12-90. Echoes
A clang echoed through the forest, bouncing off the mountains and startling the wildlife. Birds took to the skies as animals darted away, uncertain of the sound’s origin. And perched atop one of those peaks, Gunnar’s face bore a tight smile.
It was the best shot he’d ever taken.
Almost nine miles from his target, which was only a few inches across. Even with all his abilities, many of them passively augmenting the bullet’s flight, he’d been forced to account for wind, the Coriolis effect, and simple gravity. He’d also used every single one of his preemptive skills, suffusing the round with so much kinetic force that its flight distorted the air, leaving shimmers of ethera in its wake.
If he had to calculate it, he would’ve estimated that it was comparable to an artillery round, with the penetrating force of a bunker buster. But he was far from an expert on heavy artillery. It was the sort of shot that would have even given someone like Elijah Hart pause.
And he hit exactly where he’d intended.
He hadn’t aimed for center mass, either. According to Isaiah’s drone, which hovered only a few inches from his ear, that wouldn’t work. Because that dwarf was a real demi-god.
“Hit,” said Isaiah through his drone.
Calmly, Gunnar reapplied his abilities, then fired again. This shot was even more difficult, mostly because the dwarf wasn’t conveniently standing still. Instead, the second that round hit his fist, fouling the path of his attack against the armored woman, he’d erupted into motion. Not to complete his strike. Instead, he’d wheeled around, his eyes immediately falling upon Gunnar’s location.
Then, he’d charged.
Gunnar’s next shot hit him dead in the chest, but he knew he didn’t have time to fire again.
“Relocating,” he said. “Location Beta.”
“Copy,” Isaiah replied.
Then, Gunnar was off, bounding across the craggy peaks with the agility of a mountain goat. He pushed himself to the limits of his abilities, knowing full well that if that dwarf reached him, it would be his end.
At the base of the mountain, he could sense his traps going off. In addition, there were dozens more surges of foreign ethera. Evidence of the other traps his ally had laid.
Kurik was a disagreeable sort who refused to give Gunnar the benefit of the doubt. But one thing was certain – the dwarven Sapper knew how to set a good trap. Doubtless, the demi-god invader was currently discovering that little fact.
It wouldn’t kill him.
Gunnar had sensed the enemy dwarf’s power, and he knew that it would take far more than a few traps and a sniper shot to put him down. But he also knew that this was not a battle that would be won quickly or easily. Against such a mighty foe, the only answer was to slowly whittle them down until there was nothing left.
So, guided by Isaiah’s drone, Gunnar dashed across the mountains, using every single one of his hard-won abilities to stay ahead of his enemy.
When he reached Location Beta, which was at the very top of another mountain, he set up to take his next shot. A rustle of trees in the distance told him that the dwarf had made up quite a lot of ground. Maybe a mile. He was much faster than Gunnar had anticipated.
“Plan C.”
“Copy,” Isaiah intoned.
It was too early for that part of the plan, but there was no point in complaining about something he couldn’t change. Once again, he piled on his abilities, took aim at where he expected the dwarf to arrive, and took a deep, steadying breath. He only needed to wait a few seconds before the dwarf, his knuckles dripping blood through the copper wire woven around his hand, burst into view.
Gunnar hit him mid-leap.
The kinetic force of the shot sent him tumbling backward and down the mountain. No matter how much power someone had, they were still subject to the laws of physics. And in mid-air, the dwarf had no footing through which to brace himself.
Gunnar didn’t watch the termination of the dwarf’s fall. Instead, he rose to his feet and ran toward Location Zeta. It was far too early, but it had quickly become obvious that accelerating the plan was their only hope.
Even as he dashed across the mountains, he sensed a surge of ethera from the other battlefield. That gave him at least some hope that the others could deal with the remaining off-worlders.
That was the crux of the overarching plan. Divide and conquer. Separate the leader from everyone else. With that demi-god dwarf, any battle against them was doomed to failure. But without him standing over the whole affair, they were beatable.
Or that was the hope.
Gunnar wasn’t certain if hope coincided with reality, but Isaiah had assured him as much. And he’d learned to trust the leader of Seattle, at least as far as his abilities to gather information went.
As far as everything else? Well, Gunnar wasn’t an idiot. And only an idiot would fully trust a man like that. For now, though, they were working together.
Crossing the mountains from Seattle hadn’t been as easy as he’d hoped. But at least there were trade routes he could follow. And because he was traveling with an army, nothing really messed with their progress.
At one point, such a journey would have taken months. However, because of Seattle’s ethera-powered vehicles and the increasingly superhuman nature of the soldiers, they’d managed it in a few weeks. A monumental feat, but Gunnar could only hope that it would be enough.
He skidded down a scree slope, bounced to his feet and leaped across the shallow ravine. Fortunately, the trees were spaced far enough apart that he didn’t have to dodge. Because of that, he made good time, but he knew that with every passing minute, the dwarven commander was gaining ground.
Stolen story; please report.
But at least he was following.
That had been a subject of some debate. Isaiah insisted that the dwarf would remain with his people, claiming that chasing Gunnar was a stupid move. But if he’d done that, Gunnar would have continued to take shots at him. And despite the man’s demi-god nature, that damage would have added up.
He had no choice but to chase down the culprit.
Which played right into their plan.
Setting it all up had been remarkably easy, mostly because of the Branch messaging system. Execution would be much more difficult. There was only so much that planning could accomplish, especially when set against such a disparity in power.
Gunnar had no idea how far into the demi-god realm Greffyn Cornelius had progressed, but it was enough that Isaiah struggled to get more than a vague idea of his power.
The only solace was that there was no way Isaiah would have committed to the fight if he didn’t think there was a chance of victory. He owed Hart, and he clearly wanted to pay that debt. Or maybe he wanted to prove to the world that, despite his recent reliance on the Druid to save Seattle, he was still capable. Or perhaps he just disliked off-worlders interfering with Earth’s affairs.
Whatever the case, he’d responded to the call for help, and Gunnar had come with him. The only complication was that they couldn’t use the Conclave Spires to teleport directly to Ironshore. Instead, they’d been forced to go overland, which was an exercise in logistics that stretched Seattle’s capabilities to the limits.
They had managed, though.
Now, the plan was afoot, and it hinged on Gunnar’s ability to stay ahead of the enemy. Fortunately, he had plenty of experience and the help of a truly ingenious trapper.
Behind him, Kurik’s work hindered the other dwarf’s passage, and Gunnar could only imagine the frustration they would cause. Restrictive vines, exploding flowers, and mushrooms that infused the air with poisonous spores were just the beginning.
Gunnar refused to think about that, though. Instead, he focused entirely on his task, which was to pass through the mountains as quickly as possible. Anything else would see him caught.
And if that happened, he would die before he even had a chance to act.
Finally, after almost an hour, he reached his destination. It was a valley not unlike a dozen others he’d traversed, with the high walls of mountains jutting toward the sky on either side. Gunnar raced through it, feeling a thousand weapons trained on his position.
He sprinted along its length, then raced up a mountain on the other side. When he reached the peak, he once again took up a prone position. Gasping for breath, he waited.
It took no more than a minute for the dwarf to burst onto the scene. One look told Gunnar everything he needed to know about Cornelius’ passage through the mountains. His entire body was covered in half-healed burns, and his clothes were in tatters. Bits of vegetation clung to his hair, and half his beard had been singed off. A still wriggling vine remained latched to his leg, its thorns lodged into his flesh and refusing to release their grip.
But he was alive. His wounds were barely more than superficial. His frustrations showed plainly on his expression, though. He slowed to a stop, his instincts probably screaming at him that he’d found yet another trap.
Gunnar took another shot.
This time, he dodged.
Swearing in his own mind, Gunnar took aim for another. But then, Cornelius exploded into a sprint.
And the world erupted into chaos.
Another trap, which Kurik had dubbed his wiggly vine trap, activated. Thousands of tentacle-like vines exploded from the earth, and with enough speed that even Cornelius was taken by surprise. There were so many of them that he couldn’t cover enough ground to outpace their growth.
Dozens wrapped around his arms and legs, restricting his movement.
Gunnar took another shot, just to keep his attention. It hit him center mass, though it was obviously no more than a nuisance.
“Wait for it.”
“They know the timing,” came Isaiah’s voice through the drone.
Gunnar shot again.
This time, the dwarf managed to rip free of the vines. The shot took him in the shoulder, spinning him around. More vines exploded from the ground, encasing him in a cocoon of writhing vegetation.
And throughout the valley, ten thousand rifles, each one the pinnacle of what Brisefer Arms could manufacture, fired upon the trapped dwarf. In addition, dozens of ethereal cannons let loose with their payloads, filling the air with enough power to make even a demi-god flinch.
The barrage continued for almost three minutes.
Gunnar caught a few glimpses of the effects, which included a hunkered-down dwarf, constantly regrowing vines, and a growing crater. But he knew it would not be enough to put the demi-god down.
Not entirely.
That had never been the goal, though. Quietly, Gunnar relocated and used a new ability. He only needed to move a little, and Fade Position did the rest. It worked in conjunction with his other stealth abilities to allow him to slip into concealment. More importantly, it reset his status so that the system considered him out of combat. In turn, that allowed him to use his full suite of abilities.
He engaged Armor Piercing. Crippling Shot. Overload. And finally, Assassinate. His rifle hissed with power, ready to explode. And he waited. With every passing second, Overload increased the power contained in that single shot by five percent. If he pushed it too far, it would explode in his hands. Not far enough, and he wouldn’t reach the limit of his potential.
After three seconds, the rifle was vibrating. But the dust had only begun to settle. Four seconds, and he saw movement. Five, and he could make out a silhouette. Six, and the vibrations grew so powerful that Gunnar’s hands went numb.
And on the sixth second, the dwarf came into view. Ragged, with his clothes having been torn to absolute shreds, he looked like he’d been thrown into a blender then set on fire. One of his eyes was missing. The flesh on his forearms was simply gone, exposing bones that had fused with the copper wiring he’d wrapped around his fists. The side of his face had been mangled beyond recognition, and one of his feet was twisted the wrong way.
But he was still alive.
On the seventh second, Gunnar took his shot.
The dwarf heard it, and he tried to dodge. But his wounded foot failed him. The round took him on the upper chest, hitting with the sort of penetrating explosion that would make a munitions engineer giddy with excitement. A cloud of ethera, blood, bone, and flesh erupted from the point of impact, and Greffyn Cornelius went flying back into the crater carved by the barrage from Seattle’s army.
But Gunnar knew it still wasn’t enough. There was no experience notification, meaning that the dwarf was still alive.
“Space Protocol,” Isaiah said, having seen the same thing.
Gunnar pushed himself to his feet and sprinted away. He arrived at his destination a few moments later. In front of him stood a miniature version of the Conclave Spires. He knew they were only prototypes, and with many flaws. Mostly, that they were incredibly inefficient and expensive enough to bankrupt multiple cities. Instead of connecting to existing ley lines for power, they relied on a massive crystal filled with ethera to operate. Even then, they could only remain active for a few short minutes, and they led to a single location. In this instance, the Spires outside of Argos.
The Conclave had provided fifty of them free of charge, citing a need to protect Earth from invaders.
Gunnar settled in at the back of the orderly line of Seattle’s soldiers. They trotted through in ranks of two, disappearing in a surge of ethera. The procession was well-organized, and even though no one panicked, it still took close to five seconds between each activation.
So, Gunnar ended up having to wait almost ten minutes before he was allowed through. The whole time, he expected a battered dwarf to come and rip his head off. So did most of the others, who kept glancing back toward the valley, fear in their eyes. Gunnar remained stoic.
If Cornelius came, there was nothing any of them could do.
Their only avenue of survival lay in the simple tenet of escape. They’d done their part. Now, it was up to others to finish things off.
That was the last thought that went through his mind as he and the Space Mage in charge of the teleporter stepped through, only to reappear in Argos.