Dark Gate Angels Complete Series Omnibus

by Ramy Vance

  Blackwell wasn’t far behind him, shouting, “You idiot! You can’t fight a balrog with tasers! That thing is going to rip you to shreds!”

  Naota wasn’t listening. He slammed into one of the balrogs, scampered up its back, and held his tasers high while screaming, “For humanity!” He plunged his crackling tasers into the balrog’s neck.

  The balrog screamed in pain, its body jerking wildly as it foamed at the mouth.

  Blackwell stopped in his tracks, his jaw nearly touching the ground. “Well, I’ll be damned!”

  Another balrog snapped Naota on the back with his whip, sending the human flying through the air as he yelled, “Don’t let them pass, Blackwell! Don’t let them fucking pass!”

  Naota skidded across the ground as Blackwell fired his plasma rifle at the balrog that had attacked Naota. Behind him, the other Marines charged.

  Terra, Abby, and Persephone were the only ones who hadn’t moved. Abby was frozen with indecision. She couldn’t take her eyes off the dragon. The same could be said of Terra but for different reasons. Persephone, on the other hand, still stared at her cradled right tentacle. “Are you ready to do this?” she asked Abby.

  Abby swallowed hard and cleared her throat. “Uh, guess I have to be.” The nanobots slid from her pores, covering her skin in a sleek metallic coating. She floated into the air, her hands burning with energy.

  Persephone nodded, closed her eyes, and convulsed as she leaned forward, the skin of her right arm splitting open, dozens of tentacles spilling out in a sloppy mess. White light burned in her eyes. “Then let’s go,” she growled before running toward the dragon.

  As Abby and Persephone headed toward their dragon, Terra looked at her shield and katar. “Well, that makes this underwhelming,” she muttered to herself. She took off after the others.

  Abby fired two blasts from her plasma cannon at one of the dragons as she flew past it. The dragon shot a burst of fire, scattering the energy blasts. It flapped its heavy wings once and rose into the air, nearly closing the distance between itself and Abby.

  On the ground, Persephone launched her tentacles, wrapping them around one of the dragon’s legs, then pulled herself into the air and landed on its back.

  The dragon rolled, spewing fire at Abby and anything else that was remotely close. She swerved out of the way, dropping to fly under the dragon’s stomach. She fired shot after shot of energy at the dragon’s soft underbelly.

  Roars of pain tore through the air as the dragon slashed at Abby with its front claws. The claws hit Abby hard in the chest, sending her careening away.

  Persephone reached out with her tentacles and snagged Abby from the air, pulling her onto the dragon. Once Abby was safe, Persephone raised one of her tentacles, speaking in a language that sounded both dead and dreamy. Her tentacles multiplied and began to wrap around the dragon’s body.

  Abby started firing into the dragon’s backside.

  The dragon screeched and rolled again, this time diving toward the ground. It hit on its back, slamming both Persephone and Abby into the arena’s sands.

  Terra had walked over to meet her dragon head-on. The dragon must have had the same idea. It slowly slunk toward the human, smoke rising from its nose and mouth. The two circled each other.

  The dragon loosed a jet of flame, and Terra threw her shield up to avoid being burned. Once the fire stopped, Terra ran toward the dragon, brandishing her katar and wondering how anyone with a sword and a shield could beat a dragon.

  Terra threw herself into the air, her katar raised high. The dragon shot another blast of fire, but Terra whipped her shield up in time, managing to block most of the fire. What remained singed her skin. She connected with the dragon nonetheless, driving her katar into the dragon’s snout.

  First blood had been drawn. The dragon slashed at Terra, throwing her to the ground. She didn’t stay on her back long, leaping to her feet, sprinting toward the dragon, and slashing at its front legs.

  The dragon pounced on her, its open mouth coming down fast, trying to bite the girl in half. Terra raised her shield, blocking the dragon’s lunge. Then she dropped her katar, grabbed the dragon by the nose, and pulled as hard as she could.

  The crowd went wild, cheering and shouting, “Not-a-Male” as Terra wrestled the dragon to the ground. The dragon frantically tried to back away, its strength matched by Terra’s. The two were locked together, and the crowd had never seen or heard of anything such as this happening before in the history of dragons or humanity. No human had ever wrestled a dragon to the ground.

  Terra, not wanting to lose any of her momentum, pushed hard, causing the dragon to lose its balance. Then she raised her fist and brought it down on the beast’s skull.

  The sound of Terra’s blow was loud enough that those nearby, orc and human alike, stopped in their tracks. They stood silent, watching the dragon stumble as if it had been hit with a lightning bolt. Terra didn’t let up. She picked up her katar and ran after the dragon, slashing its face open and blinding its left eye.

  The dragon reared up on its hind legs and touched its paw to its eye. It looked down at the blood, then in a low voice that poured through everyone in the arena, said, “Ah, the taste of my blood. I had forgotten such a thing.”

  The dragon roared, its violent screech sending chills down the spines of all who beheld its awful power. Fire burst over its scales as if hell had been unleashed. The flaming red dragon pounced on Terra, clasped her in its claws, and took to the air, spewing fire as it flew.

  Anabelle took advantage of the momentary surprise of the orcs and the rest of those in the arena to launch her own attack. She concentrated on the flow of water, saw it weaving through streams, through rivers, while also focusing her mind on veins of lightning one sees in the sky during a thunderstorm.

  She felt her body lose its consistency and she pushed her manna forward, a dazzling display of electricity and water moving as if it had will, spreading through the throng of orcs and goblins, shocking many to death and leaving others spasming, their teeth locked.

  Even with the orcs that Anabelle had just dispatched, this wasn’t going to cut it. There were too many of them. “Outnumbered” didn’t do justice to the balance of this fight. She was going to have to figure something else out very fast.

  A mere hundred feet away, Persephone and Abby were struggling with the dragon that had attempted to crush them. Persephone’s tentacles were still trying to wrap around the dragon. The dragon suddenly rose to its hind legs, grabbed Persephone’s tentacles, and bit down on them.

  Persephone screamed in pain as she fell forward, clutching her wounded appendages.

  Abby flew out from behind the dragon, constructed a plasma cannon on her shoulder, and fired at the dragon, who nearly tumbled over from the blast. Then she flew to Persephone, scooped the drow up in her arms, and flew to a section of the arena that wasn’t overrun with battle. “Are you okay?”

  Persephone nodded as she gritted her teeth. The torn tentacles fell out as new smaller tentacles pushed through the open wounds. “Just need a minute,” she managed.

  Abby looked up to see the red dragon charging toward them. “Not sure if we’re gonna get a minute.”

  Suddenly, the ground burst into flames. A red dragon toppled from the sky, crashing into the ground. It held Terra in its claws, trying to crush her, as Terra hacked at the dragon’s chest with her katar. They were both covered in blood. When the dragon hit the ground, it threw Terra into the stone wall, which cracked. The dragon got up, swaying as it spat blood.

  Terra picked herself up off the ground, hardly able to get to her feet.

  The crowd chanted, “Not-a-Male!” over and over.

  Terra threw her shield to the ground and slammed her fist to her chest, shouting, “My name is Terra, She Who was Hewn from Orc Bone. My name is Terra!” As she declared her name, the orcish handprint marking her as a chieftain appeared on her face.

  The crowd grew silent as the flaming red dragon launched a j
et of fire at the girl, who threw herself to the side to avoid the flames. Terra ran toward the dragon, moving faster than the dragon could turn. She slammed into its side, forcing it onto its back.

  Terra ran the length of the dragon’s torso, dragging her katar down its belly and cutting it open from stomach to neck. She drove her katar deep into its throat before moving to its face, then cupped both hands together and drove them into the creature’s skull.

  The thud of the impact rang out over the entire arena.

  Terra stood over the dragon, which lay unmoving. She raised her hands again and slammed them into the dragon’s head once more, then keeled over, unconscious on the dragon’s chest, which still rose and fell.

  Anabelle was making her way out of the throng of orcs. She saw Terra fall, watched as Abby and Persephone fled from the red dragon, witnessed Naota and Blackwell and the Marines fighting a failing battle against the balrogs.

  We aren’t losing, Anabelle thought. But we sure as hell aren’t winning.

  Anabelle’s comm suddenly came to life. Sarah said loud and clear, “Hey! Got an idea for some backup, but I’m going to need Abby’s help, all right? Can you get her away from all this?”

  “How the hell am I going to do that? Can you see this shit?”

  “Hold on.” She called up something on her HUD. “Plasma batteries installed. OK, now the whole world can see this. What about those catacombs? Aren’t there like a hundred people in there or something? Sounds like enough good fighters to me.”

  Anabelle thought it over for a second. It didn’t matter if it was a good idea. It was an idea. “I’ll get Abby, then you two figure out how to help us the fuck out.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Back on Earth, Sarah and Kravis stood beside Creon as the goblin ran through frequency after frequency, trying to pinpoint how the Game Master had been able to figure out where the Dark Gate Angels and their troops had come from. That information was extremely dangerous in the hands of one of the Dark One’s lieutenants. It would spell doom for Middang3ard HQ.

  It was obvious by now that the Dark One’s forces greatly outweighed those of any planet’s resistance, Earth included. It would be best to keep locational information away from the Dark One.

  Creon also had another issue on his hands. The Angels and their squad were being overrun in the arena. The only noticeable victory had been Terra managing to knock out the dragon, but since she had passed out as well, it looked to be more of a draw. There had to be something Creon could use to help the Angels. Otherwise, this was going to be the dreaded snuff film Abby had been so reluctant to broadcast.

  Kravis climbed onto a chair while Sarah continued to pace. Kravis pointed at one of the frequencies on the list of thousands Creon was reading through. “That’s my homeworld,” Kravis said.

  Creon absentmindedly nodded and muttered, “Yes, well, we can’t get reinforcements from there, can we?”

  “But we could get them from somewhere else,” Sarah suggested. “Like I did earlier. We could open the Dark Gate we weren’t able to use earlier. You could transport Kravis and me back to the gnomish world with coordinates to where we have other troops on other worlds. We could piggyback, back and forth, until we bring them all to the arena.”

  Creon thought it over for a second. The plan sounded like it would work in practice. The only problem was making sure they could access the Dark Gate at the arena. Everything else was solid. “Go, start prepping the collider right now. Get credentials from Myrddin so you aren’t questioned,” the goblin said. “I need to get in touch with Abby.”

  Sarah and Kravis hurried from the room while Creon hit his comm, pinging Abby. “Abby, I have a plan to help you all, but I’m going to need you to do something for me. I’m sending you a copy of the energy signature of the Dark Gate in the arena. I need you to get to it and activate it.”

  Abby was flying circles around the red dragon, firing when she got a chance, narrowly avoiding the jets of fire that flew past her. She’d received Creon’s message and said she was going to do what she could but had no idea how she was going to get the dragon to stop paying attention to her.

  Persephone was trying to keep the dragon from getting off the ground with her tentacles, but Abby already knew Persephone was not going to be able to take the dragon on all by herself. However, she had to slip away somehow. “Martin, you remember how you took out Persephone’s microchip?”

  Martin answered instantly. “It’s a sweet idea and all kid, but you’re not going to be able to destroy everyone’s chip and set them free. That’s going to take way more power than you have.”

  “What if it was just to disrupt them for a bit? Five to ten minutes. Do I have enough juice for that?”

  Martin thought about it for a few seconds before answering, “We could build a construct, put it in the middle of the arena, and let it go. You could handle that, but you would need a little bit of time to recover. Probably as much time as it would take for their chips to come back on.”

  “That will have to do. All right, let’s do it.”

  “Already seventy-five percent done. Just get to the middle of the arena.”

  Abby didn’t waste any time peeling away from the dragon, who seemed confused that Abby suddenly stopped attacking. She made her way to the middle, weaving in and out of the orc horde that Anabelle was thinning out. In there, Abby knelt as nanobots rolled off her hand and into the sand, building up and forming what looked like a small tuning fork.

  Martin said, “Just tell me when to set it off.”

  Abby rocketed off toward Terra, who was still passed out on top of the dragon. She landed and shook Terra awake. “Terra! You have to get up. We need you.”

  Terra began to rouse, then she jerked up suddenly, looking around as if she had forgotten where she was. When she recognized Abby, she calmed down. “What…what do you need?”

  “We need you to go into the tunnels and bring out the other fighters. They’ll listen to you. They respect you. Otherwise, we’re not going to win this.”

  Terra looked around the battlefield. Even though some of the orcs and a dragon had fallen, they were not winning the fight. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to try to bring even more.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  Abby nodded and helped Terra stand as she told Martin to fire the microchip scrambler.

  An invisible wave of energy flooded through the arena. The dragon and balrogs stopped in their tracks for a second. Then they started back up, fighting as if they were drunk. Still dangerous, but not as much as before. The orcs didn’t seem to be affected.

  Abby didn’t have time to figure out why the orcs seemed immune. She had bigger fish to fry.

  Terra returned to her feet, stumbling at first but then steadying, and headed toward the locked gate to the hall where the other fighters were. She kicked it, and the gate buckled under her strength.

  Abby was following close behind since her systems were recovering. She might need time to return to fighting mode, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t move. At the end of the hall, she split off from Terra, going another direction down the halls, following the map she had made from the first time her tracker had followed Terra. She stopped at the room with the Dark Gate and blasted the door open. She reached out, and electric tendrils slipped from her fingers and connected to the Dark Gate.

  Martin whistled to himself as he turned the Dark Gate on.

  It roared to life, glowing an unearthly purple. “Creon, I got the Gate on. It’s all you guys now.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sarah and Kravis were back on the gnomish world in no time. As soon as Creon relayed that Abby had managed to turn the arena’s Dark Gate on, Sarah and Kravis had departed. Time was of the essence. They were making a huge gamble that the Game Master wasn’t prepared for another attack. It made sense. The orc seemed smug enough about his first trick.

  Overconfidence was the best trait to take advantage of. If Sarah a
nd Kravis worked quickly enough, they’d be able to make sure Game Master never felt anything like it again.

  The Dark Gate on the gnomish world opened. Sarah had expected to see Bim-Bop, but he was nowhere to be seen. Maybe the little guy managed to escape after all. That or someone let him out. Either way, he was gone.

  Sarah and Kravis stepped through. They had held onto the frequencies that the Gates used just in case. Neither of them had thought they would be useful, but Sarah was glad Kravis had suggested it. Now they got to work setting up the Dark Gates to go to the three different places they needed.

  First was the arena. That was the first Gate they opened.

  Next was the Red Lion in the Shire of Middang3ard. It was the MERC bar. There were a handful of powerful fighters there, but Myrddin had recommended the Mundanes specifically. Sarah had heard the name here and there but that was about it.

  Third was the Wasp’s Nest, the dragonriders’ HQ. Boundless was the name of the team Myrddin recommended there. Roy vouched for them as well. Sarah hadn’t heard anything about them but figured Myrddin and Roy knew best.

  Kravis entered all the frequencies. According to the monitor, the Dark Gates were connected. “I’ll go to the legendary MERC HQ on Middang3ard, the Red Lion,” Sarah said. “You grab the dragonriders. We’ll funnel them straight through the Gates.”

  “Help me with this one,” Kravis said as he tried to push his Gate closer to the Gate leading to the arena. “If they’re going to be bringing dragons, we’re gonna want to make sure we’re going straight from portal to portal. I don’t want to end up with five dragons in the room.”

  Sarah gave Kravis a hand, and when they were satisfied, she jumped through her Gate.