SlaughterBot

125: Titan's Debt

Nicolai avoided the undead guards with ease, his shelled Soul Sense allowing him to spiritually blend into the background while the poncho hid his form, and after scaling a series of stairways he looked into a large, ornate room.

He’d expected the head Warden to resemble the rest of them, tall and spindly, but instead it resembled an undead knight, only scaled up. Almost as large as the Titan, it sat in a large chair behind a stone desk, wearing once-ornate but now faded plate armour,...

124: The Titan Speaks

The warden’s chains didn’t loop around throats, the blades on the ends didn’t cut and slice. Instead it just gripped the others tight and began to pull, dragging them stumbling after it, Perro yelping as he was dragged over the stone.

Nicolai followed at a distance, pleased to find that his shelling of Soul Sense combined with the poncho was effective at hiding him from this undead. He could faintly feel its own Soul Sense sweeping around when it brushed him, but with his own shel...

123: Back in Jail

Nicolai sat himself by the desk in his room, looking to Kleos. Onwards and upwards. All of this was only a minor event. His course was unchanged.

‘You felt the castle shake?’

‘Hard to miss it.’

‘What does it mean?’

Kleos looked uncertain, chewing on its lip. ‘I’m… not sure. Perhaps a simple earthquake, perhaps something more. A castle in good repair would typically resist any tremoring of the earth. But this castle has greatly decayed from th...

122: Fallout

They all emerged onto the tower-top of the safe-place, peering out over the wall. Slow moving clouds of dust choked the castle lower down, thrown into the air from places where chunks of the castle had toppled and crumbled.

‘Seem’s like this castle isn’t as safe as we all assumed,’ said Elena. ‘I wonder what our brave new leader is going to do about this?’ She shot a look at Nicolai.

He grinned back, projecting confidence. ‘We’ll find out what’s going on. Just a ...

121: Tremor

Nicolai grinned at Karl through the shimmering disc of energy, staring down the man’s gunbarrel. Naturally, he’d charged his shield in readiness of something like this.

He crouched down so the shield covered his whole body. The shield was visible, rippling the air, and Karl was smart enough to shoot for his legs. His rapier slipped out of its sheath to hover beside him while he tugged his pistol from its holster with his free hand.

He wasn’t worried because his Soul Sense to...

120: Follow the Leader

Nicolai emerged from the painting to find guns pointed at him, and his shield snapped into existence as he sidestepped, raising his gun-limb. He recognised an ally and connected to them over Local, querying them as to what was going on.

‘What?’ they replied, in a manner that suggested confusion.

His gaze was drawn to the shadows, which flowed in endless, thick streams over walls that seemed to rise endlessly and endlessly, the ceiling disappearing up and up and up, ev...

119: What am I?

Everything around him was transformed, oddly surreal and dreamlike, vague and shifting. The ragged dark of the enemy retreated out the corridor ahead of him, into the area beyond, and Nicolai pursued, hungry to finish it. A world of imagination, Kleos had said, in a tone of warning. What did that mean?

He emerged from the corridor onto a strange island, floating in a void of darkness speckled with endless stars. A path wound between rough stone crags, up towards an open area on top of t...

118: Into the Painting

‘Come, finish your part,’ hissed the painting to Nicolai, Jo, and Kleos who Nicolai held in his hands, as they stood before it.

They’d gotten away without issue, and now Nicolai needed to work out just what would happen if they did as the painting bid. His eyes rested on it, observing it in detail.

The painting depicted a hallway, almost as though it were a large window or entrance into that hallway. The hallway was of plain, slightly yellowed stone, blocky and unlined. Flam...

117: Teamwork

‘The paintbrush is there,’ Nicolai told Beth over Link, indicating the spot, keeping his eyes on the two armoured knights across from them. ‘These things are very hard to kill, but that’s not our goal. We get the paintbrush, we get out, and we win.’

His Node was near empty, and he reached out a hand as he spoke, his rapier which was only a second from losing its charge snapping back toward him. He sheathed it and pulled two crystals, drawing on them to refill...

116: Chivalry is Dead

Nicolai paused just short of the tunnel exit. For this particular operation, he’d successfully taken a kind of temporary, operational-only leadership from John, with the man and the others agreeing to follow his directions. John had given this up surprisingly easily, which told Nicolai he was uncertain about taking lead in combat. Nicolai intended to capitalise on this in the future, in his drive to seize full control of the group. ‘You’ll provide fire from behind,’ he told Jo, who no...

115: Attack on Tower

Cyberwarfare sunk spiritual claws into the thing and dragged it from where it had hidden, leapt at it and savaged it like a wolf, but the thing, which appeared as a little ball of slick, oily darkness in his Soul, struggled and resisted, trying to dig back into him.

Nicolai immediately turned the entirety of his Soul toward it, diving in to aid Cyberwarfare. He gripped the dark thing tight, clenching his Soul around it and squeezing it, holding it still while Cyberwarfare tore at it. 2024-07-24 16:03:00 +0000 UTC View Post

114: Demonic Artifact

‘Yeah, I remember. What about it?’ Kleos responded to his question about the Demon, Paxolnaz.

‘It mentioned a sword to me. It told me how to get to that sword.’ The memories resurfaced, almost as fresh as when Paxolnaz had given them to him. A route through the castle, winding down and down, to its lowest depths. A door, and a word he was to speak to open it.

Behind, a powerful undead. One that wielded the sword, a big two-handed weapon. Then, a method to create something ...

113: Spiritual AIs

Torches dulled from yellow to orange, the sun kissed the horizon, and Nicolai and Beth returned with more purchased items to find John and the others were back from their trip. Nicolai didn’t ask how much progress they had made, but they seemed pleased with themselves, and they asked Ben whether they could have the Soul Trap he’d finished making. The old man gave it up to them immediately, looking happy to do so. Nicolai had opted not to remind Ben of their deal, not just yet. He could al...

112: It Writhes

Nicolai was already up and launching himself over the edge of the tower after Beth, falling into open air. As gravity seized him he clutched the three rings tight and injected a surge of Oma into all of them, using them for once not to rise up but to shove him faster down after Beth who was flailing at the air as she sped toward the ground.

She grunted as his arm lanced out and he grabbed her by the forearm and she clutched at him in return, and her weight dragged him down, but he worke...

111: Sunny Soulful Skies

Beth came at him, and she’d learned from his tricks. She feinted at him with a cutting strike then switched to crushing, but he’d seen it coming and a Loose Guard awaited her, the blow glancing off with minimal effect. She kept going, and now she was rapidly switching between the forms; Piercing, cutting, crushing, crushing, piercing, cutting, piercing, attempting to confuse him as she juked and harried. He also detected her sudden, irritated awareness of how he was monitoring her leaking...

110: Souls Collide

Nicolai reacted to Beth’s Soul Sense attack immediately. He formed his own into the tight sphere around him in time to endure the attack, and worked to keep it solid and concrete while she struck and tore at it.

He didn’t struggle, his Soul Sense sphere holding firm until Beth pulled back, a frown on her face, and her Soul Sense began to twist and shift as she prodded and poked, searching for a weakness, attempting to form different shapes to see if she could have any more effect. <...

109: Mysteries of the Soul

As he entered the safe-place and looked upon those within, he could feel the Modules stirring within him, watching out from his eyes and ears with interest.

‘Perro.’ Nicolai gave the youth a friendly smile as he entered the room, seeing Azure lowering the speakers volume to almost zero.

‘Hey, welcome, uh, welcome back,’ Perro managed a smile of his own in return.

‘Good job with the cameras,’ he said, and Perro’s uncertain smile bloomed into grin. Some urge made...

108: Bleeding to Death

Nicolai almost laughed but inside he knew this was wrong, his Mask was still there and it was fighting hard. He couldn’t kill them. The Contract prevented it. The darkness writhed through him, pushing and pushing, but it met his drive to survive, slipping out from the depths of his mind and Soul. If I kill them, I will be killed. And beyond that, his possessiveness. They were his! Why would he break such useful tools? Insanity!

And the hole, he remembered, was not a ...

107: Angry Bird

Some of the deafening boom of the chaffbang and a flicker of the blinding light made its way through his hands and eyelids, and Cyberwarfare growled at him when his Link connections fuzzed, the result of the anti-network filaments contained in the grenade. Not something he’d needed at this moment, but he hadn’t purchased any pure stun grenades as he’d expected to be using the chaffbangs against people with augments, not giant birds.

The bird let out a great scream and its body and...

106: Pegasi Ring Hunter

As the three of them made their way outside and looked over the bridges, Nicolai noticed something had changed.

There were no longer any archers floating over the largest bridge, and there were also fewer undead on that bridge in general. Looking further afield, he noted other bridges, all of which had previously been manned by undead, but now some of them had no undead atop them.

Had people killed the undead? He saw no corpses or other signs of a fight. Most likely someone or a g...

105: Hacker

Half an hour later found Nicolai floating beneath the bridge over the chasm to the Trade Link.

He finished shaping and squeezing the C4 into one of the bridge supports near the centre, then stuck the triggering device, a small boxy unit, beside it, and from it he drew two needle-like activators which he pressed into the plastic explosive. Through his Local connection to it he set a specific signal as its detonator, one he would give when close enough, and the Modules helped him tie this...

104: Still a Killer

Nicolai crept up the ladder, the other two following after him. He was almost at the top, close enough that his Soul Sense was able to push up and slip around the tarp and check the area. Nothing in the bush, but the gunshots continued, steady rapping sounds, occasional bursts and booms.

He slid the tarp aside and poked his head out, checking around. All clear, excepting the sound of gunshots coming from one side. He emerged slowly and quietly, poncho open at the front, MP5 at the ready...

103: Old Friends

Nicolai awoke, cushioned by air, floating, staring at the ceiling.

He was changed. It distinctly reminded him of waking up in the white void that first time as a human, everything different.

For a moment fear and rage twined through him, but tilting his head he saw the Cherubic Surgeon hovering beside him, and his Mark tingled, and he remembered where he was and what was happening.

Surgery complete. Session ending in five… four… three… two… ...