A new message appeared of its own accord in James’s vision:
You have 1 Hour to Gather
With 100 Other First Wave Summoners
Serenity must have seen it, too, for James felt her stiffen against his back. But there was no time for further reaction, for a second message appeared:
Gathering Accomplished.
Nemesis 3 has Released
Time seemed to slow.
<... 2022-09-23 18:41:06 +0000 UTC View PostThe next three days were a blur.
Airports were terminally weird experiences, and Bjørn alternated between being a charming and withdrawn travel companion. It was all suitcases and stale snacks, empty gates and harried skeleton staff who volunteered heroically to keep the lights on. Hotel rooms and minifridges, rental cars lifted from abandoned lots, keys snagged from under the counters, convention centers and new skylines.
The cell networks were still up, so James would call each...
2022-09-23 18:39:09 +0000 UTC View PostAfter what felt like an idyllic week of preparations, it suddenly felt as 3-Day was upon them. With only four days remaining, every moment felt precious. Jessica set to work marshaling military staff and volunteer civilians to create her envisioned assembly lines. Cindy and Captain O’Shea, the S1, worked on coordinating the different platoons and companies depending on their Benediction strengths, while Duffy, Hackworth, and his XO, Major Baker, spent countless hours trying to determine the...
2022-09-23 18:36:38 +0000 UTC View PostThe machine was beautiful. Easily a dozen feet long, it was slender and delicate, fashioned from sinews and plates of steel and gold, and veined with divine diamond that gave off a pulsing glow. A large depression near the front could serve as seating, and James realized the whole of it was like a kind of motorbike without wheels, elongated and with ivory wings emblazed along the side; the wings weren’t functional, he saw, but more a stylistic effect, a symbolic decoration.
Everybody ...
2022-09-22 12:04:00 +0000 UTC View Post“It’s not much to look at, yet, but I’m close to attempting the final assembly,” said Jessica, tucking a strand of blond hair behind one ear.
James had met her in the parking garage beneath the Marriott where a large space had been cordoned off for Fabricator usage. The air smelled of old exhaust, and the lighting was garish and bright. They were only a floor down, the ramp to the street just visible in the distance, but the area had been marked off by yellow tape and cones to k...
2022-09-22 12:02:00 +0000 UTC View PostA black sedan picked them up outside their DC hotel the next morning and drove them to the White House. James wore a dress uniform that Jessica had ensured fit him perfectly, and he felt stiff and uncomfortable and utterly unworthy of the navy-colored suit. The black tie felt like it was choking him, the white button-down shirt was starched to hell, and he had a conspicuous lack of decorations on his chest but for the bare essentials.
Still, he had Command Sergeant Major chevrons on the...
2022-09-22 12:01:02 +0000 UTC View PostThe day and evening had proven hectic, and it was only as dusk fell that James managed to find time alone with Serenity. She’d gone up to an abandoned Cuban restaurant on the 17th floor with views of Brooklyn’s downtown core. The restaurant was gloomy with the growing darkness, the colors bleached out, the no doubt vibrant murals depicting life in Havana grown faded and gray.
“There you are,” said James, crossing the small waiting area, passing the hostess stand, and navigating ...
2022-09-22 12:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post“I still got your attention?” Star Boy looked out over the audience. “Good. Because this last segment is a bit of a puzzler. Let’s take a look.” He clicked his clicker.
Bless
Dark Energy Siphon
Demonic Form | Infernum Reaper | Void Break
Bless
Aura Mastery
Nova | Righteous Obelisk | Seraphic Web
Bless
Inspirati...
2022-09-21 12:04:00 +0000 UTC View Post“Now we’re talking,” said Serenity.
“Now the Smite crew are the ones who lay down the pain. Something your humble Star Boy can only do with his sense of humor.” Star Boy paused. “See what I did there?” He pointed at himself. “Self-aware.”
“Richard,” said Jessica from the side of the stage, her tone flat.
“Right, right. So! Smite. Let’s take a look.” He clicked his clicker.
Smite
Dark Vision
“All right, listen up you monkeys.” Star Boy leaned forward dramatically, eyebrows raised, and waited as if daring the Blue Light crowd to react. When nobody responded he resumed slowly pacing back and forth on the stage. “As Colonel Hackworth just finished saying, we won a big victory out there today. Fourth Wave-level crazy. We’re talking millions of the bastards, shut down, denied, kicked out of town.”
James looked over to where Hackworth stood with Jessica and the...
2022-09-21 12:01:04 +0000 UTC View PostJames radioed for a ride and they descended to the streets in tense silence. Bjørn’s staff bid them goodbye, surprised at the speed of their departure, and nobody spoke on the way down. Only when they emerged onto the sidewalk did James turn to the crew, the fresh air and vividness of the street providing the kind of energy that he needed for what he was to say.
“I’ve turned down Bjørn’s offer.”
Everybody watched him gravely, including Bjørn, whose expression was insc...
2022-09-20 12:02:00 +0000 UTC View PostJames extended an arm over the sofa’s back and said nothing. Absorbed Bjørn’s words as the others blew up all around them.
“Are you kidding me?” asked Serenity. “You saying you could have done any of this better than James? It’s because of him that we’re even in this room, that there even is a Blue Light -”
Becca leaned forward. “You notice how many people we lost when we were forced to become Blue Light? Where’s Sarah?”
“Yo, Sarah made her ...
2022-09-20 12:01:03 +0000 UTC View Post(Quick note: I'm going to be double posting this week to try and bring the Monitor tier to 20 chapters ahead of what's available on RR. Here we go!)
James and Yadriel returned to the fortified intersection to find that the army presence had been drawn down. A second tank had shown up to tow the Abrams away, though it lacked a tank gun, and was in the process of being hitched up. Crews were overseeing the process, while the remaining Rangers were piling into hummers.
The Ranger cap...
2022-09-19 12:01:04 +0000 UTC View PostThey made their way through the valley of dead demons.
It was unnerving and strange to walk through so many corpses. James had waived the offer of a Bradley, and there were too many in his ka-tet for them to take Zeroes. So they walked. Picked a torturous trail between the piles of decomposing demons, stepping on chitinous limbs and ground soaked in ichor.
Everybody was wary. Though there was no doubting the demons were dead, it was all too easy to imagine the walls of talons and ...
2022-09-19 12:00:09 +0000 UTC View PostSerenity watched him drive up, losing track of what she was saying even as he parked this bike just outside the crowd’s radius.
“…which is awesome ‘cause by that point I was totally shooting out the barrel, and my new Benediction… hold on. Excuse me folks.” She set the Ma Deuce down, slipped between the members of Crimson Griffin, and took James by the arm. “Come on.”
“What?” He pulled back. “We’ve got shit to do. Where we going?”
“Come on 2022-09-16 12:50:48 +0000 UTC View Post
Too much was happening all at once. James’s system was still hopped up on adrenaline and exhilaration, leaving him jump and looking for more Nem2’s to come plummeting out of the sky at them. People were forming a circle around him, speaking all at once.
Beyond them, the army folks were evaluating their situation, treating casualties, radioing in to command, and getting their shit together.
“James? James!” Bjørn was getting in his face. “We need to take control of this s...
2022-09-15 12:56:20 +0000 UTC View PostJames barely read the text. With death about to fall upon them all, he instinctively chose Heaven’s Assault.
The text faded.
Awareness arose within him as to the Benediction’s nature: by expending a significant amount of his divine power reserve, as determined by his Arete, he could drop a blast of divine fire upon his enemies from above.
Time seemed to slow. Even with the noise-canceling headphones the roar of countless guns was overwhelming. Nem2’s were falling upon ...
2022-09-14 13:25:59 +0000 UTC View PostThey settled in.
Ebon Hydra joined them and would man the guns facing down East 33rd. Their leader was a stocky butch woman with a crew cut and a perennial cigarette in her mouth called Lou. James liked her plenty; she was course, direct, and had a laugh like a siren.
It felt strange to move to the fore and take point with so many capable men and women watching from behind. An Abrams tank was in place, its presence hugely reassuring and projecting a sense of immovable strength, bu...
2022-09-13 13:37:21 +0000 UTC View PostOne thing became readily apparent right away: the military, once it got going, once the right people locked in on what needed to be done, was awe-inspiringly ready to move heaven and earth to achieve their goals.
Jessica did her level best to keep up with the lieutenant colonels, majors, and captains who set up shop in the hotel, a dizzying array of different military branches and special forces, but soon she, too, was sidelined as efficient men and women got to work implementing the ne...
2022-09-12 13:15:34 +0000 UTC View PostHaving burned Aeviternum, James, Richard, and Jessica stayed up all night. Serenity came to check in on them at one point but left in drunken disgust when she saw them crowded around a computer screen.
“That ain’t living,” she said over her shoulder as she left. “That’s putting your life on lay-away.”
But the data they mapped out was too exciting to ignore. Richard painstakingly examined Jessica’s new Battle Engineer information, creating tables for components, googl...
2022-09-09 13:01:54 +0000 UTC View PostThe night wound down. The music kept blaring, but people slowly faded away from the dance floor, bottles in hand, to either go hook up, crash, or sit on the sidelines and get maudlin.
James had a good, solid buzz going. Every now and then he wished he had another cigar or wondered if he should have forced everyone to tackle another hive, but then he thought of how good this was for morale, how these people weren’t machines, and hell, how they’d be facing millions of demons tomorrow,...
2022-09-08 12:12:59 +0000 UTC View PostThe mission was a huge fucking success.
Somebody raided a liquor store and brought a hundred bottles of champagne to the ballroom, which proved ridiculously insufficient, so the hotel bar was raided and it turned out the Marriott had plenty more bottles in reserve.
The hotel staff, the few that still remained, were invited to partake, and most did.
Richard hooked up his phone to the ballroom speakers and started blasting some party anthems, stuff by The Weeknd, Drake, and Bi...
2022-09-08 12:11:59 +0000 UTC View Post“Hey Major, you want a cigar?”
James blinked and came to life, pushing off the side of the hummer to look up at the gunner behind the mounted M2. The car was positioned in the center of the street, the tip of an inverted triangle whose base points were two more Ma Deuces, each manned by Serenity and Becca.
The sun was setting. The wind was bitterly cold, sweeping down the avenue to knife right through James’s jacket. Shadows lengthened. A few blocks over, incongruously, sals...
2022-09-08 12:11:00 +0000 UTC View PostJames awoke.
He lay in a queen-sized bed, the sheets clean and smooth, the mattress indescribably perfect. Serenity’s couch hadn’t even come close to this decadence.
Something was ringing. His phone on the bedside table. 5:00 AM flashed over and over on the screen.
Wiping at his face, James swiped the alarm off, then sat up. A hotel room. The Marriott. That’s right, he’d come up here around two in the morning for a few hours’ sleep.
He felt like crud, his eye...
2022-09-08 12:10:00 +0000 UTC View PostJames fielded questions for the next twenty or so minutes, though it quickly became obvious that most folks just wanted to hear themselves talk. He was patient, however, answered what he could, admitted when he didn’t know something - which was often - and promised to get back to folks on everything they wanted to know.
In the end some thirty or forty individuals left, some coming up to apologize and give their reasons, others slipping out the double doors quietly and without a glance...
2022-09-08 12:09:00 +0000 UTC View Post14 Days till Nemesis 3 Released
84 Days till Pits Open
James stared at the text which floated before his eyes as he walked south to the Marriott with Jessica and Serenity. Had it been only a week since he was attacked in the subway by the Nemesis 1?
It felt like a year ago.
Jessica was on the phone continuously and working her tablet as she went. For the most part she seemed to be accepting documents, getting new clearance l...
2022-09-08 12:08:06 +0000 UTC View PostThe conference room was large and almost completely empty. A couple of aides were on hand, ready to work the screens, while a couple of officers sat together at one end, stiff and cold and withdrawn.
The dozen TV monitors were lit, dour faces staring at them.
It felt like walking into a prison sentencing.
Major Hackworth was on one of the central faces, and James studied him, trying to get a sense of what was to come.
The major’s handsome visage gave nothing away. 2022-09-08 12:07:00 +0000 UTC View Post
The next four hours were unpleasant, drawn out, and frustrating to the extreme. James got a sense of large wheels turning in backrooms as power brokers cut deals and negotiated the DRC’s future. Jessica was on her phone almost continuously, either placing calls, texting, or being placed on hold. Sometimes she’d disappear into meetings or take off down the hallway without a word, desperate to catch someone before they left the building or for otherwise inscrutable reasons.
Serenity a...
2022-09-08 12:06:00 +0000 UTC View PostThey entered the NYCEM, Serenity checked her bullpup, and Jessica led them upstairs. Their entrance had been noticed on previous visits, but this time they actively drew stares, as if the vast majority of the folks loitering in the lobby knew who they were.
They weren’t the friendliest stares.
Made James feel like he was walking into a slaughterhouse and these people had lined up to watch.
They entered an elevator. Jessica was tense but calm, while Serenity kept fidgeting,...
2022-09-08 12:04:00 +0000 UTC View PostJames pulled himself smoothly up into the tunnel and strode into the darkness. This time he approached it without fear, extending his axe before him on the off chance that things were different this time.
They weren’t.
He hopped over the edge, out of the cloying darkness, and landed neatly on the flesh-paste floor.
An identical spire rose toward the distant demon symbol high above, and another bulbous cocoon was placed right beside it, lashed to its side by thick stands of...
2022-09-08 12:01:05 +0000 UTC View Post