James A. Hunter
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Wasteland Warlords Episode 4: Chapter 10 - The Wyrms of War
🕑 Added 2023-08-26 17:00:02 +0000 UTCDespite sitting unused for over twenty years, the sludge in the sewers farther from the treatment facility was fragrant and knee-deep. It was a scent combo Clay could’ve happily lived his life without ever smelling—backed-up toilet, salty ocean, rotting garbage, dead animal, burning hair, and sugary soda. Rats the size of pit bulls skittered along the narrow walkways or swam through the sludge, beady eyes accusing the Jaeger squad of trespassing.
Chonk chittered out a warning whenever he saw one, his tail puffing up like an angry cat’s, but Joe kept him from chasing after any of the vermin with bits of chocolate granola bar. Bacon Bits might have fried a few if she’d been awake, but with the cramped space in the tunnels, she had opted to return to her ZombiePop form and ride hooked onto Clay’s belt until they reached more open ground.
As the Jaeger squad followed the abbot through the sewers, Clay studied Alex and Joe with the Monocle of True Seeing. He wasn’t the only one who had been leveling up his abilities on the Paths of the Dew.
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Alexandra Jaeger
Level: 12
Race: Incant
Class: Bloodborne Striker
Alignment: Blood
Exp: 2,990; Exp to next level: 15,000
Available Characteristic Points: 0
Health: 344/344
H-Regen/5 Sec: 80
Magick: 340/340
Magick-Regen/5 Sec: 13.75
Stats:
· Strength: 74 (68 + 6 item bonus)
· Constitution: 31 (30 + 1 item bonus)
· Dexterity: 44 (39 + 5 item bonus)
· Intelligence: 23 (20 + 3 item bonus)
Characteristics:
· Armor Rating: 137
· Melee Attack Damage: 273
· Ranged Attack Damage: 203
· Spell Damage: 205
· Movement Rate: +19.8%
· Critical Hit Chance: 9.4%
· Critical Hit Damage: +72%
Active Effects:
· Rapid-Regen
· Goliath Physique: Disease, Filth, and Poison Immunity (Permanent)
Bloodborne Striker Skills:
· Battle Instinct
· Goliath Grip
· Uncanny Reach
· Bloodborne Frenzy
· Bloodborne Armor
Player Special Skills:
· Chain Weapons Oversized (Melee Skill) – Lv. 5
· Ride the Lightning – Lv. 2
· Bring the Thunder – Lv. 1
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While his wife still looked like a pint-sized post-apocalyptic doll, Alex’s dodge tank abilities had gone overboard. Her speed was already effectively double what it had been thanks to the samurai armor from PwnrBwner, and she’d gained two new abilities from her Art of the Dew training. One called Ride the Lightning, which gave her a 10% chance of dodging any physical attack, and a second called Bring the Thunder, which gave her an additional 5% chance of scoring a critical strike in hand-to-hand combat when she used a Shout of Power and doubled each crit’s damage output.
Pretty much the opposite of what Clay had expected her to gain from the brothers’ slow, flowing, flowery training. Alex, however, seemed to think it made perfect sense.
“The Art of the Dew is all about moving your power along the correct meridians of your body,” she explained as they walked. “Aligning breath and body and mind. Not very different from karate. It’s like my old sensei used to say, power comes from accuracy, timing, and understanding your body and others’—not raw strength or speed.”
“Sounds like something somebody weak and slow would say,” Clay joked, nudging her with his elbow.
Alex poked him in the side, making his Obsidian mail jingle. “See if you’re still saying that when I hit you with a liver shot that knocks you into next Tuesday.”
Joe’s advancement was more visually obvious than Alex’s. As in, the second they stepped into the dark of the deeper tunnels, it became clear that he was no longer your everyday average beer-and-chainsaw enthusiast off the street.
Joe glowed in the dark.
“Pretty cool, right? I’ll never need a night light again. Turns out there’s an exact level of Mountain Dew you can have in your system before you turn into a human glow stick,” he said, stretching out an arm and wiggling neon green fingers. “I just had to reach the final level of Body Purification—aka Body By Dew—and click, on went the light.”
“That’s gonna make sneaking up on somebody a challenge,” Clay said, rubbing thoughtfully at his chin.
Joe shrugged. “I can turn it on and off. What’s really cool is the ability that comes with Body by Dew. Check this out.”
Joe reached up onto his shoulder where Chonk was riding and high-fived the mechacoon.
“Boop.”
Chonk lit up like a barrel of radioactive waste.
“While I’m lit up, I’ve got total immunity to all poisons and venoms, and I can give one ally a Dew Body as powerful as yours truly’s for up to one full minute. And I can switch it from one buddy to another on the fly.” He tapped Clay on the nose. “Boop.”
Chonk’s glow winked out, and Clay lit up. Clay looked down at the neon green strip of skin shining between his tactical glove and his sleeve.
“Great, I always wanted to be the most obvious target on the battlefield,” he muttered.
“Snipers like that sort of thing,” Alex agreed in a deadpan voice.
“We’ll see who’s laughing when Joe’s Glow saves your life,” Joe said cheerfully. “He who laughs loudest laughs last.”
“That’s not how the saying goes,” Alex said.
“Only Sun Tzu knows for sure, and we’ll never be able to ask him what he really meant now, will we?”
“Okay, now I know you’re trolling me,” Alex said. “No way did you read Art of War. You’ve got a cheat sheet of famous authors and their works somewhere, don’t you?”
“Where would I keep something like that in an outfit that hugs the curves like this?” Joe smoothed a hand down the front of his bulky mech armor. “It’s practically painted on.”
“Joe, will you shut this light off?” Clay squirmed uncomfortably inside his Obsidian Glass mail, the green glow gleaming through the links in a million tiny pinpricks of light. “I feel like a blinking neon Shoot Me sign.”
“And hide it under a bushel?” Joe pretended to be scandalized. “No! I’m gonna let it shine.”
Clay leveled a flat look at his brother.
“Aw, fine.”
The glow cut off, disappearing from him and Joe at the same time and plunging the tunnel back into darkness. Clay’s thermal vision responded instantly, rendering his family, friends, and the decomposing sewage in yellows, oranges, and reds, and the tunnels and their gear in cool blues and greens. Even some light purples in the case of a couple icy potions in his pack.
In some places the streets overhead had fallen in and allowed the midday sun to shine down on them. In others the faint line of light shining in around the occasional manhole cover was the only illumination.
Finally, Abbot Rakshas stopped.
“This is as far as I lead,” he said, tucking his paws into his wide sleeves. “Ahead you will find an intersection. Take the second tunnel on your left, straight, and then a hard right into a tunnel marked in spray paint by an ancient prophet.”
“Sounds more like an ancient graffiti artist,” Alex said. “What will it say?”
“‘This way to ride the walrus.’ Once you have reached that point, you must move forward in all stealth and silence,” Rakshas warned. “At the end of that tunnel lies the secret entrance to the Temple of the Dew. It is kept under heavy guard day and night.”
Alex shot a look at Joe. “Translation: Set your Body by Dew to dark mode.”
“Oh, you mean don’t dance in there like a one-man rave?” Joe asked, making his glow strobe on and off fast enough to give an epileptic a seizure. “But what about these killer moves?” He pumped his arms and did some obscene pelvic thrusts while beatboxing, “NN-tss-NN-tss-NN-tss!”
By Joe’s feet, Chonk mimicked his owner, tiny balled-up paw and hedge-trimmer arm thrashing wildly.
Alex rolled her eyes. “This is why teachers always had you writing lines.”
“Actually, they said it was because I didn’t know when to quit.” Joe was out of breath, but he was still dancing. “Can you believe that?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe we could use that to our advantage,” Clay said, a plan already forming in his mind.
***
Four heavily armed Triple S guards posted up outside the sewer entrance to the Temple of the Dew—the max number the tunnel would allow for without becoming a liability. They were packing M4s, like Clay’s except a hell of a lot newer and shinier. From their sides hung swords shimmering faintly with magical properties. Knobbly black hand grenades and brightly colored health and stamina potions hung from drop pouches that had been added to heavy black plate armor. Each one had a stark, utilitarian SSS etched into the breastplate.
Why they needed four guards crammed into some back tunnel was a mystery, but when you’d made as many enemies as Cassidy and Rhett no doubt had, overkill was probably firmly in the realm of “better safe than sorry.”
Clay stealthed back to the end of the Walrus tunnel, where the rest of the Jaeger squad was waiting. When he gave them the rundown, Alex asked the question that had been weighing on his mind since they took this quest:
“Why is a government contractor working the back door for those power-hungry jackoffs?”
“I’ll give you a hint, short stack,” Joe said, his eyes wide and round, “and it starts with a C-O-N-spiracy.”
“Not now, Joe,” she said.
“You’re just annoyed because you know I’m right. This right here is the shady dealings Pwnr was talking about—it has to be. The government’s in league with Cassidy and Rhett. No wonder them and the Triple S were always in Camp Liberty at the same time!”
Alex rolled her eyes. “Yeah, that definitely couldn’t have been a coincidence since it was the only place within a hundred miles to stock up on supplies and sell your loot.”
“Don’t go too hard on him, lass,” Griff rumbled. “I noticed it a few times myself, but was never able to prove anything. Mayhap they upped their guard down here at the Temple since you lot took out Gearhead.”
Alex turned to Clay. “So, what do you want to do?”
In spite of her casual tone, he knew the look in her eyes. She wasn’t just asking what the plan was. She was saying that Triple S guys weren’t mindless wasteland monsters or Incants enslaving hundreds of settlers. They were just doing a job. They didn’t get to pick their assignments; they went where they had to and did what they were told. Most of them probably had families on the other side of the wall. People they were supporting. Plans for when they retired. The buddy who had managed to get Clay and Alex that black market potion of Cure Disease had been with the Triple S. What she was really asking was whether he was willing to put a bullet in their heads knowing all that.
“We’ve got to get through them or we can’t stop Cassidy and Rhett,” Clay said after a long beat. “We stick to the original entry plan, with one minor adjustment.”
Removing the magazine from his M4, Clay selected the bullets. Each one packed a potentially deadly punch for humans, but maybe he could change that with his Spelled Ammo ability.
[Spelled Ammo: Bless or Curse ammo with pre-cast spells and hexes, which activate on contact with an enemy combatant.]
He opened up his Haphazard Cast spell and selected two of the potential six outcomes—chance that target falls instantly asleep and chance that the target is transported to a random location within a fifteen-mile radius.
Casting the spell on his ammo didn’t change the bullets’ damage output, but with the enhanced ranged accuracy from the Fateslinger passive, he should be able to zero in on the spots that were least likely to kill or cause someone permanent damage.
“I’ll incapacitate as many as I can with these,” he told them, slapping the magazine back into the M4, “but if things go sideways, do what you have to do. Don’t hesitate. They won’t.” Just doing their job or not, the Triple S wasn’t anybody to mess around with.
With the huddle finished, Clay dug out a Camo potion that he’d brewed from Green Fury, black licorice, Golden Ragweed, and Swiss Miss packets—the lame kind without the little marshmallows. For thirty seconds, the potion would make him all but invisible, especially when the guys with the guns were focused elsewhere.
Joe turned on his glowing neon Body by Dew, and in a flare of artistic inspiration, hit the strobe.
“All right, Snipey McSniperson,” he said, shooting Clay a fierce million-watt grin. “Let’s rave.”
They followed the arrow pointing the direction to ride the Walrus. Clay ghosted along the walkway, silently heel-toing it, while Joe slogged through the water at the center of the pipe, flashing like an incoming nuke warning light.
“NN-tss-Nn-tss-Nn-tss…” Joe’s self-produced soundtrack echoed down the tunnel ahead of them.
Clay let Joe pull ahead and chugged his Camo potion. Up ahead, he could see two of the guards raise their rifles, bewildered expressions on their faces.
“Howdy, boys!” Joe called, thrusting and juking along. “Who’s ready to par-tay?”
Clay zeroed in on the right corner of the first guard’s torso, one of the few places he wouldn’t clip an organ, bone, or artery. The upgraded targeting was almost like a security camera’s zoom and enhance feature from those old movies.
“Stop right there!” a guard yelled.
“Can’t do ’er,” Joe answered, arms pumping. “Listen—we’re just about to the drop.”
Clay fired. The round hit with a meaty thunk and the first guard disappeared on impact, popping out of existence in an acid green flash like some mad scientist throwing a smoke bomb to cover his escape. A heartbeat later, the tunnel erupted in gunfire.
The remaining Triple S contractors lit Joe up like a Yuletide log, but the rounds pinged harmlessly off his heavy metal armor, ricocheting into the walls. Joe kept right on dancing—wiggling, undulating, and thrusting in a way that would give everyone involved nightmares for months to come.
Still moving forward in the stealth crouch, Clay threw a Shield of Minor Warding in front of his brother and focused on his second target. This guard had his body turned, blocking off the prime torso shot. Clay put the bullet in the meat of his deltoid, just outside his etched armor. This time it erupted in a blue mist, and the guy went down snoring.
“Come on, really get into it!” Joe yelled breathlessly at the last two guards. He laced his fingers behind his head and undulated his hips. “Uhn! Yeah! Let the music carry you away!”
The last two guards backed away as the flailing redneck glow stick advanced. The closer one laid down suppressing fire in spite of its apparent lack of effect. His buddy broke and ran for an escape hatch.
Clay swung the muzzle of his M4, leading the runner. He homed in on the guy’s right butt cheek.
Just then, his Shield of Minor Warding gave out. Joe was exposed.
“Mosh break!” Joe yelled.
The rockets on his suit roared, launching him headfirst into the shooter—and crossing directly through Clay’s line of fire.
The bullet slipped between the metal plates covering Joe’s thigh. Joe howled something between a war cry and a cry of pain as Friendly Fire sent his health back up to full.
Cussing, Clay tried to home in on his mark again. Too late. The runner threw himself through the escape hatch untouched and kicked the heavy metal shut behind him.
Joe and the shooter crashed into the tunnel wall like a semi plowing a motorcycle into a concrete barricade—little damage to the semi, little but metal shavings left of the bike. With what looked like a broken hand, the shooter fumbled for his sidearm, but Joe cracked him in the jaw with a mech-gloved haymaker. Lights out.
“We’ve got to move,” Clay said, bolting down the tunnel. He yanked the rope from his ruck. “That guy’s going to sound the alarm. The longer this takes, the more reinforcements he’ll have on the other side of that hatch.” With his K-bar, he divided the cordage and tossed half to Joe. “We’ll hogtie them.”
By the time they were finished tying up the unconscious guards, Alex, Griff, and Chonk had made it to their position. Clay checked the map in his character screen. He couldn’t see any firm details, but he could tell the room on the other side of that hatch was fairly large. Maybe the factory floor or a warehouse of some kind. Plenty of room for a firing squad.
And for a Greater Blue Wyrm.
He tugged the ZombiePop off his belt. In a rush of aquamarine smoke, Bacon Bits appeared.
During his time with the monks, Clay had managed to advance from a level 1 basic Quack to a level 5 Snakeoil Slinger. As a result, he’d gone from being able to apply Damage potions only to weapons to being able to feed them to a mount or summoned creature. Feeding Bacon Bits the Damage potions would give her a rotating arsenal of draconic breaths to choose from.
“I’ve got a wide-open space perfect for a flame-throwing wrecking ball with fangs,” he told her, pulling Damage potions from his drop pouch. “You ready to wreak some havoc?”
Bacon Bits grinned, baring gleaming choppers as long as his hand. “Open the hatch and let slip the wyrms of war.”
