Bitter End #2
"I don't know!" Merlin said as he fought off three of them. "I need to be able to focus!"
"Then go," Lancelot said harshly. Get up high, out of the way. We can handle her for now.
Merlin didn't bother to reply, just knocked down the two in his immediate path and ran for the seats, scaling the wall with ease and vanishing into the crowd.
Trusting he could manage himself, Lancelot put his full attention on the fighting, exchanging buckler for shield, using that and his water to drive opponents back, knock them over, take them out of the fight however he could without killing them.
Chances were, they were already dead. He doubted the process involved with possessing them left anything intact. But until he knew for certain, he would not fucking kill them.
Unfortunately, Amphelise had no such compunctions. She screamed with fury as Gawain continued to match her assault, even best her, and cut down two of her own to bathe her sword in blood. It glowed a lurid, violent purple.
Gawain met her with walls of fire, turning Lancelot's water into steam, clouding the arena and making everything that much more difficult.
And they had no idea what the others were facing, if they were even all right.
The facts, what were the facts.
Scrob's body seemed to be the main Amphelise, as that was who held the sword—and she'd cut down the other possessed like they didn't matter. Doing so certainly had shown no signs of hurting her. So taking her down, and not being distracted by the adds, was the key to all of this.
As Gawain hit her with a wall of flame and boiling-hot steam, leaving her wounded and bloodied and her face a horrifying mess, Amphelise screamed with a rage he'd never heard before—except for that last day at Camlann, when Maleagant had realized he would lose.
When he'd bargained with a creature he never should have messed with and gained an army of nightmares that had slaughtered the knights of Camelot like they were a child's wooden soldiers.
Lancelot should have died then, a lance headed right at him. Galehaut had stepped in front of him and taken the lance to the chest instead. Lancelot had died then, in every way that mattered, though he'd held himself together long enough to find Merlin.
Now here they were, and that rage was returned, but in the sister. She cut down more and more of her own puppets, her wounds slowly healing, until he and Gawain were simply no match for the blood-soaked power of that damned sword.
Fine. Drastic measures it was. Dismissing Arondight and his clothes, Lancelot once more called up the full power of his true nature, past the claws and kelp and webbed hands, screaming in agony as his body reshaped itself into the great silver serpent.
A form regarded as holy by his people of the waters, a form only he could take, and his mother's most deadly form was greater still.
His tail made short work of the minor puppets, batting them out of the way, into the wall, into the stands. Water once more filled the arena, rising quickly, his movements making it all the more treacherous. Gawain scaled the wall, getting well out of the way.
Amphelise had no such form, but she used floating detritus to get to him, climbing on his back, clinging to his spines to stab him over and over, using her slight size to avoid his gaping maw.
Still not enough.
The ground cracked further under the weight of the water, and down, down, down they went into the hidden tributaries and lake far below the earth, landing with a thunderous splash that brought rocks raining down upon them.
Finally where he belonged, able to see where most other creatures could not, his spines glowing a soft blue in the endless, frigid midnight of the subterranean lake, he went hunting.
Strangely, Amphelise had not abandoned the game. Perhaps she couldn't, trapped in the pocket dimension the same as them. Or perhaps it was tied to how she had possessed poor Scrob. Or somehow the wards were holding, even this far down. Little mattered, in the end.
What mattered was that he was able to find her in the dark, swim up from below, and grab her in his jaws right before she was able to breach the surface. The force of the bite tore her body into two pieces. Letting go, he crushed the head, reducing it to pulp.
Leaving the remains to fall where they may, issuing a silent apology and prayer to poor Scrob, he swam to the surface again, then climbed up slippery rock until he reached the remains of the arena.
Gawain waited in the box seat where the NPC nobility had watched the festivities. "The remaining puppets collapsed."
Lancelot didn't reply, just dipped his head so Gawain could climb aboard, and together they went in search of the others. Merlin?
Still working. Almost got it. I think you killed-killed her, well fucking done. Not the sister we were hunting, but I'll fucking take it. What happened to her sword?
Sank to the bottom with the body. Didn't want to waste the time to find it, not when I didn't know what else might be going on up here.
Hopefully it stays down there. The others are in the practice fields, outside the inner ward but within the outer ward.
Lancelot raced in that direction, though at his size, it didn't take long. As they reached it, Gawain threw himself off Lancelot's head and right into the fray, landing amidst a bunch of canon fodder in a burst of blinding, fiery light.
Turning his attention to other parts of the battlefield, Lancelot swatted and snapped and clawed at the rest of the shadow forces.
At the far end of the field, a golden dragon and black gryphon fought with Ethelfleda, who'd taken the form of a black and purple dragon, venom dripping from her fangs, the underside of her wings flickering purple fire.
Morgan was on Arthur's back, countering every bit of shadow magic Ethelfleda tried to use on them.
From the pallor of her skin, she was fading fast.
He roared and the water came, the earth trembling with the force of it, and everyone unable to get to higher ground was swept away, dragged downhill back to the river.
Ethelfleda lunged, getting her jaws around Dred's throat, but she was thrown off by their flames in the next moment.
Bleeding heavily from wounds that wouldn't close, Dred withdrew.
Entrusting them to the others who went rushing to their side, Lancelot joined Arthur, the water rushing all around them.
Arthur's blinding sunlight, the rarest form of earth magic, filled the area. Lancelot struck with his tail, the deadly barbs sinking into Ethelfleda's body, making her scream. Like her sister, she could not seem to retreat. The wards were holding; he'd given them enough time to see them through.
He just wished he hadn't doomed Scrob in the process.
Snarling, bitter and angry and furious with her and himself, Lancelot wrapped around her, twisting and binding, ignoring biting and stabbing and clawing, the way chunks of him were ripped and torn away, to squeeze with all his might, until she weakened enough to stop thrashing.
He clamped down on her throat, flooding her body with venom far more potent than anything she could muster as Arthur came lunging in to rip her head off.
Ethelfleda's body collapsed, thrashing around in its death throes, and then went still. Lancelot slowly unwound from her body, though it took some effort to free his coils from her dead weight.
Once he was free, the water steadily receding once more, he shifted back down to his human form, the pain diminished by the last rays of Arthur's golden sunlight.
Galahad caught him as he fell, keeping him from faceplanting in a pool of bloody water.
Lancelot clung to him, tears streaming down his face from overexertion, pain, and grief.
How many people had died because he'd been so stupidly fucking arrogant?
They had just meant to have a bit of fun while they stalled for time.
None of the other gamers should have been caught up in this.
War never cared about innocents. But even assholes like Scrob didn't deserve the unholy hell that he had suffered as Amphelise destroyed him from the inside out just for the pleasure of it, for the delight in their torment.
"Did— Did we succeed?" Lancelot managed. He hurt. He was tired. He'd spent his entire past life fighting this battle, and now it felt like he was headed for the same fate in this life. And he wouldn't even get the fleeting joy of Galehaut at his side first.
Merlin appeared in front of them, grabbed them tight. "We can leave the game, and we have to go now—"
Everything went black, freezing cold, and Lancelot realized they'd been kicked out by the game itself. The words Server Emergency Maintenance flashed in lurid red letters across the darkness. Before he could compute all the ways that didn't make sense, the darkness vanished.
He gasped, alert in a way he hadn't been for days, and stared groggily around at his surroundings. The interactive booths in Merlin's house. His entire body ached, and his head was fuzzy from the disorientation.
The door opened and Merlin, looking as awful as Lancelot felt, yanked him out of the box, ignoring all the cables and tubes that were unceremoniously jerked free with the motion. "We have to go. We've got one fucking chance at this, and almost no fucking time to do it. Move."
Lancelot followed as best he could, stumbling more than walking, clipping corners and slamming into walls, until they were all but falling into a waiting car. It was him, Merlin, and Dred. "Others?" he croaked.
Merlin didn't answer immediately, fumbling with the seats across from them, finally yanking out a back cushion to reveal a hidden storage area.
Yanking out a dark red case, he punched in a code, opened it, and then tossed Lancelot and Dred each an injection pen.
It was orange with white and black stripes.
A special adrenaline shot, only permitted for use by the military and a very short list of civilian exceptions.
They were called TGARS. Adrenaline-Rejuvenation Shot manufactured by TG Medical.
He slammed the injection into his thigh, and damn near threw up from the too fucking much of it all. "My heart is going to pop," he said hoarsely. "Where the fuck did you get these, asshole?"
"I fucked somebody, obviously," Merlin said wryly. Some of his color was coming back, though not much. "The others are getting Arthur and everyone else not already at my house. A house we'll probably never see again, so hope you have everything that matters with you."
Dred grunted. "I hate you right now. So what are we doing, now that you've made me feel both drunk and high as a kite and like I just got run over by a fully loaded cargo truck?"
"You'll be fine, it'll even out," Merlin said. "We're going to retrieve Scrob's body."
Anguish ripped through Lancelot, and he pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes in a futile attempt to stem the pain.
"He was a stupid, arrogant brat playing a stupid video game.
He didn't deserve any of that. Not me humiliating him, and certainly not being ripped from his own head and killed by that stupid bitch. "
"It wasn't your fau—"
"Yes, it was," Lancelot snarled, barely noticing as Dred and Merlin recoiled.
"I am Captain of the Knights of Camelot.
The only people with bigger targets on their backs are Merlin and Arthur.
I drew attention to myself on purpose, but I shouldn't have dragged innocent people into it.
Other ways could have been found. Instead I harassed some stupid fucking kid just because he was rude and flagrantly cheating.
I showed off and made a spectacle and humiliated him just for the fun of it, to teach him a lesson, and that put a target on his back because of course Maleagant and his rotten sisters would prey on him to get to me.
My behavior was inexcusable." He swiped angrily at tears.
"How many people died tonight because I wanted to show off?
Leave me alone," he added when they tried to speak.
"Just leave me the fuck alone. Why do we need Scrob's body? "
"Because his brain will have pieces of Amphelise in it, and we may be able to scan them for information.
The kind of information that could change everything.
I scrambled as much data as I could to slow down them knowing where Scrob is, but it won't take them long to undo my mess.
This is our one chance to get information on that bastard.
He's just been a fucking shadow so far, and always ten steps ahead of us.
But we got him on his backfoot today, and now we just need to push. "
"Hence this nightmare injection," Dred said with a grimace. "I can taste the ten years it just took off my life."
Merlin gave a short laugh. "Only seven."
Lancelot grimaced, because that really was the only way to describe the nasty aftertaste in his mouth. Which was wholly unfair, because how did an injection in his thigh leave a bad taste in his mouth?
They drove out of the protected city and into the 'nice' apartments closest to the edge of the dome, along a street that was relatively clean, far better than the shitty slums that Lancelot hadn't seen for what felt like years but was only weeks.
"Apartment 702-A," Merlin said as the car came to a stop in front of a building that might have been painted blue at one point, but now was just a sort of desultory gray.
Lancelot only barely felt steady on his feet as they climbed out of the car, bypassed building security because of something Merlin did, and raced up the stairs, all of them too paranoid for the elevator.
Just as they reached the right hallway, the EXIT door at the opposite end burst open, the hallway filling with half a dozen dudes in black tac gear.
Dred surged to the fore, flames filling the hallway, forcing them back.
Lancelot didn't bother with his sword, all but useless in the narrow confines of the hallway, only went in with sharp claws, tearing easily through the melted equipment and burned clothes, clawing open their throats and stomachs.
Panting, he left the dead and dying there, spinning around and heading for the apartment the other two had already broken into. They reappeared as he reached it, a body slung over Dred's shoulder.
"Let's move," Merlin said. "Say goodbye to this shithole city, because we're probably never going to see it again either."
Claws out, Lancelot led the way down the stairs back to the car.