Chapter 47 - Follow the Light

The breathing room Trix gave me didn’t last. That was the problem with opponents that had no instinct for self-preservation. They were perfectly fine throwing themselves at me and being reduced to a puddle of goo if there was even a remote chance of said puddle of goo making my footing slightly more tenuous.

I did use the window of relative calm to charge up another handful of stones, though, if only to give my body a rest.

Split Mind is now level 9.

Conduit is now level 5.

I was glad at least someone appreciated how difficult the trick was. That biting, cold feeling I experienced when using foreign mana types (thanks Tempered Channels) ripped at the edges of my concentration every time I pulled this little maneuver, and I knew I was tempting fate with every additional rock I added.

This time I made sure to be well away from the blast zone before I launched rocks toward the growing mound of corpses that used to be the stairwell. I aimed for the top of the pile, having the rocks zip over the peak before I triggered the detonations directly on top of the creatures currently climbing over.

A panorama of purple explosions ripped through the rising tide.

*BOOM*BOOM*BOOM*BOOM*BOOM*

My head absolutely throbbed. I wasn’t low on mana, far from it, in fact. My oiled wood technique seemed to be working beautifully in keeping me topped off. However, the constant bottoming out of my mana pool and subsequent drink-through-a-firehose recharge was starting to do something to me that was decidedly unpleasant. I felt empty yet brimming with energy, like I’d gone two days eating nothing but coffee grounds. Maybe, more accurately, I felt like I was a passthrough for all of this mana instead of in control of it like I should have been.

The stairwell side suppressed for now, I turned my attention to the rest of my defense. The turrets barked as the flow of scourge gradually grew from a trickle back to a roar.

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I slapped a new magazine into the stairwell side turret and got it back in business. By this point I wasn’t as worried about the stairwell as I was about the North and East side turrets. The slain monsters, though both a blessing and a curse everywhere else, had begun to choke the stairwell entrance to the point where the press of bodies was keeping the flow of Returned to a steady drip. That didn’t stop them from coming up that side of the roof, but without the stairs, it bottlenecked a large part of the enemy host up to where they were manageable.,

Everywhere else, the Black Ones were making my life an absolute nightmare.

They used their dead as cover to climb up onto the roof, grouping up near the top of the corpse walls to come at me in larger numbers. They were starting to do their grasshopper leaps before they even crested the ‘battlements’ of my ever growing fortress, and that left the turrets with precious little time to track and kill them all before they were in my face.

What’s more, the amount of “things” on the roof was quickly becoming the biggest problem. Not only were my fortress walls growing in height but, as physics dictated, in width as well. With every downed foe, the base of the wall of dead things crept closer to my perimeter, a noose of my own making that was slowly tightening as the fight wore on.

The scourge-touched I’d had to dispatch with my sword laid at my feet, now a thickening carpet of tripping hazards that leaked blood and unmentionable fluids everywhere. They made moving from breach to breach with any speed or technique almost impossible. My now higher Body score was helping with that, my supernatural balance and grace keeping me upright, but soon I’d be walking on nothing but dead scourge. At that point it would only take one stumble to end it all.

I had to keep moving, though. To stop moving meant death.

The scourge-touched were starting to adapt to our strange equilibrium. Now, instead of going into a murderous rage every time they saw me, some of them would eschew the direct approach and lunge for the turrets. Usually, that plan would just end with another dead goblin, but about one in five that tried would make it as far as the turret’s legs. Fewer still would get a hand on the machine and have a chance to flip it over. It only took one nearly catastrophic incident to vindicate my practice of killing breaches as they happened. I had a hell of a time flipping the turret back over. It was heavy and awkward, and its programming didn’t particularly care whether it was upright or not. I’d never been a livestock guy, but if I had to create a metaphor for the situation, it would involve trying to lift a pissed off, three legged, mechanical murder bull. Oh, and the bull’s shoulders and head were hot enough to ignite fibers and fry skin.

Yes, after that, I was very attentive to breaches.

Movement was key. I had to be everywhere, protecting the turrets so they could protect me.

I had to imagine my ammo worms were having a hell of a time trying to fulfill their programming to return to me, or maybe they already had but I hadn’t noticed in all the chaos.

The focus and technique Dad drilled into me was doing me some good when I had a chance to use it, but Dad didn’t teach me fighting like this, the mad scramble for survival amid hundreds of tiny threats that would stop at nothing to draw just a little of my blood.

This was butchery, mass slaughter.

I had no room for a proper parry or riposte, my feet couldn’t turn or slide the way I’d been taught, and there was a massive qualitative difference between a duel between armed opponents and a swarm of monsters that just threw themselves at you without regard for their own lives. The best I could do was jump at opportunities for free hits and swing for the fences.

Just a little longer.

—------------------

Sword is now level 4.

You are now level 16.

The arc of my swing connected with the undead’s neck, the creature’s spine stubbornly halting my swing before the blade could cleave all the way through, and I felt the muted impact in my chest even through the metal of my arm. The scourge-touched, unphased at the sword embedded in its neck, grasped the sides of my cuirass and used its unnatural strength to pull itself closer in an attempt at a bite. Growling, I set my pistol hand against the monster’s chest and slowly straightened my arm until I had the right amount of space. Then, I jerked my blade free to slam it down again and again until the thing finally fell over dead.

Spots danced in my vision, my muscles burned, and my lungs cried constantly for more air, air untainted by the foul emanations of all of this… I didn’t know. The battlefield was a horrific slurry of broken bodies and gore. The turret barrels sizzled in the polluted air, and the smell was everywhere.

I missed the sword’s atomically sharp edge desperately just now, but I had no time to re-Shape it back to what it was. I just had to endure a little longer.

*PHOP**PHOP**PHOP*

The stairwell turret was getting low on power, and the barrel had a noticeable bow to it now, the heat finally making the steel pliable enough for gravity to warp it in such a way. The gun still tracked and fired, but it was having a hard time. Its individual rounds, with a less than straight path out of the barrel now, were more sluggish and less impactful when they hit. I just felt lucky the action’s spring was weak enough to keep the feed of lead going.

My right hand hung down at my side, and I could feel the hot rush of blood pumping through torn muscle fibers. Overworked tendons throbbed at my joints. The effort I’d expended to wrestle with that last Returned was all I had left. I could barely even lift the pistol in my hand anymore. My body was tapped out, my prosthetic the only part of me not weak and bleeding.

I slapped my new free point into Body and felt the effects immediately, like I’d just gotten an injection of electrolytes and saline. It wasn’t much, just enough to take the edge off, but it was something.

“Come on,” I whispered hoarsely against the polluted air. The boom of the guns and the howls of the scourge-touched drowned out my voice, but this was for me more than it was for them at this point. “Come on… you little shits.”

Just a little longer.

Just then, something flashed in the corner of my vision, pale-blue, arc welder bright. What was this now?

Turning my head, I tracked the intensity of the light up, North, toward the Spire.

A flare. A bright blue flare was floating lazily down from somewhere near Trix’s observation deck.

What had that meant? It had been part of the plan, the plan I’d made. My brows knit together in thought. It felt so long ago, and I was so tired.

A scrap of a thought blew lazily through the hollows of my mind, tumbling before finally clipping the edge of another.

Blue meant… safe. They were safe. They’d made it back to the Spire, and they were safe.

It was time. It was time to move.

Forward. Move forward.

I wobbled forward, toward the light. A Black One loomed up to block my view. My body reacted.

Scourge Touched Goblin defeated.

You have been awarded 18 experience points. [10 base (-6 level, +2 nemesis, +10 group,+10 chain, -8 non-combat class)]

Stepping over the crumpled form, I followed the light, past the Northern turret, its rate of fire now in sluggish staccato bursts of *FWUPFWUPFWUP* *FWUPFWUPFWUP,* a beat I could feel in place of a pulse.

Any other day, I’d hesitate to get in its way, but after spending all this time in a constant state of knife’s-edge tension, I had a hard time rising above the level of a 2 on the fear scale anymore, especially for my own machines. It had my back, just as I’d asked it to when I’d made it.

I pressed forward, my sword hacking at the monsters that presented themselves to me. My sword strokes were weak and slow, only serving to keep my enemies’ grasping claws temporarily away from my body. That was okay, though. I just had to keep moving forward.

The turret did what I couldn’t. The best the scourge-touched could hope for was one, maybe two swipes at the human before they died in a hail of bullets. All I had to do was survive.

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When I came to the wall, I climbed. The smell was worse here. It didn’t matter. I’d think of it later.

What mattered was getting over, getting through, getting to the light.

The mound was unsteady. The bodies gave when I stepped on them, slid down when I grasped them, landslides of dead things.

I’d think about it later.

Then I was standing at the top.

Before me was a nightmare. The city was swarming. Teaming masses of monsters crawled over rooftops, flooded the streets, choked the doorways. All of them flowed toward me, like I was the drain in a bath. I was a nexus, the black hole where they meant to cast out their lives in the hopes of drowning me under their combined weight. As one, they wordlessly roared their desire to do so.

It turned out I still had room in my mind for fear afterall. My legs nearly gave out at the sight of it.

Holy Constance preserve us. Holy shit. Holy shit.

There was only one island of order amidst all the chaos.

At the center of the square, beyond the black sea of scourge, ranks of rescued soldiers stood in neat lines, shields and spears leveled and at the ready, waiting for me.

That was where I had to go.

The scourge-touched were climbing up from down below me, others were rushing in from my sides.

Forward. Move. Move now.

Another handful of rocks appeared in my hand. I needed a few seconds.

One.

A claw slashed at my shins, scoring across my armor.

Two.

A Black One lept at my face from the approach to my right. It didn’t take much convincing for my legs to give out, collapsing to the floor to allow the monster to sail overhead. Something from within the mass of corpses grabbed my neck from behind, weak but still alive, its broken claws attempting unsuccessfully to open my throat.

Three.

I sat up and stabbed out with my sword to take one of the scourge in the stomach. It didn’t die, but its lower half gave out, sending it tumbling down the wall and over the lip of the roof.

Four.

Something jumped on my back, digging in with its claws, and its teeth sawed into the armor on my shoulder. That felt familiar.

Five.

I couldn’t wait any longer.

With one, final lungful of breath, I screamed as I forced my tired leg muscles to straighten, and leaped from the battlements of my fortress. The sea of black rushed up to meet me.

*BOOM**BOOM**BOOM**BOOM**BOOM**BOOM*

My charged rocks hit the ground before I did, a carpet of wild, explosive power that pulped the scourge-touched down below, as packed in as they were.

From above, hundreds of angry hornets zipped down in blurry gray lines to lay waste to everything they hit. The scourge-touched were mown down like wheat.

*ZUP**ZUP**ZUP**ZUP**ZUP**ZUP*

I landed badly, among the shell shocked monsters. I had the sense to tuck and roll, but when I made impact, the air left my body in a *woosh* and I tumbled forward to hit some of the only exposed paver stones for many yards.

Status Gained: Broken Bone [Arm]

I laid there for a full second, opening and closing my mouth like a fish suddenly pulled from the water, but I knew I had to move. Moving was all I could do if I wanted to live. I got to my feet and stopped, blinked. What happened?. I’d lost the Spire. Where was it?

*ZUP**ZUP**ZUP**ZUP**ZUP**ZUP*

The blue. The blue light. Where?

Spinning, I tracked the light, orienting myself. It gleamed off of teeth and claws, cast shadows behind individual monsters in the swarm.

Behind.

There. Behind me. The Spire. I had to get to the Spire.

I hobbled forward following the track Trix’s withering fire gave me. He blasted huge swathes of monsters in five second bursts. Wherever he turned his fire the entire area became a mess of fountaining blood and flying splinters of bone. Then he would move to my side or to my back.

Crossbow bolts zipped past my ears, one of them inches from my skin before it sank into something behind me with a *thwuk.* The dying breath of whatever it was caressed the hair on the back of my head.

I couldn’t think about that either.

I kept moving forward. Always forward. Trix and the crossbowmen paved my way.

An undead rose up in front of me, missing an arm, its head listing sideways but not entirely damaged enough for it to stay dead. I tried to swing my sword but found that I’d dropped it somewhere in my landing. So, instead, I reached out and slammed my fist into its face with my prosthetic then shoulder charged the creature until it vanished from sight. I didn’t bother to finish it off.

I kept moving.

The world narrowed. All I could hear was my own breathing. All I could feel was my burning lungs and pumping legs while the rest of me was just cold.

All I could see was the sliver of light between the gates. Between me and it, the ranks of people, real live people, gesturing me forward. Cheering.

“Come on! Come on!” They mouthed at me. “Don’t stop!”

I kept moving.

My eyes felt heavy. Only one of them could fully open anyway, but for the life of me I didn’t know which one. It didn’t matter. I knew where I was going. Something heavy battered me from above. A burning line traced down the center of my scalp. I reached up and grabbed, triggering Devouring Grasp, and then it was gone.

Forward. Forward. No stopping.

*FWOOM*

Then, the air went still.

With great effort, I opened my eyes.

I was among faces, the faces of people. The two closest people, male Miur in ragged robes and severe looks of concentration on their faces, sweat pouring down their brows, held up their glowing hands confusingly. That wasn’t the light I was following. Mine was blue. The Miur didn’t get in my way, though. My feet kept moving.

Forward.

Something tried to grab me, but I put a stop to it. No. I was so close. Nothing could stop me. I had to get to the Spire.

The ranks of soldiers, Miur, Leori, and a few species I didn’t recognize in their armor, all slowly parted to let me pass. None of them said anything, like the still air had put a hush spell over them.

My rattling breaths seemed to be the only sounds allowed to bypass said spell. They echoed in my head, only accompanied by the hum of my metal heart.

Up the stairs. That took some time. My leg wasn’t working right anymore. No one made a move to stop me.

I reached out for the door.

Then, in a turn I could never have foreseen, a skeletal Miur with ridiculously pronounced cheekbones interposed himself between me and my goal. He bent down, his hawkish face peering into mine with a look of… concern? Frustration? It took me a handful of breaths to really get a good bead on it.

He was saying something. I shook myself, blinked blood out of my eye.

“What?” I heard myself say.

He reached out hesitantly for my arm, his fingers wrapping around my bicep and steadying me, his look of absolute disbelief amplified by his gaunt features.

“It’s alright, Ryan, we’ll take it from here,” He breathed softly as if he were calming a wild animal, shaking his head before adding: “Unbelievable.”

Jassin? What are you doing here?

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EPILOGUE: Dad

Proxis 3: Now.

Myron Kotes sat on a dirty fabric camp chair, staring at a rust colored stain on the rocky ground, his eyes tiredly blinking away the grit. The winds were mild today and at his back, giving his face a break from the goggles he’d been forced to wear day in and day out for however long he’d been at this. The sand blasted cliff where the System had seen fit to snatch his boy wasn’t the most sheltered of places to camp, more exposed a campsite than he would have chosen to use.

He reached up to itch his beard, resisting the temptation to rub his eyes as well. The skin there was red and raw, and if he got too enthusiastic, his fingers might come away with blood. His scalp itched as well, the dust in it turning his jet black hair prematurely gray.

Normally, he was such a well groomed man, upstanding and respected among his peers. Now, he wasn’t sure if any of the clan would recognize him.

A metal thermos of coffee thumped against his shoulder, warm to the touch. The rich, bitter smell of it tantalized him. Worse, it tempted his mind to relive better times.

“Take it,” a cold, robotic voice said from behind him.

Myron reached up and took the thermos, using his dirty nails to crack open the top and expose the liquid inside while grimacing at the unpleasant idea of drinking the stuff. Riley had loved coffee, and she’d passed that love along to Ryan. Myron himself had never been a fan, though, too singularly focused on whatever thing was in front of him to remember he had a drink in his hand. It always went cold before he could finish a cup, and those unpleasant experiences had piled up until he grew an aversion to the stuff. He did like the smell, however dangerous it was.

“Thanks,” he croaked after a long swig of the near boiling liquid.

When was the last time he’d spoken?

“This marks thirty days, Mr. Kotes,” the man behind him droned. He droned well, professional-like, like he was a bureaucrat in an office somewhere instead of camping in a portable hab in the middle of nowhere waiting for the System to regurgitate its latest Chosen. The tone reminded Myron of the synth voices they used on passenger trains.

“He’ll make it,” Myron affirmed for himself for the hundredth time. It had become a mantra of sorts, one he now repeated even in his dreams.

He’d begun to speak it ever since they’d come to rescue the boys that fateful morning, when Myron had learned his boy was taken.

Taken from this very spot.

The ground was still stained with Ryan’s blood, though it was fading in the elements, wind blasted like all of Proxis 3. Like Myron himself. Myron wouldn’t forget where the spot was, though.

“Of course, Mr. Kotes,” Mr. White said, punctuating his words with a pair of slow, awkward pats on Myron’s shoulder. “Once again, allow me to put you up somewhere while we wait. You can still come out to this location whenever you wish, courtesy of a CRF transport.”

“No,” Myron replied as he’d done every day now.

Mr. White, the man behind him, was an Exotic, probably an old one. Of that Myron was increasingly sure. The way he moved was too graceful, too deliberate and exact, his presence too domineering even when he was silent. White carried no weapons, wore no protective gear, just a simple coat with buttoned pockets and a wide-brimmed hat that covered his shaved head. Myron was fairly sure the man didn’t actually sleep in the portahab he’d set up either. All of it felt off, like a terrible thing trying to imitate a human instead of being of them.

Plain, wiry, deadly, White wasn’t at all like the Exotics the Colony put on the airwaves. He was a man to be watched closely, a killer born if Myron had ever met one.

“I’ll be waiting for him when he gets back, Mr. White,” Myron said, fighting not to let his hand stray to his belt where he kept his pistol. “He deserves someone that'll be there for him.”

Someone that should have been there.

“You are a leader among your people, are you not? Do you not need to be there for them as well?”

Myron shook his head, keeping his eyes fixed on Ryan’s fading blood. “They’ll understand. I’m going to do what’s right by my boy.”

The Exotic sighed performatively, this time resting a gloved hand on Myron’s shoulder and giving it an uncomfortably hard squeeze. “Then he will find us both, I am afraid. This- The waiting- is what I do.”

Myron turned and narrowed his eyes at White. “Is it really? By my recollection, what you do has been a different thing every time it’s mentioned. What was it last time? Documentation? Security? What really is your job, Mr. White?” He asked for what must have been the fifth time now.

“To be there for the birth of rogue Exotics. To ensure their safety and to guide them home. To tell them their places in our society,” White intoned, his too-pale face moving to sound out the words and no more. Myron might as well have been talking to a moving corpse. Still, it was a longer answer than he’d gotten before. Maybe White was feeling magnanimous today.

“Integration can be traumatic for mortal born Exotics,” White continued. “He will need someone here who understands.”

“I think I understand my own son, Mr. White,” Myron growled, probably showing a bit too much anger than was wise. Secret agenda or not, Myron didn’t need to antagonize this creature. Watch, yes. Be ready to shoot, yes. Antagonize, no.

Consciously, he forced his body to relax and his blood to cool, no small feat staring into Mr. White’s pale dead glare, knowing he might have… intentions for Myron’s only son.

Perhaps it was time for a more direct approach.

“I know when I’m being fed a line, Mr. White,” Myron challenged. “I also know Ryan has been gone for too long for it to be good, even considering interversal time differentials. Why did they send someone like you out here to wait on a boy that may never come home?”

Mr. White’s mouth twitched upward slightly, just a little thing, the first bit of expression Myron had gotten out of him since the day the Colony Exotic had arrived. He couldn’t be sure, but Myron thought he saw something then, in White’s eyes, an inky shadow that passed like a cloud over night sky.

Myron suppressed a shiver.

“They send me to all rogue Exotics, Mr. Kotes. Ones that are chosen as opposed to born. The process of integration is unpredictable and poses significant risk, the mitigation of which I have made my purpose in life.”

Unsure if he wanted to know the answer but simultaneously unable to resist posing the question, Myron swallowed. “What kind of risk?” He asked in an unintentional whisper

The look on Myron’s face must have amused the Colony man, because Mr. White slowly peeled back his lips to show his teeth.

“The kind you send someone like me to handle.”