Demigod, Suiteonemiades, Phosfuriae.
Death.
He strode down a corridor of dark, metallic stone.
Right into a trap.
The most damaging items in their arsenal.
Enough to turn the floor into a crater. To turn the walls and ceilings into white hot sludge dripping into said crater like a molten lake.
He walked through it like it was just a puddle of water.
Golden forcefield lined his obsidian-colored skin.
The corridor was a wide affair.
5 large Earthians could walk line abreast with their arms held out wide, fingers touching, and still leave room at either end for another to fit. They could jump as high as they could with outstretched hand and be nowhere near halfway to the ceiling.
He made it look cramp with how large he loomed in the dim lighting provided by strips inlaid in the surfaces.
“I will walk, not run. If you can escape me, then you escape.” His deep voice filled the corridor with the same energy as a bored student forced to read from the driest of textbooks.
Madalena flexed the high-tech prosthetic arm the rangers had brought along with them.
“You promised to let everyone go if you got what you wanted. On your honor. You stressed that word a lot.”
“Hence the walking.”
“I knew you’re full of shit.”
“My honor only holds to the point that I can achieve my purpose. Madalena, I didn’t lie to you and them. Truthfully, all any of you have to do is run and you will escape, but you won’t. You can’t leave the little boy, despite what he did to you so many years ago. Trapping you in that gray nightmare as he took your family one by one to serve as his soldiers to this day.”
Madalena snorted. “I made peace with that a long time ago. Boy’s not a monster. You’re not taking him for whatever your stupid life purpose is.”
“What about you, rangers? Good Skill use by the way. To get through my defenses… it would be a shame for this to be the height of your leveling. Closer to Level 60 than 50,” he pointed at Mouthy. “Not that far off,” he nodded at the rest of the old Squad 13. “Gain 20 more and you’ll make me expend true effort.”
“Fuck off, taint smear!” Mouthy snapped.
Captain Butcher was more diplomatic.
“Release him to us and we’ll depart without violence.”
None of them could see the gray filling the corridor.
Hands grasped the demigod around his limbs, his neck, his face, futilely trying to pull him back.
Faint lights visible in the drifting wisps appeared between the two forces.
Teal.
A translucent wall or a large pane of glass from floor to ceiling and wall to wall.
The demigod slowed, eyes growing unfocused for a split-second.
“The weaker ones are fleeing with the aid of my automatons. I’d ask how they have been suborned, but the answer is fairly obvious.”
Mouthy sneered.
“They got tired of working for a shitstain!”
“Less of an employment and more slavery, but I wish them well because of that fact. Not that an existence as a brain in a metal case is one to be envied.” He regarded them. “It’s fitting that it’s you. Well, most of you. You were there at his beginning. To be present and a part of his end brings auspicious symmetry.”
“What the hell do you want with my cousin?” Madalena’s prosthetic glowed and hummed.
“Deicide!” The demigod laughed. “And you brave men and women will be the push he needs! Pain, suffering and despair! One might not be willing to reach into his depths to save himself. But, to save others? You will die by my hand and he will break in the failed effort to stop me. The mortal shell shall break, unleashing tr—”
Madalena feinted forward.
The demigod stood impassive even as she hit the deck in a split-second.
Five arrows streaked through the ranger formation and over her prone body.
The faint teal pane allowed them through.
Wispy gray roiled in their wake.
Sonic booms rocked the corridor less than a meter from impact as the gyrojets in the arrowheads fired, pushing them from the shaft at supersonic speed.
“Shields!” Captain Butcher barked.
Each arrowhead packed the explosive equivalent of the old hellfire missile.
Fire and smoke filled the corridor.
The faint teal pane broke first.
The small, portable magi-tech forcefields the rangers had set up earlier held until an obsidian fist cracked the blue-white wall of light.
“Fall back!” Captain Butcher said. “Madalena!”
The superstrong woman had pushed herself off the floor and looked ready to throw hands.
“The plan!” the ranger captain snapped. She ran down the corridor. Madalena would listen or not. There wasn’t anything she could’ve done to drag her along.
“Move!”
The captain felt the impact on her armored back, though blunted by the systems, as Madalena swept her off her feet.
They burst out of the corridor and into a chamber large enough to maneuver just ahead of a massive blast of smoke and fire.
The rest of the traps they had set up.
“Remember the plan?” Captain Butcher whispered.
Madalena scowled.
“I slip past him while you keep him busy and I find Boy and get him out of here.”
“Just checking that you didn’t forget. It was obvious that Goldenspoon was the key to this and now that we know for sure, well… we win if the demigod doesn’t get what he wants out of this. That’s all that matters.”
“Laser net’s up!” Hardhat said.
The demigod walked through, burning the red net on his black skin without so much a sizzle.
She sighed. “Laser net’s down.”
The rangers had spread out.
There was a lack of cover in the large chamber, so they made do with scattering forcefield generators.
Spiritwalker had ended up sharing one with the two non-rangers.
The only ones from the Mist Spekters that had stayed behind when Galen had led the others to escort the people the demigod had taken from Manila over a year ago.
Those hadn’t weathered the interrogations well and they needed a guiding hand.
“Last chance for you guys.” He gestured at the corridor behind them. “Wouldn’t mind the help, but you don’t need to be here. Hell, they could probably use your help to fight through the bunker.”
He had the advantage over them since he knew of them.
Successful rehabilitation.
The removal of a monstrous class. With help, but ultimately at their hands.
Outliers.
Brittney was a dark-skinned beauty.
Michael was tall and grizzled.
Both exuded melancholy.
Their eyes revealed horrors that their spirits would never be completely free from.
He didn’t need his magic to sense that.
“We owe him,” Brittney said.
Michael merely nodded before nocking arrows on his massive bow.
“Okay. Great.” He shrugged. Rangers didn’t hesitate, well, dead ones did. “Aim for his eyes. I’ll distract him.”
“Tell me when,” Michael said.
“I’ll go on your shot.”
Michael leaned out of the forcefield’s cover and loosed.
Two arrows in one shot.
Distraction came in the form of glowing catfishes.
Spirits out of the ether.
Glowing and translucent.
Spiritwalker conjured them out of the floor and midair.
The former swallowed the demigod’s tree trunk-like legs up to mid thigh, while the latter appeared swimming ahead of the arrows.
“I am not an opponent to hold back against.” The demigod flexed, shattering the spirit catfish swallowing his legs.
The arrowheads exploded, covering him in dark smoke.
“Move! Move! Move!” Captain Butcher barked.
Madalena broke into a sprint toward the corridor they had just exited.
A golden beam screamed out of the smoke, turning the opening into molten rubble.
“One should not speak their plans in battle.”
“Fuck that pew pew shit!” Mouthy appeared out of a portal.
Weight of My Grief.
She brought her mace down on the top of the demigod’s long, bulbous helmet.
The dark, metallic floor cratered under his sandaled feet.
He lashed back, but she had already fallen back into the portal.
The tiny portal stone on the floor went dark.
He rolled his neck.
“Now, that is what I meant! Come! Rayna’s Rangers! Earn your worthy deaths! Make me try! And I will make the tale of this battle legendary!”
Captain Butcher pointed at Brittney and Michael.
“Temporary Induction: Rayna’s Rangers, Squad 13. Do you accept?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah.”
“Squad Skill: Rayna’s Rangers, Squad 13. Underdogs Rise, We Punch Up.”
The demigod smirked.
“Bold of you to utilize a little used Skill.”
Mouthy smirked harder.
“Nah, fuckhole we use it all the time to shitfuck evil like you.”
“A lie betrayed by spoken words.” He regarded Captain Butcher. “There is a reason leaders must obfuscate their presence if they venture into the thick of battle.”
A single step carried him across the distance.
Superhuman physical abilities shrank space.
Though in strictly mortal bodies with boosts beyond their natural human limits via a handful of passive or active Skills and the odd stat boost picked up from Quests over the decades Rayna’s Rangers weren’t without counters to the demigod’s sheer superiority.
Hardhat interposed herself between the demigod and Captain Butcher.
A ripple in reality.
Like a still pond with the construction helmet-wearing ranger standing just at the water’s edge.
One stood behind a magitech forcefield generator several meters away. One stood behind a scutum-style shield.
A split-second.
Only the latter remained.
Black fist slammed into the enchanted Threnium with the crack of thunder that triggered helmet auditory protections.
Hardhat grit her teeth as her shield cracked.
Despite her armor, such a blow should've snapped her arm.
Instead, the cracks mirrored in the ancient construction helmet that once belonged to her father from the days before.
Bright colored plastic flaked off.
“Interesting artifact. A few more generations of being pressed into the groove of reality and it might become a true relic. However—” he lifted Hardhat by her shield. “Protecting against strikes is just one part of defense.” He hurled her into the distant wall.
The dark metallic stone cracked just as much as her helmet.
The demigod whirled, taking Mouthy’s mace on an upraised arm.
She struck with the weight of her grief over ranger losses across nearly 3 decades.
Golden light flashed blindingly bright.
Once again, the demigod’s sandaled feet sank into the hard floor.
Instead of falling back into the portal, she emptied the magazine of her machine pistol at point black range into the demigods nethers.
One advantage of being dwarfed meant she didn’t need to crouch to get under the man skirt.
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The demigod laughed.
“I felt that! Congratulations! You approach a fight to the death correctly.”
She snarled in response and clubbed the side of his knee.
How many tons of force?
How many combined elephants?
How much did her Skill weigh the pain, suffering and deaths of rangers over the years?
Enough to move the demigod.
He stumbled to the side.
Arrows exploded around his head as Mouthy fell back into another portal she had activated with a light step that Creepy Chipmunk had slid from across the chamber with precision stolen from one of the many shrunken monster heads in his bags.
The headhunter didn’t intend to leave anything out of his bag, literal and metaphorical.
Instincts honed over decades told him that one way or another it wouldn’t matter if he still had a supply after the fight.
Thus, he slid portal stones all over the chamber floor, walls and even the ceiling.
Captain Butcher’s Skill gave each ranger an intuitive sense of what each other ranger was doing or thinking about doing without the need to verbalize.
It wasn’t at all like telepathy or any sort of conscious extrasensory communication.
It was closer to each ranger being a part of one whole, like the fingers to a hand.
“Bindings of Beleanqua, Hunger’s Repentance.”
Brittney rose on a nimbus of soothing yellow light.
A far cry from the sickly color of her magic when she had been a flesheater.
Yellow ribbons writ with unfamiliar script unfurled from her hands, snaking across the air to wrap around the demigod’s limbs. They pulled against god-like strength. Slowly, but surely spreading the demigod even as Brittney screamed and wept red tears.
Next to Creepy Chipmunk, Aims cursed, muttering something about a lack of good angles.
As if hearing the gun-slinging ranger’s words, Brittney pulled on the bindings around the demigod’s long, bulbous helmet.
The massive head slowly turned until it faced Aims.
Shield Piercing Bullets. Thread the Needle. Sextuple Shot.
An antique revolver in each hand.
One squeeze of the trigger each.
The demigod roared, ripping free of Brittney’s bindings.
The feedback sent her crashing to the floor.
But the demigod?
His cry was one of true pain.
Gold liquid and light leaked from his left eye.
“Damn it! These things are throwing me off!” Aims snapped at his hand. The fingers he had lost when he had been kidnapped by the fast-moving demigod had been replaced by magitech prosthetics the rangers had brought for him. There hadn’t been enough time to properly calibrate them on account of their surroundings.
“I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself,” Creepy Chipmunk said. “You shot a demigod’s eye out.”
“I was aiming for both!”
“One’s better than none. That’s— down!”
The headhunter tackled Aims out of the way of a thin, lancing beam of golden light that blew right through the forcefield, destroying the generator.
The beam burned a line into the floor as it tracked them.
A giant translucent green sticky tongue speared from the other side of the chamber and sucked the two rangers up into the giant spirit frog’s mouth.
“Ribbit, ribbit!” Spiritwalker grinned.
“Good save! We owe you another one,” Aims said.
“It’s a spirit summons how can it still be wet and sticky?” Creepy Chipmunk said.
The same question a decade old, yet never answered.
Captain Butcher caught their eyes.
A single look was enough to convey a plan when under the blanket of her Skill.
No one needed to speak.
They just acted.
Spiritwalker summoned a stampede of spirit carabao, swamp-dwelling water buffalo from his homeland, and sent them crashing toward the demigod.
Creepy Chipmunk dug into one of his bags of holding, instantly touching a finger on a shrunken animal or monster head. 5 was a dangerous number to use at the same time. His senses and reaction times sharpened. His muscles and bones strengthened. His bloodlust grew ravening.
Aims reloaded in a second, rolling the cylinders across his ammo belt while thumbing rounds into them.
Captain Butcher shot a quick-hardening foam grenade at the demigod’s feet.
A rain of arrows from Michael’s bow turned into a wire net whose strands were just a few molecules thick that fell on the demigod like a cutting blanket.
Brittney pulled herself up to one knee to blast spells.
Divine energy erupted in bright gold.
Foam vaporized, followed by the net, then Brittney’s spells.
The leading edge of the spirit carabao stampede vanished.
The rest thundered into the demigod.
Goring horns in translucent gray shattered against bare black flesh.
Creepy Chipmunk leapt from the stampede’s midst, having run low to the ground in the forest of their thick legs.
The Igorot axe was a nasty piercing and cutting weapon with its concave blade.
Heddy’s enchantment made it even deadlier.
Golden forcefield broke.
Blade dug into the side of the demigod’s neck.
The impact reverberated up Creepy Chipmunk’s arm.
Like striking an old tree except made out of solid steel instead of wood.
The demigod struck quicker than a cat.
Thunder sounded, but not on Creepy Chipmunk’s Threnium armor.
Hardhat had swapped places.
A tank’s Skill.
Her shield had been reduced to roughly a quarter of its size.
Her construction helmet had flaked enough material to leave holes big enough for a man to put his hand through to her head or the demigod to put a couple of fingers.
Mouthy portaled in to meet the follow up punch with her mace.
This time she moved.
“Already at your limit? Three strikes is woefully inadequate. Even for such a Skill that is as heavy for the wielder as it is for the target.”
“Shut your shit-smeared taint hole of a mouth!”
He ripped the mace from her and snatched her around the neck like one takes an unruly kitten by the scruff. He slammed her into the floor, unlike how one handles a kitten.
Threnosh-made armor with all its high-tech safety features kept her alive and unbroken.
He placed a foot on her chest and pressed.
She pushed against him.
She had borne greater weight in the past.
A man-sized spirit eagle in vibrant browns, creams and whites screeched a battle cry as it sank talons of comparable size to the demigod’s hands around his shoulders.
An underdog could hang in there, even gain the upper hand and score blows, carried by will and inspiration.
Add a powerful Skill and the mice could even draw blood or take a tiger’s eye.
But, invariably power proved true.
The demigod’s power dwarfed Squad 13’s combined might even more than his centuries of combat experience outstripped their few decades.
The reaper tickled the backs of their necks with gray wisps of fingers more insubstantial than smoke.
The demigod’s eyes flicked back to the corridor where Madalena burned her brand new prosthetic hand in a vain attempt to dig through the molten blockage.
The edges of his mouth turned upward.
He released a burst of divine energy.
Gold light scoured the chamber, destroying scattered portal stones and magitech shield generators.
The rangers’ Threnium armor protected them the same way that Brittney’s magic shield did for her and Michael.
As for Madalena?
A soundless scream erupted from her lips as the heat burned her flesh and stole the air from her lungs.
The light cleared.
The demigod held a hand to the sky.
A star twinkled to life, coalescing into a spear of divine energy, blazing gold and setting the air around it on fire.
Any demigod could fire off formless blasts of their divine inheritance.
Only age and expertise allowed one to concentrate and shape it to their will.
Mouthy’s faceplate darkened against the painful glare.
She sneered.
“Last words, foul-mouthed one?”
“Ain’t wasting shit on you!”
Her eyes flicked to the side, widening in horrified recognition.
“Don’t you fucking do it, you dumb bitch! Not for me! Don’t—”
A swap.
Last resort.
Life for life.
Reality rippled.
Mouthy found herself in front of Captain Butcher.
“Your deaths are all assured. It is simply a matter of the order.”
The demigod thrust the spear down into Hardhat’s armored chest.
Resistance from desperate Skills, hers and the others.
Broken.
Resistance from her construction helmet.
Flaked away to nothing after 3 decades of keeping her alive through the steepest odds that had claimed so many others.
A father’s last bequest.
Armor, no matter how strong, without esoteric enhancements couldn’t stop the spear of divine energy created to slip through the Threnium’s molecular structure.
Gold light flashed again.
The rangers fired, as if into the sun, with just as much effect.
Their vision cleared.
The demigod was gone.
All that remained was Hardhat’s empty armor leaking smoke.
“Where—”
Mouthy spun.
The demigod thrust his spear.
A troop of spirit monkey’s hooted and howled as they swarmed the towering titan, throwing off his aim enough that the sleek spearhead pierced through Spiritwalker’s upper arm rather than his chest.
The demigod shattered the spirits with a lazy swipe of his hand.
Creepy Chipmunk bounded in.
Low to get under a spear thrust, then up, using the burning shaft as a springboard to reach his axe still embedded in the demigod’s neck.
Knee to the throat.
Harder than hitting a steel plate.
He tugged at his axe, but the demigod flexed neck muscles, keeping it in.
A massive black hand grabbed the headhunter by the face, like palming a volleyball.
“Too long spent taking the heads of non-sapients. You lack the levels, but had you specced down a different path then your chances would’ve been more than zero.” He whipped Creepy Chipmunk like a wet towel.
Skills, artificial muscles and defensive systems in the armor.
All were overpowered, silenced by a resounding crack.
“Chipmunk’s down,” Captain Butcher said flatly to forestall reckless attempts to save his life. “Fire everything you’ve got left.”
They responded without hesitation.
Mouthy pulled a modified 25mm cannon from a bag of holding and fired from the hip. The weight of her collective grief handled the recoil.
Michael emptied his quiver of special arrows.
Brittney cast scintillating balls of yellow light.
Spiritwalker called forth spirit serpents that slithered across the floor.
Captain Butcher used her Skill to guide the fire to make sure everything struck the demigod and not each other.
The demigod laughed.
A sweep of the spear cleaved the spirit serpents.
The rest of the fire he accepted on his gold-sheathed skin.
He leapt like a tiger.
Aims fired shots from a pair of six shooters as if they were drum-fed machine guns.
They clipped the demigod’s legs, sending him spinning right into a storm of arrows from Michael.
All of which was distraction for a special one.
The Arrow of Hunger Refused screamed through the air, outlined with a wailing, desiccated face, perhaps human, perhaps not.
Only Michael knew and he had never shared. Had never used the Skill aside from the one time just so he knew what it did.
The demigod ignored the rest, but caught the last.
His hand and arm shriveled with frightening quickness.
As if all the fat was being sucked out.
He snapped the arrow with a desiccated arm.
Gold light flared and it returned to normal.
He hurled his spear through Mouthy’s cannon, forcing her back as the ammo drum exploded, showering her with fire and shrapnel.
A golden bow of light coalesced in his hand.
“An archer’s duel then?” He nodded at Michael.
Michael fired three arrows with one draw and loose.
The demigod met them.
Michael fired six, sending them in curving arcs.
The demigod got four.
Two struck home.
Steel heads exploded on black skin.
Three more times they exchanged sharp words.
Michael emptied his Skills.
There was seemingly no end to the demigod’s divine energy.
A golden arrow severed Michael’s bowstring, but Brittney replaced it with one of yellow light.
The others attacked.
Spirit animals latched on to the demigod’s back or tried to constrict around his legs.
Bullets burned into molten slag within the bow of golden energy.
“Bindings of— arrgghh!” Brittney screamed as the spell fizzled at her finger tips, burning them as the price for failure.
Michael had many quivers. One was bottomless. Mundane ones of wood and steel. A requirement of the enchantment.
The demigod had seen enough.
A last flight of arrows filled the air.
They bounced off black skin.
They penetrated armor.
Brittney flew to his side on wings of yellow light.
“Is that—” Red bubbled on Michael’s lips as the golden arrows sticking from his chest and limbs dissolved into beautiful sparkles. “— enough?”
His eyes faded before she could answer.
Was it enough to earn forgiveness?
She had made peace with herself that it wasn’t up to her.
It was for her victims to determine whether her penance had been enough and they were long dead.
To that end, she had decided her life would belong to others.
As she had consumed the lives of others, others would do the same to hers.
“Bindings of Beleanqua, Hunger’s Repentance.”
Too powerful to be used in quick succession.
Brittney’s insides boiled as she emptied her mana into the spell.
The yellow ribbons held the demigod.
Mouthy slammed a new mace into the side of the demigod’s helmet.
Aims emptied his ammo and Skills.
Spiritwalker knelt on the hot floor, chanting in another language.
Captain Butcher glanced at Madalena still trying to dig through the blockade.
She blinked.
For a moment it looked like smoke seeped through the molten plug.
The demigod caught her eyes.
A knowing golden glare through Brittney’s bindings that failed to smother him of oxygen.
If he even needed to breathe.
The captain sighed.
The wounded eye had already healed.
She held the recoilless rifle, but decided that it would be a waste.
Command and control.
That was her role.
That was what she was best at.
It was how she knew that Brittney was past her limit.
The message was instinctively passed to Mouthy, who ceased her hammering and ran.
The demigod laughed and exploded out of the yellow ribbons.
Brittney collapsed to the floor.
Empty eye sockets and open mouth smoked as her once beautiful dark brown skin charred from within.
“Half,” the demigod said. “Symmetry.”
Instead of continuing the fight, he stopped, regarding them like insects.
His gaze drifted down to the captain’s feet.
She couldn’t help but follow.
Smoke flowed like a gentle wave on a long, shallow shore.
No— that wasn’t right.
Not smoke.
It looked like fog.
A sudden realization struck her.
Decades in the past.
About 26 years.
“Oh…”
The fog wasn’t at her ankles.
It was actually at her neck and rapidly rising.
“Madalena!”
The call wasn’t necessary as the superstrong woman pulled at the molten slag while another pushed from the other side.
“Slower than I had projected,” the demigod said.
He punched toward the corridor.
The golden blast splashed against a flat pane of faint teal light revealed by the swirling fog.
“Captains!” Ranger Goldenspoon called out. “He has the key to the ritual on him! We have to destroy it.”
“Where?” Aims barked. “He’s got nothing on him aside from sandals, skirt and helmet.”
“How big is it, Goldenspoon?” Captain Butcher said.
“Not sure where, but at least as big as a fist.”
“Big boy like him can definitely hide a fist up his ass…” Mouthy said.
“Let me save you the waste of effort to divine its hiding place.” The demigod raised a finger and stabbed it into his own chest. Flesh and muscle parted with a spray of gold. He peeled his own pectoral open like a jacket to reveal ivory ribs dripping with shining gold. A red heart beat. A lung expanded and deflated.
Aims took shots, but the demigod blocked them with his other hand.
“That’s just fucking bullshit!” Mouthy spat.
There was indeed a stone.
Dull and gray if not for the streaks of golden light flowing over its smooth surface in between words of another language, untranslated by the system, etched with artistry and precision.
It sat in the chest cavity, partially hidden by the sternum.
The demigod only had eyes for Goldenspoon as he closed his chest, healing the cut with a flash of golden light.
“Can you destroy it before I destroy them, little boy?”