We pushed through Grease Street, and saw Old Cripple Tom's sour-wine workshop had already become a sea of fire. The old man who was always cursing, but still always left a bit of sugar scrapings for the kids, was slumped motionless in his wheelchair as the golden flames swallowed him whole.
By the look of it, in his final moments he'd used that modified cane of his to fire three last nail-rounds at the attackers, pinning three long-haired madmen in leg-irons to the wall beneath his shop sign.
But it meant nothing.
Against that massive tide of fanatics, it didn't even count as a ripple.
"This way! Cut through the abandoned yard here!" Spark cried, her voice breaking. Her short orange hair was speckled with ash and dust, and her face was streaked with tears, black and white in uneven tracks.
We charged into a half-collapsed courtyard. The air burned so badly you could barely keep your eyes open. Burning beams and sheets of plastic were everywhere.
I stepped on a toy car some kid had left behind and nearly slipped. I'd only just regained my balance when my foot caught on something soft and limp. I went down hard, my palm landing in a warm, sticky pool.
I lifted my head. By the savage firelight all around us, I saw the face of the corpse.
My heart stopped.
Roy.
The shy big kid who'd brought alcohol to the clinic just yesterday. He was always smiling, a little tiger tooth showing, and he always had a few small cat-like animals around him. Everyone liked him.
Now he lay utterly still. His neck was twisted at an unnatural angle, clearly snapped by brute force. The eyes that used to carry that easy smile were empty now, staring up at the smoke-choked ceiling. A dagger had been driven straight up through his chin into his brain, and the skull-shaped pommel reflected the surrounding flames, looking especially vicious amid the spreading blood.
Worse—more blinding than anything else—was the crushed metal tin he still gripped in his right hand, clenched tight even in death.
That was the "cat food" I'd slipped him yesterday, saved from my own rations.
"I can't stomach this stuff either," I'd told him. "Take it and feed your cats."
He'd grinned like an idiot. "Thank you, my lord! Thank you, my lord! Those little guys are going to be living good!"
And now, there was a smoking bullet hole in the lid.
Rage.
A rage I'd never felt before—cold, absolute—slithered up my spine like a venomous snake, crushing fear, crushing panic.
Why?
Just to catch me? Just for this so-called "heresy"?
What did Roy do wrong? What did Adela do wrong? What did Old Tom do wrong?
They were only trying to survive in this damned hell. They could barely string a proper sentence together. What the hell did they know about heresy?
Gunfire, flames, and screaming were everywhere. That ear-splitting loudspeaker was still blaring nonstop.
"Advance, my flock! Answer the Archbishop's call! Destroy the false saint! Purge the blasphemy! Offer the blood of heretics to the Golden Throne!"
I couldn't help thinking back to the chaotic fight I'd stumbled into when I first arrived in Grandtale. Back then, even though I was dazed and clueless, at least I'd had help from professional soldiers. This time, aside from a little girl who wasn't even tall enough to reach my shoulder, I had no one.
"Bathe in His radiance! Fight under the witness of His daughters!" The loudspeaker suddenly jumped another octave, and then countless voices surged together into one roar. "Kill the mutant! Destroy the heretic!! Purge the filth!!!"
"They… they're in the sky!"
Spark's shriek yanked me out of my fury and back into reality.
I jerked my head up. Through the smoke above the crooked rooftops, I saw that the steel sky above Warehouse 7 had opened into several bright, gaping apertures at some point without us even noticing.
Buzzzzz—
That scalp-crawling mechanical drone flooded the whole space.
Countless black dots poured out like a hornet nest had been kicked over. When they dropped lower and dove, I finally saw what they were.
Servo-skulls—and those winged mechanical babies.
I'd seen servo-skulls before, even gotten fairly familiar with three of them. Real human skulls, with all kinds of machinery grafted beneath: thrusters, camera lenses, spider-leg metal limbs, and twitching manipulator-tendrils. I hadn't disliked them much before. I'd even thought they were kind of interesting.
Not now.
Not when there were hundreds—thousands—circling overhead, scanning with cold electronic eyes, their exposed teeth and talons clacking as they flexed. I felt only nausea, revulsion, and a deep, gut-level terror. Red electronic lights flickered in their sockets as they cut through the smoke, the buzzing merging into one endless swarm-hum, like a cloud of flies from hell.
"Search ongoing. Primary target: false saint. Orders: dead or alive."
A flat, emotionless machine voice came from every direction.
The projectors carried by those winged cherubs lit up, throwing a massive, flickering holo-portrait into the smoky sky.
My face.
Below it, in huge blood-red characters:
[EXTREMELY DANGEROUS HERETIC. FALSE SAINT. PURGE BOUNTY: AMNESTY FOR THREE GENERATIONS.]
I'd heard stories about desert princes who got a thrill from having drones form giant sky-projections of themselves, their vanity fully satisfied. Experiencing it firsthand, I understood none of that joy.
And behind that mechanical swarm, something even worse descended.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Heavy impacts that made the ground tremble.
From the freight corridors and lift shafts, golden flame and steam blasted outward. Then those familiar silhouettes arrived—women in black powered armour, wearing angel-wing jump packs—dropping like a meteor shower out of the sky.
They didn't howl like the fanatics.
They were silent, like a flock of black reapers.
The oversized guns in their hands spat fire. Every round hit like a miniature grenade, turning walls, cover, and any body foolish enough to show itself into a burst of red mist.
And then there were those… those horrific flamers.
I saw two figures try to resist—and get swallowed by a fifty-meter-long orange-red dragon of fire. They didn't even get a shot off. In an instant, they became a heap of burning charcoal.
The black-armoured woman holding the flamer didn't slow her step in the slightest. She even chanted, in a tone like someone reciting poetry:
"Only in flame can sin be cleansed."
Madness.
Every last one of them was insane.
(End of Chapter)
[Get +30 Extra Chapters On — P@tr3on "Zaelum"]
[Every 300 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter Drop]
[Thanks for Reading!]