“Get me in…this fuckin’….shield! Right damn now!”
Becky could see Phuong, she just couldn’t get to Phuong. Her powers also couldn’t go through the huge, circle of demonic magic, which meant she got to stand there like an idiot while her friend fought a fucking demon lord.
Or…maybe not exactly stand there.
Demon lord number two ripped out of its own portal, sucking up dirt and rock from the ground like a giant vacuum as it grew into the shape of a…huge…dirt mound. With a big ram on the front. Or something.
“Second isn’t demon,” Alex said beside her in his accented English, looking at Phuong’s battle with the closest thing to concern she’d ever seen the man show. He touched the shield thing trapping them inside. His hand sparked with golden light before he pulled it away. “It’s elemental.”
“I don’t rightly give two shits what it is!” Becky spun to Seamus as she turned her mace back into a shield. “Can you get us in there or not? And where the fuck is Blake?”
The two planar lords weren’t the only problem, which was a hell of a sentence. More and more portals had opened all over the place. Becky didn’t have time to stand around gawking.
She at least saw other players now coming from the walls, dozens of powers blasting into the enemy as the teams came rushing to support. She had to assume there were more elsewhere. That the other sides of the wall were less bad and getting under control.
Demi’s giant pets were also still alive and swinging. She was right with them, too, pumping out that deadly gas as she (and Lodie) turned everything around them into a no man’s land.
“Let’s mow the grass,” John said, crackling with power. “Ready, lass?”
Becky nodded, trying not to worry about her shrinking mana pool. With a last glance to make sure Alex and Seamus were good, the two ‘tanks’ charged out together with just enough distance for the big man’s ‘Shocking Strand’ to function.
John’s electricity formed between them like a blue, writhing rope, crackling with deadly power. Then they ran straight into the biggest cluster of demons, the arc between them cutting down demons like a ‘scythed chariot’, or so Blake had once described it. To Becky it was more like the world’s deadliest game of limbo. And demons were really shitty at it.
“I’m here! I’m here! What’s happening?”
Becky almost sagged with relief as Carl materialized out of the air right behind them. He looked at the giant elemental lord, then the huge purple sphere holding Phuong and a demon in a duel that looked more like a blur.
“Oh.”
“Yeah fuckin’ oh.” Becky pointed at the elemental lord moving towards the city. “Could ya maybe stop that? Or go get Blake or Erik to open this stupid thing?”
“Blake’s kinda busy. Erik messaged me. He’s coming. I’ll uh, stop the giant rock…thing. No problem. Phuong’s fine. Don’t worry about him.”
With that, Carl warped away again, and Becky jogged forward, slamming her shield into a demon’s face before catching John’s attention.
She gestured back towards the other primal lord, and the big Scotsman got the idea. They turned and charged back the other way, electric limbo cord leaving a trail of destruction in their wake.
**
Demi filled the air with death, and really hoped the other players didn’t go into it. They’d all been briefed and shown and warned a hundred times. But in a big swirling battle things…happened.
“I’m out of bombs!” Lodie shouted. It wasn’t alarm. It was more like happy surprise. “I need to go back and get more!”
“No. Stay here with me.”
Demi physically gripped the princess’ hand. Lodie had plenty to offer with her other little trinkets, and anyway Demi didn’t want her out of her sight in the chaos. She’d promised Mason she’d protect the other girls, and she didn’t mean to break that promise.
Her prestige power elementals swiped away another charging group of demons with angry growls. Seamus fell back beside her, blasting another wave of flame and letting out a string of impossibly Irish curses at the demons that had chased him.
“Er, uh, pardon me French, ladies.” He stopped to tip a pretend hat at her and Lodie, then ran off blasting again.
Demi wasn’t good at closing demon portals. In fact, she wasn’t very good at killing planar creatures at all. Living things were far more affected by her magic. These elementals and demons shrugged off most of her spell’s suffering until their physical forms were completely broken.
She felt an almost painful longing for Mason. To see and smell him and turn to find him there beside her, terrifying all these little bastards with one good look. Why did everything have to be such an attention-requiring mess? She really just wanted to go home.
“The big rock guy. Let’s bring him down.”
Carl appeared out of nowhere, and Demi just about ripped Lodie’s hand off in startled panic. She put the other to her racing heart, then waved off the elementals as one came lumbering over to turn Carl into a pancake.
“Hey, how come that littler rock guy looked like he was gonna hit me? Was he gonna hit me?”
“Just…go. I’ll buff you, and get the ‘littler rock guys’ to support.” She winced and turned to Lodie. “Do you have a different kind of bomb? Big enough for that? One that won’t kill every player anywhere close to it?”
Lodie looked excited at first, but then deflated at ‘that won’t kill nearby players’. She shook her head. Demi let out a breath, then went to gesture at Carl to get moving. But the annoying man was already gone again.
“I can’t buff you if I can’t find you!” she yelled.
Then she walked towards the giant planar lord, doing her best to get her elementals to follow. She tried not to worry about Becky and the others, knowing there was only so much she could do. And mostly, she just really missed Mason.
**
Carl stuck his ridiculous dagger into the elemental lord’s ‘shoulder’, dragging a line of open wound down from top to bottom. The thing’s dirt body shook. And scattered up some dust. The wound sealed entirely about a second later.
“Oh come on.”
Carl was forced to warp as the thing lazily swiped a giant arm at him. Well, ‘arm’ was creative license. The thing was more like a moving hill covered in vine-tentacles. It was ignoring the players attacking it completely as it rolled on towards the walls of Nassau. Presumably they did not want it to arrive.
“Well at least it doesn’t really do anything!” He shouted at the handful of eastern players circling and attacking with their own weapons and powers from the front and sides.
A few seconds later the earth started to shake. Then the dirt and rock all around them started ripping apart as creatures formed from the ground. Oh, and apparently the air. He really should have kept his mouth shut.
“It’s summoning earth and wind elementals,” he called. “Focus on the air. They almost always shoo…”
His Prescience power flared, and he ducked as a blast of electricity whipped just past his head. Oh how he hated flying things. And shooting things. And pretty much everything that didn’t just stand there and die like good apocalypse monsters.
“Demi! Is there anything you can do about the damn…”
He was forced to warp away from another vine-tentacle, but this time he chased the thing and gave it a few slices until it fell off. He grinned and chased after another before he noticed the first one literally just pulled up more dirt and stone and re-formed.
“OK.” He banished his dagger and looked around. “So it’s a magic dirt hydra with no organs. I’m getting Blake.” He pointed at the eastern players and gave them two thumbs up. “Good job! You’re probably hurting it! Be right back!”
With that he warped away again, with close to zero expectation those poor bastards were damaging the thing at all. Most jobs were hard because you had the wrong tool. And as painful as it was to admit, sometimes, you just needed a God damn Nimitz brother.
**
“Another portal to the east!” Chinua shouted. “Ready to move, Blake, or do you need more time?”
Did he need more time? Him?
That was it. That was the last straw. Yes, he was ready. He’d been ready about two minutes earlier. Compounded with the waiting from the last seventeen portals, multiplied by the amount of idle portions of his brain, and Blake had been waiting for these people for hours.
He was officially tired of humoring Mason’s minions. He did not need a ‘ground team’ to support him as he closed portals. In fact, if they hadn’t all been such small minded, vengeful idiots, he could have had Seul-ki with him on his platform, and hardly spent any mana.
The thought galled him, stuck in his brain like a thorn. He floated down to meet Chinua’s eyes directly, most of his pleasantness gone.
“This is inefficient. Just take your people and…”
Chinua held up a finger as if Blake should wait, eyes glazing as he received some kind of message. The absolute gall. It took everything in Blake’s power not to snap at the man, or just fly off and finish the damn portals on his own. If these people had any idea just how utterly simplistic this all was, and how he could…
“They need you north. Some kind of demon lords. Go now. We’ll catch up. We can deal with what’s left here.”
Blake took all his anger and impatience and shoved them into a Partition. Or at least most of it. He smiled politely at Chinua and flew off, rising up above the city. He looked out at the nearby section of wall under major attack with his Arcane Sight, blinking with surprise when he saw the rifts. They were pulsing with massive power.
“Navi?”
His familiar popped out of his pocket with a little hum and flash of light. He heard a screech and crushed a flying demon with a flick of telekinetic power, not bothering to look.
“Yes, Master?”
“Identify those rifts, please. And tell me what’s going on. It’s difficult to see, and I don’t want to get too close. Not yet.”
“Identifying, Master.”
Navi could teleport now and vanished with a blink. She popped back in front of him in a few seconds.
“Portal one - earth plane. Portal two - deep infernal. Two high tier planar lords have emerged. One is locked in an event duel with the player Phuong. The other is attacking the city. Do you want the names of all the nearby players?”
Blake shook his head and crossed his arms, tapping his fingers on a tricep. Phuong was something of a pain in Blake’s ass. To say the old man ‘disliked’ him was an understatement. He also disliked the orcs, and Seul-ki, and likely clouds and uppity young folk. He used whatever influence he had to counsel Mason to dislike them all, too.
This wasn’t ideal. And it meant his death would be…convenient, before this doom business was over. If it was timed right.
Sad? Perhaps. And a loss to humanity in the short term. The very short term. Because he was…well, old. And he’d die sooner than later if things were just left to their natural progression.
But then you just never knew in this new world. Maybe the clever old warrior would figure out immortality. Maybe the sour bastard would be a pain in Blake’s side for eternity. Now there was an unpleasant thought.
On the other hand, Blake couldn’t risk his relationship with Mason over it. He’d been asked to help now and he couldn’t just ‘get lost’. The death of the old man would be an unfortunate emotional blow to his brother, which brought Blake no pleasure. There’d be questions. Maybe even accusations from Chinua.
No. He couldn’t just ‘let’ it happen. But Blake’s Mental Multitudes were already offering suggestions. There were a great deal of choices between ‘save Phuong’ and ‘ensure Phuong’s death’ that might yet yield results. Blake only had to pick one.
He floated heroically towards the planar rifts, cycling through the options. One of two of them even made him smile.
