Wasteland Warlords Episode 5: Chapter 11 - Kicking the Hornet’s Nest

“Stop them!” Merciful Shepherd roared, letting the half-strangled Joe drop to the dirt, choking and holding a throat covered in livid bruises.

Half the guards attacking Alex split off to take on the oncoming horde of released prisoners. Multicolored flashes of magic lit up the night, mainly focused on the DCU. Looking like somebody’d just hocked a loogie in their milkshakes, the superheroes backpedaled, trying to put enough distance between themselves and their attackers to counter.

A trio of stony demons surrounded by smaller vicious-looking horrors with mouths full of knifelike teeth sprinted out ahead of a man in prison greens, headed straight for the superhero team. Wildflame’s and Merciful Shepherd’s eyes nearly popped out of their heads, but it wasn’t the creatures they were running from—it was the guy directing the monsters.

Hope, sharp and hot, spread through Alex. If the Supermax prisoners were free, that had to mean Clay was, too.

She kicked a snapping barracuda-jellyfish hybrid off her, tearing a few of the gel-covered tentacles it had tangled in her hair, and struggled back to her feet. The Lariat still bound her arms to her sides, but she wasn’t just a brawler. A lobster-esque creature galloped in, maybe counting on its stardust-speckled shell to save it. The creature was woefully mistaken. She intercepted it with a thunderous back kick; her Ettin strength cracked through the creature’s natural armor like an egg and sent it flying.

Joe was covered in starfish, sea urchins, and lampreys.

“I got you, Joe!” Alex yelled, vaulting over a dive-tackle from a loggerhead. She hit the dirt next to her downed brother-in-law and started punting bottom feeders off him. The camera light in his mech suit’s core was still blinking. He was still rolling. “Some of you jackoff viewers better be showing this to your friends,” Alex snarled. “If we did all this crap just for the truth to stay buried, I swear…”

“It’s you who’s gonna be buried,” a dark voice growled over her shoulder. An arm clad in black leather snaked around her throat.

Alex didn’t have her hands free to trap his arm, but Dark Sentinel had a tight enough hold on her that she didn’t need it. She dropped to one knee, throwing her opposite shoulder, tossing the dark crusader using a modified Ippon Seoi Nage shoulder throw. The air whoofed out of his lungs when he hit the dirt like a sack of potatoes. Of all the DCU heroes—or maybe villains—he really hadn’t lived up to the hype.

She dropped a knee on the side of his head, knocking him out again. “People with glass jaws shouldn’t throw stones.”

“Boo,” Joe croaked through a raw-sounding throat. “Ten-point deduction.”

“Hey, mine was better than your Phil McKracken thing.”

He shook his head and coughed out, “Permanent Hall of Shame.”

“Duck, lass!” A notched shortsword sliced over Alex’s head, chopping the sword-nose off a marlin prison guard who had been about to impale her.

“Griff!”

The old man shot her a grin as he hacked into the marlin again. “Glad to see you two are still kickin’.”

A flash of brilliant purple magic crashed into the marlin, blowing it to sushi chunks.

Griff nodded over his shoulder at a slate-skinned young woman with lilac hair and matching eyes.

“My daughter, Ella,” he said, grabbing the Flaming Lariat wrapped around Alex and sawing through it with his shortsword while the girl watched his back. “Ella, this is Alex, Joe, and Chonk.”

“Nice to meet you,” Alex said absently.

Joe rubbed his raw throat as he climbed up out of the dirt. “It’s actually pronounced Lumberjack Joe.”

“Lumberjack Joe?” Ella asked, cocking an eyebrow. “What are you, some kind of hipster Incant?”

“I’ve never been more insulted in my entire life,” Joe replied, sounding scandalized.

Ella just shrugged. “Whatever. Well, hipster or not, thanks for helping me break outta this dump. Now, what do we need to do to put this place behind us forever?”

The Lariat slithered off Alex, its flame extinguished, as Griff’s sword sliced through the last coil.

“First, we find my husband,” she said, flexing her hands and bending her arms to get the blood flowing again. “Then we run like hell.”

“He oughta be on his way,” Griff said, looking back toward the center of the prison. “He was right—”

A crackling boom like deep-fried thunder shook the prison yard. Half the wall of Cellblock 1 disintegrated in a mushroom cloud that immediately formed an acidic downpour.

Thanks to Katotes, Alex was immune to the effects of all poisons, sicknesses, and filth, but the droplets still ate into her new samurai armor, curls of acrid smoke drifting up from the metal. Joe and Griff hissed as the rain burnt their exposed skin.

“Heads up,” Ella called, raising her arms over her head and projecting a bubble of purple light around the four of them to shed the noxious downpour. But then her face paled and a little bit of her spunk and spitfire seemed to drain away. “Oh crap, the Warden’s here. Looks like I’ll never get to see that BLS concert after all.”

A spherical, eye-covered monstrosity the size of Clay’s repo-ed work truck levitated through the newly created gap. Its bulk shifted and rippled, faces, human and inhuman, twisting in screaming horror as they floated to the surface of the monster’s stardust skin and then sunk below the cosmic coloring once more. A black miasma rolled out ahead of the otherworldly beast. Wherever it reached, prison guards and prisoners alike dropped to the dirt, screaming incoherently and clawing at their eyes, attempting to pluck them out.

The battered DCU superheroes looked like they had been interrupted in the middle of getting their asses handed to them, but when they saw the Warden coming, they scuttled back a few steps, cozying up to the concertina wire fence and giving the horrifying eldritch abomination a wide berth. The prisoner directing the summoned demons snarled as he spun on his heel to face the new threat.

But the Warden wasn’t headed for them. Its millions of eyes and faces turned to the Jaeger squad. Apparently, it knew just who had started this prison raid.

“Okay, new plan.” Alex’s fists balled at her sides. “First, we kill that Warden thing, then we find Clay, then we run like hell.”

Joe’s cannon whined as it powered up. “I’m in.”

“I’m the only one of us with Poison Immunity, so I’ll have to do the close-quarters work.” Alex topped off her health and stamina using a pair of potions Clay had brewed for them beforehand. “I should be good for one more Bloodborne Frenzy.”

“Way ahead of ya,” Joe said. “Chonkie, do the honors!”

With an affirmative chitter, Chonk grabbed Joe by the ear and prepared to sink his teeth into the big redneck.

“Guess it was nice knowing you guys while it lasted,” Ella muttered. “Dad, you’d better haul ass with me.”

“Don’t count ’em out just yet, lass.” Griff stuck out an arm to stop Joe and Alex, then nodded toward the ruined cellblock. “And don’t you two dinguses go off halfcocked, either. Looks like we might have a little help yet.”

An eerie green light shined through the gap the Warden had created. Clay Jaeger strode out into the prison yard, glowing like a toxic nuclear sunrise, dragging a heavyset guy with some kind of crazy skin condition and weird branches growing out of his head.

“Hot damn,” Alex said, stealing her husband’s favorite line. “We’re saved.”

***

Clay hopped down from the sniper’s nest just as the last of the Treefrog Shinobi Essence timed out. The ghostly sticky pads disappeared, leaving him with regular human hands and feet again.

Taking out the sniper in Watchtower 2 had earned him a boatload of experience points and pushed him up over the edge to a new level, but he didn’t have time to screw around with the stats or new spells. Not just then. He closed out of the notifications. He had his family to save, some sweet comeuppance to dish out, and some asses in serious need of kicking. And he only had so long to make it all happen. Somebody had blown a hole in the cellblock, widening what had been the exit door into something more akin to the Grand Canyon.

“Hey, that was cool,” Shifty said, patting him on the back. “And now I can wait safely in here until you’re done out there with the Warden.” He aimed a twiglike thumb over his shoulder at the hole in the cellblock.

“Yeah, no. You’re coming with me,” Clay said, aiming the M4 at Shifty. He wasn’t taking any more chances with the Oath, especially not while he was fighting a Cosmic Horror or those DCU douchebags. “I’ll let you choose—come willingly and hide where you want out in the yard until this is over, or make me use Tether Shot and be tied to me while I fight the Warden.”

“You didn’t let me finish.” Shifty’s grin barely faltered as he pressed a mossy hand to his bark-covered chest. “What I was going to say is, ‘I can safely wait in here, but I’d rather safely hide out in the yard.’ The yard is my favorite place to hide this time of year.”

Turned out that Shifty’s mouth was more willing to agree than his body, however. Clay took off at a jog, but was immediately stopped by heart-crushing pain at the cellblock door.

“Guess we’re going to have to compromise on this ‘willingly’ thing,” Clay muttered.

As he dragged the tree druid into the yard, a strange rain poured down, impossibly heavy for the desert landscape. Where it hit, the droplets burned his skin. Clay threw up a Shield of Minor Warding, which Shifty immediately took advantage of to sprint off to find cover. At least that gave Clay the whole yard to work with before the Oath caused any more problems for him.

He scanned the outer courtyard for his family.

Carnage was spread across the open space between the cellblock and the fences. There were ICSOs, wasteland creatures, and Incants everywhere, and everyone seemed to be fighting everyone else without any real rhyme or reason.

Clay’s supernaturally enhanced sight locked onto Alex and Joe. They were safe inside a bubble of Ella’s sparkly purple magic with Griff, but definitely looked worse for the wear. Thick streaks of blood covered Alex’s face and armor, and Joe looked like a prizefighter who had just taken a beating from an angry silverback gorilla. Big dark bruises were starting to develop around his throat, visible even through the impressive neck fur Joe was sporting.

Cold fury built in Clay’s chest remembering what he’d seen in the security monitors, but he couldn’t worry about the two-faced superheroes yet. The Warden was headed straight for the Jaeger squad. Stopping that Cosmic Horror had to be his first priority. Then he would deal with the state-sanctioned assholes who’d gone after his family.

He checked the timer in the corner of his vision as it rolled down past ten minutes.

“Over here, Warden!” he shouted, triggering Beguiling Call to make his voice boom in whatever the amorphous, eye-covered horror heard out of. “Pick on somebody your own level.”

“Nice! And I got you both in the shot.” From inside the purple bubble, Joe shot Clay a grin and double thumbs-up. “Note the confidence in my bro’s tone, Lumberheads. You don’t get that sitting behind a desk in your fancy civilization. That’s pure wasteland right there.”

The Warden’s multitude of eyes all spun and locked on Clay.

“What do you want, you pathetic human vermin?” The Warden’s voice thrummed through the yard, shaking the dirt beneath Clay’s boots.

Individual skirmishes ground to a halt, and wide, terrified eyes turned from the Warden’s horrific form to Clay, standing tall and defiant under the terrible gaze of the ultimate dungeon boss. He wasn’t sure his appearance stacked up against the Cosmic Horror’s, even with his eating-nails scowl.

“I want to drag every single dark thing your buddies in Big Pharma and the government have been hiding out here into the light,” Clay said, searching the Soul Index as he spoke. “Let the world know what’s really going on behind the wall—who’s really pulling the strings. And if I have to go through you to do that, so help me Lord, I will.”

The Warden’s skin rippled and shifted as he let out a deafening laugh that sounded like a million hungry locusts buzzing in unity. “You have barely put on your Incant skin. You have no hope of surviving a battle with me, human. This is my dungeon.”

“Not for long,” Clay said. “This is your one and only warning. Let the prisoners go free without attacking, and I’ll let you live.”

In response, a star-speckled blast of black exploded off the Warden and whistled toward Clay like a mortar.

All of Clay’s instincts said to dodge, but he kept his feet rooted to the spot, thanking God he’d selected the Fractal Fae Essence.

“Echo Wall!” The Essence took over. As if he’d known how to cast the spell all along, Clay raised his arms like he was trying to brace a tower shield. Shining silver mirror glass spread outward from his fists and encased his body in a diamond dome.

The cosmic mortar slammed into the glittering mirror and rebounded, sending the attack streaking back downrange. It crashed into the Warden and divided like water around a rock. Herman, who’d been behind the Warden in the splash zone, cussed up a storm and backpedaled out of the way, one of his stone demons getting hit and disintegrating into a minor nuclear blast.

“Fool,” the Warden rumbled. “Did you think I would not be immune to my own starborn magic?”

Clay smirked. “I hoped. How’s about you try this one on for size.”

The reflection spell had taken a hefty chunk out of Clay’s Magicka, but luckily with his Incant abilities, that was already regenerating. He had just enough time left in his Fractal Fae minute for one more spell, one that didn’t require such a steep price to cast.

The Essence took over again, and he instinctually directed his palms at the Warden. “Shards of the Malenfant Mirror!”

With a musical sound of breaking glass, the shining diamond mirror magic covering Clay from head to foot shattered, and the Shards exploded toward the Warden like a pissed-off swarm of glimmering murder hornets. In every Shard, Clay saw faces identical to the ones that kept surfacing in the Warden’s skin—except instead of looking tortured, the faces in the mirror were furious.

The Warden’s many eyes widened in what appeared to be genuine fear. He tried to dodge, but his amorphous, floating body wasn’t built for speed. A handful of the mirror buckshot peppered his side before he could get fully clear of their spread.

He roared, and the eyes that had taken Shards sank into the depths of his body. They left behind no visible wounds, but ripples of rot spread outward from the impact points.

“Prison yard playtime is over,” the Warden snarled. “Prepare to be exterminated, vermin.”

An army of those tortured faces burst off the Warden like smoke, every one a twisted and malformed horror from the dark beyond the stars. Clay broke into a run to put some distance between him and them. He’d been eyeing the Ravenous Slender Essence as a follow-up to the Fractal Fae, but when he saw what the Warden was throwing at him, he had to switch plans fast.

The conjured horrors solidified as they chased after Clay, thin, twisted limbs stretching impossibly from their faces and grabbing for him. Gaping maws filled with unspeakable voids gnashed at his heels.

Instead of the Slender Essence, Clay selected the Tricorn from the Soul Index. The Tricorn was the lovechild of a rhino and a triceratops, if either of those creatures had downed protein shakes and roids like they were candy.

The Warden’s army of monstrous wraiths caught up to Clay, crashing into him just as he embraced the Tricorn Essence. Power and strength filled every muscle in his body, along with a general urge to rampage through a city smashing down buildings and flipping over cars. He was basically an entire mob of Seahawks fans all crammed into one body. The mouths of the void tried to rip chunks from him, but his body glowed with Pebbled Skin, a natural armor of the Tricorn.

Spinning into the blow, Clay slammed the butt of the M4 into a horror, kicked another out of the way, and caught a third with the rifle barrel in its void mouth. Each creature burst on impact like a water balloon. Starry black smoke swirled around Clay. His skin and lungs burned like a prairie fire.

[You are in the blast zone of a Starborn Terror. Take 10 points Radiation Damage per second for 30 seconds or until you leave the blast zone.]

He ducked out of the smoke just in time to run into the rest of the Warden’s army. The Tricorn’s instincts were to smash and bash until all its attackers were gone, but that wasn’t going to cut it here. He threw up a Minor Shield of Warding to keep them back, but they kept kamikaze-ing straight into it, bursting and filling the yard with that deadly radiation.

“Here,” Alex said, appearing at his side. She shoved his Wyrd West gun belt into his hand and squeezed between him and the Terrors. “I’ll handle these small fries.” Their radiation didn’t seem to bother her. Seeing the look on his face, she reminded him, “I’m immune to basically everything. You worry about the Warden.”

He nodded and used Fast Hands to strap his gun belt into place.

Outside the smoke, Clay saw that the fighting around the yard had re-erupted with renewed fervor.

Joe and Dark Sentinel were busy shooting balls of red and black light at each other, Joe running his mouth the whole time to his viewers about how only a wuss trying to look cool would shoot Shadowfire from his eyes.

Herman had summoned an army of demons, both huge and small, and was harrying Merciful Shepherd and Wildflame while simultaneously dodging magical attacks from Crawley.

Griff and Ella waded into the oncoming hordes of ICSOs along with the released prisoners, throwing arcane energy and glitter bombs. Chonk darted back and forth at their heels, attacking anything that tried to flank the father-daughter duo.

In the corner of Clay’s vision, the timer was at 8:44 and counting.

The Warden’s eyes all suddenly darkened, the weird multi-lobed pupils widening until it looked like they could suck in the universe. Clay didn’t want to look into them—something about their shapes and movement made him sick to his stomach. But they pulled at his vision until he locked gazes with as many of the Warden’s pupils as he could at once. He couldn’t move. Every muscle in his body was locked in place.

[Black Hole Hypnosis engaged. You have 1.5 seconds to retaliate per 10 Intelligence points before you are sucked in and your mind is compressed to a singularity.]

That only gave him eight seconds to work with. He had to come up with something or they were all screwed.