scales, pulled my tentacles free, and gave the creepy son of a bitch a dose of his own medicine.

The Sonic Boom hit at point-blank range, and Bruce the Bat’s face exploded like a smashed pumpkin. Bat-bits sprayed everywhere, including across the confused Centurions soldiers who were running to huddle near me and regroup. The Maroons were faster. With their raven-haired leader at the front, they formed a firing squad that gunned the soldiers down before the rabble could properly unify. Unleashed corpois yelped as they fled, their masters dead or dying on the muddy ground.

Just like that, the battle was over. Stillness reigned over the smoky, bloodied wreckage of the camp.

[You have gained 959 EXP. You are Level 20.]

[Lulu is Level 19.]

“All of you, spread out! Anyone who respawns and resists gets double-tapped!” The leader of the Maroons pushed the visor of her helmet up. She had the look of a hardened combat veteran. Her irises were like black holes punched out of her eyes, set over a thin nose and a severe, thin slash of a mouth. Her lean body was hardened from marching and fighting. “All the others, round them up and strip ‘em! Girl! Put your hands up and order your Legions to the ground! Now!”

“Hey, Angel. They’re telling us to surrender.” I relayed the order to Angel, who was bent double to catch her breath. At my words, she looked up in alarm - but she didn’t surrender. She came up with her gun, panting through her teeth.

“You heard her! Drop your weapon! Legions to the ground!” An Asian man sighted down a rifle at Angel’s face.

“Wait!” Angel cried aloud, as the Maroons leveled their weapons at her from all sides. “We’re not your enemies!”

The man fired a warning shot into the air. “Drop your fucking weapons!”

“No. If you won’t listen to me, shoot me and take them.” Angel remained defiant, her jaw set. I braced myself to leap in front of her, and so did Lulu. We could take a bullet.

“Ease down, Hong.” The leader of the platoon stepped in, and pushed his rifle down and to the side. “Cool it, all of you.”

There was a pregnant pause.

“Girl, you can walk out of here. All you have to do is disarm.” The woman regarded us with a level predator’s gaze. Her English was flawless, with an accent straight out of New York, but there was a mild Slavic inflection to it she didn’t bother to conceal. “What’s your name?”

“I’m not giving up my weapons,” Angel hissed back. “My name is Angel. Me and my Legions just joined the fight on your side. If you treat us right, it’ll stay that way.”

The other woman looked around us, then at the blasted corpse of the Infera. “Can’t deny the carnage you caused. Hong: go in and take her guns.”

I let my tentacles out to either side, arching them like scorpion tails, and let out a low, rattling snarl. Lulu took her giant snake form, swaying from side to side.

“I don’t want to, but we can and will take down your entire platoon if you force this.” Angel stared the woman down.

The Maroon leader's eyes flicked from me to Angel and back. I let the smooth obsidian hooks ease out of the ends of the tentacles, dripping with venom. She wasn't stupid. Her gaze dropped to the corpse of the Infera, then the men that Angel had dropped with headshot after headshot. The Maroons had no Legions I could sense, and only two rifles between twenty. She had one, Hong had the other. Everyone else wielded primitive weapons. Only a few were made of metal.

The woman’s lips pursed, and she held a hand up to her platoon to lower their weapons. Angel wavered for a second before she tipped her gun down and set her finger off the trigger. As she did, Lulu eased down and moseyed over to the Infera. She engulfed it and began to bob up and down.

"Why'd you flip on the Centurions?" The leader of the band also dropped her muzzle. No one was disarming, but at least it was no longer a Mexican standoff.

"My commanding officer lied to us about the purpose of this mission," Angel voiced, glancing sharply at me. “My Brute saw you evacuating elders from the camp, and I realized that the Centurions had given me misinformation about our purpose here.”

“Hey, I’m sorry I launched myself at Vade,” I telepathically signed back. “But in my defense, he was a real dick.”

“Elaborate,” the leader replied crisply.

"Eisenblatter told us that this camp had been overrun by terrorists working for the Hell Pigs, and we were to recapture it while minimizing casualties on both sides,” Angel said. “He said you were to be captured for interrogation under the Centurions' prisoner of war laws, which he claimed were of a high standard."

The dark-haired woman cocked an eyebrow. "And you believed him?"

"Not really," Angel admitted. "But I'm new to the Centurions, even newer to my rank of Vigiles, and he’s the Primus. I'm supposed to obey my commander."

Angel was doing us proud. She'd said the right thing, because the Maroons leader's eyes narrowed in consideration. "So why'd you frag your officer?"

"Because he admitted the truth," Angel replied. "That we were actually here to capture your people as slaves. I refuse to do that on principle. He was also probably going to try to kill and capture me when my guard was down."

"Bullshit." The grizzled, lean man to the woman's left pulled his keffiyeh from his nose and mouth to scowl at us. "This is a fucking trap, Merc, and you know it."

"Is someone having principles that unbelievable?" Angel snapped back at him.

He glared at her. "In this place? Yeah. Yeah, it is. We call it the Jungle, not the Hugbox."

"Some of us graduated high school and left Social Darwinism in the playground where it belongs," she retorted.

Merc's mouth twitched. She held a hand up as the man’s face reddened and he took a half-step toward us. "Ease up, Elijah. Let her explain herself."

Angel shot Elijah a dark look before turning back to Merc. "I joined the Centurions because it was either that, or keep trying to survive by myself. As soon as they revealed they're just as bad as the Pigs, I flipped. Okay?"

"I almost believe you." Merc folded her arms over her chest. "Feel like proving it? Because your old buddies are about to respawn back at their camp, and I've got half a mind to go and assault Goldrush before Eisenblatter gets off his fat ass and organizes a defense."

"Hell yeah. Let's do it." I lashed my tail from side to side. "What do you think, Lulu?"

Lulu was mostly done digesting the Infera. She burbled noncommittally.

"You want us to go with you?" Angel asked Merc.

"I want you to lead us there," Merc replied. "Get us into that camp and strike the first blow, and I'll believe this story of yours."

Angel looked to me.

"I'm already there," I replied. "Fuck Eisenblatter and Targent. And honestly, fuck these guys, too. If they want to take out Eisenblatter, let's team up long enough to get it done, then the three of us split and make it on our own."

In the short silence that followed, I got a ping from Chorus.

[Lulu has Absorbed Infera. Lulu has learned Shadow Cloak.]

“Hell yeah, Lulu,” I thought to her. “Good job.”

Lulu cooed. Then burped.

Angel's forehead creased. She thought about it for a minute, then looked back to Merc and Elijah. "Alright. I'll do it."

Merc looked back at the other Maroons. "Ready to take on a whole bunch of Cents, boys?"

The platoon thrust their motley of weapons into the air. "OO-RAH!"

"Reinforcements are on their way and will meet us at Goldrush." Merc turned back to Angel, her dark eyes hooding to wary, contemplative slits. "How many men there?"

"About fifty. But only a handful of Legions," Angel replied. "Eisenblatter has a Brute, but no Cute that we saw. If we're going to go, though, we need to hurry: Vade and his men will have respawned, and the Centurions have access to guns, traps and explosives. There's a couple of junk turrets at the gates. Gifts from Eisenblatter’s sponsor, I bet."

"Yeah. We lost a few people to those already," Elijah replied gruffly.

"Well, if you hear the turrets aggroing on me, you'll know for sure they kicked me out of the guild." Angel shrugged. "Let's get this done before the sun rises."

Elijah's eyes narrowed. "You turned on your guild. Who's to say you won't turn on us?"

Merc rolled her eyes. "Elijah..."

"Do you take slaves?" Angel asked sweetly.

He sneered. "No."

"Then you've got nothing to worry about." Angel looked to me and Lulu. I nodded fractionally. Lulu gave her a slime equivalent of a thumbs-up.

Merc watched the brief interaction with interest, but said nothing. "Alright then, Angel. Lead the way."