by Shad N Freud
Camilla raised a fist from her position at point, with Cenere taking the rear. The group halted as she pointed at the floor. The biological mass on the floor pulsated, tendrils leading hither and yon, and she squatted down to get a better look. The stuff seemed to be leading into the storage bay they were trying to get to, the one containing a new body for the Stones. Zeke’s face twisted into something of a grimace as he sniffed the air. “Anyone else smell that?” he asked, rubbing at his nose as his eyes started to water. “Smells like burning metal.”
Jin’s eyes widened and he dropped to the floor, listening carefully. “Something’s scratching at the floor below our feet. I think the nest is under this section of the ship.”
The burning smell Zeke mentioned became far more noticeable to the others as a section of the floor started to glow. The scratching sound intensified as the floor’s hotspot went from red to white, and the radiant heat made most of the party start to sweat as the room’s temperature began to climb rapidly. Jin’s hair started to stand on end as his face contorted into a vicious snarl and his aura sprung to life, wreathing the gnome in a frosty silver mist as he started running for the hottest part of the floor. Zeke reached out to grab him, to pull him back, then yelped as the cold frosted his scales and caused some of them to crack. Jin was growling as he ran towards the spot and lunged at it as a white-hot blade pierced the floor, followed shortly by an enormous Darkspawn, one with extra mandibles and extra arms, covered in dense layers of armor.
The Spawn looked not unlike one of the queens below, save the lack of ovipositor, its carapace matte black and plasma cutters grafted into its forelimbs. Its other limbs terminated in claws, save two arms sprouting from its upper thorax, which terminated in large bulbs. The Spawn swatted away the small thing that felt like an icy needle and ignored the thick frost on its face. Jin bounced off a wall and lay still for a moment, breathing raggedly as he pressed his hands against a bleeding wound. Carl stepped in front of the little man and began rummaging in his coat. Cenere desperately fought the urge to piss himself as the big bastard ahead of them opened its great maw and roared.
Zeke saw Camilla rip open a trauma kit and began binding Jin’s wound, slowly feeling his fury build within. He could tell his control over his bloodlust was slipping and decided to use it constructively. He turned and drew his sword, walking towards the Darkspawn Tyrant that stood between them and their objective, the docking tube for the synthetic body the stones required. The tyrant stepped forward and away from the hole, allowing a swarm of the lesser Spawn to flood the chamber.
Cenere looked back to Camilla, who was fighting like mad to save their tiny friend and smiled. “Sachi? Keep an eye on Camilla for me, would you?”
Carl finished pulling out his pintle mount for the minigun at his feet as he heard Cenere say his bit to Sachi and froze. He looked up and watched as Cenere began to sing a song, an upbeat song that had a rather negative connotation. “Heavenly shades of night are falling…it’s twilight time…”
As he sang, the air around him became filled with green light. Hellfire flowed from his hands as he smiled, singing what he considered to be his swan song. If he was going out, it would be with a bang. The hellfire began to swirl, causing a wake in the tide of the Spawn as they burned to a crisp. He could feel his life force slowly starting to ebb with every word; this song was a contract with Lucifer, his life in exchange for his friends. Zeke was in front of him, unharmed by the flames, and being spurred on as his wounds rapidly healed in the most painful method possible. His black sword flashed this way and that, taking limbs and heads, gutting and bisecting, purple blood burning away as the Maelstrom of Hellfire grew.
Blades of sound began to fly with pinpoint accuracy for the Darkspawn as Carl started spinning up his minigun. Sachi lifted Thumper to her shoulder and sprayed the wave of bodies running towards them with lead from her MP5 as she fired the grenade launcher into the crowd, inflicting hideous casualties as Zeke and Cenere waded further into the swarm towards their target, the great rutting bastard leading them. It shrieked loudly as a sonic blade took off one of its thermal lance arms and pointed the pintle mounted bulbs at Cenere.
Zeke’s blood lust chilled and everything slowed down as his inner serenity took over. The rage he felt became cold, calculating, and he could see everything. He saw the bulbs open slowly and a blue glow spilled forth from inside. In and among the ramblings Greggory shared with his unwitting apprentice had been weapon designs. Zeke had often sat in Jin’s lab, fascinated by the technologies Greggory mentioned at length, including the myriad energy weapons McG had developed. One of which, the Seeded Plasma Explosive Delivery System, or SPEDS, sent flaming blue balls of plasma death at their target. Balls of plasma that rapidly expanded in a massive conflagration of burning air and had the potential explosive energy of a small thermo-nuclear device.
This Darkspawn had apparently grown two of the weapons right out of its back and had focused them on Cenere. Zeke looked back to the group, who were fighting desperately to keep the Spawn back while the enemy piled up their dead like a wall, making it harder to fight them. Zeke turned his head back towards Cenere, who had closed his eyes when the arms swiveled towards him, opened his mouth, and was putting everything he had into a crushing crescendo. Zeke could see the ‘ball’ of sound the tiefling was screaming at the walking battle tank and could tell it would probably end the creature’s life, but not before the plasma bolts would kill the bard. He squared his jaw and flung his sword as he ran into the path of the second plasma bulb and prayed his untested technique would work.
Jin and Greggory hadn’t been the only two doing research in the library within the mansion. Zeke had found a treasure trove of old texts and would often read them when not meditating, laughing with his friends, or eating enough meat to drive a buffet out of business. One technique required using your own life force, or Ki, to form a barrier. Normally, such barriers only worked against magical attacks, so he had no idea how well this was going to work. He roared in a saurian fashion as he forced both hands out in front of himself and pushed all of his being into a barrier. The barrier sprung to life, golden energy forming a dense bubble around Cenere and Zeke, and his in-lizardmanly possible speed abruptly ended as the plasma ball arrested its flight on the golden hemisphere, pushing against the barrier for a bare second before detonating.
∞∞∞
“I can smell your fear, little elf. I know you’re around here, somewhere,” Ink cackled as she dropped yet another dead body. Demons had already torn the neighborhood apart and Tristana had grabbed her daughter, fleeing to the bunker below. The bunker was designed to withstand a prolonged assault by rank and file demons so long as there were enough defenders to hold it. The bunker was also full of murder holes, dead ends, and traps galore. It was designed to hold the line against a chaotic, mindless horde, and that was precisely why it was failing. This assault was abnormal, as Ink was leading it so and was hardly mindless.
She had bodies to spare but used them intelligently, deliberately setting off traps to allow the others to follow, not falling for the tricks these humans had set up, and the attrition rate was impossible for the defenders to maintain. To add to their dismay, all communications electronic or otherwise were being blocked by the static field erected by Abyssal sorcerers above. Granted, it was only a matter of time before the church noted the lack of comms, but Ink and her targets would be long gone by then.
“They can’t protect you from me. Oh, they’ll die trying. I won’t begrudge them that honor. But, one way or another, you will be in my hands. You and your daughter. I will have you both. And then? I’ll use you to kill Carl Fucking Beaumont’s heart. I will crush his love, the only things in this life that matter to him. And oh, but I’m going to enjoy it.” Ink pointed at the armored door that stood between her and the prize, directing the demons milling about to attack. The door lasted several moments before the vespid’s acidic saliva ate through. Immediately, a hail of bullets flew through t
he holes in the door, splattering demons left and right. More pushed forward and eventually breached the door.
Ink smiled. It was just a matter of time, now.
∞∞∞
The twin explosions disintegrated over half of the remaining Spawn; those milling around their leader had no chance at all, and a large portion of the floor was gone. A semicircular section stood unmolested, and Zeke collapsed. Cenere staggered to his feet, looking at the blast radii of the three attacks and whistled. Then he looked down at Zeke and felt the bottom of his stomach try to migrate to the floor along with the lizard.
Zeke’s plan had worked, but at a terrible cost; a pyrrhic victory is no victory to the minds of the survivors, after all. Zeke’s arms were just gone. He was covered in third degree burns and his left eye had burned away, exposing an empty socket. Zeke’s breathing was extremely ragged, and his bones were showing through in some places. He had shielded Cenere from the blast and, clearly, paid his life to do so. Jin stumbled over as the shooting continued, negligently frying a Spawn that got too close, with a syringe of Lazarus compound in his hand. “Move it, Fancy. I can still save him.”
Jin straddled the burnt lizard and thrust the syringe into his heart. “This is gonna hurt like hell, buddy, but you’ll survive.” He shoved the plunger down and injected the brown goo into the lizard’s faintly beating heart. It caused Zeke to scream as he sat up and parts of his flesh began to regenerate. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t enough; Lazarus compound works wonders on most injuries but can’t regenerate missing organs. Nor could it repair damage caused by intense radiation. Zeke’s remaining eye focused on Jin for an instant, his mouth moving soundlessly, trying to tell Jin something before his heart stopped and the lizard grew very still, collapsing back to the floor, his open eye staring at nothing as his last gasp fled his body.
“No,” Jin whispered as he placed his hand on his lizard friend, watching the light fade from his eye. “NO! No, I refuse to accept this! I REFUSE!” Jin’s scream became a roar and his skin became pure silver. His body shifted into scaly skin from head to toe with scaly skin as he began to grow, roaring in fury and grief, hovering over his fallen friend as he changed forms. He grew to be the size of a tour bus and roared to the heavens at the injustice of it all.
The intercom fizzled to life near Carl’s ear as they finished slaying the last of the horde. “If you want to save the scaled one, you haven’t much time. Go to the room to your left; there is a single dose of a compound one of the scientists was working on. It will save the lizard, but…he may not appreciate it in the long run. Go! Hurry! It’s a syringe filled with a silvery liquid!”
Sachi booked it for the door, which slid open just as she reached it, and she grabbed the syringe. She ran back to the fallen warrior and had to dodge the Dragon standing above him, roaring in rage and sorrow as its tail and neck thrashed about. She paused for a moment, not sure what to do with the syringe.
“His eye socket! It has to go into the brain! Do it! Do it now!” Incidius ordered through the intercom
“Sorry about this, big guy.” She grimaced, then jabbed the large gauge syringe into the dying lizardman’s empty eye socket and depressed the plunger. Zeke’s body went into convulsions for several seconds before it became very still again. “Oh, God…what have I done? He’s still not breathing, and he’s got no pulse…I’m sorry, but he’s dead.”
“No shit,” Jin hissed above her. He gently scooted the young woman away from the scorched warrior with one of his large clawed hands. He then grabbed the twisted, burned, and bent adamantine greatsword that now resembled a piece of abstract art more than the honor blade of the chief of a long-dead tribe and reverently placed it on Zeke’s burned chest. He turned his serpentine neck, looking for the remains of his clothing and grabbing the nexus bag from his belt. Jin tossed it in his mouth and bit down hard, destroying the bag. He then spit out everything in his mouth and grabbed a paw full of gold, silver, copper, and platinum coins, dropping them on Zeke’s body. “To pay the boat man to take you to the Allfather’s hoard,” Jin whispered as the tears began to fall.
Jin opened his mouth and breathed a stream of opaque vapor onto the lizard as softball sized tears ran down his face. The tears mixed with the vapors as they fell on the lizard and his corpse was slowly covered in a crystalline diamond shell. Generally worthless, diamond created in this way allowed a silver dragon to sculpt diamond palaces with their tears or encapsulate their hoards to protect them from thieves. The magic involved caused the diamond to form hexagonal micro structures, aligning so perfectly that the hard-shell forms small breathing holes. Hence why the third use for their “breath” weapon was to spit on their enemies and encase them in diamond. In seconds, Zeke and his possessions were covered in a hardened diamond shell, fully encapsulated.
“We’ll come back for you, buddy. Just wait for us to come back.” Jin looked over at the group, still shaken by their friend’s passing, and felt a great rage building in his broken heart. “Let’s get these fuckers. They killed my best friend, and I’m not going to rest until every last one is dead. Coming with? Or am I avenging Zeke alone?” Jin rumbled in a low, deep, angry voice.
Camilla looked up and stared the dragon directly in the eye, tears streaming down her face as she snarled in rage, her brogue becoming almost indecipherable. “Cenere nearly died due tae his own stupidity, 'n' reckless bravery. Bit if he hadn’t bin reckless, Ziccorro wid hae died far sooner, 'n' we’d a' likely be deid richt noo. Ziccorro died as a warrior, 'n' saved a' o' us by killing that muckle piece o' demon jobby. Sae, in his memory, ah say we build him a proper funeral pyre, wi' thae arseholes as th' fuel. Ah say we send him tae th' afterlife oan a pile o' corpses a mile heich.”
Carl walked over after straightening himself up and came to a salute. “I’ve known plenty of brave Inquisitors that died for their faith, their friends, their people…but none of them did so in as bad-ass a way as Ziccorro. He used his own lifeforce to shield us from that blast after throwing his sword into the ugly fucker’s other weapon, to prevent a second shot. If he was a Satanist, he’d probably get to skip the line. I’m going to ensure the Pope declares him a saint of the Church. The Patron Saint of Kicking Ass.”
Cenere raised an arm from where he was laying. “Seconded.”
Carl laughed as he shook his head and pulled out his never-empty flask of whiskey. He placed the flask so that it faced slightly downward, with the cap open. “Not your usual vintage, big guy, but it’s the best I could do on such short notice.” The flask kept pouring onto the diamond casket, whiskey dripping through the tiny airholes and onto the dead lizard’s corpse, soaking the body in alcohol.
“Let’s grab the body from the tube, put the rocks in, then tally-ho. We’ve got a lot of Spawn to kill.” Jin grabbed the tube with one hand and held it in his teeth. Everyone followed the dragon, Carl having gathered the rest of Jin’s possessions into an empty nexus bag, including the box, and handed it over to Sachi. The group made their way back to control and the door closed behind them.
Unbeknownst to the group, Zeke’s bloodstream was now filled with a prototype nanite package, one that took a moment to activate after performing a full body scan. Those nanites placed the dying cells in stasis as they also absorbed raw materials nearby. Pure carbon was slowly stripped away from the diamond shell, the alcohol was broken down into its base components, and the nanites scanned the DNA contained within. The precious metals were likewise broken down and deposited in the process of adding the highest grade of cybernetic wetware and hardware available to McG R&D before the fall. The destroyed honor blade of his tribe was broken down to infuse his cells with adamantine as well as create a sub-dermal lattice network in his organic tissues and a thin layer as an outer shell for his armored synthetic parts. The nanites absorbed portions of his organic body so that the undamaged skin and other tissues could be reused, replacing the lost parts with cybernetic and biomechanical components.
His inorganic left eye blin
ked to life. The damaged neural tissues had been replaced with a logic co-processor linked to the synthetic eye. The synthetic eye began rolling around, the pupil flashing rapidly as the eye connected to the ship’s intranet, downloading new drivers for all of his new internals. The nanites connected directly to the logic co-processor, which began ordering them to finalize the genetic restructuring, slowly restoring life to the restored tissues. The restoration process would still take hours, as would the full system update.
All the while, the liquor still pooled on the lizard’s chest, the diamond shell grew thinner by the micron, and the chittering below signaled more of the Spawn making their way to the surface after they cleared the rubble from the massive blast.
A single thought crossed the co-processor’s logic stream: KILL ALL DARKSPAWN.
To Be Continued in Necessarily Evil: Apocalypse