Chapter 14: Glare In The Sky

Ophelia sat in the passenger seat of a Gospel, gripping her Lampade Wand in white-knuckled hands as Prudence flew them both to their destination.

She never used to be this nervous before fights but the way even the angels had seemed terrified of this Red Rider had gotten to her. And, she admitted, the beast had scared her as well.

After her stud of a girlfriend had managed to fix Ophelia's bloodlust she'd thought herself on top of the world but apparently it had barely taken a couple of hours for the world to come tumbling back down around her. But right now she had no time to be scared. She had a job to do.

The mermaids had really outdone themselves this time. The Professor had claimed Caulder would use the new moon to cast some nasty spells and the mermaids had subsequently scoured the area for any sign of those. As a new moon caused ripples in the perfectly natural fabric of the world the power could only be used to cast normal magic and not Outsider witchcraft but even ordinary magic could be dangerous. She would know. Her perfectly ordinary magic had become fucking terrifying.

And so, after scouring the area, the mermaids had found half a dozen hotspots of magical activity, no easy feat considering the way the Red Rider had saturated the entire area with his red haze.

Prudence had offered to fly Ophelia to these locations, both as a driver and as muscle in case the hotspots turned out to be guarded by something Ophelia couldn't handle alone.

But when they reached the first hotspot what they found was:

“Oh what the fuck,” Ophelia ground out, staring in horror at the thing on the ground.

The thing was a ritual circle. No, not a pentagram. Pentagrams were for amateurs. The circle was a complicated shape, a decagram inside of a circle with flowing lines of script that looked like nodes on a circuit board.

The entire construction was made of gleaming metal, stainless steel with inlaid threads of copper. That part was perfectly normal as far as ritual magic went.

What was distinctly less normal was the creature wrapped around the circle.

The ritual circle was surrounded by, or rather embedded in, what looked like a single enormous spinal cord but on closer inspection turned out to be five human spinal columns. The connection points consisted of deformed human heads, each mouth filled with the tailbone of the spine in front of it. The amalgamation had ten limbs, five right arms and five right legs, that the creature could use to walk around. The brains of the once-human bodies were wired to electronic gadgets which were in turn wired into the summoning circle. The end result looked like a cross between a tortoise and an ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail.

“Every time I think this bastard's work can't get any more vile he goes and does something like this,” Prudence muttered.

“I mean, there is a certain efficiency in the design,” Ophelia said, sounding far more calm and detached than she felt in the presence of this atrocity. “A ritual circle that sets itself up and powers itself. And judging by the ripples in the air it protects itself with a barrier.” And then she lost her sense of detachment and added: “But even so, how fucked in the head do you have to be to come up with this?!”

“About as fucked up as someone who would turn a still-living angel into a sword?” Prudence asked.

“Yeah,” Ophelia said. “That. The good thing is, I don't need to understand the guy who created this. I just need to break his toy and put these poor people out of their misery.”

“Prudence nodded. “Indeed. But, if you can, leave the circle whole.”

“You want to use it?” Ophelia asked.

“It's not tainted by the Outside and ritual magic is fairly simple if you have a good circle. And these are really high quality. Worst case, we trash them later. Best case, we find something that can really ruin Caulder's day.”

**

The picture Elaine had seen of the Red Rider had been very clear and accurate but it had failed to convey the sheer scale of the beast.

The entirety of Project Divinity stood at the ready, waiting for the Red Rider and its army of the dead. The more physically inclined fighters like Evelyn, Alexis, Cassie and Elaine herself stood in front while the casters and ranged fighters stayed in the back, though still protectively in front of the human soldiers who made up the camp guards.

The only ones not present were Ophelia and Prudence, who were busy making sure no nasty surprises befell them. Either way, looking at the Red Rider in pictures it had seemed as if the beast was perhaps a little larger than a normal man riding a horse but that was not the case. The beast wasn't kaiju-sized or anything but it was a good thirty feet tall, towering over its army of thralls.

These zombie thralls were plenty unnerving in their own right. They didn't move like shambling zombies but not like proper humans either. Instead the condensed red haze wrapped around them yanked their limbs this way and that, moving them like marionettes on the strings of a particularly violent puppeteer.

And while Prudence's pictures had prepared them for the sight of Yellow Wraiths with probes and diodes attached to their air bladders, it hadn't prepared Elaine for the discordant humming sound those metal bits emitted. The sound set her teeth on edge, like a swarm of mosquitoes dredged up from the depths of a bad dream.

And then there was the eye in the sky.

Elaine was incredibly grateful for Evelyn's Akashic Knowledge and the way it had informed them that this eye wasn't physical but rather a magical construct conjured up by the Red Rider, because if it were a real, physical thing she would have lost her shit entirely. It looked far too real, as if it was grown out of the stars themselves, a canker of the cosmos. The eye was bloodshot and yellow, the pupil bizarre for its sheer mundanity, and the eye was lazily looking back and forth across the battlefield, its attention never focusing on anything for long. And it would be Alexis' job to make sure that didn't change.

**

Alexis knew she was the best for the job but the anxiety had still hit her like a physical thing when they had told her that it would be up to her to deal with the Red Rider's eye.

Alexis' spear could pierce through shield bubbles as if they weren't even there and so she was the only one who could attack this eye before the shield went down. And so, if the beast decided to get the attention of the eye in the sky before its shield was broken it fell to Alexis to deal with that.

Alexis was a bundle of anxiety in social situations, especially when someone as important as a General gave her orders. But once she'd arrived on the battlefield that anxiety had melted away as it always did, to be replaced with calm focus. She thought it deeply ironic that a slavering monster that controlled a giant eye in the sky was infinitely less terrifying to her than having to talk to people she didn't know but that was her damage.

Just as she thought that the horse's eye narrowed as it stared at the defenders and the red haze rose up in response.

Go time, she thought, and hefted her spear.

Areadbhar, Alexis' spear, or rather Lugh's spear, could pierce through anything. And Alexis now had an ability that greatly increased her body's reflexes and responses. And Alexis was going to combine the two to keep everyone safe.

She hefted the spear in order to throw it, high over her shoulder. She calculated the arc of the throw, the spear's weight, the force required, the speed of the wind and a dozen other variables, her superhuman brain barely taking two seconds to come up with the perfect way to throw it. When she was done she began a two-step run-up and then tossed her legendary spear at the beast's eye.

The arc was perfect and the spear passed through the shield bubble unobstructed, not shattering it but not hindered by it in any way either, and struck the mount's eye perfectly, skewering the socket.

She knew this wouldn't be enough to get rid of the threat entirely. No part of Areadbhar was capable of stopping or even slowing regeneration. Eventually, and soon, the beast's regeneration would push the spear out of the wound before fixing the eye. Even worse, in order to strike this blow Alexis had tossed away her spear. Two days ago this would have been a terrible mistake and a crippling one at that. The spear could be recalled, that wasn't the problem. She had long since tested this. Attempting to summon an M-skill that was already summoned would teleport the item back into her hand. But if she didn't leave the spear in the wound for as long as possible the beast's eye would likely be back in perfect conditions within a minute and so she had to leave the spear where it was for the time being. And it was her best weapon.

Or rather, it had been her best weapon.

Alexis reached deep inside herself and drew out her newest weapon. Fragarach, the Answerer. Winds swirled around her the moment her hand grabbed the hilt of the ornate longsword and the sword hummed as if in approval. The ability to cut through any armor, the ability to force anyone at the point of the blade to speak the truth and control over wind equivalent to advanced air magic. The sword didn't feel more powerful than Areadbhar, precisely, but it was so much more compact, so much easier to swing than an enormous spear, that she wondered if she could combine it with her Gevurah pattern force rifle. The gun wasn't so much a gun as it was a gun-shaped device that cast force magic on demand. It had no recoil and it didn't weigh much so it was feasible to use it one-handed. She couldn't use it one-handed while holding her enormous spear in the other but with this sword that wasn't exactly an issue, was it? She'd had to switch back and forth between weapons before but maybe now that was no longer necessary. Yes, she would make this work. Her magic wasn't as monstrously powerful as Ophelia's but Alexis could still be a force of nature.

Much more concerning than losing her spear, however, was the way the Red Rider reacted to having its eye skewered. The mount thrashed around, sending out tremors that reached all the way to the camp defenders and made them stumble and the rider threw its head back as if trying to roar, except it had no mouth to roar with. When it was done throwing a tantrum it locked its eyeless gaze onto Alexis and raised its free hand. A sphere of not-light gathered in its hand and a wrist-thick beam of Darklight shot out of it, aimed to pierce Alexis through the heart.

Instead of dodging the attack Alexis took a deep breath, trusting her teammate to keep her safe. And he did.

A spike of ice shot out of the ground and intercepted the beam, reflecting it back at the zombie horde and cutting a swathe of destruction through their ranks.

Alexis gave Cassie a quick nod of appreciation and then turned back to the enemy.

The Red Rider waved its sword through an arc. Alexis expected another attack, a beam of energy from the sword perhaps, but no such thing happened. Instead the tendrils of red mist coiling around some of the zombies throbbed and pulsed and then they were yanked up and forward, moving as if making successive moon jumps. It made their already janky movements stand out even more as their limbs were barely involved in the way the haze was making them move, either flailing about wildly or flopping uselessly. Alexis tried very hard not to think about what it meant that some of these bodies were flailing rather than hanging limply. Not that she had much time to contemplate any of it, considering the bizarre form of motion failed to hide the fact that a large part of the enemy force would be within melee range within moments.

But it spoke to the training of everyone around her that even the bizarre sight of strung-up zombie thralls moon jumping towards them only made the cadets hesitate a moment. By the second jump everyone from Project Divinity was firing at the thralls, shooting them out of the sky before the monsters could reach their front lines.

But by the fourth leap Alexis realized something horrifying: Their numbers were barely thinning. No matter where the thralls got shot, they kept going. No matter what limbs were severed, they kept going. The red haze kept whatever bits remained locked in a humanoid shape. She saw one thrall with disembodied hands and feet following the motions of its torso even though the limbs had been reduced to a fine red mist by shotgun blasts and another one that had been squashed by force magic but was still coming, a mess of blood, bone shards and viscera held by the mist in a human shape. The only thralls that actually got destroyed were the ones that were destroyed so thoroughly that there were no remains left to yank to and fro.

“Burn them!” she yelled. “Vaporize them!”

If her side had consisted of ordinary people or even normal soldiers Alexis was certain her command would have been drowned out in a cacophony of panicked screams but Project Divinity, collectively, had seen some of the worst the Outsiders were capable of and it had toughened them up. Nobody was screaming, nobody was panicking, and so everyone heard her commands. All the fighters with offensive magic put their guns away and started hurling their most powerful spells at the thralls.

Thralls were incinerated by fire, light and lightning magic, atomized by water and air magic, crushed into diamonds by space magic and a dozen other displays of power that would have been horrific if they'd been used against normal humans. Alexis even saw one of Elaine's spells, a whirlwind of crystal shards that turned a group of thralls into a fine red mist. Of course Alexis knew that this was grossly inefficient. They were using very powerful magic to deal with cannon fodder while the main threat steadily approached but being bogged down by cannon fodder when the Red Rider arrived would be even more dangerous.

Of course Ophelia would have been able to get rid of these thralls very easily by disrupting the spells that kept them going but of course Ophelia wasn't here because she was busy making sure Caulder didn't pull any nasty stunts.

Objectively speaking Ophelia's skillset was one of the most useful of the entire project. In a different situation Alexis might have been humbled by this but right here, on the battlefield, she was more confident and more objective than that. Yes, Ophelia was extremely powerful. Her ability to unravel spells, her ability to destroy hordes of undead with conjured spectral hounds, her monstrous potential for clearing entire hordes of enemies and of course her obscene healing abilities were all incredibly useful but Alexis' own skillset wasn't that far behind it. She could also heal allies very quickly and she had ways of dealing with hordes of enemies. And, unlike Ophelia, she had a way to deal absolutely catastrophic damage to single targets. Although now that she thought about it, using her Single Stroke Finish ability on Areadbhar gave her immensely powerful single target hits but right now she wasn't using her spear, was she?

She smiled and took Fragarach in both hands. The thralls were almost upon them. Alexis and the others had managed to thin their ranks considerably but the rest were still coming closer and closer. It would only be a moment for the rest to be in melee range. Just enough time to charge a devastating strike, in fact.

**

A blast of condensed air shook the battlefield as dozens of thralls were carved into pieces, the force of the attack so violent that it momentarily dispersed the red haze and so instead of being yanked back into shape the sliced body parts hit the asphalt with wet smacking sounds and stayed there motionless.

Evelyn stared. She knew she had her own battle to worry about, knew that only a fraction of the enemies had been destroyed, but still she stared at Alexis, at the way Alexis had just casually revealed herself as an absolute monster. She's held a ready pose for five seconds and then dragged her shiny new sword through a diagonal slash that had sent out ripples of air so powerful they hadn't merely carved apart several of these ridiculously tough zombie thralls but had also rippled outward to jostle the swarm of Yellow Wraiths in the distance around.

But it didn't make Evelyn jealous. It spurred her on. If Alexis could pull out that kind of power, so could she. In fact, Evelyn thought, the main downside to her Thunderstorm Dominion was its visibility but right now they were in open combat anyway, weren't they?

She drew on her Soul Shard, the way she did when summoning an M-skill but going far deeper than that, and pulled out her Dominion. Instantly thunderclouds covered the battlefield, hiding the awful eye in the sky from sight at least momentarily, and lightning crackled around her fingertips.

She had limitless stamina in thunderstorms and right now she had summoned her own thunderstorm to fight under. And she was going to make the most of it. She pointed at two clusters of thralls and nearly instantly two bolts of lightning, each as thick as a tree trunk, crashed down from the sky and vaporized the clusters of thralls. Next she pointed at a spot where the swarm of Yellow Wraiths had clustered up and they, too, were struck by lightning. Spurred on by the effectiveness of her new skill she pointed a finger at the Red Rider. A bolt of lightning even thicker and more powerful crashed out of the sky and struck the barrier. Except the abilities that had been more than capable of shredding all other opponents on the battlefield scattered harmlessly as it struck the barrier.

“Damn,” she muttered quietly.

But the attack did have an effect, just not a good one. The Red Rider directed its eyeless gaze towards her, raised its hand at her and sent out a massive beam of Darklight in retaliation.

Evelyn was about to jump away to safety but before she could spring into action a pane of ice appeared in front of her. The beam of Darklight hit it and ricocheted back at the caster, carving into the Red Rider's shield bubble, sending out concentric circles where it struck the shield.

“Thanks,” she called out, hoping Cassie would hear her.