Inflame (The Completionist Chronicles Book 6)

by Dakota Krout

  “Fine! I’ll go first!” Joe held out his arm, and gently poked the skin with the taglock.

  Apply Eye of Argus to ‘Joe’? Yes / No.

  “Yes.” Joe answered loudly, to make sure the nay-sayers could hear him using the magic. He needn’t have worried, because in the next moment he was screaming in pain and horror as an eye appeared on the back of his hand. As soon as it did, the eye connected with his nerve endings and burned a new line of sight into Joe’s brain. There were also… emotions that came through. Namely, displeasure.

  The eye began to roll up Joe’s arm, each movement disconnecting and reconnecting it again. The vision was like a strobe light in Joe’s mind, and the pain and terrible migraine didn’t stop until the eye had swirled around his neck and reached the back of Joe’s head. Then a feeling of ‘good’ came through, and the eye simply looked around with constant curiosity.

  Joe stayed on the ground, not even remembering falling. He panted for a few minutes, then stood up and activated Neutrality Aura. The blood that had dried on him all the way back at the start of the ritual began vanishing, and the new lines from tears and vomit promptly dissipated. “Ugh… see? Major? N-nothing to it.”

  “That’s a hard no from me.” She was backing away, keeping the undead in a line to make sure Joe couldn’t get closer.

  “I’d start it on the back of your head!” Joe challenged her reputation one final time, hoping that he could inform her how important this would be to everyone involved. “What, now you can’t deal with pain? You sure that’s what you want your troops to know about you?”

  That stopped her cold, and the undead stepped aside as she marched toward him. “Why are you doing this, Candidate? Are you sure you need me as an enemy?”

  “No.” Joe swallowed when he realized that her troops were moving to surround him, this time not as a test. “I am certain that I need you as an ally. You control all of the undead, right? That means that they attack what you tell them to attack. If the Elves can subvert you, that means we will have a powerful enemy against our side that we can’t do anything to contain. I know it might never have been an issue for you before, but Havoc told me that they have a new illusion focus; something everyone thought was only theoretical. Are you willing to take the risk of the disease when the cure is right here?”

  He held up the Taglock, and Major Infraction fumed before turning around. Joe thought she was going to storm off, but instead she only lifted her helmet to expose her head. “Do it. Know that you will never repay me for this.”

  “Success is its own reward, Major.” Joe jabbed the Taglock forward as he stated the mantra of the Dwarven Oligarchy. An eye oozed off of it and grew in size, consuming the Major’s flesh until it had created a lovely eye socket for itself. Through the entire process, the Dwarf didn’t even flinch.

  “That's… it?” She turned and rolled all three eyes at him. “What kind of a puny constitution do you have in that frail body? I’m assigning you an escort if you’re planning on joining this battle. Captain! Get over here!”

  Another Dwarf ran over, and Joe saw something that confused him. Half of the teal-colored mustache on her face was ragged, as if it had gotten caught in a door and yanked out. The Major pointed at the Captain. “Joe, this Is Captain Cleavage. Her axe skills are unparalleled. As an example, she’s able to cleave through three Hammer Beasts with a single blow. She will be escorting you, so make sure she can see.”

  The Major walked away, and Joe looked at the Captain. “Captain… Cleavage. Um. Okay. Do you accept that assignment? I’ll admit I’ve been feeling a little exposed, and a teammate would be pretty helpful.”

  “I look forward to impressing you with my reach. Always ensure you are behind me; anyone who can clearly see my cleavage is slain by it,” she stoically informed him. A double-bladed axe was strapped to her back, the sharp portion extending over her head and the shaft almost dragging on the ground as she walked. “I’m actually looking forward to having eyes in the back of my head, so let’s do this.”

  “An eye.” Joe told her, getting no response. “Not… it’s not eyes.”

  Already unsure of his new companion, Joe poked the Taglock into the back of her head, and an eye grew to full size before locking on him. He moved around, but the eye only watched him. “How are you controlling where it looks?”

  “I’ve had practice focusing.” Joe paused at her words, but… he wasn’t sure if he had just been insulted. It was hard to tell, with Dwarven culture being what it was.

  After looking around for the other people that were supposed to be getting an eye and not finding them, Joe realized that all the troops and leaders had entered the tunnels already. More reinforcements had arrived, yet the tunnels obviously hadn’t widened; the line was starting to slow. Joe waved at the Captain, and they hurried to the front of the queued-up warriors. Though they got a few dirty looks—only noticeable thanks to the eyes watching behind them—no one questioned their right to be there.

  The tunnels themselves were straight and sharp, lined with broken volcanic stone and obsidian. Brushing against them meant a sure way to take terrain damage, which slowed the Legion ever further. Forced to follow the path and wait, they could only move forward at a non-enhanced human’s running speed; far slower than most of these Dwarves even usually bothered to walk. Though the mountain was massive, thanks to hundreds of years of volcanic eruptions and growth, the tunnel eventually widened out into a sight Joe was familiar with.

  They had entered the cavern.

  The hollowed-out space was illuminated by the lava flows and dancing lights, which allowed Joe to see the raging war that he had walked in on. Hulking earth elementals slammed hammers of stone onto golems and automatons; spells and arrows fought for air supremacy with crossbow and ballista bolts; and the walls of the fort were being reduced to rubble by hammers, while simultaneously being repaired by mages specializing in earth spells.

  “Our troops are being pushed back,” Captain Cleave—as Joe forced himself to think of her—summed up the situation succinctly. “Perhaps if they had been getting constant reinforcements, they would have had the opportunity to penetrate the defenses of the fortress.”

  Joe let the eye on his head turn to look at her, meeting the single eye staring at him. That made him feel slightly sick, so he ‘looked’ away. “I strongly feel that this was the right thing to do.”

  “I hope we can learn the truth of the matter together, and study it after surviving this battle.” She blithely stated, forcing Joe to take a deep, calming breath. Before he could retort, a howl rolled through the cavern. Joe had never heard such fury in a single statement, but he knew the voice. Major General Havoc was on the warpath.

  “You want to retreat? You… filthy cowards!”

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Havoc was not having fun. His troops weren’t listening to him. If they needed to die so that Francine would get out here, then they would die. His shouts were so loud that even the war itself could not stifle the echoes that rang through the cavern. “Traitors, every one of you! I… this isn’t going to happen! Not again! I don’t need troops. I told them I didn’t need troops! I warned them… I warned you all!

  A silver orb appeared in his hands, and he crushed it with a single squeeze. In an instant, his form was obscured by a dense cloud of silver smoke. The people around him noticed what he was doing and screamed, turning to run immediately. Only the fastest of them, the ones that had been furthest away, managed to escape from the area of effect. The smoke climbed the wall, reaching the parapets after only a few moments.

  Screams came from within the smoke, but they were different from the screams of a wounded person. These were more… concerned? Not pained, at least. It was the sound of someone waking from a nightmare only to find that the dream was, in fact, reality. When the smoke vanished, the people that had been caught in it were nowhere to be seen. The wall that had been holding them back was also gone, a massive breach revealing that the first layer of
defense had been broken.

  All of the stone composing the wall around the breach was slowly vanishing, so slowly that no one but Joe really thought much of it. He was seeing everything from as far away as it was possible to see, but his architectural senses were tingling. That thing that Havoc had used, it was a weapon. He knew it was; he just wasn’t sure what it did. One thing he did know was that whatever he was seeing wasn’t the end of the effect, and that using that hole as a point of entry wasn’t an option. He took a step forward and was slapped with a buff.

  You have entered a raid area! All experience gain has been paused, and will only be calculated at the end of the raid, or when leaving the raid area.

  The Lord of Slaughter stands with you! -30% sensation of pain. 25% damage dealt with melee weapons. 10% reduced damage taken from all sources.

  “At least I know that Havoc is still alive in there.” Joe grumpily charged forward, joining the flowing silver-clad troops as his adopted group of soldiers entered the fray. Almost a kilometer of space had been cleared from the outer wall to the fort, and people and things were fighting for every inch of that space. Charging through wasn’t an option, and Joe didn’t think that trying to be fancy and jumping over people would end well. Certainly not with the sheer number of projectiles in the air.

  The stone of the ground was scorched, and the interior of the volcano was actually increasing in temperature from all the plasma that was coming into being. He hurried forward, planning to join at the flanks, but Captain Cleave was suddenly in front of him, shoving him back and pulling her axe into her hands. A twist and a pull, and the stone elementals in front of them fell to rubble. She glanced back at Joe. “Stay behind me.”

  “Don’t get hit by my spells,” Joe shot back, starting to get annoyed by his sudden babysitter. He was trying to remember why he accepted a partner; he had forgotten that it was so restricting. One of his orbs popped into his hand, and he tossed it forward. Just before it hit, Cone of Cold came into effect. The orb struck the elemental and left cracks at the point of impact, then the spell washed over the line of elementals; evidently it was extra effective against the stony foes in this high-temperature arena.

  The subsequent hits from the Dwarves caused extra damage to the brittle defenders, and their line was broken in the next moment. The elementals that had been caught and surrounded were demolished, and the troops moved forward more than a dozen feet as a whole in under a minute. Captain Cleave nodded approvingly at Joe. “More of that would be exceedingly welcome.”

  “Cooldowns.” Joe tried to stay salty, but he was as susceptible to praise as the next person. Checking that no Dwarves would be caught in the area of effect, he let out an Acid Spray to start weakening the hulking defenders.

  Just after the liquid settled, Joe was knocked to the side as a dozen automatons pounded through the area and into the rocky defenders. It was a strange dichotomy of the natural world fighting the artificial, but it quickly devolved into a stalemate. The automatons were more directly powerful, and were designed specifically to fight this foe, but the elementals didn’t need an outside power source to keep fighting. The automatons could only last so long before needing a fresh core, but in that time they inflicted massive casualties.

  Then they couldn’t move.

  Elementals surged forward, slamming into the powering-down metal and reducing it to scrap with heavy blows. Incensed, the elementals turned their stony gazes on the Dwarves and rumbled forward like a landslide. They met a wall of blunt weapons; even the Dwarves that used edged weapons knew better than to attempt cutting these foes. Swords were replaced with rebar-looking weapons—perhaps weighted training blades?

  Dwarf after Dwarf was crushed beneath huge arms, feet, or even a defeated elemental falling on top of them. For a few minutes, Joe was worried that they were going to be pushed back by the behemoths, but for every Dwarf that fell, two would enter the fray. He didn’t need to turn around to see that a new tunnel had connected; now they were being reinforced fifty percent faster.

  Joe had truly underestimated the resolve the Dwarves had, the fury that they were holding in their hearts for having their ancient memorial site intruded upon. Not a single tear was shed for the fallen. There was only grim resolve and deadly intent. The elementals would move, or be moved. A light strobed within the cavern, and a swath of the Legion stopped attacking; worse, they stopped defending.

  Illusion ignored: Fae Beckoning. Eye of Argus grants immunity to illusions!

  “Snap out of it, soldiers!” Joe bellowed in the face of an auburn mustached Officer, who was standing there with a dreamy smile showing through the gaps of her helm. There was no reply, so he whacked her with a Ritual Orb. The damage registered, and she backhanded the empty air; making him extra happy that he had hit her at range. That gave him an idea, “Pain does the trick?”

  He cast Dark Lightning Strike at an elemental, and the splash damage washed over the nearby Dwarves. They came back to themselves with a vengeance, and Joe hurried to stand near them. His three standard buffs were in place, meaning anyone within five feet of him would slowly heal over time.

  The next hour was a grind of healing, attacking, working to keep people out of mental traps, and hardcore survival. Somehow, the pressure on them was waning, even though they were getting closer and closer to the actual fort. At the same time, the illusions were becoming more potent, more frequent, and harder for people to resist.

  At one point, Joe noticed that Major Infraction was looking at him—yet another benefit of the Eye of Argus was that it let him know when people were looking at him—when Joe’s head snapped around so that they could lock eyes, she simply nodded at him with resignation in her gaze.

  “Like your people always say, Major… success is it’s own reward,” he chuckled to himself. Joe was almost to the wall of the fort when a notification appeared, one that had happened earlier.

  Message available! Send a message to friends list contact? Yes / No.

  “What?” Joe selected ‘yes’, asking the empty air, “Who is this?”

  The message sent, and a moment later a strangled cry of surprise reached his ear. It… it wasn’t human. Joe’s Eye of Argus locked on the position emitting the sound, and he watched as the tip of a reptile’s head vanished, leaving behind unmoving fingertips. The rest of the person was buried under a half-dozen boulders; this was clearly the end of an important battle. It took a moment, but he finally understood what was happening. Joe rushed to the boulders and touched the fingertips, allowing Lay on Hands to flow into the only portion he could touch.

  The fingers spasmed with renewed feeling, their owner clearly in fresh pain. Joe turned to search for the nearest Dwarves, screaming for assistance. They ignored him at first, until Captain Cleavage stepped forward and slammed her axe into one of the boulders, shearing it off the pile. A Bro walked over. “Yo, guys, no one can fix that mess. I saw Pokey-Bro get squashed. He’s human; he’ll come back.”

  “Get these off him.” Joe’s voice was furiously quiet, and he forced Mend and Lay on Hands into the fingers as fast as he could manage. The Dwarf shrugged and helped the Captain with the rocks. Joe tried to help as well, but even with his high stats, the magical rocks were simply too heavy for him to budge. His eyes flashed with an idea, and he slapped the rocks with a touch of mana.

  Item: Elemental Stone (Dead). Aspect-

  He ignored the rest, dumping mana into the Ritual of Reduction that was engraved in his very being. The first rock he had touched vanished, then he healed, and allowed his mana to come back. He reduced… and a mangled body was revealed. “Lay on Hands!”

  After that heal, the face warped back into a recognizable one with a sickening popping of facial bones. “Jaxon! What the abyss happened?”

  The man couldn’t speak; it appeared that he was still unconscious. Joe pumped more healing into him, making sure to do as much as possible so that his friend would awaken to a healthy body. It didn’t take long. As soon as his health passed
an unknown threshold, Jaxon came up swinging. It was always concerning to see how the man stood, as if he were being dragged into the air by an outside force.

  Then Jaxon calmed, too fast for it to be natural. He stared up at the ceiling, his standard smile becoming creepier over the next few seconds. Joe pulled out his Taglock, jabbing it into the back of his friend’s head. “There ya go, buddy. Now that illusion can’t get you.”

  “Joe?” Jaxon slapped at his own head at the sudden pain, more arriving as he poked his new eye. “Ow! What? What illusion? I was just reveling in the feel of my bones being complete once more, and you poked me! Also! It’s very nice to see you again. So… what’s new? Been doing anything fun? Oh, thanks for the eye! I can see so many people smiling at me! Hello!”

  “Who are you assigned to, Jaxon?” Joe tried to get the man to focus, which was hard, since it wasn’t Joe’s strong suit either.

  Jaxon waved at the pile of rocks, “Oh, his day is off to a rocky start. I told him he needed to be boulder, and he took it literally! When I got over here, he was destroyed, and I had to charge those earth elementals with aggregated assault.”

  “Wind spirits,” The Captain stated, getting a strange look from both of the humans.

  “Oh. Right. The whole ‘call them by their weakness’ thing.” Jaxon stepped forward and tried to shake her hand. “Hi, I’m Jaxon. I was in Joe’s party on Midgard, and I’ll fight you if you took my spot on his team.”

  “I’m his escort, not a party member. Though, I am thinking that I might want the chance to prove my skills and travel with him,” the Dwarf admitted cheerfully, limbering up with a swing of her axe.

  “Joe!” Jaxon turned scandalized eyes on his party leader. “An escort? Now?”

  “Not like that.” Joe shut him down as fast as possible. He turned and started toward the slowly disintegrating walls. “Both of you follow me. There’re Elves to boot out of the Shoe.”