She stands behind me, silent and ready, taking her dagger back. She’s assertive, dominant in her stance, ready. Not for combat, like Syl, but she’s definitely someone who's used to acting. I wonder if it’s her or the memories of her creator she has locked inside.
Doesn’t matter, just now. First, escape.
I reach for the lock with my mind.
At first, I don’t feel anything. I extend my senses as far as I can, and just feel… For anything. My awareness stops at the boundaries of the cell, probably because of the same barrier that keeps Astra at bay. But the lock is inside that zone, and if I can just…
There. It’s odd, cold and metallic in my mind. In the past, I’ve used my power as a weapon, or more recently to save Astra, but in each case, I was using it on a living being or as a club. But this is something new. Again. A tiny lock, nonliving and with no life signature.
But I find it. Reach inside its workings with my power. Feel its shape and texture. Wrap my mind around…
“Got it,” I whisper. A simple tumbler, barely even a lock at all. Just need to turn…
Astra whoops as the lock clicks over like distant thunder. The door slowly swings open, letting out a low squeal. My head aches already, but it’s bearable.
And we’re out. I trade grins with the AI and peek around the corner.
The passageway is barely lit by torches set into the wall. They drip oily bits of slag that drift lazily to the moist stones, hissing when they hit. Despite the acrid smoke crowding the low ceiling and the shitty light, I can still clearly make out one of our captors at the far end.
An orc. Hulking, blanketed in a mishmash assortment of armor and deadly weapons, turning toward me as if sensing that I’m loose. Despite the passage being like eight feet across, it still fills the space and has to stoop to avoid hitting its head on the uneven ceiling. Its eyes reflect the torchlight as it starts toward us and as it pulls a jagged sword as long as my body from its back. Muscles like cordwood ripple as the blade comes free, and teeth longer than my fingers drip saliva, probably at the thought of tearing me apart and eating me.
He’s terrifying. A perfect image from a nightmare.
No sweat.
I smile, push Astra behind me. “I got this.”
“Sam,” she hisses. “Last time, you almost died and–”
I grin over my shoulder. Maybe it’s stupid, but this is the first trial, and it’s kind of hard not to show off for her. “Been through a lot since then. Levelled up, you know? Like I said, I got this.”
She grumbles something at my back as I step fully into the passageway. Something about being foolish, but she doesn’t stop me. At the last moment, she passes me her dagger and steps back into the cell.
I stride forward a few steps. The orc slows, clearly confused as to why I’m not afraid. “Howdy, Arok.”
It stops fully, about ten paces away. “How you know my name?” Its long fangs jut over lips covered in scar tissue as he considers me. “We fought before?”
“Oh yeah. We go way back.”
Arok rolls his shoulders. “Guess Gruk didn’t beat you hard enough. Lazy swine.” His grin is pure bloodthirst. “I can fix that.”
I almost bust out one of about a hundred stupid movie one liners that pop into my head at this, but in the end, I stay silent.
Arok shrugs, his back almost brushing the ceiling, and starts toward me slowly. He whirls his blade, and it’s kind of hard to take my eyes from its ghastly length as it reflects the torchlight.
A part of me screams to run or hide, or to use my mind powers to punch a hole through the orc’s chest. But no. I realize that coming out here alone, even after telling Astra that we’re a team, is about more than that. We were on the brink of escape, so close to getting out of this fucking place that we could taste it. And now we’re back, and I’m staring down the same first challenge orc that Mika stabbed in the eye what feels like a lifetime ago.
No, this isn’t really about showing off my new strength or power.
It’s about being pissed.
Arok stops again just a few feet away. We size each other up one last time. Violence crackles in the air between us. It’s utterly silent save Astra panting in fear.
00:04:49
With a roar, Arok shatters the stillness and charges. From utterly still to an avalanche thundering toward me, bringing his blade around like a scythe. His movement is so sudden, so primally predatory, that it almost takes me by surprise.
Almost.
With my mind, I tear off his arm.
The move is instinctual, seizing my power and pulling in an instant. I don’t have to be precise, not when his arm is the size of a tree trunk. Arok stumbles as he shrieks a surprisingly human scream. His arm rolls to my feet as he buckles and thunders to his knees. Black blood sprays from his flailing stump into the cell next to him, sluicing past prison bars in a torrent. He comes to rest an arm’s length away. Triumph swells my chest. Finishing him off will be cake.
Fuck yes. I turn to grin at Astra, give her a thumbs up, when something slams into me so hard I feel ribs shatter in my chest. Astra screams as I sail backward and careen off the wall, falling in a tangled heap of agony.
What… What happened?
Breathing. Heavy, snarling above me. I moan, manage to roll over as shards of bone do terrible things to my insides. My vision’s clouded with blood from somewhere. Did I hit my head?
This can’t be happening. I had this.
Arok holds his stump over me, and fat droplets of blood spatter my face. One falls into my panting mouth, choking me. It tastes like acid, like the worst rotgut booze of all time, and I choke, coughing as I turn my head away. His remaining fist is clenched and bloody where he…
He punched me.
Fingers like tree branches grip me by the shirt and lift. Arok brings me so close to his face that I can smell his rotting teeth. “You pay for that, goblin shite. Gonna tear you apart, piece by piece.” He pins me against cell bars with his shoulder, freeing his arm. “First, payback.” He takes my limp arm in his fist and starts to pull.
The pain is intense. I struggle, kick with everything I have despite the screaming protest from my broken body. I’ve been powered up by this place over and over, can practically punch through a wall at this point. How is he overpowering me so easily? How can this be happening?
Something tears in my shoulder. Frantic, I try to seize my power, but it slips from my mind’s grip like quicksilver. The pain, from my torn organs and broken bones, from my soon to be detached arm, is so intense that I can’t concentrate, can’t think, can’t…
A scream. Is it me? It must be. Not surprised.
Then I’m falling. The pressure on my arm and chest disappear and I tumble to the stone floor in a heap. How? I don’t care. Can’t care. Hurts too much. Can barely think.
I’d be dead right now, finished, if not for my upgrades. But even with them it takes everything in my power to pull myself together enough to look up.
It takes a moment to understand what I’m seeing. Arok stands perfectly rigid, mouth open in a silent scream. His body’s ramrod straight above me, eyes rolled back in his head, dead.
A spear of silver is punched through the back of his head, shattering his teeth on the way out his mouth. It extends so far that it’s cut through one of the cell bars I was pinned against.
What is it? Where’d it come from? It’s hard to care as I lay, trying to push aside the pain long enough to understand what the hell’s going on.
The spear. It’s silver. Familiar.
Astra.
It wasn’t me screaming. I realize it as the blade retreats and Arok’s body thuds next to mine. It was her. Shrieking as she sliced through the back of the orc’s head.
Arok’s falling body reveals her behind him. She stands, arm still extended, frozen in place. Halfway along its length her bicep flattens to the silver blade that’s still slowly retracting. She’s as frozen as the dead orc, eyes wide and terrified as she s
tares at his dead body at her feet.
“Astra,” I cough, spraying a misting of blood. God this hurts. I’m getting really goddamn tired of almost dying, and I’m not looking forward to the healing.
I can’t blame anyone but myself, this time.
My voice animates her, and Astra falls to her knees next to me. “Oh God, Sam. Oh no. What do I… Why did I let you… Dammit… Why did you… So stupid…”
“Tell me how stupid I am… Later… Right now… Healing… Chamber…” I manage.
“Right. God. Not thinking… Not… Not used to this.” Her voice is ragged. She’s worse than Mika when we were here before, close to unravelling. I don’t have the ability to wonder why. I’m barely capable of caring, at this point.
Have to. Have to help her. Guide her. “Arm, something wrong with my arm.” It’s not broken, but the pain is fucking ghost pepper to the eyeballs terrible.
She takes in the wound and if anything, her eyes widen. “Oh, God,” she whispers. She stills, schools her expression. “I can do this, can…” She shudders. “Like when you cut your fingers off with the bandsaw, John. That was… That was bad. But I iced them, and we got you to the hospital, and a few months later you could almost bend your pinky!” The smile she flashes is a little unhinged.
John? Bandsaw? Uhh…
Astra’s hands flash at me, fingertips thinning to tiny blades. A moment later, my shirts sliced free and like some kind of black magic she’s got it a tourniquet cinched high on my shoulder. Why? Why do I need…
Oh. I’ve avoided looking so far, but when I see why she’s trying to choke off my arm, I almost pass out. My wrist is purple where Arok’s iron grip at my wrist yanked, but my bicep...The bone isn’t broken, but the skin is split in a ring, and revealing torn and shredded muscle. Blood drenches the ground below me, fed by my beating heart.
I’ve had cuts in my life that didn’t hurt until I really looked at them. Like a little slice to the back of your hand or something. This is kind of like that, except is already hurt like a motherfucker. As do my ribs. And head. And my everything else. But looking at my arm… Sweet Jesus. It’s like going over a waterfall in a barrel made of pain and plummeting into a pool of molten lava. When my brain processes what’s been done to my tender flesh…
I pass out. Only for a moment, though, because Astra pulling the tourniquet tight pulls another moan of agony from my shredded lungs.
She sits back. “Okay. You won’t bleed out before we run out of time, now.”
“How… Long…”
“Three minutes and forty-five seconds,” she says, still on her knees.
One minute? That’s all the time that’s passed since I faced down Arok? Goddamn. Pain makes time pass slow as hell.
“Last thing,” she says. “Gotta seal it.”
Memory of Mika cauterizing my stumps punches into my mind like a hammer. “No, no… No fire. Just… Let’s get out of–”
“Not like that. Watch.” Astra reaches for my torn flesh and her hand melts. Her mass flows around my wound, ringing it completely, staunching the much lighter flow of blood. When she’s completely surrounded my torn flesh, she pulls her arm back, leaving her liquid metal band aid behind and forming new fingers. “There. Should last.”
My mouth hangs open, and for once, it’s not because I’m dying. Her silver flesh flows around my bicep, soothing, numbing somehow, not going liquid when she releases it. I don’t know how, and I don’t care. “Astra… You are amazing.”
She blushes, looks down. “Hard to feel that way when I’m so scared.”
Another thought occurs. Probably the wrong time to mention it with only with only a few minutes till this turns into A Nightmare on Shepherd Street, but I’m not thinking clearly. “You called me John… Something about a bandsaw.”
Astra falls back, stricken. “I did… What? I… Oh no…” Her eyes close tight.
“What is it?”
“Later… I’ll… I’ll tell you later, Sam. Sam,” she says again, more forcefully. “Sam.”
“That’s my name, don’t wear it out.” I start to laugh before my pulped lungs put a stop to that. Something about how freaked she is, beyond what this place and the orc she just killed should cause, sounds an alarm in my head. But later. Later.
“Okay. There’s… There’s another orc. Not sure why… Not here yet. Maybe… Spawns in when the first one dies?”
The hallway’s empty, but Astra still stands, turning, panicked. “Where is he?”
“You’d know better than me. Watched… The first trial… Remember?”
“I don’t know, Sam. I told you, this place changes. And I… Having trouble remembering… I’m…” Her body’s shaking like a leaf. She’s losing it.
“Astra. Astra!” I shout when she doesn’t respond. “We can… Do this. You’re… Amazing. Just… Have to think… Before he gets here.”
Like prophecy, a voice echoes from down the hall and around a distant corner. “Oi! What’s all that ruck?”
Astra kneels next to me, a hand to my bare chest. She’s so warm. Her touch feels so good. Comfort to the dying.
So tired. Could just close my eyes and rest. So tired.
“Sam! Sam!” Astra’s shaking me. My eyes snap open. She’s so close I could lean forward and kiss her. Want to… So beautiful…
But she’s crying. Why? She’s…
“Sam, I don’t know what to do! Help me… Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me alone here…”
That sobers me. Shit. That was close. I don’t have long.
Have to think. Astra’s whole, unhurt, but she’s freaked. Not thinking straight. Need an idea, and need it right fucking now.
“Change… Form. Arok. Change into… Arok. Bluff until other one is close. Then kill. Then you go all ‘Meet the Spy’... Stabby stabby,” I chuckle.
Astra’s lips thin, pale with worry. “I’ll… I’ll try.”
Rustling from down the hall. We don’t have long.
Astra stands, and her hand goes molten as she puts out the torch sputtering above my head. Arok’s hulking corpse and my way tinier body are shrouded in darkness. Smart. Then she moves a few paces away before hesitating.
For a moment I wonder if the panic’s too much for her, if she’ll unravel, but after only a second, she shifts. Her sexy nerd form disappears as she turns pure silver, and then she expands, growing, widening until she’s as massive as Arok was.
Details come next; the orc’s mismatched armor, his green skin practically bursting with muscle and veins, his collection of weapons dangling haphazardly from his gorilla frame. Within moments, a perfect carbon copy of Arok stand with his back to me, grunting in the tiny space.
It’s enough to make me draw back on instinct. Raw memory of how the asshole just went Street Fighter on me is too fresh, and her replica is so good I almost panic.
No, that’s the blood loss. The pain. Still not thinking clearly. The edges of my vision are dark, getting worse. Having trouble breathing.
I will never get used to this shit.
Hurry, Astra. Please.
For all her fear, she doesn’t hesitate. As the other orc, Gruk, comes around the corner, she bellows. “Ey! Over here. Prisoners tried to escape.”
“How they do that?” Gruk rumbles as strides up the passage. If anything, he’s even bigger than Arok, and he looks a lot angrier. “They’s locked up. What’d you do, open ‘em up to ‘ave some fun? I told you that girl’s too small for you to–”
He slows as he spots the blood spattering the walls and floor. I can barely see his face past Astra’s tree trunk legs as he takes in the carnage. “Arok. You kill ‘em?”
Astra lumbers forward, hands up. Blood coats them, something I’m absolutely sure wasn’t true a moment ago. Nice. She’s thinking on her feet. “Had to. He had a dagger, somehow. Tried to put me spittin’ eye out. She’s still alive.” She scratches her groin. “I think.”
“Sweet Denmother, you stupid fuck,” Gruk spits, coming chest to ches
t with her. “How we gonna explain this to Shandraq? How are we–”
He freezes and his eyes go wide as he draws close to Astra. He’s taller than her, looking over her shoulder. It’s so dark back here, but somehow he still spotted us. Shit. Can orcs see in the dark?
There’s no hesitation in him as he swings his arms like twin hammers to the sides of Astra’s head. She reaches up at the last moment, catching his wrists, bellowing spit into Gruk’s face as she shouts her fear.
The stand like that, struggling, for long moments. Her new form must give her some freaky badass strength, because Gruk doesn’t smash her flat. But he’s gaining ground, overpowering her, and her trembling arms can’t take much more of his brutal power. I don’t know what happens to her if he hits her in this form, or why she doesn’t go liquid on him, but it doesn’t matter.
Only one thing does.
“Stab!” I wheeze as loud as I can, stealing the last of my breath.
I can’t see what happens, but Gruk screams. A torrent of blood explodes from his throat, coating Astra like a crimson sheet. He writhes in her grip, twitching, before there’s another jerk and he falls to the stones, dead before he hits the ground.
How? I didn’t see her move, didn’t see…
Oh.
She turns just as twin blades as thick as broadswords retract into her chest. In moments she’s back by my side, still in orc form. She stares down at me, eyes wide, searching.
“Holy… Shit… You… Stabbed him with your… With your…” I giggle.
It’s bizarre, hearing a sob of fear and relief from Arok’s terrifying frame. She lifts me in her arms like a child. “Keep laughing, Sam. Don’t die. We’re so close.”
My arm flops as she picks me up, giving me a glimpse of my wrist display. Forty seconds. “Better… Run…”
She does, eating the distance to the corner like a marathon runner. “Have to put you down, now,” she rumbles as we turn the corner, coming face to face with the exit door. “Can’t open it like this.”
“S’okay,” I slur. “I can… Stand…”
She bites her lips so hard it blanches. “No, you can’t. But maybe…” She liquefies again, turning pure silver.
Aspirant 2: A Sci-Fi Harem Adventure Page 4
