The Last Experience Point

Kalana sprinted as fast as she could down the Blood Rain Expressway. But with daylight just an hour away, the morning rush to the city had already begun. And unlike Anelia and Alex, who were heading southbound, she was moving east to intersect, which meant she was caught up in it all.

She leaped, rising quickly over four DEHVs on the highway in front of her. The moment she touched back down, however, she jumped right back up a second time, the wind assailing her as she soared ahead of another six.

She wasn't going fast enough, but she couldn't risk moving any faster. That would be too dangerous.

"Alex, what do you mean she's attacking?" Kalana shouted into her phone, having to speak extra loud to be heard over the lively noises from the highway and the wind slamming into both her and the phone, which she held up to her mouth.

"I mean what I said. Anelia thinks they might make it to the border with Tomb of Fire, and she refuses to listen to reason. Look…I can't talk now. I've got to go and back her up."

Kalana couldn't believe it. Anelia wasn't willing to wait just five darn minutes for her to get there? Gods, as if Kalana didn't have enough stuff weighing on her to begin with. Even putting aside the ordeal with that poor "Landy" NPC, she'd already been gripped with worry about her adopted little brother and all the dead bodies in Den of Ziragoth. And now, in addition to all that, she had to seriously wonder whether or not Anelia and Alex were about to throw their lives away for no good reason.

After all, Angelica had been crystal clear: if Anelia and Alex tried to fight the bounty hunters on their own, they were gonna die. And Kalana couldn't let that happen. She just couldn't.

"Excuse me!" she shouted despite knowing no one could hear her as she raced down the highway and launched herself into a running jump. Drivers stared at her in fascination and incredulity as she sailed over another five fast-moving DEHVs and landed with a dull thud atop the back of a long, loud, and powerful ten-engine shipping DEHV, which, based on its logo, was likely making a sizeable furniture delivery.

More thuds echoed with each of her steps as she ran along the roof of the vehicle before jumping off the hood. Zipping over another half-dozen DEHVs, she then landed on both feet between a DEHV taxi and a medium-sized truck. To her right, she saw a woman in the front passenger seat frantically tapping on the shoulder of a man piloting a dark blue sedan, which hovered a few feet above the top of Kalana's head.

Though she couldn't hear the man, she could read his lips well enough to see that he was saying something along the lines of: "What is it, hun? I'm busy. Huh? Who?"

She tapped the man even more excitedly, and then at last, the man swiveled his head to the left and glanced down and out of his window at Kalana, who was running alongside and beneath him. The man's jaw dropped, his entire face lit up with surprise, and honestly, if Kalana wasn't in such a hurry, she might've even waved.

She had to get there as fast as she could. Those two were gonna die. They had no chance! With that thought in mind, she sped on ahead.

********

"Mommy, how long until we get to Diamond Paradise?" Leeney asked, excited.

It was her first time ever! Even though mommy and daddy said the Guild of Gentlemen were bad, they were still going to Diamond Paradise in Tomb of Fire. The lights. The sounds. The dancing. The...the toy store! Everybody went there! It was the best place. Or at least that's what her brother said. But he was snoozing away right now and wasn't saying much of anything.

"Soon, baby," her mother said from the front seat.

Leeney was sitting next to her brother in the back, and mommy and daddy were up front. She yawned and closed her eyes. She would take a nap before they got there. But first, she waved out the window to her uncle, who was driving next to them in his own DEHV. He waved back. She giggled.

*******

A few minutes ago, at the start of this chase, the road had been mostly empty. It had been Anelia, Alex, and the four DEHVs packed with bounty hunters, probably between about 8 and 15 of them in total.

Unfortunately, right after passing Exit 47, the highway merged with the Blood Rain Expressway, which meant that, although traffic wasn't quite "dense," it was beginning to pick up, as people who lived this far south in Whispery Woods were more likely to work in the primary city of the Guild-of-Gentlemen-controlled region of Tomb of Fire than they were to work in Whispery Woods. In other words, the closer they came to the border, the more traffic would increase. Things needed to end now.

Disregarding everyone and everything around her, Anelia pumped her arms as she ran, her guns gripped in each of her hands. The world rushed by with the steady hum of hover engines and the blast of wind. Alex managed to keep pace, too. Together, the two of them closed the distance between themselves and their targets: the four vehicles she was positive were all part of the same entourage, all likely having only just been stolen from some nearby town or another.

Two were "sport" models with no back seats and just two in the front, and these two were side by side in opposite lanes: one was red and the other dark black. The remaining two DEHVs were slightly larger and could seat four in total, and both were white—and likely where the boys were being held, either together or in separate vehicles.

But I can't be sure.

If not for Pete and Adim, Anelia would simply shoot the hover engines out and force the DEHVs to crash, even if it meant causing them to erupt in flames and break apart. But that, obviously, was not an option here. Adim was only level 1 and could easily die, and Pete was low enough level that he could probably also still be injured, too. So yeah, that was a no-go.

But with the road becoming more trafficked by the mile, she needed to do something soon. Especially now that the sun was about to rise, and their cover of darkness would soon leave them. If they were spotted, it would make Vazzal unpredictable. He might do something stupid. Something unforgivable.

"We have to slow them down somehow," she said, quickly peeking behind and over her shoulder at the kid. His face was a mask of serious determination, and though he was clearly not happy to be disregarding the princess's wishes, Anelia had to respect the fact that he still had her back. "Any ideas?"

"Yes, actually," he replied. "We should wait for Kalana. If…if we can."

"You ought to know we can't. Do you got any ideas or not, kid?"

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

The science geek lifted his head and looked a bit upward—and beyond—Anelia. Then he made a half-frown that seemed more reflective than dissatisfied. "That depends. How good a shot are you?"

"Good enough."

His frown deepened, and an uneasy look came over him. "You have to be better than 'good enough.' The lives of those boys depend on it. You'd be shooting in darkness, too."

Anelia resisted the urge to shoot him. "Quit talking shit and tell me what you're thinking."

Alex narrowed his eyes. "Only if you give me your word—on pain of death—that you will never tell the princess or anyone that I suggested this to you."

"Fine."

"I'm serious, Anelia. If you were to ever—"

"I said fine!" she snapped. "What's your plan?"

From the way a crease formed in his brow, he was becoming even less at ease by the moment. "Those two SUVs about a mile ahead—can you see them? It's dark, but you should be able to."

Anelia looked beyond the four DEHVs they were tracking and much farther up the road. She could just see the two DEHVs the kid was talking about. "Yeah, what about them?"

Even while running at more than a hundred miles per hour down a highway, with wind beating against them and causing her scale armor to make a hissing whine, Anelia could still somehow hear the kid grinding his teeth. And though she didn't know him that well, she could tell that, whatever he was about to say, he was deeply, deeply uncomfortable with it.

"If we could just wait for the princess…if we could just give her the chance to—"

"You wouldn't be supporting me if you thought we could!" Anelia snapped. "You're emotional, but you're not dumb. You know damn well we're fucked if they get into Tomb of Fire. There's no way you'd be going along with this otherwise."

"True."

"So, what is it? Tell me. Now."

"If I tell you…it'll be crossing a line. I'm not afraid to cross lines when I truly think it's warranted. But this…" There was real agony in his voice as he said, "This is beyond anything I've ever done. Yet, if the Guild of Gentlemen captures the prince, it will galvanize them. It will incite the fury of the Elves. War is guaranteed to follow. I cannot allow that."

Anelia was losing her patience. "I don't give a fuck about any of that. Just tell me what you know or I'll—"

"Very well," he said quickly, interrupting her. A grim determination entered his eyes, though there was pain in his gaze, and it was plain as day. "I don't even know if such a shot at this distance is possible. But if you were to hit the power supplies on the bottom right of those two SUVs, they would explode in a way that they normally wouldn't if struck by ordinary bullets. But with your guns, it would…it would detonate the entire DEHV."

Anelia again looked over her shoulder at him, wondering if he'd lost his mind. That was the last thing she'd expected to hear from the young man. In fact, she wasn't even sure she'd heard him correctly at first. That was how unexpected and downright crazy he'd sounded.

"Kid, are we talking about those two SUVs?" she asked, extending her gun to point them out. "Those two unrelated DEHVs way ahead of us down there?"

"Yes."

"Why in the fuck would I do something like that?" she asked, perplexed. "And why would you, of all people, suggest it?"

"Because," he replied, an unmistakable pain in his voice, "we are on the Blood Rain Expressway. And unlike the Basilisk Way, this stretch of road has been modernized and updated with all the latest safety features."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning," he continued, "if two vehicles a mile ahead were to suddenly explode, it would cause an uninterruptible STO—Safety Takeover—of the onboard control units of all licensed DEHVs heading inbound. In other words…"

Anelia gripped her guns more tightly, and she could hear the darkness in her own voice. "Our bounty hunters would be forced to stop."

"Precisely."

And I'd be murdering people to do it.

"You're okay with that?"

"No," he said. "No, I'm not. And I never will be."

"But?"

His lips peeled back as though in self-disgust. "Like you said. If I thought for sure we could wait for the princess, I would be doing everything I can to impede you. But…I don't know that we can. Just tell me, Anelia. Can you make such precise, long-range shots with those guns or not?"

"Yeah," she said, speaking the word at a volume low enough that she couldn't be sure he'd even hear it. "I can."

Regardless, he nodded as though he heard it just fine. "Then shoot—and keep your word."

Anelia returned the nod. "Yeah," she said softly—far too softly for him to hear. But she met his eyes as she spoke, hoping that would be enough. "I thought of it myself. Didn't get it from you."

With that, she oriented her body forward, extended her arms, took aim, and even as she raced along the highway so fast that her feet were kicking up sparks, she needed less than a second to aim before squeezing both triggers.

A loud bang filled the night, and two bright flashes lit up the area around her, but only for a tenth of a second. Then, there was nothing—a nothing that lasted for just another tenth of a second. Yet in just this short time, Anelia was still able to become cognizant of the way that Alex, who was now running directly beside her, tensed up apprehensively and winced.

Then came two loud explosions along with a blast of light.

******

"What in the fuck was that?" the evil man shouted, using another really bad word.

Two loud booms and two bright flashes lit up the entire vehicle, but they were from someplace up ahead. Pete got a little scared, but Adim got a lot scared. The bright flash also made it light up so that Pete could see Adim, whose eyes were so red that Pete worried they might have been bleeding. It's cause he cried all the time since they were here. He was really worried about his friend, because he wasn't being as brave. They were both 7 years old and big kids now, but Adim was really, really sad cause Adim had never seen nobody die before, but Pete had.

The bad men killed lots of people and made them watch. Pete covered Adim's eyes a lot but sometimes Adim sawed it anyway.

Mommy Fylwen taught Pete that sometimes Pete had to be really strong, but Adim didn't know that 'cause nobody teached him. But now Adim was really scared and sad, and there was fire and screams and things coming from all outside. The DEHVs also started to slow down and a voice started speaking.

"Emergency Compliance Mode Activated. Your vehicle is coming to a halt. Emergency Compliance Mode Activated. Your vehicle is coming to a—"

"FUCK!" the bad man—the worst—man shouted, banging his fist into the speaker and shattering it.

Adim was trembling really bad and was crying now again too. Pete couldn't hug him cause they were both sitting with their hands and legs tied. Adim was crying so hard again. "Where's my mom?" he cried. "I need mommy. Please let me go. Please. Please let me—"

The bad man snapped his ugly, jagged face around at Adim, his unnaturally sharp teeth jutting from his mouth. "Shut the fuck up!" he screamed. Then he screamed even louder, slamming his fist into the back of the seat with each word. "Shut. The. Fuck. Up! Or I'll throw you onto the road and run you over!"

Pete had to be good right now. He was high enough level that he could break out of this binding and hit the bad man for making Adim cry. But then that might only make things worse. Mommy would tell him to be smart now and to use his head.

If only Ruby was here, he thought. She would know what to do.

His pet raptor would save them both if only she was here. He loved Ruby so much. He missed her. He hoped he got to see her again.

He was scared.

"Boss," said the other man in the front. "This ain't good. The fuck we gonna do now?"

"I don't know," the bad man said. "What even happened?"

"Those two DEHVs just fuckin' exploded."

"Yeah, but why?"

"No idea. Hey, you don't think the Elves had something to do with that, do you?"

He shook his head. "Nah. Not a chance. There's only one sick fuck who'd do something like this. Besides me, I mean."

"Who's that?"

"Anelia," he whispered, sounding real real scared now. "She must be here." He slammed his fist again. "Shit!"

As he spoke the name, Adim's tears stopped and he looked like he hurted less. He even smiled.

*****

"Daughter, you must move quicker!" her mother demanded over the Comm.

"I'm trying!" she insisted. Then she leapt up into the air, spun her body around, and landed in the opposite lane, where she immediately resumed her forward scramble.

Having needed to escape the old Orcish planet in a hurry, Angelica had inadvertently dropped the two of them off in completely separate locations. Kalana had been dropped not far from the Lonely Meadows, and Mom had ended up all the way in Slopes of Dal'Zarrah, where she'd had no choice but to make her way through Hamen's Isle—which meant dancing and singing her way to get back here.

Her voice had taken on a whole new level of urgency, however, and it caused a nervous feeling of sickness to sprout in Kalana's gut. "Mom, did something happen?"

She didn't reply.

"Mom!"

"There's been…an accident on the Blood Rain Expressway heading southbound. I've only just heard. I'm heading over as quickly as I possibly can."

"Wait, what kind of accident?"

She explained what she knew. Supposedly, two vehicles had spontaneously combusted on the highway, causing the safety overrides to activate—coincidentally stopping the four DEHVs Anelia was pursuing.

"Are…are the people inside okay?"

"Almost certainly not. But we don't know. This has only just happened."

Kalana turned the words over in her head. And then she gasped. Surely…surely Anelia hadn't…she wouldn't. Surely, she wouldn't.

She couldn't.