Wormhole Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 74: All In (Patreon)

We were under a dome. A far smaller one than those I’d seen on the news over Cape Town and the rehabilitation centre. Perhaps the same kind the demons had raised over their latest series of captured facilities. Classic red facets, purple fields. The low polar sun hung right on the horizon, doing triple duty. It had to break through the leaden clouds, through the blizzard lashing the dome with white, icy sand, and through the dome itself.

Inside, a strange purple dusk and cold silence waited.

My portal faced straight towards the throne.

It was placed to catch the eye at once. Black, lacquered, with long, sharp spines, either horns or tentacles, since there were many of them and they fanned outwards.

On the throne sat Ghaurzakh.

Or at least someone with his horns and in his armour. True, demons’ horns came in different shapes, but with a bit of technology, I didn’t think they were all that hard to imitate.

The shield before the throne was a more serious claim: whoever sat on it was the real thing. Thick, probably half a metre thick, with clean red facets as fine as threads. In this dusk, I didn’t even notice it straight away. It stood as a separate wall, roughly three metres by three, exactly between my portal and the throne, as if issuing a challenge, as if declaring it would take head-on any blow humanity could muster. It had only the faintest purple tint, invisible in the dusk here.

And naturally, in demon tradition, the shield protected only the leader and a couple of his closest, strongest vassals, who had the best chances of survival anyway. The big bad’s retinue was arranged in two wings, extending to the throne's right and left.

On the left, right beside the throne, stood Vezhkar; on the right, Mzharot, head of the Drkhaal. Next to the Sevens stood the Sixes, whose images I had deliberately memorised. A couple wore helmets with the same sporty purple stripes running across the visor onto the forehead and horns, like the one whose head Adam had cut off with Old Chen’s sword — the clan head’s personal guard.

Beyond them, recognition got harder. Either these were Fives, of whom there were far more, or the Sixes had put on spare armour we had no data on.

Beyond the ends of the ‘wings’ stood active portals that let the weakest demons get out of here in a single leap. That was unheard-of prudence and humanity for the horned ones, who put strength above everything else. I’m sure it wasn’t intentional.

All in all, about twenty had gathered here. The strongest, I suspected, and yet the demons had prepared for the portal-cannon scenario, as well as for an emergency evacuation. Only they had prepared for the wrong cannon.

Still without stepping out of the portal, and only once I’d made sure the whole device in my chest plate had cleared the membrane, I activated the micro-portals.

I couldn’t see any scanners aimed at me, but I was sure something like that was here, so I used the portal's spatial distortion as background noise to cover the activation of my little toy. I pushed my brain to the limit with mental techniques, wrapped the micro-portals in my Space Qi, and directed all but one stream of consciousness to detect and pre-emptively eliminate any fluctuations. Only then did I take a full step forward.

I was in no hurry to move. I turned my whole body slowly to the left and let my gaze rest on the portal.

I felt something passing through the micro-portals. Not only a physical object, but also someone else’s faint qi. I knew it was Aoran, or rather his eye, but in the tests, without stimulants, Thousand Sparks of Awareness and Mind Parallelisation, it had felt different.

The xeltar could see through metal, but he couldn’t turn his eye much inside the portal, so I did it for him. I turned slowly from left to right, surveying the whole available range of demon models. I let my gaze rest on the right-hand portal for symmetry, then turned back to the centre so he could get a better look at the throne.

“Don’t fucking drag it out!” the boss on the throne snapped.

“A fake,” Aoran said in my ear. “The real one is third from the right.”

I was ready for this turn of events, so I didn’t flinch; instead, I answered the fake. “I haven’t finished looking around.”

And I really hadn’t. It would be unpleasant if Novak stepped out of the portal; it shut down behind him, and he immediately took a shot from behind. I turned left and took a couple of steps, trying to recall the third demon from the right. With my brain accelerated, it came easily.

Red-and-black armour without any gold, a completely black faceplate without stripes, only horns with the same curve, which wasn’t all that unusual.

I took a few steps to the left and looked behind the portal. Dozens of hostile gazes bored into my back, and I felt icy ants marching along my spine, without any active auras around.

Nevertheless, I stayed calm and confident.

There was nothing behind the portal, only ice all the way to the black obelisks holding the defensive array above us.

‘Aoran’s gaze’ vanished; instead, a different will touched the membrane from the other side and took control far more confidently. Yet that other will didn’t conflict with mine; it helped.

I turned back to the fake leader and took a few steps forward, so that when Novak came out of the portal, we wouldn’t block each other’s line of fire.

“The transit is clean,” I said.

After a few quiet, awkward seconds, Novak peered out of the portal. Like me, he lingered in the membrane to activate his micro-portal.

All eyes converged on him. I looked round too and turned my torso so that it faced the third demon from the right. For a moment, I assigned several streams of consciousness to align my position precisely, froze my body, but turned my head as if I were looking at my master.

Novak stepped forward and waved a hand at the fake on the throne.

“Shit! You must be very scared to wall yourself off from me with that!” he said, pointing at the shield.

The fake on the throne leaned back.

“Suppose,” he said, “this time you really are who you claim to be. Why should I not kill you right now?”

“Because then you won’t get your present,” Novak replied.

He raised his right hand, palm up, and a large glass jar with a metal base and a matching lid appeared on it. Large, about ten litres, so the horns would fit. The head inside floated in a cloudy yellow liquid, with a faint froth near the surface.

Whoever had chosen the beer had got the colour spot on.

“The whole base did its best!” Novak said, over the stunned rustle that rolled through both wings.

The fake on the throne didn’t react; Vezhkar tilted his head to one side. A dozen demons exchanged glances and shifted from foot to foot. The real Ghaurzakh took an involuntary step forward before freezing himself in place by force of will.

I couldn’t resist glancing at him to check and correct my body’s position relative to the target.

He wasn’t looking at me; his eyes were locked on Novak.

My master drew his arm back slightly.

“Catch,” he said, and hurled the jar from the hip in a high arc, aiming over the shield at the throne where the fake sat.

I didn’t see the jar fly.

I knew it was flying because I could see my target’s head and the heads around him turning to follow its trajectory.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the threads of the shield’s facets shift, rising upwards. And then the glass shattered with a ring and a wet slosh.

At that instant, the membrane under my breastplate whined and howled as it let through a power capable of rewriting reality itself. The brief flash of tender gold was so much stronger than I was that I wouldn’t have held the membrane if that other will hadn’t helped me. My focus would have been torn from my core, modified by the Anchor Point; the Keystone Heart wouldn’t have helped. I probably wouldn’t have suffered fatally, but I couldn’t have pushed all that power through the micro-portal.

It was like forcing a jet of water from a fire hose through the eye of a needle. And the fact that it succeeded multiplied the blow's force.

My breastplate cracked. A round piece in front of the membrane dematerialised.

The real Ghaurzakh’s defensive formations flared in a red-yellow-purple rainbow. Blood, flesh and armour, scattered into the finest dust, struck the portal ring behind him so hard that it rocked and shut down.

You could have pushed a football through the hole in the demon’s chest now.

I caught a vague taste of mixed Fist and Palm Qi. What the Federates called Force in its hard and soft aspects. Here, the two were woven into a single brief flash.

And a moment after the hole appeared, a crooked metal spike slammed into the demon’s shoulder. The blow knocked him down onto the ice.

I felt Point Qi and a sickening shift of Space to my right.

Novak had a hole in his chest too. Not like Ghaurzakh’s, with no exit, but bloody mush was pouring out of it, and in its upper far corner, a deformed heart was stubbornly pulsing.

The portal in his chest collapsed, and Novak began to fall.

And then the demons took fright, and auras swept across the ice.

Not concentrated or targeted. They overlapped, clashed and conflicted, spreading chaos. Several Fives couldn’t take it and fell to their knees. The second portal behind the demons shut down. The portal we’d come through followed it. I would have got lost in this storm of qi, emotions and manifestations of the various aspects of existence, if not for the modification the Anchor Point had made to my core: a small, calm place amid the chaos and space. However, the greatest help came from that other will, which now maintained the stability not only of the portal, but of me as well.

It didn’t press on me or push me away. It held the membrane together with me, the way an adult holds a bicycle while a child learns to ride.

With that help, I could do far more!

Novak was falling face first.

My brain was still accelerated, and the world around me stretched like honey. I realised what I could do before I’d even put together a plan: pure instinct and a moment of inspiration.

I yanked the membrane out of my breastplate as if it were one of my Space Discs.

The Generator was done for; I sliced through it along with the armour.

I poured my own Space, my Gravity and my Vacuum into the disc, stretching it, widening it.

The portal on the other side was done for too, since both membranes were exact copies. Widening one enlarged the other. Scraps of metal tumbled out on my side.

I felt the other will on the far side flinch in surprise, then begin to help, stabilising the disc, which I pushed towards Novak.

He fell into it face first. His legs, just below the knees, caught on the edge, and without the user’s will, his armour and body were little better than ordinary metal and flesh. The portal's zero-thickness edge was sharp enough that the legs’ own weight started cutting through them.

To hell with them; he’d grow new ones. I got ready to jump after him when, out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed a streak of flame flying at me.

I reflexively dissolved, as in Misty Step training. The flaming blade passed through me, though its Fire Qi scorched me from the inside.

I lost control of the portal, and the other will’s support wasn’t enough. It collapsed, leaving Novak’s legs on this side.

With the portal gone, the will that had been supporting me vanished, and the enemy auras hit me with full force. The world flared with pain and threw me to the ground. My palms sank several centimetres into the ice before solidifying, and a new wave of familiar pain spread through my body.

My feet and hands had fused with the ice, but not for long.

Someone kicked me in the ribs and tore me out of the ice, leaving shards of frozen flesh and armour in it. My vision went dark until fire cut through the darkness. It sharpened and revealed itself as a flaming sword aimed at my throat.