The party follows the scent to the base of a Skytower, one of the drabbiest and shortest in the West district. A worn-down brick tile bounces on protruding ledges cartoonishly breaks next to Cenvin’s foot.
Lenny declares, “This is the place, my friends.”
Drawing his shortswords and snarling, Cenvin rushes headfirst into the building, Durand closely behind, his longsword dripping drops of fresh blood. In the lobby, two armored figures stand calmly with the confidence of a soldier. Kores and Clyde.
“What do you want with her!?” Durand shouts, pointing his longsword directly at Kores. He slowly turns, hands raised.
“She is a property of Starmetal Valley. We raised her.” Kores replies.
“You were treating her like an experiment! You bastards better let her go, or else we will storm this damned tower and liquidate every single member of Starmetal Valley!” Cenvin threatens. Being closer to Clyde, he makes a violent motion with his shortswords. Clyde steps to cast her ability, but Kores interrupts her.
“Do not. Orders.”
He steps forward, arms still raised in peace.
“My friends, you certainly do not understand the story of the girl’s importance and our machinations to fight the Otherworld. Please, I assure you that Shyn is safe. In due time, we will allow you to meet her again. Is that a sufficient bargain?”
Clyde scoffs at Kores’s show of weakness and begins climbing the stairs. Before she goes out of sight, she leaves one last word.
“We created her.”
She leaves. Face scarlet, Durand explodes furiously with the shrill of Death.
“Two damn chapters, no interaction with the Otherworld, all this character-building, just for you to take her? What an ending!” He flicks his longsword at Kores, some droplets flying off and staining his pristine azure armor purple. “I’m here to ensure this isn’t a waste of time. Who’s with me?”
Lenny cheers.
Cenvin roars.
Kores sighs.
Moving at lightning speed, Kores draws his reversed shortswords and feigns an attack towards Cenvin, who blocks. Instead, Kores kicks Durand, and the sheer force behind the kick sends Durand flying into the brick wall, creating a massive dent. Lenny slides in and tries to claw at Kores, but his heavy armor protects him from Lenny’s weak moves. Struggling to stand, Durand raises his arms and thorns appear beneath Kores. He grunts momentarily, then immediately hops out of the radius of Durand’s spell. With his shortsword, Cenvin attacks with precise stabs, but Kores kicks Lenny upwards into Cenvin’s attack. Lenny scrapes across the floor, a fresh bleeding cut in his thick hide. Durand tries to imitate what Shyn has done with his ability, attempting to melt Kores’s body. He fails automatically. Taking advantage of the prone Lenny, Kores slashes at the rasping honey badger. Thankfully, Cenvin summons a portal in front of Kores, tricking his arm into going inside the pocket dimension. Kores draws back his attack rapidly right before Cenvin closes the portal. Steadying his pulsating heart, Lenny sends a glowing orb at Kores, but he dodges and the orb burns a hole through the solid brick wall.
“Your party is very underdeveloped-” Kores is interrupted by a longsword to his chest. It finds a crack in his plate armor and briefly finds flesh. Durand follows up with another slash, sending Kores reeling back.
Cenvin knocks Kores onto the ground with two quick attacks. Turning, he rushes up the stairs.
“C’mon!”
“Wait-”
“We ain’t got no time!”
“God, fine!”
“Where’s Lenny?”
“Lenny!”
“Lenny!”
“He disappeared!”
“Whatever. We need to go now!”
Behind them, Kores calmly raises himself with no more intention of shedding blood. He watches pensively as the adventurers rush up the staircase. Behind him, a shadow of a furry animal looms closer.
The adventurers climb the spiraling steps with the haste of light. Durand arrives at the 2nd floor first, behind him Cenvin bumps into him.
“Hey, what gives-”
He stops.
Shyn, free either by her own accord or the Orions’, is now drawing strokes of bloodshed with the brush of the Orions’ body. Clyde is nowhere to be found. An Orion attempts to cut through Shyn’s thin body, but moving with immense concentration she crushes the Orion into the wall with a transparent air hammer. Some corpses on the ground are mangled and twisted into inhuman shapes; possibly the work of telekinesis. The others are mutilated in various ways based on their ability.
Taking Shyn by the arm, Durand begins dragging her to the stairs, despite her constant protest.
“Whyyyyyyyyy?” She groans. “You’re like a parent I never had. And that’s a darn insult, you mute idiot! Let! Me! Go!!”
Durand sighs as he carries the struggling Shyn down the stairs. Cenvin closely follows.
“Today you’ve killed so many people. How are you not affected by that? Jesus, Durand just drop her, she can kill Starmetal for us.”
“She’s a freaking ten-year-old!” Durand restates. Cenvin shrugs his shoulders.
“I don’t see how that matters.”
Back at the lobby, the adventurers are shocked to find Lenny, bloodied and rasping, on the floor. Cenvin hurries to pick him up, nauseated by the little fleas hiding amongst Lenny’s fur.
“Hygiene,” he whispers to himself.
“Did you try to fight Kores by yourself?” Durand asks. Lenny slightly nods his head in embarrassment.”Look, man, I know you got a grudge and everything, but if you want to take down Starmetal Valley you should stick with us, right?”
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Right,” Lenny silently says to himself. Durand manages to subdue Shyn by brute force, holding her so tightly that she can’t do anything, such as using her abilities. He begins scolding Shyn.
“I…can’t…breathe…” Shyn whispers.
“Ain’t gonna kill you,” Durand continues.
Back at the penthouse, Shyn plops onto the couch, perfectly at home. During the way here she had agreed(reluctantly) to negotiate peacefully.
“I have the power to destroy the bad guys, why won’t you let me use it?” Shyn complains. Durand rubs his temples in frustration.
“She’s not wrong, you know? Plot of every story with an op lead?” Cenvin joins in.
“Kill!”
Lenny looks around for Nyri. Her usual cushion in the corner is dauntingly empty.
“-Now that this turns Meta you disagree?”
“No, what I’m saying is-”
“Kill!”
A new sensation has taken Cenvin on. This is one chance to eliminate Starmetal and gain Lucius’s favor, but Durand is a major obstacle.
“Think of Brett!”
Durand looks wearily at Cenvin.
“Listen, we don’t get Starmetal, Brett is not healed. Did you forget about him in pursuit of little Shyn, your new sidekick, huh?”
“Kill!”
“She’s not right! Look at her! She’s addicted to gore! She isn’t normal!”
Exasperated, Durand throws his hands on the table and turns his back to Cenvin. Their thoughts an ocean of infuriating debate apart. Shyn tilts her head and stares unblinkingly at Durand.
“I’m not normal?”
In her outstretched hand, Durand sees his demise.
“I am very normal.”
She smiles awkwardly at a loss for words and not knowing what else to say. The penthouse is silent. Finally, Cenvin breaks the suffocating hush.
“Durand.”
Keeping eye contact with Shyn, Durand slowly sits down in shameful defeat.
“Fine. Today Starmetal will have some new job openings.”
“Attack Starmetal’s headquarters?” Lucius repeats. His face is an emotionless mask. His voice, smooth as always, trembles a slight decibel.
“Yes, and we have a plan,” Cenvin confidently says, taking the lead. Durand leans against the Hyperslate's handrails, darkly watching the conversation unfold.
They had asked to meet Lucius outside Shadow’s Edge’s base of operations, another Skytower similar to Starmetal’s. The doorman refused to let them in, but fortunately, Lucius happened to come up the Hyperslate behind them.
“With the girl, the one my Mercs had informed me about?”
Cenvin takes an alarming step back in surprise.
“Wha…How did you know?”
Lucius falsely rolls his eyes. He pretends to laugh.
“That little girl used to attack grownups on sight. She got a bit famous with the Skywatch, but we stepped in and calmed her down. She has an ability?”
“Yes, she can-”
Durand steps in.
“We just need some Mercs for backup.”
“Well, that will make Shadow’s Edge openly declare war against Starmetal. In case your party doesn’t know, Starmetal Valley isn’t based in Italica City, no. Their primary fortress is not here.”
“Then where?” Cenvin asks.
“You buffoon. Starmetal Valley, of course!”
“Oh. That’s an actual place?”
Lucius turns around, face concealed from the party, and contemplates.
“How about I send some Mercs, and if you fail and get captured, you either end it yourself or deny Shadow’s Edge’s official involvement in your operation? I do hear Starmetal employs some… questionable torture methods.”
“Eh, can’t be worse than normal medieval torture,” Cenvin shrugs.
As the party turns to leave, Lucius mentions one more thing.
“The Otherworld is becoming considerably harder to suppress. If you plan to eradicate Starmetal Valley from its presence in this city, you better do it nice and clean. We can only win when we are united.”
Durand finally speaks.
“Sounds like your goal is to rule the city. Aren’t you already there?”
Lucius bats his eyelids and his lips curve into a smile assuringly.
“My dear Durand, I am not the Premier of Shadow’s Edge. I have no idea what you’re trying to say.”
The Mercs had launched their attack. Surrounding Starmetal’s Skytower, they begin closing in from every entrance. The defenders, it seems, have abandoned the first floor.
Cenvin looks up at the moonlit Skytower. Durand had suggested they attack at night. Lenny, using his enhanced senses as a honey badger to keep watch, throws an arrow to Cenvin’s feet.
“Someone coming,” Cenvin says.
Durand pauses, then continues, “No. Listen to me, knucklehead, Lucius is a traitor to Shadow’s Edge.”
Cenvin twirls his shortsword urgently, looking for the incoming stranger. He replies absentmindedly.
“Why is that?”
“When we saved Shyn, I swear I saw the use of Lucius’s ability to defeat one of the Orions! Lucius was also so reluctant to grant us support-”
“He did give us some men at the end, didn’t he? Also, you are just against this, okay? I don’t care about your opinion, I’m saving Brett by letting Shyn have her way!”
“Don’t weaponize him!”
“Yeah? Watch’u you gonna do? I got him in my pocket, don’t I?”
Durand steps up to his face. They glare at each other, ready to pounce. Lenny and Nyri exchange glances of silent laughter.
“What happened to the black one, Hadke?”
Nyri scowls. Lenny, knowing what’s good for him, lets the topic go. In the distance, a Merc yells, “CHARGE!”
Cenvin and Durand break up and head into the Skytower with the rest of the Mercs. Lenny shrugs and follows suit. Nyri evaporates and blends her whiteness with a nearby lamp.
Leading the charge, the party pushes through the endless defenses of Orions. Durand, taking Cenvin’s shortswords, dissolves into a hurricane, sweeping through the ranks of the knights. Cenvin, now using Durand’s longsword, slows down to finish off the ones Durand leaves behind. Shyn, her green scarf once again brown with slaughter, nonchalantly evaporates any Orion she sees, usually in particularly painful parts of their body. The Mercs behind them act as the length of the spear, ensuring they won’t get surrounded as they continue to go up, floor after floor. Finally, hundreds of feet above the ground, the party, along with Shyn, faces off against Clyde and Kores on the third-to-tallest story.
“Starmetal out of talents?” Teases Cenvin.
“No, my friends. The other Stellars are better suited for research back at Starmetal Valley.”
“But we are enough, punks. You won’t beat us. Go back if you wish to leave unharmed!”
“Our swords rated E for everyone, so why don’t you just move aside obediently and let us kill the Star? We'll give them a little promotion... to Supernova?” Cenvin mocks.
“Enough talk!”
Leaping from behind the team, Lenny makes the first move by slashing Clyde with his scimitar. She sidesteps, then retaliates with a whip created from scales of unknown material. It briefly flicks him, but enough to create a bleeding wound.
“Try this!”
Trapping Kores’s legs in a small portal, Cenvin rushes and stabs him squarely in the chest. Trapping the tip in his armor, Kores turns rapidly, forcing Cenvin to let go of the weapon. Drawing his reversed shortswords, Kores multi-attacks Cenvin, landing a critical and Cenvin collapses on the floor, screaming and covering his blood-soaked face. Yelling furiously, Durand swipes his shortswords at the Stellars, his relatively weak attacks parried expertly. Shyn smashes Kores against the wall with another air hammer, then tries to vaporize Clyde’s right arm. Unfortunately, Clyde manages to break into Shyn’s mind first. Instantly, the party is crushed against the floor by pounds of invisible weight.
“Not a bad show,” she breathes. Cracking her whip, she lashes out against Durand, creating a hashtag of bloody marks against his back. He screams in pain. Kores stops her from continuing.
“The party can go. We cannot override orders.”
Clyde’s domination shrivels up and she steps back. Shyn, still controlled, hovers the incapacitated party out of the Skytower. The Mercs had either been subdued or killed. Clyde’s grasp on Shyn is only relinquished once they return to the penthouse.
“Damn!”
Cenvin kicks the table in frustration and swears in pain. He kicks it again, howling again.
“DAMN!”
Durand sits impassively on the sofa, watching Cenvin hurt himself.
“Just because you can’t afford healers to fix that scar of yours doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world, ‘k?”
Cenvin pauses and finesses his scar across his cheek.
“Damn it!”
Turning, he collapses on the couch. Walking to his limp body, Lenny feels his pulse.
“Coma again.”
Durand nods, a thousand words he wanted to say to Cenvin. Shortly after they returned to the penthouse, the Orions attacked and dragged Shyn away. Nyri agreed to try to save her, but Cenvin, who was away visiting a healer under Shadow’s Edge to remove his scar, blamed himself for not stopping the Orions.
Durand closes his eyes.
“Diem, can you say a joke? You haven’t been interfering with us in a while.”
At the start, I actively interacted with you guys because you weren’t immersed in the world and the story yet. Now, why would I distract you with more of my silly jokes when you are so invested in the plot?
Kill count: 642. :)