“Twitch, get back here!” Isaac whispered hoarsely to his minion, who was tottering gleefully in the open air outside the suspicious entrance he and Marie had discovered.
Without a hint of chagrin at being interrupted, the minion ran unsteadily to Isaac’s side, attempting a curtsy which landed her flat on her face.
“She’s absolutely precious, isn’t she?” Marie grinned, ruffling the minion’s chestnut hair.
“Wheeheehee!” Twitch tittered gleefully.
“Precocious is more like it,” Isaac muttered. “If we get caught because of her, she’s going to get a serious talking-to.”
Continuing on their way, the pair discovered that beneath the relatively small fortress lay a veritable catacomb of branching passageways, all leading to rooms of various sizes carved into the hill itself. Despite the number of chambers however, the majority of them were in various states of abandonment, with only about one in every five showing signs of use.
“I guess they have more bandits than rooms,” Isaac quipped as they closed the door on another dust-filled chamber.
“Maybe they’re planning on expanding soon,” Marie ventured. “Either way, with all the dust, it makes it easy to tell which hallways people travel through, and which ones we can skip.”
“Still,” Isaac continued worriedly. “The fact that we haven’t run into a single person yet isn’t exactly inspiring me with confidence. If we were headed the right direction, wouldn’t there be more guards?”
“Maybe we’re just lucky.” Marie grinned. “If we can make it to Tenshi without having to fight a horde of baddies, that’s alright by me. Besides, they’re probably all above ground fighting Charles and the rest.”
“I hope they hold out,” Isaac muttered. “And if they get overwhelmed, I hope they have the good sense to escape. It won’t do us any good if we save Tenshi, but lose the rest of them in the process.”
Marie looked like she was going to say something, but before she had the chance, they rounded another corner, causing Isaac to run head-on into the rat-faced man who had kidnaped Tenshi.
“Hey, watch it!” The man glowered up at the pair of adventurers. Then his eyes nearly popped out of his head with shock. “You’re not Cutpurses!” he exclaimed in a shrill voice.
“Just what I was looking for!” Isaac grinned wickedly, brandishing his revolver. “Take me to the prisoners, now!”
“DISARM!” the man shrieked, as Isaac’s pistol flew from his hands, clattering harmlessly off the adjacent wall.
“Get him, Twitch!” Isaac yelled, diving for his fallen weapon, but before the minion could enter the fray, the man had already broken into a dead run in the opposite direction, hollering for guards at the top of his lungs.
“After him, quick!” Marie yelled at Isaac, grabbing Twitch under her arm and chasing after the fleeing man. “If we follow him, he’ll lead us right to where we want to go!”
“Or we'll end up surrounded by guards,” Isaac shot back, snatching up his fallen weapon and chasing after Marie.
*******
“Oryaaah!” Rampardner bellowed, swinging his massive lance in a wide arc towards Walter. The young teen ducked low in panic, but the weapon only glanced off the orange energy bubble surrounding him, careening off on an angle to tear a chunk out of the nearby wall.
“Well don’t that beat all,” Rampardner mused, laying an armoured palm across the back of his helmet in thought.
Quickly coming back to his senses, Walter slipped his magnum’s barrel back through the pale orange force field, snapping off a number of shots into the armoured player’s chest.
Stumbling backwards, Rampardner responded in kind, deftly flipping his lance upwards and catching Walter’s magnum right where it exited the field. The force of the blow sent the weapon flying to the side, well out of reach of the firmly anchored Inertist.
“And now that that’s out of the way…” Rampardner grinned broadly through his helmet grating. Flipping his lance up into the air, he reversed his grip, grabbing it like a giant icepick with both hands and driving it tip-first into Walter’s energy bubble.
The sphere crackled loudly in protest, arcs of orange lightning whipping and flashing as they laced up and down the shaft of the Hoplomachus’s lance. Holding a hand to his eyes to shade against the sudden light, Walter noticed in dismay that the once perfectly spherical shield was now caving in, as the wrought steel lance slowly but surely pushed towards him.
“Saint GEOOOORGE!” A yell erupted from behind Walter as an armoured figured shot through the air shield-first, smashing into Rampardner’s helmeted head and throwing him backwards.
As the electromagnet in his shield hummed to a stop, Charles stabbed his sword through a chink in the player’s plating, blinking in surprise as is glanced off the chainmail beneath it.
“Well, you certainly don’t do things by halves,” Charles muttered, a split second before Rampardner’s mailed backhand caught him in the side of the head, sending him flying.
Ears ringing loudly, Charles staggered to his feet, holding out a hand to steady himself against the nearby wall. As his eyes uncrossed, he glimpsed something flying at him out of the corner of his eye, and instinctively broke into a roll to the side, as three javelins made of pure water imbedded themselves in the wall behind him.
Picking himself up and drawing his dagger, Charles turned to meet his new foes.
“Not bad,” Deep6 admitted, waving her hand as the water javelins dissolved into puddles.
“Hey, didn’t we already kill you?” Charles complained, flipping his dagger into a throwing position.
“I got better.” She smirked. Breathing in deeply, she exhaled a thick cloud of vapour which rose rapidly above them. With a wave of the girl’s hand, the cloud darkened, crackling with thunder.
Charles didn’t even bother looking up. As the ominous cloud above him rumbled, he broke into a sprint towards the watery player, even as he heard the sound of numerous impacts chasing his steps behind him.
Directly before him, Deep6 traced shapes in the air with her fingers, her face a mask of concentration. Charles flinched as something boiling hot clipped his armour, splashing searing liquid on the nape of his neck. Now only a few feet from his target, he readied his dagger, dropping his hand low, then flicking it upwards, launching the weapon on a direct course for the woman’s chest.
“Nice try,” Deep6 grinned, as her upper body dissolved, allowing the blade to pass harmlessly through her. “You should’ve…” The rest of her taunt was cut short as Charles slammed his armoured left gauntlet into her still-formed face.
Deep6 spiraled backwards across the cobblestones, water and blood sprinkling the ground as the storm cloud behind Charles dissolved into the night.
“You just don’t have any luck, do you?” Ifrit sighed as he walked over to the fallen Incarnate’s body, his palm glowing with healing energy. “Sickle, did you get Trance yet?”
“You can bet yo’ beard I did!” Sicklesoul shot back from across the courtyard, as she stored the player’s preserved form in her inventory. “Easy peasy, now that revolver boy’s stopped tryin’ to turn me into Swiss Cheese.”
“Perfect.” Ifrit grinned, planting one knobby fist into the opposite palm. “That means we can finally take on these ruffians without holding back.”
“Walter, a little help?” Charles called out, as the four Cutpurses advanced on him, weapons drawn.
“I working on it, hold your horses!” the boy shot back, fiddling with numerous dials on his bunker. Pulling out one set of wires, the remnants of his shield flickered twice, then vanished. Reconnecting the wires to a secondary location, Walter’s Inertia Core began to pulse again, as a long rifle-like device slowly emerged from inside it.
“Any time now would be fine!” Charles called back as he blocked a pair of water-lances launched by the now-healed Deep6. Turning at a glint of light in his peripheral, Charles glimpsed Sicklesoul dashing towards him, the two wickedly curved blades in her hands matching her name.
“Say yo’ prayers, capon!” she yelled, flicking her wrist and launching one of her blades like a deadly Frisbee at the Knight.
“Paparapara!” An oddly nasal cry came from across the courtyard, as one of Isaac’s minions emerged from the gateway, tossing its box of ammo roughly on the ground and removing the tripod from around its neck.
“Shuuupau!” the second minion affirmed, slamming its oversized machinegun onto the waiting tripod. With military-like efficiency, the first minion grabbed the loose end of a chain of bullets and clapped it into the waiting orifice of the weapon. Dropping to the side of his companion, he grabbed hold of the rest of the belt of bullets, holding it ready.
“Barah-papa?” the first minion asked, clicking its heels.
“Barah-papa,” the second minion affirmed, dropping to a crouch behind the weapon and opening fire.
“Get back!” Rampardner bellowed, lunging at Deep6 as a hail of bullets erupted over the battlefield.
“Well,” Charles muttered in surprise, as he dropped back, holding his shield high in defense. However, he needn’t have worried. Not a single bullet struck him, as the pair of minions swept the battlefield with calculated ruthlessness, riddling Ifrit with holes and forcing Sicklesoul into a retreat behind a ferocious-looking gargoyle that jutted from the stones beneath the south wall’s steps.
“Ifrit!” Rampardner yelled, the bullets pinging off his armour like hail on a steel roof. Still keeping himself between the machine gun fire and Deep6, he strode over to the corpse of his friend and yanked him behind his protection. Kicking out with one steel-shod foot, the Hoplomachus righted the unhinged door where it had fallen, gripping it tightly as an improvised shield.
“Someone’s gotta take that bloody thing out!” Rampardner bellowed, as bullets thudded into the thick oaken woodwork of the gate.
“Can someone send a message to Sandman?” Ifrit sighed, rising to his feet again as a flood of bullets popped out of his body, littering the ground as his wounds regenerated.
“I think he’s still backing up (M)Alice,” Deep6 assessed, looking up at the wall where the Lurker and Jason were engaged in heated combat.
“You know, I think this takes priority,” Ifrit opened his messenger window. “It’s only a matter of time before this door gets torn to shreds, and us with it.”
The words hard barely left his mouth when a sound like a whip crack split the night, followed closely by a searing beam of orange energy which blasted a narrow hole in their wooden cover. Looking tentatively through their new window, Ifrit’s eyes locked on Walter, who was now fiercely reloading a large railgun mounted on his barricade.
“Well, shoot.” Ifrit sighed, as he ducked back behind Rampardner.
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