Austin, Texas Summer 2055
The contract had been hashed out and signed by both parties in a matter of hours.
Hopefully, the Mist Spekters’ eagerness had been masked by the congresswoman’s.
Otherwise, one might start asking dangerous questions.
Regardless, the quick resolution afforded the mercenary company more downtime than they had planned for.
Alin sat in a sidewalk bar half-populated by Mist Spekters.
Steph was regaling some hot local women their age with his gladiatorial exploits.
A spinning truth gem in one of the women’s hands pointed to signs that Steph’s month’s long drought was on the cusp of ending.
Fraternization wasn’t strictly against Mist Spekters’ rules. Otherwise Alin and Kat would’ve ran afoul of it many times already. It had been merely discouraged as messy entanglements would only cause problems as they tried to build cohesion in their early days.
Victor was drawing eyes from both men and women, but his eyes were firmly planted back with his husband in Southern California. “Jesus H. Christ! Some else gets the next round,” he placed the craft-brewed beers… er… artisan brewed, according to the signs, on the table.
“Probs?” Eda said. Her glasses glinted dangerously under the street lights.
“People can’t keep their hands to themselves.” Victor sat with a sigh.
“That’s… ballsy,” Isaak whistled. “You’re a big, dangerous-looking dude.”
“Nah, some people like that sort of thing,” Luzi sipped her sour raspberry cider. “Vic’s huge bear arms can wrap them up nice and snug and safe.”
“It’s still not okay to touch him without consent,” Eda leaned forward dangerously, staring into the packed bar interior. “Can you point them out, Victor?”
“No, no. That’s okay, Eda. It’s not worth cursing someone over.”
“I was going to do a pinching curse, so that they know what it feels like.”
“Ah, thanks,” Victor laughed nervously, “but I couldn’t point them out anyways.”
Catelin cleared her throat. “Guys, that’s terrible and all— I empathize with you, Vic— but, since you’re letting it go. I have a more important issue.” She made them wait until all their attention was fully on her.
She even used an acting Skill.
“What’s the difference between cider and cidre?”
She delivered such inanity with all the solemn gravitas of one of her Shakespeare in the park plays.
“Pretentiousness,” Kat said flatly.
“You scurrilous wench.”
“I’m rubber and you’re glue, whatever you say to me bounces back and sticks to you.”
The two young women glared a moment before breaking out grins and clinking their ciders… er… one cider and one cidre.
“In all seriousness,” Catelin began, “I’m with Eda. It is my belief that such brigands of Vic’s ample assets must be taken to task. If only for their own sake, for, while Vic is generous beyond reasonable expectation in his magnanimity, another may not.”
“Translation: They fuck around with the wrong person and they’ll find out,” Luzi said.
“Exactly!” Catelin stood on her chair and hoisted her glass high. “Thus, we serve a righteous cause!”
“Oh god…” Victor tried to shrink his big body down, failing miserably.
“I’m in!” Isaak grinned. “I’ll be the bait for the next round.”
Eyes turned to Alin.
A quick calculation showed him what he already knew.
There were no other men at the table.
He glanced around the bar, calculating which other Mist Spekter he could rope into the idiocy.
“Wait a second…” he whispered in realization, “I don’t have to agree to any of this.”
“But, don’t you want to be a team player?” Kat batted her eyelashes up at him.
“Wait… what? You want rando’s pinching my butt?”
“It’s for a noble cause.”
“Agree to disagree. Only one person is allowed to pinch my butt.”
“Aww… I love you too!”
“Blegh!” many people said in unison.
A fun night was had by most.
Happy people filled the downtown entertainment district with laughter and smiles.
Not a single fight broke out.
Monster outside the walls… sometimes inside had a way of changing most people’s perspectives.
Young men, who in an earlier era would’ve fulfilled their aggression through booze-fueled brawling, had their fill up on those walls.
As for young women?
They didn’t tend towards aggression in the physical ways of the men.
In any case, they too got their fill shoulder to shoulder with those men.
Thus, all were one in celebration of a night off.
Unfortunately, nothing was forever and as the clock ticked closer to midnight the revelry ended with the jarring suddenness that it tended to in a spires world.
Watch alarms beeped.
Mist Spekters cursed almost as one.
Of all the times—
Alin dumped a bunch of Universal Points to the bar’s page before joining his team as they sprinted through the tightly-packed crowd.
It was impossible to keep an eye on everyone, if not for the gray that billowed out from his skin like the smoke machines some of the more dance oriented establishments employed.
The gray spread out rapidly, searching for threats.
Nothing at ground level.
The reason for the alert came in on his hastily plugged in ear piece.
“Sparky to all points. Wizard threat detection: Condition Red. Unknown. Proceed as planned.”
That was more for his dad’s team and the rangers on the skyships.
Two in the clouds and one more about a half hour away.
The Golden Eagles and the Austin militia should be getting the same message.
“They’re slow,” he said through grit teeth.
Where were the sirens? The call to arms and shelter?
“Sober pills, everyone!” Kat called out, if unnecessarily.
He had popped his just before he hopped the gate out into the street.
Minutes ticked quickly in a battle zone.
One.
Two.
Three.
They cleared most of the crowd.
“Slow! Headcount!” Kat called out.
A shiver ran up Alin’s spine.
Shitshitshitshit!
He looked up, eyes drawn into the dark night.
Stars twinkled.
Then kept growing.
Bright yellow.
“Hey, do we have time to armor up?” Steph said, breathing easily despite the frantic run.
“What do you think?” Luzi snapped.
“I guess it’s shield charms,” Steph said.
Isaak peered at the slowly opening portals through his magitech scope. “They’re outside the walls. About 600 meters out and 1000 up.”
At least the wizard countermeasures worked somewhat.
“Better than right on top of us,” Victor said.
Technically, correct.
Sadly, that distance would probably only buy them minutes at most.
“You think they’ll leave us alone cause we’re officially working for that congress chick?” Steph said.
“Do you want to count on that?” Caitelin said.
“Less talk, more running,” Kat whistled. “Orphanage first, worry about ourselves after.”
The city’s sirens finally cried out like a hungry baby.
Just in time for the first golden portal to finish opening.
Even from the distance it looked enormous.
The monster that dropped out of it looked tiny, but Alin knew better.
He didn’t need a HUD to know that.
“What was that!” Luzi said.
They lost sight of it as it plummeted to the ground.
The dust cloud it created was visible despite being kilometers away.
“What do you call a snake with one body and many heads?” Isaak said.
“Hydra?” Steph ventured.
“Thought those had legs, like in the monsterpedia,” Victor said.
“Shut up and run!” Kat snapped.
“Call your horse.”
“No,” she said flatly. “I’m not ditching you guys.”
“You can take 4 people at a time much faster,” he tried to keep his tone light.
Fear breaching into terror from all the people only now coming to the realization that it was happening to them pulsed through the gray and into him.
He was poised to start draining as soon as the monsters went past the walls.
The snake hydra was followed by a variety of winged monsters or beasts.
It was hard to delineate sometimes.
“Shit! It’s those harpy chicks that attacked your dad’s base, Alin!” Steph said.
They crossed two streets when Kat’s robot horse appeared galloping through a running crowd of people.
The virtual intelligence made it deft in a way that seemed impossible for such a large and heavy machine.
Not a single panicked person was so much as grazed.
It stopped in front of Kat and lowered itself to make climbing into its motorcycle seat-like saddle trivial for Kat.
“C’mon, hurry up! 3! No! Make that 4 people!”
Steph snorted. “More like 2, if it’s me and Vic.”
“Smollest is best,” Victor said.
“Eda—”
Alin’s words were swallowed by an explosion that rocked them off their feet.
Instead of fire and heat, he was hammered by water and cold.
He tumbled across the street, choking on brine until he slammed through glass.
The gray swelled out of him.
Too eager for him.
Rein it in! Can’t hurt teammates! Civilians!
He rushed back into the street as the water receded.
They stood there in a small crater as the dark water snaked back to them.
Outworld invader.
Not a monster.
He felt it through the gray.
Drain their lifeforce!
Male.
Strong.
Dangerous.
Take stock of the battlefield.
Mist Spekters scattered.
Kat’s robot horse weathered the watery onslaught, sheltering her and a handful of others.
The rest had fared about as well as him.
As for the civilians?
There were a lot of bodies scattered up and down the street.
Some moved, moaning weakly.
While many more remained still.
A mass of water falling from above crushed just as well as earth and stone.
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“I, Tandol, Reef Guardian, Level 51, greet you, humans of Earth.”
His voice resonated with a noticeable echo.
Unimpressive at first glance for he was small and thin.
Smaller even than Alin’s mom, closer to a preteen Earthian in size and build.
Armor a blend of glittering scales and spiky coral.
A riot of colors.
Bare arms, at least that’s what they looked like, were striped in bright reds, oranges and whites.
An open-faced coral-looking helmet revealed a nose-less face with a sharp smile.
Thin slits on both sides of his neck opened and closed to reveal rich, red gills.
Dark water flowed up his legs to his back, where a small, cylindrical backpack of sorts sloshed.
Too small to seemingly hold the volume of water flowing into it.
The fact that the reef guardian did the whole greeting thing meant there might be an alternate path.
Alin raised empty hands.
“I, Alin, Mist Spekter, greet you.”
“Brave enemy. I take your name and memory.” Tandol held his arms out wide and opened webbed fingers. Colorful fins along his lower arms unfurled.
Threat display?
Empty hands meant the opposite, but Tandol had the water control thing.
“Wait! These people aren’t fighters!” he gestured at everyone on the street.
“Unfortunate, but it is war.”
“We can fight somewhere else.”
“I have been commanded to spare none.”
“You haven’t spared everyone. I’m just hoping you aren’t crap enough to slaughter people that aren’t a threat.”
“I carry the will of my God. No matter what else beats in my chest, I must fulfill it without hesitation.”
“Tandol, we’re having an entire conversation. I’d say that’s a pretty good example of hesitation.”
“Accurate. It is unfortunate that not all of your fellow Earth humans took the opportunity to flee.”
Tandol acted quicker.
Tendrils of dark water surged from his backpack, lancing through people and splattering them against the asphalt.
Alin hit a split-second later.
The water carried strands of Tandol’s life force.
They lost cohesion as he stole them.
Guys, this is a help situation. You don’t like coming out for non-evil people, but this guy’s killing civilians. That’s evil, right? At least protect the people and my friends!
The echoes stirred.
Lights appeared, faintly visible through the wisps of gray.
Water shaped into weapons splashed against numerous forcefields.
Walls, panes and shields in many shapes cracked, but kept people alive.
A long, red staff swirled the gray, batting aside a water spear and stopping it from putting another hole in the robot horse’s metal flank.
Kat’s wide eyes caught his.
The front of her shirt was darkly wet.
Blood or water?
He touched her through the gray.
Fear, but not for herself.
Someone was down behind her, cradled by another Mist Spekter.
He couldn’t tell who was who with just his eyes. And he couldn’t spare any brain power.
“Just get out of here! They’ll cover you!”
He pulled on Tandol directly and found resistance.
A mere trickle flowed from the outworld invader to him.
The high level was already a problem.
Tandol’s natural body compounded it.
He was plainly superhuman compared to normal Earthians.
Increased cellular density. Bones, muscles, scales, skin and everything else. Adaptations to withstand life under the pressure of the ocean depths.
Come on! Come on! Come on! I know a few of you want to scrap with worthy fighters.
The echoes stirred, but didn’t do more.
“Challenge!”
Alin cursed.
Steph, you idiot!
His friend, the gladiator, stood shirtless a few dozen meters down the street.
Trident in one hand and a net in the other.
Steph planted the butt of his trident into the street. “You and me, fishman! Let’s have a show!”
“You wield tools of the reef. Nostalgic! Our young begin their training with a weapon much like that. For reminding me, I accept your Skill,” Tandol said.
“Steph, you mor—”
“I can buy you five— shit! One minute… assuming I can even last that long.” Steph took a deep breath.
The Skill made interference difficult to impossible depending on one’s strength.
“Alin!” Kat called out.
“Just go!”
Tandol created a trident out of hardened dark water to mirror Steph’s.
Water erupted at Tandol’s movement, creating a spray in his wake that reached the height of the rooftops.
Steph’s thrown net was sliced to shreds.
The clash was over in a blink of an eye.
Steph’s trident clattered across the wet ground.
The dark water trident descended.
Alin screamed, dissolving the sharp points before they could plunged into Steph’s gut.
Tandol’s head snapped around.
“Yoink!” Bluewolf popped out of white smoke behind the outworld invader, tagging him with a half dozen strips of paper before vanishing and leaving a cut log in Steph’s place.
“Wh—” Tandol’s words were swallowed by blooming fire.
“Everyone needs to fucking run!” Alin snapped, drawing his longsword and round shield.
Bullets were going to do jack shit.
Tandol was probably bulletproof at a baseline, not counting enchantments, armor and whatever spells and Skills he had.
“You, Alin of the Mist Spekters are doing something. Yet, I cannot perceive it properly. Will you illuminate the depth’s darkness?”
“Sure, after you let everyone run away and promise to stop fighting. I’m not asking for you to violate your oaths or whatever. Just… try an alternative interpretation. Maybe you don’t have to kill these people specifically at this exact moment.”
“You can’t bargain with the tides. They do as they will.”
Tandol dashed forward like he had jets in his webbed feet.
Fast, but not too fast to keep up with.
Dark water clanged against solid iron shield.
Sword counter cut bound between trident prongs.
Enchantment triggered.
Water froze, shattering as Alin pushed the cut through.
Steel screamed against coral.
Tandol recoiled, twisting his head and falling back.
Water splashed in Alin’s face.
A metaphorical truck slammed into his shield, sending him stumbling up the street.
He tripped, forced to ditch his sword lest he cut himself as he rolled across the wet asphalt like a ball.
A heavy weight crushed his shield arm into his chest.
Dark water trident descended on his face only to skip across a faint teal pane of light drifting in and out of sight with the swirls of gray.
Tandol’s large black eyes narrowed.
“You’ve got questions? I’ve got answers. And all I’m selling them for is for you to not raise a hand for a while. Cheap price, don’t you think?”
The dark water trident rose and fell, each time stopping a finger’s length from his face.
To the outworld invader it would’ve felt and looked as though he was hitting an invisible wall.
Alin heaved.
Tandol flew.
Heavier than he looked.
Felt like somewhere between 135 and 180 kilos.
He took a moment to take stock of his surroundings.
Dead and dying people everywhere.
Kat and the Mist Spekters were running.
He gave a moment of thanks to whatever that they actually listened to him.
Now’s the time the guys. We’re clear of anyone that might get caught up. Yeah, there are still a few dying people around, but we can’t get them help while small Aquaman is around trying to kill everyone.
The echoes stirred.
The gray rumbled.
Tandol’s head whipped from side to side.
Hands tried to wrench the dark water trident out of his grasp.
A fist clanged off the side of his coral helmet.
Superhuman strength wielded by ethereal bodies.
They had been stronger in life before the fog had subsumed them.
Their echoes were just that.
Bound in all ways to Alin.
Most were stronger than him, but could only grow stronger if he did.
And he had no idea if they would ever reach the height of the physical power they held when they had drawn breath.
That would’ve made dealing with Tandol much easier despite the invader’s strength and level.
As it was—
Dark water exploded.
Spears lancing in every direction.
Round, black eyes narrowed.
“You are more than you appear.”
The gray was slow to coalesce back around the outworld invader.
Dark water surged, serpent-like.
Alin blocked it at the last moment.
Protective enchantments flashed around him, momentarily lighting up the darkness with a splash of color.
The water serpent rose with his shield in its fangs, carrying him high into the sky.
Lights flashed in the distance.
Thunder and lightning cracked.
He had almost forgotten about the larger battle, forced to condense the gray closer to him by an overwhelming foe.
Tandol swam up the body of the water serpent faster than any fish.
Alin pulled on the life the outworld invader had extended into the construct.
Violently.
The dark water weakened, losing cohesion and dumping the both of them on a rooftop a block away.
Stolen strength surged through Alin’s limbs.
He leapt on Tandol, deflecting water spears with his shield before slamming the edge into the side of the outworld invader’s gills.
A stricken look crossed the nose-less face.
Level 50 or not, superhuman strength or not, he had felt the blow keenly.
Alin drew a second longsword.
A cut to an exposed arm—
— caught by dark water tendrils.
Freezing enchantment created shattered ice shards but the quick outworld invader jetted away on a burst of dark water.
Tandol stumbled forward from a powerful blow on the back of his armor.
Bits of coral littered the roof top like colorful hail.
Alin lunged in with a thrust more suited to a rapier than a longsword, but functional nonetheless.
A wall of dark water met the tip, shattering into ice a split-second later.
Tandol rolled.
Small size an advantage in close quarters without the expected weakness of a lack of strength.
Dark water tendrils cut pain across Alin’s limbs.
A sudden burst of water threw him off the roof.
He rolled into a crouch on landing.
Tandol stood poised on the roof with dark water tendrils writhing protectively around him like an angry giant octopus.
“You do not bleed?”
Indeed, his cut clothing was wet, but not with red.
Gray wisps rose from out of his cuts like steam escaping from the rice cooker.
“Nah, I bleed… sometimes.”
“I cannot appraise your class. You must be one of the blessed then.”
“Or maybe, I’m just too high level for appraisal?”
“If that was the case then we would not still be fighting. You could be toying with me, but then that means you allowed me to kill your fellow Earth humans.”
“Having second thoughts? Still time to withdraw. You want to kill, there are plenty of monsters out there. I’ll even pay you Universal Points. That snake hydra looked like a huge challenge.”
“No. I do not believe you. Your concern for others was genuine.”
Tandol leapt with a dozen dark water constructs.
Alin met him with the echoes of his relatives.
Faintly glowing forcefields blocked spears.
Superstrong fists and feet cracked shields.
He pulled the fight to the north, away from the orphanage. He had never run as fast or leapt as far as he had before this night.
Snatches of battle filtered in like blurs on the edges of his perception.
Armed civilians, Austin militia, random murderhobo groups, Golden Eagles.
All fought for their lives against the onslaught.
The walls had been breached.
That much was clear as monsters rampaged into the northern part of the city.
Thunder and lightning marked the dark clouds in the skies as skyships battled harpies and flying monsters.
An enormous shadow loomed, covering the light from the explosions in the sky.
The snake hydra moved fast.
A body as thick around as a big rig at its narrower parts slithered over single-story buildings smashing them like they were the little Lego houses Alin sometimes secretly built.
5 heads hissed and struck, picking screaming people, animals and monsters like a chicken mowing bugs in the grass.
1 head flopped, dragging along its side.
But even that was a deadly weapon, crushing buildings and smearing wet streaks across the ground.
Bigger than anything he had ever—
Dark water sword curved inward struck the lip of his shield.
He pushed it up and moved his head out of the line of attack, but the tip suddenly lanced out.
Metal screamed on the side of his head.
The helmet had been the only piece of armor he had managed to put on during the frantic run from the bar.
He leapt back a dozen feet, blocking strikes with his rapidly weakening shield.
Fuck it!
How different could one giant monster be to a lot of smaller monsters?
Their collective mass was probably close.
Individual power?
That could make a difference.
But options weren’t plentiful and he was creating more.
The snake hydra created a song of screams as each head tossed a wriggling figure back and swallowed it whole in quick succession.
Alin stretched the gray, engulfing the giant monster from several blocks away.
No time to prod and poke.
He pulled in one violently regrettable instant.
The snake hydra hissed, writhing around as if in the grips of an even larger snake-eating bird of prey.
Tandol aborted a lunging attack backed by a rain of dark water arrows.
Those large black eyes widened than narrowed.
Arrows turned into wary tentacles.
Alin’s tongue darted out unconsciously.
For a moment he stared down at Tandol from on high through 5 sets of eyes.
He saw warm colors, yellow to red, radiating from the outworld invader’s core. Thin strands of the warmth flowed down the center of the dark blue tendrils.
The surrounding environment was awash in splotches of warmth against a dark canvas.
A blink.
A shake of his head.
Reality snapped back.
Wispy hands in the swirling gray seemed to be signaling him, snapping fingers or flipping him off.
They seemed to grow more distinct, more tangible as the giant monster’s strength bled from him into the gray.
Tandol was an experienced warrior.
He didn’t make the mistake of taking his eyes of his opponent.
It helped that he seemed to sense things through his dark water.
Tendrils struck out in all directions, spearing into the gray as it swirled around him.
Dark water hardened into shields as fist struck, punching through, but falling well short of the outworld invader’s face.
“Invis— no. I sense nothing. There would traces of magic, footsteps—” he splashed water all around him, “nothing— not even a silver of a pupil to catch the light. Do you command spirits?”
Alin hissed, lunging forward.
Faster now.
Stronger.
Muscles burning with stolen strength.
Even a small portion of the giant snake hydra condensed into his body was well-beyond what he had ever possessed at one time.
He thrust his enchanted longsword into a wall of dark water.
Ice and steel shattered.
He plowed through the remains behind his shield, smashing Tandol off the rooftop like a bullet.
The outworld invader careened across the street and tumbled across several rooftops before crashing through the legs of a large water tower.
Alin was on him a second later with a third longsword.
The water tower collapsed, releasing its full contents upon impact.
“Drown! Riptide of Dumagaan!”
The waterfall over the edge of the building reversed, swelling and darkening to envelop him.
He stabbed his blade into the roof and held on as dark water pulled.
The roof gave before his grip in the unending pull.
He had been caught in a riptide just the once when he had been a kid surfing.
This was much worse since he had an outworld invader swimming at him, striking him with cutting blades of dark water as the pressure squeezed around his chest like an industrial press.
They flowed down the street, picking up unlucky people and monsters.
He saw their wide eyes.
Mouths open, choking.
Dark water turned darker red.
It felt like an eternity being spun and tumbled by an impossible tide moving along the dark city street.
Until he slammed into a sudden wall.
Faint teal light out of the corner of his eye.
The remaining breath driven out of his chest.
Brighter orange from above speared down. Almost like a fishing line.
He grasped it.
Sudden force.
A hard landing.
Cold and dripping.
Brine and bile gushed from his mouth.
“Holy shit!”
Armed and armored men and women gaped.
A motley crew around a machine gun emplacement on a rooftop.
Austin militia and an adventuring band.
“Get a—”
Too late.
Tandol erupted from the street in a spout of dark water, swirling with red chunks.
“Shields!”
Magic flared to life.
People’s screams cut off as suddenly as they had began.