The great-serpent screamed, a terrible wail awash with discordant highs and lows, a machine’s mockery of true human speech. Its mechanical legion echoed the cry, screeching tinnily whilst hoisting their sutured laser weaponry high into the air. The overwhelming blare drowned out all other sound, and for a moment, I was thrust into a world of silence. My head whipped about madly as I struggled to maintain awareness of the battlefield.
Everything began to happen very quickly.
Rover collapsed with a shriek that I couldn’t make out but for the movement of his maw, eyes scrunched shut tight, hands clamped firmly over his pointed ears. He rolled back and forth in agony upon the smooth steel ground. Easy pickings for the rallied cybersimians.
I gripped my sword so tightly that my knuckles whitened.
Focus.
Vox’s arms braced before him, brow furrowed in intense concentration. Beside him, Quarrel’s face was pale, eyes darting back frantically over towards the treeline far behind us.
My breath thumped in my own ears, my chest heaving as I fought against the panic.
Focus.
Thaum struggled to maintain command, shouting orders that no one heard, twenty shades coalescing into one massive tendril that darted towards Rover, swirling about protectively over his incapacitated form.
The Champion lowered its bulbous head, digital headlights flaring. Though still deafened, I could feel the slight pop of pressure discharge across the fine hairs on my arms as ten compartments on its back slid open.
From each one, a swarm of nightmarish insects emerged. I watched them as they all grouped together, forming a grotesque cloud of buzzing, crawling death. To have any hope of defeating them, I’d need to reveal my true Blessings.
Could I? Was I ready?
My head pounded. I hadn’t budged, not an inch. I was frozen in place. Any moment now, the bugs would race towards me.
MOVE!
All of a sudden, a bright white comet slammed into the Titanoboa’s back from the side, erupting in radiance like a miniature volcano. The flash singed my eyes, heat reaching me even from leagues away, vaporizing the emerging swarm and shocking my body free.
Glare.
In a grating whine of servos and circuitry, the Champion recoiled, reeling back with a thunderous hiss of pain. Displaying speed unexpected for something so massive, it whipped around to face the Immolator.
But he showed no fear.
The High Inquisitor, fury of the Frontlines, made dodging lightning-fast snaps from a maw full to the brim with serrated, corrugated teeth look easy. He darted back and forth like he’d been birthed already airborne, circling the mechanical leviathan with near-contemptuous ease and blasting it repeatedly from afar.
“I’ll keep it occupied!” Draconic Blood had already repaired my hearing, and so Glare’s voice graced my ears unimpeded through Thaum’s shade, this time. “But I can’t break through this plating without time!”
At his words, I surged into action, diving back amongst the throng of apelike servants, to thin the herd whilst my ally kept their Master occupied. My allies rushed to join me, renewing our assault.
“We need a plan!” Thaum cried from afar, her hand contorted as she sent forth spears of shadow, skewering the cyborg creatures. Her victims belched up clumps of congealed blood and oil as they toppled to the ground.
“My arrows won’t do shit to that thing,” Quarrel cursed as one of her shots skittered off the stapled helm of a simian. Her voice was high-pitched even through the shade’s distortion. “They’ll barely fucking scratch its armor.”
“Nor my sonics, I fear,” Vox’s voice grated next, grudgingly. “The Champion isn’t being controlled–it’s the controller. There’s no signal to disrupt, and it’d take too long for me to charge up a blast powerful enough to damage it.”
Rover just moaned agonizingly through the connection. I wasn’t close enough to examine his condition. I could only hope it wasn’t enough to keep him out of the fight.
There was a pregnant pause in our discourse, none of us sure quite how to proceed. The Champion’s servants were almost all taken care of, now, decimated by our continued offensive. I thrust my blade brutally through the half-breastplate of the last one, Fang shearing through bone and metal with a snarl.
He parted the roughshorn steel without an ounce of trouble.
“My sword,” I said, suddenly. “It may be able to damage the Champion.”
“Excellent!,” Thaum exclaimed, “Then–”
“But that still means I’ll need to get close enough to do so,” I continued.
“Then we shall aid in Glare’s distraction,” Thaum declared, without missing a beat. I took a moment to look back towards the Master, who was nodding my way far more confidently than I felt.
“Shall we not?” She asked, glancing at my other teammates.
Rover had managed to drag himself to his feet, the fur below his ears stained red with still-fresh blood. “I’ll…get in close,” he groaned, shakily. “Do…what I can. Can still take…a few hits.” His tone didn’t exactly assure me of his capability, though.
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“Right…,” Quarrel said, looking at the lycan uncertainly, “Well, I’ll…” she glanced around at her allies nervously. “I’ll do what I can…,” she muttered. Then she narrowed her eyes and snapped. “At range. I’m not taking any risks. I’m no Brute.”
“Fine,” I accepted quickly, forestalling any argument. Right now, we were as unified as we’d ever been, and I was eager to keep it that way.
But I wouldn’t risk death a second time. I needed a fallback plan. If I couldn’t kill the creature quickly enough with my sword alone, I’d pulse a huge amount of Lightning through it, hoping that would be enough to melt the leviathan’s internal circuitry. If even that didn’t work, I’d Flash Step away. If worst came to worst, and everyone else died, I’d just harry the creature to death. I could run away from it indefinitely with my Mover Blessing, and quickly regenerate any hits it landed.
I’d try the risky route once, and only once.
I looked back towards the writhing, snapping, serpent. It was at least three stories tall, even with only a third its length raised off the ground. The Entropic cannons mounted on its head’s either side glowed menacingly, but it hadn’t seen fit to use them yet, not against the Immolator. Did it know laser weaponry would prove ineffective against him? How?
My thoughts were interrupted by a clap of thunder.
The Champion, having realized its teeth were of little use against the High Inquisitor, finally managed to land a devastating tail swipe upon the Blessed. Despite my companion’s Hard Light Armor, I felt sure I could hear the crunching and cracking of shattered bones.
Glare shot towards the treeline like an enchanted arrow, whereupon he promptly disappeared. I gulped. Could he survive a hit like that? Could I?
Only one way to find out.
“We’re out of time,” I informed my companions.
I dashed off at once, again shattering the metallic soil with each step, the distance between myself and the machine snake rapidly disappearing. The Champion, after casting one self-satisfied look towards the crevasse Glare’s trajectory had plowed through the foliage, turned to face the five of us.
Before fixing steadfastly on me, the closest to it.
It hissed, low and slow, and the ever-present whine of its cannons reached a fervent crescendo. My gut clenched. My muscles tensed. Every strand, every fiber, every synapse of my being stood ready to dodge. Even Flash Step waited alongside them. The lights glowed brighter, and brighter, and BRIGHTER–
THOOOM.
The Champion shrieked in pain, head bobbing backwards, firing sequence interrupted by a hardened projectile of condensed sound. It dealt little damage, but served extremely well to infuriate the creature, who changed its focus from myself to Vox, lasers nearly finished charging–
Before being interrupted again, this time by an elongated whip of condensed shadow which snapped viciously against its left mechanical eye, countless little shades raking across the ocular sensor with minute fangs and claws, leaving deep rents in the hardened glass. The Titanoboa howled, this time so loudly it made my teeth hurt. I was almost upon it.
But I was too late.
The Champion reared back, screamed, and fired directly at Thaum.
My enhanced reflexes allowed me to see the discharge in near-slow motion. It was almost a thing of beauty.
The twin lasers bore forth through space seamlessly, leaving neither pressure nor sound behind their passage, shining with all the colors of the rainbow. They moved silently, thick blots of paint drawn across reality itself, their light a spreading stain that threatened to consume the canvas whole.
Instantaneous. Unavoidable. Inevitable.
There would be no escape.
The Cell heir’s face whitened. Even from this distance, I could see the blood drain from her every pore.
Thaum summoned forth a mammoth shawl of shades, more than I’d ever seen, more than I’d thought possible. They emerged from her robes by the dozens, covering her and my other three companions in a great black ball, yet painfully slowly compared to the hard light projectiles that were headed her way. Her makeshift shield had barely finished forming, before…
IMPACT.
A second sun lit up the Champion’s arena. This one put Glare’s to shame.
The discharged plasma impacted her shadow shield in a terrifyingly potent detonation. The shades burned, disintegrating and dissolving under the serpent’s flame. Even the one next to my own ear vanished, fizzling away into scant motes of darkness.
The explosion’s cacophony drowned out their screams.
I turned my head as quickly as possible, but the heat and radiation still melted my eyelids, fusing them horribly to my own corneas before Draconic Blood rushed to handle the damage. I didn’t have time to assess the attack’s effect on my allies. The shockwaves had blasted me backwards, allowing me to cover the last few leagues, if haphazardly, in an instant.
I was headed right towards the serpent’s back, thick and broad, and armor-plated, humming with internal energy. The Titanoboa hissed triumphantly from above, metal maw opening wide and cannons whining furiously at the empty sky, crowing its victory over the gnats that had troubled it so. Then, with a snap, and a crunch, I landed.
The Titanoboa’s head whipped down to stare right at me. I looked back up at it. For a split second, the two of us stared right at one another. It almost seemed surprised I was alive. But that wouldn’t last long.
The Champion reared back, once more.
I watched it move. My teammates were dead, or incapacitated and, soon, I would be too.
Its devastating cannons lit up, once more.
Fuck. It.
For the first time in close to a week, I called upon my favorite Blessing. And without a moment’s delay, accompanied by a swell of pure euphoria, it answered.
Flash Step.
It was too easy.
In an instant, I was no longer draped ungainly over the serpent’s back. In a minute flicker of red lightning, and a moderate flex of internal Entropy, I was standing steady on the very top of its head. As the Champion’s sensors went wild scanning for my new location, I raised my right arm high, and Fang let out a raucous howl.
In a single, smooth motion, I bent down and impaled him through the Champion’s left eye.
It roared in pain, letting out a keening mechanical wail as it whipped its head frantically around, desperate to dislodge me. There was no purchase on the creature’s sleek, metallic scales, and I couldn’t possibly hold on. With the second nauseating throw, it’d unseated me, whipping me violently towards the silver soil.
It didn’t matter.
As I rapidly approached what was doubtless to become my second forceful interment of the day, I grinned, relaxing my muscles.
I’d won.
With but a gesture, a tug of two fingers upon my right hand from one side to the other, and a roil of Entropy deep within my soul, I directed the motion of my Soulbound Weapon from afar.
Fang, still stuck fast into the creature’s mechanical retina, dug even deeper, tunneling from machine pupil to internal wiring and, finally, to the colossus’s central processing unit.
The first floor’s Champion let out one final, horrific screech that grew increasingly static as it thrashed upon the synthetic earth. Its death throes shook the floor, destroying what remained of the spire fragments, turning the many Entropic gems and precious metals to naught but pulp.
Finally, it produced a mortal moan, and its remaining eye went dark.
And then everything went dark, as I impacted the burnished steel floor at over one hundred miles per hour.