Chapter 293 - Change of Plans (Patreon)

Chapter 293

Change of Plans

“Ready to punch Alexander the moment we find him,” Annie said.

Augustus nodded. “I suppose that counts.”

She glanced at the line of mercenaries. “Why did you pull the mercs from the Beastworld for this?”

Talia crossed over to them, shaking her head. “You really should listen to the briefings, Annie.”

“I did!”

Talia raised an eyebrow. 

“It’s not my fault I got bored halfway into it. You need to make the meetings more interesting.”

Augustus crossed his arms and sighed. “Meetings are not meant to be fun. They’re meant to make sure everyone knows the plan—”

“I know the plan.”

“—and what to do if everything goes wrong, which plans often do,” Augustus finished.

Annie glanced between him and Talia. “I may have forgotten that part.”

“I know you did,” Talia said. “Which is why I’m here to remind you that if Augustus or anyone else in the line of command gives the order to retreat, you fall back behind the Triple S defensive line. Augustus will open a portal up to the mansion for everyone to escape, before we collapse the sanctum.”

Annie nodded slowly.

Augustus shook his head. “That’s why we pulled the mercenaries. In the event something went wrong, we didn’t want to leave them trapped on the other side of the Beastworld gateway.”

“Ohhh. That makes sense.”

“Perhaps my mother hit her too hard, too often these past weeks,” Julia said.

“Oh, no, it’s definitely the opposite,” Gabriel said immediately. Almost like he’d been waiting for it. “The more she gets beaten, the smarter she grows.”

Annie leaned around Augustus to glare at Gabriel. “Is that your expert precog opinion? And can you see what I’m about to do to you?”

Gabriel tucked his hands into his pockets and grinned. “Hm… I’m not seeing anything. You must lack the resolve necessary to actually commit to whatever it is you’re imagining.”

Annie scoffed, but before she could move, Augustus’s hand fell on her shoulder again.

“Alright, that’s enough,” he said. “Let’s focus all that energy on finding our wayward leader and bringing him home.”

Annie stuck her tongue out at Gabriel. “I bet you just saw that Augustus was going to stop me.”

“Maybe,” Gabriel said, still smiling.

“Are Grimnir always like this?” Caroline said, glancing at Maximilian. “They must drive you mad.”

Maximilian sighed. “Yes. Unfortunately. But they’re even worse when Rooke is around. They’re actually… tolerable, when they’re not all together.”

Caroline laughed, then she nudged Julia, standing next to her. “The more I hear about him, the less I want to teach him a lesson. Maybe I’ll even forgive him if there’s an interesting fight on the other side of the gate. At least then this trip will have been worth it.”

A speaker crackled from the security office. “One minute to gateway activation. All units, final positions.”

Annie’s breathing slowed.

Around the sanctum, the separate groups stilled. Conversations died mid-sentence. People checked weapons, adjusted armor, tightened straps. The designated units shifted back toward their positions, the casual clusters dissolving into the formations Talia had laid out at the briefing Annie had mostly slept through.

Only then did she realize that her MetaMetal had stopped rippling. That her arms were still. That the restless, anxious energy that had been crawling through her since she’d walked into the sanctum had gone quiet.

She glanced at Augustus and gave him a grateful look. He’d known. The banter, the teasing, letting Gabriel wind her up. All of it had been deliberate.

Then she frowned at the floor. “He’s going to be there, right?” she asked quietly.

Augustus gave her a gentle smile and patted her on the head. “It’s Alex. It will take more than a world full of wizards to stop him.”

Annie forced a smile. “Right. Of course.”

“The Machine God is fine,” Maximilian said.

She looked over. The Dragon Lord had opened his eyes. He stood with his usual composure, but something in his posture had shifted.

“I may not know him as well as you, but I know this: Rooke is alive. There are a dozen threads pointing toward him in this room alone.” His gaze swept across Annie, then Augustus, then the others behind them. “And I cannot imagine that man being anything other than free and a complete pain in some unfortunate’s backside, or dead.”

Murmurs of agreement rippled through the sanctum. Someone near the back laughed, quickly stifled.

Annie snorted. “That’s true.”

The speaker crackled again. “Fifteen seconds.”

Augustus nudged her back into position between Titanic and Caroline Delvane. Then he stepped back, returning to his own spot in the formation. She heard his spellbook rustling behind her as pages turned. Then shields sprung into existence around everyone.

All around the sanctum, people tensed.

“Five seconds.”

Weapons slid free of holsters, sheaths, belt loops. 

“Three seconds.”

Annie closed her eyes and exhaled. MetaMetal rippled from her shoulders, up her neck, before swallowing her head. At the same time, it rushed down her torso and finally her legs.

“Gateway opening.”

She opened her eyes.

The overlapping metal plates forming the aperture began to rotate. They pulled back from the center, vanishing from the outer edge inward as the gateway opened.

The courtyard on the other side appeared through the gap, the view quickly growing bigger.

It was longer than it was wide. Metal walls on three sides, a heavy door at the far end. Two watchtowers had been built into the far corners, each manned by a pair of wizards in dark robes. Across the courtyard, rows of waist-high metal barricades were spaced in staggered lines, positioned for overlapping fields of fire.

The place looked like it had been through a fight and lost. The walls bore burn marks and dents that had clearly been hammered back into shape with little concern for skill. The floor looked like it had an almost fresh layer of concrete. Whoever had repaired it hadn’t been worried about appearances.

Caroline stepped forward. “Change of plans. Give me a moment.”

Mid-step, she floated off the ground. Her arms tucked behind her back, one ankle crossing behind the other. She drifted through the gateway without urgency, rising gently as she crossed the threshold.

On the other side, the wizards froze. For two seconds, maybe three, nothing happened. Then the shouting started.

There were dozens of them. But they’d been positioned facing the wrong direction, arranged behind their barricades to defend against something coming from the far door, not from the gateway at their backs. They scrambled to reposition, spinning, tripping over each other, diving behind the metal barriers they’d been standing in front of moments ago.

Wands were pulled from holsters. Staves materialized, summoned from wherever wizards stored them. Spellbooks snapped into existence, pages already turning.

Annie glanced back at Augustus, who had a hand in the air.

“Hold,” he said.

Flashes of light from the other side of the gateway pulled her eyes back to the action. The wizards were firing. Spell after spell streaked across the courtyard. Bolts of energy, arcs of lightning, something that looked like liquid fire. All of it converging on the woman floating casually through the air above them.

Caroline didn’t dodge. She didn’t block. She didn’t acknowledge the attacks at all. Spells struck her body and dissipated. Energy splashed across her fitted white suit and vanished. She drifted to a stop a few meters inside the courtyard and looked around.

“I’m just here to find my future son-in-law, but that is quite the welcome.” She glanced left, then right, taking in the dimensions of the enclosed space. “And I do so love the acoustics in here.”

Maximilian tensed. His hand shot up. A transparent barrier snapped into existence across the gateway.

Annie flinched at the sudden alarm on the Dragon Lord’s face. She didn’t understand why until she saw Caroline move.

One instant, the Matriarch’s arms were tucked behind her back. The next, they were pressed together in front of her. The transition between the two positions was too fast for Annie’s eyes to track. She saw the start. She saw the end. The middle was missing.

But she heard the clap. Even through Maximilian’s barrier, the sound struck her like a physical blow. The air inside the courtyard detonated outward from Caroline’s hands. A shockwave tore across the enclosed space, bouncing off the walls and amplifying as it went.

The closest half-dozen wizards were launched off their feet. They tumbled through the air, limbs loose, mouths open in screams Annie couldn’t hear through the barrier. The ones behind them stumbled backwards, hands clawing at their ears, faces twisted in agony. Barricades screeched across the concrete. Dust erupted from every surface. The watchtower wizards crumpled against their railings.

The shockwave hit the far wall, rebounded, and rolled back through the courtyard a second time.

Caroline floated in the center of it all, arms tucked behind her back again, ankles crossed. She rotated slowly in place, studying the concrete beneath her feet with a frown. 

Then she moved, blurring again. One moment she was floating in the air. The next she was down on one knee, kneeling on the concrete, her right fist buried up to the elbow.

The courtyard heaved. The floor buckled outward from the point of impact in a rippling wave that tore across the entire space. Barricades jumped off the ground. Bodies that hadn’t finished falling from the thunderclap were tossed upward again. Concrete cracked and split along fracture lines that raced to every wall.

Caroline tore her arm free. 

Concrete and shattered rock sprayed into the air, fragments peppering the walls and the underside of the watchtowers. The ground where her fist had been was a crater, and everything around it had shifted upward in a broken ring.

Lifting into the air, she swept her gaze across the courtyard before nodding to herself. Then she turned back to the gateway, gestured for them to follow, and headed for the far door.

Maximilian’s barrier broke apart, fragments of energy dissipating into the air.

Augustus brought his hand down. “Go.”

Annie launched toward the gateway. Julia beat her to the other side by a fraction of a second.