140 – Incantation
Into the next chamber. A long corridor, blocked off by a single hive, from whose doors already poured a crowd of drones and warriors. Too many to safely dispose of just using the flaming sword, even with its greatly extended burn time. Instead of even considering direct combat, she opened up her coat and pulled out all of her sparklocks pair by pair - eight in total, each richly engraved. Two in her hands, two under her arms, four under her elbows.
It was situations like this that gave reason to carrying all those sparklocks inside her armored coat. Normal officers only carried all those guns because they couldn’t afford a more advanced weapon. Inquisitors, however, were equipped with specially produced sparklocks, each possessed of four rotating barrels set in pairs with two hammers, and each of their grips etched with a glyph that bound the gun to its owner. Elaborate, prohibitively expensive, and useless to anyone not trained to exploit it. Even still, they were coveted by those who knew of their existence for being one of the few multiple-shot, cold-iron firearms that had ever been produced in Grekuria.
Taking a breath of Fog, she began to recite an incantation of three lines. Each line necessitated a lungful of Fog to be metabolized, and even a minute lapse in concentration would cause all that built-up Aether in her system to come surging right back out, without regard for the integrity of any tissue in its way.
“Blessed be ye, who wield the Eight Stars of Calamity...” she said, and the first pair of pistols floated from her grasp, their binding glyphs shining as bright as any constellation, connected to her by bright tendrils of Fog. Before the first line even ended, she already took the pair from under her arms and made it float as well.
Another deep breath. Another lungful of fog. A building tension began to tug at her, both in body and in mind. Both her physical and spiritual fortitude was sufficient to withstand it, but only barely.
“For these arms that man hath wrought of cold iron...” she continued, calmly observing the gathering swarm as the third pair floated up to join the first two above her head. The last pair, she gripped in her hands, even as the guns’ glyph shined and the Fog tendril wrapped itself around her wrists The bugs assembled into a phalanx of sorts, but without a Locust Noble present, they only had old and faded pheromones to go by. The phalanx was uneven and had great big holes. Little more than a crowd, really.
The last incantation was to bestow yet greater firepower unto these arms, as well as to fuel their recoil-mitigation glyphs. She pulled the triggers of both the guns she held, exclaiming the last line as she did so, “...Shall bring to heel all the beasts of this world!”
All hell ripped loose around her and Alcerys felt herself being pushed back from the recoil, as eight spears of blazing lead soared right into the horde. Some ripped through a warrior and a drone before being stopped, whilst others obliterated three drones in a row. They trailed spiraling trails of smoke and Fog, and even the remains of their victims were twisted by their violent spin on impact.
They were rearing up to swarm her, but she had cared not, calmly recentering herself and marching ahead whilst she focused on breathing - she could simply leap overhead and rain death from above, if it came to that.
The second salvo, she loosed in two parts into other areas of the crowd to further thin them out, and then there were a few quiet seconds whilst she turned the barrels of her weapons. Not with her hands, but simply by uttering a command, “Turn.”
At her word, the Fog tendrils did as ordered, winding around the barrels to work their mechanism. A gap, in which the surviving locusts - about two thirds of them in total - scrambled about and tried to charge towards her position. They had fallen to disarray already, charging straight at her. Sure, they tried to surround her, but even in this they lined up with warriors in front and locusts in the back.
There was no next salvo, only a continuous string of gunshots as she discharged her guns one by one to take out as many locusts as possible.
The Eight Stars of Calamity were one of the many reasons Inquisitors had the reputation they did. An Inquisitor in the right place could, with some luck, kill even more than she just had - it was known that a Star of Calamity could penetrate three humans and severely wound a fourth, if they were lined up and shot center-mass. Not because of a myth, but because they had been tested on the corpses of executed criminals, and some live ones as well.
Thirty-two shots rang out, and she was done. There were still some twenty seconds left before the guns floating above her would fall, more than enough time to finish off the remaining locusts - a little over a dozen, going off a cursory sweep of her surroundings. Alcerys stepped out of the way of a charging warrior, stowing away both the guns she held after she willed their respective Fog tendrils to dissipate. She pulled her sword from its sheath and ignited it, performing a wide sweep to cleave in twain any bug that might possibly be sneaking up on her before.
It was almost sad, how animalistic and disorganized these creatures were without one of their leaders. They were sloppier and easier to make fools of than back in the forest, they just kept coming at her and fruitlessly trying to outnumber her as if that would help them. She had to agree that they would be an ideal terror weapon, an ideal land-holding army against normal soldiers, but far less effective against very powerful single opponents such as Inquisitors or really any other Fog-breathers. In a manner of speaking, they embodied the Pateirian approach to normal infantry - just filler to back up the elite soldiers.