Chapter 16: Departure

The next morning the five of them met up in the cafeteria to have breakfast together and were joined by Jeanne. They'd at first been nervous about the angel's presence but Jeanne had kept mostly quiet, only informing them that she would be giving them a discount on any gear they wanted for the trip and otherwise just sharing in their company.

Later, at the armory, Alexis and Ophelia both bought a Ring of Holding after having seen how useful it was for Elaine and even more so after Elaine used hers to make her bulky Mil-Spec backpack disappear into it. Evelyn and Abigail both placed their backpacks in the other girls' rings, thanking them for it. Alexis and Evelyn also each bought a shield bracelet, a piece of gear from Heaven that could conjure a personal shield in a dome around the bracelet, letting the wearer hold it like a shield in front of them, with Evelyn saying that she was going to try letting one of her Deva Arms hold the shield up for her.

While they were getting ready they also noticed Jeanne grabbing a large weapon that looked vaguely like a gilded halberd.

“What's that?”, Elaine asked as Jeanne spun the thing through a series of motions that showed she had experience with the weapon.

Jeanne held it out and showed it to them. “This is a Mark XVII Trumpet.”

“Doesn't look like any trumpet I've ever seen”, Abigail commented.

“Ah, sorry, it's not a real trumpet”, Jeanne explained. “Well it is. It can be used as an instrument as well. Anyway, Heaven has an elite unit called the Trumpeters. If you've read Revelations you may have heard of them, they're the ones who will someday break the Seals and begin the Apocalypse. These Trumpets are both their weapons and symbols of their authority.”

“So the Apocalypse is coming?”, Elaine asked.

“Seems like it's already here”, Evelyn groused.

Jeanne shook her head. “What's happening here isn't the Apocalypse. The Apocalypse is coming at some point but... think of it this way: Judgment Day is at the very bottom of the Lord's to-do list. Everything new that gets added gets added on top of it. So only when there's nothing more to do will it happen. And I think it would be safe to say that the Invasion has filled up His schedule for the foreseeable future.”

“So are you one of these Trumpeters, Jeanne?”, Elaine asked.

Jeanne shook her head. “I am a protege. I am the direct subordinate to my Lady, the Angel Lord of Chastity and Temperance. The Trumpeters get the newest issue of the Trumpets. Everyone else, like me, gets cast-offs. They're currently at Mark XVIII, one higher than this. Also, only they get access to the ones that can break the Seals. All others are modified to not be able to do that.”

“So, what do they do?”, Alexis asked.

“And can we get one of these?”, Evelyn asked.

“Well, they're halberds, practically unbreakable and sharp enough to carve through plate steel”, Jeanne explained. “They also amplify all magic cast through them. They have a storage that fills up a little every time you channel a spell through them and you can use the stored-up energy later. And finally they play music. And sure, you can get one. Well, an earlier version, the Mark XIII. It's for sale here. We also sell Hell's counterpart to the Trumpet.”

Alexis' eyes were wide and she asked excitedly: “What's Hell's counterpart?”

“So”, Jeanne said, “where the Trumpet is a symbol of authority and a weapon, their Thorns are basically just a sword hilt. The sword hilt also amplifies magic and when swung it creates a blade of plasma for a split second. The hilt is made of something that doesn't trigger metal detectors, making it ideal for assassinations. It's a distasteful weapon, but highly effective at what it does.”

“So it takes everything about a katana and amplifies it?”, Alexis asked. “Terrible at defense, terrifying at offense?”

“Pretty much”, Jeanne confirmed.

“I can't wait to try both of them”, Alexis said. “How much are they?”

“Three thousand Credits each”, Jeanne said.

“Well, so much for that dream”, Alexis grumbled.

With the women all geared up, they began their journey to Albion.

“Really wish I'd bought the upgrade to Aenbharr right about now”, Alexis muttered ten minutes into the trip. “We're too many people to ride him now.”

“Are you seriously getting tired already?”, Abigail asked.

“Not at all. But a horse is much faster than walking.”

They had decided to follow the 98 down south for a while until they'd make a sharp right to grab some fruit at a local orchard. After that they'd head further west to check on Gaines and see if anything new had settled in before heading on to Albion proper, arriving via the North Main Street. From there they'd need to start sneaking around as the road would lead them right into the middle of town.

Albion was, or rather had been, a town with a population of over 6000 so there was a good chance some of them were left alive. If they found any survivors it would be their job to get them out. If they found any hostiles it was their mission to assess the threat level. If they were weak enough to dispatch it was their mission to do so, if not it would be their mission to return safely and report so that a larger task force could be sent.

The way to the orchard ended up being entirely uneventful and Abigail used the time to practice the Song of Courage, singing them a little song to speed them up, though it ended up being too taxing to keep using it without any threats to warrant it.

When they reached the orchard they got to picking fruits until Elaine noticed something yellow fluttering next to the nearby storage facility.

“Do you want to investigate it?”, Abigail asked Jeanne.

“Up to you”, the angel replied. “Our mission is in Albion, but killing Outsiders is and always was our goal.”

“I say we take them down”, Elaine said. “You girls need the EXP.”

“Understood”, Ophelia said and pulled her sniper rifle from her back.

**

It took them a minute to sneak into position. Once there they found a trio of Yellow Wraiths surrounding what to Elaine looked like a pile of bones. Abigail was disturbed by the floating Yellow Wraiths and they had to explain to her what she was looking at. By the time they were done with that Ophelia had noticed something suspicious about the pile of bones and decided to use her scan on it.

“You're saying that thing is alive?”, Abigail asked, horrified.

“Undead, but yeah, that's an enemy”, Ophelia replied after sharing her scan result.

“How should we do this?”, Elaine asked Jeanne.

“Up to you. I want to see how you take this on”, Jeanne replied.

“You're not helping?”, Alexis asked, shocked.

“Only if you need me”, the angel said.

Elaine narrowed her eyes at Jeanne, then said: “Alright, fine. Here's the plan...”

**

All of them got into position.

Ophelia summoned her Hounds of Hades but held them back as she aimed her sniper rifle. Abigail leaned in close to Ophelia and quietly hummed a Song of Courage. According to the ability description it would affect anyone able to hear it so between the quiet hum and Ophelia's fine-tuned senses she was able to enhance Ophelia without alerting any of their opponents. Buffed by the song Ophelia fired a high powered sniper bullet right into the rightmost Yellow Wraith, then sent her Hounds of Hades at the Gashadokuro.

The bullet did not quite overload the shield but it did enough damage that a few launched swords from Elaine were able to cut into it deeply, annoying the Yellow Wraith enough to pelt Elaine with Darklight beams, which she used three swords to defend against while harassing the Wraith with the other three.

Alexis meanwhile used her light speed flash to appear behind the leftmost Yellow Wraith and ram her upgraded Areadbhar into it. The armor-piercing spear passed through the Wraith's personal shield without resistance and right into its body, killing it before it even knew it was under attack.

Evelyn meanwhile had her Deva Arms activated, the left of which was holding the shield bracelet up and ready and the right of which was casting a lightning spell that crashed into the center Yellow Wraith, sending concentric circles all over its shield. Her physical arms, meanwhile, were firing the assault rifle, putting more and more pressure on the Wraith's shield.

By this point the Hounds of Hades had reached the Gashadokuro, which had finally risen up to its full nightmarish size. It was twelve feet tall and had the rough shape of a centaur, with a quadrupedal body from which grew a humanoid torso with two more arms. Except where this hypothetical centaur would have had hooves it had three hands each, the fingertips fused into human jawbones. Its arms ended in claws that looked as though each finger was a pointed rib and the limbs and body were all comprised of multiples of human bones. The legs each consisted of three femurs fused together, a skull in place of a kneecap and then three pairs of fibula and tibia, which then ended in the bizarre jawbone-tipped hands. The arms were similarly huge, but consisted of quadruple bundles of each bone. Where its face should have been it had a cluster of seven skulls, each with their lower jaws missing, arranged to look like some obscene flower.

The Hounds of Hades barreled into its legs and though they couldn't break the bones they did mess with the spells reanimating the construct, making it topple alarmingly until sickly black and yellow energy pulsed along the gossamer-thin threads connecting it to the two remaining Yellow Wraiths, fixing the Gashadokuro back up before the Wraith Evelyn was laying into sent a beam of Darklight at her. In response Evelyn held her conjured shield in front of herself.

Ophelia had had a bad feeling about the personal shield and so she shadow leaped into Evelyn, shoving her out of the way of the Darklight attack that passed straight through her shield without slowing down.

“Fuck”, Evelyn said.

“Yeah, screw that shield”, Ophelia told her. “Leave the Darklight to me.” Then she pulled out the Lampade Wand and used it to amplify a shadow flare that she sent straight at the Yellow Wraith. It sent another beam of Darklight at the two of them but the beam was destroyed on contact with the shadow flare. The shadow flare, undiminished, crashed into the Wraith's shield, shattering it after all the damage Evelyn had already put into it and a combined attack of a shadow flare and a lightning strike blew the Wraith up in a shower of ectoplasm.

When the Gashadokuro had stumbled Alexis had gone for a thrusting attack, though the bony construction turned out to be fairly hard to damage with a spear. She had to dash back when the Yellow Wraiths fixed it but then the Hounds had come back around for another go and Alexis instead fired her shotgun into whatever looked particularly vulnerable, pulverizing most of the femurs in one of its back legs.

By this point Elaine had managed to finish off the final Yellow Wraith and then the four of them bore down on the Gashadokuro.

Abigail had been singing a Song of Courage but when the final Yellow Wraith had died she'd summoned her bow instead. To her absolute shock, the moment her fingers wrapped around the handle, which looked to be made from white gold, she knew exactly how to fire it even though the only bow she'd ever touched before was the kind that came with a violin.

She drew and fired a sunlight arrow right into that obscene skull flower, the light magic blasting outward as if she'd put an explosive sniper round into it. Three of the skulls broke and two more flew off entirely and the thing lost its mind, swiping at everything in front of it with the sharpened rib claws, which unfortunately included Elaine.

Elaine, for her part, blocked both claws with three crystal blades each and then sank Areadbhar into the thing's face, wrenching it back and forth as it shrieked at her.

Alexis charged it from behind and jumped on its back, putting shell after shell into its spine until she'd separated the quadruped body's back half.

The beast, now way too top-heavy, keeled forward and Ophelia had to shadow leap to save Elaine from being crushed by its weight while Evelyn tossed away her gun and her shield, gathered a lightning spell in each of her four fists and slammed them all down on the monster's head, killing it once and for all.

“Not so undead now, are you?”, she growled at it.

The moment the thing stopped twitching Alexis was swamped with notifications.

“Should we check inside the storage facility?”, Alexis asked after smiling at the amount of EXP she'd gained.

“That Gashadokuro looked like it consisted of the entire workforce here but yeah, let's”, Elaine replied.

They ended up finding no zombies or corpses but they did find quite a lot of food and they made a point of sending the coordinates over to Base 15 to send people over to grab what hadn't spoiled yet. Most of the fruit had gone bad but there had been what had looked like tons of tinned food. Base 15 had a hydroponics bay and a replicator, both courtesy of Heaven, so they had no need of the food but anything they could send over to the refugee camps would help.

Once they were satisfied that there were no more hostiles in the area they went back to the orchard to grab fruits. They had rations with them but the preserved food was so bland that a bit of fruit went a long way towards making it more palatable.

While picking fruit Jeanne told them: “I have to say, that was pretty impressive. You worked well together, even improvising when things didn't work as planned. I was afraid I was going to have to jump in when that Gashadokuro started swinging, but you girls had it.”

“Well, I didn't really have anything”, Abigail mumbled.

“The hell you didn't, that arrow was amazing”, Elaine told her. “You need to train that.”

Abigail didn't have anything to add to that.

**

After picking fruit they kept going until they reached Gaines again, which looked just as dead as it had when Elaine and Abigail left it. Once they'd passed the church they turned down South again and made their way down to Albion. Along the way Alexis kept teaching Abigail about light magic

When they were most of the way there they noticed two shapes on the road ahead that made them hide behind a house.

“People on horseback?”, Alexis asked.

“Look closer”, Elaine breathed. “Those aren't horses.”

The things did look like horses at first glance but a second glance revealed the cancerous growths they had all over their bodies. What little of them wasn't covered in the growths was reddish brown and steaming, rotten meat slowly sloughing off the trotting carcasses. Their lips were shriveled up, exposing teeth that looked like they belonged on a crocodile. The riders meanwhile looked like Thralls at first glance, but where Thralls had the cancerous growths and goat parts strewn haphazardly over their bodies these people were more uniform. They had one large tumor right over their hearts, similar to the wendigo, and then one had goat legs and goat eyes and the other had goat eyes and a mass of tentacles where his left arm should have been.

Elaine scanned both the mounts and the riders.

“Hit them fast and hard?”, Evelyn asked.

“These guys look like a patrol”, Elaine replied. “I want to squeeze one of them for information if I can help it.”

“Risky”, Jeanne said. “They're cultists. If you take one captive, he might just drop a portal on top of himself to take you with him.”

“I know, but if they're sending out patrols that means two things. One, there is a nest of cultists in Albion and two, they think there is something to find that warrants sending out patrols”, Elaine said.

“All true”, Jeanne said. “Hmm. Evelyn?”

“Yes, ma'am?”, Evelyn replied.

“Can you tone down your lightning spells to be non-lethal?”

“Yes I can.”

“Then this can work out”, Jeanne said to Elaine. “If you capture one, Evelyn can keep shocking him whenever he tries to summon a portal. No human caster is faster than lightning.”

Elaine nodded. “Alright. Then here's what we'll do...”

**

Elaine stepped out from the house they'd hidden behind, right into the path of the two riders. In the same motion she sent her swords to scythe through the legs of one of the mounts, making the horse crash to the ground and causing the rider to fall out of the saddle and onto the ground.

Ophelia had expected to catch the guy unawares and put a sniper round into his head but the goat legs allowed him to jump up and away before a quick volley from Abigail's assault rifle hobbled him. That gave Ophelia enough time to get her second shot to land and the cultist's head exploded like a watermelon. A tentacle shot out of the cancerous growth as if trying to reattach the head but there was no head left so it merely flailed around wildly. Abigail, disturbed by the sight, ended it by putting three rounds right into the tumor.

Had the other rider been mounted on a normal horse it would have probably bucked him off to run away but this mockery of a real horse did not have the slightest bit of will or self-preservation so the rider was able to turn it around and ride away. Or rather he tried to.

The moment the action had started Alexis had used a light speed flash to get behind the riders, then she summoned both her spear and her horse. When the rider turned around she galloped straight at him and swung her spear like a baseball bat to smack him right out of the saddle before Ophelia sent a shadow flare into the Equoid, killing it.

Once the rider was on the ground and Evelyn began pelting him with electricity Alexis went over and killed the Equoid whose legs Elaine had chopped off.

When they were sure the two horse-like creatures were dead they surrounded the cultist, although staying so far apart that he couldn't target them all at once.

“Where's your base of operations?”, Elaine asked, not unkindly.

“Fuck you! That was Brother William, he was my partner!”

“So?”, Elaine asked. “You and your Outsider scum have done much worse. Tell me, where is your base of operations?”

“You're all dead. Dead, you hear that?”

Elaine sent a single crystal sword into the ground inches from the guy's crotch. “Listen here, fuckboy. We can do this two ways. Either you tell me what I want to know and you die quick or you don't tell me and you die slow. Which one will it be?”

“Come, Augur of---” A red portal began forming on top of them at his words but Evelyn zapped him, causing him to lose his concentration and making the portal dissipate.

“None of that”, Elaine told him. “But thanks for showing us that you're no victim in this. You're a willing member of this club or you wouldn't be able to do that. So, again, fast or slow? Where is your base of operations?”

“F-f-f-fuck you!”, he stammered through the shock. Elaine sent a sword straight into his right hand.

He shrieked.

“Fast or slow?”, she asked him again, evenly.

“The library”, he finally said.

“There, that wasn't so hard”, Elaine said. “So, one last question. Why were you patrolling here? What were you hoping to find?”

“Rebels”, he said, resigned. “We rounded up everyone to make it more convenient on us. But some escaped us so we were trying to find them.”

“Where do you have them rounded up?”

“Correctional Facility.”

“Thank you. Any last words?”, Elaine asked him.

Suddenly he got a malicious gleam in his eyes and raised his left hand to point at Abigail, screaming: “DIE!”

Evelyn didn't manage to shock him in time and a beam of Darklight shot out at the singer but Elaine shadow leaped towards her and blocked the beam with one of her swords, sending it back into his forehead, piercing his brain and killing him.

Then she turned around to Abigail and asked: “You alright?”

It took a moment for Abigail to even register what had just happened and when she did she shivered all over and whispered: “Thank you.” At that moment Abigail also got a notification.

Elaine meanwhile, saw the notifications on the spoils.

**

“So, the correctional facility”, Elaine said. The group had found the nearest house that didn't have corpses in it and had hunkered down inside. It was out of the open and made a much better hiding spot than anything else in their immediate surroundings.

“Yes”, Jeanne said.

“We're going to need to check it out for ourselves since we can't trust the word of a cultist but if we find people still alive they need to be our first priority”, Elaine said.

“I agree”, Alexis said. “Question is how big is this cult and what do they need the civilians for.”

“Human sacrifices”, Elaine said immediately.

The girls minus Jeanne shivered.

“If they've sacrificed this many people they might have already summoned something bad”, Jeanne said. “This may well end up being too big for our party.”

Elaine snorted. “No, this may be too big for our party”, she corrected. “You could have beaten everything we've faced today on your own.”

Jeanne shook her head and told them: “Depending on what they've called up this might be too big even for me.”

“Well that's just great. Then what do we do?”, Elaine asked.

“For now we stay here”, Jeanne said. “You assign your EXP, we eat and rest up, sleeping in shifts. I don't need much sleep so I'll take the first four hours. You just need to worry about the other four.”

“I'll take the other four”, Ophelia said immediately. “Human sleep cycles are too long for me.”

“Good”, Jeanne said. “Then tomorrow I suggest we check out the correctional facility, see how many prisoners are left and free any we find. Then we can scout out the library.”

“I'm surprised you're suddenly taking charge again”, Elaine told Jeanne.

“These are cultists”, the angel explained. “They're much worse news than normal Outsiders.”

“Why?”, Abigail asked.

“Because they can summon more Outsiders.”

ChrisLensman

The Equoids are a reference to Charles Stross' novella of the same name. Read it if you haven't, it's really good. Just... don't read it while eating.