Chapter 39

Garden of Minos

The clearing spread out before them, a vast wide-open area only broken up with what appeared to be the remains of some structure on the other side, but what it had been, Gaige couldn't tell, not just because of the distance, but because it had been weathered down until it was a mass of rounded lumps. Still, something about it struck a chord in her, like she'd seen it somewhere before, but couldn't place it.

Turning away from that, she scanned the rest of the area. It was considerably different from the trench that they'd been in up till now. The walls were no longer smooth, but instead looked like the inside of a cave, with shelves of worn rock jutting out and stalactites dripping from them. All of them looked like they had been melted out of the walls, the result of millennia of the atmospheric processing that was going on around them. Even as she looked, she could feel the back of her shirt clinging to her with all the sweat running down it. Even the air tasted moist and a bit rank.

She was about to step forward when a hand grabbed her. Glancing over, she bit back what she was about to say when she saw the expression on Artemis's face. Silently she pointed up, eyes never leaving whatever she was looking at.

Gaige followed her directions and quickly spotted what she was looking at, and found herself unable to decide what they were. At first glance they seemed to be flying cloaks, or maybe some kind of underwater creature moving through the air, but not quite. They moved in the same manner as the wide flat underwater creatures that she was thinking of, but something was off about them. They seemed stiffer than what she was thinking of, and they lacked any form of tail. Actually, now that she was looking at them, they were slightly diamond shaped, with a bit rounder corners, going from a slight point at what she assumed was the head, out quickly and then formed a longer point at the rear.

"What are they?" She whispered as softly as she could.

"No idea."

"Wait, really?"

"What, I'm supposed to know every creature that we run into? Isn't this an Eridian place? Aren't you the expert on them?"

"Never claimed to be an expert, just more experienced. And no, I suppose you wouldn't know what they are." She shot back, feeling the anger rise. But as soon as she felt it, she tried to push it back down. "No, you're right, I'm sure there are plenty of things out there that you've never encountered before, I was just hoping that you might have some insight."

"Uh, right. Unfortunately, no, no I don't. I mean, they look familiar. At first, I tried to think of something underwater, but that wasn't it. It seems more like something I saw on Tartaris, but that ruin had nothing like this there, so I can't figure it out."

"Well, I got nothin. Still, I think these must be the things Istivan mentioned."

"Yeah, but I wonder what they're doing here?"

"Nesting?"

"I mean, that's possible, they could be using the moisture here to live, but it seems odd, they just keep circling, moving in and out of the clouds, but I haven't seen one land yet, or for that matter, descend."

"Well, leaving them for a moment, see anything else here? Like where we need to go?"

"No." She shook her head sadly "I don't know if this is the right spot or not, and I'm a bit reluctant to step out with those things overhead. Still, they do seem to be guarding something, I just wonder what it is."

"A nest?"

"Where?"

"Maybe in that structure?"

"That's not a structure, it's..."

"What?" Gaige asked as the other girl trailed off while cocking her head.

"Gunfire, and it's getting closer."

Gaige quickly glanced behind her, making sure that the rest of the troops were still hiding, and caught Alezander moving up to them. She motioned for him to be quiet and he nodded, before creeping up to them.

"What?" He mouthed.

"Gunfire." Gaige replied softly "And also, them."

He looked up and nearly fell over backwards. To his credit, when he spoke up, he didn't raise his voice, but there was a slight tremble in it "What are those things?"

"No idea, was hoping you might know."

"And why would I know that?"

"You live here?"

"Not around here I don't."

"Fair enough. Still, I gotta ask, you don't have anyone over that way, do you?"

"I don't even know if that way is closer to the landing point or not."

"It's not." Artemis flatly hissed.

"Then, no."

"Well then tell everyone to be prepared, we don't know which way we might have to go."

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, the sounds of gunfire erupted behind them causing Gaige to swear under her breath.

Even as she did, she heard the cries from the back "More behind us." and "There's too many."

"Fall back." Karivona yelled as troops started to run past her.

"But we'll lose the bottleneck." She yelled at him.

"They come down the walls and are on ridge, out there, they only have height on us."

"But there's..." The rest of what she was going to say was drowned out as one of the Bears fired, covering the rest on their retreat.

Jinx watched the chaos unfold and swore, she wanted to know more about the situation before she went out, but it seemed that they didn't have a choice. Keeping one eye on the flying things, she moved with the bulk of the troops, but kept herself at the edge so that she could get out when the attack came.

Even as they spilled into the open area, and she could see the roiling mass of Guardians bearing down on them, she spotted from the other side a tide of bandits pouring in, also being chased by Guardians.

"What the?" Was all she could get out, even as she spotted a familiar face perched on top of a massive psycho.

"Seriously?" She heard Gaige say from near her "Is that McStumpy?"

It was, but it wasn't just him, another mob of bandits were fighting against them as much as against the Guardians. "And it looks like he brought the Bloody Gear with him."

Gaige spotted a few familiar faces amongst the crowd, and groaned. 'How can this get any worse?' Flashed through her mind, followed immediately by 'Uh oh.' as she realized what she'd just done.

As if to answer her unspoken question, the clouds above tore apart and the strange creatures started diving at them. They descended with a strange cry, attacking everyone indiscriminately. They slammed into their target, enveloping them with their strange bodies and then Gaige couldn't see what happened, except that blood flew out and when they were let go, the corpses looked torn apart.

There were hundreds of them falling out of the sky in seconds, though most of them weren't attacking. She was slammed to the side as Artemis tackled her, knocking them out of the way of one of the creatures. It crashed into the ground and before it could recover, they each shot it.

It flopped and thrashed but even as it did, Gaige could make out the small barbs that covered the inside of its 'wings', which had undoubtedly been what tore the troops apart. She couldn't imagine what that would be like, to have all of those hook into your flesh and then have the creature shake.

To her horror, the creature, despite having been shot twice, flipped itself over and started to take off. Before she could react, Artemis slammed her rifle into it and fired directly into it. This time it hit the ground and didn't move.

"Tough bastard." She muttered while reloading.

Gaige looked at her and nodded "We need something to take them out faster, but what?"

Artemis dropped down into a crouch next to the thing and studied it for a second, muttering to herself as she did "Tough outer hide, inside covered in barbs, no mouth, leathery skin...try fire."

Gaige looked at her and switched to her SMG. Flipping the switch on the side, she unloaded the rest of the clip into the mass swirling through the air. There were so many of them that even with her demolished accuracy, not a shot didn't hit one of them. To her amazement, many of them caught fire, burning brightly and thrashing about. Many ascended into the clouds, trying to use the moisture to help put the fire out and illuminating the clouds in streaks of red.

"Seems they didn't like that." Gaige said watching the creatures burn as she slapped another clip in.

"Can't really blame them." Jinx muttered next to her. She glanced over at the Guardians engaged with the hoard of bandits and then over at the ones that were fighting the troops with her, then back up to the sky. "This isn't good."

"Really?" Gaige snapped.

"We need to do something to get out of this, but what?"

"Urgurr"

The girls turned to Deathtrap who looked at them and shrugged.

"No, you're right, we need to clear one section at a time, it's just, well, easier said than done."

"Yeah, I mean, where do we even start?"

"Well not with the bandits."

"No, really? I never woulda thought of that." Gaige paused, seeing the looks the other two were giving her and took a breath "Sorry, I'm cranky and this situation's not helping."

"I couldn't tell." Came the cool reply "Why don't you take a drink then."

"I want to, more than I can say. But no, I told you I wouldn't, so I won't."

"Whatever. Let's just deal with this."

"Fine, I'm thinking we should take the air."

"Why?" Artemis said, firing into the crowd of Guardians pressing the troops.

"Cause someone's gotta keep 'em busy."

"Alternatively, we could take the Guardians, and then have more support, especially since you've got the only fire weapon along."

"And that's somehow my fault? I specifically suggested that you take one."

"Oh, you're gonna rub that in my face now? Really?"

"Urgur"

"Right. Whatever, do what you want." She grumbled, pulling the assault rifle off her back and after giving it a dirty look, like it'd somehow offended her, Jinx popped the bi-bod and opened fire into the sky.

The entire group was slowly backing into the clearing, being driven back by the seemingly endless waves of Guardians, so it was no surprise when the first Bear fell over. That wasn't to say that it didn't send a bit of panic through the troops, but if she was being honest, Gaige was actually surprised that it had lasted as long as it had.

The Bear let off one last ditch attack, as if it was trying to use up all of its remaining ammo and fuel in one go even as the nearby troops struggled to get the hatch open.

Jinx spared a glance at it, but Karivona yelled her way "We have this, keep those things off us." So she turned her attention back to the swarms of flying creatures.

Gaige swept her gaze across the area, things weren't looking good, even without the Bear going down it seemed impossible to deal with everything. First there were more Guardians then she'd ever seen before, at least at one time. Then there were the bandits. It seemed to her that both of the bandit camps must have emptied and poured down to attack, though she couldn't figure out why they'd chosen now of all times to do it. Even as she watched, she saw a melee Guardian pounce into the middle of the clan, easily tearing through a dozen bandits before a mob of psychos piled onto it, dragging it down and chopping it up with their buzz-axes. The lot of them were nowhere near as organized as the troops she was part of, but they made up for that in both sheer numbers, as well as their disregard for safety, both theirs and others, meaning they were taking the Guardians out at a rate at least equal to the troops on her side.

Gaige kept firing on the creatures without needing to look where her bullets were going, instead she checked the rest of the clearing, but there was nothing there. She could make out where other paths entered, but aside from that and the fallen structure, there was nothing there.

She looked over to the rounded bits of the structure and then over at Artemis "I think we should try and get behind that structure, it'd at least give us some cover."

"What structure?"

"Are you blind? The only thing that's here, I mean, we've been falling back towards it so I figured that was what you had in mind."

Artemis glanced over and cursed "We need to stay away from that."

"Why?"

"Instinct tells me that it's not dead."

"Dead? What're you talking about? It's a fallen structure."

"No, that's a skeleton."

"Well, a skeleton is a structure." Gaige huffed as she looked back at it, now that she'd mentioned it, it did look a bit like a skeleton that had completely fallen apart, but even if it was, once it was that disassembled there was no way it would be anything but dead. "Besides, there's no way that thing's alive, I mean, it's just bones."

As if in response to her saying that, all the glowing 'spirits' from the fallen Guardians started flying toward the skeleton, forming together just over it into a giant ball of light and the bones started vibrating as a cold wind blew across the area, as if being pushed away by the new light.

Slowly the frame started to push itself up, pieces sliding up as if still connected, till it was towering over them, still throwing off its ominous illumination.

"You just had to say it didn't you?"

"Oh, shut up." Gaige snapped back "Besides, I didn't think you believed in that crap."

"I don't, but you do."

Gaige ignored her and turned her attention back to the rising creature. It reminded her of what the warrior would've looked like without anything covering it, but that might have been because that was the first encounter she'd had with a Vault creature. This one was significantly different. While they both had an overall draconic shape, this one was shorter and wider. It also didn't have wings, instead it had two long spires of different lengths jutting from over its shoulders, they curved inward slightly and one of them had a slight twist to the tip. She wondered if they had been wings at one point.

Next to he,r Jinx was spotting all kinds of things that Gaige was missing, even through the shock freezing her mind. Things like the back spires not being broken wings, though she couldn't tell what they were for, they were too heavy and solid to be wings. Things like the strange surface the bones had, being covered in small pits that she couldn't guess the purpose of. Or the amount of small bones connecting the larger, giving it an almost frame-like look.

She watched as the skeletal creature rose up, the glow inside it growing brighter as more and more of the Guardian 'spirits' flew into it. Then the flying creatures, which had been acting strangely ever since the skeleton had started rising, started spiraling down, forming into a funnel-cloud, barreling down towards it. As they watched, the creatures started attaching themselves to the outside, layering themselves up from the feet, their barbs hooking into the pits in the bones. As they did so, Jinx realized why their shape had been so familiar, they looked like scales.

The wind blasted and buffeted them, preventing any of them from reacting or really seeing what was happening after a bit, but eventually the wind died down and they all looked up to see the creature for what it really was, a monster covered in scales from the tip of its snout to the spike at the end of its tail. The glow in its empty eye sockets intensified and its mouth opened, revealing the empty opening within as it let out a bone shakingly terrifying bellow.