“Idiot boy-o.” Ali shoots over to me, having freed himself.
He slams a container of plasma into Wex’s back, burrowing in as deep as he can before releasing the containment. Electricity tries to jump to the Spirit, but he’s mostly immaterial. Beyond charring the Spirit a little at the edges—disrupting Ali’s material plane connection—he’s fine.
So’s Wex, to my horror. The damn creature’s resistances and bank of life is taking Ali’s attack with aplomb. Things go from bad to worse as I reel from another System Edit assault that floods my body with Mana, turning my Judgment of All Skill on me. I batter the Edit attack aside, shoving will and my own Skill against it, but not before my Penetration Skill pops and my life plummets.
My body is on fire, the Hod is smoking and screaming as the power armor is melted, and my flesh decays as necrotic energy invades me. I liquify and burn, and my tender grasp on the lightning falls aside.
A last ditch maneuever. I haven’t tried it before, but theoretically, if I let the bonds between my molecules slip far enough, I can fall. Right through its grip. I try for it, feeling myself and the Hod shudder.
And stop, for electromagnetic force is only one of the prime forces in the universe. And the damn Administrator is wielding gravity spheres in its mouth, pulling me toward its fangs.
“Wake up, Mikito!” Ali shouts. Its olive face is scrunched up in concentration as it pours plasma into Wex’s torso, trying to push it through the body to hit something important. It must hurt, but the Administrator doesn’t care.
A snap, a tear, and the Hod’s outer armor around an arm falls away as the damage from the elements, from the lightning, from the fires that burn below and the toxins that drip take its toll. It falls—and so does the arm beneath it, as liquified and crisped skin offers no grip. The armor falls for only a second before swinging up, smacking Wex in the face as gravity spheres pull it up.
I’m held in place not by its mouth but the gravity it wields, attacked on all sides. The lightning is gone, only occasional sparks still bursting into life as excess energy keeps firing. I’m semi-immaterial, floating in space, smoke and toxins entering and mixing within my body, leaving a burnt, rotten smell in my throat, in my lungs.
Blood drips and falls, and even my defensive Skills fail. Peasant’s Fury is working overtime to increase regeneration, but I’m taking more damage than it can keep up with. Elastic Skin and Harden help, as do my resistances, but poisons and toxins bypass a lot of the defenses. Wex’s abilities are perfect for dealing with me.
The gravity spheres hold on to me and my mind spins, time and Intelligence stretching out for a few brief seconds. Gravity spheres work in one of two ways. It compresses and increases the mass in a location—making it denser and thus increasing the force of attraction. Or it increases G—the gravitational force itself. My Affinity doesn’t change my mass, and releasing it leaves me still hanging in space. The Administrator isn’t strong enough, physically, to handle an increase in mass, so the spell must increase the gravitational force itself.
Which means…
I trigger a Skill and pull at my sword. It lets me, not caring about the extra swords I conjure. They can cut, but they aren’t that powerful, not with me thrashing in mid-air. But I release my soulbound weapon, letting it fall. And it shoots upward, just like my arm.
To strike Wex in the face. It plunges deep, point first. And then, behind it, the conjured weapons it let me have follow, just as they’re scripted to. The attack isn’t enough to kill it, but having multiple blades plunged into one’s body from below and attempt to come out one’s face is distracting as all hell. Never mind the plasma torch Ali wields.
Wex’s concentration falters for a second, the gravitic spheres blinking off. Anger takes over the Administrator and it twists the spell with its System Edit. Rather than drawing, it repulses. Ali, the swords, myself are launched away at speed.
The floor rushes up to me, shattering my newly renewed Penetration shield. The mixed-metal and stone floor cracks beneath my body, webs of kinetic energy dispersed. Flames from burning corpses gutter, as dust and air billow out from the impact point, before reasserting themselves with vigor.
My head rings, my body shattered. I feel bones grind, a lung pierced, organs ruptured. Frenzy threatens to activate, before it is slapped down by the Administrator. It holds itself in the air, Ali and Mikito caught in its webs as it lowers itself toward me.
I wonder when it caught Ali. Maybe in the half-second when I fell, when it turned its full attention on the Spirit.
A glance at its Health bank, as my Skill tells me we did well. We took out nearly all of it. Just a little more and we would be tearing into its real health. We could win.
I just have to move.
But I can’t. The Hod is broken, my body not much better.
Wex lowers itself, thread spooling from its behind as it speaks. “A good attempt, but futile…”
Wex begins to monologue.
And it freezes when I grin.
***
The golden book comes slamming down at an angle, which is a good thing. I’m too broken to dodge, even if I wanted to. And if I did move beforehand, it’d give Wex time to dodge. As it stands, the damn Administrator manages to get a bunch of threads in the way and its body scurrying to the side.
But the book is huge and it’s moving as fast as a bullet. The amount of time Wex has to dodge is counted in milliseconds. The book keeps moving, crushing the spider into the wall and pushing, turning the Administrator into so much paste. I spot a single leg, uncovered at the side of the wall, twitching. Before the flood of blood and guts push out from the edges of the book itself.
“Squish,” I breathe and let my head flop backward.
Pain, pain that threatened to take me, floods over my consciousness. I ride it out, floating in the sea of agony as the System battles the poisons and toxins still in my body, as it deals with the flames. A refreshing wave of energy flows over me, healing some of the damage. Another wave and my body bubbles and twists, toxins and poisons exploding from my skin. A noxious green, yellow, and black paste bubbles from my body, mixing with the red of my blood.
Above, screams resound from Mikito as the same happens to the Samurai. She’s shocked awake by the cleansing, dropping to the ground a moment later when she releases her steed. The normally calm and unshakeable Samurai blanches when she spots the state I’m in. Not that she looks much better. Her hair’s almost all fallen out and patches of flesh peek out from the damaged clothing she wears, raw and open as the System keeps healing it.
“I… I failed,” Mikito whispers, bowing to me.
“Pish-tosh,” Ali says, floating down. “It caught you unawares with that sleepy poison. Overrode any of the defenses you had by cheating.”
“I should have anticipated. Planned better,” Mikito says, shaking her head. “I could have bought other Skills.”
“Which the Administrator would have likely rendered useless.” The voice that cuts in is thick Glaswegian, barely understandable. Totally at odds with the thin black tie, charcoal-grey-suited figure that floats over to us. Except, you know, the extra long limbs and fingers and the grey and pallid skin with oversized eyes on a famine-shaped body. “It was only when it felt secure that we were assured of its death.”
“Pride before fall. And then, squish.” I lever myself up, laughing a little in pain and sardonic humor. It might be a little hysterical, as my mind and the System try to compartmentalize the memories of burning and rotting alive. Simultaneously.
“Yes. I received your message,” Feh’ral says. His eyes flicker sideways, up to the library and the books I purchased. The signal to it, the locator beacon that allowed it to step across time and space to our side. With a little help. “The Lord is less than pleased with us both. I do not think he will help us further. But he is delighted that the Council is no longer probing his defenses.”