Now, Earth
Another woman stepped forward and opened her jacket to reveal a bare stomach that rippled in a disturbing way.
Before Keisha could process what was happening a flesh-colored tentacle unfurled out of the woman’s stomach and lanced out across the forty feet of hallway.
Keisha raised her shield, but the tentacle snaked around it and wrapped around her thick neck. She felt small teeth in the suction cups bite into her flesh.
“Another type of gift that could be yours,” the robed young woman smiled. “As you can see… the Deep Azure grants many benefits to those that buy in. I wasn’t lying. We all have the same choice. We buy in as much as we choose and are rewarded to the same degree. Performance is what matters. Nothing else. Not your connections, your wealth,” she raised a brow, “nor the color of your skin.”
Keisha wanted to call bullshit, but she couldn’t speak. It was taking all of her Enhanced Strength to keep the tentacle woman from pulling her in.
“Your classes and magic pale in comparison,” the young woman continued. “So, you see… you can’t win. Join us and spare yourselves pain and suffering. If not for your sake, then for your friends and families.”
“Fuck that cult shit!” Amber snapped. “Mage Armor.” A ghostly, amber-colored shell that resembled knightly armor flared to life around her. It had been a good source of humor that her name happened to match the magic armor’s color. She didn’t know if it was a coincidence or if there was a deeper connection. It didn’t pass her notice that her spells tended to be same shade.
Trevor threw a small cylinder at the cultists. Too fast to react to. He hadn’t used a skill, just an all-league pitcher’s fastball.
The flashbang exploded with a bright flash.
Rory and Del squeezed off three round bursts.
The tentacle around Keisha throat slackened just enough for her to pry it off. She punched at it as the tentacle woman pulled it back.
“Buncha bullshit,” Keisha muttered.
The cultists had closed ranks around the robed young woman. A few of them had bullet wounds, but were still standing. That wasn’t a good sign.
“Down the stairs,” Keisha picked her sledgehammer up off the floor. “Amber in front, then Del and Trevor, me and Rory will bring up the back.”
They ran down the stairs to the ground floor. Lantern light played wildly around them, throwing menacing shadows that felt as if they reached out with black talons.
Keisha ignored the shadows. The squad had real danger on their heels. She kept one eye on Amber’s softly glowing armor and the other on the darkness behind her. The cuts around her throat stung and tingled.
Amber took a left down the wrong hallway.
“Wrong way, damn it!” Rory snapped.
Keisha looked back. The cultists were closing. “No time. Keep going.” She pushed Rory forward.
“We’re going the wrong way!” Trevor yelled up ahead at Amber.
“I know! Sorry!” Amber’s voice was high. “I think I know how to get to the exit from here. Left next.”
“No, no! Go past the next hallway junction. Then right turn at the one after that, right turn!” Del huffed.
“Got it!” Amber yelled back.
They hit the first junction at a sprint. First Amber, then Trevor. When Del crossed something grabbed him.
He didn’t even have time to shout or get off a shot.
“Oh f—” Rory skidded to a stop. “Del!”
Keisha had barely seen what happened. Something big, long and muscular had violently yanked Del into the dark hallway.
Rory swung his MP5 around the corner. The light from his lantern seemed so weak. There was no sign of Del.
Keisha saw nothing. “Keep going,” she roughly pushed Rory on.
“But—”
“C’mon, man. We can’t do anything for Del right now,” Keisha said. “We need to get out of here and get the word out. Come back with more people and then get Del back. It’s his, our, best chance.”
Something whizzed by Keisha’s head.
She turned and raised her shield. A series of thuds shook her shield.
That snapped Rory out of his shock. He dropped to one knee and leaned to Keisha’s other side. He squeezed off several bursts.
“Keep running!” Keisha lifted Rory by the collar of his tactical vest with the same hand holding her hammer. She dragged him at a sprint for a dozen feet until he finally started running on his own.
“I’m running low,” Rory huffed as he struggled to keep up with Keisha.
She was a lot heavier than him, but her skills meant that she was stronger and had more stamina, so she was a lot faster than she looked.
“Six-ish rounds in this mag and a half-full one left.”
Ammunition had become a problem as the conflict with the fish cult had dragged on. Old man Del Campo could only reload so much per day and everyone else that had picked up the Gunsmith Class were too new to it. They couldn’t do more than a handful a day.
Keisha didn’t say anything. She wracked her brain for a plan that’d see the rest of them home safe. Nothing came up beyond running faster.
Amber and Trevor had opened up a sizable lead, but Keisha could still make out the glow from the former’s magic armor. At least they were back on track for the exit. She recognized the paintings on the hallway walls.
“Almost there,” Keisha said.
Rory grinned despite how tired he was. The light at the end of the tunnel was from the moon and the stars outside. It was visible through a large window in the door.
The ceiling suddenly exploded down in a shower of dust and plaster.
A flesh-colored tentacle whipped down and wrapped around Rory’s head.
His screams were muffled as he sprayed the contents of his magazine into the floor.
Keisha reached for his legs as the tentacle pulled him up. Her fingers just brushed at the bottom of his boots, then he was gone. Swallowed up by the darkness above.
She heard heavy footsteps rushing at her back. She spun around with her shield. Just in time.
The big, bearded man that had transformed the skin of his fingers into long, sharp blades, came rushing at her. He slammed into her shield and knocked her back several steps despite her strength and weight.
Without Rory and his lantern Keisha found herself unable to clearly see her opponent. Scant streams of silver moonlight were the only things that stood between her and the darkness.
Flesh turned sharp as steel scrapped across her shield.
Keisha kept backpedaling. She didn’t want to get bogged down here for the rest of the cultists to overwhelm her. She needed to keep moving toward the exit.
The slashes and blows on her shield were strong. Possibly just as strong as she was capable of.
The narrow hallway meant that she couldn’t swing her two-handed sledgehammer to its full potential. Instead she choked up a bit on its long handle and thrust it forward where she thought the big cultist was. The narrow hallway proved just as much a help as a detriment. There wasn’t much space for a large man to move around.
The man woofed as Keisha’s hammer took him in the stomach and drove the air out of him. He doubled over and Keisha threw down the hammer.
“Power Strike!”
Keisha struck with relish. She couldn’t see too well, but the meaty impact of the hammer on the man’s broad back was unmistakable.
The big man groaned.
Keisha heard a loud boom come from the front lobby of the building.
“Keisha! Help! Fishman!” Trevor’s voice was loud and clear from the other side of the closed door.
She didn’t have any time to waste. Keisha turned and ran for the door. She put her shield in front of her and didn’t stop. She battered the door open.
Another loud blast lit up the darkened lobby. Amber’s shotgun barked as a fishman advanced on her and Trevor.
The fishman took the blast of pellets on its shell shield.
“Fastball Special!”
Trevor’s rock blazed like a comet as it tore a hole in the fishman’s shield and zoomed just past its gray-scaled head.
The fishman responded with a bone-like javelin hurled with the strength of many men.
Trevor ducked behind Amber.
The javelin struck her in the center of her chest. Her magic armor cracked then shattered, but stopped the javelin.
Amber dropped her shotgun and clutched her head in pain from the damage feedback.
“Trevor, I need a grenade around the corner back there,” Keisha said as she banged her hammer on her shield to get the fishman’s attention. “It’s dark and you won’t be able to see it, but do you remember where it was?”
“Yeah?”
“I need you to throw everything you’ve got around that corner. You need to keep the cultists back for as long as possible.”
“Got it… I think.”
Trevor went to the broken door and started with his last flashbang. “Curve.” The small cylinder streaked down the hallway and turned at the corner in defiance of the accepted laws of physics. There was a bang and flash that momentarily lit up the hallway. “Shit!” Trevor had a brief peak at several cultists coming. Including the big man that Keisha had slapped down. “They’re coming!” He started throwing rocks from his pack.
Keisha didn’t have time for that. She had to deal with the fishman.
“In The Zone,” Keisha said flatly.
This was the last throw to win the meet.
Do or die time.
The skill pushed Keisha past all of her limits, physical and mental. Every move she’d make would be exactly as she intended. Speed and strength temporarily greater than what she could normally do. Faster reaction times.
The fishman thrust out with its bone spear. It was fast.
Keisha blocked it with her shield and deftly deflected it to draw the fishman off balance and to open up its side for her hammer. The heavy iron head thudded into its ribs.
The loud crack of its ribs had the fishman gaping in surprise before the pain hit it a second later. It tried to scramble back for space and a moment.
Keisha wasn’t about to have any of that nonsense. She charged after it. She slammed her shield into the fishman then crushed it up against a wall.
Keisha flipped her grip on the hammer so that the head was down at the bottom of her hand. She hammered down at the fishman’s knee like she was driving a stake into the ground.
The knee crumpled.
The fishman made a keening wail. High-pitched and inhuman. It had Keisha gritting her teeth. She stepped back and the fishman fell to the ground.
Keisha dropped her shield and took her hammer in two hands. She raised it high and brought in down on the fishman’s head. Once, twice, three times had the fishman’s tough head looking like a dropped watermelon.
Keisha was almost shocked by the outcome. Fishmen were really tough. The current theory was that their bodies needed to be so in order to survive the pressures of the ocean depths. That or magic bullshit. Keisha figured it was probably a bit of both.
At least now she knew that it only took the best Enhanced Strength passive combined with a huge boosting skill to pulp a fishman’s head. In The Zone was still in effect, but the clock was ticking and she only had a minute or two left. There was no way she could fight the rest of the cultists.
Keisha hurried over to the dazed Amber and picked her up like a sack of potatoes, a very light sack, and threw her over one shoulder.
Amber was still trying to reload shells into her shotgun, but otherwise didn’t protest.
“C’mon, fool boy!” Keisha beckoned Trevor. “We had best be gone.”
“Don’t need to tell me twice.” Trevor abandoned the door and took off running out into the dark streets.
Keisha, with Amber over her shoulder, was right behind.
They needed to make it back. They had counted dozens of the summoning circles on the first two floors. They hadn’t even gotten to the third floor.
The fishman’s appearance had cinched it.
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The monsters were somewhere out there in the city. Not to mention the cultists displayed new and dangerous abilities.
Keisha couldn’t help but think about Remy and Hanna being out on the operation. Two of their three biggest guns weren’t around and she had already used her best skill. It was going to be a rough night.
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“It’s been an hour,” Hanna said.
“Barely 45 minutes,” Remy said. He twisted his head from one side to the other. The helmet was annoying, stifling. He tried to remind himself that it was all in his head.
“They actually had an E-Z Up shade thing ready.”
“Huh?”
Hanna pointed at the pop up canopy the cult people had brought out to shield the diplomatic discussions from the sun.
“Fold up table and chairs too,” Hanna mused, “like they were ready for this.” Her eyes drifted over to the office buildings on the left side of the road. “Say? Do you think we’re going to get ambushed?”
Remy had been trying to look nowhere in particular. Lest he give away his identity. Yet, he found that his gaze kept drifting over to the ocean several hundred yards away to the right side of the road. He had been barely paying attention to Hanna. He glanced to the buildings on the left.
“Oh yeah, they’ve got people in most of them.” Remy had already stretched a thin magnetic field into much of the surrounding area. He had detected electromagnetic signals from multiple human brains. No fishmen or anything weirder, at least as far as he could tell. He still didn’t consider himself anywhere close to proficient when it came to this aspect of his power. “I’m also messing with our immediate area. I can’t say it’s a hundred percent perfect, but if they’re trying to listen in on what we’re saying with any electronic devices then they’re getting nothing.”
“No offense, but I’m not going to take your word for it. You haven’t figured out how they’re messing with our communications back home, so I think we should still try to avoid saying too much… just in case,” Hanna said.
“None taken.”
“So… you probably can’t tell, but it’s getting hot out here. How much longer would you say this ‘negotiation’ is going to take?”
Remy had only been paying partial attention to the discussion taking place a few hundred yards down the road. He listened intently for a few more minutes. “I think it’s getting close to the end. They keep circling back to wanting a ‘cooperative relationship’ with the state people.”
“That leaves us in the lurch,” Hanna said.
“Sorry, sounds like, me and my family’s existence is a sticking point. They don’t want us a part of any discussions. Basically, we won’t be considered as part of the state and the protections afforded by any agreement… but it seems like they’re okay with the rest of you being basically folded in with the state.”
“What about the women the fishmen took?”
“Hmm… I think Detective Ordonez is locking that trail down,” Remy said. “The cultists are being coy about them, but from the energy build up in Jake’s tablet, I’d say that things are about to end.” He tapped the soldier standing next to him for this very purpose.
The soldier spread the word through the rest of their fifty-strong force with a series of subtle, silent signals. They gave no obvious outward sign, but in seconds they were ready to act at a moment.
“Shit!” Hanna whispered as she checked the long sword in the scabbard at her side. She checked the straps on the round shield secured to her back.
“Being a bit obvious,” Remy said.
Hanna picked her greatsword up from where she had it leaning up against the army truck’s grille. She cradled the grip and hilt in the crook of her elbow will the blade in its scabbard rested on her shoulder.
“Hate heights. Not looking forward to the next bit.”
“That’s what you’re nervous about? Not the part about being in a life and death battle.”
“Like I said before, you need to get your head around the fact that you’re going to have to kill another human being. If you don’t you might get the rest of us killed.”
Remy frowned behind his helmet.
“If that isn’t enough for you… then think about what’ll happen to your family if you hesitate and get yourself killed… or worse.” Hanna slammed down the visor of her helmet.
She looked like a stereotypical knight, except her armor was stronger and lighter than anything in history. All thanks to Remy’s efforts. The irony didn’t escape him. His actions made Hanna better able to kill.
Remy was about to say something when his distant magnetic field picked up a spike in energy from all of Jake’s devices.
“Now!” Remy yelled a split-second before a bright flash enveloped the negotiation area.
Gun fire erupted from both sides.
----------------------------------------
Detective Julieta Ordonez had the cult representatives pegged at about thirty minutes into the sham negotiations. What they said, how they said it, their body language might as well have opened up their thoughts to her.
They were a sham on several different levels and on both sides. That was another thing that the detective had discovered thanks to her Skills and skills.
The thought rankled her on a fundamental level. She felt like the former made a mockery of all the efforts she had taken in her entire life to develop the latter. All the experience, all the setbacks and triumphs. It was as if they didn’t matter. She was a better detective now than would have been possible before the spires had appeared.
The detective was angry, but her face betrayed nothing.
Gates sat too close as he pretended to take notes on his tablet.
The smiling cultists hadn’t lied in their pitch. She could tell and that bothered her. They believed everything they had said about the benefits of living in the Bay Area under the aegis of the so-called Scions of the Deep Azure. That their people lived safe and comfortable lives. That the path to more was accessible to all.
There was no pressure. You simply got what you put in. Benefits stacked up based on how much you bought in and how well you did it. An actual meritocracy.
The detective had seen the medical reports from Davis’ first encounter with the cultists. She knew what sort of benefits the cultists were talking about even if they had tried to play coy.
What truly bothered her though was that this wasn’t like a normal cult. Those always touted the benefits of what following their ways would yield. Those were bullshit. Nebulous and impossible to quantify. Easy to trick people with. Lies.
This fish cult was different.
The detective’s skills, legitimate and not, made that clear. As much as she’d rather discount them. She couldn’t. Not in a post-spires world.
Talk turned to the kidnapped women and girls from over a year ago.
As the cultists talked the detective itched to draw her pistol. It was fortunate that she had left it in the SUV. She had wanted to go after them right away. She had no illusions as to what their probable fate was and she knew that the longer you waited the more impossible tracking them down and getting them back became. She had worked several human trafficking cases before.
The robed fuckers had the gall to chalk it up to a misunderstanding. Then they implied that the people they abducted had been, were, being treated very well and that they had no desire to leave.
The detective almost reached down to her new prosthetic lower leg, but stopped herself in time to avoid tipping the cultists off. She took a calming breath. It was her turn.
She asked questions about the abducted. A mixture of direct and oblique ones. The cultists answered. Little did they know that the detective had Skills that made them more forthcoming than they would’ve been under normal circumstances.
It didn’t take too long.
In the end, Detective Ordonez had a picture. It disturbed her and made her itch for a weapon, but at least she had a trail. All she had to do now was follow it. It’d narrow the further she went. Until it’d take her right where she wanted, needed to be.
“I’ve no more questions,” Detective Ordonez said.
That was the signal.
Gates fingers suddenly sped up their tapping on his tablet.
Detective Ordonez shut her eyes and reached down to her fake leg at the same time that a bright flash erupted from the tablet.
When she opened her eyes there was a translucent, light blue dome over the entire negotiation group tethered to the tablet by a thin strand of the same color and consistency.
“Shock!” Gates spoke the spell with relish. A thread-thin bolt of lightning sparked across the space between him and one of the cultists. It struck the cultist in the chest.
The cultist spasmed and fell to the ground.
The smell of ozone and burnt flesh filled the shielded dome.
Detective Ordonez came up firing with the modified taser that had been hidden in her artificial lower leg. The pistol was a combination of magic and technology courtesy of Gates and the Davis R&D team. They had made it along with her lag and Gate’s prosthetic hand. It was based on the standard taser pistol, except it didn’t need the wires to carry the electric charge to the prongs. Instead it contained a small magazine of darts that Gate’s had magically programmed, as he had called it, with the weakest level of the Shock spell.
It still bothered her that she needed Gates or another Mage-type to charge the pistol and her leg with mana, as well as the spell that made the latter function. She didn’t like the vulnerability.
The detective dropped the remaining cultists before Gate’s could even fire off another spell.
“Secure them,” Detective Ordonez barked.
“Are you sure this shield will hold up?” one of the negotiators asked as bullets from the cultists at their barricade sparked off the shield.
“Relax, my dude. It’ll last long enough for our hammers to drop,” Gates said as he zip-tied the downed cultist’s wrist and ankles together.
There was a loud scream overhead. It sounded like a mixture of terror and rage to Detective Ordonez’s practiced ears.
She looked up.
Cruces and Gozen flew overhead on metal disks with razor-sharp teeth. The screaming was the latter’s doing. She didn’t stop until the pair had disappeared on the other side of the cultist’s wall.
The bullets stopped plinking off of Gate’s shield.
Detective Ordonez waved the rest of her people forward.
The trucks and armored SUVs rumbled forward.
Gate’s dropped the shield and they got on board.
“Shit!” Gate’s pointed out the window. “Fishmen incoming!”
Detective Ordonez saw them coming out of the water.
The state forces opened fire.
They had seconds before the fishmen would close into melee where they had an overwhelming advantage.
Thankfully the barricade gates suddenly burst open as the metal crumpled as if a pair of giant, invisible hands had pried them open.
“Cease fire! We’re moving in!” the commander of the fighters shouted back.
Detective Ordonez’s SUV shot into the lead. She needed to give the driver directions on the trail that only she could see.
----------------------------------------
Now, Threnosh World
Primal stomped through the detritus of the wooden gate they had blown open with their arrow. Resplendent Zabriium had already gone in.
Primal was displeased as they watched their teammate launch miniature missiles from the blocky launchers attached to their sides.
The missiles exploded on the cragants rushing to engage.
Resplendent Zabriium wasn’t going to leave any for Primal.
Some of the cragants fell, while a few staggered under the barrage. Most kept charging after a moment to gather themselves.
Primal was pleased at that. They were going to have the opportunity to finally engage in close combat after so much time spent sniping from a distance.
Resplendent Zabriium galloped away from the mass of cragants in the front area of the base camp. Their job was to sow as much chaos and confusion as possible throughout the entire camp. Strike and run, never stop moving.
This left Primal with a dozen opponents that now turned their attention to them.
The Threnosh’s massive 2.5 meter tall power armor was actually dwarfed by the shortest cragant. They had similar width however and from the intelligence that had been gathered, Primal knew that they had more mass, by almost half as much.
Primal opened up with their own micromissile battery from the back of their shoulders.
The cragants hunkered down behind thick shields.
Explosions shattered the thick wood and rendered them useless, but they had already done their job in keeping the giant humanoids alive and only slightly injured.
The cragants had no formation, they charged in a wild group. At least they tried to spread around and circle Primal.
Primal set the minigun on their right shoulder to track the cragants circling around on that side, while they charged toward the thickest group.
Thick javelins struck, but didn’t penetrate the Thenosh’s armor.
Primal punched a cragant. Their massive fist was like a wrecking ball as it crumpled the front of the cragant’s helmet. The thick metal provided no protection. The cragant fell to the ground cradling its broken face.
Another cragant grabbed Primal’s left arm and pulled them off balance. The cragant landed several blows with its sword that dented the top layer of Primal’s armor.
Hidden safely inside the massive chest of their power armor, Primal smiled. This was what they had missed this entire time.
Primal engaged the rows of whirling metal teeth that encircled their left arm. The armor panels opened and the teeth emerged, spinning to life.
The cragant cried out as its thick glove provided no protection.
A proximity warning blared in Primal’s ear. They spun around, but were too slow to stop the cragant from slamming into them with its shield.
The cragant thrust its sword into Primal’s leg. The armor held for but a moment when it gave and the blade sank many centimeters in.
Primal ignored the flashing red warnings and swung their left arm down at the cragant’s wrist.
The cragant relinquished their grip on their sword rather than test its gauntlet against the whirring teeth.
More cragant’s swarmed on Primal. It was like having trees collapsing in on you.
The warnings blared with increasing intensity as armor breaches appeared all over from the cragants’ slashing and stabbing weapons, from strong, grasping fingers.
Primal engaged their boot jets. The cragants held them down at first, but they shot up into the air, free of the scrum. They landed several meters away and spun to face the now, clumped together group of cragants. Armor panels in their torso slid open to reveal three rows of gun barrels.
Primal emptied the barrels and the magazines into the cragants.
They staggered and wavered against the assault of supersonic metal projectiles, but the cragants were extremely large, strong and durable. More importantly, they were fighters.
There was still a lot of fight left in them. Just as Primal wanted.
----------------------------------------
“What the hell!” Cal looked around. He hoped no one heard his outburst. He put the wooden spatula back into the pot of stuffing and backed away from the stove.
“That’s gross.”
Cal turned slowly.
His teenage sister frowned at him.
“I… I don’t know what you might be referring to.”
“You tasted the stuffing,” Rayna said flatly.
“No. You are mistaken. Understandable, seeing as how you were standing behind me. You couldn’t see what I was actually doing. So, when you think that I tasted the stuffing with the serving spoon, touching said spoon to my mouth and subsequently returning it to the pot—”
“Uhhhmmm,” Rayna arched a brow, “that’s exactly what you did. Cause that’s what you always do. You don’t think anyone’s watching,” she leaned closer to get in Cal’s face, “but we all watch. We’re just too nice to call you out on it. Not anymore, older brother. Times have changed.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’ve change, Rayna.” Cal narrowed his eyes. “Ever since you became a teenager—”
“Pfftt, whatever,” Rayna rolled her eyes. “Why are your panties in a bunch anyways?”
Cal made a noise in mock outrage. “Language, young lady.”
“Whatever, you say that to Remy and Eron all the time.”
“That’s different.”
“Quit redirecting. It’s lame.”
“Fine, fine… don’t get your panties in a bunch,” Cal muttered the last bit under his breath.
Rayna rolled her eyes again. She did that a lot these days.
“The stuffing tastes off.”
Rayna laughed, short and angry. At least that’s how it sounded to Cal. “So you admit it?”
“No, no. I don’t admit to your scurrilous accusation,” Cal waved a finger. “The spoon didn’t touch my lips. I dropped the stuffing from spoon to open mouth. Plenty of space between the two.”
Rayna shook her head side to side. “You’re the worst older brother.”
“Anyways,” Cal went on. “I love stuffing and this doesn’t taste right. Blander. Like a lot. Did mom use water?”
“She used vegetable stock.”
“I knew it,” Cal grimaced. “Why?” he clutched his fingers into claws.
“Kim’s coming and she’s a vegetarian.”
“I thought she was a fish person?” Cal frowned. His younger cousin had ruined his stuffing. Not that he’d let it show. He wasn’t a hundred percent a dick.
“Pescatarian,” Rayna said.
Cal’s face went blank for a moment.
“That’s what you call someone that eats fish.”
“I knew that… so, no meat, but fish is okay?”
“Yes.”
Cal didn’t see the difference. Can’t eat mammals and birds, but fish was cool? He wondered where lizards slotted into that list. Were frog legs okay?
“So because one person can’t eat meat, the stuffing has no meat?” Come to think of it he had missed that there weren’t any chunks of ground beef in the small amount he had tasted.
“Yup. So, don’t be a dick.”
“It’s fine,” Cal waved Rayna away. “I guess I can just wait another year for proper stuffing.”
“Quit being a drama queen. Mother knows best. What she says, goes,” Rayna walked away. “Don’t be so difficult, Honor.”
Cal blinked.