We tried to move as soundlessly as we could. When finally I heard the familiar thunderous squawk overhead, we promptly wrapped ourselves in our Chameleon capes and hugged the steel supports trying to become one with them.
The Roc! I’d forgotten how big he actually was. His wingbeats raised a swirling cloud of dust and tiny rock fragments into the air. The ancient elevator framework began to sway with us clinging to it.
Luckily, the feathered monster promptly took to the sky, disinterested in whatever might be going on at the edge of the cliff. My Binocular Vision allowed me to see him soar aloft until he became a barely discernible black dot high above.
Once it had disappeared behind the mountain slopes, and once we were reasonably sure the monstrous bird couldn’t notice us anymore, we resumed our climb.
Step by step. Beam after beam. Trying not to look down. Twice I very nearly lost my grip: the first time because I’d overestimated my ability; the other when I recklessly stepped on a rotten joint. Both times I was saved by the safety line tethering me to Kai who climbed with remarkable agility as if he was used to scaling thousand-mile heights on a daily basis.
By midday, we were barely halfway there. Our endeavor proved to be much more long-winded than originally thought. In the meantime, Alice had contacted us (Kai had connected our suits into a communication network using some complex signal amplifier) reporting that she’d found a herd of Khutakh and was ready to start the hunt. We needed to buy ourselves as much time as we could, so we resumed our climb on the double.
When we’d covered about three quarters of the way, I gave Alice the go-ahead. She began teasing the “Diplodocuses” trying to lure them out into the open from the safety of the giant trees. It didn’t take her long before a good dozen of them were chasing after her, trumpeting angrily, the earth quaking under their feet.
All of it was happening way beyond our range of vision, Alice’s snapped reports the only way we could appreciate the heat of the chase. We just kept climbing, trying to clear the remaining distance before the Roc noticed two yummy morsels and fell upon us from his wuthering heights.
In all honesty, our plan wasn’t that special. I could clearly see all of its drawbacks now. The flying monster could ignore our ruse entirely as he could very easily hunt more suitable prey in the nearby A-zones hundreds of miles away. He could also grab a smaller Khutakh and carry it back to his nest to feast on it, just like he’d done with the Hydra earlier. Still, there was a reasonable chance we might distract him – and if so, we had to take it.
Finally, we could make out the top edge of the cliff overhead. We were nearly there, some thirty or forty yards left. Like two stubborn ants, we climbed onto the last section of the elevator and froze, peering down. From here, the tall pine trees and giant boulders covering the slopes seemed tiny; our climb, impossible. The very thought of us possibly having to return the same way sent shivers down my spine.
Kai shuddered, clinging closer to a rusty beam. “Azure keeps growing.”
That’s what my interface was reporting too: the level of A-radiation was weak but stable. Which meant that the egg was still there.
We couldn’t climb any further for fear of the monstrous bird noticing us from above. We hunkered under the rocky ledge which formed the cliff’s edge and prepared for the final dash. By now, Alice had been driving the herd around for well over an hour; her snapped comments rang with impatience and desperation. The sun was about to set; we had very little time left. What if we failed to make it?
“Listen, man,” Kai said, apparently preoccupied with the same thoughts, “If he doesn’t bite, let’s just go for it.”
I nodded, making a mental note of the time. Even if the Roc didn’t show up, we could still take our chances with Lady Luck and try to steal both the egg and the airmobile. It just felt so stupid to sit and wait when we were mere yards away from our prize. Last night though, Kai had told us about the Rocs’ super vision saying they never left their nest unattended. I couldn’t forget the dead Incarnator’s skeleton up above. He'd probably wanted to get to the nest unnoticed, too. It hadn’t worked though.
I gave us an hour. Forty minutes later, we heard Alice’s anxious voice,
“He’s here! He’s coming!”
The Roc couldn’t resist the nice juicy bait, after all. He attacked the Khutakh, dropping down from the sky like a bolt from the blue. Although we couldn’t see the scope of the battle of giants, it must have been monumental.
Alice tried to keep us informed with her laconic comments. “He attacks. Three Khutakh, fully grown. They fight. He killed one. They flee. He grabbed another one. Got him! Holy Azure, he picked him up! He flies off. Toward you!”
I gritted my teeth. Had we underestimated the Roc? Had he managed to lift a Khutakh into the air and take it home?
After a few seconds of tense silence, Alice reported,
“No. He’s coming down. He can’t carry it. He... he starts to eat!”
It worked!
I nodded to Kai, and we darted up. We’d already discussed our plan of action: first we had to take the egg, then check the airmobile. If the craft was out of order, preventing us from carrying the egg away, we’d have to quickly destroy the hatch. Every moment was precious: we had no idea how long it might take the Roc to feast on his prey.
Finally, we climbed out onto a ledge which ended in precipitous drops on three of its sides, the fourth formed by the plateau with the familiar domed ruins and the Roc’s enormous nest sitting right on top of them. The air above it shimmered with a dull pale-blue glow.
The place was empty. Deserted. We hurried to cross the rocky ledge littered with the gory remains of the Roc’s past meals and climbed into the nest.
Then we saw it.
It was amazing. Truly magical. The oblong egg was the size of a grown man, its shell strewn with a great multitude of glittering crystals like with powdered gems. So beautiful.
Within its pale-blue crystalline shell, I could see a blurred dark silhouette. Waves of pulsating pale-blue glow spread around the egg, accompanied by powerful surges of A-radiation.
“Holy shit,” Kai muttered. “This is an Azurid, if ever I’ve seen one! The mind boggles.”
“Why?”
“This is altered crystal. From what I heard, it can even survive over the Edge. A class-Gold resource! You can’t even imagine the kinds of things we could make with it!”
I didn’t reply. For some reason, stealing the egg with a hatchling inside just felt wrong. The Roc may have been a monster but he had his uses. Taking his baby from him would be cruel. From what Miko had told me, he’d spent decades hatching it, guarding it closely, and now some Incarnators would steal it from him! That was a mean thing to do.
“Come on, man, quit stalling! Help me pick it up!” Kai broke the silence. “Move it, we don’t have the time!”
I shrugged the indecision off. This wasn’t the right moment for soul-searching. Stellar’s mission had said it loud and clear: we had to either bring the egg to the nearest terminal, or destroy it. The prize was three commendations – and Alice’s future. That’s what had made us scale the precipitous cliffs, risking our lives every second of it. Was I prepared to give up now simply because I was unwilling to break the heart of an Azuric monster?
The egg felt hot even through my thick gauntlets. And it was so heavy! More like a boulder, really. I got the impression that the silhouette inside had stirred, changing the pattern of the blue pulsations. Still, we didn’t have the time to think about it. Helping each other, we gingerly lifted the egg out of the nest and lugged it toward the edge.
The airmobile was still there, sitting on a narrow ledge inside a deep crevice: small and oblong-shaped, its paintwork an inconspicuous grayish green. Its fuselage was pockmarked with bullet holes, its windshield covered in a web of hair-thin cracks – but other than that, it looked undamaged.
“That’s a Dove!” Kai said. “And it’s still in one piece! Holy shit, that’s freakin’ per
fect!”
My interface promptly identified the craft too. This was indeed a small five-seater Dove: a replica of the Utopian raid craft armed only with a coaxial coilgun turret. Still, its high speed, stealth and maneuverability more than compensated for that. A recon craft rather than a fighter, it was perfect to carry and drop a small raid group.
We climbed down.
“See that sign? That’s the Seventh Cohort of the First Legion,” Kai pointed at the faded logo — the rising sun encircled by seven stars — painted on the plane’s tail. “The Seventh Cohort are the special-ops people. This is getting interesting. As far as I know, only their Legates were entitled to Doves.”
When we checked the craft’s other side, we discovered the rectangular access hatch, still ajar. It bore another logo: a fancy image of a rampant lion in knight’s armor, the way they depicted them on medieval coats of arms.
Kai nodded. “That’s right. That’s Lion Face. One of the Seventh’s Legates. This is his machine. That’s what I thought when you mentioned an Inca with four arms.”
“Did you know him?”
Kai shuddered. “I only saw him a couple of times. A very spooky guy. He took the Legion’s side during the war. One hell of a powerful Warrior he was. He was famous for always working solo. From what I heard, he was bent on finding the Aurora.”
“The Aurora? What’s that?”
“It’s a long story. Basically, it’s some kind of project the late Utopians were allegedly busy with. Something to do with Stellar and the Azure, I think, but I can’t be too sure. Come on now, let’s carry the egg over here!”
The machine’s cab was dark, cramped and desolated. Fat dust-drenched sheets of cobwebs blocked the entire interior. The stale air stank of decay.
Cussing, Kai swept the cobwebs off the pilots’ seats. He then cleaned the moon-shaped control console, hunched over it and pressed some of the sensors.
A few indicator lights beeped as they sprang to life. The emergency lighting blinked on. The emergency signal emitted a deep barking sound as if denying us access.
Kai swung toward me. “It’s live! But the controls are DNA-protected. Just a regular standard-issue lock, nothing special.”
“Think you can crack it?”
“Not a problem but I’ll need some time and a DNA sample. You said the skeleton was still there? Mind fetching me a tissue sample? A bone fragment, a bit of skin, a clump of hair, anything. And it’s a good idea to search him too. You might find something worth keeping.”
The skeleton of the ancient Incarnator had fused with the nest, pinned down by large boulders and uprooted tree trunks. Both the skull and the lower body was missing – basically, all that was left was the guy’s giant four-armed torso which didn’t look as if it could even belong to a human being, its bones twice as thick as human. Still, the surviving pieces of his Hercules bionic suit still bearing the Legion’s logo didn’t lie: I was looking at the remains of an Incarnator, a legendary Warrior.
I hurried to frisk him, discovering several useful items: a pauldron the size of a small shield still in good condition, a wide cryptor bracelet, and a pendant which was firmly stuck to the skeletal chest. When I finally managed to rip it off, I recognized it: it looked identical to the whistle-shaped master key Arachne had given me on board Avenger. The two looked virtually identical, only this one was marked with three wavy parallel lines running across the dull metal. Never seen it before.
Then Miko highlighted an object the giant still clasped in one of his skeletal hands. Freeing it was a job and a half: even dead, the Incarnator seemed unwilling to share. When I finally got hold of it, I saw a filthy dull crystal framed in some metal. But as soon as I tried to rub one of its facets clean, it began glowing with an unusual iridescent shimmer.
“Miko, what’s that?”
“Data not available. An unidentified Azuric artifact, I suppose.”
She was right. This was another sample of the marriage of Utopian technologies with the mystical energy of Azure. Now I could see the iridescent drop-shaped glow of an A-artifact fused into the metal next to some nano-assemblers.
I found nothing else of any value on him. I used my Fang to gingerly cut off a piece of his withered skin and returned to Kai still busy with the console. I saw a few results: the lighting had changed to a pale-yellow, and several augmented-reality screens had lit up over the console.
“Have you got it? Give it here,” he reached out a demanding hand. “Found anything good on him?”
“A cryptor, a key and also this,” I said, showing the artifact to him.
He cast a quick glance at the item. “Holy shit. This is the Tear of Shea. Give it here for a second...”
He did something to the crystal which suddenly unfolded forming some kind of a silvery crown or a tiara – something you had to wear on your head, anyway.
“So that’s how he planned to get rid of the Roc,” Kai murmured. “But apparently, things didn’t go according to plan...”
“What is it?”
“The Shea call them the Frah. It’s quite rare. Basically, it’s an Azure booster. A mental amplifier. See this plug over here? That’s where you insert an Azure battery. This thing is a real gobbler. I might be wrong but I think it can use up to a thousand Azure a minute.”
“A mental amplifier? How does it work, then?” I asked, suddenly curious.
Kai shrugged. “It temporarily boosts your mental powers. We’re talking several orders of magnitude. You can use it to attack or to defend yourself. A very useful thing for you as an Enchanter.”
“You think it could work against the Roc?”
“It didn’t help Lion Face much, did it?” he replied in all seriousness. “Never mind. I got work to do.”
He turned away and continued fiddling with the control panel. I slammed the door shut behind me and stared at the egg’s hot throbbing crystalline surface.
I didn’t like what I saw there.
Chapter 27
THE EGG SEEMED to be vibrating. I even got the impression it was rocking from side to side. The hue of the light it was emitting had imperceptibly changed.
The dark shape inside jerked into motion. I watched, frozen in bewilderment, as a small crack formed on the egg’s surface. It was growing longer, branching off from the inside like an ice flower forming on a frozen window. I heard a soft but distinct cracking sound.
The hatchling had found the most awkward moment to announce its presence to this world!
Kai swung round. “Grey, what the hell is- Holy shit! Has it decided to hatch right now? Grey, you’re the Enchanter here. Calm him down, now!”
I touched the quivering shell, activating the Leader of the Pack and reaching out mentally to this creature still bathing in its warm pink-and-yellow ocean.
The hatchling had been asleep all that time, enwrapped in his changeable dreams. Our actions had shaken him out of his slumber. The awoken creature sensed my mental touch and reached out to me as if expecting it. For a brief moment, we embraced each other’s souls.
An alien mind, cold but singeing at the same time. It was a bit akin to that of the Fiend – or my Fang, or even Alice’s Beast, but it was perfectly pure and free from greed, devoid of hatred, hunger or lust for blood. I could sense his joy of discovering new experiences, as well as his curious trust. The creature dormant within the egg hadn’t known fear or pain, it had no foes, no grief or regret. He was reaching out to me like a baby reaches out of her cradle toward an adult offering her a supporting finger.
“He woke up, Incarnator!”
Alice’s anxious voice resounded in my earphones. She shouted that the Roc had left his prey and suddenly taken to the sky.
The moment our two minds had merged, I already knew that the hatchling and his parent had some form of mental link too. The mega bird must have sensed there was something wrong with the egg, so he dashed off to his baby’s rescue.
I erupted in cold sweat. The Rocs could fly very, very fast. He would be back in
a matter of minutes!
“Grey,” Kai said, looking nervously at the cracks spreading over the crystalline surface of the egg, “if this thing hatches, we’re as good as dead.”
I focused, keeping my hands firmly pressed to the egg’s throbbing surface. Sleep, baby. Forget everything. Just sleep.
Still, no matter what I did, I couldn’t lure the awoken creature back into the comfort of his slumber. Even now the baby Roc was much stronger than I could ever be, freeing himself from the tethers of my soothing images with a playful ease. Suddenly it became perfectly clear that I just couldn’t do it!
“Grey! The Roc’s coming! Calm that fucking thing now!”
“I can’t! He fights me! He’s too strong!”
“Use the damn booster!”
The Enchanter (Project Stellar Book 2): LitRPG Series Page 32
