Chapter 4

Cybernetics in the modern era can mean the difference between a battle won or lost and even surviving to see the next day. Implants can be used to improve strength, speed, mobility, reflexes, add extra senses, or even add unseen weapons. In most Tier 1 nations, the majority of cybernetics can’t be implanted until the subject is done growing. So children can’t get anything too drastic because it could interfere with their development. But exceptions are always made, either for life-saving reasons or with enough deckra to grease the right palms.

It had been a week since I had the talk with Mystagogue Thrasher, and the day had come. The day I headed back to the Aegis Academy of the Grimmalk. Mystagogue Thrasher’s estate was nestled way back in the Titan’s Fall Mountain Range, several days west of the academy. In honesty, if I had traveled to the academy by foot, it would have been a trip of weeks. Because of this and the fact that the entire mountain range was classified as a red threat zone, the large Orc had a private AV (Aerial Vehicle) hovercraft that was designed custom to fit him comfortably.

I climbed the stairs to the sixth floor after getting my room assignment from a rather grouchy Dwarf who linked my B.I.C (Bio Identification Chip) to my quarters and gave me my uniforms for the year. So, with a bag over either shoulder, I climbed the sixth floor to room 666.

I stood before the door to my room and let out an amused chuckle. In the Cassillis religion, the number was considered one of the most unlucky and was held in close association with demons, devils, and the Eternal of Darkness Tenebrous. Go figure they would give an evil room number to the Darkling that had traits from all breeds of Darklings. I was a freak among freaks, and this would only add to my dark reputation.

I swiped my wrist that was implanted with my B.I.C across the scanner of the door and stepped inside as the door opened. What I found inside gave me a pleasant surprise. The room was twice as large as my room from last year. The walls were an ash-gray with a purple stripe running along the center of each wall, flanked by two black stripes. 

 The Black Rack against the wall to my right was three times the size of the one I had last year. The room’s workbench spanned the entire wall to my left and five feet of the back wall, corner included. The bench was fitted with dozens of drawers full of raw crafting materials and a Black Rack on the wall above the bench, already filled with a range of tools that had me giddy with excitement. 

The bed was at the center of the back wall, a full-size mattress with a mounted overhang stretching from the headboard. That overhang was a connection hub for access to the LSN (Living Sigil Network) and the Full Dive system. That was my connection to the wide world outside the mountain. The comforter and pillows of the bed were dyed black with the Order’s compass Rose insignia emblazoned on them in amethyst-purple, ruby-red, and ash-gray.

The Order’s emblem was a series of overlapping bars with angled bands, each ending in sharp points. Each point of the compass rose was formed from two of these mounts, with a thicker one sprouting from the overlap at the center to form a trident and a V shape under each of these directional points. 

A door leading to the bathroom was in the room's back right corner. Attached to the wall beside the door to the room was a large locker to store my clothes. The locker was larger than last year’s, and I had a feeling that the bathroom was larger, too.

I strolled into the room, dropped my rucksack to the floor, and tossed my pack of uniforms onto the bag. For some easy entertainment, while I got settled in, I double-tapped my therra-node mounted to my right temple and started a playlist of rock music while I unpacked. I immediately set about placing my weapons, training and lethal, into the Black Rack on the right wall. After most of my weapons were in place, I put away my uniforms and civilian clothes. Finally, before I left the room, I equipped a sidearm, a Shortsword, and my tactical gauntlet.

My gauntlet was a completely unique device that I had modified plenty of times and overhauled more than a few. The current model at the time was my Mark Five Dark Venerator. I called her Venna for short. Venna’s structural frame was based on an old piece of weaponized armor known as a catlar, a set of overlapping plates to be mounted to a fist and forearm. A standard catlar was tipped with a pair of curved punching daggers, and the length of it was armed with either small blades or spikes. But Venna was a nasty piece of work that I was more than a little proud of.

The overlapping plates reached up to a scale-layered shoulder piece. The front tip ended in a clawed five-finger gauntlet. At each of the base knuckles were what would look like simple punching spikes but were what I called Shock Bites. Built into the back of the hand was both a kinetic force projection source and an illusionary projection device. Mounted to either side of the wrist and set just above were a pair of apparatus arms that were designed to shift forward and link to form a battering ram that could channel elemental power. Mounted to the top of the forearm was hidden a collapsed Vekenna blade, also known as a Dwarven Handspan Blade, for its blade width. The Vekenna could be launched and was also attached to the gauntlet with a mythril filament woven cable that could reach up to thirty feet. On the inside edge of the underside of the device was a custom grappling hook I called the squid hook of my own design. On the side opposite of the squid hook was a blowtorch/gas projection system. On the underside of the gauntlet was a disk launcher and a magazine clip of disks that could be filled with various substances. The whole armor piece and integrated tools were painted a matte black.

I equipped Venna and tightened all the fastenings before double-checking my other hidden tools. Lock picking set for both mechanical and electric locks set into the lining of my underwear. Utility belt full of smoke pellets, various elements and sizes of myst crystals, and several other quick-use, disposable tools and antidotes to poisons and venoms. My black cargo pants were filled with a range of crafting components and resources. Around my thighs were small but tight bandoleers filled with screwdrivers, adjustable wrenches, and other crafting tools. I finished off the whole ensemble with a pair of daggers slipped into my black combat boots.

I needed to be ready for any potential situation from the moment I left the safety of my room. Before leaving the room to take a look around, I projected an illusion over myself that hid my gauntlet, bandoleers, and sidearm, but I made sure to still display my Shortsword. I didn’t want to show just how ready for trouble I was, but I didn’t want to appear totally vulnerable.

I stepped out of my quarters wearing a leather jacket and, with a much smaller backpack, shouldered and locked the door behind me before heading back out to the grounds. As I descended the stairs, I pulled up the HUD of my therra to overlay my vision and sent out a text message to two very specific individuals and told them where to meet me. I left the dorms and made a B-Line straight to the Foundry in all its innovative glory.

The Foundry had always been my happy place on the academy grounds. A building exclusively dedicated to crafting and designing new weapons, tools, and armor. I had spent countless hours of my free time in the labs and forges of the building. So I waited outside the front doors of the massive structure, and people watched.

I could tell just from a glance who were veteran students and who were the new slates. The second-year students and up all walked with an air of confidence. Many of them had dedicated their very appearance to their sect. Warriors from the Sect of the Crimson Blade were all well-built and armed with at least one or two weapons. Plenty of them openly bared scars like badges of pride. That was something I could never do, my scars each being a sign of failure, and I had literally hundreds of them.

Mages from the Sect of the Blackened Crown strode with a sense of surety and purpose that could only be found in an understanding of magic. The fact that they mostly wore mage robes also helped. Almost all the mages that passed by had their spell focus on their person. Those that didn’t were just asking for trouble, but I wouldn’t be the one to give it.

Members of the Sect of the Burning Hand, the sect for craftsmen, engineers, scientists, and mystgenists, all walked by with some carrying device full of tools, and many of them wore lab coats. Men and women after my own heart, dedicating their passion to designing and crafting technology.

Members of the Sects of the Silent Heart and Sightless Eye were easily confused with each other. They all developed some ability to blend into a crowd and avoid notice. This little trick would work on almost anyone else, but Thallos drilled into me an almost instinctive level of noticing what doesn’t want to be noticed and telling just how big a threat it is.

Just from the people that passed by, I counted thirty-six spies and fifteen assassins. Of those fifteen, on a threat scale of 1 to 10, four were rating 3, six were rating 5, three were rating 8, and two were rating 9. It also seemed fairly obvious that the ones with higher ratings were from higher-class tiers.

I also noticed that certain species were more prone to join certain sects. There was a higher-than-average Elven populous that was drawn to the Blackened Crown and the Silent Heart. Most of the Dwarves seemed to be Crimson Blade and/or Burning Hand members. The Ceangar seemed to be mostly drawn into the Crimson Blade, Sightless Eye, or Silent Heart. Orcs were almost exclusively part of Crimson Blade, but I did take note of several of the normally brutish species that were casters. Most of those looked to be Shamen or Druids. Gnomes, however, looked to be exclusively part of the Blackened Crown, their kind being the only species with a 100% Mage birthrate. Dracose seemed to easily fit in any of the sects, depending on their breed. Humans, being the most prolific species, were the majority of all the sects.

Half breeds, also called Halflings, were difficult to pick out in most cases. A Human/Elf could easily be mistaken for either species. Dwarf/Elves could appear as Dwarves with fine features or an Elf with a bit stouter frame and facial hair, but that could easily be mistaken for a Wild Elf. Orc/Ceangar could appear as short Orcs with thin frames and whipcord muscle or a Ceangar with Orc skin tones, a strong jaw, and maybe a little tusk showing. The really easy ones to pick out were the Halfling Species like the Drakin, Darklings, or Brightlings, but I saw none of those. Or should I say, I saw almost none of those.

Strolling across the grounds was a pack of hounds in students’ garb. An Orc, Dracose, and High Elf all flanked a certain feathered fop. The pampered pigeon I wanted to permanently pluck sauntered across the grounds like he owned the place.

He had changed from when we last met. Mallrimor was dressed in a sharp dress suit, shirt, and pants. The jacket was ocean blue with gold trim and stitching and cut in a two-button Ambrin style with ornate sapphire and gold scrollwork embroidered across the lapel. The dress pants matched the jacket down to a strip of the same scrollwork along the same outside crease. Under his jacket was a sunflower yellow dress shirt. Capping the whole outfit was a pair of white wingtip shoes with gold laces. As before, his skin was pale and flawless, his features were angelic in a very literal sense, and his golden blond was worn long and tied back in a tail. His aqua eyes gave off a light glow as another hint of his lineage. The biggest sign of his bloodline was the large pair of cloud-white dove wings that grew from his back.

Mallrimor was a Brightling, the complete opposite of my species as a Darkling, and he was a grade-A jackass that made it his goal in life last year to make me miserable. But when I grew a spine, developed an ability to fight back, and made a fool of him and his gang of thugs, his goal changed to killing me by any means necessary.

I tried to keep unnoticed after I noticed the gaggle of gangers, but only a moment after I noticed the feathered fop, he noticed me. A merciless smirk spread across his face, and he redirected the trajectory of his herb of lemmings my way. I nonchalantly adjusted my stance and location to a more tactical position without seeming threatening or weak. I set myself next to the Foundry doors for an easy evacuation route. I leaned one shoulder against the stout doorframe, posted on one foot, the other crossed in front, boot toe in the dirt. To finish the look of unbudging nonaggression while remaining tactically ready, was loosely folding my arms over my chest.

From this position, I could fall back into the Foundry for an environment I could use to maximum advantage. I could kick up dirt as a distraction or simple obfuscation attempt, or I could make a surprise attack with a fast kick. I also had the ability to either easily reach the only visible weapon I had so I wouldn’t show my hand and get easily armed, or I could slash my palm with a claw from my gauntlet and unleash any of several flavors of hell.

Within moments, they closed the distance, and I made sure to take note of each weapon I might go against as they moved in. I also found verification of a theory I’d had since early last year.

“Well, if it isn’t the cock-flop of a hellspawn. And here I was, hoping that you had managed to do something successfully for once and died. You being homeless and all, I figured you’d have enough of an advantage that you couldn’t fail.” The infested testicle of a Brightling said in a falsely mourning tone as he gave me a heavy shrug with palms facing up in a pose that conveyed, ‘Oh well. What are ya gonna do?’. “But here you are. At the academy again to ruin things for other students because you just can’t succeed.” He dropped his pose, and his tone shifted from sarcastically bemoaned to caustically amused.

It was only because of deeply engrained acting training that I didn’t show any of the annoyed rage I felt. My casual expression and relaxed posture were a flawless mask made from brittle glass. I didn’t even clench my jaw in an effort to restrain myself from breaking his hollow bird-bone jaw.

“Really?” I sarcastically queried as I laxly pointed with my gauntleted right hand off into the distance above. “Because I have several memories of me kicking the asses of you and your wannabe gangers.” I adjusted the posture of my right hand to hold up a finger as if emphasizing a point. “Oh, by the way, thanks for helping me learn that I had magic that I can use without a focus. How’s the wrist?”

Mallrimor’s sneer morphed into a snarl as he tried to hide his burn-scarred right wrist under a jacket sleeve. "Oh, and nice toy." I said with false ease as I pointed to the device strapped to Mallrimor's hip. The device was a set of 4 concentric thin and wide rings floating around a central stone. Each ring was forged from a red-copper metal with veins of silver-blue and engraved with complex runic formulas. The metal was known as Zallerrum. The central stone of the device was a smooth sphere of partially translucent blue and purple with shining specks of silver. Starlight Quartz was the common name for the crystal. Between the two very identifiable materials and the shape of four floating rings around the centerpiece, I recognized the device as a Catalyst Gyro Prysm, or CGP for short. The CGP was the spell focus of a Sorcerer. Sorcerers were a dangerous destruction-proficient mage class with Elemental Affinities very close to mine.

Not only had my sarcastic question brought up that I had harmed him, but my follow-up comment made casual notice of his mage classification, which would show I knew his weaknesses. This was in addition to me subtly noting that I had harmed him with an element he was supposed to have a strong affinity for. 

I can't lie. I was more than a little proud of that subtle social skill expression. Even today, I  am not the smoothest talker or the best at understanding social cues, but back then, I was much, much worse at it. This was a rare display of social skills that, under most circumstances, would have been impossible for me. Maybe I was put into a mindset that allowed me to act like a smooth and fork-tongued noble, or maybe I was temporarily blessed by some god. I legitimately can't rule either idea out, but I'll get into the god thing later, because that's a whole other bowl of cobras.

Mallrimor cut his hand through the air as if to render my statements harmless as he snapped, “That’s bold words for some whose girlfriend left him for his master. I also heard they both hated you so much that they turned traitor on the Order just to get away from you.”

While I gave the scum-sake an almost amused smile with a cocked brow, inside was a different story. Rose and Thallos were both sore topics in and of themselves, and that final act of theirs was something that I simply couldn't get over. Mallrimor bringing them up in such a disdainful manner almost caused my eye to twitch as I restrained myself from the desire to gut him like a holiday turkey.

I threw Bird-boy a mocking yet curious look as I pressed the tip of my right index finger against my jaw in an exaggerated pose of questioning thought. “I really am curious how that story got around. I’m shocked that it got around even faster than the news of how you and your thuglets ganged up four-on-one against me with lethal-edged weapons, and I still managed to bounce you clowns off the wall like rubber balls.” I could see the three lackeys bare their teeth, looking for an excuse to thrash me. But not Mallrimor. He was focused on where my finger met my jaw. The moment I saw where his focus was, I knew I had made a mistake. That was my gauntleted hand, with claw-tipped fingers that stretched past the tip of my actual finger by a good half-inch. I could feel the skin under the claw dimple, but with the illusion, my finger wasn’t even making contact.

The feathered fop knew something was up. I needed to think quickly, but my mouth went off before I finished pulling together a solid strategy. “You know, it’s funny that I compared you all to balls because that’s something I know none of you have got rattling around in those trousers.” That was the breaking point. Mallrimor’s eyes snapped to mine with a murderous glare. Kesher, Brecken, and Gellar all moved to draw weapons, and I took my moment as they were busy drawing weapons. I kicked up a cloud of dirt using the toe of the boot that I had been unobtrusively digging into the loose soil and dust from the Foundry.

As I kicked up the cloud, I took a step back and threw a solid punch aimed at Mallrimor’s jaw while he coughed and tried to clear his eyes. The punch thrown with my gauntleted right hand was made in perfect form. As the fist passed my shoulder, I threw my shoulders into the blow and pivoted my hips in time with the strike to give the attack power from my entire body. If that hit didn’t knock the hollow-boned egotist out cold, I would be shocked. I felt the blow make contact and pushed through for maximum force. As my fist struck the left side of his jaw, I watched with satisfaction as Mallrimor’s head snapped to the right, and his feet lost contact with the ground. The Orc, Brecken, caught the bastard before he could hit the ground, and I was shocked as Mallrimor’s eyes shot open and locked on me as he raised his hand to cast a spell at me.

That moment of shock cost me. While I was stunned by my failure to knock the Brightling out, Gellar, the blond High Elf, closed the distance with impressive speed, a pair of gladius swords coming at me just as fast. I staggered back on reflex and brought up Venna to block. Gellar was in motion to perform a scissor slash, so I tried to place Venna right where the two blades would meet and overlap. But Gellar saw what I was aiming for and altered tactics at the last second.

He drove his left blade into my gauntlet to lock me into a block. The High Elf felt stronger than normal. I shifted my stance for a better footing and dug in my heels to prevent being pushed over, but the Elf seemed to have planned for that choice. As I leaned into my block, just barely holding him at bay, his right blade slipped around the left side of the blocking arm in a serpentine motion. The next thing I knew, my left shoulder was screaming in pain. I glanced over for a second to verify that Gellar’s right blade was stabbed into my left shoulder. He pulled the blade free and positioned it to stab me in the abdomen.

To prevent that plan from following through, I drove my front knee up in a strike aimed at his left wrist. The hit landed with satisfying force. I failed to disarm him, but I did force him to let up on the pressure against Venna. I pulled that hand back as I threw a hard push kick at the High Elf’s chest. He lept back to avoid the hit, which gave me some breathing room.

I pulled the Vekenna from my gauntlet and was about to trigger its expansion when a shape came at me from the side. With a leap back, I only barely dodged a downward swing from Kesher, the red and black-scaled Dracose with a familiar burn scar over his left eye in the shape of a handprint. He drove the chop that was aimed to cleave my arm from my elbow down with a greatsword with the massive strength of his larger frame. I gave a silent curse for not noticing the massive Dezzar breed Dracose until he was practically atop me.

Kesher drew his blade from a deep furrow in the ground that wasn’t there before. That was not natural strength. Did Mallrimor enhance his goons with Lumina Myst? How could he have had enough power to boost two people if that was the case? The questions raced in my mind even as The Dracose and High Elf came at me together.

Vekenna in my left hand, I lifted my right hand to face my attackers and drew my line of sight on the High Elf. If I could knock him out of the fight with my Shock Bites, then I could handle the other three more easily. I shot two Shock Bites to strike the Elf. Gellar batted one aside with the flat of a blade, but the other stuck home on his chest.

While set into my Venna, my Shock Bites looked like simple knuckle spikes and could be used as such. But their real purpose was only revealed when it was too late for the target. These two-and-a-half-inch spikes could be shot up to twenty feet, and in flight, they bloomed into small voltage flowers with claws designed to dig in deep when they made contact with someone. The claws of the Shock Bites acted as conduction amplifiers to the central spike that would pierce the skin and discharge a high-powered electric current. The amperage of these devices was nonlethal, but that didn’t mean that they were easily shrugged off. It was only four amps, so the target’s heart wouldn’t stop, but the voltage was high enough to cause a body to lock up and likely knock out the victim they were attached to.

But nothing happened to Gellar after my Shock Bite dug into his chest. The High Elf looked down at the device in annoyance and plucked it free as if it were little more than a large splinter. Kesher stepped in close with his blade raised for easy defense or prepared for an attack, waiting for me to make the next move. I was debating my approach as I held my ground. Something was clearly off. Mallrimor was more durable, Kesher was far stronger than normal, and Gellar was both stronger and faster than expected, as well as immune to my electric assault. Only one answer came to mind that would explain all of these new factors. Cybernetics. That was a problem.

With this new assumption in mind, I changed gears and slipped into the Foundry. The inside of the new Foundry was a long hall made from one solid piece of red jade, the body of scarlet with fissure veins of orange and black shining in the lamplight. Lining the walls every six feet were ornate lamps burning with an orange-red flame that cast dancing shadows across the intricate walls. A part of my mind took note of the excessively expensive and rare stone even as I fled down the hall. Under the lamps, along with walls, were shadow boxes holding either broken weapons or armor or diagrams of complex feats of engineering and the systems within.

I didn’t have time to stop and inspect the walls as I dashed down the hall to emerge into a large triskaidecagon room that reached up seven stories to a domed glass ceiling. Of the thirteen sides of the room, eight held doors on each floor that were labeled 'Cauldron', followed by a numeric identifier. Excluding the wall with the entrance I had just emerged from, the other seven walls of the room had a wide and deep groove that ran up to the roof; locked into each of these guiding tracks was a sturdy metal platform, each of them with safety rails and a sign the specified that the platforms were meant for unloading heavy equipment from the Cauldrons and NOT to be ridden up. At the center of the room was a spiral staircase that branched off to walkways on each floor, leading to an exterior path around the room's perimeter.

While I knew that rules in the Foundry were set for safety purposes, that was not the time for me to follow the red tape. I sprinted across the room to the platform opposite the entrance. As I skidded to a halt, I turned to the control panel and quickly looked for the button to raise the damned thing. I could hear pounding feet just in the hall I had left, which drove me into a frantic rush. I found the needed button and slammed my palm against it. Just as my pursuers entered the room, a guard rail raised to close the path I had just taken to step onto the slab of textured metal. With a shudder, the platform raised, just passing out of Kesher's reach as he was about to reach me.

There was a stream of cursing from the group below as I rose ever higher and repeatedly pressed the seventh-floor button. Kesher and Gellar turned to the stairs and climbed them three at a time for the Dracose and two at a time for the High Elf. I kept my eye on them as they tried to keep up with my ascent in a less-than-successful manner. I tore my eyes from the two on the stairs to search for Mallrimor and Brecken to find them riding on their own platform in pursuit.

I needed to think of a way out of this situation and fast. Just as I reached the seventh floor, I had an epiphany. I slammed the button to drop me one floor. Just as my platform began to lower, Kesher and Gellar reached the seventh floor. The Dracose was heaving for breath, but the Elf seemed no worse for wear, which was something I took careful note of.

Once my platform came to a stop, I vaulted the guardrail and aimed Venna at the stairway. As Gellar and Kesher reached my floor, I triggered a kinetic blast in a concentrated burst aimed at Gellar’s face. The ball of force struck the Elf, and he was launched back to slam into Kesher and throw them both down the stairs. When Gellar turned to glare at me from his tangled heap with the Dracose, I broke out in a wide smirk when I saw his nose was broken, blood running free from both nostrils.

Without taking another second to inspect the scene, I run into the nearest Cauldron. Cauldron 45 was a large room in the shape of a cake slice, with the entrance at the narrow end. Running along the left wall was a series of smelters, burbling and boils with molten metals in a range of colors, from deep red to white hot. Installed before each smelter was a crucible stand, some already holding a mold for the burning liquid metal. Along the right wall was a series of stations, each laden with tools and equipment for shaping and working metal. Along the back wall was a series of shelves and stands holding raw ores in a range of colors even more expansive than the colors glowing from the smelters, but I didn’t have time to identify anything. The room already had seven students working on various projects, and from a glance, it looked like the majority of the work being done was for enchantable jewelry.

I hurried into the room and prepped Venna for my next trick. I picked a smelter at random and triggered the gauntlet’s illusion system. Because I had nothing pre-saved for images to lay over my person, I was forced to make a disguise on the spot. I needed something that would blend into the background and go unnoticed. I focused on the mental image of a Human. Male, brown hair, brown eyes, medium build with the muscle build of a smith. That meant I needed brawny arms, back, and chest, but little in the way of legs or abdomen. I set the hair to a length to cover my face while I was bent over to cover any flaws in my image and made it extra shaggy. For clothing, I wore grease and ash-stained jeans, work boots, and a smith’s apron over a bare torso.

I quickly set to looking busy. What Master Mystagogue Mallock, the head of the Sect of the Burning Hand at the academy, would call ‘cutting wire’. In other words, I looked busy while doing nothing productive. I set to adjusting the settings on the smelter before me in minor tweaks that wouldn’t really affect the quality of the metal.

The four attackers stormed into the room, ready to rip my head from my shoulders, only to find me nowhere. As a squad, they stalked deeper into the room. They passed me by, and I couldn’t help but smile at my success. Kesher gripped the shoulder of a student at the back of the room and spun him with force to inspect the poor Human. The student was clearly a non-combatant as he flinched away from the massive Dracose on sight. Gellar, in pure rage, stormed through the room with murder writ plain on his face as he checked under tables and behind smelters. Brecken stood guard at the door. I noticed the Orc had changed up his standard combat equipment. While he kept the battle axe on his back, he held a pair of odd-looking hand axes in each hand. Brecken idly leaned on the entryway frame as he bounced one axe off his thigh, the blade away from his skin as if he was totally bored with the events. What made his hand axes so strange was the odd shape of their hilts and a hole at the spine of the blade that ran as deep as I could see.

I was trying to figure out a way past the Orc when I heard Mallrimor bark, “There he is!”

I turned to find the Brightling pointing right at me from the center of the room. Until that moment, he had been standing in that exact spot, tapping a foot in irritation as he let Kesher and Gellar hunt me down. I looked at him in total shock, trying to figure out how he spotted me when I noticed a dim red light in the pupil of his left eye. Damned cybernetics again. I was going to need to upgrade myself soon if I didn’t want to get creamed by these goons.

Gellar stalked towards me with hate in his eyes, blades at the ready. Kesher only looked annoyed as he approached with his great sword in hand. In a panic, I dumped the smelter I had been in front of. Between the force I threw it down at and without a crucible to catch the molten metal, the burning sludge spilled across the floor and burst into flames. To literally add fuel to the flames, I triggered my welder/chemical thrower to gush phercyma onto the liquid metal. The highly combustible gel erupted into a wall of flames on contact with the molten surface.

I took my moment and ran towards the door. I was hoping Brecken would have been too surprised to put up much of a fight, but I was wrong, dead wrong. I hadn’t even made it halfway to the door when Brecken pointed one of his axes at me, and a shot rang out. There was the sound of a rush of wind from beside my head, and I heard a loud clang of metal on metal before a massive crash. I glanced over my shoulder to find a portion of the shelves at the back of the room had collapsed. It was then that I realized his axes doubled as kinetic pistols and a large caliber if I guessed right.

With that development, I decided to kick things up a notch. I bit down on my lip hard enough to draw blood and used the crimson focus to fuel a body enhancement spell. The amount of blood wasn’t enough to do more than a Tier 1 boost, but I could only hope it was enough.

Raw power rushed to fill my body, and the pace of my dash doubled. I crossed my arms over my head, gauntlet out, and projected a hurried illusion of Mystagogue Thrasher to obfuscate by shape. I rushed Brecken even as he cracked off another two shots before I reached him. His second shot grazed the side of my head enough to draw a burning line from the brow to the back of my head. But I could use that.

As I felt a rivulet of blood run down my cheek, I drew on yet another dose of Morphic Myst and enhanced my body, and I struck the Orc head-on in a bullrush. My arms collided with his chest and abdomen at the same time, and he was knocked clean off his feet. But I didn’t stop there. I raked the claws of Venna across my left forearm and pulled on every last ounce of myst for my next trick.

Without breaking stride, I hit the guardrail just outside the Cauldron, jumped atop it, and kicked off. I fell from six stories up and angled my feet downward as I summoned a series of lesser kinetic shields to slow my drop. I hit the ground floor with a stagger, but righted myself with a mad grin of victory. That trick was totally cobbled together on the fly in a panic, but it gave me an idea for a new device I could use. But I was shocked by who I found at the entrance to the center chamber of the Foundry.

As I staggered on impact and only just managed to keep my feet, I looked up to find two figures. A Human girl with platinum blond hair and a body of cybernetics from the jaw down, and an Elf with a mane of wild hair that made me think of a lion. The Elf, Ferris, stepped forward while giving a slow clap of sarcastic amusement, his Wild Elf triangular teeth shown in a wide grin in sharp contrast to his High Elf-sized pointed ears. Ferris was a Quint, a half-breed between two Elven breeds.

“You know Ive’s, I figured you’d get into trouble at the beginning of the school year, but picking a fight before the year even starts is a new best for you.” Ferris stepped up beside me and clapped me on the back in a friendly sign of camaraderie.

“Don’t tease him, Ferris.” came Nennel as even she looked at me with an amused smirk, her arms folded under her titanium bosom. “You saw it as easily as I did. Those slither-spined trogs made a B-Line to give our favorite Darkling trouble.”

Ferris rolled his eyes at this before commenting, “Yeah, I saw it. They came to give him trouble, and he went out of his way to tick them off." Ferris turned to me. “What did you say to get them so riled up, anyway?”

With my hands on my knees and hunched over as I tried to calm down from the panic, I said, “I may have mentioned how at the end of last year, I bounced them off a wall like racket balls and followed it up with a comment about them lacking balls as a whole.” I ended the statement with a huff of amusement.

Ferris let out a low whistle. “That would do it. I gotta say Ive’s, you’ve got some adamantine stones if you made that comment to a bunch of thugs that almost put you six feet under last year.”

I stood up straight and looked the Quint Elf in the eyes. “They were mocking me about Rose and Thallos.”

At that comment, both Ferris and Nennel winced. Before either of them could reply, a shadow flew overhead. We all looked up to find a winged figure gliding down. I immediately knew who was coming down and prepped a surprise for him as I stepped just under where he was going to land. The moment Mallrimor was three feet from the ground, his body dropping at around seven feet a second, I threw an uppercut with Venna aimed at his groin.

I felt my gauntlet slam into the Brightling's testicles and watched with deep satisfaction as his wings and body closed into a ball in reaction to the pain. He lay on the floor, gasping in pain, and without a moment’s hesitation, Nel and Ferris had him flanked. Ferris had a dagger pointed at Mallrimor’s neck, and Nennel had a Shortsword aimed at his chest. I could hear his goons hurrying down the stairs, so I decided to make a dramatic scene.

I redrew my Vekenna, spun it in hand, and thrust it point first into the ground right next to Mallrimor’s face. Then I uttered in a threatening tone, just loud enough for his gang to hear my words as they reached the ground floor, “I don’t care what cybernetics you pick up to gain an edge. I will put you in the dirt as many times as it takes to get it through your feather-filled head. I am, better than you. And your bullying amounts to nothing.”

With that, I re-sheathed my blade and walked out of the Foundry without looking back. I knew without looking that my friends were following me.