Threadbare used the opportunity to break and run for it, whispering “Camouflage,” as he went.
“You only delay the inevitable!” Anise screamed. Behind her the last of the teddy bears fell, as hellhounds tore it to shreds. The three figures rushed to join her, spreading out at her command, searching for the little toy.
And not finding it.
Your Stealth skill is now level 18!
“A few dozen teddy bears. Really, what did you hope to achieve?” Anise said, flicking her gaze over to the Cataclysm. “Renew the wall.”
Wordlessly, the beautiful brown-skinned woman did so.
“Did you think to soften us up? Did you think to weaken us?” Anise laughed. “It was no trouble at all to deal with you. I lost a few scrolls, so what? We’re barely wounded. And every second that the one you call The Lurker is in there, more of your puny little kingdom dies. People, animals, even the crops... every tragedy you can imagine, he’s inflicting on Cylvania right now. Every nightmare Melos had ever hoped to prevent, happening at once. And everyone will die in torment.” She stalked around the pillars, looking for the little bear. “Why?” She said. “Why bother coming here? You’ve LOST.”
Threadbare weighed his options and sent along a Wind’s Whisper. “I wonder,” Threadbare’s voice whispered in her ear, “Why you didn’t do this sooner, if this is what you wanted. Everyone dead, I mean.”
Your Wind’s Whisper skill is now level 20!
She smirked. “It was funnier to make Melos and the rest of you fools do it to yourselves. But in a pinch, this’ll do.”
“And I wonder,” Threadbare continued, “if you know how to work this dungeon at all.” He paused, then sent a third whisper. “Or if you’re just playing it by ear and hoping it works the way you think it does.”
Your Wind’s Whisper skill is now level 21!
Anise laughed smugly, as she moved past the throne, eyes peeled, looking for him. “Are you looking for the part where I tell you how to fix this mess? Forget it. I know what you’re trying to do, and it’s already hopeless. I just killed the only one who might help you with that,” She grinned over at Melos’ slumped corpse, lying in a puddle of blood, his head gone.
“Oh, he’s dead? That’s all?” Threadbare whispered. “Well, that part’s easy. Speak with Dead” said the little bear, stepping out from behind the throne.
Your Speak with Dead skill is now level 25!
Melos rose from his corpse, whole again, in ghostly form, staring about him.
But Threadbare didn’t have much time to examine the dead King. Instantly, Anise was on him, foot catching Threadbare and sending him flying. He bounced off a pillar, rolled a few times in a shower of green sparks, and scurried to his feet. “Fry him!” Anise shrieked.
The Cataclysm hurled a bolt of smoking flame—
“Manipulate Faia!”
—only to see it turn aside.
The daemons froze.
The daemons turned to look at the entryway.
And at the wall of fire that had been quietly been pushed out of the way with elemental magic, and reshaped into an enormous fist, with the middle finger fully extended.
“Good distrahction, boss!” Madeline said, ripping the golden laurels from her head. “We’ll take it from heah!”
“Get’em!” Garon yelled, and the second wave of toy golems charged.
“Mend Golem, Mend Golem,” Threadbare said, putting himself back together, before slipping away again. “Camouflage,” he whispered, fading away, moving toward Melos, who turned to meet him with a sorrowful gaze.
Behind him, the daemons started up a dark chant, hailing Cron and Vhand...
“Dispel Magic!”
...but Beryl was having none of that.
Threadbare did his best to ignore the fighting at his back. He didn’t have the sanity to heal, like he normally did in these fights, and Anise would shred him if he tried to tank. No, he had to trust his friends to handle them and focus on the third task in his checklist.
“We don’t have much time,” Threadbare whispered, drawing close to Melos. “How do we fix the Oblivion?”
“If I knew that I would have done it!” Melos raised his hands. “Do you think I wanted this?”
“Well, what have you tried?” Threadbare asked.
“I... I’ve been trying to get enough wizards and enchanters skilled enough to take a look at the damn thing, but... I think she’s been killing them,” Melos muttered, glaring at Anise. “So I haven’t tried a hell of a lot. I’m in over my head, here. I was.” He sighed. “Cron’s balls I’ve made a mess of things.”
“Self-pity later, please,” Threadbare asked, shooting a glance back. Graves and Fluffbear were leading a line of wooden toys against Anise. It wasn’t going well. Meanwhile, the other half of the strike force was focusing on the Ninja, while Madeline countered the Cataclysm and dealt with the hellhounds’ fiery breath. That was going a bit better but still not well. “I need helpful suggestions. What happens if the dungeon is sealed?”
“The other ones forming the barrier will still be open. Everyone dies,” Melos said, shaking his head. “The Oblivion sweeps inward and everyone will go into the numbers. No one comes back from them.”
“Okay, how do we close the other dungeons?”
“You can’t.” Melos pointed at the green, warped discs between the core chamber and the rest of reality. “The throne adjusts the space in the dungeons. They’re... stretched out, to form the Oblivion. And the throne is wrecked! There’s no way to un-stretch them! They’re stuck at WIDE. If they were returned to normal, you could enter them, one by one, and kill the pygamlion animus that’s holding each one open. But with space distorted? Nothing would survive that. Not even you, little golem.”
Threadbare looked at the Throne. “Mend.”
Invalid target! Unidentified item.
Melos laughed, ruefully. “Don’t you think that’s the first thing I tried? It’s too complicated, it’s an artifact, minor magic won’t work on it. You can’t mend the throne, you can’t mend the exhausted cores. It just doesn’t work.”
“The active cores. Is there something we can do with those?” Threadbare pointed at the glittering gems.
“No!” Melos shouted, covering his mouth in horror. “I had that idea too. I threw a Dark Augury for that one,” Melos said, pointing at a pile of gore and guts assembled into a blasphemous pattern. “The vision was horrible but true. If the throne were intact, it might work. But if the cores are removed BEFORE this dungeon is sealed, even a split-second sooner, then the part of the Oblivion they make up EXPLODES instead of IMPLODING. You’d wipe out an entire region, for each one you removed, and then the other three would be stressed harder to compensate, and the Oblivion would snap around into a smaller space...”
Threadbare shook his head. He looked back at the battle, saw Emmet manage to get his hand around the Ninja’s leg, and get shanked repeatedly for the trouble. His brother staggered, guarding his helm and eyes, as red numbers leaked from the cracks in his armored shell. And then the Legion was on him, summoning up another giant hellhound to replace a fallen one, as his friends worked like mad to keep him at bay.
This isn’t going well.
He looked around the room. Looked up. “What are those?” he said, pointing up at the sky, at the shattered numbers and the voids.
“I... don’t know,” Melos said. “I think it happened after we broke the throne. It’s been getting worse ever since. Like cloth wearing down. Losing threads, losing thickness. Getting thinner.” Melos shuddered. “I fear it. I fear what it means, when those holes join, and everything ruptures. Like space itself is... threadbare, I suppose. Just waiting to rip away completely.”
“So it’s broken,” Threadbare said, staring up at it.
“I... suppose? But not in any sense that could be...“
“Mend,” said the little bear, stretching up a paw.
And one of the holes shrank.
“...what.”
Melos said.
“Look!” Threadbare said, pointing at the entryway. One of the warped disks was noticeably LESS warped now. And less like a disc. There were shifting colors on it now, there was just a hint of depth.
“My gods,” Melos said, looking like he might cry. “You can’t tell me it was that simple.”
“Celia!” Threadbare whispered, through the wind. “Look up! Mend the holes in the sky!”
A second, while he wondered if she’d gotten the message. Two. Five. And then...
Then, as he watched, the holes started shrinking. Green numbers filled the gaps in between them, flowing now, moving with more vigor.
The battle slowed, as both sides noticed the changing light. “Everyone,” Threadbare shouted. “Everyone who can mend, mend those holes in the sky!”
“No you don’t!” Anise shrieked and went straight for Cecelia...
Only to be forced back, dodging, as Jarrik emptied all his guns at her.
“Mend!” shouted Cecelia.
“Mend!” Graves muttered, behind the muffling visor he wore to keep Anise from kissing him again.
“Godspell Mend!” squeaked Missus Fluffbear, as she moved Mopsy out of the fight, much to the cougar’s relief.
And the holes shrank. The discs in the entryway flexed and gained shape... until they were portals again. “Keep her busy,” Threadbare whispered to Garon, spending five more points of his dwindling sanity. “I’ll go sort this out!”
“Not alone you’re not!” Garon said. “Kayin, go with him!”
Threadbare bolted for the first portal, and Kayin hurried in behind him, keen eyes piercing his camouflage.
With a ripple they were through, into another darkling plain... this one tiny. Only a few columns gleamed green here, and in the central one, stood the statue of a beautiful dwarven woman, motionless, staring out at the world.
Then a flicker behind him, and Threadbare glanced back in time to see the Ninja cartwheel through the portal, hurling shuriken straight at him.
“I don’t know how to fix this! But I can fix her!” Kayin yelled. “Go! I’ve got this!” The catgirl growled and launched herself at the black-clad figure, and knives flashed and flew between them as they moved, almost too fast for the eye to follow.
Threadbare ran straight up to the column. “Get out! Please get out!” he said, but the statue didn’t move.
He poked the green light around it, found the light no barrier, and smacked the statue on the leg with his scepter. “Hey there! Please come out!”
The Pygmalion statue charged out and tried to stomp on him. Threadbare danced back and weighed his options.
Well. It WAS some sort of construct, wasn’t it? “Eye for Detail.”
Behind him, Kayin shrieked. There was a sound of tearing cloth. But the spell told Threadbare what he needed to know, as he dodged away. “Command Animus, accept my invitation!”
And he invited the statue into his party. It stopped trying to stomp him, turned, and charged the Ninja.
Reality flickered, as numbers appeared in the sky. Threadbare ran back, pausing to grab up Kayin’s torn body as he went. “Are you alive?”
“That’s a good question,” she coughed. “But yeah, just lost another life.” The ninja had cut her clean in half.
He shoved Kayin in his pocket for now.
Behind him, stone shattered, but that didn’t matter, because he was back through the portal. “Zuula! Vines!” he called. “Block the portal!”
But it was Bak’shaz who reacted, reaching into his pack and throwing a flowerpot down in front of it. It broke, plants and dirt went everywhere...
“Call Vines!” Zuula said, and then there was a wall of plant matter, that rippled and churned. Something behind it struggled, writhed, trying to get out...
...too late.
A scream echoed, trailing off, as the vines pushed inward to the empty space where the dungeon had been. The ninja was gone.
On the loot pedestal, one of the glittering gems churned for a bit, then popped, like an overheated glowstone. “One down!” bellowed Melos’ ghost. “It’s working! Keep at it!”
“Go!” roared Anise, and across the field of shattered toys, the Cataclysm roared towards Threadbare as he ran for the next portal. Then he was through, and already, already he could hear the air burning at his back—
—and turning from him. “Manipulate Faia!” Madeline yelled, swooping in behind the Cataclysm.
“How many of those do you have left, little dragon?” whispered the daemon, as fire traced arcane patterns on the black ground below her, and flaming tentacles rose up. “And can you withstand a magma kraken, I wonder?”
But then Threadbare was smacking the statue and backing up as it came out kicking. “Command Animus, accept my invitation!” The statue hesitated, then arrowed straight for the Cataclysm.
“Yeah, I ain’t fighting that thing, sweethaht,” said Madeline, swooping over and grabbing up Threadbare, then beating wings back to the portal. “Seeya!”
“Get her—” The Pygmalion statue tackled the Cataclysm, and the daemon shrieked. “Get this off of me!”
Then they were through the portal. As soon as they were, the vines went up again. “Out of sanity!” Madeline whispered in his ear as she put him down. “What do you want me ta do?”
“Go tell the dwarves that it’s their turn,” Threadbare said, glancing around. That was two daemons down. But Legion was calling in armored fiends now, Anise was still going strong, and his friends were flagging. Pulsivar was down, Threadbare saw with horror, but he couldn’t tell how bad it was. Sloopy the Snake was dead, torn into bits. As were most of the toys who’d followed them in.
No time! He raced through the next portal...
...and a brace of the armored fiends followed, pushing past Mordecai and his family, taking the hits, to race in after the little bear.
He was faster though, and he reached the control pillar with time to spare, smacking the statue and dodging its return strike, luring it out of the pillar. “Command Animus, accept my invitation!”
Threadbare sent it towards the daemons...
...who weren’t advancing. They were guarding the exit, spears and blades out in a phalanx.
They’re not trying to stop me from sealing it, they’re trying to keep me here until it closes!
Threadbare ran forward, trying to pass, but their spears knocked him back every time. The damage wasn’t much, but they had weight over him, and his thoughts were scrambled. He was low on sanity, with no clever ideas, no tricks to pull-
And then Emmet was there.
Emmet had no clever ideas. Emmet had no tricks to pull. Emmet just had his fists, and a whole lot of daemon butt to kick.
And it was enough.
The phalanx broke, Threadbare leaped through, and Emmet caught him, backing off just as the portal wavered and disappeared.
“One more! Get it quickly!” Melos commanded.
“No! No you don’t!” Anise screamed. “Vevintarego? OUT!”
Grinning, The Lurker stepped out of the central control pillar, pulled knives, and came forward to join the battle...
...and the main dungeon rippled.
Reality groaned.
“Get to the pillar! Get someone in there!” Melos yelled.
“Not a chance!” roared Legion, and he ripped his hands through the air and shuddering walls of daemonflesh rose to bar the way, as Anise laughed and laughed. “Close, but no victory for you!” she called. “Well, at least you’ll all die quickly!”
“Melos!” Graves yelled. “Get in there!”
“What?” the dead king stared at him. “What can I do? I’m dead!”
“Yes! You’re temporarily a ghost. A disembodied soul.” Graves yelled back. “And daemons can’t do shit with souls!”
The battle stopped.
Anise looked at him, leaped over to Melos, and put her hand through his head so fast that her sleeves snapped in the air.
Melos stared back
at her, unhurt. Then he grinned and blew her a kiss.
Reality flickered again, and when it returned the former King was disappearing through the flesh of the daemonic walls, hindered not one bit by their physical forms. In a matter of seconds the flickering stopped.
“No!” Anise shrieked...
“Yes,” said Threadbare, emerging from the last portal with a statue following him. “You’ve lost.” Then he shifted back out of the way, as a double column of dwarves rushed in, taking up positions around the entryway, shields held high.
He pulled Kayin from his pocket, as gently as he could. “Mend Golem,” he told her, using most of his remaining sanity. She gasped as her lower half reappeared and hopped to the ground.
Anise drew herself up, smiling. “Focus Chi to hands. Focus Chi to hands. Focus Chi to hands. Offensive Stance,” she said, as her arms disappeared into glowing, pulsing spheres of energy, roiling red and gold. The succubus sneered. “You saved your land. Bravo. But you really can’t stop me from killing my way through every last one of your friends, before I get to you. Twenty dwarves? Bah. Speedbumps. I’ve still got enough energy left to—”
“NOW!” yelled the dwarven captain.
Twenty shields hit the floor.
Twenty pairs of dwarven arms shifted to the wide-barreled blunderbusses hanging from their backs and pulled them over their shoulder with a smooth motion.
“DOWN!” Garon bellowed, and the toys and their friends dropped.
And thunder came to the darkened realm between worlds.
Martial artists had phenomenal agility.
But blunderbusses, designed to throw clouds of shot at short range, really didn’t care too much about agility. The daemons ate a full cloud of shot.
Legion rocked back, slicked with blood. One of his Hellhounds disintegrated. The Lurker vanished, then reappeared, holes punched straight through him as he dropped.
But Anise was made of sterner stuff. Bloodied, screaming in incoherent fury, she leaped into the dwarves, sending them down in crumpled heaps as her arms rose and fell, threshing, smiting them down, until—
“Corps a Corps!” yelled Cecelia, parrying her, staring up at her murderer with loathing in her painted eyes. Her blade locked firm to Anise’s fist, as the chi pulsed around them both, rippling and making Cecelia’s hair rise.
Threadbare Volume 3 Page 34
