Test Summoning: Apocalypse

I thought the two dozen or so gang members Lisa recruited from her basement and upstairs leatherworking front was an impressive force. I saw familiar faces, such as Hespeth and her three companions, among the crowd. There were eight Advancement 1 members in this little crew. While not impressive in the face of the Guard or Exterminator's Guild, it was a dangerous force.

It didn't prepare me for what we found inside the mall. I could hear a loud cacophony and smelled body odors wafting on the air when we entered. At the crossroads at the center of the mall was a massive force. I had a hard time counting how many different people were milling around. "How many?"

"Around a thousand," Lisa growled. "250 of them have an Advancement. There are more, but they're too far away to get here in 30 minutes."

I had no idea. Due to my constant looping through the same three months for centuries, I had built up an arrogance about my knowledge. I had assumed I knew all the major facts I couldn't change with my presence. My previous evaluation of Gully Jack's gang pegged them with only a handful of Advancement 1 members. It turned out that was only the ones I had seen and Lisa had revealed.

The other surprising aspect was how hardened the crowd looked. It still had a substantial volume of low-level street toughs. They were all kept in line with a strong population of grim-faced career criminals which could give MS-13 pause to tangle with, especially the rather large group with full weapon and armor kits.

Now with the threat I described coming from below, Lisa had mobilized her entire force. Now I knew why she was able to maintain control of the slums and keep the authorities at arm's length. She had a veritable army at her disposal. While it wouldn't be able to defeat any of the other major powers in the city, it was large and threatening enough to force a Pyrrhic Victory on anyone who attempted to dislodge Lisa.

Lisa strode to the head of the crowd and stopped. Everyone in the room immediately silenced when their boss arrived. With a deep thundering voice, Lisa projected over the room. "Alright you lot! I'm going to keep this short." Lisa's voice shook me to my core with the reverb. She pointed downward dramatically. "Right now, in the tunnels, there's someone who dares threaten our territory. They plan on destroying our very livelihoods. That makes me quite perturbed."

The crowd nodded with agreement and remained silent. They had discipline somewhere between a formal military and a mob. Enough to keep quiet, not enough to get into stiff ranks. Lisa continued. "Ferris! Enrin! Garth! Salma! Get over here!"

Four figures melted out through the crowd. They were a fox-clan man, a badger-clan woman, a rat-clan man and a marmot-clan woman. "You four, go down into the catacombs and find the bastards. Ferris, check the old cistern, it's the largest room. Return with a report. Do not engage and do not be seen."

"Yes boss," the four barked. I saw them make a few hand and body motions before shadows began to draw into them. It wasn't enough to make them invisible under the shaded skylight of the old mall, but it would make them very difficult to see in the tunnels below. Their forms silently flowed toward the side hallway and vanished.

We milled around in silence for a few minutes. It took 20 minutes for one of the scouts to return. It was the fox-clan man. He was panting and clearly injured as he stumbled out from the doorway.

"Ferris! Report," Lisa barked. "And someone get him a healer."

A rabbit-clan woman pushed her way through the crowd and began working on Ferris while he spoke. "Sorry, boss. I went to the cistern as instructed and found them. There are around 300 down there. They were clearing up an area at the direction of six in strange robes. The six immediately saw through my spell and I was attacked. I barely escaped."

"Not good. They must have a few Advancements under their belts. What of the others?" Lisa asked.

Ferris shook his head. "I don't know. Based on the screams, there are even more enemies and the others didn't make it."

I could see Lisa shaking under her armor. She was pissed. She turned to the crowd. "You lot! Get down there and make them bleed!"

Like popping a plug in a tub, the gang flooded into the hallway. It took a while for the mass to clear the bottleneck as they moved in eerie silence. The only sound they made was the tromp of their feet and the thunk of their wooden armor and arms.

"How did you earn this loyalty?" I whispered as I watched the people flow.

"My charisma," Lisa responded. She noticed my look of incredulity at the statement. "I know, people think it's fear. Realistically, do you think I could fight them all? No, I gave them opportunities. I took in those kicked out of the orphanage with nothing. I took their families off the street, bought medicine for their children and cared for their elderly parents. My reputation is important to keep third parties in line. You can't run an organization on threats, though it helps keep the few ambitious ones from seeking impromptu promotions."

Once more, I was surprised. Lisa, for all her twisted evil, had a pragmatic political mind. It made sense now that I thought about it. She was running a major cartel in Leoren right under the king's nose. If it was as easy as having someone with a higher Advancement show up and throw around their weight, Lisa wouldn't be in charge.

We waited for a while as the gang flowed into the tunnels on the way to the battle. Then, after the final body entered the tunnels, Lisa followed. While she was a politician, she wasn't one of the lazy city nobility. She wasn't above getting her hands dirty and, as the big hitter of the gang, Gully Jack needed to be present to knock heads.

"Why are you coming?" Lisa asked. "You're not armed and you're missing a shoe."

"To observe. We need to know how this goes down so we can stop it next time around," I replied.

"I see," Lisa said. We continued down into the catacombs beneath the maintenance tunnels under the mall and I started to hear distant fighting. Screams echoed down the halls as fighters roared in their battle. I could even hear metal striking metal, indicating there was someone with resources involved.

The catacombs were eerie. I had never been down here before. The tunnels were wide and allowed at least a dozen people to stand shoulder-to-shoulder across. Magic lights were set in the ceiling by whoever was down here to cast the summoning spell. There was a strange, musty smell which reminded me of my grandmother's attic when I was a kid. The tunnel was a half-circle lined with red bricks which had, halfway up the walls, shelves carved into them. On the shelves were ancient bones of every different clan in the kingdom.

The only element detracting from the creepy environment was the sounds of battle echoing around the stone. It was difficult to tell which direction the battle was. The only way we knew where to find the fight was to follow the crowd as they moved through the twisting path and down crossroads.

Soon, we began to see the effects of the fight. Based on the flow, the gang was currently in an advantageous state. Their mass of people was overwhelming the enemy as they moved toward the cistern Lisa mentioned. We began to see bodies slashed, stabbed, heads caved in, showing marks of burns or freezing and other signs of magical trauma. If it wasn't for the red cloth tied to the bicep of the gang, it would be impossible to differentiate the bodies. Whoever was down here looked no different than any random civilian on the street.

"What's your flavor?" Lisa asked, snapping me out of my observation.

"What?" I replied, confused.

She nodded toward the ground. "Weapon. Blade? Bludgeon?"

I looked down and noticed she was referring to the discarded weapons from the fallen fighters around us. "Normally a bow, but those aren't here. I'll take a rapier if you see one."

She picked up an arming sword. "Here, make this work."

I gripped the metal blade she handed me, which she took off a jaguar-clan woman wearing simple laborer clothing. The weight was somewhat unfamiliar since I had gotten used to using the wooden variant, but I knew I had enough experience at this point to use it effectively.

"Where's yours?" I asked.

Lisa flexed a hand. "I don't need a weapon."

I wasn't about to argue right now. It was hard when we were getting closer to the core of the battle. I could see flashes of flame lighting up the tunnel ahead of the crush as the gang flowed into a widening area. The battle was intense.

On one side was the Gully Jack gang. They pushed in hard and fought dirty. There wasn't rhyme or reason in how they organized themselves. It was a crush of bodies pressing into the enemy with fervor. Lisa had undersold how loyal her people were. They were almost fanatical. The prospects of their loved ones' livelihoods vanishing gave them rock solid morale even as their people fell.

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On the other side were the mysterious opponents. Dressed as innocuous civilians one and all, they fought back with equal aggression. While outnumbered 3 to 1, they held an advantage in equipment, organization and experience.

The gang continued to press the enemy back as we stepped foot inside the cistern. It was a wide space the size of a football field. A slope led down into a rectangular space cut into the floor. Around the edges, rotting wooden remains of machinery littered the room. It looked like the area was designed to pump the stored water upward toward a long-forgotten wooden pipe network which tangled along the ceiling.

Gully Jack's gang continued to push with their advantage fighting from the high ground. However, it was beginning to slow under the disciplined counterattack. Magical attacks flowed heavily from both fronts into the other, partially disrupting each side's advantage. It was hard to maintain a cohesive battle line when someone was slinging fireballs at you while the mass of bodies made it easier for the enemy to defeat targets with blades made of wind.

It was becoming obvious Lisa's gang had bogged down. The enemy had more people with Advancements using spells, neutralizing the numbers opposing them. The worst were the six robed figures in the back. Five of them fired far more advanced spells in each of the elements, save light. The light caster was busy healing the enemy ranks. I noticed Lisa start to move toward the battle and I followed. She pressed a hand in my chest. "Stop, you wait here."

"I can fight," I protested.

"You will die," Lisa retorted.

I waved my sword. "Then why the fuck did you give me this thing?"

The plague mask turned to peer at me. "Are you stupid? You're barely holding on with the battle rush right now. Your body is wrecked from the drug abuse. The sword is insurance in case someone gets through. You also need to see the whole fight for next time. It was your idea, remember?"

Lisa had already come to the conclusion the battle was looking poorly for her side. She was right. If I paid attention, I could come better armed for the next attempt. She was also right about the drug abuse which I hadn't noticed with my adrenaline high. My health was severely depleted as was my stamina.

The most pressing realization from my observation was this was an impossible fight without Lisa's support. There was no way Tizek, Lia and Void were going to defeat this mass on their own nor did I have access to any other fighting force. I shuddered at the prospect of a permanent world where Lisa was aware I knew her true identity.

It was a sacrifice I was willing to suffer. Getting my loved ones out of this terrible loop was worth the potential downside of having a crazed crime lord wanting to turn me into a breeding tool. I stepped back away from the fracas to avoid getting hit with stray magic and watched.

The difference maker right now were the six mages in the rear. They were stronger than Advancement 1. How much so? I couldn't tell. Lisa also recognized their threat. She built a long spear made of ice and it began to rotate rapidly. With the flick of a wrist, the ice spear hurdled across the room and plunged through the face of the light mage, taking the main healer out of the fight.

The opponents didn't sit idle and the remaining five began to focus on Lisa. Lisa lifted a shield of ice before her in time to watch flames, rock, air blades, water bullets and shadow tendrils crash against it. The shield fractured under the onslaught and shattered. Something about the setup tickled my mind, but it wasn't coming to me in the stress of the fight.

Overly focusing on Lisa ended up being detrimental to the mages. While focused on the biggest enemy threat, other gang members managed to breach the front lines and poured into the enemy heavy hitters. It wasn't like a video game though. The holy trinity didn't exist in this world. Advancement was Advancement. There were differences between people of identical potentials, but they weren't min-maxing stats here. A powerful caster was also physically adept. It proved out when the five pulled out swords, axes and maces.

They fought like whirlwinds. Weapons lashed out and sliced down Advancement 0 gang members like harvesting wheat. The Advancement 0 members were only able to get glancing blows and, with their weaker unenchanted wooden weapons, had a hard time causing significant damage. A few Advancement 1 allies fought toward the five and pressed them, using numbers to help engage.

Had they been the only ones, the enemy would have won. Lisa, however, used the distraction to attack. She formed ice shards the size of rifle rounds in the air and launched them at the five. The ice punctured their robes and staggered three of them. They didn't go down since health pools helped substantially in this world.

The fire mage counter-attacked during a brief opening and a fireball slammed hard into Lisa's torso. She fell to a knee when she failed to keep her balance and I could see part of her mask had melted away, revealing her mouth and some of her rabbit nose. She barely intercepted a follow-on attack with a water sphere. Heavy steam filled the room when the two opposing elements collided.

All the while, I remained in the rear with my metaphorical thumb up my ass. I impotently watched the battle with my arming sword held at the ready and a growing addiction twinge in my limbs waiting for an opponent that never came. The din of battle began to die down. Both sides, in their fanaticism, were fighting to the end and both sides were equally matched. For every three gang members that fell, one of the enemy fanatics died.

The battle began winding down. It was looking like they'd end up wiping each other out. The enemy was now down to the five heavy hitters. Everyone was heaving heavily as their stamina and mana bars had exhausted. They had stopped slinging magical spells and were beating on each other with their weapons.

One of the mages went down to a sword strike from Lisa's soldier while two more soldiers fell to a mace from the enemy. Another heavy dropped to a pair of daggers into the eye and more soldiers died in the process. The meat grinder continued as two more mages saw their heads separated from their torsos. The final mage then ran his sword through the last goon's chest and out the back. He ended up losing his grip when it got stuck in the corpse.

All that was left was me, Lisa and the final enemy. Both of the opponents squared off. They were tired and wounded, making them cautious as they circled. Neither had a weapon with Lisa not bringing one and the other losing his. Neither could take the risk to retrieve one lest they suffer an attack.

The next move was from Lisa. She slugged the hooded head with a right hook while the mage hammered Lisa's chest with his fist. The battle was ugly. The two slugged each other hard with little regard to defense. It was a street brawl between two people too exhausted to worry about technique and style.

Lisa took a nasty uppercut to her chin and I could see a tooth thrown through the air. I briefly lost attention on the fight and saw it plop into the growing pool of blood in the cistern. My eyes flicked back to the fight to see Lisa slam a pair of punches into the stomach of her opponent.

The enemy leveraged his superior height by gripping Lisa's head and ramming a knee directly into her face. She staggered and spat out blood. The mage followed-up by grabbing one of Lisa's ears and yanking her head to the side. When Lisa's back was exposed, he punched her in the base of the skull.

Lisa fell to the ground and sprawled. She coughed hard and tried to get up, getting a kick to her stomach for her efforts. She slid her hand on the ground beneath the accumulating blood. When the enemy came to kick down on her head, she rolled to the side.

I noticed Lisa had picked up a sword from beneath the blood and jabbed upward toward the mage's groin. The wooden blade slipped into the soft tissues and out through his back. He didn't scream and, instead, toppled over, pulling the sword's handle out of Lisa's hand.

Lisa gripped a nearby mace and stood. She wasted no time to bring the mace head down and crush her opponent's skull, sending his fluids to mix with the rest.

The room was silent save for the heaving of Lisa's breath. Both sides of the fight had killed each other to the last with the Gully Jack as the sole survivor. I was untouched as a makeshift battlefield reporter in the rear to observe the gruesome fight.

Lisa dropped the mace and began slowly making her way toward me. She had a hand pressed against her chest and she was heaving heavily. She came up to me, coughed and laughed. "Shit. I think I punctured a lung."

I was in shock by what I just heard. I couldn't believe what I was hearing from the woman. I waved to the carnage around. "What about your crew? They're all dead!"

"So?" She coughed and I could hear a bubbling in her breath as she wheezed, the sound made deep and thick through her voice changing stone. "We killed the enemy and I hope you learned something. What did you see?"

"A disaster," I said. "We can't rely on this to stop them summoning the apocalypse."

Lisa glared at me through her plague doctor mask. "Is that all?"

"What else was I supposed to see?" I said with annoyance. I had been around for a long time and experienced violence on many occasions. This? This was new and that was a rare situation where I was not happy to see something different. My mind was also still dealing with the after effects of my drug binge and my adrenaline rush was fading.

"Moron," Lisa snapped. "Did you see the markings on the floor?"

I looked at the room again. I noticed it was illuminated by magical lights on poles surrounding a section of the cistern separated from the fight by around 10 meters. I squinted to see what Lisa was talking about. Then I gasped when I saw it.

On the floor, painted in some unknown substance, was a six pointed star. I recognized it. It looked very similar to the one the king and his six mages crafted in the basement of the castle. I walked past the wounded Lisa and through the blood, ignoring the squelch of the warm fluid between my toes and horrid iron tang on the humid air to get a closer look. The writing on the image was different from the text used on the one that summoned the others and me here.

Nearby were empty wooden crates with straw lining. At the center of the star was a pile of ash, another different element compared to what I was used to seeing at the start of every loop.

It was obvious. Six powerful mages of each element. A six pointed star. The crates probably held valuable casting reagents. The mages summoned the interdimensional horror to our world.

"Hey, idiot."

I turned and saw Lisa slowly making her way over to me. She was holding a scroll in one hand with flecks of blood. When she arrived, she held it out to me. "This was on one of the hooded shitheads."

I took the scroll and unrolled it. On it was detailed instructions on the ritual. How to format the star, the materials to use for the paint and the reagents needed at each point of the star along with the order to place them. There were even the words, unique to this ritual and the one which summoned us, written below.

The core difference between this one and the other, the pile of ash, was a sacrifice. The ritual called for a powerful caster to serve as a conduit to summon He Who is Eternal. On the rear of the paper, words promised eternal life and power to those who swore allegiance to He Who is Eternal. I suspected it was utter nonsense used to trick the power-hungry zealots who performed the ritual into the summoning.

"Have you heard of these reagents?" I asked Lisa. I faced the scroll in her direction to see what I was talking about.

Lisa whistled. "Impressive. I don't even have those kinds of resources. My best guess is it would take over a hundred thousand platinum Sovereigns to accumulate those items. A few are illegal imports which are only available on black markets. Not the black markets I run, the ones only the nobility has access to."

I looked around the room. "I wager whoever fronted this venture was not present. Whoever has these kinds of resources won't want to be caught anywhere near something like this."

"That's not a bet I'd accept. You're guaranteed to win that one," Lisa replied with another wheeze.

"I'm going to have to ask you about helping stop this," I said.

"And I'd agree. Just come to me sooner. I couldn't muster my entire organization. With what I saw here today, we'd have a far easier time winning if I had at least a month of preparation," Lisa said.

"I'll remember that," I replied. I wish I could avoid calling on her, but she was the only one with a paramilitary force I could rely on. "I'll also have to find out when the best time to attack is. Meaning I'm going to stake this place out to find out more details."

Lisa looked around the room at the array of pipes and machinery. Her face then peered upwards. "They probably have had this place set up for at least a year. Getting these lights in place is a big project."

"Not that I'm experienced enough to answer. I do see plenty of places to hide to watch the events here. I can set up in the pipes and live down here until something happens," I said.

Lisa chuckled. "Be sure to bring a clock, dumbass. It'll be hard to keep track of what day it is without the sun."

I wanted to retort that I already knew that. I had to keep time during my imprisonment in her disgusting sex dungeon by when she showed up for her daily pleasure session. "I'll keep that in mind."

Lisa stripped away her mask and showed her face. Her beauty was marred by deep burns from the heat of the fireballs she took. Her smile had missing teeth while the rest were stained red from blood. She then looked me up and down. "When is the end of the world again?" Her velvety voice had replaced the deep reverb of her mask, which still had undertones of bubbling wheezing from her punctured lung.

"The day after tomorrow," I replied.

She closed her eyes and wheezed before opening them again. "Mind doing me a favor?"

"What are you looking for?"

She gave me her charming smile, which looked horrific with the bloody teeth. "I don't want to die a pure maiden. Since I clearly trust you enough to tell you my identity, it means we must have had something more. Do you think you can grant my wish?"

I held back a shudder. I thought a brief moment and realized I could get a little revenge in now. "Sure."

I approached her and wrapped my left arm around her waist. I drew her in and leaned down for a deep kiss. She gladly responded and our lips connected. While I was giving her a kiss, I rammed the sword I was still holding in my right hand through her stomach. It was an easy effort to do it to a severely wounded Advancement 3.

She pushed away with a gasp. "Why?"

I spat out her blood which had gotten into my mouth from the kiss. "That's for forcing me to live for two months in your guest room as your sperm donor. You wanted to breed me to birth heirs to your empire."

Lisa stared at me for a few seconds in shock. Then she started to laugh. "That does sound like me. Good show, Oliver. Good show. Be seeing you on the next loop." She then fell to her knees, toppled over sideways and died.

I resisted the urge to spit on her corpse and spent time investigating the cistern area. I found a good hiding spot when I climbed my way up to a tangle of pipes above the ritual site. If I was lucky, no one would be down here when I looped back again. I took stock of the site and mentally identified what I would need to live here. I would have to buy books, find a way to deal with my waste and bring a ton of water and food. It was also chilly down here, so I'd need a blanket, a sleeping roll and some rope to keep me from rolling out of the makeshift hunter's hide to my death.

After I finished my mental preparations, I pulled out my Heartstop dagger and slammed it into my stomach. Two more loops and I'd finally have a way out of this nightmare.