Chapter 21: Breaking Through

“Elaine?” Prudence's voice popped into Elaine's ear. “Do you read me?”

“Little busy right now,” Elaine ground out as she shoved with all her might to push back the Red Rider's sword arm so that Sergeant Fielder could hurt the beast.

“I need you to get me a sample of that monster,” Prudence said.

“What for?”

“I found a ritual circle that should help us beat the Red Rider but I need a sample of that thing to use it properly.”

“I can try,” Elaine said with a grunt as she blocked another strike by the Red Rider.

“Do better,” Prudence said. “This could be our ace in the hole.”

“Alright,” Elaine said with another grunt of effort, then added with a sarcastic emphasis, “boss.”

She trusted Prudence. If the angel thought that this could win them the fight then she believed it. The question would be how to go about it. Oh, finding a sample of the creature wouldn't be hard. The Red Rider's regeneration was on another level entirely, completely beyond the pale. Getting its head punched into a fine red mist was something it'd shrugged off in a matter of seconds. Getting its hand lobbed off had barely halted its sword swing. But that was the crux of the matter. The beast regenerated quickly. Its cut-off limbs didn't miraculously reattach themselves, it simply grew new limbs when necessary. The cut-off body parts littered the battlefield at this point. Even just in the short conversation with Prudence she'd chopped off three left hands and two right hands. More than enough for Prudence, whatever she was planning.

And so while continuing to block the Red Rider's attack so that that hot idiot from the mech squad could deal the real damage to the Red Rider she let Typhon deal with getting Prudence her sample.

It was a bizarre sensation, splitting her mind apart like this. The parallel processing afforded to her by becoming a Lacrima let her mind work on multiple diametrically opposed topics all at once. And so one part of her mind was focused on staying aware of the battlefield, a second was acting as a metronome by keeping the intricate series of rhythms she needed to keep her spells going, a third was actually moving her body and working the magic necessary to stop the Red Rider's attacks and, now, a fourth part emerged, governed by her Soul Shard, Typhon.

He could act independently of her to some extent and he used that independence to summon two more crystal blades, which he then used to scoop up the dismembered limbs of the Red Rider, chopping them up into manageable pieces and flinging them into the air, hoping Prudence would notice.

And she did. Just moments after Typhon had started juggling the disgusting red pieces of meat Elaine could hear the sounds of a Gospel in motion. A moment later the strain Elaine had felt on the Winds of Magic in the area became acute, letting her know that it had been Prudence's ritual magic that was drawing in all that power, and then the Gospel sped off again as the angel's voice said into her ear:

“Perfect. Great job.”

**

Prudence had enormous respect for Elaine, whatever the woman's proclivities may or may not be. And so Prudence wasn't really impressed with how quickly she'd met her request, merely satisfied, which was high praise in itself.

She'd of course heard the skepticism in Elaine's voice at the idea of this sample and that told Prudence that Elaine had at least a passing understanding of ritual magic. She had no doubt wondered what the sample would be used for. And Prudence couldn't fault her for that.

Ritual magic was more structured than the tricks most mages worked with and that meant its programming language was more rigid. If Prudence needed a sample that implied the spell always needed a sample and Elaine had no doubt wondered what sample the spell had previously used as it couldn't very well have included DNA samples of every single camp defender. And it hadn't.

The ritual circle had been set to cast its effect indiscriminately over a large swathe of the battlefield. It was a deceptively simple bit of magecraft, less overtly deadly than a rain of acid or a trap of monofilament wires but no less deadly the way it had been intended to use. But with only one foe remaining an indiscriminate effect wouldn't be worth using. So under ordinary circumstances this ritual circle would have been useless to them.

Except Prudence wasn't a hack. She hadn't been lying to Ophelia. She loved working with this stuff. She'd spent years and years learning how to craft and manipulate ritual circles. And so it was the easiest thing in the world for her to add an exception loop to the circle, to make it affect not an entire area but only the one thing whose essence was smeared on it. And Elaine had just provided her with more than enough essence to make it work.

Oh, what Prudence needed wasn't DNA, per se. This beast's DNA was likely a jumble of all kinds of things. No, what this spell needed was a link of contagion, the same thing tracking spells relied on. Any part of a creature could be used to lead back to that creature, so long as it was fresh enough. Old, dry hair wouldn't be of use to track anyone down but a fresh fingernail clipping would work just fine. And right here Prudence had finely chopped monster arm slices. It was disgusting stuff but when you worked with ritual circles you stopped caring about revulsion after a certain point.

There was just one problem with this spell circle: It had been meant as an anti-army spell. Prudence focusing it down into a single target hex made it usable against their foe but it didn't diminish its energy requirement in the slightest. That energy requirement would mean that, focused down on a single target, the spell would strike an order of magnitude harder but it still meant that she had to sit still and feed Winds of Magic into the damn circle for a while longer. The thing already thrummed with power like a tuning fork and Prudence was extremely grateful the Gospel's windows were far sturdier than any glass the mortals had figured out how to craft because any normal glass would soon shatter under the hum that was beginning to set her teeth on edge.

Oh yes, this spell would ruin that bastard Caulder's day.

**

“So I can't help noticing that we're not really making any progress,” Eos said as Jacob unloaded his twelfth shotgun burst into the Red Rider's midsection.

“We've been making steady progress,” he protested.

“We did at the start,” Eos said. “But the deeper into its guts we dig the faster it regenerates. At this point we're making negative progress. And we're running out of bullets.”

“So what do you propose? Give up?”

“Let Faye and Elena handle things for a moment while you talk to the pretty brunette. Maybe she knows how to deal with it.”

Jacob hated the idea of deferring to another person.

Oh, it wasn't because the brunette from the Superhero Squad was a woman. He'd certainly held opinions like that before he'd joined Project God-Machines but they had been quite literally beaten out of him. He'd used to be the kind of guy who thought that girls needed guys to protect them and, in their mechs, this was certainly true, what with him being the melee fighter while Faye and Elena stood back and fired guns. But out of their mechs it was a different story entirely. Him and Faye had gotten together after some careless remarks of his had led to a bar brawl and he'd lost teeth to her fists before their violent disagreement had ended in violent, sweaty bedroom activities. And Elena had beaten the absolute piss out of him in training while calling him a bitch, again and again, until he'd gotten good enough to score a win against her.

So no, it wasn't the brunette being a woman. It was his damn stubborn pride. He was the guy in the damn super robot. He'd thought getting the giant mech with the magic wings of light would mean he'd get to be the hero of the story. But he could also tell that Eos was right, that his attacks were having less and less effect the deeper into the Red Rider's body he dug, as if the healing got stronger in defense of its Ouroboros Drive. He alone couldn't do this, couldn't even keep this up for much longer. And he wouldn't jeopardize the entire mission just for his pride.

“Sergeant Caldwell, was it?” he asked into the communication channel.

“That's right,” she replied.

“I don't think my attacks can make it past this thing's regeneration.” He hated admitting it. “I don't think I can keep this up, either.”

“That's funny,” she said, “because I only have about ten minutes left in this form before I collapse.”

“Fuck.”

“So, what's the plan?”

“I was hoping you had one,” he admitted.

“I do, in fact,” she said.

“Yeah?” he asked, hope creeping back into his bones.

“There's over thirty people behind us waiting for their chance to light this thing up with magic,” she said. “And the angel who brought us here is cooking up something she thinks can win us the day. So let's back off and let our gunners and mages do a bit of work until she's ready.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

**

Caulder stared at his monitors, glee evident on his face. He'd had many, many reasons to send the Red Rider out against this little refugee camp. It had been a field test, a show of force, a twisted form of respect for a former ally, a challenge against that former ally, yes, but it had also been an experiment in and of itself.

The Red Rider had been based upon his old design of the Ouroboros Drive, an idea to harness a perpetual motion machine of emotion that could draw in Winds of Magic on its own. But working with Outsider forces had opened Caulder's eyes to myriads of truths and among them had been a way to make his Ouroboros Drive into so much more.

The Red Rider combined the Eros of the Queen of the Woods and the Thanatos of the Sovereign of Carcosa. That much was true. He'd infected the beast with both strains of Outsider corruption and they worked together to create the red haze that was causing such chaos among the ranks of the defenders. But the Red Rider also had a concerning tendency to tear itself apart if not continuously fed with Outsider energy by its swarm of Yellow Wraiths. Or rather, it had had that tendency.

Caulder had hypothesized that this tendency was due to an overabundance of Eros in the being, that the lack of Thanatos around it was causing this reaction. The fact that being energized by servants of the King in Yellow suppressed this tendency had been a good indication of this.

Except the swarm was dead now. The Red Rider should have torn itself apart – but it hadn't. If anything it had become more efficient and more powerful than Caulder's models had predicted. The Thanatos in the air, all the pain and death around it, had caused its balance to shift. The writhing bodies at the beast's center no longer provided it an overabundance of Eros. Rather, they provided it just barely enough to even out the Thanatos all around the being.

The camp defenders had managed what Caulder himself hadn't: They'd managed, through their defiance, to make the Red Rider self-sustaining.