Chapter 44

Knyght is a type of Martial Adventurer class. Only elite-trained men and women can earn this class through years of rigorous training and conditioning. When a Squire (Initiate) reaches the end of their training, they are bestowed a custom-designed Knyght power armor suit. These suits enhance physical attributes as well as some sensory attributes. Each suit is designed to specific standards and can be equipped with a wide range of integrated equipment and gear.

I’ll warn you now that after this point, things got schizo, and I do mean, like drained Kassidan’s Goblet kind of insanity. I’ll give you what I experienced and attempt to keep it coherent.

As I stared at the mechanical, former tiger who looked at the three of us like a juicy meal, a realization came to mind. Necrotech Predators were creations that sparked outrage from some and were seen as invaluable to others. Ripping out the souls of several animals, fusing them together, and sealing the result in a Soul Shard to power a weaponized mechanical body was an abomination. However, there would always be those who would see Necrotech beasts as valuable tools for hunting, guarding, and similar work.
 I had stumbled across rumors that Vartex had been running a healthy illegal business, manufacturing these creatures and selling them to the highest bidder. And that was where the irony dwelt in this situation. So, I could only think of one thing to say to Nel and Jon. “RUN!”
Nel bolted to the left, into the woods. As she ran, my sis drew her sidearm and fired at the beast twice. The shots did nothing but catch the creature’s attention and bait it to follow her. While Nennel acted as a distraction, I clutched Jonathon’s shirt front in my artificial hand and slung him over one shoulder. I gave a hurried apology as I ran in another direction. We passed into a thicket in the opposite direction of the fighting when I dropped Oz. “Ferris should be in the large maintenance shed in that direction,” I pointed in the direction I had arrived from. “Follow the road and get in the building. Ferris should be in there. Help him. Follow him out of here.” I turned and rushed toward the fighting without waiting for Oz’s response.
I need to find that Sun Elf and fast. I ran across the clearing that the two opposing forces had arrived in. Halfway across the clearing, emergency sirens split the air above the war zone. Spotlights banished some of the darkness we had cloaked over the rooftop. Two of those lights shone down on me, searing my eyes. With a hand raised to shade my vision, I spotted three more circles of light passing over the forest top. The intense shafts of light only partly reaching the floor below as they roamed over the rooftop lent the battle an unnatural and disturbing sense. But I had bigger problems than dramatic lighting effects.
“Everyone in this area is to drop their weapons and lie on the ground for collection by Regulator forces.” Boomed an authoritarian voice over loudspeakers from above. Recognition of that voice lit in my mind, and I prayed I was wrong. I knew I wasn’t, and Nennel was going to have serious problems.
“You screwed up, boy!” called Thallos as he stepped into a circle of light twenty feet from me. “You really should work on those disguises. I noticed no less than four flaws.” His smug tone grated on my nerves. “Not that it would’ve saved you from the jaws of this beast.” 
With those words, Regulators started dropping from the AVs overhead. When I saw the first three figures, I knew we were in even deeper trouble than I had feared. 
First, Kellden landed beside Thallos, using his new chains to reduce his fall. He had a strange cannon-like device slung over his back and a device at his hip that looked like a lantern with opaque glass.
Then, a pair of eight-foot-tall figures landed on either side of Kellden. Their landings made the roof quake enough to feel it from where I stood. The enforcers were clad in heavy-plated power armor forged with strange technology. Knyghts. Those suits weren’t simply purchased from an arms vendor. They were heavily regulated and only granted to someone of noteworthy skill. My stomach dropped through the floor when fifteen more power armor-clad figures dropped to the ground with quakes.
I hurried to send a message to Ferris and Demierra using the hands-free function again. The message read: ‘EMERGENCY! Make your move NOW!’
While that was being done, Kellden spoke up. “Good to see you again, Fiend. I intend to pay you back for that spinal damage you caused.” I inwardly screamed a string of curses. “I also need to thank you for the gift you gave me.” Those words made my fear spike to new heights. What gift could I have left him?
That was when the Arsenal stretched his chains. Instead of links, the new chains were formed from familiar blade segments. Familiar blade segments, held together by a controlled magnetic field. Kellden triggered a shift, causing the blade segments to shift and fold into a sawtooth form. The trog scum had stolen the design for Devil’s Tail. My first blade must’ve been found in the rubble of the gang hideout.
I restrained myself from screaming only until I heard the notification sound of a pair of new messages. They both gave confirmation and told me to hold on for a minute or three. I wasn’t sure if I could hold out for another thirty seconds.
Thallos gloated. “Everything’s in place for me to walk out with the prize and leave a story of my own design,” he said, pointing dramatically to his left. The light on him moved to follow his gesture, stopping over Laina Ozwald. Jon’s mother clutched a familiar briefcase to her chest while she stood over the corpse of Mr. Collins. The businesswoman’s spliced guards stood beside her, and her Dwarven assistant stood behind her. At the signal, the guard I labeled Lizard-Man struck his boss across the jaw with the butt of his rifle. Liana staggered and recoiled from the surprise blow. While she was focused on Lizard-Man, Cat-Lady drove a dagger into the back of the woman’s knee. Liana toppled with a cry even as Cat-Lady ripped the briefcase from her grip. The painful display climaxed with the Dwarf assistant, Fadlemor, conjuring a dagger-sized blade of ice and punching the spell through the back of Liana’s head, exiting her eye.
I heard a heartbroken scream callout from somewhere behind me. The idiot hadn’t moved. Jon was only going to be a hindrance after he witnessed that. Bad mother or not, Liana had still been his mother. It was just another problem to stack on the heap.
I watched as the traitor guards walked up to Thallos and offered him the case. If they were going to be casual because they thought their spider web scheme was air-tight, I wasn’t going to interrupt them until my team made their moves. Thallos snapped the container open with supernatural ease, as if it hadn’t been locked. He pulled free a single glowing teal crystal the size of a fist. It had to be a memory gem. Which could only mean that the thing on Kellden’s hip was…
Kellden pulled the lantern-looking device from his hip, gave the handle on top a half-turn, and pulled the interior to expose it to the world. Sure enough, it was a Data Capture Canister. The now exposed inside the canister was a mass of glowing crystal circuitry and specially attuned myst crystals. The moment the capture system was fully extended, it gave off a rising glow of blue light. The light extracted any form of unprotected stored data within its range. Motes of light were pulled from not just the memory gem. My own therra leaked a stream of data that flowed into the canister, and mine was only one of several stolen pieces of data.
Kellden sealed the device and offered it to Thallos. A glowing shape caught my eye from above. It looked like a pair of flame wings with a prominent, scaly figure between them. 
A knowing grin crept across my face just before I did three things in short order. My right hand pulled a signal flare from a pocket and thumbed it on. At the same time, I mentally triggered my Extractor Pauldron to fill with blood and grabbed a fist full of teleportation tags with my left hand. Then, I did a massively stupid thing. I charged Kellden.
The Regulators were twenty feet away with the Arsenal and my uncle between the Knyghts and me. Three steps into my charge, I lobbed the flare to land among the Knyghts. Kellden looked toward the flare in surprise. However, Thallos looked directly at me, readying for my assault. So, I gave them a surprise. I pulled a vial of blood from my right shoulder with the same hand, thumbed the seal open, and infused the vital fluid with as much Umbra Myst as I could shove into it before throwing it at Thallos’s feet. The tube spun, flinging blood across the ground. The blood exploded into a cloud of inky shadow that enveloped Thallos, his Regulator shock troops, his turncoats, and me.
One stride through the darkness, my foes gave shouts of surprise. Three strides into the darkness, surprise quickly turned to cries of pain and panic when a Fury-shaped comet plummeted from the heavens. Demierra struck the ground with an explosion strong enough to topple even the Knyghts.
Four strides into the darkness, I flung the teleportation tags within the cloud of darkness like a farmer sowing seeds. Five strides into the darkness, I pulled another vial of blood and conjured a blade of razor-sharp blood in my right hand. Six strides into the darkness, I was on top of Thallos and Kellden.
Thanks to my Darkling vision, I could see everything within ten feet of me, regardless of the cloud of shadows. I watched Kellden blindly lashing out toward where Demierra landed, only to mostly hit his known men and sow even more chaos. 
Thallos was a different matter. He knew I was coming and likely could sense me even if he couldn’t see. He held the data canister in his left hand and knew I was coming for it. I came at the Wild Elf from his left, and he swung at me with a dagger aimed at my stomach.
I attempted to spin away from the slash but only partly succeeded. The dagger carved through my side and the armor that covered it, with an enhanced edge. 
I mentally fortified myself against the pain and made my move. I followed through on the spin that failed to evade the slash, spinning past Thallos and driving the blood blade into Thallos’s left shoulder. In a single motion, I released my grip on the conjured weapon and took advantage of his own weakened grip to snatch the canister from his grip. Thallos moved his now-empty hand to cast something at me, likely very unpleasant. However, Thallos was unaware of my cybernetic feet and what they could do.
I triggered a kinetic burst to throw me past the two most significant threats in the area and straight into the squad of Knyghts. That fight was complete anarchy. The strike squad attempted to set a defense against the frenzied Fury. Some pairs of Knyghts stood back to back with guns or blades at the ready. Others tried to find an escape from the shadows. Kellden was already shouting commands to organize his troops. But Demierra didn’t hesitate to fight dirty.
She threw elementally-charged punches at faces, knees, and groins. Each of her powerful blows was carefully placed to disorient or stun.
Ducking a wild swing of an enchanted blade, I slipped between two Knyghts to close in on Demierra. “Demi!” I called to her in warning before grabbing one of her wrists. “Follow me!” 
She shouted in surprise but didn’t fight me. “Why?! What’s happening?!” she asked.
“Things are about to get a lot worse!” I said.
“Worse how?!”
I didn’t answer her, as we breached the obscuring cover. Instead, I got my bearings before dragging the Dracose to where I had last heard Oz’s cry of anguish. Along the way, I called Zynna and gave a simple order. “Send all of them.”
“Are you schizo?” Zynna demanded.
“Shut up and do it! Then, meet up with Khar’. We are getting the hells out of this pandemonium.”
Instead of responding, Zynna hung up the call. Shortly after, there was a series of popping sounds from the darkness I had left behind. Following those pops of arrival were bestial cries.
Sure enough, Jon was huddled behind a boulder, not far from where I had heard him. Jonathan held his knees, scared, crying, and hiding. When he saw me and Demierra closing in, his face lit with a flicker of hope.
“What the hells, Jon! I told you to run to safety! What happened!?” I demanded.
His face washed over with another wave of grief. “I was moving, then I saw… they… she’s dead.” 
With a firm hand, I slapped Jon back into the present before turning to Demierra. “That wing thing. Can you do it again?”
“You mean Fury’s Flight? Yeah. I can use it one more time before I need to recharge.” She gave a casual shrug.
“Great,” I said. “I need you to get him,” I pointed to Jonathan, “and Ferris,” I pointed in the direction of the shed, “Out of here.”
“And the Knyghts?” Demierra asked, jerking a thumb to the darkness.
“I just had Zynna teleport a dozen rabid mutants into the darkness with them,” I said. “That should keep them busy for a bit.”
Demierra gave a derisive snort. “Elite Knyght troops, my scaly tail. They were pushovers.”
I shot the Dracose a warning look. “Because you ambushed them while they were blind. Don’t underestimate them.”
I must’ve challenged Fate or Chance with that comment because things fell apart then. A wave of Distortion Myst emanated from where I had left Kellden. My blinding cloud evaporated like so much smoke in a strong wind. Kellden knelt, pressing the end of the cannon-like tube he had held on his back to the ground. Was that a Disruption Wave Cannon? Of course, the trog of an Arsenal would bring something like that.
With my spell gone, the Knyghts rallied into formation and executed the entire batch of mutants. That plan had been my emergency distraction button, and they turned it into cuts of meat. I was about to curse when the lights across the roof flickered back to life and the defensive energy dome over the tower was reinstated. Whatever Kellden had done had knocked out our power disruptor. I spat a string of curses before returning to Demierra to say, “You’re going to need to dive along the side of the tower until you get clear of that dome. That should be near the base of the tower. Be careful. Go, now.”
Suddenly, I got three responses at once. Kharmor and Zynna called on separate lines. “We’ve got a problem, Iver,” said Kharmor.
“Hey, uh, Horn-head. We’ve got a major problem.” Zynna said.
“But, Iver, your side-” Demierra started.
“EVERYONE SHUT UP!” I snapped. After I took a long breath, I issued orders in short succession. “I know we’re in trouble. Kharmor and Zynna wait in the secret lab. I have an idea about that problem. Demierra, get Ferris and Oz out of here. I’ll get Nel.” I said.
“But-” Demierra started again.
“GO!” I interrupted. Without another word, I ended both calls and ran into the woods. 
I sprinted between trees and leaped over bushes, closing in on Nennel’s signal. The ping was still moving. I desperately hoped that meant she was alive and not being carried off by a mecha-cat.
At the thought of the Necrotech Predators, I realized I had somehow shoved that entire problem from my mind until then. That realization was the cue for me to start passing bodies. Most of the bodies bore blade slashes, crushed limbs, scorch marks, and similar features. However, I also spotted plenty with significant claw marks and other wounds that were caused by yet-unknown means.
The battle between partygoers had significantly died down since the start of the skirmish. Gunshots were less frequent. Cries of fear and pain spread further apart. That was my first smell of what real battle meant. Hot metal, blood, burning hair, charred meat, the stink of release bowels and badders upon death, the revolting stink of awful from spilled guts. The blended myriad of traumatic scents dug their own scars into my mind. I assumed it was the smell that made me lightheaded.
I rounded a small cliff, only a few dozen yards away from Nel, when I skid to a halt. I had been stupid. In my panic and rush to solve problem after problem, I hadn’t thought to be careful to avoid the metal beasts. I stood face to face with a pack of mechanical jaguars. Seven large, skull-faced cats of steel eyed me like a prime cut of meat. Not that they could eat, but that wouldn’t stop them from rending me into small bits.
The cats slowly closed the distance, moving with a grace that no machine should have. I took a panicked step back, and that triggered the chase. Seven massive predators rushed me at once.
I made the first response that came to mind. Launch myself into the air while screaming in panic- I mean, shouting a battle cry- yeah. I avoided mauling by a scant few inches, passing the treeline to see worse news still.
The Knyghts were heading this way in a wide formation, burning down the forest with suit-installed flame sprayers. Mecha-murder-cats from one side and heavy-armored super-troopers burning down the forest on the other. I couldn’t help but wonder why I was so cursed.
Then I stopped climbing into the air and started falling. Falling directly into a waiting meat grinder of metal claws and fangs. I grabbed the next idea that came to mind. It was a bad idea. It was a stupid idea. But I had been on a mad streak of those kinds of ideas this entire evening, so why stop now?
I let myself fall toward the metal jaguars, timing my move until the absolute last second. When a few of the beasts jumped up to meet me, I triggered another kinetic burst against the face of the first cat that came within reach. I set the angle to throw me toward, and hopefully over the Regulators.
If I could avoid catching fire and lure the metal murder cats into the scrap with the mecha-men, I might be able to distract them enough to lose track of me. Then I could circle around to find Nel and get the Hells out of here.
My head was only getting lighter, and dizziness was setting in, but I pressed on, throwing myself away from the cats with burst after burst. I caught a lucky break when I accidentally landed in the correct position just short of being scorched by the forest fire. I leaped again over the wall of flames, and the Knyghts pushing it forward.
I arced over the heads of the Knyghts, several spotting me as I did so. Even as they noticed me, I saw Kellden, as well as Thallos and his goons, not far behind the wall of flames. 
It was with that realization that my lucky streak seemed to end abruptly. I timed my landing wrong as my vision swam, and hit the dirt to roll several feet. The tumble sent a flaring spike of pain through my side. I came to a stop with a snarl of pain, my vision spinning. As soon as the world slowed its spin enough, I checked the source of the most prominent pain.
The armor on my right side was slashed cleanly an inch above my kidney. Quickly, I glanced up to see the Knyghts and cats had just encountered each other. With a moment or two to breathe, I lifted my shirt and armor from the gash. And a gash it certainly was. Four inches long and two inches deep, the slash was a gruesome sight as it openly gushed dark crimson. It also appeared that I had torn the wound wider with my excursions, if the ragged edges were any indication. So that was the reason for my head spinning. I had likely spilled a whole trail while I was running like some mad rabbit. A trail clear enough that even the densest hunter could follow it.
Only a handful of seconds had passed since I made the gruesome realization. When I looked back up to check the state of the skirmish between the steel predators and armored defenders, I was shocked to find Kellden putting down the last of the seven beasts. The Arsenal held the last struggling Necrotech Predator with a blade chain wrapped around its neck, holding it suspended. Even as I watched, He used two other chains like band-saw blades, shearing through the middle of the futility thrashing cat.
Those Chandress Chains were far more than simply in a new shape. The Arsenal limbs weren’t typically strong enough to hold a several-ton metal cat like a newborn kitten. The chains also couldn’t usually cut a steel-form beast in two like a piece of balsa wood. I could feel my grave only growing deeper.
Kellden dropped the remaining half of the beast like it was only so much scrap and turned to me. Thallos was already looking at me with his own intentions. Frantically, I attempted to get to my feet, only to fall back to the ground after barely raising to an elbow. I had lost too much blood. My thoughts were sluggish and muggy. Damnit! I cursed inwardly. 
So, I did the only thing I could think of to gain even an extra second or two. I started dragging myself away from the Regulators. Arm over arm, I desperately pulled myself closer to the edge of the clearing furthest from the monsters in sophic skin. Or at least, as frantically as a Human infant. The act was only made all the harder by the canister still clutched in one hand.
Kellden gave a derisive smirk as he slowly strolled toward me, his Knyghts only a few steps behind him. Thallos gave the Ceangar Regulator a calculating sidelong glance. My uncle then gave his goons a series of foreign hand signals before he and the Gem Dwarf started moving in another direction, away from me. The remaining double agents, Cat-Lady and Lizard-Man, followed behind Kellden. The two Splicers watched the Ceangar intently.
I had been watching my pursuers from over one shoulder. However, a rumbling growl somewhere between predator and grinding metal made me face forward. I found myself sandwiched between opposing forces yet again. Standing opposite the Regulators was a pride of steel lions. A considerable pride of steel lions.
Behind me were thirteen elite Knyghts, two Spliced, and an Arsenal with a vendetta. That was discounting the NightVeil I hated to call uncle, who seemed to have something brewing in his mind. Before me were twenty mechanical lions, sixteen lionesses, and four males.
Any one of the lionesses was at least fifty percent larger than the jaguars I had run into and likely twice as heavy. The male lions were more than double the size of the jungle cats the Knyghts made short work of.
I was prime rib sandwiched between two titanium buns, each armed with enough lethal force to put down an entire battery of standard soldiers. Stuck between the two, bleeding out, unable to stand, and with no backup in sight. “Tenebrous’s Teeth,” I cursed. Then, I caught sight of something behind the pride. I couldn’t make the shape out, but it had predator eyes set into a massive pale skull and a metal body. Whatever it was, it was much larger than any of the other Necrotech Predators I had encountered that evening.
When I saw that none of the cats were about to pounce on me, I glanced up to see where Nennel’s ping was reading. I hoped she was safe nearby and able to drag me to safety if I was lucky. When her ping registered as near, very near, I let hope grow. Then, I noticed the ping was from the same direction as the large, threatening metal shadow. My hopes crumbled, and I turned to reviewing everything I still had on my person.
I had a few myst crystal batteries of various elements, a couple of sidearm magazines, three vials of Devorrick Acid, a single Trapp Tar mine, a bottle of Zero Oil, and a Voltreonic field grenade, all on my belt. Nothing but damned Compound Elemental tools. None of it would help at that moment, so I moved on to my other pockets. A packet of Quik-Klot was the first thing I found in my pants. I would need that if I could get to safety before I was bled dry. Next, I found a packet with three Hemo-pills. Why in the hells did I bring that? The Life Myst in them would likely kill me, even if I didn’t bleed out as fast. Next, I found a single Hypo-jector of MyCast. I truly hoped it would not come to me using that stuff to refill my Mystwell. I needed something to turn things around. I hadn’t finished my desperate personal search when the situation exploded.
The lions fanned out during my equipment check, clearly laying down a challenge against the Regulators. The Knyghts readied melee weapons as they took up a defensive formation with Kellden at the spearhead. Kellden was flanked by the two Spliced, who were in battle-ready stances. Kellden, on the other hand, held an unthreatened stance, refusing to back down. He held the stare of the forward-most lioness near me, challenging her.
Kellden flew into action with no warning. Simultaneously, he rose on four of his Chandress Chains and lashed out with another two. Both of these striking arms were already in serrated form, extending well past what should’ve been his reach limit of fifteen feet. One chain lanced toward the lioness he had challenged.
The beast leaped aside from the blow but still found her front left leg torn off at the elbow. The second strike reared back like a cobra to lunge at my prone form. I thought I was doomed, only to find my life saved by a precise shot from the spliced guard Lizard-Man. The man had fired three rounds in rapid succession as he looked down his sights. Each of the three shots struck the bladed edge aimed at my chest. With every bullet, the trajectory was moved off course by the barest margin. But it was enough to send the limb stabbing into the soil just over my shoulder.
Both Kellden and I shot the marksman looks of surprise, except mine was more confused, while Kellden’s was more enraged.
It was when he looked away from the scene that the cats attacked. A wave of steel and claws crashed against the seawall of Knyghts. The lions fared much better than the jaguars. Their largest size provided more mass to throw and more mechanical muscle to throw that mass. The cats also outnumbered the Knyghts.
Even as I watched, two of the male beasts tag-teamed against a Knyght who had over-extended an attack with a massive hammer. The blow was aimed at one male who retreated just outside his reach, while the second came in to wrap jaws around the Knyght’s wrist and drag him from the formation. The poor man or woman was summarily dismantled in a mess of gore and twisted metal.
Kellden had prioritized defending against the lions over killing me, but he was the apex predator between the two forces. I watched as he ruined three lionesses in just as many strikes. This battle played a new discordant symphony, over-full with the shriek of rending metal backed with the screams of men and women, and climaxed with the battle cries of beasts.
While this man-on-beast battle was less one-sided than the last, it still wasn’t an even match. Three of the thirteen Knyghts were ended in a matter of seconds, but eight of the twenty lions had been butchered. In that short window of time, Kellden had killed half of those eight dead cats. He had become something much more dangerous than he had been when I faced him in the hospital, and I wasn’t able to beat him then without cheating.
I took advantage of the clash to continue my crawling toward the treeline. I needed to get out of sight long enough to patch myself up, so I wasn’t about to shake hands with The Final Keeper. Unfortunately, that was when Kellden and Cat-Lady noticed my snail-pace fleeing and made their own moves.
Kellden simply stepped over the skirmish with his Chandress Chain limbs while Cat-Lady dove through an opening in the wall of Necrotech Predators. Cat-Lady sprinted beneath Kellden to close in on me with enhanced speed.
I turned onto my back to face the two encroaching enemies, looking for anything I could use to defend myself against both of them. I didn’t see an answer for both Cat-Lady and Kellden. I found a sizeable pool of Iver blood between Cat-Lady and me. If I were to use that pool, I’d need to time the action perfectly, and she’d be almost on top of me. I couldn’t waste time thinking about whether I failed the trick; I needed to stay focused on my timing.
Cat-Lady closed in on me, leaving Kellden in her dust. Then she was half a step away, one foot in the blood puddle. She was reaching for the Data Capture Canister with one hand and my throat with the other.
I triggered Hemo Spike through the blood at Cat-Lady’s feet. A single ripple that had nothing to do with her foot spread from the center of the puddle. I thought I had her. Then, suddenly, without warning, Cat-Lady changed direction, veering hard to her left like she was turning on a coin. She avoided the five-foot spike of hardened blood and lanced upward to where she had been only an instant before.
As Cat-Lady veered left, Kellden took a swing at her with a chain limb, likely thinking she had betrayed him, too. The limb caught the Spliced woman at the waist while she was in mid-dodge. Cat-Lady was flung aside with force. I didn’t check to see if she survived. I was preoccupied with the blade-limbed cyber-octopus-man who was about to turn me into a limb ornament.
My mind was blank. I couldn’t think of anything to do. I couldn’t move in time. I would’ve sworn I was doomed, and I silently sent up an apology to Nennel for getting her into this mess and not getting her out. 
That was when Fate made a move. It was likely the most ironic move that could’ve been played. But it was a sweet irony that saved my tail in a twist that would have me laughing for years to come.
A roar that shook the very foundations of the rooftop cut through the din of blood and metal. Whatever that was, it was truly massive. The shape I had only glimpsed bashed through the trees to charge Kellden like a runaway train engine with claws, fangs, and… Nennel?!