Chapter 51.6: Out of Her Hands

The fight in front of her went on as Penny continued finding what gaps she could, though those gaps grew smaller with every moment as more combatants joined the central fray.

The nearest bandits peeled themselves off the ground as two new asura also took up the fight against the jade construct. Four energy weapons now threw a continuous, cycling volley at the back of the towering creature. It turned on them, still pinning the norn to its chest, but the shift in its focus seemed to give ground to the anguished bandit lord.

The man yanked on the magical tendril that ran from his open hand to the jade monster’s head. It thickened and stretched, seeming to steal density from the opposite line that ran from the construct’s hand to the man’s face. His whole body clenched and writhed with the exertion, but the leader barked commands at his people as he continued his weird, mystical contests. “Get up— and— do something!” he hollered.

The two nearest humans paused in confusion but ultimately obeyed. Despite their injuries, they moved for the base of the jade monster, smashing weapons into its still fractured body with what strength they had left. That drew more of the construct’s attention. Its six hot eyes flashed from target to target as the onslaught increased. The bandit leader roared in fresh fury, tugging again at his magical thread, and the thing’s head arched back for just a moment. It regained control, though. Penny had little idea what was happening, still taking shots with her last few available rounds, but she had the distinct feeling the construct had made some kind of choice.

It peeled Fjornsson free with its remaining arm, gripping him by the head, and slammed him viciously down into the thin field of jade and scorched wood beneath it. Yult lay still, and the construct released him, sweeping a backhand through the human man slashing an axe at its lower half. That guy flew a dozen feet and slammed into one of the attacking asura, and the pair rolled aside in a flurry of limbs.

The construct turned its back against the ongoing shots from the other three asura, focusing instead on the other human, the bandit woman hacking weakly at its base. It spasmed, still seeming to feel the pull of the magical lash that bound it to the dirty, red-clad bandit lord.

The ground tremored, and for whatever reason, Penny’s eyes went instinctively to the norn. She blinked, hissing a curse. The indestructible oaf was up on an elbow, already rising despite having more of those shards now protruding from his face and neck. She couldn’t believe it.

There was another tremor, though, and another. Penny realized Yult wasn’t the source of it. Neither, strangely, was the construct, which hovered inches above the ground as it set a wrenching grip on the female bandit. Where in Torment was it coming from?

Penny looked back at the allies behind her, honestly not knowing if she hoped to see them coming to help or running for their lives. They were still there, yes, but it was the golem, leaving Jidel and Jinkke in its wake and stomping toward her, that held her terrified gaze. The ground trembled under each of its heavy steps.

“Shit!” Penny yelped, suddenly realizing how long she’s stood still, right in its course. She leapt aside and rolled back up to her feet, dropping her pistol aside and gripping Jinkke’s rifle like a staff—whatever good that would be against a charging golem.

It went right past her, though, making its steady, intentional way to the mursaat construct.

Penny cast a questioning look back at the others, and Jinkke, hunched and panting, returned an uncertain shrug. No one knew what the hell was happening now.

The plodding golem reached the living mass of jade, and Penny finally recognized just how big the damn thing was. She’d seen it beside the norn, but witnessing the jagged, purple monstrosity standing taller and wider than even one of those thick, domed machines the asura loved— that sent a chill up her spine.

She had no time to think about it, though. The second it hit her, the golem threw its first blow. Servos whined as it cocked back and slammed a fat, stone fist into the monster’s side. There was an ear-splitting crash and the tinkle of raining crystal as the golem pulled back its fist from a crater in the creature’s side.

The jade construct screeched, dropping the human it had gripped and wheeling on the new combatant. As if on cue, the bandit leader yelled something unintelligible, and the violet strand cast from his left hand pulled taut, doubling in width. The man screamed, the construct bellowed, and the golem slammed it with another blow in the side. Penny had no idea what she was watching, but it was definitely better than staring down any of those combatants alone.

The scene played out twice more, with the asura behind everything still delivering shots that added to the chaos. The construct’s attention was divided so many ways that the potency of whatever the man on the ground was doing continued to grow. He doubled in on himself, expression tightly torn between agony and rage, but he persisted. And with every yanking pulse that rippled along the man’s fattening tether, another layer of jade sloughed off the monster. It was shrinking; from both the man’s effort and the golem’s physical assault, it was shrinking.

Penny grabbed her gun from the dirt and cracked off another shot between the attackers—what the hell else was she going to do? The shot only barely helped, shattering a few bits off the outermost layer of the jade creature’s already flaking body. She pulled the trigger again, and it clicked. She clicked it again—nothing. She scoured the ground, but there were no more rounds available to her. What now? Did she run back to the ammo bag just to add some more of her pea-shooter damage to this fight that was so dramatically beyond her?

Shaking herself free of the question, Penny realized Fjornsson had wobbled a few steps clear of the fight. She might not be much help against the construct, but there was still a chance to get the norn out of this nightmare alive.

Before she could second-guess it, Penny ran the gap between them, cursing at herself all the way. She angled herself into his line of sight, hoping that if he saw her coming he’d still have enough wits in his thick skull to recognize her.

Fjornsson’s wobble stiffened, heavy muscle tightening from toe to head as he got his balance. One hand roamed the shards of pulsing jade protruding from his— gods, it was everywhere. His eyes grew wild again, rising to meet hers as she came within his long arm’s reach.

“Hey, Jumb— er, Crusader,” Penny quickly corrected herself, raising her hands in peace and forcing a smile. It was time to channel some of that Minkus-the-Large energy. “You feeling OK? You’ve definitely looked better.”

Fjornsson hunched slightly, assessing her with a wary eye. He looked like a feral cat pushed into a corner, and still he loomed over her. She could feel the moisture of each panted breath.

Penny eyed the wandering path of crystalline needles that dotted his body. “Look, I’m sure you feel like total shit right now. I would— hell, I do. But maybe we can get you some help, like Biggie gave you. Right? Minkus? You remember Minkus? Little guy, big head. Bigger ears. Saved your ass.”

His eyes narrowed with hard-won thought, and he glanced past her, toward her fallen friend. Penny didn’t take her eyes off him, despite the scraping, cracking, wrenching, wailing sounds of battle against the construct that still rang out behind him. Damn it, if he didn’t hurry up and come with her, he was going to get them both killed.

“They’ve got this,” she lied, gesturing past him to the humans, asura, and golem still working to bring down the jade. She immediately knew it was the wrong move.

At simply the mention of the conflict, and the construct at the center of it, Yult’s eyes blazed. Penny could have sworn they flashed violet in the whites, and the monstrous man arched back and bellowed something primal. Blood and spit rained down on her, and before she could pivot, he drove an open palm into her chest.

Penny didn’t stumble; she flew, slamming back-first into the dirt several yards away. The world flashed hot white, and the air left her lungs. All she heard was the list of names screamed in sequence again: “Alayna! Pypp! Dulf! Keaste! Vulmos!”

Forcing wind to refill the vacuum in her chest, Penny gasped and pushed herself up to an elbow. Blinking the stars away, she couldn’t even curse. She only stared, gulping air.

The norn rushed away, making up for his failing balance with pure, adrenalized speed and bellowing the names of his fallen friends again. A trail of blood followed him, running from numerous wounds, and he closed the gap to the construct almost effortlessly.

Leaping, he struck the back of the golem between him and the jade monster and slammed it forward into the still looming construct. The big machine threw one last punch before flailing in a futile effort to rebalance itself, but the momentum of the crazed norn was too.

Fjornsson roared, voraciously clawing over the twisting golem as their combined weight drove down on the lower half of the construct. It buckled and the three collapsed into a heap. The ground shook, jade fragments flew amid a plume of dust, and large chunks of the mineral cracked and fell to the earth. Penny saw at least one bandit buried in the avalanche of stone and steel.

“Oh, shit,” she whispered.

The construct shrieked furiously, the golem lay stunned for a moment, and Yult lunged at his prey, ripping and tearing into the jade body at the expense of his own flesh. Blood flew through the air right along with the shards of glowing crystal he could remove. He found a larger chunk of jade nearby and changed his approach, gripping it between bloody hands and repeatedly slamming it into the creature’s six-eyed face. Even more jade sloughed off, clattering to the ground beneath the brawl, and Penny felt her stomach turn. The thing wasn’t alive in any real sense, but gods, the sight was gruesome.

The golem rose, shoved Fjornsson aside, and rejoined the melee, punching more holes into the other construct—and now also the norn. Like that, the conflict at the center of the larger one devolved into a three-way fistfight, with each participant lashing out at every other. And beyond the chaos, twin streams of magic still connected the hulking jade figure to the man who’d meant to create it.

Those shifting, tugging lines of magic were what Penny noticed most clearly as the next seconds slid by.

Each time one of the combatants passed through one, there was a blinding flash of light, and whoever held control of the tether screamed abruptly in pain: first the bandit, then the creature, on and on. Each time he was the source of the interference, Yult bellowed agony as well, but the golem was just a golem; it felt no pain. Stuck at the center of so many layered conflicts, the jade construct showed no signs of recognizing the pattern, but the human at the edge of the fray did.

Penny watched the fiendish snarl contort the man’s already tortured face. Twitching almost to convulsion, he waited intently for the next body or limb to pass through the construct’s tether on him. Twice more the combatants passed through his own tether to the monster, throwing him into spine-arching spasms, but with that look back on his face, he dragged himself back to his vigil for the perfect moment…

Utterly unaware the construct grabbed Yult in what hand it had left and swung him toward the bandit’s leash.

Penny screamed, “Get out of there!” but she knew it was too late. Even if there had been enough of the norn’s mind left, he couldn’t have changed what was happening.

His jade-shredded body whipped up and through the undulating violet thread.

An unseen blow seemed to smash into the construct. The thing screeched and quailed, releasing the grip on Fjornsson’s leg and pulling away. The norn crashed aside, convulsing. The human at the feet of giants leapt on his opportunity. “I am the master!” the lunatic screamed.

His purple lash pulled straight, suddenly thicker at the man’s hand, and thinning out along its length as though physically being yanked taut. The construct twitched and convulsed, straining against whatever the man was doing to it. Bits of jade began to fall, first from its remaining arm, tinkling against the growing pile of its lost mass. More fell off from other parts of its remaining body, not from any strikes delivered by the golem, but strictly from whatever in Torment the bandit was doing.

The man too was suffering from the exertion. He leaned over, laying against the ground and working to keep his breath, but his mad eyes remained locked on his disintegrating creation. Penny hardly understood what she was watching. The man babbled something angry, incoherent, but continued to yank on that magic tether, drawing what he’d put into the monster right back out of it. Each time the strand whipped tight, another thick patch of jade slid free of the creature, crashing to the ground and losing its poisonous glow to a surge of magic that rushed down the line and into the human.

Teeth gritted, the bandit lord took it. He flew into convulsions, rolling over and over but still taking it: yanking at the magical thread again and again, to both his own anguish and the construct’s. He seemed to thrill in the pain.

Despite everything, at some unconscious level, Minkus remained in Penny’s thoughts. They may actually be witnessing the end he’d wanted from this horrible situation, so she found herself doing what he would do: she made futile calculations at how she might still get the norn out of the mad scene. The force of her debt drove her to her feet.

Before she made it a step, though, something yanked her to a stop: two stubby hands gripped tightly around her wrist.

“What in the Alchemy do you think you’re doing?” Jinkke barked. Penny saw genuine fear in her lilac eyes.

“I have no gods-damned idea,” she admitted. “But I have to get in there and save that big dumbass from himself. For your brother.”

“There is no universe in which that norn will hear you in his current state!” she argued, anxiety melting to anger.

Penny wanted to scream. “You’re preaching to the choir,” she spat. “I know it’s nuts, but Biggie wouldn’t leave him, so I can’t, not as long as—”

Penny’s words were cut short by an earsplitting thunderclap and a concussion that launched them both off their feet. The world and the asura somersaulted wildly across Penny’s field of vision. The motion wrenched at her stomach, but before she could feel the nausea, the earth smashed into her, driving wind and thought free yet again.

All went dark and silent. For a moment nothing existed, and Penny prayed she was dead.

Disappointingly, air rushed back into her thirsty lungs, darkness gave way to stars, and bells rang in her ears.

When the real world came back into existence, Penny heard screams—screams like she’d never heard before. Gods, they were awful: the grinding wails of men breaking right in front of her. She snapped up, throbbing from head to tail and almost seizing. But she had to get up and see what the hell had…

Penny swore aloud. Nothing at all looked as it had a second before. The four-way brawl between construct, norn, golem, and man was gone. Not just at an end. Gone. 

The golem, now missing limbs, had been flung clear of the spot, no more than a toy in the force of that still echoing blast. It scratched aimlessly at the ground, turning in a confused circle.

In the opposite direction was the twitching form of Crusader Yult. Hardly moving, he looked darker than he should have been, bearing a sheen that slowly spread across and away from his body. Gods, that wasn’t good.

Penny knew she had to get to him, but that was not enough to speed her past what she saw next. She cursed again, the words barely slipping out of her mouth. “Grenth’s green ass.”

Spread out several feet above a shallow crater at the center of everything was a sick, shifting, purple miasma. So dense as to be virtually opaque, it blotted out the sky and landscape beyond it. Angry tridents of fluorescent lightning spidered across its surface, giving it a sort of caged shape even as it flexed and bulged against its bounds. Below it, a field of shimmering crystals reflected its crackling power, like the eyes of a thousand creeping things in the night. Shattered jade was strewn everywhere, embedded in the ground in concentric circles that rippled out from where the construct had been a moment before.

Penny tried to push herself up to a knee and almost fell over, pain lancing through her thigh as it flexed. She caught herself and reached for the source of the pain, yanking her hand back as soon as she touched it. There was no mistaking that obsidian-smooth, faceted shard jutting out of her leg.

She reached again, still unwilling to look, but she knew what she felt.

And there was a second.

And a third.

Penny stifled a sob before she even knew it was there. She wanted to be furious, to rage, but all that came was a hot rise of tears that she madly forced back down. This was the cruelest possible joke the universe could play on her.

She knew that what came next was unavoidable, but damn it, she still had a task. Penny drove herself to her feet, yanking the first shard free and tossing it aside. She would make it to the norn if it killed her.

There was a cough beside her. “Wait,” Jinkke demanded. “Just wait.” On hands and knees, she grabbed loosely at Penny’s ankle as. “Smoke and sparks, look where you’re going!”

“What the hell does it matter?” Penny said, turning on the asura and pointing at her still impaled leg. “I’m as good as…” Her words, thoughts— gods, everything fell away from her as she spotted the only worse thing than the shards sticking out of her own body: those jutting out of her friend. Thin lines of blood ran down Jinkke’s side, from the half-dozen slivers of dark jade embedded in her arm and torso.

“Gods,” Penny rasped. She glanced past Jinkke to Minkus and almost broke. “Gods, no.” She whimpered it this time. How the hell had she failed so fully?

Jinkke sniffed frustratedly. “No, it isn’t— would you just observe with your eyes?” She tugged out the first of her own shards and pointed ahead. Penny finally recognized the source of that tortured, raging wail. It was the bandit leader.

She’d heard the man cry out throughout the struggle, but it had been nothing like this. Somehow his voice had taken multiple tambours, like a stacking chorus of voices screaming just out of synchrony, from a single man’s mouth. It wrenched at her insides, and she twisted.

“No. Look,” Jinkke instructed, stopping Penny from turning away. She pointed again, but what Penny saw next wasn’t what Jinkke intended.

From the storming cloud of mursaat magic, a thin funnel of magic swirled downward to the man laying on the ground, head clutched in his hands. The needlepoint end of the violet twister touched down at the crest of his forehead, and, though Penny didn’t think it was possible, his screaming redoubled, every one of the increasingly distinct voices hitting pitches that shouldn’t have been possible. It drove Penny back to her knees.

She and Jinkke both slapped hands over their ears to keep out the otherworldly sounds. The cloud spun into a virtual cyclone of magic that forced itself violently into the man. His shape arched and writhed with the bending movement of the torrent, just as it had several minutes before. This time, though, it had no outlet, and his torment only deepened. The cloud thinned, further and further as the man absorbed it all. The northern end of the ravine and the reddening sky beyond it grew clearer, as did the handfuls of asura and humans gawking at the sight from the other side. Finally it vanished, and whatever power had drawn it into the human quieted, leaving the air still. The man too, with one last mind-rending cry, went silent.

For the briefest moment, none of the onlookers moved; the man’s twitching limbs were the only movement that broke the scene. Even the thickets along the cliffs seemed to go still, and the jade debris strewn about the field ceased to twinkle.

It was only then that Penny recognized what Jinkke had really been talking about: the jade wasn’t glowing that sickly purple. In fact, she realized, it hadn’t been even when it had been reflecting the magical storm cloud at its center. The pulsing heartbeat that had lived in each sliver and slab was gone, leaving nothing but lifeless stone, dimmer and darker than even the weakened pieces Ventyr had carried at the outset of this damnable adventure. That included, she realized, the shards embedded in her friend.

She finally laid eyes on her own bits of jade, bristling from her thigh: cold, dark, and dead.

“You recognize it now?” Jinkke asked, grinning more proudly than made any sense. She pulled another sliver out with a wince. “I knew something must be different when my mental faculties never diminished. Everyone else’s direct exposure to the mursaat magic had immediately negative effects.”

Penny nodded, momentarily unable to take her eyes off the things still sticking out of her leg. Without their malevolent glimmer, they really did look harmless—aside from the fact they were still stabbed into her thigh. Jinkke was right: if they’d had any remaining power, she’d already be feeling the effects.

Penny bit back a scream as she pulled the second fragment free, holding the wound for a moment as the jagged hole pooled with blood. This one was worse than the first. Then she went for the third. She got up and hobbled forward into a jog, learning to rebalance through the stabbing leg pain. She held the shrapnel wound that still burned in her side.

Jinkke looked up from her efforts. “Where are you going?” Penny ignored her, trusting she’d come to her own conclusion.

In the distance, at least one group of asura and humans had taken up their fight again. Penny’s time was limited.

Quick as she could, she moved across the showered jade remains, feeling the crystals chip and grind beneath her boots. She gave berth around the bandit lord, but couldn’t avoid looking at the man. He twitched at fingertips and toes but was otherwise still, his whole body steaming wisps of unnatural purple that somehow lacked the color’s previous malignance: the last traces of steam from an emptied pot. His face and arms bore bloody gouges that made his existing scar tame by comparison. Penny winced. She hadn’t seen him do it, but the blood-and-dirt-caked nail beds told her the man had gored himself in his war with the madness. Penny hated him no less, but even she could find some pity for the blank eyes that stared up out of that mangled face.

She moved several steps farther, keeping one eye on the activity returning to the ravine. One of the asura who’d charged the jade construct was finally on her feet again, and— yes, damn it, she’d noticed Penny.

Penny darted to Fjornsson’s side, grimacing through the pain.

Even before kneeling she knew what she’d found, but she checked for a pulse just the same. The norn was gone. One arm bent back unnaturally beneath him, he was covered in ragged slashes and thick bruises that implied even more broken bones than the obvious ones. The dirt below him was all but black with his blood, and yet Penny had the sinking suspicion the massive warrior could have survived all that; it was the bristle of crystalline quills up and down his body that had been his end. Perhaps even before the blast could finish the job.

“Gods damn it!” Penny spat.

Even in what looked like a victory, she’d failed to do the thing she’d really set out to. She slammed a fist into the dead norn’s chest. If only the damned fool had thought for a second before leaping headlong into every fight.

Of course, Penny also didn’t know what in all of Tyria had really happened at the end of that struggle with the mursaat monster. If the idiot hadn’t been in a literal mad rage, maybe whatever the bandit had done wouldn’t have worked, and the construct would be the one still standing there instead of her.

“Well?” Jinkke called, catching up to Penny.

As she rose, Penny whispered to the soldier, “Thanks, I guess.”

She scanned the landscape again before heading back to Jinkke. “He won’t be carrying Minkus out.” She met eyes with Jinkke as she reached the asura, and the reality of her glib statement hit them both as they broke into an injured, exhausted excuse for a run.

Yes, the Crusader’s death was a loss in its own right—Penny wasn’t heartless—but as they rushed toward their allies, gathered just beyond Minkus’ fallen form, her friend was all she could think about. She stopped before his body, desperately searching for any reasonable solution, but the facts were unavoidable. No one but the norn could have carried him alone, and with everyone else injured, they’d have their hands full simply moving themselves. There was no choice but to leave Minkus where he lay. Penny stood with the weight of that for too long.

“He’s staying.”

Penny hadn’t even realized Jindel was missing until the young soldier stumbled to a panting stop between her and the rest of the group. “Wepp is staying,” she repeated between shallow breaths.

Yissa spun to her, shocked. “What do you mean he’s staying? Here? I don’t know him myself, but I can’t conceive of a reason even the krewe stationed here would remain. What does he possibly intend to gain from—”

“Don’t ask me,” Jindel snapped, hands up defensively. That’s just what he said.” She slipped around the scholar and ducked to get a shoulder under Ventyr’s arm.

Penny blinked stupidly at the exchange. “Wepp is— what??”

“He says it’s what he wants,” Jindel said. She nodded westward, and everyone looked to see the same odd sight. Wepp willingly hobbled toward the western complex with what must have been an Inquest medic. Nothing about it looked coerced. “Means we need to move.”

Penny was surprised at her own disappointment. Maybe Wepp had grown on her, or maybe she was simply tired of losing people.

“Where’s Fjornsson?” Jindel asked, looking expressly back at Penny.

Penny shook her head, and the soldier nodded solemnly, already turning to shuffle southward under the weight of her own gear and as much of Ventyr’s weight as she could support.

The sounds of conflict increased behind them, and one by one, the remaining three pulled themselves away from Minkus. Penny was last to go, shoving Jinkke ahead before jumping back to grab Minkus’ fallen pack. She couldn’t leave it.

Together they fled, each catching up to the one just ahead before all reaching the two Vigil members and hitting their hardest stride as a group. It honestly wasn’t much, all of them dragging each other southward despite their collective wounds. Still, they escaped the scene, rounding the southern edge of the ravine and slipping away eastward into the moors.

Night descended, Thaumacore and all its chaos fell slowly away behind them, and so much of it drifted away like a nightmare none of them wanted to fall back into. For all their distance, though, Penny couldn’t really escape. Minkus was all she could see.