Oh yes. Just what I thought. When we’d walked closer, I saw that I’d been right: the tunnel was blocked by the shimmering pale-blue screen of a power field.
I transformed the Speck of Ra into a beam of light and pointed it at the screen. Behind it lay a dead man, almost grown into the tunnel’s floor. There was precious little left of him, if you didn’t count the helmet with a large visor still sitting on his crashed skull and a hi tech device on his wrist which emitted a thin thread of light reaching for the energy shield.
Dead A-Man
Integrity: 43%
Source type: Void
Evidence of unidentifiable genetic and myoelectric modifications found.
???
“An Inca,” Alice dropped, approaching the translucent barrier.
I nodded. It looked like we’d found Gerda’s team.
Chapter 18
I GINGERLY TOUCHED the shimmering veil with the tip of my dagger. The power field began to hum ever so slightly. A spark flashed through the air, prickling my hand.
So the shield was working, then. The device on the dead guy’s wrist, powered by one of those radioisotope “lifetime” batteries, could sustain the power field for decades – possibly centuries.
So what were we supposed to do? How were we going to get to the other side? Miko?
The solution offered by my smart neutral network was so trivial it was a mystery why I hadn’t arrived at the same thing.
“A vacuum shield lets particles of light through... enough said, Incarnator.”
The Speck of Ra easily penetrated the shimmering veil. I ordered it to come back, then transformed it into a single beam of light, as thin as a needle, pointing it at the device on the guy’s wrist. Miko highlighted its interior, showing me where exactly to point the focused photon beam. Once that done, I activated Reinforcements with Light which lent the beam some random spontaneous properties. I had to do it with extreme care, making sure that all of Ra’s thermal power focused at the very tip of the beam.
Unfortunately, my Reinforcements with Light were still at level 1 – one of the first abilities I’d selected as an Enchanter. So it took it a long time to heat up the device on the dead Incarnator’s wrist. I did it exactly as Miko had shown me, pointing it at a gap between some particularly fragile elements and waiting for it to reach the right temperature.
Finally, a little red dot glowed in the darkness and began to spread, raising whiffs of acrid smoke. The smell of red-hot metal tickled my nostrils. I waited patiently: this was a hi-tech device which had kept working all this time, which meant it must have had every possible protection against elements and high temperatures.
Still, as they say, constant dropping will wear away a stone. With a dazzling cascade of sparks, the red-hot bracelet switched off. The power field went out. Cheerful little flames ran up the deadman’s dessicated arm. The coast was clear.
“Enchanter!” Alice said, rising off her knees. She’d been waiting patiently and silently for me to lift the shield.
“Excuse me?”
“You. Enchanter,” she said with a weak smile. “That’s good.”
“We need to study the body,” I nodded at the withered corpse. “We might find something useful, you never know.”
If the truth were known, I had no desire to rummage inside mummified bodies which had spent decades in this dry climate. You’d think that all the horrors I’d been through would have toughened me, wouldn’t you?
“Later,” Alice said. “Let’s find the others.”
About thirty yards up the tunnel, we found another Incarnator. This one was huge and burly, wearing a heavy exosuit reminiscent of a medieval knight’s plate armor. His head was missing. The way he was holding his coilgun gave me the impression he’d been trying to shoot at his now-absent head as he died.
“An Inca,” Alice gasped softly. “A Warrior.”
The latter was pretty obvious. The deadman must have been leveling his physical body. He appeared twice as big as a regular human, his cumbersome cybersuit lending him some truly monstrous proportions.
My interface promptly highlighted and ID’d his gear.
Bionic Exosuit
Class: Hercules
An assault coilgun
This was truly precious. Authentic Alpha gear! Both the suit and the warrior’s weapons looked virtually intact. I felt my lips stretch into a happy grin. So all this hike hadn’t been for nothing...
But how were you supposed to scrape him out of his suit? I bent over the body, studying the armor’s mechanics. Even though all bionic exosuits were built from the same prototype, each one of them was custom-made to fit its future master, so even two Hercules sets could vary dramatically from owner to owner.
Miko highlighted its components one by one, seeking for something similar to the battery of Angel’s wingsuit. I gingerly pressed down on an armor plate, trying to remove it. What about that small black circle over there...
“Watch out, Incarnator! Back off!”
This time I managed to promptly react to her command. I rolled aside, following the path outlined by her. The exosuit began to glow, then erupted in a multitude of forking surges of energy which exploded, forming a hemisphere of pale flames around the suit. The sharp fragments of the disintegrated suit flew in all directions. Apparently, the warrior’s gear had a built-in fuse to protect it from any looters, just like my clan artifacts did.
“We need technomancer! Badly!” Alice cussed, hissing with pain. Once again she’d shielded me with her own body. “Don’t touch! I’ll do it.”
I closed my eyes. Angel shit! There was nothing left of the warrior, apart from all the still-smoking fragments scattered around. My haste and stupidity had just cost me a full set of Alpha gear – and had submitted Alice to a new round of agonizing injuries.
Miko appeared to be upset she hadn’t spotted the trap.
“We wouldn’t have been able to use it anyway,” she reassured me sadly. “Alice has a point. It takes an expert Technomancer to hack this kind of protection.”
We discovered the last Blizzard team member – an Incarnator whose name was Gerda – further down the tunnel, at the center of a small junction formed by several corridors. A flock of Voids hovered over her body, their outlines merging in a slow dance. I scared them off with a mental image of a Flash – which was quickly becoming a habit – and gingerly approached the body.
Something crunched underfoot. The place was littered with the empty shells of Azure batteries.
I’d never seen Gerda before – and still I recognized her straight away. You just couldn’t confuse her for anybody else.
I recognized her by the disintegrating pale-blue cape with the snowflake symbol that enshrouded her body. I recognized the high cheekbones and long white hair strewn over the floor. Even in death, she’d preserved some of her bygone beauty.
Her body and face were virtually intact and in a surprisingly good state. Actually, all of the team members, with the exception of the beheaded warrior, seemed to have died in a strange manner. There weren’t any wounds on their bodies – and even the warrior seemed to have taken his own life. Whatever had happened here?
“Look,” Alice said, pulling something out of the wall.
A snowflake-shaped star made of some dull metal. Its sharp edges glinted a familiar blue which looked suspiciously like my dagger’s blade. Gerda’s shurikens were made of Blue Steel.
???
An Azure Artifact
A throwing A-weapon
???
My interface didn’t seem to recognize the item’s properties.
I stepped toward the body but Alice motioned me to stop. She bent down and gingerly picked up a long metallic object. She gave it a quick once-over and handed it to me. “Put it away. In your cryptor.”
“What’s that?” I asked, studying the elongated cylinder made of beryllium bronze and covered in Chinese-type symbols. It must have rolled away when Gerda had lost it in the heat of combat.
<
br /> “Later. Put it away. Step back. Step back further. This is dangerous.”
She bent over Gerda’s body and cautiously unclenched the corpse’s stiff fingers. When she stood back up, I saw her hold a broken fragment of a thin dainty sword blade, about a couple of feet long. It looked like a fragile transparent crystal framed in silvery ice – a work of art rather than a combat weapon. This was an Azure artifact just like my Fang of Fenrir, albeit infinitely more exquisite.
“Broken,” the girl stated the obvious, studying the sword. “Not good.”
“What could have killed them?” I asked. “What do you think?”
She cast me a quick glance. “They lost their Enchanter. A Storm. An outbreak. Lots of monsters. All kinds. They fought. They ran out of Azure. They died,” she drew the side of her hand across her throat.
“Unfortunately, I think she’s right, Incarnator. Gerda’s team met their deaths at the hands of Storm-invoked Azuric creatures, so to speak. Possibly, during an outbreak.”
The Fate of Blizzard: Mission Updated.
Report the group’s death to Stellar Archives.
So this was how it had happened? I vividly saw them run, seeking shelter from the looming Transmutation Storm just like Alice and I had. They’d sent a mayday on the go, before finding this place. The Technomancer set up a force shield – which hadn’t saved them from their phantom visitors. A tidal wave of monsters surged toward them. No amount of concrete, armor or weapons could protect them against it. And the only one who could have efficiently stopped the enemy had lost his host in the airmobile crash. Their Incarnators kept fighting to the best of their abilities and artifacts – but the enemy ranks only grew.
How long had they had to fight before the Voids – or possibly even worse monsters – had ripped out the souls from their bodies? Hours? Days?
“Do you understand now what makes Enchanters so important?”
“Look,” Alice suddenly touched me. “See?”
“See what?”
She pulled Gerda’s cape aside. It disintegrated, crumbling to the floor.
Gerda’s body was clad in a hugging silvery suit of scaly armor. I’d never seen anything like it before. It looked like a regular jumpsuit but it must have been considerably stronger. It ended at her throat in an elaborate wide neck ring. At first I thought it to be some Utopian piece of jewelry but then I realized it was in fact some hi tech device which might be a cryptor.
“A Guyver! A BBA!” Alice warily touched the transparent crystal on the neck ring with the tip of the broken sword.
The dead Gerda stirred.
Luckily, it was only her gear rearranging itself. The suit of armor — which had only just now clung to her body repeating its every curve — disappeared before our eyes, getting sucked into the neck ring. What was that now?
“That’s a Guyver, Incarnator! A set of light bionic A-armor integrated into her cryptor. It owes its name to a fictional prototype dreamed up by an ancient writer long before Utopian times. Alpha-class gear, Grey, bespoke stuff! It’s usually synced with the owner’s DNA code. We’d better not touch it. This is a job for an expert.”
Freed from its armored shell, Gerda’s corpse crumbled to weightless dust before our very eyes. It was as if she’d been waiting for this moment to finally become free.
Remembering my unfortunate attempt to remove the warrior’s suit, I stopped Alice’s hand as she reached for it. I reached into my cryptor for the beryllium bronze box which Gnarl and Evyl had used to store my possessions. For some reason, that particular metal was often used in Azuric artifacts – probably because it seemed to be able to block Azure’s properties. Although I didn’t know any details, I’d already noticed that Azuric items were normally kept in cases made of beryllium bronze.
Alice nodded her understanding. For some reason, we didn’t need words to understand each other anymore. She slid the broken sword’s tip through the neck ring and cautiously dropped it into the box.
Nothing happened. I heaved a sigh of relief. Apparently, the DNA lock was the suit’s only protection. That was a very common way of keeping your property safe.
When we searched Gerda’s resting place, we found a vox shaped as a snowflake, a magnet sling for the shurikens, and the remaining pieces of the broken sword. Alice also found two more shurikens fashioned of the precious Blue Steel. The rest was insignificant: just some junk.
Unfortunately, the warrior had left nothing behind. As for the Technomancer, we managed to remove his damaged helmet and the black bracelet which we identified as a cryptor. All the items, including Gerda’s, were protected with a DNA code. As for all the rest – the weapons as well as artifacts – it was either damaged or hadn’t survived the test of time.
At the end of the day, we still had nothing we could actually use – with the exception of the three shurikens and the magnet sling they came with, which Alice had claimed for herself. The sight of the dead Incarnators left a painful impression on our minds, reminding us of the fragility of our own existence. They’d been a strong team, but even they had once run out of luck. The circumstances had been stacked up against them – so now they were dead, and the phantom monsters had claimed their very souls.
I was gradually beginning to understand why the Incarnators, powerful and immortal, had been reduced to a legend. It didn’t take much to send one of us over the Edge...
We left the tunnels. It was getting dark, and we still had to find shelter for the night. The light of the Black Moon lured the local scavengers out of their dens which made nights infinitely more dangerous than daytime. In order to survive, we had to find somewhere safe and secure.
Still, it didn’t quite go as planned. No idea what had caused this new predicament: whether it was a coincidence, or my curiosity, or maybe the fact that all those who’d made their way here were doomed to die. To cut a long story short, we came under the Call.
It happened at nightfall, a couple of hours after we’d left Blizzard’s resting place. We didn’t get the chance to fight back. I just got this painful, clear sensation of being caught under a psi field which was yielding like jelly but incredibly mighty, more ancient than time itself. I just can’t explain it. It was like a giant cloud floating overhead. There was nothing human about it. I got this clear image of a languid gaze studying the familiar landscape below.
It sensed me, too. Its focus shifted, zeroing in on me. I felt its all-consuming power. I tried to recoil – but I couldn’t. Too late. The curious giant had already taken an interest in the funny insect below.
“Grey, you must immedia—”
Chapter 19
MIKO’S VOICE cut off mid-word. Her cartoon face froze, then disappeared. My interface went off. I stood motionless too, as I began to lose control of my body.
Alice froze next to me. I glimpsed a silent horror in her gaze just before it went vacant.
We’d heard the Call.
How can I describe it to you? A gentle whisper? A crooned song? It’s possible that everyone who’d heard it invested their own secret meaning in it, something inwardly dear to them. The creature to whom the psi-field belonged to must have been so powerful that it had effortlessly disabled all the workings of my mind, freeing space for the single desire to go toward the source of the Call. Some kind of hypnosis? I didn’t think so. More like an instinct or an inner need. Going toward it felt right. All the rest had faded into insignificance.
Alice and I turned round and stumbled in its direction like two zombies, two puppets caught on an invisible sticky string. Neither of us spoke; we didn’t think, didn’t try to fight or reason. The Call was all that mattered. It was impossible to fight it.
After a while – half an hour or an hour, I couldn’t really tell – the earth quaked underfoot. A giant serpentine A-morph — an ugly snake really — arose from behind a hill and headed toward us, leaving a trail of chewed-up ground in its wake. The creature had a flat reptilian head and the long bloated body of an overweight worm which was covered
in horn growths.
Just a regular Tiferet, nothing extraordinary. It could gobble us up whole without even noticing it.
I felt neither fear nor surprise. When the monster had approached, both of us stopped obediently, guided by the calm knowledge of what needed to be done. Someone wasn’t impressed by our progress and decided to send us a ride.
Clutching at the rough edges of the creature’s shell, Alice and I climbed onto its back and sat there, holding on to its spiky iridescent crest.
Having picked us up, the “snake” slithered across the rocky plateau. As darkness fell, we glimpsed more monsters moving rapidly in the same direction, all of them medium- and large-sized A-morphs. Calm, focused and purposeful, they kept going toward some goal of their own. Consumed by the Call, I didn’t pay much attention to them. The horrendously powerful psi field had suppressed my thinking, leaving no room for my own musings.
The Enchanter (Project Stellar Book 2): LitRPG Series Page 23