Chapter 447 - Retaliation (Patreon)

Notes : Chapters 453 and 454 have been written and added to the queue !

Wew. Sorry for the late chapter upload, I just spent all day travelling and writing. Wrote almost 8k words (around 7.8k to be more exact), spread across TFW and Starlight Delights. It includes almost 2k words of...well, full on smut for Starlight Delights.

Anyway. Because of my writing pace reaching roughly pre-allergy levels, chapters having a lower minimum length, and the fact that chapter 450 and 452 have, err, sizeable cliffhangers, I'll be upping the pace of uploads after the coming week, back to 3 chapters a week. So, you'll get chapters 448 and 449 on wednesday and sunday next week as usual, but the one after that will have friday added back into the schedule. I feel like I have enough in the backlog to justify it.

If it's too much though, I'll bring it back down to two chapters a week.

Anyway, I hope you'll enjoy the chapter ! This is the first one written under the new format, which is shorter but more fitted to my writing style, so don't hesitate to tell me what you thought of it !

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Chapter 447

Lavalands of Last Point, Tark Hegemony

City of Tark

Trumley's & Sons was a prosperous shop. Tark had come a long way since the Directorate, and a century and a half of progress and relentless warfare had changed its society. Where before one's clothing tended towards the heavy and traditional lavaland robes, to protect from the ashes and fumes, it now became more stylish, and less about pure practicality.

Suits and hats for the gentlemen and gentlewomen of the modern age. Small respirators that could fit in one's pockets, and ashgoggles for those who wished to venture beyond the perimeter of the air purification towers.

Trumley's suits were never the highest grade, nor the cheapest. But they ran that fine line that made them both affordable and of decent quality. Many up and coming officers, merchants and industrialists wore Trumley suits.

And with the Empire, business was booming. The impending recession, after the staggering expense of the military buildup, was now but a distant nightmare. Money was flowing into Tark, vast flows of mana for everything. Weapons, rails, airships. The Empire had need of the factories of the Hegemony, and its people were happy to provide.

Thus, no one batted an eye when people came and went constantly to Trumley's, carrying trunks and other containers. Many a merchant bought many suits and other clothing from the shop, and returned from a long trip, sending the whole trunk to be cleaned and mended. One of the many services the shop offered.

A small, puttering truck came to a halt, two doors down, and the driver got out, checking her map, the engine still running.

In the back, had someone been able to hear past the engine noises, they would have heard the sound of magazines being slammed into weapons, bolts being worked, and safeties being removed.

On a building at the end of the street, the door to the rooftops opened.

The momentary flickers of figures could be seen. A vague shimmer in the air, here, there. Then gone.

Even with their cloaks of invisibility, the inquisitors moved like shadows. Which was good, as when they arrived on the building next to the shop, the roofs filled with a kaleidoscope of colors as powerful technology and heretical enchantments shattered the magic shielding them. Men and women in armor appeared. None of their badges of office to be seen.

There might have been a reaction from the shop. But the doors to the truck slammed open, and two inquisitors leapt out.

They held Tarkian rocket launchers. And two streaks of fire and smoke disappeared into the front of the shop.

There was a second of stunned silence after the explosions. Then screams. Some, from the pedestrians struck by the shrapnel. Some in pain, others in anguish as they held fallen companions.

Others were in anger, and the first shots of the riflemen that followed the rocketeers were not against agents of the Order, but to execute armed passersby that tried to intervene.

Then they rushed in, from above and the streets.

The first inquisitor to leap through the shattered shop's display came back out in a spray of blood and flechettes, dead before he even hit the ground. The squad went to cover, their assault specialists answering in kind with their submachine guns and trench shotguns, darting in too quickly for their wards to be overwhelmed.

Grenadiers tossed their explosives in, and screams of alarms were curtailed by the sharp crack of detonating fragmentation grenades, and the clamor of shrapnel scouring the room.

The inquisitors headed in.

Two of the remaining Order agents died, still doggedly trying to hold their positions in the shattered shop. One was already close to meeting the Gods for judgment, and was easily dispatched.

The other one, behind the armored counter, downed two inquisitors with his trench gun, before a holy warrior leapt over the debris strewn cover and unloaded her revolver into him.

Her victory was short lived. The backwall, already little more than shreds, simple ceased to exist as the heavy machinegun opened up from the other side, instantly reducing her to a bloody mist.

Half of the inquisitors died before they even realized what was happening, cut down by high caliber rounds as the machine gunner swept the room, shattering wards and bodies. The rest, with better reflexes, or simply better luck, threw themselves down behind the debris, avoiding the first volley.

The machinegunner retargeted, and-

The ceiling above it exploded. The gunner died, bullets slamming through her shield, then her skull and down through her body, killing her instantly. Her loader threw himself out of the way, his energy barrier taking most of the damage, and fired his revolver. One inquisitor went down before the others killed the agent.

Then it was quiet.

Inquisitors descended from the ceiling, and both units reunited.

Weapons were reloaded, potions downed. Wards were switched for fresh ones, and damaged equipment discarded. Thermite charges were set on the large, armored door in the back.

They heard, below, the muffled 'thump' of demolition charges. And they knew, without a doubt, that those of the Order that had attempted to evacuate through the sewers had just found out that there was no way out.

No way out except the Gods' judgment.

The inquisitors went back into formation as the thermite ignited, and advanced again as the armored door fell. They moved into the stairs thus revealed, and down into the cellars.

This time, both sides knew what they were facing. This was no longer a surprise attack.

The inquisitors passed by charred desks. Incinerated by self-destructs, both arcane and mundane. Cabinets full of documents, now little more than warped hulks.

Down below the shop, there had been an office. One that did not pertain to the shop's activities.

The inquisitors would have liked getting these documents. But they knew there was almost no chance of finding anything before the failsafes triggered.

Besides. This was not a mission to gather information. This was to strike back.

The lead inquisitor froze, and raised her hand. Everyone stopped.

She tapped the door leading to the next corridor, and gestured at the walls.

The demolition experts nodded. As the rest of the inquisitors flattened themselves against the walls the door was opened.

And explosives sailed through.

The grenades were fairly anemic. They did not even have shrapnel.

What they did have was enchantments and a small charge. Electricity and more arcane energies arced around, scarring the walls of the hallway.

And the mines lining the corridor detonated.

The inquisitors dove in. Grenades sailed in. The relic nullification, brought in by the Seraphim, the imported flashbangs, and mundane smokes. One did not plant a minefield without covering it, unless it was purely to slow someone down. And the Order knew it would be a paltry obstacle indeed for the Church.

The shield that had been at the end of the hallway had protected those beyond from the effects of their own traps, but the devastating detonations had shattered it. In time, it would come back up, even after the nullification blasts.

But there was no time.

The inquisitors emerged into the room, rushing out of the billowing smoke, firing as they came.

The first three went down, hard. The towering, armored figures that came to meet them wielded trench guns and wore the armor that was reminiscent of a knight, if one had been made to jump into trenches and dugouts, to clear them with blade and gun.

But the dead inquisitors bought time and space for their comrades. Agents of the Order, the few that were left, fired from small sandbags emplacements, trying to give cover to their armored troopers.

It wasn't enough. Enchanted blades flashed, and the armored soldiers dropped their empty shotguns, drawing their own trench knives, their enchantments still sputtering thanks to the nullification.

Inquisitors exited the smoke on the side of the melee, firing to suppress the heretics in cover.

Their reflexes betrayed them. Common tactics pushed them to hunker down.

Inquisitors rushed them, leaping over the bags, swords and revolvers in hand.

Agents screamed and fell.

They died. But died hard. When the smoke began to dissipate, there were twice as many bodies of inquisitors as there were of heretics. The hacked to pieces forms of the armored soldiers were surrounded by a circle of corpses, in a pool of blood.

A few of those in cover had been mages, their magic rendered useless by the relics given by the Seraphim.

They began to reload. Prepare for the next advance.

Which was when the armored door the Order had been defending opened.

A single man went through.

Inquisitors were covering the door of course. Those doing so with blades simply died first. The man moved almost too fast to see, his bladed staff whistling through the air.

Wards exploded as the enchanted weapon met them, when the inquisitors even had wards protecting them still.

The man's own barrier exploded as the other inquisitors opened fire. But bullets pierced through the collapsing bubble of energy only to meet flesh engorged with essence.

Weapons that would have felled a normal man barely even slowed the soldier of the Order, and he leapt into the inquisitors.

He was a whirlwind. Limbs and bodies flew away from him. But for every one he took down, half a dozen wounds appeared on his body.

He slowed.

One of the inquisitors he tore apart came down, the pins of her grenades tumbling down from her cut off hand.

The soldier of the Order tried to leap away, but his damaged body failed him.

The room filled with thunder and fire.

When it cleared, the man was on the ground. His body shattered, but his chest still rising.

The surviving inquisitors came back up, and emptied their weapons into him. Reloaded, then emptied them again.

He stopped breathing.

And silence descended upon the Order's outpost, as the surviving inquisitors realized they had won.

Three seconds later, the dead man switch on Commander Sherman went off, and Trumley's became a funeral pyre.