Chapter 70: Nemesis 3

A new message appeared of its own accord in James’s vision:

You have 1 Hour to Gather

With 100 Other First Wave Summoners

Serenity must have seen it, too, for James felt her stiffen against his back. But there was no time for further reaction, for a second message appeared:

Gathering Accomplished.

Nemesis 3 has Released

Time seemed to slow.

An ebon demon appeared directly beneath them atop one of the buses.

It was massive, hairless, and obscenely muscled.

Easily three times the height of a man, it stood hunched over on two dog-like legs, a tail flaring out behind it with a spearhead tip, its torso bent nearly parallel to the bus, shoulders, chest, and back so hugely strong that it had more in common with a prize bull than anything else.

Each arm terminated in a yard-long machete of black bone, its tip hooked, and long enough that the Nem3 rested their edges atop the bus.

Its head. Jesus Christ. No eyes, just a fanged maw that split its skull in two, the upper half of its face nothing more than bulging bone, a triceratops-like fan of horn and bone sweeping up to a huge spike of bone that emerged from the peak of its swollen back like the head of a harpoon.

The roof of the bus buckled under its weight.

The radio was going wild.

More Nem3’s were appearing, most of them along the side of the roads, a few atop buses, each massive, as tall as the buses, hideous, instantly alert, tails lashing, muscles tensing.

The Nem3 on the bus roof just below them looked up, sensing them somehow without eyes, screeched, and the bone harpoon embedded in the great mound of muscle between its shoulder blades erupted forth and flew at them.

James yelled and yanked the Wing aside. It flew into a barrel roll and dropped, the bone harpoon spearing past and nearly taking them out, and then even as he righted the craft he saw the Nem3 bunch its legs and leap at them.

Its departure crumpled more of the bus’s roof, caused the huge vehicle to swerve, its backend fishtailing.

But James dipped the Wing down right to the road, skimming just inches above it, and raised his hand to unleash a Sacred Strike as the Nem3 flew over him.

White fire gouted forth, a huge curtain of glory through which the Nem3 flew, its black skin blistering and burning away.

James looked back to keep track of it as it landed, staring over his shoulder as the demon hit the highway’s shoulder, bounded forward, then collapsed to one knee.

Serenity opened fire with the Ma Deuce, it’s every shot reverberating through the wing, a powerful DONDONDONDON that James felt more in his chest than heard.

He tore his eyes from the Nem3, looked ahead, and screamed.

One was galloping right at them, using its bladed forearms as front legs, its mouth wrenched open. It leaped, he yanked on the Wing, and tore off and up to the left as the demon flew past them, its left blade reaching, missing them by inches.

“Fuck!” he shouted and gained altitude. The buses were barreling along, chaos erupting up and down the line. Black Hawks were swooping down and laying waste with their armament. Carvajal was working to clear the Nem3’s atop the buses on his end. Six buses ahead a Nem3 was tearing the roof off its bus, working its huge blades into the metal and wrenching the metal aside even as it sank into the crumpling mass beneath him.

Serenity worked her Ma Deuce from side to side. She needed him to hold steady, but a Nem3 came galloping out of the shoulder and hurled itself into one of the buses.

The vehicle was going a hundred mile an hour.

The Nem3’s hit it like an elephant, smashing in through the windows and immediately tearing down the length of the bus as it blew past him, glass exploding everywhere, its taloned arms slashing through metal as it sought to hold on.

“Serenity!” yelled James and banked to the right so the bus would come into her field of vision.

The Nem3 embedded itself into the very rear of the bus. Gunfire erupted from within, but it reached down with one arm and hacked off the rear right wheel.

The bus’s back corner dropped to the highway, unleashing a storm of sparks. Serenity opened fire, Smite-enhanced 50 Cals blowing into the Nem3, but the bus fishtailed, metal screeched, and then a second Nem3 hit it and the whole thing flipped.

Even as the bus began to roll James realized the whole operation had gone FUBAR.

The next bus slammed on its breaks, tires squealing, and slid sideways along the highway behind the first bus which was powering along on its side. The second flipped, crashed down, and then the third slammed into it nose first.

“Fuck!” shouted James, bringing the Wing around. Another fifty buses were slamming on the breaks, desperately driving out to the sides, some hitting the cement medians, others sawing to the hard right onto an emergency lane.

There had to be some fifty Nem3’s along its line.

The demons raised their heads as one and flung themselves into the slaughter.

“Crimson Hydra!” James shouted into this radio. “With me!”

The other Wings had been spread out behind him, but as he brought his craft down in for a landing they descended in turn, settling light as feathers upon the gray asphalt beside the three-bus pile-up.

Olaf leaped off his craft and immediately a Circle of Protection rose into existence, five yards in radius and burning with a bright, pure light.

Everyone rushed to stand within its perimeter, M4’s raised, and immediately their guns blazed with communal Smite.

James grabbed his fire-axe and moved inside the perimeter as well. The squads in the three buses were fighting back, machine-gun fire bursting out the windows, but the Nem3’s didn’t seem fussed. Another bounded into view, landed atop the first capsized bus, stared at them, and fired a bone harpoon their way.

“Incoming!” shouted Denzel, and three shields materialized before the harpoon, which slammed home and bounced off. The harpoon was at least two yards long, as thick as James’s arm, and tipped with a wicked point. It’d go clear through a man.

Serenity hefted her Ma Deuce and fired from the hip, reaching out and touching the Nem3 where it stood with hundreds of burning 50 Cals in seconds. The bullets caused fist-sized holes to erupt across its chest, knocked chunks of bone off its skull-plating, then split its head wide open so that it collapsed backward off the bus.

James felt the blood drain from his face. It’d taken at least twenty shots from a Ma Deuce to drop. What did that mean for everyone else?

“Behind!” screamed Jason, and James wrenched around to see a fourth Nem3 come dropping out of the sky to fall upon their circle. One shield got up in time, but it crashed right through it, hit Olaf’s Circle, and caused the hemisphere to flare into visibility, bright white radiance barely visible in the daylight.

Jason extended his hand and a spear of Iron aura burst forward to punch into the Nem3’s chest. It slammed clear through the Nem’s body, emerging out its back, but the demon just screamed and brought both blades crashing down upon the hemisphere.

Which shattered.

The Nem3 fell upon them, only to be met halfway by Becca’s Black Apotheosis. She flew up to tackle it around the waist, her black flaming head splitting open to reveal a maw of her own which she clamped around the Nem’s throat.

The impact was tremendous, and James thought he heard bones crunch as the pair fell to the ground, locked in their embrace, the Nem3 shrieking as it sought to tear Becca’s shadowy form apart with its bladed arms.

But Jason was there and dropped a dozen Iron aura-spears through its head, killing it.

James turned back to the buses, saw one of the two remaining Nem3’s slam its bladed arm into through a ruined window to where a man was firing Smite-enhanced bullets, and finally snapped his mind into the situation.

He extended his hand and called down a Heavenly Assault empowered with Gloria.

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From the skies fell a tree-trunk thick bolt of lightning, hammering the Nem3 where it stood, encasing it in burning silver and gold. It unleashed a shockwave of raw divine power that blasted out in a block radius, washing over the three buses and the beginning of a fourth behind them, filling the air with sweet, devouring might.

The blinding light suffused the world, then disappeared.

The Nem3 James had targeted was a burnt-out husk, still erect on its rear legs for a moment before it collapsed like a scaffolding made of charcoal. The second which had been digging its way into one of the buses also lay dead, reduced to cinders, and another Nem3 that had been charging them collapsed onto the road from its leap and exploded into black chunks of coal.

James breathed heavily, arm extended.

Your rank is now Novitiate 2

You have 5 unspent points.

Everybody stared at him, wide-eyed, but there wasn’t time for words. The whole line of buses was engulfed in madness.

“Come on!” he shouted and moved back to the Wings. “We fly tight, cluster-formation. Straight strafe down the line. Form up!”

They’d practiced this all but twice, and it took careful positioning up front to get right. But everybody leaped onto their Wings, each of which hovered a few inches off the ground while waiting for them. James gave Serenity a moment to lock her Ma Deuce back into place, then willed his Wing to rise.

Olaf’s Circle of Protection burned around them, encompassing the five Wings, two on either side of his own.

As one they rose like a platform, and then together they took off down the line.

A Nem3 came galloping toward them, only to fall apart into hugely bloody chunks as a Black Hawk roared by, its Smite-enhanced miniguns blazing and tearing up the road.

“Fuck yeah!” said Jason, raising his fist.

Each bus was being assaulted by one or two Nem3’s. They were tearing into the vehicles as if they were made of cardboard, reeling back as the squads within hit them with Smite or a Black Apotheosis form emerged to tackle them, but mostly it was a slaughter. All the demons had to do was reach inside with a limb and wave it around to mostly puree the fuck out of everyone within.

Olaf shared Smite again across the group, and everyone raised their guns. They flew at around thirty miles/per hour, cruising down the shoulder and rising to some twenty yards in height.

The first Nem3 reared back to screech at them in defiance, opening its bladed arms wide, and everybody pegged it with Smite, M4’s chattering as they poured white fire down into its torso.

The Nem3 staggered back, dropped to one knee, then launched a bone harpoon before collapsing.

Three shields appeared before the assault, but a second harpoon came at them from a Nem3 a bus down, flying with horrific speed and accuracy.

“Watch out!” shouted Olaf, but only one shield got over just in time - whomever wielded it angled it surface so that the harpoon hit just right to deflect instead of completely block, sending the harpoon flying a few yards wide.

More Nem3’s were taking notice of their approach. Three of them were gathered atop one of the buses, and as one they hunched, bringing their bone harpoons to bare.

“Shields!” shouted Olaf, changing their communal Benediction, but James reached out and dropped a Heavenly Assault upon the trio.

Again the divine lighting boomed down, wreathed with gloria, and when the painfully bright light washed away, the three gigantic demons were reduced to ash.

“Fuck yeah!” shouted Yadriel.

Olaf’s Circle flared bright white. James hadn’t even seen the attack coming, looked around wildly, saw a Nem3 off in the shoulder of the road, a new bone harpoon already pushing its way out of the bloody hole in the muscled mound atop its shoulders.

Fuck. They regenerated those fast.

“Smite!” shouted Olaf, and everybody opened up again. Serenity, here Ma Deuce pointing backward, cleaned up as they went.

But shit was happening fast. The Nem3’s could move. Squads were spilling out of the buses, M4’s lighting up, Circles of Protections dropping, but it was hard work: James saw a Nem3 charge right into one, swatting aside a shield and slamming into the hemisphere, the force of its attack sending cracks through the hemisphere.

Lindsey’s Medusa was approaching on foot at the far end, guns chattering, his chainsaw roaring. But without Heavenly Assault they were hard pressed to make progress.

“Left flank!” shouted Jason, and then a Nem3 fell upon them, somehow leaping the twenty yards to hit their side, slamming into the circle only to fall away as they opened fire on it, tracking it down, and then they were past and Serenity finished it off.

James fought to not try and look everywhere at once. A bone spear hit their Circle without warning, fracturing it, and then another Nem3 bounded toward them, loosing a harpoon before leaping right after.

“Shields!” shouted Olaf, and everybody manifested one in the Nem’s path, blocking it entirely so that it fell to the ground, cratering the asphalt beneath its paws.

“James, let me at ‘em!” shouted Yadriel. “Let me shift!”

“No,” he called back. “Not yet. We need to keep mobile.”

He could sense Yadriel’s frustration, but too bad.

A screen of six Nem3’s were closing on Medusa, drawn from the last few buses and composed of those who’d fallen behind during the initial summons. Lindsey’s Circle was up, but harpoons were coming at them from every side such that their shields couldn’t keep pace.

“With me!” shouted James and urged his Wing to close swiftly. They accelerated smoothly and rose up before dipping back down, Olaf shifting to Smite again, six guns roaring. Four of the Nem3’s turned, flinched before the bullets, ducked their heads, then pounded toward them, arm-blades gauging deep cuts into the road. As one they prepared to leap, crouching low for just a second, but then James reached deep, drew on his Aeviternum, and empowered a Heavenly Assault.

Aeviternum flooded the blast. The bolt that fell from the gray skies was as thick as an ancient oak tree, Gloria intertwined with its fury, and the blast hit right behind the four Nems.

The shockwave was tremendous, blasting out in every direction, washing over Lindsey’s crew, past them, and over the rear Nem3’s.

James gasped, the blast faded away, and they flew over ashes, every Nem3 blasted apart and utterly destroyed.

Your rank is now Novitiate 3

You have 5 unspent points.

“Hell yeah James!” cried Lindsey from below, his voice pitched high with fear and relief. “Hell yeah!”

“Fucking A, man!” Jason grinned at James, his eyes alive with admiration. “Gotta love dropping nukes!”

James surveyed the back of the convoy. His assault had wiped out the remaining Nem3’s, but sporadic fighting was still taking place up the line.

“Let’s turn this around and mop up,” he said. “We ain’t done yet.”

“Whatever you say, boss man,” said Denzel. “Let’s go mop up.”

Their fleet of Wings cut a tight turn, and they started heading back up the line.

But the sight of the stopped and savaged buses filled James’s heart with despair. If this was just the First Wave, how the fuck were they going to handle the Fourth?

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