by Sean Kennedy
Jacob nodded and looked down at the sparkling water, rippling from the dragon’s constant exhale. He closed his eyes and felt the light on his face. When he opened them, he noticed a shimmering castle on a distant hill. He turned to Teeva as he watched the 0perators, waiting as gunfighters to fill their hands.
Jacobs saw a unit patch of the bearded killer and wanted to get a better look. The logo highlighted in his helmet’s HUD, enlarging in Jacob's lower left display.
Hangmen
0perators Code D4R77
He thought about what that might mean, and considered what the 0perators might have hidden in their inventory.
“Why do they spell it like that?”
“Like what?” Teeva asked
With the zero instead of a letter in their name.”
“Oh that,” Teeva said, “it’s because... ah ... because...”
“Warscape 0perators are combat junkies, so they get the zero from combat networks.” Joni came to Teeva’s rescue. “On their nets, the highest callsign was always zero, so 0perators use that zero in their name as a way to show that no one is higher than themselves. Since they’re their own highest authority, they are always zero. That D4R77 code is just what you need to get in touch with that unit on the 0perator net, it's so registered groups can track their exploits, build their reputation and whatnot. Majka already registered you.”
“She did?” Jacob said.
“Had to,” Majka smiled, “We needed it to have you join us for the job.” He looked to the cloak clasp and thought to scan it.
Dragon Cobra Ninja Clan
0perator code N1NJ45
“Huh!” Jacob said. “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” and as he spoke, the mournful sound of an alphorn sent a droning tone echoing across the lake, igniting other alphorns in the distance. Jacob turned to the others, but the 0perators reactions told him the answer before he could ask.
He looked back over the lake, and saw seven black winged shapes descending from the cloudless sky.
“They’re coming.” Joni whispered.
Chapter 8
“C’mon bro!” Teeva said, and sprinted past Jacob, joining Majka, Kage, Butai, and Joni as they raced to the edge of the tent bazaar. The crowd began screaming, rushing towards the tent shops, only to find their fabric doors fallen to make immovable walls.
Spirals of fire opened into portholes like compass points around the central fountain, as men and women in the purple robes of the Galafynn guard began channeling the crowds into a stone courtyard that waited on the other side.
Jacob followed his team to where cobblestone street split into forest paths. Six Hangman 0perators formed an extended line across the road, holding short fat rifles with belt housings leading up to their ammunition backpacks.
The bearded 0perator crouched on one knee in the middle of them. Jacob heard one side of his conversation as more avatars joined the battle line, holding a variety of Takrizatchi blades and watching the sky
“Hit ‘em war-fly,” Jacob heard the hairy Hangman say, and no sooner had the words left his mouth than a blast came from the banner spires of the market tents. Jacob’s optics focused on the sniper, lying prone against the fabric rooftop, now working the bolt action of a twenty-millimeter rifle.
Jacob Looked back to the seven descending winged monstrosities, and saw the lead creature buckle and twist, tumbling out of the sky to crash into the mighty forest below. Jacob’s enhanced vision brought the remaining creatures into telescopic focus.
Dragons!
Their bodies were a dark, sickly green with scabbed skin stretched over reptilian bodies with long necks and humanoid heads. Giant leather wings lifted hybrid-humans like nightmares cast skyward. The remaining six dragons unleashed a raging chorus that chilled the air.
Two more blasts from the tenting came in quick succession, but only one of the twisted creatures fell from the sky. A prompt for Jacob to activate his Hummingbird Armor appeared, but he dismissed it.
More Galafynn forces joined the fighting line. Barbarian muscle bristled as they passed massive bladed weapons from hand to hand, shifting their weight with bloodlust in their eyes. The bearded hangman yelled to the growing crowd as the Galafynn Bowmen fell in behind them. “Do not to move past the line or you will get shot!”
Jacob believed him.
The sniper’s cannon barked twice from the tent tops, and two more of the Plague dragons fell into the green sea of trees below. Three remained, and the largest of them dropped its wings and dove towards the defenders.
Someone yelled, “Incoming!” As the 0perators began to fire, each belt fed machine gun blasted, their tracers like lasers towards the descending beasts.
Jacob felt Teeva grab and drag him off his feet into the shallow brush of the roadside, but for others, it was too late. With a flash and terrible heat, the beast passed only meters above the ground, turning its demonic head to bathe Galafynn’s defenders in brilliant yellow flame.
The Dragon’s breath roared over the searing screams, and Jacob heard a noise like reality tearing come from the roadside forest. Jacob got to his feet as Teeva crouched beside him, staring past his takrizatchi blade and away from the burning wounded, into to the trees. A crowd of howling madness came rushing from the forest’s darkness, charging in onto the carnage.
There were hundreds, maybe thousands in the screaming horde. Each a twisted, stylized demon. Those without terrible claws held hideous meat cleavers, swords, and axes, while others lashed forwards thrashing the air with vicious barbed whips. There were tentacles, extra arms, giant hands and gnashing jaws that flashed amongst glowing Plague eyes. Some wore black leather armor while others used their skin as an extreme canvas for vulgar tattoos and tainted symbols that shifted with dark magic under their skin.
Another hateful roar came as they rushed the burning guardians of Galafynn. The two flanking Dragons swooped in, dropping their fire into to the market and hitting those still streaming through the escape portholes with burning breath.
Amongst the dead and burning, the bearded 0perator stood up, smoldering as he pushed off the burning corpse of a barbarian he’d used as a meat-shield, and Jacob heard a familiar whisper before rotating belt-fed death began carving the charging horde.
A second 0perator, whose burnt arm was still sizzling from the dragon's kiss, shouldered her cannon and began firing. Two more guns spun up among the burning bodies as other 0perators emerged from the smoking flesh piles.
Fast moving plague bringers, howling as they came, embraced the cannon fire by pushing to catch the bullets with their shredding bodies, soaking up the rounds for the tumbling legions behind them.
Some Elven archers, still smoking from the dragon’s attack, rushed forwards, firing with each pace, notching fresh arrows mid-stride. The fletched feathers whistled past Jacob, burying themselves in the enemy wave as they trampled the wounded and dead.
The acrid smoke corrupted the air into a fog, making it impossible to see far in any direction. Jacob couldn’t see any of his clan other than Teeva. He followed his friend's gaze skywards to see the three-winged demons turn in a lazy arc for another pass.
Jacob’s HUD flashed the prompt for the Hummingbird again. He canceled it and looked to Teeva who had placed himself beside a Galafynn Guard and barbarian woman who brandished a wicked two-handed sword.
“Get ready bro!” Teeva called, and copying him, Jacob spaced himself amongst the fighters with enough room to swing his takrizatchi, as the five remaining 0perators dumped fire into the tumbling onslaught.
A warning flashed in Jacob’s HUD, and he shifted, just barely avoiding a long black arrow the size of a javelin as it whistled past him. Another arrow was coming for Teeva, but time seemed to slow as Jacob reacted, swinging his takrizatchi katana to catch the arrow in flight, cutting and deflecting it away.
Over the screams, the bearded Hangman yelled, “Charge!” and the defending fighters along with Teeva and Jacob, surged forwards to meet the oncoming mass.
The two crowds smashed together as thundering waves, parrying steel and rending flesh while the sounds of combat, gunfire, and death erupted.
There are so many of them! Jacob thought as a lithe female with dead black eyes and hair like fire, leaped over the Hangmen shooters, lashing out with two hooked scythe hands towards him. Jacob crouched just in time, letting her wicked claws pass over his head with a grim whisper. He stood, bringing his takrizatchi up to slash behind her elbows, severing both arms and shearing away the top of her face. Her momentum carried the carcass into the smoldering meat behind him.
Teeva cleaved a tentacle-armed demon from her right shoulder to her left hip, opening her torso like a vertical mouth. Her protruding ribs glistened like teeth between her swollen breasts before a fountain of gore vomited out of the new mouth.
A mutated arm, as long as Jacob was tall, swung claws out of the sky. Jacob brought his blade up deflecting the blow, and it knocked him to the ground. He looked up in time to see a giant plague bringer, like a deformed gorilla, loom over him before six explosions erupted from the creature’s chest and through its forehead. The hulking beast fell, and Jacob rolled out of the way as it splattered on the cobblestones.
The bearded 0perator turned his smoking cannon back to the crowd, stomping one plague bringer to the ground and firing a burst into a charging swordsman before dropping the barrel to finish the scrambling demon.
“BRO!” Teeva screamed, and Jacob brought up his blade just in time to block a humongous ax from cleaving his body in two. On impact, his takrizatchi gave a sickening crack, and the blade shattered, knocking Jacob down onto a pile of bleeding and burnt flesh.
Jacob scrambled from the bloody mass. A muscular giant with a head like a tiger opened its feline jaws and released a terrible scream to rip the air. It swung the great battle ax again, but Teeva struck from the side, slashing through cat creature’s thigh, severing the leg cleanly and it collapsed, howling in rage.
Jacob scrambled to his feet, still holding the broken takrizatchi, it’s blade snapped a hand’s span from the hilt. A wind blew up from behind as a shadow passed overhead and a dragon's talons grabbed the bearded Hangman like a child's toy, pinning his arms as great leathery wings lifted the plague-beast into the air with its stolen prey.
Jacob turned, only to see a huge cloven hoof connect with Teeva’s chest, sending him tumbling into the carnage and smoke. The hoof planted itself on the road with a sound like splitting teeth and, a barrel-chested thing with spiked quill hair over a satyr body, snarled as a long forked-tongue lashed from its goat head.
At that moment, Jacob activated the Hummingbird Armor. There was no inventory search, no selection or prompts. The power armor came on like a rage, welling from his subconscious to take control of the fray.
The armor lifted Jacob’s perspective higher, and twin mono-blades ejected from his wrists, stalling the onslaught of the plague with his sudden transformation, leaving the monsters staring at their reflection in the Kaizen armor’s spider-eye lenses.
Jacob lunged, driving his twin blades through each pectoral of the goat thing’s chest. With a flick of his wrists, he tore it in half, sending a geyser of blood over the attackers. His tri-barrel cannon began to whistle as it spun up on his shoulder.
The cries of the attacking plague were interrupted by the supersonic growl of the mag-cannon’s ferrous steel shards sweeping through them at thousand rounds a minute. Jacob swept his arms wide as he stepped forwards, clearing demons as though harvesting hay with his vibrating mono-blades.
His mag-cannon fired in a fanning spray, and Jacob caught four plague bodies with another bladed sweep. Jacob’s attention brought the Hangman’s Dragon into his HUD's targeting focus.
The railgun fired, interrupting the steady stream of the spinning mag-cannon with a powerful blast, driving a ferrous slug through the back of the dragon's head. It exploded into shards of meat and its neck thrashed like an wild blood hose. The body tumbled, releasing the 0perator to fall towards the horde below.
Another stride and Jacob ejected wing shroud turbines from his back, launching forwards as his turbine’s wash blasted the flowing blood into a spray, blinding the oncoming horde as he carved his launch path towards the falling Hangman.
Jacob retracted his mono blades and flew above the mass, revealing to all the Hummingbird Armor they now faced. He reached out and caught the falling 0perator like a sport ball and heard the sickening crash as the dragon’s headless body falling on the attacking mass, crushing dozens beneath it.
Turning in a low arc, his turbine wash blew back the crowd, knocking them from their feet as he floated away from the battle line and towards the center fountain. The two remaining dragons turned away from their path toward the castle on the hill and beat their giant wings as they came back towards the Galafynn market square.
Jacob sent water spray into rainbow mists from the fountain as he descended. Another 0perator ran to them, and Jacob gently lowered the bearded Hangman, letting his squad mate take him. He was conscious but wounded from the crushing grip of the now headless beast.
The 0perators turned away covering their eyes as Jacob spun up his turbines, launching above the market tents, presenting himself as a clean target for the two dragons. Their humanoid faces twisted with hate as they thrashed their leathery wings towards him.
His HUD showed a lock, and flexing his back Jacob launched two warheads from their shroud, leaving tentacle smoke trails as each missile sped towards its target. They impacted on both plague dragons simultaneously, each explosion engulfing the creature and blasting hulks of flesh to rain down. Galafynn’s defenders lifted their eyes as the screams from the attacking Plague changed from rage to terror.
Jacob saw a few 0perators firing into the horde and felt his rage swell. This beautiful realm was now awash in blood. The Plague threatened to destroy not only Galafynn but the free dreams of the world.
He scanned the crowd, like a guillotine hovering above the condemned, designating optimal missile placement. His back opened, and the launch of sixteen warheads became Jacob's battle cry. The missiles detonated just above them, blasting crowd-cleared patches and sending torn bone and flesh fragments into the seething mass.
Jacobs systems tracked a strafing pattern across the horde, and the tri-barrel hissed before belching hypersonic metal from the mag-cannon, and his attention shifted back to finding rail gun targets.
Wump!
A swollen minotaur was blasted in half as he raised his sword to a downed Galafynn guard.
Wump!
The tall pale bowmen firing javelin sized arrows from behind the horde exploded.
Wump!
A human-serpent plague bringer trapping a Hangman 0perator had her upper human torso burst into red mist. It was then that Jacob saw the sudden red flashes of portholes opening among the frenzied horde.
Reinforcements! Jacob thought.
He spotted an optimal choke point between the red gates and descended, and flared his turbines before retracted them to letting the armor’s legs take the weight. Three plague beasts made a sickening crunch from his combat landing as it crushed them into a mangled mass.
He extended his mono-blade claws and caught two more creatures, fatally cleaving their distended torsos. The whine of his mag-cannon mixed with the screams of dying Plague before unleashing hell into the wall of flesh before him.
More red flashes and Jacob fired his railgun, tearing through the horde as bodies exploded, forming valleys of carrion before him. Looking through his new railgun canyons, Jacob saw the Plague crowding to escape through fiery red world-gates.
They’re leaving!
In his armor’s 360-degree view, he watched the retreating plague behind him be cut down by the takrizatchi blades of the bloodied Galafynn defenders.
The remaining demons scattered like rats into the fiery portholes, and as quickly as the attack had started, the Plague disappeared; leaving the cobblestone street a carnage of death.
“Bro!”
Jacob turned to see Teeva standing amongst the dead, eyes wide and staring. With a thought, Jacob placed the Hummingbird armor back into his inventory and dropped to the ground letting his power-boks absorbing the impact as his cloaked envirosuit touched down
Teeva worked his way through the carnage to reach him.
“Teeva... I....” Jacob started to say, but Teeva fell on him, wrapping him in a tight bear hug and squeezing as hard as he could. He released him, pushing Jacob back to hold his shoulders with blood-spattered hands.
“Bro!” He said and looked at the hundreds of bodies seeping into the ground.
“Bro!’ he said again and started laughing. Jacob found himself laughing along with him, “I was keeping the armor low key, but when..."
“If that’s low-key bro, I don’t want to see you bring the noise!” Teeva said looking around. “Whoa.... bro...” Teeva put his hand on his forehead, smearing blood as he shielded his eyes from the sun, taking in the mangled battlefield. Blood ran into streams off the cobblestone and down the gentle slope of the hill, draining into the lake like a seeping stain.
Jacob heard Joni’s voice, and his heart leapt as he saw her and Majka stepping from the side of the market tents, their clothing soaked in blood.
“Where’s Butai?” Jacob called out as they approached.
“He had taken fifteen before I saw him fall,” Kage said as he stepped from the roadside, and Jacob felt his heart drop.
If only I had used the armor sooner!
“Jacob, it's okay,” Majka said, and he felt her hand on his shoulder. “He’s okay, he’ll just be offline for few days, but he'll be able to train in the Dojo. Everything's okay.”
“Yeah,” Jacob said, and remembered this was virtual reality, but it didn’t feel that way. Majka’s hand felt real, the copper smell of blood on the wind smelled real, and there was real terror in the screams of the Plague’s victims.
The blue flash of a gate opened beside the fountain, and Jacob saw a crowd of Galafynn soldiers spill through. These weren't the usual guard, but something more, something elite.
