Chapter 331 Cold.

Chapter 331: 331 Cold.

"Highly unfortunate," I demurred, my eyes constantly flicking across the massive room.

The dozens of masked henchmen working the digital terminals in the upper gallery were absolutely loaded with heavy weaponry.

I could sense high-carbon steel swords, fully loaded automatic assault rifles, and thick bandoliers of heavy fragmentation grenades. If things went sideways, this room was going to turn into a meat grinder.

"Quite so. And here," Jester continued seamlessly, his heavy chains dragging as he moved past the armor toward a bubbling blue cylinder. Floating perfectly in the center of the illuminated field was a human heart. "Here is the preserved heart of Doctor Dorman. He was casually digging around Egypt in the eighteen hundreds and accidentally discovered the Jewel of Aranth, a gem that would have granted him cosmic knowledge far beyond human reckoning. Naturally, that simply couldn’t be tolerated on a strategic level, and I very politely requested he hand it over to my custody. Sadly, he defied me. So, I sliced out his heart and mounted it in the glass here."

"Charming," I said, keeping my face perfectly blank.

"Thank you. Ah! And this is perhaps one of my absolute favorites," Jester continued, moving to another glowing display.

Floating in the ether was a scarred, severed human head, still wearing a cracked monocle over a dead, milky eye.

"General Gore. He was the brilliant engineering mind behind the Dreadnaught, arguably the most powerful Nazi war machine ever brought into existence. He sought my tactical aid during the war, and naturally, I gave it. Hitler was a man of such bold, brutal vision. Tragically, our dear General eventually thought I might become far too strong, calculating that I was a threat to the future Reich, so he foolishly sought to betray me in Berlin. I personally expressed what an... unfortunate career decision that was."

"He wuz a vewwy, vewwy bad man!" Ratchet chirped brightly, her massive hydraulic servos whirring as she clasped her armored hands together.

I was definitely starting to detect a very specific narrative theme to all of these exhibits.

"Tragic," I said dryly. "I mean, if you can’t trust the Nazis to honor an agreement, who can you possibly trust?"

"Precisely," Jester said, a booming chuckle escaping his throat. He leaned casually against a stone pillar, the ragged, neon-green light of his jagged smile glowing harshly against us. "But enough about the past. I believe you have something important to tell me regarding your future."

"Yes, actually, I do," I said, clearing my throat and straightening my posture. "After careful corporate consideration of your ultimatum, I am, of course, highly honored by the employment offer. But unfortunately, I don’t think I can actually work with you. Mostly seeing as how you were the exact guy who dragged me into this mess to begin with and actively framed my employee for murder."

Samuel let out a long, heavy sigh of disappointment.

Jester slowly tapped a clawed finger against the stone pillar, the sharp, clack-clack sound ringing out in the deafening, heavy silence that had suddenly fallen over the trophy room.

"I see," Jester purred, his voice dropping an octave. "And, I suppose there’s absolutely no way to convince you otherwise?"

"What can I say?" I said with a casual shrug. "You have a real talent for making completely unnecessary enemies."

"Never for very long," Jester observed darkly, pushing off the pillar.

"True. And speaking of which..."

I grabbed the space rock out of my coat pocket and whipped it out, holding it high.

The alien glow of the green crystal flared violently in the dim trophy room. A sudden, massive ripple of raw energy erupted from the stone, radiating outward across the entire chamber like a shockwave.

I instantly followed the disruption up with a wide, localized blast of magnetism, forcefully throwing the masked henchmen backward over their consoles by their own rifles, and sending Nurse Ratchet skidding violently backward across the polished floor with a deafening squeal of scraping metal.

But the big target was Jester.

The sorcerer warlord actually swore out loud, throwing up a chained arm defensively as if the mere green glow of the crystal was sheer agony.

He reeled backward, stumbling away like I’d just slapped him across the face with a heavy chunk of iron.

But just to be absolutely sure, I hit him with actual iron anyway.

My arms swung up, and from the concealed sleeves of my coat, I shot a dozen sharpened slivers of iron outward like lethal needles.

They pounded into Jester one after the next, punching clean through his heavy robes and out the other side as if there was absolutely nothing solid standing in between the fabric.

But that didn’t matter. My real target had been the massive steel support beam standing directly behind him.

I pulled both my hands back sharply, my magnetic powers vibrating as I prepared to violently wrench the heavy chunk of steel down onto his head.

But right as I flexed my fingers, a sudden, crushing wave of physical weakness hit me.

I gasped, my knees wobbling violently as my powers rapidly began to ebb. The stone floor beneath our feet suddenly lit up with a shimmering, runic glow.

"Polaris!" Vanessa cried out, instantly rushing to my side.

But before she could reach me, Samuel suddenly materialized out of thin air directly behind her.

He looped a arm tightly around her throat, grabbing her wrist with his other hand and wrenching it brutally behind her back.

I tried to turn and blast him, but I staggered as the sheer, unassisted weight of my dense iron armor and my weaponized coat suddenly dragged me straight down into a painful crouch.

Jester snarled in anger as he straightened up, recovering from the crystal’s shockwave, and threw his clawed hand forward.

Uh oh.

I desperately tried to dodge, but the crackling arc of emerald lightning hit me dead in the chest. Pure, blinding agony screamed up through my nervous system.

I gritted my teeth, trying to fight through the electrical burn, but the sheer pain took my legs completely out from under me, and I collapsed heavily onto one knee.

My right hand convulsed involuntarily, my fingers springing open. I dropped the green crystal.

It bounced across the polished stone floor, rattling away until it slid to a halt near the center of the room.

And then, Ratchet stepped down on it with a sickening, shattering crack.

"Oopsies!" the massive pink android giggled brightly. She lifted her massive metal foot, looking down at the crushed, powdered fragments of the glowing space rock. "Did siwwy wittle me do dat?"

I winced, desperately trying to sense the massive amount of metal plating covering the robot, but I was getting barely a ping. It felt exactly like someone had wrapped my brain in thick cotton.

I simply couldn’t grip the magnetic fields in the room anymore. The runic dampeners in the floor were draining my abilities.

THIS IS WHY WE HATE MAGIC!

"You really are a cocky one, Polaris," Jester growled, his voice echoing with absolute authority as he stalked slowly toward me, deliberately giving the glittering, powdered fragments of the crystal a wide berth. "But really now. Did you honestly think I’d have trusted only my own sorcery when dealing with a mutant of your caliber? Did you genuinely think I wouldn’t have figured out a mechanical way to completely suppress your magnetic strength while you stood in my throne room?"

He laughed cruelly, the rich sound echoing around the massive chamber.

"I haven’t survived and ruled for this long by being a complete fool. Vastly better heroes and vastly smarter villains than you have tried to take me down over the centuries. Hundreds of them! And yet you, a minor corporate CEO, genuinely thought you’d be the one to finally do it." He chuckled, shaking his head. "How utterly arrogant."

"And now," he continued smoothly, drawing a wickedly curved, glowing dagger from beneath his robes. "I think it’s finally time I add your heart to my personal collection. It will serve as an excellent warning to all those who would dare defy the New Order."

"I’m not... I’m not totally done yet," I ground out.

I forced myself back to my feet, gritting my teeth as my thighs burned, sagging heavily under the crushing, unassisted weight of my iron armor and my loaded coat.

Jester scoffed dismissively. "Really now?" he mused, lazily twirling the glowing dagger in his hand. "You actually still want to fight? And here I was generously thinking you were smart enough to realize when you mathematically don’t have a chance."

"Yeah. I don’t," I said, a slow, grim smile spreading across my face. I looked up at the ceiling as the digital lights around us began to violently flicker, the omnipresent, humming drone of the castle’s massive energy shield completely fading out. "But... what about him?"

Jester stopped, his glowing green eyes narrowing in confusion. "Him?"

And the massive stone floor bucked violently beneath us.

The thick walls shuddered, and the entire floating fortress quaked to its very bedrock. Ancient dust rained down from the high ceiling as Jester stumbled sideways, his horned head whipping around in shock.

"What happened to the grid?!" Samuel barked, struggling to keep his footing from where he still held Vanessa hostage.

Jester peered frantically about the room, his green eyes glowing warily in the dimming light. "I don’t—"

The stone floor wrenched violently under us again, then tilted sharply on a massive, sickening axis. Jester hastily steadied himself, but Samuel let out a yelp, falling hard onto his side with Vanessa and skidding helplessly down the suddenly angled floor. I only managed to keep my place because the massive weight of my iron armor anchored my boots directly to the stone.

Then, a deafening, booming explosion of breaking stone and twisting metal echoed up from somewhere much deeper in the castle’s bowels.

And the air in the room instantly went dead, freezing cold.

"JESTER!"