Lilah rushed over to Lasik, casting a healing ward over the dying ranger. She went to Babyapple next and drew the worms out of the young ranger’s stomach to levitate in mid-air for Madalena to crush.
The healing ward pulsed, slowly stemming the bleeding.
It wouldn’t be enough.
“Was it worth it?” Dastardly sat on the ground. Her back was torn, partially eaten. Blood pooled in a puddle underneath her, flowing with the thin layer of rainwater to create patterned swirls that under other circumstances could be called beautiful.
Madalena bristled, but Lilah laid a hand on her protector’s arm.
“It is not my place to answer that question for you. For me… I say it is never worth it. The people we care about should not die in such sudden violence. They should live with us and only die in peace after a long time. But that is only my thoughts. I would say that only the one that died can say whether it was worth it,” Lilah said.
Dastardly grunted after a moment. “What’s it going to do?” she gestured at the circle of sigils slowly moving toward the Cruces and the demon mired in their battle several hundred feet away closer to the Cabal’s HQ.
“I pray that it will keep the demon from going free to continue its slaughter,” she said. “It has already killed so many.”
“Mostly slavers, though.”
“Not all in this place deserve to die at its hands.”
“Agree to disagree.”
The conversation ended when a medic went to work on Dastardly’s wounds.
Spiritwalker took command as the most senior sergeant not badly injured.
“Casualty status?”
Sweet Teats swallowed the lump in his throat.
The tall, thin young man had been pressed into dangerous field duty by necessity and he resembled a squirrel in the middle of a circle of hungry cats.
“Nothing of note for reinforcements,” he stammered.
Naturally.
Lilah’s ward had frozen the monsters.
It was like that odd American phrase about shooting fish in a barrel.
Though, why one felt the need to do that escaped Spiritwalker.
“The others?”
“K.I.A… Cherry Chapstick, Bootleg Jesus and Timber, um, they lost him inside the Cabal HQ.”
“We’ll get him back.”
“Uh… there’s nothing left. Some kind of disintegration gas spell according to Sergeant Aims.”
“Please continue then.”
“Lasik is red.”
Obviously.
“Babyapple is red.”
Spiritwalker frowned.
“Um…” Sweet Teat’s face turned green, “worm-like monsters ate parts of his internal… uh… cavity… organs. The rest are in yellow.”
Spiritwalker gave the order.
The two worst injured were tied to drakes and winged their way back to base camp in less than a minute.
The rest took longer to secure to a wyvern before they too were on their way.
It was telling that no one complained about being taken out of the fight.
Spiritwalker turned his attention to the colorful shimmering forcefield maze where the demon and a physical powerhouse battled.
“It’s still alive,” he sighed. “Now what?” he turned to Lilah and Madalena.
“Tito Phillip and Tita Stella kills it or Lilah’s magic keeps it trapped to give us time to learn how to kill it,” the latter shrugged.
“What about the ground? It might try tunneling under,” he said.
“Of course I wouldn’t forget that!” Lilah pouted.
Sometimes Spiritwalker forgot how young she was.
It was easy to see the strength of the magic rather than the girl casting them.
“Can we help?”
Lilah shook her head. “Nothing can pass from the outside. You would only damage my magic by shooting at it.”
“So, they’re stuck in there? That doesn’t sound good.”
Another shake. “Nothing can go inside. Only Tito and Tita can leave it.”
The ring of sigils continued its slow constriction.
Inside Stella Cruces’ multi-hued forcefield maze, Phillip fought the demon.
The demon was faster.
It ate thin slices off Phillip’s armor and clothing with each touch while he landed about one in five of his punches.
The blows staggered the demon, sending it stumbling into a lattice of sharp edged forcefield panes.
Bloodless cuts marred its pale, pink flesh.
It surprised the two Cruces by pushing through. It should’ve sliced itself like deli meat, but somehow reformed on the other side when it launched itself at Stella.
She altered her forcefield wall, turning it into a bristling ball of sharp spikes like an angry porcupine.
The demon impaled itself.
Phillip was right behind it, grabbing its head to rip it off his wife’s trap and slam it into the asphalt.
A boot party followed.
Thunderous stomps drove its face into an asphalt crater.
The sting of its touch caused Phillip to hesitate, allowing it to get free.
As the fight wore on he began to show angry red patches on the exposed areas of his brown skin.
The demon couldn’t take huge chunks like it had off everything else, but it was doing real damage.
“How much time?”
“Six minutes,” his wife said.
It felt much longer.
Three minutes later he bled more freely and Lilah’s circle had finally stopped.
The glowing sigils created a yellow-gold dome of translucent light roughly forty feet in diameter.
Phillip wasn’t breathing hard.
He could’ve fought for days, but he wondered if there would be anything left of him by then.
The demon healed despite the relentless pressure from his physical strikes and his wife’s sharp forcefields.
The plan wasn’t going to work.
The two of them couldn’t do enough damage quickly enough.
They needed one single overwhelming burst.
“It’s over. Get out of the circle.”
His wife hurried out.
Her forcefield maze dissipated.
The demon tried to go for her again.
He tackled it into the ground.
It ate at him with every touch while he broke its limbs and twisted its head around. The former healed by the time he finished the latter.
Freed from its touch, he leapt free and joined the others outside.
As they watched, the demon stood with pale, pink fresh as pristine as it had been before their fight.
“Po, what do we do now?” Spiritwalker said.
The demon touched the glowing barrier.
The sigils wavered like they were glitching.
“Uh oh…”
“I won’t let it,” Lilah said as she fed more mana into her sigils.
“Can she keep that up?” Spiritwalker said.
“Yes,” Madalena scowled.
“How long?”
“I’ve been saving my mana for days just for this,” Lilah said.
Sure words, yet they didn’t miss the sweat beading on her dainty little forehead.
“Will giving you more mana cause problems?”
Lilah shook her head.
Spiritwalker addressed the gathering.
“Anyone with a mana transfer ability? Spell? Skill? Whatever?”
A few hands went up.
“Okay, anyone with mana left line up. I want a steady supply going into Lilah.”
Not just anyone could do a transfer.
One needed an ability to take in from one source and give to another.
The process wasn’t efficient.
It depended highly on level and skill.
At its worst one could liken the process akin to using a spoon to carry water from the upstairs sink to put into a narrow necked bottle balanced on the edge of the kitchen table… during an earthquake. A lot would be lost.
One needed to be on the level of someone like Ms. Teacher to do it with a hundred percent efficiency.
“Are you going to go help at the castle, Po?” Spiritwalker returned to the Cruces’ side.
“Cal wants us to stay here just in case it breaks out,” Phillip shook his head.
Spiritwalker let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “We’ll take care of setting up a perimeter.”
“I’ll help you Tito Phillip if it escapes. I’m still pretty fresh,” Madalena said.
“Thank you.”
“Tita Stella, can you…” she glanced at Lilah.
“Okay naman, I’ll keep her safe. You just be careful, na?” Stella said.
----------------------------------------
Great Hall, King’s Castle
Swan Princess was fucked.
And he had lost his tricorne hat.
Which meant Neckbeard was royally fucked.
His teammate was taking risks to fight by her heroes’ side.
Hayden and Dayana had engaged the Slaver King to buy Hanna some respite.
Flicker Clones danced around while the real one slashed and stabbed.
Electricity charged the air so much that he felt like he was in the middle of a dry desert thunderstorm.
The Slaver King’s skin bled and charred only to heal just as quickly.
Swan Princess sent multiple spell orbs to circle the king and spray him with fire, cold and acid.
The king slapped his hands together blowing the three off their feet.
Swan Princess was the closest.
He leapt.
“Shit!” Neckbeard clicked on one antique stopwatch. Then on another. He glanced at them. Not much magic left.
The king slowed.
Swan Princess sped up.
His knee broke through the expensive hardwood floor, while she was already a dozen feet away and back on her feet.
Spell orbs struck.
An armored woman hurtled through the air.
What the fuck? he gaped.
The woman threw a barrage of green-tinted needles.
They showered Swan Princess.
She screamed as the acid ate away.
Neckbeard tripped over a body in his haste to help.
A too-tight dress and a once pretty face.
He vaguely remembered one of the sideline reporters that did the interviews. Even interviewed his team once.
The damage was too great for him to tell which one.
He scrambled up only to be hit by a barrage of energy balls in a myriad of different colors.
The impacts felt like punches on his enchanted long coat.
The protection held.
He pulled out a wand and sent a stream of grease at the Gold Division fighter, Orb.
The man sniffed.
“Are you gonna cook me? Weirdo. Some kind of wannabe street wizard.”
“Yeah…” he drew a second wand and shot a small spark, “something like that.”
Orb’s smug face shifted to concern. He waved his hands frantically, filling the space between them with colorful energy balls.
Neckbeard dived behind an overturned table and got showered with splinters.
He was disappointed to see that his spark hadn’t made it.
Blackstar’s concussive blasts did, however.
They slammed into Orb with strength that could punch through steel.
Bone and brain matter sprayed everywhere.
Neckbeard narrowly avoided a pillar of fire that fried a knot of the king’s fighters to get to Swan Princess’ side. He was relieved to see her taking shelter behind a pile of broken furniture.
“You okay?”
“What do you think?” she hissed as she pulled the acid from the side of her face and upper body into a small spell orb. “Going to shove this right up that bitch’s—”
“Yeah, about that… listen. This part of the fight is kinda above our level. Why don’t we try to find the rest of our team? You know they’ll need us against the Meat Parade.”
“They’re long gone by now. And I don’t think we’ll get very far. He won’t let us,” she pointed.
“You mean they.”
The king had been joined by the acid-casting woman.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
She watched his back. Cast a shield to block Hayden’s taser prongs. Cast ice to freeze the follow-up chain.
Dayana flickered between the two, slicing, dicing and disappearing before they could react.
“She must be one of the king’s fists. Some kind of special bodyguard class,” Swan Princess grunted.
“Where’s the other one?” he donned his special monocle for a better look. The brass-rimmed, antique-looking device allowed him to use mage sight. “She’s got a lot. And he—” Wait a tick. What the fuck is that? What had the magus shouted? Something about ghosts?
They wavered even when viewed through the monocle.
Ghostly people flowed through the walls and ceiling, converging on the Slaver King.
“They’re going into his back and— Jesus! He’s got people’s souls or something growing out of his back. Damn, we missed the final form transition.”
“What are they doing?”
“Wailing. Uh… helping him… somehow…” he shrugged.
“The collar system should’ve been destroyed. The enslaved were freed.”
“Clearly this is something else.”
“What if I hit the ghosts?”
“Won’t work. They’re taking errant shots and they’re just passing through. Oh shit! He sees us!” he ducked behind the rubble.
It was too late.
The Slaver King landed in front of them.
“Rangers,” he nodded. “Going to send you back to Rayna in multiple small boxes,” he smirked.
Swan Princess covered him in spell orbs while Neckbeard activated the last of his Haste to drag her away.
The clattered into a pile of bodies a few dozen feet away.
“Round two, bitch!” Steel Hammer thundered toward the king.
Her dark, metallic skin bore countless tears. One arm hung limp. Her face was a puffy mass of bruises so bad that one eye was buried deep within puffy flesh.
“No.”
The king dodged her punch with a tilt of the head and kicked her back.
His woman fist appeared next to him to shower Steel Hammer in a wide spray of magic acid.
“We need to help her,” Swan Princess shifted her orbs.
The fist was forced to stop her attack in order to defend herself.
Steel Hammer staggered toward the king.
“Very tough. You can be useful for my program. I commute your death sentence,” he cracked her in the jaw with a jumping uppercut.
Neckbeard saw his hand break, then watched the ghosts expending themselves to nearly-instantly fix the damage.
Steel Hammer vanished somewhere in the second level mezzanine.
The Slaver King was on them in a flash.
His vise-like grip yanked Swan Princess off her feet, dangling her like a prize catch.
He ground the bones of her arm into powder.
To her credit, she didn’t utter a sound.
“Brave. Damn shame about your pretty face. I watched you fight. Thought you had promise. Could’ve smiled more. Oh well. Your journey ends here. This is what happens when you fuck around.”
“You find out,” Neckbeard wound a loop of wire around the king’s wrist, heating it hot enough to cut iron. He tightened and pulled.
Swan Princess dropped to the floor.
“Go, Swanny!”
She scrambled away.
Impossibly, the king’s severed hand flowed back into place pulled by several ghostly hands that had emerged from the stump.
The vise-like grip grabbed the top of Neckbeard’s head and pulled him nose to nose with the king.
“I have to give you props for that. You’ve got a decent aesthetic. Like a private detective wizard. I think I read a book about that once.”
“You, read? No way, you’re a Chad and everyone knows Chad’s don’t read.”
The king’s eyes narrowed.
“Yeah, well we always rubbed your faces into the dirt or dunked you in the shitter. Once a dork, always a dork. Magic didn’t change any of that. Any last words?”
All things considered Neckbeard wouldn’t trade being in this position for anything in the world.
When he was in his twenties he had figured he’d end up fat and alone in his mom’s basement in his forties. Games would be played, noobs would be pwned, anime waifu’s would dance in his daydreams, all while YouTube videos decrying the ‘females’ ran in the background.
The spires had forced him to change his trajectory for the better.
He had gotten in shape.
Only occasionally grew a beard, not to hide his chins, since he only had the one, but because it made him look badass.
He had made a difference fighting alongside his fellow rangers.
Who would’ve thought he’d single-handedly bringing down a zombification pillar deep within the San Diego Underworld Dungeon?
Who would’ve thought that he’d be going head-to-head with a Slaver King?
No one… that’s who.
His name was going on the wall and that was something to be proud of.
He watched over the king’s shoulder as the fist closed in on Swan Princess only to be cubed by Hanna, the Sword of Freedom, who didn’t need to use her dull gray longsword.
He laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Slaver King,” he managed, “systems like their counters. You enslave. Others free. It’s like the circle of life, bro. And everyone gets eaten eventually,” he flashed a one-fingered salute. “Cut the ghosts coming out of his back! It’s how he—”
A loud crunch sent him into the eternal dark.
Hanna cut from a distance, following the brave ranger’s words.
There was something there on the edge of her perception.
Like cutting spider strands.
Somehow, she knew that she wasn’t quite touching them.
“I understand,” the magus hovered overhead. “Let me…” she cast a spell.
Glitter descended on the Slaver King.
Hanna saw.
Hanna cut.
The Slaver King snarled, launching himself forward.
Expecting to lay hands on the Sword of Freedom, he instead found himself inside his mansion.
The massive living room as large as a small home greeted him with warmth and… dread.
Something was wrong.
In the middle was the central control unit.
Standing next to it was a short man. Muscular. Light brown skin. Black hair cut short. Eyes that seemed to pierce straight through him.
Anger.
Disdain.
Pity.
“Took me some work… took a lot of people working together… sacrificing… to bring you here,” the man said.
Thin strands of light flowed into the central control unit from everywhere.
One greater strand flowed into the Slaver King.
It was just as he had imagined it.
His connection to each individual piece of his property.
There weren’t as many strands as before.
“I’m not going to explain anything,” the man said.
“Did I ask? Obviously, whatever you’ve done has freed most of my slaves. At least the ones in the city. You’ve even done something to my banks.”
“Don’t you mean ‘essential workers’?”
The Slaver King chuckled.
“That was marketing. Make it easier to stomach for those on the fence. They went along quick enough when they realized how much better their lives would be. You’ve set me back a lot, I’m man enough to admit that. But, you haven’t beaten me. As you can see, I’ve still got my connections to every slave outside the city. Bet that didn’t go according to your plans.”
“It didn’t,” the man admitted. “Which is why I’m going to ask you to act like a human being for once in your life and free them. The fight’s over. You’re just wasting lives at this point. Isn’t it your responsibility to take care of your ‘subjects’? At least that’s what some of your oaths say.”
“As long as it doesn’t negatively impact me. The king takes precedence above all. You know, I’m feeling generous. You did some good stuff. I didn’t see it coming. Game knows game. How about we do a truce? You stay out of my territory and I stay out of yours.”
“What if my territory includes yours?”
“I can tell that’s a bluff. I’m a leader and I can tell that you aren’t. I was born and bred for this. My family has led for generations.”
“Born on third, thinking you hit a triple,” the man shook his head. “I know all about you. I know all about your family. They started your wealth with stolen land. Killed an entire village of Native Americans. Lucked into the land being oil rich decades later. Your great, great, great-whatever grandfather just had to arrange an accident for his partner and it was all yours. Children working in your coal mines. Sweatshop factories in other countries. War profiteering in every war. Stealing more oil, this time in the Middle East. No bid reconstruction contracts for the cities blown up with bombs built by companies you had a stake in. You even got into the pharmaceutical game. How many billions did your family make killing a few hundred thousand through synthetic opioids? What else? Ah yes, vulture capitalism as a side gig. Dozens of companies and livelihoods ruined to make a quick profit. You even had stakes in slavery chocolate, slavery palm oil and slavery lithium. Seriously, sand mines? What is that even about?”
“Winners win,” he shrugged. “That’s just how it is. How it’s always been. Strong takes. Weak takes it. You just sound jealous like the little brown monkey you are.”
“Slavers gonna slave? Is that all you are? A strong man would’ve found the strength to do better. You could’ve started small I guess. Say, get rid of a mansion, a couple of yachts and a half-dozen Bugattis for a handful of plantations and mines. But that’s all pre-spires. You actually decided to bring full slavery back and you made it even worse.”
“No!” the Slaver King snapped. “I’m bringing us back to greatness! Unlike you, who’d doom us all to the monsters and invaders that are going to come.”
The man raised a brow.
“Not looking forward to being on the wrong end of colonialism?”
“I’m not an idiot.”
“And, yet, here you stand. Unable to do anything.”
“I can fuck you up!”
He charged—
He stood where he had always been.
He calmed himself. He wasn’t going to make a fool of himself by trying twice.
“You got a name?”
He had to buy time to figure out what to do.
“Yes,” the man stared at him impassively.
“Well.”
“You aren’t worth sharing it with.”
“Smug bastard. You know, you’re lucky we let you into this country.”
“How do you know that I wasn’t born here?”
“Then your parents?”
“What if it was the same for them?”
“Bullshit. Then you can go back to your first monkey grandpa that flew or swam or whatever over.”
“What if he was here before this was even a country? What if he landed in, say, California before it was even in U.S. hands? My ancestors might’ve been actually beat yours.”
“Bullshit.”
“No. It’s history. Verifiable at that. I suppose that’s why your kind loves rewriting it or burying it in favor of whatever fantasy makes you feel good about yourself.”
“Dick. Bitch. Pussy.”
“Slaver,” the man’s facade cracked into a laugh. “You really never grew up. Deep down— well, not that deep— you’re still that cocky frat boy running his mouth without worry thanks to daddy’s money and connections. How many rapes did you get away with?”
“I didn’t rape anyone. They all wanted a ride on my magic stick and they loved it.”
“It’s long past time, but they’ll get justice. You just got to hope that it’ll matter wherever they are.”
“Well, I got some bad news for you, you little brown bitch monkey manlet,” he sneered. “I know why you brought me here. You can’t figure it out, can you? You can’t cut me off from the rest of my property. I die, they die, but not before some of them go crazy and take a few others with them. I can just wait you out. I’m getting stronger with every one of my subjects that gets killed out there. Their souls belong to me.”
“I figured that out early,” the man shrugged.
“Then what’s the point of this. Are we just going to talk? How long can you keep this up?”
“That’s the thing. Perception’s tricky. A minute in one place could be a second in another. A second in one could be a minute in the other.”
“Wait? Is my body still out there? Is that what this is? Some kind of magic spell drawing my consciousness into a separate domain?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Bullshit. You’re doing this! Tell me!”
“Nah. I’m content to wait.”
“Fuck you, bitch! At least fight me, you pussy! C’mon, bro, let’s go!”
He raged for what felt like hours.
All the while the man regarded him with that mixture of anger and pity.
The latter enraged him even more.
But he was a smart man.
He thought he saw a way out.
But what if it was what the man wanted.
Could he want something like that?
It’d go against why he said he was here in the first place.
Would he sacrifice all those still wearing collars just for a chance to win?
“Fine. This is on you,” the Slaver King willed the remaining strands to drain everything from his slaves.
The man’s eyes widened, but not in fear. He plunged his stump into the central control unit.
The Slaver King’s connections wavered.
The flow of life force reversed.
He fought.
This foreigner wouldn’t take what was rightfully his.
“I’ll have my Due!” he snarled.
----------------------------------------
The room housing the central control unit had two entrances.
One opened to a narrow hallway with several turns leading to the only back door for the entire building.
Shrewed had appointed himself as the sole guardian.
Drake hadn’t been able to argue.
The grizzled ranger was built for dirty fighting in tight confines, while he needed plenty of space.
The second entrance led into the large space also with one way in and out.
Narrow hallways branched out into various rooms, but only one led out to the front lobby.
The three remaining defenders had decided to start their defense there.
Death’s Dancer had barricaded the windows by jamming them with every piece of office furniture he could get his hands on.
Drake had to admit he was intimidated by the way Death’s Dancer casually carried wooden desks to the windows before pushing them in like he was a child playing with toy blocks.
The skull-masked helmet would’ve been more intimidating had it not been painted like the old American flag.
“You should’ve left it plain or maybe gold,” the third member of their impromptu team grunted.
“Excuse me?” Death’s Dancer’s glare bore down into the other man.
“Colors ain’t scary.‘Sides, I was military once,” Howard smirked.
“So?”
“You breaking the flag code. Lucky there ain’t no more America.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? America’s still here. We’re standing on it for fuck’s sake! And if you were military then after this is over you’re coming back with us.”
“Kid, I’d like to see you try. I spent the better part of a year in this dungeon. I ain’t about to trade it in for the little hole you crawled out of.”
“You’re a sworn citizen. Your rightful government has passed a law drafting all able-bodied men and women to defend your nation. Especially for people like you and me. We have a duty to use our god-given powers to do everything it takes to take back what is ours. You’re bound doubly so by your oaths of service.”
“Nope. I fulfilled all of that before the spires popped their woodies. Honorable discharge. Reserve time done. Hell, going by the sound of your voice, I’ve served more years than you’ve been alive.”
Death’s Dancer vanished then reappeared looming over Howard.
They glared at each other eye-to-eye, though Howard had to look up.
“Fancy trick, don’t think it’ll let you get the drop on me,” Howard tapped his nose and an ear.
“Guys… don’t forget our mutual enemy,” Drake said.
“They’re coming,” Howard nodded.
“Almost here,” Death’s Dancer agreed.
“Spread out. Let me shoot my load before you jump in. I ain’t gonna be responsible if you kids cross my line,” Howard went over to the pile of guns and assorted melee weapons he had placed near the center of the lobby. He picked up an assault rifle in each hand and pointed them at the glass door that Death’s Dancer had left open.
Drake had his own meager pile of spears and spear-like objects. He had left his main spear back near the central control unit room.
All he had were his javelins.
Sadly, the vast majority of the slaver guards they had looted hadn’t been armed with long, pointy sticks.
Go figure.
Death’s Dancer moved to the opposite side of the lobby and readied two short spears.
Which was weird to Drake.
Why didn’t the scary, skull-masked dude just use a pair of short swords. That way he could cut as well as thrust. If you wanted to use a spear why cut it in half. All you’ve accomplished was to take away its greatest advantage.
Howard sniffed.
“They’re leading with those collared monsters like Cruces said they would.”
Drake didn’t catch what the first thing to crash through the glass doors was.
Howard blew it away in a hail of bullets.
More followed.
The wooden barricades shook violently.
Howard quickly built a pile of bullet-ridden bodies at the door while his pile of loaded guns dwindled.
One section of the barricade suddenly exploded, showering Howard in jagged splinters.
The man laughed, ripping them out.
Drake watched the wounds begin to close.
Monsters and mutant animals flowed in like flood waters.
Slavers followed.
Drake hurled a flaming javelin.
A slaver mage cast a magic shield to eat the explosion.
She missed the second javelin landing in their midst.
One beat.
The fireball engulfed a handful of slavers.
Howard switched to an axe and a knife. He leapt into the mass of monsters with an animal snarl. Face twisted in glee, he stabbed and hacked, ignoring tooth, claw and venom.
Death’s Dancer vanished.
A moment later one of the slavers was crushed into the floor.
Warning shouts added to the din.
Weapons pointed. Spells primed.
They couldn’t risk a crossfire.
A slaver went flying into the ceiling, thrown by the back of his armor.
Another went down, throat spraying blood like a garden hose.
A third wriggled high in the air like a fish on a harpoon. Held up by apparently nothing.
Death’s Dancer suddenly appeared holding him aloft on a short spear.
The slavers fired, heedless of each other.
Bullets and spells pounded into body armor and burned clothing, but the young man was tough enough to survive the assault.
Death’s Dancer shucked the slaver off his spear before going invisible once again.
“I’m out! Falling back!” Drake called out.
“Do it! We’ll meet you there!” Howard said.
Drake reached out.
Spear Teleport.
He blinked, standing with spear in hand back outside the central control unit room.
Meanwhile, a smaller force of slavers cautiously approached the rear door into the building.
Comms chatter from the front indicated that fighting a that location was heavy.
They breached the door with a bang.
Weapons didn’t have much space that needed sweeping in the tight hallway.
Lights cut through the darkness.
“Clear to the corner! Go! Go! Go!” the squad leader barked.
They filed in quickly.
The leader went last.
A heavy impact brought a loud crash from above.
He didn’t have time.
Pain on both sides of his neck was followed by darkness.
Shrewed had crashed through the ceiling, stabbing both trench knives into the squad leader’s neck.
“Contact!”
The slavers turned and fired.
Shrewed held the dead leader’s corpse as shield, charging into the thick of the slavers.
They had no room to maneuver.
Face-breaker Punch did what it does to a slaver.
An open-faced helmet had its disadvantages.
Thin, stiff blades found openings in armpits and necks.
Automatic fire in the enclosed space left his ears ringing, but Shrewed knew how to handle it.
Namely, ignore it and keep moving.
Never on a line.
Zig zag in and out of the slavers’ sight lines.
Bullets whizzed past him.
A few struck body armor.
Skills made him tougher.
Felt like getting punched.
A lucky shot burned a line through the side of his arm.
Cloth wasn’t armor unless it wasn’t enhanced in some way.
The slaver paid for it with a blade to the groin.
A squad downed in less than a minute.
Good work.
He left the bodies where they fell aside from taking a handful of grenades.
Retreating farther into the building, he started laying his second trap with fishing line.