51 (II)
Regroup
Shiv felt a building ache pass through his skull as he remembered something. He remembered being a chef for years at… at Blackedge.
He was doing all this for Blackedge. And… and this place was a teleportation anchor and a monster den in one. He hadn’t come here as a monster cook or anything like that—though it sounded interesting to him now. He came here because the Jealousy was guarding a gateway he needed to get through, or something, and it was also going to help him escape. Somehow.
Lots of details were still missing, but his broken memories were slowly melting back together. He took another bite and was about to tell the slaves to try, when he heard a loud sob.
He saw an old human man weeping as he ripped another chunk out of the meat. “This is… this is the best meal I’ve ever had?!” Several others who hadn't touched their bowls looked at him like he was insane, but an elf with burn-scars covering most of her face shrugged and bit down as well.
She let out a gasp and then a moan. “Gods! System!” And she turned frenzied, stuffing more of the meat into her mouth.
A dam of tension broke. The rest of the slaves started eating as well, including the only girl brave enough to approach Shiv. Soon, groans, tears, and chatter grew among the slaves, and Shiv found himself smiling. Despite all the horror and death, this was a nice moment, and he wanted to fill his life with more instances like these.
“Well,” Shiv whispered, grinning at the survivors passing along his food, “glad you all like it.” He looked at the metal walls surrounding him—and spotted a set of doors. He looked at his hands and hummed. “Maybe… Maybe I can force my way out. I’m strong enough. Maybe—”
The partially broken spell patterns lining the inside of the teleportation anchor then flashed. The Jealousy spasmed as a wave of pressure washed over it. The slaves began to cry out. Shiv’s heart sped up. He turned, expecting the Greater Demon to be alive again. Instead, it was still dead, just…
He remembered something else. Teleportation. This was what teleportation felt like. Spatial bubbles washed over you, pulled you from one place to another. He could dimly remember it happening faster than this, though. Maybe to do with the size of the chamber? Or because it's damaged? he thought. What was certain was that they were about to be teleported somewhere—somewhere Shiv thought he needed to be.
As panic overtook the slaves, Shiv turned to them and called out. “Hey! I think we’re about to be teleported. I don’t know where, but that might be what’s happening.” Most of them were still panicked, but a few were listening. The girl blinked at Shiv, then she turned to the others, calling for them to calm down. To his surprise, she managed to do a much better job than he did. As they simmered down, the pressure built. Shiv could see a wave of distortions slowly closing on them. “Okay, how many of you have Master-Tier Toughness?”
All of them stared blankly.
“Right,” Shiv muttered. “Probably a stupid question.” He had a bad feeling about them being teleported. If they ended up in midair or some kind of volcano, these slaves were going to die immediately. He wondered if he could protect them all with his field if everyone held hands, but the idea seemed unlikely to work and kind of stupid. So, Shiv improvised. If he was the toughest thing around in the room, then the second toughest was the Jealousy.
The dead Jealousy. A dead Jealousy with a lot of space and protective tissue inside its body.
“Alright!” Shiv called. “Everyone, follow me, quickly! I know how we're getting out of this.” He leapt over to the main body of the Jealousy and drove his fingers through its body-carapace. With a snarl of effort and a good deal of ripping, pulling, and twisting, he snapped a piece of shell free and turned his efforts on the protected flesh. This time, instead of clawing a chunk of meat out, he tore a chasm into the Greater Demon—a chasm that he pried open wider with his gravitic field.
“That should be big enough to hold a few hundred people,” Shiv muttered. He turned to wave at the slaves. “Alright. Get in!” A great many mouths fell open as they tried to understand what he was asking them to do. The spatial waves emitted by the non-broken spell patterns were increasing now. The teleportation was going to happen soon. The girl looked at him, the chasm, and then at him again. “Look, we’re about to be teleported, and this is the safest place I can think of. It’s either this or try to wait in the blood pool. I can’t remember how you guys got here, but judging from those collars, I don’t think you all got lost on your way back home.”
The girl grimaced and sighed. “Are you sure it’s safe?”
“No. But it’s the best I got.”
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Her sigh intensified. “Alright!” she called out. “Everyone, let’s… go inside the monster!”
As the slaves rushed in, Shiv could see the Jealousy heal a little bit. “Ah. That’s good. Might even serve as a fusion. I’ll see if I can keep tearing it open or something. I’ll stay near the outside of its body and let it partially heal over me so I can see what’s going on.”
The girl, being the last to enter with the slaves, just bit her lip. “I… I’m scared.”
Shiv looked at the other slaves huddled in the messy wound-cave behind her. He sighed. “Yeah, I don’t blame you. But I’ll try to keep you alive, alright? I’ll do my best if you do yours.” He aimed his best smile at her, and she just nodded
“Okay,” she said, slowly backing into the cave.
Shiv, as he said, took his place right where he made the wound. The Jealousy healed fast, so in seconds, a layer of scabbed skin was holding him in place, leaving only his upper body and head outside the Jealousy. He periodically tore the demon's insides open further to push against the regeneration and drove holes into the flesh so the slaves could keep breathing, but this wasn’t going to be comfortable. Not by a long shot.
The spatial pressure clamped down on Shiv a second later, and he rolled his shoulders. He pressed his hands close to the Jealousy and, to his surprise, realized he could use his field to move its limbs. The damn thing was ridiculously heavy, but he might just be able to sort of drag or fling it a bit like some kind of giant corpse puppet.
“Alright,” Shiv breathed out. “Let’s see how this works out. And if more of my memories come back fast enough for me to remember what I’m supposed to do next.”
The Challenger is watching with great interest.
***
“Is the gateway activating? How long? Is he coming?” Siggy bit her lip as she looked at the towering, inactive archway from outside. They managed to slip through a few hours ago. The entire process had been eerily simple. She, Tran, and Heather walked to the gateway and casually passed through using the spatial magic thingy that Leu showed Heather. They also had badges pinned on their armor, marking them as gateway engineers. Of the three, only Heather really had any clue what she was doing, and so the other two pretended to be her assistants.
After that… Well, they just had to blend in for a few hours. Blend in while riders sailed above and guards wandered around.
That was why Heather had Tran repeatedly striking a portion of the archway under the guise of “maintaining its Enchantment integrity.” Meanwhile, she was constantly shaping the same spell over and over again as she muttered random nonsense under her breath. Every now and again, she and Tran would talk about something that had nothing to do with the archway, but they rambled on about random Enchantments when someone got close.
“I mean, seriously,” Siggy hissed, looking up again. Above, there were like a hundred wyvern riders patrolling at any given moment, gliding through the air, most just lazily circling the place. Outward, there were a bunch of smaller gates, most manned by fire dimensionals—fire dimensionals that Siggy once saw fry a clean hole through a massive cave biter. When a cave biter died like a collapsing mountain? You felt it more than you saw it.
And then, there were the massive cave biters themselves—literally, like, hundreds of them, clustered and cluttered right outside the gate. Because of the Gate Lord’s lockdown order, a whole lot of goods and slaves were just bunched up outside, halfway up into the faraway wilderness, even. They’d set up camps and intended to wait things out. It wasn’t Gate Theborn’s first lockdown anyway.
If only they knew what was coming.
If only Siggy knew. Here she was with two Yellowstone Republic Slayers from the surface, waiting for a guy who might just kill her at the end of this. The other option was getting killed early. Shit choices all around. That could practically be the title of Siggy’s autobiography.
“So. Like. Do you feel anything?” Siggy asked again.
“Just wait,” the Jump Mage snarled. “I’m not feeling that great either, goblin. But if we freak out and one of those riders comes down to ask us a question, or one of those guards that keep coming around to flirt with me starts asking actual questions, we might actually be screwed. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, well,” she shot back, glaring at the Adept Junk Mage, “if our dear, psychotic, murderous, bone-wearing friend doesn’t show up, then we’re screwed anyway, right?”
Heather was about to say something when there was a flicker—a fracture of spatial magic that danced and spread across the archway. The gateway was triggering, only briefly, only an instant, but it was drawing something across—something immense. Even Siggy could feel it from the pressure.
“Alright, alright, here he comes. Just get ready.” Heather nudged Tran.
The other Slayer drew in a long, deep breath and clutched a saber at his hip. “All right, hopefully we don’t need this, but…”
And then, Siggy looked up as a massive sphere of spatial magic shot up from the top of the archway—a sphere expanding wider and larger. For a moment, her heart stilled, her breath quickened, and a colossal limb extended outward. A tentacle.
The goblin merc swallowed. “I don’t think he won that fight, guys.”
“Shit, no!” Heather cried. Another limb, and soon the Jealousy’s shape—its intact shape—was sliding back across.
Siggy felt her insides sink. “Well, I guess we won’t be seeing our bone-covered friend anymore.”
The Jealousy glared down at them with its… Wait, why’s its eye so unfocused? Why's it… And then Siggy watched it fall—watched it drop without creating that shadow-magic-shit it usually did. And it just kept falling. Siggy realized it wasn’t stopping at all, just speeding up.
“Uh, guys?” Siggy muttered, pointing at the Jealousy. Then, it spattered a few dozen wyvern riders and other aerial Pathbearers as a shockwave of force exploded off the other end of the Greater Demon, spiking it down toward the earth at an angle.