Book 17-18.3: Resistance
The daemons that came out of the rifts weren’t as large as the apes, not even compared to the four-armed ones that were leaner than the standard. They were barely bigger than a human, from the looks of it, though they weren’t even close to a humanoid shape. In fact, Yuriko amended her thoughts.
They weren’t marching.
They moved out of the rift, floating, and propelled through the air by…well, something. Their heads were bulbous and hairless, and a large spherical eye that looked like a cross between a cat’s and an octopus’ eye, with regard to pupil shape—rectangular and oriented vertically. Below the head dangled numerous tentacles that varied from seven to thirteen, with those having more being the larger specimens.
The tentacles didn’t touch the ground, nor did they flap around to propel the floating, one-eyed cretins. But the eye, those were the deadliest part of the creatures. The rectangular pupils narrowed into slits, and then expanded as wide as they could, which almost obscured their off-white sclera. A ball of red, superheated plasma would shoot out, and the results were horrific. Many Capes were targeted, and about half of them were struck. A couple lost their lives directly, while the rest were grievously wounded or lost limbs in the process.
Yuriko angrily swept her conjured sunblade and released an Invisible Edge a dozen paces wide. They careened towards the nearest formation of bobbly eyes and cleft them in twain. She dove towards the portals and unleashed another couple of Invisible Edges to kill two more squads of the Eyeballs before they could unleash another barrage.
As soon as she dipped within reach, the Crimson Apes lunged towards her, eerily silent. She twisted and slashed, infused her Intent into the sunblade. It extended her reach by about ten paces, though she only extended it when she knew she wouldn’t hit anyone other than the daemons. Since she kept hold of her conjured weapon, she was readily able to sustain its Radiant energy expenditure, though with the sun setting, her regeneration was based solely on her Radiant Physique. With her incarnation body, it wasn’t fast enough to allow her to conjure dozens of sunblades at a time, but it was more than enough to sustain a single weapon that could cut through anything.
Radiant energy burned through everything and created more of itself to perpetuate. In the Chaos Sea, the quality of the tinder—replete with ambient Chaos—was enough so that Radiance could conceivably consume and perpetuate infinitely. At least until it encountered an opposing Will. Without Intent infused into constructs, an opposing Will would break anything. Not easily, mind, but it would flip Radiant’s consumption-perpetuation cycle into the negatives, even inside an ambient Chaos-rich environment. In the near desert conditions of the Great Continent, much less in the Eternal Tower, it would take a massive infusion of Intent to even get a positive cycle.
Which was honestly better; she didn’t want to destroy everything after all.
Her scan of the area revealed that the rifts continued to remain open, if only because it continued to spew daemons out into the greenery. The Capes fought back, but they were reeling from the initial assault. She noticed special police squads armed with heavy assault weapons and wearing tactical armour, start to fight back. Unenhanced bullets didn’t work well against daemons, similar to how attacks without Animus often failed against Chaos creatures back home. It took a full magazine of bullets to wound an ape, and it took two or three dozen to put them down. The SS mortals had ammunition to spare, for now. The Eyeballs were squishier and much more dangerous, so they focused fire there, but the apes moved to protect the tentacled cyclops. That had the effect of giving the capes some breathing room that allowed the blasters among them to focus fire, too. Those who can fly and blast—limited to Brilliance and about five other individuals—focused on the cyclops, too. The rest picked at the apes, with the tougher melee fighters holding the line.
The air suddenly felt heavy. As if a mountain sat on her back. She fought it off with some difficulty, mainly by adjusting her aura to push against it, but the pressure disappeared a moment later. At least, it did for the Capes and mortals. All of the apes, cyclops, and hidden lizards slammed down with a crack.
There was silence, then somebody yelled, “Keep killing them!” The voice sounded odd and had a strange buzz to it. She resisted the urge to turn around and look since whoever said it, and whoever was the source of the pressure, wasn’t within her perception range, as well as the fact that she was still in melee.
A moment later, bullets flew from the mortals. Then she noticed tiny, metal bees descend from the sky, from the same direction the voice came from. They slammed into the cyclops’ eyes and penetrated through to the back. The daemons slumped, then slowly turned to dust.
The downed apes were by no means helpless. Even pressed against the ground, they struggled to remain on their feet. They swung fists the size of a dinner plate at her, though she easily bounced them off using her aura. She didn’t bother parrying with her sunblade and simply went for the head. A stab between the eyes resulted in a quick death, even if going through the skull cost more Radiant energy than cutting the throat. It was the only mercy she could give the pentapodded creatures.
She went through the rest of the platoon in seconds. Her Intent recovered quickly, and it was full after she finished with the apes. She sent another Invisible Edge at another squad and cut through a dozen of them mid-sternum. She sent another Edge to a group on the opposite side. The Edge curved around obstacles and bisected a similar number of daemons. Then she had to let her Intent recover again before it hit a threshold.
She cut through another squad, and another. The Crimson Apes couldn’t even come close to harming her. She deflected blows with her Animakinesis, or simply allowed her condensed aura to take the blows, often to propel her into another direction, or to add force to her blows. Now that she was practically counting Radiant motes, she noticed some things that would have been too minute to take note of before. Lilibeth’s brain retained memories even if Yuriko didn’t access all of it at once. Learned knowledge of physics and other Astorian sciences allowed her to notice that more speed equalled more force, which also meant fewer motes were needed to cut through. It was a variance of a single mote or two, and irrelevant when she could regenerate her entire pool within a second. But that was only in her true body.
The rifts stubbornly refused to close, and when she tried to tip the balance by using her Animakinesis as well as Radiant energy, her probe was either rebuffed or her Radiant motes consumed in a flash. There was just a tiny bit of a fluctuation when it did, but whatever esoteric energies kept the rift open flooded into the aperture and stabilised it. And even so, more and more daemons flooded out.
There were three rifts along the edge of Central Station, and about half a dozen more inside Grand Central Park. Each one spewed out a platoon of daemon apes every five seconds or so, or cyclops at the same interval. She wasn’t sure if the latter were also controlled by the pentapods since she couldn’t see any sign of them.
She alternated between melee fighting and ranged fighting for over an hour. She moved towards the park rifts since the police and Protectorate Capes covered the station. There was also the iron hornet user who remained out of her perception range and targeted the park rifts, too. Then, there was the one who used air pressure…the one who slammed the daemons down earlier. Most of the latter’s work was in suppressing the daemons long enough for the hornet shooter and another ally who used small lightning orbs to kill.
She caught sight of them when the fighting thinned, and she resisted the urge to shoot an Invisible Edge. The hornet user was more than familiar. It was the iron-armoured flier that accosted her when she first flew towards Winderfield a few weeks ago. She frowned at the metal man, who didn’t give her more than a glance. Huh.
With a start, she realised that one of the others—the lightning ball thrower—when she looked at the reinforcements.
“Alexis.”
The young doctor, whose costume was a white labcoat, gloves, and a morph mask, nodded at her. While the mask obscured his facial features and had pads to alter his jawline, his posture and general attitude, as well as his height and build, gave him away. At least to her.
He stood next to the man who made use of air pressure. That one had an arresting gravitas, even if his costume obscured him head to toe. A deep purple coat that flared at the tips and was trimmed in gold thread. Pristine white button-down shirt, and midnight black trousers that were tucked into mid-calf high boots. His head and face were concealed by a morph mask, but it was an elegant shade of purple instead of the normal black. He was taller than Alexis and had broad shoulders, though the clothes hid his build.
Yuriko frowned as something nagged at the back of her mind, but discarded the feeling once she determined it wasn’t about anything nefarious.
The daemonic flood started to weaken, and she noticed that the edges of the rift started to attenuate. She cast an Invisible Edge tuned to interact with dimensional rifts and broke the continuity of the portal. It collapsed destructively and sent shockwaves outward, along with broken and battered daemons. She did the same with the nearby rifts to similar results, and once they were clear, she flew back towards the train station. The sun had set hours ago, but the surroundings were still lit by powerful floodlights. Those that survived the attack, anyway.
Once she reached the station, she scanned for the rifts, but found only evidence of destructive closing. Around where the rifts had been was a thick layer of daemon dust, as well as half-dried blood from the defenders. The station itself was wrecked and would take weeks to repair and bring back to working order. At least there weren’t any civilians around.
She landed with a sigh and looked around. The defenders, Capes and mortal police and guards, were too exhausted and numb to pay her much attention, and Yuriko hid her aura underneath her clothes. It meant that attacks could rip her coat and leggings but it also meant the telltale glow of her aura was hidden. Mostly. If she wore sheer clothing, it would shine through.
She pulled out her smartphone and noticed that the cellular signal was still absent, but somehow, the Network had a sporadic connection. She had several messages from Scarlett seeking updates. She composed and sent a quick summary of what she encountered and asked her friend to find out what else was going on.
Nothing much on the news, other than the state of emergency. Was the reply.
Yuriko sighed and pocketed her phone. She headed towards the defence coordination base, which happened to be the station’s security office and the adjacent conference room. The triage and infirmary were also close by, and she noticed Brilliance next to Speedrun, who had an arm in a sling and had bloody bandages across his head. The young woman saw Yuriko and gave a weak wave.
Speedrun coughed. “Good to see you here, Regalia. Heard you gave a good accounting of yourself in the fight.”
Yuriko waved it off. “No more than anyone ought to have done.”
“Hah, yeah,” he croaked.
Before he could utter another word, however, someone yelled from the security office, “Hampstead and Ackermont fell! We’re doomed!”
The resulting panic certainly wasn’t good for morale.