Anchor Knight

by Nathan Thompson

  When I ran my awareness across the odd bump, it twitched, and two thin lines lifted from its end and began to wave about. A smothering pressure began to wrap around my mind, as if it wanted to trap me and take me somewhere dark and cold.

  There was a loud thump in my Soulscape, and my concentration shattered. My awareness returned to my actual body. When I turned my gaze toward my Soulscape, I could see Grandmother Mara watching me patiently, tail raised in case she needed to thump it again.

  You are alright, dear, she told me. I was watching you. You were never in any real danger.

  Did you see it, too? I asked her. Do you know what that thing was?

  I did, the motherly dragon confirmed, and I do. A small castoff of the nightmare that wounded you earlier, and one still far beyond your current power. You were right to be fearful of what lurks beyond that shaft.

  How did it see me? I asked her. Can my spirit be noticed when I use it in such a fashion?

  Only by the learned or powerful, she replied, answering my second question first. Or by those with special senses of their own, such as this creature's antennae. But withdrawing your awareness is enough to protect you, and even then you were only in danger of receiving a migraine. If it was powerful enough to cause you further harm, it would have been stopped by the vessel-saint's more powerful wards.

  That does not explain how I was damaged before, I protested, remembering my awful encounter with the three mad shadows before.

  Those creatures were exerting their own perversions of soul power, and you were more damaged by your own determination than their influence, although they could have driven you mad over time. But you have a valid point, grandson. I suspect some of the vessel-saint's wards weaken whenever she reclaims a portion of her ship-body. This is the reason why I will teach you how to wield your soulsense, that you may not be their prey again. Awareness is the first step. Protecting yourself from the intrusions of others is the second. I promise I will make you ready for their next attempt.

  If this mission of ours is successful, I sent, trying not to swallow with subconscious fear, their next attack will come very, very soon.

  I know, grandson, the ancient dragon replied. You will be ready. I have seen them. I know what to do. I will not fail you again.

  Her apologetic tone made me too uncomfortable to keep arguing with her. I turned my attention back to Nova, and spoke quietly.

  "Something lurks several dozen yards out, but it is quiet and still. I do not think it can enter or it would have already attacked us. But according to my new family, its power is beyond us for now."

  "Really?" Nova asked, as her light-blue eyes widened. "But I couldn't sense anything with Vessa's power. It must be over a room's distance away." Her clear eyes narrowed as she stared at me. "If there's a way to learn how you found that thing, you'll have to teach it to me."

  "As soon as I finish learning myself," I promised her, privately wondering how Nova did not already know such a skill, given her connection with Vessa, and how my senses could be superior to her own.

  Do not worry about it for now, grandson, my newest teacher told me. Her senses will surpass your own as her ship-body heals. Go forward. You have already lingered for too long.

  The dragon-woman had a point. We headed to the door leading to where we battled the Longman, checked to ensure it was still clear, and continued moving forward.

  I was surprised at just how difficult it was for me to reenter this room. Both of my most terrifying experiences, the battle with the Longman and the encounter with the three nightmares, had happened here. My foot hesitated when I told it to step into the room, and an angry flame of shame suddenly flared up within me when I realized just how terrified I was of a now-empty room.

  But you shouldn't be ashamed, a tiny part of my mind said. Isn't it a bigger mistake to assume you'd be safe this time? When have you ever been safe before?

  "You okay, Jas?" Nova asked me as I stepped forward a little slower and more purposefully than should have been necessary.

  "I'm fine," I said quickly, making my pace more normal. "Won't happen again."

  "Not a problem if it does," she told me. "This room still makes my insides quiver, and that's without the horrible thing you went through in here."

  "You seem perfectly fine, Nova," I said with a frown, worried that she felt nothing of the sort, and was just trying to soothe an ego that didn't need or deserve it.

  "Well, yeah," the tanned, angelic woman said with a smile that shone in the dim light. "Because I'm with you."

  This time, it was the inside of my chest that nearly stumbled.

  "I…good," I stammered, "thank you, I mean, I'm ready. Let's go."

  I could not tell exactly why, but in spite of my awkward response to her words, I no longer felt weak or ashamed.

  She frowned though, when we reached the other side of the room.

  "Right," she said, looking at the door leading to the unpowered section beyond our territory. "There is this. Your handiwork."

  "What do you mean?" I asked her. "Vessa undid the work I did to this thing and returned it to its normal state."

  "She supposedly did," Nova said with an unhappy edge. "But I don't believe her. I think she stopped working on it as soon as she found all the obvious changes you made to it. But there has to still be a weld or two left in here somewhere, that she wouldn't have even thought necessary to check, that you probably reinforced two or three times, just in case."

  "That's not very fair of you," I protested, privately wondering if she had a point.

  "Is it?" she asked, giving me a serious look. "Let's find out, shall we?"

  With that, she closed her eyes and concentrated.

  "Yep. Sure enough. She only fixed the gears within easy reach. She didn't do the ones deeper inside the seams of the door, because those only matter at all when the power comes back on. In other words, the next Longman would have had to bring his own power generator, find a way to connect it to the door, make sure the rest of the door was fully prepared, and then try to activate the door normally, using whatever clearance Vessa would have made necessary at the time, for that weld to matter."

  "Ah," I said quietly, and Nova's frown deepened.

  "Ah?" she demanded irritably. "Is that all you can say?"

  "For now," I said with a shrug. "But if we find a dead body with a portable generator and a key card on the other side of the door, I'm going to pretend I'm a genius, and expect the proper amount of praise for my foresight."

  Her head tilted slightly as she stared at me, and her left eyebrow began to twitch. A single uncomfortable moment passed before she sighed.

  "You know what?" she said suddenly. "It's fine. I'll just fix it with some of Vessa's ambient Source energy, and we can move on. Give me one moment, Jas," my beautiful, but inexplicably irritated friend said as she closed her eyes and began to concentrate.

  Be grateful, dear, Grandmother Mara said into my mind.

  What for, Senior? I asked, sensing another lesson was coming.

  Because she was deciding whether or not to hit you, instead of what to hit you with, and how hard. You should be as nice as possible to her, and at your earliest opportunity.

  I would never apologize to anyone regarding my rigorous paranoia, but perhaps my adopted grandmother and guardian had a very good point.

  At any rate, Nova had succeeded in undoing my remaining sabotage and finished opening the door. I kept my halfblade ready and waiting to confirm whether anything had avoided our senses and was preparing to ambush us. But the only horror that greeted us was more pitch darkness.

  I was long tired of the sight, but we were too practiced by now to complain. We fell into formation, with Nova in front, lighting the way with her new light magic, myself right behind her, and Nestor scouting far ahead in front of us.

  Dark-hall, he sent to me, as he ran forward. Much death.

  Dead bodies? I asked with his concern, and felt his affirmation through our link a moment later. Do
not touch or come near them. They may not be nearly as dead as they look.

  I-know, the little mouse said patiently. I-remember.

  I reminded myself that Nestor was not only present for our previous battles with the undead, he had grown up on a world that had been overrun by a powerful deathbeast and turned most of the population into unliving slaves.

  Coming-back, he said to me, and I smiled quietly in satisfaction over the fact that our conversations would now be longer than two syllables. Should-burn-dead.

  Good idea, I replied, and good idea for not trying to do it yourself while you were alone.

  He sent me a happy sensation in response to the praise, and soon I saw his fluffy body run into our little field of light.

  He guided us up to where the bodies were. They resembled a mix of rat-lizard eaterlings and the humanoid scavengers we had seen the Longman control. Nova and I burned holes into their heads with small bolts of fire magic as we continued moving forward.

  Room-ahead, Nestor sent to us from his position in the front. Big-room. Broken-door. Smell-bad-things. Big-ones.

  Noted, I said as Nova and I shared a nod. Nestor's news was unsurprising. It had been a battle for almost every step in this dark metal cage.

  We reached the end of the hallway and saw the aforementioned doors. Just like all the other barriers so far in this place, they were massive structures of metal, meant to contain fires and boarders.

  Unlike the others, these had already been torn completely off their hinges.

  A massive thud sounded from beyond them, cutting off a horrified, familiar-sounding shriek, and Nestor spoke again.

  Large-man-things. Next-room. Four big-ones. One-bigger. Kill-eaters.

  As tired as I already was of fighting eaterlings, I did not relish the idea of fighting something that could turn one into paste with each swing, which was what it sounded like was happening in the next room. From our current distance, though, we couldn't see anything but faint movement among the shadows.

  "Okay," Nova said as she inhaled a little nervously. "We need to figure out whether we should wait for them to finish fighting, and then attack—unless they are one of the few things down here that aren't actually hostile, which I highly doubt—or rush them now while they're distracted." More eaterlings screeched in defiance, but one cut off with another loud thump, and Nova’s eyes narrowed as she came to a decision on her own. "It depends on whether or not the eaterlings have a chance of actually hurting these things. Which is sounding more and more unlikely the longer we wait. So we should attack now, like Vessa recommended."

  "Agreed," I said, readying my halfblade and activating my various enhancement powers, feeling the different spells, charms, and techniques augment me. "Ready?"

  "Ready," she confirmed with a nod, drawing her jeweled sword. I saw it glow with a faint golden light, as thick red embers of flame ran up and down it. She drew her war baton next, keeping its blasting end carefully pointed at the ground. "Let's go."

  We dashed forward through the door.

  The security station proved to be a much more lit room than the hallway preceding it, even if said lighting was haphazard and flickering. Long tubes of emergency lights ran all along the floor, some glowing dimly, some flickering on and off, and some completely dark, either from loss of power or because they had been directly smashed. There were rows upon rows of barriers in the room, each one stomach-high and similar to the one I had seen back in the emergency drive room. They were giving the eaterlings problems, as the monsters were having to leap over and around them in order to fight effectively.

  But their five attackers had no such problem, as the barriers only came up to their shins. They were massive humanoid giants, with heavily muscled forms at least as tall as the Longman was, with the largest over eighteen feet tall. Their bodies were naked except for ragged loincloths that looked to have been made from hide somehow, and they wielded large clubs made of scrap metal, with each swing pulverizing a rat or roach eaterling. The disgusting scavengers were clearly losing the fight, but every one that raced for the open door at the back died just as messily as the others, on account of the one giant standing in front of it, to purposely cut off their escape.

  "Ugh," Nova said in disgust as she looked at the giants' forms. "Why does everything down here look so gross?"

  Like Vessa, these giants were gray in skin tone. But where Vessa's coloring was an even tint throughout her body that gave her a sort of exotic beauty, even in her frail and damaged state, the giants' own color darkened or paled in throbbing, quivering, patches, with some of the patches rising up in throbbing, pus-leaking boils. The boils and other growths made it hard to tell what was muscle and what was simply tumor or disease, even if the swinging of massive steel beams and the splattering of eaterlings made their power far more clear. From what Vessa had told me to watch for, I guessed the power of the four smaller ones to be in varying parts of the third stage of essence, the striving stage, and the larger one to be at the very end of the fourth stage, the thriving stage. Meaning that even the strongest one was barely a match for Nova, who had four stages of mana Advancement and two stages of essence and qi.

  They are far more dangerous than that, Grandmother Mara warned in my mind. They are sott-jotun, or plague giants, a pseudo-Sourcebeast that roughly resembles one of your practitioner races. The affliction that damages their minds also strengthens their bodies, making them both more powerful and less enlightened than another creature at the same stage. You and the saint's Beacon must fight wisely, young rider.

  Noted, I replied, as Nova and I crept forward. The dragon-woman's warning was enough to salve any lingering concerns I had over these somehow possibly being good giants, and we both prepared to blast the least suspecting sott-jotun.

  But before we could begin whittling down our enemies one by one, the laws of probability realized they had not scorned us yet today.

  The largest jotun had reached down and snagged a roach-carapaced eaterling in its massive fist. It was the first time we had seen any of the sott-jotun attack without using their clubs, so we both subconsciously hesitated to see if he was about to unleash some new dangerous attack. But the beast merely lifted the screaming roach-rat-lizard to its oversized maw and bit straight down on the top of the carapace, tearing the doomed creature in half with its massive, blunt teeth. The dying eaterling chittered its mandibles in agony until the giant began chewing with its back molars, ending its cries with a loud, wet crunch, even as viscera, chitin and scaled pieces of its meal slobbered out of its mouth.

  It was probably the single grossest act I had ever witnessed, and both Nova and I took far too long trying not to throw up. But one of us must have gagged too loudly, because as the monster stuffed the second half of the eaterling's body, it looked in our direction.

  "More food," the jotun garbled in English as it looked directly at me, slurping most of the eaterling's legs and rat tail into its mouth. Then its eyes slid over to Nova. "And female!" It slobbered, spitting out what looked like a half-chewed antenna and a bloody patch of fur. "The ship-thing is a pretty female!"

  "Ship-thing?" one of the other jotun rumbled greedily, turning its head toward us as well as it smashed one of the remaining eaterlings.

  "Female?" another jotun said, even more hungrily than the last speaker.

  This time, Nova did not hold back her gags, and I could not fault her for it.

  To be this disgusting, they must be even more far gone than I thought, Mara said in quiet, disgusted rage. Their intent alone for the holy vessel-saint merits them a painful death. Destroy them for their profanity, young rider. I was gagging as well, but I somehow moved to the front, and tried not to think about how the monster chewing an eaterling in half had just referred to me as food. Instead, I tried to get the dimensions of the room, and noted the height of the ceiling.

  As the five jotun finished off the remaining eaterlings and marched toward us, I came up with a plan.

  "Nova," I began as my frien
d finally stopped gagging and readied her weapons. "Activate your Soulscape and fly high up. Attack them from range, especially the largest one. Try to get them disorganized if they start chasing you. I will pick them off one by one where I can, and keep them from getting too close to you."

  "Good," she said wiping her mouth and looking at the monsters in angry disgust. "I mean, sorry," she corrected herself, shaking her head. "I mean, thank you. I mean, let's finish this so that I can hurry and go complain to Human Resources about this nonsense!"

  "And Nestor," I said, getting into position as one of the four weaker sott-jotun shoved its packmate out of the way and began stomping over to us.

  Yes-yes? the little mouse piped up, shifting into its electrical war form.

  Go for the genitals, I commanded, leaping on top of one of the barricades inside the room.

  Yes-yes! the rodent squeaked in angry agreement, then darted through the air so quickly I lost sight of the lifemouse.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The same instant my furry companion disappeared from view, the closest jotun roared and pulled its scrap metal club back to swing at me. As it did so, I completed the spell and technique I had quietly been casting, projecting a thin line of fire qi—made all the hotter by incorporating a thermodynamics spell—directly into the monster's face.

  The creature screamed in far more pain that I had been expecting it to feel, and its swing went wide. But I was already moving anyway, leaping off the barrier and rolling forward. I still felt the force of the swing send air whistling through my hair, but I chose not to think about it. Not getting hit was more important than fully contemplating the ramifications of getting hit, so as I landed I activated an essence speed charm, modified by an air qi technique, and further modified by a kinesiology spell, and rushed past the giant's leg, slicing the back of the monster's knee as I ran. I had been expecting its warped and mottled hide to offer resistance, but the silver-plated glove holding my halfblade suddenly glowed, and my now-shining weapon tore through the monster's knee with ease.