Knights Apocalyptica

Chapter 131: Another World

Erec did a slow turn, his eyes roaming over the blackened marks on the ground and the bits of blood splattered among steel wreckage. His breath came in waves, his heart still beating out of his chest. The silver flame that served as a cloak against the bullets and pain was long gone.

After it left had come nausea, but it was enough to push down in the thrall of Fury now. His body was getting attuned to it.

That unrealness that came with it was still problematic. Combined with Fury, it was like watching himself move through a lens, tearing things apart and blowing things up. A certain euphoria came with the freedom. Even the sickness that grounded him in reality was suppressed as long as Fury burned.

Erec sank to his knees, slamming a hand on his visor and vomiting up putrid black all over the remains of one of the mobile-tank-like robots.

He sat there, gasping for air as the last of his fire burned off. His skin felt numb, and his eyes ran over the destruction with a new understanding. All of this was him. Those behind him contributed, but the majority of this battle was his.

Robin was further down the tunnel, back with the Pendragons. She’d kept them safe and let him charge ahead.

Erec wiped his mouth with the back of his steel gauntlet, tapping on the side of his helmet to bring back the visor.

A moment later, he was stumbling back to the other humans.

He passed by fires with a dim awareness of the torn-apart steel and flames left in his wake. Erec felt as if he were made of clouds, and not even aware he willed it; a notification ran across his vision on his arduous trek.

Strength: Rank D - Tier 6 → Rank D - Tier 7

Vigor: Rank E - Tier 8 → Rank E - Tier 9

Soul (Aspect: Fire): Rank E - Tier 3 → Rank E - Tier 4

With each step, his body shook more and grew colder. The feeling of blood running down his right arm was a welcome warmth; it held onto an axe that trailed on the ground. He hadn’t the strength to lift it back to where it belonged, nor the care.

“Erec!” a voice yelled. Enide. She appeared in front of him as if from nowhere. A ghost, a flickering presence that may or may not exist. So close, yet paradoxically far away, his stomach twisted in knots again. Somewhere deep down, a voice screamed to bottle it away. Not in front of her.

Why care?

Why did he care what this person thought? Was she real, anyway? All that mattered was he won, wrapped his control over his fire, and brought it out to cause destruction.

Erec slid from the girl, or perhaps she guided him. It was tough to track. Though, he did feel the wall press against his back as he slipped down it to sit. More blood dripped down his fingers. That’d need repair, surely.

The girl fluttered around him like the wind, her voice a soothing note that kept him anchored to reality. She’d convinced him to take his helmet off. She pressed her hand to his forehead, leaned in, and whispered to him praise. As he deserved, a victor of his battle. All was right then. Surely.

Until the bile won out, he asked the girl to look away, embarrassed and vomited his insides out for the second time.

When he looked back for her, she was gone. Taken by the wind.

Olivia was staring back at him, her face scrunched up and her palm glowing with light.

“Where is she?” Erec croaked out, the world stitching back together, strings in a grand tapestry.

“You’re asking about Enide? Really? She told you she went with the others down the tunnel fifteen minutes ago,” Olivia shook her head. “What I don’t understand is your wounds. She said none of them could heal, but half were closed, and by how things look, you lost a lot of blood.”

[Your silver flames appear to have regenerative properties; you stitched yourself together during the fight but were a bit more reckless than usual as a cost. Odd. Before, they burned unnaturally, and now this. The way they healed was almost like how this girl had patched you before. I’ll make sure to gather more data before offering a conclusion.]

“She saw me puke, didn’t she?” Erec rubbed his eyes. His helmet was on the ground.

“How are you even concerned about that? Look what you did.” She cupped Erec’s chin and made him look at the wreckage of fire and steel down the tunnel. “Do you think she cares about you puking? Honestly, it’s impossible to gauge what’s going on in that skull of yours. Goddess, help you.”

She let him go, and he leaned his head against the wall, looking at the metallic rings on the tunnel. What secrets did this place hold?

Regardless, he couldn’t sit here. Not much longer. A few minutes, that's all it’d take, and he could get his body moving again. The fight wasn’t over. Deep down, he craved more and knew there were still Seven-Snakes to find and challenge—his fight. The pull of it would give him the Strength to proceed, even if he needed to burn Fury to keep on his feet.

“I’m not done. There’s more to do.” Erec promised, his fist clenching. Wherever this tunnel led, it’d go to Seven-Snakes. And he’d let Enide watch. Let her see.

This hadn’t been enough; she’d seen the anger, the Fury of him. The Mad Knight. But that wasn’t what he wanted to show. It wasn’t the part of him that was the most important. No. He knew now that the role he wanted to be the most, to display for the world to see, was the man that refused to give up. The stubborn boy. He who dragged himself from being the second son of a landless noble to making himself a Knight.

That was who he was.

Erec shook as he forced himself back to his feet.

“Sir Erec, You’re getting carried away. Sit down, and drink some water. I believe you’ve already exceeded expectations for this mission; I highly doubt Boldwick wants anything more than for you to recover.”

“I’ll be fine.” Erec partially lied. He wasn’t fine now, and there was no promise he would be. Nevertheless, he’d press ahead. If he gave up here, it would cut off the lifeblood to a truth he now saw. Thanks to this silly game of Enide’s.

Deep down, he knew who he wanted to be. And that part of him couldn’t sit on the sidelines, not with business to bury and Snakes to catch. With Olivia hounding his steps, he went down the tunnel into the dark after the rest of the Knights.

— - ☢ - — - ☼ - — - ☢ - —

The base of the tunnel led to a large ring around a solid steel wall. It sparkled with various lights and complex machinery that framed the otherwise solid steel. The tracks running down the tunnel went straight to the wall, but the tunnel split at the end. Leading to pried-apart blast doors, about another seventy shredded bots Erec was reasonably sure he didn’t kill, and a giant wall of tinted glass.

A couple of Pendragons were looking over the machinery around the wall, but most of everyone was behind those doors.

Erec stumbled his way through and eventually overheard Boldwick talking.

“Rift?” Boldwick asked, filled with disbelief.

“From what I can see, the leftover documentation I managed to recover supports that.” Corey’s voice rang out. Erec followed the noise, walking down a hall and into the room on the other side of the sizeable tinted glass from the main entrance. “And you heard the thugs we caught. They intended to open it back up for him. Now they can’t, obviously, since their tech died in the scuffle.”

The room was a tech-lovers dream. Consoles lined all the walls, filled with screens, lights, and boards. Some blinked or streamed information; others were completely blank and dead. Enough buttons around everywhere instantly tempted Erec to press a few to see what might happen, though that might’ve been the lingering lost sense of reality still clinging to him.

Corey leaned back in an old-world chair near the center console, the foldable screen in his lap hooked up to the central console as he plugged away on its keyboard.

Enide, Yniol, and the leader of the Pendragons, Rochester, were all in the room, along with a couple of other Pendragons and Dame Robin, who was right near Boldwick’s side.

“Sure felt like it. My skin only gets like that near rifts, but it was odd…” Enide trailed off as she noticed Erec. Her eyes went wide. She probably thought he’d be down for a while.

Boldwick gave him a nod of recognition, then returned his attention to Corey.

“All tracks and traces you’ve found, and our investigation shows that Seven-Snakes managed to operate this machine, opened the rift, then walked through it. Why?” Boldwick asked.

“Dunno. They had a tech with him and scrubbed as much data as possible. With how haphazard the job was, though, the guy wasn’t good at it.” Corey sighed. “Might be able to pick up the pieces and rerun it, but that doesn’t change the fact we need to use an old-world device to go through a Rift to get him, now.”

Rochester shook his head and laughed. “Well, we have to do it, don’t we?”

“You’re going through a Rift to track a bounty target?” Boldwick asked, voice dripping with pessimism. “Since their exit closed on them, why not go to your Magi and tell them what happened? Scarcely seems worth the risk. He can’t return now. As good as dead.”

“Well, about that…” Rochester rubbed his hand. “To get a favor from the Magi, they wanted him alive. Dead is just payment. That and our reputation is at stake, along with his. He’s known to slip away at the last minute; they’ll assume he evaded us like everyone else. But the favor is vital. Corey, if we open this Rift, we’ll be headed to the same place?”

Corey nodded. “That’s why they left people to operate this side. No idea how the old-world accomplished this, but it’s stable enough. A Rift that opens and closes in the same spot, all it takes is to induce it.”

“Simple then. We go through. Same plan as he had, only I have far more confidence in our people to maintain our position here.” Rochester nodded.

“Madness. You don’t even have Armor.” Boldwick pointed out.

“Neither did Seven-Snakes. We wander the wasteland without need for steel; I see nothing different here. I appreciate the concern, and obviously, I won’t ask you, our new friends, to follow us through a Rift. It is enough to get us this far, disable the security and the men Seven-Snakes left behind. We’ll handle the rest. I’ll pick our people to go through. Then we can pay you what we owe from our side of the deal.”

“I’m going.” Enide declared, finally breaking her attention from Erec.

“Damn it, Enide!” Yniol hit a table, “There’s no need. Don’t throw yourself into this; the idea of getting back into that vault is foolish, to begin with, and you know it!”

“I’m the most suited to this. We don’t know what’s on the other side, and Seven-Snakes does now. You can’t argue that I’m the best scout in the family,” Enide argued, her voice rising. “And it is worth it. We need that favor. If nothing else, then to pull them out and give them the send-off they fucking deserve!”

“I agree,” Rochester said. “Her bravery is undeniable, Yniol. Let her be; this is right. We’ll find this man, bring him to Vega, and then we can finally free our people.”

“Damn you both,” Yniol stormed out of the room with a snarl. “They’re dead, Rochester. Make peace with that, you and the rest of the damn fools who can’t move off from the past.”

“Sorry,” Enide said quietly to her father's back.

This was it then. She was going to head into a Rift, to think she’d made the decision so easily. For what? They planned to go into a vault to save her Uncle and Retrieve his body? That was the favor they wanted from the Magi? Erec saw his mother’s face, that feeling in him that always welled when he thought of finding her again, saying what he wanted to say about how it felt to have a piece of him ripped away. These people were just like him; they wanted closure on their lost family. And to get it, they needed to track down the scum that was Seven-Snakes.

“Sir,” Erec spoke up, his heart hammering, burning as he thought about it all. There wasn’t a choice here. He knew what he had to do. If all it cost was to get these people to achieve a wish he held himself, which was to go through this Rift, the decision was easy.

His eyes snapped to Enide and took away power from how the girl flowed through life. This decision didn’t have to be complicated.

“I’m going through the Rift with them. They shouldn’t go alone.”

Boldwick rubbed the back of his head. “Goddess, damn it. I knew you’d say that. It’s the sort of hot-headed declaration… Worse is that I agree.”

“What? You want to come after all that?” Rochester asked.

“I need to meet with my Knights. After that, we can talk,” Boldwick waved Rochester off before addressing Erec directly. “Since you’re walking and talking loud enough to rope yourself into dangerous decisions, I suppose you’re fine enough to follow along for a bit longer. On me.” The Master Knight walked off, not cutting any slack in his pace for Erec.

With one last look at Enide, he followed, burning a bit of Fury to catch up.

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