Dark Gate Angels Complete Series Omnibus

by Ramy Vance

  A large shadow fell over Abby and Terra. An ether dragon was flying above them.

  Alex, on Chine, swooped down and landed in front of Terra and Abby. "Find anything interesting?"

  Abby and Terra informed Alex of just how little they’d found. The rider crossed her arms and clicked her tongue. "That's unfortunate. Everyone's hoping that big brain will be able to figure this out. Well, I have to get back to the edge of the quarantine zone. The dragonriders are helping transport the zombies to a holding pen. See you guys later."

  Terra raised her eyebrow at Abby. "Anything I should know about there?"

  Abby chuckled as she went back to scanning. "Hardly. We're friends. Kept in touch with each other after we first met and while she was on the run. One of the only people I could talk to about what was going on who was my age, and we could swap tech notes."

  Martin projected from Abby’s and Terra's comms. "You guys able to wrap up what you're doing? Anabelle wants to get together and figure out where you're going from here."

  Abby checked her scanner. "Looks like we’ve got enough. Thank God this isn't like a zombie video game. Scanning for a dozen variants would be such a hassle. Let's head back to HQ."

  Abby and Terra knocked on Anabelle’s door and waited for it to open.

  The elf slid the door open. She was dressed in sweatpants and had three beers in her hands. She passed one to Terra and another to Abby. "Come on in."

  Abby looked around the studio. The carpets on the floor were insanely detailed, reminding her of Eastern Orthodox iconography. "Why aren't we meeting in the War Room?"

  Anabelle flopped onto her couch. "Myrddin and Roy are busy, so I don't see the point being cooped up in that uncomfortable room. This room is a little easier to relax in, don’t you think? "

  Terra and Abby exchanged glances. "Anabelle? Relaxed?" Terra asked. "Did someone kidnap our Anabelle and replace her with a good clone?"

  Anabelle tossed a pillow at Terra. "Fuck off. I figured…I don't know, this is our first big real mission in a while, and it's starting to feel like it's going to all be on us. There's way too much going on to wait around for Myrddin and Roy to plan this."

  Abby cracked her beer open and sat on the floor, folding one leg over the other. "What are you thinking?"

  Anabelle smiled. "Resources are spread extremely thin as it is. The whole integration thing has been a double-edged sword. One hand, everyone's in contact with each other. On the other, there are so many channels to go through and people you need to get authorization from. Besides, we know what's going on better than anyone since we’re on the ground level. So, what do we have, Abby?"

  The girl tapped the side of her head. "We just received the information on my chat with the Omniverse from Martin a few minutes ago. Working on processing it right now."

  Terra raised her arms and said in a robotic voice, "Computing possible situations for viable combat. Analysis complete. Anabelle is freaking everyone out by not being uptight."

  Abby laughed while the elf scowled from the couch. "I bring you to this beautiful room and give you the finest cheap beer I could hunt down, and you insult me? On my couch?" Anabelle mock-gasped.

  Terra chugged her beer. "What can I say? I'm a savage. You have any more?"

  Anabelle pointed to the fridge. "You have to get it yourself. So, while we wait, what was hell like after Terra and I left?"

  Abby scrunched her face as she thought. "It was weird, to be honest. Rasputina...she seems so different. Not like the person we knew a year ago."

  Anabelle bit her lip as she nodded. "Yeah, I didn't want to admit it, but I thought the same thing. Both of them. Nothing like when we left them in the Netherverse."

  "Maybe people can change, even if they were as bad as those two. Anyway, there's no reason for us to think they're involved with this."

  Terra came back with her beer and jumped on the couch. "Besides the fact that Grok was doing something with the gates to hell, you mean?”

  Anabelle nodded. “Yeah, but they’re trying to help, and from what I gathered, they weren’t far enough along to warrant…that!” She pointed out the window at the Omniverse.

  Terra shrugged. “Whatever. I don’t trust them.” She turned to Abby. “You done with that processing?"

  Abby made a cartoony ping sound. "Is that what you were waiting for?"

  "It would have been cooler if it came through the speakers."

  Abby smirked.

  "Computation complete," Abby's voice said through the speakers in Anabelle's room.

  She projected a holoscreen from her wrist. "This is everything the Omniverse was trying to say and some things we picked up from running deductive analysis with Martin."

  Terra hung her head. "Jesus, when you're not joking, you sound much freakier."

  Abby didn't listen and continued speaking. "The Omniverse is composed of a material similar to the Dark Melody. Not quite the same, but they are built of similar compounds. That means this might be an actual manifestation of the Omniverse, not an avatar or something."

  Anabelle studied the holoscreen. "What does it want?"

  "It repeated multiple times that it wanted some kind of balance to the souls between it and the Netherverse, but Martin compiled a bunch of information based on what was being said by the Omniverse that I couldn't understand because of how we were communicating. This'll work for now, but we're going to have to figure out how to actually talk to the thing."

  The screen changed to what looked like a series of mathematical equations.

  Anabelle turned to Abby. "You're going to have to explain those."

  Abby swiped through the holoscreen. "Those are a list of demands. For the most part, they're pretty much the same, only slightly different. Apparently, it all boils down to the Omniverse wants us to bring it the Dark One. It knows the Dark One is still in the Netherverse, and it's holding our realms for ransom until it gets him."

  Terra stretched out on the couch, throwing her legs on top of Anabelle’s. "What does it want with the Dark One?"

  Abby shook her head as she closed down the holoscreen. "Didn't say, and we can't deduce why, other than it has something to do with the Netherverse and a balance of souls."

  Terra drained the last of her beer and sighed. "And how are we going to do that?"

  Anabelle leaned forward, cupping her hands together and staring into the distance. "Grok and Rasputina. They've been raising an army to find the Dark One. The two of them have to know where he's hiding, or at least have an idea of where we can start looking. I guess we gotta get back into hell."

  Chapter Seven

  HQ was buzzing with bodies. No one stayed in the same space for longer than five minutes. The sheer amount of effort that HQ was having to put in to plan around nine different realms was astounding.

  Creon had been glued to his holoscreen for what felt like three or four days straight. He still wasn't sure if it had even been a day.

  He was on his seventh cup of coffee, and all of the information on the screen looked like nonsense. "Gods be damned," he muttered as he reached over to the conjuring pad next to his pad and summoned another cup of coffee.

  Cire walked into the lab, carrying two plates of food. "How's it going?"

  "Dismally. But I'm happy to have the company."

  Creon was being honest. He’d grown used to having Abby in the lab with him. Someone to bounce ideas off of was always appreciated, and Abby had the added benefit of being able to improve on them. Martin was nice to work with, but the AI's smart-aleck attitude made conversations difficult at times. Cire was proving to be a solid stand-in. Even if the orc didn't understand everything Creon said, he had enough curiosity to probe each idea.

  Creon pointed at the holoscreen. "I've been trying to break down the composition of the Omniverse based on the information Abby provided, but I'm not getting anywhere. As far as I can tell, it is composed of something entirely different from anything we have in the nine realms. Which doesn't help me at all."<
br />
  "What about the zombies?"

  Creon looked away from the holoscreen and pushed up his glasses. "That is supposed to be your department, isn't it?"

  Cire took a seat across from Creon. "Still, I'd like to see if you found anything out."

  The gnome shook his head as he sighed. "No, nothing. I can't seem to find a link between the Omniverse and its ability to raise the dead."

  "It could be a combination of things we don't know," a voice said from the hallway.

  Sarah walked into the lab, holding a cup of coffee. She looked as ragged as Creon did, hours of sleep deprivation hanging heavily under her eyes.

  Creon jumped when he saw her. "They brought you in too, huh?" He looked at Cire. “Guess they want all the heavy-hitters in one place to solve this.”

  Sarah walked past Creon and took a seat behind Cire. "It's all over my head at the moment. Zombies are being stored, which I'm assuming they are across all of the realms. There isn't anything to do. I figured I could maybe do something useful over here, but I showed up, and the DGA is already gone. I guess I'm just looking for someone to bother."

  Cire grinned sheepishly at Sarah. "To be honest, I don't think I'm doing much other than that at the moment as well."

  "Shouldn't you be with the orcs?"

  Cire laughed. "Unlike the rest of the nine realms, the orcs are handling things quite differently. We haven't penned up any of the zombies. We've gone through and taken care of the problem. Dead bodies burn easily enough."

  Creon gasped and looked at Cire with an open mouth. "Are you saying—"

  "We do not believe in desecrating the dead. If you didn’t leave a mangled corpse, you weren't living, so there is no way to desecrate our dead."

  Creon tried not to look horrified as Sarah laughed. "All of our lives would be much easier if we were taking the same route," she said. "Also, concerning this whole Omniverse, have you thought that it might be magical?"

  Creon nodded as he leaned back in his chair. "Crossed my mind. Or maybe a combination of tech and magic. But the more I look at it, the harder it is to figure this all out. It's proving difficult to pinpoint how it resurrected the dead."

  "You know, this isn't really my thing, but..." Sarah’s voice trailed off.

  Creon turned around in his chair, obviously exasperated. "Whatever you have, I'm more than happy to hear it."

  "During my training, I heard many stories of balance, stories that were taken very seriously by the monks who taught me but aren't widely known throughout the nine realms. Mostly because they were human ideas, but there are philosophies that speak about the innate balance in existence. There is a dark side and a light side, a yin and a yang. They are linked together, and to create an unbalance on one side would naturally tip the other. Hence the state of chaos we’re experiencing now."

  Cire stared at Sarah, his eyes cold and stony. "Are you talking about Star Wars?"

  Sarah burst out laughing. "How do you even know about that?"

  "Terra has been acquainting me with human cinema. She says it is a quality I lack as 'boyfriend material.' It has been entertaining."

  Sarah shook her head. "I'm not talking about Star Wars, but the movies were definitely lifted from a tradition passed down in human stories. Maybe the Omniverse is trying to restore a universal balance, and when you look at the scope of things, if it's for the sake of the universe, it doesn't really matter how it gets us to listen to that message."

  Creon snapped his fingers. "You know, I've never even thought of this before, but...maybe the humans do have a grasp on this. Martin, are you available?"

  Martin popped up on the holoscreen. "What do you want?"

  "Cross-reference everything we know about the Omniverse with all of our databases on celestial bodies and communication. Learning how to talk to this thing should be our first priority."

  Martin yawned. "Why didn't you ask that before? Here you go."

  Martin's findings came up on the screen.

  Creon rubbed his hands together. "Great. This might be exactly what we've been looking for.”

  Anabelle, Terra, and Abby stepped through the portal Abby opened into Grok's throne room. "Do you think it's going to be hard to find her?" Terra whispered.

  The dark halls were instantly illuminated by hundreds of candles.

  Grok sat on her throne, staring at the DGA agents as if they were roaches. "I was wondering how long it would take for you three to come back here."

  Anabelle didn't want to waste time with pleasantries. "I'm assuming you've had a problem with zombies over the last few hours."

  Grok stood, and her throne vanished as the hallway contorted and stretched farther back. "Not zombies, but yes. Hell has its own version of the undead. And as for having a problem…” She shook her head. “I would have considered it a problem if we'd handled it the same way you did up top."

  Terra leaned over to Abby. "Probably did the same thing we did," she said as she mimed slicing her head off.

  Anabelle approached Grok. "The Nine Realms have a problem. You and Rasputina might be the solution. That thing hanging in the sky wants the Dark One, and it's prepared to wreck all nine of the realms to get him."

  Grok crossed her arms and sneered. "How is this my problem? This is the land of the damned. A couple thousand zombies aren't something we're worried about. What do you have to offer us?"

  Anabelle wracked her mind for an answer. "You know what, we don't have anything. Absolutely nothing. All I can do is ask you for help because we need it, and I think you might be able to provide it."

  It was hard to read Grok's face. There was no emotion on it. Finally, she answered. "We both want the same thing—the end of the Dark One. If that's all the Omniverse wants, I'd be more than happy to help. But we're going to need Rasputina for this."

  Abby scanned the throne room. "She isn't here?"

  Grok headed past her throne. "The new order in hell isn't as simple as it may have seemed when you first got here. I take care of the circles and the lesser demons. Rasputina has been working on something much more complicated."

  The DGA agents followed Grok as she walked down the length of the hall, the walls eventually opening up to a balcony that looked out over a sprawling vista of rocky canyons and bare valleys. In the distance was a beam of light, shooting up to an infinite sky.

  Grok pointed at the beam of light. "That's where Rasputina is. She's been building a city for our new order. Curbing the demons under her heel. It's a never-ending struggle, but we're building down here."

  Anabelle stared at Grok, uncertain of what to believe. It was difficult to imagine Grok and Rasputina doing anything other than trying to create an army for their own selfish purposes. But it seemed as if Grok was more than willing to share their resources.

  The orc straddled the rail of the balcony, preparing to jump down into the darkness below. "Rasputina is meeting with the various old generals of hell, the lords of death, right now, trying to rally our final assault on the Dark One. If you want to add your strength to our forces, I'd be honored."

  Terra and Abby looked at Anabelle, who took a deep breath before answering, "We'd be honored to fight by your side."

  Chapter Eight

  Grok jumped, but instead of falling, she floated to the ground beneath.

  Anabelle followed, using her magic to slow her descent. On the ground, she turned to Grok and said, "When did you get magical powers?"

  Grok didn't turn to face Anabelle. Instead, she stared grimly ahead. "A perk of being friends with Rasputina. Unfortunately, it only works in the circles of hell. Once we leave my domain, we will be on equal ground. I'd like to take this time to remind you to pull your own weight while we are out there."

  Ahead, a sliver of light could be seen.

  Terra scoffed good-naturedly. "What do you mean, ‘pull our own weight?’ All of us can walk the Path of the Lost, and Abby is built out of pure intensity."

  Grok shook her head as she raised the flashlight she’d br
ought higher. "Just as I thought. Did you think the Path of the Lost was as strong as you could get?"

  Anabelle didn't answer, but that was exactly what she’d thought. She still couldn't imagine anyone being stronger than Grok had been when they had fought. It was still hard for her to wrap her mind around how strong she and Terra had gotten.

  Terra spoke in the absence of anyone else. "Dude, we wreck everyone we come across. We haven't fought anyone we couldn't take once we take the Path."

  "Why don't you use it during every fight?"

  Anabelle knew the answer, but she wasn't sure if Terra had put it together yet, or if she'd even noticed. The Path of the Lost was exhausting. Anabelle hadn't noticed it when she'd been pushing her body a year ago. She wasn't sure if it was the adrenaline of the fights or something else, but once she had reached the Path, her usual strength had been amplified. That was the other reason she only traveled the Path when it was necessary.

  Terra's answer was quite different. "Because if I do that every time, I'll never have a good fight."

  Grok laughed as they came to the end of the hall, which was on a cliff that looked out over a vast red valley covered in scraggly dead trees. "Spoken like a true orc warrior. Well, let me explain this to you since Anabelle hasn't. You're naturally stronger once you access the Path of the Lost for the first time, but that isn't the limit. Just like any of the other Paths, you can continue to get stronger, but it's up to you. You have to push yourself. Fight stronger enemies. Search out tests. Otherwise, you're just coasting."

  Grok leaped off of the cliff’s lip, and the DGA followed.

  Terra hit the ground hard and turned to face Grok. "Are you saying you could take us now?"

  Grok chuckled, smiling slightly. "Down here, even the weaker demons might give you trouble."

  Terra was already stretching her arms. "Fuck that. You and me, right now, baby. Let's see if your fists can keep up with your mouth."

  Anabelle sighed, but she couldn't deny she was interested to see if Grok was talking out her ass or really believed she was stronger than Terra and her, particularly Terra. Anabelle didn't like to admit it, but Terra was unstoppable if she was really pushed. The fight in the circle of hell had been a reminder of that.