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318. Get Out
🕑 Added 2025-02-28 15:00:09 +0000 UTCThe puppets charged, and Ike charged back. Lightning flickered over his hands as he gripped one by the head and smashed it into the one behind it. Their heads shattered. The two staggered around, blindly knocking into their fellows. Crouching a little too low for their blind grasps to find him, Ike drew the Hungry Sword and charged into the mess. Trailing purple light, he dashed left and right, winding through the puppets and cutting whatever he could.
He wasn’t aiming to kill. Instead, he struck at legs, letting the Hungry Sword saw through them. The puppets fell, but continued to try to fight. Their worm-like bodies and wildly grasping hands tripped up their uninjured fellows, and slowed down the entire group.
Wisp cast thread left and right, tangling the puppets up, then destroying or disabling them with brutal punches to their most important limbs. She struck their cores at first, then caught on to what Ike was doing and started breaking legs and heads instead. More and more injured puppets staggered about, getting in the way of all their fellows.
Mag took on a small bird form and became a feathery menace. Like spider-form Wisp, a smaller form didn’t diminish his battle power in any way. He darted down from the shallow ceiling to deliver punishing blows to the puppets, often disabling them directly through punching their backs or blinding them by pecking out their eyes. The puppets’ eyes were made of glass or stone, but before Mag’s beak, they were as nothing.
Ike ducked a puppet with a meat cleaver and let the Hungry Sword take their throat. He stepped forward and found himself in the clear. “Come on! Let’s go!”
Mag fluttered up and flew to his side. Wisp kicked a puppet out of her way and ran over. The three of them fled just as the first puppets from the city pushed open the hatch behind them. The city puppets faced a mess of interlocking limbs and broken heads, as the automaton puppets struggled to extricate themselves from one another. Taken aback, the city puppets froze, not knowing where to go. A few of them staggered into the mess, only for the headless puppets to thrash them and the legless puppets to grasp their ankles. Stymied, they could do nothing but retreat and work out a way past the mess.
“Hah,” Ike muttered, half to himself. He turned back around and raced on, toward the staircase out of the underground. At speed, he passed the farm animals and looms, and all the other production gear, then reached the staircase.
Immediately, a feathery bolt zipped by him as Mag forwent the stairs to fly directly up the tunnel. Ike chased after him. Wisp shot spiderthread past his head and pulled herself up to where it stuck, released the line, and shot another bolt of spiderthread.
“Oh, come on,” Ike grumbled.
“Get better at locomotion, loser,” Wisp called backward.
Ike sighed. If he activated Lightning Dash—or rather, the part of Storm Clad that corresponded to Lightning Dash—he could easily pass both of them, but he didn’t want to use that much mana or announce his presence to the world above via the thunderclouds that inevitably gathered when he used the skill. If Brightbriar came after him, things would be different, but for now, the man seemed content to send his puppets. Besides, he knows… or should know, through Llewyn, that the lightning clouds are my signal. If I use the technique, he knows it’s me who infiltrated his city, the guy who caused trouble in Shopkeep’s city. As it is, he clearly didn’t recognize my face, so I’m just a random mage. Someone worth pursuing, not someone worth pulling out all the stops for. I can’t reveal myself now, or else I risk our entire escape.
Clattering behind him. He turned. Puppets clambered up the stairs. Most of these puppets were fully intact, some dressed in the generic robes of the automatons, others dressed in the mage finery of the mages down below. They’d broken through the snarl, but the snarl had bought him some time. Ike turned back around and kept running, charging toward the top. He was still fast even without activating his pure speed-based technique, but now, he pushed himself to go even faster. Without any boost of technique, with nothing but his body, he raced up the stairs. His muscles ached, pushed to their very limits. His breath came quick and heavy. His whole body focused on nothing but running, and as it did, he circulated mana through himself, pushing himself even faster.
Ike blasted past Wisp, who startled, then shot a spider thread onto his back and hopped onto his shoulder. He rushed past Mag, who screeched and flew faster, taking his rush as a challenge. The door at the top of the stairs, his destination, came into view. It seemed to glow, outlined by the sun pouring in from outside. Ike lowered his shoulder and charged the door.
Bam! The door flew open. Ike blasted outside, into the sun. For a second, all he could see was pure white, his eyes washed out by the sunlight. He blinked, rapidly bringing his eyes back to normal.
“Uh oh,” Wisp muttered on his shoulder.
Ike pressed his lips together. “That’s one way to put it.”
Puppets. Puppets in every direction. No matter where he looked, where he turned, a generic puppet stood there, blank faced, baring a weapon.
Footsteps rushed up the stairs. Ike drew his sword. Mag fluttered out and took on human form, and Wisp hopped down from his shoulder and did the same.
“I’ll carve a path,” Ike declared, stepping forward. “Get puppets between us and the door, as quickly as possible!”
“We gonna fight all of these?” Wisp asked, eyeing them warily. There were puppets everywhere. Countless puppets, stretching in all directions. A mass of shifting fabric and shiny porcelain, rounded ball joints and kinked doll fingers.
“Nah. I have a plan. Just follow me,” Ike replied.
Wisp nodded. Mag grumbled under his breath, but fell in. The three of them charged, rushing toward the waiting puppets once more.
Comments
PoeticSaint
The plot thickens.... wasn't expecting the puppets in wait, but it tracks. I'm just wondering when the other shoe is gonna drop and Brightbriar comes guns blazing.
