170 Hallway of Death
170 Hallway of Death
Amelia’s ears twitched as she kept her bow drawn, her Tigress form sharp and alert. “It’s chaos out there. I can smell a lot of blood. By a lot, I mean a lot,” she said, her voice tense but steady. She stood at the front of the chamber where the long hallway led straight toward the cave mouth. Every torch along the passage had been snuffed, giving Amelia full control of the battlefield through her enhanced sight. As for me, I swept the area outside with my empathy and telepathy, reading the flux of fear, rage, and pain as if they were shifting colors on a canvas.
“They’re here,” Amelia muttered. “Abner made it. Three important-looking people with him, plus a dozen soldiers. Some bandits are on their tails.” She didn’t wait for further instructions and began loosing arrows down the darkness. Her shots slid past Abner’s group cleanly and sank into the pursuers with precise thuds. Screams followed, drowned by the raging battle outside.
Diane stepped beside me and breathed a controlled plume of fire onto one of the torches, lighting the first chamber with a low orange glow. The nobles behind Abner stiffened at the sight, but relief flickered through their fear as they realized she was no threat to them, yet.
“Where is this?” a noblewoman asked, shaken.
Abner guided them in with urgency. “My lords and lady, this is the new lord I serve: Lord Eclipse. And Lady Tigress. They came here to subjugate the mad prince.”
One of the older men snapped, his voice almost shrill, “What is this farce!? This man? Your lord!?”
The second lord scoffed. “I must’ve gone senile. So you really mean to betray the kingdom, Abner?”
Their soldiers and elite guards raised their weapons, tense enough to lash out at the slightest provocation. I lifted a hand toward the pile of magic weapons lying beside me and spoke evenly. “We don’t have time for posturing. Pick your poison. Every weapon here is magical and will help you survive the next five minutes.”
“How dare you interrupt me, peasant!” the man with the gold medallion roared. He was Lord Goldburg, arrogance dripping off him like cheap perfume.
Amelia didn’t turn, still firing down the hallway at a measured pace. “Do you really think this is the time to fight among ourselves?”
“Shut it, anthromorph,” said the young noble with brown hair, his contempt unmistakable. Lord Blasten, the one hailed as the most talented of his house for his gift. Charming.
I kept my patience coiled tight. We needed them alive. The dark-haired noblewoman stepped forward, steady and composed despite the chaos. Her eyes locked on mine as she addressed me directly. “Eclipse. I believe you were a mercenary hired by his highness. Why should we trust you now?”
Lady Thornland. Biokinesis. Rare, unpredictable, and dangerous, depending on the wielder’s temperament. Back home, every biokinetic recorded in the history books had left a trail of corpses behind them. They were mostly composed of men and women unhinged by their own power.
“I have a method,” I told her calmly, “but you’ll have to trust me for a moment. All you need to do is open your mind to me.”
The three nobles exchanged hesitant looks. Suspicion clouded the air, but desperation pushed them closer to acceptance.
Thornland exhaled, then squared her shoulders. “I am willing to take the risk. The western lords spoke of gifts of the mind. Some were said to be able to dominate others with a thought.” Her eyes narrowed. “If you attempt anything of the sort, and I detect the slightest wrong move, I am confident I can take you down with me.”
“Fair enough,” I murmured as I stepped closer.
It was time.
“Let me show you my purpose,” I said, activating Possession as her mind opened to me.
The moment Lady Thornland opened her mind to me, her thoughts fell away like a curtain lifting, and I stepped into her consciousness. I didn’t enter gently. I gave her everything, about my life flashing in a sequence of memories sharp enough to wound.
She saw me as a naive villain cape in my early years, bumbling with half-formed ideals and pointless theatrics. She watched me stand over the dying bodies of powerful figures, my hands bloody, my heart colder each time. She felt the twisted sweetness of my romance with a woman whose soul was split between two selves, one loving, one cruel. Thornland trembled when she experienced the day I lost her, when both halves slipped away from me forever in a single moment that felt like being gutted alive.
I showed her the laboratories, the wars, the chaos, the betrayals, the way I clawed my way up through a world that ate the weak and spat out the bones. She saw the final collapse of everything I had built and the strange, disorienting drift that landed me in this world under a new sky with new rules. She saw my choices here too, from my killings, my alliances, my cold pragmatism, and the faint shape of the purpose I was trying to carve out.
When I released her mind, Thornland crumpled as if the weight of my life was still dragging her down. Tears streamed down her cheeks. For a noblewoman, for a biokinetic, for someone raised to steel herself, she looked unbearably vulnerable.
“I… I never knew such things were possible,” she whispered, wiping her face with a shaking hand. “Another world? Really?”
Lord Blasten leaned close to her, alarm and suspicion mixing in his eyes. “Lady Thornland, what did he do to you? Is this some trick?”
“No,” she breathed. “He showed me his truth. His purpose. His pain. Everything.”
Goldburg snorted. “Everything? Nonsense. No man bares his soul so easily.”
Thornland faced them, her expression sharpened by awe. “Then you try it. Open your minds to him. If you dare.”
Blasten paled. “Absolutely not. My mind is my castle.”
Goldburg crossed his arms in defiance. “I refuse on principle. But… if he convinced you, then I’ll accept that much.”
They did not trust me enough to open themselves, but they no longer viewed me as an enemy. That was good enough.
Amelia growled from the end of the hallway, still firing arrows without pause. “If you three are done having your emotional epiphany, pick up a damn weapon already! There’s a whole pile of them and my arm’s getting sore. This bow might be magical, but it drains me like crazy.”
The nobles flinched and moved to the pile. The soldiers hesitated, glancing at me for confirmation. I nodded at the weapons. “Take them. They might awaken something in you if you’re lucky. Even if they don’t, use them anyway, since you’ll need every edge to get out alive.”
Lady Thornland stepped toward me, her voice softer than before. “Heroic sir, how do you wish to approach this battle?”
The title made something uncomfortable twist in my chest. “Heroic sir.” No one had ever called me anything like that. But her earnestness made it impossible to dismiss.
I pointed toward the long corridor. “Here’s the plan. All of you stay right here. I’m going to soften the enemy and break their formation. This tunnel is narrow enough for me to let loose without holding back.”
A shimmer in the air caught my eye, like heat distortion. Invisible. A mercenary slipped through the dark, but I reached out, phased my hand into his spine, and ripped it free before he could react. I hurled the spine like a javelin. It speared straight through a bandit running behind him.
Goldburg gagged. “Such insanity. Did he really mean what he said earlier?”
Thornland wiped her residual tears and nodded. “Don’t worry. He is a mighty warrior from another world.”
Diane gasped behind me as I summoned the telekinetic sword. It hovered in front of me, humming with restrained violence. I drew the teleporting dagger with my free hand and charged forward. The sword darted ahead, its intangibility activating as it drove through skulls as though they were mist. At the same time, I sliced throats, hamstrings, and tendons. Bodies dropped like puppets with severed strings.
Behind me, Lord Blasten muttered in disbelief, “Are we even needed here?”
Goldburg straightened his vest and grinned with sudden bravado. “We might as well do our part! Lord Blasten, Lady Thornland! Ensure your guards devote themselves to protecting you, because I shall fight in the vanguard!”
With a shout, he activated his Gift. Golden hexagonal plates burst across his entire body, overlapping into a radiant armored shell. He leapt past his guards, landed with surprising agility, and tore a superspeed mercenary clean in half with his bare, gilded hands.
Goldburg laughed triumphantly. “You have talent, young man! Work for me!”
“No thanks,” I said flatly as I felt a flicker of displacement behind me. It was a teleporter lining up the angle of attack like a fool. I didn’t even turn. I simply slid the teleporting dagger backward and up, letting him appear directly into its path. The blade punched through his skull the instant he materialized. His body dropped without ceremony. “I’m going to start letting a few of them into you,” I warned my allies. “Deal with whatever slips past.”
Diane roared and shifted into her half-dragon form, muscles swelling beneath scaled patches. She swung the spear I’d given her in brutal arcs, shearing through the first bandits I funneled her way. The spearhead glowed white-hot from its thermokinesis, slicing bodies cleanly. The shaft sent men flying like ragdolls every time she slammed it forward.
“A d-dragon?” Blasten stammered, voice trembling between awe and terror.
Beside him, Lady Thornland didn’t even acknowledge his shock. She was already touching one soldier after another with deliberate swiftness. The veins in her arms darkened with the strain of her Gift. “Listen well,” she told them. “The strength I am granting you is temporary. It will cost your lives afterward. But I swear upon my name, your families will be compensated. You have my word.”
“YES, MY LADY!” the soldiers roared as their muscles swelled, bones creaking under the sudden surge of power.
Blasten frowned as if feeling left out. “I suppose I should do something, too.” He raised both index fingers, and brilliant bolts of energy blasted from them, carving burning tunnels into the swarm ahead. “I’m gonna blast them all!”
Amelia kept firing without pause. “Big silhouette coming!” she warned. “Looks like the mercenary, Jon. The invulnerable one—”
“DUCK!” Abner shouted.
“BREAKTHROUGH!”
A dagger streaked through the dark like a comet, wrapped in lightning and fire, ripping a straight path through the cave. Renry appeared beside Thornland in a burst of speed, the redhead’s eyes manic with bloodlust. She aimed both of her crackling daggers at Thornland’s throat…
But Abner slammed into her just in time, his blade intercepting both of hers in a shower of sparks. The impact rattled the air.
That wasn’t the worst of it. Jon had thrown her across the whole cave length with super strength strong enough to crack the walls. If Prince Grant had ordered it, Jon could have collapsed the entire cave already. He hadn’t. Which meant Grant wanted ‘answers’ before the slaughter. I imagined he must be pretty flustered with the current development.
Renry grinned as flames rippled across her skin. Abner slashed again, but his sword phased straight through her body as though she were smoke.
Renry wasn't just fast. She wasn’t just strong. She had intangibility, and she could turn into fire.
Shit.
Around us, her daggers spun wildly, guided by telekinesis, zapping soldiers with lightning and burning holes straight through armor. Half of Thornland’s temporary soldiers died in seconds. Her elite guards followed soon after, crumpling one by one as the cave filled with fire, electricity, and screaming.
Renry laughed, her voice a jagged shriek. “I AM INVINCIBLE! SO THIS IS THE BLESSING OF HIS HIGHNESS! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!”
The force of the blessing had pushed her beyond reason and probably beyond sanity.
Amelia snapped her bow onto her back and lunged forward. “Enough!”
Her null claws crackled as she clamped Renry’s flaming torso. The flames vanished instantly, negated by Amelia’s power. With one violent pull, she tore Renry’s intestines free. Renry gasped, flickering between flame and flesh.
Abner didn’t hesitate. He drove his sword through her back, straight through her heart. Both of her telekinetic daggers clattered to the stone as her body slumped to the ground.
Breathing hard, Amelia wiped blood from her claws. “Next?”
I stepped over Renry’s corpse and tightened my grip on the floating telekinetic sword. More footsteps thundered toward us.
“Push forward,” I said. “We break them here.”
Goldburg punched his fists together, the golden barrier coating his skin gleaming like a hundred interlocking shields. “I’ll lead the way!” he roared, lowering his huge frame before charging straight into the swarm. Bandits scattered like insects, some crushed outright as he bulldozed his way forward.
From my empathy and telepathy, I could feel the panic spreading outside. Dozens of bandits were fleeing, their terror sharp and frantic. Prince Grant must’ve ordered them to chase the enemy, hunting the ones who fled the encirclement. Perfect. The fewer enemies outside, the cleaner our path in here.
Abner sprinted ahead and shouted back, “Lord Goldburg! Something big’s coming! DODGE!”
Above us, the ceiling burst outward. A swordsman dropped from the shadows, falling with predatory precision. His blade cut through the air with terrifying force. It was Ernesto, the kinetic nullifier. The blessing had amplified him into something feral.
Goldburg raised his arm, golden hexagons flaring.
It didn’t matter.
Ernesto’s blade sheared straight through the barrier and severed Goldburg’s arm in a single, vicious stroke.
Before his scream finished leaving his throat, I hurled my intangible dagger. It slipped through Ernesto’s sword like mist, but when it struck his chest, it bounced off uselessly. Even the intangible momentum had been nullified.
“That almost scared me,” Ernesto said coldly as he drove his blade toward Goldburg’s heart.
I yanked Goldburg backward, phasing us through the strike. His blood sprayed the air as he clutched his stump and howled.
Amelia leaped forward, Tigress form swelling with muscle. “I’ll handle him!” she shouted. She understood immediately that Ernesto’s nullification was the worst match-up for me. Her claws flickered with null energy as she barreled into him.
Thornland’s voice cut through the chaos. “PUSH!” She and her enhanced soldiers tore through the bandits around us. Each soldier fought like someone burning the last of their life in one final blaze.
Diane lit torch after torch with her breath, filling the cavern with harsh firelight while slicing through bandits with her spear.
Goldburg staggered beside me, shivering uncontrollably. “F-fuck…” Blood streamed from his nose. His body convulsed.
Then he burst!
His body ruptured outward in a spray of gore, and Jon stood where he’d been.
He’d been inside Goldburg!
“How… how is he… ?” Thornland gasped.
“He can shrink his body!” Blasten shouted, shaking with fury. “Get away! Don’t let him into any of your orifices! He’ll crawl inside and explode you from the inside out!”
Jon darted forward with unnatural speed, shrinking and growing mid-movement, killing two soldiers with super strength before they even registered he’d moved. I locked onto his mind, tracking the compressed mass. The telekinetic sword phased out and struck, but he shrank again, slipping through its path before crushing another guard like a toy.
I threw my dagger. He shrank, dodged, and kept coming. Every mind near him shrieked with terror as he rushed from one target to another.
When he reached me, I unleashed every ounce of psychic strength I had from empathy, telepathy, and pain induction, slamming a crushing migraine into his skull. Jon stumbled, shaking violently.
Across the cavern, Ernesto was losing his battle with Amelia. Null energy carved deeper and deeper into his wounds, while Amelia kept nullifying his tricks. Still, one mistake on her end would kill her instantly.
“Amelia!” I shouted.
She glanced back mid-fight.
I grabbed the disoriented shrunken Jon and hurled him in a clean arc. “Think fast!”
She caught Jon effortlessly and, with a snarl, shoved the tiny brute straight into Ernesto’s open mouth.
Ernesto’s eyes widened.
His head detonated like an overripe fruit as Jon expanded instantly, still half-dazed, his limbs flailing.
I didn’t give him a chance to recover. I rushed in, phased through the ground with him in tow, and forced him straight down, six feet deep, before merging his every atom on the dirt. Jon’s mind vanished in a dull, suffocated flicker.
When I surfaced again, Amelia was panting hard, leaning on her knees, blood splattered across her fur. She looked up at me, breath ragged, but a wicked grin split her face.
“That’s some fucked-up shit,” she said.
“Yeah,” I replied. “But it worked.”