"Who are you, really? I've had a nasty feeling about you ever since we met in your castle." I spat, wincing in pain as Necrotization spread further through me. My left eye began to deteriorate, all vision in that eye fading to darkness.
Niko laughed ever louder, until his voice shook the entire cavern and sent crystalline stalactites crashing to the ground. He stood up, ignoring the spikes of pure mana piercing his body. Blood continued to pool on the ground, enough for a score of people. "Can't you tell? I'm a god, boy, and you've done exactly as I have asked of you. From the seed I planted in your soul in the underworld allowing you to get a fragment of the Orb of Creation, even back to your untimely demise on your home world. I have orchestrated it all.
"You see, even I have my limitations. That Shard of yours is foul, repulsive to my touch and guarded by forces even I cannot surmount. But they welcomed you openly, in a pitiful attempt to destroy me. You fell for that poorly executed performance at the castle, grew your pitiful village, and spent months chasing your own tail trying to find the source of this world's destruction. But I finally have you, and with your true death the Orb of Creation will never again be whole!
"Even now, despite all of your effort, Haven Clearing is falling and my beast shall end you." He gestured with one hand behind him, to the ancient skeletal throne with one hand while materializing the Tainted Shard. It pulsed once with dark energy, burning like an inverted sun for a brief second before splitting in two and falling to the ground, spent. There were flickers of energy left in the stone, just barely enough to hint at some tiny form of remaining power.
A dark miasma of power flared to life in the ivory rib cage. Life was returned to the skeletal dragon, regrowing flesh and shiny ebony scales. The process took mere seconds, fleshing out an impossible creature before my very eyes. Niko vanished, dissipating into a fine black mist until only his smile remained like the Cheshire cat, until even that faded away. I darted forward and grabbed the dormant Shard...
Then the dragon roared, loud enough to pierce my eardrums and vibrate my brain inside of my skull. The thing was easily the height of a three story building, and over three times as long. It also looked immensely pissed, though it was kind of hard to tell with its reptilian features. I scrambled backwards toward the portal, my single remaining eye wide open in shock as I quickly scanned the creature's Character Sheet before fleeing.
Name- Talokuthrimyr the Unyielding
Level- ???
Health- ???
Stamina- ???
Mana- ???
Strength- ???
Endurance- ???
Dexterity- ???
Perception- ???
Intelligence- ???
Wisdom- ???
Luck- ???
Condition- Healthy
Humanity- 0/10
Alignment- Evil
Spells- ???
Abilities- ???
(Note: Talokuthrimyr the Unyielding is a god-like being of immense strength. As such, the entirety of its power and abilities cannot fall under comprehension of your mortal mind lest it break. Obtain more fragments of the Orb of Creation to increase your stature among the Immortals and discover more of this beast.)
Cradling the Tainted Shards, I sprinted for my fucking life. I pulled every spare ounce of mana I could draw from my reserves, even converting my Health into mana through Shard to fuel Inner Channeling.
It wasn't enough. Almost casually, the massive dragon reached down with a single, four foot long claw and pierced me through the left shoulder. I screamed at the searing pain that shot through me, making my vision swim. The cavern tilted and spun as Talokuthrimyr picked me up and faced me toward him, thirty feet in the air. I grasped at the claw sticking from my shoulder weakly, trying to free myself despite the insane height I was hanging from.
"What do you want?" I snarled, blood and spittle flying from my mouth. The flesh around Talo's mouth peeled up in a twisted form of a smile, and he puffed a single ball of roiling black smoke into my face. I coughed and sputtered, waving my good arm in a vain attempt to clear the air of its god awful stench. I still held one half of the Tainted Shard. It pulsed every few seconds with a sensation that felt like pins and needles on steroids. I had dropped the other half, quite obviously, when the huge ass dragon destroyed my shoulder.
"I promised to take your soul, mortal. And now, it is mine to devour!" The dragon boomed, pressing on my body and mind with such power that my vision shook and began to darken. He threw me off of his claw and into his mouth with a haphazard flick. The sheer force fully separated my injured arm from the rest of my body, pinwheeling toward the ground with a spray of blood. Death, again, was reaching for me with its numb grasp.
No.
The Tainted Shard, gripped so tightly in my right hand that it split the flesh, was practically humming. An idea came to me, piercing through the pain of my missing arm in a split second of clarity. I smiled, summoning as much mana as I could muster. The effects of repeatedly draining my reserves hit me like a sledgehammer to the solar plexus, and I almost blacked out- though that could just as easily be the blood loss. Before that could happen, though, I forced all of my summoned mana into the Tainted Shard. The gem flared to life with an anti-light that was even darker than Talokuthrimyr's maw.
As charged as I could possibly make it, I plunged the jagged Shard into the dragon's throat. Warm blood spurted onto my hand, but the physical damage to the ancient beast was negligible. In my mind, though, Talo screamed. I could feel his heartbeat through the gem. Rapidly it beat, loud and powerful enough to almost dislodge my grip on the bloody Shard. Pressure built in my head, in my body, in the very fabric of existence that held Talokuthrimyr and I on the mortal plane. I felt something rip from me, my very soul unraveling as something vital was stolen from me. It was painless, but I trembled and let go of the Tainted Shard, slipping down Talo's vast throat.
Before I could land the world disappeared, dissolving and reforming over and over before me, mixing and separating in a mass of color that hurt to look at. Slowly, the world ceased its thrashing. I stood, bewildered, on a blank slate of pure white that went off infinitely into the distance on all sides but one, where it clashed with the unending darkness of its opposite half.
Talokuthrimyr stood there, fuming as he tried to pass the barrier between us. My arm was still gone, lost an incomprehensible distance behind us, but faint tendrils of light created a holographic outline of where it once was. The lines traveled up to recreate my destroyed shoulder and part of my chest as well. Faint power emanated from the limb, but it was hazy and unfocused, like a drunk suffering a bad concussion. On my right hand, where I had cut it on the Tainted Shard, was a jagged line of black tearing across the flesh of my palm.
Shard. He did this.
"Shard!"
No response. I shouted again, louder this time. Still, he didn't respond.
"God damn it!" I fell to my knees. He couldn't be gone, not now. Not after all that we'd done, growing and evolving together while ushering in an entire new civilization into the world. I slammed my hands on the ground in a pitiful attempt at anger. My new arm jolted as it struck the ground and shot off a burst of power that sent me sprawling.
I sat up, ignoring the booming laughter that came from Talo at my pain. Gingerly, making sure not to brush the ground with my left arm again, I stood up. I felt good. Way better than I should have felt after receiving what was essentially electroshock therapy. I flexed my left arm on a whim, surprised to see that it was brighter, more defined that it had been a moment ago.
Reaching out, I put my ethereal arm back on the ground. Pain raced through me, sharp but bearable. The white half of the world dimmed and flickered as power rushed into me, like a gasoline fueled shot of adrenaline. The power pulsed up my arm and through my body, seeping all the way into my ruined left eye. It blazed with an explosion of pure white flame that quickly died down into a light glow.
I felt good... more than good, actually. Talokuthrimyr
still looked pissed, especially after he saw that I was still in one piece despite his best efforts, but his expression turned to disdain as I started toward him.
"You are lucky this barrier stalls my passage, worm, or you would long since be dead!" He boomed, though the sound barely reached my ears. The unseen barrier between us must have muted the sound.
Is this how couples that find out they hate each other feel? An unpassable divide between them? Yikes.
"Don't you worry Talo, That'll be solved in no time." I grinned and rolled my shoulders. It felt strange with the white arm, thrumming with power but nearly weightless at the same time. Within minutes I was at the convergence point between white and black, light and dark, and I stopped as soon as it came within arm's reach. There didn't appear to be anything blocking my way forward, but I didn't want to take any chances.
I reached out with both arms, pushing mana into my white arm and the black scar on my right hand as they made contact with the invisible barrier. I could feel the power there, beyond almost anything else I had ever felt. I fed a touch of mana to my white eye, and the entire thing lit up in an impossibly complicated weave of black and white tendrils of power. It was fragile though, so complex that one missing link would break the whole structure apart.
I pushed with my left hand, distorting the wall as the white tendrils were pushed backward, straining their connection to their dark counterparts. When they were pushed to their limits, almost a foot inside of Talo's side of the world, I began slicing them one by one with a small blade formed from the Tainted scar of my right hand.
Each one popped with an intensity that made the entire world waver, and my left arm burned with an unnatural pain with each broken thread, but I forced myself to keep carving through the tapestry of magic. A tear about the size of my hand was split through the barrier.
I slid my hands through the tear, pulling in opposite directions with as much strength as I could muster. The barrier split further, leaving just enough room for me to squeeze through. My body bubbled and popped where the barrier touched it, but compared to the hell I had already been through it was nothing.
"I must admit," Talo boomed, narrowing his eyes ever so slightly, "I did not expect such resourcefulness from such a lesser being."
"That's because I'm a human, not some ancient scaled little bitch. I don't think you understand how fucked you really are, Scaly." I knelt down, putting the black scar on my right hand against the ground. Just like my white arm, I began drawing power from the dark half of the world into the mark. I could feel the Tainted Shard respond from Talokuthrimyr's throat, calling out to the power I wielded. It was ancient, beyond powerful, and all mine.
"Time to die, dickhead."
Chapter 12
Haven Clearing was falling, there were no two ways about it. Austin and the score or so Izveir still able to fight were no match for the flood of abominations. The Weavers were still performing their spasmodic chant, surrounded by a haggard circle of bloodied warriors. Any visible space not under their protection was covered in a seething, writhing mass of Tainted flesh.
All in all, it wasn't the finest hour for Donovan's people. Austin had tried sending a message to the Izveir that had been sent to aid their ruler's siege, but that plan had failed miserably. Within seconds the man they sent was torn to shreds, his screams sending shivers down the spines of everyone present.
Now, though, Austin was beginning to think the man was graced with good luck in his final moments. They had been fighting nonstop for almost an hour now, and despite the immense growth all of them had gone through under Donovan's leadership none of them were in any shape to go on for much longer. The only thing keeping any of them in fighting shape was a steady stream of Level ups, and even they couldn't fix everything- Many fighters had lost fingers and hands, even limbs. Austin himself was missing an eye and two fingers on his left hand.
"Whatever those Weavers are doing, it'd better be damn good or we're all dead!" Austin shouted over the harsh din of battle. He ducked under a razor sharp set of claws the moment before they would have torn through his throat and returned with a vicious slash that split his opponent in two. The motion should have been easy, almost effortless, but after fighting for such an ungodly amount of time his arms shook with the effort. They had retreated to Donovan's throne room as a defensive point, which had granted a reprieve for only as long as it took the monstrous creatures to force their way through its walls.
Two more of the beasts came, quick as lightning, but a Gruff to his left crushed them both with a single swing of his massive hammer. "Aye," the Izveir spat in a gravelly voice, "but in the meantime we've got to give them the chance to finish." He accented each word with a vicious swing of his hammer, almost always taking multiple lives with a single blow. His smaller, more human sized arms each carried a heavily modified shield that offered less protection but wouldn't get in the way of his attacks.
Austin immediately took a liking to the man. He was all business, a trait he had repeatedly noticed that Donovan lacked. His leader had a dark, violent streak, even if it rarely surfaced, and he was extremely good at motivating a crowd, but was still painfully scatterbrained. Unfortunately, all thoughts of a future friendship fled his mind as more of the enemy descended upon them.
"Brothers and sisters, Izveir of Haven Clearing! One last time may we wield our weapons in the name of our lord and god-king! To arms!" With a final, fateful cry, the last stand of Haven Clearing came to its bloody end...
Only, it didn't. As Austin's sword fell to the ground, his body too exhausted to move, towering thorns burst upward from the ground, piercing and rending flesh as they tore into Haven Clearing's enemies. The thorns drank greedily on blood that poured from ruined bodies as they grew, until an impenetrable wall of carnivorous vines stood between the Izveir and certain doom. A ragged cry rose through the ranks of survivors as Austin fell to his knees, world fading into darkness.
"They actually pulled it off. Damn Weavers..."
◆◆◆
"Back off, or you're all dead!" Murlough growled with wild desperation, ignoring the bubbling rasp of blood filling his lungs. He was surrounded by a haphazard army of the undead, dozens of which had already been sent back to the afterlife by his hand. He was low on mana though, almost completely out, and he knew that the hole in his chest would be fatal if left unattended.
How did this happen? I was just on my way to see.... Niko. That bastard is behind this, I'm sure of it. Not that it matters now, unless I can figure out a way to get myself out of this mess.
Pooling all but the very dregs of his shamanic power into one last fireball, Murlough executed the only last-ditch effort he could think of.
Shock and Awe.
◆◆◆
"I-impossible..." Gida gaped wide-eyed at the massive black castle Donovan had disappeared into. The brutal, horrific stonework was coming to life, shivering and quaking until they were released from their obsidian prison. Hundreds of twisted golems wrenched themselves from the walls, hungry for blood or simply mad from the torture they were forced to endure as building blocks for such a horrific mural of death.
Antuhr clapped her on the shoulder with a single enormous hand, grinning like a madman. "Don't lose your spine now, sister. If Lord Donovan had the nerve to venture inside all on his own, then I believe we will be just fine." He said, eyes gleaming with admiration for his lord.
Nearby, Bourock chuckled. "I'll be damned, but it's no surprise you were chosen as an Adviser. Now let's kill these bastards!" He, Gida, and the rest of the armed patrol mounted their Bronzed Aurrelites, while the rest of the Izveir fell into rank behind them.
They charged as one, maintaining nearly perfect ranks even as they tore toward the enemy at a dead sprint. The bronze coated cavalry decimated the enemy's first ranks, breaking through living stone like a battering ram. Quickly, before the unholy golems could drag them to the ground, they scattered and regrouped with the main army.
Antuhr headed the
foot soldiers' charge, wielding four enormous battle axes with a ferocity that very few of the Izveir could hope to match. scores of enemies fell to his blades alone, but the rest of his infantry was never far behind.
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