System Hunt: Regalia

The chop of the rotary blades some few feet above their heads drowned out every word. Sam had headphones on, large, professional and could speak through its mic to the pilot and Alex.

But there wasn’t much left to speak of. Pilot, Alex and Sam were all far too enraptured by the apocalypse playing out on Manila. The modern city was being transformed right before their eyes, pockets of forests would erupt, quaking the earth as full grown trees sundered through the concrete jungle human’s had put in place and reclaimed it with supernaturally burning timberlands.

The chopper circled the collapsing city, after a day and a half of terror from the Doom Tower, the area had been turned into a burning jungle. Streets buried under unnaturally roots, broken apart by erupting trunks, with homes set ablaze as the eternally rejuvenated leaves spread ethereal fires wherever they land.

The Doom Tower stood at the centre of it all, the monolith dwarfed everything and its untouched peak was capped by a permanent cluster of lightning clouds. It was made of an almost black, purple stone, a smooth obsidian-like gleam contrasted the pulsating red crystal veins and ominous runes and symbols that riddled the base.

Sam couldn’t bring himself stare at it long, the supernatural structure stirred up his thoughts, intrusive images of his greatest fear even though he was here not to fight man but monster.

Helicopters danced with danger in its the air around it, deploying tons of water to quench the unquenchable flames of the unnaturally born forest. Ladders to save families, pedestrians trapped in the unravelling. The Tower stood unperturbed by the noise as though none of it were its fault and yet…

Alex drew close and pointed, “There are Belua in the thick of it. Reports coming in all say the same thing, over eight feet, a chimera of a human and a horse and a touch none of its victims have escaped from.” She held my gaze sternly for a full moment as she let that info sink in before she softened, “Be careful, you’re our only-”

“I got it! No pressure right?” Sam cut her off before she could mount said pressure squarely on my shoulders. The view from on high told Sam more than he wanted to know, more than she could hope to put into words.

There were DSF agents down there, fighting back against the Tower Surge to little success and the truth was— Manila will fall if I don’t end this somehow. Only thing is…I really don’t like how.

Alex moved to speak but it was the pilot’s voice that cut through, “Found a fair landing zone for you, Sir.”

Anyone willingly jumping into that is a ‘Sir’, Sam nodded and gave Alex a knowing look, she wanted to go over what needed to be done one more time to be certain he’d gotten it through his skull but Sam wanted to be free of the twinge of doubt left over in the pit of fear his stomach had become.

In the back of his mind Sam nudged the four panes of tempered glass that followed underneath the chopper’s base, bringing them out to the side as the pilot manoeuvred his way closer to what remained of Manila’s metropolis.

Each of the pieces was a shattered fit of the original two— now four— and were large and thick enough to block out Sam’s point of view when raised. The panes appeared one after the other, held vertically with one set out horizontal to the hovering aircraft so he had something to step out onto.

A lump of fear stuck in his throat at the transparency of the object he’d be trusting his weight with. Even at this height, away from the closest burning supernatural tree, it was still a lethal drop.

Before he took it though, Alex caught his arm, “Just remember, keep your tag on at all times and we’ll have a way to reach each other.”

Sam nodded and she ruffled Nyx’s head. Realizing he couldn’t hear any of her protests as she swiped at Alex from the pet backpack, Sam took off the headset and mic that had blocked out the noise to help them communicate.

The world wailed sorrows the next instant, plunging his heart into further doubt and fear. The fires that simply looked like strange horrors sang with a fury, their crackling, igniting heat wafting all the way to warm his cheek as he stepped out onto his glass panes.

Glass-supported flight was an impromptu idea he had right at the airport, Alex got excited the moment she saw him lift two inches off the ground and decided to integrate it into the DFS’s plans for Manila. But it was a struggling ability or rather technique.

He crouched, hands and one knee touching the glass as he lowered it and its companions through the smoke and sliding rubble of sundered buildings. Careful not to make any sudden movements as merely lifting his own weight was a balancing act.

As the glass carrying his weight crunched against the street, Sam let out a sigh of relief and stood up straight. He’d been wary to check out his surroundings on the way down but gotten the gist of things anyhow— destroyed city. He waved up at the chopper and Alex who still lingered and got a wave back before they tilted south ways from him, leaving him to accomplish his mission.

Sam sighed and looked around. He stood at the edge of the chaos, behind him Manila still had roads leading somewhere, stores with flickering lights, cars parked and forgotten.

Ahead of him was an urban jungle burning in primarily blue-black fires, an odd colour but one that aptly described what would await him further in the mess of the Doom Tower’s destruction.

There was hardly a path in front of him, a tanker hung off the branches of a crooked, blackened tree. The front of the long vehicle spilled forward but had its teetering middle caved in by a streetlight, making a caveat Sam could squeeze through to the other side.

But the tempered glass panes hovering behind him needed a broad space to move alongside him as he imagines. It had taken four shots from his Holy gun to break it into four unequal, jagged parts.

His gaze narrowed at the opening the street lamp had made and then across it to the cluster of burning trees. He glanced overhead of it all, to the open space where the foulest smoke wafted through the mess of a city.

Flying to the Doom Tower would choke me to death assuming I don’t wobble off my own saucer, Sam thought. The DSF hadn’t really planned ahead fighting the Tower Surge but then who could anticipate a mystical, apocalypse heralding Doom Tower?

All they could do was deploy Sam to attract the Belua’s attention while they did their best to minimize civilian casualties and continue evacuations. Stopping the Tower Surge entirely was a different game entirely but the best theory the DSF had was to ‘conquer’ the tower.

How does one win a war against Doom? Sam imagined they would be fighting the tower itself, would his Regalia of Fractured Glass work where all of humanity’s weapons had failed?

Sam hoped it would be as simple as being the chosen one as he continued to considered how much parkour it would take to safely navigate the evolving wreck. Even now flurries of gunshots echoed, explosions and tremors shuddered the earth, pounding to some unending drumbeat.

“Meow.” Nyx cooed, making her presence known and felt as she looked up at him with pitch dark eyes.

“Yeah…just me and you now, Nyx.” With her in mind, Sam raised his arm, lifting his weight with a glass saucer took a fair bit of concentration but otherwise, delivering a simple slicing command—

Two panes shot from his sides and smashed through the tanker, eliciting an explosion as they went on to rend the blue-black enflamed trees from their stem. A third glass pane slid out in front of Sam, shielding him and Nyx from blasted debris.

The fourth pane placed itself at Sam’s feet, he stepped onto it and sat with his feet curled up underneath him. The two on debris slicing duty flung backwards, abusing the disfigured tanker even further on their way to flank Sam.

Still spooky but clear. Sam thought at first glance at his handiwork. His glass was strong and sharp enough to slice through the trunks of the strange trees and even demolish some crooked parts of upheaved streets and toppled buildings. The result was a crumbling path licked by flames and littered bloodstained gravel.

Sam hadn’t noticed any potential sources for the blood but he reasonably expected there would be some. He gulped and was careful to hover only a couple feet off the ground to avoid the supernatural fire as he ushered himself into the Doom Tower’s sphere of nightmare.