Radical-9

CHAPTER 15: The Plot Against the Giant

February 24^th, 2022

5:20 am

The force field rises around us, the hard metal floor comes from underneath us. Gregor hefts his hammer up and over his shoulder. It is Klein who acts first. He jumps out towards Gregor, Mitsurugi clashes against Gregor's hammer, but Klein's got all of the momentum here, Gregor is knocked off balance. Athena and I begin to move, I turn to instead face the copy, he is wrestling with his hammer. I begin running at him, ducking underneath the swing of the brute's weapon. Athena hops over me leapfrog-style and jumps into Gregor, putting her shoulder into the bash.

I swing my blade down on the toppled copy, he then shatters almost instantly into pixels. “What?” I ask.

The pixels don't hover upwards to the sky like normal, instead they gravitate over towards Gregor, as they reach him they flow into his body, filling his health back up. “Oh...crap. That keystone of his.”

He grins as he slams his leg down, regaining his own balance and shoves Klein back, two forms erupt from out of his body in a shower of pixels, and then two more, again and again until eight different copies encircle the three of us.

“If his health is restored when the copies are killed, that might mean he actually has to split his health to make the copies, right?” Athena asks.

“Is that just it? Maybe it's all his stats he has to cut.”

One of the copies catches me in the back, sending me into the arms of another in front of me. I see behind me that one of the copies is bear hugging Athena. I turn my head to see the copy's face, it's absolutely soulless, even moreso than the original. Not a single amount of emotion crosses the copies faces. The copy takes me by my left arm, yanking me high into the air.

I use the momentum he'd given me by thrusting my feet into the copy's face, sending my heel straight into the bridge of his nose. A kick like that would surely be fatal in the real world, but all it does here is send the copy's head back as he falls over. I land, barely keeping my balance as my kicking foot tries to stabalize me. Two of the other copies have focused their attention on me, three are hounding Athena and there is one that Klein is fending off, so I would assume that the last had been fighting Klein and had lost.

I hold my sword out as I run at the copy to the left, I use the Shroud to camouflage myself as I prepare to swing around behind, but I feel a kick to my gut, I'm looking up at the real Gregor, one of his copies at his side. I see my hand form in front of me, I'm visible again.

“Don't you remember who gave you that shroud?” He says, grabbing me up by my collar. Stray pixels enter his body, pixels from the copy whose face I kicked in, Klein had finished it by stabbing Mitsurugi right through its chest.

Gregor punches me once in the face and my vision goes blurry. Before he can manage a second time I act without thinking, I slam my head forward, headbutting him and freeing myself.

My vision goes black. I scream out at the top of my lungs. I hear the thud of my skull against his, a low thump and then a loud growl of pain, two if you count mine, but then it's quiet. I'm standing in blackness, and there is a lump of light beside me, a small ball of concentrated glowing white. I walk over to it, inside the center I can see some color, it goes deeper and deeper, I can feel myself looking closer into the light, and then I feel like I am falling into it, from darkness into the bright.

Someone's eyes are opening, I'm watching through them, unable to move or speak. Up above is a small candle-lit ceiling. Whomever I'm looking through sits up, swings their large legs over the bedside, and stands up tall. I can assume I'm looking through Gregor's eyes, this looks like the armory, perhaps his room? The question is when this is, or why I'm even seeing it. I've never even seen his bedroom before, not from the inside, that is, so why do I know what it looks like?

I see a small sign in Gregor's vision, it's a red alpha, it flashes in and out, over and over.

Why is that here?

That's when the text begins typing, there's a script of sorts writing itself alongside the edge of his vision. I see words appear, “Do you understand your purpose...?” flash in and out of existence. They remain when Gregor closes his eyes, switching to a piercing white color instead of the red when the black takes over.

He nods his head up and down, “Kill the boy,” he says.

“Do you know the consequences for failure...?” The text now reads.

Gregor waits a second before nodding, “Yes. I will not fail.”

“Your objective is to lie low until we give you directive, do you understand? Do not blow your cover.”

“I will not.”

“You shall meet the blacksmith in her chamber outside to your left, she doesn't know about you, don't change that. Now, continue on and wait for the next directive...confirm?”

“Confirm,” Gregor mumbles out.

“Proceed.”

Gregor stumbles out of the room, opening the wooden door to a familiar sight, the lobby of the armory. He walks up the stairs to his left, the dimensions contorting just as they had when I'd gone up them with him before. He reaches the large set of double doors, much more grand than the tiny wooden slab Gregor's got.

He grabs the handle and swings open the door, inside I see Beth, she turns as he enters. Her face lights up as she sees him, “Hello! I assume you're going to be my partner, the one I'd heard about in the email?” She asks.

“Da,” Gregor says, putting on his accent.

I can feel a sort of weightlessness, everything begins to dim back to black. I open my eyes, I'm back on the battlefield, the force field at my back. Gregor is right in front of me, staring into me, his jaw almost hits the floor. I can see a tear out of the corner of his eye.

I hear a voice call out, it's Athena, “Duck!” I see her sword first, it glows with a bright light, it seems to extend off longer than it should, and then it all comes back to me.

“No, Athena! You don't understand!” I call out to her.

Athena swings the blade in a nasty arc, a blade about ten feet long composed of the bright light. I hear Gregor whisper, “Save the boy,” before Athena swings. I hit the deck as the sword comes around, Gregor doesn't dodge, the light cuts right through him, he stutters as he shatters into pixels.

He...knows I know. He was under the command of someone this whole time. He was forced into this, but why? And...who is the boy he was supposed to kill...could it be Sam?

Gregor's remains remain, they stutter, but don't float upwards. Instead, they form together, colliding with each other and forming a new figure in a bright white light.

“What the hell is going on?” Klein asks.

“Keep your guard up! Dex, on your feet!” Athena calls, her sword returning to normal length, the light dissipating. All at once the pixels leave and a new body takes its place. I'm standing to my feet, I look up. It's Jen.