And if the night is burning, I will cover my eyes
For if the dark returns, then my brothers will die
And as the sky is falling down, it crashed into this lonely town
And with that shadow upon the ground, I hear my people screaming out.
Now I see fire, inside the mountains
I see fire, burning the trees
I see fire, hollowing souls
I see fire, blood in the breeze.
–I See Fire, Ed Sheeran
The Runners had driven half-way across the plains and broken highways of Calfree, to within sight of the city they couldn't return to. Colonel Saito was no more likely to forget the Armoury fight and Shavarus' madness than they themselves were. Sarah, born in the Mission, stared through the Bulldog's plate-glass window at the distant bridge over the bay.
"What became of Shavarus?" Ilsa asked Anya, by way of semi-idle road trip conversation.
"Seems he got some big vision; that the one chosen race who deserved his shining tomorrow were the trolls. He'd been hating on elves since the Armoury fight, though, seeing as the Tir left him hanging. Anyway, he kicked all the orks and dwarfs out of his little cult, MPA put him on their hitlist, and that mad fragger ain't been heard of in months."
"I had a run-in with his trolls, last year." Sarah got out, "They said Shavarus wanted me brought to him, he wanted to show me I was still his. I try not to think of my world like some fragging torture pit, but sometimes…why?"
Sarah didn't have much patience with idle chat, and Susan was happy to back her. The human girl weakly gripped Sarah's wrist, shifting her head in the troll's knobbly lap.
The toxic spirit had sunk into Fighter's soul like an oil slick with teeth. Ilsa had managed to knock the thing into a torpor, having reread studies on the Hamburg toxic floods before the junkyard Run. It had still swallowed half of Susan's life and Essence. Only a specialist shaman could conceivably remove it; Ilsa couldn't even assure Fighter she wasn't crippled for life.
To Susan, the idea felt like the end of life. And she felt the polluting spirit on her body; an incubus she was helpless to remove. Taut as wire from her jaws through her shoulders to her eyelids…she could still speak without screaming. Ilsa never failed to be amazed by her.
Susan had insisted they all finish the mission, all the way to Colma. She stared up at Sarah's rough face, framed by her long and very striking raven hair.
"…you got stronger since last time, chummer. Even stronger."
"Sorry my knees aren't soft."
"…soft." Susan muttered, giving Sarah's vast bosom a fist-bump, "Make an amazing Moma. Chip truth. Moms should be tough."
"Shifu…Susan. I'm a Runner. I'm never going to have kids. Why do you say drek that like that, when you're so lucky? Why can't I do without you, even now? You've given me so much, but you've taken so much away...why are you always strong…?"
"…you're stronger. You'll find a good man who loves your strength. Oh, Harry…"
Sarah averted her face, bitter with frustration, as Susan quivered with her own fearful need. Ilsa and Paladin, who were sharing driving duties, ignored the outburst as carefully as they were ignoring each other's presence. Runner teams thrown together at full tilt, between vans and small safehouses, had to consider each other's privacy where there was none.
Anya's Guardian drone was squatting on the captured NC data tablets, furiously as a faceless hover-drone could furiously squat.
"I could almost believe, if we released this drek –the NCs fragging agreed to split Calfree with the Tir, for their guns –it wouldn't even kill them for once and all or be worth a frag."
"Indeed, any supporter who could overlook open murder and torture would say anything can be faked." Ilsa responded, "With the NCs defeated from Redding to San Francisco, however, and their main forward base destroyed, their fighters will seize any excuse to jump ship. And largely return to scattered banditry–but it will no longer be impossible, at least logistically, for Norton's Army to travel to Redding and oppose the real threat from Tir Tairngire."
"The Agency wiped out Humanis in Calfree just three fragging years ago. For my Kenji, my sweet, strong boy that they murdered…two, three years time, they'll be spreading their lies and killing young orks again. FRAG IT! What have I got to do?"
"Sadly, some problems cannot be solved with killing. So long as the ideas and the conditions remain, that give rise to–"
"Do you think I enjoyed it? Shooting down those drekheads that ran from the junkyard? You would try to kill every NC in Calfree, but I couldn't even start. What have I got to do? To show them metahumans are people! You're human, don't you have anything to say?"
Ilsa didn't assert her own view that Anya wasn't strictly a metahuman–furthermore, that her free will, cognition and compassion were more significant than her (non)metahumanity. Anya's orkish identity wasn't a thing that the young A.I. would give up in a million years.
"I was too scared to get revenge on hu–on the Japs, when I was alone." Sarah filled the silence, "I can't think you were afraid, Miss Anya."
"My Dad killed a lot of humans, for what they did to us, but he never got any joy . I never liked killing, but I wasn't gonna in stay in the gutter, and I was a fragging good decker. You know, six months back, I tried outing the Governor's special advisor as Humanis down to his drek, and worse? They waved it all away ; Gavin Morgan's still got his job, and Calfree was too busy throwing rocks at trogs to care. I've have kept on raking their muck until it choked them, but SK picked up my trail and I had to dive deep."
"After the Armoury, you and your dad, Orion, were spending some time apart, right? I can't think that lasted long…what else did you do, Miss Anya?"
It pained Sarah–regrets lodged in her like iron nails–that she hadn't worked more with Anya. Her Year One had worked up from security gigs to milk runs, for the People's University and MPA, with a few good chummers who were either dead or still struggling in Oakland. There had been nothing to interest a full-fledged A.I. Although Anya was a strong ork sister, who should have been her mentor and friend…the whole living-in-cyberspace thing was a damper on chummership.
"I looked for other A.I. I wrote programs. It was lonely. The Net is vast and infinite; I could make castles of cloud or oceans of chocolate, but what did I want? I dressed a program in algorithms and memories, and the sex was actually incredible…but it wasn't Kenji, it wasn't even a person. That's when I knew I had to delete it, and start looking for a guy –even a girl, you can be anything online –who didn't mind only dating in the Matrix. I actually found someone, but they're sort of not an ork. So, my time apart from dad kind of went on a bit…"
"Chummer, that's wiz! You found love again." Susan began, "But your dad…Orion wouldn't ever, he wouldn't–?"
"If you call my dad racist, I'll fry your brain, chummer. You know what humans have done to everyone he loved. You know his vision of the future is orks helping orks. He'd have every right to be angry…but I was more afraid he'd be hurt."
"Is there anything we can do–?" Paladin's voice was taut, as he drove on, "–to increase the likelihood that this Chieftain of Colma will agree to our proposal? That most or all of his people should transplant themselves across hostile country, to a human city, to kill or be killed by fellow metahuman separatists? You've all met this Orion; I must defer to your judgement."
"Practical as ever, Herr Steiner, in Shadowrunning at least," Ilsa replied, too quickly, "Norton's army will follow Orion, and Orion will do only as he thinks right."
"Bringing old Norton probably wouldn't have helped much," Anya added, "Dad's grown the Army so much, a lot of them haven't even met him. Dad armed them, too. It's part of his dream to build a place like Tir Taingire, for all metahumans. He knows all about Tir's fantastical, fascist, feudal flaws, though… and I hope he'll still listen to me."
"Anya, your dad would fragging die for you!"
"Don't mean he always listens. Don't mean I'm not a few other things, like a copy in a box…frag it, I'm sorry, I just wonder sometimes."
Ilsa broke the silence and changed the subject; at least Orion would certainly pass the NC intelligence they'd captured to the People's University in Berkeley.
"No chance of your old boyfriend helping us, at all?" Susan muttered, "Or his Halferville buddies?"
"The dwarves dug Halferville as their fastness, a refuge from the Marines, the Tir and Calfree's senseless battles. I am grateful that it exists as such, and very grateful that Henry will remain there. You will show him some verdamnt respect." Susan imitated a fragile invalid; even Paladin flinched, "If you want something serious to consider; the Agency's purge of Humanis Policlub in Calfree allowed the Native Californians to get their start, three years ago. Which Prince of Tir Taingire also controlled the Agency, and promised to destroy us if we opposed his plots again?"
The air of irritable tension, that had been seeping through the van, was wiped out by dead silence. The Bulldog roared on, grinding the road to asphalt dust and travelled miles–hacking away the distance, closer to the end. Paladin, squaring his thick shoulders, smiled at Ilsa rather tragically.
"…you knew this, and you went to Redding. We all put on the shirt of Nessus."
The burning poisoned shirt, that General von Tresckow had donned by attempting his Fuhrer's death. The rebel general, the righteous Runner… Ilsa had always felt affinity for her ancestor's convictions. And she had never felt less than a burning passion for the brilliant, beautiful knight whose hand was inches from hers…but it hadn't been enough for them, two years ago. She turned away, adjusted her glasses, and said that it was so.
"I decided that facing death for something hopeless and right was better than wandering the Shadows. I tried to begin another research project. Henry was so much kinder than I deserved…but there simply weren't the same endless possibilities. No one gets out alive, I suppose. I mean, what would you do without me, Susan?"
"Hm, I'd be having magic sex with Harry, in our house that got burnt down." Susan grinned and winked, "Kinda got dragged into this, but it's alright. Me and Harry never turned back from anything if we could help it."
"It would be churlish of me to say…" Paladin gazed on Ilsa as a fallen angel might have gazed, "…that I had any reason to fear death's sting."
"I…I've though death looked better than life, sometimes." Sarah got out, "When I didn't have a path, or chummers to face it with."
"That's it, girl." Came Anya's heart-metal voice, "This drekky world took all we had, except a few imperfect bonds worth staking our lives for. That's why we're here, with no one's orders but our own. Not a clue where we're going…but frag it, we are going."
The van sped on toward Colma. Where Norton's Army had made their home among the graves, from guns and dreams, which the Runners were going to call on them to leave. Susan admitted that if it turned out that the survivialists, kooky shamans, Kung Fu students, familes and friends she remembered would rather not head north to risk their lives, then she was chill. Only seeing them again would be worth the trip.
Sarah's thoughts held far less hope. Colma had been her home and refuge, she had thought many times of returning; but they all knew she had gone with Shavarus and betrayed them. Shadowrunners could never really go home, unless to each other.
They had planned to prepare with a few hours' sleep, before their return to Colma, before they'd seen the rising line of smoke on the horizon. Then the fires, glaring through the fall of night. Paladin all but drove the gas pedal through the floor.
-0-
Anya hadn't needed to mention that Lofwyr had been hunting her and her father since she'd been born, in a sense. Or that their two years' survival had been cold comfort, against a foe that might wait years while his schemes ripened across the world, then let destruction fall on the instant he chose. Perhaps not only on the lives of the defiant ones.
Susan thought of all the burnt and poisoned farms, the metas and humans slaughtered, to weaken Calfree for conquest–but she thought most of Redding in flames and Harry lost forever.
"That woman, Tabitha, she came up in the NC files." Anya chattered on at a desperate pace, "Not who she is, but the NC had orders to deliver her to Tir. To Lofwyr, bet you nyuyen to nutrisoy. Using cat's paws like that that is his style. There's no way he just would spread his wings and rain down death…"
An orange fireball swelled through the darkness, bursting in sparks like spores from a mushroom. They caught the scent of sizzling mould and turf on the wind, and burning bodies, as they piled out of the van.
"This is Lofwyr's work. Through his creature, Torphet." Ilsa's voice shocked Susan and Paladin, it was so brittle and quiet.
"Einen Augenblick, Ilsa. You told me about Torphet, but how do you know he's controlled by Lofwyr?"
"…I will explain. Give me just a moment."
The gates of Woodlawn were black and broken. Moving closer, the heavy burning smell choked them all. It had been the heart of a free army, a silent town of survivors. Now they could see nothing of Norton's Army among the smoke and shattered graves. Only Anya couldn't smell the burning, or express what she dreaded except by shaking in mid-air.
It seemed to Ilsa, the blasts were not chasing helpless targets across the ground, but pounding out a tireless barrage, for destruction of will. She didn't know for sure. If it were so, could some of the metas have holed up in mausoleums or vaults…? She didn't know. She was sure the firestorms over Dresden or Tokyo had been incomparable, but it was not a great city choking under a cope of flames. It was a humble, innocent town. Paladin would say that she was only a Runner, and this was war, but he didn't know the reason that she was staring once more into hell.
Sarah, seeing the home where she'd dreaded rejection burning, stared in terrible disbelief. It was only instinct, like a mother at a crosswalk, that made her grab Fighter's neck before she could charge through the flames.
"No, no, you…! Get your hands off me!"
Susan fought weakly, shook in the troll adept's grip, and craned her neck towards the ruins with tears in her eyes.
However, several fiery lights from the swarm in the sky above Colma were rapidly detatching. Resolving into ash-black demons–Torphet's Embers, swooping down on the Runners. Paladin ripped up two spirits in mid-flight with his Ares rifle. Ilsa wounded one. Sarah flung herself aside, shielding Fighter, as the fireball blasted a circle on the grass.
"Dad! DAD! WHERE ARE YOU?"
Anya blasted through three Embers with her turret, then shot past them into Woodlawn; into the field of fire. Her Guardian was lightly armoured but couldn't use cover or magic healing; hover-drones were glass cannons. There was little her chummers could do, as they dodged the firebolts from Torphet's Embers.
Ilsa dropped behind the van, clutching her side as she Healed. When Paladin gripped her shoulder–still firing off one hand, and a taunt rifle-strap–she didn't move. Sarah emptied her Semopal into the last spirit, and Fighter ended it with a throwing knife.
She was about to rush after Anya, when the pale figure stepped out from a dark row of trees. Bleeding, as ragged as she had looked a few days ago, hundreds of miles northward–her figure still buried in shining copper hair.
-0-
Tabitha dropped to the grass, curling her legs in underneath her. Her hooded eyes were barely open. After more precious seconds, stood stupidly before a disaster, Susan managed to speak.
"…how did you get here? Can you help us?"
"I believe I could."
"Can you destroy those things?" Susan waved her at the cloud of Embers still dropping fireballs on Colma.
"Those spirits, that only act by another's command? Perhaps I would do better to destroy you."
"We're here to save anybody who could be left alive in there!" Fighter screamed at the strange woman, almost collapsing, "We don't know where they are, what's happening or why, and we're just standing round like idiots while people are dying–!"
"Because we do not know the where, what or why." Paladin firmly cut in, "Miss Tabitha. What must we do?"
The weary eyes flicked over all four of them. Tabitha's expression was something like a smile.
"The survivors took refuge beneath the earth, as the old warrior taught them. They remain there, but the fire spirit is at the gates. Too many metahumans never reached the vaults…the Golden Wyrm's servants hold those that live, at Holy Cross."
"…you can't complete a massacre with air power alone." Paladin quickly supplied, "Lofwyr's agents would interrogate anyone who has worked with the MPA or PU, before selling them to the Marines. They will not remain here much long; they must be our priority."
"The families, the children, trapped in the vaults." Susan countered, "We need to save them now."
"The vaults are protected with magical seals," Tabitha murmured, "They will hold…long enough. I will enable you to pass through and bind the master spirit. If your friend, the wizard…will swear to honestly admit the why."
Tabitha's eye rolled toward Ilsa. White-faced, the mage nodded.
Then the hostile glow of a binding spell flashed over Tabitha. A bullet cracked into the tree behind her, as she shook it off.
Fighter and Sarah instantly charged the shooter, while Ilsa and Paladin pushed Tabitha down. It flashed through Susan's mind that Tabitha could have probably banished the toxic spirit, that she hadn't, and that she, Fighter, was going to be shot or simply collapse before her fists touched their foes. She wrung out her hobbled strength, sprinting on behind Sarah. As a panicked bullet cracked past them both.
The enemy emerged from the dark as a squad of cloaked spindly figures, resting on a low cemetery wall. Intelligence commandos, not Ghosts–the closest troops on hand to Lofwyr, perhaps, when the Runners or Tabitha had appeared at Colma. With all her hollowed strength, gasping already, Susan rolled as much as vaulted over the wall– scissoring her foot into the squad mage's head. She landed in the dirt. Surged up to wrestle back a rifle butt. Wounded, crippled or terrified of failing the children of Colma, she could never back down.
Sarah's short punches from the hip effectively broke the other three elves, against the ground. Bullets from a flanking Tir fireteam dropped both adepts into cover, wounded, as another flight of Embers detached toward them. Paladin had the same infra-red sight as the elves, however, and even quicker deadly aim. Anya had quickly recovered herself and returned as well, jinking aside from a firebolt and blasting Embers out of the air. It was over quickly and simply, with Susan fighting for breath on her knees.
Sarah pulled out a medkit for her. Tabitha had vanished, but Ilsa confirmed she had told what they needed.
"Torphet's primary manifestation is in the vaults. Once we get to him, I should be able to neutralise him and all his Embers for a considerable time. No, I certainly can...it was I who summoned him."
"Ilsa, do you mean…?" Paladin looked almost as sick, standing at Ilsa's side, as Sarah and Susan crossed back towards them.
"Two years ago, when my little brother was abducted by shadowrunners, I summoned Torphet to destroy them. I succeeded in binding one of the most powerful fire spirits that has ever touched this plane–because I had encountered him once before, because I am a genius–" A bitter breath "–and because Lofwyr supplied a unique fetish. In return for passing him Torphet's reins, once Joachim was safe. I thought…I was a fool. I knew if I went to Redding, opposing Lofwyr once more would earn me the death I deserve."
Staring into the flames, Ilsa's face was too heavy with pain for Susan to face. Then Sarah stepped up and heavily spat in the young mage's face.
Paladin pushed Ilsa behind him, his gun half-raised. Susan desperately stood before Sarah.
"It was her brother…"
"This place was my home. My people. You human witch."
"Seconded, sister," Anya grated, "But for frag's sake, we need to get rolling."
Ilsa mopped at her glasses as they ran. Susan didn't know what she could've said, if there'd been any time.
-0-
Dispersed across miles of graveyard on a hastily ordered mission, the Tir commandos failed to concentrate their forces against the Runner's sudden offensive. It further seemed that Torphet's single will, split across a host of fiery bodies and characteristically hellbent of burning out the Colma survivors, could not simply send down his whole army of Embers on their heads at once. The fighting across Colma, to Holy Cross cemetery and back, could only be called scrappy, vicious and survivable. The Runner couldn't know that going in, but they couldn't turn back–even if that meant dying on a side-quest to save hundreds of innocent metahumans.
Susan was almost sure that Harry would keep on the good fight, if she didn't make it. The thought was painful, but unexpectedly lightening.
The Tir officers, mercifully, were still interrogating their metahuman prisoners within a burnt-out church surrounded by sentries. Without a word, Ilsa summoned a fire spirit of her own–Susan managed to hold Sarah back, as the sentries mistook the summon for one of Torphet's Embers. They were burnt down, or shot. Paladin and Sarah crashed through the church's half-broken wall, firing without pause.
One of the elves got a combat knife to a hostage. Scorpion-like, he saw Sarah already squeezing the trigger, and slashed the dwarf's neck before she shot him. As Ilsa barely managed to Heal the wound in time–and herself collapsed beside the comatose dwarf, from mana-drain–Sarah stumbled out to weep and throw up.
Susan didn't recognize any of the prisoners–Norton's Army had grown under Orion, since her time in Colma–but all of them were quaking with fury or grief for their home. A Colma elf had been shot dead in the church, after the Tir had skilfully beaten the goronagit traitor bloody. The Runners had seen more dead on the paths and among the graves. Fighters or their families, shot or burnt. They'd smelt the ones there was little left of to see.
"When the frag does it stop being like this?" Sarah moaned, as Susan rubbed her back, "When do these things stop, when does it stop…?"
"Never stops being scary, chummer. Feeling weak never stops, no matter how many fraggers you kill or lives you save. But we're not what was done to us. We're novahot. You're a woman who saves, like you just did. Frag's sake, you showed up your shifu."
Susan rested on the floor by Ilsa, exhausted without even fighting, and quipped that this had been a very drekky road trip for them both.
"…Susan, I had a choice. Better ways to save my brother, but I wanted to bind a mightier fire spirit than any human mage had bound since the Fourth World! I thought that giving one more tool of destruction to the most powerful, satanically unfettered being in the world meant nothing. I was only one more of the dupes on which that monster bestrides the world! I don't deserve–"
"Couldn't you have let me decide what the chummer I love deserves? Frag it, Ilsa, couldn't you have said anything? Two years, I was singing songs, bragging about Harry, and you had this hell inside you!"
"What could you have said? Susan, my good, perfect friend…it wasn't so bad for me. You would kill yourself at once, if you knew it was right, but I hid in my thoughts, my equivocations and the pleasures of life I had known so little. I told myself we would never hear of Torphet's name again, but then three months ago, a growing anarchist group in Hamburg was destroyed by fire. A ghoul community in an old Austrian mine, repurchased by Saeder Krupp…my one good act in the Shadows led to this. I drank for a month, I treated Henry terribly. I could not kill myself, but I swear that I tried–"
"No, Ilsa, we fight for our lives! That's what we always do! Harry told me there were weeks after Hong Kong, he took hold of a gun every night–but praise Guan Yin, he didn't do it! I'm only alive because of you, you could save so many, discover amazing magic, and you can love! You can't throw your life away!"
"No, I must spend it wisely. That is all that is left for me to do."
Susan was too overwhelmed to answer right away. Paladin, blinking back tears, silently reached down to help Ilsa up.
"Some of us are more guilty than others, but we all deserve to die, chummer." Anya snapped, metallically, "Don't act like a tragic fallen angel, with higher morals than us slum-scum. You were born in the light, but you always belonged in the Shadows."
Anya had already passed the Native Californian data to a dwarf decker, liaison between Norton's Army and the People's University. The young woman promised she would pass it on, but not that any more help would be coming from the PU.
"They're unarmed pacifists; they stay out the line of fire. Why do you think this happened to our home? Tir is saying very loud, even the smallest group that opposes them will burn."
The metas did direct the Runners to a tunnel hidden in the graves, with a magic seal that Ilsa could get them through as Tabitha had instructed her. Norton's Army had dug tunnels big enough for trolls, under Orion's guidance, which linked the largest funerary vaults across the city of the silent into an impromptu shelter network.
Cramped as it was for her, Sarah descended into the darkness unhesitantly. A few good howls had propelled her sorrow into sorrowful and purposeful rage. It was Susan who felt lost and weak as a child now–perhaps that was the truth of their lives, until they ended them in despair. Susan had known young Runners and old ones end like that, and it was almost the worst way to lose the best friend she could think of.
Moving forward only, not knowing the end or way, could feel terrible. Feeling so tired and crippled that she would uselessly die if she tried to fight was torture. And she stood confirmed in her view that nothing good ever came from black, claustrophobic dungeons of monsters.
-0-
The vaults under Colma stood almost troll-high; the rich and good of Fifth World San Francisco had even helpfully supplied their dead with emergency air shafts. As well as looming stone angels, effigies and grotesques to accompany their relatively through endless night–though it was the bodies of invading Tir mages, and charred ork or dwarf fighters, that truly made a place of death.
Ilsa conjured a ball of light, which painted the walls with shifting shadows. The harsh, determined set of her mouth made Paladin sigh, even as he half-raised the muzzle of his Ares.
A few old families, retaining their wealth into the Sixth World's early years, had added more modern measures which Norton's Army had avoided carefully. As Sarah stepped through an archway, stone cracked on either side. The hard, cold claws of gargoyles leapt from the dark into both her arms.
Even with Astral vision, fighting a shining black smudge through the gloom was fumbling and desperate. Paladin's infra-red sight was no good against animated stone, but trolls had darkvision; Sarah smashed the construct against the wall. Ilsa blasted its fellow with a Flamestrike. Then Paladin had to drag her onward, pressing a respirator to her face, as sickly, noxious gas from the broken bodies poured through the tunnel. Sarah and Susan held their breath and ran through terror.
After hacking through another gargoyle pair, Sarah was bleeding heavily, and all their lungs were burning. Ilsa broke the rainbow-glowing ward round a final stone door, and they truly faced Torphet at last.
The spirit lit up the little chamber ahead like an evil flare. The wave of heat shook their knees and shook their vision. With his host of Embers, Torphet had clearly grown stronger since their last fight–but the madly proud, world-consuming glare of the ultimate fire spirit was unchanging.
An Ember behind the monster was casting firebolts at a cracked stone door. The shards of several Sealed doors spilt from the corridor Torphet had taken. Breaking through Colma's defences, as the metahumans packed in behind that door waited in the dark to die. Fighter could hear their shrill moans inside her mind.
"Ornaments for my moment of triumph. The end of a long infuriating command becomes the climax of my just revenge. For defying ME, for commanding ME, die in the flames, Ilsa Tresckow!"
The Runners fell back from the towering blast of fire, to the doorway's cover. The adepts still had to Ki-shield Ilsa and Paladin from the wave of flames, and still blistered–together, they screamed out. There was no more time; people would burn for nothing they had done, unless Torphet was stopped right now.
"I have one plan." Ilsa had to shout in Susan's ear as she pulled off her cloak, "I have to get across the room, alive, with one Haste and one Heal!"
She was clutching Susan's wrist. Spirit-ridden, exhausted, Fighter barely had Ki for a fragile shield. She could do nothing by charging Torphet but require the Healing that would save Sarah's life.
The young adept still looked to Susan. It was harder for her to nod than face any fight–she had fought Torphet four years ago without fear, and now this was all she could do.
"This is for my Dad, demon." Anya growled like nothing but an ork.
As she and Paladin poured covering bullets into the living inferno, to no effect, Sarah dashed out and upon Torphet with three huge strides. Snapping off a stone angel's arm for a club, roaring as her lungs filled with ash. Groaning, as Ilsa's Heal spell surged back all the flesh that Torphet had blasted away.
"Burn to naught, nameless creature of nothing! All of my foes will be destroyed utterly, but your death-throes mean nothing to TORPHET!"
A firebolt from Torphet's off-claw burst on Paladin's chest. Licking at his face; only the flash visor on his helmet saved his eyes. He still went down; Fighter could only dive across the doorway with a medkit.
She should have thrown a knife. Drawn the monster's fire from Sarah, Ilsa...but then she would burn, and never see Harry again…? But the Ember across the room had almost broken into the vault, to burn all the metas sheltered there and end them!
Shoes flashing with Haste, Ilsa dived under another firebolt. Slammed into the far wall, scorched with agony over her side. But she had noted, in this corner of the vault, a sinking and slight crack in the stone, from a submerged pool or river beneath it.
Her summoned water spirit poured up through the cracks, streaming and skull-faced, with jewels for eyes. Torphet's laughter roared through the chamber like a backdraught, and he flung a blast of flames at his natural enemy. The water spirit, barely twisting aside, was less eager to close–but Ilsa's towering magic and dominant will goaded the potent but simple magical creature to its fate. It immediately conferred the Quickness of a Wave on her, so that she could leap aside from more firebolts as if she were Susan Lei.
Fighter was at Sarah's side now, punching out the last of her Ki into the flames. Dodging enough to get burnt only half to death–pain receptors shut down after the first time. You only had to move as soon as the Healing hit. Striking into the heat by pure combat sense, blinded in the glare.
Sarah, bigger and tougher, took worse burns, unhealed. But her Pain Resistance was strong; she pounded Torphet's face with blistering knuckles, again and again. Anya and Paladin, still chill, aimed swift bursts from their guns whenever an angle opened up. Again and again, to the end.
All of them were together in the inferno. The mad place where they went to fight. Where they belonged.
The water spirit shot desperate, enchanted high-pressure blasts. Steam filled the close space, Fighter very nearly passed out. Torphet swiftly blasted the water spirit to vapour, but he had been battered enough for Ilsa to finish.
She had noted the principal shades of Torphet's Aura in their last fight, as if hunting the monster with a photospectrometer. Swiftly, she had noted the growths and changes in his huge incandescent soul, and now every tint was a syllable she chanted unstoppably. Blocking every loophole by which the alien horror poured from its plane of fire, onto the small metahuman circle of the world.
With a roar of frustration that shook the vault and deafened them all, Torphet vanished in a fiery bust. His Ember was gone, and the vault door still stood. The air itself seemed like ash–if magical fire were fuelled by oxygen, Susan knew she'd be as dead as she felt like.
"It is not banished…Lofwyr will find a path to resummon it." Ilsa whispered, "He will not let go of his toys, he will never give up…"
"Oh, be quiet, Schatz." Paladin coughed, "Or praise God that we're alive."
On the floor in a black hole, Susan barely heard the vault door creaking back. A growly voice called her Big Sis, and she looked up at three ork kids in charred shirts. Shaven-headed and ugly, but bold enough to be first to emerge from the shelter.
"…Big Sis? Miss Lei? The Imperial Kung Fu sensei? Been over a year–"
"–and you came back to save us! Like you saved the City! You gotta be the chillest human in the whole fragging world!"
The ork boys grabbed Susan's arms and started hoisting her up. She fought them off–thankfully not hurting them, orks were tough–and managed to thrust her finger toward Sarah. The troll adept was already standing, as the burnt and blasted-eyed survivors of Colma poured out of the shelter.
They remembered a silent, fearful victim, like so many metahumans who'd come to Colma. Now, they saw a shadowrunner, a fighter, a troll who had gone through darkness and hellfire. To save her own people with her own fists.
A tiny, silent ork girl edged closer to her, clutching an even tinier baby. Maybe it was her's, maybe it had no one else. Sarah saw the child's limbs shake, a spasm of fear for what was gone. She dropped down and folded huge arms in a wall of heart and dermal bone.
In near silence, Orks, trolls, elves and dwarves crowded to Sarah. The children fought to hang from her arms; their mothers leaned against her with sobs. Pressing her with thanks, that their lives' murderous, senseless disaster had been reversed by her miracle.
Sarah bowed her horned head and choked down tears. She held or simply touched all the scarred children and stoic women, survivors like her. Susan grinned at her chummer, and at her own three young fanboys who were still clinging to her. It seemed to her that a whole world of cruel hate had changed suddenly into a better place.
-0-
Susan was unsurprised to find Orion wounded; her shifu had been the last one into the vaults. Even with a medkit clinging to his scorched arm, he looked very tired. As if his mind's eye was already gazing over the burnt tents and blasted mausoleums on the surface, with those survivors who had emerged. Even with the Embers banished and the Tir fled, the metas' place of safety had been destroyed around them, again.
First, Orion held Anya's drone body in his arms; said he was sorry for almost dying without her, again.
"I regret that so many lives were lost, my girl, but I do not mourn my year of work in this place that has been wrecked. I mourn that I did not spend every day of that time with you."
"Don't go even softer on me, Dad! You were born to lead these people, you saved every one of them that survived…they needed you even more than me…no, no that's a lie, Dad. I'm so glad you're safe…"
The report came back that casualties were in the dozens. Broken and adrift, Norton's army was still a fighting force. And when the Runners had saved them with their families–so very characteristically, Orion observed with a smile–how could they ever justly deny their call for aid?
"…this is bigger than us, shifu," Susan managed to answer, "You should think about the best course for your people."
One white eyebrow rose, above Orion's dark and craggy face. He commented that Susan had grown more than he had imagined, but it was the truth that no gap was unbridgeable to the metahuman spirit.
"Whilst I rank Tir Tairngire considerably higher than both Sacramento and the Imperial Marines," The old ork continued, "It will be the brutality of the Marines that North Calfree bears, if Tir's invasion whips up a wider conflict. The day of metahuman liberation would undoubtably be pushed back, whichever party eventually conquered. Furthermore, as you have struck down the Native Californians and defended Colma, it is foreseeable that metahumans across Calfree will rally to your cause. If the hostility of Tir may be resolved, then Redding may well be a far better place to build our home than in San Francisco's back yard. We will require vehicles from Redding, and a small escort–but allowing for an exodus in two waves, it could be completed in less than a fortnight. I anticipate, not without sadness, that very few of my people will be unwilling to leave this place, after tonight."
"Shifu…thank you."
Susan felt a strange chill of excitement, as she bowed with Sarah. As if something mysteriously very significant, like the enigmatic Tabitha, had been struck. But then, climbing back to the surface and gazed over the ashes of Colma, she felt tired as Orion looked. She needed to talk with Ilsa, she needed Harry; she needed to go home.