by Kal Aaron
Aisha wrinkled her nose. “I would have done fine, even with a handicap.”
“Sure, you would have.” Lyssa chuckled. “Keep telling yourself that. Live in wonder.”
Ryan sliced through a rock with his sonic blade and nodded with a satisfied expression. “This is a simple job. Engage and terminate hostiles. It’s nice to have something so straightforward. It’s been a while since I had that. No hostages, no worries about collateral damage.”
“I think it’s been a while since any of us have had that,” Lyssa said, thinking back to her concern about Aisha setting an oil tanker on fire. “Though getting this far wasn’t easy.” She passed through the mine’s entrance. “And we still might have to raid a rogue’s base at the end of this.”
“One rogue against four of us.” Aisha scoffed. “He’ll be dead in seconds. The coward is personally weak. That’s why he hides.”
“Being careful isn’t the same thing as being weak,” Lyssa said. “I thought the same thing as you at first, but now I’m not so sure.”
Antoine waved his staff. “I’m here to keep you all alive and find the monsters, not so much to fight. I wanted to throw that out there.”
“Then slink back when the time comes.” Aisha shrugged, shaking her bangles. “That leaves more glory for the rest of us.”
“Killing these things isn’t that fun,” Lyssa said. “I’ll be happy when this is all over.”
The trip to the queen’s chamber passed quickly. Antoine confirmed the main group of living creatures was in the same place as last time. Lyssa was grateful for the spell, though the memory of the awful smells still made her gag.
Aisha grimaced as she surveyed the decaying carnage from Lyssa’s earlier battle. “Such disgusting creatures. I don’t envy you having to do this more than once, Hecate.”
“Sure.” Ryan sliced a couple of rotting carcasses apart. “But this is mostly a numbers game. She said the small ones aren’t so tough.” Faint clicks sounded from his mouth. “Nothing nearby in any of the tunnels, and I can bounce to the end of them.”
“That’s good to know,” Lyssa said. “I wasn’t sure if the tunnels were connected to the other chambers somehow.”
Antoine nodded toward the wall. “Everything we want to kill is behind there.”
Ryan tilted his head and produced more clicks. “There’s a lot of movement over there, along with some other vibrations. I think they know we’re here. Surprise is no longer an option.”
“I should open it.” Aisha walked to the edge of the pool. “And give them their chance to die if they’re so eager to face us.”
“Save your energy,” Lyssa said, lifting her pistol. “I brought an extra explosives mag as a knocker. You’ll get your glory from roasting them.”
“And if your bullets prove insufficient?” Aisha asked.
Lyssa chuckled. This was one of those times Aisha’s pokes slid right past her ego. “Then you can prove what a badass you are, Flame Deva. It doesn’t matter as long as we get it open, but I’d prepare a nice gift for them.”
Antoine hefted his staff with both hands. “I’ll do my best to help you, but remember, I can’t do much if you’re dead.”
“That’s a stirring speech,” Lyssa replied. “Very memorable.”
Aisha snorted. “I will not be defeated by such pathetic creatures.” She rattled off a Sanskrit chant, and two circles of flaming orbs winked into existence above her. “Bring the weaklings to their slaughter. Let them know pain. Let them rue the day they faced off against Torches. We will be the last thing they see as we end their twisted, miserable lives.”
“Now that’s a speech,” Lyssa said.
“You’ve both got issues,” Antoine said.
“Yeah, I can’t argue there,” Lyssa said.
She aimed at the center of the wall and pulled the trigger. Her rounds blasted rock and dirt out of the wall. The chunks splashed into the pool, some landing in and on the body of the dead queen. She fired at the same spot repeatedly, deepening and widening the hole with each round.
Half the mag was spent by the time she blew through the wall. Her new hole exposed a writhing mass of eyeless chittering six-foot-long lizards covered in dark scales. The only thing they had in common with the previous monsters was the slathering jaws filled with dripping fangs.
“Huh,” Lyssa said. “I didn’t expect that. That’s a new model.”
With shrieks, the lizards surged through the hole.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Aisha didn’t hesitate to unleash an inferno of death. The fireballs from her first circle came down from above her and pelted the advancing monsters. The explosions rippled across the front line, burning, scorching, and melting all the unfortunate nearby targets.
Dead and charred creatures collapsed to the ground. Others screeched in their final moments before the flames took them. Those behind them paid little attention, jostling and charging and stepping over their fallen comrades or knocking the wounded aside.
Aisha released the fireballs from her second circle, and they pounded the surviving enemy. The scales of the lizards did little to protect them as her spells struck. The hungry fire and heat vaporized the monsters’ flesh.
Lyssa was impressed and glad she invited Aisha, but she couldn’t let the other Sorceress have all the fun. Aisha’s attacks had blunted the enemy advance. Now it was time to push them back. Lyssa brought up the pistol loaded with regular rounds and opened fire.
The growing pile of scorched lizards and the dead queen’s body formed a natural barrier for the advancing lizards, forcing them into two distinct streams and higher into the chamber, which made for easy aiming. Lyssa and Aisha instinctively targeted opposite sides as if they’d been working together for years. Their bullets and flame blasts struck the attacking lizards.
The monsters looked different from the snake-roaches, but they weren’t any more bulletproof or intelligent. With their more defined heads, Lyssa didn’t have to experiment with technique.
Her first few shots proved a bullet through the brain killed a monster lizard the same as a person, and the lack of explosions or disintegration meant their bodies became obstacles for their friends. Unlike the snake-roaches, the lizards bled red blood. It felt quaint and normal in a twisted way.
Aisha’s blasts continued to char the advancing enemy column and scatter their toasted bodies. Her use of fire didn’t frighten the survivors any more than the bullets carving through the other column.
Lyssa kept up her attacks, satisfied the newer monsters weren’t any cleverer than the snake-roaches. The last thing she wanted to deal with was an entire army of fast and dangerous monsters that demonstrated tactics.
Despite the solid efforts of the two specialist Torches, a lizard made it past the front line. It leaped toward Antoine, who brought up his staff and shouted in Latin. The staff hit the lizard, and a second later, the monster blew apart in bloody chunks.
“I thought you needed to be taken care of?” Lyssa shouted over her gunfire before laughing. “It doesn’t look that way to me.”
“It’s easy when I just have to stand here, and they come to me,” Antoine yelled back. “And this only works when I can get clear contact close to muscle tissue. If these guys had decent armor plates, it’d be useless.”
Lyssa gunned down two more lizards. She was starting to enjoy herself. Every dead monster was a kick in the shin of the rogue responsible. She was killing his time, money, and dreams. He was the real monster, misusing his power to make this horrible army.
Ryan rushed in front of the healer to carve a lizard apart. Its body flew a couple of yards before the neatly sliced top and bottom separated. He pivoted toward another enemy and took it apart with similar ease.
“Nothing’s coming from the rear,” he shouted.
“Kill what you want,” Lyssa replied. “There’s plenty to go around.”
The huge volume of monsters rushing the team made it impossible to contain to the hole Lyssa had blasted
into the wall, but the modest size of the opening kept the team from having to worry much other than shooting, frying, and slicing the front monsters so eager to die. An occasional beast popped over the group and made a play for Antoine, and he blew it apart.
Aisha sliced off the bottom of her boots with a flame dagger before surrounding herself with a bright flame aura. A lizard charged her, but its mouth burned away before it could bite down. She shoved her palm against its body and a burst of flame hurled it into other monsters, slowing their advance.
“Pathetic creature.” She sneered. “Did you think you had a chance against me?”
Lyssa didn’t mock her about her taunts as she continued firing. She had been guilty of the same thing during her first trip.
She had reloaded her regular rounds several times but had been holding her other pistol and doing nothing with it. She brought it up and disrupted the enemy line, her quick shots exploding in the centers of tight clusters of lizards. That attack, combined with Aisha’s hail of fireballs, helped create a growing mountain of charred lizards.
One lizard made it through the death stream and barreled toward Lyssa to bite down on her arm. She hissed at the sting, but her vest and regalia stopped it from penetrating into her flesh. She fired two rounds into its throat and kicked it back.
“I don’t want to smell even worse when this is over, you freak,” she shouted.
A curtain of flame tore through the front line of the lizards of both columns, setting most of them on fire. Lyssa took the opportunity to jump back and reload both her guns.
The crazed monsters charged through the flames and thrashed in the fluid, but they were scalded and dying. Even the snake-roaches had eventually demonstrated mild self-preservation, but the lizards didn’t seem to be learning anything.
Lyssa didn’t mind. They could finish off the enemy quicker that way. Cautious monsters wasted time.
Suddenly, brightly colored lizards streamed through the opening. Lyssa head-shot the first two she spotted, worried about what the difference in coloration meant, but a third lizard clarified matters by spitting a thick white glob toward her. She ducked and avoided it, but it struck a leftover chunk of the queen and sizzled as it ate away at the decaying material.
“Acid spit!” she shouted. “Careful!”
Aisha ripped into the air with flames shooting from her feet. The pool sizzled and evaporated below her. When she neared the room, she showered flame blasts and exploding balls on the lizards at a more feverish pace than before.
Ryan pointed his sonic blade at a pile of fallen rubble from the original opening. Lyssa couldn’t make out his humming in the chaos of the shrieks, explosions, and gunshots, but chunks of rock shattered into hundreds of pieces. The shrapnel shredded the nearby monsters, adding to the burgeoning piles of the dead. It was pure carnage.
An acid lizard nailed Lyssa’s leg with its spit. Her regalia sizzled and thinned. She gritted her teeth before blowing its head off in revenge.
“You need help?” Antoine asked, twirling his staff. He’d not had to pop a monster in a while.
“I’m not that badly off yet,” Lyssa said. “Just watch yourself.”
She laughed when a pack of small snake-roaches rushed through the opening. Aisha’s aerial bombardment scattered them, leaving them nothing more than charred messes before they made it very far.
“Good to see some classics,” Lyssa said, firing at an acid-spitter.
The heaving, thrashing mass of monsters coming through the hole was scraping off material on both sides and widening it. They were still forced into easy columns, but the increased space was allowing more through with each wave.
Lyssa double-loaded her empty pistols with regular rounds. Aisha was handling crowd control fine. It was time to focus on finishing off the ones who got past the initial bombardment. She swept through the monsters, putting round after round in their heads or down their throats.
“You guys never learn to be afraid. Not a great survival trait.”
The dead bodies had started as a barrier for the enemy, but the now-huge pile formed a natural soft ramp onto and over the body of the queen, making it easier for the survivors to scramble toward their targets. Though the increasing waves included more snake-roaches and fewer lizards, the acid spitters grew more common, forcing everyone to keep moving.
The cacophony of battle receded in Lyssa’s mind as she focused on the nearby threats. She trusted Aisha, Ryan, and Antoine to play their parts and concentrated on downing targets and ducking and dodging the monsters that made it close to her or the occasional splat of acid coming her way.
Snake-roaches fell. Acid-spitters’ heads exploded. It was a meditation session centered on death.
Two magazines later, Lyssa took short, quick breaths, trying to ignore the burning pain and holes in different parts of her regalia. Aisha dropped to the ground shortly after, her breathing just as ragged. Huge numbers of dead monsters proved the cost for the enemy, but the team had been pushed back to the other side of the pool.
The monsters were able to spread out now, and the change provided the Society team a greater advantage since the lizards and snake-roaches couldn’t swim faster than they could run. Ryan waded toward the front, eager to cut through the survivors, while Aisha alternated concentrated fire blasts and explosive orbs near the ever-widening hole.
A lizard made it past Ryan and bit down on Antoine’s leg. Its fangs bounced off after leaving a tear in the regalia. He slammed his staff into its head and blew it into bloody chunks.
“I’m glad I used those potions already.” Antoine laughed. “That could have seriously hurt, and I don’t want to get poisoned this week.”
A large group of acid-spitters charged through a pile of bodies near the entrance, knocking them out of the way and spraying wildly, as if desperate to kill at least one human. Lyssa shifted from one monster to the other with lethal determination, taking them down with single well-placed shots.
Aisha’s bright aura had dimmed but not disappeared. She thrust her palm forward and shot out a flame blast that flew right into the mouth of an acid-spitter. The creature fell forward, smoke drifting from its mouth. Lyssa didn’t want to think about what it might smell like without Antoine’s spell.
“This is endless!” Aisha shouted. “How many of these things can there be?”
“We’re winning. They made that big push, but fewer are getting through.” Lyssa loaded explosive mags into both guns and unleashed her version of explosive hell.
The overlapping blasts joined Aisha’s, sending monsters and their parts into the air. Thick smoke choked the area, but Lyssa kept her guns pointed toward the exit and continued firing. The squeals and shrieks of dying lizards resounded.
An acid glob flew from the smoke and hit Lyssa’s shoulder. She fired two explosive rounds in that direction. Scorched, flaming lizard chunks shot out of the smoke.
Ryan had advanced until he was on the front line between Aisha and Lyssa. He’d not escaped unscathed, having tears and acid holes all over his regalia, along with reddened skin and blood dripping from a claw wound in the front. He’d all but made a fort out of the dead monsters in front of him.
Lyssa had a lot of respect for melee specialists, especially in this kind of situation. She might like the batons on occasion, but she was a gun girl at heart.
“Most of the small ones are gone,” Antoine said. “But there are two large ones behind them.”
“Everyone back to the hatchery,” Lyssa shouted, unsure if Aisha would listen. “We need more room to maneuver and better visibility.”
Ryan jogged backward and decapitated a couple of snake-roaches who had mistaken their retreat as an opportunity. Though the heavy-breathing Aisha continued shoving out fire blasts for a moment longer, she shot backward, flames coming out of her palms and feet, and landed in the hatchery.
Lyssa ceased firing blindly into the thick cloud of smoke and dust swallowing half the queen’s chamber. She waited for lizards a
nd snake-roaches to emerge from the water to put them down.
Aisha took a moment to catch her breath. Her flame shield had dissipated, though only minor tears marred her regalia. Constant sorcery had its costs.
Ryan pointed his hilt toward the roof of the queen’s chamber. Another whine preceded cracks shooting through the top. Large chunks of the cave roof fell into the diminished horde’s front line and crushed monsters.
“Don’t bury us,” Aisha cautioned.
“I know what I’m doing,” Ryan replied.
Antoine laughed. “Famous last words.”
The constant shrieks had dropped to a desperate few as the enemy continued trying to get to their tormentors. Lyssa downed the newer targets with deliberate slowness, more worried about whatever larger monsters Antoine sensed.
Dead monsters filled almost every spot in the pool not already filled by the dead queen. Lyssa took slow, deep breaths before swapping her empty magazines for penetrator rounds. She was doing all right this time for ammo, a combination of more consideration and the other Torches doing a good job of killing their targets.
A roar echoed throughout the connected chambers, and something crashed through the obscured entrance. Its huge shadow marked the creature in the cloud before it stepped into the pool, crushing its brethren beneath its feet.
Lyssa had been expecting a queen or a giant lizard, but the massive beast looked more like a tank-sized black panther covered in thick bony plates. An identical-looking partner joined the monsters. Like all other monsters they’d fought, they had no eyes.
“Why aren’t these things attacking one another?” Aisha asked.
“Who knows?” Lyssa pointed both guns at one panther. “Who cares? Antoine, is that it?”
He shook his head. “Now that we cleared out all those other monsters, I can sense more living things past the third chamber.”
“Damn it.” Lyssa took a deep breath. “This is beginning to get annoying.”