T: Intrusion spaces often adapt to the environment they appear in. In this case a nuclear power plant.
He chuckles in the way you expect a man watching the depth indicator on the Thresher to have chuckled and throws up.
D: 10 300. What does that mean?
P: We have about a week to live. Prompt symptoms in about 30 minutes
I point at Thomas
P: That is psychosomatic. But justified. Or maybe essences accelerate the process. I don’t feel anything so far.
I lean against a tree, close my eyes and turn my face towards the sun.
The lady among the network people pops a potion out of her belt and downs it. „Nothing. I can still feel it. What is going to happen?“
T: In simple terms: Your gut liquifies.
She turns very, very white. Rademacher does not scare that easily. I feel myself being lifted up by my combat vest attached to my body armor. I put them both into my storage space dropping myself to the floor. But he gets what he wants. I open my eyes and look at him.
P: You want us to use the time we are still capable of combat most effectively?
R: Do you want this to happen to more people?
P: They’d be on you for your stupid policy of secrecy. But you are not going to leave me in peace unless I do what you want. So be it. What do you want us to do?
R: Does the device still work? We were close to locating the doorway the anchor entities are likely to be close to.
He pulls a tablet out of a conventional, reinforced bag strapped to his leg. Do storage spaces and devices block GPS signals?
R: We are here.
What a feat. That is what a GPS device is built for. But I no longer care.
R: The highest probability of detection is from there. I have a slow fall power that works for groups. That location is slightly lower in elevation. I can see the sky above it. I will teleport with you, the device and our three fighters. That’s my capacity.
P: Why don’t you just teleport there?
R: What? Oh, I keep forgetting. It does not work. A teleport destination must be visually visible or known to the teleporter. How’s your mana?
P: Could be higher.
R: Here. I am carrying the potions for a battle group. It’s a category 1 mana potion.
That is a pleasant experience. Better late than never.
--
This time I throw up, while still in the air. I am not weightless. Air resistance just seems increased to a ridiculous amount. My terminal velocity is comfortable for landing.
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He returns the device to me.
R: Store it after we are gone. It needs to go back to base. Here’s a category 2 coin. Give the device a full power burst.
His plan works. I do a quick ritual to make the door visible.
R: You could have been worse. Good luck.
He unclips his belt.
R: You must not wear it. Your category is too low, but you can store it. The potions are labled, respectively in labled dimensional bags.
They march through the doorway. I deliberate going back. Do Ulrike and Dejan deserve privacy? No, let’s be honest. It just does not matter anymore. Nothing else matters either. I store the belt, leaving the pouches that refuse to dangling on the cord uniting them, and the device and look for a mossy place to sit down.
Something is wrong with me of course. Prompt symptoms should set in just about now. I take one of the healing potions out of the belt. They do surpress the symptoms. At least for an hour or so I spend looking at the leaves moving in the wind against a blue sky.
This place is surprisingly quiet. Does the doorway made visible repel monsters? There would have been so much to learn.
--
Two monsters come out of the doorway. I jump to my feet unstoring my body armor, conjuring my gun in assault rifle form and go to small hulk form. I feel an absurd urge to talk about myself in the third person and make a comment on futile actions.
One is some kind of steampunk robot. Four legs supporting a saucer shaped body with a column supporting two rings of four arms spaced equidistantly each. The lower ring’s arms were equipped with grasping appendages one could not strictly speaking call hands. The upper ring’s arms carry rotating saw blades.
The other is not really there. There is just a space looking wrong. The background visible through it is absurdely deformed. I see Einstein rings. At least the robot looks battered. It is leaking some kind of liquid and has smoke trailing out of some joints. Concerning the … entity, how do you tell?
Two persons are following them. One of them is missing the upper half of his or her face incuding the eyes. I lose my stomach content a second time. The second is Rademacher. He pulls out some devices out of a pocket, conjures a spear of light and jumps into the entity. Two seconds later the ground trembles, something that has four appendages but is much too flexible to be human is ejected towards me, thankfully misses and hits a tree with a sound I never want to hear again. A kind of crystalline dust appears in the entity now standing still and drops down not affected by wind at all, as if in vacuum.
The second person puts a coin into his mouth, lifts two staffs, one in each hand, aims them at the robot – without eyes! - and a very bright orange beam and one tiny beamlet impact the robot. The stricken robots withstands the beams for five seconds. Then it explosively disassembles and the person collapses, dropping his staffs. One of them crumbles apart into shards of strange material.
I walk over. „Who is there?“ His ears are sharp, but I don’t care. I know that voice. Von Bülow.
„It does not matter. That thing is a troll, even though it may look like a cyborg. You need to burn it.“ He plucks a bottle out of his belt while his other hand is fumbling at his belt. „This is everburn oil.“
He is getting a vial out of his belt. A healing potion presumably.
No. I’ve had enough. I am strong now in this form. I kick the vial out of his hand. I grab the surviving staff. „Remember me?“. I point the staff at his skull and give full power. His skull produces a sound as if branches were put into a wood chipper. His head flattens and spreads out.