Authors: Ben Bequer
The only thing that came to mind was to drop in front of its face, maybe get its attention, but there was something dead about the array of glowing eyes, and something non-organic about their arrangement.
That was it. The creature wasn’t alive, but a construct of some form. Then I recalled how the whole trouble had started.
The crystals.
I scampered back and also noted a strange configuration to them. Crystals were much more random in nature to be so evenly spaced, the same size and number. But they were in a pattern I couldn’t recognize. I hurled myself towards the nearest bunch and pushed them forward but nothing happened. The big bastard lumbered forward with the same devastating pace, slowly closing the distance to the village.
Behind me, the Mist Army battleship was landing, along with dozens of smaller attendant ships. A score of manta riders kept up with me, watching for now. Their riders wore similar armor to the swordsman I had faced a day or two before, but these wielded long, bright lances with long banners that danced with the winds.
The Mist Army would find this battle an easy one. Once the beast trounced the village, they would move in and kill everyone in the town, including me and the others. Our plan was a failure unless I could find a way to turn around this behemoth.
But it made no sense, maybe it was something I could never understand, something far beyond my comprehension. I punched a crystal in frustration and stumbled back a few steps. This thing was moments away from destroying the village and I couldn’t figure it out.
The crystals had something to do with it, that was for sure, but how and what? Moving them was near impossible, and I didn’t think that they were some sort of neural interface where I could just will the machine to move. No it had to be more complicated than that. Something I wasn’t thinking about.
Or maybe it was simpler.
This wasn’t a beast, it was a machine and something I did turned it on. What had I done originally? I banged on the crystal.
I rushed back to one of the tall translucent structures and banged on it with all my might. The construct reacted instantly, increasing in speed. That was not at all what I wanted, so I ran to another and did the same, and it slowed down. The two crystals I had struck were beside each other, so they must be the accelerator and the break. A dozen others jutted from its head, so I went from one to the other; getting it to side-step right, then left, then finally I found a crystal that made the beast come about.
It turned with more agility and speed that I had imagined, almost knocking me off altogether. In an instant, and a cloud of dirt and dust, the monster whirled around to face the enemy battleship. Once it was headed to our real foe, I ran to the gas crystal and pounded on it like a boxer on a heavy bag. The colossal construct took off with incredible speed, faster than I imagined, now using its rear legs and bounding towards the Mist Army battleship.
For a few moments, as the gargantuan mechanical beast crossed the plain, I was the greatest rider ever, history’s finest knight, atop the most formidable mount of all time.
* * *
The ground thundered beneath, as the construct left a wake of devastation, a tear of exploded dirt and dust.
In the distance, the Mist Army panicked. Scout riders rode forward on their undulating worms, firing with arrows at the behemoth to no avail. The remainder of the army hurried to setup their formation. They were gathered around a pair of enormous, beetle-like creatures, each over fifty feet tall and a hundred feet in length that acted as rolling fortresses. Each had a formidable stronghold constructed atop their carapaces, castle-like structures that teemed with activity as warriors prepared for my charge, loading cannon and other missile weapons.
Around the two beetles the vast host of the Mist Army assembled, still spilling from the open maw of the battleship. There was no way to estimate their number, even with the benefit of how high I was, but they were many thousands. All of them eager to prove their mettle by defeating me.
Before I had set off, Zundergrub mentioned the Mist Army was formed from the assembled warriors of those who arrived here. They were the apex predators of this place, that Cool Hand had dubbed Shard World. The Mist Army was led by a small number of lords, including the one I had defeated in single combat. These lords now came for their revenge, afraid of looking weak before their masters, something we hadn’t yet encountered called the Lightbringers.
But I had come with a beast mighty enough to defeat their whole army, and it churned through the ground in their direction, speeding up as we approached. Behind me was a miles-long scar of black dirt that stretched all the way back to the lake.
I noticed a flock of stork-like four-winged birds matching my speed, flying beside me and the construct, like dolphins riding a bow wave. They had multiple eyes, and upon closer inspection seemed to be more like rodents and not birds, for they lacked feathers altogether, and had thin leathery wings like those of a bat.
Then they panicked, the whole flock scattering with a flutter of their wings, and I knew something was wrong. Looking around it took me only a second to spot them, the manta riders approaching for the kill. They had long silver lances and shields that glimmered with the light.
One got close, a few dozen yards away, so close I saw myself reflected off his shining shield. In the reflection, I also saw a figure behind me. I hurled myself to the ground as a spear skewered the air above me. A manta rider attacked from the opposite side, flying past with a loud swoosh, using his partner to draw my attention.
The first manta rider fired with a crossbow at me, but I used the crystals as cover. The quarrel slammed into the cluster of gems, clattering to the ground uselessly. I popped out and fired an arrow, using the bow I had captured from the scout which split open at my command. Instead of aiming for the heavily armored rider, I sank the arrow deep into the unprotected head area of the manta ray. The creature recoiled violently, tossing the rider down screaming to his death five-hundred feet below.
I fired another arrow at the rider that had put a pass on me, but he was too far and the arrow sailed wide. He saw his companion fall to his death, and rode up to the other manta riders, perhaps a dozen in all. They conferred a few moments, before one of them, no doubt their leader as he had the most impressive set of armor and rode the largest manta, ordered the next attack.
The came as one, and fired their fast repeating crossbows as soon as they came in range. Quarrels slammed all around me, but I stayed under cover until they passed by. Two broke off, coming around the far flank and closing sharply. While the others pinned me with crossbow fire, they neared with sharp spears ready to kill me.
I readied a special arrow and fiddled with the settings display on the arrowhead. Just as they were too close to veer away, I fired. The arrow sailed between the two riders, who raised their shields, curbed their lances to continue their charge, content that their heavy armor would protect them from my feeble missile.
But the arrow wasn’t aimed at them, and the small, inoffensive charge exploded into a cloud of gas. Once the gaseous charge was exposed to the air, it turned into a hyper-strong adhesive and dried in an instant. A second after the explosion, both mantas were glued to each other, wingtip to wingtip.
One of the mantas fought the inevitable, trying to veer off and pulling the second with it. The riders now knew something was wrong as well. Seeing his manta try to bank away, the first rider leaned into the maneuver, hoping to assist his mount, while the second rider yelled something at his companion.
The banking turn of the first manta made the second lose attitude and flop backwards, emptying its saddle of the rider, who fell to a screaming death. The first manta spun around in a flat spin, as the second flapped out of control. Both slowly descended to the ground, the rider holding on to the bitter end.
Three down, nine more to go, I thought, and then I got peppered with a hail of crossbow bolts. Two got me, digging into my leg. I circled the crystal to avoid further fire, but they had decided to kill me from range, rather than risk getting closer.
That was fine by me. While they had the advantage of the crossbow’s increased range over that of my bow, my mount was moving over fifty miles an hour, making their shots harder. And they probably spent most of their time training with their swords, rather than in ranged combat. In a ranged fight, I had the advantage.
The quarrels were stuck deep into my skin, meaning they were probably tipped with the same material as that axe I had captured from the pig-grilla warrior earlier, the same material as Shivver’s dagger. This material was strong enough to penetrate through my skin as if it was that of a normal human.
I was tempted to tear the quarrels out, but several spent ones lay on the head of the beast, and I could see their heads were barbed. To pull one out was to tear half my leg off. Instead, I tried to forget about them, mentally dampening the pain while concentrating on my next shot.
It was hard to focus while they kept peppering me with quarrels. They were clever and began to spread out in a wide circle around the crown of the beast. In moments, I wouldn’t be able to hide from them all.
This was no time to be saving the firepower. I took three arrows out of my arrow bag, and fired one at a time, timing my shots to maximize the effect of the special arrows.
One by one, the three arrows exploded. These were fragmentation arrows, designed to explode with tiny shards of molten steel within an approximate area of thirty feet. The range wasn’t much, but a few of the mantas dropped from the sky from each explosion, their riders soon to meet their bone-crunching deaths.
When the smoke had cleared, two manta riders remained, one of them the leader. Enraged, he flew right at me, hurling his crossbow at me. I picked it up and opened fire. It was like a machine gun, auto loading from a large reservoir of quarrels. I shot the leader’s manta, peppering it with shot after shot.
He banked the beast back and jumped off his mount, crashing against the top of the beast’s head. I fired the crossbow again, but the quarrels bounced off his magnificent armor as he drew an impressive glowing sword.
“Gor Narhalkas!” I yelled at him, nearing him as he approached me.
Behind him, the army was quickly approaching, the weapons from the beetle-castle things were already firing, and every few seconds a cannonball or huge ballista bolt would soar overhead or rattle around the crystals. Blaster bolts traced around the beast as the army opened fire with all its weapons.
My opponent stiffened, hearing me call out his former companion’s name, and pointed at me.
“Brackshock,” he said.
“That’s me,” I responded. “Blackjack.”
He nodded and corrected himself, “Blackjack. Dethregas,” he said, pointing at himself.
Dethregas had apparently heard what had happened to his buddy, Narhalkas, so he didn’t intend to even the odds by giving me his sword. He attacked with blinding speed, bringing his sword overhead and down at the spot where I had stood, but I stepped aside behind some clusters, that showered me with shards as he swing across and slammed his sword into the crystals.
Using my momentum, I grabbed the farthest crystal and swung on it, bringing my legs into his midsection and sending him sprawling to the ground. He slid towards the edge, losing the grip on his sword, and almost fell over. Dethregas held to the edge for dear life, but with the agility of an Olympic-caliber gymnast, he lifted his body up, tucked his leg under and hurled himself at me.
I stumbled back, losing my footing and falling forward to my hands and knees. He slammed into my side and pinned me on my back, digging into his belt for a jeweled dagger with his right hand, and pressing his left elbow down on my chest and neck. But in a wrestling match, as in a bow to crossbow fight, he was at a disadvantage. I brought my legs around his waist, powered around to his right, spinning him atop me as I used my back and buttocks as a fulcrum. We went from him being atop me, to him on his back, and me on his right flank with his right arm under me. His free left arm now reached for the dagger, but I wasn’t done, I rolled atop him and straddled him chest upwards, so he couldn’t reach the weapon.
Dethregas clawed at my face and chest, but I batted his arms away and threw a full-bodied punch into his face, caving in the metal helmet and crushing his skull. His body shuddered for a moment then was still.
I heard a scream behind me, and turned to see the final manta rider firing his crossbow at me, enraged that his leader was dead. A shower of quarrels washed over me, most bouncing off me.
We were almost to the army, moments away from crashing into them, when I got an idea. I ignored the final rider and picked up Dethregas’ body, using it as cover and inched back towards the crystal controls.
Carrying the alien was difficult, due to the unsteady ground, and how heavy he was, but I stumbled towards the front lip of the behemoth’s head. I pressed the alien over my head, now overlooking a panicked army, as my mount crashed into the farthest edges, churning through the armored vehicles like if they were paper mâché before Godzilla.
I yelled, “Dethregas!” and threw the dead alien down on his army.
Then the behemoth crunched down on the nearest beetle-castle, and the world exploded.