Chapter 45.2: Entering the Labs

Well inside the eastern building now, Penny, Jindel, Jinkke, and Yult held as tightly as they could to Minkus, who swept through the halls as if trying to escape them. He was, of course, only interested in reaching Ventyr and Yissa as quickly as he could, a fact he apologized for over the sound of the still-blaring alarm every few steps. 

Penny was more than accustomed to his constant apologies at this point. Besides, she has other questions in mind. “Can anyone tell me what the hell that was outside?”

“Looked like attackers,” Yult said from behind her. “Humans.”

“Yeah, I got that much,” Penny grunted. “But what in Torment is that bandit jerk and his merry band doing here—that has to be who the rest of them were, right: his people?”

“You saw the bandit leader too?” Minkus called back from the front of the pack. Eyes ahead, he continued to run.

“He ran across the courtyard before you showed up,” Jindel said, her tone flat and cadence clipped. From the corner of her eye, though, Penny spotted the heat in the other woman’s expression. “I don’t give a damn why he’s here, as long as he gets what’s coming. He got off once. It’s not happening again.”

Penny knew instantly where the Vigilwoman’s mind was: Crusader Braxus. Suddenly Penny’s was too. The thought of the crusty, old soldier snapped Penny back to that cavern in the Queen’s Forest. She’d liked the charr: the scars, the stories, the sharp mouth he had on him. But Penny had only known him for a few days. Jindel, on the other hand, had apparently had a history with him—Vigil-crusader training or something—so the old cat had meant a hell of a lot more to her. Penny still didn’t like Jindel or anything, but, well, maybe she understood her a little.

Fjornsson grunted, deep and resonant. “As long as that human is out there, he’s not here, so he’s unimportant. How far to the sergeant, asura?”

Minkus kept his eyes forward, though his voice faltered a little. “I— I don’t know the distance, exactly, Crusader Yult. But it isn’t far.”

He turned them aside and into a room rimmed with angular, stone tables. Then just as quickly, they were out the other side and into a hall that looked identical to the one they’d just come from. How the hell did Minkus know where he was going? 

Just in front of Penny, Jinkke was panting hard, audible even over the running footfalls and the screeching alarm. Really, though, she wasn’t the only one wearing out. Minkus seemed to be alright, with his magic and all, but the rest of them were starting to slow. Penny was getting particularly tired of the stack of armor clattering in the pack she still carried for Minkus. It was noisy, cumbersome, and half as heavy as Minkus himself. If they didn’t get where they were going soon, she would have half a mind to toss the whole thing. Hell, if they didn’t get there soon, none of them were going to be much use in this absurd attempt to rescue the carrot-stick at all.

Penny grimaced at that thought: not the one of being worthless, but simply the thought of Ventyr. She hadn’t yet agreed with Minkus that she’d wronged the sylvari—not fully, anyway—but she sure as Torment knew that he would see it that way. She just had to focus on the part of this mess that mattered: having Minkus’ back, like his sister had said. Of all the people she’d known, that odd, little man was one she least wanted to disappoint. She didn’t know why, but there it was.

She also wouldn’t mind sticking it to this Kikka person. Despite everyone’s decision to prioritize rescuing Ventyr over getting justice, the potential for the latter still gave Penny the greater satisfaction between the two. If only in her imagination, someone besides Penny would pay for all that had happened.

The thought of knocking in some of those pointy, asuran teeth sustained Penny for a few more turns and several lengths of ominously dim hallway before Minkus and all those following him came to an abrupt halt.

Minkus didn’t move, suddenly unable to meet anyone’s eyes as he hovered beside an open doorway. Penny thought she could hear animal sounds inside, which seemed odd. 

“Is this it?” Valliford asked.

Minkus nodded tenuously. “It’s just— well, there’s a lot— it’s not safe, and I…”

Fjornsson shoved past the asura, ducking to get through the doorway before he could say anything else. Jindel followed, and then Jinkke, taking Minkus by the hand and ushering him through.

Penny grumbled as she entered. “Let’s get this over with.”

But she stopped immediately on the other side, not a step behind the others, who’d frozen at the strange scene sprawled out before them: huge tubes, burning machinery, the slick sheen of gore, and dancing shadows cast by the beasts still roaming and mauling. The coppery scent of blood and burned wiring hung in the air. They stood on a wide landing overlooking the broken room, not quite in it, but certainly not far from it.

Yult drew a heavy breath, Stepping cautiously down to the main floor. “By the Bear.” Eyes up and scanning the space, he drew his weapon.

“Minkus,” Jindel demanded, “where’s the sergeant?”

Stammering, Minkus took a step down the stairs behind the norn. “I don’t know. He— I— well, I only know he was headed toward those big—”

“There he is,” Jinkke chimed. She leaned out past the railing, extending a finger toward a mound of flailing flesh and teeth and limbs just visible beyond the leftmost row of those green cylinders. “There, right under— smoke and sparks, what is that?”

“It’s a skelk,” Minkus said. He paused, though, looking closer. “And a stalker. My ears, it’s the skelk and the stalker from before! They’re both on top of him and— and they’re fighting each other?” Even Penny felt her eyes go wide.

Ventyr lay at the bottom of an undulating pile of two living, raging creatures. It was one of the strangest things Penny had ever seen; the skelk and stalker were so consumed with goring each other that neither seemed even aware of the sylvari beneath them. “Well, there’s something you never see at the circus,” she mused.

Meeting her gaze only a second, Valliford gripped Ventyr’s staff in one hand and an axe in the other, lunging down the stairs past Minkus. “Fjornsson, get me to the sergeant.” The big man grunted assent and vanguarded her into the room, cutting through the half-wrecked landscape like a ship’s prow through waves.

Minkus turned back to Jinkke, his face harder than usual, though his eyes still pleaded with her. “Please, just—”

“You can’t assist them while also impeding me, now can you, Big Brother?” The sharp crease of Jinkke’s brow was every bit as determined as her brother’s. “If you stay to stop me, it will only mean—”

In the time it had taken to open her argument, Minkus had hopped back up the landing and cut her off with a fat-lipped kiss to the forehead. “Just, please,” he whispered, jumping back down to the main floor.

Jinkke froze, dumbstruck, and glanced up at Penny. There was a question in her eyes that couldn’t seem to find a way to her mouth.

Penny shrugged. “Don’t look at me. He’s your brother.”

The two watched him go, bounding off to catch up with the soldiers moving to Ventyr’s location. At the same time, an assortment of creatures closed in on the three of them from around the room, and it wasn’t clear if any one of them down there recognized it.

Penny cast another sidelong glance down at Jinkke. “Are you still planning not to listen to him? Because I think they’re going to need the help after all.”

To Penny’s surprise, the asura floundered.

She scoffed, shaking her head and drawing the pistol from her right hip as she made for the stairs. “Oh, fine. You’re all piss and vinegar when I’m questioning this bullshit, but as soon as—”

Jinkke started to move. “Alright, alright,” she muttered, all but tripping over the rifle she still couldn’t seem to carry straight. She managed a hot glare. “Please shut your theory hole— Penny.”

Penny shot a glance back as she hit the main floor of the room. “Fine. Just don’t shoot me with that thing, OK?”

Silence told her the barb had landed, and the slightest grin touched her lips. It felt warmer than she’d expected, but there wasn’t any time to think about that. Sidestepping the wrecked base of one of those greenish cylinders, Penny sighted up on the first moving thing she could track in the shadow-cast half-light of the lab. It wasn’t a sylvari, a human, a norn, or an asura, so she squeezed off rounds like she had them to spare, which she did, thanks to the Vigil.

The smell of scorched gunpowder filled her nose as the creature hiccuped grunts with each shot. It didn’t slow, though it did change direction, arching away from Minkus and back toward Penny and Jinkke.

“Why isn’t it stopping?” Jinkke asked, raising her own weapon to sight. She fired, taking a nervous step backward, and her shot went wide.

“The hell if I know,” Penny barked, emptying the last round from her pistol. “But you’d damn well better start hitting it. I need to reload!”

Jinkke didn’t look happy, but she obliged. “What is it?” she asked, taking aim again.

“Who cares?” Penny barked back. “Just stop it from eating me!” She dashed behind the broken remnants of a glass-and-steel chamber laying lengthwise across the ground—some cover was better than none.

After all her aiming, Jinkke finally took the shot, and Penny had no idea if it had hit. If it had, it did nothing to either slow the beast or distract it. It was still after her, and— gods, was it moving faster now?

“Shit,” Penny muttered. There was no time to reload.

The animal crested what was left of the glass cylinder, its weight slamming down and shattering the edge of jagged glass. It collapsed into the wreckage, shards of glass stabbing through its limbs and into its side. Now it screamed, something cackling and reptilian, and suddenly, despite the glistening knives of glass and glossy streaks of blood, Penny could see it for what it was. That jutting jaw, almost handlike forepaws, and the tattered remains of a webbed ridge along its scaly back— but, gods, no skale she’d ever seen was capable of anything like this.

Panting and chittering, it began to rise again.

Penny shook her head clear and drew her offhand weapon, spinning the loader to line up an electrocution slug. She’d wanted to conserve her few remaining trick shots, but she wouldn’t be able to use them later if she was dead.

She called at Jinkke, “You loaded?”

“Just one second and—”

“Just do it and pass me the gun,” Penny barked, aiming her own weapon at the skale. She fired, the muzzle of her gun flashing blue only a split second before threads of energy shot across the creature’s body, lancing out from the point in its back where the fired round had struck. It sizzled, seized, and stilled.

Penny sucked air and let a long breath go. It had actually worked, at least for now. 

Replacing the pistol at her hip, she stretched a hand for Jinkke’s rifle and gestured emphatically. “OK, now give me the gun.”

“What for?” Jinkke said, striding forward and almost hugging the weapon. “For all appearances, you’ve already…”

The skale twitched, gurgled growls rumbling from its slack maw, and Jinkke quieted, extending the weapon. 

Penny grabbed the rifle, shouldering the stock and pressing the muzzle to the top of the creature’s head with a shiver. At the pressure, the skale’s sick, yellow eyes popped open and rose to meet Penny’s.

Against her will, Penny yelped even as she pulled the trigger. The recoil bounced her off her footing, and the skale’s body heaved at the impact, but both stilled: Penny panting at the fresh shot of adrenaline that coursed through her, and the skale leaking fluids from a crater in the center of its head.

“Shit,” Penny wheezed, going slack for a moment.

Jinkke stepped forward cautiously, inspecting the mutilated animal. “Is that a skale?” The question was almost a whisper. “Just an ordinary skale?”

Penny handed back the gun, trying to still a shaking hand as she pulled rounds from a pouch at her hip to reload her empty pistol. “What do you mean, ordinary? Every time we shot it, the thing got stronger and more pissed off. What the hell kind of ordinary skales do you have in asura-land?”

“Well, obviously not in that sense.” Jinkke almost glowered, investigating what was left of the dead animal. “In all probability, it was an ordinary skale, prior to being exposed to— smoke and sparks, do you suppose this was the effect of the magical essence we’ve been building against?”

“Gods, I hope not,” Penny said, sliding rounds back into her primary weapon. Even as she said it, she shook her head, knowing that hope was wrong. In all likelihood, this was exactly what they’d been building against, and that was bad.

“Interesting,” Jinkke mused, inspecting the wounds along the animal’s body. “It sustained numerous injuries without stopping, but an ordinarily fatal strike still succeeded, implying that…”

Penny stopped listening, instead scanning the darker side of the room, where the skale had come from. Something broad and horned wriggled along the floor over there, but its movements were choppy and slow, and it left a fat sheen of what must have been blood behind it. Other than that, nothing moved in that direction, so she ran her eyes across the back of the room, where they’d entered: the asuran terminal, the landing, the door. The last thing they needed was something coming at them from be—

“Oh shit.”

There in the door stood a doll of an asura, almost perfectly still. Done up in one of those black-and-red getups that everyone in this complex wore, she stared into the room. Only her head moved, swiveling slowly as her widening eyes drank in the scene with an icy fury that even Penny could see from where she stood. It was only when the asura’s eyes met  Penny’s that she exploded to life. Grimacing openly, the tiny woman waved an arm into the room and barked some sort of order, stepping back out of the doorway and storming off down the hall.

Two guards appeared, raising weapons and charging into the room.

Penny spun, slipping the last round into the pistol’s loader. “Uh, Smalls. We’ve got a new problem.”

“Yes, we certainly do.” Jinkke said, not looking at the door.

It took another second for that to settle in. Jinkke wasn’t looking at the door.

Fumbling back away from the guards, Penny also turned to follow Jinkke’s gaze. She was staring at Minkus and the soldiers, who were in an equally problematic spot—gods, so many problems.

Valliford was at war with— was that a moa?

Yes, the woman was fighting a creature Penny had always considered nature’s clown, and she genuinely didn’t know who was winning. The huge, dopey bird was slashing talons at the woman so ferociously, it could have almost passed for a raptor, though the lanky neck gave the truth away. The vigilwoman still had a hand on Ventyr’s staff, striking back at the huge bird with a single axe, as much to keep the creature at bay as to actually strike it. It would have been laughable if Penny hadn’t just had similar difficulty with an oversized lizard hopped up on insanity magic; there was no laughing at anything that could absorb a full rotary loader of ammunition without missing a step. But, gods, Jindel had to get that staff to Ventyr.

Minkus might have been faring better than the soldier girl—he really should have been—had he not been pitted against what looked like another asura. It moved aggressively but erratically, waving an electrified stick and chattering angrily, while Minkus only dodged and parried. Behind him lay another figure, also asura, and while he clearly worked to avoid landing fatal blows on his opponent, Minkus worked hard to keep himself between the attacker and the unconscious figure. There was a blue flash of light that said Minkus had been hit: blocking the blow with one of his magic shields, but still hit. Still he held his position and stayed his hand. Penny silently cursed how gods-damned gentle Minkus was.

The norn was the only one who’d actually reached Ventyr—maybe there was something redeeming about how stupidly bullheaded Fjornsson could be after all. Kept from using that massive sword, for fear of cleaving Ventyr right along with the creatures fighting atop him, Yult had resorted to a wrestling match first with the stalker. He’d pulled it free of the pile and now reached for the comically small asura warhammer at his hip. Listening to the wild bellowing that came from the giant man, he would doubtlessly bludgeon the thing to a pulp with whatever he held. But the number of darkly bleeding gashes he’d already sustained would make him much less useful against the skelk now righting itself atop Ventyr.

Two creepy, little bear things also approached the fray, ambling toward whichever conflict was more active, moment to moment. And around the room, Penny could see scattered sets of eyes reflecting lamplight and firelight from within still-locked glass tubes.

She gasped at all the sights, hardly recognizing her own mouth working. “Oh gods.” They really did have some problems.