Chapter 50 - Bring it down !

Chapter 50

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth.

Dungeon Factory, Command Center.

"HEY ASSHOLE!"

For a second, everything seemed to freeze as the massive yell sounded throughout the town, it's faint echo bouncing off of the mesas, and everyone turned towards the column of golems marching out of the dungeon. Golems that had just combined their voices into a single one, yelling their defiance towards the manticore.

And the manticore heard them.

The creature obviously hesitated for a second, before detaching itself from the ship whose shields it had finally managed to get through, coming down in a massive crash it landed in front of the column, roaring. Despite everything it seemed more...curious than furious. Obviously the beast had been barely inconvenienced by the ship's retaliation, and the few spells and arrows that had hit it, and wasn't exactly worried about it's ability to escape should things head South.

Alexandra smiled.

"Ever heard 'curiosity killed the cat' vampy?" Emilia nodded, and Alexandra's smiled grew. "Well let's see if it can kill a manticore. ATTACK!"

The column of golems in front of the manticore dissolved into a sea of metal as the golems charged. The manticore tried to take to the skies again, clearly realizing what was about to happen, but unfortunately for it, all of the golems in the front ranks were martial golems, and unburdened by armor or weapons they surged forwards, jumping ontop of the monster and literally holding it down through the sheer weight of their own bodies.

"Legionnaires, move in. CQ, get your marksmen out there, firing line behind the entrance, use the exit line as shield." Said Alexandra as she mentally repeated the same orders. A chorus of acknowledgement...feelings, for the lack of a better word, reverberated back from her golems, and a more elaborate one, and noticeably more excited one coming back from CQ.

"You're not going to possess her?" Asked Emilia as the legionnaire golems began walking forward, jumping on top of the trashing monster and adding their spears to the largely ineffectual punches and kicks thrown by the martial golems. Not that the spears seemed to be making that much of an effect as well, although a few splashes of red, and screams from the beast seemed to indicate they had found some weak spots in the creature's hide.

Alexandra shook her head as she kept half her mind on the battle, and half on her companions, or in this case companion, a skill honed by decades of experience commanding warships or trying to keep them from falling apart as nuclear missiles, lasers and railgun rounds did their best to pound them to scrap.

"No, it'll be good training for her. Besides, I need to keep my mind on the wider battle." She nodded towards the adventurers and the city defenders, who were milling around uncertainly, clearly unsure of what to do about the fight unfolding in front of them. "Especially since these guys are invariably going to make it harder."

"Okay. Do you need me to get out there."

"No!" Snapped out Alexandra, before relaxing a bit at Emilia's startled expression. "Sorry, that was a bit harsh. But if I'm honest you'd stick out like a martian at an interstellar convention, and this thing doesn't seem that stupid. I don't want to have you end up like Darius and have to throw in everything I've got to keep them away from you. Come in only at the end, when the battle is wrapped up."

"Okay...?" Said Emilia. A lot of what the Earth-born had said didn't make any sense to her, but she was smart enough to realize that Alexandra had just reverted back to using Earth metaphors by reflex, and simply didn't have the time to explain them. "Well, what's the plan?"

"You said we might not be able to kill it, or even subdue it, on our own, so I'm doing the next best thing."

"Which is?"

Alexandra smiled as she nodded towards the screen, where Emilia suddenly realized the airships were starting to rise, one by one.

"We buy them enough time to do it for us. Then we take all the credit and steal the body."

Emilia snickered.

"I don't think stealing something the size of an airship is very...sneaky. Or feasible for that matter."

Alexandra shrugged.

"Well, we don't need it's entire body, do we?"

Emilia shook her head.

"Not really, if you want to replicate a monster you need only a relatively fresh chunk, but you'll only able to make a baby version of-Oh."

"Yep. I'm not crazy enough to give this....Thing to CQ. But I think she should be able to handle whatever version of this thing qualifies as a kitten easily enough. Especially if it's under my total control."

"That might work."

"Well, we'll get to see soon enough anyway. It isn't putting up much of a fight."

No sooner had she said that that the screen's vision shook, and a massive roar filled the room as golems went flying left and right. The manticore rose on it's hindlegs, small red rivulets of blood doting it's body, throwing off most of the golems that had tried to attack it. Then it slammed back to the ground, crushing the golems that had tried to rush forward, or survived the fall, before backing up, flattening itself to pave the way for it's...Scorpion tail?

Then, a jet of liquid burst forward from the tip of the tail, and Alexandra winced as her interface was momentarily filled with anomalous damage reports. She brushed them away and turned them off, and looked at what was happening directly through the eyes of the golems present.

Alexandra frowned as she saw the front ranks of her army fall down, hissing and bubbling as the acid spray ate through their body, and eventually fell silent as the liquid found it's way to their core systems, with some golems' torsos exploding as the chemical came into contact with the mana crystal at their core. Alexandra frowned. Thanks to her experience in making the Royal Archmages, she knew that mana crystals were overall remarkably stable, unless spells directly clashed with them, which meant that there was more to this acid than simple chemistry. Which rather explained why this monster was so feared, it was probably very hard for normal priests or healers to bring back someone who'd been dissolved, and hard to defend against something that could dissolve plate armor.

Well, in that case, as they say, the best way to fight fire is with fire. Alexandra drew up a brief plan, and sent it to CQ, who acknowledged, and began calling up her golems, organizing them into vast mental formations so she could move entire platoons at once without the need to tell every individual soldiers their orders. It was kind of like those strategy video games she used to play, to some extent at least.

So while the frontline legionnaires and martial golems were busy being melted and torn to pieces, the column began to reorganize, fanning out into a vast half circle, with legionnaires standing back in a massive block formation, interposing themselves between the rampaging beast and the emerging Palace Guard golems, CQ at their head.

Whatever instincts drove the manticore, they were spot on, as it immediately locked it's gaze on CQ, and began flapping it's wings, ascending into the air, before immediately diving for the boss.

As soon as it began it's attack run, the legionnaires all drew back their spear in a single, perfectly synchronized motion, and threw. The manticore easily dodged by just a single flap of it's wings, rising out of their trajectory...And straight into the wall of lightning arcs spells thrown by the Royal Archmages.

The manticore screeched, it's muscles seizing up, and crashed beyond the entrance, clipping the pillars and destroying the top of most of them. It roared, and jumped back up remarkably quickly, madness in it's eyes as it turned around, one of it's wings dragging on to the ground, broken and useless.

Alexandra smiled. That was more than she had been hoping for. Taking out the beast's capacity to fly was going to be a huge boon and-

That thought lasted as long as it took the manticore to rip out one of the entrance's pillars with it's hands, which apparently included prehensible thumbs, and throw it at the assembled Palace Guard golems. Fortunately it wasn't a very good thrower, as the pillar only flattened the front ranks, before bouncing back in pieces and ending it's course in the legionnaires.

"Okay, what the fuck?" Said Alexandra out loud.

"Beasts aren't just bigger, meaner animals. They aren't exactly sapient, not most of them anyway, but they're definitely much, much smarter than animals as well."

Alexandra looked sideways at Emilia's grim face, and sighed.

"Wonderful. Welp, time for plan B then." She pressed a mental button, and golems in the reserve began moving, the spider tanks in front. The Praetorian Guard also began assembling, although they stayed in their post, which was between her core and Emilia and the rest of the dungeon, and whatever might be trying to kill them.

Emilia chuckled.

"Well I hope it turns out better than plan A." She gestured at the manticore, which was currently busy fighting off the Palace Guard as CQ had immediately ordered a charge to avoid sustaining a pillar bombardment. Unfortunately the remaining pillars were breaking up their formation, and forcing them to fight less effectively, although fortunately the manticore seemed to be so pissed it had decided to dig in directly rather than just melt everything. That, or....or it couldn't, and had a limited supply of acid that had to recharge.

"Your sarcasm is noted. Emilia, how many acid blast can a manticore make before having to recharge?"

The vampire girl blinked, before looking speculatively at the beast.

"Oh...I'd forgotten about that...Uh...Depends heavily on the manticore, each one is unique in the quantity, quality, and type of acid it makes, but I'd say...2, 3 shots? And it's going to take a few days for the acid sac to refill."

Alexandra smiled. All things considered, it wasn't a particularly nice smile.

"Excellent. Well then, let's kill this thing."

*****

Allya sighed and closed her eyes as she sat down. Today had been...Taxing, to say the least. Combat could really take it out of you, even more so when you had no idea if you were about to be ambushed at any given moment, or what lay around the next corner. She suddenly had a lot more respect for the assault guild, if that was what the poor bastards had to deal with. Getting hit by a giant monster was just icing on the cake.

"Are you okay? That was a pretty bad hit."

Allya opened her eyes and chuckled as she saw Pyn's worried face, her girlfriend hovering right in front of her.

"I'll be fine, I've seen worse. Besides, Éclair has taken the brunt of it." She looked to the side, where a healer was tending to the wounded. "Her condition hasn't changed, has it?"

Pyn shook her head, and Allya sighed in relief.

"Well, that was-"

"The bravest, or stupidest, thing I ever saw."

Allya and Pyn looked to the side, where a tall man, entirely clad in a sort of black varnished laminated armor, stood. Even to Allya's admittedly very cosmopolitan view of the world the armor looked odd, and somehow subtly exhuding danger.

"What?" Said Allya by reflex, before shaking her head. "Oh, you mean the bit with the sand demon?"

"Yes." The man looked at her for an instant, before deciding to take a seat, and Allya had to stop her eyebrows from rising. Whoever this man was, he was clearly in a position of authority here, as everyone had cleared the area around them, affording them some privacy, and the two obviously hovering soldiers looked like bodyguards, who were looking very warily at Dominique. Sitting down to treat them as equal was...not exactly common. Then again, they had just saved his bacon, or at least that of a significant number of his people. "You do realize how suicidal that move was?"

"It was either that or the sand spirits. You know, coming from every direction to tear us to bits."

The man blinked, clearly not used to being talked back to, let alone in such casual a fashion, and smiled.

"I suppose that is a very good point. Well, in any case, you have my thanks."

"That's nice. Whose thanks, exactly?"

"Olstor Numis, current leader of the Greymane caravan." He looked around. "Well, what's left of it anyway."

"I'm sorry for your losses." Said Allya blandly. Oh, she meant it, she hated the fact that innocents had gotten killed, but she would waste any pity on the assholes that had purposedly put them outside safety just to fill their damned pockets.

"Thank you." The man sighed. "Well, at least your stunt seemed to have broken the back of the main assault." He nodded towards the mesas, where Allya could see ships starting to poke above them, making a beeline for the caravan, as well as hearing the ever closer sound of combat. Very close actually, Anders manifestly hadn't wasted any time. "And the rescue team from the town is about to arrive it seems. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have our rescuers to properly thanks and kow-tow to."

Allya chuckled, the irony just being too much to bear under the circumstances.

"Of course."

Less than a minute later, the sound of combat reached a paroxysm, and simply ended. Then, the rythmic sound of boots hitting the ground filled the air, and a platoon of soldiers errupted in the corpse littered clearing, the familiar shape of Anders at their head.

"Ah, commander Anders, I take it. I-" Olstor's voice died as he realized the commander wasn't paying the slightest bit of attention to him, and was in fact frantically searching the faces of the survivors assembled behind him.

Then suddenly, Anders locked gaze with Allya, then Pyn, and relaxed.

"Miladies! You're safe!"

Allya sighed as everyone turned towards them, and facepalmed. So much for keeping things incognito...