Chương 67: 66-Heaven Speaks but One Language

Bob rolled on the ground as thousands of sizzling magic missiles erupted from the flying angelic host, aimed at randomly chosen targets. Panic spread among the Elves as they saw their leaders and a sizable part of their force smitten in an instant. The angels sang as they fought, a single verse, endlessly repeated, which Bob could understand even though he did not know the language: Give it back! He felt a smidge of pity for these raiders, who must be wondering what their attackers were referring to.

"Don't lose sight of each other," Jenna shouted amidst the chaos.

"Let's head to the Citadel. This is our chance to enter it." The exquisite symphony of battle the Elves had been conducting had turned into a volcano of screams. A squad of spellsingers bravely tried to regroup and hold the line. Their songs mingled together, conjuring a squad of ghostly Elven bowmen, floating above the battle. Before they had time to release their payloads, two angels blew their trumpets, and their sound dispersed the delicate Elven sonic spellforms and, with them, the magic constructs.

The spellsingers were pierced by bright rays of light that bored holes into their bodies while setting them aflame.

"To the right!" Jenna screamed, her brain in full tactical mode. Bob missed the Blood Link. It made everything in battle so much easier. Jenna had them following an erratic path that took them away from the most dangerous spots in the battle. By chance, their path had taken them near one of the trebuchets. A runed Dwarf was ready to be thrown, the sigils engraved on his skin causing him obvious pain. A line of manacled Dwarves was standing beside the siege equipment.

"A moment, please," Jenna said as she summoned her Elven axe and shattered the manacles binding the runed Dwarf before freeing the others. The Dwarves looked warily at Bob and Billy, not knowing what to expect.

"Drop the Elven forms," shouted Jenna.

"They are a liability now." Bob and Billy shifted back into their true shapes. This seemed to put the Dwarves at ease. They were obviously infiltrators, and infiltrators were exactly what you expected during a counterattack. The Dwarves split into small groups, each fleeing in a different direction. All save one.

The runed Dwarf looked around the battle, finally focusing on a small group of combatants to his right: four Elven officers and five conscripted humans were fighting two angels, one armed with a mace and the other with a trident. The angels were sporting wounds. There were three human corpses on the ground. The Dwarf ran towards the group, singing a war chant. He jumped in the midst of the group and exploded. A giant fireball in the form of his head rose into the sky as the shock wave reached the Losers.

It did not sound like a scream—it sounded like laughter. Victorious laughter. Jenna signaled them to take cover under the wreckage of the trebuchet.

"We must have a plan. Things are not going to work without one," she told them.

"Let's hear it, Jenna," Bob said—he had absolute confidence in Jenna's tactical prowess.

"We are going to do some training," Jenna answered.

"WHAT?" said Bob, totally flabbergasted.

"Honey, I don't think it is actually a bad idea," Billy intervened.

"But perhaps this is not the best time; you know, with the fiery beams of death raining from the sky and celestial warriors on a death rampage and all that..."

"Look, I get that it sounds crazy," Jenna explained, "but the Blood Link accounted for half of our tactical prowess—I only had to think of a tactic and send it into your brains. We do not have access to the link here because Dignity has not yet been born. And the Answer managed to disrupt it."

"We do not have five months to train in the field, Jenna," Bob reminded her.

"True, but we have five seconds to train inside my mind," she said as she grasped their hands and enveloped them with her Spirit. Time slowed to a crawl. The Angels froze in mid-air, their faces strangely serene as they rained fire on their fleeing enemies. An Elf to Bob's right had been shot by a musket in the gut as time stopped, his face frozen in a rictus.

"Don't go crazy cutting throats," warned Jenna.

"This is just a shared illusion."

"An illusion?" asked Bob.

"With what purpose?"

"A pedagogic one," explained Jenna, as all the combatants thawed at the same time and fell on them. Bob did what he could and managed to take down two angels before being speared in the back by a third.

"Again," Jenna said, without a hint of mercy in her voice. The world glimmered and rearranged itself. And they fought again, and again, and again. Soon, life became a never-ending stream of duels, each time with fiercer and braver opponents. Jenna fought at their side and died many, many times. It made no difference. Her voice still asked for an encore, even if she was technically no longer alive. She must have split off a part of her consciousness to deal with that, Bob thought.

On and on, the longest and shortest battle in the history of warfare went on. It lasted only five seconds, but to Bob, they felt like five millennia. Sometimes, Jenna's voice would congratulate them when they had fought in a specific way. Good, it simply said. Bob realized that the more praise they got from the voice, the sooner the hellish training would end.

"Why don't you just blood tell us what you want us to learn?" he snapped at Jenna after their 14, 276th defeat.

"But I don't know," she protested, as she broke the arm of an angel in two places with a perfect karate kick.

"I left that piece of info in the part of my mind that is training us. I think it has something to do with the way we synergize our powers. Each time I use Connection abilities on one or more of you, it rewards us."

"That's it," said Bob as he expertly blocked attacks from three Elven warriors at once with his scimitar.

"It wants us to learn to communicate with each other without the Link."

"We need to practice maneuvers, give them names, just as the Federation used numbers, as well as hand signals." Things improved when they started working on those plans. The voice complimented them more often than not. The voice liked it most when Jenna used her Hive Ring to enhance another Loser in different ways throughout the fight. Five seconds and one billion fights later, the battle ended.

Jenna's psyche was merciful and allowed them to remember only the hundreds of effective maneuvers they had learned, along with their names and how to signal them using hand and whistle signs. Gone were the desperation and resentment all three had felt during that five-second hell. Those feelings had been even more intense for Jenna, who could only be angry with herself. The battle tableau was still frozen. What now?

"I think something has happened to me, honey," said Billy.

"Tell me," answered Jenna.

"Do you remember how guilty I felt when Necessity snitched about the omelets? Truth is, I do not feel guilty anymore. Don't know why." If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Beats me," lied Jenna. Then the tableau unfroze, this time for real. Four Elves charged at them, mounted on stags and armed with lances. Bob felt Jenna touch his shoulder and create a powerful +5 Connection, +5 Transference effect. Ring of the Hive Mind: Once you have used Connection to establish a link with another soul, you may maintain it indefinitely, even if you retrieve the stat points. The link will reproduce the effects of any Connection or Transference effect originally cast on the target.

Can only maintain one link at a time. His mind and Jenna's achieved perfect Connection, maintained by the ring even when she redistributed the stat points.

"Feisty Cannon, Bob," Jenna told him as she enhanced his Body, Strength, and Throwing power. Bob felt as if all his muscles had become as dense as steel. His whole body radiated an immense power that somehow coalesced in his right arm. He knew he could behead anyone with an uppercut. Bob summoned Elariana's Palooga ball and combined Elariana's Initiative and Cannonball in a single powerful throw that went through the first three riders. They burst apart like melons hit by gunfire.

The last knight dodged at the last moment and spurred his stag, aiming his lance towards Bob's chest, nearly trampling a human squire who was trying to get out of the way. Once the rider had passed him by, the squire jumped with superhuman agility onto the rump of the stag, landing just behind the Elven Knight. The squire cut the Knight's throat with a single, precise movement of his Elven dagger. The Knight toppled slowly sideways as the squire shifted his shape, revealing the Thousand-Faced Assassin.

"Twelve O'Clock, up high, Fae Gatling," Jenna screamed. Bob felt Jenna's power retreat from his body and enter his mind. Reality became as flimsy as cobwebs, ready to be torn asunder by his will. Ice Spear (Watercraft Level 3): Shoot an Ice Spear with deadly force at any target within medium range. Ten-second cooldown. The cooldown scales down with Mind. He turned around, already releasing a barrage of razor-sharp icicles that tore apart three angels who were approaching him from his blind side.

A fourth one, armed with a huge flaming spear, dove towards Jenna—it had correctly identified her as the most dangerous member of the group. The Thousand-Faced Assassin apparently emerged from the wall near Jenna—Bob knew his camouflage ability was so powerful that it was impossible to detect him if he stayed near a flat surface.

"MK2 Reptile, Jenna," Billy said. Bob felt Jenna's powerful magic retreat from him and embrace Billy. He knew the current version of the Assassin had enhanced abilities. Poisonous Spit x3: Once every thirty seconds, the poisoner may spit his poisonous blood at medium range. If it strikes the face, the eyes suffer as if the attack were powered with a 50% Dexterity bonus. Billy spat a glob of toxic substance straight into the Angel's face when it was no more than fifty feet from Jenna.

Bob winced as the creature's face began to smoke with a hissing noise. The angel screamed horribly as it careened past them, no longer able to control its flight. They lost track of him as he passed over the Citadel's battlements.

"Let's regroup near the wall—Billy will be nearly invisible if he remains close to it. Bob can use shadowcraft to remain unseen. I will lower my Spirit to draw less attention," Jenna instructed them.

"We can follow the wall till we hit the breach. That is our way in." They ran the two hundred feet separating them from the ramparts, dodging among the corpses from failed prior siege attempts. Mostly human corpses. Elves did not believe in using aristocrats as cannon fodder. Bob risked looking backward as he kept running. The Elves were being massacred. The Dwarves were also abandoning their positions and taking refuge inside the buildings of the citadel.

It made sense—battlements offered little protection against flying enemies. They finally hit the wall. Billy camouflaged himself against it, becoming almost invisible, and Bob used the new, improved Unseen perk. Unseen (Shadowcraft 4): Become invisible. It can only be used if no one is looking directly at you. At least once every five minutes, you must become visible for seven seconds. If someone sees you when you do, you can't use shadowcraft perks for the next five minutes.

Jenna lowered her Spirit so much that Bob almost forgot her name. They moved stealthily along the wall's perimeter. Billy suddenly stopped.

"Elves. At least twelve of them. They are going the same way we are. It is hard to say if they are trying to infiltrate the Citadel or escape from the Angels," said Billy.

"Night of Long Knives, Jenna," he said.

"Lots of Body, Dexterity, and Precision for you, honey. Make good use of them, and take care," Jenna mumbled. Billy's shape glimmered and shifted into that of an Elven warrior. He left the group and slowly approached the line of Elves advancing along the wall. Bob could watch him work safely while invisible. Billy approached the last Elf in the line and cut his throat. The Elf vanished without a sound. Silent Death: If the Assassin kills his foe in one blow, he will do so without making any sound.

Then he did the next one. And the next. The Elves were so concentrated on what lay ahead that they missed the infallible assassin mowing them down from behind. He took all twelve warriors in under a minute. Then he signaled that the way was clear using hand signs. As they approached him, Bob noticed that Billy had strewn the way with magical items as someone might leave breadcrumbs.

"Son of a gun!" Bob exclaimed when he noticed what he had done.

"He has used Loot charges on them as he slew them."

"You have to admit it's much less messy leaving magical items than corpses," Jenna told him.

"Can you use your Eye of the Appraiser on those, Bob? Any good loot?"

"It's a good-news/bad-news situation, Jenna. Experientials seem to drop magical items when looted, but the items require a Competency to use, much like Avatar items. They are basically useless to us."

"Put them into your Inventory, anyway, Bob. Maybe we can sell them to Bilto." They had almost reached their goal when Bob felt something flutter against his mind.

"What was that?" he asked.

"Damn it! It was a Charisma pulse; someone was searching for hidden enemies. They found me, guys—my Spirit was too low to resist it," said Jenna.

"Let's run. We can make it!" They ran as fast as their legs allowed them to, jumping over debris and dodging pieces of stone falling from the damaged battlements. They made it into the breach and reached a central courtyard. Bob looked for a way into the citadel itself, but he found none. There were doors—dozens of steel doors, all of them locked. The citadel was no stranger to sieges. They heard a familiar feminine voice from above.

"At last we meet, sinners. Give me the Sacred Die." It came from a female angel with the head of an eagle—Marphel, the speaker for the Host, second in power only to Araphel.

"All yours, milady," Bob said as he threw the Gambling Die at her. It had enough facets to pass for an Icosahedron, at least at a distance.

"Jenna, Gandalf," he muttered. His will grew in power until it could not be denied. Marphel caught the die, needing only a moment to realize she had been fooled. She turned furiously towards Bob, but he had already made his move. The Heart of a Star (Gamble 3): The die's surface becomes incredibly hot for one second. Scales with Mind. Requires Living Volcano (Flamecraft 3). There is a 10% chance the die will become inert for 24 hours. Marphel screamed as her left hand was vaporized.

The Gambling Die fell to the ground, already back at room temperature, and Bob used The Match Begins to summon it back to his hand. He tried to use Ice Spear on the angel, but she had already recovered. Her Might stat must be enormous.

"You would use magic against the Speaker? I know the name of Water!" The hundreds of icy projectiles Bob had summoned suddenly exploded in mid-air, not close enough to harm her.

"Billy, Rambo, second variant," Jenna shouted as she pumped him full of freebie points. That was the surprise backstab while enhanced, Bob remembered.

"I know the name of Shadow!" the Speaker announced as Billy appeared frozen in mid-air, one second away from plunging a poisoned knife into the Speaker's back.

"Fiery Gandalf, Bob!" Jenna said. The power came back to him, but before he could use it, Marphel spoke again.

"I know the name of Magic!" Bob felt as if his mind had been put in a vise. He could hardly breathe, much less cast a spell.

"I have seen you fight, little nameless girl," Marphel mocked Jenna.

"You put your power into others and let them fight for you. No champions left, little nameless girl. What are you going to do now? What do you do when you can't hide behind someone?"

"You do not know my name?" Jenna asked Marphel.

"Then you have no power over me. And I do have a name." Jenna's Elven axe, thrown at supersonic speed, plunged deep into Marphel's forehead. The Angel fell to the ground, vanishing into motes of light.

"I am Jenna Seachann, daughter of Alarel." She stood proudly and turned her back on her defeated enemy. Way to make a dignified exit. But, being Jenna, she could not help herself. At the last moment she turned around and spoke again.

"And when Billy and Bob are not around, I do my fighting myself. Moron."

"I will remember not to mock you in public, Jenna. Or in private," Bob added.

"What was the light show with the Angel, Billy? You did put a Loot charge on her, didn't you?"

"Grazed her with the dagger just as she was falling. She dropped this," he said, showing Bob a beautiful silver ring. Bob appraised it.

"It grants the gift of tongues to whoever wears it, and it does not require a Competency—it is a major magic item. It seems Experientials can drop them after all if they have a high enough level. You keep it, Billy. You are the one who can benefit the most from it." Suddenly, one of the doors opened, and a Dwarf beckoned to them with hand signs.

"That's our way in," Jenna said. They ran towards the entrance. Billy put the ring on one finger—it would be useful to communicate with the Dwarves. They had hardly entered through the door when one of the Dwarves closed it behind them. There were almost thirty Dwarves inside. They all drew their weapons at once. The Losers found themselves with many blades touching their throats. One of the Dwarves angrily asked them a question. Billy translated, using his new ring.

"He is asking if we are the bastards that brought those winged madmen to his city." Tell him he should not worry about the Angels, Bob. Tell him he should worry about you, Charlie Vaughn whispered inside his mind.

"Could I have a second option, Charlie?" Bob whispered back.