"Scipio has attacked and taken Fort Worth, part of Dunpool's protection against the Skree," Richard Fisk tells Squad as they walk along a platform of Central Station, Anya and Sig to Squad's left and Fisk on his right. "From there he can access the Warrens."
Squad nods. "And if he does that, the Skree could escape. They could overrun the world."
"That's what our projections suggest," Fisk solemnly adds.
"The Warrens long predate humanity and we still don't fully understand what keeps the Skree inside. Even if a path is left open on our side, perhaps the builders designed it in such a way that it won't matter?" Anya suggests hopefully. She looks worried.
"We can't take that risk," Fisk counters as they near the end of an empty platform. "The Skree are a terrible biological weapon. I think they're the last legacy of a vast conflict we couldn't possibly understand – or, I should say, that we don't yet understand. It's my job to understand that conflict and neutralise its effects on us, to tear down the veils of secrecy and protect Samaria from all threats. To that end I'm giving you a mission: go to Dunpool and find out what Scipio is doing."
Squad outlines his requirements. "Certainly. Dunpool is two thousand miles away, across the sundering sea. I'll need—"
A simple gesture from Fisk summons a small bird to his hand. It perches on his finger and he turns to the others. "This is Gaia. She'll transport you and all your equipment to Dunpool."
Sig takes in Fisk's statement about the tiny bird carrying them all two thousand miles, looks first at Fisk's face, then at the little bird on his finger, then back at Fisk's face. He turns to the others. "...I've had some weird conversations before, particularly in my head, but this..."
"Watch," Squad smiles.
Flying from Fisk's finger, the bird approaches one of the station's wide platforms and transforms into its true form, a kelpie. More than a hundred metres long and twenty across, kelpies resemble wingless, metallic dragons or well-built snakes, beautiful in their own way, their eyes a shining electric blue.
"Every spectre gets access to their own private kelpie," Fisk tells Squad. "I wish I could present Gaia under better circumstances than this, but we play the hand we're dealt. Gaia can cover the two thousand miles in twenty hours, so we'll establish contact via sonovox when you reach Dunpool and you can update me on your mission plan. Get some rest onboard." After a strong, brisk handshake, Fisk adds. "Good luck, spectre."
*
Captain Mallory, Sig and Squad sneak as close to Forth Worth as is possible. The captain is a tough, grey-haired soldier with a face like rain-beaten stone; a professional fighter all her days. She turns to the newcomers, who have taken command of the operation.
"Does your DIA friend know what she's doing? That's a powerful magical bombardment she's commanding: at my count over a thousand battlemages, and if it goes wrong..."
"Don't worry," Squad assures her. "Anya's a qualified battlemage, and could have been an officer in the military if she'd chosen that path. She'll break whatever magical barrier's been set up." A crease of worry appears on Squad's handsome face. "Scipio can only have a handful of mages, scrambled together at short notice. These defences are much stronger than I would expect from our reports."
Captain Mallory's face sets in determination. "The only way to find out is to test them."
Sig nods sagely. "Sometimes the only way to get over something is to let it pass through – like a strong curry."
The strike group consists of one thousand battlemages to smash down any resistance and ten thousand elite soldiers to mop up what's left. Scipio's attackers are reputed to number less than a hundred, but they took a fort with a garrison of eight hundred, so they can't be underestimated, and the Skree are a sensitive subject in Dunpool. With each repetition of the name, it grows more and more weighted as if everything terrifying the word calls forth is present. This struggle will be the first public recognition that anything is wrong at Fort Worth, and the higher ups are keen that it should be swift.
Taking out his sonovox, a magical device like a radio, Squad gives his signal to Anya. "Hit them."
The morning sky explodes in a cacophony of colours, as barrage after barrage hits the barriers around the fort and the fort itself. Squad turns to Captain Mallory, whose heart is storming with joy at the onset of battle. "Begin the attack."
As soldiers charge towards the colossal gate, the barrage smashes it inwards and a defender rushes out, clawing at his own head, his skin trailing behind in festoons like rags. Squad leaps through the remains of the gate and sees dead defenders blackened on the ground, knees doubled against their chests like hunched-up rabbits.
A flaming volley shrieks across the ground and, dodging it, Squad locates the enemy mage and fires a bolt of lightning into the man's face, skittling him down a flight of stairs. He kicks an incoming attacker and cuts off her head, then leaps forward and plunges his swords into two others. Impaling the two opponents on his swords, he points them at a group of onrushing foes and, with a sound like cannons firing, explodes their bodies in a deluge of blood and bone, stopping the charge dead and knocking some enemies down with the weight of the gore.
Before any of them has recovered, Squad is in their midst, cutting them down. Sig is there too. "I really feel I've earned these kills," he tells Squad, killing helpless enemies who are slipping on blood or coughing it up. "In some ways, I'm life's greatest hero. They'll never give me a medal, though...because basically everything I do is illegal."
Squad smiles and shakes his head at the psychopathic dwarf. "There's something wrong with you."
Sig shrugs his shoulders as if to say, "Aww, shucks," and smiles at Squad with childlike glee. "I combine a madcap sense of humour with genuine mental illness," he says, smashing his axe through a man's skull and winking.
*
Cleaning her blade with ruthless efficiency, Captain Mallory turns to the approaching Squad. "Have we found Scipio?" he asks her.
"No," Captain Mallory answers. "All the defenders are accounted for, except for Lord Scipio. But he couldn't have escaped." A glance towards the large, circular entrance to the Warrens indicates where she thinks Scipio went.
Squad nods slowly, building himself up for the mission to come. "I'll enter the Warrens, find Scipio and kill him."
"I'll go with you," Captain Mallory agrees. "Let me know what troops you want and I'll have them ready."
"No. That's not viable," Squad shakes his head. "We can't take a large group into the Warrens without alerting the Skree. It'll just be me and my team."
Anya and Sig approach. "Thanks for volunteering us for the suicide mission," Anya jokes.
"It was a lovely consultation," Sig agrees.
Captain Mallory seems determined to go. "You should take me. I've defended these tunnels for thirty years and my experience will be invaluable."
"It's amazing," Sig mouths, staring at Captain Mallory in awe. "You have the confidence of a much younger and more attractive woman."
Captain Mallory casually flicks a punch into Sig's eye. "I'm sorry," she deadpans. "I thought you were an assailant."
"Don't mention it," Sig replies, checking his watery eye. "Friendly fire can happen."
"Erm, yes...friendly fire," Captain Mallory agrees.
Squad, respecting her skill and how she handled the operation, tries to let Mallory down gently. He knows working above the Skree and going down to face them where they live are two very different things. "Captain, I need you and your people up here to secure the fort, identify the bodies and secure us further leads."
This seems to placate the captain. She salutes. "Yes, spectre."
The entrance to the Warrens is a huge, circular, gold-coloured door embedded at an angle into the ground. "I've heard about these," says Anya. "No one knows what this gold-coloured metal is—"
"Gold?" Sig guesses.
Anya gives him a look. "No – you can see it's different."
"No, I can't," Sig retorts. "I haven't been paying attention."
Anya ignores him, running a hand along the smooth golden entrance. "Extraordinary. They're supposed to be unbreakable."
"How do we open it?" Squad asks, addressing the question to either Anya or Captain Mallory.
Captain Mallory points. "The guard post over there. I'll handle that." She turns to them all, resolutely. "Good luck."
They prepare themselves as Captain Mallory makes her way to the guard post. Anya warns the others. "Various forms of Skree have been documented, and there are probably others we don't even know about yet, but most of them are fast and attack in devastating numbers. If we're discovered, we're unlikely to survive, even if we attempt to retreat."
"Sig Hammerhead never retreats!" Sig boldly, and dramatically, declares.
Amused, Squad looks at Sig sceptically. "You run away all the time! Remember that basilisk—"
Sig argues back, smiling as if he knows some deeper truth. "That was a satirical escape. I was 'running' in inverted commas!"
"You'd left the inverted commas behind – they couldn't keep up!" Squad laughs.
Laughing, Sig shakes his head. "You have no eye for satire! I was inhabiting a comedic sketch, the premise of which is that I would run away but, outside the confines of irony, at no point did I actually run—"
"You seemed to be running. Your legs were moving very fast, in the opposite direction of danger."
"That was misdirection. I was lulling it into a false sense of security."
"But instead, you lulled into a true sense of security."
Sig shrugs. "That's my genius."
"...Is it?"
"Yes!"
A clockwork mechanism rolls the massive circular entrance aside, revealing stairs heading down into a dense darkness that envelops the sight after only a few metres. Sig takes a deep breath and prepares to head down. "Well, it looks like it's get-to-it time, I think."
"Stop trying to make that your catchphrase," Anya replies, summoning a ball of light that floats just ahead of her.
Summoning another ball of light, Squad begins the descent. Sig turns to Squad. "Do we actually know that the magical barriers and labyrinths which keep the Skree at bay will let us back out?"
Squad stops for a second. "...I'm sure they're only effective against the Skree."
Anya smiles. "What's that based on, a vision quest?"
"It's based on the fact we're the only ones who can stop Scipio," Squad replies. "So, we don't really have a choice. We're operating on a wing and a prayer."
As they disappear into the gloom and the vast door shuts behind them, Sig puts a friendly hand on Squad's back. "Do you know the Dwarfish word for prayer? Moron."
*
"The Warrens are a place of astounding discoveries, where a passage leads to some place on one day, another the next and disappears the day after," Anya tells them, as they traverse a vast cavern filled with lakes of fading light and long, remorseless shadows.
Hot springs of strange, unearthly light billow up into the darkness, are caught in it but flow on unceasingly from deeper down in the world. Squad is transfixed by the sight of this light flowing from deeper down in the...he's almost tempted to think gloom, but of course the light proves there are worlds of colour and imagination somewhere beyond our reach.
"There's a lot of beauty in this place," Squad says.
"Thanks," Sig replies. "But I'm just not drunk enough to find you attractive."
"Quiet!" Squad warns, stopping to listen to distant movement in one of the many side passages.
"I was joking!" Sig protests. "You're a very attractive man—"
Anya and Sig duck and listen.
Squad's enhanced hearing detects conflict ahead. Carefully, he sneaks forward and the others follow, weapons drawn.
Several creatures spill out of a passage, tearing each other to shreds. The two largest are as big as horses and walking on at least six legs, with several spike-like limbs protruding from odd places on their pink hides. A group of smaller, spider-rat hybrids, each about three feet tall, dart around the larger combatants, taking bites and slashing acidic limbs at each other.
"These Skree are fighting each other," Anya whispers. "There's something wrong here."
Some of the spider-rat variety, dark and stealthy, scurry out of the shadows, spitting acid at the group. Sig barely avoids one of these, which sails right over his head. He watches the giant acid-spitting critters. "That is both disgusting and cool."
It's hard to see this type and, while engaging one Skree, Squad is surprised by another, which flies almost invisibly through the air and slashes straight at his chest, but he evades at the last moment and is caught on the shoulder instead. His quality armour stops most of the force but, touching the wound with a slight grunt, Squad is surprised, unused to being harmed; flicking away the acid with a gloved hand, he turns and cuts the attacker in half.
The formidable Skree are mostly killing themselves, and this is only a fraction of their potential billions, but Squad is still glad the larger, dark pink pair are busy fighting each other. He turns in time to see Anya change her hand into a flamethrower, pushing several dark Skree back, but Sig is nowhere to be seen.
With a ferocious howl, one of the larger Skree punctures its opponent's hide with two of its spiky limbs and tears it apart in a hurricane of blood and acid. Squad cuts one of the little crawlers out of mid-air and turns to see the larger beast charging straight at him. He dodges its massive acid throw and shoots a fiery blast at it, but it only slows the Skree down. On the backfoot, Squad readies his swords for defence more than attack.
Before the Skree can charge Squad down, a compact ball of muscle launches through the air towards it and Squad hears Sig's shout. "This! Is! My! Moment!"
Twirling his mighty axe in mid-air, Sig slams headfirst into the Skree and slides harmlessly down its side, onto the floor. The Skree, completely unharmed, turns to Sig who, following his ineffectual attack, rises sheepishly, shrugs and offers an olive branch to the beast. "...At least we'll both get an anecdote out of this."
The beast snarls and a spiked limb smashes through the air, where Sig's head was a moment before. "Alright, we'll do this the hard way then," Sig grumbles, ducking another attack and slashing through a pincer leg. The leg is severed, throwing the Skree temporarily off-balance, and Sig quickly clambers up another leg and launches himself at the Skree's neck, hacking into it.
Effortlessly, and with disturbing speed, the Skree's head turns at almost 180 degrees and the creature bites at Sig's head; with full contact, it would take off the dwarf's head and half of his torso, but Sig twists so that most of the bite misses and the rest is absorbed on his heavy shoulder armour. Still, the armour is pierced and Sig switches his axe to his left hand and continues pummelling the neck and head, while the Skree tries yanking him off its back with the bite's loose grip on his metal armour.
Striking frantically, Sig feels the bite sink deeper and disgustedly muses. "Ah! I hope this thing isn't laying eggs in me!" After a moment, adding. "This really shouldn't be erotic."
An attack caves in the Skree's skull and it collapses to the ground with a mighty crash, sending Sig sprawling. Styling it out, he converts the fall into a roll, rises to his feet and points dramatically at Squad.
"Yeah! Lap up my success, bitch! Lap it up like a thirsty mule!"
"...And so modest, too," Anya adds.
Squad smiles and walks towards Sig, but one second the spectre is there and by the next step he's gone, disappeared into thin air.
*
Squad appears in a vast plaza of pure, cold light with Lord Scipio standing just across from him. When he first sees his mentor, Squad's face changes and a boy's eyes peep out from among the man's features, but the look quickly rewrites itself and both men charge, clashing with the zest of hurricanes in the centre of the plaza.
Scipio looks as if he's going to say something but doesn't: a flame blazing silently from his eyes. His sword moves with impossible speed to combat Squad's two, batting aside his apprentice's attacks and closing in, only to find Squad has come up with a last-ditch defence. Is Squad imagining the look of pride in Scipio's eyes?
Sensing an opportunity, Squad lunges forward and Scipio traps both his swords, leaps into the air and kicks Squad fully in the face, breaking his nose and sending him spiralling back. Scipio quickly descends on him and Squad barely fends off the powerful strikes raining down, then darts to the side and rotates his wrist, swinging his sword from an unusual angle at Scipio's face. The older spectre flings his head back but the sword grazes his cheek, drawing blood.
Rejuvenated, Squad stands as Scipio takes a long package from his back and opens it, a strange whispering filling Squad's head. Seizing his chance to attack, Squad moves forward – or tries to. His thoughts are magnetized by the artifact Scipio holds in his hands. He hears his own swords drop to the ground and is frozen in place as Scipio moves forward, sword levelled.
***
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