All that magic impacting it at once, knocked its face backward, but didn’t have the desired effect. Allistor got another idea. “Everybody who can, cast Erupt so that the spikes go up into the base of its heel!”
There was a scream as somebody who’d quit watching the monster’s hands was struck. A moment later the scream ended abruptly. Allistor looked to see one of the healers collapsed in a heap at the base of a wall. Her raid icon was greyed out.
“Dammit!” Allistor got angry. But more at the healer than the monster. “See what happens when you take your eye off the ball? Pay attention or I’ll kill you myself!” he growled into his radio. He instantly regretted his words, but now was not the time to dwell on them. He cast Mind Spike on the creature again.
A moment later, four or five spikes shot upward from the floor into the soles of the titan’s feet and heels. It roared in pain, and tried to pull its legs free. When that didn’t work, it used its hand to push itself back toward the wall behind it, attempting to free its legs.
That was just what Michael had been hoping for. There was a popping sound, and the roar turned into a garbled cry of pain. Michael had told Allistor to place the tip of his spear right next to the exposed spinal column, then wedge the butt-end into the angle at the base of the wall. When the creature scooted back toward the wall, the spear was pushed directly into its spine.
Void Titan
Level 38
Health: 47,600/211,000
“Pour it on!” Michael shouted, running toward the monster. Its legs no longer moved, and he dashed directly under one slightly raised knee. Holding his shield above his head to catch most of the nasty blood, he drove his sword up into the soft flesh several times, lightning fast. He took a small step to the side after each stroke, doing his best to avoid the falling blood.
Allistor equipped his bow again, casting Mind Spike on the beast, then firing several arrows into its mouth as it roared. With the head a solid thirty feet above him, his arrows all punched through the roof of its mouth.
Michael didn’t see the hand moving in from his left side as he stabbed away at the knee, severing tendons and a vein. The claws impacted his shield first, the sound of metal on metal screeching and drawing everyone’s attention. The index claw got past Michael’s shield and penetrated his shoulder. The man screamed and dropped his sword, trying to use his hand to push himself off the claw. Several heals hit him before Amanda started screaming at the healers to quit it. They couldn’t close the wound with the claw still inside him.
Sam appeared out of nowhere, grabbing Michael by the back of his chest piece and yanking him out from under the knee, pulling him off the claw even as the monster closed its grip in an attempt to crush Michael. The thumb claw scraped across the man’s thighs, leaving deep cuts festering with nasty, polluted fluid.
“Heals! Now!” Allistor shouted as Sam hustled back toward the healers and right out the door, dragging an unconscious Michael behind him. Allistor saw his health bar shoot back up before he lost sight of them both.
Allistor had had enough. “Prime! I need your staff weapon!”
The general, who had orders not to use his plasma rifles, had been dashing about and poking the monster to distract it. He turned instantly and tossed the weapon to Allistor, who caught it and looked up at the beast. Its arms were still moving, though much more slowly. Its health bar was draining rapidly, and the pool it sat in was thickening with its blood and spinal fluid.
Focusing on a spot atop the monster’s shoulder, Allistor cast Dimensional Step. A split second later he appeared in the exact spot he’d targeted. Wasting no time, he lowered the sharp end of Prime’s weapon and charged the three steps across the titan’s shoulder, ramming the spear deep into the ear. He saw the adjacent hole where his arrow had penetrated, the wound leaking a steady trickle of nasty black blood.
Allistor pushed with everything he had, leaning his body into the motion. The spear struck something hard and all forward motion stopped. Allistor pulled it back, then shoved forward again. This time he heard a familiar pop, and the weapon nearly disappeared in the creature’s head.
A hand that had been about to seize Allistor suddenly fell limp. The titan’s roar cut off in a sort of a gurgle, and its head dropped forward. Which launched Allistor, still holding the spear, into the air.
“Shiiit!” he yelled, thirty feet up and flying toward his people. He managed to stifle his panic and cast Levitate on himself, arresting his fall. But he couldn’t do anything about his forward momentum in time to keep from slamming into the wall at a high rate of speed. He tried to spin his body so he didn’t hit face first, felt his shoulder dislocate, and a couple ribs break on impact.
Everybody but him leveled up as he felt heals wash over him. A moment later he lowered himself to the floor and cancelled Levitate.
Attribute Level Increase! Your Constitution attribute has increased by +1!
Dusting himself off, he supposed the Constitution bump was a decent consolation prize for not leveling with everyone else. He was really damn tired of fighting void titans. And again, they’d lost somebody.
He walked over to where the dead healer was being placed gently on the ground and covered. Her name had been Sonya, and she was one of their better healers. He didn’t know much about her life, so he asked Amanda. “Did she have family?”
Amanda shook her head. “They were killed by Paul’s people. She was one of those we rescued from the Denver mint. Volunteered for every single raid and dungeon run.”
“I don’t want to burn her down here in this hole. We’ll carry her back up and have a proper funeral.” Allistor walked over and kicked the titan in the head as hard as he could. Which counted as looting it. He ignored the notifications, even though he saw an orange glow among them. “Guys, help me push this thing forward enough to get my spear back?” Prime had already recovered, and somehow cleaned, his own spear.
Ten of the raiders pitched in to help move the giant corpse. All of them having above-human-normal strength, they were able to press their feet against the wall and push the upper body forward enough for Allistor to rip the spear free.
Amanda and a few others had placed Sonya in a body bag, and Logan lifted her up in a princess carry. Nobody bothered to try and harvest hide from the titan. The entire group was quiet as they retraced their path back up to the street and down the block to the tower. Someone had seen them coming, and hundreds of citizens poured out to meet them in the street. When Logan quietly informed them who they’d lost, dozens of them immediately spread out and began gathering wood from nearby collapsed buildings. In less than an hour they had enough for a pyre.
Allistor didn’t waste any time. He gave a short speech about the tragedy of surviving the first year only to fall prey to a monster. He spoke about her selfless service as a healer, and remembering her along with too many others who’d given their lives.
When a few friends had spoken kind words about her, Allistor called down a column of fire and lit they pyre. As the flames burned down and eventually guttered, her name appeared, etched below the poem on the front wall of the tower lobby, along with the others who’d perished so far within the walls of Invictus.
Chapter 21
While Allistor went back to crafting for at least part of each day, his people were hard at work. Some were improving their own crafting skills. Lilly and Michael were making great strides in combining enchantments with materials used in their armor pieces. Nancy was busy helping grow food and livestock more rapidly than normal, and was personally teaching the improved growth spell to people in each community, saving Ramon and his team the time it would take to make scrolls.
The survivors living at Pelican Bay organized their fishing boats and began hauling in significant quantities of fish. They remained in the waters near islands, hoping to avoid any large sea creatures. Allistor had them limit their trips to once per week, and rotate the locations where they dropped their nets, not wanting to overfish the waters and destro
y the ecosystem. When Helen heard him give that order, without any prompting from her, she gave him a little hug and a pat on the ass.
The fish, meanwhile, were distributed via teleport, providing fresh meat to all of Allistor’s properties, and those allied Strongholds who wished to purchase some. The fishing crews kept all the proceeds from those sales.
Gralen and his officers, along with Gene and Kira, were training the flight crew candidates. Each day two groups would go up in the morning – one in the yacht, the other in the colony ship. Then another two would train in the afternoon. They practiced a range of simulated situations from routine takeoffs and landings to space battles, learning how to operate their stations and react to problems quickly and precisely. They had galley crews up with them at the same time, learning to cook, literally, on the fly. Each galley crew would serve the bridge crew, engineers, et cetera, a single meal during the half-day training sessions.
At the same time, Gene and Kira were leveling up their Aviator skills. Both Allistor and Helen also spent a day with them, watching them pilot during the morning shift, then taking a shot at it themselves in the afternoon, to level their own skills.
When Gene wasn’t flying, and even some of the time that he was flying, he and the engineers and mechanics were taking apart and studying the small hydrogen fuel engine Allistor had bought for them to play with. They were doing their best to reverse engineer the thing, using any books they could find on the topic to supplement their efforts.
Eventually, Gene called Allistor and the others together at the Citadel motor pool. There were chairs laid out in rows, facing a large table with a cloth-covered object on it. When everyone was settled, George unveiled his prototype.
“Aaaand here she is, folks! We’re calling her Hydra. Partly because she runs on hydrogen fuel, but mostly because she has seven heads, all in-line, like a legendary dragon turbo engine!” He waggled his eyebrows at his perceived cleverness. There was some scattered applause and a few cheers.
He yanked the cloth free, revealing a brightly shining engine block. It was much less fancy than Allistor had expected. It was also quite compact. He didn’t know a lot about engines, so he asked the first question that came to mind.
“Why in-line?”
Gene smiled. “We actually started with a V pattern, but one of the books Ramon found for us showed that the in-line engine was steadier, with less vibration, less power loss, and could be made smaller. Which also makes it lighter. If we’re going to be using these in planes, lighter is better.”
“Very cool!” Allistor got up and took a few steps closer, leaning in to examine the thing. He really had no clue what he was looking at, but he knew Gene and the others present had worked hard on it, and he wanted to show some appreciation.
“So, is this a large scale replica of the motorcycle engine I bought for you to sacrifice?”
“Oh, no! This one is a whole new animal. Dragon! Engine. Whatever.” Gene grinned at him. “We combined what we learned from the alien tech with good ol’ fashioned Earth mechanics. She’s not as efficient as alien tech, yet. And still a little heavier. But she’s all ours. We’ll keep making improvements over the next few months, maybe years. But this baby here, she’ll be installed along with her twin sister in my jet tomorrow.” He paused when he realized what he’d said.
“I mean… the big jet that I fly for you.” He looked slightly embarrassed, his enthusiasm flagging.
“It’s your jet, Gene. As long as you agree to take me for a ride when I need one.” Allistor gave him a light punch in the arm. “Now, you were saying about tomorrow?”
“Right! She’ll be installed in the Gulfstream tomorrow. Then we’ll take her up for a few test flights. And yes, we’ll bring parachutes.” He rolled his eyes, having received that advice from at least a dozen people already. “But our preliminary testing shows she could push the plane faster than the fuselage was designed to handle. Something close to eight hundred miles per hour, which is faster than Mach 1! And fifty gallons of water, or a much smaller amount of refined hydrogen fuel, and she can fly around the world, nonstop!”
“And she’ll be faster than the dragons. That’s great, guys!” Allistor gave Gene a high five, then went around to the others doing the same. “Awesome work!”
“Dragons? Ha! The only thing a dragon will hear is a sonic boom as we pass them by.” Gene was like a kid showing off a new toy.
“And are you going to upgrade the structure of the plane to handle faster speeds?” Allistor envisioned the luxury jet streaking across the sky at Mach 2.
Gene shook his head. “Not worth the trouble. I mean, the Gulfstream is beautiful, but if we want to hit higher speeds, it’s better to just go with a different vehicle altogether. She’ll be great for running around the planet, and we’ll just keep her to within her tolerances. By the time we took her apart and rebuilt her, it would be more time and cost efficient to just build something better from scratch.”
“I see. Well, I look forward to seeing what else you come up with! And… will you make some version of this that we can use in ground vehicles? Like… armored personnel carriers that could plow through crowded highways all day on just a barrel of water for fuel?”
“Sure! Already have one almost done. Not for an APC, obviously. But we’re refitting one of the RVs. We’ll be able to drive cross-country nonstop, switching out drivers as we go. The engine won’t overheat. With a moisture collector on the roof, you could go for weeks.”
Allistor patted the enthusiastic engineer on the back, congratulated them all one more time, and took his leave after promising to tag along on the test flight the following day. As he walked toward the teleport pad, he placed a call through Nigel to Chris.
“Hey, boss. What’s up?”
“Talk to me about refined hydrogen fuel. Can we purchase it in bulk? Is it expensive?”
Chris snorted. “You’ve not been doing any homework at all, have you?”
“Uhh... no?”
“Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe. I know you know that. And hydrogen fuel is the cheapest. Which is why so many things run on it. You can literally find converters that will remove the hydrogen from the air, from water, whatever, and refine it into fuel, just about anywhere. I think you can purchase a large one, big enough to supply refined fuel for a fleet of ships, for like a million klax.”
“Cool! I guess I’m not used to being the backwater savages of the universe yet. I keep thinking this tech, since it’s new to us, is going to be super expensive. Please buy us a few of them and have them installed at the Strongholds. Eventually we’ll have small fleets of vehicles that run on the stuff at each location. And we’ll be able to fuel our planes and spaceships.”
“Sire, if I might make a suggestion?”
Allistor’s eyes widened for a moment. “Certainly, Nigel.”
“I actually have one suggestion, and one recommendation. First, hydrogen fuel is explosive under certain conditions, and converters can be damaged in attacks or by sabotage. So I recommend the converters be installed far from heavily populated areas. As for my suggestion, along those same lines, should George begin to manufacture munitions featuring a solid form of the refined fuel, very small amounts could cause large explosions.”
Allistor heard Chris chuckling. He shook his head. “Very helpful on both counts. Thank you, Nigel. Seems that upgrade is coming in handy.”
“Yes, Sire. Thank you.”
Allistor teleported back to Invictus and sought out Amanda. As usual, she was in her medical ward, scanning someone. It was a child this time, with a broken arm. Allistor winced as she pulled on the little boy’s wrist, aligning the bone properly before letting the boy’s muscle and tissue pull it back into place. A quick Restore spell, and the child’s tears stopped falling. His mother hugged him, rubbing his back as he sniffled.
The whole time she’d been working, Amanda had her Internal Analysis working. Handing the boy a lollipop, she said, “You can’t see
it, but right now little tiny magic robots are all scrunched up inside your arm, making your bones even stronger than they were before.”
The boy just nodded, wiping the tears from his eyes with one sleeve before unwrapping the candy and popping it into his mouth. The mother thanked Amanda and let the boy out of the room. Allistor smiled and ruffled the kid’s hair as he walked past. “I been there, little man. It ain’t fun. But she’s right, you’ll be stronger now.” Fuzzy, who had been following Allistor in hopes of some treats, licked the boy’s face, nearly knocking him backward. Allistor suspected it was an attempt to steal the lollipop.
The boy grimaced at Fuzzy, wiping his face with the same sleeve as before. The bear’s stinky breath detracted significantly from his cuteness.
Turning to Amanda, he asked, “Any chance I could get one of those lollipops? And… do you have a mint-flavored one for Fuzzy?”
Amanda looked him up and down quickly. “You’re not wounded.”
“Exactly! I haven’t let anything bite me all day. Surely that earns me a treat.”
“Nope.” She shook her head, turning and placing the candy jar up on a shelf. “Patients only. Not loiterers. No lollipops for lollygaggers!”
Both Allistor and Fuzzy pouted.
“Sire, there has been an incident north of the main gate. Two of your citizens have just been attacked by humanoids of unknown origin!” Nigel’s voice echoed through the room.
“Shit! Nigel, send the droids! I’m on my way. Give me loudspeaker please.”
“Go ahead, Sire.”
“Attention all citizens! A few of our own have been attacked just outside the north gate! Anyone who is nearby, please assist as quickly as possible. I’m headed there now. Report to Nigel as soon as you have info.”
He was already running down the corridor toward the main lobby. Outside, people were piling into the two Juggernauts that were parked in the street. He saw Helen climb into the driver’s seat of the lead vehicle, so he and Fuzzy jumped in the back, along with Amanda. There were already four armed citizens inside. Helen shouted, “Moving!” and the vehicle jerked forward even as the side door was being closed.
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