Mercenaries of the Apocalypses [System Apocalypse Progression]

Buttercup fairies had surprisingly bad pitch. You would think, being little fae creatures with plump feminine faces, that they'd sing like angels. But they squealed like pigs. Andy grimaced as the dissonant chant rose in pitch, and one of the butterfly-winged imps fluttering above the clearing burst into a shrill solo. Andy's Augmentation might be able to alter his genome and repair his tinnitus caused by firearms, but it would never scrub his mind clean of the fairies' fork-on-chalkboard cacophony.

Stalking through the undergrowth, Andy neared their ceremony. The moon was half crescent, obscured by midnight clouds; Andy could feel the whisper of her energy on the back of his neck as he sank into the shadows, eyes fixed on the clearing. A boulder towered over the forest clearing, about which the fairies flitted in swarms, flaring their golden wings like fireflies, whining like mosquitoes. Andy paused, now about thirty metres from the gathering. Though his eyes were well adjusted to the darkness, his targets were well camouflage. The wood-trolls accompanying the fairies appeared as trees, with bark-like skin and branching limbs. Oramented in a layer of moss, they stood out as old dead trunks amongst the lively saps of the early spring forest. With his senses enhanced by his AI's Combat Conceptualisation module, Andy counted seven of the camouflaged trolls towering over the clearing like guardians–the muscle of the fae apocalypse.

Julie hummed at Andy's hip, like a lover's fingers probing for attention. Her brand new jet-black cylinder stood out like warpaint against her silver frame. But Andy held his breath, forcing his focus. The branch of a huge apple tree overlapped the clearing, bending before the weight of its fruit: three people, dangling by their arms tied above their heads. They had been stripped naked, beaten and burned. Two were unconscious, but the man in the middle was wiggling in his binds, mumbling incoherently. Beneath him, toad-like mud gnomes wallowed in the sludgy earth. The fat little creatures sluggishly climbed over one another to smear mud on the prisoners' ankles. Andy wasn't sure what purpose that served, if any.

The man kicked feebly at the mud gnomes' slithering wet hands, moaning louder. Buttercup fairies–named as such for their yellowish glow–danced around the prisoners' face, zipping in like stinging bees. He winced and moaned with each diminutive assault, and tiny razorblade cuts swelled on his face. The man's wails rose in a brief rush of panic, invigorating the fairies. Their song rose in symphony as a dozen more flitted around his face, slashing and squealing in merriment.

Andy crept a little closer. The shadows of the forest half-submerged him in blackness, it was like dipping his toes into inky pools. That was his new Shadow Affinity ability. Since being bitten by a vampire lord, Andy had mutated into some sort of demon-spawn. But his AI implant had diverted him from full-blown DNA corruption, stabilising the mutation, and had since learned to work alongside it. It had even written a new delineation for him: Vampire. Although, Andy wasn't a fan of the name. Growing up, vampire fiction was edgy, melodramatic… essentially, for teenage girls. He wasn't sure he liked the direction his AI-mutation amalgamation was pushing him in, but he'd conquered it in the past, bent it to his whim. He'd do the same again.

The wind rushed around Andy, picking up the underbrush, pattering his leather jacket as it drew towards the clearing. A whirlwind of twigs and leaves swirled at the boulder's crest. The fairies swarmed around it, spinning like embers. As they sped up, they grew brighter, encasing the whirlwind in a flurry of golden light. Andy jumped as he spotted the tree-like trolls had all moved in unison while he wasn't looking, stretching their arms out towards the whirlwind, mimicking the enormous apple tree above their heads. Andy hand hovered above Julie, then he laughed. It wasn't often something made him jump nowadays. It was thrilling.

The wind died down, and the fairies dissipated. All was silent, even Andy waited patiently. Seemingly, nothing had changed, until a cloaked figure came into focus atop the boulder as though appearing into existence. Andy blinked. With his Vampire delineation, his eyesight was near perfect, but he couldn't believe his eyes. After a few seconds, the stooping figure became opaque. A sorrowful hooting sound swept across the forest, rising in volume. The fairies chattered in response as the hooting grew sonorous, like the bowles of a maleficent frog. The mud gnomes gathered beneath the prisoners hollered in discordance, flopping in the dirt. Andy's skin prickled with a slimy energy. He'd smelt the magic once before while tracking this witch, but never so potent. It was a confused concoction, at once enticing his stomach and making him feel sick, like wet ash ground together with fragrant flowers, scraped over the decaying hide of a flayed animal.

Yeah, well he had his own magic, despite how Clara tried to convince him his powers were rooted in science. A familiar metallic taste trickled over his tongue as his Augmentation released combat enhancing hormones into his system, counteracting the witch's arcane aroma.

The two unconscious prisoners roused at the smell, rocking in their bounds. One woman spluttered and shrieked, plummeting head-first into a panic attack. Clearly, she'd preferred unconsciousness. The fairies cascaded over her, cutting her face and mouth, drowning out the screams. Her eyes bulged and she shook violently. Beside her, a man averted his gaze, clenching his eyes shut, his expression twisted in knots of anguish.

Some distant emotion stirred in Andy's heart, like a striking match, failing to catch flame. Crouching, he snuck closer to the clearing, forming a plan as he went. They were on a rescue mission. Clara was on the opposite side of the clearing, waiting at a distance. She couldn't sneak as well as Andy, but she'd come charging in once the fighting started.

The question was, how to get the humans down and whisk them off to safety? He and Clara couldn't carry three people between them, not quickly anyway. Therefore, the only reasonable way to go about things was to kill every last fae creature attending the ritual, put a vortex-sized bullet through the witch's skull and take a lazy stroll out of here, with a bonfire of corpses behind them.

His Augmentation lit up at the thought. His Marksman delineation casted sharp lights about his vision: priority targets and enhanced precision and ricochet potential. A heady urge to kill wafted over him–not entirely his own, enhanced by his Predator delineation. Andy squeezed his eyes and shook his head. It was all so distracting. "Simmer down," he grunted. "It's my ship. I'm the captain."

Opening his eyes again, the lights had retreated to his subconscious, whispering for his attention, drawing his gaze this way and that, manipulating him like a tentative finger on a puppet's strings. Andy sighed with relief.

Something squeaked beside Andy. A light shone golden in his periphery. Andy froze in the broken shadows of a holly bush, glaring at the sound. A tiny fairy sat atop a slab-like mushroom jutting out of a nearby tree, staring back at him. The tiny creature looked like a woman, but with an alien face–sharp and stretched. Its slender body emanated a golden sheen, long blond hair like silken whisps of a spider's web floated on the air. Its translucent pink and purple butterfly wings were erect like the ears of a startled deer. With both hands over its mouth, it watched Andy in horror, slowly relaxing its wings and shifting forward. Some deep predator instinct within Andy recognised the signs and knew what they meant: it was about to take flight.

Drawing his sidearm, Andy pounced. The fairy shrieked as it took to the air, but Andy was too quick. He merged with the darkness, rushing through it as though dragged by a current. He snatched the fae creature out of the air, wrapping his fingers around its wings, pinning it against the tree.

"Shh," Andy said, pressing the muzzle of his sidearm to his lips. The gun was a basic 9mm, less powerful than his .45 calibre revolver, Julie. But sometimes, that proved useful, such as when he wanted to ricochet a single bullet through several skulls, or take a more stealthy approach.

The fairy squirmed in his grasp, but his forefinger snuffed it cries. Glancing around him, Andy listened for a disturbance. The witch was still crouched atop the boulder, humming rhythmically, absorbing the attention of the fae creatures gathered. But Andy was close now, a mere twenty metres from the clearing. He couldn't afford to have his cover blown; Andy wouldn't get paid if all the prisoners got their necks hastily snapped by the trolls.

Andy felt the crunch of the fairy in his hands. The golden light went out. With one last squeeze, he dropped the fairy and slouched against the tree. Sticky residue–like glitter glue–stuck to his fingerless gloves. He tried to rub it off on black jeans, but it stuck to his fingers. "Eww."

Something fluttered towards him–another errant fairy, drifting away from the pack. It glided over to his hiding spot, clutching an apple-blossom to its chest. Andy kicked at the fairy corpse, trying to hide it in the bracken before slinking back into the shadows, but as the fairy approached, it must have known something was wrong as it stopped in the air about three metres off the ground. The apple blossom fell gently towards the earth as the fairy drooped, its golden glow diminishing to a mere reflection. It squealed and jittered, descending towards its friend's corpse. Then it stopped. Suddenly its light flashed like a star, burning the shadows Andy had draped himself in. Shrieking, it turned and fled towards the clearing. It was too high to grab, and too far to chase. But Andy had a backup.

Aiming his sidearm, a cold focus enveloped Andy as his Marksman powers flickered to life, steering his aim with Enhanced Precision. Yet the coldness was marred by an acrid warmth as the hormones of his Predator delineation rose from his gut, up his throat like the smooth burn of whiskey. Breathing out, Andy savoured the taste, then squeezed the trigger.

The gun flashed in his hands, its meagre recoil easily compensated by his enhanced skeleton. Andy sucked in the air, syphoning the explosion's sonic energy. Like riding a bike, he'd never forgotten how to hit a pipe like the older boys had taught as a kid. His new Silencer ability was much like that. The taste of the forest swirled in his mouth as he inhaled, mixed with the sting of gunpowder, like a spicy chilly. Andy drained it into his lungs, snuffing the sidearm's bang to a mere pop, like throwing a stone into a pond.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

His target burst like a glowing fruit, leaving no trace. Andy held his breath trying not to cough out the smoke, waiting for a reaction. But there was none. He was in the clear. Spluttering into his fist, he took a swig from his hip flask to clear his throat. Clara tried to convince him that the Silencer ability was so rough on his lungs was due to it being a 'new, uncalibrated ability', but Andy reckoned his lungs just weren't used to the drawback yet.

As Andy stalked closer, the witch's lament transformed into a cackle. The mud gnomes skipped with glee in their deluge beneath the hanging prisoners, while the buttercup fairies chirped like a flock of sparrows. Perched atop the boulder, the witch surged like a cloud of smoke, doubling in size. Its tattered cloak draped over grotesque form–a hideous hunchback and dislocated shoulders surmounted a craning neck. A disturbingly kind smile crossed its plague-pocked face. Its large eyes shone like moonlit pools, too large for its face, alarmingly inhuman, like a dream-blurred visage of someone's wicked grandmother.

Leaping down from the rock, the witch landed in a crouch, shrinking once again, concealed by its cloak. The fairies went quiet, the mud gnomes stood still. The wood-trolls, stiff as usual, gazed upon their idol. The locals had given it a name: Thuggag. Though a relatively minor apocalypse at first, the witch had spent years summoning a league of baleful minions to torment nearby settlements, kidnapping children and subjecting them to ritual sacrifice. Her power had grown, and the apocalypse zone had expanded. Gabe's bunker was on the fringes of the Thuggag's territory, but that wasn't why he and Clara were here. For the first time in weeks they had an employer, plus, the villagers had something which Andy needed: potatoes and barley. He wasn't going to screw this mission up.

The Thuggag stooped in the centre of the clearing beneath the prisoners, then rose to reveal an iron cast cauldron at its feet. Much like with the witch's entrance, the cauldron hadn't been there moments before, but was miraculously summoned. Andy struggled to conceive that kind of magic–to be able to just pop something into existence. Could he do something like that one day? For years, he had felt shackled to a relatively mundane Gunslinger's skill-set, yet with his Affinity with Julie, and his new mutation's powers, perhaps he could develop more other-worldly abilities too.

The prisoners–all of which were conscious now–dangled like halloween decorations from the branch as the witch rounded her cauldron. She hobbled on spindly legs, supported by a crooked cane. The mud gnomes shrank away as she outstretched a slender finger towards one prisoner. Stroking the woman beneath the chin, she carved a line between her breasts, over her stomach, down past her hips. The witch curled her finger, inspecting her nail, grinning with almost kind, beady eyes.

The Thuggag plucked a hair from the woman's head and dropped it into the cauldron. A wisp of white smoke rose from its bowls. Andy watched from the shadows at the edge of the clearing, cast by the buttercup fairies' glow. The witch cackled with delight, and her minions took up the fray. As intrigued as Andy was to see where this was going, he wasn't willing for it to cost him the mission.

Drawing Julie, Andy strode towards the edge of the clearing, opening himself to her. Like twisting a tap, her energy gushed through him unabated. Since making amends on the outskirts of the Golden City a few months ago, he and Julie had been going smoothly. She didn't ask for much from him, only his honesty, commitment, and something powerful to shoot at every once in a while.

The air condensed around Julie's muzzle as Andy channelled her Vortex ability, twisting the raging fire swelling in his chest into a tight knot down his arm, withholding its release from his lover until the perfect moment. With a viscous crack, Julie exploded in his hand as he pulled the trigger. A concentrated Vortex Missile burst from her muzzle, blasting the Thuggag square in the chest. The creature was flung back, crashing into its cauldron, obliterated. Andy had expected more gore, but the only trace of the witch left was its tattered cloak, caught in the upcurrent of the blast, snared in the apple tree's branches.

Without pause, Andy turned on the two nearest trolls, blowing their heads apart with Enhanced Precision. The tree-like figures crumpled to the ground as their brethren turned towards him, surprised, for a moment. A grenade would have gone nicely with the Vortex Missile, but he couldn't risk killing the prisoners in the blast. Instead, he picked his shots, firing into the dark, felling three more trolls before they could react.

Snapping her cylinder open, Andy reloaded with deft fingers, dispensing the spent casings on the ground. His long-since calibrated Firearms Finesse module operated deep within his muscle memory, completing the complex sequence with ease. Closing her up, Andy felt the satisfying weight of six fresh rounds inside his lover, and pointed her at his prey.

Much like earlier, the fairies were flustered, frozen in shock. However, the wood-trolls were not so easily intimidated. One of the lumbering creatures loped through the clearing, its long branches outstretched, a hateful snarl on its contorted human-like face. Andy blasted it between the eyes, blowing chunks of dark flesh and carapace about the clearing like a hellish party-popper.

A snapping sound alerted him. Andy spun on the target, quicker than he could think, his Killer Instinct taking primal precedent over his actions. Andy shot at what he'd assumed was a nearby tree, until it blew apart and sprawled at his feet, outstretched limbs covered in thorns and sharpened like staves. The wood-trolls were too well camouflage even for his Combat Conceptualisation protocol to pick them up sometimes.

Stumbling backwards, he shot at twisted shapes striding through the dark forest, more than once hitting a tree trunk, mistaking it for a troll. Cursing, he reloaded. An assault rifle would be nice, but he'd run out of ammo weeks ago, and since failed to scavenge any. The pump-action shotgun slung over his back carried eight shells, but it was just a backup–he could do more damage with Julie.

The forest ignited with a buzz of light. No longer flustered, the fairies swarmed into the air, blotting out the sky. They descended on him like a cloud, stabbing and stinging his face as he fumbled with the .45 calibre rounds. Burying his face in the collar of his jacket, Andy staggered through the forest as a screeching shower of cries drenched his ears, disorientating him. Planting his feet, Andy swept his leather jacket around like a shield, battering the fairies off him for a moment long enough to bring Julie to bear.

The Vortex Shot ignited in his feet, catching flame as it tore through his chest, bellowing from Julie's muzzle in a swath of force. The explosion ripped through the curtain of fairy lights, revealing the night sky above. A storm of fairies dropped out of the sky like stones, or were flung high above the canopy on a gust of wind.

Andy slapped his ear as something buzzed close and sliced his lobe. The surviving fairies pressed their attack, distracting him from the approaching wood trolls. Batting the air, Andy aimed through the fray and shot a charging troll. Right as he pulled the trigger, something bashed into his hand, knocking his aim off. The troll staggered as one of Julie's rounds thudded into its shoulder, but kept on charging. They were closing in.

"You ruined my streak," Andy snarled, swiping at the fairies in a Killing Frenzy. A hatred seeped into his gut, fermenting a bloody hunger. The prisoners' pale flesh dangled in his peripheries, like flies caught in a web, glimmering like gems. Andy swallowed unsavoury urges as dashes of silver light appeared in his vision, brighter than before, steering his attention this way and that–his Augmentation's AI fighting for supremacy over the primal urges of his vampiric mutation.

"Fuck off, both of you." Andy tore a fairy out of the air, dashing its body against the ground and stomped it to death. The rush of a Vortex swelled beneath his heel, exploding out of Julie as he blasted three times into swarming lights.

"Where?" he said, giving in to the Augmentation's pull. His arm shot up without his command and he twisted around to see a charging troll, merely a few metres behind him. Andy fired once, bursting its shrub-bearded face, but the corpse crashed into him. The troll's flesh was as hard as steel. Julie shot from his hand as Andy was flung to the ground, yet they were not entirely disconnected. Andy called to her with a thought–an urge to be whole again. Julie skipped through the undergrowth into his hand, bound by their Fatal Attraction.

As Andy tried to rise, something weighed him down. Plump black mud gnomes climbed over his legs and back, covering him in a layer of sludge. Their eyes were like grey stones in their melon-sized heads. Their fingers squirmed like leeches over his skin, matting in his long hair. Andy shook them off, but they clung tight, and the ground beneath him had suddenly sunk into a bog. He waded, knee-deep through the mud, flinging and bucking the mud gnomes off of him.

Raising Julie, he aimed as best he could with one of the gnomes clinging to his arm, and fired at the final charging wood troll with Enhanced Precision. Its headless corpse slammed into a tree and rattled to the ground. The immediate danger dealt with, Andy grabbed a tree root and dragged himself out of the bog, quickly assessing the situation. Sparse golden lights dashed to and fro above his head. He had annihilated most of the fairies, and the remaining fae were weary to attack. The mud gnomes were annoying, but not especially lethal. Andy observed the human prisoners. They dangled, unmolested, for the time being.

All about him, mud gnomes bounded over the bog and dove for his face. Surrendering one leg to the mud, Andy drew his sidearm and started blasting the mud gnomes. Their squishy forms exploded like rotten eggs, spraying their muddy detritus over himself.

A wind picked up as he fired. Andy blinked the dirt out of his eyes, wiping his lids with muddy hands. Pulling himself free, half blind from the mud, he leaned against a tree and reloaded his weapons. But something caught his eye. The cauldron in the clearing had moved on its own, or by the wind, so that its mouth was faced down in the dirt. Andy squinted, groping for a clean patch of shirt with which to wipe his eyes.

The cauldron shifted, then lifted. Spindly fingers crawled out from beneath its rim like spider's legs, lifting it higher, revealing the Thuggag's twisted smile.

"My deary," it croaked in a high-pitched grind, rising from the cauldron's depths. "You're all muddy, beaten, bruised and bloody." The witch cackled maniacally. "Drown and die, mud fills your mouth, turns organs black, decayed and fouled."

Andy's Killer Instinct triggered, but as he drew Julie up, a large branch wrapped around his throat. Andy dug his chin in and squirmed, but the wood-troll pinned him to the tree. Mud gnomes climbed up his legs, drawing him into their deluge. Meanwhile, fairies flittered closer, illuminating him in an inescapable glow.

"Tear his flesh and crush his bones," the witch chattered. "Pluck his eyeballs and clip his toes."

"You're an old bitch, everybody knows," Andy riffed. "Thuggad? More like… you're buggered, cause I'm gonna shoot you-" A mud gnome jammed its hand into Andy's mouth, cutting off his rebuttal, but he was somewhat relieved cause he couldn't think of an end to the verse.

A floodlight danced across the clearing like a phosphorus grenade. Between the light and the mud, Andy was completely blinded, but his Augmentation guided his aim. A spear of silver light dashed behind his eyes, drawing his focus. Twisting his arm around, Andy aimed at the light and squeezed Julie's trigger. Her bullet sped down the trajectory, pinging off a stone, clipping a tree, obliterating an airborne fairy, then whizzed past Andy's ear and slammed into the troll behind him. The troll's grip loosened as it recoiled, and Andy squirmed free, firing three times into its carapace.

Spitting out mud, Andy drew his shotgun and started blasting at his feet, kicking up a muddy spray like a child jumping in a puddle.

"Andy." Clara's panicked voice penetrated his swamped senses. "The captives!"