Chapter 33

One second they were there and then whatever movement abilities they used had accelerated them out of his sight faster than he could blink.

Then, between one heartbeat and the next, while he was still registering that the four of them had vanished there was a roar and the spatial attack swept out of the cave mouth. Kiyoko stepped backwards in surprise as the rush of power widened the tunnel by an extra metre or so.

Kiyoko frowned.

“Get ready,” she ordered. “When this drops all of you go.”

“What?”

“But.”

Adrian moved. His mind was fixated on the fact that he had volunteered to go in the first wave. He could have died. He still might die. But getting through the tunnel as fast as possible maximised his chance of survival. Battle wraith and internal haste were already running at full so all he could do was drop his head and go as quick as he could.

“It can’t do a third. Go!” she screamed.

Adrian took off at the same time as the other six. He chained steps. Then there was a blast of what he assumed was an earth attack. Shards of rock slammed into him. His various shields glowed with power and failed one by one. Adrian sprinted into the chaotic spread of earth energies. Straining forward. Shadow evasion triggered, and he used a shadow step whenever there was more than a couple of metres of free space in front of him.

Internally, he cursed. If this was fire, he would have already won.

Wind gusts exploded before and after him, clearing debris and propelling him forward. His sense of direction let him register the tunnel had ended and a wind gust aided his steps by blowing him out from the stream of earth missiles.

He curved toward freedom.

Blue sparks were all around, then a distinctive popping noise. His personal shield and his last defence had failed. He was at the edge of the torrent of magic, literally a metre from safety. Earth magic slammed into him. His right arm and leg felt like a thousand mouths were biting into it. Despite his vitality, the hostile magic ripped into his arm. His armour was shredded and gashes an inch deep were torn into the exposed limbs.

Then he was out of the torrent and free. His wounded leg was incapable of supporting him, and he flopped hard onto the ground. In a daze, he triggered Omala’s healing spell in his necklace once, twice, and then three times. The wounds stitched themselves together as his domain spread out he registered no immediate threats. His face was in the dirt, but he was alive and Adrian knew he had a task. While the powerful healing magic washed over him, Adrian used his good arm and leg to stand. Air grabbed at his clothes, aiding the process.

There was a click as fractures in his leg snapped together. Upright, Adrian looked out over the massive cavern. It had barely changed from the last time. There were the same number of shells as last time, or possibly even a couple more. All of them were busy focusing magic on opening the portal.

The stone arch itself had grown slightly and the torrent of earth magic was tearing through that hole in reality. It was coming out at the bottom. Adrian could see above it and where that massive shell was. Relative to that creature’s size the torrent of energy was not that much. The class zero god-like shell was creating it to stop the humans reaching the portal room. Once more, he was reminded of the simple fact that things were not fair in the Alpha physics world. The power the world destroyer was bringing to bear was beyond anything he had ever witnessed.

Within his domain, he felt one of the nearby mages, a class three, twitch. Its limb was coming towards him.

Move.

All hell was breaking loose around him. Last time, he had only peeked into the room. This time he was physically present and to the mages that made him a threat. Adrian knew that his step reserves were almost depleted, just like his magic, but consequences were for later. He ignored the problem, linking steps and zig zagging toward the portal as magic rained down everywhere and limbs flailed as they tried to turn him into a bloody paste.

Reach the portal.

Adrian increased the randomness when it felt like the mages were trying to predict his movements. Luckily, none of them were using area attacks. Even so, there was a wall of magic halting his progression. The tattered remnants of the protective bag fell off his bag of holding and the portal disruptor was lifted using telekinesis into his hands as he dodged forward. Adrian only had to reach that huge stone archway and he could attach the device.

Flames, ice, darkness and other magic attacks he did not recognise fell around him. A pinkish-coloured attack in front of him faded.

Gap!

Adrian stepped into it.

Flames burned his heel. They were not coordinating. Instead, they were all throwing out spells in a blitz of power that American’s attacking a terrorist compound with missile strikes would have been chuffed with. More of the first round of attacks faded and there was a corridor ten metres long. It stretched right to the edge of the portal.

Step

Got you.

Gleefully, he slammed the disruptor onto the strange stone in front of him.

Emily would live. The kids would live. He had done it.

Mystified, Adrian looked up and wondered why he was not dead. Just the act of clicking the disruptor in place had stopped his movement, which should have been enough for one of them to strike. He was defenceless and nothing had struck. In shock, he looked up. None of the mages were coming near him. None of them were trying to squish him, and there were no magic spells targeting him.

He stepped back and felt the stone of the portal behind him and he realised the portal was protecting him. The mages were too scared to attack near the arch for fear of breaking it.

Adrian glanced at the lump of rock he had attached. It had already melted and fused into the structure, and it glowed a different colour from everything else. And the intensity of that glow was increasing every second as its magic went to work.

He had done it.

The world would survive. Adrian sucked in another breath, gasping for air. His limbs were exhausted, but he stood there triumphally defying the creatures that were so much more powerful than himself. They were not going to destroy his world. Abruptly, he realised he was no longer the only human next to the portal. A metre away Wei Xinyi was there shivering, her disruptor was also pressed onto the soaring pillar. It was only just starting the melting process. Adrian had beaten her. Then a third person arrived.

“You two quick, use your teleporter,” the man immediately demanded. Dazed by the grandeur of what was happening and the stay of execution he had received, Adrian looked at him in confusion. It was the meth-head, weasel face from earlier. “Go. You don’t have time.”

Another gasping breath and with coordination compromised, as he pulled out his personal teleporter plate it slipped from his fingers. The spear reacted, its magic caught the tumbling plate and ensured that it landed right way up. Wei Xinyi had followed suit, but the meth-head stood there. His eyes looked outwards. “Go,” Meth-head ordered. “I’ll make sure they do not interfere.”

Adrian, his mind feeling sluggish was stunned to find that no less than four class three mages had moved to just ten metres from him. Not from him, but from the portal. That was what they were worried about. But despite that fear, they were coming. Thinking animals who had obviously concluded that waiting would be death.

Magic flared in Meth-head. “I invoke Sanctuary of Blood,” the strange man screamed before stabbing a knife into his heart seppuku style.

A spell exploded around the man. A defensive half circle that encompassed him and the portal pillar. That magic Adrian realised was protecting the attached disruptors and preventing the mages from reaching the objects and potentially countering their magic. Adrian studied the magic Meth-head had sacrificed his life to use.

Sanctuary of blood

Self-sacrifice to create a barrier that cannot be broken for at least five seconds.

Oh fuck.

The man had sacrificed himself to save everyone. Adrian wasn’t sure the disruptors would have been able to hold up against those mages.

Knowing that time was running out Adrian invoked the teleporter under his feet and there was a wrench of reality. The last image he saw was all four mages striking forward. Their attacks were repelled by the Sanctuary of Blood.

His stomach lurched, and he was in the cavern’s corner.

Kiyoko was next to him. “In, In,” she screamed. “Everyone in.”

In front of him was a hole in space. Adrian could see the Australian bush through it. The teleportation specialists had created a two-way teleport in order to get the elites out of the hole in the ground.

Step.

Abruptly, the rippling pane of energy was in front of him. A wind gust courtesy of the spear hit him from behind. He had the start of a mana headache, but it blew him through the portal. Then he ran, putting aside his exhaustion to get away from a portal that he knew might blow. While sprinting, Adrian curved to the side to get out of the immediate mouth of the two-way teleporter.

Calculations ran through his head. His disruptor counting down… Then… The imp portal exploded violently. Compared to what was about to blow was the same sort of difference between a firecracker and a nuclear bomb.

The portal would detonate, then the mountain, and then the portal behind him.

The world itself shook. Heat from the nearby teleporter washed over him and then a blast of debris and wind grabbed him and threw him further away as their smaller two-way portal detonated. Twigs and leaves stung his skin as he was rag-dolled by that explosive energy and that was despite the spear borrowing his remaining power to smooth the airflow and protect him.

With a gasp, he hit the ground hard.

Adrian looked around. Five kilometres away a cloud of dust like what he had seen in photos from nuclear explosions formed in the sky. Closer to home the mini explosion from the two-way portal was not as bad as he had feared. It had been pretty limited and had protected the people who had come through by blowing backwards and sideways. His mistake of curving to the side was the only reason he had been caught in the destruction, and then it had only been the weaker edge of it.

There were no visible dead bodies and given the angle of the explosion he doubted anyone else had got hurt.

The elite teams had survived.

Well, at least a narrow majority of them.

Those four runners hadn’t and nor had Meth-head.

Adrian didn’t even know the man’s name, and he had been the Hero. He had sacrificed himself to guarantee the portal’s destruction.

Another glance at the mushroom cloud. It was right over where the hole had been. It was quite possible the small group around him was all that was left of the tens of thousands of volunteers that had come from Wangaratta. How many tens? Two, three probably three, thirty thousand gone.

“Fuck me.”

His notifications were dinging almost violently for his attention.

Adrian ignored them, staring once more out at that massive plume of dust. He hated this world, but with a couple of noticeable exceptions had loved the people he had met since the event. Australian values had survived, and sure the system had held a gun to everyone’s head this time, but most of the people who had come had participated to save the world rather than for personal gain.

“ADRIAN!” He looked around and Jules was running over to him. She leapt up and gave him an enormous hug. It was like catching a feather boa. She had hopped delicately and with his enhanced attributes it was easy to pluck her from the air. “You survived.”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you were dead. You idiot. What were you thinking?”

“About Emily and my kids.”

Jules wiped tears away while dropping to the ground. “You could have died.”

“I was the best tool for the job. What else did you expect me to do?”

“Nothing else,” Jules admitted. “But I thought I lost you.” He nodded at the plume of the dirt and Jules winced. “Is it over?”

“I have notifications, but I haven’t checked,” Adrian admitted.

“Let me.” There was a slight pause as her eyes went unfocused. “It’s over,” she confirmed after a moment.

“Did you get any rewards?”

“I’ll check later,” she said dismissively, staring out at the cloud that had finally stopped expanding. “Are those rocks?”

“Yep,” he answered springing to his feet and side stepping a rock the size of a basketball. It slammed into the ground where his foot had been and left a spherical impression before bouncing away.

Then they both stepped the other way as a couch-sized one slammed down to their right.

“Damn!” Jules said. Lighter clumps of dirt rained down around them. “I guess that is what it looks like when you blow up an interplanetary portal.”

“I wonder if any of them survived?”

“I am sure Kiyoko knows.”

“She’s alive?”

“Yeah. Why are you so surprised?”

“She followed me?” Then he remembered the explosion of the portal failing had been outwards as opposed to into the people exiting. Providing she got through before it failed, she would have been fine, as she was outside the blast radius.

“How bad was it?”

“Running into death?”

“Yeah.”

“I just kept seeing Emily and the kids. I couldn’t fail, for their sakes.”

“Did you almost die?”

Adrian laughed even as they walked towards the oracle. “Have you met me?”

“So what creative method this time?”

“A quarter of a second away from being torn apart by earth magic. See,” he waved down at his leg, “still bleeding.” There was fresh blood staining the leg.

“Just a scratch.” Jules smiled.

“All my shields failed as I left the torrent of energy. A fraction of a second slower. Dead!.”

“So out of all the ways to die what is the best?”

“Old age.”

Jules laughed, and the shell-shocked survivors from the rest of the elite team looked at them in shock.

“What’s your problem?” Jules yelled out good-naturedly. “Is this the first time you have almost died or something?”

Adrian winced. He pulled her back and away. “If you can’t laugh, you end up crying,” he told them, putting a hand over Jules’s mouth, knowing she was about to say something provocative. She struggled and with a wrench yanked his hand away before elbowing him in warning.

“Stop that,” she hissed. “I am better at this than you. Kiyoko, I assume you had contingencies for.” She waved at the cloud.

The Japanese woman glanced up. Her chest was heaving, and she looked exhausted. Adrian realised it was from physical exhaustion. Kiyoko would have sprinted that hundred metres from the tunnel to the portal exit. For someone her age, and who had presumably pumped up the magic attributes and vitality, that was quite a sprint. “Yes, yes,” she said annoyed before hunching over with her arms on her knees.

Jules smiled brightly at everyone else around her. A few angry faces changed to smiles.

“Your right lass.” a big bearded man said finally. “No point grieving before we know.”

“They couldn’t have survived.”

“Did you see the explosion?”

“The wind almost blew me away when it hit.”

Adrian sat down. Tuning out the conversations and concentrated on bringing up his notifications. Time to work out what happened.

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