by wildbow
“Then please listen carefully,” I said. “Because I suppose I’m paying for this with my life.”
“So be it,” he said.
“If you want proof that Jack intends to betray you, look no farther than your own creations.”
“What?”
“He’s secreted an assassin into your midst. A killer who pretends to be one of your creations.”
A gamble, a last ditch effort. Was my gut right? Had Jack instructed Bonesaw to create a costume or a creature to hide the Siberian’s creator?
I called my flight pack to me, parked it on a rooftop nearby. If it came down to it, I’d have to run. I could see Golem tensing. He’d read the situation right.
“Just look,” I told Nilbog. “Because somewhere nearby, there’s a creature you didn’t create.”
His eyes roved over the crowd.
“Might not be in this crowd, but it’ll be close.”
“I see it,” Nilbog said. “I see it. Bossy, Patch, hold him!”
The crowd of creatures parted as two creatures took another in their hands.
“Not an assassin,” Jack said. “Merely one of Bonesaw’s… I suppose you can call it a homage.”
“It is,” Bonesaw said.
The Siberian was moving. Readying to pounce?
I couldn’t move fast enough if he did.
“Wait,” Jack said. He stood from his chair.
No, I thought. “Don’t listen.”
“I’ll do as I please,” Nilbog said. “Last words, sir Jack?”
“Last words, yes.” Jack approached the captive. The Siberian followed.
“You let him do this, and he kills you,” I said. “Your creations will go mad with grief, and they’ll die in a war for vengeance, just like Jack wants.”
“Not at all,” Jack said. “Because…”
An instant before the Siberian made contact with the monster, Golem jammed his hand into his side, using his power, throwing the creator into the air with one thrusting hand. Siberian lunged, punching through the hand of soil to grab the creator’s foot.
Nilbog half-rose from his seat, though he was massive enough that standing was hardly possible. His eyes moved from Golem to the hand, anger etching his expression, if one could etch into a face as soft as his.
“You dare disturb the peace!?” Nilbog screamed the question. “Kill the queen! Kill the Golem-man!”
In that instant, Golem created two hands, throwing us back.
I caught the flight pack in the air, hugging it. It provided lift. Not enough to stop my momentum as I headed back towards the ground, but enough that I could shift my direction to land on a rooftop. Golem wasn’t so lucky, as he fell into the midst of a sea of the creatures.
“Azazels, now!” I screamed, one finger pressed to my earbud. I pulled on the flight pack and then took off again.
Golem used his power to create a platform, slowly raising himself above the street. Creatures tumbled off of the surface of it. Some flew at him, and he struck at them. Not enemies he was capable against. I sent my bugs to them, the reserve I still had on hand, commanding the bugs to bite and sting.
Others leaped onto rooftops, then onto the rising platform. Golem grabbed one claw as it slashed for his face. He couldn’t do anything about the other, as it gouged his armor, scoring it. He created a fist that jutted out of his chestplate, striking the creature off of the rising hand-platform.
Spines rained down on him. One caught him in the shoulder, and he collapsed.
“Where are the Azazels!” I shouted. The flying creatures were turning my way.
But Defiant had said they were unreliable. Dragon was out of commission.
My bugs burrowed towards the buried Nilbog. Jack had orchestrated a war. Killing the creature’s creator wouldn’t stop that, wouldn’t keep them from rampaging and seeking out revenge beyond the walls.
But it would slow things down.
They inched ever closer. Jack was untouchable, but…
Yes. Worms, centipedes and other subterranean bugs made their way to the buried goblin king, and forced their way into the sac that enveloped him, past the threads of material that wound down his throat and nostrils, and into his airways.
“Creatures of Ellisburg!” I screamed.
Heads turned.
“You’ve been betray—”
And before I could say more, Jack’s knife slash caught me across the chest, the cut severing the straps of my flight pack. I dropped from the sky, landing on one of those ramshackle, spiraling rooftops. Planks that had been poorly nailed in collapsed around me as I hit solid ground.
My hope of turning the monsters against the Nine had been foiled. The fall had knocked the wind out of me. I couldn’t get my footing, and the creatures were advancing. Every possible combination of features, it seemed like, an infinite army, unpredictable.
Your king is dying, I thought, my mouth moving and failing to form the sounds. There was only the barest whisper. I killed him, but if you could believe that Jack did it…
I would have used my bugs instead, but I had so few, here.
I sent those few to Golem, removing them from the flying creatures.
“Nilbog dies,” I spoke through the bugs, but the range of sounds was too limited, and with scarcely thirty bugs in total, they were quiet.
“Nilbog’s dying,” Golem said, his voice coming through the comm system.
One creature, eyeless, like a crocodile with a serpentine body, advanced on me, looming over me. Its jaws opened.
The lizard boy was here too. A drop of venom appeared on one distended fang. I was surprised by the fury on his expression.
“Blame Jack,” I said, through the swarm.
“Jack Slash has used us as a distraction to kill your king!”
Golem hollered the words at the top of his lungs. I felt a tension leave me. I might be fucked, but we’d limited the damage. They’d turn it inward.
The attack stopped. The creature looming over me turned and slid away in a flash. The lizard-boy remained. Still recovering from the fall, I couldn’t muster enough strength to fight back if he bit.
I commanded the flight pack instead, flying it into him with both wings extended. He was brained, and the pack ricocheted off his skull, one wing shattering.
Golem had risen almost to safety, though he was still too far from the wall that had been erected around the city.
I looked at the wall.
Looked past it, at the capes who were swiftly approaching.
Rescue.
I brought the flight pack to me, the broken wing partially retracted, the other still extended, and pulled it on with slow, agonized movements.
Lost without their master, half of the creatures seemed to turn on the Nine, the other half seemed to remain intent on Golem and me.
Capes settled around me, forming a defensive line against the ones who approached. Revel was among them, using her energy blasts to pick off the largest ones.
Someone picked me up, then took flight.
“Jack,” I wheezed out the word.
The Siberian took hold of the umbilical cord and heaved, Jack maintaining contact with a hand on the Siberian’s shoulder. Nilbog, still slowly dying of oxygen loss, was brought to the surface with a surprising ease. Bonesaw wrapped her arms around the man. Frailer than his self on the surface, smaller.
I felt a moment’s despair.
Foil? Someone who could stop Siberian?
Somebody?
The heroes advanced, but the Nine created a portal, and were gone in a flash, Nilbog carried between them.
Leaving the monsters of Ellisburg to riot.
Sting 26.5
Unholy screams and screeches followed us as we made our retreat, landing beyond the walls of Ellisburg. In moments, Nilbog’s fairy wonderland had become a hell on earth, thousands of demons crawling from the literal woodwork to attack. The ground split as subterranean creatures emerged, while others climbed out of buildings that seemed to h
ave been built around them. One was somewhere between a dragon and a gargoyle in appearance. Big, leathery wings, with a gnarled body and a leering, fanged face.
The flying creatures, the gargoyle-dragon included, took flight perching atop the walls, then backed down as a barrage of gunfire and superpowered attacks assaulted them.
“Shuffle!” Revel cried out her lieutenant’s name.
Shuffle stepped forward and used his power. Teleportation, but not teleportation of living things. Not people, anyways. Grass didn’t hinder him much.
He teleported the landscape. A hill was bisected and placed against the ruined entrance of the facility.
His power was unpredictable. There were metrics he couldn’t quite grasp or understand. Teleporting things in sometimes teleported things out. In attempting to shore up the wall, he created gaps.
But this was a known issue, one he’d been dealing with for some time. Unsurprised, he fixed the resulting hole with two more followup teleports. If any terrain was removed, it was inside the structure, unimportant.
Something inside Goblintown struck the wall, hard, and then started clawing at it. I could sense it’s silhouette with the few bugs I had near the area. It was four-legged, with all of the most effective parts of a rhino, bear and elephant combined, and it was big enough that I suspected it could make its way through the great concrete wall.
Defending capes had gathered in a loose ring around Ellisburg. Revel and Shuffle were among them, which I took to be a sign that Golem’s group had handled whatever issues had arisen in Norfolk. The heroes opened fire as the gargoyle-dragon thing explored the upper edge of the wall again, and it disappeared, only to make an appearance further down, trying to find a spot where the defensive line was weaker.
This was the worst case scenario, on so many levels. We couldn’t afford to be dealing with this.
“Two more attacks,” Revel said. “Just minutes ago. Two different cities. The situation in Redfield is still ongoing, which means we have three crisis situations set up by the Slaughterhouse Nine.”
“Four, if you count this,” Shuffle said.
The creature hit the wall again. Shuffle shored it up, placing the other half of the hill against it.
“This is getting out of control,” Revel said.
“You’re implying we had control,” Jouster said. He stood off to one side, with the defensive line of capes.
“More out of control,” she said.
I’d been placed on the ground as the capes landed. I was aware that someone was checking me for injuries, but it seemed secondary. I stared up at the overcast sky, watching the rare raindrop tap the lens of my mask. My mind was whirling while my swarm was feeding me information on the ongoing fight, both inside and outside the walls.
I stirred as I heard Golem’s voice. He was sitting a short distance from me. “This is my fault.”
“It was a lose-lose situation,” I said. I moved my arm to allow the medic to check my ribs. “Jack set it up this way.”
“I could have done something. Said something different.”
“No. We played the cards we had available, it wasn’t enough. Bonesaw’s power and Siberian’s invulnerability made for ugly trump cards.”
“There had to be a way.”
“We’re coping,” I said.
“Are we?” he asked. “It doesn’t feel like it.”
“We came through every challenge he set in front of us so far.”
“That doesn’t mean we’re doing okay,” he responded.
I didn’t have a response to that.
He stood. “I’m going to go talk to some of the people in charge, find out where I can be useful.”
“Okay,” I told him.
He walked off, and I let my head rest against the ground.
Jack had a game plan here, and the more I thought about it, the more the ‘game’ seemed to be a farce. He knew we were helping. He was setting up situations where we had to help. When we’d started winning, maybe even winning faster than he’d anticipated, he’d ratcheted things up.
Just as it had at the outset, the situation now seemed to offer Theo the same dilemma as Jack had aimed to provide early on. To go after Jack or focus on bigger things.
It was measured, calculated, and it suggested that Jack was fully aware and fully in control of what was going on.
A cape knelt beside me. “Are you alright?”
We’d only gone through a small fraction of the Nine. Even assuming every group we had run into had been exterminated, there were so many left to deal with.
My strengths lay in problem solving. Jack’s strength lay in problem creation.
We came up with a solution to whatever crisis he posed, he responded by creating another, something offbeat enough that we had to change things up. Specialized groups of his pet monsters, two scenarios at once, and now we had new issues popping up before we’d finished with the last round.
The clones weren’t as fleshed out as the originals. A little more reckless. They were being set up to fail. Were they scary? Yes. Were they effective? Yes. But we were winning, and Jack wasn’t using them in a way that kept them alive. They were expendable assets.
It was all too possible that we could keep winning, if the game continued down this road. We’ll lose some, but we’ll come out ah—
No.
Golem was right. We’d achieve a steady stream of victories. Nothing more.
“Weaver?”
I pushed myself to my feet. A cape put his hands on my shoulders, to try to get me to stay still.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I got the wind knocked out of me.”
“If you have an injury—”
“I’m pretty experienced when it comes to being injured. I’m fine. Really,” I said.
He didn’t move, but he did let his arms drop from my shoulders when I pushed them off me. I found my feet, straightened, and felt aches all across my back where I’d collided with the ground. I’d be one giant bruise tomorrow.
Then again, if we saw tomorrow, it would be a bonus.
The fighting against Nilbog’s creations was still ongoing. The flying gargoyle-thing had made it over the wall and was being swarmed by defending capes. Others were just now starting to climb over, and did their best to avoid the ranged fire that pelted them. Eight or nine more creatures flew over, only these ones carried smaller ‘goblins’. The winged ones were shot out of the sky, but many of the smaller creatures managed to survive the fall into trees and the midst of the heroes. The ones that did went on the offensive with zero hesitation.
“Need the Azazels!” someone shouted.
I directed the few bugs I had in the area to attack, assisting with bites, stings and silk cord.
I would help, but I wouldn’t join the battle. Not this one.
No, I’d used up every bug in my reach, and the damned goblin-things were too good at killing them. Nilbog had no doubt designed them to live off of a diet of insects, to supplement their diminishing supply of protein.
I made my way to the Dragonfly, my flight pack dangling from the damaged straps I’d looped around my shoulders.
I’d very nearly told myself that we were coming out ahead. Golem had been a dose of reality on that front. We weren’t coming out ahead. Jack was spreading fear, he was killing innocents, and he was whittling us down. Doing so with such expendable forces cost him nothing. Now, with Nilbog in his possession, he had access to that many more monsters and freaks that he could just throw away.
There was no guarantee we would continue down this road unfettered. Just the opposite. I fully expected Jack to turn to the rules he’d established at the very beginning and state how blatantly we were cheating. Then he’d carry out his threat, murder those one thousand people, and move on.
I reached the console, shrugged out of my flight pack and sat down.
I pressed a button, “Defiant. Not a priority, but get in touch when you can.”
It took a minute before I had all of the i
ndividual windows open. I set it so I could track the feeds provided by the various members of the Wards and Protectorate. Some were here, others were investigating the sites where more members of the Nine were taking action.
Redfield. The Undersiders and Brockton Bay Wards were holding a defensive position, their backs facing one another. Foil took a shot at a flesh toned blob that leaped between rooftops, then swiftly reloaded. Skinslip.
Skinslip was a minor regenerator with a changer ability, allowing him to manipulate his own skin. I could see him using it to scale a surface. He extended that ability by flaying people and crudely stitching or stapling their skin to his own. The regeneration connected the tissues and extended his power’s breadth and reach, but it didn’t prevent all rejection or decay, forcing him to replenish it from time to time. He was a newer member, but they’d still cloned him.
A quick check of the computer noted the members of the Nine they’d seen and fought. Three Skinslips. Three Hatchet Faces. Three Miasmas. Three Murder Rats.
Hatchet face excepted, they were enemies who were exceedingly mobile. Skinslip’s skin acted like a grappling hook, it let him climb, and it broke any fall. He could also smother and bludgeon his opponents with it, if he felt the need.
Miasma was a stranger, invisible and undetectable but for an odorless gas he gave off that wore away at other’s minds, causing headaches, ringing in the ears, watery eyes and eventual blindness, memory loss and coma.
Murder Rat, for her part, was agile.
It meant they were up against nine opponents that were fast or slippery enough that they couldn’t be caught. That group was supported by a trio of Hatchet Faces that could steadily lumber towards the group, keeping them moving, ensuring they couldn’t simply maintain a defensive position.
The camera images that Clockblocker and company wore shifted as they scrambled away. There was a shudder as a mass landed in their midst.
Hatchet Face, dropping down from a vantage point somewhere above them.
Rachel’s dogs went on the offensive, attacking him, but their flesh was already sloughing off, their connection to Rachel shut off, their bodies disintegrating.
Parian’s creations were already deflating.
More range than the Tyrant had possessed, and the power loss was immediate.