The large research facility used by Markowitz has seen better days: cracks run down the walls like dead lightning bolts and Squad estimates that only about half the building is in current use. It's possible the appearance is being used to deflect attention, because the facility is on the outskirts of Hellac, capital city of Hellac Arn and seat of the government of The Arnlands.
Anya, Sig and Squad have been watching the building from an apartment across the road for several hours and no one has entered or left the premises, at least from what they can tell. In his experience, Squad doesn't rule out an underground tunnel or even an entire facility under the ground.
There's tension in the air because they don't know what they're facing and it looks like they're going to have to go in to find out. Sig turns to Anya. "If Scipio's in there, what chance do we have against a trained-to-perfection super soldier?"
"I don't know," Anya answers, honestly.
Sig chuckles. "Well, thanks for the pep talk."
"If you were alone and he was here right now, would you fight him?" Anya asks.
"That's academic."
Anya laughs. "If he was an academic, you'd probably fight him."
"Yeah, and kick his ass," Sig chuckles.
"Quiet, you two. I see something," Squad warns.
A man in a long, gleaming dark blue trench coat stops in front of the research building. He seems to turn towards Squad and the others, despite their hidden position, though only for a moment. Squad catches sight of dark sunglasses, blue gloves and short, black hair, then the man turns and punches through the facility's heavy door.
Squad leaps from the window, telling the others. "Follow me as best you can." He lands, rolls and sprints, knifing through the air at full pelt. Doctor Markowitz is his best current lead on Scipio's whereabouts and Squad doesn't intend to let him escape or be killed.
It's as Squad thought: the inside of the facility is perfectly maintained, in contrast with the shoddy external appearance. There's audible fighting and Squad draws his swords, creeping along a corridor with many doors on either side. After a blast, the building's magical lights black out and Squad's path becomes much gloomier, though he can still see some details.
From one of the doorways, a strong hand grips Squad's wrist and another grabs his throat, slamming the spectre into a wall with concussive force, bringing down plaster and other materials. At first Squad thinks it's the intruder, because this man is wearing a similar outfit but his is red, not blue. After a second, Squad feels his neck starting to snap and quickly kicks out at the attacker's arm, breaking the hold on Squad's weapon arm; swinging the freed weapon at the man's head, he's astonished by the speed of the dodge and is forced on the defensive as the attacker pulls out a sword.
The sword strikes at him like a cobra and Squad jerks his head in both directions, barely avoiding the hits each time. Dropping his shoulder, Squad evades an impact in that area and quickly lashes his own blade out, striking the attacker's arm but the man spins and, using the momentum of Squad's attack, kicks the spectre in the midriff, almost doubling him over. He's on Squad in that instant but there's a blast and he's thrown forward, over his target.
Anya hit him with a magic projectile, and she's accompanied by Sig. Squad holds up a hand. "Stay back and just cover me. This one has superhuman strength and speed."
"I have superhuman enthusiasm," Sig counters. "But you don't see me bragging about it!"
"Yes, you do," Anya reminds him. "All the time."
Squad and the attacker clash in a storm of steel, and the spectre spins, exposing his back to a strike; the man attacks with stunning speed but Squad is slightly faster, slapping the strike away with one blade and, as he completes his spin, cutting through the man's midriff with the other. Then he plunges forward and puts both swords through the attacker's head, cutting through futuristic sunglasses wrapped around the face.
While Squad looks down at his downed opponent, Sig walks over, takes off the man's coat and gently covers the corpse with it. This is oddly touching and Sig explains his actions while shaking his head at the man's misfortune. "The cyber-ninja thing isn't cool anymore. He's got enough to contend with, being dead, without the added humiliation of wearing last season's outfit."
Alarms and sounds of fighting in the near distance attract their attention.
*
Home. He feels its hook inside him every moment, yet Mazer pushes on. He's wearing a cloak to hide his Scrovengi identity and the human girl, whose name is Lu, is similarly disguised. He half expects her to be wise and all-knowing beyond her years, because of his speculation that she's the new holder of the Mandate of Heaven.
She carries the weight of lives on her back, and he feels responsible for her. He's responsible for all of them, the memories or emotions or whatever they are that live inside her. He's a soldier, not an extinguisher of cultures. Still, he hasn't found the words to describe this protection to her, to cross the frontier of words and say, "I'll get you to your people, no matter the path."
The Scrovengi attack has stormed through this part of the Jade Empire for several hundred miles in all directions, so they're heading south, towards Ryoko, the first city beyond Scrovengi control. By sticking to backroads, they have avoided incident so far and Mazer's conviction to protect the girl remains untested, so he suspects she doesn't trust him.
"Are you tired?" he asks her.
She makes a little noise and shrugs.
He smiles and shakes his head. "Was that strange, non-committal cat noise supposed to tell me something?"
She rounds on him. "Why did you invade our country?"
"Because I was ordered to."
"That's not a very good reason."
"It's the only one I've got, so move on." Mazer takes out a turkey he caught earlier, but Lu's disgust is obvious. "You need to eat."
"I don't eat meat."
"It's alright – I smashed its face off."
"You're a barbarian!"
Mazer laughs, then breathes in deeply, looking out over the rolling fields and white flames of cloud stretching into the distance. "The country is very beautiful."
"Yeah. It's like the city but without all the stuff."
Shaking his head, Mazer again breathes deeply. "I feel revitalised."
"You sound like a cult leader or a serial killer."
"I'm not a cult leader!"
"...But you could be a serial killer?"
"I'm not—"
Sensing something, Mazer pulls Lu down a slight incline by the side of the road. A line of trees on the other side marks the start of a large forested area, and it was from here that Mazer's special forces instincts alerted him to movement.
"What is it?" Lu whispers, but Mazer lifts a finger in warning.
Shadows are moving amongst the trees, heading their way and Mazer's hand drifts to his blade. Without waiting, Lu takes off towards the shadows, shouting. "Help! I'm being kidnapped!"
Annoyed, Mazer takes off after her and gains swiftly. The shadows move even faster in their direction and intercept Lu just before Mazer catches up. It's a six-strong patrol of Scrovengi soldiers.
Lu skids to a halt, in horror and the Scrovengi look at her, then at Mazer. The leader speaks. "So, you've found one. Good." He draws his sword and advances on Lu.
"Wait!" Mazer calls and the Scrovengi halts, suspicious.
"What squad are you with?" Mazer stares him down and the soldier presses him. "Are you SAIMR?"
It looks like SAIMR are sending mobile groups through recently captured territory, rounding up any stragglers from the Jade Empire. They're probably killing them or putting them in prison camps. Mazer's disposition towards these people hardens. Normal Scrovengi soldiers are too honourable to do this kind of work – Mazer doubts they would even permit it, if they knew.
Patience gone, the soldier points at Mazer aggressively. "That's it—" A throwing axe plunges through the soldier's head and, before he falls, Mazer cuts down another one of his people. Funny, it feels just like killing a non-Scrovengi.
A mage tries casting a spell at Mazer but it's nullified by his magic dampener, and he decapitates her before she can try again. Using his claws to deflect two knives, Mazer slices through the back of an enemy's knee and, when the man drops to the floor, spins around behind him and cuts his throat so hard he ends up holding the head. He slaps a charging opponent's sword out of the way and slams the decapitated head, with its three Scrovengi horns, through the enemy's neck.
A kick knocks Mazer into the dirt and the last enemy lands on him before he can recover, pressing a sword down at his neck with his full body weight. They struggle intensely and, boosted by the Scrovengi's massive bulk, the sword slowly presses down, but Mazer quickly darts his head to the side, allows the sword to strike the earth and elbows the opponent in the face as his head drops with the blade. This throws the last attacker to the ground on his back and Mazer quickly sits on the soldier to stop him escaping, then plunges his sword through his chest with all his might, pulling it out with a sickening crunch and a fountain of blood.
Getting to his feet, Mazer looks around and spots Lu running as quickly as she can down the path. He overtakes her and spins her around. "Are you trying to get us killed?"
"Just one of us."
The girl stares him down defiantly and her eyes seem to tell the many different stories of war. He lets her go, his anger disintegrating.
*
Squad rushes into a large room, its walls lined with man-sized glass containers, each holding a sleeping person. Most have been destroyed and their inhabitants killed in their sleep. In the middle of the room, the blue-gloved intruder is fighting two people similar to him – they're also almost identical to the so-called cyber-ninja Squad just killed with great effort.
The intruder flips over an attack, sweeps his sword down to cut through the opponent's ankles, then angles it up to slice off another attacker's head. Before the first attacker, who now has no feet, can hit the ground, the intruder turns and plunges a sword through the back of his head. Calmly, he looks up and slowly advances on a grey-haired figure in a white lab coat, presumably Doctor Markowitz.
Rushing forward, Squad stalls ten feet short of the two men, as the intruder holds a blade to Markowitz's throat, looking up at Squad. "Hello, spectre."
Sensing Anya and Sig entering the room behind him, Squad engages with the intruder to keep him busy. "Why do you use that word?"
"Spectre?" the man smiles. "Because that's what you are. Please stop there," he says, slightly louder for the benefit of Anya and Sig, who halt their advance.
"What do you want?" Squad asks.
"Think of this as an audition, orchestrated by The Spider. This man created me," he says, gripping Markowitz's shoulder. "But it's time for me to move on, and become a spectre."
"You need to either be trained since childhood, be picked as a candidate from special forces or have an extraordinary gift," Squad tells him.
"I have an extraordinary gift," says the man.
Fear lances through Markowitz's eyes and he protests, in a deeply accented voice. "Don't listen to him! Kill him! He's not human—"
The intruder grips Markowitz's neck, cutting off his words, then turns his wraparound shades up to Squad with a smile. "My name is Boon and he's right about me not being entirely human." It's obvious that Markowitz doesn't want this secret to come out, because he struggles ineffectively against the powerful grip on his neck. "I'm a synthetic human, a fusion of organic, machine and magic. His perfect weapon." He's referring to Doctor Markowitz. Boon gestures to the corpses around the facility. "All of these people were created by Doctor Markowitz. All of them are like me, but I'm his perfect design—"
"Scipio..." Squad mutters.
Boon nods, then his eyes focus in a hard stare. "Yes. Lord Scipio is what sets me apart from my...siblings. I suppose you could call him my father. He was the primary template used to design my instincts and fighting ability. Markowitz used me for his Hellac ultra-nationalist purposes: assassinations, sabotage, intimidation of dissidents. Everything you could want from a super soldier."
"And yet here we are," Squad replies.
"Here we are," Boon smiles grimly. "I wanted to get away from his parochial world but he sent some of my brothers and sisters after me." He indicates the corpses littering the floor. "The only way for me to get out is for him to no longer be operational, and the one you call The Spider whispered in my head, showing me the way."
For a moment, Markowitz frees his throat enough to bargain with Squad. "I'll build you an army," he shouts, before he's cut off by Boon.
"He could probably do that," Boon says. "It's part of the reason I want him out of the picture. I don't want any rivals. He's a genius. A pathetic, snivelling, prejudiced little genius but a genius nonetheless. Take me to The Spider. I want to meet him in person."
Squad shakes his head and smiles. "No one talks to The Spider—" As he says this, Squad feels a new magi-graph message and, as he takes it out and reads it, resolve appears in his features. "It's from The Spider," he tells Boon and Markowitz, approaching them quickly.
Markowitz, held down, can't react and Boon chooses not to; Squad plunges his sword through Doctor Markowitz's heart, then rips it out again as Boon slits the man's throat so powerfully it rips the head clean off.
Boon stares down at the corpse, his eyes full of rapture and scorn, then Squad says. "Let's go meet The Spider."
*
At the peak of the highest mountain in a vast mountain range on the far northern continent of Jona, stands an immense and terrible statue. Like a giant beast climbing a building, it clings to the peak for over a hundred metres and underneath this, drilled into a plateau near the top, is a shrine with a great golden door. Shrieks of wind mount the air and rush screaming off the plateau to oblivion, accompanied by torrents of snow.
Lord Scipio strides towards the shrine like a decisive wave, longsword held loosely by his side, almost dragging through the snow. Twenty metres ahead, two flaming portals appear from nowhere and a demon emerges from each. Servants of The Paingod, each is over seven feet tall and has hardened skin like sleek black armour, but underneath this is a red-hot core flowing like lava between the black ribs of armour.
Scipio charges and slides on his knees through the snow, smashing his sword into the one on his right-hand side, knocking it to the floor, then deflecting a downward curved attack from the second demon, slicing diagonally through its head; before the first can recover, he spins around and decapitates it in one motion, then rushes towards the golden door.
As he gets there, he's intercepted on his unarmed side by a demon like a great black and red lion but, quickly shifting his body, Scipio catches it as it leaps and, though it must weigh over a ton, slams it onehandedly into the ground. Lifting up his sword, he plunges it through the creature's heart and, in one fluid motion, spins to the door and smashes it open with a blast of concussive energy from his open palm.
He charges inside, where dozens of humanoid demons are crowded in a narrow passageway; fireballs fly his way but he deflects them and throws back a wave of concussive energy that flings enemies aside and tears them apart. Then he rushes them, though the space is so narrow that he's basically a hurricane of steel, cutting down demon after demon.
When they're all dead, he calmly walks up to a blood-red crystal floating in a central altar at the end of the passageway and slashes through it, producing an emptied sigh of crumbling energy as the light goes out. He topples the altar, kicks through a wooden chest of offerings and smashes his sword through another, scattering objects across the floor as he calmly but swiftly exits to the snowy plateau.
Turning around, his gaze glides over the gigantic statue as if waiting for something. Above the lash and riot of the wind, sounds of an avalanche can be heard as the statue breaks apart and The Paingod, one-eyed, monstrous and covered in chains, roars his way to freedom and rears up like a tense flame. He looks pissed off.
The Paingod tears a hundred metre chain from the mountainside and smashes into the plateau, where Scipio was a moment before. He's definitely pissed off. The chains are attached to The Paingod's arms, but extreme piercings also cut all the way through his massive shoulders.
Scipio charges to the doorway and, instead of running inside, runs up the door and the mountainside above, slashing debris out of the way as he runs at a sheer vertical angle. Mistake. The Paingod gazes down, opens his thousand-tooth, circular mouth and fires a beam of red light down onto Scipio, who raises a barrier just in time but is slowed by the attack, almost coming to a halt fifty feet up the steep mountainside
His barrier weakening, Scipio leaps to the side and lands on The Paingod's arm, vaulting a manacle the size of a wagon and slashing at the arm as he goes, strange blood flying around him. Horrifying, deformed creatures form on the skin of The Paingod and attack with savage intensity, slowing the former spectre down. He hacks off limbs and new ones grow, the creatures solid but moving like liquid. Freezing them and running on, Scipio hears them break free a few seconds later but doesn't turn back.
The Paingod flings his arm up, like someone trying to flip something off their forearm and catch it; Scipio is launched over a hundred metres in the air, above The Paingod's head. Simultaneously, the god prepares two clever attacks: he opens his circular mouth wide, forming a large many-toothed pit, and he swats at Scipio as he's falling, so that if the swipe fails then the distracted ex-spectre will fall into the waiting mouth.
Sensing he's close enough, Scipio pulls the object retrieved at Guggenheim from his back and, for a moment, The Paingod seems to be distracted. This is all the time the former spectre needs, shaping his body into an aerodynamic bullet, sword held out in front of him, and flying straight down, adjusting his course at the last minute to miss the mouth and slam straight into The Paingod's eye, sword-first.
There's a horrendous roar and a torrent of energy flows up from the wound, passing from The Paingod into the sword and then on to Scipio, who tenses up with the effort. Maintaining a hold on the sword with his left hand, Scipio slowly raises his right and, clearly taxed by the effort of whatever's taking place, slams it down into the hilt of a sword like a man striking a detonator with force.
*
By their campfire, the Orc tribesmen look to the great peaks of the north and are shaken as the atmosphere explodes in a cacophony of colour, red and purple light spiralling into the sky and dancing in motes of pure power. The next day they head south.
***
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