Our one advantage was that the herald seemed undeniably startled to be suddenly crossing a dimensional boundary when it stuck its enormous, black, dragonlike head through the portal, seeking the Dauphine.
“Dragon” was perhaps too cuddly a term to describe it. It seemed to basically be rows of animated, flailing, razor teeth on a nested series of multiple jawbones, operated by a small skull that seemed to indicate the thing was low on brain power while absolutely keen on chewing through the fabric of spacetime. Loosely occupying the position of eyes, a buglike array of irregular, slick panels adorned the top of its head.
The portal seemed to operate as a freestanding transmutation engine, ensuring that whatever came through it from the logosphere was appropriately formulated for the material plane of existence. This potentially meant the herald’s body was still some kind of swirling mist of anger masquerading as the shell of a living thing on the other side. What a fun science and philosophy problem this event would be if the planet managed to survive!
I jetpacked across the room, narrowly avoiding a raging snap of its outermost jaws, and plunged Blades Per Minute deep into the buglike eye panels on its head. It reared with such force that I was thrown clear of the thing, leaving the sword jammed into it, vibrating at 160 BPM. Then it roared with pure fury and directed a breath weapon straight at me, a freakish cone of what looked like black ice.
The ice bounced off a bright energetic shield, and I realized Olivia was on her feet next to me, keeping me alive.
Jordon let rip with the AR-15, depleting its ammunition in a massive blaze of glory, focusing fire where I’d landed my wound; the crew caught on and emptied their handguns at it as well. They managed to decimate the array of buglike eye panels to the point where Blades Per Minute actually came loose from being caught in the crossfire; it landed with a clattering crash and skittered across the floor, still vibrating wildly, slicing the legs off tables and being a massive nuisance. I summoned it back into my hand.
Meanwhile the herald seemed quite stunned to be taking physical damage for potentially the first time in its indeterminate lifespan. Is that pain, am I in pain here? Oh hell, is that blood—like, my blood? Wait, are pieces of me literally getting obliterated by little hunks of hot matter? Whose fucking idea was this?
The Dauphine rolled onto her back, and I caught a brief glimpse of how tattered she was before I realized she was holding both of her pistols straight up into the air. She began firing. These pistols were not mere six-shooters from the Wild West. They were her marquee weapons in SD5, pistols enchanted with a Repeat All spell so that their ammunition never dried up. They fired bullets made of the last remaining sparkle in the Realm, and the sparkle was anathema to the herald. This series of brightly glowing shots tore entire chunks out of the herald’s throat, knocked a dozen teeth from their sockets, sliced its demonic tongue into pieces. It recoiled instinctively, and in that moment, the Dauphine snapped the portal shut, carving off the tip of its snout, which dissolved into a sickening black mist that coated a good portion of the room.
After a long pause, Gridstation said, “See, people just have such a wrong impression of what anarchists even do.”
The Dauphine tried to stand, and couldn’t.
I dashed to her side, taking her silver hand in mine. She almost didn’t recognize me in my new glittersteel skin, but then she smiled.
“I am very happy to see you, sister,” she said, and then she passed out in my arms.
Didn’t take long to nurse her back to consciousness. She was so deeply torn and ripped in places that you could see bone, organs, parts of her that probably didn’t actually need to exist until she came through that portal. But I healed her enough that she could start accessing her own healing, and she recovered quickly. Her steampunk attire was so thoroughly thrashed that we borrowed some street clothes from the anarchists to help make her comfortable. She had spells that could have mended her own clothes, but she welcomed the change. She felt it was time to ditch the pretense that she was simply a character from Sparkle Dungeon 5. Eventually, we needed to let her sleep.
Olivia watched the situation carefully. She could’ve teleported out of the gym during the chaos quite easily, but she’d stayed, and probably saved my life. I didn’t trust her, but she’d been useful.
“What was that thing?” she asked me.
“A herald of the thunderstorm,” I told her. “A small one, judging by how easily its head fit through that portal.”
“A small one? Good Christ, how big do they get?”
“Olivia—are you telling me your cabal doesn’t even know about the heralds?”
She shook her head.
“Then let me be the first to advise you—the heralds will fuck with your planning well before the thunderstorm itself actually arrives.”
“And who is that woman that fell through the portal?” she asked.
I actually smiled and said, “That’s the Dauphine of the Shimmer Lands. She’s Alexander’s daughter.”
Yep, always nice to see that particular look on Olivia’s face, when you’d finally managed to surprise her and her stoic demeanor just evaporated.
Maddy pulled me aside and said, “We need to start sending people home.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I went to a damn lot of trouble to find and rescue these people and it’s sheer luck none of them were killed just now. If you need to fight capitalism, these people are your lot. If you need to fight freakish hell monsters with four million teeth, I would not call these people qualified. Gridstation can barely hold a stapler, let alone a weapon. Every minute they spend in our company is life-threatening. And this is not the fight they signed up for.”
“You think I signed up for this?” I countered, but I knew she was right. “Anyway, yes, I agree that we are in the blast radius of all kinds of ongoing nasty business. I propose this: let’s start spreading the word that anyone is free to go at any time. But the Dauphine is going to have a story to tell when she wakes up, and they might want to stay long enough to hear it.”
“Fair enough,” Maddy said.
I suddenly, irrationally blurted out, “You’re not leaving, right?”
“As it turns out, I did sign up for this,” she said with a small grin before wandering off.
“How have you been, my Queen?” the Dauphine asked me, as I visited her on a cot in between her power naps.
“You’re on Earth now,” I told her. “You can call me Isobel.”
“Isobel,” she said slowly, like she was testing it out.
“I’ve been fighting the good fight,” I said. “How about you?”
“I have been fighting the terrible fight,” she said wearily.
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“Of course I do. I wish I had more to tell.”
“Do you mind if my friends hear your story? We’ve been through a lot together, and they deserve to know what’s going on out there.”
She nodded her assent. I signaled to Maddy and Jordon to start rounding up the crew for story time. Olivia drifted conspicuously close.
As people settled, I said to the Dauphine, “The last time I saw you was in the Iridescent Warehouse, with Alexander Reece. What happened to you after I left?”