Phantasm

“Two people,” I said doubtfully.

The smile Grunwald gave me had way too many teeth in it to be considered a grin. Or a smile.

“Two,” he repeated. “My crew have been all over this dump and there’s only one place that has the records you want. Permanent archives, basement level.”

“Why haven’t they been stripped as well?” I asked.

“Locked up tight,” he replied. “Only two of us have got the codes to get in and turn off the alarms.”

“Why do you have the codes?”

“Other fellow’s the caretaker,” Grunwald explained. “He let us in when it all went to shit, but he kept the basement locked up. That’s the only bit his bosses care about.”

“Why’d he give you the codes?”

“I’m the boss, I insisted on it. It’s got real thick doors, figured we could hide down there if things took a turn for the worse.”

“But now you’ve got a threat that can go right through thick doors,” I said.

He scowled and nodded. “You take care of that, you can get what you want,” he said.

“Are you sure the codes work?”

He nodded. “I wasn’t born yesterday, I tested them when he gave them to me. It’s dark and dry down there, but it’s untouched.”

“And all I have to do is kill this monster for you.”

“Aye.” He showed me his teeth, in what may have been a friendly gesture. I don’t know. “Sorry if it’s one of your side’s super-weapons, but we aren’t exactly a priority military target, are we?”

“Don’t expect you’ll believe me, but it isn’t one of ours,” I said.

He shrugged. “As long as you can kill it, I don’t care who it belongs to,” he said.

“Fine,” I replied, and then I didn’t say anything for a bit, just sat there and thought.

How can I do this? I asked myself. It took a bit, but something like a plan started to form.

“It likes light,” I said slowly.

“It is light,” he countered. “Glows like a lightbulb.”

“Sure, but it still likes light. It can jump from one light source to another. It is a light source, so we can’t stop it from leaving, but we might be able to control where it goes.”

“Do you know where it is now?” he asked.

“Utility shaft,” I said. He frowned.

“How’d it get there?” he asked. “There shouldn’t be any lights in there.”

“That is odd,” I said. I thought about how the shaft felt to my shadow sense. There were small shadows in there, too small to jump through, hidden behind pipes and boxes. Did it feel, I wondered, like it was lit from a single light source, or was there more than one?

It didn’t feel like one.

“There must be two of them,” I said. “Or more.”

Grunwald grunted and took another shot of his schnapps. “Get all of them if you want us to help you,” he said. “But how’d they get there in the first place?

“The first one I found was in a dark room,” I said. “I figure they can fly around, maybe they’ve got some way of opening and closing doors. I’m betting the door to the shaft on the top floors isn’t secured.”

“Probably not,” he agreed. “So, where’s all this taking us?”

“To start with, if you turn off all the lights in the building, there won’t be anywhere for it to run,” I said.

“So we get to huddle in the darkness while you piss the damn thing off?”

“I reckon I can get past the door on my own,” I said. “If you’d rather I take my chances with the alarms…”

“Keep your hair on,” Grunwald said. “I didn’t say we wouldn’t. You’re sure, though?”

“No,” I answered frankly. “I don’t know Jack about this thing, except for what I’ve seen. It’s not exactly staying within the bounds of physics, you know?”

Grunwald stared at me for a long moment. “I was hoping… I don’t know. What are you going to do?”

I showed him one of my knives. “These daggers,” I said, “can hurt it. They absorb light, so maybe it’s as simple as that. Anything else just seems to go through it like it was made of smoke.”

“I saw,” he said sourly.

“Right. But it doesn’t go through walls, so there must be a limit to that,” I said. “If something is really wide, it can’t let it pass through without getting disrupted too much.

“Something wide… and it’s in the shaft…” Grunwald said, considering my words. “Ah. You’re going to drop things on it from the top of the shaft.”

“Exactly,” I said. “And if it comes up to complain, I’ll stab it.”

The top floor was the best for this attack, I decided. There was still plenty of junk lying about that I could use. None of it was great, from an aerodynamic or structural perspective, but there was plenty of stuff that I wouldn’t want to get dropped on me from the fifth floor. Really heavy stuff, like chunks of the wall, would probably damage the pipes and wires in the shaft, leading to problems for the refugees later.

I could feel the darkness growing downstairs, as the goblins put out the lights one by one. Grunwald said he’d give me an hour. It wasn’t long before it was pretty dark. I wasn’t sure if moonlight shining through a window counted as a light source, but I guessed that we would find out.

Hey, I thought to myself. Maybe the abominations run outside the building and become someone else’s problem.

Just on the off chance it would work, I cast a [Light] spell next to me. It was, I judged, the strongest light source in a hundred metres, except for the ones below me.

The door to the shaft was, in fact, not secured. It was hanging askew, only attached by one of its hinges. I removed the remaining hinge with my darksteel dagger and then cut the door in twain. The two pieces made for a fine opening salvo as I pushed them into the light.

You have inflicted 18 damage!

You have inflicted 17 damage!

You have inflicted 21 damage!

You have inflicted 17 damage!

That’s pretty crap damage, but it is damage, I thought. Which is more than I thought I’d do.

I didn’t hear any screams though, so I looked down to see what I could make out. I kept my dagger between me and anything that thought to swoop up from below. It was under my invisibility spell, so with any luck any swooper would cut themselves in half before they realised what was going on.

There had been four notifications for two pieces of door. Did that mean there were four abominations down there, or did each door only hit two? Or were some abominations missed altogether?

It was well-lit down there at least, but it was hard to make out what was going on. There was movement, but even my enhanced vision couldn’t tell how many things were moving down there. For now, it didn’t look like any of them were coming up. I eyed the ladder running down the shaft for inspections or whatnot. That was a possibility to consider later, maybe.

My light flickered behind me. Without looking back, I cancelled the spell.

I winced as a scream started up again. This one came from both behind me and from down the shaft. It was weaker, though, and shorter.

You have inflicted 2367 damage!

For killing an Elohim Abomination, you have earned 50000 XP

Nice. Soloing these things is pretty lucrative.

I glanced back behind me. There was a piece of meat on the floor, bleeding white blood. It wasn’t glowing any more. On the off chance it would work, I recast my [Light] spell. I still didn’t know if these things were intelligent, and this seemed like a pretty good test.

Nothing happened immediately. No other abominations volunteered to step into my guillotine, nor did they start floating up towards me. I decided to try provoking them, dropping an empty metal cabinet down.

It made a lot more noise than the doors had. And this time it got a response. A scorching ray of light flashed upwards cutting the cabinet in half. It kept falling though, and I got a notification.

You have inflicted 13 damage!

Hmm. Two pieces, but only one hit? Only one target, or did some of them dodge? More data was required, so I went and fetched more cabinets.

I kept an eye on the shaft door as I scavenged, but I wasn’t too worried about being snuck up on. My targets glowed in the dark after all. My shadow sense could let me know if they found a way to teleport out. The lower doors were all sealed shut, so I didn’t think they could get out that way.

Once I’d assembled an arsenal, I started launching medium-sized pieces of junk down the shaft. The abomination responded with a barrage of lasers, but some of my shots got through.

You have inflicted 8 damage!

You have inflicted 7 damage!

You have inflicted 6 damage!

You have inflicted 7 damage!

You have inflicted 6 damage!

Are they really lasers? I wondered. I could see them after all, and I didn’t think you were supposed to be able to. I didn’t need an answer to that question to know I didn’t want to be hit by one…

… or did I care? I was invisible after all. Light went through me, and these were light beams of some sort.

Hopefully, I wouldn’t find out. It might take a while to kill the thing this way, but I had plenty of junk. Of all the fights to the death I’d been in, I think I preferred this one.

It wasn’t to last. The light in the shaft suddenly dimmed, and my latest salvo didn’t get any points. I took another look down. It was all dark, except for some light coming from a hole in the wall, around the third floor. My shadow sense concurred, telling me that there was a new light source moving at jogging speed on that floor.

Damn.

Was it running, or was it looking for some tasty goblins to eat and heal up with? It didn’t really matter. I didn’t want any more civilians to die, and I was even less keen on letting 50,000 XP slip through my fingers. There were plenty of shadows on that level, so I stepped through, aiming to get ahead of the thing.

I stepped out into an open corridor, but I’d misjudged the abomination’s speed. Its light washed over me before I could recast [Greater Invisibility]. It froze, seeing its enemy for the first time. Then it sent a barrage of lasers at me.

I dodged to the side, moving just fast enough to stay out of the scorching heat.

[Greater Invisibility]

The abomination froze for a fraction of a second. I didn’t wait for it to decide if it had seen me teleport or go invisible and dove toward it.

Ooof.

Oh, right, I wasn’t a gymnast. [Jump] could help me launch forward, but it couldn’t do much for my landing, given that I was planning on landing prone. Fortunately, my spell covered up the sound of my embarrassing belly flop. The abomination didn’t know what to do, but it tried lasers anyway. Three more of them flashed through where I had just been standing. Then three more further down the corridor.

It thinks I’m running?

It wouldn’t think that for long. I forced myself to move despite my sore elbows. I really needed to practice diving for cover. Crawling forward, I got in range just as the abomination decided that it wasn’t getting anywhere with random laser blasts. It started moving again, in the same direction it had been before I had popped up. Which was toward me.

I love how invisibility makes everyone dumb, I thought. I waited a moment more for it to get into position, and then lunged up with both daggers.

You have inflicted 238 damage!

You have inflicted 241 damage!

It screamed again, hurting my ears. Just on the off chance, I tried aiming [Improved Blind] but the spell couldn’t find a head. Never mind, I seemed to be hurting it more.

It jerked itself off my blades and sent a spray of lasers in my general direction. Instinctively, I blocked with my dagger. The light hit it and… got sucked into it. I managed not to drop it in surprise.

That’s Darksteel for you, I guess.

The other two shots went wide, but not so wide that I didn’t feel the heat. I lunged forward again. I had an idea that this was an abomination that I’d already stabbed. I could see some dark marks on it that might be scars from previous stabbings. With luck, it didn’t have many stabbings left in it.

It dodged, desperately, but it couldn’t see what it was dodging. Running might have worked, but from what I’d seen, it didn’t move that fast.

You have inflicted 241 damage!

You have inflicted 239 damage!

You have inflicted 237 damage!

You have inflicted 244 damage!

You have inflicted 238 damage!

For killing an Elohim Abomination, you have earned 50000 XP

I didn’t waste any time. Grunwald’s office was entirely dark, but there was a goblin-sized void in there that I couldn’t step into. I stepped to another place in the room.

He jerked as I came in. My invisibility had been cancelled and I guess my normal [Stealth] wasn’t good enough against goblin hearing.

“It’s done,” I said. I made a small light glow over my head, giving me a spooky look, just for kicks. “Let’s talk about your end of the deal.”