Chapter 74 – Survivors

  “Cole, look at this,” said Nona, nudging one of the ablating ape bodies with her fist. Its fur had gone stark white after death, losing the natural camouflage it had. He knelt down and touched it, pulling out a tuft of prismatic fibers.

  “Some sort of stealth skill?” he asked. “Maybe that’s why my mark failed. I didn’t know it could fail.”

  “I’ve heard of creatures like that,” said Nona. “But these things—their strength, their size. They shouldn’t be on this floor of the Hall. At least, not in these numbers.”

  Cole settled back on his heels for a moment and pulled out his vape pen. “Maybe these floors are due for a risk index update,” he said. Over his radio, he called out to Howie. “Howie, keep the big guns on the ridge in case those apes come back for round two,” and then to Nona, “Police these bodies, yeah?”

  “Sure.”

  With Howie left on overwatch and Nona left to collect any loot from the apes on the ridge, Cole backtracked to join Roxy and Besson down in the canyon. The hot, humid air shrouded the canyon in a cloying mist. Cole could hear the hissing of steam and bubbling of underwater vents. Hot springs, then, creating a natural smoke screen. No wonder the apes had used this as a hunting ground. If they had stealth abilities—wild for something eight feet tall with the strength to make a gorilla look puny—then they could get right up on prey before they knew they were in danger.

  Roxy’s shield was caked in blood and matted fur, and the woman herself was splashed with blood and worse. Besson had fit a new belt of ammunition into his gun and was cleaning off his axe while Nutmeg lapped up water from her rubber bowl. The bodies of their opponents were already turning black and crispy, breaking down to leave nothing but residue and maybe an otherworld armament if they were lucky.

  “You hurt?” he asked Roxy.

  “Nothing major. A bad bite on my arm, but it fixed itself up during the fight,” she said. She was flushed and sweating, with her helmet off. “Had to burn Malleable Mending charges non-stop just to keep ahead.”

  “You did great,” said Cole. He looked over at Besson. “Both of you did.”

  Besson just raised a thumb toward him, but the man looked worn out. Nutmeg at least chuffed in his direction.

  Cole tilted his head toward the canyon, and his vanguard team sighed and pulled their helmets back on. He took point this time, heading down into the steamy ravine. The terrain leveled out and he passed several partly-ablated bodies from where he had focused his own fire before the apes started shooting arrows at him and climbing the ridge. Loot could wait, for the moment. They still had to clear the canyon itself. It was only a few hundred meters long, and maybe twenty-five or thirty wide, but it had several cracks and crevices shooting off at odd angles. As they pushed in, Cole burned the last of his own charges to mark hostiles, just in case there were still some of the camo-apes hiding in the crevices waiting to jump out. Instead, he saw a cluster of silhouettes that took on a purplish color-as though his innate IFF couldn’t decide if they were friends or foes.

  “Contact,” he whispered, raising his hand and gesturing ahead and to their right. “Three pacs, prone, forty meters. Not moving.”

  A chorus of good copy responded on his radio, and he pushed ahead. The smell of blood had been strong at the mouth of the canyon, but here he started to pick it up again, along with the bitter foulness of excrement behind the sulfurous tang of the springs. The billowing steam parted just enough for him to see the shredded remains of what once was a humanoid on the ground. A male had been eviscerated and partially chewed, and now it swarmed with insects. Roxy coughed behind him and Nutmeg whined. Besson swept his gun around, looking uncomfortable with the tight confines and low vis.

  “One DOA,” Cole murmured into his radio. No helping this man, Cole pushed ahead and began to see more. They had been a decent-sized group of climbers, if his guess was right. At least eight dead as he approached what he hoped would be survivors. He called each of them out as Roxy stopped at every body to check conditions. They had all been savaged by the apes and partially eaten by the cruel predators. Stone weapons lay in ape-shaped stains on the ground, as well, so they’d at least put up a fight.

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  As they got closer to the bodies, Cole called out. “Friendlies inbound. Apes are gone, we’re here to help.”

  Two of the silhouettes shifted in the fog, and one pushed itself up against the cliff, away from his voice. In a few more seconds, they were close enough to see two more bodies along with three survivors, though they hadn’t survived so much as the apes hadn’t gotten around to eating them before Cole and the rest could intervene. One of them had a bow but was too weak to draw it. One was still unconscious, while the last tried to drag herself away.

  “Hey, hey, easy,” said Cole, raising his open palm and lowering his own weapon. The survivor with the bow lowered it—though he might have just lacked the energy to hold it up. The side of his head was covered in blood, and one eye was swollen shut. “Roxy, triage?”

  Roxy being a corpsmen meant she was used to assessing battlefield injuries. She pushed up, pulling around her pack and opening the satchel of battlefield medicine supplies she carried. She handed equipment to Cole and Besson as she spoke.

  “Tourniquet on that leg,” she told Cole, pointing to one of the unconscious bodies. The leg was shredded below the knee, but he also had a five-foot long arrow piercing his shoulder.

  “Umm, what about the arrow?” Cole asked.

  “The leg is more critical. He could bleed out if we don’t get a tourniquet on it. He still might, even with it. Use a bandage to immobilize the arrow until I can look at it.” She glanced to the survivor trying to drag herself away—at least, Cole thought it was a her. But she was covered in red and blackened wounds and most of her hair was gone. “Looks like that one was burned. We have LF-empowered burn gel here,” she handed it to Besson. “Start applying it to the worst areas first.”

  Supplies handed out, she moved to the strongest of the survivors and Cole felt the pop of abilities being burned. Using what charges she had left on the ones they were most likely to be able to save was a cruel, but necessary, battlefield calculus.

  The man gasped, seizing as his Resilience temporarily shot through the roof. As Cole worked to tighten the tourniquet on his own patient, he watched as wounds on Roxy’s survivor started to close and scar over. The swelling from his eye reduced as well, and the man blinked.

  “Healer?” he groaned and pointed to one of the bodies on the ground. “He’s our healer. Help him, and he can aid you.”

  Roxy glanced back and grimaced. “I’m sorry,” she said. “He’s already dead.”

  The man grit his teeth against the pain of Roxy’s triage as she wrapped a pressure bandage around one of his deeper cuts that hadn’t completely closed with her healing ability. “Alas, that we should meet such a fate. We are twice-cursed, I suppose. Taken by the Hall of He Who Watches.”

  “Are you their leader?” asked Cole.

  The man shook his head and nodded towards Cole’s patient. “Nay, Artian, am I—a man of blade, bow, and ballad. He is a retainer. The right hand of a chosen lord. We were traveling to swear into his service when we found ourselves on the first floor of this terrible tower. As though being forced to face Demons of the Boiling Sea were not trouble enough for our sins. Now we must be made to dance and die on the strings of a mad god.”

  Once he got the tourniquet tightened, he drew out Beth’s photo. “Seen this woman?”

  He squinted at the photo through his good eye. “Aye, I have. Friend of yours?”

  Cole replaced the photo. “Something like that.”

  “We crossed a day ago. I spoke to her in brief. Interesting lass. Parted ways shortly thereafter.”

  “Where?”

  Artian hissed in pain. “Get me out of this ravine and I’ll tell you that and more.”

  A fair enough trade, if the man was telling the truth.

  “Rox, I need you!” shouted Besson. The woman under him was convulsing as he tried to hold her still.

  Roxy swore and moved over. Cole felt another of her charges burn, but when the woman went still, it wasn’t with relief. Roxy looked back and shook her head.

  The survivor looked at the woman and swallowed. “‘Tis a shame. This troupe made for foul company. But I liked her best out of them.”

  “Forced to swear and fight. So you’re what, like a criminal, or something?” asked Cole.

  The man offered a grim grin. “Or something,” he offered. “Criminal implies wrong-doing, when I was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. That is, being in the magistrate’s coffers when he arrived with the house guards, as it were.”

  “Or something, eh?” asked Cole. He grinned. “No judgement.”

  “T’was taxes embezzled from the people of the March. I was merely liberating moneys to stimulate the local brewing industry. Nay, sir. Save judgement for true sinners,” said Artian, with pained chuckles. He winced as it awoke new pain and nodded down to a body that had been ripped nearly in half. “Like that one. He was caught in the magistrate’s wife’s drawers.”