“Thanks, Knighthawk,” I mumbled as Loophole shrank to get out of the grip of the crabs.
I reached for her, and—like before—she shrank me as soon as I touched her tiny form. I was ready for it this time, and lunged for her as soon as I was tiny. I crashed into her again, grabbing at the pouch around her neck. I felt the thin metal rectangle through the leather inside. The motivator!
“Persistent little idiot, aren’t you?” she growled at me as the two of us, still tiny, grappled across the floor.
I grunted, managing to roll us up beside the crack-chasm in the ground. Then she head-butted me—and it stung. The room shook and I gasped, letting go—of both her and the pouch.
She rose, standing before me, the crack in the ground behind her. “I know his plan,” she said. “Epic of all Epics. Sounds like a great deal to me. I let him gather the pieces, then I make off with them. Go up and pay a visit to old Calamity myself.”
I looked up at her, dazed, my nose bleeding.
“I…,” I said, gasping.
“Yes?”
I panted. “I…suppose this…would be an awkward time to ask for an autograph.”
“What?”
I threw the dust into her face, then—as she cursed—I slammed my shoulder into her, grabbing the pouch while simultaneously knocking her backward. The cord snapped, leaving the pouch in my fingers. She fell into the chasm-crack, and I rocked there, on the edge, almost following her in.
She dropped to the bottom, where she hit with a soft thump. “You idiot!” she called up. “You realize that at this size”—she stopped, sniffling for a second—“at this size, a fall isn’t harmful at all. You could fall off a building, and—and— Oh, hell—”
I jumped away from the crack. A very faint sneeze came from behind.
Followed by a gut-wrenching splat. I winced, peeking at the mess of pulped flesh and broken bones that Loophole had become by growing too quickly inside far too small a space. Parts of her burbled out the top of the crack, like rising dough that had outgrown its bowl.
I swallowed, nauseous, then stumbled to my feet and pulled the motivator from the pouch. A bit of dust and one sneeze later, both it and I were back to regular size—though my Gottschalk was nowhere to be found.
I grabbed my handgun instead. “Mizzy, I’ve got the motivator,” I said over the line. “Where are you?”
I stumbled through the caverns underneath Ildithia, passing walls blasted open with the tensors, leaving scattered piles of sand. The glowsticks gave the tunnels a radioactive cast. I stopped, steadying myself during another tremor, then continued toward the nook where Mizzy had dragged Cody. Was that them ahead?
No. I pulled up short. Light poured through a rent in the air, like cut flesh where the skin had curled to the sides. Through it I saw another cavern, this one lit by a lively orange light. Inside, Firefight struggled against Loophole.
I gaped, watching the woman I’d just killed shrink and run from him while causing a set of falling rock chips to become boulders. Firefight zipped backward, his flames heating the rocks to a reddish orange.
I looked down the passage and glimpsed other rents in the air. Megan had been pushing herself, it seemed. I gulped and continued toward Mizzy. A flash of light to my left illuminated figures struggling in the shadows—a section of the cavern network beyond where Mizzy had placed her glowsticks.
Prof suddenly appeared a little ways down the cavern, forming like light coalescing. He was using Obliteration’s powers to teleport. Sparks! Even as he appeared, a section of the roof collapsed. Not an illusion this time, an actual rockfall, which Prof was forced to catch with a forcefield above his head. He bellowed with rage, holding up the fallen rocks, then sent a few lances of light off into the distance.
They’d both been forced, it seemed, to grasp for dangerous resources. Prof using his hidden teleportation device; Megan reaching further and further into other realities. How far had she gone? What if I lost her, as I’d lost Prof?
Steady, I thought at myself. She’d been certain she could handle it. I had to trust her. I ducked my head and scrambled down a side tunnel, eventually spotting bloodstains on the stones. I rounded another corner, then stumbled to a halt as I almost tripped over Mizzy and Cody.
He lay on the ground with eyes closed, his face pale. Mizzy had needed to pull off most of the tensor suit to get at his wounds; it was piled in a heap nearby, the harmsway portion detached, but with wires extended to his arm. Mizzy yelped when she saw me, then snatched the motivator from my limp fingers. She plugged it back into the vest.
“Knighthawk,” I said over the line, “you really need to secure those motivators better.”
“It’s a prototype,” he grumbled. “I built it to have quick access so I could tweak motivators as needed. How was I to know Jonathan would yank the things out?”
Mizzy glanced at me as the harmsway glowed softly. “Sparks, David! You look like you fell off a cliff or something.”
I wiped my nose, which was still bleeding. My face was starting to swell from the beating I’d taken. I slumped down next to Mizzy, exhausted. “How’s the fight going?”
“Your girlfriend is kinda amazing,” Mizzy said grudgingly. “Abraham keeps getting locked up in forcefields, but she gets him out. Together they’re keeping Prof busy.”
“Does she seem…”
“Crazy?” Mizzy said. “Can’t tell.” She looked to Cody, whose wounds were—blessedly—closing. “He’ll be out for a while yet. Hope the other two can last. I’m out of boom-packs too, I’m afraid. So maybe—”
Someone exploded into existence next to us. A sudden burst of light, silent, but stunning if you watched it. I shouted, falling backward, and reached for the handgun strapped to my leg. It wasn’t Prof. Unfortunately, that left only one other option.
Obliteration turned, his trench coat sweeping the side of the cavern. He looked from Mizzy to Cody to me, studying us with bespectacled eyes. “I’ve been summoned,” he said.
“Um, yeah,” I said, hands trembling as I held my gun on him. “Prof. He has a motivator built from your flesh.”
“To destroy the city?” Obliteration asked, head cocked. “She made a bomb beyond those she gave me?”
“Those she gave you?” I asked. “So…you do have more?”
“Of course,” Obliteration said calmly. “You are fallen, David Charleston.” He shook his head, then disappeared, leaving behind an image made of ceramic that broke apart and faded.
I relaxed. Then Obliteration appeared beside me, hand on my gun. It was suddenly hot, and I shouted, fingers singeing as I dropped the weapon. Obliteration kicked it aside, kneeling next to me.
“?‘And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come,’?” he whispered. He flinched as, distantly, Prof must have teleported. Then he grinned, closing his eyes. Sparks. He seemed to like the feeling. “The hour has come for you to die and for this city to be destroyed. I regret that I cannot give you more time.” He placed his hand against my forehead, and I felt warmth coming from his skin.
“I’m going to kill Calamity,” I blurted out.
Obliteration opened his eyes. The heat dampened. “What did you say?”
“Calamity,” I said. “He’s an Epic, and he’s behind all of this. I can kill him. If you want to bring about Armageddon, wouldn’t that be the perfect way? Destroy this terrible…um, angel? Creature? Spirit?”
That sounded religious, right?
“He is far away, little man,” Obliteration said, contemplative. “You will never reach him.”
“You can teleport there though, right?”
“Impossible. Calamity is too distant for me to form a proper picture of its location in my mind, and I cannot go to a place I haven’t seen or cannot visualize.”
How did you get in here, then? Sparks. Had he been watching us somehow? That didn’t matter. Hand still trembling, I reached into my pocket and unhooked my mobile. I brought it out and tur
ned to him, displaying Regalia’s image of Calamity. “What if you have a picture?”
Obliteration whispered softly, eyes wide. “?‘And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition….’?” He blinked, looking at me. “Again you surprise me. If you defeat your former master, and impress me in so doing, I will grant your desires.”
He exploded into a flash again—and this time he didn’t immediately return. I groaned, leaning against the wall, shaking my burned hand.
“Calamity! What is up with that man?” Mizzy asked, sliding her sidearm into its holster. It took her three tries, her hand was trembling so much. “I thought we were dead.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I half expected him to murder me for the audacity of claiming I wanted to kill Calamity. I figured it was even odds that he worshipped the thing instead of hating it.” I peeked around the corner, looking down a tunnel that shone with rents and rips into other dimensions.
“Abraham just went down!” Knighthawk said in my ear. “Repeat, Abraham is down. Jonathan sheared his arm off—rtich attached—with a forcefield.”
“Sparks!” I said. “Megan?”
“Hard to see,” Knighthawk said. “I’ve only got two crab cameras left. I think you’re losing this fight, guys.”
“We were losing it before we started,” I said, turning and crawling to the tensor suit. “Mizzy, some help.”
She looked at the suit, then at me, eyes widening. She scrambled over, then helped me start putting it on. “Cody should be stable now; that harmsway is something.”