Ruthless V5-Epilogue-Death in the Air

A warning rang through James’s mind.

He frowned.

That’s from the wyverns that went with Alan and the Electricity Commission. Are they having some problems?

“Everything all right, skapi?” Mina asked.

James tried to force a smile, then gave up. Mina would know he was faking it.

“I felt something from the wyverns,” he said quietly. “I think Alan and the others with him are in danger.”

“What can we do?” she asked, reaching over and taking his hand.

They had been eating lunch, enjoying a short time alone, before the children and Yulia would come home from school and day care. Now the plates sat forgotten, as a fresh crisis absorbed their full attention. It had been two weeks since the Panther Queen and her army were defeated and sent marching southward.

“There’s nothing anyone here can do,” James said. “I’ll try to pilot my wyverns directly. They’re supposed to be protecting the group, but I’m guessing what happened was pretty sudden. Assuming direct control is the closest I can get to actually helping. But I only have two in the area. This isn’t going to be easy.”

Mina nodded, squeezed his hand, and let go. The last thing James saw before his mind left his body was her rising from her seat and starting to clear the table.

Then he was soaring through the air, his spirit flying due West—shooting toward Orlando.

James flew as swiftly as he could, until he struck flesh and found himself inside the Great Sound Wyvern. The Great Solar Wyvern and the Great Sound Wyvern were the two that were assigned to Alan and the Electricity Commission, while the Great Berserk Wyvern and the Great Venom Wyvern were protecting the rest of the Expeditionary Force on their return journey to the Fisher Kingdom.

He seemed to have traveled almost instantly to his vessel. Below, he saw the party had struck an underground surface. They seemed to have fallen into a sewer or something, because James could hear water splashing as they moved. The humans were surrounded by an army of red-eyed rats.

As James observed the situation, an additional flood of rats was pouring out from an alley, moving to join those that menaced Alan’s group. As Alan and his party were in a sort of underground space, while the new rats were flowing in from the street level, the humans would be sandwiched from above and below.

The strange thing that James noted was how the rats above were united into a single shape, moving as if they were one single gray furry body. He could see the individual rats’ eyes and tails, but something kept them synchronized and in constant physical contact.

This is a Ruler’s power, he decided. He didn’t know how he knew it, but he was almost certain. His spirits fell. The odds of the group surviving had just cratered.

An instant later, he issued his order to the Great Solar Wyvern, and it began charging its Solar Ray.

While it charged, James directly targeted the mass of rats that had thrown itself toward the opening in the ground. The Great Sound Wyvern struck them with its Otherworldly Shriek, and the entire unified rat structure writhed with pain as the attack hit.

James had a moment of grim satisfaction as the uppermost layer of rats looked up at him with what he could only imagine was hatred in their eyes—at least he would make the rats suffer for their dinner—but the mass of furry creatures kept falling. After a moment, the top layer of rats stopped staring at James.

The pile of vermin landed with a loud thud in the sewer below, and James could not see the humans at all anymore. They were completely covered in rat flesh, so densely packed that they probably blotted out the sun for those suffering their attack.

A moment later, the Great Solar Wyvern fired its Solar Ray into the rat swarm. A ray of blinding light struck the mass of them, and even from high in the air, James could smell the rank odor of their burning fur and flesh.

A moment later, there was a collective screech of agony, and this time, the uppermost layer of rats keeled over dead. Unfortunately, there were still so many that James could not see the humans. The surviving rats continued whatever activity they were engaged in, moving in a frenzy—undoubtedly attacking the humans beneath them—not even bothering to look up this time.

Perhaps they were aware that if they successfully killed off their targets, the wyverns above would have no more reason to target them.

Fire again! James ordered. The Great Solar Wyvern began to charge its attack once more. They were under full, intense Florida sunlight, and it was midday, so the attack would undoubtedly charge very quickly.

In the meantime, James threw himself into a downward dive to hit the rats from closer range—he and the Great Solar Wyvern were about five hundred feet up—and as he drew a bit nearer to the rooftops of the squat structures that stood on both sides of this street, he blasted out another Otherworldly Shriek.

Some of the rats squealed and writhed, some seemed to be paralyzed on impact, and another group dropped dead instantly as the sound struck them. This wasn’t as many as the Solar Ray had killed, James noted. The Otherworldly Shriek was probably less effective, perhaps because these vermin were inherently creatures of the darkness.

He nevertheless fired another Otherworldly Shriek as he waited for the Great Solar Wyvern to launch its blast. More rats were paralyzed, and others looked up at him with obvious hatred, though only a few died this time.

More importantly, James began to be able to see a few human shapes, trying to fight their way out from underneath the mass of wriggling rat flesh. They kicked and stabbed and stomped and tore rats from atop their skin, but wherever one rat was crippled or killed, another took its place. James could hardly even see little patches of skin or armor become temporarily visible, before they were again covered with rat fur.

He started charging another Otherworldly Shriek. The area-affecting sonic attack had helped the humans thus far, to the extent that he could gauge such a thing, more than it had hurt them.

Then the Great Solar Wyvern let out a cry of alarm.

James turned his head, and he saw the cause of the wyvern’s distress.

Two giant pigeons—creatures nearly as big as the wyverns themselves—were now flying around the Great Solar Wyvern in circles, scratching at it with razor sharp claws or pecking it with spear-tipped beaks. The wyvern was already bleeding in long lines across four different parts of its body.

For the first time, James regretted that his monsters were made from his own skin. Tough though it was—almost certainly bulletproof at this point—a layer of fur would have been valuable protection for the wyverns just then.

I’ve heard pigeons referred to as rats with wings, but are they really allied to these things? he wondered for a moment.

But no. The wyverns were probably just in the pigeons’ territory, and the pigeons were simply defending it. The rats and the pigeons might have overlapping territories, if one ruled the skies and one ruled the underground. James had seen that before with his bats and squirrels.

He hesitated for a moment. Could the Great Solar Wyvern handle this threat on its own? It was visibly trying to defend itself, batting at the pigeons with its massive wings, though it was not as graceful or agile in the air as them. Perhaps…

A flicker of movement caught James’s eye. In the distance, he saw another handful of giant pigeons rushing toward the Great Solar Wyvern.

Damn it! That decided it. He knew he couldn’t win the fight against the rats without the Great Solar Wyvern.

James ordered the Great Sound Wyvern to blast the pigeons and then return to blasting the rats, and then he shifted his spirit from the Great Sound Wyvern’s body and shot up into the Great Solar Wyvern.

As soon as he landed in the monster’s body, he felt the extent of the wounds. They were not so terrible, certainly survivable, but they had been distracting. They would continued to be, unless the creature’s natural tendencies were reined in by a mind colder and more disciplined than its own. A human mind.

The pigeons struck at him again, and James batted them both simultaneously with the Great Solar Wyvern’s wings, then folded them to his sides.

The blows seemed to take the pigeons by surprise, and James gained a moment from that as he began to drop out of the sky. The idea he had in mind was that he might fall all the way out of the space the pigeons considered their territory. Perhaps if he was a bit closer to the ground, they would leave him alone.

As he descended, he felt the Otherworldly Shriek released from the Great Sound Wyvern. It had been aimed so as not to strike him, but it was a sound-based attack. Such precision was probably impossible, so it did graze him.

James tensed up slightly in the monster’s body. And then he felt them surround him.

The other five pigeons that had been rushing to reinforce their comrades were suddenly in the air right next to him. Probably some form of swift aerial movement Skill. Not something he could have accounted for.

“Leave me alone!” he yelled through the Great Solar Wyvern’s mouth. “I have no reason to fight with you. My problem is with those rats below.” He pointed a claw at the monsters still fighting in the sewer. In the instant when he was half-turned to look at the sewer scene, he suddenly became aware that the rats were not monsters anymore. The mass of vermin that had seemed to fight as one had now actually become one. A single giant rat.

Identify.

Ruby-Eyed Rat King Frederico, Lv. 33

James had a moment of observing the giant—pickup truck-sized—rat before the pigeons demanded his attention again. The rat had one of the Electricity Commission members clutched in its claw and had just bitten his head off. Most of the other humans appeared to be bleeding heavily or dead, though James did not look for long enough to be precise.

“You think your fight is with them,” one of the pigeons said in a mocking voice. “But that’s not up to you, wyvern. Your fight is with us!”

The five of them hurled themselves at him, ripping with their beaks and clawing with their talons, apparently ready to struggle to the death over their little patch of sky.

James obliged them. He threw himself fully into the struggle. He had already not been trying to fly, allowing himself to drop freely. He was in the right headspace for a fight to the death. They outnumbered him, but he was slightly bigger, and as long as he was under direct sunlight, he got a little bit of extra energy from that. He tore one bird’s wing and broke another’s neck.

In return, they tore big gouges out of his chest and legs and ripped the skin of both of his wings. This wyvern would not fly again without some serious healing.

But then the pigeons seemed to be content. They had done enough. James felt them start to push away from his body.

A blast of sound struck the midair tangle of flesh and feathers—James felt slightly annoyed that the Great Sound Wyvern wasn’t focusing on the giant rat—and the pigeons scattered.

“Safe travels!” crowed the one that had spoken originally.

James did not reply with words, but he did bite the head off of the pigeon whose neck he had broken. No healing for that bird.

Then he crashed into the ground.

He instantly felt the wyvern’s rib cage shatter, along with bones in both of its claws.

Move me over to—James began to give the Great Sound Wyvern orders, when he realized that he didn’t see it. He turned his head and saw the surviving four pigeons all attacking it, though the wyvern was on the ground now, certainly outside of their territory if it had ever been inside it. And the other two pigeons were dropping from above to join their friends.

The Great Sound Wyvern was faring even worse than the Great Solar Wyvern had. A great gush of blood was already pouring from its neck. It did not have long.

James would have to do what came next on his own.

The Great Solar Wyvern had dropped only a few feet from the hole that had opened into the sewer. James dragged its body forward, pulling it along with broken limbs, even using its jaw for purchase on the broken concrete.

He pulled his body until he reached the edge of the hole, and he looked down.

The Ruby-Eyed Rat King stared up at him, its emotions unreadable. In its claw, next to its head, it held a bloody pulp that had once been human but was now missing the top half of its body. James could not even tell the sex of the deceased.

He seethed.

At this creature’s level, James knew, it was almost certainly intelligent. Rats were not stupid creatures even before the System.

“I’m going to come back for you,” James growled. “In a different body. I’ll come back and kill you. How dare you attack my people?”

“If they are your people,” the Rat King replied in a low voice, “you should have protected them.” There was little malice in its tone, but James thought he heard a hint of contempt.

“I’ll protect them by making an example out of you,” James replied, taking the emotion out of his voice. “Let the rest of them go.”

“I think not, crippled wyvern.” The Rat King turned away from James as if he was no longer of interest, and the giant monster’s nose twitched and wrinkled. “Them.”

James felt movement at the edges of his vision. He turned his head and saw a large, reptilian head sticking out of a building’s front door. It had feathers all up and down its snout, despite being the head of a reptile.

Almost like a bird.

But it didn’t matter what sort of creature this was. James didn’t even bother to use Identify. He needed to do whatever he could to take care of this Rat King.

With a last burst of strength, he threw himself over the edge of the hole onto the creature’s back. The King turned its head lazily and looked at him.

“More food is delivering itself,” he said with a derisive snort.

Then the Great Solar Wyvern lit up the Rat King’s back with an intense burst of fiery energy, firing Solar Ray at point blank range. It had been fully charged before he struck the ground.

James heard a scream of agony, smelled the foul odor of burning fur and flesh, and then felt the Rat King’s claws grasp him by both of his wings.

“Bastard!” the Rat King uttered indignantly.

Then, with little apparent effort, it ripped the Great Solar Wyvern limb from limb.

James felt the agony of ligaments and bone disconnecting for an instant, and then he was forcefully separated from the body.

Floating above, he saw that the Great Solar Wyvern’s head was lying apart from its body. The Rat King was now viciously biting into the body.

James looked to where the Great Sound Wyvern was, but it lay unmoving in a pool of its own blood, being eaten by the pigeons.

A moment later, it must have died.

He blinked and found himself back in his own body.

“Skapi?” Mina said. She sounded worried. James’s face must have given away roughly how things had gone. “Is everything all right?”

“I think we lost Alan,” James said in a stunned voice. “I think we might have lost everyone in the Electricity Commission. The wyverns are dead, and so is the monster I had with Alan, so I can’t check.”

“Summon him!” Mina exclaimed.

“What?”

“Quickly, use the Skill you have to bring people to your location! Use it to save Alan!”

“Right.”

Summon Divine Helper!

James felt a massive buildup of Mana inside him, the Skill activating—and then nothing.

Mina looked around. She must have sensed the Mana build within James too. She would have observed that it had suddenly dissipated, but unlike her, she had no way of knowing that it had, for some reason, simply gone back into his core rather than being used up as usual when he tried that Skill.

Summon Divine Helper!

He tried again, but with the same lack of result.

“Where is he?” Mina asked, her voice breaking. Tears had sprung to her eyes.

“Not here,” James said.

“What happened to him?” Mina asked urgently, her brow furrowed.

“He’s not dead yet,” James said automatically. “I can still feel him out there somewhere.”

But he was a bit shaken.

Alan might not be dead, but it seemed as if he was choosing to remain with his group. Refusing to be summoned. Not all of the Electricity Commission had blessings and could be summoned. Alan was probably the only one, actually. He might even be aware of that.

And the captain was choosing to go down with the ship.