Torg Eternity – Dead Legion
Vault of Eternity
Nile Empire – Island of Hespera
Around the Furies and their would-be targets, the very air in the temple seemed to tremble with a power whose source none of them could see.
Ghost vanished from sight.
Wren muttered inaudible words and made quick passes with their hands as they summoned their sorcerous powers. An Amazon blade flashed out in an arc, intent on silencing the mage, but was suddenly blocked on the barrel of Sophia's rifle. The two warrior women—Amazon and slayer—locked defiant eyes. It was Sophia who moved first, lashing out with sudden kick to the Amazon's midriff. Her boot clanged off the armor, but it gave Wren enough time to complete their spell.
They took a step forward and pretended to trip on a stone, then pointed at the surprised Amazon with one finger. She blinked at the mage, then yelled and advanced, swinging her sword again. Surprising the warrior and Sophia both, it missed by a mile. She swung it yet again, but one foot hit the other and the warrior staggered past them, Sophia knocked her out cold with a blow from the butt of her rifle.
"Interesting tactic," Sophia observed.
The mage shrugged, but smiled. "If I remembered half the magic I knew before, I could really show you fellows some things."
"We have the matter at hand to deal with," Sophia reminded them, turning around to rejoin the fight as a pair of the Furies closed in to continue the attack on them.
"Of course," Wren whispered back.
Meanwhile, the Amazon with the already bloodied sword was swinging it at Kristina Rouge with all her considerable strength. Only a fraction of a second ahead, Kristina spun away from a deadly thrust, but then screamed when the sword gouged her side. Kristina turned away and ducked, covering her face with her hands.
"Just what we expected from a woman tainted by the outside!" gloated the Amazon, raising her sword for the kill.
Right before the flashbang Kristina had dropped at her feet went off.
The Amazon screamed and held an arm up in front of her eyes, trying to block out the horrible glare still lingering there from the burst of light. Kristina turned and jammed her gun into the Amazon's midriff, firing half a magazine at point blank. At that range, even the heavy armor gave under repeated shots. A strangled gasp drifted from the Amazon's lips, and she went down.
"Ass-kicking comes in a lot of styles, sweetheart!" Kristina Rouge yelled.
A single shot rang out, and someone fell to the floor behind her. Kristina peered backward and saw another Amazon warrior, fingers still wrapped around the hilt of a sword that'd been meant for her.
A flash of light seized her attention and Kristina turned just in time to see the lightning bolt explode from Wren's hands and floor an enemy warrior, while Sophia took out another with a precise shot from her revolver. Yet another went down, clutching a bloody wound across her throat from Avgo's blade.
One last warrior hesitated at the sight of the rest of Furies having been defeated, then turned and ran for the door. "You haven't beaten us yet!" she yelled as she ran. Before she could make it, an unseen gun roared again and she fell.
A shimmer formed in the air as Ghost appeared, walking over to Kristina and the lifeless leader of the Furies' ambush group. The expression on Kristina's face was uncharacteristically grave. "So that was them, right? The ones who made the big scorpions come after us?"
"Yeah, that was them," Ghost said. "You heard what she said? Survived one attempt? She was talking about the scorpions trying to kill us."
He went on, though, "And if they're really gonna go overthrow the queen, we better try and find her first."
"You sure you're gonna be okay?" Ghost called back to Kristina. Already the red stain on her shirt had doubled in size since they'd come running out of the temple, despite the impromptu bandaging they'd put on it.
"I'll manage," she grunted back.
Avgo looked at it too, grimacing at the sight of Kristina's injury. "A warrior knows there is no shame in admitting to the severity of a wound."
"I'm not a warrior," Kristina grunted back again. "I'm the driver."
Most of their run toward the throne room was uninterrupted. The group could hear the sounds of swords clanging not far away, and didn't have to guess the Furies were fighting it out with loyalists. In front of the throne room, however, standing over the bodies of Amazons and their own comrades alike, were the female shocktroopers. As soon as they spotted the Dead Legion they opened fire, forcing them to split apart and duck into the relative safety of the archway supports.
"What do we do?" Sophia asked. "It's madness to rush a firing line."
"Maybe there's another answer," Avgo replied beside her. She pulled a short wooden whistle from a pouch on her belt, and blew it. The noise was short and shrill. Nothing happened for a bit, with the shocktroopers clearly waiting for a target before they opened fire.
But it seemed someone else had found a target among them.
Before anyone, least of all the Dead Legion, realized what had happened, an arrow had whipped past and taken down one of the shocktroopers.
"Fire!" yelled one of the soldiers, and her squadmates indeed let their weapons spit lead into the darkness of the hallway for a few seconds. Silence prevailed, with the shocktroopers looking down the hall, wondering if they'd gotten their target.
An answer came when another arrow flew and another shocktrooper fell. More arrows sailed past the Dead Legion, who had collectively seemed to accept their good luck. Soon all the soldiers guarding the throne room were down, and then down the hallway came a small group of Amazon warriors, bows still in their hands.
"We heard your call, sister," one of them addressed Avgo. "What would you have us do?"
"Guard the passage," Avgo ordered them. "What our enemies want lies beyond that chamber, and I have a terrible feeling I know what it is. As for you, Dead Legion, will you join me in chasing the worst of these villains from this island?"
"In a way, it is why we came," Wren nodded.
They threw the doors open wide, while Avgo's fellow Amazons formed a defensive line behind them.
Inside the throne room, it was much the same as the Dead Legion had seen it before. Except now the throne was tipped over, revealing a door hanging open behind it, and a trio of statues stood in the middle. Two were Amazon guards, but the third was Queen Aegea herself. Still in her nightgown and clutching a spear, defiant expression on her face, but no doubt her.
"Oh no," Avgo breathed. She ran over to a guard who lay on the floor, and rolled her over. "Thiya, tell me what happened here. Please, tell me it isn't what it looks like!" Avgo pleaded.
The wounded Amazon coughed, a gobbet of blood dripping from her lips and onto the marble floor. "Megaera…it was her," she choked. "Her and her…Furies. She brought those people from the Nile Empire. They attacked us, and the queen. We weren't sure who to fight. And then…and then…"
"And then what?" Sophia prompted more urgently. "What did this? Was it a gor—"
She stopped when they all suddenly heard the same sound. A snake's hiss. A deep, reverberating hiss, that had to have come from a very large snake.
"Do not look," Sophia whispered in warning, clutching her slayer's rifle. "Its gaze will turn you to stone, just as it did to the queen!"
Behind them the hissing grew louder, whatever its source was getting closer. All of a sudden Sophia turned and blind-fired an armor-piercing shell. A hiss turned into a scream of pain and a fountain of blood sprayed across the floor. For just an instant Sophia saw the thing and her fears were confirmed: a skull-like face with blood-red eyes, a mass of squirming snakes for hair, and a body covered in green scales.
Just as she'd thought. It was a gorgon.
But she turned away the instant she was sure.
"Go!" shouted at the rest of the group. "Whatever those villains are after, stop them before they can get their filthy hands on it!"
The Dead Legion and Avgo turned and headed for the door in the back of the room. Ghost hung back, though. "Can you really handle that thing by yourself?" he asked her.
Sophia met his eyes. There was her usual iron-hard determination, but for just a moment the masked hero saw a smirk break through her grim expression. "This is what I do, Ghost. Slay monsters. Go."
He went.
Ghost ran fast, knowing well not to underestimate the threat Dr. Mobius's personal underlings could pose. He passed Kristina Rouge, who wasn't running as fast because of the sword-wound in her side. Wren, Ghost and Avgo passed through the room beyond, through a heavy iron door sitting open in the opposite wall.
Just before Kristina was about to join her teammates in the darkness behind the door, a fist shot out and punched her right on her bleeding wound. She screamed and fell to her knees. Vaguely, she was aware of the sound of someone slamming the iron door shut and the clank of its lock being shut.
A shadow fell over her, and for a few seconds Kristina was afraid to even look, sure it was the gorgon finishing off the weak one first. That was when she heard the cocking of a gun. Wanting to at least see who her attacker was, she looked up and saw the grinning face of the shocktrooper captain, submachine gun pointed at Kristina's back.
"One of those Core Earth weaklings in our territory, huh?" she leered.
"I'm the driver," Kristina replied defiantly. "My crew would be nowhere without me."
"Is that so?" asked the shocktrooper captain, her leer unmoved. "I'm Captain Tali, a soldier. The Nile Empire would be nowhere without people like me."
On the other side of the sealed door, Avgo and Ghost pushed and pulled to try to open it, but it wouldn't budge. Wren even had them stand aside and made an incantation at the door, which also failed to open it.
"Does this kind of thing happen often?" Avgo asked, seeing the amount of ways they were attempting to unlock the door. "Doors suddenly locking and cutting allies off from each other?"
"Well, it wouldn't be the first time," Ghost admitted.
Wren dropped a hand onto each of their shoulders for attention. "I have faith Kristina will find a way to open this door, if she must. In the meanwhile, if we are to face the worst of the villains we're pursuing, I certainly don't wish to do so on a narrow staircase."
When Ghost, Wren and Avgo hurried down a stairway into the depths of the earth, a very strange feeling came over all of them. For a while their pace slowed, every part of their being seeming to be processing the power that was coming upward at them in waves. Great, terrifying invisible waves.
"You feel that too, don't you?" Wren asked.
"Yeah," Ghost affirmed. "Power. Whatever's down there, I can already kind of understand why the empire wants it."
"I feel…alive," Avgo breathed, not seeming aware of the others. "It's no surprise it's this powerful up close…"
By then there was no chance to ask what she was talking about, or perhaps, no need. Their descent had ended, and they were at the entrance to a cavern, framed by the bodies of a pair of slain Amazon guards. It was lit by a rippling pool of molten blue and red matter. Over it was a metal platform that extended out from the stone floor, and standing on it, arms and legs pinned by rings of blue light, was the royal blacksmith.
And standing with a sword trained on her was another Amazon warrior, with the same emblem of the tilted spear as the one who'd ambushed them in the temple. "Megaera," Avgo whispered, her words full of hate.
"Getting warm over there, isn't it?" Megaera taunted the royal blacksmith. "Show us how to extract the eternium, and you'll live to fight another day!"
"You expect me to trust the honor of a traitor," the royal blacksmith replied calmly. "I cannot say I have much faith in the intelligence of those who've chosen to be your allies, to trust you." She eyed Megaera herself then. "Or yours, for trusting them."
"Enough already!" the Red Hand exclaimed. "We tried scarin' her, now how about we try usin' our brains instead?" He turned to the woman in the white linen gown. "You're up, Mirage."
"At your service," she said with a simple nod to him, and stepped forward onto the platform, brushing by Megaera and paying her no attention. Mirage held her hands in front of the royal blacksmith's face, her fingertips starting to glow while she intoned indecipherable words.
She almost lost her fingers when Avgo came charging at them swinging her sword. "I will not allow this to continue!" the warrior screamed. "And you, Megaera! How could you lead these intruders here?!"
The accused drew her own sword. She yelled, "We weren't given these great resources to hide away from the rest of the world! The Amazons have the right, the need, to make their own empire! This is only the first step!" Megaera raised her blade. "And if need be, I'll take it without you!" Swords clanged together, Megaera making a furious assault that drove Avgo away from the platform over the pit.
Mirage began her spell again, but ducked off the platform when she was attacked again. This time it was the sound of a bullet being fired. She and Red Hand looked around, unable to see their attacker, until out of the corner of his eye Red Hand saw a burst of muzzle fire just before the bullet dug into his side.
But no-one in Dr. Mobius's inner circle got there by being a weakling, and Red Hand stifled his cry of pain. A cloaked figure, dark hands weaving through the air, was now standing at the entrance to the chamber. Red Hand raised his gloved hand and rushed them, but a masked man appeared in front of him and fired twin automatics into him from mere feet away. "You think a couple of bullets can stop me?" Red Hand growled more than spoke.
"Nobody's invincible, Red Hand," Ghost retorted. "Not even Dr. Mobius."
"Especially not a little runt who has to hide when he tries to shoot!" the villain leered before he launched himself at Ghost fist-first.
But his target seemed to see him coming ahead of time, and juked to the right, letting the villain's notorious hand splinter the rock wall instead of his skull. "You think letting you see me was an accident?" Ghost taunted.
Mirage turned away from both her captive and the fistfight going on across the cavern, focusing all her attention on the hooded intruder. Already she could detect another practitioner of the mystic arts, but what were they capable of? She traced a quick pattern in the air and shouted a word of power.
The next thing Wren knew, a huge boulder was rolling down the ramp from the platform at them. However, the mage didn't move a muscle. Wren allowed the rock to roll right over them, leaving them unharmed before it disappeared behind them.
"You certainly learned the basics," Wren said. Then without warning waved their hands and a ball of light burst right in front of Mirage, bathing the entire cavern in a yellow radiance. Before Mirage could recover Wren was already weaving another spell, finishing their incantation with making a show of rubbing their temples as if feeling mental pain, then pointing an accusing finger at Mirage.
The sorceress blinked the last of the glare from her eyes, but clutched her temples and grunted in pain. "Damn you!" Mirage growled at Wren. "You really think this is going to weaken me enough to lose to a dabbler like you?"
Wren just snickered. "If that's all you think I am, it shows just how much you think you know about the thoughts of sorcerers…"
They were already moving when Mirage fired a lightning bolt from her fingertips, but Wren wasn't fast enough. The electric bolt hit them full in the chest and knocked Wren to the floor. Their body twitched horrifically the whole way they skidded before hitting the wall.
Mirage's head was still ringing from the spell Wren had managed to weave on her, but she still took a few cautious steps closer to ensure her enemy hadn't survived the lightning bolt. Still, Wren's body was twitching from remnants of the electrical current they'd been hit with. Eventually they fell still, but Mirage knew better than to get close enough to fall for such a base ruse. She spread her hands another lightning blast started forming between them.
Between the electric crackle and the clamor from Ghost and Red Hand's battle, Mirage didn't hear the footsteps of the Amazon zombie sneaking up on her.
An arachnid form was starting to wriggle its way out of the pool of the gorgon's blood, but Sophia's boot came down on top of it and it stopped moving.
There would be no tiger-sized scorpions to make things difficult for her this time.
Part of her was curious to find out if the monsters of the Nile Empire would be as chatty as its flamboyant villains. That was not the way she was taught to stand against the darkness, though. Acknowledge its power, but do not show you fear it, for then it will be your master.
Behind her, the serpentine hissing became louder and angrier. Sophia looked sideways, seeing a shadowy form with wiggling hair rushing at hers. She whirled around, stopping at a precise point with her eyes firmly shut. Her finger squeezed the trigger of her slayer's gun. It roared and rocked back in her hands.
Again a scream of pain, and a wet splat. That one was larger than before, and a quick glance in its direction showed Sophia's armor-piercing shell had actually managed to sever an arm from the gorgon! She clutched her rifle to her side and ran past the monster's shadow, only to feel a taloned hand grab her by the wrist.
The gorgon hissed louder and angrier than ever, trying to twist Sophia around, no doubt to be face-to-face so the monster could unleash its horrific gaze on her.
"Not today, creature!" Sophia exclaimed.
With not the most graceful kick, she swung her foot at the gorgon's elbow and weakened its grip just enough for her to pull free and retreat a few vital steps. To get room to avoid an attack. To have a moment of respite to plan her next few moves.
Sophia passed the gorgon's arm on the floor, where another scorpion was starting to push its way out of the puddle of blood.
Without thinking, she stomped on that too to keep another monster from joining the fight.
In stomping on it, she slipped on the gorgon blood.
And the huntress went down. The wind was knocked out of when she hit the hard stone floor, but those battle-sharpened instincts were strong enough she managed to grab the butt of her slayer's rifle so it wouldn't slide away from her.
A kick from a clawed foot connected with her shoulder and knocked Sophia onto her back. Being flipped over, she looked right into the abomination's glistening eyes. Immediately Sophia could feel her scalp and feet starting to harden, the sensation racing across her body.
But she didn't—couldn't—give in to fear. Sophia Black raised her slayer's rifle, arms already stiffening. Her elbows had crusted over with gray already. Before the feeling left her fingers, she squeezed the trigger.
Her slayer's rifle barked louder with fire than it ever had before.
It missed.
Or so it seemed when the gorgon made an evil hissing noise that sounded like a laugh.
It didn't last long, because then a golden liquid fell onto her shoulders, and burst into flame. The gorgon's hissing laugh turned into a shriek of agony as the fire spread across its body, blackening the gorgon's scaled flesh as it did.
And the stone finished closing itself around Sophia Black.
Inside the checkpoint behind the throne, both Kristina Rouge and Captain Tali fired their machine guns at each other from close range, the deafening echoes reverberating off the narrow walls.
Kristina yanked out the empty magazine and threw it at Tali's head before diving behind a stone bench. The shocktrooper had already gotten a full magazine off her bandolier by then, and with speed born of great practice had it locked and loaded while Kristina was still diving. Her first bullet still grazed the bottom of Kristina's shoe, while the rest chewed the top off the bench and rained tiny shards of stone down on her head.
"Is that how the driver faces danger?" laughed Tali. "I suppose it makes sense, speed is probably the only thing you understand!"
It took all Kristina's willpower just to avoid crying out from her new wound, and her other wound starting to drip blood down her side again. Another hail of bullets, lower this time, littered her back with more chips of stone.
"I've fought in the Living Land!" Kristina retorted, trying to withdraw and load a fresh magazine as silently as she couldn't. "Seen monsters even you can't imagine."
"Is that what you think?" Tali scoffed. "We know our allies, driver! You think I've never seen an edeinos!? I'm a soldier, I know the importance of military intelligence!"
"For a consummate soldier, you're not in much of a hurry to finish off a target," Kristina called back, hand on the cocking mechanism of her gun.
Captain Tali laughed at her remark. "I'm staying at my post and making sure no-one gets past me!" she retorted. "Don't suppose the driver would understand that!"
Incredibly, Kristina's luck held, and Captain Tali didn't seem to have heard Kristina Rouge cocking her machine gun over the sound of her own insults. Maybe she was a trained soldier, but it sounded to Kristina like a lot of what she learned involved reminding people how big she was and how small they were.
But Kristina Rouge was a Storm Knight; reality itself was a weapon in her arsenal.
It was time to use it.
Once again, Captain Tali fired a steady burst, and Kristina was sure it was more to intimidate her than to actually try and shoot her. Kristina Rouge was already in motion, though, sprinting out from behind the chewed-up bench, and taking aim at the shocktrooper. A look of surprise broke out on Tali's face, who turned her half-spent weapon in Kristina's direction.
By then, Kristina was already focusing hard. Seeing a reality where she was brought down by the soldier's few remaining bullets. She focused even harder and that vision changed, and saw another where she ran to the other side of the room, firing her freshly-refilled gun and bringing down Captain Tali.
Suddenly she felt something pushing against her will, and the first version of events was playing out in her mind again. She felt the expertly-aimed bullets cutting through her, and landing in a warm pool on the floor, the last thing she heard was Captain Tali's mocking laughter. There was only one explanation that made any sense: Captain Tali was a Stormer, with the same ability to tweak reality that she did, and using it against her.
But she refused.
Kristina Rouge forced herself to move, dashing to the opposite side of the room like she'd envisioned herself doing before. Her mind seemed to burn at the exertion she was having to make rejecting Tali's reality and substituting her own, but while the look of disbelief was still on the shocktrooper's face, Kristina kept running and closed her finger on the trigger of her gun. She couldn't even hear the sound of the bullets eating into the wall across the room.
She was barely even aware of the wet splat Captain Tali made when she hit the floor, overcome by Kristina Rouge's reality.
"You're right," Kristina breathed. "The Nile Empire would be nowhere without people like you."
Right in the center of the vault's chaos, two Amazon warriors, loyalist and traitor, dueled with blade against blade.
"Did Alithya even offer to let you join us?" Megaera sighed, parrying a slash.
"She did, but I didn't even entertain the thought!" Avgo yelled back, turning a slash side with her own sword.
"Honestly, Avgo, I'd hoped you'd have the sense to accept what we were offering," Megaera said, aiming a powerful swing at Avgo's throat. "It's a chance to finally get off this island and see the world, like you've always wanted!"
"See the world, serving a madman?" Avgo asked as she danced back.
"As opposed to seeing the world as a foot soldier to some local warlord? On the word of some of his foot soldiers?" Megaera demanded with a thrust of her sword that glanced off the side of Avgo's breastplate when she performed a last-second dodge.
"The Nile Empire came here under a veil of lies!" Avgo shouted, lunging and managing to draw blood from Megaera's arm. "These others came here asking for our help! Not to steal the contents of the Vault of Eternity! And they came here bearing proof of great bravery! I don't entirely know what they fight for yet, but they've earned my trust far more than the Empire and its two-faced dignitaries!"
"We'll have the throne of the Nile Empire under Amazon control within a year," Megaera scowled at the continued refusal. She ignored her wound, and made a surprise slash at Avgo's legs, but her dueling partner saw it coming and jumped over the blade. When Avgo landed, though, she didn't counterattack. There was a look on her face that stopped Megaera where she stood. Eyes glistening, mouth slightly agape. A look of betrayal.
"There's no reasoning you out of this, is there?" Avgo asked her former comrade-in-arms.
"There isn't," Megaera confirmed.
"I can't allow this," Avgo said.
"To spread our power and our values?" Megaera scowled, raising her sword in readiness again.
"To fight to conquer," Avgo said sadly, but raised her sword as well. "Athena counsels wisdom, not exploiting others to seize their power and destroy their ways to make space for ours."
"So be it," Megaera said.
"I must fight for justice, even if I must fight against my own kind," Avgo replied. Megaera nodded, then lunged for Avgo's heart with the tip of her sword, who threw herself at Megaera in return to begin the battle again.
Thanks to the sound of the blades ringing against each other in the middle of the cavern, and her own drive to finish the battle with her own enemy, Mirage didn't notice the dead Amazon guard sneaking up behind her until the zombie's sword had penetrated her back.
A shocking transformation took hold of her. Her beautiful dark visage flickered away, revealing a skeletal, pale-skinned woman in her white linen gown. Thin strands of grey-black hair were all that hung off her dry scalp. Her lips had almost completely receded, leaving rows of yellowed teeth.
"You DARE!" the bone-thin fright screamed, her voice quickly fading into an arcane chant that made a lightning bolt rip from her hands and obliterate her fellow undead.
While she'd been occupied, though, Wren had been weaving some magic of their own. Blackness seeped from their fingers and exploded upward, hitting the roof of the cavern and slithering down the sides, plunging the entire area into pitch darkness.
It was a desperate ploy. Something to buy Wren of Greymarsh a few valuable moments to recover and make a counterattack.
Instead, a very unexpected thing happened to their ally.
When the blanket of magical darkness fell over the cavern, Ghost delivered a right cross to Red Hand's chest. The brass knuckles he had over his fists tore the villain's expensive suit, sending the bottom half of his silk tie fluttering to the rock floor at his feet. Red Hand clenched his teeth in rage and rage and swung a punch at Ghost's head, but he was distracted by the darkness that suddenly engulfed the cavern, and his punch went wide.
"Where'd you go, runt!?" barked the Red Hand, flailing his powerful arms around trying to hit something. Anything. "Too scared to finish a fight against a real heavyweight?"
Ghost didn't reply to his bullish threats, but he ran as fast as he could to the edge of the pool. The masked hero was surprised to find that even though darkness had covered everything, he could still see. Everything was reduced to ghostly grey and white shadows of what they were in the light: the molten pool of Eternium, the pair of Amazons who'd paused their duel when they could no longer see each other, Wren still laying helpless across the cavern, while the cadaverous thing that had once been the beautiful Mirage was finishing off her attacker.
But he had no intention of giving her the chance.
Ghost dropped the brass knuckles and drew his automatics instead, and fired both at Mirage. Her desiccated body jerked as the second bullet hit while the first only tore through a fold of empty fabric.
He kept firing, not sure if bullets could hurt such a thing, but determined to get the villainess's attention away from Wren. So he fired with both automatics again, both hitting Mirage dead-on. She let out a wheezing gasp that was probably from pain. Red Hand looked around, unsure of where the shots were coming from in the darkness, but apparently decided he had no plans of becoming a victim of being cut down in the dark and started stumbling toward the stairs.
Once again, Ghost fired. A bullet hit home while another missed. Then a fourth time, but Mirage had seemingly had enough. Like the Red Hand, she turned and ran for all her body was still worth to the stairs.
Megaera seemed to sense which way the wind was blowing herself. She took a few sprinting steps, her armored boots echoing off the cavern walls, but Avgo heard it and tossed herself to the floor. She held out her sword and Megaera tripped over it in the dark, falling with a last scream into the pool of Eternium.
Ghost circled around the deadly molten element, and made his way to where he saw Avgo crouching cautiously in the dark. He took her hand, and led her way to where Wren was still laying on the cavern floor.
"Help them," he said simply, then dashed up the stairs. At the top, the door was hanging open, but the only person inside was the dead shocktrooper on the floor. Ghost kept running out into the throne room. There he saw Kristina Rouge, laying on her side and clutching her head.
Much worse, however, was the sight of Sophia Black, petrified to the floor, while the body of the gorgon lay burning in the corner.
Ghost gulped, but ran to Kristina's side and crouched down next to her. "You okay? Did you see which way they went?" he asked.
"No," Kristina gasped. "The guy in the red suit knocked me into the wall and I think I must've hit my head on it. I'm sorry."
"You alright for now?"
"I think so," she murmured, and Ghost ran to the entrance to the throne room. All he saw were the signs of battle and the bodies of a few more warriors, no trace of Mirage or the Red Hand, but he could still hear the signs of battle echoing down the halls. He ran back and forth, making a quick inspection of both halls, but couldn't see any traces of the villains at either juncture.
They were gone. At least they hadn't been able to claim the eternium.
He returned to the throne room to assess the state of his teammates, and found Kristina Rouge up on her feet again. Walking a little funny, but that appeared to be mostly because of a new bleeding wound on the bottom of one foot. "You sure you're okay?" Ghost asked her, still uncertain.
"Yeah," Kristina sighed. "Believe me, getting shoved into the wall could've gone a lot worse. I saw how bad it could've been…"
Just what she could be getting at eluded Ghost, but it had been an exhausting day even for a crimefighter like him. Instead of questioning Kristina, he walked weakly over to the statue on the floor that had once been Sophia Black. Ghost could think of nothing to do there either, and simply sank to the floor, letting out a weakened sigh of his own.
"I'm sorry this is how it ended," he mumbled, reaching out to touch her cheek.
And he recoiled in shock when a stone chip came off in his fingers.
Sophia's body started to shake, dust billowing up around her.
"Oh gods, what's going on?" Kristina groaned.
What was going on was the stone cracking off from Sophia. But not only her, but the petrified bodies of Queen Avgo and her guards also. Ghost drew his guns out of caution, fearing some kind of monstrous horror might be about to attack, but was relieved to see the stone break away from Sophia and the Amazons in the throne room, all four of them seeming to let out the same huge breath as they were restored to normal.
"You're alive!" Ghost gasped, and threw his arm around Sophia's shoulders, pinning the side of her slayer's rifle between their bodies. She was still breathing hard, but managed something of an awkward smile.
"Yes, it seems I am," she breathed into his ear. "Living in this ridiculously forgiving world of yours hasn't made me lose my touch."
He helped her up, and by then Wren and Avgo were entering from the back of the room too, the royal blacksmith right beside them. Avgo supported the mage with an arm over her shoulders, but Wren greeted the rest of the team with a tired smile.
"By Zeus, what's going on here?" Queen Aegea demanded.
"My queen," the royal blacksmith said, bowing her head. "After the traitors aided the Nile Empire in seizing control of your throne, they forced me into the Vault of Eternity below. They tried to force me to tell them how we extract the eternium, but I would not give in. Fortunately, the Dead Legion came to my aid and were ultimately able to drive them off."
The queen propped her throne back up with her own two hands, and sat down on it heavily, her spear laid across her seat's arms. "Bold and honorable, eh?" she asked.
"I would absolutely say so," the royal blacksmith nodded.
"Delivering the Bow of Sekana, and protecting our greatest asset from our enemies," Queen Aegea breathed. "Dead Legion, hear me now: whatever else happens in the days to come, I will be accepting the alliance with your organization. But now…"
She stood up. "But now, fetch my armor! The traitors must be hunted down before they can go to ground!"
Scouring the palace for the remainder of the Furies lasted until after sunrise, but there was no-one among them as formidable as the villains the Nile Empire had sent to parley with the Queen. Most surrendered themselves after the blackened body of the gorgon, once their secret weapon, was hung up in the city square. It would be some time yet before Queen Aegea was sure her court was clear of conspirators, but the worst was hopefully behind them.
Once things had begun to settle down, the Dead Legion were afforded an escort for their return to the airstrip so they could make their way back to the mainland.
"This was a typical day for you, wasn't it?" Avgo asked the Dead Legion, but she was grinning. "I hope the Queen considers me for the detachment she'll send to your Delphi Council."
Her grin faded somewhat as the Dead Legion were focus entirely on their own discussion. Ghost whispered to Wren, "You think the stuff down there made your magic stronger?"
"Not exactly," they replied. "When I've tried to use my more powerful spells while here, I felt like I was losing touch with who I am. Feeling closer to…who I'd be, if I was from your world, Ghost. When I was near that vault, though, that power that was coming from the eternium, it seemed to be feeding reality near us all. I could weave my strongest spells without risk of losing my connection."
"And when you made the whole cave go dark, was that from all the extra reality?" Ghost asked.
"Possibly, but I think it's me regaining a bit more of my old knowledge," Wren replied. "The spells I knew, before I revived this time. What about you, though? Seeing in the dark wasn't a power you had before, you tell me."
Ghost shook his head. "No, it wasn't. But I still have it; when I was looking around in the dark even after we got out of there, it's exactly the same. Plus, when the Red Hand tried to attack me, it was like my mind could see him coming a minute before the rest of me did. I just knew a danger was there."
"That's a little like what I did when I was fighting with that captain lady," spoke up Kristina Rouge. "I've sorta been able to change what happens before. I never knew I could stop somebody else from trying to change reality so they'd win, instead."
Sophia gave a rare smirk. "It sounds as though all of our capabilities are expanding."
"Watch out, Dr. Mobius," Kristina snarked.
"Well, at least the Retribution League, let's hope," Ghost replied.
Their banter stopped abruptly when they got to the remains of the airstrip where they'd first landed. The plane they'd left there was gone; even the grass sticking out of the cracks in the tarmac looked freshly-squashed.
"The Red Hand took it," Kristina Rouge stated the obvious.
"I thought you said you locked it securely," Sophia pointed out.
"I did!" Kristina exclaimed, even holding up the key. "Does that matter when the bad guys have freaking superpowers?"
Sophia Black nodded. "Yes, that's true enough."
Avgo spoke up, "We'll lend you a ship to return you to the mainland. It's the least we can do."
"Okay. Where are those?" asked Kristina.
Avgo blushed. "The other side of the island."
"Well," Ghost suggested breezily, "guess we can bask in the glow of our good deeds a little longer."
"You're a strange one, Ghost," Sophia said, but she was smiling, and walked by his side as the group made their way to the island's port.