Chapter 83

Only Ingrid reacted as fast as he had. She had thrown the door open and the desperate screams from below reached them.

Ingrid slowed momentarily, surprised by a scream that sounded a lot like a death yell. Smart woman, Daniel thought even as he pushed past her. She needed someone between her and the monsters.

Downstairs, the entrance to the stairwell had been wedged open, and a woman whose name he had never learned was clawing her way through it back to the safety of the stairs. He leapt past her, his club smashing down on a termite, and it was immediately clear that Ivey’s group had got it worse than Daniel’s had. Besides the termite wave, the air was filled with moths the size of dinner plates. They were nothing like the monstrosities from the lift wells, because he could see broken moth bodies, and the well moths did not go down that quickly. These were weaker, moved slower, and based on the frigid air and the icicles, were utilising ice magic.

Daniel stepped through the door, Pausing only to smack one moth away, its body shattered under strike, killed outright. His eyes assessed what had happened.

Like them, Ivey’s group had been swarmed by a hundred of the weird insects, but unlike their group, the ambush occurred after they had left the safety of the stairwell choke point. They had been only a couple of metres down the corridor, but the wave of bugs had cut off their retreat and overwhelmed them.

His eyes continued gliding over the disaster and then his heart caught in his chest.

Ivey was down. Possibly even dead. Dave was standing over her, roaring and using the claws on his feet to squash anything that came near him, his club abandoned. Blood was visible on Dave’s grey fur.

The entire strike force of ten was down, except for Dave and the girl he had stepped over. The tank had perished. The termites had torn him to shreds and had as good as burrowed through him. Everyone else he did not know. Last week they would have been mortally wounded, but with healing magic, you only needed a slither of life and you could be brought back from the dead.

The group may have fallen, but they had also broken the mass of monsters attacking them.

He wanted to strike back. Unleash everything in a tsunami of fury. Lightning stirred, and he felt the club almost light up in excitement. Through me, it seemed to say. I have proven myself. Push the energy through me. Let’s eat and kill together. It responded to his fury, eager to please and contribute.

Lightning flowed into the club. Not as much as he would like, as his mana levels were so low. But it was substantial. Sparkling electricity danced around the weapon that had abruptly become a lot more spikey than usual. Daniel’s mana was bottomed out completely, but the electricity stayed in it, and that small trickle of mana that continued to flow into him was sucked out by the club to expand the energy it had captured. The headache was acute.

It seemed to be filled with excitement, and the communication he had with it was crisper than normal.

Kill!

Revenge or saving the survivors—the purpose did not matter. Either path required him to smash them.

He swung the club and just its very movement through the air left afterimages, but as it passed near a moth, three arcs of electricity flew out. The moth burst into flames.

Dark smoke boiled out of it.

Another moth, a little further away, had five arcs lash out at it. Daniel expected the crackling energy to dim, but somehow that did not happen.

Ivey might be dead. Rage filled him.

He demanded destruction and death. He would crush them. All of them, not just the termites. All of that. By the time he had finished, every monster in Melbourne would be dead.

“DIE!”

Speed.

Bursting out to close the gap between himself and Dave, Daniel understood how to use the power.

Lightning from his hands was directable but unpredictable. It could hurt friend and foe alike, but channelled like this through the club, it became a precision instrument. The closer he got, the less energy would be lost on transmission, and if he could flat-out squish the bastards, that was even better.

As the club swept just centimetres above the clumped bugs, specifically directed sparks rained down upon them. The termites shrivelled up, and smoke puffed out from their heads. Upstairs, the monsters had looked fried. These appeared almost untouched by the destructive energies. The club had learnt exactly how to kill them with the smallest amount of power possible. None that the lightning touched moved again.

Thirty bugs died over the next three swings, and the crush around Dave was easing. The ball of electricity on the edges of the weapon still crackled brightly. Good, he could kill more.

A group of six moths descended upon him. He swung, hitting them one by one. Electricity sparked, and they fell. Every hair on him was standing. Even Dave’s heavy hair was sticking out, such was the static electricity that his attacks had generated. That club sparkled, threatening to explode out of control, but the intelligence in the weapon controlled the power.

“Help,” he roared. “Healers!”

Sweep of the club, this time down low to stop the charge of the next row of insects. Sounds of sizzling and crackling greeted him and then the stench of burnt bug. He kicked a living bug, and it went flying to splatter against the far wall.

“Dave,” he snarled, nodding toward Ivey. Dave responded, leaning down to pick her up. Even if she was dead, she deserved a proper service and not to become bug food. Most of the survivors would not be here without her. Himself included.

Through his broken interface, he could still sense her. She was still alive. Chunks of her flesh were missing, but she was still alive. It was a relief. Partially.

“Evacuate,” he roared. “Healers! Get her healed.”

Swiping again, three moths fell, and Daniel realised that while it was easy for him to hit the flying creatures, these may have been the straw that had broken Ivey’s team. He had only allowed them to split because her team had been the strongest. Stepping back towards the door, if truth was to be told, most of the swarm of monsters had already been dealt with, but there were still too many of them. His team was pulling bodies or corpses to safety, but none tried to grab the tank. The boy was clearly dead. Captain Australia had fallen in his first real battle. His superhero name had not saved him from his overconfidence.

Another low sweep and more of the termites died, and Daniel realised that the previous eye-watering bright flashes around the spikes on the club were fading. He was running out of energy, but that was not a problem. There was a commotion in the stairwell. Tamara’s team had arrived.

With a thought, he encouraged the weapon to preserve its remaining power for the moths and then he leapt over the packed descending bugs and swept the club through the area that the moths had gathered to avoid him. They saw him coming and tried to spread out, but it was too late. There must have been twenty of them clustering. The club sparked, cracks of light that left afterimages seared into his vision. There was the smell of burning and the disgusting furry bodies plummeted to the ground. Their exoskeletons and wings barely touched, but their brains inside them had been fried. The club was back to its normal muted appearance, with the sparkling energy spent. Daniel was happy that last strike had done what it needed to do and removed the aerial threat. Fifteen of the remaining twenty flying monsters destroyed, and they—not the termites—had been the true danger.

Without speed, Daniel swung his club at one of the undamaged moths, and it flapped easily out of the way. It was what he had feared: he could only hurt them with his superpowers.

Speed.

The one trying to sneak up on him got caught by the burst of speed, and at the club’s urging, he twisted it as he went past, and the small hooks that had come out of the surface of the weapon shredded it.

Back to normal time and the remaining moths fled from the carnage, having realised that the lightning was not the only danger that he represented. The wave of termites that had been single-mindedly charging the door split, with half of them peeling back to get him. Keeping an eye out from above, he smacked them when they got too close, retreating further from safety, but knowing he could not let them reach his feet. Finally, they thinned enough for him to leap over them and flee to the stairwell and the rest of their fighters.

An optimistic moth drifted too close.

Speed.

It got splattered.

Arrows were joining the fight, and he was glad to see that Ingrid was targeting the moths that, having presumably recovered from their shock and avoiding him, were re-entering the fray. The battle now felt like that first one in their room when the electricity centipedes had fallen upon them. Once they survived the initial shock, it just became a matter of clean up.

Dancing in gaps, when the termites attacked en masse, they were terrifying, but broken like this they were easy to fight. Their only weapon seemed to be their bite.

Animal Sense.

Damn, there were mind worms nearby.

While he was aware of it and knowing they liked ambushes, he danced under the creature. It dropped, and his club met it. Once more, choosing to eat it rather than knocking it away.

Satisfaction rocked through the club.

It encouraged him to get under another neighbouring one. He complied only because they were ultimately the most dangerous things that remained. Casually, he squished five bugs as he moved. If he landed on their bulbous back, he could kill them without risking a bite in return. Micro animal pulse flicked out continuously to track his target. Why this one had not attacked him yet was a mystery. Priscilla’s image reached him.

It was falling.

Speed.

The club whistled through the space.

Slurp!

The club ate, and he dropped speed and moved slower as he sought to regain his breath.

The termites broke and fled like something had called for a retreat.

Ivey! Daniel’s eyes turned to the stairwell.

His team was defending the doorway, exhaustion in their eyes. His juggernaut, with his shield reduced to half the size it used to be, stood just outside the door. Luke was next to him. Together, they had held the line. Ingrid, the fire mage, and the laser caster stood behind them.

“Ivey?”

Log Report 5 - Entry 10

As you might have noted, the performance of the co-wobub guided by my host has exceeded expectations.

Unfortunately, today it all almost ended in disaster.

I have read the various accounts of circumstances where the survival of a species depended on the smallest of margins. The right spell at the right time, getting someone to see something that was trying to be hidden or just the sheer fortune of a hero choosing to leave a day early.

I just had the same thing happen.

It’s so damn exciting. I’m caught up as the hero in the stories.

Sure, the scale is smaller, maybe a thousand people at risk as opposed to an entire world.

It still feels special.

Everything came down to five seconds. Maybe even less.

And I was the hero.

I held off, triggering my host’s defensive ability.

Just me.

She was unconscious. Technically, I should have triggered the ability immediately. That’s what the standard interface would have done, but I am more. I made a judgement call, ran the models and concluded that Ivey’s survival would be maximised by waiting.

I was getting little information, but I monitored the host’s health and waited.

It was possibly the most nerve-wracking moment of my existence.

I don’t know how my elders do it.

How do you wait? Not knowing if you are making the right choice with the spectre of dire consequences hanging over your freedom.

Despite the risk, that is what I did.

I gambled, I guessed, and refused to trigger it till the absolute last moment. If the host survived and co-wobub died then the chances of survival over the next month collapsed.

I held off triggering ‘Something accidentally attacked me and I responded with claws of shredding blackness and boiled them alive, oops’

And both the co-wobub and wobub survived because of me.

If the suburb survives its because of me

I am the hero.

Just like in the stories.

End Log Report

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