Death Smith - Book 2 - Chapter 10

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Tools of war

Mere hours before exiting the Rift.

Late-March, 14 AR.

Inside Rift 8.

“Lance, on your left!” Myles shouted at Lance, ordering him to guard their left flank and protect Noel, who was busy channelling his Magicka. “Claudia, hurry it up,” Myles continued before he felt the second monster hit his shield, pushing him back a step.

The air was thinner this far up, with the Rifters having to exert themselves more and more. Lance had the most trouble, with Myles the least because of his higher Endurance stat. An average non-Rifter would have passed out long ago or needed specialised gear to be able to breathe.

With laboured breath, Lance slammed his axe into the monster’s neck before kicking it down the mountainous ridge. The Trihorn skirted down the path, slamming into several of its kind before it plummeted to his death. ‘Just a few more,’ Lance thought, seeing the next wave of monsters climb up the ridge and charge towards them.

They were standing on the top of a large mountainous peak where an ancient chiselled out stone floor was located. It looked both captivating and decrepit, with signs of forgotten battles adorning the floors. Someone had at one point carved intricate lines and strange symbols into the floor, but it had faded over time, now only hinting at their former purpose.

[You have finished repairing an item.]

‘Right on time!’ Lance thought, seeing the notification pop up. He grabbed his axe with his left hand as he held his right hand above his head, seconds later retrieving an item.

[You have retrieved an item from the inventory.]

A slender javelin appeared in his right hand, already positioned so that Lance could throw it immediately. He timed it right, forcing every bit of strength into his throw. He twisted his body as he threw the javelin. It impacted a monster with an incredible speed and force that only a Rifter could produce.

Lance’s javelin was part horn, fastened on a thin shaft made of bone, glued together and further fastened by using cloth or sinew to hold it in place. In terms of reliability, it was a shoddy weapon that broke after a few uses. Still, it did a lot of damage during that time. Myles had taught Lance how to use plant and animal fibres to make improvised sinew or cordage. Although the process took time to improve its quality, Lance had learned that by using animal sinew, he could speed up the process at the cost of lowering the quality of the binding. Beyond that, Claudia had taught Lance how to make glue from bones by boiling it and removing any impurities.

Lance watched the javelin imbed itself into the skull of the charging Trihorn, the force of the impact enough to slam its head to the ground. He then rushed to the next monster, sidestepping to avoid the dangerous horn as Lance began hacking at the monster’s limbs and neck, either destroying their mobility or killing them outright. Lance could feel the sting of minor cuts and large bruises on his side, slowly sapping his strength.

“Claudia, is it ready!” Myles shouted, separating a monster’s head before grabbing his pistol with his offhand and embedding two rounds into another monster, stopping it in its tracks.

“Done!” Claudia screamed, each hand holding a propane tank that had been jerry rigged to serve as an explosive device. Both Noel and Claudia had been working on them the last few days, ensuring that they were both volatile enough to do damage, while also not go off in their hands. Claudia had gone the extra step by taping jars filled with screws, spoons, forks, and bits of rubble on the side of her bomb, ensuring that the explosives would contain as much shrapnel as possible. “Hold on to your panties, boys!” Claudia screamed, watching Lance and Myles rush back to her and Noel.

“Please tell me it is more stable than the ones you guys made in our last Rift?” Myles asked, his voice betraying his uneasiness at the fact that they were about to set off two explosions to introduce an avalanche.

“It will be fine,” Noel said, his eyes glowing bright blue as he activated a skill. Lines of blue energy appeared around them, forming a circular shape as the thin air became dense with Magicka. They could feel the surrounding temperature decreasing rapidly, even atop the mountainous region they were in.

“Now!” Myles said, emptying his magazine in the monsters that had gotten too close to them. Claudia then activated the timers on the bombs before she threw them away from them, slamming into dense groupings of monsters that were climbing up towards the Rifters.

Lance was not looking forward to experiencing the explosion of glass and shrapnel, knowing full well how lethal those things could be. Luckily, he did not have to find out when the lines of Magicka solidified, slowly turning into lines of ice. A moment later, crude, and thick walls of ice encased the party, forming an improvised bunker of ice.

“Five… four…” Claudia counted down as Myles reloaded his pistol. Only one second later, two explosions rattled the air with a fury, assaulting their icy fortress by bits of stone, ice, and shrapnel. The protective ice had cracked in several places, and a deep rumbling sound developed. The very earth around them trembled as the rumbling increased. This continued for several minutes as Noel continued to activate his skill and keep up the barrier.

The Rifters rested up, readied themselves as Lance activated his ‘mend wounds’ skill a few times, healing the others when he touched them. None of them had any major wounds besides a few cuts or bruises. Lance had taking most of the damage and had the least amount of protection to prevent it.

‘Mend wounds’

[You have used Mend wounds lvl 2 at the cost of 15 Magicka]

[Current Magicka 49/175]

Lance felt the sting of the cuts on his side lessen, only leaving a dull ache behind. As the blinding blue light faded from his body, he could see the others more clearly, seeing the determination in their eyes. Despite the many monsters that had charged them, they were doing rather well.

“Everyone doing all right?” Myles asked, his gaze scanning his companions to see if there was something wrong. With everyone nodding and Claudia grinning, Myles then gave the order to Noel. “Blast them.”

“Get ready,” Noel warned them, stopping his ‘Ice wall’ skill as he activated another skill, one that could create blasts of air pressure around him. Lance and the others bundled up next to Noel, holding onto each other to prevent them from getting swept up by the blast as well. The pressure in the ice bunker then increased bit by bit as Noel held the skill at the ready, waiting for the point where the ice walls would show even more cracks. They could hear the remaining monsters on the outside ram into the walls, desperate to breach the ice-fortress and slaughter the Rifters inside. Cracks turned into larger tears until chunks of ice fell apart.

Noel activated his skill, turning the ice fortress into a 360 degrees artillery barrage. The walls shattered in hundreds of individual pieces, propelled outwards in a violent fury.

Heavy ice chunks slammed into the surrounding landscape and monsters, ripping them apart or ramming them off the mountain with a tremendous force. The sudden ice barrage carried enough ferocity akin to something on a biblical scale.

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“I still say I did the most damage,” Noel said a few hours later, standing next to Lance on the newly formed ledge.

Lance stayed silent, not wanting to take any part in Noel’s and Claudia’s contest. Ever since the battle, the two of them had been at odds with one another. Both claimed that their explosive device had dealt the crucial blow and had caused the avalanche to trigger. It had swept dozens of monsters off the cliff, plunging them down the mountain and entombing them in ice and snow.

“I mean, I taught her how to build those contraptions,” Noel continued, with Lance nodding once or twice, knowing it was better to do so, lest he’d get involved even more.

Lance moved a little closer to the edge to peer down, seeing the steep drop where rock and snow had formed a torrent and swept downwards. From what Lance’s acute Perception could make out, he spotted a few monsters half-buried, their limbs sticking out of the snow in a mangled mess. ‘That is a bad way to go,’ Lance thought as he stepped backwards, not trusting the structural integrity of the ledge he was standing on.

Looking backwards, he noticed the splattered remnants of the monsters they had been fighting. Dozens of them hacked apart or impaled by one of the crude javelins Lance had thrown. A few others had bullet holes in their skulls or sides, or even whole limbs shot off from Claudia’s shotgun. But most of them Noel had reduced to red smears of gore and ice when his ice barrage had hit them. The blocks of ice had been akin to cannonballs in terms of size and speed.

“You guys made the right call. The plan worked perfectly,” Lance commented, remembering how they had started this day off. Myles and Claudia had set up some lures near the base of the mountain, reeking of fresh human blood, while Lance and Noel had made some large fires on the other side by burning bits of wood and plastic that they had scavenged from the apartment buildings. When the monsters that guarded the Rift-event rushed down the mountain to investigate the blood and fire, the Rifters had climbed the unguarded sides of the mountain. By the time the monsters had found out and rushed back upwards, layers of traps, ice barricades and four determined Rifters had met them. Rifters that were eager to make the monsters bleed for every bit of ground that the monsters wanted to reclaim.

“That it did. Myles has a knack for that sort of thing. The monsters themselves weren’t all that dangerous, and we had culled their numbers enough to remove their biggest advantage. The tactics and barricades were simply there to remove any chance of failure,” Noel commented as he stepped backwards, taking a seat on one of the monstrous corpses that was missing its head. “Why leave things to chance? That is our motto.”

“I can’t argue with that. Do you think the others will be back shortly?” Lance asked, rubbing his arms to stave off the cold.

Noel scratched his grey beard once, his mind working out how much time had probably passed. “A few minutes or so? We might have damaged the path up because of the avalanche, but I reckon it wouldn’t take them much longer,” Noel said as he activated his inventory and retrieved two tin cups, placing them on the stone floor. After that, he produced a steel flask from his inventory that contained some warm tea he had made last night, but it had stayed warm in his inventory. “There we go,” he said, handing Lance a cup as well.

Lance eagerly accepted the drink, a warm smile offered as currency as Lance sat down on the stone surface. “Remind me next time to only accept Rifts that lead to warm and exotic places,” Lance joked, accessing his inventory to retrieve his thick camp blanket and leather raincoat, wrapping them tightly around himself. Although it did not provide as much heat as he would have liked, it lessened the sting of the icy wind.

Noel laughed at that, taking a few generous sips of his tea before he cocked his head to the side, hearing the clear signs of snow being trampled by feet.

“Friendlies,” Myles stated, hiking his way through the snow until he came into view of Lance and Noel. Myles looked almost regal in his armour, with a thick fur cloak draped around his form. He was pulling on a thick rope, dragging a tied-up monster behind him. The monster was larger compared to the other monsters, with larger layers of muscles present within its figure. It would have proven a tougher opponent to fight, had Claudia not shot it off the edge of the mountain at the start of the battle with her shotgun.

‘They found the Rift-guardian,’ Lance thought, seeing the Rift-shard embedded in the monster’s chest. It was black, but it had a slight red hue to it, marking it as the guardian. “Nice. Did it put up a fight?” Lance asked Myles and Claudia as they joined them, dropping the wounded Rift-guardian next to them.

“No. We found this little fellow passed out, half-broken on a boulder at the base of the mountain. I think if we waited a bit, it would have died on its own,” Myles said as he quickly accepted a warm cup of tea from Noel. “Good man.”

“Really?” Noel said to Claudia, watching her drop four bundles of items on the floor belonging to each of them. The Rifters had safely stowed those bundles at the bottom of the mountain but were still close enough to retrieve them in case the Rift-event began to close. Over her shoulder, Claudia had slung a bicycle she had found in an apartment. Time had rusted some bolts, but it was otherwise still in good condition.

“What? You know the dorks over at the Workshop are going to love this one. If not, we could always hit up the ‘Little Market’ near Dublin,” Claudia said, placing the bicycle next to her and ringing the bell a few times, grinning as it produced a lovely sharp sound.

Lance finished his drink, handing the cup over to Noel before he grabbed his sack of items and double-checked if everything was still there. Inside were several dozens of items he might need in a new Rift or were valuable enough to sell. The larger and more impractical items Lance had wanted to take with him were now stored in his inventory. He had filled his backpack with a lot of black-shards he had retrieved from the dead monsters, along with several of the horns, hooves, and teeth.

‘This should do nicely,’ Lance thought, having tied up the cloth again. He had made the sack out of bedsheets, sown, and tied together. Ugly, but would do for now. Inside the sack were strips of copper and tin he had looted from the apartment. Beyond that, he had grabbed cables and electrical devices, as well as silverware. Your average person might view it as junk, but the people in the Workshop would pay good money for it, especially any intact electronic item. “This should at least get me some decent shoes,” Lance said with a smile, hearing the others agree with him.

The four of them then went over the last things they needed to do before they left this Rift. Myles did a last-minute shave; Claudia had swapped some things around in her inventory to not have to carry the bicycle around with her while Noel had double-checked his sack full of items like Lance had done. Lance had kept himself busy with his items. He had hoped the others discuss the ‘little market’ some more but had not brought it up himself. He had heard Claudia and Noel mention it a few times, with Myles usually putting a stop to these types of discussions when Lance was around.

‘Perhaps some sort of black market?’ Lance thought as he strapped his backpack on, securing his weapons before flinging the sack of items over his shoulders. Then, one by one, the rest of them got up and neared the centre of the Rift, stepping close to a spot in the air where reality felt flawed.

As they had discussed before, Noel would be the one to kill the Rift-guardian, seeing as he had the highest Luck stat of the entire party. They had explained to Lance that the higher a Rifter’s Luck, the more chance there was that the Rift-guardian’s shard would contain a skill. Most people referred to such a thing as a skill-shard. This item alone would be worth more than whatever else the four of them could loot from this Rift and the one after that. A skill-shard contained a tremendous amount of energy. It was useless to mere humans, but a Rifter could break it up in his inventory to absorb the energy in the form of a new skill. A weak or more common skill could be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. A rare one could be worth millions, even billions.

“Here we go,” Noel said, activating a skill as he shot a sharp shard of ice from his hand, piercing the inside of the Rift-guardian’s cranium. Mere moments after Noel killed it, the very ground trembled as the Rift became unstable. Noel grabbed a knife and began cutting out the Guardian’s shard, only to show a normal shard to the others with a disappointed expression. “I’ll have better luck next time,” he said as he stepped next to the others again.

They all prepared for the closing of the Rift-event. Each person was as close to the core as they could, pressing against the impassable dense flow of energy that was now becoming more visible. It was getting darker, with black energy surging, until it became a pillar of indescribable blackness. ‘Here we go,’ Lance thought, holding onto his bundle of salvage as his body tensed up, clearly remembering the way he had left his last Rift. Sweat ran down his back as his heart rate increased, his mind recalling every painful memory of that moment.

Then, the Rift-event collapsed in on itself and this world as it enveloped the Rifters in pure black energy.

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Author: Osirium

Copyright: 2022 OsiriumWrites

Released: 2022