Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee-Chapter 97: PopCorn

The battlefield holds its breath.

Two thousand soldiers behind a wall of shields. The desert ahead—flat, dark, and vibrating with the approach of something heavier than Phase One.

I look down at Eventide in my hand. Something clicks.

[Eventide — Devoured Soul: 47/50]

The Shadow Shellcats and Coral Wivers from Phase One fed her well. Forty-seven out of fifty. Three souls away from whatever happens next.

How did I forget to check this?

Growth Relics aren’t something I’ve had the luxury of carrying before. The mechanics are foreign—I’ve read about them in archives, heard veterans describe the thresholds, but I’ve never held one through an evolution cycle.

Three more. Tonight might do it.

I sheathe the thought. The Red Tide’s rumble grows; a primal hunger that crawls from the soles of my feet and settles in my bone.

Above me, the ballistae crews crank their weapons into position. The repeating crossbows are loaded with the black thorn bolts we harvested an hour ago.

The sound of OXI charging through crude, steam-driven mechanisms fills the air—pistons hissing, gears grinding, the entire wall buzzing with the jury-rigged technology of a civilization that built its arsenal from monster parts and stubbornness.

I’m standing behind the shield wall on the left flank, close to Lola’s tower. Boris is beside me carrying his double-edge axe. Oliver on my other side, warhammer already in both hands.

"Your call, kid," Boris says. His voice is steady, but the weight underneath it isn’t. "Whatever you’re going to do, do it now."

My blood runs hot. The hair on my forearms stands. Adrenaline hitting the system like a mainline injection.

I shout to the vanguard. "Hold formation! On my command—shields up and braced!"

I tap the comms.

Look at the battlefield.

Check the distance—the dust cloud is close now, individual shapes forming inside it. Bigger than Phase One. Heavier. The silhouettes of Rank-D beasts moving with the deliberate momentum of things that don’t need to run because nothing has ever made them.

I look up at the tower. Confirm the angle. Check the field of fire one more time.

"Now, little bear."

A soft "Mm" comes back through the comms.

The small stone tower on the wall lights up.

Then Lola’s voice—quiet, relaxed, half-asleep—speaks a word I’ve never heard her say before.

"Pop... Corn."

I brace for the sound. The atmospheric tear. The supersonic shriek that makes two thousand soldiers duck.

Nothing.

A soft puff—like a pressurized air canister releasing. Barely louder than a cough.

My eyes track the sky. Hundreds of tiny bright objects arc across the battlefield in a wide scatter pattern—like a fistful of stars thrown across the dark. They cross the distance in under a second and disappear into the charging mass of the Red Tide.

Silence.

The objects vanish. The monsters keep charging. The ground keeps shaking. The shield wall keeps bracing.

Nothing happened.

The front rank of the Tide is close now.

Too close.

I can make out individual jaws, individual plates of coral armor, individual eyes locked on the shield wall with the singular focus of things that eat or die.

The soldiers feel it. Shields rattle. Boots shift in the sand. The specific tremor of two thousand people realizing that whatever was supposed to save them didn’t work.

Lola... what happened?

The monsters are fifty feet from the wall. Forty. Thirty.

"BRACE FOR IMPACT!" I roar.

Beep.

A single, high-pitched electronic chime cuts through the thunder of the charge. Clean. Precise. Familiar.

Beep. Beep. Beep-beep-beep-beep—

The chimes multiply. Dozens. Then hundreds. Cascading across the front line of the Tide like a chain of firecrackers with a staggered fuse.

The first monster detonates.

A localized burst of blue energy and red mist—the same signature as Lola’s touch-detonation, the same concussive crack I heard in the jungle when she turned a man into abstract art. But multiplied. Replicated. Scattered across the entire width of the charging horde.

The second beast explodes. The third. The fifth. The twentieth.

The detonations cascade like popcorn in a hot pan—rapid, overlapping, each blast triggering the next in a chain reaction that rips through the front rank of the Red Tide with the systematic brutality of a meat grinder running at industrial speed.

Chunks of monster fly. The sand turns black. The air fills with the copper stench of vaporized blood and the acrid bite of spent OXI.

By the time the last beep sounds, the first three lines of the Red Tide are a carpet of gore.

The pieces click before I finish breathing.

The bright objects. Scales. She used Scales.

Lola loaded Lullaby with Scales—hundreds of them—each one activated with her detonation skill before firing. A scatter-shot of timed explosives disguised as currency, launched across the battlefield in a single volley.

Not a cannon shot. A cluster bomb.

PopCorn...

The name makes perfect, horrifying sense.

Brilliant. And expensive. Insanely expensive. We need to talk about ammunition costs before she bankrupts us into suffocation.

But that’s a problem for later.

The front line is shredded. The back ranks of the Tide stumble over the remains of their dead, momentum broken, formation scattered.

Boris doesn’t waste the opening.

"ARCHERS! BACKLINE! NOW!"

A volley of black thorn bolts screams from the wall—the repeating ballistae spitting death in mechanical, rhythmic bursts. The bolts punch through the disorganized rear of the Tide with the efficiency of needles through cloth.

I look at Boris. He looks at me.

No words needed.

I break into a sprint toward the shattered front line. Eventide screams alive in my grip, the violet-black blade cutting the desert air with a sound that drowns out everything except the charge.

Behind me, Boris’s boots pound the sand. Oliver is right on his heels, warhammer cocked, every ounce of grief compressed into forward momentum.

The vanguard sees us charge. The shield wall surges forward in unison—two thousand voices roaring as the defensive line becomes an offensive wave.

Above us, the small tower on the wall lights up again.

Lullaby is humming.

I really hope her aim hasn’t gotten worse since the last round.