by Chris Fox
The mecha knight delivered a vicious kick that Miri ducked by falling back around a corner of the building. It twisted one hand and fired the spellrifle at Briff. The shot knocked the hatchling off the platform, and he tumbled into the abyss, toward the gravity well that would suck him into whatever lay at the center of the planet.
“Nooo!” I roared. Rage burned away the exhaustion, and I charged the mecha, which stood on the far side of the platform. I knew my pistol wouldn’t do squat, so I holstered it, then leapt onto the mech’s leg.
An arm whooshed over my head as I clambered up to the thigh, then maneuvered around the back as it struggled in vain to reach me.
“Keep it busy, Jer!” Briff roared from behind. I risked a look, and spotted him hovering, his wings flapping hard behind him. He landed on the cable, and his spellcannon bucked.
A fat ball of plasma slammed into the mech’s chest, and cracks spread across the armor for several meters.
“Come get some, uh, mech…thing.” Briff lobbed another plasma ball, but the thing dodged out of the way this time.
Which meant it wasn’t paying attention to me.
I clambered up further, and nestled myself behind the head. The antenna lay within reach so I grabbed it, and swung around the mech’s face. My free hand shot out and I planted it against the right eye. “Weaken.”
Nara’s magic flowed through me, and the no doubt nearly indestructible crystal became destructible. I yanked my pistol out and shot it with an explosive round, and the eye shattered.
Have I mentioned I can be petty? I wrenched the antenna loose, effectively blinding the sensors. This thing was one optic away from total blindness, and that was exactly what…uh oh.
My hero moment ended when the mech got a hand around both of my legs. The massive mechanical fingers tightened, and my paper doll flared red as my legs were crushed together and the internal alarms began full panic mode.
The mech lurched as one of Miri’s grenades exploded violently beneath its feet. The stumble loosened its grip, and I wiggled free and onto the back where neither arm could reach me. Thank the depths my armor was tough, or both my legs would have been broken.
I couldn’t afford to let it get ahead of me again.
The mech brought up its rifle, and hip shot at Briff. The aim was true, and knocked the hatchling back along the cable. His spellcannon tumbled over the side, and one of his wings had all the scaled webbing burned away until nothing but skeleton remained.
Briff screeched, and pulled the ruined wing close against his body as he clung to the cable. If he fell off again there would be no flying. We needed to stop this thing. Now.
I glanced at Vee, and she’d disconnected most of the cables connecting the core to the rune matrix housing.
“Captain!” Kurz roared. My attention shifted his way in time to see him lob a green vial at me.
I caught it instinctively, and inspected the contents. Hellish green smoke swirled within, and as I watched, a pair of eyes peered hatefully out at me.
“Slam the soul into the mech’s eye. The soul will consume all nearby magic until it explodes.”
Explodes. I was, quite literally, using a soul as a bomb. That asked some troubling questions that I shoved down into the recesses to leave me free to fight. Guilt, if warranted, could come later.
I surged to my feet, and nearly toppled off the mech, but caught myself against the shoulder. The head swiveled in my direction, and I realized in that terrible moment that my survival, my friends’ survival, might come down to my athleticism.
We were doomed.
I lobbed the green vial toward the broken eye like a ball sailing toward a lifewine jug back at festival. I’d been terrible at that game, and pro-tip…don’t try to impress a date if you’re bad at hitting lifewine jugs, like I was.
Fate, the universe, and maybe my dad’s ghost guided the throw, and it sailed into the empty eye socket. The vial cracked, and greenish smoke exploded outward to fill the socket.
One of the mech’s hands shot up to its face to cover the wound, and I realized that I’d been thinking of this thing as a machine. It wasn’t. This was an elidmagus, and that meant it was alive.
The mech thrashed in pain as the soul did its work, but I didn’t stick around to watch. I dove from the shoulder, and rolled with the fall. Sparks skittered across the platform as I tumbled across it, but I flipped over and directed my tumble onto the cable, where I recovered and somehow found my footing.
I wish I’d recorded that.
“Briff, you okay?” I sprinted over to my friend, who had risen to his feet, but had an arm wrapped around his wounded wing.
“Yeah,” he croaked. “Vee can heal it after we get back to the ship. Did…did we win?” He gawked at something behind him, and I spun to see what had become of the mech.
The creature had fallen to its knees on the far corner of the platform, and now clutched its head with both arms. A high-pitched whine grew from inside the head, and a moment later the head, the mech’s hands, and shoulders were consumed in a magical explosion.
I sank to my knees on the cable, and ordered my mask to slither off my face so I could catch my breath. Sweat coated me. “Miri, how much time did that buy us?”
“Not much,” she called back. She gave a low whistle. “I’m impressed. Your team took down an Inuran Mark IX assault mech.”
“Our team,” Kurz corrected. “You were instrumental with the well placed grenade. The captain clearly chose well when selecting you as a new crew member, though if you continue to antagonize my sister you will wake up in an airlock.”
Miri and I just blinked at the soulcatcher, whose monotone voice hadn’t changed a bit from the compliment to the threat.
“I’ve done it!” Vee’s triumphant cry came from inside the structure. “Get Briff in here. There’s no way I can carry this. I just need to withdraw this last cable, and—”
The blazing energy in the core ceased for a moment, and the loss of power rippled outward to each of the dozen cables connected to the platform. The circuitry darkened, and the wave of blackness swept outwards to every area their theft had suddenly deprived of power. Kilometers of lights darkened.
“I feel like that’s going to get a response.” Miri gave me a half grin. “Maybe run?”
“Briff, how do you feel about carrying a magical star in a box?”
“I’m green, Jer.” His good wing rose majestically over him.
“That’s why I love you, bud.” I clapped him on his good side, and moved out of the way so he could get access to the core.
The darkness continued to spread, which didn’t alarm me. Then one of the cables popped off the platform, and swung out over the abyss before it began retracting into the wall.
“Oh, shit,” I roared. “It’s going into some sort of stasis mode. Get onto the cable, and secure yourselves. Now!”
19
“Go, now!” I hustled Miri toward the cable, and Rava leapt over her and drove her spurs into the dense rubber. Ours hadn’t disconnected yet, but every three seconds another did, and we were only a few down the line. “Briff, buddy, let’s do this.”
“I’m on it, Jer!” Briff squatted down, and hefted the reactor with a tremendous groan. “It’s pretty heavy, but I got this.”
He lumbered out of the structure, and as he passed Vee she extended a bracelet and a wave of golden energy rushed into his wounded wing. Scales and leathery membrane regrew, partially at least. “Sorry, that’s all I had left.”
“Thanks, Vee,” Briff grunted as he stepped onto the cable. “I should be able to—”. His tail slammed spike first into the cable, and sank all the way in. “There we go.”
“Everyone hang on!” I yelled as the last cable before ours popped off the platform.
Ours came a moment later, and we were in free fall for several seconds.
The vertigo passed when the cable began retracting into the wall, and carrying us upwards with it. The cable retracted swiftly, but not s
o swiftly that I worried. We should have been able to jump off at the top, though if anyone messed up they’d likely plummet to their death. No pressure.
I tightened my grip on the corded bands that ran every ten or so meters, and held on until we reached the receptacle where the cable gathered. Above us lights were clicking off, making the jump trickier as darkness overtook the ledge above us.
“Time your releases, people,” I barked into the comm in exactly the way I imagined my father would have. “This is routine.” Even though I knew it to be anything but.
Miri made the jump first, and made it look easy. Rava jumped higher, and landed further up along the ledge, just to show she could.
Next came Briff, and that was the part where I held my breath. He carried so much weight, and he was still wounded.
Briff didn’t care. He flung himself upwards with a kick from both legs and the tail. He swung up over the edge with a meter to spare, and rolled until he hit the wall, the reactor still cradled against his chest.
Then it was Vee’s turn, and she rolled over without trouble.
When mine got there I focused, and flung myself up over the edge. Vee caught my hand, and helped me to my feet.
“Nice work, everyone!”
All the light in our section abruptly vanished as the power drain reached this section.
“Crap. Vee, see if we can retrace our steps.” I nodded at the black metal iris we’d come through earlier, which was closed again. “Can you get that thing open?”
“I don’t understand why we don’t see a response squad coming our way.” Miri nudged me to get my attention. “Look. There are no drones anywhere. They’ve all cleared out.”
“Something must be a bigger target than us,” I reasoned, even as my eyes found the cause. The walkway we stood on ringed this entire massive planetary space, and might be thousands of kilometers long.
About two kilometers distant a female necromancer and her horde of minions were overcoming a wave of drones. Specks of black streaked down from above, and I enhanced my vision for a better look. “They’re some sort of bats, I think. And they’re wrecking drones…and she’s looking this way. Uh…she’s looking at me.”
The necromancer waved her staff furiously in my direction, and the cloud of bats started our way.
“Vee, can you get that iris open?” I drew my pistol again. “We’re not going to be able to hold them for long, if at all.”
Vee didn’t answer immediately, and instead knelt next to the panel. After a moment she turned in my direction, gaze bereft of hope. “There’s no power. The door is dead. I’m sorry, Jerek. I should have considered what would happen when we removed the core.”
“That’s on all of us. Any one of us could have thought of it.” I turned back to the approaching flock of dead bats. “Let’s do what damage we can. Vee, if you have any ideas, I’m open to them. Can you use the core somehow?”
“Uhh.” She seemed reluctant to answer.
I turned back and saw the agony on her face. “I can crack the casing. If I get it right, and it’s a small crack, it will roast any unliving, demons, or dream wraiths that get close. If I get it wrong…well, we could trigger a chain reaction that causes the other cores to detonate. It would destroy the moon and anything orbiting it.”
The knowledge hit me like explosive decompression.
“If we triggered that chain reaction intentionally are you certain it would destroy the moon?” My hands began to shake as the ramifications of my plan became clear.
“Blowing it up would make us fugitives, if we lived. And there could still be survivors,” Miri pointed out. “If we do this we’re dooming anyone who might still make it off. Other survivors, like us.”
“They’re doomed anyway.” Kurz’s flat tone made it clear this was a calculation to him. “If we do this we ensure that this place doesn’t become a factory for our enemies. If we do not deprive them of this place, then what is to stop these necromancers from retrofitting it into a necrotech moon?”
“You both make good points.” I glanced at the approaching bats. They’d be on us soon. “Those transports dropped the necromancers off here for a reason. They’re here to corral the unliving, but what then? Retrofitting this place is the next logical step, and then they have a Great Ship and a trade moon. If we have a chance to stop that…I know it’s callous, but I say we do it. Even if it means our lives.”
“I’m not even sure cracking the casing will blow up the moon,” Vee pointed out. She massaged the back of her neck as she inspected the casing. “What do you want me to do?”
“Best case we deprive our enemies this place. Worst case we kill some bats. Crack the casing.” I turned back to the flock of bats. They were close enough that I could see their fangs and claws, and the wicked barb on their tails. The same hellish green light lived in their eyes as they swarmed closer.
“Maker, forgive me.” Vee raised her bracelet, and touched it to a clasp along the top of the containment unit. It popped open, and she repeated the gesture seven more times in quick succession.
I very nearly forgot to swap ammo, but at the last second remembered I had salt rounds, and swapped back from explosive. I took hasty aim and began squeezing off rounds at the approaching swarm. Due to the density of the swarm, each shot killed at least one bat, and some destroyed two.
But there were a lot of bats.
The swarm crashed over us, and my HUD went red as claws and tails stabbed into my amor. A spike crashed through the faceplate directly over my eye, and the HUD went dark, leaving me with a needle millimeters from my eye.
I activated my sight, and shot the thing in the face with a salt round. The creature’s body slumped as a sickly black-green cloud dissipated over it.
Another spike bit through my armor and into my calf, and I screamed as poker-hot pain commanded my attention.
More wounds flared as they swarmed over us, and I had just enough time to wonder what I could have done better…and then the core exploded.
Brilliant magic washed over us, and I hoped that I’d at least get to go on some sort of magical trip before the torrent of divinity incinerated my frail mortal body. At least it would wipe out the unliving, and that necromancer, even if I wasn’t here to see it happen.
Ah, spite…enjoyable when it was the last thing I had left.
20
It turned out I got my wish. There was a magical trip before the end. As the golden brilliance washed over me my understanding of the universe leapt. Connections linked everything together.
Energy. Matter. Thought. Magic. Time. All of it was part of a singular whole. A system. A cycle. A Great Cycle.
As the magic permeated me I glimpsed a tremendous galaxy-sized purple star. It pulsed out wave after wave of chaotic magic, and each pulse grew and changed into a dizzying array of souls.
These souls swam through the chaos, and founded ephemeral kingdoms, and died in dream storms or found their end in other ways.
These souls were not lost, and instead passed to a new realm. A realm of life. Our realm.
The erstwhile souls remembered little, in most cases, but their essence was preserved in new bodies. New lives. Time continued to spin enterally, and each of these lives ended.
Their souls passed to the next realm, the spirit realm. From the moment of their entry their essence drained into a negative sun at the center of the realm.
My new understanding told me this negative sun was also the blazing purple sun. They were one and the same.
Was I observing the structure of the universe?
“Yes.” To my immense shock a ghostly version of Inura hovered near me. “You are witnessing the Great Cycle, as only an elder god can. The vision will fade quickly, though your memory of the structure will scar you forever.”
“I didn’t see the Umbral Depths.” I tried to focus on the Cycle, but gave up and let the vision take me where it would.
“The Depths lie outside the cycle, which is why they are so convenient
for travel.” Inura folded his arms and raised a patch of platinum scales meant to mimic an eyebrow. “You haven’t asked how I’ve come to be here.”
“Seems pretty obvious.” It was my turn to raise an eyebrow. “You’re a literal god. You’ve been scrying on me, and when you saw me get into trouble you intervened, right?”
“Perhaps.” Inura shrugged, more than a little petulantly. “I warded the lot of you from the blunt of the blast, but only enough to spare your lives. As a result of my intervention you’ve been blessed with a large reservoir of life magic. All of you. And see the results of your efforts.”
The vision dissolved and I was back outside the Iris. I rose slowly to my feet, the ghostly vision of Inura still there.
The bats were gone. The necromancer was gone. So were the drones and every platform, I realized. The cavern had been effectively hollowed out, though enough lights remained to see by. Barely.
“So much for destroying the moon.” I clenched a fist. “We wasted the core, and didn’t even dent it.”
“Not so.” Inura offered a tentative smile. “You robbed the moon of power, and destroyed any chance of this monstrosity ever being mobile. Effectively it is as inert as a real moon. Stationary. The necromancers can still harvest the souls, and some of the tech, but the ships got off, and you burnt out the most valuable thing remaining. They’re trapped.”
“True, but it doesn’t feel like a win.” I shook my head, too exhausted to care that I’d once again disagreed with a god. “This place makes an excellent staging area to take the other Great Ships. For all we know Necrotis has already been retrofitting one or more of them with necrotech like she did the Maker’s Wrath.”
“Perhaps,” Inura allowed with another shrug. “Your friends are waking. Your new magic should make escape a trivial thing.”
“What about the core?” I raced to its side to see if I could determine how much magic remained within it. I couldn’t go back to the Word empty handed.
