Chapter 112
January 8th, 2070
Eleven years post Change
The Guardian
The rugged mountain range on the southern continent looked tiny below her. The winter air chilled Lydia, even surrounded by her water shield.
During the last eleven years, implant wearers had created vast underground caverns all over the world, containing crops, cattle, and Afflicted breeding pits to produce the Afflicted they needed to hunt for experience and Demon Tears.
And the Ascended Ones? They'd been too busy with their politics and petty infighting to suspect. The few Ascended Ones that noticed anything assumed they were witnessing isolated incidents, and focused their energy on what they believed were more important matters.
Until now.
'Alpha Gremlin': Release the drones.
Lydia activated the fifty small, long-ranged drones she'd brought with her.
Mr. Osmond had been like a father to her since she was ten. More than a father, since her real dad had never been around. But she resented her role as the diplomat princess who had to hang back and never got in on the real action.
Keeping track of fifty drones was tedious, even with her implant's assistance. She was Mr. Osmond's eyes and ears in the area, letting Mr. Osmond run things from his home base, deep underground.
Since her brother had turned into some kind of big-shot Guardian, gotten himself killed like an idiot, and became a martyr, she'd been treated like nobility. As a kid, people would tell her about their problems and ask for her advice, like they thought she knew the answers.
Even here in the middle of nowhere, a stealth force followed her, ready to step in and provide support if anything went wrong.
Lydia Ice Queen: Pet Sparkles for me.
'Alpha Gremlin': Your worthless cat is fine. I need you to focus, Lydia. I want eyes everywhere. Do not move from your present location. Our forces are waiting for Guardian Abdul Aziz's permission to enter his territory. Let the drones do the risk taking.
Lydia Ice Queen: Sparkles is not worthless.
'Alpha Gremlin': Sparkles ran away from a mouse. That is the very definition of worthlessness in a cat.
Lydia Ice Queen: It was a small rat. The ongoing Sparkles commentary had been going on for close to a decade.
***
Guardian Abdul 5191: Lydia Ice Queen. I am honored by your presence.
Lydia sighed. The man was ten years older than she was, so his infatuation with her was mildly creepy. But they needed his support.
Lydia Ice Queen: The honor is all ours, Guardian.
Guardian Abdul 5191: Regarding the matter we discussed earlier. I'm not the reincarnation of your brother. I was born before he was, but I do owe him a deep personal debt. I was managing the nightclub called the 5191, taking care of my ten siblings, when the aliens issued their Beware the Guardian 5191 warning. The next day, the nightclub burned down, and I spent the next month in hiding. I hadn't even chosen Guardian at that point, but when you're attacked by monsters, and you have Guardian/Legendary available, you take it.
Lydia Ice Queen: And when the monsters killed my brother and thought they'd killed the Guardian, nobody was searching for you anymore.
Guardian Abdul 5191: Exactly. If you want, I'll make something up to win you and your brother's people over.
Lydia Ice Queen: That would be great. Just between the two of us, I think Leo's followers are crazy too, but we need all the help we can get.
***
'Alpha Gremlin': I was hoping for a little time to prepare, but several large forces of implant wearers are headed your way. Your purpose at this point is political, to show the different factions that we are serious in our support of this new Guardian. Look pretty, smile, and wave. Try to be nice. Once the fighting starts, you will run like hell, bravely showing support from a distance.
The hell I will, she thought.
Lydia Ice Queen: What fighting? I was going to a formal dinner. I even memorized a bunch of etiquette, so I wouldn't offend anyone.
'Alpha Gremlin': I didn't say anything before, because I didn't want to worry you. Guardian Abdul's forces drove off a High-Level Boss attack last month, killing six of them. Since then, the Bosses have been planning a full-scale assault to finish what they failed to do previously. I thought we had a little time, but I suspect the Bosses spotted enough implant wearers flying in Guardian Abdul's direction to launch their attack ahead of schedule. A foolish move on their part. If they were smart, they'd have waited for the implant wearers to run out of food and disperse.
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Lydia Ice Queen: How many Bosses?
'Alpha Gremlin': Pretty much all of them. Over a thousand of their best strongest monsters. This is serious. The Bosses intend to crush Guardian Abdul Malic Aziz and his followers in a show of overwhelming force before hunting down the rest of us. That cannot be allowed to happen. I'm sending you the speech I've given to everyone else. I didn't send it to you before, because, of course, this speech isn't really from your brother, but let's keep that our secret.
Leo/Mr. Osmond's Speech.
This is it. The last speech I've prepared. It's been 11 years since the Change.
It took me a while to figure out the aliens were warning their allies about my current incarnation, Guardian Abdul Malic Aziz 5191.
A great battle will soon take place. In the future I lived, my current incarnation and my followers were annihilated. They lost badly, and that was it for humanity. Over the next thirty-nine years, the human population dropped quickly, until, fifty years post Change, humanity was no more.
The fact that the aliens warned their monster allies about this battle means we can win.
This is the turning point of the war. If we win, humanity wins. If we lose, humanity is fucked.
I don't care if you believe in me or not. I don't care if you like me or not. I need you to understand this. The monsters are coming to annihilate Guardian Abdul Malic Aziz and his army. If they succeed, humanity is doomed to extinction.
If you have an implant and can fly, get your ass to this Guardian's mountain hideout. If you're not part of an existing unit, Contact Alpha Gremlin and he'll assign you to one based on your skill set. If you have no combat skills or healing abilities, your instructions are to fly around and look dangerous to distract the monsters from someone who is. This is what we've spent the last eleven years preparing for.
GET OUT THERE AND FIGHT!”
Lydia looked around, extending her implant-augmented senses. Humans were coming from all directions. She lost count at three hundred thousand, with many, many more on the way. This was what implant wearers around the world had spent the last decade preparing for. And it was finally happening. It was do-or-die time.
She felt before she saw the first Boss.
'Alpha Gremlin': Looks like that moron Ambrose is coming in fast. Doesn't think he needs support to take on some stupid humans. Let's show him how wrong he is. Team Alpha, wait until you see his tentacles and immobilize him.
Lydia wasn't technically part of Team Alpha, but Ambrose had been present when his business partner, Damien, had killed her brother, and as a water mage, she had some excellent immobilization skills.
'Alpha Gremlin': NOW!
Lydia hit the Boss with everything she had, using her freeze skill. A thousand others used their abilities to do the same. The Boss would have shrugged off any one implant wearer, but a thousand working together brought the monster to a halt in the air. Tentacles twisted and spasmed as Ambrose fought to get free, and if nothing else happened, he would have succeeded. But the humans weren't about to give him the chance to escape.
'Alpha Gremlin': Ranged attacks. Team Beta. GO!
Lydia fired sharp chunks of ice at velocities that would have eviscerated a tank. Team beta attacked it with everything imaginable. In her periphery, Jason Young, Leo's old friend, fired a gun that was larger than he was. The ranged attacks combined to make the Boss resemble a giant piece of Swiss cheese with tentacles.
'Alpha Gremlin': Team Charlie finish him off. GO! GO! GO!
Lydia hung back since her close-range attacks were at best average. But Angie, who'd looked after Lydia since her brother died, shot forward with a fifty-foot-long flaming sword, along with many others who hit the Boss with every imaginable close-range attack.
Ambrose let out a final scream as he died. Pieces of him rained on the mountainside far below.
And that was how you did it. A human army had killed a powerful Boss in less than thirty seconds. Lydia received an invitation to join Abdul's party. She accepted, ignoring Mr. Osmond's repeated requests that she withdraw, and felt stronger as his augments took effect, increasing her stats. Looking above the vast sea of humans, the sky speckled with tiny dots of High-Level Bosses. The great battle for humanity was beginning.
***
Ten days later.
The emergency shelter was filled with groans, the smell of bodily waste, and death.
Lydia stroked the head of an unknown man whose face and eyes had been badly burned in the fighting. She used her special skill, Mend. A powerful all-purpose healing skill with a short cooldown time, that also reduced the patient's pain and cleaned the wounds, preventing infection. She'd created the skill by combining the special skills Sooth, Cleanse, and Heal, and she was quite proud of it. She used it on the wounded to keep them alive and comfortable until more specialized healers could look at them.
She'd been using this skill nonstop since she arrived at the shelter the day before.
Thanks to her, the man would live. Thanks to implant regeneration, the man would get his sight back. If he lived long enough.
After nine days of brutal, bloody, nonstop fighting and a tenth day of tending to the wounded, Lydia was dead on her feet but couldn't rest when so many others were in worse shape. She popped more Demon Tears, focusing them on her exhausted body to keep herself upright, a trick she learned from Mr. Al. Soon even that wouldn't be enough to keep her moving.
She heard crying in the background as another poor bastard breathed their last.
So much death.
And they'd failed.
After nine days of desperate fighting, in which entire human armies had destroyed themselves against the Boss forces, the Guardian had fallen. Guardian Abdul Aziz could have fled, but he chose to stay, supporting his people as they fought to the death beside him. Gretchen; that mf paladin guy, Pete; Howie; and so many others she didn't know had died in the fighting. So many good people.
'Alpha Gremlin': We won.
Lydia could feel a chuckle through the implant. She could tell Mr. Osmond had broken out the good scotch he reserved for special occasions.
If Lydia could have reached out and strangled Mr. Osmond through the implant, she would have.
Lydia Ice Queen: I don't know what things are like in your comfortable shelter, but up here on planet Earth, I'm surrounded by dead and wounded comrades! We got our asses kicked!
There was more chuckling through the implant connection.
'Alpha Gremlin': The Bosses thought if they took out the Guardian and his forces, they would win the war, and they sacrificed most of their people to make it happen, all of their best, strongest monsters. Check and mate. Idiots! We took heavy losses as well, but I'm counting over a hundred thousand surviving implant wearers who are stronger than ever before and itching for payback. I keep running the numbers and there's no scenario in which we lose. We've won, Lydia. We've won the war.