Chapter 28: The Siege Of Ohio II

BOOM!

An ungodly explosion shook the earth for miles around, disrupting the enemy army's march.

Might have gone a little overboard, Elaine thought as she watched Tracy brushing the purple goo from her armor.

Tracy had explained that thanks to her Shard Bearers she had access to abilities that allowed her to cloak herself in shadows as well as abilities to deal catastrophic amounts of damage and she hadn't been exaggerating one bit. One of her Shard Bearers held a Soul Shard of Thor and thanks to that she had access to a manifestation of Mjöllnir as well as a manifestation of Thor's legendary belt Megingjörd, which just so happened to double Tracy's already prodigious Strength. She also had access to a skill remarkably similar to Alexis' Charged Attack, except her Shard Bearer had clearly sunk way more points into the skill as it allowed her to triple the power of her strikes. Combining all of those buffs with a legendary hammer that already struck with the force of a bolt of lightning apparently lead to some spectacular results and her first strike had killed a living siege engine in a single devastating strike. Not only that but the explosion had sent out literal tons of partly caustic bug guts and sharpened carapace fragments, which had mowed down most of the cyborg warriors in the vicinity.

Elaine took a moment to admire Tracy and wondered why she'd never done that before. Tracy had always been gorgeous, a natural blonde and obviously a former head cheerleader who had stayed in fantastic shape. Now, though, Tracy looked as if that cheerleader had grown up to be a barbarian queen. She was decked out in artifacts created by her M-skills, wearing a big fur belt around her waist and what looked to be a cloak of raven feathers draped over her shoulders. Her blond hair was billowing in the wind, same as the cloak, and thanks to that the assault rifle strapped to her back and the sword at her hip were plainly visible. The massive hammer in her hand and the specks of purple bug guts all over her outfit completed the image.

Fuck me, no wonder she's got four guys drooling all over her.

Not to be outdone Elaine, under a combination of Alexis' light magic to bend light away from her and Ophelia's shadow magic to mask her scent and sounds, stepped up behind a beast that looked like an organic battering ram, a beast with six legs of revolting ropy muscles and a big torpedo-shaped head covered in layers and layers of bony armor. The thing looked to be in immense suffering merely from existing and that was without even taking into account the oozing black tentacles wrapped around its body, some of them clearly squirming around underneath its skin. Most of all, though, she got the same feeling from this abomination that she got from the Havoc Professor Stollos had shown her. The beast looked deeply, distressingly human, the hind legs ending in perfectly human feet and its two sets of front legs both ending in normal human hands and its skin, bar the places the tentacles had corrupted, was a pale Caucasian hue. Its brow ridge was overgrown with bone armor to the point where the expression was permanently scrunched up and Elaine suspected that this poor thing was fed via a feeding tube because nothing else would fit into the tiny opening it had for a mouth.

She was making sure to refer to the thing as an 'it' in her mind even though from where she stood she could clearly see that the being had been a human man once upon a time.

God, she thought, I hope this was just a vat-grown clone before.

She decided to put the thing out of its misery and summoned two dozen crystal swords, which she could now do as easily as breathing, infused them with fire magic until they gave off heat mirages, and rammed them into the creature all at once.

The creature let out a squeal that she knew would feature prominently in her future nightmares and thrashed around on the ground, its four human hands groping for the swords and trying to yank them out. The tentacles inside the creature went even wilder, whipping around until the ones buried underneath its skin burst forth in showers of blood and gore. After only a few moments of this the creature itself was dead but the tentacles inside of it were still going strong, ripping their way out of the creature's guts until they emerged, looking for all the world like a Dark Young had gone on a diet, all whip-thin but still bearing the rough shape of a tree with three bony goat legs for roots.

As the thing tore itself loose from its fleshy prison Elaine realized with horror what kind of creature she'd just encountered and she knew that if she met Caulder she would kill him no matter what. It wasn't just that he'd taken a human and then changed it into a living battering ram, distorting its features until only it only resembled a human in the vaguest of ways, he had then also implanted it with a Dark Young. She didn't just suspect but knew that this creature had been meant to breach the outer wall of the refugee camp, whereupon the Dark Young inside it would have burst forth and started turning the humans inside the camp into Thralls.

Human lives truly were just a plaything to the man who had created this abomination.

She shook it off, then recalled all the blades she'd skewered the other creature with and sent them at the newly birthed Dark Young, which was even now swelling up as if inflating itself back to normal size. The blades bit easily into its black, oozing skin and as the creature was distracted Elaine summoned Areadbhar and skewered it through one of its undulating maws.

The thing died twitching on her spear but before it had a chance to dissolve into ectoplasm Elaine was acutely reminded of the fact that they were still right behind Caulder's army.

Hey Elaine, might want to look behind you, Typhon said in her head.

She spun around only to see a muzzle aimed at her flashing. In her old body the round would have hit her but this new body was so much faster, so much more graceful, and so it felt like she had all the time in the world to summon a crystal sword and intercept the bullet headed her way.

To her utter shock the bullet cracked her crystal sword and when she looked back up again she realized that she'd just blocked a sniper round that would have hit her in the back of the head if Typhon hadn't said anything.

Thanks, she thought. How the fuck did you know that?

Pay more attention to the reflections in your blades, he said.

Yeah, she thought. Got it.

It had shaken her. She was so unbelievably powerful but even now a sniper round to the skull would probably still be enough to end her.

She gritted her teeth, summoned a tiny shard of crystal and sent it at the sniper, using her magic to make it curve around. Sure enough, the cyborg next to the sniper raised a combat shield that would have blocked the crystal shard had it come from straight ahead. Instead the shard came in from the side and skewered the sniper's eye.

After quickly mending her shattered blade and looking around she noticed that the rest of her strike team had likewise killed many of the living siege engines Caulder had brought with him. A good chunk of the enemy army had noticed them by now and would be bearing down on them shortly. They could stand and fight but she decided that taking on half an army with only the six of them was madness and so she used the messaging function of her CARD to type out a quick:

**

Sometimes Cassie hated how much foresight Elaine had. She'd told him that attacking the army's back line might end up causing part of it to turn on them but also cause the rest of it to charge forward. Cassie hadn't wanted to believe it, had thought she'd only said that so she could go be a hero while him and the others had to sit back and wait, but unfortunately it had turned out that she had been right. The moment the living siege engines had started going down, most in spectacular fashion, the cavalry had started charging forward.

Thankfully they had planned for just that. And, sure enough, the handsome black Awakener, Jordan if Cassie had heard correctly, called out:

“Anna, now!”

And together the two of them began flooding the area in front of them with magically created water. When there was a noticeable layer of water all over the asphalt another Awakener, a handsome South American man, called out:

“Ice squad, your turn!”

Cassie nodded and reached for his magic. After training with Elaine it was the easiest thing in the world for him to simply freeze the water in front of him. The scale was much larger than anything he'd done with it so far but with all his added stats he found that to be no obstacle, especially since there were three other ice mages along to help him.

In only a few seconds a layer of mirror-slick ice was between them and the approaching cavalry.

Three dozen cyborgs riding Equoids were the first to hit the ice and the half-rotted canker horses lost their footing almost instantly, crashing to the ground and breaking both their own legs and those of their riders.

An unholy cacophony of pained whinnies that just sounded wrong rose from the pile of steaming horse carcasses but the cyborg riders were eerily quiet even as they were flung off their steeds and crushed underneath other bodies.

“Offensive magic,” Jordan called out. “Now!”

Offensive magic was a bit of a misnomer, Cassie thought. He had offensive magic but after tallying magic types it had been decided that water and ice mages shouldn't be participating. Not only had they already done work to get this layer of ice going but their spells would just get in the way of the dozen fire mages who were now raining hellfire all over the canker horses. At the same time air mages were pumping oxygen into the flames and force mages send invisible saw blades into the pile even as the lightning mages pelted everything with bolts and balls of electricity. Cassie noted with a kind of proprietary satisfaction that of the four lightning mages Evelyn was by far the strongest, the lightning spells she hurled with each of her currently four hands tearing the beasts to bits wherever they struck.

The unicorn riders hadn't been far behind the Equoids but by the time they caught up the Equoids and their riders were already dead, not even twitching coming from the stinking pile of burned rotten flesh.

Cassie wondered if they should renew the sheet of ice but when he saw the first creature's razor-sharp claws sinking into the dirt on every step he realized that it wouldn't matter. These unicorns weren't horses. They were vicious predators with fangs and claws that merely resembled horses and their footing was true.

The point was proven when the unicorns reached the smoking pile of horse carcasses and, instead of stumbling or swerving to avoid it, climbed right over it, barely breaking stride as they did.

Just as before, all of the fire mages as well as the lightning, force and air mages, hurled their spells downrange at the monsters and Cassie already scrunched up his face, bracing for the stench of burned hair and flesh.

But it didn't come.

Instead, the moment the spells were about to hit home the rider of the unicorn in the center of the pack raised what looked like a banner pole, except with electrodes jutting out of it instead of a flag. As he did an electric blue light flashed outward from the staff and solidified into a force field that all the projectiles shattered against.

The beasts had all slowed down, probably to make sure they wouldn't charge into or out of the force field, but they hadn't stopped. They were going to advance on the defenders until they were too close to attack with ranged magic.

Cassie took a deep breath and reached for his sword, already expecting a tough fight, but then he heard a Slavic woman's voice in the comm channel:

“Stand back!”

A moment later a ball of purple flames sailed over his head to strike the horde cowering behind their shield. As it struck it erupted in a pillar of purple fire that consumed both the force field and the pack of monster riders behind it.

**

“Holy shit Elena,” Jacob said, staring at his girlfriend in her mech. The mech's hands were wreathed in purple fire and the ball of it she'd sent at the monsters had inflicted a level of carnage none of them could have predicted.

After talking to that hot dark-haired girl from the Superhero Squad Elena had managed to figure out Zvezda's powers and they were glorious. A bizarre type of fire magic that, apparently, unraveled enemy spells on contact. Finally Jacob and his girls would no longer have to worry about mages messing up their whole battle plan.

**

The messages had come from Alexis and for the first time in years Elaine found herself embarrassed by a compliment. She hadn't known it. Only the fragment of the dead god she'd allowed into her mind had let her notice it and she wouldn't be here now if he hadn't. So, not wanting to take all the credit for herself she typed out:

Their team was already rushing back to the refugee camp. Alexis, Elaine and some of the others could have already used light magic to make it back there but the shadow magic users, while fast, weren't quite able to move at light speed and so they were hurrying back together, giving the army a wide berth but still holding out for ways to ambush the convoy.

The message had come from Ophelia, sent to both of them. A moment later Alexis' text joined Ophelia's in Elaine's feed.

Elaine read their argument a little while longer and then interjected:

They had already racked up a sizable number just from what had already happened, even if Caulder's abominations all awarded weirdly low amounts of EXP. Elaine was already looking forward to how high her girls' stats would soar once they had a few quiet moments to allocate all of it.

Before she could think much more about it though they saw part of the enemy army vanishing in a pillar of purple fire.

“Holy shit, what was that?”, Elaine muttered, unable to keep quiet.

To her shock her girls seemed much less surprised.

**

Nobody could doubt the purple fire's effectiveness but, in Cassie's eyes, it might have been a little too effective. Where there had been a giant pile of bodies arranged as a nice roadblock before there now was only a foot-high layer of soot and ash that wouldn't be blocking anyone's advance. Now the only thing between the enemies and them were several hastily erected barricades, slightly stronger than sandbags but still nothing that would stop concentrated fire.

But at least the army was now down its cavalry and its siege weaponry, leaving only units upon units of cyborg soldiers. Cyborg soldiers with no sense of pain and a mindless urge to obey the commands they had been given.

Cassie took a deep breath and aimed his assault rifle downrange. He knew how to shoot. He was good at it. He had expected to get nervous about shooting these soldiers but the grotesque metal parts and the beasts they'd showed up with took away any of his reservations. But still, he didn't fire.

While Cassie had never had occasion to shoot humanoids before the Invasion he had still gone through boot camp before and he knew how to do it if he had to.

Wait until you can see the white in their eyes.

Of course Cassie knew that this wouldn't be your standard issue firefight. More than half of the cyborgs carried only melee weapons and many of those were bizarre bio-technological weapons welded and grafted to their limbs. For such a uniform army they didn't seem to have much uniformity going on with their equipment. Either way, Cassie was already aware that after going through the three magazines he had on his belt he would be dropping the weapon in favor of the magical sword on his hip. Likewise, he was already wearing his other M-skills. The cloak of falcon feathers looked gorgeous on his slender frame, doing a great job of disguising his shoulders that were just slightly too broad to be feminine, and the massive jewel necklace around his throat would have drawn attention to his collarbones if his armor didn't hide that part of his anatomy. A shame, really, because he really liked drawing attention to the tiny mounds he had. He had never taken hormones to facilitate their growth, it had just happened. Years ago he'd been ashamed of them but once he'd come to terms with the fact that he had no interest in appearing masculine he'd embraced them.

He might have also spent a little time perfecting them with a little vacuum pump but he was far too embarrassed to ever admit that out loud.

He shook himself out of it and eyed the horde ahead again. In the back of his mind he already held a construct of ice magic, one he'd come up with thanks to Elaine's tutoring. Allegedly his ice spells would be able to disperse Darklight constructs and so he kept one ready to go, just in case.

The horde drew a little closer still and Cassie saw his cue. He took one more deep breath, let it out, and opened fire.

After the briefing they'd gotten he had expected the bullets to bounce off the enemies but with two dozen Project members and several more soldiers from the camp's own defense force laying into them even the cyborgs went down. Not as fast as normal soldiers but still, down they went, line after line. There was a lull in the hail of gunfire as many reloaded but some of the camp's soldiers had held back to lay down fire during the reload.

For a moment Cassie felt annoyed at the fact that the super robots weren't helping until he heard their weapons roaring and looked past the advancing horde to see the mechs' projectiles striking a group of Dark Young coming up behind the foot soldiers.

Even so, more and more of the cyborgs kept coming and Cassie's fingers were already twitching towards his sword. And then the angels entered the fray.

Prudence held her blade in a high stance, both hands on the handle at the height of her head, blade pointed at the advancing horde. Half a dozen magic circles spun through the air along the blade's length, each glowing orange, and the air around them flickering in a heat mirage. Then, in quick succession, five bolts of pure, white-hot fire shot out of the blade's tip. Each of them struck a cyborg and just kept going, entire lines of them getting holes seared into them before the volatile projectiles finally petered out.

Jude stepped up next to her, a battered and abused silver coin in his hand. He flipped it in the air and muttered: “Vanitas vanitatum...”

The coin spun through the air and Jude drew rivers of power into himself, then pointed at the coin with a glowing finger and released a searingly bright beam of light at it. The beam struck the coin and was refracted off of it, straight into the horde of cyborgs and monsters. The coin continued to spin and so the beam veered off for a second, resulting in a swathe of death that seared its way through the approaching horde. Jude gave the clump of dead creatures a sad look and finished:

“... et omnia vanitas.”

ChrisLensman

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