I watched, fascinated as the thorny Count Fronz jumped directly upon his emperor and fired a massive gun. The boxy, blue gun fired ring-shaped pulses at the mini-kaiju.
It was a quantum gun. I’d seen smaller, human-sized versions for sale in the tech shops. They were a technology-class only weapon. The human version was one of the only weapons stronger than my Epiviper. But this one, wherever it came from, was much bigger.
The former caterpillar was about fifty feet tall, yet he remained much smaller than the individual Epsilon pieces. He screamed and bellowed as he fired the gun over and over, pumping and firing like a shotgun, causing the remaining robots to disengage and retreat into the sky. Baal sat up, shaking his head.
Fronz ran after the retreating machines, continuing to scream. And once they were too far away, he threw his weapon at the flying robots. He fell to his monster knees and turned both of his middle fingers up at them.
And then, he saluted.
A moment later, a new sun appeared in the sky, burning through the clouds, turning the dusky light into a bright, unbearable radiance. For a moment, the fighting stopped as we all turned to this new source of light.
The rain boiled, turned to steam.
I’ll help you, Fronz had said. I’ll deliver your message to Baal, I’ll tell you what you need to know about Vinea and the gate. But you gotta promise to let me hit the button. I get to be the one to blow him up this time.
Every non-guardian that still remained on the field flew off their feet as the shockwave ripped over us. I cringed as the roar whipped at me, burning the south-facing half of my body. My health dropped by 30%.
The entirety of the forest was now in flames. Demon, angel, monsters, animals alike. If they were closer to that explosion, they were now dead.
I turned from the action and proceeded through the city, knocking over buildings like they were made of cardboard. I pushed ahead, trying to get to the temple. Behind, Clara continued to grapple with Kanaloa. I kept an eye on her, hoping I didn’t have to turn back. And beyond them, Tem, Bast, and Warble started to wake up. I slowed. I wanted to make certain they saw and followed.
Banksy: Father. Watch out. Buried ahead of you, coming up fast.
I stopped dead. I felt the cobblestone street buckle underneath me. The spire we’d used to frame Olga groaned and leaned. It started to topple all around me, rising a plume of smoke into the wet air.
Moritasgus appeared, burrowing up from the middle of the city street. The badger emerged in a shower of dust and soot, rising like a nightmare, blocking my path. The distinctive indicator of a player driver glowed over the guardian’s head. But then it blinked out. I tensed to attack, but the badger did not move. He appeared frozen in place.
After a moment, I realized he’d been put to sleep.
What the hell are you doing, Jenk?
A moment later, Jenk prime—not the groundling version, but the lycan—appeared on the badger’s head. He must have logged out and then quickly logged back in, taking on his more powerful lycan character. The lycan produced what looked like a lawn chair and made a show of unfolding it. He sat down and crossed his legs like he was sunning himself in front of a pool. The tiny player looked up at me and waved. Olga teleported onto the kaiju, appearing with a pop.
“Asshole,” I muttered.
He yelled something back, but I couldn’t hear. I resisted the urge to lash out with a tentacle and whack him into the next century. He’s holding up his part of the bargain so far. Leave him be.
Behind, Kanaloa tumbled to the ground and did not get back up. Tem, Warble, and Bast scrambled toward Avvinik.
The remains of the temple loomed before me. I crunched my way around the badger and headed toward it. I kept an eye on Moritasgus as I rushed the temple.
Oh you fucking asshole, I thought. I saw it, the jaws of the trap in the moments before it sprang.
The familiar semi-circle shield popped up around Jenk at the same moment Avvinik turned and finally noticed the badger sitting there with her arch-enemy sitting on top, ripe for the taking like a tiny, wrapped present.
Avvinik only had one special attack left that would work against the badger. The fatal attack.
Hail and Kill.
She didn’t even hesitate. I watched in horror as the panther stood up on its back paws, pulling his front claws out. His body flashed three times like a camera shutter as the skin started to peel off his body.
Moritasgus, asleep, was immediately affected by the spell.
Hail and Kill caused anyone in its area of effect to cast their most powerful spell, and Moritasgus’s most powerful spell was Batshit Berserker. The badger leaped to its feet and started to glow. I knew in a moment, his insides would come out of him, reaching forward to melt and kill anything stupid enough to be close to him.
The Shrill was also in Avvinik’s wide area of effect.
My mind registered all of this in slow motion as my brain reached for the Eject button. Too slow. Too slow.
Shoggoth Activating.
Chapter 75
Dread.
Every eye, every mouth, every nerve on the surface of my body snapped shut. I was frozen in place. Frozen in time. I stood upon an empty, colorless plane.
Go, a voice intoned in my mind. A deep, ancient voice. If you must defy me, then begone.
Why, why must you do this? Another voice asked. I immediately recognized it as a much younger-sounding Lamashtu.
Why? I will show you why.
A single eye on my flank, once the eye of a mouse, snapped open.
I saw, then.
I saw the mouse’s life. I was the mouse. Searching for food. Food, food, food. A mate. Children. So many children. I saw them die, one by one. Some starved, some snatched away, some eaten by my mate. Some eaten by me, when resources were light. I felt the pain, the loss. I felt it all, compressed into a single moment.
Condensed. Squeezed into a soul.
That’s it, isn’t it? Souls weren’t something one was born with. No, I knew that now. Souls, and the resulting power, they were the sum of one’s pain, one’s joy, one’s laughter, and one’s wanting. All captured and distilled and expelled upon death.
Energy doesn’t go away. It just takes another form.
And with the opening of that single mouse’s eye, the soul power shot forth. It wasn’t much. A blink. A flash. It had been a short life, but it had been a joyless one.
The beam of light reached no target.
But the mouse’s eye was but the first to open, to see. Next was that of a frog, and then a fox, and then a boar, and a snake, snapping open one by one. I experienced their lifetimes one after another, until there were too many. And then I experienced them all at once.
A human. A woman. Her life flashed. My life. I lived it. I experienced it. I felt it all. My brain swelled. It cracked. It broke.
This eye, this human eye. It opened, and the light that shot forth finally hit a target. Another human, by chance. An NPC, fleeing the battle with his child. The man would eventually drop to his knees, and he would die screaming, his body overwhelmed by the sins of a woman he never met. His daughter, falling to the ground would get hit a moment later, but she would not die. This game did not kill children. But they suffered all the same, as all must suffer.
Another human eye opened, then another, and then all of them.
The demons came next, the angels. Aliens. Monsters. Gods, big and small.
I experienced all of their lives in a fraction of a moment.
This is what the Shrill was. This was the burden Zagan bore. This was his form. He chose to follow his brothers, but he did not choose to forget the suffering of the universe. Their father had tried to show them, and he absorbed it all.
With each opening eye, with each screaming mouth, with each nerve on fire, light shot forth from the Shrill, obliterating any mind it touched. And while I suffered, I also felt relief. Zagan felt relief.
It wasn’t much. A drop in the bucket. But some of
the suffering was gone, let out into the void, released like a balloon into the heavens.
But not before it first filtered through my very human, very fragile brain.
Do not eject, Duke. Stay with me a voice called. I recognized it. Zagan. You have healed me. I will heal you.
“I have to eject,” I muttered. My brain was in a thousand pieces. Marbles rolling in a circle. A poster torn. Get home now. A pair of policemen standing at our door. A man sitting in a Starbucks. A groundling mother sobbing as I give her child away.
A small, crumpled form. Alone and dead on the freeway.
“You’re about to die,” I heard myself say. “I gotta leave your body before you move to your respawn.”
This is too much, I thought. This is too much.
No, Zagan said. It is not too much. It is the price we pay, the contract we sign.
I never signed a damn contract, I thought.
You did the moment you took your first breath, said Zagan. And then, when you decided to care for others, you signed it again. Every friend, every love, every child. None of that is free.
It’s not worth it. This pain is too much. Fuck. My brain. It throbbed.
You’re wrong, Duke. It is worth it. Every second. Would you trade it? Would you end it in exchange for never knowing him? Would you remove Chris from all memory?
A distant part of me wondered how the Shrill knew anything about Chris. But in the moment, I was overwhelmed. My brain felt as if it was shaking itself apart, like a hunk of space junk shredding its way through the atmosphere.
No. No, I would never trade it away.
Chapter 76
Entering Banksy the Gurt – Player Base.
An entire page of notifications scrolled by.
I crashed onto the floor, my head pounding.
Duke: Banksy, what’s going on?
Warning: You do not have a familiar. Obtain a familiar to use the chat feature of this pet carrier.
What the hell?
I shook my head. Everything still spun. The world flickered. I didn’t know if it was the latency or the… The what? I couldn’t remember what had happened. There was a mouse… That didn’t make sense. What the hell? Am I crazy? No, no I didn’t think so. But that’s what crazy people always thought, wasn’t it?
I remembered Zagan’s soothing voice.
No. It is not too much.
I couldn’t worry about it now. I knew the Shoggoth attack had activated. Light had blasted out of all the guardian’s eyes at once. And then I was here.
It took me a moment to understand what had happened. Banksy had leveled up to 50. He had transformed into his final form. He was now my associated guardian. My player base had transferred here from the Shrill. It looked exactly the same. It was the same. My Gross Anatomy map showed Banksy’s long, rippling form, perfectly healthy. Strange organs dotted his body. He was currently coiled like a snake, wrapped around something.
My former pet was bigger than ever. I couldn’t quite see how big from just the map, but if the size of my base, right in the back of his head, was any indication, he was one of the bigger ones. Not as large as the Shrill, but longer than sleek Avvinik and stout Bast. He’d at least doubled in size once again.
My brand access appeared to stay with the base, not the guardian. But what about my cockpit brand? I moved to the sliding door, my head still pounding. I needed to see what was going on out there.
The moment I touched the door, I received an error.
You do not have access to this area.
I pulled up my guardian menu. I still had control of the Shrill. But it was the only guardian on my register. He was listed as dead. He’d regenerate in 15 minutes, far from here. I didn’t have a controller for Banksy. My Epsilon controller was now gone, too.
I turned toward the vein wall and startled at the bright purple tube that now snaked through the room. Oh shit. I feared Banksy would be like Tem and not use blood. But on closer examination, it did appear to be blood. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen Banksy bleed. I hadn’t. He’d been injured multiple times. I remembered long, deep gashes on him. But he never actually bled. I didn’t know how scientifically accurate bright purple blood was.
I pulled up my talent menu, and I saw that many of my surgical skills had changed. I still had some of the basics like Antiparasitic, Incision, Patch, and BloodBorne. But several of the others, like Reroute, Detoxify, and Patch were gone, replaced with odd talents like Mutate, Emulsify, and Reclaim.
I suspected I would never learn what some of those did. For a moment, a fraction of a moment, it made me sad.
Clara popped into the room.
She looked about, eyes wide. “Oh shit, Banksy hit level 50,” she said.
She ran to me and grasped my hand. Her tiny hands were warm, but they felt rough, worn, nothing like how fairy’s hands should feel.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I saw him, and I just reacted. But that fatal attack. Wow. The Shrill killed almost everything in the whole city.”
I didn’t have time to be mad. I couldn’t be mad at her, not for that. Jenk was practically controlling her like a damn puppet. “What about the guardians who were following us? Tem and Bast?”
“They’re okay,” Clara said. “Or they were, last I saw. It’s been a few minutes. Warble isn’t okay. You hit him with a blast from one of your biggest eyes, and he just collapsed to the ground. You got Jenk, too. His shield didn’t stop it, and I watched him die. He fucking exploded like you’d shoved a grenade down his throat. Even Avvinik died. He was about to die anyway, but it was your fatal attack that killed him. It hit Avvinik, and all I heard was screaming. So I ejected before it got worse.” She shuddered. “I don’t know what the hell that attack is, but holy shit. Anyway, we have to get out there. We have to do it now before Jenk decides to come back. He can still mess this up.”
I twitched. I felt on my shoulders where the hawk had grasped me as I fled across the field. I blinked. The mouse again. No, not a mouse. This one was a rabbit. No, that’s not your memory. Stop that. Whatever had happened to me, the Shrill had removed it from me as he died. But not all of it was gone. Crumbs remained.
I blinked, bringing myself back to the present. Again, the scene stuttered. “Are they still there? Tem and Bast?”
“I don’t know,” Clara said. “You just asked that. Remember? Are you okay? We need to get out there. What does Banksy see?”
“I lost him. I don’t think I can talk to him.”
“Wait, wait,” Clara said, holding her hand up. “Dickinson just regenerated and is coming up. He’s describing the scene. He says Banksy is huge now. No surprise there. He’s curled around the remains of the temple, wrapped around it like a snake protecting his eggs. Bast and Tem are just outside, not daring to attack. I don’t think they know what to do. There’s a bunch of worm surgeons out there, too, he says. Baal is in the city, swinging his flail about, grappling with that clockwork centipede kaiju and the rhinoceros one who walks on two legs. …And Dickinson’s dead again. Damnit.”
“Okay,” I said. “We’re going out there. You protect my back, and I’m going to do this. We’ll do Tem first. The moment he dies, set a timer. Ten minutes. No more, no less.”
Clara grasped my arm. This was it, and we both knew it. End game. If we succeeded, we would never see each other again. Not on this side of the veil, at least.
“Duke,” she began. “I should…” She stopped. Her eyes had taken on that sheen, the watery, uncertain look, like a wild animal. Just like that. She’d been fine just a second ago. I didn’t see this particular version of Clara often. She was next to useless when she was like this. This was scared Clara, panicked Clara, not-in-her-right-mind Clara.
“Clara,” I began. “Jenk is getting into your head. Take a deep breath and…”
“I’m sorry,” she said, cutting me off. Her hands turned to fists as if she wanted to beat me. “God damnit. This is not what I wanted, not how I wanted it to end. If I could take it bac
k, I would. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I was going down the road, and I saw them there. Just stopped. And I did it. I did it. I did it. It wasn’t an accident. I did it on purpose.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. Jenk had known you were going to pull that attack. That’s why he stopped right there on the road. He can’t stop us, and he knows it. So he’s watching, trying to get into your head. He knew you’d attack. He knew exactly what was going to happen.”
Her eyes clenched shut. She took a deep breath, and I saw the calm come over her. “Okay, okay,” she said. The switch flipped once again. “I’ll see you on the other side.”
Banksy had several anal tubes, and I used BloodBorne to get as close to an exit as possible.
I’d been so worried about shoving Banksy up my own ass when I’d first gotten him, and here I was. I dropped out of my worm’s massive bunghole. I laughed as I used my claw to lower myself to the ground. I laughed and laughed. The cackle even sounded unsteady to my own ears.
“Banksy,” I cried as I hit the rocky, unsteady ground. “Banksy!”
I landed in the rubble of the Temple of the Chained Gods. I knew exactly where in the temple I stood, right at the intersection of the T. The roof of the building was gone. The ground was like churned earth after being plowed, but with rocks and smooth hunks of marble. The place smelled of blood and smoke.
No radiants remained, but I could hear the distinctive thwump of energy weapons. Clara and the worm surgeons were out there now, holding them off. Banksy wrapped around me, protective, keeping the other kaiju back.
And beyond that, Baal and his family finished mopping up the resistance. He wouldn’t approach, not yet. His part in this was mostly done. The game wouldn’t allow me to take this path without Baal at the gates, ready.
A massive head emerged from the top of the coil, looking down at me. It completely blotted out the sky. The rain had stopped for a while after the detonation of Epsilon, but it had returned. It stopped once again as Banksy blocked it.
Kaiju- Battlefield Surgeon Page 58
