Annals of the Keepers - Rage

by Christiaan Hile

  Maddox was being driven back by concentrated fire from the Vrae formation which was still combatting the onslaught from both the Reavers and the Korin Shai.

  The casualties on the Vrae side were mounting, Kercy surmised, by the scattered bodies that at least one third of the attacking force were incapacitated or dead. Keelan was beset by a few Korin Shai and was holding his own against their energy lances by moving in to closer melee range, negating the longer reach of their spears.

  She increased the magnification on her helmet visor and saw the distinctive red cape of Lintorth flowing through the press of Vrae soldiers, leaving broken and bleeding bodies in his wake. The beam, whatever it was, had ceased as Lintorth moved into Vrae-populated areas.

  Kercy watched the Kryth, Reavers, and Vrae fight below her current perch when she saw much smaller beams of yellow energy lance into the melee. Sometimes the beams would fire straight and true, striking a glancing blow on the acrobatic Korin Shai as they danced through the storm of plasma bolts and projectiles. Other times, the beams would arc until they hit a Korin Shai. Fascinating, she thought. Just as she was tracking where the golden energy bursts were originating, another brilliant beam flashed through her vision. The bright energy that radiated off the beam caused her optics to darken. When her vision returned, she saw other Reavers had also sought shelter from the beam, and the Vrae around Lintorth had either been vaporized or were giving him a wide berth as whomever was aiming that destructive power tried to hit him.

  Kercy extended the stock on her rifle and deployed its bipod to stabilize her aim. Her HUD calculated trajectories and angles for her, saving her time. Tracking the last beam’s origin point, she found a cluster of Vrea and opened fire. Firing a salvo of explosive rounds into the Vrae weapon crew was satisfying as she watched the explosions pepper the ground at the crew’s feet as they clustered around the archaic weapon.

  The barrel of the large black weapon was not machined with function over form in mind, as all Ordinance weapons were. It looked…organic somehow, but with ostentatious decorations as a filigreed metal casing whorled from the barrel to the base.

  Typical Vrae, Kercy thought.

  A few Vrae fell under the initial salvo. Kercy fired again, this time targeting the ornate weapon instead. The explosives erupted against the ornate surface, causing more Vrae to suffer from shrapnel of their own decoration. The weapon itself seemed to suffer no noticeable damage. The Vrae crew were determined, still manipulating the weapon to fire again into the battleground.

  “No,” she growled, envisioning another Reaver getting disintegrated. She forced herself to calm down, slowing her rapid breathing and heartbeat. Her sensors tracked seven Vrae below around the weapon. Seven gentle squeezes on her weapon grip sent the same number of more explosive rounds across the distance, impacting each skull before detonating.

  The Vrae weapons crew, clustered around the Gashnee weapon, dropped in quick succession like dolls whose strings had been cut by a capricious god.

  ∞∞∞

  “To the weapon, fools!” Issara shrieked to the nearest Vrae soldiers enduring the barrage from the Kryth and Human attackers. Stabbing a hand in the direction of the Gashnee weapon, Issara saw panic in their eyes as the Vrae hunkered behind their energy shields. They looked around, searching for orders from their immediate superiors to counter the noble-born, safe from all harm inside his impervious body shield. None of them knew how to even fire the weapon and they had just seen the former crew’s heads explode one by one. The soldiers still suffered losses but were unwilling to leave the relative safety of the formation compared to that death trap.

  Infuriated at the Vrae not obeying his commands and the state of the assault despite the numbers he had brought, Issara seethed. He had brought four whole covenants, outnumbering both the Human and Kryth’s combined forces twenty to one, yet his troops were being mowed down and now they cowered. His beloved Gashnee treasures had not had the overwhelming advantage that he had expected.

  Renewed in his confidence, he strode forward as if walking through his own palace towards the weapon. The Vrae soldiers, seeing their noble and commander stroll without fear in the middle of the crossfire, followed his general direction while maintaining as much cover as the terrain allowed. His silhouette glowed and rippled, absorbing an array of ballistics from the frontal assault. He continued his steady march, then fired a zartil at a Korin Shai that charged him. The Vrae watched as the beam arced from a sure miss to hitting the Korin Shai square in the chest, burning through its armor. As they watched their fearless nobleman continue striding and killing with ease, the Vrae warriors moved closer to him and redoubled their counterattack, bolstered by their invincible champion.

  Firing his zartils, the whispers grew louder. He was almost there. Turning and walking towards the black weapon, “Yes, I will burn them all,” he muttered, oblivious to all attacks.

  The ornate Gashnee weapon thrummed with power. Energy crackled and lurked beneath the filigreed surface of the barrel. Under the Vrae metalwork, twisted tendrils of alien artwork stretched across the skinlike exterior. He was mesmerized by the alien patterns, still not understood by any Vrae long after its discovery.

  It was a cursed weapon. Many Vrae had gone mad and taken their own lives after working with it for too long.

  Issara smiled.

  “Yes. Burn them all.”

  It had been in his possession for ten cycles and he was well-versed in how to operate the Aerniss Gvar. Somehow, he knew that he could crew and fire it by himself. He chuckled at his genius.

  Striding towards the Gashnee weapon, Issara didn’t notice the scattered line of fist-sized, black pucks between him and his destination.

  Multiple explosions erupted before him, turning the shield’s surface a dark violet as it absorbed the waves of force from the concussion grenades that now delineated a rough perimeter around the Gashnee weapon. The shield absorbed as much energy as it was capable, but Issara was still shoved backwards ten or fifteen meters by the concussive force. His confident expression widened in shock and horror as he was thrown back by the wave of explosions. Gasping in surprise, he regained his feet.

  ∞∞∞

  Kercy watched all this from her position overlooking the battlefield.

  She watched, perplexed, as the Vrae stood up and resumed his path towards the beam weapon. She watched in shock as he touched it, then the same glowing surface around the single Vrae grew to envelop the entire weapon.

  The Vrae moved around the weapon, touching it at various points with a surety that made Kercy worry. “Is he going to fire it himself?’ she asked aloud. Her mind replayed a flash of light and a pair of bodiless Reaver legs falling to the ground.

  “Void take you!” she snarled, hurdling over her cover and sprinting towards the weapon itself.

  ∞∞∞

  Pushing the familiar glyphs on the base of the Aerniss Gvar gave the Ascendant of Dal Karsis a sense of satisfaction. The raised blocks inscribed with Gashnee symbols had to be depressed and locked into position to create a complete cypher. There were cyphers for aiming, firing, and a multitude of other functions.

  The blocks felt like polished rock. Some were warm to the touch, others cold. The cyphers had a vast range of complexity depending on the function.

  Issara had spent cycles training his crew to learn sequences of cyphers, the crew that now lay dead all around him.

  Stepping over corpses as he paced around the weapon, he pushed the last glyph and completed the sequence to fire the weapon. It hummed, complimenting the voices inside his head.

  “I will burn them all…master,” Issara said aloud. He lingered on a glyph that grew warm beneath his fingertips, distracted by the whispers inside his head promising victory. He smiled as he continued keying in the sequence.

  The impact on top of the now vast shield startled him. Looking up, he saw a figure in black armor splayed out, limbs grasping to find tenuous purchase on the top of his shield. The Human drew i
ts arm back and rammed the point of the blade from its gauntlet into the shield. She punched the shield several times, then held her blade there. The Human must be exhausted, Issara thought. Energy flashed and rippled around him, still deflecting other projectiles and plasma blasts, but Issara felt fear clutch his heart when the tip of the blade started to push through the protective barrier.

  Panicking, he fired a zartil at the Human.

  ∞∞∞

  Kercy slammed into the shield, surprising the Vrae within. The surface was not rigid, as she had suspected, but felt gelatinous. She sank into it, before it righted itself and again felt solid beneath her.

  She drew her right arm back, extending a blade, and punched the shield as hard as she could. She punched again and again, each time the shield counteracting her efforts. She saw it indent a little with each impact, then rebound. So, she punched once more and pushed, willing the blade to puncture the shield. As she watched, her blade started to sink through the membrane.

  Kercy wondered how this technology worked. Impervious to projectiles and plasma, but now her blade had penetrated. Maybe not at first, but…

  She continued to push with her blade. It was like punching through thick, cold mud. It felt as if the shield was pushing back at her somehow.

  She saw the flashes before the yellow beams struck her. She felt searing heat that radiated through the plates in her Reaver suit, blistering her skin, and the cool flow of battle drugs to ease her pain. One beam hit her arm, burning the skin beneath the armor. She grunted from the sudden and intense pain, but her HUD showed no structural damage to her bones. She didn’t understand how the beams bypassed the shield that withheld her, but she didn’t have time to think about it.

  The nanites will handle it, she thought.

  Kercy leaned into her blade, ignoring the incoming yellow beams, pushing against the membrane with her whole body. She deployed her other gauntlet blade and she punched with it in the same place, tearing through the shield.

  ∞∞∞

  Issara fired his zartils at the tall Human pushing its way through the shield. He saw the Human shudder as he fired again and again, each beam sizzling against the black carapace. He saw the armor burn away, and the skin along with it, then it would start to heal and close. The Human’s intimidating mask seemed to snarl at him as it continued to claw its way through his impenetrable shield.

  “No…” Issara breathed, backing away in terror from this unstoppable creature. Issara moved along the weapon’s body, away from the Human clad in black armor with glowing green eyes, as he attempted to fire it again.

  “Barsa!” Issara screeched as he fumbled with more glyphs. “To me!”

  ∞∞∞

  Parrying the crackling spearhead with his three-fingered hand, the Vartis laughed in the face of the Korin Shai trying to kill him. His synethetic vocal cords amplified by his helmet echoed with mechanical, mad laughter. His bronze arm moved with a life of its own, blocking attacks with unnatural speed and skill. Barsa knew without a doubt the arm was moving of its own accord now, but did not care as it pulled the Korin Shai near and snapped its neck.

  Shoulder, elbow, and wrist all acted, defying the anatomical limits of a flesh-and-bone limb. Turning at impossible angles, the arm deflected another Korin Shai’s attacks with ease. Barsa watched the three fingers grab the haft behind the blazing spearhead after it had scored a shallow scratch on his right side below the shoulder socket. Still, he felt incredible pain from the glancing blow. Nonetheless, his prosthetic hand acted without his conscious effort and grasped the shaft, bent backwards, and pulled the Kryth towards him. The three fingers straightened and he could swear the tips sharpened as he watched the arm punch through the Korin Shai’s chest, armor and all.

  Barsa drove his heel into the hip of the faltering Korin Shai, pushing it off the arm, as the fingers relaxed and reformed into its relatively normal, three-fingered hand. He could not understand the voices whispering in his mind other than their insistence and a sense of…purpose. Staring at his empty hand, he nodded, agreeing to do…something. He wasn’t sure what the voices wanted him to do, but he felt a strange compulsion to please them. Distracted, he did not see a red cape flutter in his peripheral vision, nor the mighty kick that sent him sprawling across the stone floor.

  Barsa rolled, then came to a stop as his arm dug its claws into the ground. He climbed to his feet, the Gashnee arm clenching into a fist as he saw the Kryth who had nearly killed him on Oxgris. The hulking figure looked a bit singed, his once-fine armor scorched, beaten, and splattered with blood. He held a kesslar blade low by his side, but his eyes held a hint of merriment.

  “Lintorth Sar,” the Vartis cackled. “Back to kill me again?” The bronze appendage mirrored Barsa’s anger and flashed towards the Kryth with incredible speed, whipping talon-tipped fingers to rip out his throat.

  It was swept aside, centimeters before striking Lintorth, who deflected the clawed hand in a screeching shower of sparks with his blade.

  ∞∞∞

  Lintorth charged after deflecting the Gashnee arm, closing with the Vartis. The kesslar blade flashed up, then streaked down towards Barsa as he stood there, laughing. The disturbing appendage reached out and sank its talons into Lintorth’s shoulder with a sickening suction sound. The talons were not able to close and rip the flesh from Lintorth as his falling blade had separated where the Vrae’s flesh melded with the metal arm.

  Lintorth rotated, his heel catching the side of the Vartis’ head, indenting the helmet and throwing Barsa sideways. As soon as he came to a stop, Barsa spasmed as a Korin Shai spear pierced his side and discharged a burst of crackling energy, boiling his insides. His piercing scream filtered through his mechanical voicebox sounded like an automaton raging against creation.

  Lintorth dropped his blade and grasped the arm still embedded in him. Without hesitation, he pulled the grotesque thing free from himself with a grumble of pain. The arm, inert now that it wasn’t attached to a living host, hung frozen in its last act, reaching for an invisible heart. The metallic screaming was silenced by a savage twist of the Korin Shai’s spear point.

  “They come…” the Vartis whispered as he stopped writhing and his eyes glazed.

  Lintorth threw the repulsive limb to the Korin Shai, who caught it.

  Yet another Gashnee artifact better left in a vault, he thought.

  ∞∞∞

  Falling to the floor inside the strange shield, Kercy groaned, suffering from the multiple burns beneath her armor. The Reaver suit had absorbed the energy beams and taken the brunt of the damage. She wasn’t bleeding, so at least there was that. The pain killers and battle drugs had been chosen to avoid conflicting effects, so she remained augmented while desensitized. The nanites were already repairing the burned tissue before it could scar or otherwise impede her abilities.

  Pushing herself up to her hands and knees, she looked around for the Vrae and his damned incinerating weapon.

  We’ll see how he likes it, Kercy thought.

  She found him backed up in a corner and fired a plasma round.

  He cried out in pain and walked out from behind the beam weapon, raising his hands in surrender.

  He took a few steps towards her, slowly, then sank to his knees, blood spreading on his fine robes.

  She hadn’t hit his knee, but had hit close enough that he wasn’t running anytime soon.

  Kercy strode towards him, weapon drawn on his head.

  ∞∞∞

  “Wait, wait,” Issara insisted, pushing against the Human, trying to protect himself from the sharp projections on the surface of the black armor. A gauntled hand twisted the fabric on the front of his robe in a powerful grip and hauled him forward until his face was inches from the terrifying mask covering its face. The tall Human held him aloft from the ground, waiting for him to speak. It was much taller than any other Human he’d seen and he gulped at its strength. “I’m the Ascendant of Dal–” was interrupted by a backhand cuff to his fa
ce that lacerated the skin and made blood run down his cheek onto his expensive embroidery.

  “Ascendant?” the Human asked, its voice higher than he expected, but no less chilling. A…female? The emerald optical lenses themselves seemed to stare into the deepest corners of his mind.

  “You…you had best be what I think you are, Vrae, or I will avenge Cetan’s death right now and send you to the Void.”

  The Human held its other hand with an extended gauntlet blade right before his face, covered in Kryth and Vrae blood. She lowered it until it was centimeters from his chin.

  “Who are you and why have you attacked us?” the Human growled the words in Issara’s face.

  “I am a collector of artifacts–” he began, crying out as she growled again and pressed the point of her blade against the flesh of his throat.

  “Lie to me, Vrae,” the Human started, “and I will kill you here and now.”

  Issara began to panic. “I am the Ascendant–” the blade pricked his skin. “Stop!” Issara gasped. “I am not your enemy! I am a noble of the Vrae Javril Empire and I came for Lintorth Sar only!”

  The Human waited, then released him from her grip. He fell back to the ground, crying out as he did from the wound to his leg. He reached up to his neck, his hand came back with a little of his own blood.

  She stood still for a few moments, contemplating. The green eyes on her fearsome helmet glowed with baleful intent. The Human’s blade remained unsheathed and could end his life faster than he could activate the zartil. Issara remained motionless, fearing any movement would hasten his death.

  “Please…” he begged, the word awkward and unfamiliar on his tongue. “Hear what I have to say…for the sake of my House.”