Nyx Tower - Floor 71

  The top floor of Nyx Tower emanated an oppressive evil energy. As Perelli ascended the final steps to the throne room, his mind went through a mental checklist of his gear. He had a full load of ammunition and a plethora of grenades given to him. Milo tried to get him to take his machinegun but the lieutenant declined. He just wasn't as proficient with the weapon.

  In the black of night, the bright red pulsing light emanating from the top of the tower shone brightly. It bathed the entire throne room in its glow. Directly beneath it, Persephone sat upon her throne. In her hands was a red orb. It swirled with ethereal energy. Bolts of electricity arced off of it as she casually ran her fingers along its smooth surface, manipulating it.

  At the front of the room the doors exploded inwards, ripped straight off their hinges by liberally applied breaching charges. Expensive Oak wood and fine metal furnishings were sent flying and their main bulk fell flat before the entryway.

  From the black smoke a single figure emerged, a single soldier. Perelli entered the room with weapon raised. It had been as much a battlespace here as it was on the pervious floors, but this one had long since ended. Off to the side, a hole in the glass dome indicated where an LAV had crash landed. The vehicle itself had endured a relatively soft landing. Tire marks indicated it had landed on its wheels and skid across the floor and stopped on the opposite side of the building. It's turret was turned directly towards the throne, barrel raised defiantly. It had probably even managed to get a few shots off. Unfortunately, that was where it had ended. A large gash was torn directly through the center of the vehicle, which had killed everyone inside. A few had made it out and their bodies now littered the floor.

  Perelli recognized the personnel of the command squad. He was careful to step over them.

  Persephone looked down on him from her dais.

  "Ah, the intrepid paladin arrives." Her voice was mirth and her smile sadistic. She set aside the orb, allowing it to float in midair next to her throne. She stood up and began to descend the first few steps off of her dais. "The conquering hero, the wielder of the sword, vampire slayer, here to save the day- "

  Perelli shot her.

  A .30-06 ripped straight into the center of her chest. Blood spattered the throne behind her.

  The Lieutenant lowered his weapon, expecting her to topple over... but she didn't.

  Instead, the massive hole in her chest began to fill and the flesh reformed without issue. Arcs of electricity reached out from the orb and stitched the wound back together.

  "You'll have to do better than that, marksman." She laughed and raised her arms. "Rejoice! For the dark one cometh! To extinguish all light! I have forged a path for him and he has thanked me generously with immortality and invincibility!"

  She continued down the steps towards him.

  Her grand oration was lost on the trooper as he cared not. He figured she was talking him up just to inflate her own ego. She was deluding herself for the benefit of own self worth, thinking she was about to do battle with a great hero or someone like the Leader-Commander, rather than somebody who just had a general habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  He fired as she advanced on him, the big HR-15 spewing hate. He placed his rounds with perfect precision, cutting linearly across her torso. The AP/HE mixture ripped flesh and tore her asunder. But it was futile. As fast as his rounds tore her apart, her body repaired itself. The orb reached out from beside her thrown with arcs of lightning that struck her and aided the healing process.

  The intensity of her laughing grew louder. Even when most of her torso was shot away it continued to reverberate throughout the room.

  "A defiant but useless gesture!"

  Perelli switched tactics.

  He let the rifle hang from its sling and began ripping grenades from his carrier. He hurled them one after the other; fragmentation, thermobaric, incendiary, flash. Everything he had.

  Explosions overlapped. The stone steps were pockmarked with shrapnel. The ceiling cracked, with chunks of concrete crashing down. The throne room shook as if the tower itself was recoiling.

  For a moment, Persephone vanished in smoke and fire. He waited, hoping he might have overwhelmed her.

  The smoke cleared and Persephone stood at the center of the destruction. Craters surrounded her, but she was completely untouched.

  Her smile had faded.

  "I have levied gifts of power to my allies. I gave flesh to the machine. I gave war to the conqueror. To you, slave, I can grant freedom."

  She flicked her wrist and stone and shrapnel kicked itself from the ground around her. Static electricity formed in the cloud of debris.

  Perelli dove as stone and steel scythed through the air. A slab clipped his shoulder, spinning him hard into the floor. He rolled without skipping a beat and came up firing again—short, disciplined bursts, aimed at her head.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  He might as well have been throwing marbles for all the good his bullets did.

  The air thickened. Gravity twisted.

  Perelli was lifted bodily off the floor and hurled across the chamber. He hit a pillar hard enough to crack it, feeling muscles tear in his side. He barely managed to stay conscious.

  He dragged himself up, coughing blood. The taste of iron was familiar to him at this point.

  She continued her diatribe, "And yet treachery and ungratefulness prevails. And yet I will still win for I see all."

  Perelli weakly raised his rifle only for it to click empty. He ripped a new magazine from his chest rig.

  Persephone descended the broken steps in a blur, stopping him from reloading. She picked him up by the neck, choking him.

  “You’re persistent,” she said menacingly. “A quality I like about humanity."

  Perelli fumbled at his hip until his hand found the grip of his .50 caliber pistol. Smirking inwardly, he pressed the muzzle against her chin and fired upward.

  Persephone dropped him, stunned by the point-blank discharge. She stumbled backwards. Her jaw was was blown clean off, silencing her.

  "You see that coming?" He laughed.

  That wound too was temporary. As soon as her mouth reformed her smile was back.

  "Your future is protected by... something. Something I cannot see through."

  "Not all that clairvoyant then, aye?" he taunted, not having many other options.

  She picked him back up and held him tighter, almost crushing his windpipe. "I would offer you mercy and power. To see a soul of light opened to the truth of darkness." She stared him in the eye sadistically. "But unfortunately your death is demanded."

  With only one option left, Perelli drew the holy dagger.

  The holy blade ignited as it left its sheath—white-gold light erupting outward, pure and searing. A golden glow emanated from it. The air shimmered around its edge.

  Persephone recoiled at the entry of the blade onto the battlefield. She raised her claws, red lightning arcing among her digits. Her grip slacked and Perelli dropped to the floor, landing on his feet.

  He thrust the blade forward.

  They met in a collision of light and dark. The sword cut through the air, carving luminous arcs that burned into stone. Persephone met it with raw force, shockwaves exploding outward with every clash of claw and steel. Columns shattered from the pressure waves that spread outward every time they made contact. Walls split. The beacon overhead flared wildly.

  Perelli fought like a man with nothing and everything left to lose. Because while he didn't, humanity did.

  Cry Havoc

  The carcass of the demon dragon was still draped over the bow of the Havoc, but now it was truly dead. It had stopped spewing fluid and skeletons from its mouth and the boarders had been eliminated to the last in close-quarters fighting. With the loss of the forward engines the ship sagged slightly by the bow. Her main flight deck was still completely blocked by the carcass. The internal fire had cleaved a path of destruction through her internals and rendered her forward weapons systems nonfunctional, but she was still airworthy.

  From the carrier's bridge, Leader-Commander Tambor watched the fight develop on a screen that displayed the highly-magnified footage from an ISR drone, as it circled the tower beyond Agamemnon's air defense ring. Sky-Captain Kilmer, Lt. Camila and Commander Dewitt were with him. They could see every eruption of energy from the tower as the paladin and Persephone clashed.

  Tambor slammed his fist down on the console.

  "Damnit!" He cursed. "This is all really all coming down to a one-v-one?"

  "The situation is getting dire, sir." Dewitt pointed out the obvious.

  The Grace and the submarine screen weren't going to be able to stop all of the vorrkoths from making landfall. At the rate they were forcing the creatures to surface for the carrier to hit with her railgun, two were still expected to make it ashore. One of the subs was now MIA.

  This came at a critical moment as Reinstead's forces were in retreat. A defensive line was being setup on the I-405 freeway that stretched from Long Beach in the southeast all the way to LAX. After an entire day and night of intense unceasing combat, all along the front the Vanguard forces were spread thin and running low on ammunition.

  "We are an army for a reason. We can't rely on a single point of failure." Tambor told them.

  He was referring to Perelli. One man stood between them and total destruction. That was not how he could allow his army to operate. There had to be overlapping backups and those backups had to have backups. One night had pushed to the breaking point. They were going to have to make sacrifices.

  "We have to strike the tower." He told Kilmer.

  "We have no available airwings." The Sky-Captain informed him. "Even if we mustered every aircraft between us and the Moment and included Grace's VTOLs it wouldn't be enough to break through."

  "We're not sending fighters, or Foxhounds, or kestrels." he told her.

  She shot back a nervous glance, realizing what he was implying.

  "We have to sacrifice the carrier."

  Kilmer took in a deep breath, a barely perceptible tremor ran through her. Asking to sacrifice her beloved ship was like asking to kill her child.

  "Officer of the deck," She barked, swallowing her pride. "Go down to minimal manning. Only absolutely essential personnel for flying the ship will remain. Give the order for all other hands to abandon ship."

  The man hesitated at first, but quickly went about relaying the order.

  Sky-Captain Kilmer placed her hands on the helm and throttleman's shoulders.

  "I'll be taking it from here, gentlemen. Get yourselves to evacuation stations." She said.

  Both looked at each other, then at her. "Good luck, Captain." They said, and departed the station.

  Kilmer took hold of the controls.

  "Coming about. Putting us on course for Nyx Tower. Descending to angels ten." She announced with final determination. "Rig ship for collision!"

  Nyx Tower

  A backhand sent Perelli skidding backwards. Stalwart, he remained standing. A blast of void-energy had been burned through his side. He stabbed, slashed and drove the blade towards Persephone's heart.

  She caught him by the wrist.

  Bone cracked.

  Perelli screamed as the sword clattered from his numb fingers.

  Persephone twisted and slammed him down, pinning him. Her knee came down on his chest, driving the breath from him.

  He tried to rise. She crushed him back into the stone. His rib implants held but didn't make it hurt any less. The air was driven from his lungs.

  “You fight hard,” she said, almost kindly. “But mortal hands will never be enough."

  She savagely ripped off his mask and helmet.

  Keeping him restrained, she dragged him towards the edge of the tower where shattered glass allowed for an unobstructed view of the entire city.

  "None of you will be enough!"

  Perelli kept struggling to free himself. He wormed and twisted, trying to find any point where he could break free. He refused to give in no matter how hopeless the situation had become.

  She forced his head up, razor claws digging into his face and drawing blood.

  “Watch!”

  Persephone raised her free hand. The red orb floated into her grasp, blazing brighter than ever before. A shadow emerged from it and cast itself across the city in a blanket of darkness.

  "Witness!"

  Perelli grit his teeth as he was forced to watch, still struggling against her grasp.

  Beneath them, the Earth cracked.