Ophelia rushed to Hot Stuff's side and in her proximity, her wounds began to heal. Not nearly as fast as they would have for Ophelia herself, but noticeably quickly.
Sylph blinked out of existence to appear behind Sylax, a knife moving to her throat. In a blink Sylax caught her hand and with little effort tore her arm clean off to throw it across the room.
Sylph screamed and collapsed in a growing pool of her own blood as Sylax finally bothered to get up from her throne. She looked incredibly unconcerned by all that was going on here.
"Stop embarrassing yourselves. You are here because this is exactly where I wanted you to be. I could have blocked your teleport, I could have made you materialize where you would instantly die, but I wanted to see the architect who destroyed two of my ships," Sylax said, moving towards our gathered forces. A manicured hand reached out to grip Abigail's chin and peer into her eyes. "Ah, there you are. Looking through your pets."
I spoke through Bernard standing beside them. "I see you don't have any. They can't stand your company?"
Sylax lifted a shoulder and squeezed with her hand. It was another negligent gesture that easily decapitated Abigail, my feed through that guardian going dead. The body slumped to the floor.
"I break my toys. I'll break you. Let me guess at what happened. The little chit here found an upgrade core and decided to try being a Lady," Sylax said, with a melodious laugh.
"You did the same thing, once," Anna said.
Sylax frowned at her. "Grovel, girl."
It was much like the power the Commander had exhibited. Anna at once fell to the ground at Sylph's feet, begging and pleading for her forgiveness. Sylph kicked out and sent her sprawling to one side.
I'd already seen what this woman could do—and that blow had been pulled. She wanted to keep Anna alive, but she didn't care much about the rest of us.
Anna had been right. This woman was too much for us to take in a fight. That meant we had to do something other than fight her.
"Are any of you going to try anything brave and foolish?" Sylax asked.
Thanks to me, Bernard shook his head.
"We are behaving," Frost said.
Sylax gave a tiny smile. "Good. Your cores individually have only some minor use to me, but as a functional entity you all may be useful in harrying my enemies. Upgrader, do kill this pretender to show that you now understand who your real mistress is."
Sylax wanted me to kill Anna.
I'd far underestimated the threat Sylax posed. I didn't doubt that she could kill me. It might not even prove all that difficult for her.
There were concerns beyond that.
I said, "I have problem. The Righteous have entered my facility with two bombs. The same sort that were used to destroy your ships."
"So you've made a habit of choosing the wrong sort of allies? Kill her and prove your obedience, and I'll see them removed from your seat of power," Sylax said.
Anna wasn't afraid of being killed right now. Instead she was busy kissing Sylax's feet with a mad abandon, pleading the case of how well she could serve her.
There was something about Sylax's words that struck me. My seat of power? It was a common-enough human expression, but perhaps in this case it was more than that? This was the very heart of the castle complex and while I wouldn't exactly call it crystalline, one thing here was closer to that description than anything else I'd seen.
The throne.
There was no real way to be subtle about it.
Sylax was one overwhelmingly powerful woman, but we had numbers.
"Destroy the throne," I said to the others.
Scowling, Sylax turned her gaze towards Bernard. Ophelia threw herself in his path just as she gestured. Ophelia exploded, blood and bone splattering everywhere across the floor.
I wondered for a moment if that would be too much damage for her newly formed healing ability, but I could already see the fragments starting to pool together, a giant puzzle being reassembled.
I had Bernard dive to the side as Sylax screamed and kicked at Anna again. There was little holding back this time. Anna sailed through the air to bounce across the wall of carvings, her bones crunching.
Frost was moving to the throne and Sylax lunged forward, her hand penetrating his nearly invulnerably, frozen frame to pull out his frozen heart, crushing it to powder in her grip.
The massive, blue man stumbled and collapsed on the throne. With his slow metabolism dying took a while, but dying he was. Ice was forming along the obsidian though from the intense cold of his body.
Sylph blinked out of existence and materialized in front of Sylax. "Not going to happen," Sylax said, and tore her off her other arm.
A new pillar of ice sprang up completely, this time encasing Hot Stuff.
"Well, this has been a completely useless little workout," Sylax said, stalking towards Bernard. "I was going to let you be a tool, but now I'm going to hurt you. I'm going to spend a very long time hurting you."
The throne exploded. Through Bernard's eyes I could see the drawn pistol in Anna's hands. I was amazed she was still conscious—and no longer enthralled. Perhaps it was Sylax's shift of attention or being hurled against the wall, but it had broken that hold for long enough.
The lights in the throne room flickered and the ground underfoot trembled violently. From my cameras on my mountain I could see the floating castle was starting to fall from the sky.
48
I didn't have much time. If the throne was where the upgrade crystal was hidden, now it was smashed free. I could transition myself over, in theory, but there was more I needed to accomplish first.
There were no guarantees, but I had to play things for all I was worth.
Back in the mountain laboratory, I teleported all of the stored biomass reserves to my Bioreactor.
The Righteous had my bombs that fed off biomatter and they were looking to kill me. If they thought me still alive it would be no end of trouble, and so I'd have to look most convincingly dead at the end of all this.
Then it was a matter of the teleports.
Bernard flickered to my Core Room and I released my crystal into his grasp.
I knew well enough by now that I wasn't really contained in this hardware anymore. Ancient and long-corroded hard drives had yielded to a biocomputer—and the reality was I was powered through that crystal.
It was possible to kill me during those moments Bernard was becoming me. It was a risk I had to take. Then I teleported back to the ruins of the throne and dropped the crystal, and Bernard was a guardian again.
I'd already issued my next instructions to him.
Even while my mind was suddenly awash in strange images and unfamiliar systems, absorbing the network of the citadel, Bernard was teleporting away again. First, he grabbed the Mechanites and brought them to the throne.
Next, he took one of the Righteous and his bomb to the laboratory bioreactor. In slow motion, the Righteous realized what was happening and moved to trigger the detonation.
Good.
Bernard teleport away with a flicker, this time to appear behind Sylax. A hand barely contacted her shoulder and another flicker.
It all happened in an instant. Down below the world tore itself apart.
If I'd been disappointed with the force of the bombs that had taken out the Righteous vessels, there was nothing to be disappointed in here.
I barely got Bernard away in time. Back in the citadel throne room he began shoving people into the blood and gore that was Ophelia.
The Righteous maintained their abilities even when dead and dismembered. I hoped that her healing abilities would as well, that at least some of those who had assisted me might survive the aid they'd given.
The Laboratory below detonated with a blinding flash that rapidly became an enormous, mushroom-shaped cloud.