by Isaac Hooke
He hit the treeline and dove inside with Sinive, Lyra, and Chase.
Splinters fell away from the trunk immediately behind him as the bolt from an energy launcher struck. Other nearby trees cracked as Fingers of Ruin hit them and sent black veins spidering into the wood.
The TSN had sent troops here to outflank Tane—or the aliens—and they were only just arriving. They were a mixture of mechs and combat robots, with a man in power armor at their lead.
They all released energy nets at Tane and his party.
Tane grabbed his beam hilt and allowed his Essence ax to explode forth. With that blade of bright light he cut through the nets meant for him. Then he leaped forward and hewed the legs out from underneath two mechs in rapid succession.
Sinive fired her pistol, and Lyra unleashed small, dim Essence Missiles.
To his surprise, even Chase helped, though his Essence Missiles were weaker even than Lyra’s. He slammed two of the works into different scepters, and then leaped onto a mech: with a dim Light Glove he managed to punch through the cockpit.
In moments only the sergeant in power armor remained standing, and he raised his hands to surrender.
Lyra rushed right up to that sergeant and held a hand to his forehead. The man’s eyes rolled up in his head, and he collapsed. Lyra, meanwhile stood straighter: she had obviously drained his stamina.
“He was strong, this one.” Lyra turned toward the forest edge behind her, where the approaching dwellers were only just beginning to enter. She glanced askance at Tane. “Go. I’ll hold them off.”
“I won’t let this rescue be for nothing,” Tane said.
“It’s too late for that now,” Lyra said. “This stopped being a rescue operation a while ago. It’s a struggle for survival. And you must survive. Now go! I will delay them for as long as I can.”
Chase removed his armband and tossed it to Lyra. “You need this more than I do.”
She nodded in thanks, and attached the armband, which resized to fit above her battle dress.
“Lyra, I can’t—” Tane began.
Her eyes glowed a bright blue. “Go!”
There was such command in her voice that he felt compelled to obey. He wasn’t sure if she was using the Essence on him, or it was merely the force of her presence that did the trick, but soon he was retreating again, with Sinive and Chase at his side.
He glanced over his shoulder as he ran. Apparently satisfied that he was retreating, Lyra turned around to face the onslaught. Her armored robe flared to an almost blinding level, as did the ax produced by her beam hilt. With the silver staff in one hand, and the white ax the other, she looked like some glowing, avenging wraith as the Amaranth bore down upon her.
Dark smears of death darted in upon her, but she Deflected them. No doubt some of the Amaranth were attempting to hold her in place with the Essence, but because of the combined intensity of armband, staff, and all the other Chrysalium accessories she wore, she was able to Disrupt the works before they reached her. At least that was what Tane assumed, because she leaped at the Amaranth unhindered, and the results weren’t pretty, at least not for them: she was an artist, the blade, her brush; the blood of the dwellers, her paint.
Tane ran on, leaving her behind. He felt terrible doing it, especially considering he had come here to rescue her, but she was right: at some point, the rescue had devolved into a fight for survival. Even so, he swore to come back for her when this was over.
Assuming she survived.
He burst through the trees and emerged onto the street next to the transport terminal, their fallback point. At three stories tall, and the width of a city block, the structure towered before him.
He rushed up the steps to the floor-to-ceiling windows. The double doors at the front didn’t automatically open so he cut through them with his Essence ax.
Inside, twenty large, circular gates filled the terminal. Spaced a few meters apart, each one had a small tank next to it containing the sponge-like lifeforms that Siphoned for the AIs that created the actual planet-side distortion tunnels. None of the stations next to those gates were active, as Lyra had predicted, so they couldn’t jump out. At least not until Sinive did her hacking thing.
“Freeze!” a synthesized voice said.
Three security robots employed by the terminal raced to intercept them, but Sinive shot them down in rapid succession with Jed’s pistol.
The trio ran to one of the stations. “Sinive, do your magic. We’ll buy you time.”
Tane stood next to Chase and faced the front facade of the terminal with its tall floor-to-ceiling windows and waited for the next attackers to come, whoever they might be, dweller or TSN.
He glanced at the Mancer.
“Why are you helping me?” Tane said.
“Let’s just say, there are a few of us who don’t agree with the junta in charge of the TSN,” Chase said.
“But you’re trained to follow orders,” Tane pressed. “Without question, I assume.”
“And so we are,” Chase said. “But sometimes, morals overcome conditioning. If the TSN told me to kill a baby, I wouldn’t do it. Some would, but not me.”
“Is that what I am to you, a baby?” Tane asked.
“Probably a poor example,” Chase answered. “All you really need to know is the TSN betrayed me. And now it’s my turn to betray them. You don’t deserve what they’re trying to do to you.”
TSN troops rushed inside the broken entrance, perhaps part of another outflanking party that had been sent to intercept Tane. This group was about twice as large as the previous, and had two men in power armor, ten scepters, and four battle mechs. They formed a defensive formation just inside the entrance, with the robots dropping down on one knee in front, the four mechs standing side by side behind them, and the two men in power armor at the rear.
Before they could order Tane to surrender, the dwellers arrived. Tane knew, because the men in power armor screamed, their faces becoming covered in black veins that cracked open along with their armor.
The remaining troops spun to face the new threat, but the dwellers made short work of them. More dark smears erupted from the Amaranth, while energy launchers fired from the ordinary dwellers. One of the mechs turned on its own platoon and began firing into the robots at point blank range.
Fingers of Ruin erupted from Tane’s own body in that moment, thanks to his legendary ring, and he sent all of the dark smears toward that turned mech, and disabled it. But it was too late by then. The entire TSN unit had been wiped out.
The aliens approached. Some entered through the main entrance, others crashed through the glass composing the floor-to-ceiling windows. There were six Amaranth enveloped in dark spheres, and five ordinary dwellers in protective suits. S’Wraathar was not among them: maybe Lyra had defeated the alien. It was perhaps a faint hope, but he clung to it.
Tane couldn’t afford to allow the dwellers to close, especially not the Amaranth. Certainly, some among them might have used up the telekinesis works they had in reserve, either against Lyra, or other members of the TSN they fought along the way. But there had to be a few that still had the ability to clamp an invisible vise around him.
And that was the last thing he needed right now.
He aimed the tip of his ax at one of the Amaranth and fired an Essence bolt. It struck, passing through its protective shield of Essence, but halted a short way inside. The dweller in question cocked its sideways-oriented head slightly, as if in amusement.
Dark smears launched from all of the Amaranth at the same time. The works appeared divided equally among Tane, Sinive, and Chase.
“Sinive!” Tane said.
But she was already ducking behind her station.
As those smears rapidly homed in on him, he realized he should probably be doing the same.
He deactivated his beam hilt and dove behind a desk near one of the gates, while Chase dodged behind a control console nearby.
Black veins appeared in the desk besid
e Tane, and it abruptly cracked open, splitting in half. The divided parts collapsed inward, the two pieces forming a subtle V.
He glanced at the gate behind him. It was made of Chrysalium...
“Damn it,” Sinive said. Her station had suffered damage similar to Tane’s desk. “I was nearly done hacking this one. I’m going to have to move to another.”
“I’ll cover you,” Tane said. “Just wait.”
He crawled to the gate behind him, keeping the ruined desk between himself and the dwellers. He expected an invisible vise to slam around him at any moment.
But it never did.
He reached the gate and touched the hard surface with his gauntlet. He could feel the frigid winds of the Lumina beckoning inside, beyond the edges of perception. A veritable tornado waiting to be unleashed upon the world.
In that moment he wasn’t sure he could handle that much of the stellar wind. He was already close to exhaustion.
From his position in cover not far from Tane, Chase, as if sensing his hesitation, and understanding the root cause of it, said: “Put this on.”
The Mancer tossed Tane a thin silver necklace that glowed with the halo of Essence enhancement.
Tane ran a quick ID.
Item: Endurance Necklace I
Item type: Epic.
Additional Effects: None.
Essence-Imbued bonus: +9 Endurance while equipped.
That would do it.
He slid the necklace over his neck, layering it atop the other he wore. He felt immensely better.
Keeping the beam hilt gripped in his right hand to retain its Endurance bonus as well, he stepped into the Essence through the Chrysalium gate.
The Lumina shrieked inside of him, the frigid cold of the stellar wind grinding across his bones. While not as intense as Siphoning through the hull of a starship, it still staggered him to the core, and if he were standing he might have lost his footing.
He clamped down on that raging twister before it could sweep him from this universe, and he directed it into the large ribbon of Essence that fluttered wildly back and forth in front of him. He had to throw out his Essence Sight lifeline to get a good view of it all. Thanks to his new perspective, he could see the dwellers beyond the desk, splitting up, slowly approaching, hoping to outflank him and the others.
Siphoning bonus. All White Essenceworks are enhanced 205% due to Siphoning through Chrysalium gate.
He tried to grow the Branchwork for Essence Missile, but that amount of stellar wind was slightly too much to manage, and the Branches and Leaves expanded without constraint, forming a useless shape that couldn’t interact with this universe. He dismissed the work and tried again. This time he drew upon the Dark Essence in an effort to contain the White, but even then the amount of White was almost too much for the Dark to handle unaided, and the flames of the Arcanum struggled to contain the frigid Esoterum. He considered retrieving one of the artifacts in his possession to add to the amount of Darkness he could Siphon, but decided against it. He was managing...
“Go!” he told Sinive.
Tane stood up slightly and released an Essence Missile. It was a thick streak of white light marred with dark veins. It roared over the broken desk in front of him, cutting a runnel through the top. It ripped into the dwellers approaching behind it, taking down an Amaranth and an ordinary dweller. The remaining aliens in the room scattered, taking cover behind the different desks and stations.
He created more Missiles and released them in turn. A mere desk or console wouldn’t protect a dweller from a Missile of this power. Also, most of the consoles were too small to provide adequate protection for the dwellers hiding behind them, so he created Persistent Flame and used it to send streams of fire across the room. The flames took hold on the metallic consoles as if composed of some kind of jellied gasoline, and set the structures, and the dwellers partially hidden behind them, ablaze.
Siphoning the Dark helped offset the fatigue he would have ordinarily felt from having that much White gusting through his core, but it was nonetheless mentally exhausting to keep dousing all those dark flames while at the same time guiding the stellar wind into trees.
More dwellers approached from beyond the terminal, filling the streets outside, joined by the familiar spider robots—Tarkwail models with dual turrets and missile launchers. And as those dwellers in the forefront began to join their emboldened brethren inside the terminal, for a moment Tane despaired.
“Sinive, how are we doing on that gate!” Tane called. It was definitely more an exclamation than a question.
“Working on it,” Sinive shouted back. “The admins have done a good job patching the system... I’m having to brute force it!”
Using Essence Sight so that he remained in cover, Tane released more works, directing some of them toward the spider robots outside the terminal, not wanting the Tarkwail to launch their deadly missiles; the Mancer beside him meanwhile prevented attacks against Tane by unleashing Deflect as necessary. Tane knew, because dark smears would sometimes come in from the side but bounce away before reaching him. He wasn’t sure how long Chase could keep that up.
Tane kept up his assault, but for every alien he felled, two more rushed inside. The only hope for them rested in Sinive, and her hacking that gate.
A momentary respite came when TSN troops flooded the streets outside: robots and mechs fired lasers, plasmas and missiles, while Mancers unleashed Essence Missiles, drawing the attention of the dwellers and Tarkwail outside.
Meanwhile, distortion tunnels opened inside the terminal: Essence warriors and scepter robots poured through. They opened fire at the aliens that had entered the terminal, forcing them to wage a battle on two fronts, with Tane on the one side, and the TSN the other.
Tane only managed to release two Essence Missiles before another rip in spacetime appeared, this one just beyond the desk in front of him.
The big dweller stepped through. It no longer carried the energy launcher, but the pitch black, fiery pole-ax remained firmly gripped in its tentacles.
S’Wraathar.
Another Amaranth joined the dweller before the distortion tunnel closed behind them.
Lyra had lost, then. Tane spared a moment to glance at her status on his HUD. Offline. Probably dead. He should have never attempted the rescue. Never.
That moment of inaction on his part allowed S’Wraathar to leap onto the desk unscathed.
Tane launched an Essence Missile but the creature was already leaping again, and avoided the attack. The missile grazed the Amaranth behind it, however, and that one was forced to withdraw as more Missiles from the Mancers homed in on it.
Tane was forced to release the gate as S’Wraathar came in, that terrible black ax bearing down on him. The loss of that much power gusting through Tane’s body was jarring, and he instinctively swung his beam hilt upward, narrowly activating the energy ax to counter. He wasn’t certain his ax would parry the Dark weapon, since a beam hilt didn’t protect against lasers and plasma bolts, or even Essence bolts as far as he knew, but a vague memory from Tiberius promised the White would counter its opposite.
To his relief, the Essence haft stopped the blow.
A tentacle shot out at Tane. With his shield set to autogate, only high-speed projectiles such as plasma and laser attacks would trigger the energy field, and that appendage would readily grab him—so Tane had to dodge. He didn’t have time to change the shield setting on his HUD, not in the middle of a fight, so as the tentacle glanced against his armored robe, he instead sliced down with his ax.
S’Wraathar withdrew it before the White blade hit. The creature’s Dexterity was high.
Dark smears came at Tane from the alien, but Chase saved him once again—that was the only way to explain why the Fingers of Ruin diverted before they could touch him.
S’Wraathar growled in outrage. Tane suspected that was the last of that particular work the dweller had in reserve.
Tane jumped back and unleashed an Essence Mi
ssile. Unaided, without the Chrysalium gate to boost the amount he could Siphon, it was a small, pitiful thing, and barely passed through the dark sphere that enveloped S’Wraathar before dissipating.
The dweller kicked outward suddenly with one of its legs, which passed though the dark sphere to strike Tane squarely in the torso. Tane flew backward, sliding along the floor until he smashed into a processing desk in the customs area. If he hadn’t had the armored robe, he’d likely have a collapsed lung right now. As it was, he had a terrible pain in his chest, but he forced himself to his feet.
S’Wraathar was taking fire from the TSN robots and Mancers positioned on the far side of the room; the dweller ducked behind the station next to the gate beside him.
Tane crouched behind another station nearby. He considered deactivating his shield autogate feature, but that meant he wouldn’t be able to take cover behind objects like he was doing now, at least not without draining his shield. So he kept it active for the time being.
He peered past the station, toward S’Wraathar. The alien lifted what looked like a black rock from its carapace with one tentacle. It tossed the object out of its protective sphere, toward a group of mechs. As it sailed though the air, the rock became molten red, and when it struck it melted right through the metal floor.
The terminal shook slightly, and then the floor began to melt in several places, collapsing as sinkholes formed. Molten creatures emerged from those holes, unfolding, as if they were being birthed. Ten in total appeared. They were humanoid in shape, and about as big as the mechs, coming in at two times the height of an ordinary man. Their red-hot exteriors quickly faded as they reached their full statures, and instead became dark gray; but the eye regions on their heads continued to burn brightly. They were rock creatures of some sort.
Tane didn’t recognize the power. But he knew one thing for certain, it wasn’t the Dark or White Essence.
This dweller has access to the powers of a different universe?
The rock creatures joined the remaining dwellers in attacking the TSN, drawing fire away from the S’Wraathar, who now arose to close with Tane once more.
