by Kal Aaron
The room shook, knocking some of the monsters to the floor. Lyssa had been wrong. They were going to be buried.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The rock sank into the ground, revealing a man in a hooded robe and a secret passage. They weren’t going to die after all. Lyssa was too annoyed to feel relief.
She tried to shoot the man, but a monster leaped at her and took the round. Her next few rounds also found monster shields. She snatched her second pistol and reloaded both with ablative rounds before growling at the man dropping into the passage.
“I can get through these things in my wraith form,” Lyssa shouted. “We can’t let him escape!”
“Get him, Hecate!” Aisha shouted. “We’ll handle these creatures. Their numbers are dwindling. He wouldn’t flee if he believed he had any chance of victory.”
Ryan diced one lizard into four pieces before nodding his agreement. “We need to know who he is so we can track down the rogue calling the shots. He’s just an errand boy with delusions of grandeur. Your advice applies back to you. Try to keep him alive.”
“Sure, but like I said, things happen.” Lyssa backed away from the front line before becoming a living shadow. She charged through the crowd of monsters, some pausing and looking her way, but every blast from Aisha or cut from Ryan refocused the army on the visible enemies.
Each step added to the eerie nightmare as a ghost of a woman ran through the seething mass of sorcery-enhanced killers. In all her years as a Torch, Lyssa had never experienced anything like it.
Ryan was right. Destroying the army would ensure the safety of the nearby populations, but they didn’t need to repeat this whole annoying experience six months from now in a new location. The robed bastard was going down, and the Society would pry the truth from his lips one way or another.
Sprinting hard, Lyssa barreled past monsters, shoving them to the side. They tried to jump after the dangerous shadow in their midst, only to be swept up in the advancing tide of their kindred. She vaulted over an acid-spitter to arrive at the secret passage.
Shallow stairs led into a curved tunnel. She didn’t sense any worrisome sorcery that might mark a trap.
Lyssa wondered if the self-destruction shard had been a bluff. The man had had a way of escaping but kept trying to force them to retreat. Perhaps he’d found facing death harder than he’d expected. She’d have to ask when she found him—after punching him a few times.
She bounded down the stairs and into the tunnel after the robed man. His heavy footsteps echoed from ahead, and the grade of the path increased sharply. The tunnel began to brighten, and she could make out the man’s outline in the distance. Lungs burning, Lyssa closed on him, feeling like she was running up the side of a mountain. There was no way she’d let him get away.
No monsters had run into the tunnel, so she dropped her wraith form. She didn’t fire her guns, unsure of her accuracy at this distance and angle.
Ryan had been right. They needed to know who the robed man served. This wasn’t done yet. She wasn’t done.
Yelling like a barbarian, Lyssa charged up the path. It became clear the light she was seeing was sunlight streaming in from outside. She was almost back on the surface, which meant possible vehicles.
The robed man cleared the tunnel ahead of Lyssa. She emerged seconds later. Bright light forced her to squint, and her eyes took a moment to adjust. For all her ease in the dark, bright sunlight wasn’t her friend. Precious seconds ticked away, marked by her heavy breathing.
Waves of sorcery crashed over her like a tightening vise, slowing her as she stumbled over the ground and fell to her knees. When she could finally see, she realized she’d emerged from the side of a hill, with the main mine entrance off in the distance. The ground rumbled, and an earsplitting crackling noise filled the air.
Maybe he hadn’t been bluffing after all.
Lyssa shook her head, trying to concentrate and figure out the immediate situation. The deputies’ cars were all gone, disappearing into the distance.
That was good. They had understood when they were outclassed. That lowered the chance of collateral damage.
Her target stood not far from the exit, holding a tuning fork in front of him. Swirling, twisting lines of bright white rippled from the ground and converged on the tuning fork, the source of the crackling. They all were coming from the same area.
“What the hell are you doing?” Lyssa shouted, pointing her guns at him.
“Starting the future,” the robed man cried. “You’ve forced this.”
“This is over,” she yelled. “Give it up. Don’t you get it? You’ve lost.”
“Do what you feel is necessary for you, and I’ll do what it is necessary for me.”
Lyssa gritted her teeth. Blasting him with ablative rounds at point-blank range would kill him, and she didn’t have time to mess around. She ejected a magazine and loaded normal ammo. The man ignored her as she lined up her gun and kneecapped him with two quick shots.
He yelped and fell forward, still clutching the tuning fork. She advanced on him, now pointing her gun at his head.
“Give it up,” she shouted. “I will kill you. The only reason you’re still alive is that I need information, but that doesn’t guarantee you’ll continue breathing. You know my reputation, and you know I’m willing to kill two-legged monsters as well as the four- and six-legged kind.”
“You’re too late.” The man groaned and dropped the tuning fork. The white energy streams ceased.
Lyssa didn’t know what was happening, but the sorcery pressure and the brightness pointed to something big. Heart pounding, she tried to think of something—anything—she could do.
Tremors shook the ground. The energy streams ripped into the earth, opening large cracks. A jagged scar ripped the ground open, the same overwhelming sorcery suffocating the area.
“They said to wait until Halloween,” the robed man shouted in a gleeful voice. “But it still worked. I thought it wouldn’t. I thought we need more life sources, but it’s working! Oh, my master’s plans aren’t ruined!”
The ground shook again, and a hill began to rise from the scarred and cracked ground. Dust, rocks, cactus, and other plants tumbled, knocked loose from their beds. As more dirt flowed off, billowing out, a rough shape emerged, then a body and five spindly legs.
Bile rose in the back of Lyssa’s throat. Sometimes the glass was half-full, and sometimes the glass was lying on the floor, shattered into a thousand pieces as the last water left in the house evaporated.
“This is just one of those days, isn’t it?” Lyssa squinted. “At least I know what the real plan was now.”
The gargantuan monster dwarfed the queen, and one of its legs alone was taller than her house. A dark, circular spine-covered body sat in the center of its legs. The spines twitched, shrank, and extended in no understandable pattern.
“Oh, wait.” Lyssa’s breath caught. “What am I worrying about? The sun will get it. You screwed up your timing, asshole.”
Each ponderous step of the twisted behemoth shook the ground. It wasn’t moving toward Lyssa. It was heading toward the road.
There was one major problem. She didn’t see any sign that it was burning.
The robed man cackled, “It worked. All the effort paid off. It isn’t as grand as I’d imagined, but you’re responsible for that. You can’t stop it now. The sun won’t stop it. Isn’t it glorious?”
“You know what you have to do,” Jofi said. “It’s the only chance. It might also be capable of regeneration.”
“Yeah.” Lyssa growled, “I hope this works.”
She holstered one pistol. With the other, she ejected and caught her magazine. Taking a deep breath, she stuffed it into her pocket and pulled out the showstopper magazine. She jammed into the pistol with a determined look.
“Destruction of the enemy to save a town is the logical course of action,” Jofi said. “You have no other weapon available that can bring it down. Miss Khatri and the other
s might come soon, but they won’t be able to inflict enough damage. It will take time to mobilize Shadow military assets.”
Her heart threatening to jump out of her chest, Lyssa began chanting loudly and imagining the sigils of power and memories of celestial doom necessary to fuel the showstoppers. A yellow sun exploded in a nova, consuming a nearby planet in her mind. She painted glyphs and sigils at a rhythmic pace while flipping to a mental picture of a universe collapsing into an impossibly bright singularity. It was time to summon the true darkness.
An all-too-uncomfortably-familiar swirling void whirled in front of the pistol. She’d gone a long time without having to use a showstopper, and now she’d been forced to use them only a month apart. So much for being careful.
Lyssa pointed at the center of the building-sized monster and pulled the trigger three times. Jofi was right. There was a chance that something that large would be able to survive, and every use of a showstopper risked her life and consciousness. She couldn’t take the chance of passing out before the job was finished. Unloading them all at once was her best tack.
A wave of cold shot through her body, followed by pure, fiery agony. Her eyes rolled up in her head and she fell, trying to scream in pain but unable to get her body to respond. Intense torture suffused every part of her body, ameliorated by odd counterwaves of numbness.
Was this death? At least she’d given her life trying to defend people.
Lyssa tried to keep her eyes open as the showstoppers struck the monster. Shadowy lines spread and crisscrossed the body over several seconds, covering it in impenetrable darkness. The darkness shifted toward the legs, spreading faster.
“No!” the robed man screamed. “Impossible!”
The all-consuming darkness covered the monster, leaving a perfect giant shadow like a hole carved out of reality towering over her. A dot of light appeared, then another, and another. Sunlight shone through the holes, enlarging them and washing away the darkness around them. Lyssa wasn’t sure how much time passed until there was nothing left where a town-killer had once stood.
She also couldn’t feel anything anymore. She could barely hear or see. Someone shouted, but it sounded muffled and distorted. Her eyes fluttered closed. There was no fear, only acceptance.
“You did the right thing,” Jofi said, his voice clear. “One life is not worth thousands. It is a beautiful death, worthy of your family.”
Lyssa didn’t want to die, but she couldn’t argue with his logic even in her clouded state. That didn’t sound like the bloodthirsty ramblings of a grand emptiness spirit who lived to feed on souls and spread entropy.
A Torch was supposed to punish evil and protect others. That meant their lives were always on the line.
She’d been wrong. Lee had been wrong. Jofi had been right. She didn’t have time to wait and let the monster lay waste to the town. There was no guarantee other spells or heavy weapons would have even worked.
An image shot into her mind. No. She couldn’t accept this. Not yet.
“Not…ready,” Lyssa wheezed. “Chris. Either need to find him or get revenge on the bastard who killed him.”
“You’re right,” Jofi replied.
She couldn’t be sure if she was imagining it, but it felt like there was a hint of something in his voice—actual emotion, sadness.
“You’re not ready,” he continued. “I can feel it. There’s something more. Something in you. A greater potential. Find your brother first. Then maybe you’ll be ready. Until then, I will continue to serve you.”
“What?”
“We had an agreement, Hecate,” shouted Aisha. “You’re not allowed to die yet, you selfish woman.”
“Monsters?” Lyssa groaned.
“They all disappeared,” Ryan said. “I think they all formed into that thing you blew away as we left the tunnel.”
Someone sat her up. She couldn’t see in front of her and couldn’t feel them touching her, but she could tell that her balance had been shifted. They continued talking, but the sound went in and out. The world didn’t seem real.
Sleep. That was what she needed to do. Sleep forever.
No. No. No. She needed to remember Chris.
Warmth grew in her chest and slowly spread over her body. She didn’t hurt much, but she also couldn’t move any of her muscles.
Her vision returned. Her eyes opened, and color returned to the world.
Aisha stood over her with her arms crossed, frowning. Antoine knelt in front of her, his hand on her shoulder while he chanted in Latin.
“I’m not dead,” she murmured.
“Not yet, anyhow,” Antoine said. “Would you prefer to be dead?”
“Not on my list of greatest plans for today, but I also don’t think I’ll be doing a triathlon tomorrow.”
Aisha scoffed. “If you can make jokes like that, you’re fine.”
Chapter Thirty
“Help me up,” Lyssa said. Her senses had returned, but her muscles barely responded to her efforts. A cloud of fatigue hung over her mind.
That made sense. The showstoppers inflicted more injury to her soul than her body.
Antoine offered her his shoulder. “Up you go.” He nodded at the robed man, whose knee wounds were gone. “I figured we should stop him from bleeding out, but good job all around.”
“Good job for you,” Lyssa offered, her voice barely a whisper.
Ryan stood over the man, glaring at him. His hilt was in his hand, with the barest shimmer of the ultrasonic sword visible as dust bounced off.
Without the army of monsters, the robed man was just a prisoner of four powerful Illuminated. Any of them could kill him with ease. He glared at Lyssa, his eyes filled with hatred.
Antoine helped Lyssa stagger over to the robed man. There was nothing distinctive about his plain features. She didn’t recognize him or have any idea who he served.
“Who are you?” Lyssa asked. “You have to get that you’ve lost. Your army’s gone. Your town-killer’s gone. We beat you. Now you’re going to answer our questions.”
“You ruined everything,” the robed man snarled. “All my master’s work destroyed for nothing but one pointless death. If you’d only waited until tomorrow, even your twisted darkness sorcery wouldn’t have been able to stop everything when we had all of the ultimate creations. We were supposed to test everything then.”
“You shouldn’t have lured those two guys down here,” Lyssa replied. A shiver wracked her body. “You screwed up. No dead livestreamers, no investigation, no Torches. You shouldn’t have sent the email. Then you could have started World War Kaiju all you wanted and taken down half the county before we got there.”
“Email?” The man stared at her. “What email?”
“The one you sent, the one where you convinced Lucky Nardi to come down here. The one where you taunted Torches.” Lyssa tried to shrug, but her shoulders didn’t respond. “You got not one but three and a bonus healer.”
“No, no, no.” The man shook his head. “We sent no email. I sent no email. Why would we bring you to us before our plan was ready? There were supposed to be five destroyers, not one. Why would we squander all that time and planning? All those resources? All that power? For what purpose?”
“Then who the hell sent the email?” Lyssa asked. “I didn’t imagine it, nor did Lucky Nardi. It was real.”
“I don’t know, but whoever they are, they’re our enemies. I hope my master finds them and makes them pay.”
“Why?” Aisha glared at him. “Why create monstrosities and release them onto the world? What could such a disgusting, twisted aberration accomplish but pointless destruction? Your master is an abomination, and the Society will execute him for what he’s done.”
“For trying to create a better world?” the man replied. “The only way to get stronger is to force things. You’re a Torch. You understand that.” He coughed up blood and smiled. “If you don’t understand now, you’ll understand soon enough. This wasn’t my master’s only
plan. You think you’re clever, but someone helped you. It won’t change anything in the end.”
Lyssa frowned. “Antoine, set me down and keep him alive. There’s no way he gets the easy out. We need him.”
“It’s too late,” the robed man said, coughing up more blood. “They’ve protected me from you.”
Antoine set Lyssa on her knees and headed toward the robed man. She couldn’t support herself and fell forward, to be caught by Aisha and steadied.
The healer set his hand on the prisoner’s forehead and began chanting in Latin and moving the tip of his staff.
Hissing, Antoine yanked back his hand and shook it out. The robed man’s eyes clouded over, and his veins turned black. He’d stopped breathing.
Lyssa was trying hard not to pass out. She couldn’t formulate a decent question.
“What happened?” Aisha asked, staring at the robed man.
Antoine clutched his hand. “I haven’t seen anything like this in a long time. Damn, those people are messed up. This was even worse than their monsters.”
Aisha glared at him. “He’s dead? But you were healing him. You don’t strike me as capable of that level of incompetence.”
“Sorry, but they tricked me.” Antoine frowned. “He had a passive spell on him that reversed sorcerous healing. I don’t get why it didn’t go off when I healed him before. I sensed sorcery, but I figured it was just leftover shard stuff.”
“He triggered it somehow,” Ryan said with a frown. “He thought he could get away before, but he finally gave up and took himself out. He was never going to let us capture him.”
“Why would anyone create a spell like that?” Lyssa asked with a shudder.
“In the past, it was done as punishment.” Antoine shook his head. “I would have never thought of someone using it for protection, but I also would have never thought of feeding an army of monsters to make a huge one and set it loose on a town.”
Aisha scoffed. “You don’t have a corrupt mind. There’s no shame in that.”
Lyssa groaned at her churning stomach at the situation. “Damn it. We lost him.”