“I’m bored,” Evie complained. It turned out a half mile long slug didn’t move very quickly.
“We’ve got a few more minutes. Bob, how close to being ready are you?” asked Vic.
“A few more minutes,” grumbled one of the few drones not rushing back and forth to complete the construction of their redoubt. Sloped walls had been thrown up by bots equipped with bulldozer rams and other bots had swarmed over them spraying some kind of polymer over the hasty ramparts that solidified into something harder than concrete in a few seconds.
The team was now surrounded by a fortress that was bristling with ever more turrets as the bots hurriedly bolted them in place. Plasma weapons, lasers, good old fashioned rotary cannons and artillery were being installed at a pace that most humans would find dazzling.
“Arty is up, watch your ears!” called a passing spider drone as a deafening whump was unleashed as the first battery opened fire. Clouds of dust flew out around the guns as drones rushed to fetch more boxed ammunition from the Earth side of the portal. Another whump echoed out a second or so later.
“Automatic artillery?” asked Flash over the internal comms.
“Semi-automatic but pretty much,” Bob replied happily. “Time to target is thirty seconds and the fire will be walked back to weaken the little ones escorting the momma.”
“I’ll start bringing some rocks down. Vic, Evie, can you drop your big hitters? Reg hold fire on the black holes for now, we’ll keep them in reserve. Anyone need a pee?” said John.
“Piss off John,” said Sam as waves of clones began rushing forwards, unleashing blazing blasts of energy from her eyes into the dust cloud sweeping towards the tiny enclave of humanity on this alien world.
Booms echoed out, muted automatically by their armour, and new dust clouds billowed out, knocking the existing ones into whirlpools of smoke and fire. John had begun bringing down his big rocks. Not terribly big rocks by his current standards. They were only a hundred tons, not the thousands of ton rocks he could be dropping. He was trying not to accidentally wreck Bob’s new toy, at least somewhat.
He narrowed his ruby eyes and looked through the boiling miasma of dust and steam obscuring the first wave of the counter attack. The little ones serving as escorts were dying in droves as the giant slug undulated forwards. The big one itself was taking a beating.
The last time they’d fought a creature like this was the Shadeworm, way back before the signing of the Accords, but everyone on the team was considerably more powerful than they had been in that fight. John was quietly confident that while this wouldn’t be easy it wouldn’t be as life and death as the fight to retake London had felt.
Then the slug did something unexpected. It dove down into the solid rock, carving a new tunnel hundreds of metres wide that went deep below the crust of Bob’s World, as his egomaniacal friend was no doubt planning to name this planetoid. Once it was half a mile underground their aerial attacks were completely useless and the surviving escorts flowed down after it to avoid the slicing beams of light Sam was filling the air with.
“That’s annoying. Fucker has to come up to get at us though. Let it come to us?” asked Flash.
“We should ferret the beast out of its den!” barked Felix.
“Den. Peace brother, we should be cautious here. This thing is a true Emissary of the Great Night and should not be underestimated,” countered Felicity. John blinked in shock. He’d never heard the pair disagree about anything. They almost seemed to share a mind most of the time.
“I’ll go have a look. As usual the noble canine must bravely go where humans fear to tread. You will be able to use your powers through me,” Zeeg scoffed. Doris began taking earth shaking strides to move beyond the boundary of their suddenly insignificant-seeming fortress.
“Raoul, need you outside the walls as well please,” Bob said.
“Ok. When you’re fishing for giant slugs you need big bait and it’s me and the old girl to the rescue!” laughed Raoul, growing to his full size and striding forward as well. He was still noticeably shorter than Bob’s giant mech, something the older man turned drone swarm politely didn’t mention, yet.
Zeeg had sunk into the dirt and according to John’s sense of her location she was running through the rock towards where the slug was expanding its underground complex by widening the tunnels and digging short side passages. John focused and could see it just melted the rock and dirt in its path to nothing. The matter simply ceased to exist like a human using an ability.
“Do we know if the Void monsters have abilities like us or are they more like monsters? You know, tough, hard to kill and maybe some kind of spitting attack or whatever but no real abilities like we got from the system?” he asked worriedly.
“Someone didn’t read the briefing notes!” chuckled Vic from where she hovered above Doris’ location a mile ahead of the fortress. “Yes they do but they’re different from ours. Tending towards destructive abilities and physical enhancement. They don’t have many casters but the ones they do have are very, very powerful for their levels.”
“Most of them are bruisers but OP versus our kind of bruisers,” added Evie. “Dad, I know you don’t like paperwork but you should have read the shit we got from the Monarchs about the enemies we’re likely to face,” she chided.
“They could have condensed into video form,” grumbled John, on this very rare occasion genuinely regretting his bad attitude to paperwork.
“Given it a rocking soundtrack and made it animated and stuff. Maybe have a big boobed lady do the narration…”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, husband,” said Vic cooly. John’s wince was hidden by his armour.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“Perhaps those of you with remote powers would like to start using them through me?” came Zeeg’s voice, much to John’s relief. They all borrowed Zeeg’s senses to examine the situation underground. The slug was deeply disturbing to look at up close. Zeeg was poking her head through the rock wall, above and to one side of where the slug was currently working to expand its new tunnel network.
Lightning blasted out, followed by arcs of white fire and bars of black and gold power. The attacks slashed through the smaller slugs and other nightmares running along on multiple, articulated legs next to the big one.
While the slug form predominated there were also weird winged things, with rows of feathery wings running down their backs as they scurried along on tentacle-legs. Others looked like armoured shellfish, the ones you might expect to see fossilised in museums. Strange trilobite and ammonite monsters made of slick shadow-stuff were interspersed with the mound-like slug forms.
Arcs of electricity snapped from one to another leaving smoking ruin behind. Eldritch wails filled the air, a noise like nothing any of them had ever heard before. The fire following the lightning silenced most of the screams and the black and gold bars of power finished off the rest. In a matter of moments the only thing moving below them, other than the bubbling remains and acrid smoke was the giant slug.
It emitted a series of babbling noises that sounded like crazed laughter, high pitched and repetitive, as it began slamming its body from side to side. The walls melted away wherever it touched them, soon widening the cave into a cavern that shook, chunks of rock falling to bounce off the things back.
Name: Void Symbiote (Heftiul Gargant)
Level: 53
Ability: Void Guardian
John reached into the rock above the creature and blipped a millimetre thick sheet away causing a two metre thick section of the ceiling to collapse. The rock passed through Zeeg’s face causing her to flinch back into the stone she was using for cover. When she peaked back out they all saw the tons of stone vanish where it landed on the beast''s back.
“It’s being selective. Pebbles bounce off, big rocks get absorbed or banished or whatever it’s doing with them,” said Flash. He and Evie were throwing out fields of force to either slice into the thing or drive it back towards the surface. Its face was a mass of squid-arms, reminding John of a Shrell’s lower half, many of which were now smoking on the ground after the slicing attacks had focussed on the appendages.
“Can we blind it?” asked Felix his power slashed down the symbiotes'' flanks leaving shallow grooves that began to bubble. A beam of gold followed after digging deeper and causing the bubbles to burst and shower the rocks with dark grey ichor.
“It doesn’t have fecking eyes ye wally!” grumbled Reg.
“So it’s relying on vibrations or something? John, drop some rocks behind it!” suggested Flash. John didn’t see how it could hurt so he brought down some big sections of roof behind it. The thing spun, surprisingly nimble, and undulated towards the impacts.
“What we need is a lure. Like a thumper to bring up a sandworm," said John.
“Get Doris to do a jig! Go all Riverdance!” suggested Evie with a laugh.
“She’s not a bloody dancing monkey-mech,” grumbled Bob but Doris began stomping her feet back and forth, gradually shuffling towards the entrance to the tunnel the symbiote had created.
“Hey, I can get in on this action!” boomed Raoul. He began to do a parody of a Flamenco dance across the dusty plains, gradually fading into the still roiling clouds of dirt and steam. “Love, can you get some clones over here to deal with the little ones? I think they’re regrouping or something!” he called as he noticed his feet smashing things gliding across the surface. They were only a few centimetres tall but covered a few metres each. As they started dying the rest rushed forwards and began undulating up Doris and Raoul’s bodies, coating them in a thin film of darkness.
“Christ! A little help here?” Raoul yelled as he began swiping at the cloying film now covering him up to the knees. “This shit hurts!”
Vic flew down and began bathing the mech and the titan in fire, making sure to keep the heat below the belt. Raoul squawked and began patting at his now smoking legs but Doris continued her shuffling dance.
“I think it’s working? The thing is moving back into the main tunnel. John be ready with the comet blaster,” said Bob.
“The what?”
“The portal to the ice ring! When it sticks its head up I want you to blast it as the rest of us move in!”
“Didn’t you just bollock me for using that thing?” John asked as he prepared to rip open another tear in reality.
“Just try and keep it focussed on the big bloody slug this time. Don’t wreck my real estate,” Bob snapped.
“Um, as shareholders in BME, surely it’s our real estate?” asked Flash.
“We accept part ownership on behalf of the Church,” Felix and Felicity said simultaneously.
“What? Can we focus on dealing with the giant fucking slug and discuss property rights when we’re done?” Bob demanded.
“Sure, sure. Just so you know we have a stake here,” muttered Evie as she prepared to unleash a lightning barrage on the symbiote as it broke out from below the ground.
As soon as it crested the surface it made a very slow beeline towards Doris. Raoul hurled his spear and charged forward with his shield and sword. The sky cracked, fire and lightning falling on it eliciting a faint screech. Then came the black hole. Reg put it directly ahead of the creature and cackled like a loon as its undulating motion fed a long section of itself into the maw of the infinite.
John opened a much smaller portal and a torrent of shards of ice and rock pelted down at orbital speeds, slicing into the Void creatures back where it was emerging from the tunnel. Flash charged forward, crossing the intervening mile in a matter of seconds and ran up its side, hurling spears of force into it and using them as stepping stones. As soon as he reached the top he began creating discs of force that sliced chunks away from it as he began hacking away with a pair of conjured blades.
The twins walked through the sky on black and gold platforms until they were high enough up to begin weaving nets of ebony and golden threads that sliced into the monster and began cutting off pieces like a cheese grater passing across the Void Symbiotes outer layers.
The fighting continued for a couple of minutes. More bolts fell from the sky, torrents of flame washed out to bathe the writhing alien in burning pain. Rocks fell, in addition to the ice cannon coming from the ice ring of the gas giant, some of which were absorbed or disappeared. As time went on it was clear the creature was running low on whatever the equivalent of reserves was for the Void. More and more began to slam home, blasting divots out of the thing.
Eventually the thrashing began to die down and its efforts to attack Doris and Raoul became feeble. Both of the human’s giant combatants were coated in dark grey gore and were starting to look like mobile statues as the ichor dripped down their bodies.
As the thing finally spasmed and died the group sighed, their shoulders slumping in exhausted relief. Raoul shrunk back down to a more modest height and the guns lining the fortress fell silent. He leaned on his spear and blew out a cloud of foul smelling gore that had gotten inside his barbute during the fight.
“Well they don’t bloody smell nice,” he complained, removing his helm and shaking it out. He glanced longingly at the purple waters and began trudging towards the shore to start washing off some of his gear.
“Just unsummon it and then call up another one,” called Sam as her clones began to dissolve.
“Oh right.” The helm vanished and reappeared in pristine condition. “I’ll have to figure out a way to do that mid fight,” the titan muttered.
“So back to property rights?” said Evie brightly.
“Sure. You can have this chunk,” laughed Bob as a drone waved a limb at the ruined landscape around them. “The rest is mine.”