Chapter 81 – Duressed to Impress

  Passing through the door of mist felt a little like passing through a wall of water—though that might have been the billowing steam on the other side of the door that filled the caldera from many bubbling pools.

  “Fan out,” said Cole. He pointed to an elevated position to his right. “Howie, take the high ground with Nona and Artian.” He handed the snake-bite rifle off to Nona. “Besson, Roxy, either side of me. Fifteen meters. Provide security while they get in position.”

  The challenger teams that had come in beside them moved off, each staying tight in formation with weapons and shields raised. They moved further into the pools, almost shoulder to shoulder as they splashed through the shallow hot spring pools.

  Cole kept his assault rifle leveled and tucked into his shoulder as he scanned the mist. The sound of bubbling water and hissing steam drowned out anything that might be hiding deeper in. He moved up, pushing his shoulder against a rock to give himself some cover. Besson did the same on his left, spaced out and with Nona pushed even further to the flank. Roxy advanced behind her shield on the other side.

  “Cole, I’m not seeing any movement in the steam,” said Howie. “I think I might be able to clear some of it.”

  “Do it,” he said. A subtle rumble vibrated under his boots. Whatever challenge Dallemonte had stuck at the top of this mountain probably already knew they were here. Hopefully the other teams had weakened it.

  Hopefully Beth Black was still alive.

  A crack sounded behind him as Howie sent a single ephemeral shell into the mist. It burst silently, pushing a sphere of cleared air out from its detonation point. The mist blew away, and Cold caught a whipping tail as a creature shifted positions, moving left.

  “One hundred meters front,” said Cole. “One contact, large, reptilian.”

  Far off to his right, the other team took advantage of the moment’s clarity and moved up, probably hoping to surround the creature.

  The steam itself shifted, billowing toward the creature, and the group froze. Their mage barely managed to get a shield up before a high-pitched whine preceded a thin, grey beam blasting out of the mist that crashed against their shield. As soon as it hit, it expanded into a cloud of hissing steam. Even from the distance between them, Cole could feel the intense heat coming off the attack, and a scalding rain began to pepper them.

  “It’s water!” whispered Roxy. “It’s shooting boiling water!”

  Cole burned one of his charges, feeding everything into the target tracking ability. A wavering red silhouette, distorted and formless, moved around. “Howie, my eleven o’clock, seventy-five meters. Clear it.

  Another shell arced out, and this time, when the mist blew away, it revealed an enormous, winged reptile with a serpentine head, maybe five meters tall at the shoulder. It was sucking steam in through vents on its chest as sacs on its back expanded. It had the same coloration as the stone, with ripple-patterned scales that looked like bubbling water. More camouflage—except for where its muzzle was stained red. It had been gorging on other climbing teams. Cole saw their bodies for an instant before the mist filled back in.

  “Is that a fucking dragon?!” asked Roxy.

  Cole was so stunned by the sight he didn’t immediately shoot. But that didn’t last long. Both he and Besson opened up with their otherworld firearms, sending an opening salvo of rounds at the creature before the steam could completely close up again. Several rounds sparked off the creature’s scales. It flinched back and twisted its head around, looking for the source.

  The other two teams took that as their cue to attack, and the team on the left surged forward, screaming their battle cry as they raised weapons. Cole swore, checking his fire as the climbers fouled his aim.

  Another screaming jet of water sprayed out of the mist, and this one hit the charging climbers. They must not have had a mage, because the beam swept across their unprotected advance, cutting one of them fully in half like a water-jet CNC machine. The splash-back scalded the other members advancing, and their war cry turned to screams of pain.

  The mage on their other side took that opportunity to send a bolt of lightning crackling toward the creature, but it diffused and spread in the fog, only illuminating the great shadow of spreading wings.

  “Incoming!” Cole said.

  The steam roiled as the massive draft of the creature’s wings displaced the air. It bounded out of the steam, plowing through the wounded party, and scattering them to the shallow pools in a gout of splashing water. Two of them didn’t get back up, but a pair of warriors were able to climb to their feet—until the creature’s tail whipped around, knocking their legs out from under them.

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  With them prone, Cole was able to open fire again, tapping rounds that were accelerated by his accretion wraps. The rounds struck the creature as it came around for another pass, knocking it off target before it could snap its jaws around one of the warriors.

  “Roxy!” Cole called.

  “Moving!” she said.

  Besson opened up as well, providing what cover fire he could as Roxy charged to close the distance, stymied some by the shallow water. The creature whipped around at the sound of the splashing, and one of the warriors was able to get to his feet and strike at the thing with a great hammer. Its neck snaked around, expelling a cloud of super-hot steam from its mouth. The warrior must have either had crazy resilience, or an ability, because the steam didn’t boil him in his armor. But it did halt his advance, and the jaws snapped shut around his chest as the creature’s neck flexed and it tossed the warrior through the air.

  Roxy slid over top of the other warrior as the steam dragon pounced. Her shield flashed, and the dragon rebounded, toppling over into a bubbling pool as its tail thrashed. The last member of the left-flank party got to his feet, angling a flintlock rifle at the creature. He fired what looked like a solid beam of red light and then retreated to reload.

  The second team, the one with the mage, chose that moment to launch their next attack. Two of their members had bows, and they launched arrows that streaked through the air, cracking with super-sonic shockwaves. The arrows stuck fast in the flank of the dragon and were followed by two more as the creature wailed. But it righted itself and launched into the air toward the mage’s party. Cole’s leap was still active, so he pushed off from his cover, matching the creature’s angle and velocity. His rifle rounds streaked toward the dragon, attracted by the mark even as they were accelerated by his new class evolution. But even their enhanced lethality didn’t help them strike anything vital. The steam rounds caused bubbles of flesh to form under its skin and burst, but this thing must have been at least as tough as one of the heart-eater demons—and four times the size of it.

  It twisted, roaring in pain at the superficial wounds, but not deterred. It crashed down among the right flank party, and its impact shattered the half-dome shell of energy the mage had managed to erect, scattering the team members as it swept the high-pressure jet across their fighters. A bowstring snapped, and one of the archers fell in several pieces. The other took refuge behind the shield of a heavily armored fighter, but both were pushed back and tumbled across the surface of the pool, scalded. That left the mage all alone, standing in a pool trying desperately to cast something as the steam dragon inhaled to fill its steam sacs again.

  Cole couldn’t get through the dragon’s hide. But he did have one thing he knew could pierce thick armor. Still in the air, he extended his vorpal spear and fed all his kinetic energy into it as he activated its innate ability, winding up and hurling it away. It trailed golden light as it blasted as though launched from a ballista. His forward speed halted immediately, and he dropped straight down as the spear left a vortex in the steam in its wake. The vorpal-affix spear struck one of the inflating sacs on the back of the creature, and it ruptured, spewing boiling water everywhere.

  It shrieked, clawing at the armor-piercing spear now stuck fast in its back. That had hurt it. Then the spear’s innate ability went off. A blinding bolt of lightning cracked down from the sky, arcing to the spear, and then spiderwebbing out across the surface of the creature. Cole could see its flesh illuminate from within, even the dark shadows of its bones standing stark against the incandescent meat. He swapped his magazine for a fresh one and slotted it in as the creature reeled and thrashed. It splayed out, claws scrabbling at the ground.

  The mage, having found a new lease on life, shot his own lightning point blank—not at the creature, but at the spear itself. It sent even more electricity coursing through the creature through its punctured steam sac, and several rounds from Howie’s cannon impacted it on its side. It looked like they were finally starting to take the initiative.

  “Cole, above you!” shouted Howie.

  Cole threw himself to the side, splashing into the water just as three smaller dragons, each maybe a meter and a half tall, crashed into the pool with him, snapping, scratching, and biting at the spot he had just occupied. In the mist above, airburst rounds from Howie began to detonate, casting the juvenile dragons in sharp relief. Two of them fell to the ground, frozen solid, and shattered. The others retreated.

  “Out of charges,” said Howie. “Switching to conventional.”

  That still left three for Cole. One of them pounced, and he knocked its head aside with his muzzle as it crashed into him, scratching and clawing and sending them both rolling in the hot spring. When he came upright, the others had circled around him, hissing and clawing and preparing to tear him to shreds. Praying that Howie was right about his new evolutions safeguards against bisecting himself with bullets, he switched his weapon to full auto and burned another charge of his ability. His three dragon nymphs lit up, silhouettes wavering only slightly at this range. But he angled his rifle at the closest of the three as it dove for him and squeezed the trigger.

  The nymphs lacked the armor of their mommy dragon. Cole’s rounds punched through the first, and then angled out to either side of him, immediately striking the two others on his flanks as his new bouncy bullet evolution altered their vectors, leaving glowing red trails in their wake. All three dragons burst with a spray of blood as though he’d been shooting with a minigun instead of an assault rifle. When his bolt locked open, all three creatures were on the ground, in pieces.

  The distraction cost them. The larger dragon, freed from its pressure, fixated on the very exposed mage who had just shot it with a lightning bolt. In a flash, it bounded forward and snapped its jaws around the man’s midsection, crushing him from ribcage to pelvis before flinging his broken body into the pools and turning to see most of its brood laying in much the same state.

  And Cole laying in the middle of them with an empty rifle.