Equalize

by Ryan DeBruyn

Spawn of Draksus

  Level 34

  Master-Salamander

  The first to emerge exhaled and a gout of fire shot into the air directly at the stunned forms of the mechanoids who thought they were safe high up in the sky. Two more of Corsair’s goons were hit, and at first, they seemed to have weathered the fire, but whatever the salamander had just unleashed wasn’t done. Something liquid and caustic must have been contained in the blast because all along the straight path wherever the fire touched back to Earth, new fires roared to life.

  The two afflicted mechanoids screamed desperately, looking around for any help that could be administered. They both took off for the river, one after the other, but unfortunately for them, they never made it. A moment later, two hunks of metal fell from the sky trailing smoke.

  As if the first salamander was a queue, the other emerging forms roared and breathed their fire sacs’ contents at any nearby enemy. The scene went from a sunny afternoon day to an artist’s rendering of hell on earth in seconds. Rocky and Sela were only spared a searing death because they were on the leeward side of the rock from a nearby salamander.

  Now Rocky was getting a better picture of what must have happened. The salamanders must have been another type of spawn from this Draksus creature. When the water crocs showed up, they must have forced the fire type spawns deeper into the cave and eventually to burrow under the earth.

  Most of the golems were completely unbothered by the fire. Only the ones whose core material was wood seemed to have a problem. A few of the wooden ones fell, but many were saved by the soil component of their new bio-armor which stopped the fire from reaching the interior wooden body.

  Now instead of plain golems, massive, flaming infernals seemed to be stomping towards the salamanders. Many of the engulfed creatures were losing limbs mid-step to Corsair’s landmines, which were going off all around the two huddling forms of Rocky and Sela.

  In some cases, a salamander’s back would erupt with numerous explosions, and the creature would just joyfully suck in the new form of sustenance. In the distance, the five golem parliament knights stood from their seats and began moving.

  All of this happened in a few seconds before massive crashes sounded over the entire battlefield. Golems collided with salamanders in titanic duels, often two golems tag-teaming a single salamander. Rocky looked at Sela, and he could see in her eyes the worry that probably reflected in his own.

  That brief moment was gone a moment later when Rocky grabbed firm control of his emotions.

  Never let them see you worry!

  Remembering an adage his father had taught him about competition, Rocky began thinking desperately. There must be a way to get out of this death trap. He began searching his bag for ideas and smiled when he saw an item that might just help him eliminate Corsair.

  Knowing he had one portion solved, he continued searching desperately through his bag as the ground continued to shake and reptilian roars sounded around him. A brief glimpse of the boss golem, which was currently ripping a salamander in two, convinced Rocky that it was the fulcrum of this battle.

  Mentally, he told Azoth to drop off his cargo away from the battle, then to swing back around to him and Sela. He then looked at Sela and said, “You are going to have to transform into a bird and fly out of here. Azoth is going to come to grab me.”

  Sela shook her head, also steeling her expression. “I will wait and leave with you both then.” Rocky could see her resolve and chose not to argue with her. Instead, he decided to use the time he had to begin planning a way to ensure Corsair’s demise. That’s when any plan he had was turned on its head.

  The boss golem was suddenly surrounded by row upon row of massive teeth in an albino white snout. The snout seemed to have spouted out of nowhere but had actually come out of the ground directly below and behind the golem. The jaws crunched down around the golem, pinning one of its arms to its side as the nightmarish creature rotated out of the earth.

  Damn it! That thing has the remains of the beacon inside it!

  The creature was completely bleached and was easily twice as long as the forty-story golem was tall. Its jaws encircled the thickly bio-armored body of the boss. Rocky shook his head and used Analyze, still shocked at how fast his luck had turned.

  Draksus

  Level 95

  Master-White Ground Drake

  Territory Leader

  Moderate Analyze failed to provide additional information.

  The golem struggled against the massive jaws of the beast but didn’t seem to have an effect. That’s when it chose to start using its free hand to pummel the creature, and Rocky could feel the impacts five-hundred meters away. Even that far away, the percussion of the metal fist on scaly hide was enough to make his skull rattle.

  Rocky looked at Sela, and they both took a deep breath. Something was going to have to be done. Otherwise, the two boss creatures in this battle might do enough damage to each other to allow Corsair to win the fight. This was something that hadn’t been fully fleshed out in his earlier plan; he had been hoping that Draksus would remain out of it.

  Draksus shook its massive head and released the troublesome prey simultaneously. The forty-story creature was sent flying as if it was a paperweight. The roar that Draksus let out, once it had cleared its mouth, put to shame its flying cousin that had been near Rocky’s Territory. They had also been farther away from that drake or dragon.

  A moment after its crash landing, the golem was back on its feet, looking a little worse for wear, but now, it began collecting the other surviving golems around itself. This was going to be a titanic battle, and it was definitely past time to make an escape. Azoth chose that moment to inform Rocky that he was returning.

  Rocky enacted a portion of his earlier plan and crossed his metaphorical fingers. First, he pulled five of the ten gravity grenades out of his bag and looped them together to form a cluster. Then he depressed the pins on two of them before lobbing them as high into the air under Corsair as he could.

  The cluster flew exceptionally far into the air, aided by the Strength of Rocky’s arm. It actually stayed airborne for the whole four seconds, which he and Sela used to run as far away in Stealth as they could. The two of them held hands, and Rocky pulled her away from a few of Corsair’s landmines that his Perception helped him detect through a feeling of danger.

  The cluster was approximately a dozen feet off the ground when the two grenades detonated and set off the other three. Suddenly, the easy run from a moment ago turned into a struggle. It was like running through water against a current. It took every ounce of strength for Rocky to fight against the pull from behind him.

  Corsair and his last remaining goon weren’t expecting the shift in a fundamental law of the universe, so it took them a moment to react, and by that point, they were far too close to the epicenter. The full power of their jet propulsion was only fighting off the slow drag the miniature black hole was causing.

  The two Master class monsters also were slowly shifting towards the pull, followed by all surviving creatures in about a five-hundred-meter radius. Rocky and Sela were about a kilometer distant, and if they stopped fighting, they would begin hurtling back along their previous route.

  No longer too worried about being overheard, Sela yelled at Rocky, “Five was too many! Next time, could you consult me before doing something reckless!”

  Rocky smiled and turned his head to wink at her, straining every muscle for another step. With each struggling stride, it got more comfortable, and before too long, it felt like he was moving at his average running speed before Ether.

  Azoth landed in front of the two of them a few minutes later, and they both stopped to look back, well past the pull of the strange gravity. The raging battle had turned into something cataclysmic. Salamanders, golems, and mechanical humans were all orbiting around a small, black spot, slowly circling, accompanied by dirt, debris, and many stone boulders.

  Rocky couldn’t make out if Corsair was bei
ng hurt or not, but with the amount of fire and debris, he could only hope that the cockroach was being charbroiled and beaten to a pulp. The effect wouldn’t last long, and Rocky wanted to be away before it ended.

  He took out his eight remaining plasma grenades and laid them on the ground. Then he grinned manically and looked at Sela. “Think you can get them that far? Don’t depress the pins. The flames will do that for us.”

  Together, they lobbed one grenade after another, each thrown weapon speeding up as it traveled and going farther than either of the two could throw.

  Once the grenades were exhausted, Sela and he both climbed aboard Azoth and flew off a bit farther to rejoin Jason and Joe. Rocky could only hope that the plasma grenades would add to the chances of Corsair’s death. He doubted they would hurt either of the boss creatures.

  Azoth curiously added as they flew away, “Azoth not know golems and lizards could fly. Azoth thought wings made flying. Maybe I just…”

  Azoth folded his wings for a second, and both Sela and Rocky rode a roller coaster, simultaneously screaming at the birdbrain. A moment later, he snapped his wings open, and they leveled out to the sounds of his chuffing laughter.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The group of Sela, Rocky, and Azoth walked through the tall grass, moving in a direction that Azoth had indicated was congregating a significant amount of humans. On the way back, without the rush, it was extremely noticeable to see the damage that Corsair and his camp of misfits had done. Burnt out husks of schools and libraries smoldered in all directions.

  All of the ones that Rocky had seen were empty, and that did bode well for the work of the Militia. However, these schools were the ones closer to the hospital as well. They still resided in the city proper, and Rocky worried about the survivors who were in the surrounding suburbs.

  As they walked, they enjoyed a silence that could only be accomplished when each person is deeply consumed by their own thoughts, each one struggling with morality issues, failures, and hopeful success. Rocky felt his failures weighing far more onerously than his most recent victory.

  If he had chosen to just save those boys and perhaps taken his friends from St. Monika to Algonquin Gorge, they would have been alive. Rocky vowed to himself to get stronger and be able to avoid situations like this in the future. Trying to save people he hadn’t known had cost him the lives of six people he had.

  It was a butcher’s bill that looking back at his actions seemed unnecessary. Rocky started a list—Alex Watt, Oliver Grees, Patrick Rose, Phil Jean, Nick Petron, and Jeff Reed. Perhaps when he arrived back at Algonquin Gorge, he could start a memorial for those who had fallen.

  Looking around at the new world, Rocky realized just how large of a number that would be. The two people beside him were some of the strongest he knew, and they hadn’t even been able to join a fight amongst titans moments ago. His mood soured slightly, and he looked to Sela, who had been given a second chance at life in the few weeks since the apocalypse.

  This brought his first smile, and as positive thoughts have a way of doing, it showed him others. Rocky had rescued some people early on, and they were alive and functioning in his Territory already. Furthermore, he might have just saved all the survivors of Ottawa from a slow death.

  His mood grew better and better until he saw a streak fly through the sky, trailing black smoke to their west. Rocky swore and pointed at the object that looked suspiciously humanoid right before it crashed into the ground. Rocky looked at his group and then hopped on Azoth. “Sela, I will be right back.”

  He took a short flight to the crash site of a long smoking gouge in the earth. Rocky dismounted and walked to the end of the crater to peer down at a severely damaged red metal form. Corsair was hardly recognizable because his face was entirely burnt off, and all that remained was whirling metal components underneath. His legs were removed below the knees, and one entire arm was also missing at the shoulder joint. Much of his body seemed to have melted to slag metal, and Rocky was surprised he had even made it this far from the site of the battle.

  Where his eyes would have been were two blackened, empty, metal sockets. It would seem that Corsair was on the last of his considerable strength, and even though he might die without help, Rocky was going to speed it along.

  Jumping into the hole, Rocky got right beside the severely damaged mechanoid before crooning, “Hello, Corsair, we meet again! I’m so glad that it wasn’t the last time outside the shop.”

  A look of horror came on to what was left of Corsair’s face. He attempted to engage his thrusters, but Rocky plunged his sword through his right leg, disabling that thruster and pinning Corsair in place. A wicked smile plastered itself on to Rocky’s face. “No, we are going to talk, you and I. You are responsible for so much death and all of it for your own power!”

  Rocky removed the sword and plunged it into the other leg faster than a striking snake, disabling its thruster as well. Corsair didn’t cry, and his face even began to calm down. “You think you have won by defeating me?”

  “I was protecting the people of Ottawa! What can you do? What can anyone do against the monsters that the world faces!” Corsair was seething with pure hatred, and Rocky took an involuntary step back.

  Rocky had been hoping the maniac might reveal a bit more of what had been happening in Ottawa. He was the only man with the full picture, but the man in front of him was psychotic and broken. Rocky chose to remain silent and see if Corsair was forthcoming with more information.

  It worked, as Corsair spat blindly towards Rocky, “I am just a pawn in the game of my patron. They will have received the beacon signal and even now will be on their way here to annihilate you all. You can’t stop the Mechano-Lords. They are the most technologically advanced guild in the universe!”

  Rocky narrowed his eyes and had to wonder if that was true. Corsair was definitely mechanical proof that this guild of Mechano-Lords had some real power, but he was also a broken Master class. Perhaps there was hope that these idiots weren’t as all-powerful as Corsair had been led to believe?.

  “Regardless of what you have done here, they will come and wipe out anyone who opposes them. Soon, this planet will be under their thumb. They will create statues of the people who helped them and not even pick up the bodies of those who didn’t. Everyone will burn.” The ranting continued along that vein for a while, and Rocky began to grow bored.

  Sensing that nothing more was going to be said, he pulled out his Soul Blade and decapitated the soulless machine in front of him. Then he stabbed it through the chest as an added measure of security before using Analyze.

  Corsair (Jack Jameson)

  Level 47

  Master-Mechanoid

  Dead

  Rocky sighed heavily at seeing the final note in his Analyze. There was no way that Corsair could bother anyone ever again. For the first time, killing someone didn’t make Rocky feel the least bit of guilt. Instead, he felt accomplishment and joy.

  Azoth and Rocky made their way back to Sela, who had been continuing along the previous path. With Rocky’s vantage in the sky, he was the first to see the gathering group of humans who were ringed by tanks and militia. A notification popped up.

  Congratulations! You have completed a quest.

  Save the Ottawa Survivors 2

  You have saved a total of 8,043 people from an original 121,321. As the original quest only specified 5% survival rate and you have managed 6.6%, you will be given an extra 16% Etherience. Great job!

  18,659,760 Etherience Awarded

  Talk to the survivors to persuade them to join your Territory.

  His feeling of euphoria drained faster than water from a bottomless bucket. How had so few survived the week? Rocky had thought five percent was going to be an easy accomplishment, but clearly, he had nearly missed that goal.

  When he landed beside the other two, Sela glanced up from a screen and gave him a brief smile before speaking, “We did the best we could, Rocky! You. Can’t. Save.
Everybody!”

  Even though he knew she was right, he had really hoped that he had saved more than that! The group walked into the clearing of somber and dreary survivors, seeming to walk into a gathering of ghosts. Everyone was too shocked by recent events to speak, but Joe and Jason, who got dropped off here originally, were attempting to organize the group and taking reports from soldiers.

  It would seem that they had managed to get to all the schools within twenty kilometers of the hospital and might have made it farther if each group didn’t argue about leaving. In some cases, the militia was forced to abandon portions of groups that refused to leave their school, library, or hospital. Many groups had wanted to wait for their hunting parties to return before leaving.

  Those people were too scared to leave their safe space and had paid with their lives. Rocky shook his head in disappointment, having been hoping that humans would handle an event like this better. Clearly, he was still too naïve and trusting.

  Maybe we should send out scouts, or I should get airborne to see if any hunting groups did survive the day.

  Joe, the new leader of the militia, made the offer of refuge at Algonquin Gorge to the survivors, and every single one of them accepted, which populated another quest.

  Congratulations! You have been offered a quest.

  Escort the Ottawa Survivors 1

  You have saved a total of 8,043 people and offered them refuge in your Territory. Escort a minimum of 10% to your Territory to complete this quest.

  Awards:

  Etherience

  The figure was sobering after the near perfect accuracy of the original quest. Rocky made a promise to himself that he would exceed the System’s low expectations by a larger margin this time.

  At some point, Azoth got bored and left to hunt, chiming in as he went, “Azoth bored! Azoth hunt. Want Azoth’s leftovers?” He had mind spoken the last while looking at a group of children.