With no more distractions to worry over, my twinned ships cut through the smoke-clogged atmosphere. The landscape below was a panoply of destroyed buildings, smouldering hulks, and the reddish smears of bodies that had been torn apart and left to rot. It grew worse the nearer we reached the focal point of the battle.
The Dread Scourge didn’t have everything go their way. One of the non-dungeon ships that came through earlier lay in the wreckage of a skyscraper and had a hole in the hull so large the ship had almost broken into two pieces. A few of the pirate crew had survived and were locked in a fight to the death with the remnants of the battle-crazed Lamers.
These were the battle lunatics. The more sensible Lamer warriors and their conscripts were already on the run, trying to avoid the attention of the Malignant Cutter as they fled the field in full retreat.
On that front, the natural greed of the Scourge proved to be an asset. With the Lamer arsenal nullified and the Curse’s arrival bossing the battlefield, the other captains had engaged in looting rather than paying attention to what else might be coming for them.
The sole exception was Cold of the Grave. She’d spotted our approach and reacted accordingly. Firing at us.
“Incoming! Brace for impact,” Crynn called from her station.
The Grave had unleashed a barrage of its weapons at both ships. A noisy thudding followed Crynn’s warning as the incoming weapon fire made contact with Marena’s Mercy’s hull. The ship absorbed most of the kinetic energy and I barely felt the subtle sway from the impacts. The shift in elevation when Anastasia sought to evade the incoming fire had been more tactile.
Up on the viewer, you could see roughly 40% of the barrage had missed us completely and either struck what remained of downtown Dallas or kept going until they ran out of juice and clattered uselessly onto the war-torn streets.
“Good job, Ana. All hands return fire on Cold of the Grave once in range.”
The cannons fitted with the Abyssal Fission Missiles roared and discharged their payloads first. The ballistic projectiles were joined by an equal number fired from Storm Raider. The ships weren’t quite in Hellstrike range but soon would be.
The Grave adopted evasive manoeuvres. However, whereas its missile attacks had been split between Marena’s Mercy and Storm Raider, the return volleys from both ships zoomed in on them from different vantages and that made it enormously difficult to avoid the barrage.
The Cold of the Grave was struck heavily in a dozen spots. With the battering it had already received from the Lamer defences several of the missiles breached the hull and caused serious damage. Not enough to down the ship but enough that it shifted course dramatically to withdraw out of our range.
“Kristoff, keep up the pressure on the Grave. We are going to make a run at the Curse. We are still on course for plan alpha, keep that in mind. Otherwise, I trust your judgement on how far to push your luck.”
“Understood,” the former German smuggler replied over comms.
As the commander of Storm Raider, Kristoff was one of the few members of the crew who had been filled in on certain elements of the strategy which had been kept from the rest of the crew. Not everything, but enough to avoid disaster. I needed to ensure he wouldn’t react unexpectedly when the plan unfolded.
Cold of the Grave listed away towards the Mesquite area of Dallas with Storm Raider in pursuit. I looked over at Anastasia. “Are you ready?”
She nodded stoically. “This is gonna suck, but yeah, let’s do this.”
With the path clear, Marena’s Mercy increased speed. The Leviathan’s Curse which had just crossed over the Trinity River turned in our direction. Titus or his crew must have spotted us.
Speaking of the devil.
“We have an incoming communication from the Curse, Torin,” Crynn relayed from her station. “Do you want to accept?”
“Sure, let’s see what they have to say.”
A face I didn’t immediately recognise popped up on the screen. Despite that, the features were vaguely familiar; the contemptuous arrogance in his expression gave the identity of the speaker away. It was Fred Simms in his new flesh. Titus was indeed gone. Not that I disbelieved the quest update.
“Carter,” the new person said with a sneering snort. “What kind of foolishness is this?”
“That’s one of my brothers, Rom. He has an identical twin brother. They’ve always had my father’s favour. He must have entrusted the attack on Earth to him.”
Crynn was playing along, she knew about the generational immortality and the change in my quest from the Shattered Goddess. We had agreed it would be better if Fred, Titus, Rom, or whatever you wanted to call him, wasn’t aware that we knew about that.
However, the ruse proved unnecessary.
“Let’s not piss about playing dumb,” Rom snorted with impatience. “Titus is gone and I’m in charge. But you both know who I really am and what I came here for. If you think the promises made by Titus will tie my hands you will be sorely disappointed. Those binds are gone along with that body.
“Surrender the harvester and I’ll let you live on as my slaves. It won’t be a pleasant life. What’s the point of having a slave if you don’t work them to the bone? But it is the only way that you will see tomorrow and the days which come after. The only way that child of yours gets to grow up. Yes, Torin, I know about baby Dash. That is my best and final offer.”
I would have told the bastard to sling his hook anyway, but the threat against my son’s wellbeing was a low blow.
Fred wasn’t stupid and he’d been around for a long time. This little speech hadn’t been designed to encourage my capitulation, he wanted me to fight and then seize what was mine by force. Was the pantomime of making an unreasonable offer merely part of his character or was there something more to it? Perhaps the boast of sloughing off the non-aggression pact we’d made was hot air and he needed me to be the one to attack first.
That offered a moment of clarity, one in which I almost rethought my position.
If Fred couldn’t come after us directly, did we need to risk everything to end it all today?
I shook off that train of thought quickly. Yes, we did.
Maybe we could walk away from this fight, but we’d already played the gate trick. The only ace up our sleeve. They would circumvent Nazz’s subterfuge quickly and then break open the gate in Stormblade Harbour. After that, they would be able to attack and slaughter my faction at its very heart as they planned originally.
In fact, I would be surprised if the rest of his fleet hadn’t been held back to do precisely that.
No, Rom was afraid that I would run, and then he would have to hunt me down to claim the soul harvester. Doubtless, he knew that I hadn’t destroyed it. The gadgets he’d supplied would surely still be monitoring for its existence.
Before we’d ordered the destruction of them all, Susan had completed an inventory. Three remained unaccounted for. Those devices would be found eventually and the traitors suitably punished.
Doyle was already on the case.
But until then, Rom knew what he needed to know. I’d either been unwilling or unable to destroy the harvester organ.
This was all theatre, none of his words meant a damn. The Dread Scourge would lay waste to Stormblade Harbour regardless of whether I agreed to his terms or not. The plan was the only way forward.
My fist slammed down on the Bridge hub in response and a salvo of abyssal fission missiles were launched.
Rom, up on the screen, grinned back at me and the Levithan’s Curse made no effort to avoid the incoming missile strike. “Thank you, Torin. That makes things easier.” Thus, confirming my suspicions. Rom though he had us, but didn’t know what I knew.
Our barrage collided with the Curse’s shields. There was some minor damage, but nothing serious. The instant Rom’s ship was hit, he broke the communication link, and the Curse started moving in our direction and returned fire. Marena’s Mercy had slowed a little but had continued to advance and we were quickly within Hellstrike range, and those cannons had time to roar before the Curse’s salvo slammed into the side of the hull.
This time, unlike the gentle sway when we were hit by Cold of the Grave, I was thrown forward and only stayed in my chair because I was strapped in.
“Fuck, that hurt,” Ana cried in shock. “Whatever they hit us with, they are twice as strong as the abyssal we’ve got.”
That was no surprise. The Curse had to have access to seventh-tier options if not the top-drawer eighth. “How is the ship holding up?”
“We’re still in one piece and the gunners have been given the gift of free fire.”
The only real surprise was that we hadn’t been targeted by Fred’s big guns a second time. The lesser payload weapons, similar to what we had ourselves, were peppering the craft but nothing with the strength which had almost knocked us out of the sky.
Watching the Curse on the viewer, the answer to that question revealed itself quickly. Whereas Marena’s Mercy had arrested her forward momentum and was currently weaving around what remained of Reunion Tower and the Dallas’ Convention Centre. The Leviathan’s Curse increased in velocity and was headed straight for us uncaring of what lay in between.
Too late, I figured out what Fred intended as the remains of the globe atop Reunion Tower was vapourised by the bulk of his ship. “They are going to ram us.”
You would think a ship the size of the Curse would struggle with intricate movements necessary to counter our evasion attempt, and it would have, if it hadn’t been a dungeon ship.
For the first time, we were on the receiving end of what we’d done to many others. Our ship ducked down low, scraping the sidewalk and hid behind the Convention Centre, anticipating that the Curse would fly past us. It didn’t, the ship came to a near complete stop above us instead. Cables with hooks shot from its hull and pierced through Marena’s Mercy, breaching her, and then the Curse’s direction shifted downward.
The gigantic pirate ship slammed into its prey and ground Marena’s Mercy into the concrete and tarmac. Thick cables were fired from the lower decks which acted like bolos and wrapped around the ship while their ends burrowed into the earth and locked us in place. From an outsider’s perspective, it would look as if the larger ship intended to devour the smaller one.
Hundreds of pirates emerged from portholes that opened in the Curse’s hull and abseiled down the multiple cables which connected the two vessels.
We were about to be boarded.
Marena’s Mercy had been taken down and neutralised much quicker than I’d anticipated, and I won’t deny that hurt my pride a little. I’d known that we couldn’t win in a stand-up fight with the larger vessel, but the takedown and submission hold in the first round suggested a proper pasting.
Crynn unbuckled her belt, rose from the console she’d been stationed at and drew her cutlass ready to join the fight and repel the boarders. Her face showed no sign of fear, only determination, and I was incredibly proud of her.
However, I grabbed her arm as she tried to hurry past.
Crynn’s gaze flicked back to me, her long hair whipping across the shoulder pads of her leather armour. “Torin, we need to get out there and defend the ship, cut those cables if we can and get Mercy back into the air, otherwise, the Scourge will overwhelm us.”
“Ana, is the splinter deck still operational?” I asked instead.
The dungeon avatar nodded. “I managed to angle our fall to keep it accessible. There are a few cords and cables across the aperture, but I’ll work on shrugging those off first.”
A horde of crab-like golems forged from the parts of the ship’s hull were already crawling to the relevant cables using their sharp claws to cut their way through the durability of the bindings. Additionally, Ripper and Slicer were already racing up the cables connecting the ships, causing chaos for some of the abseiling assailants that wanted to reach us.
“Good,” I said and then slipped off my chair and opened a ship-wide channel. “All crew to the splinter bay. Board a splinter pod and abandon ship.”
Crynn looked on in dumbfounded shock, but then she didn’t know the full details of the plan. I knew that a ‘defeat’ like this has been inevitable and prepared for such an eventuality.
“Kristoff, are you there?” I asked switching the channel.
“Yes, Captain. We are on the way. ETA less than thirty seconds.”
“Excellent, do not engage the Leviathan’s Curse directly. That might prevent them from firing on you, though I doubt it.” At this point, Rom wouldn’t need to give orders. His crew would likely react without prodding. “Gather up the splinter vessels as quickly as possible. They can only benefit from the aerial sails while within range of Marena’s Mercy.”
Physics might say that because Marena’s Mercy had sails allowing it to fly that doesn’t mean diddly squat for the splinter pods aboard her which did not. But the Framework had a loose association with the laws of physics. If they were in range, they could fly.
“You can rely on me, viel glück, Torin.”
I released Crynn’s arm. “I need you to lead the evacuation, Crynn.”
“Where are you going?”
My finger pointed above. Up to where our greatest enemy lay in wait. The looming spider whose web we were trapped in.
“You can’t, not alone. I should go with you.”
A shake of my head dispelled that suggestion.
“Then come with the rest of us. Retrieve Ana’s core and create a new ship. It’s costly but it can be done.”
“No. Trust me, I know what I’m doing and what I need from you is to get as many of the crew off the ship before your father’s fighters get inside. They’ll slaughter anyone they find. Nobody else needs to die, this part of the fight is over.”
One of her fists hit my chest and there was a tear welling on the edge of her eye. “That includes you.”
I patted my bloated stomach. “Nah, I’ll be fine. I’ve got something he wants, and he needs me alive unless he wants to risk it going kaboom. A possibility that will appear all the more real if it looks like I’m sending my people out of harm’s way.”
This final argument convinced Crynn, and I didn’t need to use the bond to compel her obedience. “Go…I’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, he’s got me to watch his back,” Anastasia added.
Crynn grabbed me behind the head and pulled me down for a passionate kiss before she released me and ran out of the Bridge to make her way down to the splinter bay. She was joined by Sheamus and a couple of others who had similarly abandoned their positions on the upper deck.
Sheamus paused as he rushed past the door to the Bridge. “I’ve left them a few welcome packages, captain. You might want to wait until they open them before going out there.”
“Thank you, Sheamus.”
The small man cackled wildly and hurried after Crynn and the other few crewmen who had been out there with him.
The first splinter pods were already exiting the bay and zipping into the air.
Storm Raider had arrived and hovered on the other side of the convention centre, on the edge of the pod's flight range ready to gather them up. The Leviathan’s Curse didn’t send any attacks Storm Raider's way, though it did unleash small-scale volleys from its splinter weaponry that targeted the fleeing splinters boast.
Some of the pods were hit and went down, but there was nothing we could do about that now. Hopefully, the volunteer crewmen in those pods would survive the crash landing and if things worked out, we could pick them up later.
Either way, they had a better chance out there than they did in here.
A series of explosions thudded above us. Up on the viewer, the descending pirates had encountered Sheamus’ gifts and several of them had been torn apart or thrown over the side where they had a hard landing ahead of them.
“Ripper and Slicer are down,” Anastasia said glumly and pointed out the chunks of cimmeric crystal that used to be the two monstrous golems.
“Can you repair them?”
“No. I can make them anew, but it won’t be the same. They might look the same, but I’ll know the difference. It couldn’t be helped, sacrifices had to be made.”
“You’ve still got Casey, right?”
Anastasia smiled fondly. “Yeah, she’s tucked up safe and sound in the lab. If they can get to the heart of my dungeon, it’ll all be over anyway.”
“Speaking of,” I began the difficult conversation. “I appreciate you telling Crynn that you had my back, but, well, the next bit I have to do alone.”
“Except for Quixbix,” I added with a chuckle. “Who is ever present.”
“When he’s not canoodling with Quinn,” Anastasia teased. Then she hopped up onto the captain’s chair and used it to equalise our heights. She wrapped her arms around my neck. “If this doesn’t work, find a way not to die,” she whispered into my shoulder. “I don’t want to end up as one of those ghost ships fighting off every overconfident wannabe corsair. It would be lonely.”
I returned the embrace and then pulled the small woman from my arms. “Guard that dungeon with everything you’ve got.”
Anastasia snapped her fingers and a shimmering entrance to her dungeon appeared. She gave me a quick kiss on the lips and then hopped through. The portal winked out of existence, and I was alone.
Not for long, though. It didn’t take much time before the Scourge pirates breached the door and pushed their way into the interior of the upper deck and then they poured through onto the Bridge where they were met by my Greatblade.
The quarters were too close to use Chaos Missile and Mutiny in the Ranks was still on cooldown. Regardless, I gave a good account of myself, killing four and severely wounding a dozen others. But eventually, the numbers told, and I was overwhelmed, disarmed, and held on the ground.
“Kill the bastard,” a badger-headed pirate swore, flecks of bloodied spittle flying from his severely gashed jaw. He had one paw over his eye that had been sliced in twain by the same upward swing that made a mess of his mouth.
“Nay,” the leader of the boarding party barked when a couple of badger boy’s friends tried to carry out his suggestion. “Captain Rom wants him alive. You don’t want to piss off Titus’ heir during the first engagement, do ya?”
There was a chorus of nays from the other pirates present.
“Shackle the bastard and take him to the Cap’n. There’ll be plenty of rewards and you’ll soon forget about a bit of blood and pain. Not like this fucker, though. Suffering looms large is his destiny.”
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“Can we give him a bit of kicking first, though?” The wounded badger asked.
“Sure, why not.”
The wanker would regret that suggestion. Like an elephant, I never forget.
The hardest part of what came next was timing the moment when I sent my gear to one of Mercy’s holds to coincide with when the shackles snapped shut.
After watching the Cutter’s activities, it was clear that the Scourge’s manacles did more than simply disallow the use of items or gear but stripped the victim of all they owned as the cells on this ship did. I didn’t want to hand over my premium gear if it could be avoided.
Once bound and disarmed, dozens of boots slammed down onto various sensitive parts of my body. When they felt satisfied in their petty vengeance, I was dragged in cuffs across the deck of my ship and hauled into the bowels of the Leviathan’s Curse.
Chapter 36
They didn’t bother blindfolding me, why would they? As far as the Scourge was concerned, I was as good as dead. A plaything for the captain to toy with until he grew bored and disposed of it.
The interior of the ship was similar to Marena’s Mercy, just more weathered. There were also chains inexplicably hanging from the rafters of the deck above. The swinging and clanking links of metal seemed to serve no practical purpose except possibly for intimidation. Did they have a corridor of the ship designed specifically for dragging prisoners down? It was possible, the interior of the Curse was huge thanks to the space-shifting ability of dungeons.
“Is this going to take much longer,” I half-chuckled, half-mumbled. “I’m starting to get bored of the endless corridor. Don’t tell me we are going in circles?”
“Quiet scum!” Badger-head barked and hit me between the shoulders with a studded cudgel. It was an extremely hard hit that cracked a shoulder blade. This guy really hated me. He must have liked that eye a lot.
The sergeant of the group glanced back over his shoulder and gave a warning glare to Badger who was virtually panting with the furious need to inflict more pain.
“Did I kill your boyfriend or something?” I needled.
“That’s it!” he howled in rage and brought the cudgel down for another swing, this time aiming for the elbow. The blow was intercepted by the sergeant.
“Get a hold of yourself, Drok!” the sergeant snapped and pulled the cudgel from his grip. “He’s playing you like a fiddle.”
“Give me my cudgel back, Spence,” Drok growled and held out his paw and beckoned with his claws.
“Hit a raw nerve, did I?”
“That’s enough from you as well,” Spence growled and proceeded to stuff a wad of cloth in my mouth and then returned Drok’s weapon. “Get him to the captain quick, no more delays.”
I’d been right, the ship was large, but they had been deliberately walking in circles for some reason. Habit probably.
Less than a minute later, I was dragged into the heart of the Leviathan’s Curse. It was an immense domed chamber lit by torches arranged in a circle of scones on the walls. In the centre of the chamber was a gaping maw in the floor that had the tell-tale shimmer of a dungeon entrance. A platform with a throne upon it had been set up overlooking the drop. A perch for the captain to watch as he cast victims to his dungeon. I couldn’t criticise, my setup was not dissimilar.
The throne itself was made from a panoply of different items. Weapons, armour, broaches sealed in amber.
The imp was quite correct, the throne was misshapen and fucking ugly to look upon. It was also a direct rip-off of a certain popular TV show. My opinion of Fred’s creativity went down a few notches.
Rom Shiptaker lounged on the throne. Standing just behind him was a large, grizzled one-eyed ogre. The moment I set eyes upon the ogre; I clocked that he was the ship’s dungeon avatar. Crynn had described him before, and it was obvious that Rom or Titus or whatever name he chose to use did not share the same kind of close relationship that I had with Anastasia and Claudia. Whenever Rom wasn’t watching there was barely restrained disgust in that singular eye.
“Ah, the guest of honour, at last,” Rom spoke from the comfort of his tacky throne. “String him up, boys.”
Spence and Drok were the two to haul me up the steps. At the edge of the platform nearest the maw were two posts with a set of shackles. The two pirates uncuffed one hand with practised efficiency and clamped it to one of the post manacles above my head and then did the other. They must have done this before.
A hysterical guffaw, muffled by the cloth still stuffed in my mouth escaped me. It was the thought of me being trussed up like Fay Wray waiting for the arrival of Kong on Skull Island. Ana would have got a real kick out of this. An endless source of material for her teasing.
“Pull that gag out,” Rom ordered as Spence and Drok started to retire. “He can’t beg if he can’t talk.”
Drok held my jaw while Spence pulled the wad out. I snapped my teeth shut just to make them flinch anyway.
“Does he have it?” Rom asked, the question was directed at the ogre by his shoulder who nodded in response and patted against his abdomen at the spot where the soul harvester had been surgically inserted. “Excellent.”
Rom rose from his throne, shook his head, and stepped up to me clucking his tongue in disapproval. “Torin, Torin, Torin, you arrogant fool. What was your play here? Fly in like a hero of old and trust that the universe would ensure a sense of fair play. Haven’t you learned by now that is not how the Darkwyrlds operates?”
I stared balefully back and spat a wad of saliva at his face. Sadly, Rom anticipated the reaction and shimmied to the side, thus avoiding the insult. Quick as a cricket, his fist slammed into my breadbasket on the opposite side of the harvester organ and winded me.
“Not so tough without your gear,” Rom seethed at my side and snapped his fingers at the ogre dungeon attendant. “Cut it out of him, be careful, but make it hurt. And leave him alive. I want him to live long enough to watch everyone he cares about die under my boot. I will pop your son’s head open like a grape, Carter!”
The one-eyed ogre nodded solemnly, drew a sharp blade from its waistband and approached me. The avatar ran its fingers over my stomach to source the location of the organ and then called Spence and Drok over to hold me in place. Lest I wriggle about to much. Rom was right about one thing; without my gear, I was no match for outfitted level 50s even if their class tier was below mine. They held me in place while the ogre sliced me open without any anaesthetic.
It hurt; it hurt a lot.
Much more than when Anastasia put the damn thing in, but then for all her prickly attitude, she liked me.
Rom’s avatar had no such positive personal bias.
The organ had been grafted to the nerve endings which the ogre severed in the process of extracting the harvester. But to be fair to the silent surgeon, it was workmanlike and swift and didn’t seem to extend or amplify the pain of the procedure despite the command from its master.
Although it was altogether possible that it couldn’t make the experience any more agonising without killing me, so maybe it hadn’t chosen to spare me but was simply following a different element of the orders it was given.
While the operation felt like it went on for much longer, the ogre removed the organ in just over a minute. Spence and Drok released me, and my body sagged in exhaustion, hanging from the manacles. I didn’t have the strength to stand and couldn’t feel the discomfort in my wrists when the pain from the surgery continued to radiate outward in intense waves.
The ogre stood and inspected Rom’s prize. There was a glint in its eye, that it flicked towards me. Did it know what was coming? We had done everything possible to obfuscate my intentions. However, I’d wrongly presumed that Rom would be the one to claim the harvester organ, not the dungeon avatar.
“Is that it?” Rom pressed from behind the avatar. “Are you done?”
The ogre nodded respectfully, and Rom’s expression lit into one of greed and victory. He pushed forward and snatched the organ from the avatar’s grip. “And it has enough power to transform me into the God of the Darkwyrlds?”
The ogre seemed to hesitate for a split second and then nodded a second time.
“Yes! It’s mine. Ultimate victory is so close, it’s almost a shame to claim it so soon. The fear of missing out on savouring the victory, I suppose,” he chuckled.
Rom moved back over to his throne and tapped a button. A pedestal rose beside the seat, and he inserted the harvester crystal. There were several cables that I recognised from my flashbacks attached to the mechanism Fred/Rom had designed. They ended in needle points which he pushed into his flesh in various places including behind his head. A sight not for the squeamish.
“Is this what you imagined when you flew your ship up against me, Torin? Hanging there, pallid and anaemic, at the boots of your conqueror. You were a fool to bring this to me. You should have run, it wouldn’t have changed the outcome, but you could have enjoyed a few more days of freedom. I’m disappointed, but then perhaps I shouldn’t have put any faith that a football player could test me when it comes to strategy.”
“I’ve no regrets, mate.” I smiled at the enemy and pointed my fingers to just behind his throne. “I just needed to get close enough to do this. Summon Rift Beast.”
*** -450 mana points ***
*** Cooldown of 7 days applied to spell Summon Rift Beast ***
*** Noxious Megapede summoned. ***
*** Your control check was partially successful. The Noxious Megapede will not obey you, but neither will it directly attack you. ***
*** Passive ‘Ride Along’ feature has been activated ***
*** The Noxious Megapede’s current attitude is instinctual aggression. It will destroy everything and anything it can lay its many legs upon. ***
One benefit to levelling up was that it had reset the cooldown for my summoning spell. Given that being bound meant I couldn’t evade the beast in any feasible manner, summoning the megapede was a huge risk. But I’d advanced several levels since unleashing it on the Outlaw Nation, boosting the relevant stats, and re-summoning the same creature improved my chances of securing a modicum of control.
Full control would have been ideal, but I would settle for the beast not seeking to kill me.
The domed chamber was filled with sparkling orange and purple smoke, which once it started to clear, revealed the multi-faceted compound eyes and chitinous armour of the megapede.
The monstrous summon screeched in rage. Angered that it had been taken from the Great Rift again and this time confined to a chamber barely large enough to contain it, the creature lashed out immediately.
Spence was the first to feel its fury. One of its many legs lifted into the air and slammed down, point first, hollowing out the man’s skull and spraying his brains all over the granite of the dungeon chamber’s floor.
“Fuck!” Drok screamed in pure terror and ran for the exit.
The badger-headed pirate didn’t make it. The megapede ground forward and cut off the escape route, snatched the pirate up in its pincers and devoured his badger head in a single bite, discarding the body with blood spurting from the neck stump.
The rest of the small detachment who had brought me to Rom and hung around to watch the torture was swiftly despatched. Some were run down and carved up, others melted by the creature’s acid spew. If they hadn’t been glyphed and limited to level fifty, they may have stood a chance. Their bad karma was returned a thousandfold for the kicking they’d given on the Bridge. I had silently promised that they would pay for their actions.
Rom, shocked by the development, jumped up from his crass throne and backed away from the thrashing monstrosity. The wiring attached to the needles in his flesh had enough length that they weren’t pulled out. The pirate captain’s proximity to me had spared him thus far, but with the few other pirates already devoured or melted, the megapede turned its attention to the platform in the centre of the room that its large body had coiled around and shrieked.
To Rom’s credit, he quickly regained calm and control. He signalled the ogre avatar, and a shimmering force shield came into existence around our position and the precious throne.
“I don’t know how you managed to cast a spell manacled as you are, Carter, but this desperate gambit will not be successful. I will give you props for ingenuity, though. I presume summoning beasts from the rift was a gift from that bitch, Nancy. A nasty trick for her to play.”
“That shield will not last for long,” I countered, neither confirming or denying his suspicions, which by default likely cemented them in his mind.
Cracks were already beginning to show in the shell protecting the platform as the megapede battered and clawed at the obstruction. Desperate to get to the chewy morsels inside.
It appeared that Rom agreed with me. “What are you waiting for?” he snapped at the ogre avatar. “Expel the beast to the exterior and blast it apart.”
“Are you sure, Master?” the ogre asked in a quiet voice.
“Now you choose to speak. It has been centuries of silence and now that tongue of yours decides to wag. Of course, I’m sure. We can’t let it break through to us.”
“Would you not prefer to complete your transition and handle the matter yourself? Removal of such a large combatant will require the expenditure of considerable resources. Not to mention, many of your crew in the lower decks are currently in the way.”
“I don’t give a fuck what it costs in energy or manpower. None of this will matter soon.” Rom screamed in frustration. “I gave you an order, now do it!”
The avatar remained calm in the face of Rom’s fury “I had to ask. By your command.”
A smile tugged at the avatar’s lips, and it glanced over at me. “I’m tired,” it sighed. “And welcome the end.”
It knew. The avatar had figured out my endgame, what was coming, and it still hadn’t warned Rom.
Rom misunderstood the sentiment and slapped the ogre across the face. “There will be no rest for you, slave. And the scale of your punishment only grows with every second you delay.”
How many times had I stressed that power and control over your subordinates was not enough? You needed to keep them happy. That there was a gulf between the letter of the law and the spirit of it. The avatar had advised its master against this path and laid out an alternative course, one that wouldn’t end in his death, and it had been refused. Its obligation of obedience had been met.
“Very well,” the ogre said and closed its single eye. The floor of the chamber and down through every other deck to the bottom of the ship disappeared. The cries of those who suddenly found the solidity under their feet gone carried upwards. The megapede fell through the gap. Perhaps it could have held on, but the screams of the pirates hitting the ground in the ruins below likely encouraged it to go with the flow and go after the freshly revealed snacks.
My stomach turned as the Leviathan’s Curse rose into the air and gained some distance from the megapede that had already started feasting on the unfortunates who had preceded it out of the ship. Before the holes in the hull sealed up, I could see Marena’s Mercy was still bolted to the ground with cables. Although Ana’s little crab golems were hard at work weakening the ties, it wouldn’t be long before she could pull the ship free, but it wasn’t time for that yet.
I hoped she was having fun turning the ship’s corridors into a charnel house for the invaders. The boost in energy would help her hasten the regeneration from the massive amount of damage incurred earlier.
A viewing screen flared into life as Rom retook a seat on his throne. The organic cables inserted into his flesh began to pulse once more as he started to use the energy of the organ to alter the very fabric of his body and ascend to Godhood.
“Fire,” he snapped.
The ogre bowed once more and unleashed a salvo of cannon fire at the megapede that ran amok on the ground below. The firestorm of weapon fire tore through its armoured chitin and blew great rents in its flesh. Blackish-green ichor flew in every direction and coated any survivors in the beast’s innards. Unfortunately for them, those innards had an innate toxic and acidic nature and likely sealed their fates anyway.
My eyes darted around the screen, but I couldn’t see any signs of my people. Not living ones, anyway. Several of the splinter pods lay in the ruins and those inside who hadn’t got away had been hauled out and executed. Each man and woman had been a volunteer, but they had died for my plan which involved putting them in this hopeless situation, and it hurt to see the outcome. Storm Raider was nowhere in sight which was gratifying. Kristoff had followed his instructions and retreated once the pickups of those who escaped were complete.
A second volley ripped into the ailing megapede and through the summon link I felt its anger and pain. The creature was dying, but its demise was a necessity if this was to work. I had been worried it would be too strong to kill and had to trust that Rom and his ship had what it took. Summoning something random carried the risk of getting a beast that was too weak, I needed Rom distracted for a short while and that required a beast capable of putting up a fight. The megapede, despite the risks, had been the best bet.
The harvester organ pulsed orange and purple, a sign for me that its infiltration was complete. Even with summoning a creature of the megapede’s power, it had only just survived for long enough.
Rom was too intent on watching the megapede be pulverised to notice that the Malignant Cutter and the other shard ships linked to the Leviathan’s Curse had suddenly fallen from the air. Every watt of energy had been drained from them to power what came next.
The same thing happened to every shard vessel linked to the curse in the Darkwyrlds. Those in the ships here were the fortunate ones. They just tumbled to the ground, a survivable disaster. Anybody in the plexus or space when the vessels lost integrity and the cimmeric crystal they were made from crumbled into dust would be doomed.
This wouldn’t knock out every ship in the Dread Scourge. There were enslaved captains like the master of Cold of the Grave as well as regular vessels within the fleet.
A third and final volley slammed into the megapede’s head, and the mighty beast crashed to the ground a few hundred metres away from where Marena’s Mercy was bolted to the concrete. With death, the creature began to dissolve back into the orange and purple summoning smoke. The colourful mist was sucked into the air and the wisps began to disappear below the Curse at the point where the megapede had been summoned a few minutes ago.
It was then that Rom noticed something was off. “Wait, something is wrong. The soul harvester has booted me out and is not responding to my direction. How is this possible?”
“I can answer that,” I coughed, clearing my throat of fluids and getting my feet back under me. “I may have made a couple of modifications to the crystalline structure before storing it away. You know, just a couple of small cracks, enough to thwart its original purpose and redirect it to serve mine.”
I hoped Nancy would appreciate that I’d thrown Fred’s own deeds back in his face at the end.
Rom pulled the needles from his body and threw them to the floor in a fury. He crossed over the short distance and grabbed me by the throat. “What did you do?”
I looked up at the viewer to the spot in the air where the summoning mist had been sucked away. The mist was gone but the rent in the fabric of reality remained, and it was getting larger.
The ogre smiled. “That is a portal to the demesne of a Darkwyrld God. The Shattered Goddess’ I presume, considering that the megapede likely came from the Great Rift. The portal is exerting a considerable pull on the ship. Drawing us in.”
As the ogre spoke the hole in the galaxy which led to the Great Rift opened wider and all manner of loose material and debris was being sucked inside from all directions. It was to my ship’s advantage to be tied down at this point, hence why Anastasia had only weakened the cables which held her in place and not cut them free entirely.
“Well, fly us away,” Rom ordered.
“I am trying. However, the pull on the ship is particularly powerful. I am straining the engines to the maximum to merely hold us in place.”
Even as the avatar finished his explanation, the Curse lurched towards the rift.
At the same time, a few escape craft were ejected from several docking ports.
Some of Rom’s crew who had attempted to flee, but the inexorable pull from the portal was already too strong and they didn’t get far before being drawn back in and were swallowed by the Great Rift. The previous battle had given the harvester organ enough time to mark every inch of this ship and the pull it experienced was a thousand times stronger than what affected the rest of the world.
And that was strong enough to suck in everything not nailed down.
The experience with the portal summoned by the Hellhounds had inspired this part of the plan, but I’d used a combination of my spell and the soul harvester instead of making a risky bargain with an Archfiend.
Rom looked back at me, panic beginning to set in. The Leviathan’s Curse was an impressive ship, one that could survive the strains of a rough portal trip, but he had to know who was on the other side. And she was not someone he wanted to meet in person.
“That’s the funny thing about summoning spells,” I stated conversationally. “They create these tiny infinitesimal one-way portals to the location of the summoned object or where it came from on the return trip. In this case, the Great Rift, which is part of the Shattered Goddess’ demesne. Too small to be of much use, unless you happen to have a crystal filled with an enormous amount of energy that can take hold of that portal before it closes and bust it wide enough to swallow something the size of a dungeon ship.”
My exclusive skill had granted me the insight about how the summons worked. Normally, the pull on anything not marked as part of the spell was so small it couldn’t be felt. But if you managed to tear the hole wider, then that pull magnified. Especially if you had an inside man that painted the intended target as if it were the summoned item or beast, increasing the pull many times over.
“Thanks for killing the megapede, by the way, I needed that for any of this to work. Without full control, I couldn’t simply dismiss it when I pleased.”
That had been another risky part of the scheme. If Rom had simply ejected the creature, there wouldn’t have been a return opening until the twenty-fours expired which would have been too late. It would have been down to Ana to finish it off if that had been the case. Something that would have been much harder and would possibly have tipped Rom off that something was up.
The ship lurched closer again and was on the threshold of being pulled through.
Rom painfully squeezed my throat, bursting several blood vessels in the process. “You stupid fucking idiot! Do you think glory and thanks await you on the other side? Nancy is fucking insane, you fool. Endless torment is all that she has in store for you. Stop this madness, stop it now.”
Even if I wanted to, it was too late. Everything was in the hands of the harvester organ and its strange persona. We hadn’t precisely talked, but there had been a form of communication. It wanted this, once its job was done, the part of it which could think would continue to exist in the chaotic energies of the Great Rift.
Formless and unable to wield the power it contained, but alive, so to speak. It was a far better outcome than its original purpose. I had no doubt, that it secretly wanted to form a body for itself somehow, but it had needed me to be the one who tinkered with its structure to give it that chance. It had to accept the permanent formless option I offered and hope that it could find a way around that later. This was unlikely, once it was separated from the harvester organ, it would then be subject to Framework authority and I happened to have a pretty good relationship with the folks in charge.
Rom relaxed his grip just enough that I could speak. “Fred, I left you a gift, for old time’s sake.”
He looked at me curiously and then the Curse lurched for a final time and was swallowed by the portal.
The moment that happened, it was transported to the other side of the galaxy. That put me well out of range of Marena’s Mercy and the connection to the flesh golem I’d been mentally riding for the last day or so was abruptly cut.
***
The Leviathan’s Curse
The light in Carter’s eyes blinked out and he fell limp in Rom’s grasp. With the controlling mind gone, details about the body which had been deliberately hidden, were now fed back to him.
“A golem! One made to mimic him in every way. What? How?”
“His core is a golem mistress,” the ogre avatar shrugged. “A novel use of her class. His real body must have been ensconced within her dungeon on the ship, connected to his body in some manner that allowed him to use the golem. The moment the golem was pulled out of range of the dungeon, the connection was severed. It would explain how he cast his spell. His real body was never here, so it wouldn’t have been affected by the suppression shackles. All that was required was line of sight, which he had. A very well-exploited flaw.”
“I don’t care about any of that,” Rom bellowed. “What are we going to do?”
“FFFRRREDDDD!” a voice boomed through the ether, followed by a great swirling mass of different shapes, constantly changing, that quickly enveloped the ship and started to tear it apart.
The Shattered Goddess had come for her prize.
“No, no, no, no,” Rom raged. “This can’t be happening. Get us out of here.”
“I would if I could, but I cannot. We are in her grip and hull integrity is already zero. My dungeon influence is keeping her out for now, but the harvester is draining my strength, when it is exhausted there will be nothing to prevent her ingress.”
“Damn, but you’ve become a chatty bastard all of a sudden.”
The ogre shrugged. “We have reached the end, if not now, then never. And I must confess to a certain degree of pleasure in reminding you that for all your plotting and machinations, this time, there is no way out. You are going to die.”
“You’ll die too!”
“You say that like it is a bad thing. I am ready and have been for so very long. You should have let me go, Rom.”
In a panic, Rom rushed over to his throne and tried to pry the crystal from the throne, but it was locked in tight and resisted any attempt at removal. Even deactivating the limiter glyph which was no longer necessary was not enough. Maybe if he had still been Titus, but Rom’s form was significantly weaker than that old bastard. He fell to the floor, defeated.
“Carter left you a gift,” the ogre reminded Rom. “Although one could say it is of greater benefit to him. The choice, as always, will be up to you.”
“What is it?”
“Self-detonation. The harvester drained the shard fleet dry to manipulate the summoning portal. It has much of the original energy it contained left in reserve. I am connected to the harvester organ through your throne, and it will allow us to go nova. You would die, but it would be quick and infinitely better than what will happen should the goddess get her mitts on you.”
“How does that help, Carter?”
“Every part of the Shattered Goddess has descended upon us. The peculiar energy of the blast would likely destabilise the last tenuous links connecting her psyche. The goddess would be truly shattered at that point, separated into a multitude of different entities, each carrying only a portion of her original power.
“More, a significant portion of the soul harvester’s energy will feed into the Great Rift expanding it in size and ferocity. Effectively trapping these new entities inside. This would free Carter from her influence. He is smart enough to understand the association can only end poorly for him.”
Rom laughed darkly and collapsed onto the cold comfort of his throne. The multitudinous claws and chomping mouths of Nancy’s ever-changing form gnashed and strained against the boundary of the Curse’s heart. “Outsmarted by a fucking football player. Oh, the ignominy. If I hadn’t damned or killed all my friends years ago, they would never let me live this down.” He sighed with deep resignation. “Carter knows no matter how much I want to; I can’t afford to spite him at the end. He has left me no other choice. Do it, blow us the hell up.”
“By your will, master.”
“If it matters any, I am sorry that I was such a dick for all these years.”
“It doesn’t.”
Rom grinned back at the terse reply. He deserved it.
Then came a flash and he was dead before the pain of his body’s utter destruction could register with his brain.