Chapter 469: The Fallen

Shrapnel and metallic pinging sprayed and bounced around Blake’s construct, bits of wood ripping with holes as the bull-figurehead roared.

“Jesus Christ!” Blake shouted, holding Seul-ki down beneath him and focusing on his shield. “Is he aiming at the God damn train?”

For a moment Blake considered standing up and tossing the goblin’s weapon with telekinesis. Instead he moved his senses to Annie somewhere out there slashing demons.

He blinked as ‘his’ head turned to watch Pliny, then spun to stare at a demon before that giant axe swung and cleaved the thing in half.

Red-hot bits of metal were zipping and bursting through demonic carapace, cutting down a swath of insect soldier. Ichor and chunks of demonic flesh sprayed on the flank of the orc Soulguard.

Apparently, the engineer’s weapon actually worked. And though Pliny had a rough start, he’d managed to get his machine gun on target. For several very long seconds (and no doubt longer, if you were a demon), the constant tat tat tat of the goblin’s invention overwhelmed the other sounds of battle.

Then it went quiet with a hissing pop, and a small squeal from Pliny. Blake blinked back to his own senses and stood to find the goblin looking a bit charred, his goggles covered in soot. But he looked over and smiled with his grisly teeth, giving what was maybe a thumb’s up before he almost dropped his gun.

“World’s greatest inventor!” Blake called, and the goblin cackled and hopped like a child with a new toy.

Blake’s train was already making for the nice, big gap of dead demons. He used his ‘legacy’ Making feature to start summoning another pile of javelins, the inefficiency not making much difference for simple objects.

“Should we…get off the train?” Seul-ki said, watching his javelin pile with obvious concern. It probably was a good idea. Their path was taking them dangerously close to that giant demon and its closest minions, and Blake rather preferred not to be the first to arrive.

“Not yet,” he said, floating the javelins up with Telekinesis and patting Seul-ki’s arm to ask for another boost. Her magic hit him and turned his icon blue with arcane power, and he stood with the dozen or so floating spears and a grin.

Some sort of bug spike whipped at his head and bounced off his shield. It didn’t do much, but it made him flinch.

Blake couldn’t even tell who’d shot it, but he flung his weapons out with a healthy dose of power, skewering demons before grabbing the same spears and tugging them out or launching them again.

Controlling so many was a bit like juggling. Blake unfocused his eyes and trusted his shields, putting all his ‘real’ attention into Telekinesis while his Partition waited for another spell from the greater demon.

Blake’s train crushed and bounced over another demon every few seconds, and there were more trying to climb up and get at him, but Annie and his constructs kept them down. It was only a few minutes before Blake heard orc drums and fighting far closer than they’d been before.

He managed to glance back to see the orc line was smashing their way into the portal. And not just the Soulguard, but the main line of heavy infantry. Apparently the demonic insects had come apart pretty quick against an angry wave of magically enhanced murderers.

It occurred to him then that these probably weren’t the same orcs he and Mason had fought near Nassau. ‘Raider orcs’ were probably a lot different than a handful of actual tower lords and their elite guard. He felt another small stab of pride in his allies, but mostly in himself for being so clever.

A few minor spells and the occasional insect barb still pinged off his train or shield, but Blake was stopping it all now with hardly any conscious thought. His mana was getting low, but he still had his gem and he could drain Seul-ki if he had to.

“A powerful abyssal spell, master! From the greater demon!” Navi warned, zipping back as if to maybe block some of it herself. Blake gathered up most of his mana and watched for the energy, scanning back and forth without seeing it.

“Are you sure, Navi? Why am I’m not seeing…”

The mostly pale, barren rock of the ground started turning black with abyssal energy. Blake looked at it and let go of any ambition to dispel the thing. There was no stopping whatever that was. Not for him.

The only question now was what the spell was about to do, and what the hell Blake should do to avoid it. But since he had a small army of orcs that probably couldn’t get away, he didn’t see much choice except to wait and find out…

He didn’t wait long. With a terrible, rattling scream, voices of dead demons rose up from corpses all around them. Blake watched them like the video of a car crash, unable to look away from what he suspected was coming.

With their broken limbs and smashed bodies, the dead demons were filled with the same dark energy that had blackened the stone. The cracks and holes in their bodies filled with darkness, and they grew new obsidian-looking limbs before they twitched and started to rise.

The giant demon apparently decided to spend a little mana to link its mind with Blake’s again, just the briefest touch without any obvious attempt to harm him. Except maybe psychologically.

He winced as his mind filled with demonic laughter. Then he cut the son of a bitch off. He hoped Pliny had more bullets. And that the orcs’s defensive magic wasn’t about to end.

**

Annie’s axe had never been so filled with joy. Every swing, every kill, was like a special gift she delivered straight to the eager weapon. It soaked up demonic blood and guts with a hunger she’d never seen, the small trace of its ‘mind’ in hers completely overwhelmed with greed. And with some kind of…revenge.

It was a mystery that didn’t currently require solving. She moved in a deadly circle around Blake’s vehicle, cutting down anything that tried to get at him. With her mind safe and clear in the Void, she knew all that mattered was keeping Blake alive.

However bad things looked, she knew he’d know what to do. Protect Blake, and sooner or later, they’d always win.

Then the black pool covered everything, and the demons started rising up, all staring with vacant eyes as they chittered and turned to Annie with acid-dripping fangs.

She didn’t hesitate, didn’t stop to wonder why. She just killed the same demons again. Her axe practically giggled with glee, apparently just as happy to kill undead demons as regular ones.

Some kind of barb covered, porcupine-like demon leapt at her with clawed hands wide, and she cut off its arm and kicked its chest to knock it back. It tumbled over and curled up before it shook and twitched.

Annie dropped and used her axe like a shield as the thing exploded. One barb sunk into her hand, another her foot. She plucked out both and stood, watching the blood from her hand leak into the axe and disappear.

More, it almost whispered with a moan. More more more.

She pricked her arm on one of the axe’s spikes and watched in curiosity as it too trickled away. There was something happening, something important. She was mixing things that maybe couldn’t be unmixed, like a chemical compound forever bound. But she had no intention of stopping.

Half a dozen demons with six times as many arms were trying to murder her again. She fell back towards the orcs, using them to guard her flank and give the creatures pause. She knew without her Void she’d have been terrified, overcome maybe by the horror of the battle.

But in her Void, everything was dull, subdued, manageable. She could think clearly about almost anything, except maybe normal human things.

“Are you alright, human?”

Annie turned to see an orc staring at her and inspecting with purple eyes. Annie didn’t like orcs. They had killed all her friends and almost her in the tutorial.

She would never have lived in the tower if it wasn’t with Blake. But being with him made her feel better than the distaste of living with orcs. And she wasn’t afraid of them anymore.

But she certainly didn’t like talking to them. Was she alright? Of course she was. Why would it even ask her that? Did she look like some little girl who wasn’t supposed to be there? She held up her axe as if to say ‘see? I’m a warrior’.

Then she noticed her hand was covered in blood and demon guts. She looked up her arm and saw it was the same, and apparently so was every other inch of her she could see. So she supposed maybe she looked a lot worse than she was. She shrugged.

“I’m fine.”

The orc nodded and grinned.

“Stay beside us, little human. You belong with warriors. We will guard your flank.”

It was a strange moment and thought, and even in the Void Annie was sure she didn’t hide her disgust.

She ran off and hacked down more demons, giving her axe some more blood when it begged. Weird that it should want so much of her blood now, and that it should enjoy killing abyssal demons. It was an abyssal demon, wasn’t it? She supposed she’d never really asked many questions. It wasn’t the talkative sort.

She fought on, losing all sense of time. Then a strange sound filled her ears as she hacked down an ant-demon by cleaving off its head. A kind of bar graph popped into the corner of her vision, a translucent space at the very top of it filling with black before it made a kind of ding.

[Hidden Weapon Power Discovered: Symbiotic Soul, activated. You have soul-bound weapon ‘Abyssal Axe’ with your actions. New weapon features discovered.]

[Weapon Abyssal Axe => Axe of the Fallen. The literal form of an ancient being, betrayed and discarded in the depths of the abyss after the war of creation. All that remains is his mighty soul, bound but unbroken for ten thousand years.]

[Title gained: Half Blood (Abyssal). Gain most of the positive effects of the Abyssal affinity, with almost none of the drawbacks.]

Something awoke in Annie’s mind. Not the animalistic thing that did nothing but feel and hunger. Something was waking up. Something dark and dangerous and maybe just as confused as Annie was. A name whispered through her mind.

Arminius.

‘Annie?’ whispered a voice she somehow knew. A voice almost trembling like it was afraid its words might hurt her. ‘So young,’ it said. ‘So innocent. What have they done to her? Why would she carry it?’

Annie blinked in her peaceful Void. She felt her mind being drawn back to reality, pulled by this thing that was somehow an axe but not an axe. A thing both darkness and light.

‘The brave girl shouldn’t hide,’ said the voice, more urgently. ‘It wouldn’t hurt her. Not anymore. But it will hurt them.’

“Arminius?” she whispered, feeling removed from the battle raging all around her, suddenly glad for the orcs. “What are you?”

‘Someone once,’ said the voice. ‘Something now. The brave girl should hold it up. She should show it the creatures that mean her harm.’

Annie held up the axe and flinched when she saw an eye in the center of the shaft. It was lidless, open, red veined and gold with a silver pupil. She turned it towards the demons, and electricity or some kind of power numbed her hand and arm.

Anger found her, even in the void. So deep and terrible it boomed like thunder in her veins. She put a hand to her head as she screamed, thinking of dead friends and a dead world. The end of everything she’d known and loved. Suddenly she couldn’t hide, and her own powerless and terror and inadequacy came back like no time had passed.

‘Yes,’ whispered the voice. ‘She knows. She has seen. It doesn’t know why they gave it to her, and it is truly sorry. But today she will fly from this pit with it, if that is her wish. They will face the darkness together.’

“I want that,” she said, cradling the axe in her arms like a child. She could feel the hurt radiating from it. The pain and loss and bitter tears it had long since stopped weeping from that lidless eye.

‘Yes. She knows,’ it whispered again. ‘Perhaps that is why they gave it to her. Perhaps, through her, it will have some use yet.’

Annie shivered as her vision darkened. For a moment there was only the eye of her axe that wasn’t an axe, then it pushed out further and further until she saw the naked body of a man, his muscled body bathed in light.

Great, white wings unfurled behind him. In one hand was the lidless, silver eye, lodged in his palm and staring. In his other hand he held up a golden sword wreathed in fire.

‘For the light that was,’ the voice whispered. ‘For the darkness that is.’

Annie clutched the axe like it was trying to escape. Numbing power lanced down her body, but she wasn’t afraid. The Void protected her mind. And she knew somehow ‘Arminius’ would protect her body. She felt it enveloping her like armor, or like a warm bath she could sink inside and disappear.

Annie gave herself willingly, smiling as she watched the awful looking axe glow with the same light she’d seen in her vision, and ignite with the same flame. She felt different, but still herself. Except for the first time since she could remember, Annie didn’t feel helpless, or small.

She had failed her friends once. But Blake had saved her and given her another chance. With Arminius at her side, she vowed never to fail them again.