Elysium's Multiverse

Chapter 138

Chapter 138

A steady, familiar thrum started to descend on Riven’s position. It came from outside, up above, and the sound only got louder as the second ticked by.

Slowly turning his head, Riven watched the air beat against the bullet proof glass of the second story window. The frost remaining in patches there shuddered, and the machine of war he’d been very familiar with growing up as a kid - for the very first time in his life - made an appearance that caused him to go giddy. He’d always wanted to see one up close… but perhaps being the target it was locking on to wasn’t all that great.

A heavily outfitted Apache helicopter settled down into a hovering position just below the third floor, where the gatling guns on either side of the absolute beast of a war machine lined up to face him on the second level. The steady beat of the helicopter blades whirred, missiles were locked and loaded, and it had obviously been modified to fit into this new magical world with sleek yellow enchantments engraved onto the thick armor of the machine. Instead of the runic symbols of the unholy pillar he was used to, these ones were… blockier. Less archaic and more futuristic, and he had some ideas - especially considering they were plastered on the side of a war machine - as to which pillar these enchantments came from.

“Now that’s fucking sick.”

Riven had assumed that because he was standing next to Senator James that the Apache wouldn’t fire. He was only a few feet away from the man after all, and he was supposed to be the guy in charge of Chicago - was he not?

But Riven assumed wrong.

The bullet proof glass shattered when bullets shining a brilliant yellow light sprayed out of the gatling guns on either side. Riven’s eyes widened only for a brief half-second before a wall of thick red ice ripped out of the floor in front of him to block incoming projectiles. But Riven hadn’t been the initial target - and that was more than enough time for Senator James to be plastered against the wall in a spray of blood and viscera. Meanwhile the wall of ice was chewed away within seconds as the helicopter unloaded hundreds of those yellow glowing bullets into the room.

He heard Fay scream out in pain when her left leg blew off and he heard Azmoth roar, but Riven had to move. With a thought, he tore a rift through space and vanished - reappearing outside mid-air behind the helicopter while swinging his staff in an arc. The fleshy tendril whipped out from 50 feet away, flashing crimson under the light of the sunset, and Vampire’s Escort ripped through the helicopter with its blade like a cleaver’s knife through soft meat.

The modified Apache helicopter exploded and shrapnel went everywhere, and Riven let himself fall thirty feet to the ground to land nearby the crashing wreckage in a super-hero pose with one arm slamming into the dirt. Whatever runes they’d inscribed into the apache, they either hadn’t been defensive ones or they’d simply been far too weak to withstand his attack.

He looked up to the devastated second floor, and could still hear Fay screaming in agony from up above. He didn’t even need to see just how bad it was to dismiss her to the nether realms for healing, and the pentagram of succubi wings on his sternum flashed as she portaled out.

The sound of grating metal caused him to look left when three tanks of all god damn things bulldozed over a fence at high speed and started to turn their cannons towards him. The shouts and approaching heartbeats of men beyond the corner of the building alerted him to even more enemies, and his eyes narrowed behind the porcelain mask he wore.

“So we’re playing hard ball.”

Azmoth crashed into the first tank from up above, crushing it in a spray of magma when the maul made contact with the machine of war that flattened most of the central cockpit and no doubt left them all dead. Riven’s body crackled with red lightning and he sidestepped a projectile with a blur of speed, retaliating with a blast of black lightning from his staff that shredded the second tank.

The third tank was already backpedaling over the crushed fence, a machine gun on its side riddling Azmoth’s armor with sparking bullets as they glanced off - only to blow the flaming demon backwards into a spiraling fall with an anti-armor shell that left a large dent in one shoulder.

Riven was about to intervene, but bullets started plastering him from the side when an entire firing squad in American military uniforms unloaded on him after opening an outer door to the prison on the first floor. He’d only barely heard the heartbeats over the din of battle, and though his pauldrons, great maw, and face mask easily deflected the bullets - the rest of his clothes and red bloodskin layer was another story. The clothes were quickly shredded in the first two seconds, and though the bloodskin along his body did take many of the hits - it was unable to keep it up for more than a few shots to the same area. Holes began forming where bullets had punctured through, causing him a lot of pain and spiking his anger as he began to see his enemies as more of a real threat.

He cursed, encasing his body in hell’s armor as flames blazed to life around him to eat up more of the incoming bullets and he launched a volley of spinning crimson blades that ripped the soldiers apart. Heads, limbs and innards splattered across the wall and ground, with simmering blades imbedded in the building and dirt - only to erupt again when another wave of soldiers tried rushing through the door while spraying machine gun fire.

The blades blew in a wave of shrapnel and the reinforcements coming out or behind the wall were annihilated, causing a small part of the building to groan and sag when the support structures beneath the top floors were turned to dust.

“This is not how it’s supposed to be.” Riven angrily turned his head and dismissed his flames, glaring with frustration at the last remaining tank that had its hatch ripped off with Athela clambering inside to the shouts and screams of the service members in it. “We’re not supposed to be fighting one another.”

In the distance and over the suburbs of Chicago, Riven saw five more Apache helicopters flying their way. They were small dots now, easy to pinpoint with the backdrop of the ocean at sunset, but would no doubt be at the prison within minutes.

The sound of a bullet leaving his body to hit the dirt beneath his feet met his ears, and he looked down at the damaged armor with numerous oozing wounds. But bullets had started pushing out from his body as his wounds started to seal, and the red bloodskin layer of his armor was already starting to repair itself. Lifting a hand with a curling motion to his fingers, he summoned a flowing, ribbon-like wave of mana along his left arm and - without looking their way - fired at the two men preparing an RPG behind a shed.

The blood lance blew through their bodies in a flash of crimson, and he called out to his demons to get their attention while picking up a walkie-talkie from a corpse. He only paused briefly when the maw across his chest opened up, unleashing tendrils of black that pulled in the arm of the corpse and snapped down to eat it. “Azmoth! Athela! We need to leave!”

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Athela jumped off the tank she’d infiltrated, covered in blood, and Azmoth’s two overarching eel-like maws blew flames into a third-story window where gunfire had been raining down on him. The horrified wails of the people previously shooting died out, and the large demon snapped his dislocated upper left shoulder back into place before hefting the huge stone maul.

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“Let’s leave before we get more innocent people involved.” Riven said sourly, staring into the sunset where the Apaches were fast approaching. “These people don’t know what they’re doing, they’re just following orders, and I really don’t like the idea of killing my own countrymen because some assclown is telling them to attack.”

“So what’s the plan then?” Athela asked curiously, stepping over a simmering piece of metal that had once been an attack helicopter. “Hide for now, and try to ping the Chalgathi artifact to find the blasphemer?”

Riven hesitated at the question.

“I’ll call you back later Azmoth, you’re too big. Sorry bud.” Riven dismissed the armored monstrosity and motioned for Athela to follow. Still crackling with red sparks due to his Blessing of the Crow, he and his minion shot over another two sets of barbed wire fences and a thick cement barricade before advancing onto a large road leading west. Civilians were staring wide eyed at the commotion from beyond the barriers, and Riven turned right to avoid the crowds - setting his gaze onto a business district with abandoned-looking buildings that seemed like a promising start.

They rushed through street after street, alley after alley and passed through multiple districts and neighborhoods; eventually coming to a run-down looking motel that was ransacked and halfway burned to the ground. Breaking open one of the doors to a room that was more promising than the others, Riven waited for Athela to go inside before shutting it behind them and shutting the curtains. Barricading it with a desk that would at least give him a heads up in case some stupid kids or local refugees tried to walk in, he let out a groan and walked over to the bed.

Letting his body fall, he landed on the soft cushions with a bounce.

“You didn’t answer my question.” Athela stated with an amused smile, hopping onto the bed and poking him in the side while the red peacock-feather eyes shifted her way. “Are we just going to hide for a while? And have you tried pinging the Chalgathi artifact to find the blasphemer yet? The faster we do this job, the faster we can get back home.”

Riven grunted face down, then nodded into a pillow. He pulled out his communication stone, the black orb that Allie had given him, only to put it back in his spatial bag again. “It’s too far for this to work. The ping Chalgathi artifacts ability lights people up, but they’re all quite a ways away from here. My guess is the cursed object that was once a Chalgathi artifact isn’t being picked up by the ability because the system no longer registers it as a world quest item.”

Athela frowned, sighed, then laid back with her hands behind her head beside him. Scooting over and pushing her side up against his, she closed her eyes and let out a content huff. “Well it could be worse. Hey, do you mind taking that armor off? It’s creeping me out.”

“You’re a demon, you shouldn’t get creeped out by things like this.”

“Well I want to see you naked. We’re in a dirty old motel room after all, why not!?”

Riven cackled while turning his head to look at her, then pushed Athela aside when she started laughing too. “Shut up Athela, don’t tease me like that. You know damn well that I can’t take this off, I’ve already tried to take this armor off. You’re doing that on purpose to mess with me.”

Athela leaned onto her side with one arm holding her head up, smiling deviously and chuckling while wiggling her eyebrows in the dark. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m bad, I know. Think the armor will come off when you get all 5 set pieces?”

“Probably, but that’s just a guess.”

“Well we need to start that hunt as soon as possible after this blasphemer is killed. It’s a priority above all else. If we don’t find him fast enough, we need to just abandon this quest altogether. Your life is more important than a silly side quest, and angering Chalgathi by not finishing it is an easy price to pay if these items are going to devour you if you don’t get the other set pieces.”

She laid a hand on one of his vampiric, horned skull pauldrons, looking closely at the swirling vortexes of blood mana in the eye sockets. “But you do look pretty damn cool. How are you going to feed like that?”

“I ate an arm earlier with the demonic mouth across my chest. It had blood in it, and I’m already satiated. It appears that this suit actually can and does settle my vampiric needs by consuming things… even as creepy as that is.”

***

General Florence took the stage in full stacked black body armor, high powered snipers and Machine Foundational Pillar engineers placed at various intervals around the media gathering there. There was even one small mech behind the stage just in case, outfitted with technology he’d only dreamed possible pre-integration, but the Mecha Sub-pillar of the Machine Foundational Pillar was a new route to glory and military dominance even above the other related sub-pillars. His aircraft were also being outfitted with upgrades day by day, and it’d only be a few months before his military was up to the task of conquering other nearby cities not already under his control.

Nevertheless, he was very aware that the monster was still out there in the city and could strike at any time, and was taking no chances after it had torn through three tanks, an already modified Apache, a locked down prison, and two squads of his men.

His dark gray hair was neatly gelled back in a crew-cut style many of his men had, and his strong jawline was set rigidly in a clenched position while taking the stage with armed soldiers wearing sunglasses on either side. Only his face and head weren’t covered, the rest of his body having thin plates with white, orange and yellow markings emblazoned onto the surface with the best quality his engineers could create. Engineers were the equivalent of mages for those in under the influence of the Machine Foundational Pillar, with classes given to those who utilized this pillar expressing uniquely different but still somewhat similar abilities to magical casters he’d had reports about in other civilizations across the coast.

He tapped the microphone to make sure it worked, squinting slightly and motioning for the overhead lights to be dimmed so he wasn’t blinded while addressing the reporters who sat or stood in the aisles of the college auditorium he’d commandeered.

“General Florence! Is it true that the vampire in question killed Senator James in cold blood!? After breaking out of a prison that has been holding some of our most dangerous criminals!? How did this happen!?”

Other questions echoed the first reporter’s own, and General Florence, briefly muted the microphone while touching a comms unit placed in his ear. “Are the cortex channels active?”

His intelligence officer on the other line buzzed back. “Affirmative. All news channels are active and live streaming across the Panu cortex forums related to Chicago, Rockford, and Milwaukee. You’re on air.”

General Florence didn’t bother nodding, and flipped the microphone switch back on while clearing his throat to silence the blubbering idiots in front of him. The reporters representing the new-world news networks quickly went silent, and he gave a long stern look out to the crowd. “It is my solemn duty to report to all the fine people still residing in the cities of Chicago, Rockford, and Milwaukee, that our beloved Senator James has been killed. Assassinated at the hands of a monster, a warlock, a vampire. We’ve uploaded surveillance footage of the unjustified attack to Panu’s cortex as proof, showing him blatantly killing the brave men and women of our armed forces that so selflessly sacrificed themselves in an attempt to save the man leading us into the new world.”

Gasps and solemn mutterings echoed throughout the auditorium, but General Florence held up a hand with a grim expression to make sure no one yelled out any questions to interrupt him. “We did not provoke him or start this conflict, but our forces will certainly end it. Our military might is greater than it has ever been pre-integration, with new technologies being unlocked by the day. The sacrifice of our people will not be in vain, and we will bury this vampire by the end of the week - mark my words. Even now we have classers such as mana-hackers, system engineers, and even our elite cyborg hunting him down to bring him to justice.”

“Will Lieutenant Cliff be enough if the vampire was able to break out of a maximum security prison so easily?” One of the reporters, a pretty middle-aged asian woman in a business suit, called out over a raised microphone.

General Florence nodded confidently, the stern look never leaving his gaze. “I have absolute confidence in Lieutenant Cliff’s capabilities. He is on the cutting edge of the merging between machine and man, and he is already a level 39 S-Tier ranker. He will be more than enough to bring this vampire down, especially with the support our other classers are providing him.”

Smiles and impressed raises of the eyebrows met the general’s proclamation, and there was even a small amount of clapping from the crowd before General Florence raised his hands to settle them down one final time. “However, due to current circumstances and a lack in the chain of command - it is my solemn duty and responsibility to all of you that I take up the mantle of leading our newfound country. I have already spoken to the mayors of Milwaukee and Rockford, and they agree that it is in our best interest that I - for at least the time being - enter into a full leadership role with complete authority being invested in me. Until this threat is dealt with, and until we can set up a working system that better provides for all the needs of safety, foot, shelter, and the other basic functions of society; I will do my best to protect you all. Pray for us. Pray for our children so that they may grow strong, pray for our prosperity so that we may find a path to greater heights, and pray for our military men and women so that they return every night safely to their loved ones. May god watch over our souls, and may the sun shine brightly on our fledgling civilization.”