Chapter 137 – Have Faith

  “I understand that we sold the ammo in the first place but that doesn’t mean I can magically make more appear. I need to have my cousin stea-ssource it and get it here before I can give you anything.” - Renee talking to Penny about several pallets of ammunition being ordered.

  Penny and Jay were both sitting behind her desk within Kurt’s hub, staring intently at the camera feeds and the screen displaying the rift monitoring data. They had watched as the combined team slogged their way along the trenches, fighting tooth and nail for every foothold they could get. Nothing really surprised them, other than the amount of unit cohesion they seemed to have, but that was chalked up to the werewolf bond they shared.

  Jay had been watching since shortly after the teams entered the rift. He said that he was interested in the unusual situation of two rifts merging and acting as separate entities, but Penny thought otherwise. Despite his generally blasé attitude, he was very invested in the wellbeing of his people.

  When Connor had touched off that explosion, they both turned their attention to the rift monitoring screen which had begun flashing erratically as all the displayed data went haywire. The previously fluctuating mana levels began to drop then spike in no discernable pattern. The energy density graph, a sphere-shaped model, suddenly became rather lopsided. The worst thing was that the aperture was beginning to gain color while the defined edges faded.

  “Well, that’s not good.” The old demon muttered, his eyes flicking to the POV cameras the agents wore and seeing that they were now dealing with falling debris. He also noted that Connor was still alive and likely to pull through if given enough food and some time.

  “You think?” Penny shot back, her voice stern and borderline manic. “But the overall energy level is starting to level off again.”

  Jay turned back to the monitoring program. “Yes, I think the remaining core is asserting itself over the rift. It probably consumed all the remaining energy and pumped itself up into a large size.”

  Penny was now watching the cameras and saw Kurt and company climbing up and out of the trench. The cameras they wore didn’t do much to help with the flying dust and sand, but she could still see the massed scorpions, their black and brown chitin reflecting the purple half light that was now the only illumination.

  “I’m calling Ra. He can get his people here as back up.” Jay said and pulled out his cell phone.

  Standing, Penny looked at him. “I am going to get more ammo.” Then she turned and ran into the house, headed for the basement. She had seen Kristi somehow exhaust her nearly limitless supply and knew that the rest of the team would likely also be getting low soon. She was just glad that Kurt had given her access to his vault. A fleeting thought ran through her mind then. Would they do an itemized tally or just general estimate to replace the expended munitions? Either way, Renee was about to be very wealthy.

  *****

  Kurt swung the glowing head of his weapon down into a scorpion, crushing its barbed tail mid strike while stepping back to avoid the pincers. He had to switch to his hammer after finding he was significantly outranged by the long tails of the creatures. He had also been told that his weapon was either a very long war hammer or a short lucerne and nobody could make a decision on the matter.

  While the variations in archaic weaponry was a mildly interesting topic, he was more focused on what was going on with Jade. He stabbed another scorpion in the face, taking a glancing shot from the stinger to his armor before he risked a glance over at her.

  Jade was completely normal looking, at least to regular eyesight. When Kurt focused on her aura he saw the strangeness. “… break them upon our bulwark!.” She had just finished another of the seemingly endless supply of scripture she was quoting. Kurt wouldn’t mind except that it was directed at him and that it was doing strange things with his own flow of divinity and mana.

  “Our sire stands with us!” Jade began another line and skewered a monster with the pointed end of her billhook.

  “We stand with him!” Her squad replied.

  “Our sire fights for us!” She swung her pole arm in a looping arc, the back end of the hook taking a pincer off.

  “We fight with him!”

  “For the Wolf!” Stab.

  “FOR THE PACK!”

  “For the hunt!” An overhead blow with the back spike.

  “FOR THE KILL!”

  The call and response cadence had whipped the faith energy and surrounding mana into a whirlwind around them. Kurt directly absorbed it, refining it into divinity. Jade, in turn, had begun siphoning off a tiny stream of it and pushing a diluted version out to her squad. They then began to burn with divine fury, their blows falling harder and faster while wounds healed instantly. Jade herself had developed strange glowing lines that had begun to crawl up her neck, peaking over the edge of her collar and from the ends of her sleeves.

  It appeared this is what he had been missing in the raid on the guild. He had been pulling directly from the werewolves before and not really understanding what was happening. Apparently Jade was somehow refining the mana and completing the cycle.

  Kurt stepped forward, catching another scorpion in an up swing that pulverized its mandibles and flipped it onto its back to die thrashing. He risked another look, this time to his left where Val and Kristi were holding down the flank. He would figure out Jade and her pack later.

  Kristi was on the end, a walking natural disaster as she whipped her poleaxe around in wide arcs, flinging paper thin lines of concentrated force out in a slightly ranged attack that split the shells of the monsters. Her every move was calculated, and her position never changed as she held off a fifteen-foot-wide section of their line. The only thing that made it to the trench on her left was dead and dying scorpions.

  Between her and Kurt was Val, using her partisan to great effect. She would jab and slash with the head of the weapon so quickly that Kurt could barely keep track of it. Her own section of the line was smaller than Kristi’s but even better covered as she left strange shadowy flames everywhere she struck. Those flames seemed to burn and injure the monsters as they would try to avoid them at all costs. He wondered if this was some mutation of the fabled ‘fox fire’ that he had heard about in some fiction.

  Seeing that everyone was fine, or at least dealing with things well enough, Kurt went back to his own fight with a will. He was focusing on using his melee weapons, thinking that this would be fine training for it. He also was a little unsure about wading into the sharp claws and stinging tails if he were to shift so he stayed humanoid.

  He had been stung several times early on, while he was still learning the capabilities of the giant scorpions. The venom they used was either not very potent or it wasn’t particularly effective against a lycan in small doses. Where he had been struck, he would feel a little numbness and a bit of a burning before the sensation faded. It wasn’t bad and the one time he had been caught in a pincer had been far worse. The pincer had held him long enough for the tail to stab him twice but its abrasive and crushing nature had left a much more widespread pain in his leg.

  The scorpions, while in theory being a tough nut to crack, were actually pretty easy to deal with. While their shells were tough, they were well equipped and strong enough to break through. And, though there were a lot of bugs, they were of such a size that they rarely attacked more than two at a time. It seemed to Kurt that they didn’t like crawling over each other or getting tangled from being too close.

  They waded through the monsters, smashing and stabbing for what felt like hours. Kristi had refined her technique and was able to send devastating waves of force out, killing dozens at a time. Val had ended up putting her ghostly flames to use and controlled the spread to corral the monsters and funnel them where she pleased. Jade kept up her near constant stream of cadences, building the ambient faith and divine mana to truly astounding levels. It had gotten to the point that the glow wasn’t just spreading along her veins anymore but was now radiating her own rather potent aura while shimmering with an amber light.

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  Kurt performed an overhand stab with the spike on his war hammer, punching down and clean through the face of a scorpion. He gave his weapon a hard jerk, shaking the body off as it curled in on itself. Looking around, he tried to find his next target but found that there weren’t any in front of him.

  Glancing both ways, he saw that Kristi had pushed forward, wrapping around the flank and laying waste to everything in front of her as Val created a flaming barrier to hem them in. On the other side, the wolves had done the same except they went even further and Gus was nearly opposite Kurt as he swung his great sword in wide glowing arcs. He drove the few remaining bugs toward the center where Jade was taking them to task with her own billhook.

  Without a target, Kurt looked around and decided to help the girls finish things off and put down a few stragglers. Jade came to meet him after she had finished with her own group, and they surveyed the mess they had just come through.

  The ground was littered with shining black corpses, the blueish blood glowing under the strange purple light. They had cleared an area of several hundred square yards between their earlier actions with guns and the frantic melee after.

  “Let’s get the core and get out.” Kurt muttered as he turned to the far side of the rift and began making his way over.

  They did cross a couple trenches rather than going around, the bodies of the humanoid monsters having been left within where they killed each other after the core broke. Then they crossed the cratered no mans land which had its own share of the carnage from earlier.

  Kurt followed the pull from the rift core the entire way. The further they got into the scorpion territory, the more sand they encountered underfoot. It went from a dry hardpack to a soft sand like a beach or dune had. He felt the core was close, also that it was slightly below the level of the desert.

  Just before he could think of looking for a cave or other depression, Kristi stopped them. “Movement. Big movement.” A moment later, the sand ahead and to the right of them shifted, lifting up and sliding off a giant black shell.

  It was another scorpion monster, but this one was a little different than the rest. For starters, it was nearly ten feet tall, not counting the two tails that curved upward behind it. It also had an additional set of pincers that hung just inside the first set and were slightly smaller.

  “Shit.” Kurt muttered and quickly looked through his ring for anything ranged and explosive. “I got like nothing left but a few pistol mags.”

  “Same.” Kristi and Val said at the same time.

  “What are your orders?” Jade asked as they readied themselves to fight the monster.

  Kurt grunted as he settled into his stance, debating on shifting. “Just fucking kill it.”

  Apparently, Jade took that personally because she turned to face the incoming giant and stepped forward as she cocked back her arm, billhook held like a spear and threw it. There was a sound like the crack of lightning landing nearby, a loud snap followed by a deep boom. Her weapon, now wreathed in light and trailing a thin line of glowing mana, flashed across the fifty yard distance, striking the scorpion square in its mandibles.

  Jade’s previous glow suddenly vanished, sucked out of her by the line connecting her to the weapon and she fell backward like puppet with its strings cut. Voooooom-SNAP-Whump. A sound like a turbine spinning up could be heard as the light followed the trail of mana toward her billhook. Then another snap like lightning before the sound of something large and soft hitting a surface with great force, like a mattress hitting a lake.

  All this happened in the blink of an eye and the scorpion barely had time to screech in pain from the pole arm protruding from its face before the front half of it vanished into an amber ball that winked out of existence. The rear third of the beast remained, standing comically still for a second before pitching forward into the sand. It landed next to a glowing shaft sticking from the ground, pointing upward like a miniscule monument.

  “WHAT THE FUCK!” Kurt shouted, unaware how loud his voice was because his eardrums had burst again. He dabbed at the fluid running from his ears and shook his head as they rapidly regenerated.

  “WAS THAT A SMITING?” Val asked as she stepped up, a knuckle screwing into her hear as she whined softly and worked her jaw.

  Kristi, apparently unaffected by the noise, answered in an only slightly raised voice. “Yes, but I don’t know how she did that.”

  Jade, for her part, was also looking a little dumbstruck as she sat in the sand, having been knocked over at some point She appeared completely unharmed by either the light, noise or energy suddenly draining from her. Her squad was not so fortunate, they had all ended up like Kurt and were rubbing at their ears despite the magical earplugs they wore.

  “I-I-I t-thought y-you wan-ahem wanted it dead.” She stuttered, looking equal parts relieved, confused and something else that he couldn’t place. “I could feel the… energy? I could feel it in me, building this whole time and when you said to kill it I felt an instinct to… well, make that happen. I was overcome with the urge to carry out your will and that just sorta happened… sire.”

  Kurt suddenly heard Kirsti’s voice in his head via the implant. “You need to be very careful how you handle this. I have seen a smiting like this once before, and it was delivered by a high priest. What god she is attached to, I can’t say, but she had to get divine energy from somewhere and the authority to use it.”

  Oh, Kurt knew exactly where it came from, and he shared a quick look with Val who also sensed it. “It’s fine, Jade. Good work.” He reached out his hand and helped her up. “I appreciate you taking care of it for us.”

  Jade once again bowed low, her armor making the gesture awkward. “It was my pleasure, my lord.” The other werewolves quickly followed suit and bowed, though they wore confused expressions. It seemed like they didn’t know what was going on and were just following the leader.

  “Ah, right, let’s just get the core and get out of here.” Kurt said, quickly moving past the honorifics that sill made him uncomfortable. “Oh, and what’s that?” He pointed to the shaft sticking straight up from the sand.

  Walking over to it, Kurt recognized it as the haft of Jade’s billhook. Without thinking, he reached out and grabbed it, his bloody fingers closing around the wooden shaft. A wooden shaft that suddenly began to heat up, turning a black color before the outer layer sloughed off and revealed a pale, golden-brown colored wood that hummed with power.

  “YEAUH.” He flinched away the shaft coming with him and he instinctively tossed it. His reactionary throw sent it straight toward Jade who caught it out of midair. He only then noticed that the head of the billhook was missing completely.

  A ripple of power radiated out from Jade, having no effect on the physical world but applying a spiritual pressure. She was suddenly filled with a strange radiance once again and Kurt noted her aura began to return then quickly leveled off as a string of faith connected her to him. She didn’t seem to notice as she held the shaft of wood in both hands, its new, smoother appearance seeming to glow with amber light.

  “A sanctified weapon.” Kristi hissed in surprise.

  “Blessed by the blood of our sire…” Jade intoned as she turned to her squad and held it out to them. “…Bathed in his divine power and forged by his will.”

  The wolves all knelt, the expressions on their faces a varied mix of awe, reverence and passion. De’Nath had tears welling in his eyes as he looked from the shaft to Kurt and back again.

  “Kurt. What have we told you about starting a cult.” Val whispered in his ear.

  “We have literally never talked about this.” He hissed back.

  “Well, maybe we should have.” She said.

  “It’s not like I planned this, this… whatever it is.” He was trying very hard to play it cool in front of Jade and her squad. They didn’t seem to notice his hushed conversation with Val and even Kristi was laser focused on what Jade was doing, ignoring their conversation.

  When Jade finally held the staff upright, she closed her eyes and tapped it once on the sandy ground, producing a single clear, ringing note that rang out despite the blowing wind. From the top of the shaft sprouted a long triangular blade made from what looked like a glowing amber crystal that somehow produced light.

  She then incanted the words to switch it to a sword, ending up with what looked more like a bar mace, with four long sharp flanges that ran the full length of the weapon. When she reverted it to the original form, it turned into a short rod, roughly a foot in length and a little less than an inch in diameter. Both the other forms glowed with the same amber light as the spear head, but the small form only glowed from the tip, like a flashlight.

  “Right.” Kurt clapped his hands together. “Let’s get back to it.” He quickly got everyone up and moving, while ignoring the strange looks he was getting from Jade and her wolves. At this point, he was getting tired of the weirdness and just wanted to be done with the rift.

  They trooped over to where the giant scorpion had emerged and found a shallow cave that was slowly being filled in by sand. Hovering within, floating a few feet off the ground, was a bright purple core. It was a strange one by core standards, its crystalline structure appearing to be layered. It was larger than a normal core, by about a third larger if Kurt were to guess. The outer layer of it was also mostly clear, looking again like it was layers of colored glass that pulsed with energy.

  A 180 grain, 10mm slug immediately halted its floating, penetrating deep through the outer layer and most the way through the inner one. It was a simple task to roll it into one of the collection bags and scoop it up as they made for the exit at a fast walk.

  When they reached the entrance aperture, following the talisman that Kurt had placed, they noted that there were a few more people on the other side of the rift. They recognized most of them as Ra’s squad but Jay was also amongst them, dressed in fatigues rather than his normal suit and tie. They quickly hustled through, emerging into a room and interrupting a quiet conversation.

  Before anyone could say anything, Jay spoke up. “Is the rift cleared?”

  “Yeah, here is the core. We didn’t bother looking for the other one.” Kurt handed the bag to Penny. “What’s up?” he asked, gesturing to the rest of the people in the room.

  Jay just opened another portal. “I need all of you for a debrief, now.” He said and pointed at the aperture he had personally opened. “Penny, shut it down. Ra, thank you for coming but it seems we don’t need your assistance.

  The other werewolf nodded and set down the ammo cans he had been carrying. His squad mates following suit and making a neat stack along the wall before filing out and through the normal portal to the Order.

  Heaving a sigh, Kurt walked through the portal Jay had summoned. He really wanted his shower and dinner routine but figured that would have to wait. Apparently, nothing would be normal about this rift.