Dimensional Summoner: Infinite Growth in a Leveling Apocalypse

[Eligible Grade: C.]

C.

[Summon selected.]

[Physical manifestation initiated.]

The air over my cleared four metres tore open and a woman came through it at a dead run.

She was already leaning into a stride that had started somewhere else. One arm was extended with a hooked blade paying out on a chain, the reel on her forearm still spinning, and she came down onto wet concrete with all her weight forward and absolutely no idea that the roof she'd been aiming at had stopped existing.

Her boots went out from under her immediately.

She didn't fall. She threw the hook sideways, caught the raised lip of the apron wall with a sound like a dropped spanner, let the chain take her weight through the turn, and swung low across the concrete on one shoulder — released the line, rolled twice, and came up in a crouch with the second blade already in her other hand.

Water streamed from her coat and hair, struck the concrete, and mixed with the rain already crossing the apron.

Tall — five nine, maybe — lean and hard through the legs in a way that told you what she did before she said a word. Dark red coat over black scale panels, knee protection, bronze-soled boots, chain reels on both forearms. Warm brown skin, short black hair cut close at the sides with a copper streak through the top, a thin old scar splitting her left eyebrow.

Her head came round in a fast arc, looking for a roofline that wasn't there.

"Where's the jump—"

Then she saw the apron, the collapse, the militia line, and seven pale six-legged things standing in a loose ring around all of it.

One of the scouts committed at her before she'd finished turning.

"Don't shoot!" I got that out as Deyra gave Vasse the same order. Neither militia raised a barrel.

Rhea Calder didn't need us.

She let it come. It went at her low and fast, comb-limbs forward, and she took two steps toward it, dropped her shoulder, and put her hook into the seam behind its head plate. Then she turned hip-first, using every bit of the speed she'd arrived with, and the scout left the ground.

It hit the concrete head-first with a crack I felt through my boots and did not get up.

Amber lines had brightened along her boot plates when she turned. They faded again about two seconds after she stopped.

"Right," she said, breathing hard, backing toward the wall with both blades up. "Somebody tell me what happened to my roof."

[Summon Identified: Rhea Calder.]

Name: Rhea Calder

Race: Human

Age: 27

Summon Grade: C

Native Advancement: Unresolved

Manifested Level: 16

Manifestation Remaining: 05:00:00

Desire: 58/100

Trust: 0/100

Resonance: 1%

[Combat-Language Synchronization Enabled.]

[Coordination Link Enabled.]

[Spoken instructions are transmitted clearly. Compliance remains subject to the summon's judgment.]

Zero trust. Which is correct of her.

"My name's Adrian Vale. I did this and I'll explain all of it, but the short version first because those things aren't waiting." I kept my hands where she could see them and did not move toward her. "You've been physically taken into another world. Not a vision. Everything here is real and can kill you."

Her free hand went straight to her hip, found a sealed leather satchel there, and checked the buckle without looking down.

"Time," she said.

"What?"

"Is time passing at home."

"No." I said it fast because it was clearly the only thing she cared about. "Your world is frozen at the exact instant you left. Same rooftop, same stride. When this ends you go back into it and nothing will have moved."

Rhea's eyes came off the scouts and onto me for about a second and a half.

"You'd better not be lying about that."

"Five hours. That's how long you're here, it's not negotiable, and it ends on its own." I held her look. "The other half you need now: anything that happens to your body here goes home with you. Injuries, exhaustion, damage to your gear. All of it comes back with you into that jump."

"Lovely."

"I can't make you do anything. There's no compulsion in this and I'm not going to pretend there is."

She took a few seconds to assess everything.

I watched her do it — the collapse blocking the downhill route, the one narrow bypass between the debris and the outer bank, the heavy flat-limbed cutter standing across it. The scouts spread on the upper bank. Ivo crouched behind the militia line with his sample case still clutched to his chest. Deyra standing upright and giving orders instead of shouting. My bleeding right hand on the rifle.

"That's the only way out," Rhea said, pointing her chin at the bypass.

"Yes."

"And your friends are protecting the one who isn't fighting."

"That's Ivo. He's a structural specialist. He's the reason we know which ground holds."

"Fine." She rolled one shoulder, testing it. "Then I'm helping, and I want it on the record that I'm helping because those things are trying to kill me too and because getting cut up here means limping into a quarantine district at home. Not because you called me."

"Understood."

"Good." A quick grin arrived and went. "Do you always summon people onto collapsing buildings?"

"The stable ground was occupied."

Deyra stepped up beside me without lowering her attention from the bank.

"Deyra Solt, Greyhaven containment. You're welcome and you're not under my command." She said it flatly. "Our objective is to break the encirclement, protect Ivo, and reach open ground. Nobody chases anything into scrub. If you need something from us, say it and we'll try."

Rhea looked at her for a moment and something in her posture came down half a degree.

"Now that's the first sensible thing anyone's said." She jerked her head at the cutter. "That one. Can your people hurt it?"

"Slowly. It's braced and the ground's bad."

"I can't overpower it either. I'm not strong, I'm fast, and there's a difference nobody believes until I'm standing next to something that heavy." She studied it. "But I don't need to kill it. I need it to put its weight somewhere stupid."

"Left forelimb," I said. "Second plate up from the joint — there's a crack across it. It's been favouring that side since it came out of the bank."

Her head turned. "You saw that from here."

"It's what I'm for."

"Huh." She looked back. "Anchor?"

I pointed at a length of reinforcement bar standing out of the apron wall eight metres to her left, still bedded in sound concrete.

"That'll hold. Nothing else on this side will."

What followed took about twenty seconds and nearly worked.

Rhea ran. Her technique depended on movement, and she built what she could from the twelve metres of apron available, going back and forth along the wall as amber brightened along her boot plates.

Corran read her without being told and put his spear into the cutter's raised right limb, which made it brace and shift weight left.

Onto the cracked plate.

I had a scout in my sights the whole time and didn't fire until it committed at her exposed side. One round, eleven metres, and my palm went through fire and the shot still landed.

Rhea hooked the cutter's left forelimb at the crack and pivoted off the reinforcement bar.

She didn't lift it. She barely moved it. What she did was arrive at exactly the moment it was already leaning and add everything she'd stored into the direction it was already going, and the cutter came down onto its own bad shoulder and slid a metre and a half sideways off the bypass.

"Now," Deyra said. "Move—Ivo in the middle—"

The scout tapping changed.

It came through the concrete under my boots, faster and heavier than the pattern I'd been hearing all afternoon, and Feline Senses gave me the direction and nothing else useful.

That's underneath. That's underneath the bypass—

"Off it! Everybody back—get off that ground!"

The outer bank came up.

Not a leap. The ground swelled, and split, and eleven metres of the bank we had just fought to reach tore itself open from below as something drove upward through it with its shoulders. Earth went twelve feet in the air. Rhea had to abort mid-stride and throw a hook into the wall to redirect, and even then the edge of the collapse took her boots off the concrete and dropped her hard on her hip.

The bypass was gone. The whole strip of it slumped into a wet trench.

And standing in the trench, shrugging soil off a broad wedge-shaped front plate the colour of old iron, was something the size of a delivery cart.

[Carrow Bankbreaker — Level 19]

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