Elsewhere in the blood-soaked city a confused melee had broken out in the street just outside Creamland.
Patrons rushed outside in terror only to run into a mob of freed enslaved out for blood.
Inside, the brothel’s enslaved had been freed, exacting a terrible toll on their rapists.
Lexington Clark had been a rising star in one of the adventuring bands loosely affiliated with the New American Republic. She had been a mage, rogue and martial artist: Muay TThay. She had a goal to eventually blend all three.
Her dream was ended by cruel chance.
There had been a party at one of the top nobles in the nation.
Lord Reagan had noticed her.
As beautiful, sleek and deadly as a tiger he had once hunted in his youth, according to him.
Naturally, she wasn’t interested and said as much.
He hadn’t taken it well.
Such was the entitlement that flowed through his ilk’s veins.
Pain and suffering ensued.
She had been abandoned by her band for they didn’t want to burn their bridges, nor suffer the same fate.
The collar stole her dreams.
Part of her realized this, helpless to act while it created a new her to fulfill the whims of the depraved.
After the lord had tired of her he had sold her to the brothel. Her life, once so promising was now a daily hell that only one part of her realized.
The other was only all to happy to please.
No longer a mage, rogue and martial artist: Muay Thai.
They had turned her into a sex slave.
Her true self had thought it was over.
That her precious classes had been stolen forever.
All of this took place within one year.
She was wrong.
“Class removed: sex slave. Classes reactivated: mage, rogue, martial artist: Muay Thai.”
The flood of emotions released by sudden realization that the nightmare had been real overwhelmed her, but she wanted to make the slavers, the rapists bleed.
Lexington kicked the young man off her.
A strong fighter in his own right, the young man reacted quickly jumping back on top of her.
He seized both wrists.
“What the fuck, slut! I didn’t ask for the rough stuff. Not this time,” he said.
She replied with a fireball to his face.
He screamed.
She kicked him off again, surged forward with a knee to the solar plexus, bending him over.
She activated a Skill, grabbing the back of his neck in a clinch that he’d find impossible to break out of with a Skill of his own.
Knee strikes followed.
Skill-enhanced.
She lost count, only realizing that she had caved his face in when he slumped to the ground.
She stomped until she was sure.
She reached for her neck after realizing that the constricting warmth was gone.
The broken collar lay on the bed.
She stared at it as tears welled in her eyes, pushed out by the weight of the countless evils done to her.
A few minutes later she stalked out of the room with her eyes red, but dry.
She knew this place intimately.
The young section was just down the hall.
She remembered that Creamland also catered to the most depraved.
She wouldn’t stop until every last rapist was just like the young warrior she had left like a cut of spoiled meat.
Outside, the melee had swung against the freed.
The brothel was located close to one of the Slaver King’s barracks. It was a common pairing throughout history.
A group of off-duty soldiers had been at Creamland. The survivors, battered and bloodied had made it back to rouse the alarm. It took minutes for a detachment to arrive.
They surrounded the freed, pinning them against the front of the brothel.
They sought to disable rather than kill.
The officer in charge didn’t want to risk angering anyone by killing valuable property and until he knew exactly what was going on he wasn’t about to risk his neck. Let the shit climb up the ladder and ruin someone else’s life.
He’d never find out.
Pale red lightning flashed across the sky.
“That’s not supposed to be red,” he muttered.
“Nah, I’ve seen ‘em go red once or twice back in the day,” his grizzled sergeant said.
“Oh, yeah? What makes it that way?”
The sergeant’s answer was drowned out by the crack of thunder.
The officer wouldn’t have heard it anyway.
A great obsidian axe as tall as he was had fallen out of the sky, cleaving him in twain.
Right and left halves squelched to the slick street.
The towering rain god landed on the sergeant, squishing the man like an ant.
Bronze skin glistened, muscles bulged as he loomed over the rear of the slaver formation.
They turned and fired without hesitation.
Bullets and spells bounced off him.
“I am Tlaloc!” he spoke with thunder on his tongue. “For the suffering! For those in chains! You all die!”
The axe flew to his hand.
The axe flew into the formation.
He moved too fast for them to react.
The dark, glossy blade cleaved another soldier.
Tlaloc pointed.
Red lighting struck the axe then arced out like hungry tendrils.
Soldiers burned to ash in a wide radius.
Tlaloc reached out.
He flew to the axe, crushing soldiers against a body as hard and unyielding as granite.
The soldiers broke and scattered.
The largest group headed back the way they had come for the safety of the barracks and the greater balance of their forces.
They ran right into a speeding convoy.
Bodies went flying or were crushed underneath.
Tlaloc regard the occupants in the SUV’s.
Formal clothing.
Numerous, well-armed bodyguards.
“Nobles,” he growled.
Fleeing the king’s little party.
The axe flew and utterly destroyed the lead vehicle.
Armor meant nothing to such strength.
He bounded forward a hundred feet, crushing another.
He leapt and let another crash into his unyielding body.
The driver and the bodyguard hadn’t been wearing seat belts.
They crashed through the windshield.
Both had Skills to survive and take action.
The driver drew a pistol, glass-filled face grimacing as he got three shots off.
The other emptied a submachine gun, while drawing a knife.
He caught them both by their necks, one in each hand.
“Endless Ble—”
He broke the man’s neck and hurled the body through the windshield of yet another SUV.
The driver suffered the same just fate.
The last two SUV’s swerved past him.
“Let the heavens herald vengeance and freedom.”
They couldn’t outrun the lightning.
----------------------------------------
Hardhat pumped rounds into the demon’s pale pink flesh while it stood a dozen feet away just watching her like she wasn’t a threat.
Special phosphorus pellets and slugs burned on the surface and deep inside.
Custom rounds that could only be handcrafted by pretty high level gunsmiths and similar.
Otherwise there was no way one could fire something like that out of a regular pump action shotgun.
Even then, the barrel glowed red while steaming in the rain.
The rangers informally dubbed them the war crimes special and she had three more assuming the barrel could handle it.
Fifty-fifty on that.
At least they appeared to be working.
They continued to burn in and on the demon’s flesh.
Reports from the first encounter had said that its wounds vanished as if they had never been there, not that they healed quickly.
The burning stopped.
Rather they had never been there.
“Damn it—”
A blur had Hardhat flipping end over end away from the rest of the rangers protected by the sigils floating around them.
She landed on her head.
The impact should’ve smashed her skull and snapped her neck.
Instead, chips flew off her dad’s old construction helmet.
She couldn’t see it, but she knew that cracks spider-webbed across the plastic surface.
The demon swiped at the sigils.
They shook and wavered.
She regarded the protection.
Babyapple was a ranger wardmage rather than a true sigilist like Lilah from the Philippines.
The difference in the their work was obvious to even the untrained eye.
It was like comparing the Mona Lisa to a crayon smeared piece of scrap paper taped to the fridge.
“Baby needs to learn that golden ratio shit or something,” she muttered, rising to her feet.
No good.
No time.
The others couldn’t fight back from behind the sigils, which weren’t going to last long.
She knew that she couldn’t either.
She sent another war crimes into the demon’s sinewy back.
Pink flesh rippled and caught fire.
She splashed through puddles, stabbing the red hot barrel into the burning hole.
One more round.
Then the last on—
The shotgun exploded.
Heat and shrapnel sprayed over her.
More pieces flaked of her dad’s hardhat.
Out came the hatchet and stiff, stabby dagger.
“Enhanced Hack.”
Crap! Barely got into the neck. Like hitting a steel post.
The follow up with the dagger only managed to sink the tip into the demon’s lower back.
She bemoaned her lack of offensive punch. She was all about taking hits. Relied on weapons that weren’t going to bother this stupid scary demon.
It turned.
No—
It had always been facing her.
Aw, man, perception shit!
Blurred movement.
Axe and dagger took a journey into the darkness.
Belatedly, she realized that it had hit her arms.
Enchanted steel bracers or not, she instinctively knew that those were bone-liquefying blows.
Instead… her dad’s hardhat flaked and cracked more.
Draw pistol.
Nothing special about these rounds. Standard hollow points for soft targets. Meant to mushroom inside the body for maximized damage.
Empty the magazine.
All on target.
No effect.
Thunder struck.
No—
A blow.
Flying again.
Seemed like a long distance.
Hints of pale pink out of the corner of her eye.
Accelerated into the ground.
Woke up in an asphalt crater.
The demon stood over over— had always been standing over her.
“Fuck…” she choked out.
Head felt light.
Dad’s hardhat was gone.
The demon opened its mouth—
Since when did it have a mouth?
—revealing a vortex of teeth—
Teeth shouldn’t come in vortexes.
A lame last thought to have as far as she was concerned.
If it was her last thought?
You see… Hardhat had faith.
Not in God.
He obviously wasn’t real judging by the spires’ existence.
She had faith in people.
Faith in their plans.
They even had one for the demon.
She trusted that it was going according to—
The demon leaned forward.
She got a really close look at the teeth vortex.
Worst death ever…
The demon bit…
She was still alive.
The pale pink thing was mouthing on air.
Nope.
Wrong again.
Faint light shimmered over the prone Hardhat, between her and the demon.
She heard cheering in her ear piece.
Faith in people.
Plan Big Mom and Big Dad actually worked.
----------------------------------------
The monsters were new for the married couple.
Some kind of mammalian reptile with four legs and two arms.
Most were about the size of large dogs.
A few loomed over him.
Not that he was particularly tall, even after growing several inches when he became superhuman.
One particularly large specimen opened a wide mouth for a bite.
He fed it his arm.
Jagged teeth dented the bracer, but that was all.
Armor made out of those titanium bathtubs found in those old military planes was pretty strong even without enchantments.
The monster’s massive jaws exerted slight pressure.
Noticeable.
Reminded him of decades ago when one of his children was in the middle of teething and he couldn’t find those little rubber rings, so he did the only thing he could think of and fed them his finger.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
His wife hadn’t liked that when she had seen… dozens of times.
“It’s unhygienic,” she had said.
“I can’t find the ring thingie,” he had replied.
“It’s got a tie. Keep it tied to his bib. That’s what it’s for. Or keep it in your pocket.”
“Now, who’s being unhygienic? Besides it’s good to build up their immune system.”
Ah… good memories!
Hard to believe how much time had passed.
Now here he was.
Past the average life expectancy of the normal human male.
He looked and felt many decades younger.
Just like his beautiful wife.
A thin pane of forcefield shimmered to life in front of him.
The monsters body dragged a smear of blood as it slid down.
“Thanks, dear… but I had that,” he shook the head off his arm.
“Yes, dear, but our son’s saying we need to move faster.”
A smaller monster leapt out from behind a pile of its broken fellows.
A lazy backhand dealt with it.
The last group pounced on his wife, but a spiked forcefield took care of them.
“Not very smart,” she said.
He wrinkled his nose.
“Do they smell bad?”
“You can find out.”
“Eww… no thank you. I’ll keep the helmet on. Our son’s fancy alien armor is doing a good job.”
“Okay,” he held out his arms. “Next spot.”
“Do you have it.”
“Yeah, about ten blocks that way,” he nodded to the northeast.
“Why would the slavers use an apartment building in the middle of other apartments to stash these collared monsters?”
“I think we’re seeing exactly why.”
His wife hopped up into his arms.
Heavy armor, heavy wife… not that he’d say that out loud… besides it was all cause of density.
She looked a hundred, weighed close to twice that, but might as well have been a feather in his arms.
“Is Cal serious? ‘Raticores’? I don’t get it? Did the slavers name them that or is that Cal’s?”
“You got the mental image, right? Well, they’re giant rats with vaguely human baby faces,” his wife explained.
She had dived right into the whole monster thing at their children’s prodding. He had been content to do the cursory research other, more motivated people had done when it came to his part in monster fighting, which was punching them until they died.
“It’s a play on the manticore. A creature from Persian legends that had the body of a lion, the face of a human and a scorpion tail, sometimes with wings, but I believe that was a later addition.”
“At least these rat things don’t have poison tails and wings.”
“Venom.”
“Huh?”
“If it bites or stings you, then it’s venom. If you bite it, then you get poisoned.”
“Yeah, I’m not biting any of these things.”
A single bound carried them hundreds of feet into the dark rain.
They got there just in time.
His wife sealed the apartment building within a massive forcefield while he dealt with the monsters.
The raticores made it easy by coming straight for him.
No sense of self preservation.
He wondered if that was a function of the slave collars or natural behavior.
It could go either way with monsters.
Some existed to do violence.
Others could be cunning.
Some didn’t take fights they couldn’t obviously win.
Others thought they could win every fight.
Regardless, it was minutes work to smash them all with armor clad fists and boots.
Easy, if messy work.
It was a good thing that their baby faces were grotesque otherwise he would’ve had nightmares about turning them into bloody pulp.
Cal’s voice rang in his thoughts.
Terse and urgent.
Things must’ve been difficult back at the king’s castle.
He knew better than to add distractions.
He acknowledge it and swept his wife up before leaping once more into the sky.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes, dear. We’ve practiced for days. Are you ready?”
“With you at my back? Not worried at all. I’m more worried for Cal and the rest of the kids.”
“They’re doing their best.”
Several bounding leaps brought them to one of the most dangerous fights of their lives to date.
Cal had been clear about that.
The demon couldn’t be allowed to roam free.
It had the ability to kill tens of thousands in a night.
There were only a handful of individuals that could fight it and even less that could theoretically kill it.
The key, his son believed, was to inflict a near steady stream of significant damage in order to overwhelm whatever it did to nullify said damage.
“I’m getting a call,” his wife said. “Yes, hello, I hear you? Can you hear me… did Cal tell you? We’re on our way. You two be careful, okay. Wait for us first. Bye— oh, sorry,” she laughed, “I mean, ‘over’… be careful— she hung up on me.”
They had a plan.
The demon leaned down to devour Hardhat’s face.
Phillip cratered the asphalt.
His wife generated a forcefield over the ranger.
“Like we practiced,” he placed his wife gently on the ground.
“Yes, dear.”
He opened it up with a handful of asphalt thrown at faster than bullet speeds.
The tight spread knocked the demon off Hardhat.
A single bound brought him to the reeling demon.
Vise-like grips on wrist and shoulder pulled hard.
The pale, pink arm ripped loose.
No blood.
Rippling distortion.
The arm was back and he held nothing.
The demon struck, clawing deep gouges in the thick titanium composite plate on his chest.
Another blur.
Almost too quick to follow.
A half turn of his head saved his eyes.
It had aimed for the opening in his helmet.
Sparks momentarily blinded him.
The demon moved quickly.
His wife’s voice.
The demon slammed into a shimmering rainbow of a forcefield.
It reared back, raised a hand and swung on nothing.
It pitched forward off-balance to eat a Threnosh-made axe to the face.
It struck his wife.
Threnosh armor proved stronger than much thicker titanium composite.
Phillip rushed forward on thunderous steps.
Dozens of feet in a single bound.
He grabbed the axe and spun the demon around before slamming it into the ground.
The earth trembled.
“Throw it up!”
He listened to his wife, ripping the axe free as he did.
She created a forcefield lattice around the demon. Multiple flat panes slid in from many angles slicing and trapping it.
“We’re here! Tito, Tita,” Madalena’s voice came in over the comms. “Lilah’s going to start warding right away!”
“Copy that, over.”
Unlike his wife, he remembered the jargon.
“Go! Get Hardhat out of our area! I’ll hold it!” his wife said.
One bound to the downed ranger—
“I’m fine,” she said groggily.
The ranger looked weird without the hardhat.
Longer hair than he had thought.
Then again he had spent most of his time in Manila and hadn’t been around the rangers much in the last few years.
“Young lady, you have a concussion.”
One bound back to the other rangers still hiding behind the adorably child-like sigils floating around them.
“Mr. Cruces,” Aim’s nodded. “What do we do, sir?”
“Watch Lilah’s back—”
The demon’s screech touched something deep inside that he didn’t want touched.
The other rangers winced, some fell to their knees.
“You’re going to have company,” he leapt back just in time to catch the demon as it ripped itself free from his wife’s forcefield trap.
“Just like we practiced!” he called out while punching the demon into the asphalt.
Bloodless cuts marred the otherwise pale pink flesh.
Rippling distortion—
He hammered the demon with his armor-clad fists.
Some of the cuts had vanished as if they had never existed.
The remainder were joined by fist-shaped depressions.
It was strange.
The demon didn’t feel like it had an internal structure. No bones, nor organs. Just a mass of flash throughout.
It kicked away, blurring for distance.
Phillip gave chase.
The demon touched him quickly and softly, almost like it was playing tag.
“Phillip, your armor!”
His wife’s warning distracted him allowing the demon to touch the side of his helmet.
When he batted the hand away he felt wind and wetness.
“It’s eating thin slices when it touches!”
“Thanks, dear!” he ducked the clawed hand. Thought he saw a circular mouth like a whirlpool lined with tiny teeth.
He grabbed the wrist and crushed.
Stinging pain greeted him.
He let go and kicked out.
The demon tore a long furrow through the asphalt as it tumbled.
He glanced at his hand.
The glove was gone as was the top layer of his palm.
A perfect circle oozed red.
His wife sent a cascade of thin panes down on the demon before it could heal.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. It’s time for the maze.”
They had practiced for days in one of Cal’s mindscapes yesterday.
Manipulated perspective.
An hour of time in the real world, days in their minds.
His wife created an ever shifting maze with her forcefields in a small area around Phillip and the demon.
Phillip turned up the pressure.
His strikes sent shockwaves that temporarily cleared the rain for hundreds of feet.
The demon ate slices from his armor, his clothing, his skin, his flesh.
He took it and gave more in return.
He had the stamina to fight for days without slowing and so he held nothing back.
All the while the forcefield maze shifted.
Sharp spikes appeared out of every angle to spear the demon while missing Phillip.
Flat panes momentarily trapped it to allow him precious seconds of free punching.
Thin rods tripped it up and stabbed into the bloodless cuts and holes on its pale pink flesh to keep them open.
Madalena kept one eye on the fierce fight and one on Lilah as the girl traced a sigil into the air.
The rangers gathered around them in a defensive formation.
“You’ve got incoming, two minutes to contact. All directions.”
They all heard the comms.
“I guess that settles that,” Aims said. “It can call monsters.”
“Even collared ones,” Dastardly sighed as she loaded her enormous arbalest.
“Done here, next spot,” Lilah said.
They moved over about a dozen yards in a circle around the Cruces and the demon where she started a new sigil.
“It’s going to be close,” Aims said.
Madalena regarded the other sigils floating in the air. Like bright signs in the dark. The promise of safety.
“She’ll get it done.”
“Next,” Lilah said.
The girl worked faster, finishing just as the howling hordes came into sight in the downpour.
Malevolent eyes shined in the darkness as the monsters and mutant animals reappeared and disappeared each time they passed under the widely-spread street lights.
A lightning flash illuminated them briefly.
“Contact. Free fire,” Aim’s ordered. “Play us something to steady the aim, Greygrass.”
She immediately strummed a soothing melody on her banjo. No lyrics, just the strings.
Dastardly loosed a bolt.
An impossible shot for a regular arbalest.
Hers was special.
Two thousand yards.
A fireball erupted, turning night into day for a brief instant.
“Why not blow up the front?” Madalena scowled.
“Too close to us,” Dastardly shrugged as she reloaded.
Aim’s pistols barked like a yipping little dog.
Twelve rounds like a machine gun.
Twelve monsters tumbled to the ground.
He spun reloads in less than a second.
Twelve more went down.
Dastardly loosed a second bolt.
This one exploded at the front of the horde.
The sticky foam expanded rapidly into the size of a street bus in a handful of seconds, catching a good portion of the leading edge of monsters.
“Fire it up!” she barked.
“Don’t shoot my drone!” Molds said.
The buzzy little thing zipped across gamely in the wind and rain until it reached the foam.
Molds tapped her smartphone and the little modular spell gun on the drone spat out a tiny mote of fire.
The magic kept it alive long enough despite the rain.
The foam erupted into a firestorm.
Dozens screamed as they burned.
“Contact, 3 o’clock!”
“Contact, 9 o’clock!”
Bootleg Jesus, face visibly pale underneath his helm, stepped out to face the pack of vaguely canid-like monsters. With a shield strapped to the bloody, bandaged stump of his arm he aimed a machine pistol. “Taunt. Enduring Defensive Stance. No Enemy Shall Pass While I Stand.”
A burst spat bullets into the monsters.
They zoned in on him like an arrow.
Madalena landed in their midst.
Breaking bones and crushing organs with each superstrong punch and kick.
On the other side of the ranger formation Babyapple’s hastily traced sigils flew forward, searing burning brands into their fur and flesh.
“Small Tornado!” Lasik’s spell swept up the smaller monsters, sending them on a ride to a fiery end at his direction. The small pillar of swirling air drew in licks of fire as it passed the burning foam. “Oh shit!” Realization struck. She saw it then. Clear as day. An alteration to the spell. “Small Fire Tornado!” she crowed triumphantly. She guided the spell back and forth sweeping up the small monsters.
Sadly, the larger ones simply barreled through.
“Greygrass, switch it up! Give us courage and anger! Pump us up!” Aims barked.
The ranger complied.
Her strumming quickened. She opened her mouth and sang. Loud. All her fury and desperation at watching her friends die given voice.
Danger Sense spiking, Vicks pointed at Greygrass. “Chapstick! Intercept!”
Cherry Chapstick acted without thinking. Intercept took him in front of the banjo-playing ranger in a split-second. Just in time to take a face full of venom spray from a monster in the darkness.
Iron Constitution let him eat and drink practically anything. One might think it didn’t have combat applications.
Some of the spray got into his eyes through the helmet slit.
“It’s okay, just venom. Tastes like pepper spray,” he grimaced.
“Bear. Bear. Bear!” Vicks eloquently warned.
Lasik was distracted from gleefully guiding her fire tornado through the ranks.
A huge, bear-like monster barreled from her blindspot.
Aims’ snapped an accurate shot out of the corner of his eye.
A streak of white flashed off the monster’s head.
He cursed.
That was the bullet tearing through fur and flesh, but bouncing off the skull despite being an enhanced round.
The bear-like monster reared up.
Cherry Chapstick appeared in front of Lasik, shoving her back.
He emptied his heavy caliber pistol into the monster’s face.
The bear swiped down with a paw the size of his torso.
Shuffle back.
Let the strike hit the ground.
Step in…
“Skullsmasher!”
An audible crack echoed through the din of battle.
Cherry Chapstick’s warhammer sank into the bear-like monster’s forehead.
It grunted, rearing up before anyone could react and smashed a paw down on the ranger.
Thick plate armor and Iron Skin saved Cherry Chapstick from being turned into pulp, but they didn’t save him from death.
The monster rumbled forward, powering through a blast of air from Lasik.
Bluesilk charged, taunting.
The bear struck.
He absorbed the blow on his shield with a Skill. Then stored and returned the energy through another Skill.
The monster recoiled, more surprised than hurt.
Bluesilk blasted it with both barrels of his sawed-off shotgun.
His only two war crimes rounds burned sizzling holes in the monster’s cheek, revealing sharp, bloody teeth and what looked like a human hand from a previous victim.
“Get back!” Dastardly loosed a bolt into the opening.
Foam expanded in an instant, filling the monster’s mouth and snaking down its throat.
The monster died choking for air, clawing out its own neck.
There was no respite.
No time to give Cherry Chapstick’s the notice he deserved for his sacrifice.
“Up!” Vicks shouted desperately at the incessant pinging in his head.
A gust of wind and ruffling feathers was their only warning.
Lasik screamed.
Talons pierced through armor and into her shoulders.
A bird-like monster the size of a human with the face of a beautiful woman. Until it’s mouth opened wide, wide, wider than humanly possible to reveal a second mouth, a beak lined with razor-edge teeth.
It screeched down.
Rangers clutched their ears in pain.
Madalena leapt.
Ten feet.
Twenty.
Thirty.
They kept rising.
A second dark-feathered shadow struck Madalena.
They fell back to the earth in a tangle of biting beak mouth, clawing talons and superstrong punches.
Madalena had beaten the monster to death by the time they crashed, but by then Lasik was beyond her reach.
“They’re fucking harpies!” Bluesilk said.
Molds sent several of her drones in chase but the wind was too strong for the little things.
Aims’ revolvers barked tearing through one of the flying monster’s ankles.
Lasik dangled from the other, wriggling like a little mouse.
Though this mouse was trying to hit back with spells.
“I don’t have a shot!” Dastardly aimed through her night optics, desperately willing Lasik to move just enough.
Aims sighted then ducked at Vicks' warning.
A spray of spines filled the air.
One glanced off the top of his helmet.
A snap shot drilled the monster responsible through the eye.
He cursed, blasting two-handed to cover everything in front of him.
Ground-bound monsters kept him from helping Lasik.
The music stopped as Greygrass screamed.
A spine had managed to take her eye through the helmet.
The rangers’ wills instantly sagged.
Limbs suddenly felt encased in lead weights.
The music started as quickly as it had stopped.
Greygrass played and sang with the spine still in her eye.
A second dark-feathered harpy dived on the struggling Lasik, grasping a leg in its talons.
The tug of war lasted an agonizing second that seemed to last forever to the rangers that had the ability to watch from hundreds of feet below.
Lasik’s scream pierced the rain and thunder.
Her leg tore with a ghastly sound.
The sudden slack sent the harpy clutching the ranger tumbling.
“Got it!” Dastardly loosed.
The bolt struck, burning the monster to ash.
Lasik tumbled toward the ground, trailing a bloody spiral in the rain and wind.
More harpies appeared out of the dark clouds, swooping after the ranger.
“Reinforcements inbound! Hold on rangers!”
A drake and his rider dived through the harpy swarm, scattering them with tooth, claw and crackling spell fire.
Madalena leapt, catching Lasik, cradling her, absorbing the impact with her legs upon landing.
“She needs the bleeding to be stopped!”
“On it!” Vicks tore his medic kit open.
Madalena leapt back into the fray, holding one side of the battle on her own.
A strange shambling monster appeared seemingly from nowhere. It rose up, covered in wriggling forms as it flowed, rather than walked, on the ground despite having three— no— five legs.
“S-S-Stay back,” Babyapple drew a shaky sigil, pushing it forward desperately.
It burned where it touched but was swallowed by the rest of shambling mass.
A gaping void opened on its surface, like a mouth, spitting those wriggling things over Babyapple.
“Oh god! They’re eating into me! Help!” he tore desperately at his armor and clothing.
They would if they could.
He was left to pull at the worms slowly eating their way into his belly.
The monsters finally overwhelmed Rayna’s Rangers.
Bluesilk did what he could to taunt them away from the unconscious Hardhat next to a Vicks focused solely on searching through the torn meat of Lasik’s hip to find the artery spitting her precious lifeblood onto the rain-slick asphalt.
Greygrass had stopped playing to fire bursts from her submachine gun. She never stopped singing. Her voice remained strong and loud.
Dastardly abandoned her arbalest, useless as it was at knife fight range. She tried to cover Babyapple. Spending the rest of her Skills like she had no tomorrow. She was overwhelmed quickly, forcing her to protect the younger ranger with her body.
Light armor didn’t provide much protection. The monsters reached her flesh within seconds. They found the latter much tastier than the former.
Aims backed into Molds while the young woman continued to focus on ordering her tiny drones to spit their attack spells.
He ran out of physical bullets.
The Skill-created ones lasted a few seconds more as they barked out of the revolvers like they were machine guns.
Squeezing on empty, he flipped them around to grasp them by their barrels. The red-hot iron elicited a hiss from his lips.
No more Skills.
He was forced to use precious family heirlooms as crude bludgeons.
The monsters swarmed over him, biting and cutting, before doing the same to Molds.
Bootleg Jesus forced his way through the chaotic mass battering with shield and hacking with axe. He had expended all his ammunition along with most of his active Skills. He only had the ones he had activated and deactivated at the start of the battle.
The ranger was pale-faced beneath his helm. Long brown hair flowed down across his neck and shoulders like a mantle.
He ran farther away, toward the street, perhaps twenty yards.
He reached the place he had judged to provide the maximum effect.
“Enduring Defensive Stance,” he whispered. “Attack Me!” he taunted. “No Enemy Shall Pass While I Stand.”
The monsters temporarily forgot about the other rangers. They swarmed him.
His Skills kept him on his feet for long seconds after they had killed him.
Madalena cursed.
Her cousins wouldn’t have let it turn out like this.
She could only watch as the long-haired, laid-backed ranger vanished in a writhing mass of snarling monsters.
The respite was longer than they had expected.
It wasn’t long enough.
The monsters turned their attention back to the rangers.
“I’m done!” Lilah said. Her eyes widened upon noticing the scene behind her. She traced a sigil in the air, hand steady, fingers sure.
The script shined with a burst of golden light, growing in size, pulsing waves of magical energy with each passing second.
Every single monster froze in place.
Fire erupted from street side.
Leathery wing beats filled the sky while battle cries joined the thunder.
Reinforcements had finally arrived.
Drakes and a wyvern cleared the sky of harpies, staining the rain with monster blood.
Spiritwalker led a combined force of almost a hundred. Most of which was made up of recently freed enslaved, sprinkled in with a random mix of mercenaries and adventuring bands that had sought safety in numbers.
The battle was won quickly.
It was time to cpunt the costs.