The Base Front

“Izha was sighted in Los Angeles,” John informed everyone. Eliana and Aclysia had just linked up with the Creator Puppet, giving him the report there. For the most part, the Harem Comms were back online. They blacked out for minutes or hours at a time. Either Izha was messing with him or his part in the coordination of the Lorylim attacks took too much out of him to retain the necessary pressure.

Other communication systems suffered in similar ways. Just about any long range magical communication was down. There were some exceptions, but nothing they could take too much advantage of.

The optic fibre of the situation was that the wires still worked. The attack on the Thorne HQ had interrupted Fusion’ communication system. Once Scarlett had cut out the core of the rot infesting her servers, the remaining skeleton was still capable of sending messages. Now they only need to free the receiving ends, which was the secondary reason why he had deployed his harem in key locations so swiftly. The other was that he could not stand to sit idly by, even if there was a Lorylim invasion **** growing on every shore of the Hudson.

Markers that were used for war games in better times were now pinned into the massive map in front of him. Their already cut-down number of leaders in the chamber had changed over the last several hours. Capable fighters had been assigned to lead forces on the ground. New strategists from every layer of Fusion’s military and political structures had been brought in. John and Momo had kept extensive tabs on every up-and-coming talent. Without the need to verify their choices by democratic mechanisms, those people were immediately promoted to the position John considered them suitable for.

Whether that was wise or catastrophic, time would tell. Swiftness was the strength of relying on an absolute ruler. Consensus was all well and good in stable times. John **** himself to run the advantages of that in the back of his mind. He did not want to get drawn into the illusion that things were universally better now that he could **** through what he wanted. They were universally better for him. Everything that flowed from there was a balancing act, as all of politics was.

The wrinkles of consensus-building were for the future. For now, his hierarchy was the ironed-out uniform of the military. All were working to keep the map of Fusion in front of him updated.

“We now hold four of our five immediate strategic objectives, my king,” Horace declared.

The man was a decent fighter and a mediocre strategist. To send him out would have changed fairly little. To keep him in the room, however, had a different use. He was a loyalist, had been for a long time, and was respected by several factions. He was good at unifying intel and voices. That was why he was the herald at the table, summarizing the situation for John and everyone else every so often.

Wielding a simple pointing stick, he gestured at the map. “Fighting in Boston continues, but it seems that Scarlett has taken out most of the Synapses.”

Momo had used that term first and it had quickly caught on. It described the stronger Lorylim creatures, the kind that effectively served as a moving relay station for the wills of Izha and Tiamat. Individual drones were perfectly capable of still receiving the signal, but they lacked the brainpower to really coordinate without one of the semi-sentient Synapses in the mix. It was a broad term that included basically anything above level 100, be it corrupted elemental, human, Metracana, or whatever else.

“New Orleans has essentially been cleansed and the Grim Reaper covers New Tenochtitlan. Jane, Nahoa, Ehtra and Nia will rejoin us soon as the car has returned. Lucifrena has struck out on her own northwards, we are unaware of her location.”

‘Like we are unaware of Layla,’ John thought. He had not known when his stalker had disappeared nor where she had gone. It was strangely soothing. They knew she was free of corruption, so she was just genuinely obsessed with him and yet she was out there doing something else. There was more to that woman than wanting him. That was, if she was still alive. Unlike Lucifrena, she was not powerful. She could get killed even by the averagely sized Lorylim swarm that were now ravaging across the continent in untold numbers.

Concern with her was easily shoved to the back of his mind. He did think about her because Aclysia and other haremettes had been invested in her. He did not actually know anything about her nor was he in the state of mind to appreciate crazies like he usually did. There was so much else to do.

“Miami is ours. After Justinian got destroyed, the local Lorylim were cut down by the remaining Floridians. Los Angeles is in an uncertain state. It seems we hold it, but we have no real local communications to know what is or is not under enemy control. We do hold the strategy objective of the port, however.” Horace finished up by putting the pointing stick under his arm. “In summary, our hold on Boston, New Orleans and Miami is firm, the local forces entrenched, and Los Angeles is good enough.”

“Which leaves the Guild Hall.” John tapped on their current position, marked pointedly by the king piece from a chess set.

“We could surrender the position,” Momo advised.

“We could,” John agreed. The Guild Hall had a Perk that allowed it to teleport to anywhere within Owned Territory once per month. It was a feature he had considered eventually using to have a mobile capital, once the resources of the Guild Hall were no longer the heart of 90% of Fusion’s supply lines. Now that ability had the use of allowing them a swift escape.

There were a few problems with that though.

“I like our chances in a defence,” he said. “Mana is being produced every minute we remain. The outer mountain ring will break any charge and we have plenty of additional defences here. Tiamat will have to come for us. She will do it soon.” He looked around the table. “It will be a horrid battle, but we must fight it. There is no engagement without losses in war.”

Grim nods around the table were swiftly followed by the front gates bursting open. Nathalia sashayed in, physically incapable of being anything besides alluring. “The dragon of chaos is gathering,” she told him. “Get ready.”

“What timing,” John muttered and began to walk. As he did, he put a hand on his side. A previously unnoticed wet sensation accompanied the touch.

John kept his hand there for a moment. Otherwise, he kept his calm exterior.

“I will be with you in a moment,” he said. “There is something I need to get out of the trophy room first.”

A blatant lie, one that everyone in his harem could see through immediately. There were powerful items in his trophy room, but nothing that would have helped them in his specific situation. What he needed was privacy and nothing else.

He headed for the back of the chamber. To not cause any suspicion, Momo joined up with Nathalia. The elementals invisibly followed their summoner, manifesting once he had made it to one of the side rooms.

He removed his hand from the spot and inspected the fluid sticking to it. It was not an unnatural one. It also wasn’t one anyone ever liked to see: it was pus. Yellow and thin, the infected fluid stuck to his hand, reeking of faint, rotting sweetness.

There was a bathroom just about anywhere in the Guild Hall. Washing his hands was something John did to have a moment to sort his thoughts. Once the tap had been closed, he unbuttoned his shirt and followed what he revealed in the mirror.

Where the primordial Lorylim had infected him, a boil a handspan across had grown. It was a disgusting sight on an otherwise perfectly fine body. His touch had torn the skin open, causing the contents to seep out.

John wretched. There were many vile things he had seen in his time. This was rancid for its simplicity and for the fact that he needed to deal with it.

Well, he needed to stand there as it was dealt with. Undine wordlessly moved to his side and lanced the boil. Closing his eyes, John chose not to subject himself to more of that view. He stood steadily and waited for the scrubbing of the towel to conclude. Once it was, he checked on it again.

The boil had been removed without a trace. Gamer’s Body had mended his body, but the infection was present all the same. It had consolidated now into a circular patch of light grey. It was hard to the touch, like the sole of a man that wandered barefoot every day. Despite that, it did not obstruct him when he moved. He could barely even feel it.

“Worrisome,” John muttered. He really would have preferred not to go out and just sit until this had concluded, whatever that meant. Another preference shattered by the demands of the situation. ‘Should I use the Visions of Calamity? A glimpse into the future could give me clarity… but I prefer a sharp eyesight…’ He shook his head and faced what would come with a clear view of the present.

Shirt back on, he moved outside. He pulled a Raid Loot item from his inventory, just to hold something impressive in his hands.

He was accompanied by the five elemental women under his contract. Together, they walked across the grass to the edge of the star fort, where 80% of the military advisors had joined Nathalia and Momo. The remaining 20% stayed back at the table, to gather and work through intel provided.

John did not have to be part of the crowd to see what they were seeing. Anyone anywhere in the Guild Hall saw it. The only way not to was to close ones eyes.

All of the mushroom spires that had replaced the skyline of the Hudson Barrier had opened up. They shed spores by the trillions, permeating the air around them in fuzzy clouds. They were heavier than air, yet moved with a will of their own, hovering in layers that appeared like gargantuan teeth closing in on each other.

The sheer amount of mana fluctuating across the river was nausea-inducing. One of the less powerful members of the crowd suddenly bent to the side, vomiting into the grass. Others swayed where they stood. Even Emrik, at Level 84, was affected by the changes. John himself could feel them, but was unbothered, like an adult that could ignore a stream that would have ripped a child off its feet.

The volatility only increased when the teeth finished closing in on each other. Not even the corruption of the Hudson Barrier was visibly anymore. Every district, every bit of landmass, every former house, office, or park, was completely covered behind a curtain of black spores. It was like a second ocean had risen from the first, moving and swaying like an unholy aurora.

“Chiiiiiiiiiiiiiiildren,” spoke Tiamat. Her voice was motherly, drumming from a horrendous head that peeled out of the spore ocean. Four fleshy, triangular segments shifted, each a part of the first maw of the goddess of chaos. Behind the teeth-filled flaps was the inner jaw of the dragon, a sharp, almost human-like maw surrounded by stretched, marine blue flesh.

Tiamat took a step forwards. Her serpentine neck showed bit for bit, a slithering thing made from dark sludge and broken scales, oozing lesser Lorylim creatures as she moved. Parts of her skeleton were visible, a mass of steel beams and concrete columns used in skyscraper construction. A clawed foot was set into the waters of the Hudson, paradoxically thinning the corruption in the water when salt water pumped from her skin.

“Why fear your mother?” Tiamat continued in her maternal tone while her avatar shifted forwards. “You all come from chaos. Crying and writhing you were born into this world. Do you not desire to crawl in it again? The crawl in chaos’ warm embrace, to soak in the womb of infinite possibilities? Let not your flesh be your prison. Together we can be whole. We can be peace. We can be war. Together, forever, in immortality of entropy.”

The body of Mother Chaos was made visible more and more. She was almost as large as Nathalia used to be, a living mountain of writhing flesh. From this vast distance, her draconic form looked almost correct. John’s keen eyes spotted the thousands of arms wriggling between running scales, the hanging lumps of skin, and the exposed ribs eternally gushing saltwater.

“Don’t fight me. Don’t fight what you could be. Are you not my strong boys? My valorous girls? Do you not wish to fuse together, to join as one, for me?”

The tail of Tiamat’s avatar emerged. A thing made of streets coiled together like a rope made of asphalt and mould. Now standing in the river, she opened her wings. The myriad, differently-sized limbs loosed from the rest of her skin with a wet smack. It was a vile sound, echoing through the Guild Hall for several seconds before she had spread all of her torn membranes. As with all incarnations of Tiamat, the wings travelled down her spine, disappearing into nothing at the edge of her tail as new ones were born from her neck.

“How are we going to stop that?” Emrik wanted to know.

“With a rematch,” John answered plainly.

The waters around the Guild Hall began to glow silver and gold.