Stormblade 4 C38: Midnight Deepens

38 - Midnight Deepens

The Portal Tyrant’s hammer, the Falcon’s Eye’s arrows, and my Darkness hit at the same time, slamming into the S-Ranked Brass Titan like a wave of steel and blackness.

We’d picked it not because it was the weakest threat—that honor belonged to the swarms of B-Rank automatons that moved through the limestone cavern in pulses—but because it was alone. There weren’t any other monsters near it, and it was the first opportunity we’d had to make a gap and slip by without being seen.

“Not undetected,” Sarah had said. “They’ll know something’s going on when they find the body. But we’ll have time, and I know a hiding spot. Go.”

So, as the Brass Titan stomped past three massive stalagmites, we went.

My Darkness covered the thing’s head and shoulders. The hammer punched through its thick plates and ripped into its knee joint. And the flight of arrows slid into gaps in the armor or bounced off—Hugo Martinez’s job wasn’t precision on this one.

The Brass Titan whirled, and I got a good look at it.

Whoever was building these things, they’d made some upgrades. An extra set of eyes, glowing blue in contrast to the bright crimson of the first set, pored through the Darkness. Its shields flickered on, covering the weak spots Hugo was supposed to be trying to hit perfectly. Its armored bands were smaller and tighter, and there were almost twice as many of them.

And instead of a pair of compressed steam blades, it wielded one massive one.

The blade swept down on Terrel Young. I ignored it—and ignored the crash as, instead of cutting the fighter in half, it slammed into Bernard’s shield wall.

Instead, I used Lightning Chain. The links connected to the Brass Titan, and I pulled myself through the air. Thunderbolt Forms. Even before my feet hit the monstrous automaton’s back, Nimbus Edge was already punching forward. It slammed into brass armor and stopped dead.

But I wasn’t the only attacker this time. The S-Rank monster accelerated, and I let go of the chain and threw myself to the side—just as a blazing wall of flames surged into it. Magical talons and feathers that burned so hot they were blue ripped into the monster. The Portal Tyrant’s hammer rose and fell. I cast and threw a single Brendan’s Stormfire Lance; it cut into the Titan’s flank.

And, just like that, the fight was over. It took another five seconds before the monster stopped moving, but there were too many of us, and—

“Get moving!” Sarah said. She was already running across the ruins of the steel walkway and the brass reinforcements that’d been added to it. I took one more look at the massive, banded-brass monster that had been a serious roadblock for me—but that the team had taken apart in less than thirty seconds—and broke into a sprint. Behind us, the metal road vanished into the blackness, and so did the corpse of the Brass Titan.

We kept moving. It was tricky; the cavern’s floor was anything but flat. Every footfall hit at a different angle on a different tiny dome of limestone—and that wasn’t the only hazard. There were tiny pits that’d break an ankle if you slipped into them. Intact, inoperable brass-and-silk machines abandoned in the darkness. And there were other things in the dark, too. Skeletons. Of people.

The Texas cities and Phoenix had both tried to clear the Carlsbad Portal, and those skeletons represented some team’s high-water mark—or maybe the last survivors’ failed attempt to retreat. Those finds were sobering, but we couldn’t stop. Behind us, the sounds of brass on brass and steam continued moving along the underground road, east to west.

Sarah stopped at a limestone dome surrounded by long, thin stalactites hanging from the ceiling. The dome spread like a bell in the air, and a pool of perfectly still water lay far, far below it. Small wisps of steam wafted from it, and a single drip splashed into it as I watched, sending ripples across the surface.

“This should be Crystal Spring,” Sarah said. She unfolded a map. “If it is, we’re well off the beaten path. This is a good hiding spot. We’ll wait here for a couple of hours until it’s—“

“Like hell we will,” Hugo Martinez said. The Falcon’s Eye glared at Sarah. “We need to keep moving before those monsters realize what’s going on.”

“They already did,” Sarah said. “They knew within seconds of our kill. We’re going to let things calm down for a little while. It’s our best play.”

“And what does that buy us?”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “It buys us time to figure out our next move and figure out how we’re getting into the big room from here. That’ll be a challenge of its own, and even if we hadn’t had to fight back there, I doubt we’d be able to stay hidden. It’s too close to the Bottomless Pit. Anders, Young, come here. We need to talk tactics. Noelstra, you’ve got two hours. Do what you can.”

I stared at her. It took me a second to realize what she was talking about. Then I nodded, pulled out the multicolored core, and opened my gate to the solo portal.

◄▼►

I stepped into the Solo Portal at the bottom of the spiraling staircase that seemed to be the core of the tower. Cheddar appeared a moment later, and I took a deep breath, steadying myself.

Working on the Solo Portal was a mistake. It was far too high-risk, and we were already doing something near-suicidal outside of it. But there wasn’t anything else to do, and if I was successful, it’d help the team on the outside. Sarah was right; the team needed to stop moving for a while to let things calm down. Hopefully, the brass automatons would cooperate and go back to whatever they were doing. Hopefully, what they were doing was dying to Angelo Lawrence by the hundred.

Sarah was right about one other thing, too; this might be my last chance to clear the Solo Portal. Once we entered the Carlsbad portal, I had no guarantee the multicolored core would work.

The path up to the third floor was familiar. I’d been working on it for days, and I knew the steps by heart. It was a maze of hallways and rooms, with multiple entrances, traps everywhere, and patrolling suits of A-Rank armor. The floor crackled with lightning with each bolt that hit the tower, and often, the only safe space was the wall. Worse, the suits of armor not only ignored the surging lightning, but their armor seemed to pick it up and hold it for a few seconds, giving them incredible speed and strength while it lasted.

I let go of the Lightning Chain holding me to the wall and kicked off toward a suit of empowered, A-Rank armor. Thunderblade and Windwalk were both running; having the extra speed layered on top of my almost-obsolete Scripts and Bindings was all but necessary. The armor shifted. Its foot slid back, and its mace ripped through the air in a horrifying tearing motion. As it headed for my face, I re-cast Lightning Chain and yanked myself to the ceiling, then let it go when I was halfway up and dropped like a missile. Rain-Slicked Blade punched into the knight’s helmet, and it dropped like a rock. There were a dozen other wounds on the Script-powered armor, but none of them had been enough.

Air. I sucked it in, then blew it out, refilling my lungs as I stood over my defeated enemy. It was the last of a patrol of six, and I’d used far too many resources killing them. My skills hadn’t grown yet, either. The A-to-S push was only getting harder with each level I gained.

Not for the first time, I resigned myself to entering the Carlsbad Portal at A-Rank. It was going to happen, and killing myself in here would only make it worse when I had to fight out there.

Stamina: 259/500, Mana: 241/620

Yeah, I needed to stop and leave. It wasn’t fair to the rest of the team otherwise; they’d be picking up my slack. As it was, Sarah would need to heal me before I could keep fighting—but she’d agreed to that. The others hadn’t. They expected me to be at my best, and I couldn’t be at my best if—

The hairs on my neck stood up, and I whirled, Nimbus Edge cutting through the air and stopping an inch from a familiar-looking helmet.

Tanat: A-Rank

She didn’t so much as flinch, and her sword hung from her belt, still in its scabbard. A pair of bloody wounds spread from her chest and stomach, and her breastplate was covered in dents where it wasn’t rent and torn open. A single, flame-orange eye stared at me from the broken, eye-concealing helm she wore, and cuts covered her leather-armored arms and legs.

The woman was in worse shape than I was. And she wasn’t attacking me—not yet, anyway. Nimbus Edge crackled an inch from her exposed eye, but she almost seemed like she didn’t see it. Then she fell to her knees and tipped forward, landing face-first on the room’s tile floor without even trying to catch herself.

I moved fast. Nimbus Edge disappeared, and I wormed my hand between her leather armor and the edge of her helmet under her jawline. She still had a pulse, and her chest still rose and fell, so she wasn’t dead.

That left me with a decision. I could kill her and remove a threat, or I could not. But there was one thing I couldn’t do, and that was leave her here on the third floor.

Another patrol was approaching. I had the resources to fight them, but I probably couldn’t stop them from getting to Tanat. And she’d been a worthwhile opponent in the past. The battle trance screamed at me, but not for a battle right now. It wanted a rematch with the swordswoman—and so did I.

More importantly, she wasn’t a portal monster. She couldn’t be.

There was only one choice to make. I scooped her up—her body was shockingly light—and draped her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and then I retreated from the third floor. Clearing it could wait. I had a team to get back to, and a worthy opponent to save for another fight.

◄▼►

Angelo Lawrence was going all-out.

It didn’t feel like it. To an outside observer, the S-Ranker’s power appeared to have cratered. Where he’d been throwing massive explosions across the battlefield with impunity and proving himself the strongest S-Ranker in Phoenix—or maybe even North America—now, those mushroom clouds barely reached five thousand feet before the winds tore them away.

He glanced over his shoulder and smiled through blood-covered teeth. The Texas and West Coast delvers were in a fighting retreat to Carlsbad Fortress. A familiar flag flew over its walls—the GC’s team had reclaimed the city’s walls. To that same outside observer, it would look like the Carlsbad Portal’s monsters were winning, shoving both him and the assembled delvers back toward the fortress.

Both of those things were half-truths.

Angelo Lawrence’s power had cratered. As the S-Ranker and Deborah Callahan’s clash tore up the desert, he’d pulled back, focusing the energy pouring from Demon Core into smaller, more precise strikes directed at his opponent. His goal in the fight had shifted, and while Fusion was still his best option, the application of it needed to be different. You used different moves when you fought a single person, after all. He hadn’t used them in a while, but he still knew them.

And the Texas and West Coast delvers were retreating. They were also pulling back, focusing their efforts not on fighting to survive or to reach the Carlsbad portal, but on drawing as many monsters out of it as possible. The fortress at their backs was less a safe refuge and more an anvil to beat the brass legions to death with.

And as for the hammer?

“Deborah, I am disappointed in you,” Angelo said. The woman’s sword and shield cut the superheated, radiation-soaked air. It collapsed behind the twin blows, sending shockwaves across the desert. “You were once a delver with great potential, but you have chosen to throw it away and align yourself with the city’s enemies. And for what? Vengeance?”

The armored woman didn’t say anything. She hadn’t said anything in the fifteen minutes they’d been fighting, and Angelo doubted she’d say anything no matter how their fight progressed—unless she started winning. Instead, her brass armor shimmered, and another blow rocketed in at Angelo’s neck. If it made contact, it’d kill him.

Instead of letting it, Angelo vented the Demon Core.

Mana and radiation rippled across the desert in a steaming wall of energy. It slammed into Deborah Callahan’s armor, stopping her like a brick wall instead of a steam one. She pushed against it, but Angelo wasn’t the Lonely Mage. He wasn’t a B-Ranker struggling against a superior foe. He was the superior foe in this engagement.

His Mana dipped as he emptied the core. Burning steam shredded his suit and robe. It ripped into his former ally’s armor. Brass melted from the heat. Then the explosion came.

A point-blank Fission strike. Not Fusion; this close, it’d cause a meltdown. But Fission. That was enough. It picked Deborah up like a paper in a tornado and threw her across the battlefield. As she rolled, Angelo followed her, hands behind his back. “You see, Deborah? Vengeance tastes burnt and bitter. It is not enough to drive someone to S-Rank. It is certainly not enough to bring them to the peak of power.”

“You know nothing of power, old man,” Deborah said. Her voice cut across the battlefield, and Angelo stared. She wasn’t down. Her armor was a little melted, yes, but it wasn’t destroyed. If anything, she looked even more ready to take the fight to him than she had a minute ago.

He smiled. Deborah’s betrayal had been a long time coming, and it was interesting, just like he’d predicted. Then he started up his Fusion process.

Or he tried to.

Before he could start dropping more concentrated nuclear hellfire on Deborah—just as the world went black from the Demon Core’s reaction—she moved.

And, for the first time in as long as he could remember, Angelo Lawrence found himself truly on the back foot against a human opponent.