09

I soared across the logosphere, scanning the oncoming fray for signs of the Dauphine or Alexander.

The throng of heralds was so intense that it was difficult to spot either of them. Then I realized Alexander was holding down a position in the midst of the throng, along with his herald allies, and together they formed a surprisingly effective hard line against the other heralds. The attackers were all so gigantic that they struggled to claim any position on the front line against Alexander, and his heralds fought with surprising viciousness, now that they had enhanced sentience to protect. Meanwhile, as Alexander made himself the visible target, the Dauphine swept in and out, a tiny speck by comparison, firing her portal weapons with perfect aim, decapitating the enemy in droves.

On the edges of the chaos, several heralds saw me and broke off to head my way, bored, I guess, waiting for their turn to wail on Alexander. I steered off to lead them away from the Sparkle Realm behind me. The Realm from the outside now looked very clearly like a skyship from SD5; I had nothing to compare its scale against, so I could only imagine that it was some significant order of magnitude larger than a typical skyship.

“Isobel, you’re in my tracking system so trust me when I say I am not going to hit you,” Cameron said.

Moments later, a fusillade of explosive jewels streaked out from an array of sparklepults, arriving almost instantaneously at their targets—the heralds I’d led away from Alexander. Huge chunks of herald disintegrated in colorful bursts as the jewels hit. Several were torn so completely apart that they couldn’t regenerate. Three others were infuriated and swiveled toward the source of the attack.

I knew exactly one attack that seemed like a guarantee: cut their heads off, then carve straight down the center of their bodies to prevent regeneration. Big problem: the herald I’d killed in this fashion on my first trip to the logosphere was half the size of any of these. My brain couldn’t really wrap itself around monsters the size of the Empire State Building with bizarre abstract appendages (gigantic conduits for spraying acid ooze all over targets, weird oversized machetes made of cartilage and nasty rumors, etc.). The heads on these things—aside from being hellish nightmares—were so big that I would not swiftly decapitate any of them; I’d have to saw for a half hour or whatever.

Another volley of jewels detonated against these three, and the disgusting shrapnel of chunks of their bodies drenched me in filth. I’d felt this before, the nihilistic wave of apathy that sank into me when covered in what passed for their blood, and I felt my flight slowing down almost to a crawl as my targets charged forward, somehow miraculously still imitating life and heading for the Realm.

But Cameron, of course, had more than jewels at his disposal, and the heralds still had plenty of distance to cross. Hundreds of shiny mirrorballs were launched into the logosphere. Lasers from the arkship pinpointed each mirrorball, which refracted the lasers with pinpoint precision at the three heralds and easily sliced them into dozens of pieces. That was indeed a more effective decapitation technique than the old manual “saw through their necks with a sword” technique we used in the old days.

In this fashion, with explosive jewels and mirrorball/laser attacks, Cameron kept stray heralds at bay for several minutes. His attacks were joined by the rousing melodies of the battle choir, which finally got its sound check over with and entered the combat theater in earnest. Heralds who got within range of hearing their movements found themselves slowing down in confusion at the sudden lack of will they experienced. Not that Cameron was having any trouble hitting them, but they were much easier targets in this confused state.

Then the tide suddenly rippled and turned against us.

“They’re learning!” the Dauphine shouted. “My portals are useless now!”

God, if her portals were useless, she’d be left with just her pistols, and when those failed, she didn’t have a long list of attack spells at her disposal.

I charged off in her direction, shrugging off the effects of the nihilism juice with a high-level heal and readying some attacks I’d been saving for a special occasion. I hadn’t used Blades Per Minute yet this encounter, so at least one lucky herald was going to understand why people hated the absurdly fast tempo of happy hardcore so much.

I ducked and dodged my way through several oncoming heralds in order to find the Dauphine’s location. I found her perched directly on the enormous head of one, firing down straight into what should have been its brain. Sadly for her, we were learning that heralds did not predictably adhere to some physiologic standard we could anticipate; for all the good her shots were doing, its brain was either somewhere else in its body, or it didn’t operate with a physical brain at all. It reared up with its jaws but the Dauphine promptly rocketed to one side and continued firing straight down its throat. It definitely didn’t appreciate that, and she didn’t stop firing until she could see straight through a hole in the back of its head.

And that still didn’t kill it, and another herald was coming up behind her. While she stayed engaged with the first one, I charged at the second one, firing off spells as I approached: Hailstorm of Razorjewels, Cone of Poisonglitter, These Boots Were Made for Kicking the Living Shit Out of You and Stomping Your Fucking Soul into Hell Where it Belongs (obviously this spell had a different name on iOS or the game wouldn’t have been approved into the App Store). My target was completely furious at my attack; Christ knows I’d be pissed, too, since you can’t get glitter out of anything and poisonglitter was worse, because it burrowed through the surface of whatever it landed on and released toxins all the way through the wounds. You couldn’t just vacuum that shit up.

The Dauphine pulled the classic maneuver of leaping into the jaws of her target and firing straight down its throat, which seemed to relieve it of its lifelike qualities, and she escaped out the hole in its skull. She saw me and smiled, before dashing off to another target.

In that moment of distraction where I watched her, my herald took a massive swipe at me and pounded me hard, sending me spiraling away from the action. Its talons had sliced through me as easily as if my glittersteel skin was still ordinary human flesh; a fountain of blood poured out of my stomach, and I was momentarily too disoriented from the pain to heal. The Dauphine somehow saw what had happened and swooped in from below me, catching me and healing me in the same maneuver. After a heal like that, you had a tendency to briefly feel invincible, which was good enough to motivate you back into battle.

“Can you fly?” she asked. I nodded, and she let me go.

Suddenly a massive tentacle flicked out at us and snatched the Dauphine away from me. And before I could give chase, the herald I’d failed to kill roared forward, having tracked me the entire time since landing its first blow. I turned toward its rapid onrushing attack and countered by accelerating straight toward it with Blades Per Minute aimed directly at its chest. I punched through its skin so intensely that I wound up with half my body buried in its disgusting innards, and I needed to teleport to get myself out of that situation. I appeared behind it and stabbed it repeatedly in the back before it could even start to swivel its massive frame toward me, and somewhere in there, one of those blows managed to kill the thing that was already half dead from poisonglitter and sliced all to hell from razorjewels.

That was me, Queen of Sparkle Dungeon, taking at least a full sixty seconds to kill just one of these things, using three of my best spells, an artifact-level weapon, and requiring a life-saving heal from the Dauphine right in the middle of the encounter. One down, hundreds to go.

Wait—where was the Dauphine?

The tentacle that had snagged her was attached to a disturbing pseudo presence, half swirling morass of seething tentacles attached to a complex, pulsing beehive or something, and half ghostlike mist as though it was still making decisions about what manner of horror it wanted to resolve into as it completed its transition into a more definite form. The tentacle had wrapped itself around her so quickly and thoroughly that she was unable to shoot it.

And because she’d always had the portal spell, we’d never even considered teaching her to teleport, so she couldn’t just blink out of its grasp.

She tried opening portals but the skin of the tentacle was already baked with resistance to her portal attack, and any free-floating portal she tried to open for escape was beyond her ability to reach.

I soared into the fray with Blades Per Minute activated, fully prepared to slice through the tentacle holding her, but unlike the Dauphine, I was not always computationally accurate with my attacks, and before I got close to her, two other tentacles swept the area and smacked me hard, twice, and I could not believe I had gotten hit so hard again. I struggled to right myself, to orient myself to the Dauphine’s predicament.

I got her back in view just in time to watch the thing wrap a second tentacle around her. Now it was trying to pull her apart.

She actually screamed, something I’d never heard her do before.

I rallied a second approach, eluding further swipes from the beast’s tentacles and aiming straight for the beehive with Blades Per Minute. This proved to be yet another tactical mistake, as the beehive was actually a murky fluid construct that took no damage from the slice of a sword, and left the sword covered in an acidic film that immediately began dissolving chunks of the blade itself. I felt the vibration drain out of Blades Per Minute, and then it disintegrated in my hand.

Once again, I had one major spell left that I’d been saving for a special occasion, the powerful but debilitating Light Show, and I cast it without hesitation. Poisonous fog sprayed all around me, and then I became a blinding ball of luminescence, spraying lasers and spotlights in every direction. In the game, this was considered a ranged attack; I was firing it off at extremely close range and the beast I’d been fighting melted almost instantly. Collateral damage to surrounding heralds was significant.

And I was drained to near exhaustion. I wouldn’t be able to cast this one again any time soon. As I reverted to my original form, I realized I was drifting, too weak to jetpack myself around, just barely able to fire off a Summon Adderall spell to keep me conscious.

The Dauphine suddenly streaked up, safe for the time being, and reached out to me.

I managed to grab her hand, absorbing another one of her doses of healing in the process, and we set off back into battle.