Anchor Knight

by Nathan Thompson

  Jasper, Nova, Vessa wrote awkwardly to us. I know this might be a perfect distraction, but it could actually be bad if this many of the monsters managed to breed. Especially if they convinced the eaters to mate as well. Harpies give birth in clutches, so even if only half of them survive their post-mating battle, that's still going to give my ship-body hundreds of extra monsters to deal with—ones that will either become powerful on their own or become fuel to augment another one of my invaders. I'm not sure what that will do to my wards.

  I nodded at that, swallowing my disgust and thinking quickly. The solution then, was to at least kill all the eaterlings first, since they were fewer in number. I hefted my axe and charged through the largest pack of the revolting, excited beasts.

  My ax proved to have a much easier time cleaving through eaterling carapaces. One of the monsters was bisected outright, and the next was nearly torn in half. The remnants of the pack scattered, most of them tripping on my remaining earth spikes, but two of the rodent-lizards managed to get clear of the dangerous terrain and begin calling for the harpies. Before I could chase them, one of the nearby eaters lumbered forward and swung their studded club at me.

  As I ducked, I could hear the harpies unleash a cacophony of excitement and anger. Half the winged beast-women shrieked out a challenge to Nova and dove toward her, while the second half swooped downward, chattering guttural cries at the two eaterlings.

  As Nova fired a blast into a dense pack of bat-women, I activated a limb essence charm, an air qi technique, and a physics spell to power me out of my own field of spikes. I landed in time to launch a downward chop into the nearest roach eaterling, crunching the monster's skull before the axe's crescent blade lodged itself into the revolting thing's carapace.

  In the time it took me to yank the weapon free, a harpy was able to sweep down and grab the cheering eaterling, carrying the monster back into the air. I screamed in frustration stemming from multiple sources—that I had failed in my objective despite my hard work, that later I would have even more monsters to deal with thanks to these disgusting and aroused idiots, and, to my surprise, that a disgusting wretch such as an eaterling was able to find a mate so easily, while I spent my entire day performing life-or-death battles on behalf of a pair of beautiful and amazing women that refused to clarify their intentions regarding me.

  I shook away that last thought and began to craft a fire blast to bring the pair down, but to my surprise, the other harpies beat me to it.

  "Mine!" another beast-woman shrieked as she collided into the happy pair, locking her talons over the dubiously lucky male.

  "No, mine!" the first harpy hissed, lashing at the other female with her wings.

  "No, mine!" a third, larger bat-woman shrieked, sinking her talons into the eaterling's thigh and pulling hard enough to tear.

  The three batted each other and yanked on their prospective suitor until he literally came apart in their grip. Shrieking in frustration, the harpies turned to fly off, each still holding their respective piece of their would-be-mate.

  As I struggled to make sense of what I had just witnessed, my senses alerted me to heavy footsteps sounding behind me. I pulled on my connection with Nestor and rolled out of the way as one of the remaining eaters' heavy club caught the tip of my flood barrier, deflecting away in a splash of translucent qi. I rolled to my feet just as the monster's powerful tail impacted my side. The painful blow sent me staggering for several steps. I freed a hand to clamp down on the tail and yanked the monster backwards, relying on my deceptively great strength to pull the thing off balance.

  Just then, a harpy came swooping toward the massive eater.

  "Male!" the creature cackled. "Strong male!"

  "No!" the seven-foot-tall monster bellowed, clacking his mandibles in frustration. "Too many of you! Will kill me!"

  But the bat-woman was insistent, and so he swatted her out of the air with a powerful swing before turning around to deal with me. But I leaped sideways to remain behind him, and yanked hard on his tail once again, pulling him backwards and off balance.

  He was a large, powerful creature, with almost two full stages of essence Advancement ahead of me. But he didn't know many charms, and my own combination of Source abilities, combined with my stages in qi Advancement as well as my own supernaturally strengthened body, gave me just enough of an edge in close combat.

  I still wouldn't have wanted to arm-wrestle him, but in a position where I had the better leverage, he didn't have a chance.

  I yanked more and more of his tail backwards, as he tried to wield his club in a way that would let him strike me around his own bulk. He might have been able to figure it out eventually, but more and more harpies swooped down to proposition him with shrieks and talons, and he was forced to bat them away.

  By then, I had yanked myself into a good enough position to attack him seriously. My ax was a two-handed weapon, but both Vessa and Grandmother Mara had informed me that most two-handed weapons could actually be wielded with only one arm, if necessary. The axe had a curved spike on the other end, so I reversed my grip and preceded to hack into the monster wherever I could reach. The power from my gauntlets and my flood qi helped me penetrate his carapace, and combined with the damage his would-be mates kept accidentally doing to his front, I was able to fell him by the seventh swing.

  As the massive eater collapsed face-first, with me on his back, the three closest harpy women drifted backwards and landed, eying me carefully.

  "Male," the leftmost one hissed in a discovering tone.

  "Strong male," the one in the middle said, leaning forward, and suddenly not nearly far enough away.

  "Strongest male!" the last one shrieked, and I pulled my ax clear of the dead eater with more motivation than I had ever felt before in my entire life.

  But before any of us could act, a massive ball of fire came tumbling from the sky and roasted the three wretched creatures on the spot.

  "ALREADY TAKEN!" the angelic woman shouted from above. "OFF! LIMITS!"

  She was sending me mixed signals again, but in that moment, I loved her far too much to care.

  I turned my gaze back to the surface, and saw Nestor leap from the smoking skull of the very last eater, the one I had crippled at the beginning of the fight. The rest of the scattered eaterlings had similar smoking holes in the back of their heads.

  I looked up to see more harpy bodies fall from the sky, apparently unable to outmatch Nova in an aerial duel. My angelic friend was able to outmaneuver the bat-winged creatures and either blast them out of the sky with her baton or slice them in half with her flaming sword. Already half of her enemies were dead, and the rest were turning to fly away. The ones that had swooped down to find an eaterling mate were leaving as well, apparently suffering enough losses of their own from the eaters and from Nova's fiery blasts.

  The Beacon hovered in place as she watched her enemies flee, choosing not to give chase. I didn't blame her. We had done enough just by killing roughly half their number and preventing them from reproducing. The longer we waited out here, the more likely something more powerful would come.

  Shoot! Vessa suddenly texted me. It was veiled! I'm teleporting you both no—

  Before she could finish, a purple blast of energy came out of nowhere and struck Nova in the back. My blonde friend cried out in pain as the energy danced over her body, sizzling into her glowing, feathery wings. She didn't even have time to scream before she went limp and began to fall, baton falling from her grip but sword inexplicably sticking to her gold-armored hand. But before she could descend more than a few feet, a long, clawed hand reached out as if from behind an invisible curtain and grabbed her by her weaponless arm.

  "Beacon!" a feminine, rasping voice shrieked as a winged woman twice the size of the earlier harpies came into view. "The Beacon is mine!"

  She was to the harpies what the eaters were to the eaterlings, save that she seemed even more powerful. Except for some patches along her shoulders and wrists, her
fur had given way to purple armored scales, forming a kind of breastplate over her torso. Unlike the harpies, her arms were not connected to her wings, allowing her full use of her hands while flying. Her lower torso was thankfully covered with a heavy cloth, but her hair writhed in the airless sky, sparking like loose wires full of purple electricity. Her facial features were even harsher than the smaller beast-women, with snarl-grooves running all along her face, making the gleeful, fanged smile she wore now even more out of place. She was clutching my unconscious friend by her arm, and looked like she was about to either kill her or carry her off somewhere.

  All of that was going through my mind as I screamed in rage, activating every enhancement power I knew, and leaped upward. Burning so many abilities so quickly created a tremendous amount of backlash that emptied a large portion of my Source energy and sent a burning pain down both my legs, but that was unimportant. Nova's life, and possibly Vessa's, was hanging by a thread before my very eyes.

  I must have leaped at least fifty feet through the air. The monster-woman looked down at me and laughed, still easily out of reach. As Nestor and Mara both screamed inside my mind, I did the only thing I could think of. I reached upward with one of my hands and opened a hole to my Soulscape.

  Awakening, a voice said from my Soulscape. Detecting imminent threat to portion of bonded Soulship. Anchor Knight protocols engaging.

  The exploding star and small ship orbiting around my world both flared with light. I felt my planet pull on Nova herself, like some kind of gravitational beam, yanking down on her even as a stream of Source energy left me and drifted up toward her.

  The giant harpy queen shrieked in surprise and aggravation as she suddenly sagged, her arms straining as if Nova had just gained several hundred pounds. She's not as strong as the eaters, I realized, but it doesn't matter if I can't reach Nova in time.

  I had reached the apex of my leap, yet I still wasn't drifting back down. Nova's own body somehow pulled on mine, and I found myself drifting towards her, until I gradually felt the pull from Vessa's hull vanish on my body entirely.

  I was now floating in space, with an unconscious angel-woman in the hands of her gargoyle-like abductor as my only anchor.

  The purple monster strained as she pulled on Nova's arm, eyes wide with hate as she looked at me. She tugged and tugged, but was still drifting toward us.

  "Thief!" she shrieked in a hoarse voice. "Let go!"

  "You first!" I snarled, my own voice turning hoarse. My Source energy strained, and pressure began to throb inside my skull.

  The gargoyle witch continued to tug, looking about frantically as she did so. I understood why in a flash. She wanted to abduct Nova, then take her somewhere safe where she could harvest her Source energy in peace. For all I knew the clouds of Source energy from the slain eaters had drawn her here in the first place, if she wasn't the pack leader of the lesser harpies. She knew that if she could surprise us, then something else could very well surprise her.

  "Fine!" the harpy queen shrieked in a panicked tone. She raised her free hand back behind her head and summoned more purple energy. "Go die then!"

  Her next blast struck me head on, blowing through my flood barrier and impacting against my armored jacket and reinforced body. The pain was intense, but I thought the blast was nowhere near as strong as the blow she had directed against Nova. She must have spent almost all of her energy making herself invisible and then leveling that blast against Nova.

  I growled through the pain of the purple fire and made my Soulscape spin faster.

  Superior foe detected, the robotic voice from my planet said. Engaging Apocalypse Denied Protocols, Subprotocol Anchor in the Storm.

  The purple fire crawled up my arm and condensed around the top of my open palm. Then it swirled down into my spiritual planet, burning my channels in the process. Even as it did so, it mixed with all of the other Source energy I had recently absorbed, refining immediately.

  Another coppery wisp drifted into my mana ore. A cry rang out from my mosaic. The pool of qi rippled as it deepened inside of me.

  Then the rest of the power drifted out of me, up the invisible string connecting me to Nova, and then into the unconscious woman in gold armor above me.

  Nova's blue eyes snapped open. The sword still in her hand burst into flame as she swung it upward at the claw clasping her other arm. The harpy queen screamed as her limb was severed by the powerful Beacon's blow and sent hurtling away, burning until it went deeper into space and extinguished. Nova slashed again, this time cutting into the monster's torso and leaving a burning gash in its wake.

  The maimed harpy queen shrieked again as she batted her wings and pulled away from us, desperately trying to put out the fire dancing across her chest.

  "I'll kill you!" she screamed at us both. "I'll kill you and kill you and kill you!"

  I pointed a finger and sent a scorching ray of my own at her, adding to the fire dancing up her chest. It was nothing more than a candle burn, compared to the damage she had already sustained, but the pain made her shriek again and finally turn to fly away, massive wings beating as they carried her into the distance.

  Detecting that local Beacon is no longer in danger, my planet said in my mind. Deactivating protocol now.

  No, wait, I tried to say, but there was no response.

  I looked up to see Nova smile at me, in an oddly tender and grateful way, before she slowly closed her eyes and went limp again, drifting in the weightlessness of space, her wings still, her hand held out toward me.

  She was still at least ten feet away from me.

  I cursed and fired a blast of fire qi behind me, propelling me the rest of the distance toward my oldest and closest friend. She had a dreamy expression on her face, eyes closed, still smiling. As if she had no doubt in the world that I would catch her, and somehow figure out a way to get us both back to Vessa's hull. I did my best to meet her subconscious expectations, and desperately reached for her hand.

  Our fingers touched.

  And she slipped away, gliding right past me, wings and white robes drifting aimlessly behind her.

  I cursed myself, fired another blast of fire qi, and grabbed for a larger target: her wings.

  I panicked when my hand started to pass right through the translucent feathers, but then my fingers were able to grip the limbs of the wings. I realized her Soulscape was a partially corporeal thing, unlike mine, which was its own extradimensional space. I breathed a sigh of relief, and fired another blast of fire qi behind myself, hopefully in the direction that would take us back to the ship.

  My aim had been accurate enough. We began to drift back down to the massive, iridescent vessel below us, and I marveled that I still could not see the end of Vessa's ship-body even while hundreds of feet above her.

  That reminded me; I needed to contact Vessa and let her know what had just happened.

  Vessa, I wrote in my mind. Can you read this?

  No answer.

  A few distinct Latin expletives tumbled through my mind, and then I remembered another person I could reach.

  Nestor, I said to my bonded mouse-brother. Can you hear me?

  Yes-yes! Come-back!

  I'm working on it, brother, but I may need your help, I told the little mouse. I need to find a way to get back down, but the air up here is very still.

  Will-help! he said firmly.

  I looked for him, but could not see his form. So I turned my attention to the other passengers in my soul, and checked to see if they were alright, or had a solution for my problem.

  We are fine, grandson, my grandmother told me. And you are doing well. The Beacon and you are heading in the general direction of the vessel-saint's outer form. That trick with the fire was well-thought. You will need to do it several more times, though.

  I was beginning to run low on my qi, but she was right. I fired another blast of fire to correct my course and drift further downward.

  As I did so, I felt Nova's semi-corporeal wings
begin to slip from my grip. I dismissed the axe in my other hand, finding that my Soulscape's passage had widened again, and gripped the Beacon's wing with both fists. I pulled my way closer to her, careful to avoid the sharp sword she was still somehow gripping, until I could reach her other arm and take her by the hand. It proved to be a more secure way to cling to her, even if I got smacked in the face by her semi-solid wings several times in the process.

  I expelled more fire, trying not to pay too much attention to the way it guttered. Vessa's shimmering hull loomed closer and closer. The distance shrunk to almost a hundred feet, and I could feel her gravity exert the tiniest of pulls on me.

  Unfortunately, it was pulling me in the wrong direction, far away from the area under Vessa's control.

  Vessa, I sent again, can you read this? We may need you to teleport us from here. You will need to get Nestor from on the ground, as well.

  Still no answer.

  Grandmother, why is Vessa not answering me? I sent desperately, sending another small flame behind me. It shot me closer, but still not near enough to the right direction.

  I do not know, dear, she replied. You may need to return on your own.

  I agreed, but I was not even sure that was possible with the short-range form of teleportation. And even if it was, I needed to have Nestor with me.

  I gritted my teeth, and fired my last bolt, correcting our course for the final time.

  It worked.

  We began drifting toward the large slope containing the archway we had seen before. I wasn't sure if our landing was going to be exact, but even if we were close to the slope, we should still be alright. Nova's glowing wings were somehow serving to slow our descent, like a parachute, so I wasn't worried about damage from the fall. We would land either on the slope or within walking distance of the slope, and then we would think up our next move.

  Young rider, Grandmother Mara messaged me.

  Yes, Grandmother? I asked.

  Young rider? Grandmother Mara repeated.

  My blood chilled by several degrees.

  Grandson, look down, she said, and as I did so I saw a blackened and torn part of Vessa's hull, as if something had either torn its way in to invade or tried to tear its way out, and escape.