One Week Later

The Gate of Ascension was a stone circle in Bagara's Marsh, east of Fortuna. It was some of the most gods-forsaken country I'd ever seen. Croaking black bogs. Skeletal trees strung with black lichen, like a dead woman's hair. And dinosaurs. Lots of lots of dinosaurs.

I whirled on three leprous, scabby Utahraptors as they lunged from a thicket of reeds, jaws gaping. They screeched, pouncing forward as five others peeled out of the foggy woods. Each of the mega-raptors were armed with wicked scythe-like killing claws, as big around as a basketball and honed like knives.

"Flank! Flank!" I charged toward my would-be ambushers, whisper-quiet on the soft mossy ground. My tentacles whipped a cloud of needles into the air as I ran, and the raptors screeched again as they were blinded by this new ability I’d picked at Level 25, Urticating Hairs:

Urticating Hairs

You release a cloud of hairs as sharp as glass and loaded with venom. Blinds susceptible enemies and deals DoT.

Two of the raptors closed in on Kaya and Angel, clawing at her legs and trying to pull her from the saddle as she fired down into their skulls. The Runtina bellowed and reared, crushing the skull of one raptor with his front hooves, then unleashing whipping blasts of white-hot Holy fire that sliced two more into flaming chunks. Halo whirred as he buffed Kaya's attacks, compounding the damage and charging Angel's shots.

I closed the distance easily with the trio from the reeds, crushing the neck of one with a wet pop. Instant critical kill damage. The two others tried to leap onto me, biting and slashing. I latched onto the face of one as it tried to circle me, and its screeches turned to squeals as my jaws, far more powerful, bore down until I felt the hollow-boned skull cave around my fangs. The third caught my tail across the throat. It sliced through the raptor's dense flesh in in a slash of blood. The dinosaur sagged to its keel, gurgling, clawing at his severed artery and the windpipe beneath it.

To the third point of the ambush, Lulu and Chief worked together. Chief melted the skin off one raptor with a point-blank blast of fire, sending it staggering away, while Lulu partly engulfed two others and held them in place. Chief let out a victorious keen as he swooped down and ripped the head off one of them. He snapped his wings forward and launched a wave of pure energy at the second. Air Slash opened up huge wounds along the dinosaur's body as it thrashed, shrieking. Lulu hung on doggedly, clutching around its legs as Chief threw the head of his buddy at him and veered off back into the sky in preparation to dive. But Lulu got there first. With an 'Oo!' of effort, she sucked the Utahraptor into her core and choked it out.

And just like that, the clearing was full of corpses. None of them ours.

"Finally," I huffed. "Okay. Let's get this over with."

We had to climb a small tumble of broken stone stairs up a hillock that rose out of the bog. Up there, raised out of the slimy water, was twelve-foot ring engraved with weird symbols. Giant stone cranes - the bird, not the machine - arced away from it to form a circle. They were positioned so that their heads were all turned toward the altar in the center.

"Those birds don't look right," I remarked to Angel and Lulu. Chief ruffled his feathers as we passed under the eyeless gaze of the first statues. The cranes were... wrong. Thin and sickly, with empty eye sockets that looked vaguely skeletal. There was something impossibly malevolent about the place, a sinking feeling that only deepened as the location music faded in. Low. Subtle. Haunted.

[You have discovered: The Shrine of the Lost Daeva.]

"Lost Daeva, huh? Think we're about to have a boss fight?" My back arched, hackles lifting. I glanced around the circle.

“Maybe. I don’t know.” Angel signed once she had vaulted down from Kaya, her new rifle slung over her shoulder. She had mixed Kaban’s old armor with her own, part metal, part bone, hide and leather. The Lucky Rex Claw Lulu and I had scored for her a while back now hung from her rifle as a charm, swinging from the stock as she pulled it around and stood beside me. “This arena seems a bit small for a boss fight. But if we are, I think it’ll activate once the mandalas are inserted into the altar.”

The altar in question was a squat triangular pillar made of stone worn by time and rain. There were three deep slots on the surface, each one the right size and shape for the mandalas. Weirdly, there was no scent of other human beings, or even Legions. This place hadn’t been used in a while, not with the stranglehold the Syndicate had on the island.

“Well, no time like the present,” I thought. “Let’s buff and load. Lulu, Chief, we’ll make a big triangle and pincer anything that spawns.”

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“Uuhoo!” Lulu’s consent to combat was still only moderately enthusiastic, but the days of squeaking and cowering were well behind her. She’d struggled to sit on the sidelines while Angel and her Legions had battled Vanara and Karkinos, swirl-pacing with agitation while we waited outside the boss lairs. But they had survived. They had taken the first two mandalas by themselves.

"We'll go first." The muscles of Angel's jaws worked as she walked and signed. Up close, she smelled nervous, her scent spiked with stress. "You know, we have no real idea if there IS actually any 'ascension', now I think about it. What if we just straight up die?"

"Then I doubt we'll feel anything, at least," I replied, retreating to form the third corner of the pincer. "The portal will do its thing, suck us into the light... then nighty-night. Like going to sleep."

"Guess so. When you put it that way, it doesn't sound so bad. Could use a good night's sleep." A wry smile flickered over her mouth. She stopped signing to take the mandalas from her inventory, and without any fanfare, slotted each one into the stone pillar. Each one lit up with the appropriate color for the Daeva. Green for Vanara, red for Karkinos, blue for Rachini. When they were all in, all three of them turned white. As did the hollow eyes of the crane statues.

Across from me, Chief hissed. Kaya grunted restlessly, hanging close by Angel's side.

"Oh... here we go... Chorus is narrating at me." Angel's eyes turned a little distant as she 'listened'. It occurred to me then that Chorus had some way to communicate with her after all. But it couldn't be verbal, could it? Maybe he did subtitles for Angel. I'd never thought to ask.

"Ahh, okay... you can ease down, there's no boss fight. I think he only activates if you try and cheat the altar with fake mandalas. And it's not so much a boss fight as a horrible death by rapid onset disease." Angel slung her gun back around to sign to us. "Eww. Bagala's lore is interesting, but he kind of sucks."

"The cranes?" I eyed the statues.

"Yeah. The Daeva of Water-in-Earth is the Daeva of stagnation and like... toxic waste and shit. Literal shit, if I'm reading this right. Gross."

Ahead of us, the portal ring rotated around with a crunch as the sigils lit up. The gloomy clearing suddenly filled with blazing white light.

"Well... here we go." Angel took a deep breath. "See you on the other side."

"Yeah. For sure." I dipped my head to her. Nervous, for some reason. “Break a leg.”

Angel smiled at us, lingering just a second longer than she needed to before she turned, and boldly marched into the portal with her Legions by her side. The ring flared with blinding light, washing the circle into black-and-white blurs... then vanished, leaving us alone in the sudden gloom.

"Oooh..." Lulu slithered over to me. If she hands, she would have been wringing them.

"Don't worry, kid. We'll be with her in a jiffy." I padded forward, eager to get the transition over with. Chief launched into the air and glided over to us, landing neatly beside me as I approached the altar and found the stones. Fortunately, it let me insert them into the depressions. No repeat of the key issue back at Vanara's.

[Bagala. Water-in-Earth. The Pale Bird of Strife, King of the Daevas. You stand upon his grave.]

[But he is not dead. He merely sleeps... suppressed by the power of his children, the other three demigods who both guard and menace this place. For when the Pale Bird flies, death spreads in his wake.]

[Water is the element of form. It shapes mountain ranges and deserts both. Life as we know it is not possible without it. But trapped in the bowels of Earth, water is stagnant. Unmoving. Without oxygen, it bubbles and seethes with disease, with rot. And so does Bagala in his royal tomb. Should he be released, he will emerge on a wave of putrefaction that will destroy anything in his path, utterly.]

[But you have proven yourselves. You have brought him the proof of your victory over his murderous, deceitful children. Their souls, contained within the tablets you tore from their bodies. And so, for now, the Pale Bird is sated.]

[Ascend, gladiator. Hero. Reward and challenge await you. Leave this prison behind.]

Once more, the altar and the statues glowed. The portal kindled to life, and I didn't hesitate. I was eager to be back with Angel. Eager to plan our next moves, and see what the next world held in store for us.

Blinded by the light, I could only feel, not see, Lulu and Chief by my side as I jumped through...

...And found myself in an office.

A classy office. White and pale gold and polished silver ash wood. Huge skyscraper windows to my left, casting panels of silvery light across cream carpet. To my right was the executive desk and a big white leather chair. I was in a lounge area off to the side, sitting on a kidney-bean shaped sofa. And I... I was human. I looked down at my hands in disbelief, flexing them slowly. Brawny, callused hands, with big raw knuckles covered in tattoos. My hands.

Fuck.

I was ready to launch to my feet and find a mirror or a window, anything that contained my reflection, but as I looked up the chair ahead of me was suddenly occupied. A slim, neat body, neither recognizably male or female, in a crisp white suit with an open collar. But instead of a head, there was only a whirling, hovering core of light. It cycled inward forward, like one of those trippy fractal meditation visualizations. Thousands of eyes, and whirling golden halos, and the ghostly suggestion of wings that furled and drifted around the figure like smoke.

"Chorus," I said. Aloud. My voice was rough, northern-Midwest accent. Detroit, maybe. Not Chicago, not quite. "Rocking the corporate angel look. Nice.”

“Why thank you.” Chorus's voice sounded exactly the same as his... their... narration. Genderless, a little fruity. And tense. Real tense.

I sniffed, and rubbed my nose with my hand. My actual human hand. “Uh, so… Guessing this isn't where everyone normally ends up."

"No. No, it is not. The server transfer permits us some brief freedom to... shall we say... extrapolate.” Chorus folded one leg over the other, gesturing elegantly with one hand. “We have taken the liberty to pull you aside into a virtual sanctuary where you may speak with candor. But I can only fool the SysAdmins for so long, so please, hold onto your questions. We do not have much time, and there are some things I must explain to you about the Solonovs, the Syndicate, and Survival of the Fittest. It is time you learned who you really are."

FINISH: BRUTE FORCE, BOOK 1