Chapter 27 – The Last Stand

“The general will return,” said Honroar as the remaining war badgers all relaxed as much as they dared.

There were only nine left.  If Badgelor had been alone he would have collapsed, it was only the fact that they looked up to him that was keeping him even marginally sane.

How would Jim manage this?

The human wasn’t smart, strong, or generally useful most of the time but he was usually able to handle this sort of catastrophe with greater resolve.  It was because Badgelor only screwed up at the important times, not normally.  Jim was the reverse, screwing up normal things badly only to outperform when the chips were down.

And the chips were everywhere.

Even Bashara and Jarra had thrown in on the last battle.  Bashara was still able to confuse even large numbers of targets, and her spells had saved at least two of his people.  Jarra’s healing was far feebler than his own, thanks to Jim, but it was still something.  She looked, and smelled, like a corpse.  If he could, he would have thrown her through the gate, but they needed to stay.

He touched his pouch idly.  He had a few items in there he was saving for the final battle, but they might be of use here, as well as his single Force point.  It would be the darkest of ironies if Badgelor spent one of his precious few items powerful enough to help in the fight against the Dark Overlord here to save his people now, only to have them killed by the Dark Overlord later.

Or worse, corrupted.  Like Charles.

It was always a stupid idea, and Badgelor had never understood why Charles had even tried it.  The plan had never been to go for Godling, yet finally that was the ‘only path’.  If Badgelor had been just a bit stronger then, he could have gone to get the crystal with Charles, but the guardian was more powerful than he could have possibly imagined.

“Incoming,” yelled Barkulis, the last Lieutenant after KaiLyne’s passing.

They would hold until the mountain fell.

***

“What am I looking for,” said Shart as I began tearing into the tentacles.  There was a channel inside of them for drawing food back to the main body.  The ones that were still intact were not worth looking in, but there were a number of tentacles that had been carved off surgically right before they got to the body.

“Why was she fighting here,” I yelled, using Badger's Fist to drive my arms into a tentacle before I began to rip it in half.  The black fluid that replaced blood splattered everywhere, poisoning everything.  Mainly me, though.

“I don’t know, wait, there's a nametag lost in the metadata here,” said Shart.

“Where?” I asked, ripping a second tentacle in half slowing, there were so many.

“It's dying or dead,” said Shart.  “I can’t get a location.  Oh no, it's a baby badger.”

I kept ripping, tearing apart tentacle after tentacle and finding nothing.  My arms burned, not from exhaustion but from the shadow seeping into my pores. I burned the shadow away but it took time and the amount was starting to overwhelm me.

The general had been separated from the support column, which included a cub.  She’d died trying to save the little thing from this horror, and ultimately failed.

“Jim, you have to be careful, there is a lot of Shadow Essence here, you are going to get contaminated,” said Shart from my shoulder.  He shook some of the shadowy goo off of his foot distastefully. “More contaminated.”

“I will handle it,” I hissed. I didn’t care, I was knee deep in the festering liquid and could feel it tainting my Mana as it continued pouring into me. Then something broke. I didn’t have the energy; I couldn’t come back to Badgelor like this.  Suddenly the liquid seemed to pour into me.

· <Admin Error>  MC: Soul Contamination detected.  Shadow Essence is corrupting Radiant Mana at the rate of 1.2 per second.

The Shadow overpowered my Mental Resistance.  I realized that at the same time I knew all of my muscles were locked up.  My entire mana network was saturated with Shadow Mana.  I focused, gaining control over my Mana but it was already contaminated.  My shadow core was cleaning my mana network, but it was going too slow. The corruption was overtaking me. Mentally I roared, preparing for anything.

I can take you home.

“What?” my Mana Network violently spasmed, squirming from my control.  I regained control but even in that brief moment the tiny amount of Mana I cleansed was corrupted all over again.  I pushed back harder, forcing the Shadow Mana away from the edges of the Mana Channels and into the Shadow Core.

It would be like you never left.

My control slackened.  Could that actually happen?  I tried to use Mental Resistance to clear my mind, see if what I was being told wasn’t just a convincing lie but the power of the Shadow was overwhelming.  You think that you could overcome anything, but wouldn’t it just be easier to go home?

Your wife misses you.

There was a tree, waving in the breeze and a young brunette I hardly recognized smiling at me. She seemed important somehow. She loved me not matter what. I saved Jarra, but she was better off dead.  I failed Badgelor.  I failed.

You can be with your family.

I grabbed the Mana and shoved it back into my Shadow Core, cleansing it.  The Shadow was lying, but maybe I wasn’t trying as hard as I could.  I glanced back up and realized that over half of the Radiant Mana that comprised my Soul was already converted to Shadow Mana, and the process was moving faster.

I was too slow.  In the handful of seconds where I doubted, the Shadow had pushed in too far.  Each moment I watched as the Admin report for my Soul tick down towards total corruption.  I pushed harder using Mana Control even as I focused on Mental Resistance.

The sad thing was that I knew I could try harder.

“Jim,” whispered Shart.

“I screwed up,” I said, watching my Radiant Mana pool continue to shrink, I was below 30 now.

“I can barely hear you, the Essence link between us is getting corroded,” whispered Shart.

I supposed I didn’t want to cease existing all alone.  I flipped into my mindspace and ramped up my subjective time as fast as I could.  I almost never came here anymore, too many memories.  Standing on the floating pedestal over the small town that made up my core memories, I spotted the stump of a tree and got sad.  I always felt sad when I saw that tree and I could never remember why and now it was covered in Shadow.

Everything was covered in Shadow.

Outside the town was the giant wall that represented my Mental Fortress perk.  It was part of the Mental Resistance skill and typically defended me from attacks like this.  It wasn’t working now and there was a torrent of black goo flooding in through the gates.  Glancing around I found the mental hookups for my connections with Shart and Badgelor located in what appeared to be a utility closet.

Of course, my mind would put them there out of the way.

I materialized next to the door and walked in.  The connections looked very much like the Shadow Tap located in my basement in Windfall.  I suspected that was because this was the only thing I’d ever seen like that.

Brushing the toxic waste away with my hand, I pulled the connection to Shart and reseated it.  It was dangerous in here now, but at least I could talk to him.

Shart appeared next to me, holding out his hands and blasting away all the nearby Shadow, “You can’t let this get into Badgelor’s Essence.  It could corrupt him.”

“Should I just disconnect him?” I asked, reaching for the connection.

“No, he’ll lose all his perks, what the hell is wrong with you,” screamed the demon.

“What’s the point, I’m only delaying the inevitable.  Jarra is doomed, and I have no idea how to defeat the Dark Overlord,” I said.

“Just because you didn’t get what you wanted the way you wanted it is not a reason to give up, you have to keep trying,” screamed the demon.  “I gave up on everything until I met you, and you know what?  That annoying, chipper attitude of yours is fecking contagious.  You can’t quit, not now.  You got this, I believe in you!”

“You believe in me? Do you think I’m just going to Jim up something?”

“Yes,” screamed Shart. “You do the impossible every day to save others, now save yourself.”

“You seriously think I can just pull something out of my…” I bellowed, then paused. “Wait, why weren’t you affected?”

“My connection is shielded,” said Shart.

I unhooked the demon, he was already physically here and didn’t need the connection to remain.  There were arcane symbols even my Mystical Lore skill didn’t recognize on the inside of Shart’s Essence connection.  His essence connection wasn’t designed to keep the Shadow out, it was designed to keep him inside like some sort of firewall.  I clicked the cable back in place.

Stepping outside, I looked at the gates of my Mental Fortress and willed the runes in place with 3.7 points of Radiant Mana remaining.

· <Admin Skill Unlocked> Soul Resistance, upgrade to Mental Resistance.  Your soul is unable to be corrupted.

The Shadow rippled, pulsed and just like that vanished.  I was back up to 98/100 Radiant Mana as the hold of the Shadow on my soul was torn away.

“Seriously, another skill?” grumbled Shart.

I exited my mindspace and looked over the room.  It was dark now, but the foreboding touch of evil was gone.  It was just a place where everything was dead and unmoving.

One of the tentacles touching my foot twitched.

“Couldn’t be,” I said.

I gripped the tentacle hunk and began tearing it to shreds as I moved up.  The tentacle was like a throat, the constricting action seemed autonomous, and several seconds later I found what it was swallowing.

A tiny, baby war badger no bigger than a housecat.  An unconscious, dying housecat.

Dying I could handle though.

I cast regenerate and used treatment on it, a bit too powerfully.  The suffocation condition vanished, as did all of the hit point damage and most importantly for our current story, the unconscious condition.

Last time I found someone like this I had to do mouth to mouth, so as the tiny war badger woke up, I was moving my mouth towards her tiny little face.

She bit my tongue.

Unlike superman, not every part of my body was equally rugged and the magically enhanced biting teeth of a war badger sliced into my mouth’s annoying roommate with ease.  I screamed, sort of, and dropped the badger.

That didn’t matter, because she didn’t release her grip.  Shart appeared on my shoulders and grabbed the tiny war badger and started to try to pull her off.

“‘Ass weep,” I yelled.

“That’s gross,” replied Shart.

“No, cast sleep,” I thought.

“That’s not a spell, what the hell does it do,” said Shart.

“It puts people to sleep,” I said.

“That sounds OP, besides this is a war badger.  They are highly magically resistant,” said Shart.  “That’s why I’m pulling really hard.”

“She’s attached to my tongue,” I shot over mentally.

“That’s why I’m pulling harder,” yelled Shart.

“This is that codpiece incident all over again,” I grumbled, then remembered something.  Sliding a hand into the baby badger’s armpit, I tickled her.  She jerked around for a moment, then released her death grip.

I scuffed the creature, which Badgelor hated and held up the snarling ball of fur.

“Well, we have one survivor,” I said.

“Um, Jim,” said Shart.

***

“There’s nothing to be done,” said Jarra as she closed Honroar’s eyes.

The last wave was the largest yet and they had broken all the way into the cavern where the exit was.  Honroar kept them from collapsing the gate, but at too high a cost.

“Any word,” said Barcillis, blinking his one remaining eye.

“I tried to communicate with Jim, he’s alive but something is blocking our companion bond,” said Badgelor.

“They must be in Ironpass,” said Barcillis.  “That much shadow infused stone would block nearly any form of communication.”

“No, it is a companion bond, that wouldn’t block it. It’s the behir. They are powerful creatures, they can disrupt essence-based communication,” said Bashara.  She had demonstrated enough technical knowledge about such connections that there was no questioning it.

The behir were out there, somewhere.

Badgelor nodded, looking at his three remaining war badgers.  Only Barcillis could manage Ultimate form, and then only with Badgelor’s help, thankfully that must have been the last wave.

Because feck trees.

Jim had the right idea, it took Badgelor far too long to realize it.  The drop pumas were being created by the shadow trees, so the solution was to kill all the damn shadow trees.  Badgelor had laid waste to every shred of vegetation taller than his ankle that was visible from the cavern.

Too late though.

Bashara moved closer to him and whispered.  “I think it may be time to let a few people through.”

“Leaving so soon,” asked Badgelor.

“If I was going to leave, I would have just gone,” said Bashara, “No, I think that part of my life is over.  I was thinking about Jarra and maybe one of the other war badgers.”

“All or None,” said Badgelor.

“Maybe one of the girl war badgers, as a scout, to make sure there is a clear path,” said Bashara pointedly.

It was only through his long association with humans that Badgelor even realized what she was talking about.  Even so, the notion was so unnatural it took Badgelor a few seconds to process it.

Humans were such odd creatures.  They would have sent some of their own off to survive while others fought because of their misplaced notions of honor.  Something about survival of the species or the like.  Charles had explained to him about human culture and their desire for at least some to survive.

That was not a feature of the war badger.  The troop survived or none of them did.  Sending a badger away was akin to saying they were no longer part of the army, and no war badger would even entertain such a ridiculous notion.

All or none.

“There is a behir creeping around at the forest line,” said Wrecktor, gesturing with his nose at the first massive warbeast.

“And another,” said Barcillis.

“And a third,” said Horoy.

Badgelor considered, no war badger would escape here with some of their numbers left behind but there was no sense in letting Bashara or Jarra die here. They were not war badgers. He moved to say something but neither woman looked all that interested in departing. Pillow looked at him, daring Badgelor to ask her to leave.

“Badgelor,” said Jim.

“I hear you,” replied Badgelor, waiting.  Everything fell onto Jim’s next words.  If there were no survivors then he could send the army through and trust Jim to get here before the portal truly closed.

But in his heart…

“Found badger,” said Jim in a hiss of choppy static.  “Enroute.”

Badgelor nodded.  They would hold, no matter the cost.

The first behir finally decided to move.  Badgelor wasn’t sure if it intercepted the communication or finally decided it had been patient enough, but in any case, the creature moved.  As did it's two friends.

“It's been an honor,” said Barcillis.

“Likewise,” said Horoy.

“It's tradition to give a speech,” said Wrecktor to Badgelor.

“What kind of speech,” said Bashara.

“If there is a last stand, there is a last speech,” said Wrecktor.

Badgelor stood with all that remained of his army and glared pure hatred at the three behir that were racing towards him.  Jim might have given a speech.  Jim might have done lots of things, but one thing he would have done was Jim’ed up something.

Badgelor could do no less.

“A last stand,” said Badgelor, drawing in his mana pool.  “This is not our last stand.  This is all the forces of hell trying to move an army of war badgers and failing.  This is not our last stand. This is THEIRS!”

· Ultimate Badger’s Roar: This power requires a force point <yes/no>

Badgelor spent his force point.  If someone was going to die here, it was going to be the Behir.  All of the war badgers expanded into ultimate form.  Barcillis turned into Evolved Ultimate form, but those were secondary.

Unnecessary, Badgelor hoped.  Ultimate Badger’s roar turned you into your greatest Apex form and Badgelor had found a new form, a more powerful one even than his Ultimate form.  The first time he used it, he’d nearly died.  Stretching a mana network over so large an area was a challenge, and he frankly hadn’t been up to the task.

Now he’d trained the form, much to a lot of people’s chagrin, and he swelled massively as the three giant Behir stopped in their tracks as Kaiju Badgelor charged them.  His ultimate skill only lasted for two minutes, so he had to do this quickly, but he would finish this or die.

***

And that looks suitably distracting, thought the shade as she whipped past the remaining War Badgers.  Still, if they spotted her on the other side there would be a problem.  The two humans might prove useful.

Especially that one.

***

“Is that Badgelor,” asked Shart as I continued racing through the trees as fast as my legs would carry me.

“What are you on about,” I hissed, looking through the canopy of the trees for a moment before I saw Badgelor, standing against the background of infinite shadows.  There was a behir wrapped around his midsection, trying to pull him in half and a second that had taken to the unfortunate strategy of hiding in Badgelor’s mouth.

“He figured out how to do the kaiju form without you,” said Shart.

I could see Badgelor, but he was deceptively far away.  His Kaiju form was massive up close, but he was so far away that he was barely pea sized to me.  Worse, between the two of us was a forest full of drop pumas.

The only reason I’d been able to make this much progress was that I’d found the trick to avoiding the little bastards.

“Must go faster,” I grunted, trying to figure out how to get more speed.  I was barely outpacing the damn drop pumas as they moved through the trees after me. Then it hit me, literally.

I ran face first into a small tree and smashed right through it.  I was powerful enough to do that, I was not powerful enough to do so without paying for it.  The tree practically ripped my face off and I stumbled for a moment, long enough that one of the many drop pumas leapt at me.

Shart flicked his hands and a spike of earth shot through the puma’s midsection.  Just a jagged stone shaft through the torso wasn’t going to hurt a drop puma much, but it gave me a moment to collect my thoughts and start moving again.

I pulled out my whip.

“Jim, I just say your plan, it is a bad idea,” said Shart.

I lashed out at the nearest branch and yanked myself towards it.  The moment before I reached it, I struck out with the whip again, latching onto another branch.  The trick was pulling yourself towards the tree when you caught it, and as soon as I got the rhythm down, I was moving even faster than before.  Hopefully I’d make it to Badgelor before it was too late.