Bella, Izaiah, and McKenna surrounded the beast. Each one took a shot at the creature—slashing it with a sword, pounding it with magic-enhanced fists, or shooting it with a rifle. And each time the creature charged, they would dodge and reposition themselves.
It suddenly dawned on me that Claire wasn’t engaged in the battle, and I saw why a minute later.
She’d climbed up the ladder on the side of the satellite’s support beam with her sword drawn and was preparing to jump down onto the back of the ironhorn. Except it was too far away, and she couldn’t reach it.
She had the highest level out of all of us, and if anyone stood a chance at killing the beast, it was her. I needed to help lure the creature over to her.
“Hey!” I shouted, running toward the dish. “Over here!”
I removed my bow as I ran and loosed a few arrows for good measure. It wouldn’t do any damage, but it might anger the thing enough to draw its attention.
Sure enough, it roared at me and lowered its head again, racing after me with frightening speed. I wasn’t even sure I would make it time.
For each step that I took, the ironhorn took three. When I felt its breath on the back of my neck, I commanded my neural link to enable a shield, and it popped into place less than half a second before I was slammed in the back by the beast’s horn.
It lifted it me up off the ground, and I went flying through air. My body crashed into the dish’s support column, and I crumpled to the ground. As I did so, my shield winked out, having been completely destroyed in a single hit.
Had I activated it a heartbeat later, I would have been skewered instead of simply batted aside.
In the future, I promised myself to be less idiotic and leave the fight to my friends.
Fortunately, though, my plan had worked, and I saw Claire land atop the ironhorn, driving her sword deep into the rhino’s back.
It bucked and flung its head, spun in circles and roared. It did everything it could to shake Claire off, but still she held on and pushed her sword deeper.
It found me again and charged forward.
I scrambled out of the way as it slammed into the satellite dish.
“No, no, no!” McKenna was yelling, but the support column held.
Unfortunately, Claire did not. The force of the impact sent her flying from the ironhorn’s back, and its full attention now focused at me.
“Oh, come on!” I shouted. “Give me a break!”
I ran for my life for like the fifth time during this fight. Whatever had possessed it before seemed to be gone now, and it ran at what could be considered a normal pace.
Or perhaps it was just tired or weakened from the sword in its back, but I found myself running faster than it was. I turned my head to double check that I was right, and that’s when it happened.
Something caught my foot, and I was falling.
Dirt raced up to meet me and pain jolted through my body as I hit the ground.
I flipped over and saw that I had tripped on a massive cable nearly six inches in diameter. It came from a building built into the side of the mountain and connected to the satellite dish.
Or at least it was supposed to. Halfway down the middle, the cord had been split in half, and it now sparked and writhed around on the ground as if it were a snake.
An idea suddenly came to me, and I was on my feet again, racing for the live wire.
The rhino adjusted its direction, following me.
It lowered its head, promising to impale me where it had failed before. Scooping up the wire, I turned and plunged it into the soft part of the beast’s neck as it passed me, narrowly missing me with its great horn.
The shock stopped the beast in its tracks, and it fell to the ground, writhing in agony. It tried to scramble away, but I held it in place, forcing thousands upon thousands of volts of electricity into its hide.
Eventually, the creature stilled and Faded.
Dropping the wire, I fell onto my back, exhausted.
My affinity mark gave a soft pulse, and my stats updated before my eyes.
AREN HALLAND
LEVEL 14
140/140 MP
8,800/14,000 EXP
5 AP AVAILABLE
Two levels! I’d gained two levels! I couldn’t be more pleased with myself.
“You idiot!” Bella shouted, jolting me from my reveling.
“I think the words you’re looking for are ‘thank you,’” I said in response.
“Thank you?” she spat.
“You’re welcome!” I replied with a cheeky grin.
“You could have died!” she yelled.
“You’re concern is touching, but really, I had everything under control.”
“Uh huh, is that why your leg is bleeding?” she asked.
Looking down, I saw that a huge gash ran down the length of my calf. I hadn’t even noticed when or how it happened.
“Let me take care of this,” she said, dropping down beside me and placing her hand over the wound.
She tapped the Healing stone on her gauntlet, and a wave of cool energy flooded through my body. I watched as the wound stitched itself over.
Cleaning the blood off, I wiped it into the grass.
I took Bella’s hand before she got up. “I’m sorry."
“For?” she asked, avoiding my gaze.
“For everything—for doubting you, for arguing with you, for scaring you, for being an idiot sometimes. I’m sorry, and thank you,” I said.
Bella smiled and looked at me as heat rushed to her cheeks.
“Touching, really, but can we get back to business?” McKenna asked, her arms crossed.
I scowled at her. “No one’s stopping you. Do your thing, Engineer,” I spat the last word.
Bella’s eyes went wide. “You’re an Engineer?”
McKenna looked equally shocked. “H—how did you know that?”
“I know a lot of things about you now, Charlotte,” I replied. “Look, I don’t know how things work out here. You can hide in your little shell and put up as many walls as you like, but if we’re going to survive, we need to work together and we need to trust each other.” I looked at Bella as I said those last words, echoing Claire’s from before we had gotten into this whole mess.
McKenna bristled but said nothing further as she grabbed the severed wire and started to repair it.
“Hey, check this out,” Claire said and knelt down a few paces away.
At her feet was a small pile of magika stones. I walked over and picked them up, spreading them out over my palm.
There were three stones in all. I recognized the first one—it was a Class 2 Lightning stone. Was that because I killed the ironhorn with electricity? It might have been pure coincidence. Either way, I was thankful because I really needed an attack spell for my bow.
The other two were foreign to me.
“What are these?” I asked, pointing to them.
Bella pointed to the blue stone on the left engraved with an angry face. “That’s an Enrage stone. You saw Izaiah use it during the fight, and that’s how the ironhorn moved around so fast. It triples your strength and speed but significantly lowers your defense.”
“What about that power I saw you use?” I asked Bella. “I thought for sure you were a goner, but you stopped the rhino like it had run into a brick wall.”
“That’s this one here,” she replied, pointing to a stone on her chestplate. “It’s a Golem stone. It triples your strength and defense but significantly lowers your speed.”
“So, it’s basically the same thing as Enrage, except with defense boosted and nerfed speed?”
“You got it,” she said.
“What’s this other stone?” I asked, pointing to a white one with a set of lungs on it.
“That’s Aqualung. It’ll let you breath underwater,” Claire said.
“Well, that’s pretty useless,” I said. "It’s not like there's any water anywhere around here."
“No magika is useless,”
Bella chided. “Each one is valuable in its proper place. But you do have a limited number of slots, so you have to make strategic choices. Placement is also important.”
Slipping my bow off my shoulder, I wasted no time in adding the Lightning stone to my bow. A magic-imbued weapon was better than a basic one. Especially, since I could turn the magic on or off depending on my enemy’s immunities.
I also didn’t hesitate to drop the Enrage stone onto my chestplate, but I pocketed the Aqualung for now. It seemed like a random drop. Up until now, the other drops made sense, but this one didn’t at all.
I was about to ask more about it when I heard a voice say, “No, no, you’re doing it all wrong. Braid the two wires together for better conductivity.” —followed by a scream from McKenna.
Thirty-One
Nocking an arrow, I pulled back on the string of my bow as I spun toward McKenna.
I immediately relaxed and lowered my weapon as soon as I saw Leon standing there.
McKenna was hyperventilating as she aimed her rifle at him.
“Where have you been?” I demanded in a lecturing tone.
“Wait, you know him?” McKenna asked.
“Yes,” I answered. “He’s one of ours.”
She furrowed her brow. “How come we didn’t pick him up when we found you?”
“Leon might have been trained as an Engineer, but he has a higher propensity for Infiltrator. Or at least it would seem so by how often he uses that Stealth ability,” I explained. Turning to Leon, I waited for an answer to my original question.
“What?” he asked, shrugging. “You guys were arguing and… well… my parents used to argue, okay? A lot. And I'd run out to the shed behind our house and cover my ears until the shouting went away.”
Embarrassment flushed over me. “I had no idea.”
“Don’t worry about it. I—I just needed some space,” Leon said. “I wasn’t ever very far behind. But when I heard the ironhorn roar, I tried to reach you all as fast as I could. I got here just as you killed it. Which is a bummer, because I really would have liked some of that EXP. But it is what it is. Good thing I arrived when I did because the commander here was about to fry the satellite.”
“I was not,” McKenna said defensively.
“You see this here?” Leon asked, kneeling down and pointing at something that made little difference to me. “If you had connected these, you would have overloaded the circuit and ended up having to replace the whole wire.”
“I—I—Chet,” McKenna said, then she sighed. “If he was supposed to be an Infiltrator, then I should have been a Champion.”
“What is an Engineer doing on the front lines anyway?” Bella asked.
“Do you seriously have to ask that?” McKenna replied. “We’re standing next to the largest comms relay up and down the border.”
“Point taken,” Bella said. “How did you become a commander then?”
McKenna snorted. “Do you think that because we faced life and death together that I’m suddenly going to share my life story with you?”
“All right, easy, jeez. It was just a question,” Bella snapped.
“Sorry,” she said, sighing. “I’ve been in the military too long. You don’t get personal here. Bad things happen when you do.”
“Trevon was a bad thing?” I asked.
McKenna glared at me. “Yes. And no.”
I stared at her expectantly.
“This isn’t easy for me, okay? Trevon is—”
The satellite’s wire sparked, and Leon yelped. “There. All done.”
“You fixed it?” McKenna asked.
“Didn’t I just say that?”
Without warning, McKenna took off sprinting for the small building built into the side of the mountain. Flinging open the door, she ran inside.
I lightly jogged to join her, not sure what suddenly came over her.
When I walked through the door, she was madly dashing from one side of the room to the other, flipping switches and turning dials on a large instrument panel of some kind.
“What’s—”
She held up a hand. “Don’t—bother me right now.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
“Stay out of my way,” she said.
I shrugged and stood back as I watched.
The others appeared behind me and crowded around, waiting to see what McKenna was doing.
The lights came on, and a dull static filled the room.
McKenna dropped into one of the chairs at the desk and pulled a microphone off its stand. Pressing a button, she spoke into the microphone, “Red Tower, Red Tower, come in Red Tower.”
She released the button and waited.
Nothing but static.
“Red Tower this is Commander Charlotte McKenna calling from the Bowl, come in Red Tower.”
Still nothing.
“Trevon, if you’re there, please answer.”
Silence. Looking stricken, McKenna was about to put the microphone back when the audio crackled. “Char? Is that you?”
“Trevon? It’s me, Trevon. Are you all right?”
Trevon groaned over the radio. “They came at us with no warning.”
“Who did, Trev? What happened?”
“They’re dead, Charlotte. They’re all dead,” he said, hissing in pain.
“Who’s dead, Trevon? Talk to me.”
“You have to tell Lockwin. Let them know we did everything we could, but… it wasn’t enough. Jennings is dead. Madison, Whalen, and Colter—all dead. Char, I’m—” Trevon began to sob. “I love you, Char. I’m—I’m not going to—”
“No,” McKenna said, shaking her head and fighting back tears. “No, don’t say it. You’re going to be fine, all right, I’m coming to you, do you hear me?”
“Don’t come. Stay there, they need you there. Just tell me you love me, and let me go,” he pleaded.
“You are not going to die on me, do you understand? I won’t let you.”
“It’s not safe, Char. You haven’t seen them. They’re like—they’re not human. Not anymore. Just stay away, do you hear me?” Trevon coughed.
“I can’t do that, and you know it,” she replied.
“I’m not asking you, Charlotte. That’s an order, do you understand me? Do not come out here,” Trevon said.
“What was that?” McKenna asked. “I—uh—can’t—you—breaking—” Then she turned a dial and changed the frequency.
“I’m guessing we’re going anyway?” I asked with a smirk.
“Smart one you’ve got here,” she said to Claire. “Come on, we don’t have any time to lose. He sounded in bad shape.” She slipped past all of us and out of the comm tower building, making her way to the forest.
“Brother or boyfriend?” I asked, catching up to her.
“Excuse me?”
“Trevon, he told you he loved you,” I replied.
“Fiancé,” she replied. “We’re getting married next month.”
“I thought you said personal connections were bad in the military?”
She paused, shaking, then she took a breath to steady herself. “Lockwin sent him to the front line, knowing he’d more than likely die. And he gave me this phony title so he could order me to babysit a bunch of flunkies as far away from the battle as possible. So yes, relationships are bad, but you know what, we can’t help who we fall in love with. And I’ll heap a million curses upon Lockwin’s head if Trevon dies.” She sighed. “There? Are you happy? Now you know. So, shut up and hurry up.”
“I’m sorry, Charlotte,” I said.
“I don’t need your pity. If you want to do something, help me save him,” she said.
“All right, lead the way.”
McKenna turned around and stopped just before the path that would take us away from the satellite and back down the mountain. “I want to be perfectly clear. I will take you where you want to go, but only after we help Trevon. The two are pretty close by, so it won’t delay you much. Once I lead you
to the cave’s entrance, I’m done. Everything else is on you. Understood?”
“Agreed,” Claire answered, catching up to us. “And just so we’re clear. My team and I are here to help. We wouldn’t leave a man behind, even if that man is one of yours. We’re on the same side here.”
McKenna nodded. “Thank—”
A great plume of fiery reds and oranges exploded into the sky a short distance away, drawing all of our attention before the force of the quake knocked us to the ground.
“What the chet was that?” Izaiah asked.
“Gods,” Claire said.
“You can say that again,” Leon exclaimed.
“No, gods!” she said, pointing.
As the dust around the explosion site settled, an enormous bald and shirtless giant appeared in the ground visible from the waist up. It was easier to see him at our current elevation, but my best guess was that he towered at least a hundred feet into the air.
“Summoners,” Claire declared as she placed a hand on her head. “That’s Eton, God of Earth. His temple is Vesna. No one’s made the pilgrimage since the war. Vesna is supposed to be neutral. This doesn’t make sense, how is this happening?”
“That—that’s back at base,” McKenna said, ignoring Claire’s ramblings.
“What happens if our outpost here falls?” I asked, directing my question to Claire.
“I don’t know. None of this happened before. Or if it did, I wasn’t here, so I didn’t know about it,” she answered.
“What if we stopped it? What if we changed history?”
“No!” McKenna shouted. “We’re going to help Trevon. Let Lockwin burn.”
“You can’t mean that?” I asked.
Going to her knees, McKenna placed her forehead on the ground, clutched her head with both of her hands, and rocked back and forth. Then she scooped up a rock in front of her and screamed as she threw it into the forest. “Curse you, Trevon, you better not die before I get to you.”
Seeing her distress, Bella walked over and placed her hand on her shoulder. Taking a couple deep breaths, McKenna regained her composure and stood back up.
“So, what’s the plan?” I asked as I looked her right in the eye.
Sworn Guardian: A LitRPG/GameLit Adventure (Forbidden Magic Book 1) Page 23
