“I’m sorry, what?” Joey gasped. Even Jonaleth was taken aback at this bold move by James, as he rapidly did the math.
“If you want to understand why, Jonaleth, tune in, shut up, and pay attention. Joey, relay me,” James stated flatly and motioned for instant silence. {Try not to fry Jonaleth’s brain, either. At least we know the suppressors don’t impact your psionics.}
{Uh, I’m pretty sure that I can’t do that. Maybe I could give him recurring bed-wetting tendencies?} She messaged back. James scowled at her.
{Okay, snark time over. SAF is about to roll on us, or they’ve been paid off by the Talons. I am getting heeby-jeeby bad vibes. Joey, reach out, and see how many people are outside the door right now.} He glanced over to the courtyard, which was empty now, and he knew something was wrong. Jonaleth raises his eyebrow in the two seconds. Joey’s eyes widen.
{Six guys. They’re waiting for us to open the door. I’m out of range of Drenar, shit! We’re on our own!}
“What are you two doing?”
{Joey, relay to him that Talons soldiers, or corrupt SAF, are about to roll in on us. And we need to move fast.} He focused on Jonaleth and slid the pad to him. “Give me a map.”
“What?! What kind of game is–” he stops, and his eyes widen as Joey relays the information, and Jonaleth groans. “Are you two serious?”
{Alright, I’m trying to relay to you both,} Joey relays to them, and Jonaleth gapes his mouth, but stays silent. {James, we need to armor up. We need to get that collar off of Jonaleth if we want a shot out of here.}
“You two are out of your mind, why would I help–”
{Dude, shut your pie hole. The calculus has changed, and there are definitely SAF who think giving us to the Ravagers, is killing two dragons with one stone.} Joey’s intense glare at Jonaleth got him to shut up, and all his plans of trolling them instantly fell on their face. Jonaleth put his finger to the tablet and started tapping out a rough sketch.
After a few seconds in this now awkwardly silent room, Jonaleth finished his hasty trace, and pointed out the spots. James made sure the camera was obstructed by looking at his back, and he talked in a hushed whisper. “Jonaleth, I’m gonna ask you one profane question. Can you live with taking directions from Drenar?”
“Because if you don’t, I will personally melt your scaly hide to organic components, and I have the knowledge for it,” Joey bristled. James wisely put up a hand of restraint. Jonaleth sighed and signed the rooms.
“Check gate, thirty meters down. Mage steel bars, three guys manning it. You aren’t busting out of here alive, they have autobows. Suppressor systems will keep me from transforming–”
“And we have a deadly alchemist and power armor, and Drenar is in a shit-kicking mood down the row. The lack of alarms and relative peace indicates that the fireworks haven’t started yet,” James whispered. “Did King leave you a contingency?”
Jonaleth spends three seconds looking back and forth between the two of them, ice-cold eyes doing ice cold math. He looks toward the table and lets out a quiet exhale before nodding. “I know how to find King. Or at least, reach him. But why?”
“We think he’s on his own side with some calling to a greater good, even if he’s working on team villain. And I hate myself for saying that,” James whispered. “You in, or you gonna take your chances with the kill squad outside?”
“Third try’s the charm,” Jonaleth whispered back. “How’s red here with her grace?”
“It ain’t my first party killing Talons scum,” Joey responds quietly. “James, if they’re SAF, and they’re corrupt–”
“Light 'em up. Anyone who takes a shot at us is fair game. Regardless of uniform–” James stopped when he heard an intercom click.
“We’re going to need you to put your hands on the table. You’re being detained,” the female attendant from earlier spoke into a hidden intercom. But, James spotted it, and pointed to a narrow observation window.
“Bold of you to assume you have any grounds to detain us. Explain.” Internally, he relayed an idea to Joey. {Adhesive sticky on the window port. Fuse the lock on the door. I’ll fry the suppressor system to get our war dragon out of here.}
“Someone has been waiting for you to make this move, Luminaires,” that woman said, with a chilly voice. “Someone keenly interested in finishing the job he started, six years ago.”
“Let me guess. The hulking titan who kills people for money or fun,” James stated acidly. He could hear shuffling outside the door. “Wow. I guess at the rate we’re going, we’re going to have to fight the whole goddamn world, to pull a win out of this.”
The woman wiped away the makeup on her face to reveal a manic, Glasgow grin, and James could see a smear of blood inside the room–likely, where the real guards were probably dead already. “Yeah, we got here a little while ago. Getting meat for the meat grinder is actually pretty easy. All we have to tell these pathetic vermin, who are desperate to get out, is a good fight against a corrupt system. But with you on the menu, Davos couldn’t resist breaking some norms. The staff here weren't as keen on rolling over this time. So, they had to go."
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
{Well, at least they’re making it easy to justify violence,} Joey thinks with an internal huff audible to James and Jonaleth. He hits his armor at the same time as Joey, and puts a spell barrier up. The woman inside laughs manically as James charges the armor with plasma energy–one he’s been able to start using for tactical options.
He was at a disadvantage compared to Drenar, Julia, and Angela. He didn’t have intricately powerful abilities baked in. He’d learned how to channel and manipulate mana through two months of studying Levine’s books, who had relied on such efforts himself, and preferred conventional enchanted items–including his collection of firearms enhanced with magical imbuements. But he has a versatility they don’t, having practice this mightily. “Alright bitch, I’m gonna lay this out in simple terms for your murkvine-addled brain: get out of our way, and you don’t get stomped like the rest of your bloodthirsty killers.”
The woman pulled out a pistol from a case, and grinned with yellowed teeth. “The axe man will not be denied. Dragons and foxes will all die. We are legion, your fate is doomed. Your fate is sealed–
James had heard enough of this manic singing from one deranged dragon already He lashed out with a coil of plasma energy at the suppressor device embedded in the wall. It would have been ineffective, if it was just his power…but with Kyle’s magitech armor and the mana crystal-powered core, it shorted out the device in an instant. The woman frowned.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen–”
Joey blasted the door with a concussive canister that the doorframe off the hinges, and pinned the woman between the now bent frame, and the wall, out cold. She threw a binder agent at the door and fused it, and there was a banging at the door.
“Drenar, party’s hot, enemies in friendly clothing! Check your fire, we need an extraction right now!” James barked into the radio, now that alarms, and mercs, were right upon them. He hauled Jonaleth to his feet to go into the adjacent room, down the hallway, and into a small service room. “Jonaleth, I need your ass transformed, or we don’t walk out of here!”
“The collar–” he pointed to it. “It’ll kill me if I try to tamper with it.”
“Yeah, really shitty design, too. Oh, would you look at that? Designed by Magitech Industries. What a revolving door industry,” Joey growled before James thrust as much stuff as he could against the previous doorway, to funnel the foes in. Joey in the meantime grabbed a canister and opened it slowly. “Jonaleth, I need you to grow scales, can you do that?”
“I–it’s gonna hurt, the collar suppresses–”
“Just do it, so I don’t melt a hole through your neck.” Jonaleth started shifting form, and spasmed, crying in pain as dusty red scales emerged.
“Fates, hurry up!” he pleaded, even as she worked with the chemical agent to separate the plating from the rest of the device.
James clicked the radio again. “Drenar, say again, we have Jonaleth but Ravagers are masquerading as SAF! They must have snuck people in or they were waiting for a sign!”
He was greeted by the sound of autobow bolts and crackling plasma. “James, get Jonaleth out of there! Ravagers just pulled up in multiple armored transports outside and SAF just let them waltz through! I’m gonna mount skulls on walls by the time this day is done! Radios are only working locally, we can’t reach the rest of the team!”
“Drenar, Davos is on his way!” James shouted. There was a pause while Jonaleth shouted in pain.
“Okay, two things, is Joey torturing Jonaleth?”
“Not intentionally,” James groused, while preparing for that incoming wave of soldiers with a rune trap on the door. One that should activate one of Joey’s deadly alchemical canisters and make a barbeque out of anyone pursuing. “What’s the second thing?”
“I’m killing Davos before we leave here. That bastard does not leave here alive.”
“Drenar, do not let your hatred of this man cloud your judgment! Your mother split him in half, and he walked it off!” James screamed into the radio. The door finally gives way distantly, and Jonaleth is digging his claws into the desk, shredding into the cheaply made fiberwood as Joey melts down the collar.
It finally pops, and he flings it off and grabs his neck, groaning. “Fates it burns–”
“Jonaleth, move your hands!” Joey shouts out before tossing a powder against the liquid, instantly neutralizing it, and he collapses on the floor, utterly spent. “James, cover me! We need to follow up on the access hallway and find a way out! Levine and Nick have one-time-use pads, I’ll get Jonaleth moving!”
“Do not let that savage asshole die, before I can kill him for this mess,” James shoots back with more acid in his tone than her alchemical rounds. He takes cover and waits for the inevitable blast.
He doesn’t have to wait too long, because shrapnel and debris pepper past his cover, and there are a few blood-curdling screams.
“Luminaires are not contained, send backup, east accessway!” someone shouts out, presumably one of the more competent men. James prepares a blast of frost and builds an obstacle course along the narrow hallway, dodging autobow shows and feeling a few rounds ping off his arcane barriers.
He’s somewhat envious of Drenar, who can eat machine gun fire when he’s in his dragon form, but a few rounds almost fully burst down his barrier before he dives into the connecting hallway, papers flying from a small office area that is being given an impromptu demolition, and he fires back a blast of fire that cooks one person too slow to dodge past his icicle course. The resulting steam blast sears additional foes behind him, and James feels the heat even at this distance.
Joey is hobbling Jonaleth, still feeling the effects of the collar, and he’s trying to transform. “James, that collar did more damage to him than I thought, he’s not gonna be useful in a fight for a bit!”
“Just give me a regen potion, and I’ll walk it off,” Jonaleth groaned in a throatier voice, with crimson wings emerging from his back.
That’s when James heard the clank of metal boots. Heavy boots. Prisoners were running about, now that the firefight had both distracted the corrupt SAF guards, and Ravager company agents were in the mix, shooting at everything that moved
But that sound of boots filled him with dread like nothing else did, and he realized he'd froze for a split second.
Just up the hallway, two guards were in a melee with a Ravager–apparently, not all of them were corrupt. But, it mattered little. There was a scream and a sound of fire–and a metal-clad man with a thruster on his back cleaved through the two of them, and split them completely in half. A man easily over two meters tall, and wielding that axe.
James hit the control on his mana crystals for a dangerous overdrive attack. Joey gasped, hand to her mouth at the extreme violence. Jonaleth grimaced as he tried to finish transforming.
And Davos grinned, as he pointed his bloodied axe at Joey. “I was looking for the bitch with the sword. But you’re a worthy consolation prize, Joey.”