Nathan stared at the sword in his hand and shuddered. He had been a second away from killing his brother with it. “We weren’t taught about a Grendel empath at the Academy.”
“How do we kill it?” Neville asked.
“It doesn’t seem to attack us unless we attack first.” I looked to Elle for an explanation, but her mind was elsewhere. Her eyes had shifted, and the whites displayed scrolling binary code.
When they rolled back, she clasped her hands tighter around her dagger. “It’s a Grendel Bloodrat,” the point clerk said. “They’re so rare the Academy doesn’t teach about them. Only specialist knights clear the portals that summon them.”
“It's a Grendel, so we have to kill it to clear the portal, right?” Richard asked.
Neville groaned. “Did you ever listen during any of the Academy classes?”
“We’ll circle around it,” I said. “I can throw a forcewave at it, and then you guys swarm the thing.”
“Wait!” Elle cautioned. “It takes mutation abilities! Nick, you need to make sure it doesn’t—”
The Bloodrat vaulted from the wall and landed on my chest. I reached for the scaled rodent, and it scuttled over my shoulder. The squires rushed to me, and they each made a failed attempt at grabbing the Bloodrat. My armor was probably too thick for it to penetrate, but there were sections with only a thin synthetic fabric around my joints. A hand slap my back, and then another hand before Nathan gasped.
“I got it!” he said. “Ow!” The squire jumped back, and then the critter was running. It hurdled over the computer consoles, and I drew my longsword. A swift thrust and upturned wrist launched a forcewave, and it struck the rodent with all the force of my prot-field.
The tiny enemy cartwheeled through the air before hitting the floor. Before it could run away again, I rushed over to the dazed creature and snatched it from the ground. The rodent awoke, and my fingers tightened around its body. It snapped at me with its jaws, but it couldn’t twist its neck far enough to bite me. I felt movement between my ring finger and my pinky finger and squeezed them together.
But it was too late.
The Bloodrat's tail slipped through the cracks of my fingers and flicked toward me. The appendage extended until it penetrated the tiny inlet connecting my helmet and breastplate. The barbs on the end sunk into my flesh, and my left hand shot to my neck to pull out its tail. With only my right hand holding the Bloodrat, it burst free.
Elle dove at the creature, but it easily evaded her. The squires encircled it, and it looked like they would capture the rodent. After Nathan took a step, the Bloodrat skidded between his legs before climbing onto the ceiling. It hung from its barbed tail while staring at us.
The rodent had only scored a surface wound, and my suit collected the small trickle of blood.
“This is bad,” Elle said. “It now has your mutation, Nick.”
“Both of them?” I asked.
The point clerk frowned. “Only one. It can only handle one at a time.”
“Let’s hope it’s not the one that makes portals a billion times stronger,” Nathan commented.
The air around the creature rippled, and suddenly it was no longer in the Watchtower.
I breathed a sigh of relief at seeing the Bloodrat use my teleporation ability. At least the portal wouldn’t be upgraded now.
“Do we know where it went?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Elle said as she pointed at the shimmering air the Grendel had left behind. It was a chamber surrounded by turrets like the one the enchanters had repaired. Smoke drifted from the weapons, and their runes were dull. Three unmanned warsuits lay on the floor, deactivated and charred from plasma.
I wondered whether I left the same imprint. I’d always been the one to teleport, so I’d never seen it before. I could barely read a symbol on the wall, and it looked like five white lines.
“Ring 5! The Bloodrat teleported to the innermost ring next to the portal zone! We have to go after it,” I said to the others. “With my abilities, that thing could teleport all the Grendels elsewhere on the Ark. Then we'll never clear the portal.”
“You need to teleport us to the gateway,” Richard said.
I shook my head. “I’ve never used my ability when I’m so close to a portal.”
“The Bloodrat seemed to do it okay,” Richard said.
The squire was correct. Nothing bad had happened when the Bloodrat teleported. Maybe my ability functioned differently from a jump mage's power?
“I’ve never taken more than two people either,” I said.
“Fine,” Nathan said with a shrug. “I’ll go.”
“You’re too drunk.” Richard started to speak, and I silenced him with a stare. “You too.”
“I can come with you,” Neville offered. He wasn’t as drunk as the other squires, but he wasn’t entirely sober. Although the knights made an art form of fighting while intoxicated, the squires hadn’t quite perfected it.
Elle stepped forward. “I can control one of those warsuits,” she said. “If you give me one of those helmets, and I’m in close enough proximity to a suit, it’ll be easy.”
Having a warsuit cover me would probably be better than a drunken squire. But I’d seen what would happen to someone controlling a warsuit if it suffered significant damage. Death was a likely possibility if Elle took control of one of the suits inside the portal zone, but she wouldn’t listen to me if I protested.
And we were all probably going to die trying this, anyways.
I figured I could kill the Bloodrat without the point clerk or the squire’s help so they wouldn’t have to get close to the portal zone. I couldn’t guarantee a second teleport would work either, so it was all the more reason not to bring my friends with me. The only time I’d attempted two portals in quick succession was on the RTF Bulwark, and Matthias had been there to guide me. If I went after this Bloodrat, then I’d probably be stuck there until the knights came.
Which could be a long time. Minutes stretched like hours on the battlefield.
It only took one glance at my friends for me to decide they would be staying behind. I just needed some way of getting Elle talking so she would be distracted. Then I could teleport out of here without her or the other squires.
“If you die in one of those suits, you won’t come back,” I challenged the point clerk. “Explain to me how you’ll prevent that from happening?”
I’d witnessed the woman's penchant for drawn-out conversation, and that’s exactly what I got. Even in a dire situation like this, she couldn’t help rattling off a half-dozen sentences to prove her worth. My conscience twinged a little at manipulating her, but I ignored it while I studied the faces of my friends and the alchemists in their booths.
The Grendels would kill them all unless I stopped that damned Bloodrat. Then the monsters would massacre everyone in the power plant before decimating the rest of the Ark. The knights would catch up to them at some point, but they’d probably be too late. Captain Cross and the prime minister would return to a bloodbath.
I felt my atoms shift a bit, a strange sensation that made me feel like I wasn’t quite present in the room. Then I stared at the portal visible through the quickly fading imprint the Bloodrat had left behind.
“. . . Nick? Did you even hear me?” I heard Elle say, and then she gasped. “You’re going without meeeeeeeeee . . .” Her voice droned on, and the piercing sound echoed in my eardrums as my feet landed inside the fifth ring. I dropped to one knee and emptied my stomach. My head pounded, and pain lanced beneath my ribs.
I had never felt so ill after teleporting. When I heard a retching noise, I spun and found the reason why. Elle palmed the floor as she vomited.
“What did you do?” I asked the point clerk as I nursed my midsection.
“I grabbed onto you before you teleported,” she said. “Sorry, I didn’t know it would harm us.”
I hadn’t intended to bring her, so the teleport must have been affected, making us both sick. I stud
ied her for a second and finally sighed. “Don’t worry about it. We have a Grendel to catch.”
Now I needed to hunt down this Bloodrat and protect Elle while my body responded like I’d downed a dozen beers the night before.
I forced another round of vomit down as I helped the point clerk to her feet. She wiped her mouth with her forearm, and I was surprised by how beautiful she looked in the midst of battle and sickness.
“There it is!” Elle thrust her finger behind me.
I drew my longsword and whirled around. The Bloodrat was standing at the other end of the corridor, and it looked like it was grinning.
“Is it . . . taunting us?” Elle asked with disbelief.
I released a forcewave, and the air whooshed as my forcefield exploded from my sword. The critter’s tail shot up, grabbed an exposed growth on the flesh ceiling, and swung away before my blast could hit it. My left hand dropped to my prot-belt and entered my speed sequence. Arcane energy soaked my muscles, and I ran. The Agility and Speed runes made me much faster, but they couldn’t fix the sickness the poor teleport had left me with.
My stomach rocked while I took five sprinting leaps to close in on the Bloodrat. It swung from growth to growth using its tail like a monkey. I jumped forward as its tail lashed out to grab onto an overhanging ridge, and my insides lurched. I ignored the gagging reflex in my throat as I thrust my longsword upward. Before the critter could find a grip, I impaled it.
As soon as my blade punctured the Bloodrat's organs, it burst like a balloon filled with green paint. A tiny ball of golden light spun in the air, and then it flared before exploding. The shock wave threw me to the ground, and white noise filled my ears.
Elle rushed over to me, and I could see her mouth moving but couldn’t hear anything. She kept pointing her finger toward the opposite side of the corridor, and it took some time before my vision cleared enough to make out a group of people.
Relief filled my aching body at seeing the knights. They’d made it to the fifth ring. They would clear the portal, and then we could get out of here. I wouldn’t even need to attempt a second teleport.
But Elle didn’t seem pleased. She kept indicating the far side of the corridor. She finally pulled her arm away from me and drew her dagger.
Something struck my prot-field, and I was thrown into the wall. A plasma ball sizzled a few centimeters above my shoulder, melting like wax on my hexagonal forcefield. The remaining white blotches in front of my eyes vanished, and I could see the figures in front of me without hindrance.
My poor vision had made me mistake them for the knights. They weren’t wearing any armor, and their flesh glistened with green scales.
They were Grendels.
Large plasma rifles pointed toward me, and I didn’t have time to dive away. Balls of heat ricocheted off my prot-field while others stuck to the magical shield for a few seconds before crumbling away. Elle pulled me back, and we hid behind the curving wall.
Although I was practically deaf and could barely see, I knew what I needed to do. I concentrated on the desperate situation we were in and then brought the image of the Watchtower to mind. I imagined the squires standing between the broken door and the cyber alchemists. My body jerked, and I felt a moment away from teleporting.
But we didn’t go anywhere.
I didn’t have time to question why my ability hadn’t worked. In a few seconds, I would need to fight these three enemies. I looked behind me, in the direction of the fourth ring. I hoped I might see the knights trudging toward us, but there was no movement of any kind.
I glanced at Elle as plasma balls buried themselves into the wall in front of me. Her shoulders slumped, and she held her dagger low as if its weight was almost too much to wield.
The nerves behind my eyes suddenly screamed in agony, and I gripped my head in both hands. Something inside me shifted, and then I was bathed in complete emptiness. It was a similar feeling I experienced whenever my ability upgraded a portal, but this was much more intense.
My hearing returned to me, and I almost wished it hadn’t. I could hear an ensemble of screeching and clicking from further along the fifth ring.
“The portal is even stronger now,” I said to Elle.
The point clerk shook her head repeatedly. “It must have been the Bloodrat. I think the shockwave after its death increased your mutation.”
We’d already faced a Grendel Ogre. Whatever would come out of the newly upgraded portal would be much, much worse.
Chapter 12
“Do you know what level the portal is now?” I asked Elle, fearing her answer.
The knights were making their way through the fortress, and they would be unprepared for a second increase in the gateway’s level. My comms didn’t work while the Grendel rift was active, so I couldn’t warn them.
The point clerk touched the implant on her temple, and her eyes rolled backward. Neon green binary code flashed across her white eyeballs for a few seconds, and I stared at the Grendels further down the corridor from us.
I could only catch glimpses of them from around the curving wall, but I counted a dozen thermal imprints from behind the turret with more entering the passageway from the portal zone. My visor didn’t detect any imprints in the hundred or so meters of corridor separating Elle and me from the enemies, but there could be cloaked Grendels there as well. As far as I knew, the Elites’ cloaking abilities were limited to only a few seconds, so they probably wouldn’t be able to remain hidden the entire time.
My friend groaned, and I turned to see her blink rapidly.
“What is it?” I asked.
“The portal has become a Level Nine,” she said as her eyes returned to normal.
I whispered a quiet thanks to the gods that the gateway had only increased one level, but then a volley of plasma balls painted the pulsating wall in front of us with charred marks.
Shit.
We couldn’t wait here. Those Grendels hadn’t moved yet, but they would at some point. And it wouldn’t be long until even higher-level enemies showed up.
I needed to warn the knights, but Elle was in danger, so I grabbed her hand.
“What are you doing, Nick?” she asked.
I didn’t know how my ability would interact with the open portal, but I couldn’t let her stay. If one teleport worked, maybe another would, and then I’d find a way to the knights. At the moment, the most important objective was getting the point clerk to safety. The others could handle themselves.
“Getting you out of here,” I answered as I concentrated on what might become of Elle if the Grendels got to her. My mind fumbled with the concept, and then I felt my atoms shake. The sensation immediately fled, and a feeling of emptiness washed over me. Whatever well I drew from to use my ability was completely empty. I must have drained it all when I increased the portal’s power. The attempt left me panting, and I doubted I could try again soon without exhausting myself to the point of fainting.
“It’s not working, is it?” Elle whispered.
“No. Maybe it’ll work later, but we can’t stay here.” Until my ability started working again, our best bet was running back through the maze and meeting up the knights.
“Something worse is going to come through the portal any second now,” I said. “We should run the other way. Toward the knights and the third ring. They should have cleared the first and second rings by now.”
“Are you sure? Maybe they’re still at the first.” Elle looked down at her Runetech dagger as though considering how many lizard-men she could fight with the weapon. “We might run straight into another group of Grendels.” All her bravado had vanished, and I fought to maintain the little hope I had left.
“But there won’t be anything beyond an Ogre in that direction,” I said. “I don’t like our chances with one of those, but we might be able to outrun it.”
“With narrow corridors like this? I doubt that.”
I clenched my jaw. “Got any better ideas? An Ogre is still going to
be less dangerous than whatever the upgraded portal spews out. We can either stay here until the stronger enemies come for us, or we can try to make our way back to the knights. You’re a point clerk. And I’m a squire. We’re Academy trained and equipped with the best weapons in the entire universe.” I lifted my longsword, and waves of magical energy rippled around the blade.
Elle stared at the weapon for a second and then sighed. “I guess we don’t have a choice. Before we go, I think I should try to control one of those warsuits. It’ll provide us with cover.”
“Good idea,” I said. I’d forgotten about her plan to connect with a mech, and it sounded like something worth trying. “I’ll keep an eye out for the Grendels. If any of them move toward us or I see the slightest shimmer, I’m dragging you away with or without a warsuit.”
Elle placed the VR helmet over her head before I could ask if she could run while controlling the suit. A black mist seeped out from beneath the helmet and enveloped her face, and then the Medusa-link continued crawling over her like a swarm of insects until the point clerk’s entire body was shrouded in black.
She rose to her feet, and I heard the roar of machinery from beyond the corridor. “I’m controlling the warsuits,” she said.
“All three?” I asked.
The Grendels screeched and their weapons boomed, and I risked a glance into the passageway. The three warsuits I’d seen lying on the ground were in various states of damage. The only machine with operational cannons provided cover for the others as they lurched upright. A giant claw sprouted from the second warsuit’s right arm, while the third mech brandished a whip that rippled with energy. They were close-combat weapons, which would actually be more useful than plasma cannons against high-level Grendels.
“By commanding three at once, I am more effective than three different minds each controlling one warsuit at a time, but it is too difficult to walk,” Elle said.
Three Grunts burst through the gaps between the warsuits and sprinted at us. I impaled one on my longsword before carving another in half with a backhand slice. The third dog-lizard slipped out of range and scaled the walls. I spun to attack, but it leaped at Elle.
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