Spires

“Oh fuck!”

Alin landed on a rooftop, but mistimed the ignition of his thrusters.

He crashed through a floor before shooting back up through the ceiling.

Battle raged across the street.

It raged everywhere.

People fought people.

Monsters tried to kill everyone.

Most of it was centered around the most populated buildings in this downtown area.

Slasher groups looking for one last chance to score points before the contest ended laid siege to people that hadn’t asked for any of it.

He patched into the comms and found it a static-y jumble of desperate calls for status updates and help.

The surveillance drones and cameras in the area were likewise mostly useless. Just like the new ones he had launched upon arrival.

What was the situation?

The tallest tower in the city was under assault by the necromancer. The shuttle was a few minutes away.

Hayden’s group fought to protect three buildings filled with people from fishmen on the river side and bastards on the street side with a dash of monsters sprinkled for seasoning.

Help the latter.

Then the former.

He zoomed in on Chandra blazing hot and bright in front of a barricaded building.

Some kind of hotel or office with battered walls and windows from the attempted breaches.

The slasher group looked to be made of many different ones going by what they wore.

Tactical gear suggest military, though they didn’t display any flags or insignias.

That meant they probably belonged to one of the remaining official governments out there.

Plausible deniability and all that.

Faces were partially masked or covered in camo paint so he couldn’t use that to figure out what part of the world they were likely from.

Language was also no good.

The translation system meant he heard everything in English, though he could tell by the stilted way some of them spoke that they were speaking another language.

Other groups were more obviously set apart by the symbols or insignias they had painted or sewed into their armor and clothing.

Crosses. Swords. Hammers.

All in different styles and colors.

Close to 50 men and women forced to keep charging forward by the costs they had accrued to get this far.

He saw it in the dead bodies of their comrades littering the broken wall, street and parking lot. It was in the bodies of the brave defenders scattered amongst them. In the blood on their weapons and armor. The streams of red that ran down their skin to join the lake lapping at the soles of their boots.

A young bloodmage held the corpse of her father judging by the resemblance.

Her wails turned into a roar as the body in her arms exploded.

The crimson fountain turned into a tree-sized whip that cracked the night as it fell on Chandra.

She slashed her flaming sword, sending out an orange-yellow arc of daylight.

Red rain turned into steam as it fell on her burning hair.

They shot her and blasted her with spells.

Threnium held.

Her fire remained.

Vengeance burned within her and the slashers had done plenty to deserve it.

A tank-type taunted her at the cost of becoming a pyre as she poured fire from her longsword.

Others charge, seeking to hold her for the rest.

The scars in her Threnium armor erupted with flame, throwing them back.

A series of explosions pulled his attention to the building on the left.

The makeshift wall across the middle of the street was a gaping ruin.

Rubble and gore rained down.

What slashers remained continued to push for access to the building and the vulnerable people inside.

Young and old.

It didn’t seem fair that they were, generally speaking, worth more points to a slasher than a hardened fighter.

And, as far as he knew, most slashers weren’t like Holly, who preferred dangerous targets.

They struck at the barricaded doors, windows and even the walls, soaking the fire from the upper floors behind their shields, magic and mundane.

As for the last building on the right?

It was quiet.

The doors had been blown open.

Corpses carpeted the parking lot all the way to the wall.

Alin pushed the gray out, letting it mix with the fog rolling in from the river and the bay.

He cursed.

It was entirely natural.

Rather, magic worked through it.

He got the impression that it was an information gathering tool.

Not unlike radar, if not nearly as accurate.

The fishmen.

They battled Hayden, Doomborer, Rand, Teresa and Bolder in the park.

The latter had raised a platform of soil up in the middle of the flood while raising blocks of dirt into the path of fishmen attacks.

Ice formed on the surface of the dark water only to be broken by the fishmen as they leapt or cast their own spells.

Doomborer breached the surface like a whale with fishmen on his armored back.

They jabbed bone spears and swords, searching for gaps that didn’t exist while the Threnosh shredded dark scales with the saw-like teeth running all over their armor.

When the Threnosh dived back into the water they left slick fishmen blood on the surface spreading like an oil spill.

Alin felt the instinctive pull of danger in two places.

Both buildings had been breached in that brief instant he had focused on the battle in the park.

Ibra fought in a small room while Chandra fought outside.

A small group of stealthy slashers had sneaked in and murdered a room full of children.

Ibra was a hardened warrior armed with weapons made from a manticore’s bones, claws and stinger. Everything he wielded held a living piece of the monster’s venom gland.

The slashers died painfully as their bodies melted into slurry.

Monsignor’s mace glowed with the holy light of her faith as it bashed a bull of man’s head in despite the thick steel helmet. Her shield shined as it drew the burst of bullets and spells.

She gave ground from the front doors.

Slashers charged forward only to face gun and spell fire from the locals on the second level balcony overlooking the lobby.

Some raced for the barricade stairs despite the downpour instead of facing the ranger priest.

“Word of Command: Die!”

A high level mage pointed a finger.

Monsignor fell to one knee.

Alin sensed her heart stop for an agonizing second. Her spirit darkened.

The mage didn’t celebrate his apparent triumph.

Sakura popped up behind him, stabbing a knife through the back of his head before vanishing again.

Slashers pounced on the fallen Monsignor.

Weapons and spells lashed her Threnium armor until Alin saw the light flare.

Her spirit returned.

She laid them low with a prayer on her lips.

He wondered if she knew what that had cost her. Knowing her, she’d gladly pay it over and over again. So long as the innocent people behind her remained alive a moment longer.

He heard Galen’s garbled voice crackling on the comms.

Followed by Swan Princess.

He scanned the rooftops.

Found each on separate ones.

The former on the right and the latter on the left.

That was all of Hayden’s team accounted for except for the Tsingtao Wanderer.

He reached for the evil ones.

Human, fishmen and monsters.

They resisted.

Personal strength held him at bay to a degree.

His gray fingers slid off cold scales. The magic in their own fog protected them to a great extent.

Warm skin proved much easier to seize.

“They chose to become murderers.”

An act of will, freely taken.

He drained them of their vitality.

Over Level 40 and they fought him, even if most only did it on instinct.

Those under hit the proverbial wall.

Limbs leadened.

Eyelids weighed down.

An act of will, freely given.

The locals and his friends surged.

Even those over Level 40 found renewed energy coursing through them.

Chandra let loose a roar, flaring her flames to the sky. Fiery blade burned through weakened foes.

Swan Princess shouted something over the comms.

He looked up.

Three massive orbs of swirling darkness fell.

Swan Princess turned all of her spell orbs to a massive magic shield to encompass as much of the building she stood on within its aegis.

Dark water splashed against the bright surface.

Immense weight pressed down.

Cracks formed as the ranger fell to her knees holding tons above her head long enough to let the bulk of it cascade over the sides of the building until she couldn’t hold it any longer.

What remained of the ocean water washed her limp form down to the parking lot.

Dead or alive?

He couldn’t tell.

The effect messing with their communications did the same to his ability to read her vitals.

At the same time, Chandra snarled, thrusting her fiery sword to the sky.

The flames on her body where sucked back into her scars. Those sticking out of the slits in her helmet winked out, turning back into her auburn hair.

Her blade glowed white hot in response. Enough that even the Threnium began to melt.

A thin geyser of flame erupted at her call.

Steam burst as it struck the falling globe of dark water.

Heat warred against the cold depths.

How could one person, no matter how powerful hold back the ocean?

The diminished globe smashed into the building, into Chandra and the last living slashers in the parking lot with her.

The asphalt cracked under them.

Bodies crushed and pulped before they could think about drowning.

Sudden darkness fell as Chandra’s flames were doused.

The building had only partially collapsed under the weight of the dark water.

Two buildings.

The one Galen was on had none to defend it.

Time slowed for Alin as he was part of the gray that he had spread over the area.

An act of will, a call for help.

Alin reacted rather than thought.

It was the need to save the lives of the people inside.

That sole thought, perhaps, made the difference.

Figures in the gray responded once again.

They moved, he felt, of their own volition.

Wisps of human form, yet strong of limb enough to hold ceilings up while other limbs carried people out by the dozens.

Faint hints of color in the haze. Shields to protect from falling debris. Solid platforms laid over crumbling floors. Blades cut through barricades. Hammers punched through walls.

How many did the echoes bring outside to slip in the dark water?

Not enough.

Never enough.

Alin felt their shock, their terror through the gray.

He felt them coming.

The fishmen appeared on top of the hills of rubble that were once buildings.

Monsters lurked out in the street beyond the ruined wall.

There was only one place left standing that the survivors could flee to.

He pushed them toward the last remaining building.

The gray parted a path while thickening around them, confusing the fishmen.

Ibra had made it through the collapse.

The grizzled warrior picked Chandra up.

Galen too.

The young man urged old people and children to run for the only place they could go as he limped bringing up the rear with a broken blade in hand.

Fishmen blasted spells in the gray.

Alin felt their anger at being denied.

They stabbed bone spears and tridents, shot spines from their versions of bows and crossbows.

Monsters tried to use their superior senses as they sniffed, listened and looked.

All failed as he fought them back.

Like holding back the tide.

Ironic considering what the fishmen could do with such.

Monsters snarled and yelped as a few of the errant attacks got lucky.

Blood in the air.

He thinned the gray around these.

Let them fight.

His uncle loved to say that even when it didn’t really apply to the situation.

The figures in the gray seemed to understand his intent.

They faded back from the fishmen and the monsters, guarding the backs of the running people.

A cacophony of violence erupted when the first monster caught sight or scent of the first fishman.

A great mass of muscle with patchy brown fur standing like lonely tufts of grass in a barren lawn of over-stretched skin weeping red reared up with a roar.

Thick, hard claws raked across gray, armor-like scales.

The impact knocked the fishman to the wet asphalt despite his superhuman level of strength.

The mutated bear reared up and brought both tire-sized front paws down on the fishman’s chest with all its weight.

The crack echoed like a gunshot.

Wetness squelched freely into the rapidly draining water.

Tentacles lanced out of the gray, wrapping around the car-sized mutant.

Fishmen mages appeared, holding it in place for the warriors to spear it.

The mutant lashed out indiscriminately, often going for the closest fishmen while they fought with tactics.

Warriors in front to hold the monsters.

Ranged dealt damage from the rear.

Mages did both.

Healers kept everyone from dying.

The fight wasn’t going to last long.

Alin could see that.

Fishmen were dangerous.

Each was significantly stronger and tougher than his mom and they had their own classes.

1 on 20 was terrible odds in a straight up fight even with his power armor.

Fortunately, it wasn’t 1 on 20 and it wasn’t a fair fight.

He announced himself with every micromissile in his arsenal.

Yellow-orange flowers bloomed in the gray.

Alin landed in their back line.

Multiweapon flared to life.

A yellow axe carved across fishmen mages.

Armor of coral and monster hide sparked with the telltale flash of defensive enchantments.

No instant kills.

They turned, blasting spells from the cold ocean depths.

Threnium tanked.

He deployed the reccoilless gun from his back.

Near hypersonic projectiles cracked their defenses.

The fishmen could take a burst or two with their armor, but not their scales.

He shredded exposed limbs, adding dark blood to the water splashing at their ankles.

The gray concealed him as he circled around to avoid the warrior-types.

Their taunting and targeting Skills found nothing to hold on to in the thick fog.

Sinews twanged.

Spines peppered his armored back, hammering him forward.

A momentary lapse of concentration revealed.

Tentacles erupted from a mage’s outstretched hand, wrapping around his knees. Beaks in the suckers ground themselves blunt against Threnium.

Multi-weapon became a slashing sword.

Ichor splashed against his faceplate.

Targeting system locked on to the mage.

He punched toward the fishman.

Fire streamed from the deployable under-mounted flamethrower.

Magitech.

1 mana battery emptied. 4 left.

Uttering a profane prayer to his disembodied god, a fishman warrior charged.

The Skill carried a bone spear into Alin’s side.

It felt like getting hit with a car even with impact absorption and deflection systems.

The spear snapped.

He tumbled across the shallow lake.

Dark water washed the ichor off his faceplate.

Flamethrower roared.

Another fishman turned into a flailing pyre.

“You will die.”

Alin had never fought a fishman before, let along spoken to one.

Hearing the mage speak English sounded wrong.

Like a rasping croak that gave him fleeting visions of a profane sanctum in the cold, crushing depths.

The mage clasped both webbed hands around his armored arm.

Ice immediately formed around the Threnium and the flamethrower.

Warnings flashed and blared in his helmet.

The cold seeped through the armor, the undersuit and down to his skin.

Muscles tightened.

Needles started to poke.

Then numb.

And pain as cells began to burst.

He raised his multi-weapon, turning it into a short axe only for more tentacles to grab him.

Activating the electric field did nothing except force the tentacles to squeeze tighter.

“Some help would be nice,” he said through grit teeth as the shadow of a bone club loomed over him.

He didn’t know why he had said that.

He was alone—

Except, he wasn’t?

Instinct.

Knowledge that he didn’t know he knew until that moment.

Concerning, but he had more immediate ones.

Faint teal light appeared, interposing between his head and the head-sized spiky knob.

The crack echoed like an artillery cannon.

Gray swirled, revealing a flat pane, like glass before the light vanished.

The fishman warrior doubled over, dropping the club as a vague figure in the gray planted what looked like a fist in his armored stomach.

Coral splintered.

The gray swirled across the fishman’s face, snapping it to the side violently.

Shattered jaw spilled sharp teeth like hail.

Alin felt satisfaction.

The pleasing sensation of a fist solidly connecting.

It was his.

It wasn’t his.

An arc of faint red light whistled past his head.

Tentacle ichor showered down, briefly outlining another wispy figure in the gray.

The first felt like a man, while this one felt like a woman with a sword in hand.

The red trailed afterimages in the thick haze.

Gray wisps swirled.

A second red arc.

Dark fishman blood spilled upon the water, leaving an oily sheen on the surface.

Faint orange light flared for a moment.

The fishman mage freezing his arm recoiled with a high-pitched cry that triggered his helmet’s auditory protections.

Magic lashed wildly as orange streaked across its exposed limbs, leaving thin lines of dark blood all over the mage’s scaly hide.

Five lines.

Human fingers.

Alin could almost see two hands working together.

One to dig into the fishman’s big, round, wide-set eyes and pull the head back for the second hand to tear across the scaly throat.

Magic died, turning into wet gurgles.

He tried to grab hold of the fishmen’s vitality, but once again his gray fingers slipped off their scales.

Too wet, too cold, too alien.

There was a dark void behind them. It strengthened and protected, yet he felt fortunate that it lacked the power to do more than that.

It reminded him of watching a great wandering monster from a distance.

Great eyes that, when it deigned to notice him, saw him as nothing but a bite-sized morsel.

He may have been safe atop a wall, building or inside his dad’s telekinetic forcefield, yet they did nothing to ease the instinctive fear of prey beneath a predator’s gaze.

The gray retreated from him, leaving him with half the fishmen.

A deadly game of blind tag played out in the flooded parking lot amidst the corpses.

Alin emptied his entire arsenal whittling away at the fishmen until only a handful remained.

The deaths of most of their mages had tilted the odds in his favor.

Still, they were strong, tough and durable.

Death by a thousand cuts.

The multi-weapon severed limbs at the cost of breaking the hardlight with each strike.

Energy reserves ran into the red.

An automatic attack Skill carved a dark path through the gray.

He had messed up.

No more shields.

All he had left was the Threnium.

Bone axe descended on upraised arm.

Armor already brittle from the freezing spell shattered.

Multi-weapon shortened into a dagger plunged into the side of the fishman’s scaly neck right through the gills.

Dark blood gushed from large, toothy maw.

Axe rose.

Blinded, Alin raised his hand.

Pain carved a line through it.

Loyal armor protected him as best as it could before it shattered, forcing the bone blade to deflect just enough that instead of losing most of the hand, he only lost the pinkie, ring and half the middle finger.

Multi-weapon into a longsword.

When desperate people turned to the familiar and favored.

Two hands on the hilt.

Right was strong.

Left was weak. Only a thumb and one and a half finger left.

Stumps gushed warmth, fortunately he hadn’t lost the entire glove. It soaked the blood, keeping the hilt from growing slippery.

His entire arm throbbed, radiating spikes of pain up his shoulder.

High guard.

A fishman probed with bone spear, flicking it low, high and middle. A feinting serpent with a deadly bite.

Low.

Alin pounced.

Stomping on it and stepping forward with a cut.

High to low, right to left.

Hardlight blade about as thick as a molecule or two scored a deep line across some sea monster’s hide.

Cracks in the blade formed on the cutting edge.

He flicked his hands up and across.

False edge cut across those bulbous eyes.

He opened the black orbs up. Turned them into gushers.

One last thrust through the open mouth and up into the brain ended the fishman.

Multi-weapon deactivated.

Yellow light winked out.

Thin wire core retracted.

Two beats for it to shoot out again and re-ignite.

Just in time to step back and parry the tooth-encrusted bone club.

Counter stroke parried in turn by the small shield made out of a turtle shell.

The fishman banged them together.

Sound radiated out.

Like a screech in his ears despite the auditory protections.

Eyes watering, he tasted iron as he placed a stop cut in front of him, forcing the fishman to block rather than attack.

He leapt back a dozen yards with an assist from his thrusters.

Distance.

Break contact.

Confuse them.

The fishmen called out to each other.

Not words.

Clicks.

Like sonar.

Did that mean—

A shadow loomed over him.

He dived to one side, avoiding the hooves.

Asphalt sprayed, plinking against his armor.

He turned with a blind slash. Horizontal to cover as much space as possible and give him distance.

Hardlight shattered.

The monster bellowed.

Great antlers swept as he rolled out of the way.

The sheer mass of displaced air helped him out, pushing him out of range.

Shovel-like scopes with jagged, twisted protrusions all along the edges.

The mutated moose’s antlers were much wider than he was tall.

Alin had to crane his neck back to gaze into its face.

It made natural moose look like regular deer.

He lost his concentration.

The fishmen spotted him.

They charged.

The monstrous moose charged.

Spines filled the air.

He dived under the moose’s front legs. Thrusters carried him out past the back legs.

The monster bellowed its ire at the fishmen for filling its brown-furred hide like a pincushion.

Idiots had grabbed aggro.

Alin left them to it, hiding within the gray.

Time and space allowed him to briefly read the spires message.

It wasn’t just an ordinary mutated moose.

It was a wandering boss monster released from the regional park spawn zone on the western peninsula.

Whether it was drawn by the amount of power being thrown around in the battle or it was the spires creating as much conflict and trauma as possible didn’t really matter when one thought about it.

The end result was the same.

People died or leveled.

The moose monster trampled and gored until two fishmen remained.

They fled over the hill of rubble and back to the river.

As for the monster?

It turned a baleful glare in Alin’s direction.

The charge rumbled like a train.

Thrusters fired, carrying him over until it reared up with quickness belied by its size

Antlers clipped his armored boots, slamming him into the wet ground.

He rolled back and forth desperately.

Even glancing blows from those hard hooves sent red lights flashing in his HUD and alarms in his ear.

It was like laying underneath a shadow of a falling sequoia.

He thrust his hardlight blade into its broad chest. It shattered underneath the falling weight, drawing a pinprick of acrid crimson.

The monstrous moose reared up again only to disappear in an instant.

The thunderous crash reminded him of when his dad, uncle and aunt would occasionally practice in out of the way areas. They often liked to throw giant things at each other. Boulders, random hunks of twisted metal and concrete, junked cars, that sort of thing.

A lavender hand hoisted him to his feet like he weighed 2 pounds, not closer to 300 with the power armor.

“Thanks.”

It paid to be polite and it could put people on the wrong footing, especially when not on the same side.

“You’re welcome,” the Eidolon of Adras said.

Alin took several steps back, keeping the eidolon between him and wherever the monstrous moose had been sent flying.

“You’re the son. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m ‘Alcaestus’, Eidolon of Adras.” The human from another world, transformed by what was claimed to be divine blood, held out a hand.

“No offense, but no. Besides… not the time for intros. There’s all kinds of dangerous stuff out there killing people.”

“And thus, I have come.”

Alcaestus loomed.

It didn’t seem right that a human could be that tall, wide and muscular.

Alin had seen pictures of outliers in human anatomy.

A man in ancient times had grown close to 9 feet tall, but was lean and lanky.

Massive bodybuilders in more recent, but still ancient times tended to be below 6 feet tall.

Basketball players got to 7 and change, but were lean more than bulky, with perhaps only one exception.

Football linemen and power lifters had height and bulk, but lacked the definition.

“I’m surprised your father didn’t enter.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s okay. Despite his efforts your existence and relation is not some great secret.”

Alin filed that bit of information for his dad.

It should’ve been one.

“He said you weren’t that bad for an eidolon. The best out of the bunch, so to speak. You actually care about protecting the innocent.”

“Hence, why I’m here. I failed against the demonic clown and must apologize. I understand many of your allies suffered grievous injuries.”

“Um… thanks. Sorry about that, uh, skull-masked guy. I, uh, figured you’re on the same side, um, since you were both there with the, uh, clown thing.”

Alcaestus raised a brow. “He wouldn’t care about your concern. Though he is already back on his feet, even if I had suggested a longer rest.”

“Is it cause of his special forces buddies on the slasher side?”

“That endeavor sits ill with me.” Alcaestus sighed. “Leaders removed from the field often seek the greediest path regardless of the costs.”

“Yeah, no shit. Why are you following their orders then?”

“I do not. I follow the will of Adras and his word was to obey Sunor’s Will.”

“Even if it goes against your—”

A deep, booming bellow shook the gray.

“Let’s debate at a more relaxed time.”

The monstrous moose stomped forward.

Hooves seemed to shake the ground with each thudding step.

“Get behind me, young Cruces. You’re injured and your arsenal has been exhausted.”

Like he was going to get between a giant boulder and a small hill.

The monster suddenly reared up.

Alin bore witness to one of the most disgusting things in his young life.

Bones broke, joints shifted.

Furred skin split, revealing wet muscle.

Its bellows seemed to change from pain to ecstasy and back.

Ribs opened wide like a toothy maw to reveal pulsing organs.

Forelegs became arms.

Hooves split, unfurling, long, wet fingers that ended in thick, curved claws. Two fingers, a thumb on opposite sides opening and closing like a baby’s.

Body split down the middle all the way to the groin and the massive log between its legs.

It split the membrane holding its viscera.

Bloody fluid, organs and entrails spilled out.

It reached up and tore spikes from its antlers, then wrapped them in its entrails, which it began to whirl menacingly like a spiked whip or chain weapon.

From quadrupedal animal to bipedal and weapon-wielding.

Alin saw the monstrous moose’s name as given by the spires.

Just like one of his dad’s favorite old cartoons, except exponentially more nightmarish.

“Great, um, you’ve got this. I’m just going to go help my friends.”

“I will redeem my failure. This boss monster shall feast on no innocents this night!”

The two behemoths roared at each other while Alin made himself scarce.

He needed to save his remaining resources.

Help Hayden.

Then the tower.

He didn’t feel a single ounce of guilt for leaving Alcaestus to a moosey fate.