Chapter 46

Scaiben Crystal, the magic nullifying material, is used in much more than Mage Killer rounds. The crystal is also used to line restraining cuffs specially designed to inhibit criminal Mages. In order for the material to counter magical effects, it needs to make direct contact with the skin of the Mage.

As I launched Nennel, Ferris, and myself out of the freshly ruined elevator shaft, I could help but wonder whether the Goddess of Fortunes loved me or hated me. I wondered this while I skid, face-first, across the hard floor with the combined weight of Nennel and Ferris pressing me into the floor. As soon as we came to a stop, I could hear Nennel and Ferris both groaning in discomfort.

“Pwease gewt owff me,” I asked, my words muffled thanks to the position of my face against the tile floor.

Nennel rolled onto her side, pulling the weight off me and rolling me onto my side. I gasped for fresh air and found the air tasting distinctly soapy. As I unhooked myself from Nennel’s climbing harness, I inspected the area and found an unexpected sight.

A familiar pair of nurses stood in the entry space of the building’s hospital. The nurses I had passed while disguised earlier in the evening were in the midst of battling a wall of white foam that expanded even as the Human and Ceangar stared at the three of us in terror.

The soap prank had clearly blown out of proportion if it had made it this far. We had just broken through the elevator shaft, initially rode up to the party, and had made it all the way to the elevators I had taken up.

I dragged myself to my feet, using the nurse’s desk to hold me up as I gave them a friendly wave before using the same hand to crack my spine. The two backed away from me before fleeing the nearest hall. They most certainly were going to call security.

Ferris stood, his back to the wall of bubbles, and adjusted his lumbar. “Iver, I am never, ever, again going down any holes, pits, or shafts with you.” He looked like a complete mess. Trapp Tar splattered him, and where the thick black goo didn’t cover him, he suffered first and second-degree burns. “What did you even do? Everything happened so fast.”

“Well, you forgot about the bag party favors I had left for you on top of that very elevator.” I cracked my neck.

Ferris gave me an indignant look. “And so you just had to blow up the bag? And right in my face, no less.”

“We had less than ten seconds before we were turned to paste against that elevator. So I used the bag to blow open an exit for us. Plus, now, no security can use that elevator.” I explained casually as I inspected my gear for damage. The shield on my arm was beaten all to hell. It couldn’t even collapse back down.

“And making me face the bomb?!” Ferris gesticulated wildly with both hands.

“That’s what the tar was for,” I said, my tone growing heated. “I threw together a countermeasure so you wouldn’t get cooked. Besides, would you rather have been the figurehead of this falling ship to face the rubble that was following us? I don’t think you had any way not to get pummeled to a pulp from that direction.”

“How, by The Keeper, is tar supposed to protect me from a bomb?!” Ferris demanded.

“Don’t you give me tha-” I started, but Nennel defused the argument with a simple question. “What’s with the bubbles?”

Ferris gave Nel a confused look before turning around to find he was practically nose to surface with the expanding wall of soap suds. “What the hells?!”

That was when I heard several sets of stomping boots coming up the stairwell toward our floor.

“Don’t ask. Just get into it. We’re about to have company.” I asserted, pointing toward the wall of foam. Nel and Ferris half-carried me into the wall of soap. The two dug through the white foamy blizzard till we found a door labelled laundry room. I raised a brow at this, irritated for more than one reason.
First, the laundry room I had snuck into on my way up to the party was linked to both elevator lobbies I used. Second, my impulse prank was likely about to save us from being shot. However, we needed to hurry through the laundry corridor. While the surprise cover was nice, it wouldn’t take a genius to realize we had dove in.

As soon as we passed through the initial door, I closed and tied it shut with two soaking socks I had found in an adjacent washer. “When you hear this door breached, drop your heads low and hurry.”

“But what if this is a dead end?” Ferris asked.

I gave my Elven friend a mad grin, “I know it’s not, because this foam is my fault, and I started it on the other side of this space. If we follow this all the way through, we’ll be right next to the elevators that lead to the subfloors.”

“And why did you start this… soap screen?” Nennel asked, with more than a bit of confusion and accusation in her words.

I shrugged as best I could manage with the two carrying me. “It was a whim to cause a bit more anarchy and confusion.”

Nennel shot me a scathing look. “I think you’ve caused enough anarchy for several lifetimes.” As her words were a cue, the tower rumbled again. This time, the shaking was much greater, accompanied by what I considered an unholy sound of tearing metal and grinding stone.

Little did I know I would learn what unholy truly was not far into my future.

“Don’t bite my head off for something that might save our live-” I was cut off by a banging against the door we entered through, followed by shouted commands to “open up!”

Both Nel and Ferris hunched over and tripled their pace. In that position, I couldn’t even partly support my weight, so my legs dragged uselessly behind me. The three of us hadn’t made it another eight paces when there came the sound I had been expecting. The doorframe of the entry behind us tore open, and the door swung wide with a sound like a gong being struck too hard.
Sure enough, almost immediately after the Security Forces kicked in the door, they opened fire with elemental rifles into the foam. I could hear the flame bolts zip overhead, hissing as they carved through the bubbles.

“You’d think they’d want to capture us for questioning.” Ferris hissed under his breath as we closed in on the exit.

“Well, we did just destroy gods’ know how many floors above us with that insane distraction of yours,” Nennel accused Ferris.

“Hey!” He snapped back in defiance. “It was Iver’s idea in the first place.”

We reached the door, now damaged by the shots from the security team, and Nennel threw it open. “Don’t give me that.” She hissed back. “You should know better than to just do as Iver says. He’s insane.”

“Hey!” I said in offense.

“Oh shut it, Horn Head. I’m almost certain that you just shot to the very top of the most wanted list of the nation.”

I wanted to spit out a snappy retort, but nothing came to my addled mind. That Distortion mental enhancement trick was having some intense backlash. The two-and-a-half of us (myself being the half) crossed the room to the elevators. Ferris and Nennel each thumbed the button to call two elevators, in hopes that one would come sooner than the other.

“You think, they sent, a team to come, around to this side?” Ferris asked between heaving breaths.

Both Nennel and I stared at the Elf. Then we looked at each other. Nennel and Ferris dropped me like a flour sack and drew side arms.

Ferris’s theory was spot on, and not a second too late. My friends had just drawn and aimed their weapons when an armored security trooper rounded the corner, with his elemental rifle at the ready. He saw us as we saw him, but Nennel and Ferris were quicker. Ferris shot the man twice with an elemental pistol loaded with Devorrick Acid, while Nennel used a classic kinetic sidearm, firing three rounds into the target. The man went down before he knew what hit him.

However, three more security troopers were right behind the first. When they saw their pointman drop like a bag of meat, the three came around the corner in a fan. They each fired three shots, but I was ready. As soon as the first had come into view, I had turned to lie on my back and readied my Shock Bytes. I shot one after the next in rapid succession. The first byte hit a half-second before the next, and each man seized up for long enough for Nennel and Ferris to make their move. Each put enough holes in the guards to ensure they wouldn’t be getting back up.

The three men hit the ground just in time for an elevator to ding with its arrival as the doors opened. Nennel and Ferris didn’t waste any time dragging me into the car. I pulled up my therra messenger even as I told Nel to hit the button for the subfloor Kharmor should be meeting us at. As soon as we were moving, I sent the Half-Dwarf a message saying we were heading his way.

That was when I noticed that both Nennel and Ferris had been hit by the security team. Nennel was mostly unharmed, aside from some scorch marks and a melted hole in her right synthetic breast. Ferris, on the other hand, had horrid burns on his shoulder and chest. Looking closer, I realized that his armor had absorbed most of the damage to his chest. The gel and ceramic of the armor glowed and bubbled at three spots centered on where his heart lay beneath. The shoulder was the only site of actual damage; blackened, smoking, and emitting the scent of burnt meat.
Ferris was already using magic to treat and seal the wound. It was a truly lucky thing that being a Reaper granted Ferris the ability to use Life Myst and Death Myst.

I rechecked my gear, taking inventory as we passed the hospital floors. I still had one Shock Byte left, a few myst crystals, three vials of blood still in my pauldron, the hypo-jector of MyCast, and some odds and ends I didn’t have the mental power to identify. I was tired. So very tired. I just wanted to sleep. Sleeping for a week or two would be nice.
With jarring motions, I shook my head clear of those thoughts. I needed to get the team to safety. My mind was somewhat clearer when I heard the elevator ding, signalling our arrival. Weakly, I pulled myself up the wall to a partially standing position, ready to start moving again. That was when I noticed the car had stopped on the ground floor.

The doors pulled open to reveal several squads of Security Forces standing, guns raised, just outside the car. The three of us slowly raised our hands. Nennel and Ferris dropped the weapons they still held. The sidearms hadn’t even touched the ground when we were wrenched from the elevator by a magical force and thrown to be pressed against the ground.

With some effort, I managed to turn my head to the side and glance at whoever was holding us down with kinetic force. Standing a safe distance away and guarded by several armed guards were a pair of Mages. Their spell focuses were both those strange gyro things Sorcerers use. That explained the hostile yank, drop, and press.

They captured us. We couldn’t move. The nearest guards quickly divested us of any and all gear they could find. They even took the vials of blood from my shoulder. When they attempted to remove my right arm and found it impossible, they attached a small disruptor using Distortion Myst to render the limb useless.

To my surprise, the device didn’t affect my cybernetic. I couldn’t be sure if it was the limb's unique design, my unique… condition, or something else. But I was not about to question this kind of gift from the above… or below. I acted as though the limb was dead, forcing the arm to fall limp and revert to its standard state, even as they handcuffed the three of us. Our captors even removed some of my Lok-Link devices. My dented shield was cut off. They tore off my pauldron, thinking it wasn’t part of my limb, and removed the remaining vials of blood. They pulled everything they could find from me besides three Lok-Links, one of which was my Mental Command Module.

I thought we were done for. I didn’t have enough brainpower to puzzle my way out of this danger. We were certainly about to be dragged off to some dark hole, where they would isolate each of us, then torture any answers they could get out of us. I inwardly cursed with what little energy I had left. I simply didn’t have enough power left in my battery to do anything. ‘I swore, if we get out of this, one of the first things I’m doing is getting some kind of cybernetic that can give me enough energy to keep going as long as needed.’ I vowed to myself.

“They're clean,” one guard said. “We’ve shut down any necessary systems.” I rolled my head up to look at the discussion. One of the guards who had frisked us was reporting to an Elven security officer.

“Good,” the officer replied, even as he ran some kind of scan over the three of us. He developed a confused expression as he reviewed the scan’s readings. “And you removed any spell focuses? And the cuffs are Mage inhibitors?”

“Yes, sir. The Elf had a Spirit Caller’s Shard. But the other two had nothing.” The guard replied. I could tell from the tilt of his head that he was giving me a side-long glance of worry.

“The Borg girl is reading as a sacred caster of some kind, and the hell spawn is causing the system to malfunction.” The officer turned to stare at me and Nel with an intense expression. “You’re certain that they had no focuses?”

“I’m certain, sir.” The guard answered in a definitive tone.

“Well, get them up. Take them to the isolation cells downstairs,” the officer turned away to face the front doors and waved his subordinates into action. “We’ll have our answers soon enough. The dig fish want answers, and I’m not about to have their axe hanging over my ne-.” he moved as if squinting through intense light, peering through the glass doors at something. “Wait. I see something. Squad, ready up. We have company!”

Nel, Ferris, and I were forgotten as every single security guard in the room stood, readied weapons, and took defensive stances. A spark of hope flared in my chest. Were we about to get rescued?

The row of reinforced glass doors exploded. A slash ran across the center of the entire entry; shards flew in a spray, and the doors’ halves flung halfway across the room. Was that Master Navor? I’d witnessed her fight before; it was plausible.

A short figure stepped through the disaster zone, someone with extra chain-like limbs. You had to be joking. There was no way in hell he survived if he had been thrown off the roof. That would’ve been more than thirty-five hundred feet.

I was most certainly thinking that my luck was coming from the Hells, and I was a plaything to be granted boons and hexes on a whim. If Kellden was back, we were in deep, deep trouble. Hands bound, magic nullified, gear stripped, and I was running on fumes. Now, the man who wanted my head worse than anyone I had ever met was just walking in to find me tied and dressed like some holiday fowl, ready to be chopped up for serving.

Kellden stopped just inside the atrium. “Thank you, boys, for wrapping up my gift so nice and neat. However, I’m here to finish some long-overdue business. If you would please leave the Darkling to me, we can go our separate ways.”

The security officer jabbed a commanding finger at the Arsenal, paired with a shouted command of “Open Fire!” Gunshots rang out from around me in a barrage. Elemental bolts few alongside physical bullets, but Kellden simply enwrapped himself in his chains like a shell of arcane metal armor.

The moment the gunfire lessened while guards moved to reload weapons, Kellden’s chains exploded outwards. Each individual segment flew, unerringly, at the defending guards. The flying blades zipped around like a flock of neurotic birds, striking guards from every direction. Blood sprayed, limbs and entrails fell, screams filled the space.

In the midst of this chaos, the security officer must’ve activated the automated defenses in the space. Turrets extended from the ceiling, the floor, and even several of the decorative potted plants. From my position on the ground, I got a good look at how many of the floor tiles in the room raised just slightly and emitted a click that signalled whatever was beneath had been primed.

None of this stopped the Arsenal. His sparrow-like blades carved through the automated guns just as easily as they were chewing through the men. In moments, none but Nennel, Ferris, I, and Kellden were the only living beings in a room splattered with gore.

I had no idea that this schizo could pull off a move like that. If he had wanted to, Kellden could’ve minced me into a fine purée before I could’ve done anything. Either he had been playing with me, or he had only recently gained that nightmarish trick.

The blade sparrows reassembled into the eight chain limbs of the Arsenal. The metal limbs were calm as they hovered behind Kellden like cobras ready to strike. The Ceangar picked his way around the armed mines until he loomed over me with a dark grin, painting his face with morbid glee. He knelt down on his haunches.

“Well, aren’t you in a pickle. All that fight you had, those friends coming to your rescue, and the absolute mayhem you pulled upstairs,” He prodded my cheek with an armored finger, “and here you are. I bet you're wondering how I survived that drop after your metal cat monster flung me. Well, we had suspected that me or my compatriot might end up falling from so high, up there. That’s why we were each equipped with a Slow Fall device. I landed light as a feather and just had to wait for you down here.”

“So what?” I said as defiantly as I could, “Thallos hired you to ambush the ambush? Since when did Regs take orders from strangers?” I tried to look Kellden in the eyes, but the hand he had been prodding me with gripped the side of my face and slammed it against the ground.

“If by Thallos you mean that Wild Elf calling himself Judge, then yeah,” Kellden said with a raised brow and smug smirk. “We take requests when the person in question works under a patron of our fine foundation. If Mr. Durge tells us to do a job, we do it with a smile. And Durge told us to help Judge in any way. Judge even mentioned that you’d probably be stirring up trouble. Finding you was just the incentive bonus I needed.” He slammed my head into the ground one last time before standing to loom over me with all three feet and change of height.

Once my eyes stopped rolling in my skull, I caught sight of something that made my heart sore with hope and tighten with worry. An elevator from the subfloors was rising. The numbers of the holo-display gave this fact away. And Kellden’s back was to that row of elevator doors.
Then I remembered the chime that would signal its arrival, which would give the Arsenal plenty of warning. Whether who was coming up was Kharmor of Zynna, they had no idea what they were about to step into while the schizo standing over us would simply through one of those murder-limbs straight into the car the moment the doors started opening. I needed to distract Kellden.

“You seem to have an obsession with me.” I goaded. “One so disturbed, I am certain you need legally mandated clinical therapy.” I rolled onto my back and looked at the Ceangar from an inverted view. “Tell me, why are you so set on putting me through the grinder?” I tested my cuffs with my cybernetic arm. Sure enough, if I shifted my arm from standard form into combat mode, I’d be able to break at least the cuff holding my right hand. “I mean, I understand that you're upset at the death of your sister and partner. I’m upset that Thallos butchered my father in front of me. But you keep coming after me like a starving worg tracking a blood trail.”

“Shut it, Foul Blood!” Kellden snapped. “I was put on your trail and told to hunt you to the ends of the world and farther. They promised to take care of my children for as long as it took me to find you. Your senseless killing only gave me more of a reason to put you down before you hurt anyone else.” His chains reared back and quivered like cobras on the brink of lashing out.

The elevator was about to arrive. If I could keep him focused on me with enough intent, he might not hear the chime. Just one last push.

Then Ferris spoke. “Hey! Yeah. You Knee-high,” he taunted. “Stop picking on the horned idiot. If you want someone to be ticked off, how about me. I’m the one who actually killed your sister.” Ferris reared up to glare at the Arsenal, but rather than defiant, he looked like a worm trying to bend backward and failing. “She was the one in that Reg AV that crashed, right? She was punched through with enough bone thorns to make a merrow rose envious, yeah?” My friend gestured to me as best he could with his head and cuffed hands. “Don’t go blaming Captain ‘I don’t think anything through’.”

I inwardly screamed, ‘Don’t you dare, Ferris!’ But he kept running his mouth. “ I’m the Reaper who cast that spell. If you’ve got a problem, take it up with me.”

Kellden looked from me to Ferris with a ponderous expression. “You know what, I like that idea. Even if the Fiend Kin wasn’t the one to kill my sister, he still murdered my partner. He hurt me badly when he took my Regga. I think he’s earned some of the same kind of pain.” Kellden walked over to stand over Ferris, but he spoke to me. “How better to tear at your black heart than to kill your friend and team partner in front of you. It’s all the sweeter that its the scum that took my sister.”

That was when the chime of the elevator’s arrival echoed through the hollow and stained space. Kellden spun to face the arriving car. Before he could make his move, I made mine. I spun on my back, throwing my legs to use the momentum, before rolling to a kneeling position. Even as I moved, I shifted my arm with a swift thought. The limb expanded into its armor-plate form. The cuff containing that hand whined for an instant before bursting with a high 'CRACK’ and a spray of crystal-lined metal. I raised my fist to point at the back of the Arsenal, even as my head spun.

Kellden launched a limb toward the elevator as the doors started to open. The limb was on a trajectory to punch through the door and hit a Human-sized person in the abdomen. The limb extended, reaching past the fifteen feet of range the chains should’ve had, and I didn’t slow.

But the guards missed something other than the Mental Command Module when they frisked me. My last remaining Shock-Byte extended from my knuckles. I fired almost blindly. Almost. And my aim was true. The electrical bolt bloomed and latched directly to Kellden’s Chandress Device. The source and controller for his chains sparked, and every limb went rigid. It would only be for an instant, but if I acted fast, I might be able to turn things around.

As the Elevator doors reached the halfway point in the opening, I spotted Kharmor, and he was more ready than I was. He stood in a firing stance, both hands on his Executioner revolver. Khar squeezed the trigger, and a thunderclap detonated within the confined metal box. Then something struck Kellden in the chest. A half heartbeat later, there was a deep ‘THUD’ from within the Arsenal’s body. He dropped to the ground, choking and foaming at the mouth as his body seized and twitched with enough muscle strength that I could hear his bones breaking.

I attempted to stand, but that burst of motion rendered me as weak as a newborn. I fell on my face and rolled onto my back again, staring up at the ceiling, breathing like I had run a mile or three. Kharmor stowed his weapon even as he ran to me.

“Iver! Don’t you die on me! You owe me a keg of something nice.”

I raised my still-cuffed left hand with a thumbs up, even as I wheezed. Kharmor was beside me in moments. He moved to help me up, but I wordlessly signaled him to grab the bags that the guards had collected our gear in. My hero got the message and collected it before coming back to me. I pointed to Nennel and Ferris, gesturing to help them to their feet.

“We, need to get, out of here.” I said between gasps of air.

“Front door?” Nennel asked as she rose, her hands still cuffed.

“No,” I answered. “Too easy to track. Need to go down, and collect targets.”

“Well, about that,” Kharmor said with nervous energy. “They’re dead.”