Dream Drive Ch. 10

"What?!" Chaki shouted.

Rachel plastered a bland smile on her face and raised her weapon. "Those fucking soldiers! We're gonna kill them!"

The warriors around her rattled their spears and echoed her cry.
"Kill the iron men!"
"Protect the mountain!"
"For Shakhan!"

Chaki pumped her fist. "Those fucking soldiers!" She glanced at Rachel. "Did I say it right? That sounded like Jackson's tongue."

"We'll work on it," Rachel said. She glanced at Chaki's hand, noting the inverted pentagram marked on her skin. If it wasn't for that, Hale's spell would have vaporized her. "I thought you were a beta tester."

"Beta...?"

"The game! Isis!" Rachel pointed at the mark. "You've got a star thingy? Hello?"

"Shakhan's symbol? Jackson gave it to me."

Rachel nodded to herself for a moment, as if that was the expected answer, and then it hit her. Her eyes bulged. "Wait, what?! How the fuck did he do that?!"

"Watch yourself!" Chaki shouted. Rachel faced front to see that they were about to come into contact with the enemy.

Her surprise of a moment ago twisted into a half-panic and amplified.

Hale's halberdiers were sweeping forward in a wave of black steel. Where their hooked blades passed, men died.

Warriors lost hands, arms, heads. Those that tried to block with their weapons were gutted. There was so much blood that the ground looked more red than brown. The elites stepped over the corpses without slowing, a spiked wall of death.

There were small victories. A few warriors would gang up on one man, managing to get their spears through the articulated plate armor, but then they'd all be cut down together in one attack. It was as if the halberds met no resistance at all when they contacted a person. They moved as easily through bone as they did through air.

A moment later, Rachel was at the front, a chaotic, screaming, gnashing, bloody front. A halberd stabbed toward her.

Rachel ducked left, stepping around the thrust. It might be sharp, but it was a giant knife on a big stick. It took time to swing. She dashed in and activated her Power Thrust.

Her sword flashed white. The tip struck the man's plate armor right on the heart.

There was a heavy thud, and Rachel's sword rebounded. She stumbled backward to keep her balance. The man winced back, clutching his chest. Rachel could see where her blow had pushed his armor in, crushing it against his skin, but he was far from dead.

Another halberd came in low from the side. Rachel jumped it. The man brought his weapon up high, then sliced down in a straight line. Rachel stepped to the side and went in for the kill.

She couldn't risk half-measures. She activated Flicker Sticker. Her sword arm blurred. She felt the tip of her blade strike the armor once, twice, then plunge through the man's gut. She kicked him off the blade and stepped back, away from the oncoming soldiers. They stormed over their fallen comrade without care.

Rachel's eyes flicked to her essence bar as the white wisp drifted into her body. It ticked up by 27 points, leaving her with 64. Flicker Sticker cost her 35 apiece. If she had to use it for every soldier, she'd run out of essence really fast. Their armor was too thick.

A white arrow flew by Rachel's head. It slammed into an oncoming soldier, plunging into the gap in his faceguard. Rachel shouted over her shoulder. "That was fucking brutal, Chaki!"

"You can't get through their armor!" Chaki said. "Go for the weak points!"

Rachel settled herself next to some friendly warriors. Now that they had really turned to face their enemy, the crush had slowed down somewhat. She tried to think. She didn't really have any abilities that could target weak points. Maybe she could make one?

The lines closed together. Rachel peered at them as they moved, looking at the places where the pieces of their armor hooked together. She'd never get her sword through the guy's helmet. Their shoulders were covered over with thick round plates, protecting their armpits. She looked at their legs.

There!

The kneecap itself had a round plate, but the back and sides of only had a leather strap, probably so they could move easily. They were soldiers designed as shock troops for smashing through an enemy, not for protracted battle. If she struck their knees hard enough from the side, she could hobble them, and then they'd be easy pickings.

Maybe she could even crush in the front – that piece of armor didn't have any supporting bits nearby. There was nowhere else for the force to go. If she hit hard enough, she should do damage.

All she had to do was get inside their giant razor-sharp weapons of doom.

One of the soldiers thrust with his halberd. The warriors to Rachel's left moved to get clear. Rachel ducked the other way.

One of the other soldiers swung his weapon over, trying to strike Rachel as she closed the distance. She knocked the shaft away with her sword, then swung the tip toward the other man's knee, activating her Power Thrust. Her weapon flared and was pulled forward on rails, straight for the soldier's knee.

An ugly crack snapped over them. The man screamed and buckled to the ground. Rachel kicked him away. The other soldier was bringing his weapon around, lifting it high – and revealing the exposed skin under his heavy shoulder plate.

Rachel exploded off her feet at top speed and activated another Power Thrust. Her move caught the soldier off-guard. Her blade sank into his chest from the side; his weapon fell from his hands, and she pushed him away.

A panel popped up in front of her.

Incisive
Passive: Increased chance of armor penetration with all active abilities. Chance increases per level.
Active: A carefully aimed thrust. Power multiplies if used at an enemy's weak point.
- Essence Cost: 15
- Level: 1
- Progress: 25.6%

Rachel barely had time to look it over before she ducked back behind another thrust. Another weapon came at her, then another. They were focusing on her, keeping her on the defensive. She whipped her torso around to dodge the strikes.

Rachel almost tripped backwards. She waved her arms and tried to keep her feet. A halberd nicked her in the side, slicing off a few points of health.

As she regained her balance, she saw that she'd almost fallen over a torso. It was the armless remains of the warrior she'd been fighting alongside.

Her temporary success had isolated her from her allies. Everyone else was falling back. Another flash of light – an arrow from Chaki, buying her time. She skipped backward to get clear before she was surrounded.

Rachel realized why she'd been left behind. They'd been struck from the front again by the normal soldiers, reorganized and pushed into another attack. They were able to fight back against those shock troops well enough, but they couldn't do that and pivot to hold off the elites at the same time.

Rachel planted her feet. They were pushed on the front and getting ground up on the sides. She had to protect this flank or they were completely screwed.

Arrows flicked past her head. A few elites went down, but their heavy armor insulated them from that kind of attack. She wouldn't be able to rely on archers to bail her out.

Warriors stepped up to either side of Rachel. They looked grim. Air misted out of their mouths and into the cold. The snow was getting thicker.

The one next to her was young, stocky, short – still taller than her, though. He looked like he'd been through hell. Blood was smeared on his wrists, ankles; more matted down his hair. His rawhide vest was splattered with things Rachel didn't want to look at too closely.

He looked back at her. "You fight well."

"I hope you do, too," Rachel said. "The last guys that stood next to me got cut into little pieces." The young man stared at her. The other warriors set their jaws a bit firmer. "Just saying, if you want to back out. You guys don't have one of these." She waved the hand with the pentagram.

The boy thumped his chest, over his heart. "This will have to do." His eyes firmed up. "We show them our hearts. Our spirit! We won't be broken!"

The warriors growled in affirmation. A few sent up war cries – some howling, others shouting. More started up a chant. It all formed a boiling chorus of noise that filled the air around Rachel. She felt caught up in it.

The elites were closing in. There was no more ground to give. They had to hold the flank.

Rachel and her allies started running toward the enemy line. Her shout was lost inside the rolling thunder of war cries, but she shouted anyway. "Let's do this shit!"

Just as they were about to clash, white beams poured from the sky.

The lines halted. Everyone scrambled for cover. The snow had turned the mud into an icy sludge; warriors fell to the ground, sliding, tripping. Elites jostled, their armor clanking as the front came to a halt.

Rachel ran forward.

Earlier, the beams of light had only killed Hale's troops. She'd watched it – it tried to kill Hale, and failing that, went after the soldiers. It never touched the tribesmen. It bent around Chaki to avoid her.

And after the kills, essence had left their bodies. That meant a player was responsible – and that meant Jackson.

It had felt like twenty years had passed since his first salvo. Being in the battle was like being in a little bubble of time. In the back of her mind, some part of her knew it had only been a minute or two, but time just didn't work the same way when you were clinging to life and trying to bash the other guy's head in.

As she prepared to use her abilities, she had the idle thought that she should be far more disturbed by how easily she was killing people than she was.

The beams of light blasted into the elites just before Rachel arrived. They punched through the black steel as easily as the soldiers' halberds cut through bone, leaving behind shredded metal and gaping blood holes. Rachel used Flicker Sticker, finishing off three soldiers at once. She used it again, and again.

Even as she was plowing through enemies, the lasers moved faster than she could. Essence drifted up into the oncoming snow and vanished. Damn waste.

The seventh time she used Flicker Sticker, a new panel opened up in front of her.

Chained Offensive Multithrust:
As long as one enemy was slain during the last use of Flicker Sticker, another Flicker Sticker can be reactivated immediately for half the essence cost. Additionally, any damage taken by the user will be doubled by each successive use.
- Essence Cost: 100
- Level: 1
- Progress: 35.6%

Rachel didn't like the name of it – she'd renamed Multithrust in the first place – but she activated it without hesitation.

Her sword arm whipped forward. Her essence jumped down by 100 points. A haze of iron and light shot in front of her; she felt her arm vibrate under the control of the ability. Two men fell dead, and she got 52 essence back.

One of the best things about Isis was how the abilities just knew when to activate without you saying anything. Rachel played tons of games where you had to click a button, state a command, make a gesture, something, anything – but Isis knew. Then again, Isis was real life.

She chained into a second Flicker Sticker. Her essence only jumped down by 50 points. She only killed one man this time, but the other two were bashed and banged onto the ground. The following Flicker Sticker – that only cost her 25 essence – killed them both.

Rachel's sword was a white-hot stick of death. She churned through soldiers, killing them one after another while they were still recovering from Jackson's long-distance laser attack. They were still bunched up from when they'd come to a halt, making it even easier to keep up her chain.

By the fifth chained Flicker Sticker, she only paid 3 essence – of course it was rounded down, Emil Mohammed would never fail her – and she'd killed enough enemies to send her essence into overflow. She had to capitalize on her strengths, so she mentally opened the menu as the ability did the work for her and dumped another two hundred into Agility, then threw another 100 into Spirit to help hold the extra essence.

While she was distracted by her game menu, a soldier busy dying in the mud managed to slice her ankle with his halberd.

Rachel's leg was torn out from underneath her; she collapsed to the ground. The blinking icon telling her she was in the midst of a combination attack vanished. All the health she was healed by Chaki and everything she'd been slowly regenerating was chewed up by that little scratch.

The soldier crawled toward her. He raised his armored elbow, then jammed it into her stomach, using the leverage to pull himself over her. Rachel clenched against the blow, trying to stop the air from leaving her lungs.

The man pulled a dagger from his belt. His eyes were wild, driven. Below the armor that covered his neck, Rachel could see a familiar wooden collar.

He swung his shoulder down, bringing the dagger with it. Rachel gripped her sword and screamed out her effort as she lifted the blade, propping the hilt under her shoulder. He impaled himself on the blade. Rachel twisted her neck away, avoiding the dagger that was still coming at her. It hilted into the mud.

She watched the light in his eyes die. Essence flowed into her.

Horns sounded in the distance; high, squealing trumpets used by Hale and his forces.

The soldier's body laid on top of her, dead. She struggled to breathe with the weight on her chest. She didn't have the strength to roll him off.

Something moved the corpse away. Rachel sucked in oxygen.

A hand was offered to her. She took it and was hauled to her feet. It was the young man from before. He was grinning.

"What was that horn?" Rachel asked.

"They're running," the young man said.

Rachel surveyed the landscape on unsteady feet. Corpses were everywhere. Dead warriors, dead soldiers, black armor and brown leather. The snow was still floating down, already beginning to cover up some of the colder ones. One good thing about the cold – it really killed her sense of smell.

"This is fucked up," Rachel said.

They both looked up at the sound of footsteps. Chaki and some other guy were coming their way. He looked like an older version of the one that just helped her up. Then again, I do kinda have trouble telling them apart.

"Rachel!" Chaki said. "They're retreating! We won! We won!"

The man marched up beside them and plopped the butt of his spear in the ground. "Rachel. I saw you fight. Thank you for helping us." He extended his hand. "Is this how you greet each other, where you're from? Jackson taught me."

"Yeah, basically," Rachel said. She took his hand. His grip crushed her fingers together; she grimaced and scrunched her eyes. He pumped her hand in a single, hard shake. She flexed her fingers as soon as they were free, trying to work the pain out. "Generally you try not to rip the other person's hand off," she said.

A sheepish smile grew on Hanta's face. "Jackson said something similar. My apologies."

Rachel sighed. "Whatever."

"I am Hanta," he said. "You've met my son, Vuntha." The younger man nodded to her.

"Rachel Ransfeld," she replied.

Rachel smiled to herself. She didn't get out much back on Earth, but when she did, her introductions were always met with the same response. Ohmygosh, did you just say Ransfeld?! The Ransfeld?! Wait, are you related to Charles? It got annoying after a while.

"That's right," Chaki said. "Jackson was wondering about your name. Do you know someone named Charles?"

Rachel stared up at the sky. Somewhere, a higher power was laughing at her. Laughing and pointing and telling its friends all about the great decades-in-the-making joke it just played. "Yeah. Charles is my brother."

"By the way," Hanta said, "why do you have two names?"

"I told you," Chaki said. "It's because they have more people. When you have that many, you need two names."

"That's ridiculous," Hanta said. "How many people can they possibly have to need two names?"

Rachel was still glaring at the clouds. "I hate you," she muttered.

"What is it?" Chaki asked.

Rachel sighed. Chaki was giving her the eyeball – maybe it was her last name, or maybe it was her muttering to herself. That tended to get weird looks. "Hale's not done. He won't give up that easily."

Hanta glanced into the distance; they all followed his gaze. The snow cut their visibility. The wind wasn't blowing much, but it was coming down in big, wet snowflakes. They weren't the kind that piled up high, but they covered everything in ice really fast.

Hanta watched the snow a bit longer, then nodded. "The iron men didn't cross a hundred miles to withdraw like cowards. They've already caught us unprepared. We need to regroup and expect the worst."

"I think those white lasers were Jackson," Rachel said. "He should show up soon."

"I hope you're right," Hanta said.

"I can feel him," Chaki said. "But it's off. Faded, somehow." She lowered her head. "I think whatever he did took something out of him."

"How can you tell?" Rachel asked.

Chaki glanced at her. "Well, it has to do with this," she said, raising her mark. "We formed a sort of pact. A Bond. That's what the magic calls itself."

Rachel really liked Chaki. She was tough, and seemed pretty smart. She even got the collar off Rachel's neck. That couldn't have been easy.

Those positive feelings were almost totally erased by the bubbling green head of envy that stirred in Rachel's gut at the news she was that close to Jackson. "What kind of bond, exactly?" Rachel asked.

"Well, we're...it would take some explaining," Chaki said. "I'll tell you about it later."

The creature inside Rachel growled and shifted, unsatisfied. Rachel pushed a fake Charles-style smile on her face and nodded. "Sure, yeah. There's a war on and all."

The echo of a scream cut through the air.

Their heads snapped toward the sound. They stared out into the snowfall. The scream came from the direction the iron men had retreated. Rachel could just make out movement at the edge of her line of sight, past the snowflakes – their lines, reorganizing. The source of the noise was unclear.

The scream turned into a low groan, then an almost feral growl, vibrating under the snowflakes. The deep sound got stuck in Rachel's chest and rattled around there like the throb from a massive subwoofer.

"We need to regroup, now," Hanta said. He started off. "Make another line! Regroup! Regroup!" Warriors flocked to his call, rapidly forming into another line along the footprints Hanta's moccasins left in the snow.

Lord Hale slammed his fist on his saddle hard enough to hurt his hand. Three mages dead. Three. The Vuldstadt himself would be dancing in his tower when he heard that Hale's magical power base had been halved during the course of the single battle.

His soldiers weren't much better off. He'd expected the barbarians to break under the power of the lightning matrix, but Rachel's sudden arrival – without her collar – had dismantled that plan. And then he wore her down, had her in his hands, and she slipped away a second time. Hale didn't understand the source of the magical bombardment that had forced him into such a corner, but it had done far more damage than the men they'd been fighting had. He mentally swore to kill whoever was responsible – slowly.

He glanced out into the storm. The black mountain loomed in the sky, easily visible even with the snow coming down thick. The spell came from there. It underlined the possibilities, the great force that stirred underneath the rock. If he could harness that kind of power, then it would more than make up for the loss of his mages.

They could still cast lightning magic, but it wouldn't have the power and coordination. Their individual bolts of lightning were powerful, but it wasn't close to the same scale. Two mages couldn't take down an entire army.