by Skyler Grant
“We’ve got a problem and your hapless monkey flailing isn’t helping,” I said.
“We’re most of our way through the protections for the lateral thrusters. I know it is little comfort but we think we’ll be able to divert the ship in twenty minutes if you can hold out that long,” said the Righteous Commander.
It wasn’t all talk. They really were good at this.
“I wish you had that long. Oozelord has betrayed us and subverted my forces. He’ll be coming for the bridge,” I said.
The Righteous exchanged looks. Only six of their team was still standing.
“We’re low on ammo. Can you contribute any aid?”
Of course I could, but it wasn’t in my best interest to do so. I didn’t want the Oozelord to seize the ship, but I didn’t suit my ends for them to know what I could do here. Even if killed to the last man today, the Righteous would rise tomorrow. Their stories would remain.
“A few of my forces survived his betrayal. I can slow them down, but I don’t have anything to stop him,” I said.
The Righteous Commander nodded and they began to establish a defensive position. Fortunately most of that work had already been done by the Scholars.
If there were a fight for the bridge, it might give me just what I required to justify the Sword of Light’s destruction.
I switched over to my drones with Caya’s team in Weapons control.
“We’ve got issues,” I said.
“No pretty princess crack? You are upset. We see the guns tearing you apart. We still can’t get control although there seem to be some unexpected power regulations we’re trying to figure out how to exploit,” Caya said.
That was me. I didn’t need them seeing that.
“We don’t have time to worry about that. I need to get you and your people out of there. Oozelord turned on us and subverted my forces,” I said.
“And you figure if he’s betrayed you, then he’ll betray me,” Caya said, tilting her head for a moment. She nodded. “With a prize like this I’m not surprised. It might allow him to settle things against Galapos with a single strike.”
It wasn’t a name I was familiar with, but a study of Sylax’s old records shed some light on things. Galapos was a baron under Boreas with an ability to shield his body in a layer of destructive energy.
“How novel, you have some knowledge I lack. I’d like the details,” I said.
“Galapos razed the city of Perpolis two decades ago. This was before he even joined with Boreas. Oozelord lost his family in the attack, he didn’t have the crystal then,” Caya said.
Missions of vengeance, how trite, how useful.
“Exchange one razed city for another? I wouldn’t mourn Boreas losing an underling, but I wish he’d decided to work with us. Unless your flawless perfection renders you immune from getting slimed on I think he’ll be looking to add you and your people,” I said.
“We’re not immune,” Caya said as she drew a pistol from her hip and blasted the room’s energy regulator. The consoles sparked and died. “Wish we could do more to stop the attack, but we’re not making headway. If you have a way out we’ll take it.”
I could just teleport her off the ship, but it wouldn’t do to let them know I had that ability. So far I’d been playing it up that the ship was disabling my ability for anything but short hops.
I had my drones guide them through the halls towards the nearest section of open hull. I’d be able to extract them with the Graven.
48
The battle for Aefwal was going in our favor. The districts had been built up and staffed enough that the Lords were more than capable of defending their own territory. Powered with the offensive Divine core Jade had already neutralized the threats she faced and had dispatched people throughout the city.
Sylax had assembled her people and come through the jump gate to take up positions defending my central core. While none of the Children of Dust were as powerful individually as a full crystal holder, she had been teaching them to coordinate their abilities and work as a team. This was a stark contrast to the usual Scholar method of warfare where the strong dominated, and while teamwork could happen it was always done cautiously and with an eye towards betrayal waiting to happen.
Right now a group of them were squaring off against a telekinetic and an energy projector. Sylax closed in on a temporal shifter with a dagger in her hand.
It was worth taking a moment to watch. The shifter should be more than comfortable in this situation, but he looked terrified.
“So what iteration are we on?” Sylax asked with a wicked smile.
“I’ve lost count. You’ve gouged out my eyes, my balls, skinned me once,” the man said, exhausted. “Last loop you said if I just surrendered you’d end it quick. Will you?”
Sylax stepped forward and drove her dagger upwards through his throat, a savage twist tearing it out and putting him to death. “Good boy.”
She was without her powers—and I’d just watched her essentially kill a man by scaring him to death. If I ever decided this working relationship of ours was at its end I would need to make sure to kill her quickly and thoroughly. Sylax wasn’t the sort of enemy you wanted behind your back.
Her students were impressive. One girl with the ability to turn herself into some sort of highly durable metal closed with enemies while another poured lightning into her from behind. Her form was thus wreathed in electricity and her punches became instant knockout blows.
They were doing well, but I couldn’t help but to think how I could improve matters even further. A lot of the charge was dissipating and a proper suit would able to hold it better, as well as having built-in communication systems for team coordination and communication.
The Sword of Light was continuing to blast the city with beam cannons. I was dampening the worst of the strikes, but the city was still getting hit hard.
The death toll of my drones was now over one hundred thousand. I’d be able to bring them back, but it was enough to hurt.
Aboard the Sword of Light my drones had led Caya and her people to the exterior hull. It was a fight just to get there, the ship still had defense drones and they weren’t friendly. Just before their arrival I jumped in the Graven and unleashed cannons at close range to tear an opening and extend the ramp.
Caya and her people didn’t hesitate, human perfection at play as they crossed the distance to the ramp with long leaps and precise coordination.
I really should copy their design. Anna was technically perfect in terms of pure stats now but really, no matter how talented the cook, bad ingredients make for ordinary cookies.
Oozelord was meanwhile starting his assault on the bridge. The Righteous had decided to make use of the captured Scholar beam weapons given their shortage of ammunition. It was the right call, the beams seared and drove back the ooze on contact, but there was a slow wave of orange slime now creeping with inevitable certainty towards them down the corridor.
I’d already been periodically using a second airship for bringing over the Bioreactors. Until recently they’d been powering Aefwal and its defenses, but now they were lining up in rows filling the engineering section of the Sword. Getting them over was just part of the struggle, I’d also been working to tie them into the ship’s power systems.
I needed the ship to still have power even after removing the Agate. That had gone more slowly than I’d have liked, the ship’s systems were unnecessarily wasteful with a power source such as it had and I had to bypass a lot systems to make sure the ones I’d be substituting would keep active.
The Ooze took the first of my drones standing with the Righteous, cracking her armor and flowing inside as the Righteous continued to fire.
It was time. My drones opened the Agate’s containment cell and extracted the massive crystal. Surrounding it with four drones I used their combined aura to teleport it to my airship and in an instant had it jumping back into an underground hangar in Aefwal.
The ship’s guns died off, my Bioreactors wer
en’t sufficient to power the massive cannons. Caya and her people had already left engineering and the Righteous were too busy to watch the bridge monitors. There was nobody there to see the oddity.
The Ooze had taken two Righteous. Their power-resistant aura was enough to handle a droplet, but submerged they fell to the compulsion just like anyone else. My last drone dropped off the network as the Ooze took them and my only means of observing events was through the ship’s sensors.
The last Righteous fell and I dropped the power to the shield preventing jump travel. At my command the Sword of Light jumped out seconds later.
On the bridge all screens began to flash red before depicting a visual of what as below.
Aefwal had been left behind and the Sword of Light was now directly above the city of Orilia—under the command of Baron Galapos, the murderer of Oozelord’s family.
The same principles that had let me block jump travel in and out of an entire band of reality didn’t function as well here. I could maintain the effect with the power aboard, but not for long. That was fine, I only needed thirty seconds to put the ship outside of the limits of a temporal rewind.
Every cannon in the city opened up the moment the ship appeared. They had time-shifters present. As always the best way to deal with time-shifters was overwhelming force.
A prompt came up on the bridge screens.
Engaged with city of Orilia.
Do you wish to initialize self-destruct?
Warning: Interdiction field is activated and ships cannot leave the city below. Self-destruct will destroy all residents.
The Ooze rippled and formed a human shape, Oozelord stepping out and just for a moment he glanced at the nearest ship camera. He knew this was me, here at the end he appreciated a move well made. He was laughing as went to the closest keyboard to hit accept.
49
My access to the sensors aboard the Sword of Light faded the moment the field was enabled. Still, I knew what would happen next—what I’d planned to happen next.
The ship would crash into the city. That much kinetic energy would shake the city to its very foundations and a great many buildings would collapse. Then the Bioreactors would go, tearing through the hull of the ship and beginning to reach the civilian populace. My Bioreactor bombs were made to be fueled off Biomass, and in a city of a million they’d have no shortage of fuel.
It was possible there would be survivors but I wouldn’t count on it. There would be just ruins and rubble and in twenty-four hours the resurrecting bodies of the Righteous. They’d probably be interrogated, tortured, compulsed or mind-read, but they’d only be able to tell what they’d seen. Their brave stand against a compulsor attacking the bridge. Further research would reveal Oozelord’s mission of vengeance against the ruler of this city, his personal motivations for pushing this crusade.
Boreas would lose a powerful ally and have none living to blame for the fact. All would mourn the loss of the Sword of Light and the secrets it held, and also quietly be grateful that it had been removed from the battlefield.
I’d have to be careful with my new power source, of course. None must know what I’d taken or how I’d gotten it. Publicly I had to be just one of a coalition that had done their part to try to stop a great threat. The Agate was too great a prize for any of the others to know existed.
A week passed and all was going exactly to plan. I’d even gotten footage of the Sword of Light and its final moments from a trade-ship that had been making its exit from the city at the time. I provided the information to the Righteous. If Boreas was torturing his prisoners it might be a cause for war between those two. I could hope.
What wasn’t working out to plan was the perception of my role in events. Caya was grateful for my saving her life and credited me with the plan that had ultimately taken down the Sword of Light—even if not as planned. A great many of the Divine credited me with working to defend their home, our home.
Two weeks after the Sword’s fall Caya took a knee before Anna and swore her allegiance and that of the city of Diamate. In a huge ceremony she wasn’t the first to swear that day. Anna had even dressed up, she looked ridiculous.
Upgrade Notification
Congratulations
Your hierarchal command structure has expanded to encompass multiple cities
New Classification
Province
All abilities have been upgraded
Superhuman upgrades unlocked
Appoint a new Aefwal administrator
It was an unexpected prompt. I could already feel myself starting to grow new processors located in Diamate. I thought Aefwal politics were bloody, my initial readings showed Caya had it far worse.
A problem for another time. I needed to appoint a new administrator for Aefwal and ideally it should be one of the existing District Lords. I also got the sense it should be one of the more powerful, I had four who fit that bill.
Jade had absorbed Ares’ core and while her decades of rebellion had seemed pointless I respected what she’d done since Sylax had been overthrown. Ophelia had consumed Bast’s core and was weak-willed enough to be compliant, she was also home to Amy who I distrusted immensely. Crystal was ancient and strong and another upgrade core. Blank had proved her loyalty, but placing her in charge of the city would probably weaken every Powered there.
I had to rule out Blank and that left three.
I didn’t trust her, not really, but with Aefwal now housing the Agate I needed a schemer and manipulator in charge.
I promoted Crystal. Crystal must have been ready for it. The appointment to take over her district came only seconds later, Medusa.
I knew the name, one of the Children of Dust and one of Sylax’s students able to turn people to stone at a touch.
Only the Powered could claim a District, she must have enough.
We were a rising power now and I knew the Scholars well enough to understand what that meant. A fight would be coming. We’d be ready.
Coming Soon
The Province
There is a coming storm. Tensions between the Righteous and the Scholarium reach a new high and the threat of a devastating war between the core and the rim grows daily. It is a poor time to pick a fight, but Anna chooses the moment to wage a very personal war threatening to tear the newly formed Province apart.
Author Notes
This is book number four for a series I really didn’t think would have more than one. It is because of your input that this series exists, give yourself a cookie.
I’ve always been sad at the edge of the game map. That point where the world ends, the closed door of the houses that you can’t walk through. It is always sad when you hit that last level and there is no more advancement to be had.
I’m a fan of dungeon core and obviously while this series started out in the dungeon it is quickly becoming something more. I’m trying to remain true to the essence of the idea even while drifting away from the actual underground lair. Emma is powerful because her people are powerful, because of what she builds, how she upgrades, how her resources are placed. In these works now I’m trying to capture what might happen if the game didn’t end and those walls didn’t exist.
Emma keeps growing, keeps getting stronger. To her drones she is a thing both benevolent and terrifying. The ever-watchful eye that guides their lives and rules their destinies. They never know a moment of privacy and yet owe her for their very existence.
