398: Honoured Guests (Patreon)

The Controller’s palace transpired to be a rather ugly, sprawling building with a big round dome on the top and columned walls. Long, wide steps led up to the entrance, two large double doors that hung open, flanked by yet more undead guards.

They pressed through and were escorted down a corridor, a wide one, luckily, because the wolves opted to keep them surrounded. Two flanked them on either side, Harrow strode up ahead, and the rest followed in a gaggle behind. To a man, the wolves wore big grins. It made Nicolai think that their heads would look pretty cool mounted on spikes, lining the steps that led up to this place. All those happy, grinning faces.

He looked away from them, refocusing on Harrow and that wonderful axe, and he swallowed, licked his lips. It wasn’t the Blade, couldn’t compare to that which had been stolen from him, but until he could reclaim it, that axe would be a fine weapon indeed. He was slightly delirious with the need to know what it did—surely some kind of power beyond the typical cutting through shields. Threat Analysis’s best guess was something to do with blood.

‘It’s been a while since someone stared at me so very intently,’ came a voice, snapping Nicolai out of it. Harrow was looking back at him. ‘Why, I’m almost flattered. But I don’t think you and me will work out.’

The wolf slowed, letting Nicolai draw level.

‘You look like you know your way around a blade, though,’ continued Harrow, looking him up and down. ‘Heh, in fact you look the type to kill people in their sleep, cut your way through oceans of blood and guts… you look almost as murderous as me!’

‘An appearance which, I assure you, is entirely at odds with my bubbly personality.’

‘You know, depending on how this turns out,’ continued the wolf, ignoring him, ‘I might have a space for someone with the right kind of mindset, and the right kind of skills.’ He glanced back at the others, acting furtive, though they were more than close enough to hear his conspicuous stage whispering. ‘I wonder if you might be interested in joining a new team.’

Clearly an attempt to sow divisions between them, but Nicolai opted to play along, nevertheless. With them walking so close together, Cyberwarfare had seen an opportunity to slide some Soul worms into Harrow. These were a different breed from the group’s—worms built to do a little more than just spy.

‘Are there any joining bonuses?’ Nicolai asked. ‘Perhaps something special, for so special a new recruit as myself?’

He heard a snort, glanced back to see Marlo glaring at him, and Junko beside the man, her mouth hanging open, looking horrified.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked over Local. ‘You’re going to join these guys?’

‘I’m sure he’s just messing around,’ said Serrin. He looked to Nicolai. ‘Right?’

‘Of course. Just conversation.’

‘Well, there may be,’ Harrow was saying, grinning. ‘What are you interested in?’

‘That axe on your back,’ said Nicolai, unable to help himself.

‘Eh? My axe?’ Harrow reared back and away, scowling. ‘You want my axe?’ He reached back, put a hand to its handle almost as though to protect the weapon from Nicolai. But Nicolai knew that was the opposite of what the axe wanted. It wanted him to cut Harrow’s head off and seize it.

‘Well, perhaps just to… hold it? For a moment?’

‘Absolutely not.’ The wolf scoffed and turned away.

We’ll see about that, Harrow, thought Nicolai. He was having that axe, and he didn’t care what volume of wolf guts he’d have to wade through to take it.

‘Well, that went well,’ came Maverick’s voice over Local. ‘Looks like you’re stuck with us.’

’Alas.’

‘I don’t like this,’ continued the dog. ‘Not one bit. Smells real off.’

‘I… think you might be right,’ said Junko.

‘They’re gonna try and kill us,’ said Serrin. ‘Right? That’s how it feels to me.’

‘Most likely,’ said Nicolai, smiling.

The group behind him were all moving in a rather tense and dispirited fashion. In contrast Nicolai strode on in easy, near-springy steps, because unlike the rest of them he both knew precisely what was going to happen and was looking forward to it. Before him the future unrolled, and it led to good places.

He’d already hoped to loot anything particularly valuable from this place, but he’d known the others wouldn’t easily agree to it. Plus he needed a proper excuse, lest the Mask give him grief. But now he was pretty sure all of those problems were solved.

They were going to meet the leader of the city, and he could guess how that was going to go because the undead wolves around them had body language he could easily read, and not all of them had perfect control over their Souls. They were ready for violence. Anticipating it. Craving it, even. Their hands stayed close to their weapons and their eyes flicked between the members of the group. They were picking their targets. Nicolai could tell because he was doing the same thing, and had already drafted an ideal order in which to kill them.

‘How are you for summons?’ Maverick was asking.

‘Striker’s back,’ said Junko. ‘Silver, not quite, but he will be in a few hours. And my other thing… well, it wouldn’t be much use here, but it’s back too.’

Yes, indeed, things were perfect. As soon as it all went to shit, Junko would summon up her killbot. They’d kill everything, including Harrow, and then he’d take that axe. And, assuming they managed that in a timely manner, he’d be free to go and study the statue.

Beneath his helmet, Nicolai let out a happy sigh as the hallway ended and they strode on into the Controller’s throne room.

As they passed through the doors, the wolves peeled off, spreading out along the walls of the hall. Only Harrow kept with them, moving out ahead.

The throne room was a great long hall with a vaulted ceiling. At the far end, a large throne of black stone shot through with silver veins. And sitting within it, a grey-headed figure swathed in voluminous black robes.

But it took Nicolai a moment to notice that, because his attention was caught by the thing behind the throne, packing the space wall to wall. It looked like a vast collection of undead bodies, arms and legs and mouths and eyes, but none of them connecting how you’d think. And all of it was engaged in constant, nausea-inducing movement, shifting as though breathing.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t content to remain plugged against the far wall behind the Controller. Instead it spread along the walls and up the ceiling.

Overhead, the hall swelled into the great dome he’d seen from outside, divided by ribs of pale stone that arched up to meet in a dark ring in the centre. The thing had colonised those ribs, crawled up them in sagging loops and strands to heave itself into a great dangling mass of flesh, suspended from it like a spider’s egg sac.

Nicolai’s head slowly turned as he took it all in, followed the lines of undead flesh from up above as they came back down, coiled around the room in loops that bulged, here and there, into beating, pulsating masses. A glance behind revealed it was up and over the doorway.

More than that, he felt the vast spiritual presence of it, something that dwarfed the figure sat on the throne. Around him, the others had stopped just as he had.

‘This is a bad place,’ said Yue, voice low and appalled.

‘Yeah. I been thinking that for a while,’ muttered Maverick.

Harrow strode forward and swept into a grand bow. ‘My lord,’ he called.

‘Harrow,’ replied the Controller. ‘And what have you brought me?’

‘Some interesting guests, probably the most so we’ve had for some time.’ Harrow straightened. ‘Thought you might like to meet them.’

The wolf shot a glance back at them, grinning still, then strolled over to the nearest wall. There he turned, drew his axe and set the head of it on the ground, then rested his paws atop it and grinned at Nicolai.

The Controller rose from his seat, black robes shifting. To Nicolai’s surprise, this Person was Tier 3, though he barely felt like it, and his Soul was easy to miss against the vast presence behind him.

Much weaker than the Queen, or even the Ripper, said Threat Analysis, performing its own, more thorough check in the background of his mind.

That calmed Nicolai somewhat. In spite of the menacing flesh machine, he didn’t think this Controller would be too difficult to kill. Still, there was rather a large number of dangerous beings here, and were it not for Junko’s summons this was the kind of situation he’d have opted to avoid walking into.

For all the pride of the free undead out there, murmured Psychology, they are still led by one of the People.

The necromancer was coming forward, and he was indeed a rather typical Person, with a wispy tentacle beard decorated with little rings, a bald grey head, lined features, and the third eye resting unopened above a hungry gaze.

‘Our latest crop of players,’ said the Controller, smiling broadly as he drifted to a stop before a long strand of undead flesh—the only strand, in fact, that chose to cross the floor, roving in a big, ropey mass from one side of the hall to the other.

‘Yep, that’s us,’ said Maverick. ‘Honoured guests, right?’

‘What is all this?’ said Junko, staring around in horror at all the fleshiness. ‘What is this awful, this awful, this… Is that thing made out of undead, all shoved into one? Are they alive?’

The Controller chuckled. ‘By definition, no. Welcome to my hall.’ There was something rather hungry about the way he looked at them. ‘It has been some time since I’ve had such a bountiful crop arrive on my doorstep.’

With combat confirmed as inevitable, Nicolai paid less attention to the conversation. Serrin began rather coldly asking what the Controller wanted of them, and the Controller said a bunch of bullshit in reply.

Nicolai’s attention was turned on the fleshy… stuff, on its Soul, on the Controller’s Soul, on the fact that they were currently standing within a perfect square made by the fleshy strands crossing along the sides, and then behind them over the door, and in that rather suspicious line across the floor in front of the Controller, which the Person had stopped just shy of. It had taken him a moment, but having made one of his own, he now recognised this as most likely a magic circle.

A spiritual pulse drew his eye to Yue, who had also stopped listening. Her arms began to spread, a faint glow emanating from her. She was looking up, at the bulging mass suspended above them.

He gathered his Soul Sense and prepped his Symbiotes for activation. Along the walls, the wolves were loosening their weapons.

‘Why did you want to see us anyway?’ said Junko, taking a few steps forward, hands on her hips. ‘Because I tell you what, I don’t like all of this.’ And she waved around at all of this. ‘So if you don’t want something, I think we’ll be going.’

‘Going? No, no, no,’ said the Controller, while the wolves chuckled and shook their heads. ‘You must stay. Stay forever with me!’

Something pulsed up above, and Nicolai felt it clear and bright. The heat of danger, hotter than he’d felt in a while. His attention snapped up to the egg sac. Physically nothing happened, but spiritually it was unfurling, then with a ripple like a gunshot it attacked. Thick tendrils shot down from it, a spike on the end of each, and Nicolai immediately knew that getting hit by one of those would be very bad. They were moving far too fast to dodge.

A wave of green energy burst out of Yue, forming into a spiritual umbrella that stretched far enough to cover Maverick and Marlo, who stood at her side. Alas, he was outside that shield, as were Serrin and Junko.

He wasn’t concerned for himself, and he trusted Serrin to manage. Junko, however, was likely done for.

The great needle thrust down, but his hand was already rising to meet it, his mind merged tight with the Modules. He and they analysed every inch of it, read it from the ripples, from the shape, from every piece of information available, and in that moment understood it. When it touched down and met his rising, outthrust palm, around which he’d formed his Soul Sense into a strange twisting shape, it tumbled apart like a tree trunk shoved into a wood chipper and was gone.

In the same moment the spikes hit all their other targets. Serrin released a great burst of energy and a yell as his stinger thrust up and stabbed the attack, dispelling it in an instinctual version of what Nicolai had done. Three more broke on Yue’s green shield.

Junko’s spike slammed into her Soul like a harpoon, and she let out a bellowing gasp, like someone coming up from drowning, pure animalistic shock, and froze up as though paralysed.

The Controller was laughing. ‘Guests with such beautiful Souls as yours cannot be allowed to—’

Nicolai snatched at the bandolier on his chest and in a blur of motion launched six knives at the Controller, who twitched a finger. A shield burst from the square of flesh around him, forming a shimmering dome. Nicolai’s satisfaction was immense when, with electric crackles, the Artifact throwing knives passed straight through that shield and slammed into his target. Two lanced into the Controller’s big third eye with a spray of bloody goo, one got him in the neck, and three more thudded into his chest at the precise spots where Nicolai’s studies had revealed the People’s heart and lungs to be.

Disappointingly, he didn’t die. Instead, screaming and flailing around, Soul pulsing madly, face running and dripping like candle wax, the Controller staggered back and managed, through the flesh melting over his mouth, to screech, ‘Kill them! Kill them!’

The square around his throne, where flesh ringed him on the ceiling and the floor, surged up and poured down to form a protective barrier around him. Meanwhile the undead mass on the wall behind him poured around the sides of the that barrier toward them. And from the walls came the wolves, closing in from every side with weapons ready.

Nicolai saw the barb in Junko tightening, preparing to pull, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen such a clear opportunity for self-interested heroism. Plus, in this situation, Junko was needed. He couldn’t let something happen to her before she summoned Striker. He darted toward her, drawing his hand back as he slid across the space between them, snapped it forward with the same spiritual construction around it, ready to dispel the effect. But in the very instant he touched her, the barb changed, its entire structure shifting as it wrenched back and became a vast pulling force, and his perfect counter was rendered utterly useless, because he’d hit at exactly the wrong moment. Not only that, but as it tore her Soul out of her body, the effect, through some quirk that even he and the Modules weren’t able to fully understand in the millisecond available to them, hooked into his Soul and ripped it out.