Chapter Fourteen
Aric
He went to the surface and found it in chaos.
Soldiers were running in all directions. Most looked organized, but enough of them bore panicked stares or stood looking around unsure to tell him that whatever it was, it was bad. What finally caught his eye, however, was the mass of smoke pouring out of the tunnel entrance.
“Oh shit,” he whispered, knowing full well where that tunnel led.
At the bottom of the deep shaft was a huge cavern, filled with banks of equipment and scientists monitoring it 24/7. There was also an entire detail of battlesuits and a dragon on duty at all times, watching the other thing in the room. The thing that was the entire reason behind the base existing in the first place.
The portal. It was the energy door that bound this place to the Outsiders’ home world. It was from there they would eventually pour forth once the radiation on the other side eventually decayed. Early in the days after discovery, in an effort to stem the tide of the first group of Outsiders that came through, the government had authorized the use of a nuclear weapon.
They’d fired it through the portal, and it had exploded. The plan had backfired however, and a door that was five feet high by three or so wide had exploded in size to nearly a hundred feet tall, the portal itself absorbing much of the nuclear energy and using it to expand.
It hadn’t taken the radiation with it though, and now the ground on the far side was littered with it, making it essentially impossible for even the toughest Outsiders to get through. They’d tried several times since, but the dragons and their human counterparts had cut down anything that came through with ease, the radiation weakening it too much.
Now though, it looked like something had changed.
A mighty roar from overhead caught his attention and Aric looked skyward as a red dragon, the biggest he’d ever seen, plunged toward the tunnel at a steep angle, tucking its wings in at the last moment as it plummeted into the bowels of the earth.
“Well that seals it,” he muttered, breaking out into a jog, and then a sprint. If the situation were dire enough for a dragon to fly around in broad daylight, then it could only mean one thing.
Outsiders had made it through.
A situation as dire as that, Aric couldn’t stay back and do nothing. He was a dragon, one of the few who could combat the monsters on near equal footing. Although his heart longed for him to go to Kaitlyn, to tell her the truth, he didn’t have time. His help would be needed down below, and it would be needed now.
“Where are you going?” a soldier screamed as he jogged past, trying to stop him.
“I am a fighter,” he said, his dragon shining through. “My place is down there. Are you going to stop me?”
The soldier looked over his shoulder at the tunnel entrance and the smoke spewing into the sky, and then back at Aric. “I don’t recognize you.”
He rolled his eyes and looked to the sky, unleashing a blast of his power straight up. The soldier balked and couldn’t throw himself out of the way fast enough.
“That’s what I thought,” Aric muttered, resuming his earlier pace, the ground moving past in a near blur as he pushed strength into his legs, propelling him forward in great leaps. The pavement crunched a little under his feet as he landed and then pushed off again.
He didn’t slow as the tunnel entrance came and went, charging headlong down the slope, into the bowels of the earth and whatever awaited him below. Behind him came units of battlesuits and human heavy-weapons teams, but they were moving too slow. Had the entire base been caught unawares?
Aric’s ears picked up the crash of battle long before he saw it. Men were shouting. Dragons roared. Weapons fired and something big whooshed, probably the red dragon’s fiery breath. The lower he went the more the smoke hovered in the passageways, providing obstacles to his sight, forcing him to crouch down.
A very human scream ripped up the tunnel and then was silenced with fatal swiftness, cutting off sharply. Aric snarled to himself and ran faster.
He was moving at a full sprint when the slope suddenly leveled out and discharged him into the middle of everything. The chaos was overwhelming. Skidding to a halt, he was forced to take a moment to take in the madness and figure out where to go.
Everywhere he could see humans and dragons battled with the Outsiders. This was the first glimpse Aric had gotten of them in person. They were tall, standing over six feet in height, with a glossy black exoskeleton that reminded him for all the world of ant armor. They resembled humans, though their arms and legs ended in stumps that he knew could be reshaped at will. Some even now bore weapons. Swords, axes, or clublike maces.
In the midst of it all a red dragon was going berserk. The mighty creature fought with everything at its disposal. An Outsider became a horrifying melted wax figure as it breathed fire across the attacker. Another was impaled by the spikes at the end of the beast’s tail, sent hurtling across the room under the impact.
Yet another disappeared under its claw, leaving behind little more than some purple goo and a deflated-looking corpse.
Aric let it fight. A scream caught his attention as a human battlesuit went down, an Outsider looming up, its sword ready to plunge down and kill the hapless warrior.
A battle cry ripped from his throat and he lifted his arms, turning side-on to the evil creature. Left arm extended in front of him, he tapped his right hand on the palm and pulled back. As if from nowhere a bow materialized in his hand, made from pure cackling energy. The arrow formed as he drew back the string, a condensed bolt of lightning that snapped and sizzled.
Cold, cool, and uncaring, his eyes picked out the slight opening the human weapons had created in the armor or whatever it was, and he let fly. The lightning arrow flew true, impaling the creature and flinging it backward in a spray of purple as the bolt discharged its energy inside the creature.
Without waiting to see how the human fared he found another target. And another. At one point he risked glancing at the portal. Again, he’d never seen it in person, but from the reports he’d heard, it was supposed to be larger. And with purple borders, not as yellow as the sun. Something was very, very wrong.
No more creatures were coming through, but the ones that were there were already causing enough havoc. They’d worked around the human lines and as he watched one of them escaped and ran up the tunnel. He sent a bolt after it, but without a wound to already exploit it could only tumble the thing to the ground.
Aric ran after it, fear spurring him on to great speeds as he went after the creature. It moved with a weird shuffle-hump gait, yet it could somehow still move with great speed. He caught up to it at the top of the tunnel. A straight shot awaited him as it tried to escape. He brought both hands up in front of him.
It was time for something more high-powered than the standard bow. A new creation materialized in his hands. Lifting the crossbow to his chest, he sighted and fired in one smooth motion. This time lightning spat in a solid burst. It went right through the creature’s shoulder, lopping off the arm.
A piercing wail split the sky, but the creature kept going. Aric was so stunned he didn’t pursue.
“Look out!” One of the oncoming battlesuits pointed frantically behind him.
Aric threw himself to the side as a wickedly tipped black blade sliced through the air where he had just been. Another pair of Outsiders breached the surface and threw themselves upon the defenses waiting there.
“SEAL THE TUNNEL!” Aric screamed, gesturing at the concrete plugs just waiting to plunge down the smooth-sided tunnel and seal it shut. “There are more coming up. We have to stop them now.”
One of the soldiers looked at him, but didn’t move to obey. Aric shook his head at the man’s incompetence. He didn’t know how to release the mighty cylinders or he would do it himself, but now seemed like the perfect time to unleash them. Another Outsider came out of the tunnel. Aric went after it. He lifted a hand to the heavens and with a mighty roar slashed it at the Outsider.
A bolt of true lightning plunged down from the clear sky above, bigger and more massive than anything he’d unleashed before now. It hit the top of the Outsider, its head for lack of a better word, and the creature just disintegrated, unable to contain the power.
Aric threw his head back and screamed his defiance to the gods, letting them know with one sound that he would make them pay for unleashing this evil upon humanity. They didn’t deserve this. There were bad people in the world, true, but there were also good people. People like Kaitlyn.
He spun, looking back down the tunnel. Kaitlyn was underground. There were corridors that led from the main tunnel to her quarters. If one of the Outsiders took a different route, she would be in danger.
Without a second thought he plunged back into the maelstrom, intent on one thing, and one thing only: getting to his mate.