I’d forgotten all about it. I picked up the silver tiara, peeled off my helmet, slammed the thing on my head and slid an Azure battery into the round slot.
Miko promptly adjusted the interface, showing an additional energy bar. Ten thousand Azure. How long would they last?
I felt a strong prickling sensation in my temples as the item activated.
I sensed the change straight away. The range of my psi field had grown manifold. My perception soared. It felt like I’d left the cramped cab, touching everything around. I felt incredibly light, a bit like an athlete who’d lifted a previously insurmountable weight effortlessly in one hand.
My Azure counter began to plummet at a scary rate as the booster consumed indecent amounts of energy.
“A 10,000-Azure capacitor will last you approximately three minutes seventeen seconds, Incarnator. Hurry up!”
Hadn’t Kai said something about ten minutes? Well, apparently he’d been wrong. Only three minutes! Then again, it could have something to do with my Source’s initial capacity.
I gently touched the hatchling’s mind impatient to break free, trying to calm him down, softly but confidently as if trying to rock a human baby to sleep. No idea where it came from: this must have been my genetic memory speaking, just like it had happened when I’d first picked up my weapons. I just knew instinctively what I had to do.
For a few moments, he struggled, then fell motionless as the world of dreams overtook his mind. The egg stopped throbbing; the hatchling curled up inside, slowly going back to sleep.
I breathed a deep sigh. I’d done it.
Too late through. The Roc’s thunderous squawk echoed somewhere very close. He was on his way back to his nest.
I switched my focus to him. He felt like the sun blazing through closely shut eyelids: a giant, furious, fiery mind. It could be that my own albeit boosted Source was still too weak to handle a class-Gold monster.
Still, those few moments were enough for me to grasp the whole picture and sense the powerful mental link between the hatchling, the Roc and something else. In a way, that connection was similar to Rat King’s Pack although not entirely. The fact was, they could sense each other – and the hatchling’s awakening had been detected by yet another parent creature, her fury so great that the mere attempt to tune into it had very nearly rendered me unconscious.
“Holy shit!” Kai cussed when the colossal shadow flitted overhead. “Grey!”
“I’ve calmed him down!”
“Okay, try to strap it down somehow and climb over here! Take the second pilot’s seat! Switch control to your cogitor and activate the guns!”
I grunted, hauling the egg onto the dusty seat behind Kai’s back. Miko helpfully highlighted the right button to press. Two polymeric seatbelts shot out, crisscrossing over the egg to keep it in place. It was safe now. The last thing we needed was it rolling all over the floor during turbulence.
The Roc emitted an ear-splitting squawk over his robbed nest, raising gusts of screaming wind filled with rock fragments. Luckily, the narrow crevice where Lion Face had landed his machine was out of the giant bird’s reach. The small rocky platform may have looked perfectly natural – but it was in fact a purpose-built landing site, a hidden pocket tucked under the cliff’s overhanging edge. The dead legate had found a perfect place to land his craft, expertly fitting it into the narrow space.
A giant shadow loomed over the airmobile’s transparent roof: the Roc had finally found the little thieves. He sank his claws furiously into the cliff’s edge, trying to widen the gap.
That was a scary sight. I refused to believe my eyes, watching the infuriated monster crumble the rock like soft bread. His beak and claws were ablaze with Azure; his wingbeats raised a veritable tornado. The airmobile rocked and jumped – it felt like the mountain itself shuddered with the Roc’s powerful blows.
An avalanche of rock debris clattered over the vehicle’s roof. Cracks spread over the cliff’s surface as it began to come apart, sending large chunks of disintegrating rock down the abyss.
Cussing, Kai shot his hand upward, activating a hemispherical power shield over the plane. Not a moment too soon: another couple of seconds, and we’d have been buried under an avalanche of rock.
“I need another two minutes!” he shouted. “Try to distract him!”
Me, distract this giant monster? Yeah, right. I hurried to sift through available options but found none. I had nothing to offer against a colossus like that. Fiery Wolf? Leader of the Pack? Flash?
I launched three Flashes in rapid succession, trying to detonate them right next to his head in order to blind or disorient him. Three dazzling flares illuminated the top of the mountain like code signals sent by an enormous searchlight.
It only helped for another half-minute or so. Squawking indignantly, the behemoth bird shot up into the sky only to return and attack the rocks with renewed ardor. The crack was getting wider. Soon he’d be able to reach in with his clawed foot or his beak capable of piercing the little craft right through.
Then the airmobile stirred and began to vibrate, lifting itself over the rocky surface. An engine came to life in the back, next to the tail pylon. The armrests of the pilot seat opened up, releasing the joysticks; the transparent windows blinked, instantly covered with augmented-reality indicators. It looked like Kai had managed to unblock the controls.
“You ready?” he shouted, trying to be heard over the screaming of the wind, the rumbling of the scattering rocks and the Roc’s deranged yelling. “Belt up! Let the fun begin! Get to the guns! Don’t let him get near us until we gain speed!”
The elastic seatbelts stretched over my torso, pinning me to the seat. My right hand lay naturally on the ergonomic control stick. The red dot of the sights lit up on the window in front of me. I moved my hand this way and that, getting used to the controls.
“This coilgun has a 360 degree field of fire, Incarnator. It’s running short on ammo though. You only have three clips left. It fires ten-millimeter armor-piercing needles. Your chances of wounding the target are around 3%.”
Grazing its bottom on the sharp rocks, the airmobile took one final leap off the ledge. With an indignant squawk, the Roc darted after it. Still, Kai wasn’t that stupid. He began spiraling around the summit, clinging as close as he could to its rocky walls. In this scenario, the monster’s sheer size was against him. We were much smaller and more agile, so this obstacle race through the rocky maze benefited us, not him.
If I pressed the button once, I fired a single shot. If I kept it pressed, it would release bursts of fire. I caught the winged silhouette in my sights and assaulted it with a shower of screaming needles.
Nah. You could forget it. The armor-piercing needles ricocheted off his brown plumage which protected the bird’s body better than a cuirass. What had Mother Nature done to create a monster like this?!
“Two clips left. No damage to the enemy detected.”
Kai sent the craft swirling around one of the summit’s needle tops. Trying to shake off the Roc, he was doing some crazy aerobatics, banking sideways to avoid obstacles which appeared out of nowhere, or diving into narrow crevices, shooting through them within a hair’s breadth of the cliffs.
Still, the flying monster kept a good pace, crushing everything in his path as he chased after us in his blind fury. Cliffs crumbled in cascades of rocks; the bird’s ear-splitting squawks reverberated in my temples.
“Grey, keep firing! We gotta shake him off!”
I just saw no point in shooting. No good wasting the rest of our ammo. There had to be another way.
“Miko, does he have any vulnerable spots at all?”
“The use of purely kinetic weapons against this kind of enemy won’t be effective. There is, however, a subtle chance of penetrating his armor if we reinforce projectiles with some kind of energy. We have Reinforcements with Light, if you remember. Level 3 of the ability would allow us to reinforce any kinetic weapon with a Speck of Light. This is a situa
tional upgrade, I agree, but I just can’t see any other way.”
Logically thinking, what did Reinforcements with Light do? They infused any weapons or other objects with the elemental energy of Ra. I’d received level 1 of the ability just as I’d started out, and it had already saved my bacon a few times, helping Fang to pierce Evyl’s Azuric armor and finish off Rat King.
I had two neurospheres ready – plus, my Azure bar was full to the brim. I hadn’t been spending any Azure lately for fear of a sudden death which would require a lot of it. I hadn’t been planning on maxing out Reinforcements any time soon – but it looked like I simply had no other option.
So I upgraded my Source twice. Ignoring the new flashing icons of available abilities, I selected Reinforcements with Light. Level three was the highest, offering damage with light, heat and Azure. Plus the ability to reinforce projectiles – excellent! Cost: 500 Azure. It was pretty pointless trying to go easy on Azure now, so I sent the tiny flame of Ra down the coilgun’s clip, imbibing the needles with its solar fire.
“Incarnator, quick! The reinforcement might damage the gun!”
I emptied the last clip, zeroing in on the monstrous bird’s head.
This time the glittering volley tripped the Roc in mid-flight, forcing him to change direction. Still, I celebrated too soon. A few seconds later he was back on track, squawking indignantly as he resumed his chase. Even reinforced, the needles had barely grazed him.
I had one attempt left. The only other thing that came to my mind was to combine Reinforcements with a Flash. But that required the highest degree of precision because both techniques required a Speck of Ra and I could only control one at a time.
I had to go all-in. “Kai, can you let him closer?”
“Are you fucking nuts?”
“Please! We won’t shake him off otherwise!”
Cussing under his breath, the Technomancer banked into another vertiginous loop. The sky and the cliffs swirled around us; the giant winged silhouette flashed past right next to us.
I focused and closed my eyelids, giving in to my extrasensory perception which allowed me to see everything clearer and sharper than my eyes could. Now... now... Now!
My hand yanked on the stick. A cascade of glittering tracers shot out from the airmobile, momentarily tethering it to the bird. The Speck of Ra ran down the chain of coilgun needles until it pierced the bird’s plumage and released an incinerating Flash of Light.
This time it looked like I’d got him. The bright dot of the Flash exploded under his armor. Predictably, it hadn’t killed him but it had wounded him quite seriously.
Screaming, the Roc darted aside, ramming into a cliff at full speed. He struggled, caught amid the rocks, flapping his wings and demolishing everything around. Once again he tried to take to the sky but dropped down, one of his wings hanging listlessly.
Kai jumped at the chance to send the airmobile upward, away from the summit, gaining altitude and aiming for the heavy evening clouds pregnant with moisture. Their gray wisps soon filled the windows as we took cover within them while scampering away.
“We’re gonna make it, we’re gonna make it,” Kai mumbled. “Holy shit, commander, what was that for fireworks? Good job I had goggles on! You couldn’t have announced our presence better if you’d tried. They probably could see the show from outer space!”
“Well, I’m sorry! That was the best I could do. Are we safe now?”
“I damn well hope so. We need to pick up Alice and go back to the Monolith. We’ll have to watch out for him now, I’m afraid, because he won’t leave us alo—”
Bang!
Something tossed us through the air like a football, sending us spinning into a lethal nosedive. The cockpit filled with the screaming wind and the desperate beeping of sensors. Decompression, hull damage, engine failure! We’d been attacked by something so huge that it had smashed the back part of the craft to smithereens!
The control console surged with flashes of blue. All the instruments went dead. Kai groaned, his body arching in his seat.
Amid the cloudy wisps high above, I glimpsed another winged silhouette dart past. Miko promptly highlighted and identified it.
Not another Roc! Where had it come from? How had it managed to catch up with us? The thoughts had flashed through my mind before Miko had the chance to analyze the data and offer the only possible explanation.
Our Roc hadn’t been alone. There must have been two of them. Male and female, most likely. Why hadn’t we thought about it? So Roc number two had conveniently arrived at the scene, attacking us from above and ripping our own bird’s tail feathers out.
We were dropping, crashing down.
Kai came round. By an incredible feat of willpower he retook the controls, pulled out of the nosedive and tried to glide down. The engine and all of the craft’s systems were dead. We were rapidly losing altitude.
“Soft landing ain’t guaranteed!” Kai shouted. “Hold on tight!”
The fiery arrow that was our craft sliced through the darkening sky, leaving a fat trail of smoke behind. We fishtailed down like a deranged whirligig toward the jagged clifftops flashing past, dropping onto the green sea of the pinewood below.
I braced myself in anticipation of the impact. Instead, the top part of the craft opened up, shooting us out of the airmobile.
We’d been ejected.
Swirling through the air, I glimpsed the fiery ball of the airmobile disappear in the woods below. I saw an explosion, clouds of black smoke and a ginormous winged shadow zeroing in on the crash site.
A sharp tug threw me upward as the chute opened. Still, the remaining altitude wasn’t enough to counter the momentum.
I hit the ground, tumbling ass over tit in a jumble of harsh impacts. The last one was so strong it very nearly flattened me against a tree trunk. I passed out momentarily, only to see the familiar message:
Activation No 27
Your host is dead.
Would you like to restore your host’s body?
Chapter 28
Success! Incarnation complete!
Current Azure count: 23400/30800
NOT ANOTHER INCARNATION! Even their fabled Hydra Genome hadn’t been enough to pull me through: a damaged brain can’t be restored instantly. I had hit the tree trunk with such force that I’d dropped the helmet which wasn’t clasped on. The rigid breastplate of my Lorica suit was covered in a web of fine cracks.
Gosh, I was so fed up with dying.
I was hanging in mid-air, my chute’s orange canopy caught on the fat pine branches above. Far below, I could just about make out the ground covered with rotting pine needles.
The Roc’s furious scream resounded quite close. After a few seconds, the other’s reply echoed at a distance. Who would have thought there were two of them? Okay, I’d wounded one, but the other could easily see my chute, so glaringly obvious amid the sea of treetops!
“This is a very prudent thought, Incarnator. I would advise you to leave the impact site ASAP.
I reached for my Fang and used it to hack through the straps. Hitting the ground hurt a lot, even though luckily it wasn’t that high. I lay motionless for a few seconds, breathing deeply and trying to recover my senses.
Angel shit! We’d lost the airmobile – and the egg! We’d failed the mission!
Having said that, Miko offered her own prospective:
“You shouldn’t panic too soon, Incarnator. I don’t confirm the mission’s failure, not quite yet. In case the egg is destroyed, the mission is still considered completed, albeit without the bonus. It will only be registered as a failure if the Roc retrieves his egg or if we lose the hatchling.”
I looked around. The impossibly tall pine trees rustled overhead. I was surrounded by prickly undergrowth, its soft foot-long emerald needles almost touching my face. We’d already trekked through these primeval woods once on our way to the Roc’s nest. They must have looked totally impenetrable from above; I doubted very much you could see a single hu
man being under its cover.
The Roc squawked again at a distance, his tone furious but also filled with agonizing desperation. The treetops overhead surged with a sudden gust of wind. I cast a wistful glance at the orange chute dangling high above. In theory, I should really bring it down and destroy it or hide it somewhere. But that might take way too much time. I had to get out of there presto. If that oversized turkey had indeed lost his baby, he could easily raze these woods to the ground in his violent fury.
Miko helpfully highlighted my helmet lying on the ground by the tree. It was virtually intact if you didn’t count the crack in the visor and the gory crimson mess splattered all over the inside.
“Holy shit man, where the hell are you? Speak up!”
Luckily for me, Stellar’s mysterious replicators definitely didn’t compromise on quality. Not only had their helmet proven stronger than my own head, but even the earphones still functioned. I listened to Kai’s hoarse voice and Alice’s snapped comments. Both seemed to have been alarmed by my little timeout. I gave them a quick rundown of my situation, then opened the group’s tactical map and pinned it in the corner of my interface. Kai’s green dot glowed quite close, a mere half a mile from where I was now.
The Enchanter (Project Stellar Book 2): LitRPG Series Page 33