Without restrains, Brail could sense far and hear almost everything in the same range. That's why he heard many various shrieks and roars, and sensed their forms, before he could discern the enemy.
'That… is strange.'
"Is it normal that Gates throw out random creatures, instead of a horde of similar species?"
"What do you mean random?"
Luster was nonchalant, but it was clear this wasn't a norm. Looking forward through the glowing black tube, a telescope perhaps, Tei visibly calmed down and pressed the button on the device on his chest. The next second his voice was heard from hundreds of similar devices across the wall.
"Attention everyone. Approaching enemy are Scavengers. Railguns and high caliber focus on flanks, create a narrow field. Archers shoot freely as they enter your range. Let's show them Antarctic hospitality."
Chorus of approving voices was heard all over the wall, followed by a deafening staccato of kinetic weapons finally coming to life and instant explosions in the direction of the Gate. Putting away the tube, Tei turned to Irregulars and explained.
"We already fought these bastards. They all are the same species, it's just that Scavengers are devouring everything, like corpses, metal, other stuff. And they grow and change accordingly to what they eat. So, it would be smart to finish them off as quick as possible."
He then again pressed the button and addressed defenders.
"Awakened will descend on the kilometer mark. Be ready to engage at the signal."
Brail drew the bow, condensed wind along the arrow, and aimed at the biggest one. The next second he saw colorful spots of different intensity as a superimposed image.
'That's how this looks like. Convenient.'
Arrow let loose, and with high-pitched whistle flew at the approaching creature.
***
"Fourteen. He ate fourteen arrows in weak spots and still moving. And I'm not even talking about the other one."
Brail shot another arrow trying to hit the mark on the head now. Fallen would been dead long ago, so he knew what that meant, even if he didn't want to speak it out loud. Lith was of different opinion.
"Well, it's obviously Corrupted, no? And a tough one. That second big boy is what you call Gate Guardian right?"
Dorn standing near him answered, observing the Nightmare Creature Lith was pointing at.
"Yeah. And I hope you will take care of him as you said. We will jump down in a minute."
"Fine by me. But I will go now."
Hiding wide grin behind the summoned helmet, Lith jumped from the wall and started running into the approaching horde. Dorn rubbed his eyes in irritation and looked down with blank face.
"I guess we jump now then. Sam, Kimmy stay here. Quentin, Belle, Luster, let's go. Captain, you will be here or coming with us?"
Brail wasn't eager to fight Corrupted, but he certainly would do more than these guys, regardless of how confident they looked. Or not. He learned his lesson. Dismissing the bow he reluctantly stared at the approaching towering fiend.
"Well, it seems I need to finish that abomination personally."
'Let's go, Zeph.'
As little spirit turned in the smoke with only eyes visible and flew closer to hover over his shoulder, Brail enveloped himself in gusts of wind and jumped from the wall. As soon as his legs softly touched the ground, he turned into the blur, rushing into the fight.
***
Slicing through another Fallen Scavenger, Brail finally saw his target. Stuffed with arrows like a porcupine, towering fiend wasn't running towards the humans. Instead, he preferred to feast on his fallen brothers, exposing his back to the approaching explorer, and didn't see anything except his food.
Taking advantage on clueless bastard, Brail decided to put an end to his defiled life quickly. His plan was to accelerate himself as much as possible, climb up his spine and cut the head off. Unfortunately, Corrupted appeared less clueless than Brail thought.
Stepping on creature's shoulder and already lowering the blade, he was thrown down, as abomination jerked his body madly. Flying right in front of his head, he managed to leave a deep cut, but this wouldn't do much, considering how this thing endured wounds previously.
Then mad beast swung his hand, and all illusions about maybe, just maybe, it was simply very durable Fallen, disappeared.
'Shit, shit, shit, shit…'
Brail focused wind currents to shield himself from the slap, but that wasn't enough. Armor deflected most of the damage, but he still was flung away. At least he didn't die outright.
Falling in the pile of snow and corpses, he quickly got up and rushed to the Scavenger. He dodged initial punch, lowered and cut his leg, deflected the slash, another shallow cut.
Brail took several quick steps back, culling little toothy thing that jumped on him, and faced roaring creature, already rushing at him. He danced around the fiend for almost a minute, trying to find a good oppening, and failing each time, only leaving deep but useless marks.
'He's quick. And covering highlighted spots. I need to find a way… Fuck…'
Taking another hit on a saber, he rotated, letting the enemy pass by him, and raised the Vulture, attempting to cut upwards and chop off the hand. Blade cut through the hide and muscle, broke the bone and seemingly stuck.
'Not enough? Of course it's not enough, this thing is Corrupted. Why it always should be so difficult?'
Roaring in pain Scavenger tried to punch elusive opponent away with his free hand, but only helped him out. Shielding his abdomen and focusing winds on the blade, Brail took a hit and was thrown away. But force of creature's punch was enough to finally cut away one of his own limbs.
'Now we are talking.'
Last hit was pretty painful, and landing was unpleasant, but this was not enough to cripple his movements. For the abomination, thought, situation was different. Left without a hand, he tried to back off, but was hit with explosive magic round from the wall directly in the head. Twice. And in the bleeding stump right after.
'That was… Precise.'
Blinking away a surprise, and getting on the feet, Brail cut down several Awakened monsters, Zeph notified him about, and surged into the distracted foe. Showing his back the second time was a mistake, he couldn't forgive.
As another explosive round threw creature's only left arm back, Brail rushed under it and in swift motion hit overhead in semicircle, pouring all essence he could into the winds and blade itself, cutting through abomination's neck.
Head dropped to the ground, and explorer finally released heavy breath, listening to an eerie whisper.
[You have slain a Corrupted Monster, Grown Offspring of Myriad Eater]
[Your winds grow fiercer.]
'That was pretty dangerous, right?'
But instead of cheering him up, little spirit was already directing his attention to the approaching bunch of creatures.
'Give me a break…'
***
Almost an hour later, Brail was sitting atop of the wall with blank expression on the face. He wasn't injured, just tired, anxious, disturbed, and glad this was over. But this couldn't be said about others.
Lith was alright, standing nearby with Dorn and Luster. All three was discussing something like nothing was happening the past hour. They managed to tear down the gatekeeper, or whatever it was called.
Surprisingly nobody died on the battlefield, but there was heavy injures and only one healer, not counting Quentin. So, their recovery will take a while. And Quentin was right now very busy.
"You gave that creature hell of a fight. Not to compare you with the real Captain, but."
Samara plopped on the ground beside him, hugging her riffle and leaning on the parapet.
"It's not like I was trying to compete there."
"Anyway, you did well. For unexperienced Master."
"Well, I suppose you are right. And I also suppose, I need to thank you for assistance. That was some cool shots. And right in time."
"You welcome."
"How's the situation down there?"
Samara contemplated for a bit.
"Not very bright, I'd say. Girl will live most likely, but... Well, it all now depends on Quentin. If not for you both she would be dead already."
"You forgot who actually saved her?"
Sam answered with joyless chuckle.
In the end of the battle, when Brail had a second to rest, he suddenly heard loud noises and screams where they shouldn't be. Right in the middle of the main lab. Zeph sensed what was going on and sure thing, one of the abominations was rampaging inside the scientists' hideout.
He was too far, so the only thing he could do is to rush to nearby Awakened, take his communication thing, press the button and shout one word. Lab.
He didn't know, how this actually worked, considering that Gates should jam all devices in such close proximity, but Samara and two Awakened defenders dashed down from the wall to eliminate the thread. Unfortunately they were late.
Twelve scientist and four soldiers were torn apart, beheaded, mangled and so on. Their VIP somehow left unharmed. Well, not somehow, his assistant protected him with her own body. And miraculously survived the assault until the help came.
"Now you believe that we need to get out?"
Irregular silently looked at the ground with unreadable face. Brail pointed on his cat, who was loafing on his knees, staring in the direction of the ocean.
"You see, where she is looking? That's because somewhere not far, under the water, there is another rift. With a Terror as a Gate Guardian, as you call them. And we have no means of fighting back. We need. To go."
"What about Ariadne?"
"Go to the Dream Realm, tell them we will go by land. Send the ship back. They will die for nothing. And we too, if will be stalling for too long."
"That's a great plan."
"But?"
"But we can't go now. We can't sleep anymore."
Brail told nothing, furrowing his brows, clearly not understanding the situation. Samara exhaled tiredly and explained.
"Condition Yellow, remember? The Gates are too close. If we go to sleep, we will be sent not in the citadel we anchored in, but…"
Brail facepalmed, remembering how things worked in War Realm. Technically, that worked for him as well. Brail and Lith didn't try to jump to the Dream Realm for different reason, though. They assumed they would be either dropped somewhere randomly, or, most likely, would be sent to their current citadel.
Which right now was a death sentence, considering that Burned Forest previously was undiscovered Death Zone, full of horrible abominations. But if they tried to travel between worlds here, they would be dragged to the Nightmare Seed, and dropped probably somewhere in the Nightmare Desert.
"Yeah, yeah, I remember now. But we need to do something anyway."
"We will gather a meeting in an hour after the cleanup. I remember what you said. Complete halt of communications and several gates."
"That's... good to hear."
Brail tried to smile, but instead what came out was tired crooked grimace of a man drenched in blood.
***
"I'm grateful to you all. For protecting us… for doing your job properly, for… for trying to find a solution to our problems."
Old man wearing white robe was sitting behind the table in a conference room, his forehead pressed against his clasped hands, staring down. Raising his head and looking in the Tei's eyes, he continued in slightly trembling voice.
"But not for saving my life, because she did it. So, I don't understand why I should be here, and not there."
Tei held his gaze, but then hesitantly looked at Sam, Dorn and Brail. He probably never saw the man nervous, not talking about so shaken.
"Professor, we…"
Lith cut him off.
"Because you can't heal wounds, because she is unconscious, and because we need you here more then she need's you there. Sorry. But it's that shimple. Professor, you are the wisest man here, and we need the solution to our problem. A technical point of view."
"Let's just… Aren't you from the future, as these young people said? Shouldn't you know more than I do? From 'A technical point of view'?"
"We wouldn't be asking if we had a solution. And no, your tech and situation are different. Maybe our cohort member would find a way to deal with this all, but he's not here."
"Okay, explain, what exactly you want to do. And I'll try to think of something."
Professor exhaled tiredly. He really didn't want to be here now. Lith turned to Brail, motioning him to explain.
"We have an order to stay here and wait for the evac ship. We can't do this now, because there is a Nightmare Gates in the water, powerful ones. A creature from the Gates won't let us escape by the sea and will tear apart any vessel coming to our rescue. We need to go by the land, that's one, warn the ship not to come here, that's two, and tell the high command, that we are discarding their plan, due to the extreme situation, three."
Brail glanced around the room at everyone present, letting Tei finish the explanation.
"The problem is that we can't contact the command through the Dream Realm because of the Gates, and through default communication network because it's been dead for a while, as you may know. So, we need some means to overcome interference and send a message. Power up a signal over the current maximum, or create some device that will help, maybe somehow shield comms we have. I don't know."
"How much time do we presumably have?"
Everyone looked at Brail.
"I don't know exactly, but we need to evacuate as soon as possible. Preferably today."
Professor looked at awakened one by one.
"Do you all agreed that we are going by land, regardless of what army command says?"
As everybody nodded he turned back to Brail.
"Call of even a powerful Third Category Gates rarely interferes the anchors of awakened more than in four-five kilometers radius."
Seeing zero understanding, old man rolled his eyes, and looked at awakened like on total idiots.
"You will be able to enter the Dream Realm, notify your higher ups, and warn the ship in half an hour after we depart."
Silence.
"I'll have my leave now."
After door closed, from the hallway could be heard not so quiet grumbling about army morons, and how future of humanity is doomed. Everyone present found tiles on the floor very interesting, and for next several minutes the room was completely still and silent.
***
It took them a little while, but on the next day they gathered all they needed for the road. Lith was reading orders writen down for him by Tei, who was standing near him, correcting if something went off script. Sam and Brail were following Professor Obel, while he was bossing around groups of scientists, who, in their order, were franticly running around packing away their research papers and various devices with data.
Other Irregulars were helping to organize and load up the column of armored PTV's, trucks and personnel carriers. MWP's were being prepared for the march and loaded with maximum amount of ammo supply they could carry. Everyone around, awakened or mundane, were hurriedly preparing for the departure, fear of the unknown hanging in the air.
Buildings were closed, electricity shut down, lights coming only from the readying column of vehicles and war platforms. As main gates of the station fully opened, Rhino led fifteen hundred soldiers and scientists into the unwelcoming reaches of Antarctic Center.
They were leaving LO49.