Dizziness awaits Drenar when the world comes back out of that intense white bright light, and he snaps to alert, looking for threats in every direction. The wall had been pulled back to reveal a cozy alcove where the portal had been hidden in the brickwork, and it seemingly distorts reality–like the space is bigger viewing outwards than it should have any business being. It’s that strange folded space enchantment that he’d seen in the chimney, compressed space that fits within tighter bounds of reality than his brain is capable of making sense of. Just how do they do that? How do you fold reality like that?
All he does know is that he doesn’t see any immediate threats. Not living ones, anyway. The corpse of a Talons soldier turned into paste by the now-shattered animated statue gave an indication the fight had not been one-sided in this area, and there are more Talons soldiers shot with autobow bolts–three of them, with deadly groupings. Someone had been a formidable shot, and shouts of outrage were audible down the hall.
“Priorities. Volkir, there are people still trapped in the dorms, I need you to run and get them some backup. The rest of us are going to barnstorm the plant, get Zameren relief, and then I’m going to send out a threat to Val.”
“Yeah? What’s that plan of yours, young master?” Volkir asks edgily. Drenar responds by tapping a fire orb on a strap, and Volkir grimaces. “Before you go incinerating our only leverage–”
“Took care of it,” Levine says after handing him a phone in a heavily armored case. “I took backup scans while we were getting ready. This information is too valuable to destroy, so do not let it fall to them, burn it if you must. But we have the master copy.”
“You really want to know how to shut that device down, don’t you?” Volkir muses.
“I really just want to give fake translations to Val, so when she activates it, it nukes her and her entire army,” he says with a grim smile. “But. that might be too much to wish for.”
“No, that's totally what we should wish for! Karmic justice!” Julia grins with an evil smile. She does enjoy it when their roles reverse on occasion, he notes. “Okay, the coast is clear, should we go to dragon forms?”
“Angela only, because she has the best defensive barriers. The rest of us, we’re conserving strength.” She gives a quiet smile before taking on her silver-scaled form, and reaches for the longsword–did that weapon grow with her? Even she’s surprised and taps at the hilt with one claw. Volkir looks smug.
“You like that surprise? It's a little trick I learned. Some weapons are reshaped to match size, in particular for dragons. When even the dragon gets a melee weapon, you know the danger level is high,” he says with more than a sharpened smile. “I’ll take care of the civilians, most of the working sensors indicate they’re bulking their forces on a sector-by-sector search. And some of them did attempt to enter the vault. It did not go well for them.”
“Pits of acid should never be something I’m hopeful for again,” Drenar grumbles, and motions everyone to hustle. Angela has to slow her stride as the rest of them hurry along, the hallway clear of threats. Joey and Kyle motion to the corner, and Kyle sends out a golem he’d had sitting in a satchel to go around the corner. He shows the screen to Drenar, who nods grimly.
“Lot of resistance to get through.” There’s a Nightwing trying to burn through the door with little success, and he’s heaving at the far end of the hall, past a series of makeshift barricades that had been abandoned. Drenar grits his teeth when he sees the light-colored militia armor that the personnel of Asqualia had been wearing, and Joey puts a hand to her mouth, fighting the urge to scream out.
“That’s Claire.” She’s being forcibly hauled to the doorway, bloodied but still fighting angrily. Drenar can see one bolt sticking gruesomely out of her leg, but the bleeding doesn’t look bad. Someone had broken her nose and bruised her face. She’s forced to a kneeling position by the door while the Nightwing heaves, out of alchemical breath and roars that he needs a few minutes. The heavily armored soldier and several others tap on the intact intercom button, and then a radio report is heard in the hallway.
“Citizens of Asqualia, this fight is over. We hold all key points of the facility, you are throwing your lives away for nothing. Open the door in the next two minutes, or your militia member is going to be torn in half by my friend here. I’ll let him pick which direction he tears her in as his preference.” Drenar taps Luminari reassuringly, and knows this man has already killed before. And without mercy, either. A murderer and a sadist, through and through.
Wait. What the hell? How do I know that? He glances curiously at his sword, and can just feel that something emanating from that man. He can’t see it with his eyes, but he feels it, in the same way he can feel the fields of force when Angela uses her telekinetics, and that distortion around mages when a spell barrier is active. This man has done wrong. He's been a butcher. Of people.
“Drenar, there’s too many of them. We can’t pick them off before they kill her.” Angela leans in, eyes narrowed. “What if we did what we did last time?”
“They’ll expect that. Do you see how they’re spaced out? I think they learned from the last time. I also seem to be unable to use that blink ability for several seconds, it’s like my body doesn’t want me to push it.” He’s racking his brain, thinking of how they get Claire to safety, and then there’s a roar of frustration.
“Screw this! Let’s just cut the bitch to pieces now, You see the little bloody chunks of Gary and Steve?! Or Anton eating an explosive to the face, or what happened to Barry and Rodriguez?!” One soldier gets fed up and grabs her away from the handler, a pistol sidearm in his hand and a crazed look on his face. “Maybe we feed her to Val! I hear she loves it when we bring her little treats like this thing here!” He fights the urge to grab his autobow and shoot the bastard in the face when he licks Claire's face, and makes a gleeful sound. “Kinda tasty, too!”
“Drenar, if we go now, she won’t survive,” Levine warns.
“Got a better idea?”
“Six men, half a squad. They’re under-strength and below combat effectiveness, and their morale is breaking. But that maintenance area is right adjacent to it, and Nick and I can get a fire line on them.” Drenar gives a quick peek down the hall with the golem, then smiles.
“I want to go talk with the big bad dragon who rhymes worse than an eight-year-old.”
“Excuse me, say what?" Joey groans. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you have a death wish!”
"He does," Angela sighs.
“Just get into position. Joey, how well does this booster work?” It feels like he drank ten cups of coffee over the past few minutes, and his head is almost buzzing.
“Your results may vary, but some individuals have reported a distortion of perception of time. Nerve latency speed is vastly accelerated and reaction speed drops to near-zero. Why?”
“I’m gambling on the evil bitch wanting to come and kill me herself, which means no one will fire in my direction.”
“Sometimes, Drenar, I still wonder if you’ve got a legitimate death wish,” Julia sighs, and readies her autobow. Nick has grabbed a perennial favorite, an HK416, and the bullets glow blue in the transparent magazine. Mana-coated munitions that can shred barriers, similar to Julia’s plasma powers. They open the adjoining hatchway and quickly go inside, with Angela ducking in and scraping by. Mages at least had the courtesy to design most of their facilities with dragon physiology in mind, so that’s a plus. He takes a deep breath, and rounds the corner calmly, and no one even notices. Are they that blind?
Nah, they can’t be. The Nightwing whips his head around after hearing his footsteps and points him out with a claw. “Hey! Militia kid! Surrender! Or I get to make human confetti!”
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“Yeah, I’m not gonna do that. I came here to parley.” The dragon arches an eye crest, citrus eyes narrowed and focused on him. “I came to negotiate a surrender.”
“Hey, it’s the kid that can teleport. Shoot him!” one shouts out.
“No, don’t shoot him. Val wants that one alive,” the heavily armored knight says behind a mirrored magitech visor. He points a heavy rifle at him. "Drop your weapons."
“No, assholes, this isn’t my surrender, it’s yours.” There’s about a two-second pause before all the Talons scumbags are laughing at this, and the Nightwing looks at them, facepalming in frustration.
“Look dumbasses, he’s not alone, he’s bait!”
“Nah he’s not, he made sashimi in the south wing! He killed Fred! I didn’t like the guy, but he owed me money!” one complains, rifle trained in his direction. Luminari is vibrating on his back, as if daring to draw it. He’s going to have to wait, though–the closer they get to him, the more danger they’re in. “Where are your friends?”
“Well, they ran when I told them to, so they’re safe.” If it weren't for the fact that he’s able to tell a bald-faced lie and have it stick for once in his life, he’d be terrified. Instead, he’s strangely confident. Is that Alex’s influence? Because even Alex is chuckling in the background of his brain.
They really are this dumb.
Yeah, but remember, the more dumb ones we kill or put on Whiterun guard duty, that leaves the smarter ones to fight. It’s a moment of grim logic as two of the soldiers close with weapons drawn, motioning for him to drop his. He willingly surrenders his autobow, and the bandolier of grenades. It’s not like he can’t grab them back with his telekinetics.
“And the sword,” one says with a motion of a rifle at his face. Drenar smirks back at him.
“Uh, it won’t let me.”
“What? What do you mean 'it won’t let you'? Is this kid cracked in the head?!”
“Do we need to take him alive?” the other one sighs, and the dragon runs his claws against the wall. It’s worse than nails on a chalkboard, and even his own guys cringe at the sound.
“Val just needs most of him in one piece to have her way with him. No one cuts up Val and lives, him and the silver dragon who grew freaky crystal scales? Doubly so. Thing is…how’d they get up here, when they were down below?” This dragon knows something is up, is his danger sense going off, or is he a little bit sharper than the rest? “You know what, just grab the sword, he’s not going anywhere.”
“Seriously, please, don’t touch the sword. It won’t end well for you.” It probably won’t if they’re stupid enough to grab him, and the three others are distracted by this commotion, with Claire giving him a pleading look, shaking her head like she knows he’s about to pull a bold stunt.
And she’s right. The soldier on his right tries to grab Luminari, and the sword doesn’t like that. There’s a blinding white light and the man screams, holding a glove that’s burnt through, and his hand is blackened.
The first gunshot rings out, but it’s the high-pitched crack of Levine’s rifle. He’s already in motion and kicks the staggered soldier away, moving at a superhuman speed when Luminari leaps into his hand, slashing with a hum. He severs the outstretched rifle cleanly through the barrel and destroys the upper receiver. Joey wasn’t kidding when she said time perception might be screwy, because it feels like the world is in slow-motion.
The gun chunk is still in the air when he sees the Nightwing rear back for a point-blank flaming, except he uses his teleport and lands squarely on its back, grabbing a wing for leverage and plunging Luminari as deep as he can through the softer scales where the wings meet. The dragon’s instant incineration that had enveloped one of the unlucky soldiers veers off-course, setting fire to the tapestries, the other unlucky soldier, and he reaches a clawed hand to his back to grab Drenar with deadly talons, but he swipes laterally–the spinal cord is damaged and the dragon collapses to the ground, the flames had stopped. Rifle rounds ping off his barriers, but the return fire stops when he leaps off his massive foe, and he stares in disbelief.
The remaining soldiers are down. Claire grabs a fallen rifle and mercilessly beats one armored knight in the helmet until there’s nothing but reflex twitches. If he wasn’t dead from that amount of blunt trauma, he likely had a cracked skull or a concussion. Nick, Levine and the others have policed the bodies, and Kyle bangs on the door with an armored glove, wincing at the still-hot metal.
“We’re coming in hot, be ready to close the bulkhead, we’ve got Claire with us!" Joey helps Claire limp into the room, while Drenar grabs his fallen weapons and bandolier and the dragon leers at him, rearing its head. He throws a resin grenade and it explodes over its snout, enveloping it in foam that leaves the dragon bug-eyed as it tries to claw it off. That damage to the spine must have not been as bad as he thought, because it’s already trying to pick itself up off the floor.
Angela has a solution for that, and slams a clawed foot down, and Drenar winces when he hears the slice of talons through scales, leaving the brute wounded and unable to pursue. They scramble just as enemy fire comes from down the hall, a bullet pings off his arcane barrier, then two more–he can feel the impact of them, and Angela shields him with her own more durable barriers while they fall back through the door. He grabs a fallen radio off a foe before falling back through the sliding door, and Kyle slams it closed behind them.
“Holy shit. Did you take out a dragon as a human?” Julia asks in amazement. He grimly nods.
“Well, I messed up his day but good. I doubt he’s going to be back to fighting form for a while, after sticking a sword into his back.” He forces his eyes closed and takes deep breaths, this combat is finally catching up to him with the visceral and brutal nature, and it’s not pleasant.
This is the first time he’s gotten to see an arcane power plant aside from the small-scale one at Mount Syren. What he’s looking at is…wonderous, in so many ways. It’s a room that towers over him in height and breadth, easily twenty meters high, and fifty meters on a side. In the center of the chamber is a crystalline tree sitting within a transparent containment vessel of steel cladding and that filament traced glass, similar to the smaller scale mana batteries he’s witnessed before. Fluid in transparent plexiglass tubing from the side flow amounts of a clear blue liquid. The pipes continue to flow the faint blue fluid around the core of the mana crystal, picking up arcane energy and whisking it away to several other boxy apparatus that are connected to the circulation loop. Most of it is suspended with girding, and protective steel lines the framework, and catwalks are suspended up above that allow for easy access. Lights blink intermittently on consoles throughout the room, and the militia hunker down behind barricades. Joey is tending to Claire, who shouts that she’s alright. Zameren gives a firm hug to Levine in greetings in a brief moment, and Julia and Angela look at the scene, both of them in wonder.
This truly is a special place, and sets in stone the amazing things arcanists have been able to build, and he hears a ringing sound–a crystalline chime in the distance. He sheathes Luminari, but is puzzled–where is the blood that should be on it? There is only a faint black powder that dissolves to nothing when he peers at it again. It’s a little unsettling that gruesome stains simply dissipate to black dust.
Well old girl, you got us this far. Let’s hope I’ve got the strength to see this through. For all of us. A single sharp metallic chime is his affirmative answer as he gives out rapid instructions, based on the urgent hostile enemy radio chatter.
Valosterla is coming. And she intends to give this troublesome group her undivided attention when she snarls at her underlings to stop underestimating them.
It’s good advice that comes far too late into the night.