by Ramy Vance
“Good thing we are checking out the breeding room. You might be able to pick up some tips. Beth would probably appreciate it.”
Beth walked past Stew and shoved him out of the way. “Trust me, Suzy doesn’t need any pointers. Come on, douchenozzle, let’s get going.”
They snuck out of the room and into a well-lit hallway. It was the same layout they’d seen before, although from outside the darkened room, it was very obvious this one was running at full potential. This facility was even eerier than the other one, though. Somehow the medical pristineness was more off-putting than blood-covered walls.
Chip pointed down the hallway, looking at the datapad. “All right, we’re going this way.”
Beth rustled up against Suzuki as they walked down the halls. “We’re blowing this place up, right?”
Suzuki nodded. “First, we find the giants and get them out. Then we blow the shit out of this place. Everyone, keep your eyes out for good spots to place detonators. I don’t want to have to go on a full tour after we get the giants out.”
The Mundanes moved down the hall. The doors lining the hall began to get farther apart until there were none. Suzuki wondered where all the workers were. If this facility had the same enchantment that increased its internal size, there was a good chance they weren’t going to come across anyone, even if they were working.
There was a loud groaning from the rafters above the Mundanes. Suzuki held his hand up, and the party stopped. They stood in silence as Suzuki strained his ears to see if he had heard something or if it was just his mind fucking with him. After waiting for a few seconds, the Mundanes went forward.
They came to the end of the hall. There was one ominous door, larger than all of them, and it whooshed open the moment Suzuki walked in front of it.
The room the Mundanes stepped into was huge. Not just long and wide, but also tall, the top of the room was capped with an ornate dome. In the dome was what looked like a laser. The room was also filled with tables, desks, and computers. In the middle of the room was a large tube, roughly twice as tall as Stew, which was filled with blue liquid.
Suzuki walked up to the tube to get a better look at it. He pressed his face close to the glass, and something in the water slammed against the tube. Suzuki jumped back out of instinct, surprised.
The thing that had attacked the tube was an angel, but it was not like any of the angels Suzuki had seen so far. This one was smaller, roughly the size of a gnome. Its arms were long and disjointed, looking as if they had three or four elbows. Its back legs were bent like a grasshopper’s and its chest was concave and covered in spikes. Much like the angels he’d seen earlier, its back muscles were extremely enlarged, and it didn’t have a face, only the line that ran from the top of its head to its chin, slowly peeling back in a snarl that showed row upon row of teeth.
Stew came up next to Suzuki and leaned close to the glass. “Looking to give it a kiss?”
Suzuki shoved Stew away and said, “Fuck off, dude.”
Diana came up behind the two of them and separated them almost the way a mother would. Then she peered into the glass tube to look at the creature swimming around in it. The angel took notice of her and lunged against the glass, foiled by its container. “Hm…just as I thought,” Diana murmured.
Suzuki crossed his arms as he watched the creature. “Care to illuminate us?”
“The angels change their body composition based on the host. See the markings around its hands? Those are the same markings redcap goblins are born with. This one must have had a redcap for a host. That was probably why those redcaps we saw were being attacked. They were being harvested for experiments.”
Beth was walking around the room, looking into its corners alongside Chip. “This looks like a good place to start blowing shit up,” she suggested.
Suzuki glanced over his shoulder at Chip and Diana. “All right, get the charges set. We’ll detonate when we leave.”
Chip and Beth went about to the different corners of the room, placing charges on the ground and ceiling, Beth boosting Chip up on her shoulders so she could reach higher.
As Beth and Chip worked, the door to the room opened. Four orcs wearing lab coats walked in. They dropped their coffee cups when they saw the Mundanes and instantly reached for the plasma rifles slung over their shoulders.
Suzuki reacted without thinking, pulling his new axe from his waist and launching it across the room, nailing one of the orcs in the chest. “Finish them fast!” Suzuki shouted as he sprinted toward the orcs, jumping to the side and narrowly dodging a plasma bolt.
Stew drew his sword and rushed toward the orcs, the cannon mount on his shoulder spinning around, taking aim at one and firing a blast of plasma in the orc’s direction. The orc leapt out of the way of the attack and fired his rifle. The blast hit Stew square in the chest, sending him flying through the air, slamming against Diana, and knocking Diana’s wand out of her hand. Diana scrambled for her wand as Sandy shot a bone spear from her palm, nailing one of the orcs to the ground.
Suzuki was the closest to the orcs, so he went for the one in the middle, hoping to break up the group. He tackled the orc to the ground and then wildly swung his axe around him, driving both of the other orcs away from him as the orc beneath him reached up and grabbed Suzuki’s throat. Suzuki brought down his axe on the orc’s arm and severed it clean from the orc’s body before one of the other orcs grabbed Suzuki by the back of his armor and yanked him off.
Stew had gotten back onto his feet and closed the gap between himself and the orcs. He slashed the orc who held Suzuki, killing it. Sandy was right behind him, her bone daggers in hand, sailing through the air and landing on the orc who was just pinned to the ground. She drove her daggers into its chest and dragged them down, ripping its flesh, and then jumped away.
Suzuki fell atop the orc beneath him and slammed his sword into the orc’s skull. He stood up as the orc twitched its final death spasms. “All right,” he said as he wiped off his sword. “Stew and Diana, watch the doors until Beth and Chip are finished. It’d be nice not to have any more surprises.”
Diana and Stew moved to watch the door as Beth and Chip planted the last few charges. Then the Mundanes moved the bodies of the orcs into a closet on the right side of the room. Suzuki went to look at the angel one last time before they left as Chip scrolled through the datapad, looking to see if she could find anything that would give them a heads up. “Got zilch.” She sighed. “Best bet is to kill anyone who sees us.”
The Mundanes exited through the door on the opposite side of the room they had first come through. The door opened up into another, larger room with a very similar setup. The only differences were many more tubes with angels in them. That and the walls were lined with glass cages with more angels.
Everyone froze when they walked into the room. After a few seconds, when the shock finally wore off, they stepped farther inside. Upon closer inspection, Suzuki saw all the angels were sleeping. Or something. They were lying on the ground, their legs in the air like a dog’s, and they took no notice of the Mundanes, who casually walked through the room, stepping to the cages and looking at them.
Suzuki watched a doglike angel’s chest rising and falling and wondered if the thing was dreaming. “Guess everything needs to sleep,” Suzuki mused aloud. “Or maybe they’re drugged. Chip, can you find us anything on this?”
Chip pulled out the datapad and scrolled through it, biting her bottom lip as she tried to find something useful. “Oh, okay, I think I got something,” she chirped. “Looks like the little uglies started getting drugged a few weeks ago. Too difficult to work with, it says. Almost had a meltdown like in the first place we popped. Kills indiscriminately. That’s what the note says, at least.”
Suzuki looked closer at the angel in front of him. They were exactly like the first one he had seen, which meant these had come from human hosts. Even though the idea of the Dark One experimenting on anyone filled him with rage, there was a special hatred r
aging in him at that moment, thinking of the Dark One abducting humans and using their bodies for such abominations, all because the Dark One had some perverse idea of control. “How do we open these?” Suzuki asked.
Chip stepped back and blinked twice as she tried to process what Suzuki was asking. “You did just hear me say they kill indiscriminately, didn’t you? Or have you gone momentarily deaf?”
“No, I heard you. That’s why I was asking. ‘Indiscriminately’ means they kill anyone, and this whole place is filled with people who could very easily be anyone. You saw how fast those orcs went down, right?”
Stew laughed to himself. “Yeah, those guys hardly put up a fight. This place is a bunch of fucking nerds. Not fighters.”
Suzuki walked away from the cages and joined up with the rest of the Mundanes. “Exactly. And you know what would make a great distraction? A shit ton of angels running around and killing everyone. Might even set off an alarm.”
Chip took a seat at one of the tables and rested her head in her palm. “Okay, I see your point. How you plan on keeping them from killing us?” she asked.
Suzuki pointed to his HUD. “Remember the SD I got? You said you used it to stabilize the Dark One’s genes in me, right? You also said its main purpose was to control angels, so how about we give it a try?”
Diana stepped up behind Suzuki and rested her hand on his shoulder. Her face was grave. “That’s a pretty huge gamble, but it would be a great distraction,” she allowed. “I suggest you try it before we open the cages. I remember how much of a hassle these things were before.”
“All right, I’m going to give it a shot.”
Suzuki turned to the cage closest to him. He closed his eyes and focused. He didn’t know if he was going to be able to get to the angel to do a command or if it was going to be more of an ambiguous situation. But now was the time to figure that out. Suzuki reached his hand out toward the closest angel and concentrated on a single thought: come to me.
Nearly instantly, the angel in the cage rolled off its back and opened its mouth in what Suzuki could have only assumed was a yawn. Then it crept toward the cage and pressed its hand against the glass. Suzuki did the same, and they stood there together, hands separated only by the thin layer of glass.
Go to sleep, Suzuki thought.
The angel pulled its hand away and laid back down.
Suzuki let out a sigh of relief. He’d done it, and that changed the entire situation. He wondered how many he could control at a time. Once again, he closed his eyes and focused. This time he imagined his thoughts stretching out through the entire room. Come to me, he thought.
All at once, the angels in the cages slowly rolled over. They came up to the glass, pressed their hands to it, and waited.
Sandy burst out laughing and clapped her hands as she jumped up and down. “Oh my fucking God, that is so cool,” she squealed. “That’s…at least fifteen you can control.”
Suzuki thought-commanded the angels to lie back down, and they did as they were told. “Fuck yeah,” Suzuki whispered. “Now we got a fucking plan. Chip, can you figure out how to open these remotely?”
Chip raised the datapad triumphantly. “Already on it,” she exclaimed.
“Great. Now we move to the giants. We’ll open this in a bit and let the angels do what they do, and I’ll be able to keep them off us. Then we blow this fucking place.”
They left the room and moved on through another series of meandering hallways. Chip led them in silence as the lights above them flickered in certain sections; the farther the Mundanes went into the facility, the more rundown it became. It looked like some sections had been abandoned as the facility continued to grow, the staff most likely moving to the newer sections of the building, trying to avoid the decrepit ones as if they were a plague. It reminded Suzuki of a horror movie he had seen once about a house that continued to get bigger long after the family living in it had died. This place was no different. It was just a different kind of horror taking place behind the walls.
Chip pointed up ahead to a series of three doors next to each other. The hallway had expanded to nearly the size of an airport terminal with hardly anyone taking notice. The ceiling was definitely high enough to get a group of giants through, with room to spare. “This is it. They’re going to be in there.”
Suzuki unsheathed his axe and tossed it into the air, catching it and smiling to himself. “All right, Mundanes. They’re waiting for us. Let’s not to disappoint them!”
Suzuki ran toward the door, the rest of the Mundanes sprinting behind him. He kicked it open and ran into a wall of light. Temporarily blind, he knew an attack was going to come from somewhere. He jumped over to the side and rolled while his eyes adjusted to the ludicrously bright room. As his vision came back to him, he saw plasma bolts flying through the air. He scrambled away and grabbed his axe as he stood up.
The room was the largest they had seen yet. There was hardly any equipment. The giants were all on a large white platform that reminded Suzuki of a gallows. Each giant was chained with an electronic device, and they were on their knees. Shackles were around their necks and were connected to what looked like a planting trough. Suzuki didn’t have to use his imagination to know what was inside. The tips of the black and purple sprouts reached out from the trough. The giants were being prepared to be turned into hosts.
That was not all the room contained, either. Plasma had been fired by the dozens of Dark One grunts crammed in the room. Suzuki hadn’t ever seen this many soldiers in one space before, and they all looked very intent on killing the Mundanes. The only difference Suzuki could see between any of the orc and goblin grunts was the reserve soldiers who stood closest to the giants as if to guard them from the Mundanes.
The orcs were firing their rifles with wild abandon as the Mundanes slipped into the room and separated. Everyone must have already figured out we can’t be all bunched up, Suzuki thought to himself. Good thing the room is so big. There’s more than enough space to move around.
Suzuki leapt, landing on one of the balconies that overlooked the room, almost like in an opera theater. He pulled himself up onto the balcony, only to find two orcs who jumped back in surprise. Suzuki axed one of them in the throat and then tackled the other one, bashing his skull in with the haft. Then he picked up one of the orc’s plasma pistols and fired a few shots from the balcony. He knew the rifle packed more of a punch, but he also knew he was a terrible shot. This was mostly just to add more chaos to the battle below.
And there was chaos. The room was hot with plasma as the orcs whirled about, firing at whatever Mundane was closest to them. From the outset of entering the room, Diana had cast a protection spell over all the Mundanes to buff their defenses. No one had gotten hit yet, but if they did, the shot wouldn’t be as debilitating as usual.
Once Diana had buffed the team, she ran straight into the thick of the orcs, her wand raised, a lightning whip cracking from its tip. She waved it around her head and electrocuted the orcs directly around her. There were so many orcs and goblins it hardly made a difference. She jumped out of the mosh pit of screaming faces and firing guns and levitated to a better vantage point, using her wand to deflect shot after shot, her face set, grim, and determined.
Beth swung past Diana, using her daggers and chains as a form of locomotion, throwing a dagger ahead of her and connecting with the wall, the tech chains attached to her wrist pulling taut as she swung. She cast her dagger at whatever poor soul was beneath her and severing its head before yanking her dagger back and sending it forward again. Beth was moving fast. When she did drop to the ground, she dashed forward, her daggers held at her side, cutting through four orcs instantly before flipping back up into the air and swinging out of danger, plasma shots trailing her from behind.
Stew still hadn’t gone berserk.
He looked like he was holding out for the right time. For now, he was backed up against the wall, casting Enrage on himself as he cut open his chest with his sword. His
eyes turned deep red, and he roared with a ferocity that physically threw the closest orcs through the air. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, preparing to synergize the Enrage spell with his Battle Meditation. When Stew attacked, it was efficient and deadly. He lunged forward, his sword raised above his head and then, in two swift movements, decapitated the goblins in front of him. Then he raised his sword again, his eyes only half-open as he turned, cleaving a goblin in half, taking the goblin’s sword and flinging it across the room, impaling an orc who was advancing toward Sandy.
Sandy was backed up against a wall. She was firing bone spears at the orcs who were accosting her, but there were too many. When she looked through her HUD to see her percentages, the HUD read at a dismal ten percent. She just wasn’t strong enough to take on this many enemies at once. As she frantically tried to figure out what to do, she looked around the room and saw her party members all holding their own. Maybe this was what going to do her in.
Chip ran past Sandy and the orcs who had surrounded her, being tailed by a large troll with cybernetic implants and a plasma cannon attached to his arm that was so large it couldn’t be lifted from the ground. Chip screamed loudly as she fired shot after shot over her shoulder before skidding in front of Sandy and firing a couple of shots to help take off some of the pressure. Then she shouted, “You’re not a fucking mage anymore, you’re a necromancer. Fight like a fucking necromancer!” before turning to see the troll. “Oh, dear,” Chip murmured as the troll raised its cannon hand.
The words of encouragement were exactly what Sandy needed to hear. She wasn’t a mage anymore. She wasn’t going to sling lightning or fireballs or call down an ice storm, but she was intimately tied to death, and that had been her first love all along. This had been what she wanted.
Sandy raised her hands and bones jutted out of her body, the longest coming from her spine as her feet levitated off the ground. She opened her mouth as she began cackling, bones flying out of her body as she levitated toward the orcs, who were taken aback by the sudden change in character. As Sandy laughed, a dark green gas started to flow from her mouth. It came out thick as clouds and rolled over the orcs in front of her. Instantly, the orcs began coughing. Some of them fell over, clutching their chests as their movements slowed, others vomiting uncontrollably, and others still, their faces growing long with age, their skin turning gray and white. Sandy knelt beside one of the orcs and pressed her hand to his face. Sharp bones burst from his body, impaling all of the orcs around him.
