I couldn’t help the little spike of giddiness as I climbed onto Ridley’s back.
Who hasn’t dreamed of riding a dragon?
Childhood fantasy fulfilled. Pity the circumstances were complete shit.
Realizing the Simurgh couldn’t precog the Gacha was huge, maybe the biggest break I’d gotten since this mess started, but it didn’t magically solve anything. The devil was in the details, and those details were crap.
I was sure she couldn’t predict what I’d roll. What I didn’t know was how far that protection extended. Could she predict how I used the rolls? The actions of my familiars once they were out in the open? The powers after they’d already been revealed?
Was Igris a blind spot because of the Gacha itself, or because of something specific about him? Same with the Golden Apple. Both were magical. Both had clearly interfered with her attempts to kill me. Did that mean she stayed blind to them permanently, or was that only true until she gathered enough data?
I had a vague memory of some quote saying the entities could potentially handle out-of-context powers.
Ridley only created more questions. He wasn’t magic. He was alien, sure, but still flesh and blood with some very exotic biology. That felt a lot closer to shard territory, which meant he might be easy for her to read. I honestly had no idea.
I didn’t have the time or the breathing room to sit there and untangle the finer points of precognitive mechanics.
None of it changed the core problem anyway. The only way I could fight her was by rolling more tickets. That meant earning more feats. Which meant throwing whatever random bullshit I could get my hands on at a literal alien murder machine and praying that one of them actually worked.
A deep crash echoed behind me.
Igris stepped out of a collapsing building, dust rolling off his armor in thick sheets as the structure gave way. Rubble clattered after him as he crossed the distance and came to my side. He dipped into a bow, rigid and formal, and even without speaking, I could feel it pouring off him. Shame. Self-loathing. The weight of failing me.
“It’s fine,” I said, keeping my tone steady. “We’re fighting a precog. The fact we’re both still alive counts as a win.”
He didn’t straighten.
“Just fight to your best.” I gestured toward the massive shape beneath me. “This is Ridley, by the way.”
Ridley turned his long reptilian neck and let out what I thought was a snort.
Igris’s hand twitched toward his sword.
“Oi. Knock it off.”
Ridley snorted again.
Igris stared at him for a long second, then stepped forward and climbed onto Ridley’s back behind me. Great. Familiar office politics. That was going to be fun.
I let out a chuckle. First priority was still living long enough for it to matter.
Ridley kicked off the ground.
The wind slammed into my face as we shot upward. The higher we climbed, the more of the city came into view, and the worse it looked. Canberra was wrecked. Entire blocks collapsed. Cars folded in half like toys. Fires ran unchecked through broken streets and shattered buildings.
But the worst of it lay directly beneath the battlefield.
The land under her wasn’t just damaged; it was ruined. Stripped raw, scraped clean, barely recognizable as a city at all. Like someone had dragged a cosmic ice cream scoop straight through the streets.
And there she was.
Floating in the same place she’d been since her descent. The Simurgh, perfect and still, while the city died around her.
The damage around her was even worse. A handful of distant dots flew nearby, capes flinging beams and explosions in a desperate attempt to hurt her.
It was doing jack all.
“Ridley, go wild and tear her apart. Igris, run interference. Keep us alive.”
Ridley answered with a roar that rattled in my ribs. The glide vanished. We tipped forward and dropped, a straight rocket dive toward the Endbringer.
The wind screamed around us. This wasn’t normal airflow anymore. No amount of wingbeats should’ve been able to bend physics like this. My eyes burned trying to stay open as sand poured around me, and I felt the Fool’s presence settle in. Goggles formed first, then something like a crude jetsuit, all shaped out of swirling sand.
Distance vanished. Whole blocks blurred past like someone had slammed fast-forward on the world.
Ridley let out a battle screech, raw and ancient, and we closed in close enough that I could almost pick out individual strands of her hair.
The sky went dark.
Buildings—entire buildings—ripped free and came screaming toward us, hurled aside like pieces on a chessboard.
Ridley twisted through the air with a speed that shouldn’t have been possible. We threaded the gap between the projectiles, banking hard left and right as debris howled past. Every near miss hit me in the gut, the air itself slamming into us.
A faint blue glow flared at my side. Igris raised a hand and willed the worst of the wreckage away, redirecting anything that drifted too close. His sword slid free in a wash of blue light, then launched forward like a spear. It spun once and split a small building clean in half.
We tore between the halves as they drifted apart, the shockwave rolling over us in a crushing wave.
The battlefield was deafening. Explosions, distant screams, the thunder of collapsing structures piling on top of each other. Through all of it, my eyes stayed locked on her. I could see the strands of her hair drifting around her face, that inhuman beauty so cold and exact.
Then Ridley opened his jaws.
Light gathered in his throat. That was the only word that fit before the fireball erupted. I didn’t feel any heat, some quirk of his biology keeping it from cooking me alive, but I felt the force as it tore forward.
Buildings surged up in front of the Simurgh like improvised shields. It didn’t matter. Ridley could melt spaceships. The fireball punched straight through, turning concrete and steel into dripping slag.
The sky flashed.
I saw the impact splash across her face. Heat shimmered in the air. Smoke curled from her hair.
When it cleared, the perfection was broken. Part of her hair was gone. A patch of skin indented and scorched. Her left eye was blackened around the edges.
[Feat Achieved! Black Eye Greeting!]
[+1 Silver Gacha Ticket]
A black eye. After ship-melting plasma.
Endbringers were bullshit.
I ripped the ticket open while Ridley kept hammering her with fire.
[XI – Justice]
|Rare Item|
Tarot Card – Clears all abnormal status effects such as disease, poison, curses, and charms, Epic rank and below, in a 10-meter radius. Cooldown: 120 hours.
The silver-etched card formed in my hand. A man seated on a throne stared back at me, sword in one hand, scales in the other.
I looked back toward the Simurgh as another barrage detonated around her. More capes had piled in, capitalizing on the opening Ridley had forced.
I caught flashes as we banked. A guy in a sky-blue suit streaked past, firing beams. A black blur smashed bodily into the Simurgh. Farther out, a faint green glow pulsed as kaleidoscopic attacks layered in from range.
“Can you guys hear the scream? Is it bad?” I yelled as Ridley climbed to reposition.
Igris shook his head. Ridley flicked his tail twice.
No.
Good to know. Her psionic bullshit probably didn’t translate through alien brains or shadow-undead.
As Ridley circled, a familiar shape swept into view. A dragon-shaped power armor, metal-plated and massive, flying with controlled precision.
“Name and powers?” Dragon asked.
“Don’t have a name, I’m new,” I shouted back. “Big guy, I’m riding is fast as hell and a high-end blaster. Black Knight is a high-tier brute with some shaker TK. And…” I hesitated, just a beat. “I might have something that helps with the Simurgh’s Master effect.”
“…Understood,” Dragon said. “I’ll coordinate you with the rest of the assault. The Triumvirate is currently engaged at full force.”
“Any chance of actually driving her off?”
“Reinforcements are still arriving. We—”
Her suit shifted mid-sentence, servos whining as a missile barrage screamed off into the distance. Ridley immediately pulled us higher.
My attention snapped back to the battlefield.
Something was rising.
Hidden within the ruins of a building, a device emerged, tall as a lamppost and wrapped in spinning brass dials. Violet energy gathered, humming, screeching in a way that made my skin crawl.
Attacks converged on it at once. Beams, explosives, everything the nearby capes could throw, all aimed at the tinker-tech monstrosity.
It was too late.
The sky vanished from view.
Ridley jerked upward hard. Igris launched after him.
I went the opposite direction.
Down.
A blue aura reached for me midair, a pressure curling tight around my body, but I was already falling too fast, and it slipped away.
The ground rushed up. Even with regeneration, I wasn’t confident in surviving getting pancaked.
I dissolved into petals mid-fall and tried to angle my descent.
The street below was gone. I was dropping into a collapsed section, multiple stories down, basement levels stacked under open sky.
Too fast. Even in petal form.
I forced the angle harder. As long as I didn’t die on impact, I could recover.
Sand poured out, piling beneath me, trying to brace and cushion the fall, but the downward force crushed straight through it.
Agony.
My legs. My fucking legs.
I felt the exact moment they broke, the impact crushing my knees and forcing bone into places bone was never meant to go. I didn’t look down.
Shit, shit, shit.
I waited for shock to save me. But it never came. My body stayed horrifyingly aware as bones ground and shifted, regeneration dragging them back into place inch by inch.
Too slow. The pain refused to fade even as my body forced itself back together.
Son of—
Breathe. Just breathe.
I forced my head to turn toward the hole I’d fallen through. A jagged ring of daylight framed the sky. High above, barely visible, Ridley and Igris wheeled through smoke and debris as the battle raged on without me.
It could’ve been seconds or minutes on the ground. I don’t know. Time didn’t start making sense again until I could finally feel my legs properly.
I pushed myself upright and immediately regretted it. Everything ached, but at least the bones were mostly back where they belonged. I tested a step. My legs protested, screamed, but held.
Good enough.
The hole above me was impossibly far away. Way too tall to climb. Judging by the depth, I had to be six or seven basement levels down.
Fuck my life.
I braced a hand against the wall and started moving.
The hallway stretched ahead, bare concrete and flickering emergency lights casting long, uneven shadows. Some kind of underground facility. I needed to hurry. If the Simurgh flipped gravity again, I’d end up as a smear.
I rounded a corner and nearly tripped over.
Dragon-shaped power armor lay sprawled across the floor. The suit twitched once, a few sparks spitting from a damaged joint.
“A little help?” a staticky voice crackled from the speakers.
“You’re still working?” I blurted out.
The armor was flattened. Like someone had stepped on it. I honestly hadn’t expected it to still be functioning.
“I operate everything remotely, with multiple failsafes,” she replied quickly.
Right. The world didn’t know Dragon was an AI. Good thing she hadn’t caught the slip.
“How do you want me to…?” I trailed off, crouching beside the suit.
“There should be a capsule on the lower right, just above the thigh,” she said. “That’s the core engine I’m currently connected to.”
It took some fumbling and a lot of swearing, but I managed to pry free a silvery capsule and pull it loose.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Keep it as safe as possible, please. If you can return it to the Medbay, I can rendezvous with another power suit much faster. But if it becomes a risk to your life, do not hesitate to leave it and run. I have backups I can fall back on.”
“Got it.”
“Thank you,” the staticky voice said.
“No problem,” I muttered, glancing around the ruined hallway. “Where the hell are we?”
“A research center. Sponsored by the Commonwealth.”
That gave me a bad feeling.
We moved down the corridor together. Doors hung from bent hinges, one barely hanging by a screw. Alarm lights pulsed red in slow, rhythmic intervals that felt more like countdowns than warnings. Dust drifted through the air, stirred by every step we took.
Eventually, we reached a lab.
The room was huge—far bigger than anything that should have existed under a public building. A ceiling so tall it vanished into darkness. Rows of shattered glass encasements. And dominating the far wall, a massive cylindrical vat filled with green fluid that glowed faintly.
The scent hit me next. Chemicals, antiseptics, that sharp hospital bite that always made my skin crawl.
“What’d they research here?” I asked, fear already creeping up my spine.
“Pharmaceuticals and biomedical…” Dragon said, and her voice carried the same dawning horror I felt.
If I remembered right, Canberra needed to be domed after this fight.
My eyes slid back to the vat. A hairline crack across the glass, the green glow beneath it pulsing as if the fluid were ready to burst free.
Ah, hell.
***
Comments and Thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Likes are like a drug to me and boost my creative juices.
I have advanced chapters on my if you wanna read ahead.