I had been expecting a lot of different potential problems from the moment we decided to come to this planet. And that list had only gotten more extensive after Denuvus showed her hand. But, despite all my paranoid assumptions about what was possible, I had to admit that I’d never considered the possibility of facing off against an army of Revenants. That had genuinely never entered my mind. Silly me.
Denuvus was already turning toward Nevada while I was still reeling from that news. “You and I can work out the rest of our differences later, once we’re all safe. Call the ship back now so we can leave.”
“Leave?” Mom gave her a sharp look. “If you think we’re just going to let all the people on this planet die to save ourselves—“
“My—“ in the midst of obviously nearly using her power to make my mother do what she wanted, the woman caught herself and let out a heavy sigh as her eyes glanced around to take us in. Clearly she didn’t like what she saw because another sigh came. “Do any of you have the slightest idea what sort of damage only a few Revenants can do, let alone that many of them? This world should be evacuated with a fleet of ships. That’s the only way to save them, short of bringing your entire army of Heretics and allies here but as far as I know, we don’t have either of those handy. The one ship you do have might be pretty special, but even jumping back and forth constantly could only evacuate a very small portion, and we’d be risking being found and killed ourselves.“
Mom started to say something, but I spoke up first. “The people on this planet have already been through enough. They spent thousands of years under Fossor’s thumb. Now they’re finally free of him and trying to pull their society together and you want us to just walk away and let them all die?”
The woman gave me a hard look. “And if all of you die in this completely impossible fight, what will happen to everyone back on Earth? She is the face of the rebellion.” She pointed to my mother. “And I hate to be the one to inform you of this, but you’re not too far behind her. Besides which, I already told you how important you are for stopping the Fomorians once and for all. Think about the trillions and trillions of beings in this universe who are going to die if you throw your entire life away on this single impossible thing.”
Mom gave a soft, humorous chuckle. “That’s the thing you don’t get, the thing you’ve never understood, no matter how powerful you are. Choosing to fight against impossible odds is exactly how you accomplish impossible things.” She let that hang for a second before adding, ”Besides, there might be a way to stop the Revenants without fighting all of them. They were contained before, and those Tribals might know how to do it again. We just have to get there and convince them to help us.”
As she said that, Mom looked at Denuvus. “I think that’s something you could do, don’t you?”
Right, she had a point with that. If there was any time when it would be right for the woman to use her power, it was now. On the other hand, I wasn’t entirely sure these guys would actually have a way to do that. It sounded easier said than done for me, but I wasn’t going to say that. Not when it was already written all over everyone’s face. We all doubted it would be that simple, but we also didn’t have a better idea.
Sure enough, Rahanvael informed us, “It won’t be as easy as just walking up to them. There are automated traps and defenses in the way. The tribals activated something as soon as the Revenants started to leave. I’m not sure what it was, but Persephone and the others were teleported back down into those same tunnels and… well, let’s just say it’s not nearly as friendly anymore.”
Asenath flipped a knife in her hand. “Great, so the rest of us just have to get Mistress Mindcontrol through all those defenses so she can tell those guys to call this whole thing off.”
Miles spoke up. “Don’t trust her.” His voice cracked a little bit with emotion. “She’ll use you for whatever she can get and then throw you away.”
Denuvus made a soft noise of disagreement. “Please, I thought we were getting along quite well, all things considered.”
From the look on the boy’s face, he disagreed and had a few things he wanted to say about that. But he shoved it down and turned to me. “Just be careful, okay?”
I agreed, then turned back to Rahanvael and told her to lead us back to where the others were so they could help us try to find the tribals from there. She obliged, and soon we were running back through the tunnels. Denuvus was clearly unhappy about the whole idea, but there wasn’t much else she could do. Her ticket off this planet was with us, and if she used her power to try to force us not to do this, Erin wouldn’t bring the ship back.
Speaking of which, I could hear Nevada telling the girl to stay away, and that she should only come back when there was absolutely no other choice. Or once we handled this situation.
I couldn’t imagine what it was like being Erin right now. She had spent this entire time secretly tagging along somehow without being seen, had actually pulled off the impossible task of stealing the Jitterbug right out from under Denuvus’s nose, and now this was happening. She was stuck out there, wherever she had taken the ship, simply watching while we tried to stop an army of Revenants from annihilating all life on this planet.
Soon, we were moving through much smaller tunnels. These had simple rock walls instead of metal and looked like they could fall apart at any moment. And wasn’t that just a particularly lovely thing to imagine. On top of everything else, we could end up buried in a cave-in. Things just kept getting better and better.
On the way, another thought occurred to me. “Hang on! Persephone already told us who created her and the other Revenants. It was the Reapers. The one in the lighthouse created her specifically! So how could the ancient Seosten be responsible too?!”
Denuvus snorted. “As though this would be the first time those people cheated off of someone else’s work in their quest to create new weapons.”
With a weak nod that way, Rahanvael agreed, “It does seem that the old Seosten found… something from a cache of Reaper tools that instructed them on how to create the Revenants here.”
Groaning, I looked over my shoulder at Mercury. “No offense, but your people and their tendency to poke planet-destroying superweapons just to see what happens can be really annoying!”
“None taken,” he assured me while we all kept running. “I have seen even more of that than you!”
Denuvus looked toward me then. “You know, everything else aside, this would be a wonderful time to call in whoever it was that you had take out my mercenaries. They seemed pretty effective.“
My head shook. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but we have no idea who did that. I just figured it was some of those tribal people.”
She snorted disbelievingly. “They are hardly that effective. Those soldiers were incredibly trained, powerful, and capable. Whoever took them down like that had to have been one of yours. Are you quite certain you don’t have another tagalong you didn’t know about?”
It was a fair question. I really didn’t know what was going on with that. But either way, there was nothing to be done for it right now. “The point is,” I replied, “we don’t know who did it, so we can’t just ask for help.”
Mercury shook his head. “Whoever it was, I hope they decide to chip in again. Because something tells me we’ll need it.”
“What about my friends?” Miles put in while we were running. “Where are they? Maybe they can help with this.”
Grimacing to myself, I replied, “Yeah, and so could Trice, if he’ll play nice.”
Denuvus lifted her chin slightly. “He will do what I ask of him. And no, I do not mean with my gift. Trice has become quite trustworthy, as far as I am concerned.”
Yeah, there was a lot I could say about that, but now wasn’t the time. Nor can I argue with having someone else who could help deal with anything we ran into. If those defenses were enough to keep Persephone and Robin pinned down, then we were obviously going to need all the help we could get.
Part of me didn’t want to stop at all, not considering how cataclysmically dangerous this whole situation was. But on the other hand, better to let them out now and tell them what was going on as we ran than to try to bring them up to speed in the middle of a fight.
By that point, we had reached a four-way intersection in the tunnels, and Rahanvael was already turning toward the eastern one that led further down. Before following, however, I took the playing card sized piece of cardboard out of my pocket and unfolded it into the box. Then I looked at Denuvus. “You’re absolutely certain you can keep him from fucking us over? And take your control off the others.”
She, in turn, shrugged. “It will likely have worn off by now, for the most part. But yes, I will not give them any more orders. Even if this entire exercise is pointless.”
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Ignoring that, I opened up the box and went down the stairs. Miles came with me, and we both saw all the others in the pocket greenhouse. The rest of his team were on one side, while Trice stayed on the other. It looked like there had been a lot of arguing, which stopped as we appeared.
“Miles!” the red-haired girl blurted, and they all ran our way, dozens of questions exploding from them.
Anxious as I was, I let him do the talking, and he was thankfully pretty quick about it. He told him we didn’t have time to get into everything, but we were trying to stop a whole bunch of Revenants from killing everyone on this planet, and that the only way to do that seemed to be to get Denuvus to where those tribal people were so she could force them to call off the attack.
Needless to say, the others all had a lot more questions. And so did Trice, from the look he shot me. But they held off, and we went back out with them.
Trice, understandably, was a little surprised to see that Denuvus really was there and cooperating. But the second we were out and I had folded the box down, we were off and running once more. Miles was apologizing to his team for leaving them, and for everything that happened, which he apparently took a lot of responsibility for. Meanwhile, Denuvus informed Trice of what was actually going on and why she had no choice but to play along.
For the most part, I shut all of that out and focused on following Rahanvael. How bad was it out there already? Had the Revenants found bodies that they could use? It couldn’t be that hard for them on this world of all places. They probably had a veritable all-they-could-eat buffet of useful bodies to possess. Have they already started killing people? Every second this took, every delay, every step, made me wonder if it was already too late. How many people were going to die because we were too slow? Yes, logically I knew it would take more time than that for them to get started, let alone ramp up to planetary genocide levels. but logic didn’t help how I felt.
And what did I feel? Guilt. I felt guilty. Persephone was here because of me. Denuvus was right in this case, even if it was accidental. If we hadn’t come here, this wouldn’t have happened. Nevada had things under control. Even if we weren’t here at all, she would have had Erin take the ship and then forced Denuvus to negotiate for it. This whole situation would have been completely fine.
But no, we had come here. I brought Persephone, and those tribal people used her to let the other Revenants out. The only thing we had managed to do by showing up here was make the whole thing so much worse. Everyone who died now, all the people who ended up being killed by those Revenants, would be my fault. I had to stop this, had to save them. They had only just started to have their own lives again, their own society. They had only just been freed from Fossor. I couldn’t let this happen.
Mom seemed to know how I was feeling, because she tried to talk to me on the way. But before we could get into that, Rahanvael stopped short right next to an opening in the tunnel. She turned back toward us and spoke quietly. “There are several heavily armed and protected mechanical sentries in that hallway, accompanied by automated turrets and other defenses. You should be very careful.”
“Sorry, babe,” Twister replied, “Being careful‘s one thing we don’t exactly have a lot of time for.”
The tall blond guy from Miles’ team spoke up. “Uh, whoever she is, the girl’s right. From what you guys have been saying, there’s no time to play around.”
Miles nodded. “Yeah, so let us run interference. We’ll block for all of you and fight these things so they don’t follow. You guys just run straight through. We’ve got this.“
I could tell Mom wanted to object, but there wasn’t time, or any better ideas. Trice, to my surprise, volunteered to stay behind as well. He said it was because he had grown fond of these guys and wanted to make sure they didn’t die. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but I wasn’t going to object to them having some help.
Or maybe this was a trick and he would just run away and abandon them, but either way, we couldn’t argue about it.
In the end, Mom went first. She went straight into that hall and threw a couple small rocks that were enchanted with concussive explosives. The rest of us were right behind her, just as the spells went off. I caught a glimpse of a dozen gray and black robot things along with gun barrels lining the walls of a large, circular room. They were all knocked aside for the moment by the explosions, and we ran straight through. Miles and his team, along with Trice, split off to stay behind and cover the rest of us.
Meanwhile, we went straight for one of the three doors lining the far side of the room. It was the one to the right, where Rahanvael was already waiting. Behind us, we could hear the fighting start up in earnest, but we just kept going. I hoped, with everything I had in me, that they would be okay. But we couldn’t help them, not now. We had to stop those Revenants.
We ended up going through a couple more rooms full of enemies. This place was set up to repel incredibly heavy invasion forces. On the plus side, Rahanvael informed us that she had taken a look, and we were actually already past the majority of the defenses. Most of them were further out. If we had to go through everything, we wouldn’t have had the slightest chance of getting there in time.
We went through what was there as quickly as we could. They were just robots and turrets, not that big of a deal, aside from the delay they created. Honestly, a part of me was surprised and impressed that they were still functional after all this time. Seriously, they have been stored down here for what had to be hundreds of thousands of years, right? Something like that. And yet, they were still effective enough to put up a fight.
Maybe if they weren’t getting in the way of us saving this world from complete genocide, I’d be even more impressed. As it was, I really just wanted all of them to blow up and get the hell out of the way.
Thankfully, we finally made our way to the room where the others were. As it turned out, the thing that was keeping them pinned down wasn’t the robots or anything. They could’ve torn right through them, just like we were. But there was a trap in there. It created a vortex of sorts that was trying to suck them in. The vortex was a portal, and no one knew where it went. But it was pretty obvious that going through it would be a bad idea. The suction was strong enough that Robin had to plant their feet and hold onto Persephone, Stasia, and Judas. We could see them on the far side of that room, with the vortex portal swirling between us. I could already feel its power, trying to pull at me even though I was a good hundred feet away from the thing. It was also making a loud screaming sound that I had to shout over as I looked back to the others. “How do we shut it off?!”
Nevada had already transformed her bracelet into its crate form, and was digging around to find something. “I think I’ve got something that can handle it, hold on. Come on, come on, where is it…”
Denuvus looked like she was going to say something, but my mother shot her a glare that made the woman stop. But it was pretty apparent that she didn’t think much of Nevada’s ability. Probably because she’d never given her a chance. I would’ve thought that she’d reevaluate after the woman managed to trick her so thoroughly and pull the ship and all that treasure right out from under her, but apparently old habits died hard.
Finally, she produced what looked like a simple frisbee. “We need to get this thing right over top of it without letting it be sucked inside.”
That was going to be an issue, considering the strength of that vortex. Even my mother was having trouble holding herself back from it when she moved even a few inches closer than where we were. How were we supposed to get that thing on top of the portal? Rahanvael couldn’t do it, the vortex was affecting her too. So solving the issue with ghosts was out of the question.
“Give it to me,” Mercury announced. “I can stand in the middle of the thing without being transported, for a couple seconds anyway.”
“No, not by yourself.” That was Nevada, holding her hand out. “Possess me, then channel your power through me so I can stand in there and activate this thing.”
There was no time to discuss anything else, so he did just that. Then we watched as the possessed Nevada let herself be sucked across the room and into the vortex. I was terrified that she would just disappear immediately, but Mercury’s power held out. She was straining, pushing against its hold on her to hold the frisbee-like device up over her head. It clearly took everything she had and Mercury’s boost to make it happen. But finally, she managed to shove it up all the way over the portal. Then the woman clicked something on it, before releasing the thing. With a scream of effort, she threw herself away from the vortex, just as the frisbee opened up and extended downward to create a sort of egg-shaped metal shell around the thing.
Immediately, the suction stopped. The vortex was still there, but it was contained for the moment. We ran past it, straight to the others. “Persephone!” I blurted.
“I am so sorry, Felicity,” she quickly informed me, her gaze downcast. “It was not my intention to–”
“Are you okay?” I interrupted, catching her by both arms. “Are you alright? They didn’t–I mean they didn’t do anything to umm… to change you, or control you, or–”
“I am… well, but my others–the rest of my people…. they are not like me,” she weakly replied. “They will kill everyone here.”
“No, they won’t,” I insisted. “We’re gonna do something about… uhh… that…”
I had trailed off, because Persephone and the others were all staring past me. Turning to look, I saw a good fifteen figures standing next to the door about thirty feet away. They were… they were Revenants. I could tell that already. Revenants with dead bodies. The dead bodies of the Tribals we had been about to get Denuvus to talk to. They were already dead, and the Revenants had control of them. And right now, they looked very ready to add us to their collection of corpses.
“My name is Denuvus, freeze.” As she said that, the woman in question stepped forward, her voice as firm as I had ever heard it. She was clearly focusing all of her power on the Revenants.
And yet, they paid no attention. The Revenants simply walked forward, as though she hadn’t said anything at all. Great, so much for the easy solution.
Fifteen Revenants? We could maybe handle a few, between all of us. Especially with Persephone and Robin’s help, and my own necromancy to hold them off. But a dozen? This was about to be a slaughter.
Even as that thought rushed through my mind, I held up both hands and dug deep for every bit of power I could muster. Stop them. They were undead. I’d stopped Persephone before. I had to stop these guys too. Taking a breath, I let it out while shoving my power that way, snapping a curt, “Stop!”
I could feel that Necromantic power snaking out, twisting its way around the Revenants. It caught onto… three of them. Three. Of the fifteen, I managed to make three stop short. They strained against the force holding them, but couldn’t manage to break free.
Which was just great, but it still left twelve. Still too many for even the rest of us. Or the rest of them. It took everything I had just to hold these three. I wouldn’t be able to help with the others.
Then I felt a shift in my pocket of all places. Looking down with a gasp, I saw Marco the beetle climb out. Just as my hand grabbed for him, he flew off and landed in front of me, between us and the Revenants. Then he fucking transformed into a furry, humanoid figure with a prehensile tail just like he’d had as a beetle. Stretching out, the monkey-like man stood only an inch taller than I was, though I could see how tightly-corded with muscle his arms were under that thin fur.
“Ahhhhh that’s better,” he announced while facing the Revenants. He twisted his head to the left, then right, cracking his neck each time before letting out a low groan of satisfaction. “You have no idea how boring the past few days have been.
“Now I can finally have some fun.”