The skeletons raised their weapons in unison, their heads rattling on their spines like a boney cousin of the forest spirits from Princess Mononoke.
“Huh,” Ree said. “That’s new.”
Chapter Eleven
Jump Jump Revolution
Ree watched the blades scythe back and forth for a few moments, trying to catch the pattern. Since the skeletons were just hanging out, she could assume that the platforms wouldn’t sink under her like those hateful parts in platformer video games.
“Can you take care of the bone brigade?” Ree asked. Drake brought his rifle up and took aim.
The nearest skeleton crossed its axes, still rattling its head, now looking more like a baby toy for the kids of Metal-heads.
Drake fired. The blue blast ripped through the air, hitting the skeleton dead center. Heh, dead. But when the blue energy hit the axes, it dissipated into the weapon.
The axe glowed blue, and the skeleton pointed it back at Drake. In a totally unfair imitation of Link, the blast fired out from the axe, zipping past the swinging scythes.
Ree pushed Drake down and to the side, and the blast took a chunk out of the end of the hallway.
“Perhaps we should go another way,” Drake said.
“Word,” Ree said, getting back up. The pair backtracked, but when they tried to turn right, they were stopped by a dead end.
Ree tested the s that shouldn’t be there with her sword, and it made the tink of hitting stone. Then she tested it with her open hand. It was cool, musty, and totally solid.
“Not fair!” Ree shouted, her mellow long since harshed. She pulled out her phone to check the charge: 12%. She’d turned on airplane mode when she established that the labyrinth didn’t get cell signal, but even so, it didn’t leave her with much oomph for magical power-ups.
“Thoughts?” she asked.
Drake tested the wall, gloved hand pressing against the stone. “I could attempt to remove the wall with an explosive, but there’s no guarantee what little munitions I have on hand would be sufficient.”
“You just carry explosives around on a regular basis?”
“Why shouldn’t I? Your military uses grenades.”
“But what about accidental explosions if you take a hit and land on something wrong?”
“That, my dear, is one of the advantages of using nontellurian physics. There is an element of volition required for my munitions. They’re quite safe.”
“What about exploding the skeletons, then?” she asked, turning back to the hall of trapitude.
“I’m sure that my small devices would suffice, but it seems rather a waste. Bludgeoning attacks should suffice. The difficulty will be taking the occupied platforms.”
Ree eyed the skeletons, which stood at attention, heads rattling. The nearest one’s axe was back to normal, so Drake hadn’t accidentally given it a permanent power-up.
“There’re a few ways to do this. The Prince of Persia way, with swashbuckling, The Tomb Raider way, trying to climb up the rigging and brachiating our way over, and the Doom way, which would involve blowing everything up.”
“I’ve always been partial to swashbuckling, but in this case, that would be quite bold.”
“Quite,” Ree said. The climb might be doable, but then they’d still have to swing and jump to avoid the scythes.
Maybe there was an easier way. She pulled out her phone again, wishing she still had her sideboard or access to Grognard’s to get her hands on some Turn Undead mojo. Again, she found herself wishing that there was a D&D movie worthy of fandom. There was the cartoon, but she couldn’t honestly geek out over that anymore.
She pulled up a clip from X2: X-Men United, where Jean Grey threw around serious telekinetic fu. She wouldn’t need a big push, just enough to knock the skellies off their feet and into the pits. If she had more battery, she’d just go for some flight mojo and hope that they could get over the wall without being fireballed to ashes.
“Can you keep an eye on the bone brigade for a minute?” Ree asked, starting the clip.
She heard Drake answer in the affirmative, but she was already zoning in on the scene, connecting with the character. Jean Grey, with her power growing inexplicably, driven by her devotion to the dream of her mentor, torn between the safety of Scott’s familiar love and the excitement of the strange with Logan. The romantic anxiety angle hit home plenty well, even with her situation’s differences from Jean’s.
As the clip ended, Ree looked up to the skeletons and saw fire dancing at the edges of her vision. Several different minds whispered at the edge of her attention, but shut them out. She wouldn’t get a lot out of the clip, and if she wasted any power, they might find themselves stuck in the middle of the hall while she tried to go back for a second dose.
“Ok, let’s go,” Ree said, stepping forward. The blades scythed back and forth, the skeletons waiting with axes shining and heads rattling.
She synced back up with the blades, watching the timing. “You good on these?”
“I’ve managed my fair share of deadly pits, thankfully,” Drake said. “After you.”
Ree winked at Drake, rocking back and forth. She found the timing, then jumped as the blade cut across the pit. Old-school platformers must have all been set in low-gravity worlds—Mario and Mega Man both had vertical leaps more than twice their height. She only needed five feet at a time, and thanked her “leadership” courses during junior high as she landed on the first stand-alone platform, staring across a second empty ledge at the skeleton beyond. She waited for the scythe in front, then jumped again, feeling the blade cut through the air behind her. Eep. That one was a shade faster than the other.
She heard Drake’s soft grunt and turned to see him land on the first platform.
“And now,” Ree said as she turned back to the skeleton. She reached out with one hand toward the skeleton, and put the other to her forehead, miming Jean Grey’s most famous this-is-me-using-my-powers gesture.
And . . . push! She saw the skeleton topple over backward, crashing like a giant-size game of pick-up sticks.
Ree brought her hand down from her forehead and blew out the fake smoke on her not-gun finger. “Nice.”
They bounded over several more pits, and Ree TKed the second skeleton as well.
But by the time she got to the platform in front of the third skeleton, the power was gone. Drake hopped beside her and she pulled out the phone again.
Ree pressed play on the video, and something overhead said, “Caaaaw!”
Ree snapped her neck up and around to see. A motorcycle-size crow arced over the labyrinth, then folded its wings into a dive, headed straight for them.
“Seriously?” Ree asked the universe, feeling cosmically shat upon. Drake popped off a shot, which blew a hole in the bird’s wing, but it kept coming. It opened its wings, catching the air. The bird wavered, one wing’s aerodynamicosity ruined by the smoldering hole, but managed to alight on the metallic frame holding the scythes, if ungracefully. It hopped from rung to rung.
“What would you say if I wanted to keep this one?” Ree asked.
“I’d say you’re quite mad,” Drake said, chuckling.
“Yeah. So what?”
Hopping down from the metallic frame, the corvid became a disturbing mashup of Edgar Allan Poe and Super Mario Brothers. Determined not to be squished like a Koopa, Ree sliced at the bird’s foot, chopping off a toe. It unfurled its wings in the space between the scythes, wafting in the air.
Bad move, Bird-o. She spun the blade around for another cut, the weapon moving like flowing water in her hands. The jian wasn’t a hefty weapon, but it handled like a dream. The slash took another chunk out of the creature, and it cawed at ninety decibels right in her face. It followed up with a peck, which she dodged by ducking to a squat, thankful for her young knees. She swung again, and got a splatter of ichor for her trouble.
Drake had dropped his rifle and pulled out his kukri, waving it in a distracting defensive pattern
. There wasn’t room for two humans, a monster, a sword, and a rifle all in the same square, so he’d decided to fight smart, letting her handle the melee portion of the encounter.
She stood with a thrust, burying the blade deep in the creature. It dropped like an anvil, straight on top of her and Drake. The three hit the platform, then rolled off. Ree kept her chest on the plaftorm, holding on with her free arm, thankful for the rough texture of the surface, which gave her half-decent handholds. She felt her back pop when Drake stopped himself by grabbing her around the waist. The bird slid off her sword to fall and impale itself on the spike pit, so at least she wasn’t holding up two whole other entities.
Mothergodddamnedfuckingow.
“Climbing would be good, thanks!” Ree gasped out, her fingers already shaking. At least she was wearing the thick leather coat, not him. That ten pounds distributed on her frame was a lot better than tugging at her hips.
She heard frustrated clambering, and tried to not take it personally as Drake grabbed his way up her body to pull himself onto the platform. What would have been terribly intimate touching in another context was just thoroughly uncomfortable and lung-crushing in this one, so it was easier to file it all away under “Not contributing to the life-as-CW-drama.”
Gloved hands wrapped around her arms, and Ree pulled herself up, with Drake’s help, leaving the pair to hyperventilate on the platform. Nearby, the skeleton rattled like a puppy whining for attention.
“Take a number,” Ree gasped, waving lazily with one hand.
They took a minute to catch their breath. Her lungs were bellows, sucking in air as hard as she could to remind her lungs that oxygen was a good thing. Ree sat up and looked at the eager skeleton. “How long have you been waiting to fight somebody?” she asked out loud. Grognard and Eastwood couldn’t have come this way, unless they’d evaded the skeletons (or they re-spawned). But since she couldn’t go back anyway, the only way out was through.
“You know what?” Ree said. “I’m done with this shit. It’s time to cheat.”
Drake raised an eyebrow but said nothing. She had a good rar on, and it was just as well that he not feed it by being reasonable when she was trying to rage.
Another trip to Jean Grey Lane gave her the magic to send the last skeleton flying, and they huffed their way across the pits to the end of the hall, where the walls dropped back to just over ten feet high.
“And now, we start getting sneaky,” Ree said. She called up Spider-Man on her phone and watched the first wall-crawling clip, her battery ticking down from 3%.
“We’re going up and then we’re going to roof-run our way through this maze until we find the guys, then we’re going to GTFO so I can go to bed. Sound good?”
“Certainly,” Drake said.
Ree felt the Spider-magic tingling softly in her brain. She had to get up and get Drake up in one go, since her phone didn’t have the juice for more than that. Let’s just hope it’s enough.
“I’ll go up, then I’m going to pull you up with the rifle. I don’t have long, so chop chop.” Ree jumped at the wall and stuck with her hands and feet. She pulled herself up the wall, the increased strength making the task way easier than her last climb. She reached the top of the wall and reached back. Drake held up the rifle, and she grabbed it, pulling as he walked his way up the wall.
She pulled herself up onto the top of the stone as she felt the Spider-magic fading, and straddled the two-foot-wide wall as she helped Drake reach the top. Don’t look down, she told herself. Looking down would give fuel to that part of her brain that housed her fear of heights.
And that wouldn’t end poorly at all.
Ree sat up and saw the maze from above, looking out instead of down. She couldn’t see into more than a couple of rows on either side before the shallow horizon cut her off, but from a standing position, they’d be able to avoid the traps, and would hopefully be low enough to dodge whatever was sending the fireballs. They just had to avoid falling and cracking their skulls open if anything nasty did decide to come and get them while they were doing their Parkour act.
She got to her feet with the last of the Spider-Man power, then took a long breath as she steadied herself. There was no wind in the labyrinth, which was a rare blessing from the universe that she felt was otherwise hating her. Ree scanned around, looking for the green light of a lightsaber or the swishy crinoline of one of Lucretia’s voluminous dresses.
Don’t look down fought with You have to look down, idiot, and she took several deep breaths before she let her gaze drift toward the labyrinth floor.
Off to one side stood a Dungeonpunk American Gladiators obstacle course in wood, concrete, and water, a steep ramp down into a dark pit sort of area lit only by glowing blue eyes, and to one side, a set of catapults manned (goblined?) by scaly green creatures with pointed ears that stuck straight out from their skulls.
“You got anything?” she asked, looking around.
“I’d suggest avoiding those catapults,” he said. Ree nodded to that. “The fireballs came from there,” he said, pointing again, “so I recommend we head this way. If we can find the aerothopter, I may be able to jury-rig it enough to fold up so that I can carry it away for later repair.”
“In that case, we go this way, right?” Ree said. Taking the high road would invalidate their chalk-based trail marking pretty damned fast.
They made their way along the narrow wall. Ree held the sword out for balance, and Drake used his rifle as a tightrope walker’s pole. They passed monsters, pits, and dead ends, and with every step, Ree felt better about taking the high road.
Several minutes later, they found the smoldering wreck of the aerothopter. It was not alone.
A pack of blue-skinned creatures with forked tails poked at the crashed contraption. They looked like Bamfs from X-Men, Nightcrawler-esque creatures the size of four-year-olds.
“That’s probably not good,” Ree said.
“Most certainly not. Those don’t appear to be gremlins, but there is no shortage of creatures able to ruin an already-damaged device.”
The hallway with the aerothopter wasn’t accessible on their wall, so they had to drop down and wind around several corners.
By the time they’d arrived, the creatures had grown in number, and the aerothopter was in even worse shape. That’s not encouraging, Ree admitted. Were these creatures born out of destruction or something? Gremlins that created and fed on atrophy? That would blow chunks, and they need to stay very far away from my apartment. Place is enough of a pig’s sty as is.
“Melee to avoid damaging your poor contraption any more than necessary?” Ree asked, raising her sword.
“That would be preferable, yes.”
Ree strode forward, whipping her sword around and trying to make as much noise as possible. If these things were scavengers, maybe they were also cowards. She’d had her fill of fighting. Just moving was effort enough. Fatigue clawed at her eyes like sandpaper, and her limbs felt like lead.
Stay on target. . . .
One of the creatures hissed at Ree, its eyes glowing red, but its companions broke and ran, screeching as they padded away on all fours. The angry one saw that it was alone, and as Ree closed to stab at it, it jumped onto the unbroken rotor and swung itself up to the top of the wall, bounding over and out of sight.
“I’ll take fights like that for the rest of the night, thank you very much,” Ree said, sheathing the sword as she stepped up to the aerothopter.
It was still recognizable, which was a plus. But one rotor was broken, and nearly everything about the vehicle was folded, spindled, or mutilated.
“So, Doc, what’s the diagnosis?” she asked as Drake regarded the wreck.
Drake took several long breaths, his nostrils flaring. Drake was a pretty chill guy, even with all the swashbuckling excitement. He was several degrees more unflappable than Ree, putting him very close to the Helen Mirren side of the flappability continuum (the other side being eternally put-upon comic he
roine Cathy, natch).
He knelt down and fiddled with buttons, levers, and something that Ree still couldn’t label anything other than hoojab. He poked and prodded, but nothing moved.
With another sigh, Drake stood. “It’s impossible. I cannot fix the aerothopter, not even enough for it to collapse.”
“But you can build another one, right? With enough time?”
Drake grabbed a pipe of the machine, holding on like he was in a boat tossed upon rough waters. “I made this during my tenure on the Lapis Galleon, using alloys found only in the deepest reaches of the aetheric sea. Barring another expedition into the outer reaches of Faerie, I fear that you may never again have the misfortune of squeezing determinedly into a Drake Winters aerothopter.”
Sympathetic grief on behalf of Drake outweighed a tiny bit of relief. Without that aerothopter, we might not ever have caught the Aberrant Muse, and I’d have had a hell of a lot worse time getting away from Rachel MacKenzie. And however useful it was, it was important to him, something he was proud of.
Ree put a hand on Drake’s shoulder and squeezed. She didn’t dare doing anything more, as punch-drunk blood loss and exhaustion had made her filters pretty thin, and that way lay madness and hurt feelings.
“We’ll get you the parts. Can you salvage anything?”
Drake said, “There’s a screwdriver in the coat. Third pocket from the left. Would you be so kind?”
Ree straightened up. She hadn’t felt a screwdriver in the coat . . . She reached inside the heavy coat and felt around. Lo and behold, a screwdriver.
“Huh,” she said, handing it to Drake. The world of magic never failed to amaze.
The inventor crouched down and fiddled with the ruined aerothopter. Ree kept an eye out for the Bamf-esques or anything else that might be wandering around.
Attack the Geek: A Ree Reyes Side-Quest Page 11
