Chapter 72: Contact

[Time Remaining: 601 Days, 02 Hours, 59 Minutes]

Alex paced in front of the humming engines.

“How the fuck did this happen?” he shouted. “Aren’t dungeons, like, pocket spaces? Other realms cooked up by the System?”

Selka, calm despite the chaotic emotional outburst he was giving, shook her head. “No. They’re tethered to reality. Pocket spaces maybe, but they are physically anchored at the entrance gates. Its not known for certain, but current thinking is The System doesn’t create them, it only regulates them.”

He paused his pacing. “So you’re saying they’re real. Like… neighboring dimensions.”

“Yes. And this one has broken its leash.”

“Shit,” Alex hissed. He dragged both hands through his sweat-damp hair, trying to shake away the ringing panic in his skull. “But how does this happen?”

“Aether backfill.” Myrae spoke this time, her tone matter-of-fact. “When dungeons are left uncleared, energy pools until they swell enough to burst open that connection and things can start finding their way out. That’s why the Empire keeps a quarterly ‘sweeping’ regulation. The Empire sends in Delvers, and wipes them clean.”

Alex’s teeth ground together. “Then somebody fucked up. Bad.”

“No…” Myrae’s eyes flicked toward the window and the burning village far below. “I don’t think this was neglect. The Empire doesn’t mess things up like that. Something else forced the breach.”

“Fuck!” Doran’s growl snapped Alex’s attention back. The Dwarf’s beard was unkempt and ragged looking in the dim light, his words gutteral and furious. “So wha’ now? We canna fight da Empire and d’ese cursed Chimera. We’ be torn apart in minutes.”

Henry’s grim nod voiced his agreement. Aburi stood next to him, mimicking the same nod with rather eerie accuracy.

Then Symon’s hysteric pitch bounced off the metal walls. Alex shot a glare onto him, dark-purple aether curling around his fists before he caught himself and forced it down. Symon only grinned back, smug, as though the chaos delighted him and the reaction was exactly what he wanted.

Tom-Tom shifted uneasily on Alex’s shoulders, the weight of the little guy grounded Alex by reminding him he had people to think about. Their safety was the priority here. It reminded him why he couldn’t afford to freeze up, or rage out, even if someone was being a huge dick.

He turned in a slow circle, eyes sweeping across the massive arrays of machinery. Coils, crystal conduits, arcanum pistons all thrumming with barely contained energy. He could feel all of it

through his [Aether Sight], like the entire engine room was a mechanical heart, beating faster than any human chest could handle.

His thoughts spun. Schematics layered over the room in his mind, a crazy plan beginning to form.

He looked back to the team. “We can’t just run into that fight. We’d be caught between two enemy forces and get slaughtered.”

“Then what’s your play?” Eric asked.

Alex squared his shoulders and his lips pulled into a grin that they all knew well. The grin Alex got when he had an idea far too reckless for comfort.

“Okay… I’ve got a wild idea,” he glanced at each of them in turn, their faces pale in the crimson alarm glow. “And you’re all probably gonna hate it.”

Even Obby spoke in his mind at that, “Oh, I see what you… oh wow… fleshsack, this will be fun.”

Alex nodded once, “We won’t fight the Empire or the Chimera head-on. We will turn the whole ship into our weapon, to use against both.”

The engine room almost seemed to tremble in response to Alex’s declaration.

With short commands, the team was spread across the chamber in positions. Most huddled near the far bulkhead with weapons at the ready. While Doran, Devon, Selka, and Alex worked over the massive engine systems.

The feeling of urgency buzzed in the back of his skull like a hive of hornets. Across from him, Selka’s hands moved with surprising speed, her stylus etching and infusing glowing sigils into the brass piping. Alex’s eyes flicked to her once, studying her method. AnInfusion Enchanter? He realized.

That was a surprise, but there wasn’t time to ask about her skills now. His own stylus darted over the control panel, cutting and weaving fresh glyphwork into the etched plates. Every movement had to be exact, or they’d all go up in flames.

The engines howled as pressure spiked in response to their meddling. Warnings flashed across the rune panels in red light. Alex remembered the second floor of the Dark Den Dungeon, and the same desperate gambles he made back then. The floor’s final room was almost the exact reverse of what they were doing now, pushing a machine to the brink instead preventing it from boiling over. Instead of easing pressure, they were overloading systems in attempt to break them.

Was this justchance? Or was it some twisted foresight by the System? Did it throw him into such a similar problem again on purpose? He didn’t have time to wonder about the implications of free will and heavenly destiny. His hand tapped onto another glyph, severing the automated relief programs.

“Okay, meatboy—move! Beep Beep!” Obby shouted in his head.

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Alex looked up. Across the chamber, Doran and Devon were sprinting toward the wide porthole. Selka was already waiting there with the others.

“Fuck.”

He launched himself forward, [Aether Burst] igniting under his boots. The blast flung him like a cannon shot, body screaming against the sheer acceleration. The wind slammed into him, bone-cracking force threatening to tear him apart. But his Vitality stat held him together. He made it to the far side just as Doran and Devon arrived.

“Do it!” Alex roared.

Henry, Ghrukk, Sarson, and Lance didn’t need telling twice. In unison, their weapons smashed into the reinforced window frame, hammering through the corners. Metal screamed and glass shattered under their assault. The wall ripped wide open with a teeth-jarring screech, leaving a wound in the ship’s hull.

Alex scooped Tom-Tom up against his chest and leapt first into the howling sky with a word.

“Geronimooooo!” Garret’s wild voice echoed beside him as he dove after.

“God damn it, Garret,” Allie cursed, before throwing herself into the gale as well.

One by one, or in twos and threes, the squad hurled themselves into open air. The frigid wind swallowed their screams, the ground rushing up to meet them.

Alex risked a glance back. Eric was the last one through the opening, barely clearing the hull before the first explosion ripped through the ship. The engines detonated in a blinding flash. Fire bloomed outward, the Andreia tilting hard to port as its power source, its heart, was destroyed, arteries torn free.

Plumes of black roiled from the wound they’d made. The proud warship groaned, dying, as they fell away into the endless, icy air.

***

The Andreia was dying.

Karsali felt it in her gut, in the way the deck lurched beneath her boots, in the tortured groan of steel and timber giving way. The ship could limp along with two engines, maybe even one, but all four had been sabotaged.

The vessel listed hard to one side, straining to hold altitude as the lifters burned through their last stores of aether. For a fleeting second, the runes carved into the hull blazed bright, fighting to keep the leviathan aloft. Then the light guttered out. The Andreia paused, shuddered, and began to fall.

“To the skiff boats!” Karsali bellowed against the storming wind. “All others—brace! Brace! Brace!”

The deck exploded into chaotic movement. Soldiers stampeded toward the smaller skiffs, cutting them free in desperate waves of blades. Others poured from hatches below, too late to reach the crafts. Some hurled themselves over the sides, wings of spelllight or aether armor lighting up around them. Others had nothing but their bare hands and courage, and clung white-knuckled to railings and cannon housings as the ship bucked beneath them.

Karsali gripped the rope of the mast. She could have leapt off the ship, she had the strength to survive the fall. Survival was within her grasp. But to abandon her ship, to leave her soldiers screaming in the fire of her failure?

No. Her fate was their fate. She would ride the beast into the grave.

The wind tore at her cloak as she looked down over the railing. Below, the battlefield was a vision of madness. Chimera and Empire soldiers tore into each other, blood and smoke staining the village in the valley. The cannons had fallen silent, and in the absence of their flashy and dusty impacts, cruel details leapt into view: the thatch-roof cottages were split open, cobblestones slick with gore, doorframes painted in streaks of crimson. A heap of corpses was stacked in the village square, a monument of ruin and death.

And all of it; every broken street, every shattered wall, every glimmer of steel and fang, rushed upward to meet her.

***

The wind howled in Alex’s ears, tearing his hair back and needling his skin. Tom-Tom shrieked in his arms, claws scrabbling against his chestplate, the poor lizard’s tail thrashing like a whip. Around him, bodies plummeted. His squadmates, allies, all spinning, twisting, or huddled in clusters as they hurtled toward the ground.

The fall was the easy part. The landing would be hell.

He could already see Holly below him, her group clustered tightly together, bodies haloed in whipping currents of wind. She’d brought herself a crowd, four figures pressed close to her, they were the smart ones. Holly air aether was probably the safest method to land. The rest? Every soul had their own life to gamble.

For Alex, there was no waiting until the last second to stop. He forced his aether into a spell pattern, azure threads knotting and pulling inside his aether channels, feeding into his limbs until the spell thrummed against his skin. It all came down to timing, angle, and control, he couldn’t botch a single one.

He took a breath, and fired his [Aether Burst]. The shockwave detonated beneath him, shoving towards the ground. His body lurched, his spine bending under the sudden shift, and for a sickening moment he spun sideways. His vision swam, trees and sky blurring into one long smear.

“Not like this,” he hissed, forcing another burst of energy from his feet to control his spin. His arms ached from holding Tom-Tom so close, fighting the lizard’s own momentum.

But, with controlled detonations, his airborn tumble broke and he leveled out. Now steady, he continued his small aether bursts, flashes of energy sounding off in staccato rhythm, slowing his death dive to a manageable descent. Each detonation cracked like a rifle, buffeting his chest and rattling his teeth.

The ground rushed up anyway. He pulsed faster, each burst a hammerblow to the air until the forest floor was a blur of greens and browns.

One last overcharged burst, then he dropped, boots hitting soil with a bone-jarring impact. His knees bent, his abdomen muscles clenched, his frame holding together only by virtue of the experience points he’d poured into Vitality. He skidded three feet before stopping, lungs heaving in large gasps. Tom-Tom seemed to enjoy the ride, given he squealed from the rough landing.

But, they had made it.

His eyes swept the clearing. Off to his right he watched as a large jet of water spiraled down from Cole and his group, easing their impact in rolling waves. Henry landed like a falling boulder, his vines wrapping him in a ball, bracing him with plantlife that bent, then sprung him back upright with unnatural grace. Holly and her group settled down in a torrent of wind, cushioning them all from any injury. Kate and Ghrukk landed in among jets of fire, kicking up burning grass and billowing ash.

All around, his allies landed down in their own ways. Not all of them elegant, but effective regardless.

The ground quaked.

Every head turned at once to watch as the Andreia hit.

The forest split open with thunder as the warship crashed, splinters of aethersteel and burning wood exploding skyward. Smoke plumed from the wreck, fires racing across broken hull plating. Smaller skiffs circled above like vultures on the outskirts, survivors already scattering to land or regroup.

“Gods be merciful…” Rynel whispered.

Alex couldn’t answer for the gods. His throat was tight, lips pressed flat in a line. Whoever hadn’t made it off the Andreia was gone, he couldn’t imagine someone surviving that.

Eric started, “Let’s break for it before—” He was cut off as a new sound ripped across the clearing. A shriek, partly human, partly beast, butt one hundred percent nightmare. The forest around them churned as shapes burst through the treeline, dozens of them, figures loping on two legs or four, their bodies warped and strange, their aether signatures twisted into mockeries of man and beast.

The Chimera had found them.

“Shit!” Alex said, dropping Tom-Tom unceremoniously. The lizard yelped, scampering back as violet energy began to crawl across Alex’s skin. His veins burned as he stepped into a martial stance.

Demon Asura—first stance.

Garret called out beside him, the lopsided smiling idiot somehow confident and fearless, “Time to earn some XP, boys and girls! Chimera’s on the menu!”

And then the world narrowed to teeth, and claws, and the thunder of boots as both sides charged at each other.

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