Now, Manila
Cal punched and tore his way through what felt like a dozen feet of material before almost falling through as he hit air.
“I don’t hear anymore hammering. You finally got through?” Eron called out from above.
“Yeah, I think so. Give me a second to check.”
Cal stuck his head through the hole and found an enormous cavern-like space. It was hard to make out details in the darkness, so he cycled through the visual enhancers in his helmet with a cybernetic thought.
Infrared returned the cool blackness of the surfaces. Except for a fading warm spot at the other end of the space.
Low light mode gave him a better image.
Lots of desk and chairs in the auditorium-like space.
Behind the chair where he had seen the warm spot was a giant flag hanging flat on the wall like a curtain.
He realized that even though he had never physically been in the space he had seen it once before in a vision.
“Well?” Eron called down.
Cal climbed back up and into the warm light of Lilah’s sigil.
The difference when moving into and out of Lilah’s protection was jarring.
“I think it’s the senate chamber.”
“I was just there and I didn’t find anything,” Eron frowned. “Are you sure?” he turned to Lilah.
Lilah nodded.
In the fifteen minutes since she had conjured the sigil, the girl’s brown skin had grown grayer and glistened with so much sweat that she looked like she had just stepped out of the rain.
She hadn’t said a word.
“At least I’m not hearing in drums in the dark,” Cal shrugged.
Eron snorted. “That’s what I had thought earlier, but it turned out to be you punching through the ceiling.”
“Ceiling or floor?” Cal mused.
“No,” Eron jammed a finger in his direction. “This isn’t the time on a philosophical discussion on the difference between the two. You walk on the floor. The ceiling is what goes over your head.”
“But you can walk on the roof.”
“Hence calling it a roof,” Eron said.
“Fine,” Cal conceded. “I tore through the roof and ceiling of the senate chamber a few feet to the left of this hole in the floor. So it’s not a straight drop from here.”
“You’ve got the armor, so you take point. I’ll carry Lilah,” Eron said.
“Not that I’m complaining, but your skin’s got to be just as tough.”
“You did see my arm,” Eron held the blood-soaked shirt wrapped around his left arm up, “plus the open wounds on my back, right?”
“Fair,” Cal said before jumping back into the hole.
He did that once more and landed on a chair in what looked to be the upper level. “Hang on!” His shout echoed. “I’ll clear you a landing spot.” He moved the remnants of the broken chair out of the way and tossed several others to open a generous space directly under the hole in the ceiling.
Cal moved a distance away before giving his brother the okay.
Lilah’s sigil lit up the darkness like a falling flare.
Eron landed on his feet with a thud, bending his knees and moving his arms to absorb the impact to protect the girl cradled in his arms.
Lilah pointed down to the lowest level, which was filled with finely-crafted wooden desks and comfortable-looking blue chairs. Nothing, but the best for the lawmakers of a nation.
Long dead and long gone, Cal mentally corrected himself.
“Tell me when I’m getting close,” Cal walked down the steps.
Eron and Lilah trailed a good distance behind.
If there was an attack, Cal knew that he’d have to deal with it, while Eron saw to Lilah’s safety.
“Keep moving toward the center!” Eron said
To save time Cal jumped on top of the desks as he followed his brother’s directions from Lilah’s pointing.
“Stop! You’re close,” Eron abruptly shouted.
Cal went through each desk in the immediate vicinity and found nothing.
The box in his thoughts was rattling nonstop now, so he must’ve been close. To what? He didn’t know.
“Nothing in the desks,” he said. “Why would the main essence of an otherworldly fog entity be inside a desk?” he muttered.
“Look with your eyes,” Eron said.
Cal heard that in his mother’s voice. A surge of exasperation shot through him. The parental conditioning was still strong. He sighed and started throwing the desks and chairs out of his immediate area.
The heavy wood cracked and splintered as they crashed down on other desks or the floor. The sounds echoed through the cavernous space.
“What the hell! Some warning next time! You scared Lilah!” Eron snapped.
“Sorry,” Cal threw his hands up. “If it’s here, I can’t find it.”
“We’re coming to you,” Eron said.
Lilah’s sigil shined on their approach.
Cal could see the swirling gray burning away whenever it got within ten feet.
He was with inches of being embraced by the sigil’s warmth giving presence when his world suddenly exploded with a bright flash.
“Shit!” Eron said as his brother suddenly toppled over like a puppet with its strings cut. “Lilah—”
The girl just as suddenly went limp in his arms.
He hurried over to Cal’s unmoving form and gently flipped his brother over with a foot.
Cal’s eyes were open, but saw nothing.
“Damn it!”
Eron lay Lilah down and laid a hand on Cal’s armored chest.
To his eternal relief he detected the slight rising and falling as his brother continued to breathe.
The sigil in Lilah’s hand was pulsing now. Like the beating of a frantic heart. It didn’t escape his notice that it was doing so in unison with Lilah’s own heartbeat.
Unable to do anything he helplessly scanned the great cavern of darkness beyond Lilah’s light.
If shades or even the entity attacked he was ready.
Death would be the only thing that would stop him from protecting Lilah and his brother.
----------------------------------------
One moment he stood in a long-abandoned hall of earthly power. The next he floated within a gray, misty void.
Cal made the mistake of trying to plant his feet. All he accomplished was to send himself into a slow spin.
“No big deal,” he muttered. “This is just a mindscape… that’s my thing…”
He focused, concentrated and willed himself to stop rotating in space.
To his surprise it worked.
He reoriented his body to a vertical position and discovered that it didn’t matter. It felt like he was upside down, then horizontal and back to vertical in quick succession.
There was no physics in a mindscape. The rules were more like guidelines and they were entirely in the creator’s control unless one had the ability to challenge that.
The question was whose world was this?
As if in answer a scream echoed from all directions.
It was impossible to follow, so he thought really hard and brought the scream to him.
Lilah suddenly appeared out of the gray nothing. The girl spun lazily as she drifted past him. Her arms frantically pinwheeled to no effect.
Cal gently caught her with an invisible hand and brought an end to her interpretation of a comet.
“What is this!” Lilah’s eyes were wide as saucers. “Is this real? Are you?”
He instinctively read her thoughts and found that she was the real Lilah, not something created by the fog entity.
It made sense. Something about the interaction between all three of them had already linked them before in those dream-visions. His powers, Lilah’s magic and the entity’s existence.
“It’s real, as much as something someone without mind powers can’t truly quantify is real,” Cal shrugged.
“I don’t— that doesn’t make sense!” Lilah snapped.
“It’s like your magic. You try to explain how you actually do it to someone that is incapable and there’s always going to be a disconnect. They just can’t completely comprehend the intricacies.”
Lilah’s head bobbed up and down. “Okay, okay, I’ll try.” She took a deep breath.
“So, you were right. The fog’s essence, whatever we want to call it, was here… er… I mean where I was searching.”
“We got pulled into this as soon as I got close enough with my sigil,” Lilah said. “Are we inside it?”
“Maybe or it’s in us? Or this is like a mindscape made out of a combination of all three of us. Now that I have my powers back, the question is can I hurt it from this place.”
Cal sent thousands of telekinetic spikes stabbing into the void.
He paused.
Lilah looked at him with confusion.
There were no discernible changes to the space.
He struck again, this time without physical force. He sent telepathic projectiles and weapons in every variety he could imagine.
Again, there was nothing.
“Are you doing something?” Lilah said.
“Why? Do you feel anything?”
“Sorta…”
“Well, I tried, but apparently I suck,” Cal sighed. “Do you think you can conjure your sigil?”
“I don’t know. This is, like, all in our heads, right? Like those dreams?” Lilah hesitated.
“When it comes to things like this, I’ve learned that reality is what you decide and if you’ve got the right tools combined with sheer will… we end up in a misty void in what is obviously not a dream… or is it?” he threw his arms out wide to encompass… everything.
Lilah raised her hand and traced the sigil in the air.
She was shocked to see it appear instantly and with a bright flare of yellow-gold light.
“It shouldn’t be that easy,” Lilah whispered.
The light burned away the gray shroud in their immediate vicinity.
“Now try extending the effect. If you can hit the entity’s essence you can finish this and we can get out of her—”
LEAVE. ME. ALONE.
A voice, but not a voice assaulted them from all directions. From outside and from within.
The words… no— not words.
Images— words— feelings— thoughts— none— individually— collectively— all.
Lilah screamed.
The light of her sigil flickered and dimmed.
Cal bit the inside of his mouth and tasted iron.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Then he didn’t.
He remembered that he wasn’t in the mindscape in a physical sense.
KILL. TAKE. SAVE.
He encased himself and Lilah in a telepathic bubble to give them a respite from the nearly overwhelming presence.
“Seems that we’re on the right track,” he grimaced. “Please keep your sigil going.”
“It hurts.” Tears streamed down Lilah’s thin cheeks.
“Yeah… it does,” he agreed, “but people are counting on you. I’m right here with you. We can do this together.”
Thousands of gray, misty hands suddenly appeared. They punched and pressed against the invisible telepathic bubble.
Lilah whimpered as she shrank close to Cal.
He felt the same way underneath the immensity of the fog entity’s direct attention.
“You’ve seen one eldritch monstrosity and you’ve seen them all,” he muttered. “You’re not the first thing I’ve gone up against!” he shouted.
The jokes and bravado masked the growing pit in his stomach. Sure, he had faced terror in the past, but Zalthyss and Mother Madrigal had been largely corporeal beings. For all their terrifying power they existed in the physical world. He had been able to punch them.
This entity was something else entirely.
He attacked with his telepathy.
Imagined blades cut the misty gray hands to shreds only for more to instantaneously replace them.
He searched for the slightest thread that might lead to the fog entity’s main essence, but was blocked and driven back at every instance.
“C’mon, Lilah, you can do it!” he urged.
Spider-webbing cracks began to appear as the outline of his telepathic bubble became visible.
The girl responded.
She traced more sigils out of nothing and sent them flying to his bubble.
They shined as they fixed themselves to the bubble, strengthening it.
Lilah screamed and the golden light answered her cry, flaring out in all directions.
The gray burned, buying the two of them a moment of respite.
STOP. PAIN.
Cal frowned. “You don’t like being hurt?”
YES. LEAVE. LIVE.
“You don’t have the right to say that after what you’ve done to thousands of people!”
NO. SAFE. ME.
“There is no safety for you. If we can’t stop you here, then someone else will rise up to face you. Your existence is a threat to existence. I’ve seen what safety means for your kind. A barren and dead world with nothing but gray emptiness.”
SILENT. SAFE.
“Not from what I’ve seen. Your kind faced destruction more than that safety. History predicts the future. And your odds aren’t good. People like me will destroy you. If not them, then other monsters, other creatures. Your very existence will lead to constant conflict.”
SAFE.
“You’re not listening. There is none for you. The—”
HOW?
Cal blinked. He exchanged a glance with Lilah.
This was the strangest end boss fight. Not at all like the other ones in the past.
“Um… are you asking us how you can be safe?” Lilah ventured.
YES.
Cal cursed silently.
This was his chance to solve this without further fighting. Do it right and he could save everyone. Free everyone.
But how the hell was he supposed to do that?
The silence stretched out. The urge to speak lest the fog entity lose patience and resume the fight seized his throat.
Lilah tapped him on the arm. “Kuya Eron and Ate Madalena won’t like it, but if it lets us all leave the fog then we’ll stay away as long as it doesn’t leave the city,” she whispered.
NO. STRONG. SAFE.
The impression Cal received was that the entity desired safety, which to it meant the continued growth of its strength. “It needs to spread and subsume,” he said. “Except, by doing that it’ll only find continuous conflict.” He sent it images of all the horrible and powerful things he had seen, done and fought. “That’s right,” he called out to the nothingness, “there’s a dragon out there. Sure you got that ibingan, but from my impression the one I spoke too was a lot stronger. Who knows how many dragons are out there? Hell, you think you can take on an evil ocean godling?”
Silence.
“Don’t you have any ideas?” Lilah hissed.
Cal regarded the glowing sigils in his telepathic bubble for a moment. “The thing with having a lot of power is that it seems to attract more of it,” he mused. “I get where you’re coming from,” he addressed the gray void, “get stronger so that other dangerous things can’t hurt you. It makes sense on the surface, but in practice, I’ve found out differently. The spires want conflict, so no matter how strong one gets there will always be a slightly stronger threat. We’re all just being played. Set against each other for… reasons no one knows. Unless you do? You’re an eldritch-type entity after all. I thought that comes with some level of omniscience?”
Silence.
“You want safety? Well, you’re not going to find it by being the biggest, strongest, most noticeable thing in the world. Like I said before… eventually you’ll run into someone or something that’ll use you to get stronger. You can’t keep yourself safe on your own,” he glanced at Lilah. “There is no guarantee of safety. There never was.”
“I don’t think that’s helping!” Lilah hissed.
Cal shrugged. “Honest answer… the most safe you could be is probably being strong enough to defend yourself while having a good group that has your back, like you have theirs. The most dangerous existence is being constantly drawn into fights with the most powerful monsters. Fly under their radar, but if you do catch their attention then you’ll have enough around you to have a fighting chance.”
STRONG. TAKE. SAFE.
“You took so many people, but you didn’t take everyone,” Lilah shook her fist at the gray void. “You couldn’t beat me and my magic! How safe are you now?”
“That’s right. We’re in the heart of your existence. Together, me and Lilah can end you.” Cal didn’t share the conviction he had put in his words.
Lilah flared her sigils. They grew brighter and larger, expanding outwardly.
Cal extended his telepathic bubble to keep pace.
A thousand sharp needles lanced his brain.
“I don’t miss this feeling,” he muttered.
A wet trickle began to fall from his nostrils.
“Been a while,” he sighed.
Lilah grunted with the effort.
Cal noticed that her nose also bled.
NO. STOP. SAFE.
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to kill, but I can’t let you keep taking people and forcing them to hurt more people,” Lilah cried. Red tears trickled down her sunken cheeks.
The gray mist burned in an ever-expanding sphere around them.
NO. STOP. SAFE.
Cal’s vision went black, not that he had been seeing in a physical sense since they had entered the mindscape. He pushed through it. He couldn’t let the small girl face the vastness alone.
“No matter how strong you are… one day you’ll run into a greater strength or just a bad match up,” he said although he wasn’t certain that he was speaking anymore. “The spires promised strength to conflict, but I don’t think most of us truly understand what that means… in conflict one side is always the loser.” His hearing went silent. He was back in a void without any sensations. Lilah was gone. “Nothing is eternal. A life of constant battle and taking just seems so empty… what’s the point of that?”
YOU. TAKE. KILL.
That’s right, Cal thought. I chose.
Flo. A young girl. Carelessness. A ruined life. A sad end.
Brightstrike. A student. A worthy friend. A year in the darkness, behind enemy lines… all to save him. Betrayed at his hands.
The balbal. Monstrous, yet with a semblance of innocence. Did they really chose their fate? In the end, he decided for them.
All dead at his hands.
More faces. Hundreds. Then thousands. Humans. Threnosh. Family. Friends. Strangers.
All alive from his efforts.
ME. SAVE. YOU.
Silence.
----------------------------------------
Phillip swept the shades off Rino with wide swings of his fists and arms.
There was no time.
He was far too late.
He took in the entirety of the desperate fight in seconds.
The shades’, his and his wife’s relatives, bodies disappeared when they were killed.
That meant that the bodies he saw laying still on the street were of those that had made the journey with him.
They had died to help his son.
He glanced at Rino.
Her monstrous Weredog form was a mangled heap of broken bones and torn flesh.
He wasn’t able to tell if she was still alive, but there was no time to check.
A blade-like forcefield cut through his armor and sent stinging pain across his broad, muscular back. He spun and drove a fist into a face.
The shade dispersed back into the fog.
He hadn’t even noticed who it was. He was grateful for that, even as he felt shame.
Hanna was fighting in the thick of the melee. She stood alone, striking with sword and shield as the shades of his family battered her with superstrong fists and cutting forcefields. Her Threnosh armor had been marred terribly and he could see her fatigue in how sloppy and slow her strikes were.
Behind her, the rest of them fought the handful of shades that bypassed Hanna.
What was left of the rangers, the spears and the Watch had been pressed nearly into the smoldering inside of the restaurant.
There were no more spells or Skills.
They fought only with mundane weapons wielded by what was left of their strength.
Jake had his arms wrapped around the legs of a slight, teenage girl. One of Phillip’s grand-nieces, Ariella, he remembered her name.
A huge man, struggling to tackle a small girl would’ve been comical if not for the rest of the scene.
Ariella pounded a fist into Jake’s broad back. The thudding blow cracked something and Jake sagged, but somehow kept his hold. His mana was long gone judging by his dead prosthetic hand.
Mouthy hacked at Ariella’s neck with her machete. The fury and desperation in the ranger’s eyes lent strength to her blows. Blood flew, but it wasn’t enough to stop Ariella.
The girl opened her mouth in a snarl as she grabbed the machete blade, ripping it out of Mouthy’s hands, before clipping the ranger’s helmet with a backhand that sent the brawny woman spinning.
Amber lunged forward and thrust her blade into Ariella’s open mouth. Blood splattered across Amber’s face as gave a crazed scream when she pushed her blade down all the way to the hilt.
Phillip looked away.
None of them should’ve been doing any of this.
He wanted to roar at the injustice of it all.
Instead, he leapt into the fray with tears blurring his vision. His fists hit with more force than any industrial power hammer as he sent his relatives back to the fog with every punch.
Tito Carlos had been right.
The rest couldn’t stand up to him.
The thought didn’t fill him with anything, except sadness and disgust.
All he had accomplished was to send them back to their eternal prison.
A lull in the fight found him in front of Hanna. He spun to face the last handful of his remaining relatives.
They squared off.
“I’ll take care of this,” Phillip said.
Hanna nodded and staggered back to the line.
He raised his fists with dead eyes.
The shades of his family did the same.
Asphalt broke under his feet as he leapt forward with one hand cocked back.
His target, his wife’s cousin that he hadn’t seen in decades, raised a spiked forcefield in his path.
He punched right through it in a shower of glowing shards of light that vanished as they hit the ground.
Elbert brought another forcefield up.
Phillip swung, but pitched off-balance when the forcefield suddenly disappeared.
He recovered his footing quickly and noticed that the shades were just standing there, looking at him.
Disbelief was in their eyes.
Then it was in Phillip’s eyes when they broke into smiles and tears of joy.
Some embraced each other.
One fell to his knees, hands clasped in prayer.
Elbert looked at him and spoke.
Silence.
He saw Elbert’s lips moving, but couldn’t hear the words.
“What? I— I don’t— I can’t hear you… what are you saying?” he pleaded.
Elbert shook his head ruefully and smiled.
Phillip noticed it at that point.
The shades, his relatives, his wife’s, were vanishing.
Their forms slowly became indistinguishable from the thin gray fog until they disappeared completely, wisps in the breeze.
“What just happened?” Hanna staggered over to him.
“They smiled,” he whispered, “genuinely.”
A dismayed shout drew his attention to the others.
Thin fog swirled inside the burned ruins of the restaurant, coalescing into two forms.
Rayna’s Rangers cried out in anguish.
Smores and Two-toes stepped out of the rapidly diminishing fog. They weren’t armed or armored. They appeared as they might have in the old world.
The woman was wearing a summer dress in bright pastels. Her nails were painted in bright red. Strappy sandals revealed the same colors on her toes… all ten of them.
She smiled at her squad.
The grievous wounds they had last seen on her body before it was taken by fog weren’t present.
“It’s a trick,” Mouthy shook her head. “One last kick in the vag.”
“God, you’re such a bitch,” Two-toes rolled her eyes. “It’s us. I remember being me,” she shrugged and glanced at the dark-skinned young man in jeans and a plain blue hoodie next to her.
Smores waved at the rangers. “Yeah. I remember everything too. My life back home. The journey here. And… well, you were all there.” He took off his glasses. “Interesting. I can’t say for certain what we are. We could be copies made by the fog, echoes, imprints or a combination of many things. It’ll take more study, but I— we don’t have time for that. I can say with near certainty that we aren’t under the entity’s control, however I can’t say how we’re able to appear like this.”
“Fuck, you’re a damn ghost and you’re still the biggest nerd,” Mouthy wiped her eyes.
“I— I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you,” Sgt. Butcher started, “I let you down and—”
“Don’t be, Sarge,” Two-toes raised a hand. “We all know what we signed up for,” she smiled sadly. “So, don’t be sad, at least for too long. We don’t blame you, any of you. It could’ve just as easily been one of you. But, it was worth it. We did it! We won, yay!” she clapped.
“What do you mean?” Sgt. Butcher said.
“The reason we can say goodbye. It’s almost over,” Smores said. “You’ll be getting that Quest notification soon… just think of the new spells I could’ve gotten,” he sighed.
Hardhat went over to Two-toes and hesitantly reached out. She choked back a sob as her hand passed through Two-toes’ shoulder. “I’m so sorry…”
“I told you not to be,” Two-toes teared up. “Can you do me a favor?”
“Anything,” Hardhat managed to get out.
“Take care of my little brother. If he wants to keep training then make my sister understand. I know her and she’ll smother him to keep him safe. Especially, now that they’re alone.”
“They won’t be alone,” Sgt. Butcher said.
“Rangers are never alone!” Mouthy sniffled.
“Thanks,” Two-toes said.
“Guys, tell my parents I love them,” Smores said. “There’s so much more I want to say to you all and to others, but our time’s up.”
Two-toes waved as the two dead rangers slowly dispersed back into the fog.
“Smores!” Aims called out. “Thanks! I mean for the ideas you gave me. My special rounds,” he gestured at the charred ruins of the restaurant interior. “I did a stun one and an incendiary one!” he shouted through his tears.
Smores grinned widely. “You have to experiment with more. At least all the different elements. You should also try ones that target specific enemies. Don’t think of them as just ordinance, think of them as magic bullets, as—”
Smores last words disappeared with him.
“I wish you all the luck in the world. Our fight is over, but yours isn’t. Stay strong, be strong, grow strong,” Two-toes. “Rayna’s Rangers!”
They shouted in response as Two-toes joined Smores in oblivion.
“Rounds… not bullets,” Aims whispered as he sank to his knees and buried his face in his hands. “He never got that…”
Hardhat openly sobbed as Mouthy awkwardly rubbed her back.
Sgt. Butcher stared at the empty space where her two rangers had stood.
Phillip looked up to the sky.
The sun shined bright. Its warm light dazzled through his tears.
He thought of his daughter.
The rangers had lost over half the number they had brought.
Rayna would blame herself for that?
“You have to go to the senate building. You have to make sure this is truly over,” Hanna rasped.
Phillip leapt up into the sky without a word.