Ever Upward, Bitter Nines!

[Author's Thanks: Thank you everyone for the outpouring of positive feedback and support; it's times like these when any of us need them most. :)]

John and his small army were led to look upwards to the growing sound from above. A hum... like a welcoming song. It wasn’t the “leyline” John had seen, nor had it come from any of those present. The song was a melody of machinery, the opening of the Peak’s many irises now gazing down at the enemy. Pelos plates glided apart to dilate the eyes of the Peak in the soft, sliding song of ascension... and it played to annihilate the fools who dared to climb.

The trick of perception was such that to look up the bridge made it shrink in the massive distances every level of Vantage promised. The tower of metal was, even only between the Plate and Ninth Disk, half a mile long... and looking straight up some miles strained the eyes as John and others tried to see where the opening pelos gates would stop their welcoming process. John’s eyes were the sharpest, and even he could not make sense of the speck of white waiting directly above… but it was enough to tell him that it wasn’t a pelos gate.

They’re not sending the first three disks after us… they’re sending every disk! They were ready to breach as many gates as it would take to get up to the Peak’s fortress… so in retrospect, John wasn’t sure why it was surprising to see their enemy forego the gates altogether and, in their place, let loose the entire throng of Lawmen from the nine cities above.

<A thousand insects die as readily as a hundred, Master.> Tita’s poor effort at supporting John did nothing to ease the new troubles they faced… or would face, if John didn’t work fast.

The Ninth Disk was the first to offer a charging wave of Lawmen Braves-

... who ran headfirst into and through the invisible wall of the Plate and into the Violet beyond.

John closed the portal that just ate the first eager wave of Lawmen and, with a brush of his fingers on Golgon’s right wing, jumped to where he expected the terminal to be on the ninth level. As it had been on the tower John experimented with, so it was here: rather than the sparse, featureless chamber of the Plate, the Ninth level of the bridge was carved with ornate script and featured a simple, screen-less terminal with about a dozen buttons and a single slot for Golgon’s key. The four remaining Lawmen guarding this terminal were felled before a new tunnel opened to cover the door leading out to the Lawmen arranging to march in. John had secured the Ninth level… and if the key worked, it would be the only level they needed.

The clicking and screaming of Lawmen from the Eighth and above could be heard as they began their flight down towards the Plate; with half a mile between John and his fellows below, he knew they’d have quite a ways to fly downward before they even came in range for the first hellfireballs or other projectiles that would greet them. John couldn’t let it get to that point; the press of Lawmen, be them alive or dead, would smother his people.

“Do it!” John commanded, but the Ootuk was already ahead of him, leaping onto the console with his small body and, with a triumphant shriek, slamming the bloated mana key home. The shaped key slid effortlessly into the machine, causing it to hum peacefully… until it began to spark, sputter, and finally shock the Ootuk with a bolt of static. The elder yelped and flapped away, but seemed no worse for wear; the machine, on the other hand, now cried and hissed as the mana visibly arced from it and into the key’s engorged body of gold.

John watched until, with only the gentle blue glow of the key as an exception, the entire bridge went black.

“It... it worked, hahahaha!” Golgon’s joyful surprise ought to have worried John, but he too was too happy to care. The sword wouldn’t be used… Hell, even the giant gun strapped to him could be saved for some later barrier. The Lawmen were probably still charging his friends, but now the route had opened.

A gentle whistle… and crashing metal. The noises were new; they joined the Lawmen’s battle cries and transformed them, slowly, into shrieks and hollers of pain or surprise. John first thought it owed to the sudden darkness of the ascension bridge, but their visors should have compensated. That wasn’t it, then.

It was a gentle rumble at first, but soon the screams and clamoring of Lawmen reminded John about that one last element, the one that wasn’t supposed to be an issue until they reached the topmost layer of the bridge. It was back when none imagined the Lawmen would open every gate, or that anyone would still be at the base of the bridge once the key was inserted. It began to clang along the sides of the tower before it was sent spinning violently through hundreds of Lawmen who could not escape its rapid descent-

“The fucking elevator!” John didn’t waste another moment; shunting a ton of his mana into the spell, he opened a massive tunnel at the Ninth Disk’s level, tearing a yawning hole across the entire width of the bridge... just in time to hear a 100-ton platform, and the broken Lawmen who fell after it or remained stuck under it, whoosh into the Violet beyond. The entire thing followed the other Lawmen who were mercilessly tossed into the Violet at the edge of the Plate... and with the portal closed, John finally permitted himself an exhale.

“That’s… a start.” The path was laid bare, the reinforcements took a massive hit, and John’s army was ready for the next phase. The Gamer and Golgon went to the tunnel, the latter trying to make out his fellow Bitter Nines below while the former began opening his network of miniscule tunnels above. Without any barrier to his vision, he swept up past the Eigth, then the Sixth, then the Fourth… and finally, that domed ceiling of white that marked the very top of the ascension bridge.

John had made it. His portals scanned past the throngs of confused Lawmen, swept beyond the four vaulted mouths of this strangely open chamber (because what did the bridge have to fear from the Firsts) until, with a sudden wash of golden light, John’s right eye fell upon the glory of the highest city of Vantage.

Towers of emerald and sapphire laced or reinforced with gold; broad city streets paved with glowing runes along energized paths; greenery, made with real green plants still wet with the pure water wasted on them to keep them tended in post-apocalyptic scarcity; the complex park that surrounded the bridge and housed the greenery as miniature plains of grass flanked by trees; and high above the ascension bridge, aligned with the flat, lifeless square of silver murals stretching in all directions from where the tower grew out from the ground… the monstrous, bronzed square of the Peak.

The massive base of the floating pyramid known as the Peak’s fortress was not the nearest part of it. Close to the ground and led to by a trio of twisting staircases waited the golden platform made with another mural of human legends etched on its surface. Emerald stairs fled upwards from this platform, then, without rails and perilously extended over a long fall back down to the First Disk, until it reached a platform beyond John’s reach: the final landing as described by Golgon’s diagrams. The front porch of the god-emperor of this nightmare, where double doors hid the innermost sanctum. That was their goal… and beyond it, the most recent tyrant for John to fell. The shadow of this place stretched across those reliefs in the ground, but John had known its darkness since he arrived: it suffocated the disks unequally until, upon touching the Plate, it could blot out life itself.

Fairy, to me! John realized the time it would take for her to fly and, with some of the last bits of mana he had remaining, conveyed her to his side.

Mage Circle activated. Borrowing 680MP from Fairy.

The massive portal to the Violet was closed, and new tears opened before John and his forces down below. In as single a file as each **** could manage, they poured through these last tunnels as Lawmen continued to charge downward to **** the ascension bridge with their furious ****… and it would be minutes before all realized their foes had vanished.

High above the First Disk, in clean winds and with the faintest scents of almost Earth-like flowers, they assembled… all according to plan.

All according to every plan.

Back at the Bitter Nines Headquarters...

Deanna shivered and clutched her robe to her body in tight, sudden fear. Her throat constricted as her black eyes bulged in horror or disgust. She sat like this at a lonesome table for almost ten seconds before Jasmine, who continued to cringe through some tough, Woofroot-grown vegetables, finally noticed. "Deanna?" Jasmine reached out to touch the girl's finned arm. "What's wrong-?"

The redhead violently withdrew her arm, her eyes darting in fear to Jasmine's face... and at the purple, hideous blur that it became. Her hands twitched to paint this horror, vivid and viscous, as if predicting it through oils might help prevent it. But it would not be avoided, and Deanna's scream at this realization was quiet. With tears bubbling at the edges of her eyes, she fled to the solitude of her giant pot. Jasmine, confused and already on edge as everyone waited for news of the rebellion, could only chase after her, repeating her question.

The Peak's Landing, First Disk

When all was said and done, the forces of John had been assembled upon the massive stage that sat between the First Disk—the highest ground of Vantage—and the floating, golden fortress of its ruler. It was here that the absolute authority of this Kingdom rested, here where no souls seemed to wait, where no guards watched, and where no weapons or defense systems could be seen. John finally began to worry. They think we’re still down there, sure, but… where is everyone?

"The Peak is safest here on the First Disk," Zalla explained, "and yet..."

"We just attacked the bridge directly under it," John finished, "so why is it unguarded?"

Neither Botuk nor Zalla had an answer, but Cidi, only half as awe-struck as her colleagues, guessed, “Well, we’re still down on the Ninth Disk as far as they know, so maybe they moved to support?”

Tricia quietly deployed four of her drones as they shot out in opposite directions.

“So long, did we fight…” John glanced at Golgon who, perched on Hurk’s shoulder, joined the giant in a mesmerized sweep of their surroundings. “To think, the moment has finally come… to believe that we are now this close to freeing our people…”

Hurk, whose bold smile never faltered, only nodded with a happy chuckle. “If you told me Humans would deliver us to the golden hour, ho ho! I would have laughed for days… but now…”

“We can end this,” Cidi hissed.

And I can finally start getting everyone home.