by Ramy Vance
Blackwell sighed and rubbed his brow. “Please stop talking for as long as possible.”
Naota saluted Blackwell before drawing his dual pistols. “Affirmative, sir.”
Terra tried to think of the best course of action. “You guys take care of the back. I’ll try to get ahead of this asshole and stop him from moving forward. Anything that gets in the way of that, take care of.”
Blackwell, Naota, and the squad tore off, heading toward the Jotun’s back legs. Terra sprinted, trying to catch the demi-god, which had stopped paying attention to her and was busy blasting fire at the buildings around it.
She slid in front of the Jotun and waved her hands above her head. “Hey! I’m not finished with this.”
The Jotun moved faster than Terra expected. He leaned forward and headbutted her, sending her soaring through the air and crashing into a car.
Terra scrambled to her feet, trying to shake away the spinning in her head. “Okay, so that’s not going to cut it.” She sprinted toward the Jotun, leapt into the air, and brought her fist down on the creature’s head. Its knees buckled and it crashed beside Terra seconds after she landed smoothly on the ground. “If we’re going to fight, then we’re going to fucking fight.”
Abby had dropped Anabelle off on the roof of one of the buildings, leaving the elf to eliminate the few orcs who had survived the mass sacrifice. While Terra took care of the Jotun and the bat-orcs, Abby’s main priority was to figure out what to do about the Dark Gates. They couldn’t risk leaving them open any longer.
“Hey, Martin, you got anything to help me with this?”
The AI’s bored voice rang in Abby’s head. “We could commandeer the gates…kind of like what you did back there with that containment field. Reverse the signal. Blow ‘em up from inside.”
“That’s a great idea. Let’s—”
“Of course, it is. I came up with it.”
Abby ignored Martin and glided above the city to locate a suitable spot to access the gates around her—all while dodging and weaving between dive-bombing bat-monsters and plasma-shots fired by orc snipers.
“You think you can hurry this up, Martin?”
“Do you think people rushed Mozart or Michelangelo? Art takes time, Abby.”
A plasma shot sailed past her. She spun and fired her own, the blast tearing through the side of a building and eliminating a group of orcs. “Were any of them under threat of death?” she snapped.
Martin hummed loudly. “You know, Michelangelo might have been. Read he didn’t get along with the Pope too well.”
Blackwell and his squad were attacking the back of the Jotun with all the firepower they possessed, but the demi-god didn’t appear to notice; its focus remained on Terra.
She cracked her knuckles and rolled her shoulders. “All right. You ready to do this?”
The Jotun released a roar.
Terra screamed back at the creature before sprinting toward it. She leapt into the air as she had before. This time the Jotun caught her in mid-flight, holding her up for a second before slamming her into the ground.
Every inch of Terra’s body revolted in pain as the concrete broke around her. But it was a familiar feeling. She knew it would hurt, but pain wasn’t going to stop her.
The Jotun looked surprised, the beady eyes in its bizarre human body narrowing when Terra boosted to her feet. A moment later, the creature lunged for her, leaving behind the soldiers accosting its rear end. It tackled Terra, who grabbed its antlers and held tight.
The demi-god raced through the streets of downtown New York as Terra pummeled its head. She wrestled with the spindly arms of its human half and managed to bite down on its neck as hard as she could.
Above the city, Abby was still flying in circles, attempting to pick up a sufficiently strong signal from all the Dark Gates, evading the echo-blasts of the bat-orcs determined to put an end to her life.
Higher still, Anabelle was holding her own against a group of orcs who had emerged from a Dark Gate. She skimmed easily between the creatures, avoiding their blasts. She drew her mana into her hands, surged forward, and struck them with lightning palms. She used the speed of her electricity to zoom between the orcs, and eliminate every last one.
The Jotun was still raging in the streets, Terra holding onto it with all her strength, trying to wrench its bizarre human form away from the rest of its body.
As Terra finally got a firm hold, the humanoid jaw opened and a wall of fire came spewing out, knocking her off the Jotun. She somersaulted across the concrete and rolled around to put out the fire.
“Hey, guys. This thing is kinda…hard to kill. Anyone think they can give me a hand?”
Anabelle's voice shrieked over the comm, “Terra! You’re supposed to be the muscle. Didn’t you kill a dragon?”
“Yeah, a dragon isn’t a demi-god!”
“Technically, they aren’t that far off.”
Abby flew overhead, stopping suddenly before boosting upward. “I finally got a signal. Once I’m done…”
All across the city, the Dark Gates detonated, shards of glass exploding from the buildings.
“Kay-kay, I’ll be there in a second,” Abby yelled.
Terra was backing away from the Jotun when Abby landed at her side. “Anabelle?”
Abby primed her hand plasma-cannons as they continued to move away from the Jotun. The creature was blowing smoke from its nostrils, stomping its back legs, as though ready to stampede down the streets.
Both Terra and Abby jumped at the high-pitched scream as Anabelle fell from the top of one of the buildings. The elf flipped in the air, regained her composure, and landed gracefully beside the two other Angels. “That was planned. So, we’re taking down this asshole?”
Terra nodded. “I don’t have any spiffy weapons like you guys. Can’t get through his hard-ass skin.”
“How about you wrangle him and me and Abby will figure something out?”
Terra smiled as she stretched her arms. “Sounds good to me.” Terra sprinted toward the Jotun, dodging to the side to avoid another blast of fire. She jumped, pulled back her arm, and punched the demi-god with all her strength.
The Jotun stumbled, struggling to keep from falling. Terra didn’t let up. She landed an uppercut to its jaw and the Jotun backpedaled, shaking its head from the blow. She jumped up and grabbed the demi-god by the throat, wrestling its head to the ground.
Anabelle looked at Abby. “Give this fucker everything you got.”
Abby clapped her wrists together, her hands combining into an unwieldy plasma cannon. Power pooled in her palms. “Ready?”
Anabelle’s fingertips crackled with lightning as energy shot from her eyes. “Let’s end this.”
Abby fired as the elf ran forward, keeping pace with the plasma blast, only backing up for a second to allow it to hit the Jotun as Terra leapt out of the way.
The plasma blast plunged into the creature’s chest, tearing upward through its head. Anabelle’s attack followed, and she sent lightning crashing through the demi-god.
When the smoke cleared, the Jotun lay on the ground, dead.
Anabelle rushed to help Terra to her feet. “Sorry about that. Didn’t even cross my mind you couldn’t kill a demi-god.”
Terra motioned to her exo-suit. “Not in this. I know this is supposed to make me as strong as I was in the games, but I feel half as strong. Either Abby severely underestimated my strength, or I’m still working out the kinks.” She looked over her shoulder at the Jotun. “That was some pretty good teamwork, though.”
Abby joined the two beside the smoking remains. “Never thought I’d say I killed a demi-god.”
Anabelle shoved Abby lightly as Blackwell and his squad came over. “Don’t think you should brag too much about that. Might give off the wrong impression.”
The body of a bat-orc fell from the sky. It was accompanied by more of the winged monsters, falling to the streets like raindrops.
Anabelle looked at Blackwell. �
��You guys think you can take care of this?”
Blackwell sighed, turning to Naota. “Can you handle this?”
Naota beamed as he addressed the squad. “Guess who’s on clean-up detail, guys!”
The Angels exchanged confused glances. “I’m never going to get that guy,” Anabelle muttered.
Chapter Five
When the Dark Gate Angels returned to base, they parted ways. Anabelle insisted Abby be taken to the medbay, where she could be observed. Abby tried to argue that she’d already healed herself, but the elf could not be swayed.
Terra didn’t bother explaining where she was heading. Anabelle was a little jealous that Terra could, in essence, do whatever she wanted.
Terra reported to only one person, and that was Anabelle.
Anabelle would need to debrief Myrddin and Roy. The briefing would have to wait for a little bit, though. Abby was supposed to be present for the discussion, and Anabelle wasn’t risking the young girl sitting through a meeting while still bleeding.
That left Anabelle with some time to kill. She would prefer not to sit through a debriefing right now, but she also didn’t want to be left alone with her thoughts.
A lich returning to an active life was a troubling occurrence. Anabelle didn’t know much about liches, other than they were extremely destructive. Also, it was clear the lich knew things, as though she were communicating with the Dark One or one of his minions.
Anabelle assumed Myrddin would fill her in on the details.
But, her mind shifted focus to Grok. She couldn’t shake her feelings about the orc. Recalling how Grok had defeated her so effortlessly made Anabelle’s blood boil.
The elf could mope about how inferior she felt at the moment, but that wouldn’t make any difference to her next fight with Grok.
Anabelle went down to the intelligence department of HQ, where most of the spies and recon teams spent their time. It was the least flashy of the departments, constantly darker than necessary, as though the spies could only work in the literal shadows.
The department was almost empty. There were a handful of people around, but they didn’t appear to be doing any work. No one was sitting at a computer. They were simply lounging about.
Anabelle hurried through the department until she reached the firing range, where she found Sarah, an unofficial member of the Angels. They had worked on the last mission together, but other than the last time they’d hung out a few months ago, she hadn’t seen much of her.
Sarah looked up as Anabelle approached. “Yo.”
Unlike Anabelle, Sarah wore standard spy armor—a thin black outfit with a vest. To the elf, she looked like one of those ninjas on human TV.
Maybe she was.
Anabelle stood beside Sarah, who was busy tossing throwing-knives at various targets. “Where’ve you been? I haven’t been able to get in touch with you.”
Sarah’s knife hit a bullseye. One after another. “Been off-world since our last mission, trying to put together another resistance cell on the gnomish homeworld. Since the last one was crushed, we been hurting to put on another offensive. Mostly guerilla stuff. Just got back today.”
“You’ve been on the gnomish world for three whole months?”
Sarah finally met Anabelle’s eyes and smirked. “Yep. It’s been good. There’s been a lot of time for training.”
Anabelle had never had a chance to talk to any of the humans who worked in intel. The department was mostly dominated by elves and dwarves.
Elves provided most of the assassins, and dwarves took care of intelligence gathering.
Technically, Anabelle should have been in this department before her transfer to SWARRT—or rather, the Dark Gate Angels—but in the past, Myrddin had kept her presence at HQ to a minimum.
Anabelle’s main interest in Sarah’s training was because of her lack of magic. It was wild to think Sarah could handle herself without any of the advantages available to the regular exo-suit-wearing forces of HQ.
“What kind of training?” Anabelle asked.
Sarah smirked as she threw another knife. “Wondering how a human does an elf’s job?”
“My team is made up of mostly humans. I’ve seen what your kind is capable of and can admit, my earlier opinions were…a little harsh.”
“That’s putting it lightly, but it’s a step in the right direction. And I’m not trying to give you a hard time.”
Anabelle pulled her mana into her hand, creating an ice spike. She shot it at the target, hitting one of the outer rings. “Thanks for that. And no, I’m just curious. I don’t know anything about you. Figured it’s some common ground. And I am curious about your abilities. If you have any.”
Sarah raised an eyebrow at Anabelle.
Anabelle turned red. “No, I didn’t mean it like that. I just…oh, I mean, I train too. It’s been a little rough lately since all of my training is mental. You know, meditation, accessing old memories. My physical training was hundreds of years ago. Training is mostly remembering.”
Sarah appeared more interested now. “Yeah, you’re one of those Travelers, right? I always had a soft spot for your form of training. If I could use magic, that’s probably the route I would take.”
“So is it mostly stuff like this? Target practice?”
Sarah threw another knife, not bothering to look at the target, and still managing to hit the bullseye. “Humans are born with our own non-magical energy. It’s just a little hard to access. My training is mostly about opening up my body’s potential through my chakras. I won’t bore you with the details, but it allows me to push myself to the limits. Helps with stuff like this.”
Sarah turned toward the door and threw a knife over her shoulder. Bullseye. “I don’t need to train at this. I’m just bored.”
The two chatted for a little while longer, Anabelle was deeply invested in learning more about Sarah. She hadn’t expected the human to have such a wry, morbid sense of humor. Calling it black humor wasn’t nearly dark enough.
At last, Anabelle remembered her reason for coming to the intel department. “Hey, could you help me with something?”
Sarah retrieved her knives from the target. “Yeah, what’s up?”
“I’m trying to get some information on a little problem of mine. An orc named Grok. The first time I saw her, she said she was going to kill me.”
“You were in the middle of a battle. That’s what I would have said.”
“And if you said that to someone, they’d probably be terrified like I was. You’re not a regular soldier. How often have you bothered to take the time to tell someone you were going to kill them?”
Sarah’s eyebrows scrunched up. “Most killing in my field is incidental, so I’ll give you that. It might rattle me a little bit. Come on, I’ll check the files.”
Sarah led Anabelle to a dwarf seated at a nearby desk. He wore thick glasses and looked like he’d rolled in the dust before coming to work. “This is Vord,” Sarah said. “He’s this decade’s librarian.”
Anabelle gave Sarah a confused look. “What do you mean, decade?”
Sarah didn’t reply. Instead, she asked Vord, “You got any information on an orc named Grok?”
Vord bit his bottom lip before answering, “Got a couple of files.” The dwarf scrawled a series of numbers and letters on a scrap of paper and handed it to her.
Sarah inspected the notes, thanked him, strode away. “Come on,” she said to the elf.
The pair headed toward a series of filing cabinets that stretched far back into the department, fading into the darkness. “Yeah, he’s on shift for a decade. Myrddin enchants the librarian so that they don’t need to sleep, or eat, or anything. He sits at that desk for ten years and never moves.”
“Goddess, that sounds horrible.”
“Not for him. He loves it. Most of the librarians do. Myrddin’s got him psychically linked to every member of the department. Soon as they come on, he gets hit with everything they got in their head. He’s also th
e only person in all nine of the realms who has access to Myrddin’s mind. Okay, here we go.”
Sarah stopped in front of a file cabinet. She opened it and thumbed through hundreds of manila folders.
Anabelle stared at the files. “Are you serious? You guys use hard copies?”
“Only one copy of anything. Can’t hack a piece of paper. Safest option. There you are.” Sarah plucked out a couple of folders and handed them to Anabelle. “That’s everything we got.”
Anabelle eyed the fat folder, almost bursting with notes. “Looks like some good, light reading.” Anabelle’s HUD watch went off, distracting her with a message from Myrddin that Abby was out of the medbay and it was time for the debriefing. “I gotta go. Thanks again! And don’t be a stranger. Just because Myrddin has you in a different department, doesn’t mean you’re not an Angel, all right?”
Sarah smiled for the first time during their conversation. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”
When Anabelle arrived at the War Room, she was surprised to see Terra sitting beside Abby. “Didn’t expect to see you here. We’re good to debrief without you if you need the rest.”
Terra, who had been talking to Abby, looked up. “I got called in. Totally fucked up my nap.”
Abby giggled. “You still take naps?”
Terra put her hands behind her back and stretched. “When you work as hard as me, rest is your best friend. Also, I love sleeping.”
“More than fighting?”
Terra nodded. “More than fighting. More than chocolate. And more than sex.”
Abby blushed.
Anabelle sat beside Abby as Myrddin and Roy entered the room. Roy took a seat across from Anabelle, his gaze drifting over her for a second. Anabelle counted the microseconds.
Myrddin didn’t sit. Instead, he approached the holoprojector in the room. “I’m glad you all are here and, well, still standing. How did the mission go?”
Anabelle didn’t like the edge in Myrddin’s voice. You would have thought Anabelle had been the one who excluded Terra from the meeting earlier. She didn’t have any say over who came to these or not.
