Chapter 82 - Get Called Out

There was one thing Sissa was right about. I wasn’t going to make it to the insertion point. Not as I was.

I couldn’t just walk over there. The scourge, despite getting a good scare when Kuul arrived, were still everywhere, scattered, hiding, even if they weren’t immediately visible from our current position. Once I was out of the turrets’ ranges, it would only be a matter of time before I was spotted and surrounded. How long it would take for the scourge to swarm me would be down to speed and a lot of luck.

Sneaking wasn’t much of an option either. The System had seen to that when it hadn’t given me an ability to see in the dark. The only way I was getting around out there was if I had a guide like Trix to hold my hand, and that ran up against my little “I want my friends to live through this” problem. Any direction I went, they needed to do the opposite. They needed to be far away when the scourge suddenly didn’t have a lightning rod to unleash their fury upon.

In either scenario, the most vulnerable my friends and I would ever be was when we were transitioning from one position to another. While the others would be making a break for the pass to the northwest where they would either bump into Jassin or their ride would find them, I would be running through the woods and trying not to die.

Therefore, I needed to minimize travel time and maximize time spent at the tutorial facility to give my people more time and distance before the scourge was free to chase after them. The problem was that I had no idea how to do that.

“Finally getting around to making armor then?” Geddon asked, his mouth brimming with some kind of cheesy cornbread. Soggy crumbs sprayed over the surface of my workbench with every hard consonant.

I paused Shaping briefly to brush away the little bits of food, careful not to smear the chalk markings I’d made this morning while also fighting the urge to grind my teeth. It wasn’t Geddon’s fault I had been stuck down here all day, and it wouldn’t do to take out my frustrations on him.

Kuul had continued his rampage through the night and well into the morning, and he showed no signs of tiring. He chased the scourge with absolute fury, vomiting fire at them, stomping them, and taking massive swipes with his giant hands. Wherever he went, the scourge scattered. Smoke hung in the air everywhere from fresh fires and burning bodies, while the horde stalked through the forest in ones and twos, refusing to leave sight of their prey even in the face of a potentially fiery death.

Or, at least that’s what I was told by those that were able to go up on the walls. According to Tiba, in no circumstance was I allowed to be seen by the flaming goblin kaiju monster. Apparently, “that would be bad.”

Tiba was much the same. She hadn’t been up on the walls since she’d arrived, choosing to stay in the shadows and wince with every booming crash Kuul made.

“Rage is what fuels Kuul now, Ryan. Nothing else,” she’d said. “He burns until his enemies die or he does, and I think he still blames you for everything.”

That didn’t explain why she didn’t want to show her face either, but it didn’t take a genius to understand how terrified she was of her old chief. The stress of having him so close by shone clearly on her face, the lack of real rest and knife edge tension making her look hollow and brittle.

Kuul never touched our little home away from home, though. He’d been the historian of the Stone Heart tribe, so maybe he still held the significance of this place in some high regard. Then again, maybe the outsiders taking shelter in the ruined goblin market were further down the list of priorities than the Black Ones and their kind.

Whatever Kuul’s reasons, he left us alone and provided a much needed reprieve from fighting… provided I stay down here out of sight.

“Mmm. Excellent.” Geddon chewed in my ear as he expressed his appreciation for my work and his food in roughly the same way.

Frankly, I was surprised the big leori could tell what I was making at all. Right now, all I had were plates that only theoretically fit together in the vague shape of a human. My current object of frustration, the beginnings of a leg joint, I’d already scrapped and reformed a dozen times trying to get the seal Triggers to work right. They either worked too fast, threatening to take a bite out of my flesh when I used them, or they were so slow and unresponsive as to be useless. As it was, I would probably be better off digging my way to the insertion point, because running in this was out of the question.

“You know, at first, I was surprised you hadn’t done something like this before,” Geddon continued at the precise moment I thought it was safe to dive back into the knee joint to unfreeze it for the fortieth time. “As much as you get hurt, I always thought it was strange that you didn’t make the effort to protect yourself with your magic.”

I sighed, letting the mana I was gathering dissipate. Maybe it was time for a break anyway.

“There was always something else to do,” I replied. “Other fires to put out, you know?”

“I’m not saying it was a bad move,” the leori added, raising his hands defensively. “I actually admired your methods. All attack. No retreat. Stand somewhere and dare the enemy to move you, right?”

In the interest of not dispelling any air of coolness I’d accidentally gathered around here, I went with it. “Sure. The turrets were a sword and shield at the same time. Armor just seemed like a problem I could put off, given how well I heal. Now that I have some time, I figured I’d get on it.”

“Don’t let him lie to you like that, Geddon,” Samila snarked from on the wall above us. Her new shield, a reinforced steel and aluminum thing I’d whipped up for her to replace her old one, hung proudly in her hand as she smirked down at the two of us. “The idea of armoring himself at all didn’t even pop into his head until he figured it would benefit someone else.”

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“That’s not true,” I argued. “If I made a list of stuff I wanted to build but never had time to, I’d have to organize it into volumes. Big ones. You’d need new shelves.”

Geddon raised an eyebrow and frowned thoughtfully up at Samila. “You know, now that I think about it, I see what you mean. His underdeveloped sense of self manifests as an almost suicidal tendency to put others before himself, a personality trait so ingrained he cannot conceive of doing otherwise. He has seen himself as a spectator in his own life for so long, it has even shaped his approach to war. His machines allow him to participate in battle from afar, so that they protect others as no single combatant could reasonably do and simultaneously keep the battle at a safe distance, lest he gives into the darker part of his personality he truly fears.”

I swiveled on my stool, slowly, until I was facing the big guy, my mouth involuntarily open but with no words that came to mind.

Samila, similarly, stood agape.

“What?” Geddon asked with a sheepish grin. “Fighting tells you a lot about someone. In a way, it is the most honest form of self expression in the world.”

“I told you!” Samila exclaimed, pointing an accusatory finger over at Sissa. “I told you! What did I say?!”

Sissa, who’d been avoiding me for the whole day, took a break from staring intently out into the smoke to roll her eyes and look up to the heavens for strength. She’d been doing that a lot lately. “Fine, Sam. Get it out of your system.”

The smaller dragonkin shook her head smugly. “No. I want you to say it,” Samila goaded.

Sissa growled like a jungle cat and showed her teeth but capitulated only after a long, hard stare. “Geddon is probably more intelligent than anyone on the squad,” she grumbled, getting a reproachful look from her sister.

“…including me,” she admitted before amending her statement in a rush. “Intelligence he refuses to apply to anything other than smashing things!”

“And?!” Samila wasn’t satisfied yet.

“And Ryan is stupid and would cut off his own arm before letting anyone else even mildly inconvenience themselves for him. That might even be how he lost it in the first place. There. Are you happy?” She muttered.

Samila sniffed haughtily and crossed her arms. “Maybe. I don’t like the way you said it,”

“Might I offer an opinion-” Bole interjected with a raised finger.

“Might I-”

“Shut up, Bole,” the sisters shouted in unison.

Bole blinked and seemed to unsuccessfully suppress a shudder, but there was a little smile peeking out from the shadows of his hood too.

The sisters continued to bicker.

Meanwhile, I cleared my throat uncomfortably and stood, suddenly very interested in more of that cheese bread Geddon was getting everywhere.

Beedy met me at the fire ring and shakily slid the iron pan full of bread over toward me. The man wasn’t up and about yet, but he was awake more than asleep nowadays, choosing to set up next to the fire to stay warm. He had taken over as our defacto cook for a couple meals now, despite Trix being much better at the job than anyone else. Unfortunately, now that he was on the mend, Beedy was back to being silently helpful instead of speaking up and keeping Bole in his place.

“Thanks, Beedy. Smells great,” I said, stuffing an overlarge piece of the bread in my mouth to signal I was not going to contribute more to the conversation. I could feel the redness in my cheeks, which I wanted to attribute to the heat of the fire but knew better.

Trix was there too in a rare moment when he wasn’t watching the scourge from his basket.

“Any progress, Ryan?” the vulpa asked, concern clear in his voice.

“Not really,” I replied once I was able to swallow enough to speak. At least this was a conversation I was comfortable having. It wasn’t about me. “The actuators are clumsy and weird. Input is either getting magnified a hundred times or slowed down to a crawl. No in between. No way to vary it.”

“And you insist on having your suit of armor be… powered?” Trix asked, trying out the unfamiliar term.

“I don’t know. It’s starting to look like a pipe dream. I might have to just have to go medieval if I want to get it done at all.”

“I thought you said that plan was doomed to failure?” Trix asked.

“It is,” I admitted with a shrug.

“That sounds like a less appealing option then.”

“It’s not my pick, no.”

One of his ears perked up, and his eyes darted over to the side in feigned nonchalance. “What about-”

“No, Trix.”

Compromise on sentencing my friends to death. Going with me. That’s what he was about to propose. They wanted to escort me all the way to the tutorial facility, send me on my merry way. Sissa still held out hope it was possible, and Trix didn’t take long to get on board too.

I wasn’t budging though. If they wanted me to sneak through the forest before it was time, they’d have to tie me up and carry me, and I was very heavy.

Even if their plan was a success, they’d immediately get swarmed by the scourge, I was sure. That was the only way I saw that plan going down. If it didn’t spot me on the way to the insertion point, it would certainly notice when the spigot of power got turned off for good, and it would come running.

I would die before I let any of that happen. Thanks to Jassin, I guessed that was always on the table anyway. Funny that my death would solve all of our problems. The only thing keeping me from seriously considering it right now was that people still needed my turrets.

Suddenly, a gust of wind slammed down into our camp area, powerful enough to send bedrolls flying and knock over camp gear. Sparks from the fire gusted in all directions and stung my bare skin, while Trix hopped on one foot to avoid setting his fur alight.

I felt the irresistible urge to look up.

There, in the space above us, the air seemed to twist, split, and then shatter as if it were a window through which something very large had just crashed. Glossy crimson scales, razor talons, and great, flapping wings that spanned wide enough to engulf the entire fort folded into the space above us until I was looking at a hulking red, honest to Constance dragon. It hovered there, nearly vertically with its sinuous tail snaking down to brush the ground, its body long and sleek, and its head a horned maw with tiny yellow eyes that regarded us all imperiously from far overhead. Most disturbing to me, it only flapped its wings once, despite its size, its altitude never wavering. It gave the whole picture an air of impossibility. Wrongness.

The dragon’s mouth opened, and a voice spoke in my head, dominating my thoughts in a way I hadn’t felt since my time under Eclipse in the presence of-

“MORTAL BEINGS, DO NOT FLEE. ”

Everyone obligingly stood there, gawking up at the thing. No one had the capacity to move anyway. I felt like a one-ton, lead blanket was draped over my body. When no one ran away screaming, the dragon raised its head and let loose a gout of smoke with a pleased *CHUFF*

“GOOD. THOSE AMONG YOU WITH THE BLOOD OF TSUMLESTORA, ATTEND ME. BRING TO ME THE HUMAN.”

Well, shit.

Our dragon, it seemed, had arrived early, and it wanted to meet me.