NOVEL NEXT 097 - Running Wild
Blake leaned, panting, against a shattered planter. The previous twenty minutes had been taxing. The fight upstairs wasn't the random assault he had expected: It was a cattle drive. The husks were definitely coordinating somehow, and they had been trying to corner him. And just as he had seen from the maintenance window, the husks didn't seem to have the same objectives as the truly mindless undead. Wherever possible, the husks had done their best to keep the wet, fleshy monsters away from him.
Best he figured was that the wet ones wanted to kill and eat him, and the husks wanted… Probably the same thing, really, but they didn't want the others getting to Blake first.
"You've been awfully quiet," Blake said to the air. His passenger was still around, but hadn't manifested in almost two hours. On the one hand, Blake didn't mind the peace, but on the other … Well, he didn't trust the silence.
Rax flickered into being a few yards away, looking grim.
"Like I said before, I'm not here to get you killed," he said, expression souring as he took in the surroundings. "You already have a lot going on, and frankly? You're close. You'll figure it out without me distracting you."
"Still, it's a bit weird of you to just vanish," Blake said. "You were so chatty."
"You needed a kick in the philosophical ass to start considering your own Path. To look at it outside of how the Roadwarden class has informed your opinions. I did that. You acted like a little bitch about the entire thing, but it got you thinking." Rax spat to the side. A calculated little gesture—the bastard didn't even have spit. Just another way to get under Blake's skin.
"Now?" Rax continued. "Now I don't think either of us wants to see one another. Not unless you start moving away from the gods-damned point again, anyway."
Blake opened his mouth to reply, but the manifestation flickered and vanished. The asshole knew how to get the last word in, at least. Blake decided he'd deal with the title-born cretin once and for all after he secured the next sub-core.
He pushed off the planter. Being down here with the source of the telekinetic strings was only marginally better than being swarmed upstairs. At least the problem was in front of him now. He checked his HUD. The sub-core was two hundred yards ahead, through the center of the sprawling, two-story mall. He began to pick his way through the ruined ground floor.
The mall floor was a kill box waiting for a target. Too open. Too quiet. A few husks stood scattered among the wreckage of storefronts, motionless as statues. But the threads were everywhere. They drifted in the air like ghostly spider silk, almost invisible until they caught the simulated sunlight. They were the real threat. The eyes and hands of whatever was controlling the husks.
He laughed despite himself, realizing that the husks didn't want to eat him. They probably wanted to serve him up to the thing controlling them. It was obvious. The fact that he hadn't put it together immediately was proof of his growing exhaustion. His hastily developed anti-thread countermeasure was mentally taxing.
One of the strings shimmered into existence near his right elbow. He felt it through his aura before he saw it. A cold prickle against his awareness. He didn't flinch. Didn't break stride. He focused his mind, a pinpoint of pure Intent. He imagined the sharp, clean edge of his knife. He visualized the flicker of light it would make as it cleaved through the air. To his right, that flicker manifested. It struck the ethereal strand, snapping it cleanly. One end dissolved into the air, while the remaining thread recoiled as if burned.
He'd been working on it since the third or fourth time they'd coiled around his limbs. It was an extension of the training Eland had put him through. His thoughts manifested as a pure expression of will. This time not a shove or a push, but a cut. Surgical. Precise.
It was, in Blake's estimation, pretty fucking cool. It was unquestionably magic, and something he had worked out for himself on the fly. Blake Connover: Space Wizard.
Another thread dropped from the ceiling, aiming for his head. This time, his reaction was faster. Smoother. He didn't think about the blade this time, just the severing flash of light. Snip. The thread vanished a foot from his hair. He was getting better at it. Battlewright was helping, of course, but it didn't actually kick in until after Blake had successfully performed the maneuver for the second time.
Ahead, his path was blocked by the skeletal remains of a grand staircase, its marble steps cracked and covered in grime. It curved up into the darkness of the second floor, a wide, sweeping structure that cut off his view of the central concourse. He moved around its base, boots crunching on broken glass.
He cleared the last of the wrought-iron railing.
And stopped.
One hundred and thirty yards out, Blake saw the source of the threads standing in the open space where a statue might have once stood.
It was a blasphemy of biology. A thick, pulsating torso balanced on a half-dozen scythed, spider-like legs that clicked on the tiled floor. One of its limbs was a dedicated shuttle, scooping twitching biomass from a pile of dismembered undead and jamming it into a gaping, drooling maw set in its chest. The sounds of its eating were wet and constant.
Its other limbs danced in the air, weaving the hundreds of shimmering threads that filled the mall. And beneath the maw, a sac of glistening, translucent flesh contracted. A new husk, slick and malformed, slithered out onto the floor. It spasmed once, then staggered to its feet, its head turning toward Blake.
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And the worst part was that it was standing directly over a crystal that Blake recognized. A spider-legged nightmare birthing husks on top of his objective. This was fucked. Utterly, comprehensively fucked.
He hesitated, but only for a moment. There was nothing to do but push forward.
Blake broke into a run. One hundred thirty yards. Not a sprint. A steady, ground-eating pace. Verdict came up, barking. He didn't aim for the central creature. Not yet. He targeted the husks emerging from the rubble and shadows. They had clearly been kept in reserve for just such an occasion. That was fine; the husks were lightweights compared to the other undead. Normal rounds were enough to stagger them, so Blake didn't hold back.
The air thickened. The threads, hundreds of them, writhed. They lifted chunks of concrete, twisted rebar, shattered display cases. The debris flew at him, a storm of jagged projectiles. He didn't slow. He weaved. His [Quicksilver Mind] tracked the trajectories, his body responding with the fluid grace of [Unfettered Stride]. A slab of marble the size of a car door whistled past his ear. A shard of glass spun by, close enough to slice a thread from his sleeve.
One hundred twenty yards.
The husks were closer now, a shambling wall of dead flesh and bone. He kept firing, thinning their numbers, creating gaps.
One hundred ten yards.
A familiar heat surged from his core, rippling outward like wildfire. The link—dead too long—ignited. No flicker. No slow burn. Just her, slamming back into his skull like a bullet to the brain.
Kitt.
The knot in his jaw loosened, tension evaporating as if a phantom burden had been whisked away. Her presence surged through their bond—a maelstrom of thought and sensation, an awareness storming into his own. He was thrilled she was back, but the situation demanded his focus.
Welcome back. Can't talk. Busy.
Her presence sharpened, insistent, cutting through the noise of battle. It wasn't her normal voice. It was pure, undiluted thought, flowing directly into his own consciousness.
Blake. Listen. You needed to be at that sub-core thirty seconds ago, but ASAP is the next-best thing. Here's the plan.
Before he could even form a question, she unloaded on him. The plan didn't come in words. It was a deluge of thought and memory poured directly into his mind. He saw it all in an instant, and reassessed how happy he was that she was back. Still, the plan was sound. It just wasn't going to be pleasant.
Fuck me, he thought, gritting his teeth. Alright. Let's do it.
One hundred yards. Blake's world narrowed to the path ahead. Kitt's plan was a cascade of pure, terrifying logic. He understood the stakes. He opened the floodgates of their shared mana core. There wouldn't be any holding back until this was through.
Power, raw and unrestrained, surged through him. He poured it all into [Unfettered Stride], pushing the skill beyond its limits. His muscles screamed as mana, guided by the skill's innate logic, saturated every fiber. He didn't think about the cost. Didn't care. The route that the skill deemed "optimal" was a suicidal ballet of impossible physics, and he followed it without question.
His pace exploded. He kicked off a flying chunk of concrete, the impact creating a spiderweb of cracks through the projectile. He used the momentum to launch himself sideways, running three steps along a plane of pure force he conjured mid-air. The world became a smear of gray and brown. The distance vanished.
Ninety yards. Eighty. Seventy.
The air tore at his skin. His own movements felt disconnected, his body a half-step behind the pure intent driving him forward. The sub-core grew larger in his vision, a beacon in the chaos. He knew, with a cold certainty, that he had less than ten seconds of his own mana left. After that, he'd be a sitting duck.
Then the pain began.
It started as a dull ache deep within his core, along with the sense of something foreign entering his spirit. The sensation grew swiftly, blooming into a firestorm of sensation. A new power, alien and agonizing, coursed through his meridians. It felt like liquid glass and razor wire. It was torture.
This was the plan. Kitt was connected to the Leviathan, and she also shared a core with Blake. The logic was simple, even if the reality approached suicidal. He was burning alive, a torrent of pure energy drawn directly from the Leviathan itself, channeled through Kitt and into him. The raw, untamed force threatened to scour his consciousness from his own body.
He adapted. There was no other choice.
He took the last dregs of his own mana, the familiar, clean energy that wasn't trying to kill him, and funneled it all into his [Quicksilver Mind]. His mental faculties overclocked. The agony was still there, a symphony of torment playing in every cell, but he walled it off. He built a fortress of pure thought around the core of his being, a sanctuary of cold reason in a sea of fire.
He arrived.
The abomination that Kitt had dubbed "the puppeteer" loomed over the sub-core, its many limbs weaving a net of destruction. Blake didn't hesitate. He slid under the creature's pulsating torso, a tempest of controlled violence. The pain was a constant, shrieking companion, but his mind was clear.
Fang was in his hand. The husks surrounding the sub-core were waiting to strike, but they moved in slow motion. He was a whisper of steel and intent. A leg here. A torso there. He dismembered them with brutal efficiency, his blade a silver flicker in the dim light.
The threads, thick and pulsing with corrupt energy, lashed at the crystal. He moved to intercept them. He didn't need to form a phantom blade now. The raw power flooding him was enough. He focused his will, and arcs of pure force, extensions of his own pain-fueled rage, leaped from his knife. They sliced through the ethereal strands, severing the puppeteer's hold. The crystal, scarred but intact, pulsed with a faint, relieved light.
The pain redoubled. A wave of it. White hot. Ice cold. Electric shocks. Dull, grinding pressure. His vision swam, causing him to see a dozen images of the puppeteer. All of them looking down at him with naked hunger.
It was time for Phase Two.