Firesign 1 - Wage Slave Rebellion (40 page)

Mazik noticed a sphere of twisting mana forming in the large man’s raised hand. “Ah. So you’re just going to try to finish me now.”

“Yes, I am.”

Mazik glanced to the side. “We’ll see about that.”

Hammer jerked, and then blood splattered onto Mazik’s chest. A strained groan escaped from the big man’s lips, and then, without another word, he toppled forward. Mazik used his shoulders to redirect the body so he wouldn’t be crushed.

Gavi looked down at the blood covering her sword.

“Thanks,” said Mazik as he shrugged the corpse the rest of the way off of him.

Gavi looked up, and gave Mazik an uneasy smile. As cultists scattered all around them, Mazik took Gavi’s hand and let her pull him to his feet. He groaned, his back cracking audibly. “Ow. That hurt.”

“It sure looks like it,” said Gavi. She reached up and touched a cut on his face. His grin had been made extra lopsided by all the bruises.

“I agree,” said Raedren as he hobbled over, leaning on his staff. “On the pain thing. Ow.”

Mazik looked around. He could see:

The other Loci, running away. He picked out Crimson and Savage, the former sprinting for the hostages while the latter headed for the True Head Cultist, as well as Tattoo, who was being tackled and subdued by multiple city guards. Sasha was nowhere to be seen.

The Gate of Life had been raised several meters to allow more people to flood into the arena. Mazik picked out Captain Ankt, who was shouting at everyone as Sergeant Kolhn’s battered squad ducked into Gladiator’s Way, still protecting the hostages they had managed to save.

There was Major Rur, with the largest knot of adventurers and soldiers around her. They were surrounding the remaining hostages, pulling cultists away from them and propelling the civilians toward the Gate of Life. Most of them had already been saved, though there were a few left.

And then there was the True Head Cultist. The cultists were all collapsing around their leader in the center of the arena, determined to make one last stand, but they were outnumbered now. The True Head Cultist’s full attention was on Rynthe and those in front of him, and he was letting them have it with light and sound.

“Just how many of those things do you have?” asked Gavi, nodding at the knife he was holding.

“Hmm?” said Mazik, coming back to the present. “Oh, this. Mazik’s Rules of Adventuring Number Fourteen: You can never have too many knives.”

“You already have a list?” asked Gavi.

“He doesn’t have a list,” said Raedren. “He’s just making it up.”

Mazik grinned, his eyes glowing with as much fire as he could muster, and mana as well. “Come on. It looks like we get to help save those people after all.”

*      *      *

Crimson gaped, despair filling him as he realized how close they had come. His allies had brought two dozen hostages all the way from the Gate of Life to one of the unopened chutes in the middle of the arena—mere meters away from the edge of the ceremony—but as soon as the soldiers came boiling out from the Catacombs, it was like they had hit a brick wall. Now they only had four hostages left, two men and two women cowering on the ground at Crimson’s feet.

Then, from the edge of the crowd, there was an inauspicious clatter.

“Coming through!” yelled Mazik as he burst out of the crowd, mana trailing behind him. Gavi and Raedren were only steps behind, but it wasn’t them that Crimson was paying attention to, nor even Mazik—it was the pinpoints of blue light hovering around Mazik’s shoulders.

Mazik pointed at Crimson. “
Mazik Missiles!
”

Bolts of mana flashed out, more steady and sure than earlier, and struck their targets with better accuracy. Three splashed against Crimson’s barriers while cultists all around him went down in screaming piles of black cloth, blue mana, and red blood.

Crimson looked forward. Mazik and the others were meters away and closing. He looked to his right, where soldiers and others were pressing in. He looked down, at the hostages who were being taken away.

Crimson leapt backward, avoiding Mazik’s punch, along with the mana that flew off it and grounded itself in the sand. The Locus retreated and made a beeline for his embattled leader.

The True Head Cultist stopped attacking the adventurers in front of him and stood up straight. Even through the darkened hood, Mazik could tell the man’s eyes were locked on him.

Mazik put his foot on a fallen enemy. “Hah!” said Mazik. “Hah I say!” He let loose a big, hearty laugh and pointed at the True Head Cultist. “How do you like that, you murderous old bas—”

“Stop being an idiot,” said Major Rur as she grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him back. Gavi and Raedren stepped in front of Mazik, placing themselves between him and the True Head Cultist—and more importantly, the fragment of the cultist knife Mazik still carried.

A lull swept over the battlefield as the city’s defenders pulled back. The cultists did the same, and as a three-meter gap opened up between the sides, an uneasy standoff emerged. The two sides stared at each other, constantly on alert—when they weren’t casting glances at the True Head Cultist and Mazik.

“This isn’t the end, you adventurer slime,” spat the True Head Cultist, his fists clenching and unclenching in the darkness of his sleeves. “We will finish what we started. You cannot stop us. You cannot stop the power of our Lord.”

“Keep on telling yourself that,” said Mazik. “But by all means, keep ranting like a crazy person. It’s like
music
to my ears.”

“You
arrogant
sack of slug-shit,” growled the True Head Cultist. “We will stop at nothing, we will run you down, and we will never forget what you’ve done. We—

He stopped, and the tension melted away into something hard and twisted. He snapped his fingers at the cultists behind him. “Signal the others. Have them bring the other sacrifices out.”

Far behind, the distant Gate of Shame rose with a tortured metal groan. Twelve hostages were drawn out, stumbling and weeping as they were dragged by the chains around their necks.

A cold fear shot through Mazik’s gut, just as it had not long ago. “You lied,” he said, mana already gathering around him.

“So did you,” said the True Head Cultist. “Don’t act like there’s any honor between us, you wretched excuse for a man.”

Mazik was already moving. “We can still stop them before—!”

Major Rur grabbed Mazik by the shoulder and hurled him to the ground.

“Wha—” said Mazik before his mouth filled with sand.

Gavi looked back, then tackled Raedren to the ground just before the gale-force winds struck.

In the middle of the biggest concentration of the city’s defenders, Sasha dropped out of stealth and spoke the final words of a spell. Indigo-tinted winds lashed out as the weakened cultist collapsed, the powerful winds pitching the people in front of her forward—

And into the waiting arms of the Cult of Amougourest.

Guards and soldiers were set upon as they tumbled into the mass of cultists, weapons kicked away and ropes lashed around them as they were quickly subdued. Rynthe hurled himself to the ground, using some of the same magick Sasha was using to anchor himself in place, and then grabbed the two Special Forces soldiers who had been fighting with him all night. Others went hurtling past.

“Gods
dammit!
” said Mazik, rolling out from under Major Rur as Sasha was set upon, shutting off the winds. Mazik raised his hand and shouted, “
Mazik Missiles!
”

The True Head Cultist ignored Mazik’s spell even as three bolts struck his barriers, his hands and lips moving again as he rushed to finish the ceremony. Mazik’s other missiles flew at the cultists hurling captured defenders onto the spell circles, but they evaporated as soon as they touched the green miasma that hung over each set of runes. A cultist stepped into each circle, a wicked knife in their hands.

“I am going to break his arms off and beat him to death with them,” growled Mazik as he climbed to his feet.

“Mazik, wait!” said Gavi, lunging on her belly and grabbing him by the shoulder. “You can’t get closer! They could get the other half of the knife.”

“I know, I wasn’t going to—” Mazik stopped. He pulled the broken knife out of his robes and held it out to Gavi. “Actually, you take it. Then I can go up there and—”

The True Head Cultist dropped his hands as the chanting stopped. “Too late.” He intoned the final words.

Winds so powerful they would put hurricanes to shame rushed out, throwing the aspiring adventurers back with head-rattling force. Mazik skipped across the ground as he tumbled, barely managing to keep a hold of the broken knife.

The trio groaned as the air pressed down on them, the pressure increasing until it felt like there were grizzly bears sitting on their backs, screaming. Screaming
loudly
— the pressure they could endure, but it was the sound that punished them, with its high-pitched, blaring whine that wormed its way into their skulls and trashed up the place.

Whompf!
The sound fell away, taking the pressure with it. Released, the trio slumped forward. Mazik lifted his pounding head away from the gritty sand.

Mana crackled above them, snapping like angry vipers. Something heavy shuddered to the ground, rocking the arena. As people all around the arena floor massaged their tortured skulls, Mazik, Gavi, and Raedren looked up.

The plumes of pale green mana were gone. So were the cultists with their wicked sacrificial knives, and the men and women who were bound among the runes, with only long smears of blood left to mark their passing. Everything else was gone, their bodies vanished like they never existed.

In their place were monsters.

*      *      *

The creatures’ bodies were still in flux, their features flowing and morphing as the cultists’ magick tore them apart and fused their flesh back together into something altogether more horrific. But some features were already becoming clear. Their skin was purple, and slick like newly cooled plastic, with burnt orange stripes across their shoulders, hands, and thighs. They stood nearly three meters tall, with broad shoulders and long, muscular arms that extended well past their knees; this rendered them top-heavy, forcing them to hunch forward until their fingertips scraped the ground.

They were also completely naked, though they lacked the definition that would have made this worrisome.

The creatures began to move as their features stabilized. One tossed its tiny, knotted head back, its thin crown of oily black hair flopping around its shoulders as it let loose a terrific roar. The other shuffled around within the magick circle it sprang from, its eyes darting around as it sniffed the air. Rather than the humans they once were, these were beasts, the light of intelligence in their eyes permanently dimmed in exchange for savage brutality and monstrous strength. They were aku, one of the most powerful tools in a god’s arsenal. They were also demons and monsters and crimes against nature all rolled into one.

Mazik groaned as he picked himself off the ground. “This is why I hate gods,” he said, wincing at the pain in his skull. “They just break the rules, like they don’t even matter. I mean, look at those things!” he said, gesturing like a manic-depressive on the upswing. “That shouldn’t even be possible! You can’t just jam a bunch of different bodies together and get something that works. That’s cheating!”

“You cheat all the time,” observed Gavi.

“I do not,” said Mazik, pouting. “I don’t cheat. I just…” he waved a hand vaguely, “…use creative applications of the truth to get my way with the minimum of trouble for all involved. Particularly myself.”

“Ah. So you lie,” said Gavi.

“Yup!” said Mazik. “Perfectly legitimate tactic. At least I don’t go around spitting in nature’s eye.”

“Very admirable of you,” said Gavi, eyeing the surviving Loci. Crimson and Savage were standing in front of the two monsters, eyeing the trio in return.

The True Head Cultist looked up proudly at his creations. Walking to one, he peered into its beady black eyes like a horse trader inspecting the merchandise. “Hmm…” he said, his sleeve disappearing into his cowl to rub his chin. He jabbed the aku twice; the creature growled, but didn’t move.

The True Head Cultist nodded. “Not bad, if I say so myself.” He walked back to the center of the magickal array. He clasped his sleeves together in front of his mouth and loosed a high-pitched whistle.

As one, the two aku turned toward him.

“I’m sorry, my brethren,” said the True Head Cultist. “Because my power is insufficient, you will only be able to maintain these forms for half a day, likely less. Then you will die.” He shook his head. “Had we more time, our Lord could have transformed you personally, but I…”

If the aku understood what he was saying, they didn’t show it. They just stared, waiting.

The True Head Cultist raised his head. “Good. Now, we must finish what we started.” He held up the bottom half of the knife, the one Mazik gave him earlier.

“This is the Edge of Ebon Darkness,” said the True Head Cultist. “We have half of it. We need the other half.” He turned and pointed at Mazik. “That man has it.”

“Wuh-oh,” said Mazik.

“Can you distract those things for a few minutes?” asked Major Rur as everyone else scrambled away from the trio. “If so, I’ll try to figure out what to do about them.”

“We’ll do what we can,” said Mazik, crouching low. The two aku were staring at him, their tiny eyes narrowing.

“You guys full?” asked Mazik as Major Rur left. Now the three of them were alone.

“I’m at one hundred percent,” said Raedren.

“Me too,” said Gavi, as the two aku snarled and scraped their feet. “What’s the plan?”

Mazik didn’t respond. Instead he held up a hand. “On my signal…”

“Now,
go!
” shouted the True Head Cultist, throwing his arms out. He stomped the ground, and indigo mana rippled outward, slamming all chutes closed. “Go and retrieve what is rightfully ours!
Get him!
”

The aku roared and surged forward like derailed hell-trains on a mission of death.