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Thresholder, ch 143, Full Contact, pt 2
🕑 Added 2024-10-11 08:31:55 +0000 UTCI have decided that part of the problem with writing is, in fact, Thresholder, or at least writing this part of it. I sit down to write and it's just like "oh, we're doing another complicated fight scene". I love fight scenes, but they require a lot more writing muscle. I read back through all of book 4 the other day, and I think I'm happy with it, but I do wish I had made things easier on myself in a few different ways.
This chapter should probably have been two shorter chapters, which I think is my preference for longer fight scenes, mostly for pacing purposes.
(I wrote up a post mortem after the readthrough, and I won't share it because it was actually premortem, and I have policies against commenting on things while they're in motion. But it was helpful, and I love my post mortems, so some of it will make it into the overall series post mortem once the series is finished.)
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The constructs had been a brainchild of one of the northern science cities.
The culture had a problem, and that problem was the use of force. Force was not part of the culture, generally speaking — it was not the way that disputes were settled, not something that was used against children, and not a part of their judicial system. It was, however, widely acknowledged that force was necessary in certain circumstances, namely in stopping violent crimes in progress or restraining people who were a danger to themselves or others. The other major need was that of defense, in the case of an invading force which managed to land an army on their shores or cross a border, in the days when they still had neighboring countries to have borders with. And of course the culture didn’t want to have much in the way of a standing army, nor did it look particularly favorably on conscripting people into the fight, even if it was part of the culture that everyone should be willing to arm themselves against potential oppressors.
From this ball of contradictions had risen the idea of some new path, and in Perry’s opinion, the constructs were the worst of all worlds, the kind of thing that probably would have outraged the culture if they had actually understood what the constructs were and how they worked. That they didn’t understand the constructs and how they worked represented a major failing of the culture, but that was tied up in their skepticism of proliferating new technologies.
The constructs were stationed in every city, in bays that held hundreds of them. They could be deployed by a hand signal, usually with a threshold of a few hand signals coming from different people, and they would appear in an instant using a transport method that didn’t work on people and incidentally, was powered by lanterns, releasing significant effluence. And from that point, when the constructs were deployed, they followed scripts that had been written for them, restraining those who were in violation of laws. They could be recalled by someone at a monitoring station, but weren’t easily stopped. They had extremely rudimentary intelligence, which made their speed and strength all the more terrifying. The only reason there had been no major problems with the constructs was that the script they followed was conservative and contained many checks.
But that, of course, meant that power over these things was in the hands of the few, which was definitely not the culture, and in seeking to eliminate a position where authority could be abused, they had created a new, much worse position of effectively anonymous authority. But it was hidden from public view, and there had been no great scandal thus far, and at any rate the constructs had to be called in by what was referred to as a “quorum” but really was just a certain number of people making the emergency sign with their hand. The control rods were tinkered with by assigned members of a symboulion, away from view.
The constructs were tall and hulking. Perry couldn’t imagine seeing one of them as a protector, but he’d never had too much nationalistic fervor of the sort that made people think the military was cool. The magic that fueled them was from another world, maybe multiple other worlds, and Perry could only imagine the fields of mechanized magic constructs in the world that the base technology and physics had come from. Maybe it was a place of eternal war. Or maybe the constructs were only possible because of the confluence of two or more magics. It was difficult to say; it was possible that they were only available in this one specific corner of the universe.
Perry had prepared to fight them. He’d been preparing since the first time he’d seen one. He thought it was inevitable that one or more would be called down on him, given the public fights he seemed to keep getting in, even if most of those fights happened when he was on the side of the civilians who would be doing the calling. But once in Berus, they had seemed like a secondary concern, because Berus didn’t have constructs, not when it was such a new place, not when they would have had to get them shipped in by the dozens from parts of the world that did not entirely trust Berus. The Farfinder had acquired a control rod, but they were either very far away or completely wiped out.
But wherever Fenilor had stashed these constructs away, they were here, now, in the china shop with Perry. There were two of them, and Perry had little doubt there would be more. Depending on how Fenilor had gotten them into the country, there might be an entire battalion of them.
He launched himself up into the air, and the constructs followed after him, lifting from the floor as though they weighed nothing.
They were not, so far as Perry knew, supposed to be capable of flight, so this was something of an unfortunate surprise. They were slightly slower than him, but as he kept going up, he saw more of them, some of which were being called in as he watched, appearing in a shimmer. There were a dozen of them following after him by the time he was a hundred feet in the air, drifting in his wake, but that seemed to be the limit.
Fenilor rose after them, flying up into the sky, swiftly arcing through their formation to come at Perry directly.
Perry dropped and sped toward the ground, watching the constructs follow. They tracked him smoothly, and with no obvious command from Fenilor. They were an unwelcome complication, and a sign that Fenilor was trying to end this quickly. If he had a control rod, it wasn’t visible on him, but they only needed to be set, not carried indefinitely.
As Perry dropped down below the level of the buildings, Marchand highlighted something that was only visible when zoomed in. On the backs of the constructs was the same crust as on the tablet Perry had pulled from the hidey-hole. It was possible that it was just used to cloak them from scrying, but it was out in the open, and from past experience, simple enough to wipe away.
Perry’s half-formed plans changed in an instant and he went for the pack of constructs, flying beneath them to get a better look. Fenilor came bolting down with a spear this time, wickedly sharp and tipped with black glass, and Perry dodged to the side with a spin, which brought him just close enough to draw his sword across the back of one of the constructs. Then Perry let himself fall again, making distance between himself and the rest of them.
He watched as the construct plummeted to the ground.
“Mask up,” said Perry.
The back of the armor, where the drone was usually stored, now held two small masks. They didn’t fit there perfectly, and the spring launcher couldn’t jettison them up, but Perry could awkwardly grab them when the compartment unfolded, which he did as soon as it seemed like he had a spare second.
The universal masks weren’t strong enough, which was the main problem with them. The one that used forced perspective to make his fingers do some janky telekinesis could squish a watermelon, at least in their testing, but it needed some distance to do that, and against someone in armor, he didn’t like the odds. He had wanted the power to pin someone in place at a distance, and had gotten a rough handhold that Fenilor or Third Fervor would barely notice before launching at him like a missile.
For smudging up a mark on the back of a construct, it seemed like it would be more than good enough.
Perry slid the mask in place, over the helmet, framing the cameras that were hidden in the front. It was attached with stretchy elastic he hoped would stay on, and there were gummy bits in place that would help it stick to his face while he was in motion.
Everything that they knew about the magic said that it shouldn’t have worked through Marchand’s cameras. All the camera equipment aboard the Farfinder hadn't interacted with the masks in any way. But Marchand had his own keen perceptions, and apparently counted as a perceiver. There were cameras studded all over the power armor, and as soon as the mask was in place, they turned off, making the mask go active. All perception was being funneled through the mask, translated to the viewscreen inside the helmet, perceived twice.
Perry rolled in mid-air, dodging another attack by Fenilor, nearly taking a spear to his chest in the process. The mask was big and obvious on the helmet, a clear weak point given that it was strapped in place with elastic, and Perry didn’t expect that it would last long.
The constructs moved together, but they kept themselves pointed toward him, keeping their backs obscured. Perry kept one eye on them and the other on Fenilor. He could outpace them, given their relatively slow speed, though they were spreading out now, the work of some algorithm or a hidden command from Fenilor.
When Fenilor came sweeping in again, Perry was ready for it, and knocked the thrust to the side, taking a glancing blow to his hip and nearly crashing into Fenilor like they’d done before. Perry made no effort to grapple again, and instead changed his course, heading straight for the flock of constructs. He aimed squarely for the center, and they converged again, no longer spreading out.
They missed each other by inches as strong metal hands reached out to grab him, and once he was through, Perry briefly had a view of their backs.
He swiped a hand across them, fingers smearing the sigils, and watched as a full half of them dropped from the sky. The others turned on him, and Fenilor came in for another pass with a howl, but the fight had just gotten easier.
Perry took the hit from Fenilor, this time to his leg. The tip of the spear hit flesh this time, shearing through the metal, and Perry felt warm blood wetting his leg, almost a balm against the pain. He ignored Fenilor though, and looked to the constructs, who threatened to close in on him the moment he stopped moving. Grappling to the ground with Fenilor would work, Perry was sure of that, but with the constructs in play he would be murdered before he could do too much.
Perry found himself drifting eastward, further from the city center. If he was bringing down the constructs, he would have preferred that he do it away from where the civilians were.
When he had some distance, he tried to pinch the constructs using the mask, but it just wasn’t strong enough, not against hardened steel. Fenilor was building up speed, and Perry tried against him too, squeezing armored thumb and forefinger together around one of Fenilor’s distant limbs.
“We could try the other mask, sir,” said Marchand.
There was just enough distance between them and the enemy to get it on, in Perry’s opinion. He slipped the one mask off and put on the other. This was the focused laser mask, so weak that under normal conditions he wouldn’t have been able to burn much, with no more power than a magnifying glass you might use to burn ants. In Marchand’s hands, it was much more effective though.
The version that the mask wearers used narrowed their vision to a point, and generally used only a single eye to do it, perfect focus on as small a spot as the lens could handle. When Marchand used it, it was by shutting down the majority of the photoreceptors in the largest of the cameras on the armor, shutting off all input of light sensing except for a single pixel’s worth.
The first time they had used it in testing, Perry had felt a wave of claustrophobia. He was blinded, the screen reduced to what felt like a dead pixel, and there was something about it that was worse than any time before. There were times he’d been stuck in the armor, unable to move, times when he’d been blinded, but the idea of using it in combat had been slightly sickening.
The solution they’d come up with was that Marchand would put up an approximation of the battle, either wireframes or a low resolution model like the ones that had been used in the past. Perry had picked the wireframe view, the better to have a distinction.
The view switched over, showing Marchand’s best guesses of where everyone was, guesses that would rapidly get worse with every second that passed. With the mask over Marchand, it was necessary that all other cameras be shut off, and that was what gave Perry a queasy feeling, like the world was slipping away from him outside.
When the view came back, Fenilor was falling limply through the sky.
“What happened?” asked Perry as he stalled his movement. The constructs were coming closer to him, and he was going to take another pass at them. With the mask, he might be able to have Marchand lance through the runes on their backs.
“I went for his eyes, sir,” said Marchand. “It’s my hope that he’s been blinded.”
Perry looked down at Fenilor, then up at the constructs. Fenilor had righted himself and changed armors to something with a mirror finish, but he was still falling. When he hit the ground, it was with a sizeable impact that shattered the stone beneath him in a circle but left him perfectly intact. The fight had moved to above a rock-studded field, where sheep were fleeing to one corner of their pasture. Perry waited for Fenilor to take to the sky, but the elf only stood down below, looking up.
“We take out the constructs,” said Perry. “We go for another pass, through the middle, and lance their backs once we’re through. You can do that?” The question wasn’t whether he could, it was whether Marchand agreed that it would work, and Perry realized that he was asking for advice from the AI only after he’d spoken.
“Yes, sir,” said Marchand.
Perry dashed forward, as fast as the sword would allow. He wanted the spear for this, not the sword, but he wasn’t going to open up the shelf unless he absolutely had to, not when the portal was waiting there. Fenilor had surely seen the shelf-space at some point, but the portal was completely inaccessible without the ring.
The constructs swarmed closer as Perry approached. He was trying the same trick a second time, though a different mask, and he felt something in his guts as he closed in and juked to the left.
This time he didn’t make it through the thicket of metal cleanly. He felt something wrenching his arm, twisting his hand and sending him off course, but they hadn’t grabbed him, and it wasn’t until he felt himself start to fall that he realized one of them must have grabbed his sword.
Perry screamed as he fell through the air, no longer supported by the sword’s magic. The world went wireframe, flickering as Marchand lanced through the runes, and the constructs started dropping too. Pain was flaring up Perry’s arm. It felt like his arm had been nearly wrenched from its socket, and his hand stung, with feeling only coming back to his fingers belatedly.
He had seconds to make a choice, and at the last second, he reached out to the side and pulled the spear from the shelf space.
Perry crashed into the ground anyhow, sinking up to his knee in dirt, though it hadn’t been particularly wet. His bones stung, but he’d managed not to break anything, and he worked his way out of the ground in time to be on his feet when the constructs landed around him.
On the ground, they seemed more hulking than they’d been in the sky. There were only six of them left, the others having been destroyed or disabled when they fell, but on the ground he was less capable of fighting them, and erasing the runes on their backs wouldn’t be enough to kill them. They had internal components necessary for their function, Perry knew that much, but he had the spear now, and didn’t think that it would be too effective against metal — nor would the masks, which were famously bad against metals in general. He tried to call the sword to him, but it didn’t come. He didn’t know exactly how he’d lost it, but if a construct had grabbed it, it hadn’t let go.
Fenilor stalked toward where the constructs were crowding in on Perry. They towered over him, heavy metal moving too sinuously, and though they didn’t have weapons, he knew that their hands were strong enough to grab him and their arms were strong enough to rip them apart.
Perry raced forward, pushing energy into his footsteps, and using some of the spear’s gathered power to hasten his stride, and slipped through a gap between the tall machines. He banged against one of them as a hand tried to grab him on his shoulder, but once he was through he was able to sprint away, and looking back, they were slower than him on the ground just like they were in the air.
Fenilor came in from the side. The mirrored armor he was wearing covered his entire body, clinging to him like a second skin, with the exception of his mouth, which was exposed as a thin line.
Perry’s screen went wireframe, showing the line of attack that Marchand had picked, a red line aiming straight at the mouth. When it went back to the camera view, Fenilor was standing there, unharmed, mouth now sealed beneath armor. Fenilor pulled out a weapon from his vast array, a morningstar this time, which began swinging of its own accord.
“Test fire,” said Perry.
The shoulder gun rose up and fired twice, then sank back down into its compartment when there was no effect. One of these times, Perry thought.
Perry moved laterally, keeping his distance from Fenilor and leaving the constructs behind, though it was a temporary solution, and they were stalking across the field toward him. The sheep had moved to one corner of the large pasture, and were bleating madly.
Fenilor swung the morningstar around, and on one of the swings, the head detached from the chain. If not for the highlighted alert that Marchand gave, Perry might not have noticed, but they were working in sync now, and Perry batted the head of the morningstar away. Though it had barely even given any strain to his spear arm, it bounced away, maintaining its speed and digging a furrow into the sheep-eaten grass. It reappeared at the end of the chain seconds later, and Fenilor began swinging it again.
The constructs had moved closer, and were picking up speed, now using a strange loping run. Perry ran from them, and nearly tripped when Marchand made everything go wireframe again.
“The fuck?” asked Perry as his normal vision was restored.
“I believe I’ve found a weak point in the constructs, sir,” said Marchand.
It was true. One of them had fallen, and was moving helplessly on the ground, churning up mud and dirt.
“We can’t be blind when Fenilor attacks,” said Perry.
“Very well, sir,” said Marchand. “I’ll confine attacks to when there is an opening.”
It wasn’t the time to talk, and Fenilor was gearing up for another attack, swinging the morningstar above his head, whipping it around with a risk that every revolution might be the one that sent it flying. Perry wasn’t sure what it would do if it hit his armor, but Fenilor wouldn’t have chosen it if it were a featherweight weapon. It didn’t look like it would be harmless.
A red line began appearing on the HUD, and for a moment Perry didn’t understand what it was, but he soon cottoned onto it: Marchand was attempting to predict the path of the morningstar’s head, the same as they’d done in the past to attempt deflecting bullets. Given that it was still in motion, swinging in a wide circle, the prediction was imprecise, but it wouldn’t move at nearly the speed of a bullet, and Perry readied himself using the spear.
When it came, Perry was ready, and hit it right back at Fenilor with a snap of power. His arms felt the strain of it, and he twisted his boots in the mud, but Fenilor took a hit straight to his hip, knocked back with his own projectile like some kind of Mario boss.
Rather than launching another of the same attack until he’d been hit three times, Fenilor switched weapons. He brought out a rifle for only long enough to test fire it at Perry, and as Perry was caught flat-footed, it struck the armor but bounced off harmlessly. The next weapon out was another sword, this one bifurcated in a way that looked impractical, almost like an oversized pair of edged metal tongs.
Perry ran, mostly to flee the constructs, and when he glanced back, the world went wireframe again, resulting in another construct down. He was going to have to keep running, which was bleeding off power, though even with the fight having gone on as long as it had, he was still only down by half.
There were only four working constructs now, the advantage that Fenilor had brought in whittled away. Perry was feeling good, in the zone, like he was whittling down Fenilor, allowing fewer and fewer options. So far, Fenilor wasn’t reusing weapons, and that was probably because he wanted the element of surprise, but there were only so many weapons and armors in the arsenal, and eventually they would start getting reused.
Maybe Fenilor saw the path of the battle too.
Fenilor flew across the field with his new weapon, racing faster than he’d gone before, almost a match for Perry at a dead sprint, but Perry wasn’t at a dead sprint. When they were a mere ten feet apart, Fenilor leveled the odd split sword, resting it against his forearm like a sommelier offering a bottle. The tines of the sword quivered and then let forth a warping of space, and Perry felt his teeth involuntarily clench together hard enough to crack a molar. The display cut out, not to wireframe but to pure black, and Perry launched himself into the air with the spear’s stored power almost on instinct, trying to flee from the weapon.
When the display cut back in, Perry was a hundred feet in the air, and something felt different.
“He destroyed the mask, sir,” said Marchand.
“Shit,” said Perry. He looked down, where Fenilor was aiming the weapon at them again, tracking them as they went through the sky. “Might be time to transform, if he’s down on the ground.”
“Standing by, sir,” said Marchand.
Whatever the sword had done, it hadn’t killed Perry, and the hit had been pretty much direct to the face. Perry didn’t like the idea of taking that hit again, but he needed to end the battle, and the shimmering armor that Fenilor wore hadn’t been tested with the spear. Perry knew that the tip was supernaturally sharp, and if his periodic attempts to tug his sword to him weren’t bearing fruit, that was the tool he was going to have to use.
Perry dropped down to the ground, angling himself toward Fenilor. The split sword tracked him, and hummed with power, but it either missed or failed, and then they were fighting each other. Perry’s spear pierced the ground, then was up and spinning around to catch the sword as Fenilor brought it down overhand. The shaft vibrated as it was struck, but it held, which Perry had been worried it wouldn’t. When Fenilor drew back, Perry swept the spearhead across his chest, moving double time, boosting his steps from the well of energy.
He was mildly surprised when the spear actually did damage, considering that the bullets didn’t. Where the shimmering armor was damaged, it was like a cracked LCD screen, black and shattered. Fenilor took a single look down at his armor and swapped with a hand motion out to the side, replacing the point of weakness without another thought. The new armor was blue, just like Perry’s, though larger and more ornate with a motif of curling waves across it. The sword followed soon after, the split sword gone in an eyeblink, replaced by what looked like a katana with a serrated edge.
Marchand fired off the two customary shots to test whether the wavy blue armor was bulletproof, and the place where they hit expanded into a cold blue circle that closed like a rippled pond going still.
They traded hits with their weapons a few times, and the serrated blade bit into Perry’s spear, gouging a line in the shaft and threatening to pull it from his grip.
The constructs had lifted into the air when Perry had taken the spear to the sky, then landed when he landed, and while he’d whittled away at their numbers, his mask was gone and he didn’t have a good way to deal with them. He was half tempted to fly up and then drop them to break on the ground, but he was worried what Fenilor would do.
Still, as they came to join the fight, Perry had to move again, trying to put Fenilor between him and them, but Fenilor was trying to counter-circle, which slowed Perry down as they got in each other’s way. The three constructs were moving swiftly, but also spreading out, and whether it was their programming or some form of remote control, they were trying to pen Perry in.
Fenilor swished the sword back and forth, then struck it against the ground, and in complete defiance of physics, the force of that launched him forward. Perry was forced to turn and raise his spear, which gained another notch from the block, but more importantly, he was stopped in his place, allowing the constructs to get closer. If the three of them formed a circle — but there had been four, hadn’t there?
Marchand spotted it just as Perry did. It had taken to the sky and was now descending from above, making a spear of itself to drive into the ground at speed. Marchand gave an alert at nearly the same moment that Perry jumped away, rolling across the pasture as the construct slammed down into the earth.
When he popped to his feet, the other constructs had closed in on him, with Fenilor’s sword held forward and ready another launch across the torn up pasture would bring them face to face, and then Perry would have to defend, and the constructs would be right there, ready to grab at him and rip him apart. He would have no defense against that, nothing except the strength of his armor.
Perry leapt up in to the air, using the spear’s power, and Fenilor launched himself up too, moving faster. They met twenty feet off the ground, with the constructs rising up around them, and Perry had to bring the spear up for another block against the serrated sword. The sword bit hard into the shaft of the spear, and Perry was pulled forward into an elbow from Fenilor, which crashed against Perry’s helm. The servos locked and Perry was saved from having his neck snapped, but his head slammed against the internal padding and he saw stars for a moment.
Fenilor’s sword was gripping the spear, which already had too many notches in it, and with a hard yank, the spear broke in half.
Perry fell to the ground, tried to roll, and scrambled back to his feet. He was still holding the pointy end of the spear, but the magic of it had failed. He tried to pull the sword to him, but it was just as unresponsive as it had been before.
Fenilor had dropped too. He had a new weapon, a blade made a glass, which Perry had seen before. His armor was still the blue one with waves, and as Perry watched, the waves began to move along it. A skinny serpent slipped up from between the decorations, growing larger as its full length became clear, and once it was free, it circled once in the air.
Perry let out a breath. The constructs had landed too, closer than before, and there was only one option, which was to run away, gain some distance, formulate a plan.
He sprinted away, darting between two of the constructs as they lunged at him. He nearly made it, but the metal fingers of one of them grabbed him by the upper arm, hard as a vise, and Perry was yanked backward, thrown to the ground.
Fenilor was on him in a moment, hacking away at the armor with the glass sword, causing warnings to flash and a small display of the suit’s integrity moved parts from white to yellow, then to red. Perry kicked and twisted against the hand on his shoulder, knowing that more hands would be there in seconds, pinning him down so he could be killed. Fenilor positioned himself for the killing blow, sword straight as an arrow and aimed at Perry’s throat.
The grip on Perry’s shoulder lifted at the last second and Perry kicked hard on the ground, pushing away. The sword scraped against him, cutting a line down the armor, and he felt it bite into his stomach for just a moment before he was off running away. Fenilor showed up in the picture-in-picture, but the constructs around him had gone dead.
Ahead of Perry, Kes was standing with a gun in hand and golden rod in the other. He was breathing hard and sweating profusely. He seemed very much alive.
The golden rod was a command override. It was what they used to program the constructs in the first place, usually kept securely, never touched. If Kes had one, it had been pulled from the Farfinder, which meant that they too were alive, or Kes had pulled it before bailing out, but —
Fenilor had moved past the immobile constructs. He was racing toward Kes, and the thick blue serpent, which had so far done nothing, was floating behind him in the air.
Perry held out a hand to Kes and let forth a beam of moonlight, then before even watching to see what would happen, let that same energy forth inside himself.
Perry’s transformation was faster, metal fusing with skin, two minds becoming one, and he quickly racing after Fenilor on all fours. Fenilor was still going for Kes, who was only halfway done turning into a wolf, and the serpent diverted course, flying away to meet Perry.
When the serpent hit, it was with a splash of water, as though it were entirely immaterial, but soon it was in through Perry’s nose and mouth, choking him and going deeper down his throat with every passing second. Perry snapped at it, which only allowed the water spirit to force itself further down, and suddenly Perry was drowning.
But Perry had been in space, and he was part machine, so this didn’t bother him particularly much. He redirected the flow of energy through his body, from the fusion core to his paws, no longer taking in air, filled with water that was getting into his lungs, but none the worse for it. He ran after Fenilor, who was attacking the large wolf that was Kes. The glass sword sliced through flesh easily, and the ground was soaked in blood, but a werewolf healed fast, and Kes trying to chomp at Fenilor’s arms and legs.
Perry barreled into Fenilor, and was grateful when his claws bit into the blue armor. Fenilor momentarily went flat on his belly, and Perry capitalized, pinning him down and biting at his helm, making sure that he couldn’t slip out from under the pin, ensuring that the armor wouldn’t get swapped for something else. Fenilor writhed and twisted while Perry bit down on the helm, hoping to hear the melt bend and buckle. Fenilor’s hand went out to the side, and the glass sword was dropped and forgotten, but another was coming soon. Perry desperately wanted Kes to bite down on the arm, to keep anything from coming out of the arsenal, but Kes was an animal and went for the leg, biting down on metal.
Fenilor was suddenly holding another what looked like a mirror in his hand, and Perry bit down harder on the helm, feeling it actually move this time, crumpling slowly. The metal fangs were achingly close to piercing the skull.
The mirror lit up, and Perry felt sick to his stomach. He tried to hold on, but the helm felt like it was getting bigger in his mouth. He felt an uncomfortable pain starting inside him, and realized that the Wolf Vessel was clamping shut. It wasn’t just light coming from the mirror, it was sunlight, more than he’d ever experience in the natural environment, and it was forcing him to change back. It had already happened to Kes, who was laying naked on the ground, clutching his chest like he was having a heart attack.
Fenilor had time to get to his feet as Perry transformed from a mechanical wolf back into a man in suit. He had time to switch out his armor, and when he did, the water that had been filling Perry’s lungs disappeared, allowing a lungful of air. Fenilor was dressed in armor that looked like it had been made of ceramic shards, glazed but with jagged edges to every plate, and Marchand fired off two shots at it. This was almost perfunctory, but the bullets shattered a plate on the chest and one of the three that made up the helm. The shattered pieces held together, and a small warning showed up on Perry’s HUD: that was the last of the bullets.
The glass sword had been dropped and forgotten on the ground. In Fenilor’s hand was a whip, long a green, more vine than anything else, and it flicked back and forth with a will of its own.
“I had expected more from you,” said Fenilor. The ceramic helm had no holes in it, and his voice was so muffled that it was difficult to hear him.
Perry tried for the sword again. It was still stuck somewhere, if it hadn’t been broken entirely. The spear was broken, the two pieces on the ground. The only saving grace was that the constructs had stopped their advance.
If need be, Perry could probably outpace Fenilor, but not without leaving Kes behind. The gun that Kes had brought was also on the ground, and Kes ran for it, naked, only for Fenilor to crack the whip in his hand. The vines shot out and grabbed Kes by the arm, and with a sharp tug, yanked him away. The crack was from a broken bone, and Kes fell to the ground screaming, bone sticking out.
Perry ran at Fenilor and was caught by the vine whip. If he had his sword, or even the spearhead, he was fairly sure he could cut straight through it, but he only had his hands. He grabbed at the vine around his wrist, and the vines grew, locking his hands together. Fenilor pulled him forward as Perry kicked at the ground, and when they were close enough together, Perry attempted a twisting motion to pull the whip away. It was fruitless, and soon Perry was close enough that Fenilor could pull out yet another weapon, this one a small pen knife with a sandstone handle. Perry strained against the vines, but there was no give, and the hydraulics and servos strained fruitlessly, even with a rush of energy from Perry’s vessels. Perry had frighteningly little power following the transformation, and had reached his limits.
Fenilor drove the knife down. It moved slowly, almost achingly so, but no matter how Perry twisted and turned he couldn’t avoid it. He should have had more power than Fenilor, but the ceramic armor must have been doing something, helping the vine whip to pin them both in place.
“Stop!” Perry called.
The knife penetrated the center of Perry’s armor, going in slowly but cleanly, a steady push of metal through metal. He could feel himself freezing up, like the blood was crawling through his veins. The knife kept going, until it was piercing his flesh beneath where the reactor sat. The suit was running on battery only now, not that all his straining was doing anything.
Fenilor retracted the vines. Perry was left off-balance but not falling, caught in warped time, still able to see through the screen, which meant that the cameras were still working and Marchand was still active.
“There,” said Fenilor. “You are stopped.” He looked past Perry, ceramic shards scraping against each other. “You, the other one. Don’t move or I’ll kill you.”
Kes flopped back to the ground. He’d been crawling for the glass sword.
“You put up more of a fight than I had expected,” said Fenilor.
“The Farfinder,” said Perry. His lungs felt heavy in his chest. He was bleeding, body stopped but still able to breathe “They’re still alive.”
“Yes, it appears so,” said Fenilor. “When I left they seemed in poor condition.” He looked around. “But it doesn’t appear they’re going to come save you.”
“The portal,” said Perry. “If you go through, the physics of this world —”
“Yes, yes,” said Fenilor. “There’s fear in your voice now. But you have the portal, and you will have to give it to me.”
“No,” said Perry. “Never.”
“I know about many things, Perry,” said Fenilor. “I know about the ring on your finger. I saw the room there. Do you need me to cut it off? I will, if I must. But I was going to leave you alive, you see.”
“Why?” asked Perry, in spite of himself.
“It’s possible you’re right,” said Fenilor. “I don’t believe that this world will end, but it might. This world is not important though, it’s one amongst many. It is proof that the culture works.” He held a hand out to the side, and a ghostly row of books appeared. “I have the accumulated knowledge, the teachings. It can be rebuilt.”
“Monster,” said Perry.
“Not a compelling counterpoint,” said Fenilor. “But you asked why I’m leaving you here, and it’s because, unless I’ve missed my mark, that’s the best chance that the culture will find a different way to spread. There are experiments going on now in the northern cities, ways of crossing the many worlds. I want my people to do that, and with your help, they might. You aren’t opposed to them, yet you don’t want to stay here. Am I correct?”
“Yes,” said Perry, knowing that Fenilor would know the truth from lies.
“Good,” said Fenilor. “Then you get to live, to stay here, to help them breach to other worlds. I think you will, from what I know of you. And if you die with them, so be it, but if you don’t, then my goals have another path toward being achieved.”
“I won’t give you the ring,” said Perry. “I won’t let you through the portal.”
“Release the lock on the gauntlet, give up the ring, or I’ll take it by force,” said Fenilor. “Or simply open the space to me and allow me to leave by the portal. I don’t need the ring itself.”
“You’ll have to cut it from my hand,” said Perry.
He tried to transform. There simply wasn’t enough power left in the vessel though. The earlier transformation had healed all the scrapes and cuts in his armor, but that came with a cost. He was tapped out. The only hope was rescue from without, and with Kes here, that seemed vanishingly unlikely. Whatever was left of the Farfinder could drop down on Fenilor, that was about all that could realistically offer salvation.
Fenilor produced another weapon from his arsenal, this one long and thin, like a knife for cutting Ibérico ham. He went for Perry’s immobile hand, and after a long moment of pressure, the knife cut off two of Perry’s fingers.
Perry cried out. It felt blindingly hot and at the same time cold, metal and flesh separating, and blood pouring from the twin stumps as Fenilor picked the fingers up off the ground. It took him some time to remove the finger from the armored gloves, especially with the ceramic gloves that he himself was wearing, and then more time to twist the ring off the finger, which seemed to resist resizing for him. Eventually he had it though, and with a small motion, he had opened the shelf space.
The laser sitting inside fired immediately, but it did nothing against the ceramic, and Fenilor stepped forward casually to knock it down. Perry wished that he’d been able to prepare a bomb of some kind, but he just hadn’t thought of it, and hadn’t known the portal would be there until losing contact with the Farfinder.
Fenilor stood inside, peering at the portal.
“Wait,” said Perry. “Get rid of your weapons. Everything in your inventory. Those things, they’ll be pulled with you, their properties will imprint on the world, and they’ll make the enemy stronger. They’ll —”
“No,” said Fenilor. He turned back to Perry. “I hope that this world persists in my wake, but there is work to done, greater work than has been done here.” He took the ring off his finger and tossed it toward the opening. It fell onto the grass, just a step away.
He turned back to the portal, steeled himself, then stepped through it.
The world failed to end.
Perry stared at the portal, which still hung there. The knife was still stuck in him, keeping him motionless.
After ten full seconds had passed, Kes got to his feet and came over. He was a mess of adrenaline, shaky and sweating, arm still badly broken and hanging awkwardly to the side. He winced with every movement. He grabbed the ring from the ground, and the shelf snapped shut, then once he’d shoved it into his pocket, he gripped the pen knife with his good hand and pulled hard at it. It took time and strength, but finally he tumbled back onto his ass, gasping in pain, knife in hand.
Perry rotated his arms.
“It’s over,” said Kes. “We lost.” He looked pallid. He was still losing blood, which dripped down his forearm to the ends of his limp fingers.
“No,” said Perry. “There’s a gap.”
“A gap?” asked Kes.
Perry nodded. “Between when you leave and when you arrive. Fenilor isn’t in another world. He’s on his way. We have … a week? A month? Some amount of time to figure out a solution, or to get out of here and leave these people to their fate.”
Kes nodded. He looked down at his arm. “I might need to go see a doctor.”
Comments
iridium248
"My own clone! Now neither of us will be virgins."
iridium248
Fenilor the GOAT
Lorenzo
Not going to lie, I was really hoping that the shit-ass magic from the classic DND world with the flying sword would somehow be crucial in the Climax, lol Regardless, fantastic chapter as always!
Leaf
You might’ve not liked writing it, but I sure did like reading it. Great chapter!
Mr. Mister
You silly Perry, that’s like a Zelda boss, not Mario’s.
Marc
Not according to the Grand Spell, which saw Perry’s opponent as Third Fervor.
Err
“We expect an evaluation step,” said Cark. “A person goes into the portal, the Grand Spell holds them there and looks at its options, sees its possibilities, then shunts them off somewhere. There’s evidence that the hold can actually last pretty long before the punch happens.” Chapter 130
patreonizing
It makes me sort of happy, actually, that Perry finally wholeheartedly loses a fair(ish) fight without some last minute saving grace...plus Fenilor being charitable enough to not murder him, or Kes, or several of the Farfinder primes (probably), or even rob him of much valuable loot like he's done countless times before. Even a sociopath's gotta have a code. Confused about the travel gap though - was that a thing that happened before? I don't remember it being mentioned...
Vinohr
And so the win streak ends
chicken
kesper otp? (jk)
