Right, so now all we had to do was hold off an entire horde of monsters along the same lines as the single one we had fought in the canyon before, and keep them away from the rift long enough for this Jessica Trent woman to do what she needed to do with Avalon to actually transfer that Phoenix bonding. Which meant that we had to do this without help from either of them. At least until they were done with all that.
But on the other hand, I still had my ghosts. Which, combined with the entire menagerie that Roxa and Sean had brought with them, meant we weren''t exactly lacking in numbers. I just hoped it would be enough to protect that rift.
Once Jessica sent us out of the egg (and I was still trying to decide just how different that was from a Reaper Archive), we found ourselves inside the actual cave where the rift was. The cavern took up a solid chunk of the inside of that particular mountain, rising from near the base of it at ground level, all the way to the very top. The inside of the mountain was basically hollow, aside from a sort of dirt and rock ramp, around thirty feet wide, that spiraled its way up, leaving a space about three times as wide in the middle of the cavern that was wide open. The rift itself was at the very top of that ramp, and gave off enough energy to light up the whole place with a purpleish glow so we could see everything we were doing without any powers or magic needed.
This wasn''t exactly a complicated situation, at least in concept. The creatures would be coming into the cave from mostly down here, and trying to make their way up the ramp to reach the rift. We just had to make sure they didn''t get that far. Or at least, make sure as few as possible made it. The more of them that got to the rift, the more damaged it would be. And the more damaged it became, the bigger the chance that the whole thing would explode and cause a chain reaction all the way through the remaining rifts and into the present. I didn’t even want to think about that possibility.
At least the fact that we were about to be besieged by a legion of bloodthirsty monsters intent on stampeding over us meant I didn''t really have too much time to think about what was going on with Avalon right then. She was about to be bonded to what was apparently one of the most powerful creatures in the universe. Even if the full strength of that bonding was going to take a few years to come into effect, it was still a lot. She would still be Avalon, but she’d also be different. Which, honestly, probably should’ve told me a bit about how others felt about me. When I had gone away with Ehn, I was still basically just a human with powers, a Boscher Heretic. Now I was… something else. As much as I wanted to say I hadn’t changed that much, I had. I was a Fae. My entire body had been rebuilt and now I had a bunch of other versions of myself in my head. I had my own Reaper Archive, essentially. I had my own working spaceship, and part of a Reaper ship that I turned into a small city for the Necromancy school that I wanted to start. Fair, I had changed a lot.
But at the core of it, I was still me. There was just… well, more of me, literally and metaphorically. Avalon, as a Phoenix-Bonded, would still be herself too. And whatever she needed, whatever responsibilities fell on her in that role, I would be there to help.
I guess it was safe to say that no one could accuse us of sitting around wasting our lives, at least. I still had no idea how all this was going to go once the rifts were closed and we were all back where and when we belonged. But we would just have to take it one step at a time. And right now, the next step was to keep those monsters away from this particular rift. Apparently they couldn’t call for their master thanks to the egg shielding, but something told me he would notice the second they started damaging the rift too much. And if he noticed, he would be here. That… we couldn’t let that happen. I didn’t have Ehn’s help anymore, and as for Jessica--well no matter how strong this whole Phoenix-bonded thing was, she was busy passing it to Avalon so we could cleanse the rift. No, if Godfather showed up before I was ready to go through, we were screwed.
Which meant that no matter what happened, no matter how many of these things showed up or how strong they were, we had to stop them. There were no other options, no do-overs. If we didn''t keep them away from it, Godfather would be here, and he would absolutely use the rift to bring the Fomorian homeworld here. If piling his monsters through the thing didn’t do the job, he would find another way. And we wouldn’t be able to stop him. Nothing we had would be able to stop him at that point.
With those fun thoughts running through my mind, we were set up for the arrival of those monsters about as well as we could be. I had scattered my ghosts all throughout the cave, along the ramp. For the most part, they were split into thirds. The first third were right up near the mouth of the cave, an enormous hole in the side of the mountain forty feet wide and equally tall. It was big enough to let all of those creatures push their way in. And even if it wasn’t, I had no doubt they would be able to make it larger pretty easily. That first third of my ghost army were meant to slow the monsters down as they were trying to come into the cave, forcing them to stagger themselves so we weren’t hit with all of them at once. Seth was in charge of them, since he was one of my most experienced fighters.
The second third, meanwhile, were largely concentrated about halfway up the ramp, ready to hit the creatures who made it that far and hopefully force them off it so they’d have to climb all over again. I had put Avanaco, the Native American ghost who had joined me during that whole thing in the haunted forest with finding the coffin and the tape recorder that had led me to stop Godfather that first time, in charge of that group. He had experience with being a part of war parties and knew how to take advantage of that sort of terrain. He would be good at forcing the climbing monsters off the ramp.
Finally, the last third were the final line of defense, all the way up by the rift itself. They were being led by Doctor Manakel, obviously. He would do everything he could to keep any of those things that made it through the others from actually reaching the rift.
There were a few more ghosts scattered than that so the monsters would always be under attack no matter where they were or what was happening. I had told Kaleigh, Jason, Chas, and Emily to simply float around using their powers where needed. But for the most part, that was how they were set up.
As for those of us who were still alive (no offense, ghost army), we were set up along the ramp itself as well. Roxa and Sean were a bit further up the ramp with their animal companions, while I was closer to the bottom. Though I wasn''t planning on staying there. I would go wherever the biggest threat seemed to be at any given moment. I was holding that energy disc I had inherited from killing those guys who had been helping Fahsteth, using the time we had to give it different effects for different lengths of time. The longer I held it, the more effects I could program into it just by focusing. Things like, ‘be super sharp and hot for three seconds, then be very bouncy for two seconds, then go back to being sharp and hot for one second, then turn into very sticky goo.’ I just had to remember what effects were programmed into it and for how long, and plan my eventual throw accordingly.
Oh, and of course we had one more little addition to our defenses, that would hopefully help whittle away at the number of monsters we were going to have to deal with. I had summoned the Cryptseeker, and it was parked invisibly near the top of the mountain with its weapon systems trained on the area leading up to the cave entrance. As they approached, it would target the biggest, most dangerous-looking things and do whatever damage it could to them. At the very least, it could weaken their army.
In any case, that was our defense. Maybe we could’ve done more. Maybe we had missed some other way of protecting this place even more effectively. But it was the best we could do in the limited time that we’d had. The scanners on the Cryptseeker were already picking up an enormous mass of life signs from those things joining up together before they approached. And yes, I did consider taking the ship out there to hit them before they could get closer, but I was worried about it not being here just in case those signs were a decoy and others would show up while it was gone. No, better to have the ship here, ready to shoot as they got closer. No matter how anxious simply seeing the size of the growing mass of life signs on the sensors made me. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Standing in that cave, watching through the eyes of one of my ghosts on the ship itself as the blob of life signatures began to gradually move our way like a massive tidal wave, I let out a heavy breath and spoke loudly, my voice echoing through the cavern. “Looks like they’re done waiting for more of their friends to show up. Here they come!”
The damn things were pretty quick too. They had been massing together almost a mile away from the entrance here, which itself was at the far end of a different canyon than the one we had been in before. Or maybe it was the same canyon but a different part of it? I wasn''t a geologist or whatever. The point was, they were coming on us quickly. Watching the scanners through my ghost, I saw the mass of life forms charging across the hills toward us. It only took them about thirty seconds to reach the entrance to the canyon.
The second the first of them did, the Cryptseeker immediately fired two of its lasers. The first shot was enough to catch the front-most creature, a thing that looked like a nine-foot-tall antelope with a sort of humanoid head and several long arms. The laser took the thing right in the face, sending the mutilated remains of its head spraying across the thing behind it. That one was twice the size of its companion, and was more like a huge rhinoceros mixed with a bear. The second shot hit that one and made the thing recoil slightly, but didn''t kill it. Nor did it actually slow the monster down that much before it was already charging again.
The ship fired again, and again, it kept firing. Two more shots hit that big rhino thing and made it stagger just a bit once more. A third disintegrated this smaller monkey thing that was trying to flip over its back, and the fourth shot tore the legs out from under another antelope monster, sending it to the ground. I’d told my ghost up there, the one manning the ship’s guns, to split her attention between killing the smaller, more vulnerable creatures, and hitting the bigger ones just to slow them down a little.
The ship was doing its best on that front, but more and more of the creatures kept coming through that entrance and pouring across the several hundred yards leading up to the cave. As they approached, Seth had his ranged combatants take aim. Some of them had ghost-like bows and arrows, slings, that sort of thing. Weapons that were basically considered such a part of them when they died that they had manifested with them just like their clothes. Others simply had ranged-based powers of one kind or another, maintained thanks to the special Tartarus-Necromancy I had inherited from Manakel. And yes, I had considered the fact that I was using something gained from Tartarus to fight monsters created by Godfather, who had his own huge connection to that place. Hell, he was able to make these things so well in the first place thanks to that. We were both using Tartarus-gained gifts against each other. I--yeah, I probably shouldn’t think about that too much. Especially when it came to considering just how bad it would be if Tartarus managed to revoke those gifts somehow. I wasn’t even sure if that was possible now that I was an Ankou-Fae, but better not to give fate any ideas.
The incoming monsters, charging straight toward the cave entrance, were hit by ghost arrows, rocks, tiny balls of fire or electricity, a few scattered laser beams, and even a decent-sized explosion that appeared right in the middle of the largest concentration of that first wave. And yet, even then, they kept coming. Seth sent his melee fighters in, swarming over the monsters to push them away from the cave. He didn''t spread his forces out enough to hit all of them, since they would have been torn through like tissue paper. He kept them bunched up enough to only hit about half of those that had made it that far. The rest kept coming, right up to the ramp. They didn''t care how many of their companions were torn apart. I doubted they were even capable of registering that sort of thing. These monsters were focused solely on reaching the rift. That was their job, the reason for their existence. They lived to fight anything in their way, killing anything stopping them from getting to this rift and throwing themselves right into it.
Three of the monsters had wings, and immediately tried to bypass the ramp completely, flying up through the open area toward the rift. But Sean was ready for that. He had Vulcan in his gun form, aimed that way. The second the things launched themselves upward, the air was filled with bullets. And these weren’t just ordinary Vulcan bullets. Apparently Sean had managed to pick up a power that allowed him to greatly magnify the destructive force of any projectile he was looking at and focused on. The rapid torrent of bullets were each hitting those monsters with about three or four times the damage they normally would have. It was enough to rip through the things in a few seconds.
Meanwhile, I focused my attention on the largest of the creatures that had made it to the base of the ramp. It looked like an elephant with eight enormous spider legs and a terrifying insect head with sharp mandibles that were rapidly and intimidatingly clacking together as the thing charged forward with a pair of long humanoid arms extended.
Using a burst from my staff, I sent myself flying right at the thing. Just before it could grab me with those large hands, I halted my momentum by pausing my clothes. The monster’s fingers, gnarled and twisted with a strange sort of dark exoskeleton covering part of them, swept through the air right where I would have been. At the same time, I brought my staff, now in its bow form, around and took aim at the monster’s face. It was a little awkward to do while still holding that disc, but I managed. A quick energy arrow exploded right between those clacking mandibles. Which didn’t kill it, but was enough to blow one of those mandibles off along with part of its face, creating a hole into its mouth. Hot Type used that, taking control of my hand to hurl a little reddish-white ball right through that opening. A second later, the twelve-foot-tall, furnace-like flames they had shrunk down and transformed into that solid orb manifested at full size once more. The monster suddenly had a fire hot enough to incinerate human bodies inside its mouth. It screamed, recoiling and stumbling as its brain melted inside its skull. That was pretty awful, but I couldn’t stop to wince too much.
Two gorilla-like monsters had been knocked to the ground thanks to Gidget and Moondoggie, the Cyberform and Tattoo-Magic (respectively) cougars ripping into the creatures just enough to keep them down. At the same time, Lightwing raked her talons across the oversized eyes of what looked like a mushroom with caterpillar legs and dozens of tentacles. The thing sent a spray of acidic spit that way, narrowly missing the magic owl just before being set upon by half a dozen ghosts with various cold-based powers. Enough to make it start to freeze here and there so Roxa herself could start to do real damage by smacking and biting pieces of it off in her wolf-form.
By that point, my object-freeze had worn off. On my way down, I sent three more quick arrows out in rapid succession, each one exploding right in front of the incoming creatures just as they reached the base of the ramp. That concussive force was enough to knock them backwards. Unfortunately, the larger, slightly slower monsters behind them kept coming. They ran right over their smaller brethren, not even slightly delayed or deterred. As I hit the ground directly in the path of the largest of those things, they kept right on coming. The creatures looked sort of like--well, the base of the animal was a giraffe, but about twice as tall and twice as wide. Instead of a giraffe head, there was what looked like a squid at the top of that long neck, complete with tentacles that waved around in all directions. Worse, there were three very large arms, each one about two feet wide and long enough to reach all the way to the ground, extending from just under that squid head. Two of the arms were on either side of the neck and the third was right in front. They were each used to assist the creature’s four regular legs in helping it lope along.
All nine of those arms, between the three monsters who were right in front of me, were extending my way. I basically had a wall of fingers reaching out to grab hold of me and rip my body apart in every direction. It wouldn''t have been a pretty sight. And probably less than fun for me.
Fortunately, I was ready. In the moment before the hands would''ve grabbed me, the stampeding monsters came close enough that they stepped on the concussive mines I had laid out while we were waiting. Well, some of the mines anyway. The resulting explosion knocked them stumbling backward, right into the rest of the creatures coming up behind them. Which was when I flung that disc to the side, at the distant cave wall. The first effect sped the thing up so it hit the wall faster. But just before it struck, the disc turned bouncy and ricocheted sideways off the rocks there before flying straight across the front of the stumbling, flailing monsters. As it flew that way, two more effects kicked in. The first made the disc several times larger, taking it from the size of a frisbee, up to being five feet in diameter. The other effect made it incredibly sharp. The thing was like a buzz saw, cutting straight through all of those extended arms, mutilating and crippling those creatures.
And through the holes we had made with those wounds, Hot Type threw several more of their solidified, ball-shaped flames that exploded into furnace fires, turning the whole area right in front of us into an inferno that managed to catch several more incoming monsters.
The moment that bit was finished, Hot Type started to switch out so that Fathom could come in, but that would take about thirty seconds to accomplish, even with the practice we had done.
All around me, the fight was raging. The Cryptseeker was still doing everything it could to stop the bulk of the monster army outside in the canyon, and each part of our defenses were cutting them down bit by bit. So far, it was working.
The only question was, could we keep this up long enough for Jessica Trent and Avalon to finish their part?