Delvers LLC: Adventure Capital

by Blaise Corvin

  It was probably too late for Mareen. He couldn’t imagine breaking that news to Henry, but if the group couldn’t survive long enough to close the helldoor, the entire issue was moot anyway.

  Bezzi-ibbi watched numbly as a huge demon to his left turned its head and fixed a cluster of eyes on him. The giant monster walked like a lizard, but with eight sets of legs. Its two tails lashed separate directions, leaving furrows in the earth with bony blades.

  A pair of small limbs terminating in whip-like, barbed tendrils guarded the demon’s back. There was no way for Bezzi-ibbi to even get near the thing to harm it, and it was probably fast enough that he couldn’t run away. Not for the first time, Bezzi-ibbi started certain death in the eyes, baring his teeth in challenge.

  He could smell the stinky fear on himself, but he ignored it. If this was his time to die, to greet his ancestors and Rark-han in the next hunting grounds under the sun, then he would leave this world like a true Family member of the Jaguar Clan. He would neither bow his head nor show his neck to an enemy.

  The demon lumbered forward, a cruel look in its many eyes. From the corner of Bezzi-ibbi’s vision, a golden glow appeared in the clouds above, but the young Jaguar Troubadour couldn't spare any attention for it.

  Then without warning, the nightmarish, reptilian demon was transfixed by a brilliant beam of light from the sky, blasting a hole through its body and setting it on fire. The true-demon thrashed and screamed, its enormous throat and lungs making an anguished bellow that shook the earth.

  Bezzi-ibbi panted in shock as a huge shadow fell from the darkness above, blocking out the red lighting flashing overhead. The figure landed with a curse…a familiar curse. “Fuck doing that again,” snarled Henry. He let go of Aodh in front of him and the young adventurer fell to the ground, nearly crying from relief. A little purple animal hopped down too, and Bezzi-ibbi sucked in a breath.

  Just standing there, the diminutive creature made his fur stand on end. Her menacing aura, even at this distance, was like a physical pressure. How could Henry tolerate standing there so casually?

  The shadow extending behind Henry snapped forward around his body, forming articulated armor even darker than the surrounding night. The protection formed just in time to block a crossbow bolt that pinged away harmlessly to the side.

  A cultist reared up out of a bank of fog, her empty crossbow pointed at Henry. After a chime, an LEDF message started scrolling across Bezzi-ibbi’s left eye.

  Fellis Trahuley, Ludan, Tolstian

  Dolos Orb, Specialist Type, Generation 1

  Secon—

  The scrolling immediately stopped and the words faded as the orb-Bonded cultist’s head disappeared, half of her face exploding into red mist. With wide eyes, Bezzi-ibbi glanced at Henry and noticed a new exogun extending past his hand made of the same material as his new armor. The Terran orb-Bonded sniffed and said, “Shooting crossbows at me? Get the fuck out of here with that shit.”

  The reality of the situation finally settled past Bezzi-ibbi’s whiskers. He had no idea how it was possible, but Henry-ibbi was truly there. His Clan-brother had come to offer support in their time of need. The young Hero grinned savagely. Demons were terrifying, but he knew from experience that the more hopeless a situation got, the harder Henry-ibbi fought in response.

  Henry leveled his exogun at another lumbering demon and four cracks split the night as he fired. The monster, a huge bull with the head of a man, its tail like a scorpion stinger, was blown apart. Each bullet Henry fired created gaping, violent holes in the demon’s body as it fell.

  As Bezzi-ibbi watched, the exogun melted back into Henry’s arm, and the Terran man removed a strange, wicked-looking club from his leg to hold casually in one hand. Behind him, a huge, bipedal, earthen figure slammed into the ground from the sky before standing up. When the new figure turned, Bezzi-ibbi could see a blonde Terran woman’s face behind the metal bars of its head.

  The woman in the bulky armor carried a massive halberd. She pointed one arm at the face of a nearby demon and a jet of fire burst forth, blinding the lobster-looking monstrosity for a short time. The distraction lasted long enough. The armored female took a couple crushing steps forward before swinging her massive, bladed weapon one-handed. The strike wasn’t particularly fast, but the sheer momentum and strength behind it cleaved the true-demon in half with a wet squelch of ruptured organs and breaking bones.

  Two smaller demons nearby were suddenly grabbed by a couple of earthen figures that erupted out of the soil. As they struggled, rolling across the ground, the woman in the massive armor skewered both demons with her enormous weapon. The two figures of dirt and clay melted back into the ground.

  The woman inside the deadly fighting suit let out a wild whoop. “Demons!” She yelled. “I never thought I’d get to kill true-demons!”

  “Hang on to your tits, Volleyball,” growled Henry. “We have no idea what is going on, well, other than my friends are in trouble. That and monsters are bad and killing them is good. “ He turned to the young Jaguar Clan adventurer. “Bezzi-ibbi,” Henry said.

  Bezzi-ibbi could feel his brother's steely gaze, almost like a physical pressure. Henry demanded, “What in the fucking fuck is going on here? And more importantly, where in the hell is my wife?”

  The young Hero's heart leaped to his throat and his whiskers drooped. Uh oh.

  Shattered

  All around Henry, the large monsters he’d seen from the air, which had been about to overwhelm his friends, all died one by one, bellowing in pain and confusion. Each creature was blasted, impaled by beams of light fired by the crew of the Delvers LLC Mosquito. The gunners’ airguns seemed to be effective too, but were not even on the same level as the daysler weapons.

  One nearby creature, standing at least the size of a Buick, went down with a hole in its head. Then the monster’s entire body burst into flame as either Rekkla, Trask, or Ceevil, zapped it with a daysler. Whatever these monsters were, they didn’t like concentrated light.

  Ceevil, Tanushree’s short, middle aged, orb-Bonded guardswoman, had insisted on coming along with Tanushree for their trip to Mensk, which had worked out rather well. The Bobrik bodyguard had quickly learned to fly the Delvers LLC Mosquito, and was doing so now while the goblin siblings, Trask and Rekkla, manned the guns. Henry had expected her to want to go with Tanushree, since she was the young noblewoman’s bodyguard, but Ceevil had shrugged and muttered that Tanushree was a big girl. Henry suspected that the guardswoman just wanted to fly the Mosquito and shoot things.

  At least the crew had had plenty of time to prepare for the current violence. They’d needed it after getting rusty on the rest of the trip.

  Other than Henry’s occasional side trips to attune to new transportation platforms he found while navigating, using his accidental map-based ability, the journey on the Mosquito had been largely uneventful except for killing the occasional flying monster. Everything had been more or less peaceful until they’d seen the red lightning in the distance. Once Henry had realized that Aodh’s mysterious directions had them heading straight for the strange lights, and saw the glow of fire, he assumed that his friends were involved somehow.

  Henry, Aodh, Tanushree, Ceevil, Trask, and Rekkla had had a quick meeting, and Henry had quickly laid out roles for the coming shenanigans. Even if he hadn’t believed his friends were involved with whatever they were flying into, turning around and not following Aodh’s directions had not been an option.

  Flying high above the violence on the ground, Henry had observed the fighting below with a grim expression. It seemed like the Delvers had been fighting for some time. Staying at a decent altitude had been risky due to the lightning, but turned out to be useful as Henry observed Jason fight, dispatching flying monsters that were invisible until they were killed. Hopefully, Jason got them all.

  Henry was glad they’d risked the freaky lightning instead of invisible monsters with stingers the size of his head.

  Then he’d instru
cted Ceevil to begin lowering the Mosquito so they could come to the Delvers’ aid. As it turned out, they’d probably been just in time, reaching the optimum engagement distance as larger, more dangerous monsters had started appearing.

  The Mosquito had had to hover fairly low to the ground to drop off Tanushree in the V-death. The armor easily attached and detached to the bottom of the Mosquito for transport, but Tanushree couldn’t survive a fall from too high up - even with the strength of her magic and protected by the V-death.

  While Tanushree climbed into her earthen mecha suit, Henry grabbed Aodh, who’d in turn carried Honey, and darkglided all three of them down to the ground. Henry thought he was getting good at naming things. Darkgliding had been kind of an accidental discovery when he’d fallen off the Mosquito during the battle with the rock wyrm.

  His first thought as he had fallen through the air was that he really needed to install better safety measures to prevent falling. Then he’d realized that to survive to do so, he’d need to think of something fast.

  The first thing he’d done was slam into place his new metal mind ability, using magic to focus his brain. He’d gotten the idea from the way Jason’s magic could speed up thoughts. Henry couldn’t do the same thing, but he could filter out all distractions to focus entirely on one thing. As it turned out, this ability was probably better than just thinking faster - at least for him.

  On the way down, a solution had presented itself to Henry. He’d conjured darksteel armor around his torso, then generated a monowing, almost like a hang glider. Henry had hang glided a few times in his early twenties, so leveling out and slowing his descent hadn’t been terribly difficult. However, with even more time to think about the problem, he’d figured out another issue.

  In the air, he couldn’t imbue himself with strength from the earth. Being at regular human strength would make landing potentially more painful than it had to be. The solution, and by extension a new ability, had occurred to him before he’d landed.

  When he’d been close enough, Henry had extended a line of darksteel towards the ground, stretching the maximum amount of material he could manipulate to the limit. As soon as his tendril of darksteel had touched the ground, Henry had been able to draw strength from the earth. The experience had also taught him that he could use darksteel to form a limb of sorts.

  All these thoughts flashed through his mind while Bezzi-ibbi just looked at him instead of answering his question about Mareen. Henry felt his skin grow cold. His thoughts immediately went to some dark places, but he forced himself back into the present. He absently noted that Aodh was standing guard to one side, presumably protecting Henry’s back while he tried to interrogate Bezzi-ibbi. Honey was staying near their feet, examining the carnage around them with an air of curiosity.

  “Bezzi-ibbi, could you please answer my question? You can speak in English.” Henry felt his patience fraying, a fact that was not helped by the end-of-the-world weather, a glowing portal nearby, and the death screams of creepier than normal, dangerous monsters from every direction.

  The Jaguar Clan Hero just continued to stare at Henry. The scene would have been comical if Henry weren’t so worried, and if the boy weren’t covered in blood and holding a sword he’d pulled from his metal arm on the middle of a terrifying, burning battlefield. When Jason appeared nearby with a rush of displaced air, Bezzi-ibbi scampered off. The young Jaguar Clan Hero dodged a firebolt from out of the swirling smoke and jumping onto a monster being roasted by Vitaliya, slamming his sword into its back.

  “Did the kid just run off and fight monsters instead of answering my question?” asked Henry.

  “Nice to see you too,” said Jason wryly. “We’ve been exchanging MMB’s for a while, but it’s still crazy to see you in person. How in the hell are you even here? It was starting to look grim for a while. I thought we were about to get overrun, but your new machine is really making the difference. It’s...honestly really a relief that you’re here.” Jason gestured at the hellscape around them and awkwardly shifted his weight from foot to foot.

  Henry looked at his friend, aghast when he realized that Jason was feeling emotional. In the background, their team fought for their lives, and stray bolts of deadly magic sped out of the darkness, sometimes narrowly missing one of the Delvers. Giant monsters continued to pour out of the red glowy thing in the near distance. Granted, a lot of them were getting cut down as soon as the crew in the Mosquito above them could light the things up with dayslers, but the entire surrounding area was a wasteland of nightmares and violence under the cover of night.

  “Are you seriously thinking about hugging me in the middle of all this shit?” Henry asked, vaguely gesturing around them. “There are literally monsters all over the fucking place. The only reason I’m even here to help in time is because of Aodh’s ridiculous magic.”

  Jason frowned. “They’re true-demons, not standard monsters. And come on, man, you’re my best friend and we thought you were dead for weeks before we started sending letters back and forth. Stop trying to act like a hard ass all the time.”

  Henry huffed, “Fine. Hurry up and hug me, but then you need to tell me where the hell my wife is. I want to see Mareen. If we all end up dying here, I’m not doing so before I can tell her some things and finally fix the servant collar stuff.”

  Jason had grinned and he’d started forward to hug Henry, but then froze when Mareen was mentioned. The taller man’s hesitation made Henry’s stomach drop, and he felt his self-control threatening to break. This is bad.

  “You were watching above for at least a while, right? How do you not know?” asked Jason slowly.

  Henry opened his mouth, not knowing what he was going to say, when a loud announcement rang out across the battlefield. The contralto female voice cut through the surrounding bedlam, creating a hush and causing the fighting to come to a sudden pause. The nearby demons stilled, and the stray bolts of magic from out of the darkness paused.

  “This is your last chance to join us. The hellgate grows larger, and there is nothing you can do about it. The larger the portal grows, the larger the demons will be. The elite forces of Berber are no doubt on their way, but by the time they get here, it will be too late. Definitely too late for you.”

  The woman was standing on a glowing disc, surrounded by some sort of force field, hovering above and behind the portal. The woman wore dark robes like all the other cultists Henry had seen, but hers were much more ornate, with black on black decorations of terrible imagery and glyphs that were just fundamentally wrong. She also wore a hood that hid most of her features.

  Henry guessed the glowy thing was the hellgate, which made sense with all the demons coming out of it, and a few things immediately clicked into place again. Jason’s jaw was set and he looked grim, the dancing shadows from a nearby flame playing over his face.

  “You have Yelm with you! I saw him! If he’s a friend, you’re an enemy!” shouted Jason.

  Henry muttered, “Really? Yelm was with them? That’s a pretty crazy coincidence. Please tell me you killed that son of a bitch.”

  “No, he’s still alive, and I don’t think it was a coincidence he was here. Remember the Asag stuff all over George’s cabin? Yelm attacked Mareen and she took off chasing him before...before we lost her,” Jason answered softly. “I was saving Vitaliya when it all happened and only caught the last bit of it. I saw when she...was taken.”

  A few more things clicked into place for Henry. The crew of the Mosquito had stopped firing. Henry’s thoughts felt like they were treading through honey, and he absently added combat training for the Mosquito crew to his future to-do list. The goblin gunners in particular should know better than to stop firing unless ordered to. He noticed that while everyone was distracted by the woman on the platform, more demons were slowly coming out of the portal.

  The woman on the platform held up her gloved hands, announcing, “Yelm disobeyed orders. He will be punished. If you join our ranks, you can still have a legal feud.
Our God understands hatred.

  “Come serve Asag and know what it is like to be victorious! Even now, agents of Asag work to open a helldoor above Mensk, the capital of Tolstey! Our plans are clever and our will is strong! We will triumph! Triumph with us, or die as you struggle!”

  As the woman in the air droned on, Henry frowned and unlimbered his sniper rifle. He’d been practicing with the weapon a lot. “Fuck this,” he muttered.

  The cultist standing on the glowing disk in the sky was still ranting. “If you will lay down your arms and pledge your souls to Asag, we will—” Her words were cut short, turning to a shrill scream as Henry’s max power bullet tore through the priestess’ shield, shattering it, and took off her leg at the knee. Motes of crimson light from the broken shield joined drops of blood, spraying out behind the woman as she reeled backward.

  Henry grunted in satisfaction, opened the bolt, and inserted another special round. His sniper rifle rounds were still largely made of gold, but also had an iron core that had never been exposed to air in any way, even while leaving the earth. It was Henry’s secret method to make his armor-piercing rounds, allowing the use of non-blessed iron. Each bullet had a thin layer of silver at the tip too, protecting it from the friction of hypersonic flight, and maybe even providing a bit of spooky mojo.

  The bullets sure seemed to be doing their job on the cultist in the air. Henry managed to get another shot off before the woman fell, destroying her shoulder in the process. As part of the priestess’ arm disappeared with the exit wound, her screams redoubled.

  The Delvers nearby all turned to look at Henry, blinking. He growled, “Why the fuck are you just standing around? While that psycho bitch was ranting, more monsters or demons or whatever keep coming out of that fucking portal! Get your thumbs out and kill things!”