Amazon Apocalypse 5: Chapter 67

When Prince Herius and I returned, we discovered the other legions had slightly underperformed in taking out their targets, likely due to most of the enemy B-Grades being concentrated within striking range of Mundwise.

The extra ambition Prince Herius and I had shown in taking out targets on the far side of the world paid for itself though, and even with the others underperforming, we’d destroyed enough ships to let his father’s teleportation artifact synchronize.

“Let’s get the ritual started. If they have more ships with jammers that haven’t yet been activated, they might force us to sally out again,” I said.

“Agreed!” Prince Herius and I returned to his manor, where the device was still sitting by the garden. The brass pieces floating around the globe in the center were whirring faster now, and the whole thing was encompassed in a faint glow.

Prince Herius flicked the activation switch, and I guided mana flow through the device to ensure it would work despite the interference around us, though such precautions ultimately proved unnecessary. It activated without a hitch.

“It’s working! I can't wait to see the faces on these heretics when my father’s armada surrounds them.” The prince wore a wide grin across his face. He was normally more magnanimous and noble, but I suspected the whole Lady Velicia incident was still bothering him.

“Look to the sky. The stars are fading.” I pointed overhead, and the prince’s eyes followed my gesture. The other soldiers gathering around us did the same.

Soon, the sun and stars were obscured by a series of faintly glowing blue hexagons, not unlike some barriers I’d seen cast by members of the Dragon Lodge. The difference here is that those had been personal shields, whereas this was a barrier that encompassed the entire world.

But our reaction to the appearance of the barrier was minor compared to the reaction of the heretics. They knew that this world was being sealed off, and more than one ship captain cut their losses and started ascending as fast as their engines could carry them. They abandoned their allies on the ground, seemingly leaving the others to their fate while they turned tail and ran.

I felt a shift in the air, akin to what I felt upon entering the shadow realm, though the world around me didn’t change at all. I suspected this entire planet had just been pulled into the shadow realm, or a similar dimension.

A cheer rang up from the walls as people felt the world move, and I heard voices proclaiming our victory.

“We did it! We won! It’s finally over!” one woman said.

“We’re going to live. I had my doubts back there for a moment...” a fresh recruit fell to his knees. I could tell he had been one of the refugees drafted to join the legion from the fact that he didn’t even have a uniform. Just a red shirt that somewhat resembled a legionnaires' uniform.

“Praise the System! Praise the System!” a man wiped tears from his eyes and held a hand to his heart.

“Perhaps we can break out the ale. When my father’s forces arrive, I doubt we’ll have much chance to hunt down the remaining heretics...” Prince Herius chuckled, then turned to one of his subordinates to give orders.

But while everyone else was celebrating, I felt an increasingly bad feeling crawling up my spine.

“Hold off on that ale, Prince Herius. I don’t think this is over yet.”

The prince turned to me quizzically. I pointed to the glowing barrier in the sky again, then to the rapidly whirring arcane device sitting next to me.

It was spinning so rapidly now that the friction on the joints was burning some of the wooden components. It clearly wasn’t designed to work this hard for this long.

Something was wrong. But what?

The device came to an abrupt and unnatural stop, like someone had suddenly put their hand on it and jammed it in place. Little brass pieces went flying and were scattered across the ground nearby.

The barrier protecting the world turned from blue to red, then rapidly faded until it was only a faint outline. A shadow enveloped the world, casting everything in a sinister crimson hue.

The clouds roiled, and all the cheering rapidly died. Even those far less sensitive to fate than I was were getting a bad feeling now.

“Something is wrong,” Prince Herius said, though that much was obvious to everyone by now.

I picked up one of the bent and broken pieces of brass by my feet. The mana I felt from them was familiar. It felt a lot like Dramonar’s mana, but more competently done. It felt just as Morgathor’s mana had been back when C-Grades had been terrifying to me.

Whoever had snatched us out of the interdimensional space between worlds was related to the Serpent Lodge in some way, and even with my limited knowledge of the Arcadia Multiverse, I was pretty sure I knew who had just caught us.

A great dark snake-filled the sky. Its head was larger than the moon, and its body stretched passed the horizon.

Prince Herius cursed as he recognized the figure overhead shortly after I did.

“That’s the former leader of the Serpent Lodge! What is he doing here?” Prince Herius asked.

“I think he’s better known by his current title. The Chaos Serpent,” I replied.

I looked to the sky and tried to gain the entity’s level in the sky overhead, but like with Vayly Vaust, my examine came up blank.

Chaos Serpent (Level ???)

Most A-Grades had centuries to hone their minor skills like examine proficiency, and the gap between grades only grew greater at those higher levels. But I was certain of one thing. If I couldn’t even see this guy’s level, I sure as hell couldn’t fight him.

“Damn it. Damn it. Damn it!” Herius paced, cursing to himself as he held his chin in my hands. “My father and the Chaos Serpent have irreconcilable enmity. Any other A-Grade, and maybe I could have talked us out of this, but not him.”

“We have a lot of B-Grades here. Not all is lost.”

But Prince Herius shook his head. “It would be hard enough to fight a freshly ascended A-Grade. But the Chaos Serpent is not that. He is as old as my father, and just as powerful. He is as strong as one can become through the System. Perhaps stronger.”

“Then help me with these things.” I started picking up the little brass pieces. I melted the metal and held it in place in an attempt to repair the teleportation artifact that was supposed to send this planet home.

“Yes, perhaps we can resume the teleportation process...” Prince Herius said, trying to force some hope into his tone to avoid demoralizing the soldiers nearby. But I could tell from the crease in his brows he didn’t think it would do much.

“Not that.” I shook my head. “You said your father and the Dragon Lodge’s other A-Grades are on the other end powering this device? They’re still connected to it?”

“Indeed. But we are stuck in the space between worlds. They likely suspect we encountered a spatial anomaly and are taking longer than expected to travel through it. By the time they investigate what happened to us, it will be too late,” Prince Herius whispered.

I shook my head. “Not if we pass them a message. You know how the Dragon Lodge has those communication rods? They light up with a specific code that can be translated into text. I’m going to do the same thing, but with this whole planet.”

Prince Herius’ expression lit up like a drowning man who’d just been thrown a rope.

“I knew I could count on you! Get it done. Just tell me what you need from me.”

“Defend the city and buy me time,” I replied.

Prince Herius nodded and began issuing orders. It was just in time, too, because new enemies soon gathered to face us.

Naga, much like the kind I’d fought near San Antonio, descended from the sky. Seeing so many snake people raining down as they slithered through the air was a terrifying sight. And it was made doubly so when they started firing spells at the city’s barrier.

Curiously, the heretics and naga didn’t fight. They didn’t rally and join forces either, but the naga let the heretics regroup and flee to their ships while ignoring one another. Were the heretics in league with the Chaos Gods? Probably not, but I suspected they were on better terms than they would like most of the Arcadia Multiverse to know. The heretics had to have passed along what was happening to the Chaos Serpent for him to show up now of all times.

I was confident in the shields I’d worked hard on holding up against the naga. Even B-Grade naga wouldn’t be able to pierce it in any short amount of time. But one figure drifted down from the sky alongside the naga, letting out a lupine roar as he did so.

This figure took the form of a giant wolf, and there was something even more familiar about him than about the giant snake coiling around the sky, but I couldn’t name what.

The B-Grade Naga stepped aside, paying homage to the powerful wolf like a servant to a lord. I wasn’t sure what was happening until the wolf roared again, and this time familiar chaotic energies shot forth and shook the barrier around Mundwise.

I felt his mana again, and this time I recognized it. This was the Chaos Wolf, the Godling of Forbidden Knowledge. I’d crossed paths with him before back home when he tried to possess me, and I still had his unholy athame.

From my research since then, I’d learned the Chaos Wolf was a recent addition to the Chaos God pantheon. He might be early A-Grade, but that didn’t mean he was weak. Far from it.

At the Chaos Wolf’s roar, my barrier shook, crumbled, and collapsed into nothing. All those weeks of work amounted to nothing in the end before the might of an A-Grade. The wall crumbled soon after, and Herius grabbed several people before they could get caught in the crumbling ruins that had been the city’s front gates. He only saved two of hundreds. The rest plummeted to their deaths on the ground below.

“We hold this ground to our last breaths!” Prince Herius shouted from atop the walls as he set the two he’d saved down on their feet.

Others roared their approval, and the legionnaires charged forth to plug the gap that the Chaos Wolf had made. The wolf himself turned his nose to the sky, sniffing the air the way a human might scan the horizon. He looked like a hound that had caught a familiar scent, and I had a hunch that scent was me.

“Damn it all!” I cursed, much as the prince had moments before. I looked around for someone to issue orders to, but found no one familiar. There were still a few of the prince’s subordinates standing around, though.

“You! Do you know the Sanctum Mystic Realm? The legion has been evacuating people into it all day.”

The prince’s subordinate nodded, eyes wide and numb from the appearance of not one but two A-Grades.

“I know the place.”

“Get all the remaining non-combatants through it and shove any remaining pocket realms through it, too. After, follow up with as much of the legion as you can. We’re going to lose the city, but that doesn’t mean we have to let ourselves get slaughtered.”

The man continued to look numb a moment later, but receiving orders snapped him out of his stupor.

“And if you see a blue elf named Reluna, send her my way!” I added hastily.

The soldier nodded, and I ordered a few more people to get moving in a similar fashion.

Though I didn’t have a rank, I’d been effectively deputized by Prince Herius, and figured the System liked me enough to bend the rules to let me issue an area-wide quest in his name.

New Quest Available!

Retreat to the Sanctum Mystic Realm!

Reward: Surviving beyond the next hour.

I sent the quest out to everyone, either soldiers or civilians. Everyone I wanted to save needed to flee into Sanctum, then close the door behind them. A-Grades could break into extradimensional spaces, but I’d given Sanctum a lot of levels recently, and it would be much harder to break than before. They’d have to find where it connected to mundane reality too, which would hopefully buy us enough time.

Time that the A-Grades of the Dragon Lodge would hopefully use to save our asses from the Chaos Serpent and the Chaos Wolf. But it all depended on me getting this message to them.

I worked every bit as quickly as I had when when looking after the System’s data transfer. It wasn’t just my line on the line, but most of those I cared about. I was just greatly that Sakura and Bridget were back in Crownhill and would make it through this regardless of what happened.

Bits of brass flew into place, and I melted, twisted, and screwed every component I could find back together. Then the real work began. The mana flow around the world had been horribly distorted by whatever the Chaos Serpent was doing. Now that I was examining the shield, I guessed it was some combination of disguise and dispelling.

I needed to slip a message past an A-Grade spellcaster who had likely been working with magic for as long as humans from Earth had been working with metal tools. It required intense focus, and I’d only have one chance.

I thought back to the extradimensional mana bolt that had turned into a black hole, which the System had used to strike a blow against Vayly Vaust using my body. I could do something similar here, albeit not quite as complex.

I could send mana back through the energy current and bypass the Chaos Serpent by routing the mana extradimensionally, just as I did with so much of the System’s infrastructure.

“You needed me?” a familiar voice said as I worked. I didn’t have to look up to tell it was Reluna.

“Yes. Start setting up talismans around me. Defensive, offensive. Whatever you’ve got.” I waved at her to begin without looking up from my work.

“How many?” Reluna asked.

“All of them.”

It took me fifteen minutes to set it all up, which was a record pace even for me. Meanwhile, Reluna worked just as hard on her own task. During that time, the forces of the Chaos Serpent took nearly the entire city.

As strong and capable as our legionaries were after months of crusading, they couldn’t surpass the might of grades, and the naga had far too many B-Grades among them.

If it were just those naga, maybe our people could hold on a little longer, but the Chaos Wolf’s presence seemed to sap the very life and morale from our forces. Even though he was hardly even fighting, just seeing him walking along behind the naga made our soldiers sense the futility in their struggle.

The further he marched, the more clear it was that he was coming straight for me. The naga fought to clear the streets so he could pass unbothered by the bloodshed around him. Meanwhile, Prince Herius, Cyra, Myrina, and most of the legates fought at the front lines, taking shifts to hold ground.

Several fell to buy me more time. I watched Maximus take a naga spear to the guts and be dragged away by some of his men. Thaddeaus vanished between the spare glances, so presumably he went down as well.

There were three redheads on the front lines, one was Myrina, one was Cyra, and the third was naturally Prince Herius. The three scions of the Samhain Clan fought ferociously, but even they were driven back.

When the Chaos Wolf finally laid eyes on me, he finally stopped sniffing the air and turned to stare me down.

“There you are. My, how you’ve grown. I wasn’t able to turn your body into my puppet before, thanks to the System’s protection. But now that I’m here in person, that protection is gone. I think I will finish what I started,” the Chaos Wolf said.

It felt strange to hear human words coming from the wolf’s mouth, but he spoke unhindered despite its lupine mouth.

In one sudden motion, the Chaos Wolf pounced.

“No!” Cyra shouted, charging after the Chaos Wolf.

“Carter!” Myrina yelled, doing the same.

But Prince Herius proved faster than either of them. He arrived at my side with his hammer held high, fearless of the A-Grade before him.

“Come no further! In the name of my father, God-King of Glacia!” Herius raised his hammer high, lighting sparking along the hilt.

“Your father has no power over me, boy,” the Chaos Wolf chuckled, then swatted at Herius with a paw.

Herius blocked with his hammer shaft, but an A-Grade’s blow proved too much for the weapon, and the haft splintered and shattered. Enormous claw marks appeared in Herius’ armor, even larger than the Chaos Wolf’s paw should have been. Herius went flying and collided with the side of his manor where he lay coughing blood and in a heap of broken stone.

“I take it we can’t talk this out?” I asked, standing between the Chaos Wolf and the teleportation artifact I’d been working on.

“What is it you were doing here? Desperately trying to find a way to flee to safety?” the Chaos Wolf let out a mocking laugh.

In a blur of motion, he appeared behind me. With another swing of his paw, he smashed the teleportation artifact beyond repair, leaving it nothing more than scrap.

“Carter, I’ve got you,” Cyra said as she appeared at my side with a shield in one hand and a sword in the other.

“Me too,” Myrina added.

“I’m flattered, ladies. But I was thinking something more along the lines of this... Now, Reluna!”

Reluna activated every talisman she’d placed over the past fifteen minutes. Normally, that wouldn’t be a lot of talismans, but Reluna had essentially been running dozens of printers non-stop during her stay in Crownhill, with access to infinite resources to boot. I was pretty sure that if I added up all the talismans of all hundred thousand legionnaires who left for Glacia, they still wouldn’t amount to half the amount Reluna had on her person. And she’d scattered them around the area just for this moment.

I grabbed Cyra and Myrina and dove for cover. The first to activate were thousands of shield talismans meant to hold the Chaos Wolf for just a moment. After that were thousands of stunning and weakening talismans, meant to restrain the Chaos Wolf for just a moment. Then, there were the tens of thousands of explosives, poison, acid, fire, lightning, wind, and other assorted talismans. The resulting magical detonation was every bit as powerful as two heretic ships crashing against one another and going supercritical.

But despite our best efforts, none of it was enough.

The Chaos Wolf emerged. His fur was ruffled and with a few splattered drops of blood. He growled at the surprise ambush, but he was still very much alive.

“A pathetic attempt at my life, truly. Did you think a minor trap would be sufficient to kill one of the Chaos Gods? I may be new, but I don’t think a few B-Grades can kill me with cheap tricks. Make peace with yourselves now, for soon your bodies will join my growing army, much like the naga you see before you serve the Chaos Serpent,” the Chaos Wolf said.

“Carter... I think it’s time for plan B,” Reluna whispered as she grunted and heaved. She was dragging Prince Herius along by his arms, though the much larger man was proving difficult for her in all his armor. I was glad she’d pulled him out of the blast zone, as I’d done for Myrina and Cyra. We hadn’t planned for the prince to be sitting so close when we detonated everything, and only Reluna’s fast thinking had saved his life.

“Agreed. Get out of here. All of you.”

“W-wait, you’re not thinking of fighting him alone, are you?” Myrina asked, turning to me.

“It’s me he wants. Hide you-know-where, and you’ll be safe.”

“Screw that! I’m not going to let my man die so long as I can still hold a sword!” Myrina planted her feet beside me.

“Agreed,” Cyra said, bringing her shield up again.

I was touched by their willingness to die fighting by my side. I was frustrated too, since I really wanted both of them safe, but touched nonetheless.

“Reluna, get everybody else out of here,” I instructed.

Reluna nodded and began dragging Herius off.

“How touching. But your efforts to save them are futile. We already know about your Mystic Realm and how you are hiding a very valuable artifact within it. Our allies among the heretics don’t know how you concealed what you’ve done from the System, but they are very eager to get their hands on it.”

“What do they think I’ve done?” I asked, equal parts curious and buying time. I was flicking through my System menus and allocating stat points. This had been a busy day, and I’d gained a lot of levels recently. I’d need every one of them for a fight like this.

“Don’t play ignorant now. I saw your handiwork repairing the teleportation artifact I just destroyed. You aren’t stupid. I know you attempted to copy the System for your own use. Clever boy. Too clever, in fact. It’s time I get rid of you so you don’t have any more clever ideas,” the Chaos Wolf let out another feral laugh, then reared back as though ready to pounce.

Meanwhile, I channeled Incarnation of the Apocalypse Dragon to its fullest, and I felt dragon scales forming on the back of my hand. When he howled a battle cry, I roared mine.