While I’d never doubted his intelligence, this little exercise made me realize just how smart he actually was, how quickly he understood and picked things up, and what a great analytical mind he possessed. It struck me that, with a bit of guidance and training from Tabitha—the Vanguard’s most brilliant analyst—the Scelk leader could grow into a formidable one as well.
“All right,” I said, satisfied with our initial setup. “I think we could go with this one.”
Varnog stared at me with the strangest grin.
“What?” I asked, feeling suddenly worried.
“I figured you wanted pain, but I didn’t realize you were this much of a masochist,” he said wistfully.
“You think it’s too hard?” I asked, knowing we had indeed set things in a way probably impossible to survive.
“Too hard?” Varnog repeated with an expression both amused and disbelieving. “I think we’re about to experience a very painful death in less than three minutes.”
I gaped at him, unsure whether to be offended or hurt. There was no question that the difficulty I had set was going to be brutal. But surely, I could last more than three minutes, right?
“Don’t look at me like that,” he added with a gentle smile as if to mollify me. “This is at maximum setting, not a toned down one for newbies. I do not question your skills, Linette. I may be a jerk, and a bit of a sadist, but I do not wish you unnecessary pain. Consider yourself fairly warned.”
Although he tried to sound mockingly indifferent, the protectiveness in his voice was unmistakable. I didn’t know how to handle it, finding it both cute and unexpected.
“I am warned,” I replied, feeling inexplicably wild and reckless—two adjectives that were normally never used with me. “Hit me with all you’ve got.”
“As the lady commands,” Varnog said with a slight bow of the head.
The world blurred before us, and then we were back at the starting point with the Palace a slightly longer distance ahead than when I first appeared in this dream world. Though this vessel had been on autopilot while we were setting up the enemies, this time it was all me.
And I freaking loved it!
Increasing the speed, I set up the shields at maximum defenses. Within seconds, large bolts of energy started rising from the ground, all of them headed towards my position. Although Varnog had followed my requests on the general areas where to set up the Bombardier Beetles, he had taken liberties as to their actual positions, therefore keeping me on my toes.
Looking almost like giant scarabs, a stone red color that blended with the dusty terrain of Kryptor, they reminded me of dogs sitting on their hind legs, their faces lifted to the sky. A huge protuberance swelled on their backs, glowing with a white light while the massive pincer-horns on their heads framing it crackled with electric energy. Then wing-like appendages on their backs squeezed tightly together, shooting the luminous sphere which became electrified as it passed through the horns before racing towards us to wreck our ship.
My eyes were everywhere at once, my brain performing crazy calculations that I could never put into words as they dictated the movement of my hands piloting the vessel. I just knew what to dodge, when, where, how, and which missile was the biggest threat. Varnog chuckled at the sight of the smug smile that settled on my lips while I easily avoided the fifty or so electric bolts that came our way. This was a basic obstacle course for me.
Then the turrets from the buildings joined the fray. Juggling both of those certainly proved far more challenging, especially since I was their sole target. Under normal circumstances, there would be multiple allied shuttles flying around, reducing the number of enemies each one of us had to deal with. We also would have come in stealthily and hoped the Kryptids didn’t detect us or manage to bypass our encoded shield signature.
While a few of the shots slapped our protective shield, Varnog’s impressive marksmanship eliminating a number of the Beetles and turrets provided me with a couple of openings. But just as I was diving beneath a passage between two buildings, I came face to face with two Bombardier Beetles on a ramp cleverly hidden by the connecting bridge until it was too late.
“Fuck!” I muttered, tilting hard to the right.
The narrow space between buildings didn’t give me much wiggle room, and the damn Beetles were spewing those electric bolts at dizzying speed. Added to the turret fire, I failed to dodge one of the bolts, which sent the shuttle spinning out of control. But I had seen worse. My fingers flying over the navigation board while our shield was getting pummeled, I managed to avoid crashing into a couple of buildings. Just as I was regaining control of the small vessel, a geyser of red sand and rocks erupted in front of us from an inconspicuous mound in the uneven ‘streets’ of the Palace district.
My heart stopped, and my brain froze at the impossible sight of a gigantic beast the size of a skyscraper rising from the ground. It opened an enormous maw filled with a billion razor sharp teeth. Its deafening roar hurt my ears and cracked the windshield of the shuttle. There was no avoiding it. Speared-limbs—at least a hundred of them—lined each side of its mostly flat body like that of a centipede although with a bumpy back that almost resembled the humps of a camel.
With full control of the vessel, I might have had a sliver of a chance of avoiding the beast. Instead, the small shuttle flew straight into the bottomless pit filled with deadly spikes that served it as a mouth.
I screamed as the two-meter long teeth rushed towards us as if we were getting impaled by an oversized, living iron maiden. The atrocious pain I expected never came. Darkness swallowed me, followed by the familiar falling sensation, and then light. My hands fisting the arms of the pilot’s seat, I stared in shock at the Palace district in the distance, Varnog having brought us back to the beginning of the scenario seconds before we got chewed up. I breathed heavily while my panicked heartbeat attempted to settle down.
Turning to look at him with bulging eyes, I was taken aback by the concerned expression on his face. Sure, I had screamed. But who the heck wouldn’t have with such a freaky thing readying to have you as an appetizer?
“What the hell was that?” I asked, staring at him disbelievingly.
“A sandworm,” the Scelk responded carefully, although he continued to examine me as if to assess my current state of mind.
“That was no freaking sandworm!” I exclaimed. “That was some weird ass centipede on steroids that stands even higher than the flipping Eiffel Tower. Well, at least when it still stood.”
“Eiffel Tower?” Varnog asked, confused.
“An old monument destroyed during the Battle for Earth,” I answered dismissively. “But seriously, what the hell? The Kryptids don’t have that kind of monster, do they?”
“They do, and it’s called a sandworm,” Varnog deadpanned, his head slightly tilted to the side.
“You never showed us one of those before!” I exclaimed, feeling like I just had a fast one pulled on me.
A slow smile stretched his lips while a taunting glimmer sparked in his dark eyes. “I was saving it for later sessions with the group. However, you said you wanted pain, and I promised to oblige. Was that too much?”
“Heck no, that wasn’t too much! It was freaking awesome!” I said with a huge grin, shifting in my seat to get more comfortable for the next round. “Again! This time, that damn crawler isn’t getting me.”