Force Your Way Chapter 5 (Original chapter Chapter 74)

Two Weeks Later

Lisa's Current Hideaway

The blond Thinker actually growled as she dumped her bag onto the ground. How the hell was Coil doing this?! He had managed to track down every single one of the places that she'd scrambled to find in Brockton Bay over the last couple of weeks!

It had gotten to the point that Bia, Taylor Hebert, was becoming annoyed with Coil, which Lisa supposed was a good thing; the likelihood of a certain snake-themed bastard getting turned into diced meat was rising by the day.

The girl shivered. Bia's strength was no joke. It was as if just by breathing she got stronger. Just in the last two weeks, Taylor Hebert had gotten vastly stronger compared to when she had beaten Hookwolf. She could probably hold her own against a moderately ramped up Lung at this point.

Not only that, Bia had, somehow, gained another elemental power, a strong form of cryokinesis this time. The Ice of Poseidon, according to the girl herself, had let her hold her own against Oni Lee, and even send the emotionless killer running.

Like the Fire of Ares, the Ice of Poseidon had its own way of becoming empowered; according to Lisa's power, it grew in strength the more the user found and then held to their own path. Following on logically, it would work especially well against those who lacked a path to follow or those unsure of their path.

Shaking her head, Lisa turned her attention back to Coil. The situation there had gotten so bad that she was currently living in a refurbished office in a warehouse that was under the aegis of the Dockworker's Association. Bia had converted it into what Lisa found to be a fairly cozy little room. It had a bed, two changes of bed clothing, a nice little armchair and she even had access to the internet via a used computer. She'd ditched the emergency laptop she'd been using about a week ago because she'd discovered that Coil had somehow put a tracker into it.

Bastard.

Still, if she knew Coil at all, she was ready to be that he was getting totally frustrated by her vanishing act, and was about ready to tear his hair out. She had, with great reluctance, resisted the urge to taunt the bastard, as that would undo all the good work she'd been doing in making him frustrated. As in control as he always liked to project to his underlings and subordinates, Lisa was well aware of the real anger and rage the man known as Coil could be feeling under the surface of that carefully cultivated façade.

No matter the person, anger made them sloppy and hasty. She was working towards making Coil very angry, thus very sloppy. It was only a matter of time before he made a big enough misstep to allow Lisa to send Bia in to clean house in relative safety, thus removing the threat of being drilled full of holes by automatic weapons.

That day couldn't come soon enough.

That Night

Taylor's Dreamscape

Appearing in front of the gates where I'd acquired the Ice of Poseidon, I looked around curiously as the battle around me in the shadows seemed to intensify. Something had changed...or was changing.

Advancing down the road out of the gates, I barely noticed as my armor and weapons materialized on me, far too accustomed to their weight for their sudden appearance on me to do more than require a minor adjustment as I took a step.

As before, I was being ambushed by undead soldiers at intervals as I walked, enemies that I tore apart with my strength and elemental powers, the flames and ice, roasting and freezing the enemies as I dealt with them.

As I had expected, yet another set of gates loomed before me. Engraved in gold upon them were the stern features of a heavily muscled man wearing a toga. He had what had to be the most elaborate and magnificent beard I had ever seen, with a yellow glow in his eyes. As per the two times before, there was a brazier before the gates with yellow colored flames flickering within it. Even as I approached it, words in Ancient Greek appeared above the brazier.

FOR THOSE WHO HAVE EYES TO SEE, I OFFER THE LIGHTNING OF ZEUS.

Zeus? Whoo-boy, this was a biggie. The King of the Grecian Gods, Lord of the Sky and the one who had freed his siblings from their father Kronus' stomach. His lightning would prove very useful if I could handle it.

Unsheathing the Venger Blades, I flipped them into a reverse grip and stabbed them into the yellow flames, sucking them into my paired weapons until the brazier broke and vanished from the loss of the power it had held.

Holding up my weapons, I watched as tendrils of lightning arced across the surface of the blades and as a lightning bolt symbol, filled with yellow light, appeared at the base of them. I could literally feel the power in the weapons, just waiting to be unleashed!

This time, it wasn't undead soldiers that attacked me...it was a goddamned minotaur! Not nearly as big as I'd seen in some films and comics, maybe half-again my own height, but muscled like a strongman and carrying a large single-bladed battleaxe. Drool leaked and dribbled down its bovine muzzle, and a pair of large, sharp horns emerged from its head. It bellowed in fury as it spotted me and started to charge towards me.

Letting out a roar of my own, I counter-charged the beast and lashed out with the Venger Blades, testing the waters. While it moved quickly, blocking the blades with the haft of its axe, it wasn't expecting a shoulder tackle from me as I pulled the blades back in, knocking it off balance. Whipping the sparkling blades up, I slammed them down in front of the monster.

"Plume of Zeus!" I shouted, unleashing a large pillar of lightning that electrocuted the minotaur instantly, although not killing it. Whipping my right blade up quickly, I wrapped it around the haft of the axe and forcibly yanked it out of the monster's hand. I then delivered a strong kick to its gut and bowled it over, aiming my blades into its mouth, the beast desperately grabbing my wrists, trying to stop my attack. We wrestled back and forth for a moment before I threw its hands off and I stabbed the Venger Blades right into the back of its mouth, ripping them out of the sides of the monster's head in an explosion of gore.

As the remains of the minotaur dissolved into nothing, I stood up and headed towards the gates as they silently swung open. As the dream didn't end, I had to suppose that it wasn't done with me yet. And, sure enough, I came across a pedestal after an unknown amount of time walking. Floating atop of it was an orb of glass, filled with what looked like golden light.

The Titans grant you the Light of Hyperion, that you may travel to your goal wheresoever light touches it.

A teleportation item now? Well, well, looks as if whoever/whatever was giving me these powers was about to ask for payment for them via services. Hopefully it wouldn't be too big of a favor...

Reaching out, I grabbed the orb from its place, whereupon it vanished and somehow integrated itself into my chestplate. Huh...it looked a bit gaudy, but whatever. I actually blinked as more words appeared above the pedestal, glowing red rather than gold.

YOUR FIRST TRIAL BEGINS TOMORROW. DON YOUR ARMOR AT DAWN AND USE THE LIGHT OF HYPERION TO GO TO THE CITY ONCE CLAIMED BY THE GOBLIN KING. ENTER THE TOWER AND ASCEND THREE LEVELS, FIGHTING AND DEFEATING ALL WHO OPPOSE YOU ON YOUR WAY. RETURN WITH YOUR SHIELD OR ON IT.

City once...Ellisburg? I had to go to fucking ELLISBURG?! There were horror stories about what the madman Nilbog had done to the place, and that was before Ziz went in and turned it into an anomaly full of who-knows-what. I was probably going to have to fight my way in and out.

Oh hell, I was already anticipating it. The chance to fight something without having to hold back so much. Fighting these things in my dreams was all very good, but a part of me thirsted for a true challenge. For something to actually make me put in effort in order to emerge victorious.

"Alright. I'll do it." I said aloud.

As a sense of approval seemed to come from the world around me as white filled my vision.

Dawn

Taylor Hebert's Bedroom

"Whoa..." I muttered as my eyes snapped open. "That was trippy."

Oddly enough, I didn't feel tired or sleepy at all. Was this a side effect of being forced awake at -I glanced at the clock- six in the morning? Possibly.

Standing up, I tiptoed to the bathroom and went through my morning ablutions before heading back to my room and getting dressed. It was a good thing that this was a weekend, otherwise I'd be skipping school to go to Ellisburg.

God, what the hell was I doing?

Shaking my head, I opened my window up and slipped out, landing on the ground easily. I'd used to have to climb down the side of the house before doing that, but now it was just as easy as jumping down the last two steps of the stairs. Such were the improvements of my physical condition recently.

My armor and weapons shimmered into place at a thought before I crouched down and leapt into the air, flying over a hundred meters towards the Boat Graveyard and repeating the process until I got there.

Now in a place of (relative) isolation, I grabbed the orb from the front of my armor and held it up, somehow knowing how to use it and what to say. "Light of Hyperion, open the gate to my destination!"

with a flash of golden light, a circular portal opened up before me. Shrugging, I walked into it...and the next moment, walked out in front of the newly built gates of Ellisburg, with the new wall built around the black anomaly that had taken the place of the town.

"Freeze!" a man's voice boomed over a tannoy. Several PRT troopers armed with ConFoam spray guns lined up to one side of me, the weapons aimed right at me. Several heroes also came into view, ones I didn't recognize. A feeling of acknowledgment came at me from the massive black pillar and I knew that it would reveal itself for everyone to see.

"While your alacrity in responding to an unknown threat is good, you really might want to pay more attention to that." I nodded towards the anomaly. "Especially in three...two...one...now."

With a shockwave of air exploding, the month-old walls around where Ellisburg had once been shattered like balsa wood as the black anomaly surged outwards, sending metal, wood, stone and bodies flying. The area where I was standing was no exception, but I had drawn and impaled my Venger Blades into the ground, which meant I wasn't sent flying by the shockwave, unlike the hapless PRT Troopers and heroes.

My eyes widened behind my helmet as the black anomaly started to vanish from the ground up, revealing a massive tower built from stone, stretching up to the heavens. It had to be the tallest building on the planet! And I had to probably conquer all of it at some point. Oh joy. Just what the hell did I get myself into this time?

Once the shockwave was over, I retracted my blades and returned them to my back before heading towards the tower. A massive set of doors, at least twice the height of my house, were on the side facing me, made of stone, wood and metal and decorated with a pair of Grecian Warriors in armor, one armed with a spear and shield while the other was bald and wielding a pair of weapons that looked suspiciously like my Venger Blades.

Near the bottom, at about waist-height, was a circular plate, with two slots that looked suspiciously as if they were meant for me to shove my Venger Blades into, like they were keys. Could whoever gave me my powers be any more obvious?

"HALT!" a female voice shouted from behind me and I reflexively dodged to one side, avoiding a wave of ash that swept across my former position. Peering over my shoulder, I spotted a blond-haired woman wearing an ash-gray costume glaring at me.

"And you are?" I asked.

"Cinereal, of the Atlanta Protectorate!" the woman snarled. "Surrender, villain!"

"Hero, actually." I corrected her, then decided to lie a bit. "I came to warn you about the anomaly falling, but you people didn't exactly give me any time to talk."

"Shut up! Who the hell are you anyway?!" Cinereal demanded.

"The Independent Heroine Bia, from Brockton Bay." I answered calmly. "Kindly stop buying time for people to recover and come to your aid. You would be better served helping to do search and rescue for those trapped in rubble. I have a tower to climb."

Deciding to ignore her from this point on, as something was telling me I should get a move on, I stepped over the line where the former walls had been and twitched as a red forcefield of some sort snapped into place behind me. Looking around, I could see the thing extending all around the base of the tower, keeping anyone from following me. Glancing back, I flinched slightly as another wave of ash slammed into the forcefield from Cinereal.

Shrugging at the older woman's temperament (not that I could really blame her; I show up and the next thing, she and everyone aside from me was knocked ass over tea-kettle and possibly dead, so obviously she'd blame me for it happening), I grabbed my weapons and shoved them into the two slots, turning them a quarter-turn in the direction opposite the other before pulling them out.

With the grind of stone on stone and the clanking of gears moving, the doors swung open, allowing me entrance. Keeping my weapons in hand, I cautiously advanced into the first floor of the tower, the door grinding shut behind me.

The hall I was in was made of what looked like sandstone, and it led into a massive atrium, with a large grand staircase leading up to two more on the opposite side of the room, with two more doors on the other sides of the room. There was a pretty massive gate-like gate barring the way up the stairs, and bars preventing someone from just jumping up the wall to get around it.

This was a trial of some sort, so it made sense that they'd want to test my mind as well as my body, so cheating here would be pretty bad...besides, I could also see the red color of the same forcefield that had blocked Cinereal's ash powers around the bars and gate, so I had to play this straight.

Flipping a mental coin, I went left to see what I had to do to raise the gate. Shoving the door open, I stepped inside and my eyes widened. At the sight before me. There were twelve statues arrayed in a circle. Cast from what looked like solid bronze, the statues looked down at me as I walked towards them. All of them were of men and women bearing a silver item; a spear, a caduceus, a chalice, a sword, a scepter, a lyre, a bow and arrows, a hammer, a lightning bolt, a rose, a trident and a horn.

"The twelve gods of Olympus." I whispered in awe. Then I frowned. Something wasn't right here. Each god or goddess had their own symbol, but none of the Olympian Twelve held their own symbol; Ares was holding Hephaestus' hammer for example, while Poseidon held Hermes' staff.

I smirked and sheathed my weapons. A basic knowledge test, huh? OK, I'd play along. Fortunately, I'd read the Iliad with mom and I'd done some research the Greek Gods that it had mentioned, so I basically knew who had what symbol. Plus, whoever had designed this puzzle had simply swapped the symbols around once., so it wasn't confusing. Much. The fact that Apollo held a bow and arrow (one of his own symbols) whereas his actual symbol here was the lyre that Artemis was holding, which symbolized his aspect as the God of Music, made me hesitate for a moment.

The last one that I placed was the lightning bolt into Zeus' hands. When I did, I felt a massive dose of what had to be pure bloodthirst coming from somewhere, so much so that I automatically leapt back and drew my weapons again, looking around frantically for an enemy.

Just as suddenly, the bloodlust vanished. Then the statues sank into the ground and were covered by metal lids engraved with the symbols of their respective deity. The wall on the far side slid open at that point, disgorging a wave of skeleton soldiers, even as a forcefield appeared over the door leading to the rest of the tower.

Snarling, I lashed out with my Venger Blades, fighting these enemies for the first time in the real world as opposed to my dreamscape. They went down just as easily, regardless of where I was, but I liked to mark my achievements where I could.

After smashing a dozen of the skull-heads, the wall closed and the forcefield back to the central section dropped. Walking back over there, I saw that a pair of clamps on the bottom of the gate had released and sunk into the ground. Looking up, I saw another pair of clamps preventing the gate from rising. So then, the right room must have a way to unlock those, if this was anything approaching fair.

Walking over to the right-hand room, I saw a bunch of gears scattered across the ground, a stone ladder leading up the side of where I presumed the gears were to go, and a rotating lever on the ground, clearly designed to move the gate once the gears were replaced. Peering up, I could see that not all of the gears weren't out of place, and a few still remained, including the four at the top. There were also indents in the rock which gave me the general size of each gear that was to go there.

Moving over and inspecting the nearest gears, I could see designs etched into the surface of each one, of which there were four; 'α', 'β', 'γ' and 'Δ', all of which were the first four letters in the Greek Alphabet, alpha, beta, gamma and delta, although it was odd that only delta was uppercase.

I headed over to the ladder and started to climb up it. I needed to see the still-remaining gears at the top to get a feel for whatever pattern the rest needed to be in. I was about halfway up when a kinda of sixth sense made me look around to see some kind of zombie archer aiming a bow at me from a gallery in the opposite wall that I hadn't seen from the ground!

Just as it loosed the arrow, I used my enhanced strength to fling myself up higher, avoiding it. As the arrow thunked into the bars and clattered away, I flung myself away from the ladder, drew my blades and landed feet first in the face of the archer, crushing its head as it slammed onto the ground.

Growling as more of the bastards boiled up from clouds of what looked like blood mist, I snarled again and started cutting them to ribbons with my blades, severed limbs and decapitated heads flying as I went to town on the monsters. Seriously, couldn't they wait their turn?!

Finishing off the last one by ripping its arms off and shoving the bow through its face, I huffed before spotting something on a pedestal...a scroll of some sort. Walking over to it, I only touched it before it exploded and knowledge started to flow into my mind

The enemies I had faced before now were called Undead Legionnaires and Undead Archers, warriors of Ancient Greece who had fallen in battle. Summoned forth from the pits of Hades, they sought to slay all those who stood before them.

...whoa. What the heck...?

Shaking my head to dispel the slight dizziness that had afflicted me, I looked around again before heading back out to the balcony and jumping back to the ladder. Now that I had the time to look at the balcony properly, I could see that it was pretty well concealed from the bottom of the room, blending into the slope of the chamber as it narrowed towards the top. A very well designed and sneaky little place to put an ambush.

After that, putting the gears into place was pretty easy. I just had to put them into alphabetical order, repeating alpha, beta, gamma and delta. The only reason it took some time was because the gears were heavy and awkward to carry, so even with my strength I could only carry one at a time.

"That's that." I said in satisfaction as I shoved the last gear into place. Even that was a good three meters off the ground, so I was doing that from the ladder.

Leaping down to the ground, I headed over to the crank and started to push it, the gears beneath creaking and clanking as they got moving for the first time in who knows how long. Every rotation, I glanced at the gears on the wall and noted with satisfaction as they all turned in perfect harmony.

At last, the crank stopped rotating and I actually had to let go as it sunk into the ground as the gears stopped moving. Then I stumbled slightly as the platform I was on started to lower down like an elevator!

What fresh hell is this?!

So yeah. Here Taylor goes into the Tower of the Gods. For now, she's going to be kicking undead ass, but minotaurs will show up. Maybe some other enemies too.

Just letting everyone know I'm alive. No need to worry about me. For those of you who don't look at my profile for when my main updates restart...seriously, go there now. That's where the date is, dammit.