Dark Matter Ascension-Chapter 22B3 - : Chaos at the crevasse

Shhiv was concerned: gravely so, and with trembling fingers typed off a message to Xera, who had revealed her identity to the Churkun woman.

“Hey X. I got a weird message from Jace…but it wasn’t Jace, because it was just a bunch of garbled nonsense. What’s going on?”

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[Something getting access to The Cosmic System. They are learning.]

[Here is the short version: Jace is on a world like I asked, something was summoned by Troxanir, and now things that shouldn’t be able to access the System are able to access it. In limited capacity.]

[Looks like they also got some of Jace’s contact information. I’m working on fixing their access, but if you get messages from Jace: ignore them. I’ll forward any real messages from him and try to screen these imposters.]

[If someone or something that looks like or sounds like him shows up? Use that ring, and then get ahold of me.]

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“Will do,” Shhiv typed back. But she felt afraid. Afraid that something out there existed that could copy her partner enough to appear and sound just like him. But, she thought, he would behave differently. I know him well enough at this point to discern the real from the fake.

Shhiv took a few deep, shaky breaths as she slipped the cosmopanel into the pocket of her form-hugging pants and tried to shake out the tension in her body. The door to the workshop area slid open, and Missy walked in carrying some supplies.

“Shhiv, you good? You look sick.”

“I’m…I’m okay, Missy. Just concerned is all,” Shhiv replied as she looked back to the cosmopanel cover she was in the process of etching a complex, flowery-coral design into. “Jace has…evil duplicates out there. If you see him show up, call X.”

Missy walked over and set down the case of blank cosmopanel covers, “Will do. We have orders to fill!”

Shhiv nodded and tried to shake off the feeling of dread by pouring all her focus into the art piece she was working on.

Jace raced across the tundra, watching the dots marking the remaining ten Astral Demons keeping pace and making their way across disparate parts of the world towards him.

Xera’s voice came over the comms in his ear, “You are going to need to deal with these enemies sooner rather than later. They are somehow getting access to limited portions of The Cosmic System, and I have to keep shutting off access nodes for them. It’s taking a lot of my attention away from other key functions.”

Jace looked at his map, “Ollie, can you give me a view version that shows terrain?”

Yup! Ollie replied in his head as the HUD shifted to show a topographical view of the world.

“Now find me something like a valley. The thinner, the better. A choke point I can use. Preferably one that can’t be scaled easily from the outside.”

The map shifted in front of Jace’s eyes and showed a line leading directly to a huge crevasse. A small mountain with a huge gash through the center; jagged and wide enough for two people to stand shoulder-to-shoulder. Does this work? Ollie asked.

Jace nodded and directed course for the natural choke point. “We can lure them in and repeat the Void Beam I just did to take out the others.”

“A smart play,” Xera said over the comms. “I’m going to be busy for a while. Quinn? Keep an eye on Jace and make sure you use all your Skills on him.”

Quinn’s voice replied, “Confirmed. Also, the other team has wrapped up the Astral Incursion they were sent to deal with. Should we send them to Jace to back him up?” 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

Xera was silent for a few moments before her voice came back, “No. I need them on reserve in case of other Incursions. We might be near the end of this set, but I don’t know for sure. Better to be on the safe side. Plus, Jace can take care of himself. He’s the strongest Signer I’ve ever had.”

That filled Jace with a sense of warmth and made him feel incredibly proud of his accomplishments thus far, because he knew that she could not lie thanks to the Broker Contract. Which meant that she truly meant that he was the strongest Signer she had ever employed in her faction. “I won’t let you down,” Jace said.

Jace was trying to set up a situation similar to the one that his mentor had told him about during the corpo war, and Jace tried to recall the words of that conversation as he began to formulate a plan.

“When I was pinned down,” his mentor had said, “I retreated into an alleyway that turned into a dead end. So what did I do? I used all the remaining grenades I had, strung them together with my boot lace, and put my back to the wall, gun aiming straight ahead. As soon as something came at me, I was ready for it. I unloaded every round of ammunition I had, and when I ran out of ammunition, I used those grenades bound together to collapse the buildings at the entrance into rubble.”

Jace smiled as his idea crystalized in his mind’s eye, and he accelerated the Sliver Arc to its top speed.

The travel to the crevasse was uneventful, and Jace took stock of his still available once-per-day Skills. “It hasn’t been a day since I fought the crab thing, and I used a lot of my daily Skills on that,” he muttered to himself as he circled the small glacier, finding both entrances to the crevasse. “I still have Primalist’s Command but there’s no animals to order around. I’ve got Steel Gale Stride, which can be useful to outmaneuver them.”

Ollie spoke in his mind; I think the best route would be to just activate every Skill at your disposal and go for it. All the Wrathblade ones and try to apply Mage’s Mark at Rank 3 to each of them to get that damage reduction.

Quinn came over the comms again, “And I’ll make sure you have every Stratagem active, along with the Coordinator Skills. The only downside is we don’t know what Skill-like effects they have from their Astral System, or how that will interact with Void or Dark Matter.”

First things first, Jace thought as he got to a spot on the back side of the glacier, where he planned to put his back to, and planted a survival meal in the ground so that he could use Void Step to get out of his planned defensive holdout, as he needed line of sight or to be intimately familiar with where he was trying to Void Step to. And, seeing how everything was icy, snowy tundra; the bright-green survival meal packaging caused it to stand out drastically against the rest of the terrain.

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Jace put the Sliver Arc into his TPSB and entered the far end of the crevasse. Taking several precise cuts at the surrounding glacier, he was able to collapse the back end, and with a few more precise strikes thanks to his Edge of Possibility’s guidance, was able to collapse the roof in a bit so that the two halves were supporting each other. A tunnel with a dead end. Then, going to the entrance, and every five feet, he picked up a clod of ice, and put a Dark Energy Mine with the activation of someone stepping over them.

Taking his place at the far end, he kept an eye on the dots that began to move closer and closer. “How long?” he asked.

Two minutes before the first arrives, Ollie stated.

Jace nodded and glanced down at the Guatch Grappler. “This thing leaves a handprint where I want to grapple to…could I apply Mage’s Mark with that?”

You could try! Ollie replied.

Jace drew his sword and activated Void Blade (Rank 5) [Rending]. He leaned against the glacier wall, focusing on taking deep, almost meditative breaths as he calmed his racing heart. The plan was straightforward. Lure these Astral Demons in by virtue of them tracking him down. Have them activate the Dark Energy Mine, and then use his grapple arm to pull them to him, and hopefully dispatch them in a strike or two. Rinse and repeat until all ten were dead. If he needed to collapse the space, he could use Raging Cleave and Ruination Razor to collapse the glacier entrance, giving him some space to breathe and recover.

And he could Void Step out of the back of the glacier and flee if he needed to recover energy. He was as prepared as he could be.

The dots approached, and Jace stood up. “Here we go. Void Shield (Rank 6). Ollie, can you please manipulate my brain chemistry to help me get angry?”

Will do! Incoming!

Jace saw his world constrict to a point as he felt a rush of adrenaline kick through his body. He felt angry: furious: that these things would dare copy his body. His gear. His equipment.

Ollie’s voice echoed in his thoughts again, Oh, this will also piss you off. Their limited access to The Cosmic System let them get some messages out: including to Shhiv. She’s scared.

“What?!” Jace shouted out as his anger was amplified by the chemicals racing through his brain. “I’ll fucking kill them!” his thoughts were focused on a singular task: annihilating these monstrosities from another layer of reality. He thought to activate his last few remaining Skills he had planned on keeping through the whole fight. Wrath’s Embrace (Rank 10) [Focused], Aura of Wrath (Rank 11).

The world around him exploded in crimson, crackling nebula clouds that arced out lightning that sparked and hissed into the glacier, melting small sections where they struck. Quinn’s Stratagems activated, and Jace saw the red-hued HUD flash up the various durations underneath his bar to track energy.

The first Astral Demon in his form arrived outside of the glacier according to the map, and Jace saw them slow and approach the entrance. Boom! There was a shockwave of dull, purple energy as the first Dark Energy Mine went off. Jace reached out with his Guatch Grappler, branding a palm-print onto the thing’s armored torso as it began to float. Mage’s Mark (Rank 3), he thought as he pulled back.

The handprint of the grapple-point glowed with the purple hue of his Dark Matter power source, and as he pulled back, the figure was pulled right to him and Jace impaled them through the head. The whole time between the initial mine detonation and his stab was less than a second; far faster than an unknowing combatant could react. After stabbing through the head, Jace chopped into the thing, cutting off its arms and legs as the power of Void continued to eat away at it.

The thing went slack and Jace saw the light blue of Souls traveling upward. Letting the corpse drop, he scowled as two more approached on the map. Nine left, he thought. One of them appeared in the entrance of the crevasse and began running towards him. Boom, another Dark Energy Mine, another grapple from Jace, and another quick dispatch.

But this one was able to raise his arm, and shout out, “Arbiter’s Anathema!”. The crackling red lightning surrounding Jace vanished.

That’s bad! Ollie shouted in his mind. He turned off your Aura of Wrath!

Jace growled in rage as he cut through the thing, and once the Souls inside it were released, he dropped the corpse. The third one stayed at a distance, and now that Jace had cleared line of sight, they, too, raised their arm. “Arbiter’s Anathema!”

Jace still felt angry, but he knew Wrath’s Embrace was no longer active as his vision returned to its normal hue of greyish from his Ascended Power. Lashing out with the grapple again, he pulled this one forward: but they planted their feet, and their Steelstalker Sabatons gripped down preventing Jace from pulling them closer and over one of the Dark Energy Mines. Dark Matter Dart (Rank 3), Jace thought. The bolts of purple energy manifested around his shoulders and darted forward, stabbing through the Astral Demon duplicate; only for the holes to slowly heal over.

But the one through the head caused enough loss of motor function that Jace could tug back with the grapple line, getting them right into the radius of the next Dark Energy Mine. Boom, gravity ceased, and Jace yanked them to him, cutting through them as they died. Seven left, he thought as he threw the corpse’s remains to the side. The other seven dots were all going to arrive a few seconds after each other, and Jace took in steady breaths. He still felt angry thanks to Ollie’s manipulations of his brain, and that was amplifying his weapon swings.

The next one appeared in the entryway, and Jace threw his sword. They deflected it with their own blade and raised their arm. “Arbiter’s Anathema!” As Jace summoned his sword back, he saw that the grey hue was gone. The Astral Demon began to move forward, and a beam of crackling, red lightning arced around his body from another one behind it: slamming into Jace’s Void Shield before dissipating.

The one in the lead triggered Dark Energy Mine. Jace grappled them over and cut into them, causing damage. But he no longer had a way to permanently put them down with the sword: he knew he had to use Void Beam to deal with them. He was able to cut off its arms, so it did not pose a real threat, but then he remembered the blades on the feet, and as he went to cut those off, the Astral Demon kicked up with its Steelstalker Sabatons.

Jace moved his forearm down to block the blow at the shin, and his Void Shield seemed to eat away at the metal. Oh, Jace thought, that’s a good idea. He dropped his sword and tackled the armless Astral Demon, disintegrating them by crushing them with the Void Shield, and the Souls escaping their form confirmed to him that it worked. Six to go, he thought as he pushed himself upright.

Arcing beams of lightning cascaded out towards him: they were a malevolent, black and blue color, mixed with crackling pinks and sickly yellow. All of the bolts slammed into his Void Shield and did nothing. One of them raised their arm, shouted out “Arbiter’s Anathema!” and Jace’s Void Shield vanished.

They slowly advanced: triggering another mine, and Jace grappled one to himself, cutting down into them. They got their blade in the way to block, and Jace felt dull impacts against his armor as more of the lightning arced around this entity and slammed into him. He could feel a lethargy spread over him, and he felt himself slowing down. His energy bar drained precipitously.

Quinn’s voice came over the comms, “They can drain energy! Get out of there!”

Jace thought, Void Step (Rank 7), and felt an odd suction against his back as he was no longer standing in the crevasse of the glacier, but instead was behind the collapsed section. Drawing on the energy stockpiled in his Primal Hide, he refilled his energy and held both hands up, “Void Beam (Rank 1) [Horizon-Splitter]!”

The whole of creation vanished before him in a massive cone that consumed everything: the glacier, the Astral Demons, the landscape, the air: everything was scoured; vanishing to nothingness. He collapsed to a knee and was breathing deeply as he felt extremely tired.

“Damn,” Quinn stated. “One was out of range given your current energy stockpile. Even with all of your effects stacked from me, your Energy Cost Reduction…still didn’t have enough energy stockpiled to reach them. I would advise fleeing.”

Jace looked up and saw, in the distance a good thousand feet away, one more of the Astral Demons in a copy of his body; a bit past where the blast had ended, leaving nothing but frozen ground. “Right…run away, get my energy back, then turn and fight.” He reached into the TPSB, grabbed his Sliver Arc, and hopped on top, slotting his feet in as he made for the Complex leading to the core of the world. Glancing back, he saw the Astral Demon following in the same mode of transport.