Down in the hanger Alin saw it in his HUD. Three dots went from green to black. Two went red. Then only one remained.
“Mom! Lee— Gob—”
“I know, Boy.” His mom turned. “You’re authorized to engaged,” she said to nothing.
“We have to—”
“I know. Lock this place down. No one in or out unless it’s one of us.”
“Acknowledged,” Fabricator Stone Lake 23571 said.
“Boy, use your power,” his mom said.
“What? I can’t—”
“Yes you can. Find the slasher. Drain them if you can. If you can’t do that then do your best to confuse them.” His mom didn’t wait for an answer. “Captain Molds,” she spoke into the comms. “Ranger Goldenspoon will be using his power. Open all vents. We’re headed for Gob— Ranger House Elf’s position.”
“Understood. Please do so in all haste.”
Gob’s life signs were fading fast.
Gray fog poured from the many small holes he had opened on his armor as he followed his mom into the corridor.
The hanger door slid shut behind him with the thuds of the bolts locking into place.
“Concentrate on your power and stay close. I don’t think this slasher can hurt us since we’re in full armor.”
With that his mom jogged down the corridor at Olympic sprinter speed.
Microthrusters in his armor pulsed to help him keep up.
The gray spread and with it part of his consciousness.
He thought of Kat, his friends and the rest of the rangers.
The gray reached Lee, Gob and the other rangers, flowing over them like a comforting blanket.
Alin heard— saw— felt something.
Movement?
But they were dead, with one rapidly fading to join them.
He didn’t want them to—
Please, don’t— this isn’t fair, he thought.
He should’ve acted as soon as they found the first body. Filled the Raynanaut with his gray. Found the slasher. Drained them.
The gray reached Kat first, as Alin intended.
She didn’t know what had happened. Why the captain had said to not be alarmed by the fog pouring out of the vents.
Opsec meant that not every ranger knew Alin had powers.
She knew because she was his girlfriend.
“Something really bad must’ve happened,” Songbird said as they both watched the gray pool around their legs as it continued to fill the corridor.
The squad headed down their way had been diverted elsewhere.
The captain had ordered them to the nearest room, which was one of the escape pods.
They had almost reached it when a friendly gentleman appeared from around the corner.
“Ah! Hi,” he said shyly. “I seem to be lost.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” Kat said.
Something— something was…
The warning about a small, slight man in a gray suit— a slasher—
The man was a friend. Her best in fact. He was also a slasher.
She and Songbird had found the body of victim in one of the cargo bays.
The gray continued to fill the corridor. Up to their mid-sections now.
Their best friend didn’t seem to notice as he approached them.
“I believe I recognize you from when you rangers were so kind as to rescue me from that apartment building,” their friend said to Songbird. “Your uniform is different? Might you be an officer?”
“I am,” Songbird frowned.
One of the rules was don’t volunteer information to strangers.
If it was good enough for kids, then it was good enough for rangers.
The gray was at their necks.
The smiling, nonthreatening man was almost within arm’s reach.
“Then you can get into the bridge? Perhaps, you have the password or a keycard of some sort? I would really be grateful if you could show me.”
The gray tickled Kat’s nose.
“Unfortunately, sir, lock down protocols are in effect. Even then civilians can’t enter the bridge without permission,” Songbird said.
“Ah! But you’ll help me with that, won’t you?”
The gray caressed Kat’s cheeks as it finally enveloped her completely. It vanished.
To her eyes the corridor was clear.
Everything became clear.
She moved at the same time the slasher lunged with a thin dagger.
Kat yanked Songbird away from the kiss of steel and jabbed the butt of her katana into the slasher’s gut.
The dagger touched her throat, but unlike Songbird, she was in full armor.
It’d take more than mundane steel to cut through the Threnium threads in her collar.
A pop forced her head back.
The slasher tried to lunge around her to get to Songbird.
Quick Cut Iai!
She drew and cut with the best technique she was capable of.
The slasher recoiled quick as a snake.
A thin red line marred the sleeve of his once pristine gray suit.
His eyes widened behind those round-rimmed glasses that kept reflecting the ceiling lights for some reason.
They were reading glasses, not reflective sunglasses.
“What is this?” he waved his hand. “I don’t sense a Skill or a spell… and it isn’t coming from one of you. Neither of you have the right classes. Nor are they high enough to—” he shook his head, calm, placid composure gone. “You lack the levels.”
He turned and ran.
Kat noticed a bloody hole in the back of his shoulder.
She drew her pistol alongside Songbird.
They filled the corridor with lead, but the slasher had already ducked behind the corner.
“Faster and stronger than he looked.”
Kat felt her throat.
The protection held, but she had felt the impact.
“Captain! This is Songbird! Encountered slasher! He’s wounded! I repeat. He’s wounded.” She added their location.
“Now what?” Kat said.
“I’ll ask.” Songbird shrugged. “Requesting further orders.”
Captain Molds spoke to both of them.
“Proceed to safe area and lock it down.”
----------------------------------------
George Griffin, Gentleman Slasher, ran.
His normally unflappable demeanor flapped in the thick gray fog like his rumpled blond hair.
He reached up to smooth it, but forgot about the blood— his blood!
Now his hair was smeared with the sticky red.
He had always taken pains to avoid the splatter.
Hated when others got on his bespoke suits.
Doubly hated when it was his own.
That dumb katana bitch!
She had cut deep from wrist to elbow.
The blood wasn’t gushing anymore, but like the bullet hole in his back, it wasn’t healing any faster.
Your Best Friend had done a lot of work getting on board the flying ship and getting him his first victims. The problem had been these rangers’ armor.
He couldn’t get through their full kit with the weapons he had. Couldn’t grab anything more powerful from the armory without messing up his passive Skill.
It was a powerful one.
Fitting for a Level 50.
But not meant for open combat.
That wasn’t his style.
Be the friend.
Let them invite him in and cut their throat or put a bullet in their eye.
It had never failed him on anyone Level 40 and under.
Over that and it had always come down to class, counter Skills or spells, and pure willpower.
He had gone for the flying ship because he knew that, despite his level, he wasn’t going to be able to face one of the other top slashers head on, nor use his normal methods.
It had been a long, risky shot, but one had to take those to win the ultimate prizes.
The spires didn’t reward the sheep for cowering with their flock.
They rewarded the lone cougar for taking the sheep.
One couldn’t deny the evidence.
Was he not Level 50?
Had he not taken sheep from the middle of their flocks right under the watchful eyes of the shepherd and noses of their guard dogs?
Even these rangers hadn’t been safe.
They had been raining down fire for over a week and no one had any idea they had been lurking above the smoke-filled sky.
That had to change.
He took a moment to access the world event page to post a message to every slasher, even the pretenders.
Boots echoed from the end of the corridor.
The damned fog threw sounds from multiple directions!
Where had it come from?
It didn’t feel like a spell or a Skill.
But that could just mean whoever was responsible was stronger than him.
That didn’t feel right.
He had spent time walking the ship and striking up conversations to gather information before they had stumbled on the man he had left in the cargo locker.
He would’ve preferred to wait a little longer but he had needed a kill to continue using his Skill.
He was running out of time.
His stamina was draining faster than it should’ve.
It must’ve been the wounds.
To be defeated by a bunch of low level children—
No!
It wasn’t over yet.
Movement out of the corner of his eye.
He spun, slashing his stiletto and pointing his pistol.
Nothing.
He had been seeing shapes in the gray fog.
People, yet the corridors were narrow, why did it seem much wider at times?
He had traversed the flying ship once, committing the layout to memory.
His options had narrowed.
Take an escape pod and abandon the massive rewards from the Quest?
Eliminating these Rayna’s Rangers from the competition could potentially put him far enough ahead of the others to allow him to take less risks. That was on top of all the other rewards. Universal Points, attribute points, free Skills and even an additional slot. He hadn’t gotten one of those in a long time.
Then there was the flying ship and all the advanced-looking gear.
Someone out there would give him the world in exchange for all of it.
It was all ether if they killed him.
He wasn’t a fool.
Calculated risk.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
That was how he had survived for so long.
He needed to escape.
To increase his chances he needed a hostage.
He didn’t know how the escape pods worked.
Logically, he should just be able to get in one and hit the launch button.
Having their functions be controllable from elsewhere defeated their purpose.
A sinking ship or in this case a falling one would be experiencing all kinds of problems with their systems due to whatever damage they took.
The pods needed to be completely separate from that.
But, a hostage was necessary, just in case.
He thought of the dining room.
There had been a few cooks and rangers in there the last time he had walked through.
More importantly they weren’t fully armored like those two squads searching for him.
Take a hostage and kill the rest to refuel his Skills.
Easy.
He stopped just outside the doorway.
The rangers had made an oversight in design by not having a door to the dining room.
Closed doors might not have bothered the more inelegant slashers, but they certainly stopped him cold. Especially, when he couldn’t politely ask those inside to let him in.
He tried to smooth his hair back into place.
The blood couldn’t be helped.
As for this cut, bloody sleeve, he could hide it behind his back.
The more dapper he looked the stronger the effect of his Skill.
He took a deep breath and stepped into the dining room.
Two rangers stood on guard at the door to the kitchen.
They were armed with short guns.
Ah, thank you! George let out a sigh of relief.
They weren’t wearing full body armor.
“Hi! I’m terribly sorry to bother you, but I seem to be lost.”
The rangers eyes narrowed as he slowly approached.
He only had one more shot in his pistol and he needed it to maintain the threat over his hostage.
A small, thin stiletto wasn’t quiet as threatening as a pistol.
“If you could…”
Their eyes hardened as they slowly brought their guns up.
He turned and ran the way he had come as they stitched fire on his trail.
The sound was thunderous in the enclosed space.
Oh, how he hated open combat!
The game was over.
He could hear their voices shouting the alert.
Those heavily armored rangers would be on their way.
The flying ship was enormous, but it was a closed space and with failing stamina his Skills would loose effectiveness before shutting off completely.
Once that happened it’d be easy for them to find him with all the cameras everywhere.
Shapes in the fog seemed to chase him all the way through twisting corridors.
His memory was impeccable, but he got turned around twice.
Boots on the metal floor.
Whispers just behind his ears.
That blaring alarm and flashing red lights that seemed to vanish and reappear randomly.
Finally, he reached the escape pods!
He reached for the door handle with a sigh.
Just as soft and silent a blade slipped into his back.
Hot pain bloomed a split-second later.
He spun, slashing his stiletto over nothing.
The blade slipped into his gut.
Gray fog parted as the space in front of him shimmered.
Dimly, he recalled a movie he had once watched long ago.
A strange face looked up at him from behind an even stranger looking armor.
Speckled gray with huge round eyes, slits for a nose and a thin, lipless mouth.
It reminded him of yet another movie or pictures. The memories were slipping from his grasp as the darkness closed around his vision.
Still… there was always a chance.
One last Skill-assisted thrust of his stiletto—
Parried by that matte gray blade.
So much gray!
He wanted to scream.
To be killed by an alien child—
He dropped to his knees and stared eye to eye with it.
No, not a child. Unless, its skin was naturally that wrinkled.
He tried to use his Skill. Be this alien’s best friend. But it didn’t work. Whether it was because of his lack of stamina or it was simply impossible due to the difference in species he’d never know.
“I was told this was a fitting way to terminate you.” It spoke in a child’s voice. High-pitched.
His reply was silenced by the stinging heat under his chin.
One last thought about a ruined suit filled his mind before nothing.
“Nila. This is Unseen. I have terminated Designation: George Griffin, slasher at Number 3 Escape Pods. Removing head now as per protocol.” The Threnosh spoke on a direct channel as they cut the murderer’s head off and moved it a short distance from the body. The blood pooled on the metal and marked their gloves, but that could be cleaned. Same as the waste filling the man’s pants. “Engage filtration.” Always unpleasant in their nose. Sapient, non-sapient. Monster, natural creature. The files on some Fae creatures indicated the opposite. Although, they could not see sampling those despite tasting like ice cream.
“Oh. Thank god! You’re okay?” Nila said.
Honor’s mate was strange.
“I am. The target had been weakened by his injuries and Alin’s fog.” Strange thing that. They couldn’t see it and neither could their instruments. Yet, they knew it was all around them with a certainty that flew in the face of all physical evidence.
“Great job! Can you please keep an eye on the body until the rangers get there? I’ve already sent them to you.”
“Then my presence no longer requires concealment?”
“No. You had been on the bottom of the list. Easy to miss. But since you got that slasher you’re going to much higher now.”
“Understood.”
“Remember, keep an eye on the body.”
“Acknowledged. Slashers may have Skills to return from biological death.”
“Cutting the head off should be enough, but at this level you never know.”
“I will remain focused on the corpse.”
“Thanks. And be careful.”
“Acknowledged.”
Unseen would ignore their Quest notifications until the slasher was definitively dead.
They expected copious amounts of fire would be involved.
----------------------------------------
Alin would’ve collapsed into a boneless heap had he not locked his power armor in a standing position.
He was the sort of tired that seeped into the muscles and all the way to the bone.
It wasn’t just psychosomatic symptoms of crossing a limit. It was physical. Like running or fighting all day.
Filling the skyship with gray had been a limit.
Trying to keep the murderer from using his Skills and draining him had been well over the limit.
Even then, the man had fought him all the way even if the man hadn’t realized it on a conscious level.
Saved Kat and Songbird… Alin was grateful for that.
Failing the other rangers and his friends?
They got to Gob in time.
His mom had to use an extremely potent healing gem to keep Gob alive long enough for her to carry him to medical.
They only had the one.
The rest weren’t nearly as powerful.
She had left Alin there to stand in the corridor while she went to watch over the murderer’s corpse with Unseen while they decided on how to dispose of the corpse.
Rangers had been murdered.
Lee was gone…
He thought of his friend’s family.
Thought of all their families.
The barrier prevented messages.
Even the spires message system had been locked.
They didn’t know their sons, daughters, fathers or mothers were dead. They wouldn’t until the event ended.
It seemed wrong that he knew and they didn’t.
He was too tired to cry.
Memories of Lee and all the times they had flashed through his head. Good, bad, everything in between. Those neighborhood wars with all the kids. Sneaking booze. Puking in training.
Shit wasn’t fair.
His friend had been so close to Level 30.
What was he going to say to his friend’s family?
Nothing seemed enough.
One of the nurses came into the corridor after who knew how long.
2 doctors, 6 nurses.
So that there was always someone ready.
“Hi! Sorry.”
She smiled, kind and sad.
His eyes widened.
“Oh, not sorry, I mean not in that way,” she lightly bonked her head.
“Um… what?”
“I gave you the wrong impression. The doctor wanted to let you know that Ranger House Elf— you guys have the weirdest names— anyways, he’s out of danger. The transfusion is almost done. He’ll be good by tomorrow!”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
“Thank you.”
Still too tired to cry.
“Okay, yeah, well, bye, see you later… I mean, I hope not cause then that mean you got hurt.” The nurse waved and went back into medical.
He waited for a time until he recovered enough to stagger back to the hanger.
Too tired to cry. Too tired to slip into unconsciousness. Which meant he wasn’t too tired to keep working.
There’d be a debrief.
Command would want to go over his power usage.
He was afraid that they’d want more.
Stay busy.
Don’t think about Lee, the other rangers.
Don’t let the reality of it sink in.
Gob was alive.
Luzi and Victor were fine.
He had been able to help Songbird and Kat in time.
Focus on the good over the bad.
He repeated the thought over and over again.
Don’t dwell on the dark.
Focus on the bright.
The gray did what he wanted.
The temptation had been controlled.
Days turned.
Alin found himself reinvigorated with frightening quickness.
Gob was back on his feet like the nurse had said.
Still off duty though until the skyship’s therapist gave the okay.
Alin had been too busy helping the fabricator to do more than a few short visits.
Same with the rest of his friends.
He hadn’t even had the chance to do more than give Kat a quick hug in the brief moments of time they had managed to snatch.
Now that he had proved his power’s usefulness, Captain Molds hadn’t been shy about putting him on missions.
Take the assault on the cult’s building for instance.
He filled the halls and rooms with the gray.
He tried and failed to drain them.
They resisted with their Skills and ritual magic coming off the sacrificial pit in the basement. The latter doing the heavy lifting for them.
It was the second one they had discovered in the city just like the one Howard’s team had found.
Different cult though.
These people lacked the robes and scarification.
They resembled any number of mercenary companies out in the world with their mismatched weapons and armor.
Most contained low to mid-level enchantments.
So, a relatively strong group.
But they didn’t fit the profile of a human sacrificing cult.
In fact, he was pretty sure they came from somewhere in Europe.
They had stripped their gear of any identifying symbols, but the leader looked familiar.
The scars matched the picture in his dad’s files of potential future issues.
The man had shaved his beard for the event.
Wet Axe Stanis was a Berzerker of the Red Axe.
He towered over Alin’s mom, wielding a two-handed axe in one hand and a wicked dagger in the other.
The steel shimmered in the same reddish haze that surrounded the massively muscled man.
Thunder dinged against the cool gray surface of the Threnium shield.
Threnium and steel clashed in a blur of motion.
Surprise was written across the berzerker’s face.
A woman a third his size matched his rage-enhanced speed and strength.
Mercenaries and rangers fought across the floor.
The former hampered by the thick gray fog that confused and disoriented them.
Ranger Morningstar kicked a merc into Wet Axe Stanis’ back.
The huge berserker snarled as the ranger put several bursts of 7.62 into the merc’s armored chest.
It wasn’t enough to put the man down, but Wet Axe Stanis did the Morningstar a favor with a back slash of his axe.
That was the risk with rage abilities.
It was tough to control oneself. To tell friend from foe in the middle of a heated battle. Let alone without the effects of Alin’s power.
Morningstar fired.
The berserker blocked with his steel vambrace, but that was Morningstar’s goal in the first place.
The disarming Skill took the dagger on a short journey to the floor.
A baseball bat-like club thumped across the berserker’s jaw.
The crack of a home run wasn’t that far off from the crack of bone.
Wet Axe Stanis’ head snapped to the side violently.
It should’ve been a knockout blow.
Instead, he snarled, grabbed his own dead merc’s body and hurled it at Alin’s mom.
She went low, behind her shield and angled it up to help the gory missile slide right over her. She struck low, a rising blow with her club between the berserker’s legs.
Armor was armor, but even a steel groin piece wouldn’t do much in this scenario if it wasn’t enchanted or boosted with a Skill.
Granted, an all-consuming rage could allow one to power through even the most ball-crunching of hits.
Case in point… Wet Axe Stanis howled. Not in pain, but with rage.
The axe fell like a tree, carving a hot gouge through the floor like a hot knife through room temperature butter.
It was getting more difficult for Alin to disorient the massive berserker.
He wanted to help his mom, but that meant leaving the outnumbered rangers out to dry.
Or…
Did it?
He felt something… like threads connecting the berserker to the rest of the mercs.
The file mentioned a company-wide Skill to empower with his rage, while feeding off their rage in turn. Kind of like collecting interest on a loan. He hadn’t understood what his dad had meant at first. Had to get clarification. Pre-spires society really did some sketchy things to its people.
He tried and failed to do… something… with the threads.
The next move was obvious.
How did one stop a Skill?
There were several ways, but only one was obvious and fairly straightforward.
“Goldenspoon here,” he spoke into the channel.
He lacked rank to give orders, but his position was special for this op.
“Head off the snake.”
He focused everything on Wet Axe Stanis.
His mom and Morningstar were already engaged with the berserker.
A few other nearby rangers switched focus, leaving the others to take up the slack against their merc opponents for the few seconds it was, hopefully, going to take.
“Come on! You one-balled, limp-dicked douchebag!”
His mom played the tank.
She didn’t have any Skills, but normal taunts worked just as well when her target had reduced himself to a frothing kill machine.
The hot-headed axe rose and fell, dinging against the deflecting shield.
She hit him in the knee and jabbed him in the throat before he could raise it again.
His body armor absorbed most of Morningstar’s bullets. Though a few drew blood through the gaps.
Kat dashed in, cutting a thin red line through the tough, padded cloth covering the back of the man’s knees.
Alin’s mom bonked him on the head to keep his attention while more rangers came in to shoot him in the back or land backstabs and the like.
Wet Axe Stanis finally ran out of steam after years of hard, violent work to get to to his level.
He fell to his knees as the rage slipped from his grasp like the axe handle after Alin’s mom smashed his rapidly deflating arm.
Alin felt the red rage threads connecting the berserker to the other mercs fray and break, fizzling away into nothing.
“Leaving him to you, ma’am.” Morningstar shouted orders. Urging the rangers to finish the fight.
Alin watched his mom put an end to the grizzled merc with one last blow of her baseball bat-like club.
“Be careful, Mom. High-level rage Skills have been known to let the body keep fighting for a short time after death.”
“I know.” She stepped away from the corpse.
“I’ll keep an eye on him. Go help the others.”
“Be careful up there, Boy… er…” she sighed. “Goldenspoon.”
Alin stood on the roof, hidden by the AC units and protected by a pair of rangers.
“Nice work, Goldenspoon!”
“Yeah, bro! Where have you been hiding your powers this whole time?”
“Ah, sorry, guys I’m trying to concentrate.”
“Yeah, bro, leave him alone. He has to concentrate. Probably, pretty hard. Figure he’s been working on it this whole time. Saving it for the right time, you know?”
“Yeah, totally. Makes sense. Good shit, though. Glad we had a secret weapon this whole time.”
“Not so secret no more. Thanks to that murdering prick.”
“Nah, bro. They don’t know shit. ‘Beware the fog’. Ha! I’m more worried about the fact that everyone knows about the Raynanut now.”
The two rangers peeked from cover to look out over the battle-torn city.
Fires continued to burn as guns and spells fired while monsters snarled and gnashed their teeth.
“Shit’s fucked worse than last week.”
“Almost half way. Just got to stay alive that long, bro.”