Chapter 45.3: Bombs Away

Shaking her head clear, Penny tried to process their next steps. If they were all going to get out alive, they needed to get Ventyr’s staff into his hands. Penny had never understood why the thing made him stronger, but the carrot swore by —

A blast of energy shot past her head and exploded fluorescent red against the wall beyond her. She unintentionally screamed and spun back to the door, cutting all other thoughts short. How in Grenth’s green ass had she forgotten about the guards?

“Shit, shit, shit,” Penny spat, turning and darting for the next cylinder that was still upright and sealed. Any cover was better than none at all.

Jinkke, however, didn’t seem to recognize the threat. Penny threw out a hand and grabbed her by the collar. “Keep up, damn it!”

The asura fumbled behind her, barely staying on her feet as Penny rounded the cylinder, their combined momentum slamming the pair to the stone floor behind it.

“What are you doing?” Jinkke squawked, tugging her collar free as she scrabbled closer to the cylinder. Her mouth shaped its next indignant word but stopped as another luminous wad of energy flew past the greenish chamber and burst against the wall. Penny pointed back toward the guards with a flash of exasperation.

Jinkke mumbled, “Oh. Well, thank you.”

“Look,” she said, eyes back on their pursuers, “I can keep them busy. You just get Soldier-girl free of that bird. We need to get Vent his staff.” Penny still wasn’t looking forward to facing the sylvari, but right now they had serious need of his muscle.

Nervously Jinkke nodded, massing the courage to move as she climbed to her feet.

“Remember,” Penny said. “You have to get the thing in the head.”

Jinkke straightened, the strategy coalescing in her mind. “Yes. Assuming the two are affected in similar manners, a killing blow will be the only effective means of stopping it.”

Giving the asura something logical to focus on seemed to bolster her. Penny pressed her back to the glass cylinder, watching only for a second as Jinkke jogged off toward the other human. Gods, she hoped the little woman could get it done. Of course, she wasn’t going to if those guards caught her in the back before she could make it.

Gritting her teeth and cursing silently, Penny spun out from behind the cylinder to unload a volley of shots. The damn thing was translucent of course, so any element of surprise she would have had was gone; the two simply watched her, lining up their own shots as she lunged into the open. With her first pull of the trigger, she decided that was just part of the plan. She was basically already dead, so why the hell not?

The guards had taken up a position behind the downed test cylinder Penny and Jinkke had just fled from. They fired off more blasts of energy that blazed past Penny on either side as she returned fire, strafing toward the bank of data terminals she’d noticed a short distance from the entry landing. It looked like it could take a hit or two, so she dropped and slid to a stop behind it, trusting she’d drawn enough attention to give Jinkke and Jindel a little time.

Another few blasts shot past her. She reloaded the ammunition in her primary pistol and crawled up to a crouch behind the rounded console—it actually was a decent position to fight from, even at the awkward angle between it and that fallen cylinder. One of her hip pouches jabbed her in the thigh as she moved, and it suddenly struck her: she had more tools at her disposal than just a pair of pistols.

Stuffing one of the guns back into its holster, she opened the snap on her hip pouch and pulled out one of several small explosives, making sure to inspect it closely. Like hell would she confuse those things a second time. This one was a bomb, not a smoker. Just what she was looking for.

Except, was it? They’d been trying to keep a low profile on this little incursion, and an explosion— well, that wouldn’t be subtle. The presence of the guards, though, seemed like a fair proof that they’d already been caught. And that other asura that had taken off? Well, she wouldn’t be coming back with a round of drinks, that was for sure.

To Torment with it, Penny thought with a flippant shrug. Striking her flint strip, she lit the fuse and counted down the timer in her head.

All at once, Penny threw her gun-hand above the terminal to blow off a couple of shots before sliding the explosive across the floor and toward the guards’ cover point. The gunshots drove them down behind the fallen equipment, and the bomb slid wide past them, splitting the distance between them and the entrance landing.

“Heads up!” Penny cried, realizing her friends might want to know what was coming.

Before she could get her hands to her ears, white light burned the dim space and thunder exploded through the chamber. Glass from the fallen cylinder shattered, and a hail of green shards and metal bits flew past the terminal console, knocking out an illumination cell on the wall. There was the faint sound of a scream from one of the guards, the sound, Penny thought, of success.

“By the bear!” Yult called from somewhere in the distance. She glanced back in the others’ direction to see the norn, half hidden by the row of cylinders but still clearly rising from the ground. She saw no sign of the big cat he’d been wrestling. “What was that?”

Another groan, from Jinkke, she thought, seemed to echo the shocked and unappreciative sentiment. For a moment, Penny questioned her choice.

It passed, though, as she realized the guards were moving. This was all the chance she was going to get.

Penny got her footing and rushed them, parting the wafting cloud of smoke to find them reeling from the blast that must have caught them as unaware as Penny could have hoped for. Both were moving, though one had been thrown easily a dozen feet farther into the center of the room. The nearer one scrabbled for the rifle that had been tossed into the steel cap of a fallen cylinder.

“I wouldn’t do that,” she chided, lowering a pistol at him.

The asura froze, arm still extended as he glanced up. Even as blood ran down his face from a gash in his dirtied forehead, he inspected her coldly, still inching toward the weapon.

“You think I won’t just shoot you?” she said, trying hard to suppress her own growing discomfort at the thought. Her gaze drifted a moment to Minkus.

It was in that drift of that her eyes passed the other guard, who was starting to rise from the floor several paces away. “You,” Penny barked, “you stay down too!”

Penny held her mouth tight, maintaining that image of icy control. The truth was, she had no idea what she was doing. If they actually obeyed her, staying put, what would she do? Stand there pointing guns and babysitting them? She’d be as useless as Wepp. She didn’t entirely like the idea of killing them, but practically speaking…

The guard nearest her snatched at something on his hip, a dagger, and Penny’s conflict was over. She squeezed off the last two rounds in the chamber, punching a pair of meaty holes through the little bastard’s shoulder and knocking him back down to the stone floor with a slap. Without a pause, she jumped forward and smashed a boot into the side of his fat, floppy head.

He’d still live, probably.

She looked up to find the second guard now also in motion, wobbly legs driving him toward the energy rifle resting on the ground between them.

“Oh, come on,” she grumbled. “Nothing is ever simple.”

Penny didn’t know what type of shot was in the barrel of her secondary gun, but with no time to reload the primary, she didn’t have any options. Suddenly, though, the scene changed; some deranged, little creature slammed into the back of the guard’s legs and brought him down in a flailing pile of limbs and ears, with another stubby creature on its heels, also diving into the brawl. The new animal was the only one she could clearly see. It was some kind of little bear, like she’d seen roaming the room before. Maybe a murellow? Whatever it had been once, it was now a mess of blood, fur, and gods-only-knew-what. From the top of the pile, it clawed and gored into whatever passed beneath it, asura or fellow creature. It didn’t seem to matter.

Penny grimaced, forcing her stomach back down to where it belonged, but her attention quickly moved beyond that scene.

“Gods,” she groaned, pushing her free hand through sweat-streaked hair. Never simple.

Her little stunt with the explosive had done more than she’d anticipated. It seemed that both the moa and the stick-wielding asura had decided bombs and bloodshed were, in fact, more interesting than their previous activities. They were now coming to join the party.

The moa was in front, head snaking around awkwardly as it trotted toward her. Was it more interested in the fray between the asura and those cubs, the wounded guard, or her? Penny had no idea. Its attention shifted erratically between the three, and occasionally it shot off at nonexistent phantoms around the room. The asura’s maniacal chatter became discernible as it approached behind the bird. His volume had decreased since the standoff with Minkus, but his stream of senseless jargon seemed to be the same. What was different was his unquestionable focus on Penny: past the moa, past the writhing combatants on the floor, and right at Penny. The look was curious and predatory. She had no idea what that meant for a mind-addled asura, but it sure as hell couldn’t be good.

As fast as she could, Penny reloaded, jamming rounds into the rotor’s chambers before either the bird or the deranged asura could reach her. It was going to be tight, and she wasn’t even sure she could drop them both in six rounds. She was a decent shot, yes, but she’d have to hit them both square in the head to have even a chance.

There was, of course, an easier way.

“Ah, hell,” Penny muttered, shoving the pistol back into its holster. “At this point, what’s one more?”

She reached for the hip pouch again, pulled out another hand-sized puck, and lit the fuse.

“Alchemy,” an unfamiliar voice cried. “Are you neurologically stunted?!”

She barely heard the wide-eyed guard as she let a bomb fly for the second time in as many minutes.

It clacked across the ground once, twice, and again, slipping just past the moa before detonating between it and the asura. Penny dropped to the floor, covering her head, but not before thunder cracked, driving her back a few feet. Glass shattered, steel groaned, and debris clattered away in all directions.

When she lifted her head, her ears were ringing like temple bells. Three more of those glass chambers had fallen, and the moa had been blown clear past her like trash in the wind. It must have slammed neck-first into the stone base of the terminal console, because it now lay twitching brokenly on the floor. Fortunate. What had happened to the crazy asura, though, Penny couldn’t say. As the smoke dissipated, he wasn’t anywhere she could see, and with several more illumination cells blown out, she couldn’t see as much as she would have liked to. It was good enough for now, though.

Penny rose, cracking her suddenly aching back and dusting herself off. The ringing diminished some as she took account of the two guards. One of the murellows was trying to right itself—it was a freakishly sturdy thing—but the guards were definitely down.

“What in Tyria is wrong with you?” Jindel asked, stalking intently toward her. She held both her axes at the ready as she scanned the bodies strewn around Penny’s side of the room. Some moved, but not by much. “We’re trying to get out of here alive, and you’re blowing off bombs? Everyone in the whole place must have heard that!”

Penny controlled her wobbling feet. She couldn’t let the soldier see that. “Hate to break it to you, but it’s a little too late for that. See these guys?” She gestured to the sprawled guards. “They came before I threw anything, with someone else who’s already taken off. We don’t have long, and it’s not my fault.”

She could see the other woman’s mind furiously composing another accusation, but before Jindel could get it out, Penny noticed something else: two axes, no staff.

“You got it to him?” Penny asked, brushing wild hair out of her face again.

A combustive whoosh burst from somewhere across the room, and both of them spun, Jindel falling naturally to readiness. A screeching skelk charged out from between the containment tubes and rushed past, showing no interest in them. Small flames tore at the creature’s skin where tendrils of smoke hadn’t yet taken hold. Its amphibian skin, black and blistered, trailed a revolting cloud of smoke and steam, somehow stinking of both bog and burnt flesh. It reached the terminal console back by the entrance and threw itself at the wall, still wailing as it tried to grind the flames out against the stonework. Jindel kept an eye on it, but Penny looked away. She could hear the gruesome thing just fine. There was no point in watching it too.

“Well, that answers that,” Penny murmured. “You got the staff to him, and it looks like he’s pissed.”

Jindel nodded.

The skelk continued to grate itself along the wall, and one of the bloody murellows began a course toward the twitching moa. Gods only knew what it had in mind, but it probably wasn’t pertinent to them anymore, at least not yet. She gestured, and Jindel turned to head back with her through the glass and debris, toward the others.

Approaching the first cylinder still standing, Penny could see through the green-tinted glass just well enough to make out the others struggling with a— gods, what the hell kind of creature was that one? The thing in Fjornsson’s massive grip looked like a snake from the waist down, except it had a waist. It had a torso and arms, like a man—a gods-damned ugly man—but its head looked more in line with its serpentine tail than it did the human-ish body between them. Ventyr and Minkus joined the struggle against it, but Penny couldn’t take her attention off the creature itself. Torment, was this insanity magic able to twist a body as well as a mind?

Penny slowed, but Jindel shifted both axes to one hand and grabbed her arm, all but dragging her the next steps around the green tube. “Dwayna’s mercy, keep moving! You look like you’ve never seen a krait before.”

“Shit,” Penny hissed with relief. She regained her feet, pulling herself free of Jindel’s grip and nabbing pistols from her belt. “That’s what it is? It’s supposed to look that way?” She’d heard about krait but really never had seen one. The damned things were ugly. Really ugly.

The vigilwoman only shook her head, leaving Penny behind and diving into the fray. She split the distance between Minkus and the norn, digging both those hand axes into the creature’s thick, scaly tail. It howled in rage as it turned, slipping free of Yult’s grasp around its middle to lunge back at the newcomer, clawed hands extended to either throttle or rip whatever had just attacked it.

Arms extended stiffly, Penny aimed both guns at the monster, trying to sight up even one clean shot amid the tussle. The others, though, kept moving in and out of her line of fire. “Damn it,” she snarled, still dancing around for a clear shot.

Jinkke’s voice broke her concentration. “With this many involved, you’re as likely to terminate a friend as you are an opponent.”

The sound surprised Penny, and she spun, looking down at the base of the glass tube she’d just gotten around. Jinkke knelt there beside the fallen form of Scholar Yissa. Jinkke still had her rifle in hand, but she seemed more concerned with being by Yissa’s side than she was with engaging the current fight. The scholar lay still, dressed in some sort of asuran leotard underwear.

Penny scowled. “Oh, gods. Is she…”

“No.” Jinkke shook her head, keeping an uneasy eye on the battle with the krait. “She’s merely unconscious. As far as I’ve inferred, it occurred prior to our arrival, so it wasn’t the fault of your suicidal bombings.” At that she met Penny’s gaze, frowning critically.

Penny narrowed her eyes. Somehow it was worse taking this from Jinkke than from the soldier-girl. “Can’t be suicidal if I’m still standing, now can it, genius?”

“How about careless, then? Haphazard? Idiotic?” Jinkke snapped. “A bad throw, and you could have obliterated any one of us just as rapidly as you did those guards.”

Jinkke wasn’t exactly wrong, Penny knew. “Well, it still worked,” she muttered, looking away.

“Look,” Jinkke started again, drawing a breath, “just— Smoke and sparks, look out!”

Her finger flew up, pointing to something, and Penny spun, only just catching the snap movement of a stalker leaving the ground a few yards behind her. The leap alone seemed to propel it out of the shadow of another cylinder and into existence.

Penny screamed a curse, not even sure what the thing was pouncing at: Minkus, Jindel, or the krait. It didn’t matter. On instinct, both hands rose, and her index fingers squeezed repeatedly. Shots burped from both her primary and trick pistols as she traced the scarred, black cat’s movement through the air.

At least half the rounds struck as Penny recognized the cat’s trajectory at Minkus, but the chaotic combination of ordinary, incendiary, and glue rounds striking across its body threw the tormented creature off course. It wrenched itself around mid-flight, passing behind Minkus and disappearing quickly into the room’s equipment, hissing and spitting. For a moment Penny watched the patch of burning fur pass in and out of the cylinders at the far end of the chamber. Then it disappeared again. She had a bad feeling it wasn’t the last they’d see of it.

There was a sickening crunch and a hissed scream that snapped Penny’s attention back to the battle with the krait. Fjornsson slammed it face-down into the ground and hammered it in the back again and again with that asuran warhammer he’d taken. It looked like little more than a mallet in his huge, norn hand, but those one-handed swings were enough to crack ribs and spine with every hit. Still, the creature continued to move, clawing at the stone floor like it would kill them all, regardless of their efforts.

“Stand back, Crusader.”

Penny had almost forgotten about Ventyr, but she’d never mistake that controlled command in his voice.

The norn paused his swing to glare fire at the sylvari. Gods, he looked almost as deranged as these animals, but after a moment’s consideration, he obeyed, lowering the weapon to his side and stepping back.

Ventyr took a step toward the grounded krait, extending his staff as he said something Penny couldn’t make sense of. Jagged lines of white light arced from the floor, from nearby equipment, and from the lights along the wall, touching Ventyr and streaking to a focused point of light at the tip of the wooden rod before cutting the air in a single, unbroken line that struck the krait in it’s still open mouth. Electricity coursed across the thing’s body as it shivered and smoked like an eel caught in the eye of a thunderstorm.

It went on for several moments longer than it needed to before Ventyr lowered his staff, flat eyes inspecting the smoking corpse. Even at his sides, heatwaves danced around his hands. Penny had seen that once or twice before, but it had never made her sweat like it did now.

The sounds of conflict had subsided with that last attack, and Penny realized she wasn’t the only one gawking at the sylvari. He stood there with nothing more than a scrap of fabric at his waist. Bent and exhausted, he panted, his bioluminescence pulsing like angry, green candlelight between the cracks of his barky skin. And his eyes briefly met Penny’s.