bookpower [357] 4.78 Final Flight IX
[357] 4.78 Final Flight IX
No more words can be spoken. As is so often the case, our differences are wholly irreconcilable. In order to slow the demise of Soreille, Apocrities and her hive must be expunged. And, in a purely selfish sense, if we are ever to get out of this pseudospace and back into our world, to save our world from falling into ruin, it will require we overcome this challenge all the same.Apocrities isn’t alone, and it was foolish to suspect that she would fight us at a numerical disadvantage. She is the hive’s queen, but she is still of the hive, and part of her strength comes from her subordinates. None on the level of those unpleasant hulks from before, but we still have to deal with hundreds of silver bee drones, each about the size of a football.
Their attacks are individually weak, barely able to scratch me through my armor and shielding, but it’s the poison on their sharpened wings and stingers which concerns me. The poison will gradually sap my [Strength] over time. Just a point every ten seconds, but that’s going to add up quickly, especially when multiple instances of the effect stack. Chloe’s [Antidote] does purge the poison, but the damage inflicted to our [Strength] persists for a period of time until our body recovers.
The queen proves to be as quick as she is resourceful. She attacks with feinting maneuvers, diving down for a split second to harry Chloe and I with swift strikes from her four arms, followed by rapid-fire stingers launched in a pin-missile array. Her barbs are covered with an even more potent venom than her subordinates, draining our [Strength] at double the rate of the weaker variant.
One saving grace is that I feel a small boost of strength from [Morningstar’s Triumph]. Not much; the Queen’s level is only one or two above my own. But it is something, and in a battle this intense, every advantage could shift the knife’s edge from defeat to victory.
Chloe’s [Radiant Purge] deals immense amounts of [Light] damage to these creatures in a wide radius, and the [Mirage Swords] are positioned defensively to prevent any of the poison-tipped bits from getting too close to her. And I can use my range advantage to pierce these creatures’ relatively thin exoskeletons before they can do more than splash damage.
But while we can winnow down the numbers of the hive, more of them appear as soon as we do, and I’m willing to bet that there are at least tens of thousands of them. Millions is probably more accurate. There are no good options. That leaves only the option of ignoring them, healing off the venom as often as necessary, and concentrating our attacks and effort on bringing Apocrities down.
Which too, is easier said than done. Chloe has to cast [Antidote] every ten seconds to prevent us from being at a larger disadvantage, which means we’re limited in our ability to press the attack against her. And while Apocrites has referred to the drones as her ‘children’, the term means something quite a bit different for her than it does for humans. She is more than willing to use them as shields and blockers, and the hive is more than willing to sacrifice bits of itself to keep the queen alive.
“Do you have any ideas?” Chloe asks.
“I can try a new lightning spell I’ve been working on this past week, but I’m worried I’ll hit us with blowback damage.” Our conversation is going at well over a thousand words a minute.
“Is that the only idea you have? Preferably ones that don’t rely on using untested spells?”
“Not unless you want me to rely on dimensional shenanigans, and I thought we were trying to clear out as much dimensional sickness as possible so we can be ready for Renault and the other Seraphina in less than two weeks.”
“Fine, your new spell it is. Let me get some distance. You let me know when you’re about to strike and I’ll fall back.”
Chloe bellows a war cry, launching past an array of drones and swinging at Apocrites with raging fury. Her attacks, though, fail to do any meaningful damage to the queen bee. They do distract her, and after her earlier raging, it could be interpreted as her losing control.
“No wait!” I shout, playing my role in the ruse. I raise my hand for emphasis, then grit my teeth. It takes all that I have to resist a smirk as Apocrites’ smug laughter fills the chamber.
“Yet another failing of your fallible kind. Only the certainty of steel and the coordination of the hive as a single being can bring proper order to this broken world.”
“Oh, fuck off,” I shout, then slash in a whirlwind pattern, hitting drone after drone in rapid succession. A couple of attacks get through, but I’m able to use all of my boosts together to dodge the majority. “I admit that I’m no paragon of righteousness, but you can burn in the deepest pits of hell for daring to insinuate that you’re any better than us.”
Apocrites shrieks once more, and though she charges at me, Chloe is able to intercept and keep the queen focused on her.
Meanwhile, I’m forming that new spell matrix in my mind. There might be another path forward, but I truly don’t see another path. Maybe with a few more hours to read through my notes, but as it is…
I don’t have Nicholas’ ability to truly operate multiple mental processes in parallel, but with my [Mind] stat, I am able to do a rough approximation of the same. Together with [Lightning], [Piercing], [Spread], and a new glyph from the data here called [Scalability]— in the sense of scaling up and down, not musical scales or keratinous armor— it’s time to finally make good use of the glyph of [Multiplicity].
Immediately, I feel the immense mental strain weighing down upon me as I try to visualize something that doesn’t exist in three dimensions and which requires clever mental tricks just to make sense of.
Branching pathways, like a tree’s myriad roots, or like an infinitely recursive fractal zooming in deeper and deeper. [Multiplicity] represents possibility and chaos, the infinite potential that lies within the future. It didn’t surprise me when Hank’s notes explained that it formed one small part of what would eventually become ⸢The Anomaly⸥. When attached to a [Glyphcasting] matrix, it allows for repeatedly casting the spell without needing to rebuild the expended array, and at a cost that scales sublinearly with the number of times invoked.
Back just a week ago, I couldn’t work with it. Seven more levels, seventy more [Mind], and that much more experience with understanding the nature of this five-dimensional structure, and I feel that I can finally pull it off.
I struggle to breathe; the poison accumulation is building up in my body and the decrease in [Strength] is even affecting things like my heart and the contraction of my diaphragm. Chloe drops down and hits me with [Antidote], then flies back up to where she and Apocrites continue their duel in the upper levels of this high-ceilinged chamber. It helps, but it’ll take a while longer before I’m able to properly fight back.
“Weak,” Apocrities says in an obvious attempt at psychological warfare. “Your feeble bodies of blood and sinew fail you. Your forms, limited by the constraints of biology–”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Limited by the constraints of biology, my ass!” I grab one of her so-called children with my left arm and crush it into an oily pulp. “As opposed to you, limited by your programming, constrained to a body that can’t get stronger. Oh, sure, you’re probably saying, you can rebuild your body, enrich it with new technologies. Well, so fucking what. I can do that too! Everyone can.
“I agree that organic life is not inherently superior to those of constructs and artifice. But guess what. You aren’t innately better than we are, either!”
“She’s right!” Chloe says. “If you were so superior, you wouldn’t have to rely on throwing your own children away like this just to stave us off!”
She fires [Scouring Light], turning a swath of the battlefield into explosions. Then, in an outcome I didn’t foresee, portions of her next cast of the same refract against the glowing life crystals floating in midair. What started as just a deadly white laser with the intensity of a welder’s torch turns into a prismatic catastrophe that decimates the incoming hordes in streaks of every color of the rainbow.
“Enough of this!” Apocrites shouts as she grabs Chloe’s arm and throws her toward the ceiling. “I’ve been humiliated by you two worthless children for quite long enough! I had thought simply to kill you, but I see now that this would be a kindness that you do not deserve. No, I shall have the both of you bound and use your still-living bodies as perpetual fuel for my hive!” She laughs. “Yes, I shall slowly drain your life force over the span of decades! Maybe even a full century if your bodies are as vigorous as your pretentious attitudes!”
Chloe taps herself and triggers a bout of [Mass Cure] that hits me as well, refreshing my depleted health. She then throws another [Antidote] my way; it seems that this technique has finally evolved to no longer require direct physical contact, a welcome strategic improvement.
Chloe, now grappled by all four of Apocrites’ arms, is slammed around like a ragdoll. Credit to her and her [Auracite Armor], she doesn’t scream or even so much as flinch as she’s being brutalized in such a horrific manner. She’s completely calm, simply casting her spell, all the while, I continue working on my own.
Chloe’s, though, takes effect first. With a piercing shriek, Apocrities releases her grip on my girlfriend, waving her hands in rapid succession in an attempt to cool them off. I guess that she, too, recognizes the necessity of pain in order to properly alert herself and respond to physical peril.
“How dare you!” she says. She throws a flurry of steel punches, each of which is skillfully parried by Chloe’s twin blades and the four others that surround her in a series of spirals.
“Are you almost done?” Chloe’s voice is growing fatigued and exasperated. “I won’t be able to keep this up much longer.”
“Just about. Give me another twenty seconds or so.”
“Damnit… Fine, I’ll buy as much time as I can.”
Almost everything is locked into place on my end. [Multiplicity] is now fully constracted, Manifested in my mind’s eye and awaiting the rest of the spell matrix. The hardest part is now behind me, but the remainder of the challenge is still before me. How exactly does one attack a bunch of stable, static glyphs to one that is constantly changing its form?
I’m not sure what Madison and her team ended up doing; Hank’s notes didn’t cover it. I found a way to do so by using a glyph which I’ve called [Collapse]— in the quantum sense. One end of the glyphs is in flux, adjusting constantly and allowing itself to flow alongside the changing shape of the monstrous structure. The other is static, providing a buffer of sorts. By doing so, I’m able to condense the potential and flux of [Multiplicity], stabilizing it into a matrix compatible with the glyphs I’ve learned to this point.
“You lose,” Apocrites says to Chloe as my girlfriend falls to the ground, bloodied and breathing.
The swarm queen, along with still thousands more of her toy soldiers— I shan’t dignify my foe by calling them her ‘children’— floats above us with that same imperious gaze she demonstrated earlier.
“And what makes you say that?” I ask.
She raises a hand and the drones gather around her, pausing their assault for a moment. “You are broken and beaten by my children’s poison. Even now I can see you wince and struggle against the toxins destroying your body from the inside. Your healer is defeated, barely able to walk. Within a minute, you will be joining her.”
“You’re half right. I will be joining her very soon. Although you misunderstood one thing,” I say, feigning weakness as my spell locks into place. “It’s not that I can’t fight, Apocrites. Or that I’m as weak as you claim I am.”
“So you have a little spark of life left in you? Very well, all the more nourishment for my–”
“That’s not it, Apocrites. Not at all.” Now it’s my turn to curl my lips up into a sly smile. “My girlfriend is a healer, and has learned some [Light] type spells to complement her repertoire. A saintess with holy magic, in body and in class. I am a little different. I do some work with machines, which is why I can relate with you a little bit. And it makes me a little sad that we couldn’t work out a deal of sorts. Because now I have to do this.”
“Do what? Go on, I’ll hear you out.”
Chloe falls to the ground at my mental cue. I raise my hand, now crackling with blue-white lightning and sparking wildly to the ground. “[Chain Lightning].”