Take the Bridge!

The streets were filled with the briefly freed denizens of the Plate. The population was let loose by news of the massacre of scores of Lawmen and the consolidation of territory that followed. Now the Lawmen could only be found concentrated among the government facilities that oozed outward from the ascension bridges like blood from wounds. This suited the denizens of the Plate fine, for the most part: all but a delusional few had nothing to find at those vaunted shrines, and the absence of the Lawmen from almost every sector meant less ****, less beatings, and less justice to stop them from living.

Rather than riots, mass ****, or whatever else one might attribute to the prison layer of Vantage, the streets were filled with cautious curiosity, friendly faces, and labor-racked bodies finally invited to rest amid those who could not or would not be committed to labor. By the azure light of their dim streets, the Plate citizens mingled past curfew in unprecedented defiance of the law.

At the Bridge of Ascensions Most Exalted, the primary ascension bridge and pin on which all of known Vantage sat impaled, those reeling Lawmen forces were purposefully meager. Braves, Brawlers, and even mere Hammers came together to outnumber the four Keepers and the two solemn Judges; at two dozen to one apiece, one could be forgiven for being surprised that so many neonates were trusted with this task.

All the same, the Judges polished their white suits of light armor with diligence before deigning to leave the bridge’s innermost chamber to directly command the Keepers meant to marshal their army of the untested or barely-blooded. The Keepers in turn barked orders at their army, and all the local Lawmen only nodded and obeyed, as they had to, with visors to hide their pallid complexions and quivering lips. The Peak’s Commandment overrode their animal fear, their natural inclination to run and hide before they too were butchered by the Bitter Nines.

They stood their ground and acknowledged their orders with the same **** loyalty that led to their deaths.

Reality tore open gashes all around them as horrors unseen on Vantage poured through: tentacles, chains, and all manner of foreign magic confused, corrupted, and killed the Lawmen in droves while that exalted pillar they guarded shone pink and gold and white with iridescence borrowed from the massacre that unfolded all around it. Over a hundred Lawmen were prepared to, and did, lay their lives to delay the inevitable. The Keepers continued their orders until **** **** or blood loss prevented them; the Judges’ disdain for the enemy proved a mightier shield… at least until “the inevitable” appeared through a large tear in space.

He was clad in black leathers interrupted only by the makeshift brown straps that helped him leverage the colossal, silvery weapon cradled in the crook of his right arm. He was followed closely by a coterie of similar Human imposters, though each had varied their appearances and weaponry beyond any appearance thus far reported. They kept their tight formation, responding only to those Lawmen who slipped through the ranks of monsters and traitors already sieging the block. The only Keeper not killed or preoccupied with one of the latter watched as the golden-haired one’s skin began to vibrate, and then come apart, as small automations sprouted from her armor once the clutch of faux-Humans reached the bridge’s entrance.

There, a twice-reinforced set of zeetok doors would be sure to bar any entry to the fast and able… but the creations did not seek to fly through it, but to leap from their master and onto the door itself. The hiss of their cutting magic could not be heard over the brutal melee swirling around him, but the Keeper knew the lights flashing at the door had to be stopped. He prepared three runes, held between the four fingers of his human-like hands on small slabs of blue stone, ready to destroy the dangerous interlopers… until the dark figure’s free hand moved swiftly, suddenly, and lethally from where it sat by his side to shatter and break the insides of the Keeper’s neck.

The last middle-ranked Lawman was killed, and John was rather sure it happened just in time. The rest of the Lawmen ranks that managed to get past John’s minions were being broken by the Bitter Nines or by whichever human they were unfortunate enough to meet: Travolta, Galley, and Miles produced the usual body count with bare knuckles, Rave’s strikes did the same with the added wound of blinding them through the protection of their visors, and Tricia didn’t hesitate to blast off the offending arm of a Lawman Brave charging her.

At least, Tricia didn’t hesitate at first. Seeing the creature screech and fly chaotically as blood oozed and flung about from the sudden amputation froze her in her tracks. She remained locked up as she tried to talk herself through it: this was a permanent barrier, and so these creatures naught but more firmly anchored Abyssal illusions, and the horror she was seeing was-

John touched her shoulder, and stunned eyes met worried ones. “We’ve already won here; you can focus on breaching the door!”

She smiled weakly at the small mercy he offered, but steeled her resolve. With a tap of a crystal on her wrist, the holographic screen came alive. “The door has been breached,” she reported, “albeit only 3% of the cut needed to **** them open. Hostiles are detected inside… at least a dozen, but likely more-”

John spotted the small gap in the fortified door where Tricia’s drones had finished their work. He opened a tunnel near it barely large enough to shove his thumb through, to peer inside. After his eyes adjusted to the artificial radiance of the bridge’s interior chamber, he could see the Braves within, each lining up with pacifier clubs and ready for ****. They likely believed they had minutes until battle would be joined.

But John could bring an army through the head of a needle, now. “Call your drones back; that’s all I need.” With that, the Gamer vanished from his human coterie; they deployed effectively as they could, guarding Tricia as she commanded her drones to return. The Bitter Nines, all but celebrating now, continued to rout those forces they could reach.

The entire affair had been resolved in the space of three minutes; as the end of the massacre neared, John opened a tunnel to replace the slightly-ruined door as the passageway into the base of the ascension bridge. “We’re ready to move in!” Rosa signaled twice, once in each tongue, as John began conveying his summons into the safety of the enemy’s walls. Most of the Lawmen were already dead, but the few that remained insisted on fighting to their respective ends; only Miles seemed eager to oblige them as all the rest piled in through the portal. “Come now, violent one!” yelled Hurk at the portal’s mouth, his fists already covered in cuts and viscera, much of it not his own. He motioned to Miles as she rapidly punched in the armored chest of a Brave until she was satisfied with the collapse she felt through her knuckles; with a grunt and a nod, she leapt through the bridge’s bared opening… and with her vanished the portal for any surviving Lawmen to follow.

The scene inside was a clean carnage. Botuk and Zalla, the only **** self-defenders, had already grown numb to the image of their dead brothers and sisters-in-arms; that their bodies now lined the whole hall and landing of the Peak’s ascension bridge was merely an added insult. With a command, John ordered Zalla to work with her lawbreaker’s armor and hack back into the Lawman Network; soon they’d know precisely what resistance their enemies intended to put up.

The rest paid the bodies only enough mind to confirm that their stillness was permanent. John’s strikes had shown their efficacy to everyone present, and the wings of the Lawmen had no place to take them to be reclaimed from here. Instead, most marveled at the interior so unlike any of the hovels or dark, ugly places Vantage had bothered to show them until now.

Polished zeetok, indistinguishable from a particularly lustrous silver, made up segmented sections of the combined walls and ceilings that formed the half-circle shape of the hallway. The floor was etched with slip-resistant gridwork painted black along the etches and lined with pelos accents in alternating curves all the way towards the elevator landing. Brilliant lights, more powerful than any of the runic lanterns or azure lamplights of the Plate, washed the entire thing in ever-reflecting rectangles of radiance that felt too futuristic in design for how primitive the Dorani and their ally races had thus far proven to be. It was close enough to the similarly strange designs of the Lawmen, however, and so none questioned it.

Anything, Zalla?

<I’m already in the Network, Master, and… the other forces on the Plate are all regrouping on the bottom four Disks before converging on this one to help stop us. None… none are to remain on the Plate at all.>

That struck John as strange. They knew he could break at least two barriers, maybe more, so regrouping to pincer the intruders between reinforcements from above and below was sensible enough… so why return to the Disks first? It wasted time... unless they thought he couldn’t get through the entire tower in one climb. Maybe Kitok really was the spy… she’s been gone since before Golgon got the key or I this cannon.

“Alright,” John announced, his voice booming over the shuffling of tentacles, drones, and bodies, “this is where they play their hand or we make them play it!” He moved through the throng of warriors with the disruptor pointed upwards; the harness Tricia had built for him made its bulky weight far more manageable than when he had first called the thing, but that didn’t make those who understood its power any more comfortable as he walked. “Once they’re done opening as many gates as they’re willing to, we insert the key and work our way up. We just need to watch out for the elevator coming down as we blast our way through whatever gates they don’t open.” John nodded towards the well of the tower. “Golgon, that white beam probably marks the path of the elevator, right?”

The group had nodded in affirmation until that point. Golgon looked towards the massive chamber of the bridge’s base: as with the rest, thin lines of gold broke up the dominating silver of what looked like a great bowl or relief in the center of an even greater room. Into that recess, a full thirty feet across, was where the floating disk-like elevator no doubt landed; that part made perfect sense. “What… beam, John the Newman?”

“That one,” John motioned to the empty air over the platform. The curious glances made John look again. He thought it had seemed oddly thin, and in the rush of combat, he didn’t give it a second thought; it was the most magical thing visible here, save the invisibly enchanted pelos hatch above, and he had assumed it was just some magical track upon which the elevator ran. It pierced right into the very center of the elevator basin and through the center of the sealed petal-hatch above; like a video game elevator, that told him it was a kind of energy “rail” for the elevator.
But now that John looked at it with a more careful eye, he realized the beam more… ran through the ground than to it. His eyes traced the line more carefully; he tried to focus on the beam, but it seemed impossible, as if he were trying to track a one-dimensional line through the air-

OBJECT LEYLINE_ROOT[Y_NEGATIVE]
LEYLINE_ROOT[Y_NEGATIVE].THRONE_ID “VA’ANTAEG”
LEYLINE_ROOT[Y_NEGATIVE].KING_ID “TAKURAKII_THE_BLESSED”
LEYLINE_ROOT[Y_NEGATIVE].MAX_POWER 385.3669
LEYLINE_ROOT[Y_NEGATIVE].NET_POWER 0.0034
LEYLINE_ROOT[Y_NEGATIVE].CONTROL “VRC_BARRIER_CONSOLE_5”

What… the Hell is this?

The message from the Game had lost all the formatting John was familiar with. The nice, blue panels and white borders were gone; not even the original orange interface housed this new text. Something about this scrawl made John's brain scream at him, as if he wanted... needed... to ignore it. But he couldn't, this time; it stared him in the face in its strange, console-like barbarism. Who's “Takurakii the Blessed” anyways? Why doesn't it say the same thing the Game does...? Is this not part of...?