CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
MAELUN BUNKER – THE QUEEN’S ASSAULT
I dismissed the system window that tried to display right in front of my face. I would have to look at it later. A massive, screeching scream ripped across the landscape right before over four hundred Kobol Kai and constructs began charging the bunker. Our cohorts were quick to respond, forming shield walls and lines to meet the new threat.
“ARi, focus on the constructs,” I said as ARi’s projection formed next to me.
The guns opened up and wailed away at the spider constructs that were trying to pry a gap in our lines. They flooded over the city walls by the hundreds. A barrage of rapid fire bolts slammed through the open gap in the bunker as we all dove for the ground.
“Gavin, you need to get your ass downstairs, right now,” ARi said.
“Don’t worry, I can watch from up here. You should be able to follow what’s happening on your map,” she added.
I made my way down the stairs and as I reached the bottom, something grabbed me out of the stairwell, throwing me backward into the assembly hall! I slid across the floor and slammed into the wall. I couldn’t breathe. Pain and searing heat ripped through my chest as the wind had been knocked right from my lungs. I gasped for air, my body leaning on the wall broken.
There in the middle of the floor I saw my rebreather, which must have been knocked off my face. I gasped, desperate to draw air into my lungs. I tried to crawl towards it right as a massive Reaper decloaked and moved into the center of the room. It paused right above my rebreather, looking down at the device before crushing it.
I kicked backward, trying to push myself further away from the monster. I looked to both openings and saw my Praetorian guards dead on the floor.
I tried to call out to ARi over the noise of battle and the sounds of explosions. But I knew she couldn’t hear me. The Reaper slowly made its way across the room, seeming to savor every step and every moment of my agony as I kept trying to pull air into my lungs.
Outside, I knew all my friends were fighting the Kobol Kai. Somewhere, Tanya was doing her best to heal the wounded pouring into the field hospital. Tim would be outside leading formations. Kyle and Yumi were trying to seal the tunnel that led into the bunker from the city. I had no way to warn them. No way to help the hundreds of refugees now trapped in the bunker below. Time seemed to stand still for a moment, a moment of clarity. I was going to die right here on this floor. I thought of ARi. She would be the first to find me, and my heart ached through my broken chest. The taste of the blood in my mouth brought me back into the moment.
The Reaper lifted one of its massive claws, and I closed my eyes, waiting for inevitability.
ARi’s projection formed on the other side of the Reaper. “DON’T YOU TOUCH HIM, YOU BITCH!” she screamed.
The Reaper turned to face ARi and spoke in a low, menacing voice. “You should not have come here, Guide! You killed my brood. I will tear you apart! You will watch as I take them all.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, you disgusting cockroach! Were you fond of the ones you sent to murder me? Are you upset that my rogues plunged their knives into their faces? Or maybe you’re upset over losing that last one. I heard his head popped like a cherry right from his neck when my Sikh Warrior removed it for me,” ARi said.
The Reaper screamed in rage and swung at ARi’s projection, and instead of letting the claw pass harmlessly through it, ARi jumped out of the way. I realized she was trying to stall. By then, my eyes grew heavy and my vision began to dim. Three metallic darts slammed into the side of the Reaper as a blue shield formed around another figure. The Reaper slammed its claws against it.
I saw Tanya running toward me, shielded by Yumi’s drones. The single smash of the Reaper’s massive claw was enough to break the force field, but Tanya escaped untouched, sliding across the floor to my side as the little drones came crashing down.
She pulled her own rebreather off and slid it onto my face. “Breathe, Gavin. Breathe. I need you to breathe,” she said, before she stood up, raised her hands, and fired a necrotic bolt into the back of the Reaper Queen.
I gasped, trying to draw air into my lungs. My chest was on fire. I watched as Tim came running into the room, slashing his khopesh across the front of the Queen before the Queen hit Tim across the side, knocking him to the floor.
She turned to finish Tim off, but the ground beneath her feet rose in the form of three massive spikes that speared the Reaper, impaling her through the side. She swung and knocked Kyle to the ground near Tim.
From the other side of the hall, Bishop charged the Reaper from the stairwell, rearing onto his hind legs as a massive pike formed in his middle hands. He drove the pike through the center of the Reaper Queen, pinning her to the floor.
“My people will kill you all. Every one of your kind will die screaming,” the Reaper Queen raged as she flailed on the floor.
“You first!” ARi spat.
Bishop grabbed the top half of the Queen’s head with his forward limbs and, with the others, seized the Queen’s neck, twisting in opposite directions and severing the head with a loud snap before it dropped to the floor.
The Reaper Queen was dead.
ARi’s projection ran to my side. She knelt, raised a hand, and cast Territorial Simulacrum. She sealed the doorways temporarily and filled the room with breathable air. I could see tears falling freely from her face.
“Tanya, please help him,” ARi said.
Tanya, also gasping for air, ran back to my side and placed her hand over my chest as it began to glow. The pain in my broken ribs seared and burned. It was completely overwhelming, and I felt myself slip into unconsciousness.
[SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT:]
The Nox Reapers have been defeated.
The Nox Reaper Queen has been eliminated from the Ascendancy. With their defeat, three civilizations remain in active contention.
As per Ascendancy protocol, the cycle will enter a consolidation phase. All surviving civilizations will be returned to their respective homeworlds or the system lobby for a period of five of their solar cycles. During this time, Any champions who have claimed a progression node, may distribute resources, integrate rewards, and secure advancements gained through conquest.
Upon completion of the consolidation phase, the tournament will resume. Standing civilizations will re-enter the Ascendancy under current progression tiers and retain territorial control.
System Note:
Any civilizations that have not reached a progression node at this point will have their assets and territorial influence and research reset back to the last progression point. As there has only been one progression node offered to each of the civilizations so far, this means any civilization that has not captured a progression node will re-enter the lobby and be allowed to start again. Champions will retain their current level and ability. However, any of their progress will be undone and their avatars on their world of origin will be forfeit.
I woke days later in a room I had never seen before. I sat up from the bed and found ARi standing at my bedside.
“Sorry, Gav, I’m afraid you’re going to have to stay down here until we figure out a rebreather for you,” she said apologetically.
“Surprisingly enough though, Kyle thinks he can actually fix the damn thing, but it’s not gonna look as pretty,” she added.
“How long have I been asleep?” I asked.
“Four days,” ARi said casually, trying to hide her smile. “Tanya didn’t have enough juice to heal everybody, so she got you stable, and Bishop and I moved you further down into the bunker into this room. I’m afraid you had to do a little bit of healing on your own before she could come and finish. We had to keep you unconscious with some of her sleepy medicine, as she likes to call it.”
“ARi, is everybody okay?” I reached out instinctively to touch her projection and my hand actually touched hers. Realizing she was actually there in the room, I tried to sit up and reach for her, grabbing her close, and pulling her into a tight hug, only to have my chest scream at me.
“It’s okay, Gav. I’m here. I’m here. But don’t hurt yourself, okay?” she said.
“Tanya said you had a collapsed lung and multiple broken ribs and that you need at least one more round of healing,” ARi added.
“Tim? Kyle?” I asked.
“They’re fine, Gav. Everybody’s fine,” she said. “We did lose some of the cohorts though. I’m not going to lie, Gav. We lost a lot of them. We lost two of the squad leaders, eight of the legionaries, all of the Praetorians in the bunker, and one of the rogues near the keep.”
“Sawyer?” I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.
“Sawyer’s fine, Gav. In fact, Sawyer’s the reason why I’m here right now and why the keep is being manned by some pissed-off Praetorians at the moment.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Sawyer killed the last of the Reaper champions in a clearing near the river, Gav. That Reaper was level fourteen. It almost killed him. Like I said, that’s why I’m here. For three days we rode a mount. I carried his ass all the way here. Tanya said by the time we got here he wouldn’t have lasted more than an hour.”
“Turns out the reason we’ve been getting vials of that Reaper venom was because the damn things actually have a stinger. Sawyer found out the hard way. It plugged him right in his gut. Luckily the other rogues figured it out and began giving Sawyer the anti venom they carry in case there’s an accident from their own blades.”
“Gav, none of us have looked at any of the system windows yet. We thought maybe we could do it together. Also, you should know that a Control-Node appeared in the middle of the city. What’s left of it, anyway. We were waiting for you before we claimed it because we don’t know what’s going to happen after we do.”
“That’s probably a smart move,” I said, still short of breath.
ARi pulled my bedding back and slid under the sheets to lie next to me. She was careful not to press on my chest. I pulled my arm gently over her and we lay there. I don’t know how many hours we lay like that before a gentle tap at the door.
The door slowly swung open as ARi sat up and stepped out of the bed, making room for Tanya to come and sit next to me.
“Listen,” I said, still struggling with the pain in my chest, “before you go calling me a cowboy, that Reaper bitch pulled me right out of the stairwell. I didn’t have much say in it.”
“I know, Gav,” Tanya said as she placed her hand on my chest and it began to glow. All over my skin and in my chest it felt like a million tiny needle pricks, but the pain quickly subsided as her hand stopped glowing and she pulled it away.
“I’ve managed to save as many as I could, Gav,” she said. “Two of the civilians were dead in the hall with the Praetorians.”
“The Matriarch?” I asked.
“She’s fine. She’s actually walking through the city right now with Jack.”
“I’m not going to say that I think we got through this by the skin of our teeth. I don’t think that’s necessarily what happened here. I don’t know how much ARi has told you about what was going on right before she told us you were in trouble. But the Kobol Kai forces were smashing against our shield walls,” Tanya said.
“Charlie saw three of the shits running up the hill with one of those explosive artillery rounds.”
“Suicide bombers, Gav.”
“Tim screamed and ordered everybody to fall back. Instead, three of the legionary squads formed up and marched right out to stop them from getting any further up the hill. The explosion was massive.”
Tanya looked down at the floor, ashamed. “I might have been able to save more of them, but I wasn’t able to get out there in time.”
“Tanya, look at me,” I said. I was able to breathe now, but I still had the rasp. “You are probably the only real healer on this entire continent, and you have limits. Don’t you dare blame yourself for any of it, okay?”
“Okay, Gav,” she said.
“How bad were Tim and Kyle?”
“Tim had a broken arm and some bruised ribs. Kyle, on the other hand, actually had a skull fracture, a broken jaw, and a dislocated shoulder. For as bad as it was though, he did kind of get his wish.”
“How’s that?”
“He didn’t flinch a muscle while I was healing his skull fracture or his shoulder. I don’t know if he could have flinched much with Yumi sucking on his face.”
We laughed and I reached up, grabbing my chest because it was still sore. “But Tim’s fine. He’s been commanding sweeps of the area. They’re trying to hunt down the last of the Kobol Kai. The other rogues found the Reaper’s territory as well.”
“There must be twenty Control-Nodes all within twenty yards of each other?” Tanya said, looking at ARi confused.
“Gavin, they weren’t more than a mile away from the city,” ARi said.
“Well, that explains why they were able to keep bringing reinforcements in so quickly.”
Over the following days, as my strength returned and I could finally breathe without pain, the reality of what we faced began to sink in. We had won the battle, destroyed the Reaper Queen, and broken their civilization. But victory came with its own complications– ones I hadn’t fully understood until ARi sat me down and walked me through the system windows I’d been dismissing.
“Gavin, we need to talk about what happens next,” ARi said, settling onto the bench beside my bed. “The consolidation phase gives us five solar cycles on Earth. But with time dilation…”
“We could be gone for a long time,” I finished.
“Exactly. And that means we need to make some decisions. Important ones.” She pulled up a system window. “About the cohorts.”
I sat up straighter, ignoring the lingering soreness in my ribs. “What kind of decisions?”
“Gavin, when we return to Earth, we can bring the cohorts with us– sort of. There’s a mechanic I found buried in your architect interface. It’s… it’s actually kind of brilliant.”
She explained: “The cohorts could be placed into a kind of stasis—a timeless space where spirits waited, unchanged and unaging, until I called them. From there, I could summon them directly to Earth without needing a cradle. It was unique to the Architect class, a way of pulling willing spirits across dimensions.
“But there’s a downside,” She said. “You will have to re-summon them with all of the restrictions and rules that you use to summon them in the first place.”
I thought about that for a moment. It wasn’t a big deal when they were low level but at the moment we had so many at higher levels that I wasn’t going to be able to recall entire legions all at once.
“What about everything that we’ve built so far, our territories and the native kobolds. I mean, they’re still Kobolkai out there?” I asked in a hushed tone, my brain trying to process what we were considering.
“There’s nothing that I can find in the rules that says that we have to put cohorts into the stasis.” Her voice was shaky and I could tell this was bothering her. Gavin, some of them are going to want to stay. From what we’ve learned from the Matriarch, Spirit-born don’t age. So even if we’re gone for a long time…” Her voice broke and I saw a tear roll down her cheek.
“And any of the cohorts who stay will be stuck here until we return.”
“Gavin I don’t have a firm grasp of the time dilation yet. Anyone who stays will be stuck here. We’re going to be gone for five days and they could be here for hundreds of years.” I sat next to her as she leaned on me.
“ARi we’ve made it our policy to allow the cohorts to choose their own path. I know you don’t like the idea of leaving anybody behind but strategically it might be necessary. But I think you’re looking at this the wrong way. This could be an opportunity for them to reconnect with their people, a chance for them to have lives outside of the ascendancy even if it’s temporary.”
“I know that Gavin I’m also understanding how hard this must have been for your family back on Earth. I mean I thought I understood then but…” her voice broke again. “The thought of leaving them behind for so many years–”
I pulled her into a tight hug.
Three days later, we gathered everyone around the hearth in the bunker’s great hall. What had once been emergency refugee housing was now becoming something more permanent. The native kobolds were returning to their rebuilt homes in the city below, and ARi was converting the bunker into a combination embassy and library.
The great hall now had a proper hearth at its center. It was a replica of the hearth back in the den, and a solid reminder of just how far we’d come.
The room felt crowded with bodies, all our squad leaders and the newly promoted captains who’d earned their ranks during the final battle. Red stood at attention with Charlie beside him. Jack sat near the fire with Sawyer. The Viṣakanyā clustered together, their dark armor catching the firelight.
Tim, Kyle, Tanya, and Yumi joined us at the long table. Even the Matriarch had come, though she stood quietly near the back with a translator.
I stood, my chest still wrapped in bandages beneath my shirt, and addressed them all.
“You fought for Earth,” I began. What I’m about to explain are options, not orders. Choices, not commands.”
ARi stood beside me and took over, her voice steady. I think she could tell that trying to talk loud enough for everyone to hear was still painful. “The Ascendancy is entering what they call a consolidation phase. We will be returning to Earth for five solar cycles of that world. Because of time dilation, we don’t know how long that will be for those who remain here. It could be a long time.”
She pulled up the system window and projected it above the fire so everyone could see.
“You have two choices. The first: you can enter what we’re calling stasis. It’s a timeless space, a spirit realm where you’ll wait unchanged until Gavin calls on you. In this stasis, no time will pass for you. But when the Architect needs you, whether on Earth or when we return here he can summon you again.”
Murmurs rippled through the assembled cohorts.
“The second choice,”she continued, “is to stay here. Maintain a garrison force on Aedaea. Continue training the native kobolds. Hunt down the remaining Kobolkai. Guard what we’ve built. But if you choose that path, Gavin can not summon you to us. You will remain on this world until we return here ourselves. You’d be maintaining Earth’s presence in our absence.”
Silence fell across the hall. I could see them processing, weighing their options.
Red was the first to speak. He stepped forward, his polished bronze armor gleaming. “Architect, with your permission, I wish to speak for many of us.”
“Always, Red.”
He looked back at the legionaries, the Principes, the Velites. “We are soldiers. Our purpose is to serve Earth, to fight when called, to stand ready. The majority of us should enter this stasis. We can preserve Earth’s military strength as a ready reserve. When you call, Architect, we will answer. Wherever you need us, whenever you need us.”
Charlie stepped forward next, his Praetorian squad leaders behind him. “The Praetorians were created to guard the Ward. We need to be where she is. We stand with Red. We enter Stasis.”
I felt a lump form in my throat. “You’re sure?”
“Matriarch,” Red said, and for the first time I heard something like warmth in his voice. “We are not abandoning this world or our people. We are ensuring that the Architect has an army when he returns.”
The Matriarch nodded her head and pulled her fist to her heart, tapping her chest. “Your people understand, Ancestor. For this Alliance to endure, and for the safety of our people I would bid you a safe journey. Protect your Ward. Your people will be here when you return.”
Heads nodded throughout the room. Charlie spun around to face the legions. He slammed his spear onto the ground and yelled, “Aye day, Aye day, Aye yay!” He was answered quickly as the legion slammed their Spears and shields onto the ground replying with Ahroo!
Yumi dramatically shivered all over. “It gives me the chills every time they do that. I wish I knew what it meant.”
“We stand, We stand again. Until we fall.” Red said quietly, smiling up at Yumi. “We find it a fitting Cadence.”
“Ahroo,” she said quietly to Red as she tapped her hand to her chest. “Until we fall,” she said, grinning ear to ear.
Sawyer stood from the table. “Some of us need to stay,” he said quietly.
Every head turned toward him.
“The Kobolkai are broken, but not gone,” Sawyer continued. “They fled into the wilderness. Someone needs to hunt them down, make sure they can’t rebuild, and can’t threaten this city again. That’s going to take time. Years, maybe. But it needs to be done.”
Jack stood beside him. “And someone needs to protect the city itself. Train the native kobolds. Maintain a defensive force. Make sure Maelun stays safe while the Champions are gone.”
Sawyer nodded to Jack. “I’ll hunt in the wilderness. You guard the city. Between us, we cover both threats.”
Tears were now freely falling down ARi’s face, her hands clenched, but before she could speak, one of the legionary captains stood.
“Some of us would like to stay as well, Architect. To serve under Sawyer and Jack. To keep ourselves in a state of readiness here on Aedaea, for when you return.”
“Ward,” Jack said, turning to ARi. “I see your distress. I’ve been told that Spirit-born live a very long time. I will do my best to keep Sawyer from doing stupid things,” he said with a smile. “This is the world of my ancestors. I wish to walk it, to know it. To protect it as my own.”
“It makes sense, Architect,” Charlie said slowly. “A reserve force in Stasis for your call. An active garrison here to hold the ground we’ve won.”
“How many are we talking about?” I asked.
The legionaries looked at each other. About a dozen stood. A few Principes. Handful of Velites.
“Enough to support Sawyer and Jack.” Red said. “Not so many that we compromise the reserve.”
Tony stepped forward, her eyes gleaming in the firelight. Beside her stood three others. “Ward, my squad will also stay,” Tony said. “Someone needs to guard the embassy. The knowledge you’ve left here is too valuable to leave unprotected.”
“Then it’s settled,” I said. “Those entering Stasis will preserve our military strength. Those staying will guard this world, hunt our enemies, train the natives, and maintain readiness for our return. I don’t want there to be any confusion. So let it be known now that regardless of whether you stay or you go, all of you are being true to your purpose.”
Red stepped forward and addressed Sawyer and Jack directly. “I’m transferring command of the remaining legionaries to you both. Split them as you see fit.
Jack clasped arms with Sawyer. “We’ll guard this world together, brother.”
ARi stood abruptly and left the hall, her footsteps echoing down the corridor. I started to follow, but Tanya put a hand on my arm.
“Give her a minute, Gav. This is hard for her.”
I knew she was right. For ARi this was like leaving her brothers and sisters behind and I could tell that it was crushing her.