by Dante King
“Where’s the crypt?” Friya asked. “We cannot waste any time wandering among the dead. We must find the item Lucielle spoke of.”
“Well,” I said, “usually in a castle, the crypt is located—”
“It’s this way,” Elyse said, interrupting me and striding confidently to the right.
“How the hell do you know it’s that way?” I yelled after her. “Have you been here before?”
“It’s an artifact of Light,” she shouted back. “I can sense its presence. Trust me on this. Follow me, quickly!”
Chapter Thirty
I figured we’d better go along with Elyse. After all, she was connected to the Lord of Light through her Fate Thread, so it stood to reason that she could sense artifacts of Light nearby, particularly if they happened to possess very strong powers, which I assumed this item did if it could destroy the Temple of Blood.
Elyse led us into a large chamber that was mostly demolished, and we followed her as she picked her way through the rubble, tracing the source of the Light magic.
“It’s this way,” she murmured, talking mostly to herself. “No, this way… Yes, here, the magic is stronger in this direction. Ah, yes, and from this way, I’m really feeling the pull.” She turned and looked at me. “I think the entrance is under the rubble here, Vance. I need some strong hands.”
Drok and I set to hauling and tossing rocks around. Drok was in his element.
“Drok like throw rocks!” he yelled, grinning like a madman.
“You keep throwing those boulders,” I grunted, tossing aside one the size of a large hog. “Throw them fast and throw them far! We need to locate the entrance to the crypt! Hurry!”
We soon uncovered a doorway. The hinges of the door had buckled under the weight of the rubble, and it was pretty much jammed shut, but with my strength and Drok’s combined, we were able to rip it out of its hinges and expose the entrance to the passage. It was pitch dark down there, but before I could call for torches, Elyse pulled out her mace, the flanged head glowing with a bright white light.
“We are in the presence of a tremendously powerful artifact of Light, Vance,” she said, a smile on her face and a gleam of liquid power radiating from her eyes. “I can harness and channel its magic. We do not need fire for light, not with this object so close to me.”
We followed Elyse down into the crypt as she held her glowing mace out before her, illuminating the dark space and banishing shadows. I had no fear of traps down here; Lucielle wouldn’t have sent us here if there had been anything that could harm us.
“The Charm Goddess said the item we’re looking for would be ‘buried under beauty,’” I said. “Whatever that means.”
We headed down two flights of stairs, right into the bowels of the crypt, Elyse drawn onward by the pulsing power of the mystery artifact. I couldn’t sense anything, and a sidelong glance at my fellow deity Rami-Xayon—who responded to this questioning look with a shrug and a subtle shake of her head—indicated that she couldn’t sense anything magical down here either. I figured that only followers of the Lord of Light would be able to detect whatever this thing was.
We reached the deepest part of the crypt, a huge chamber that looked like it had been an ancient temple of some sort, on top of which this whole castle had been built. There were statues of many old gods and goddesses between huge stylized pillars that supported the weight of the stone ceiling and the floors above it. Rami-Xayon rushed over to one of the statues, a young woman with a huge mass of curly hair. She gasped, staring with wide eyes at the lifelike sculpture.
“It’s… me,” she murmured, her eyes locked on the stone face in front of hers. “How I used to be.”
I walked over to the statue and stared at it for a while. So this was what Xayon had looked like. She was somewhat bland-looking and dumpy, to be honest, and her nose especially had a weird shape. Her new face and body were a huge improvement,but I figured I’d better not say as much. I saw that Isu had also found a statue of herself, a remarkably accurate replica of her in marble. She was studying it with a contemplative expression. I looked at the statue’s hands and saw it was holding a stone replica of Grave Oath. A shudder ran through me, but it passed as quickly as it had arrived. Isu had told me she had become tired of being a goddess and that I was already a far better God of Death than she had ever been.
Elyse, however, was looking confused. I walked over to her and asked her what was wrong.
“It’s too strong down here,” she murmured, shaking her head and looking crestfallen. “The power of the object is filling this whole chamber with its presence. I’m overwhelmed. There’s no way I can pinpoint where it is.”
“Think about the clue Lucielle gave us,” I said. “She said that—”
“I know exactly where it is,” Isu said sourly, interrupting me. “It’s obvious. That tart said it was under beauty, correct? Look over there. It’s under that statue, I guarantee it.”
I followed the direction of her finger and saw a statue of a very beautiful young woman, with thick locks of wavy hair, big pert tits, and seductively curved hips. Her face was a masterpiece, and if it was a truly lifelike replica, I definitely would have liked to meet that goddess.
“Lucielle, isn’t it?” I asked, even though the answer was clear.
“Who else?” Isu folded her arms across her busty chest. “The empress of vanity herself. She considers herself to be the epitome of beauty, so that’s your clue right there. Get that smelly oaf to topple her statue, and I’m certain you’ll find what you’re looking for.”
It seemed a shame to destroy a statue of such exquisite beauty, but we didn’t have time to remove it carefully. If all went well, we’d be saving the real-life version of this archetypal beauty, which would be worth infinitely more than one stone replica, however well crafted.
Drok, always eager to participate in any sort of destruction, almost jumped for joy when I nodded my affirmation. He bounded over to the statue of Lucielle, grabbed it by its marble arms, and grunted. With one powerful twist of his hips and shoulders, he ripped the whole thing out of the ground and flung it to the side, where it shattered.
“Not so beautiful now, are you, Lucielle?” Isu stared at a split-off section of the Charm Goddess’s face.
Where the statue had just stood, I found a small hollow in the floor. Inside it was a leather pouch. I pulled it out and opened it, and as soon as I did, a pure and almost blinding light blazed out of the bag.
“Shit,” I grunted, turning my face away from it. “That felt like it was about to melt my fucking eyeballs. What the hell is this thing?”
Elyse hurried over and took the pouch. Keeping her eyes turned away from the intense spears of light shooting out of the pouch, she reached into it and closed her hands around whatever was inside. As soon as she touched it, she nodded and smiled knowingly.
“This,” she said, taking her hand out of the pouch and pulling the drawstring shut to block off the powerful light from within, “is a Tear of the Lord of Light. It is one of the most powerful artifacts of Light in the world. I always thought that there was only one in all of existence, but now I know that there are two.”
I’d heard of the Tear of the Lord of Light, way back when I’d been an ignorant youth who wanted to become a Consecrated Knight. It was indeed one of the most powerful artifacts of Light in existence, and I too had thought there was only one. That was what the Church of Light told people anyway.
“And where is the other one?” Isu asked.
“The vaults of Luminescent Spires, of course,” Elyse answered. “Of all the valuable objects, treasures, and artifacts kept there, the Tear of the Lord of Light is considered one of the most valuable.”
“Well, now we know where to go if we need another of these,” Friya commented.
I chuckled humorlessly and shook my head. “Maybe we can grab it while we’re fetching an embalmed dragon heart? Hopefully, we won’t ever need either of them. Right now, we have what we need to de
stroy the Temple of Blood.”
With that, we raced out of the crypt and returned to our mounts.
“We need to take the trail northwest of here,” Rami-Xayon said.
“I’m sending Talon on ahead to check the trail before we go down it.”
“We can move while the harpy is flying though,” Elyse said. “We cannot delay, Vance. Every second that we allow to slip through our fingers is another second that brings us closer to catastrophe.”
“Okay, let’s ride,” I said. “But don’t interrupt me; I’m going to be scouting.”
We took off, galloping out of the destroyed fortress and following the northwestern trail that led toward the distant mountains. Once again, I put my trust in Fang to carry me safely onward as I shot my spirit and senses into the body of the harpy, who was flying a few hundred yards above the ground.
I flapped the undead creature’s wings urgently, propelling it onward at maximum speed, that ineffable worry making me push even harder even at this speed. I used the currents of air to my advantage, swooping and diving and rising with them; I was becoming quite the expert flyer.
The sharp mountain peaks, shaped like dragons’ teeth, loomed ever closer. I kept the only passage through these harsh mountains beneath me like a strand of thread that would guide me through a labyrinth. As the trail started to wind upward into the peaks, I swooped down lower to get a closer look at the terrain. The trail cut like the bed of a long-dried-up stream through the mountains. On either side of it, sheer walls started to rise, getting higher and higher until they reached a mile in height at one point.
And then I saw a sight that almost made me forget to flap Talon’s wings. Here, right here by the unsurpassable cliffs, an avalanche had occurred. Debris and rocks were piled hundreds of yards high, blocking off the trail completely. We would eventually be able to climb over it, of course, but that would add a number of hours to a journey that was already cutting things extremely close.
This avalanche could not have been a natural occurrence. My uncle and the Blood God had been behind this. And it had been a good move; this would surely delay us beyond dawn. The sacrifice would go ahead, Lucielle would be killed, and the Demogorgon would take permanent physical form in the world.
With despair hitting me like a Frost Giant’s club in the gut, I yanked my spirit and consciousness out of the harpy and pulled it back into my own body. I reined in Fang as I called a halt to the party’s gallop.
“What’s going on, Vance?” Elyse asked.
“It’s over,” I muttered, hanging my head. “Rodrick and the Blood God have won.”
“Why?” Rami-Xayon asked. “Has the sacrifice been completed? What did you see?”
“There’s an obstacle in the passage through the mountains. It will add hours to our journey. We’ll arrive well after dawn. The sacrifice will have been carried out.”
“No!” Drok yelled. But in his gravelly voice, there was hope, not despair. He had his usual idiot’s grin on his face.
“Drok, what the hell’s gotten into you?” I asked. “Do you not understand what I’ve just told you?”
“Drok understand! But Drok know way get to Rodrick before dawn. Obstacle in trail no matter.”
“How?”
“Remember we fight Rollar? You use baby bag for harpy carry Elyse. Harpy can fly over obstacle! Harpy can only carry you, but you strong. You God of Death! You defeat Rodrick! You go alone. Harpy take you. You kill Rodrick. Easy. We come later, help you later. But you go first, with harpy, and stop sacrifice. Easy, easy, we win!”
The deep frown on my face turned into a smile. The crazy bastard was actually making perfect sense. This was the only way to stop the sacrifice before dawn. Hell, if I was sneaky enough, I could even kill a couple of my uncle’s troops and use them as zombies before first light so that I wasn’t completely alone against my uncle and his minions.
“It’s a crazy fucking plan, Drok,” I said, “but fuck it—it’s our only hope. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna take on my uncle and his forces alone.”
Everyone murmured their agreement, but their eyes were clouded with worry. We all knew our chances of success were slimmer with this crazy plan than they would have been without the obstacle, but slim chances were better than no chances.
“Wish me luck, everyone,” I said as I called Talon down from the sky. “That shady fuckbrain Rodrick won’t know what hit him.”
The harpy dug its claws into my armor, plucked me off Fang’s back, and surged upward, carrying me into the darkening sky. I waved to my party one last time as they watched me from below, before the harpy and I disappeared into the clouds.
From this point on, I was on my own.
Chapter Thirty-One
I watched as my companions were swallowed up by the ocean of clouds beneath me. The air was cold down there, but up above the clouds it was fucking freezing. To take my mind off the icy cold and the somewhat unnerving fact that I was about to go into battle against my uncle and his forces on my own, I closed my eyes, trusting the harpy to take me where I needed to go, and traveled to the black plane. I figured that after the battle with Elgroth’s Jotunn, I’d have gained enough new souls to give me a new skill, maybe even two. A Frost Giant’s soul had to be worth a good few regular human warriors’ souls, right?
I opened my eyes and found myself on the black plane, where there was no more cold, no frigid wind rushing against my body with the speed of the flight, no ever-present sensation of the ground hungrily sucking me toward it. No, up here everything was calm. There was no wind, and it was neither hot nor cold. Come to think of it, there probably wasn’t even any air here—not the kind of air my body was breathing in and out on the mortal plane, at any rate.
I jogged across the glassy black surface, which stretched out beyond me farther than I could see in all directions, and kept my gaze fixed on the upper branches of the tree. I ran with bated breath, hoping, almost catching myself praying, as I’d been brought up to do. I sure as hell could use something new in my arsenal to take on an army on my own.
A grin spread across my face as I approached the tree; two new skills hung like ripe fruit from the upper branches of the gray tree, glowing brightly with the promise of fresh, potent power.
I clambered up the tree with my eyes locked on the prize. The lower of the two showed an image of a warrior imprisoned in a cage made of bones. It looked like a huge ribcage had burst out of the ground beneath him, and closed around him like a giant set of teeth.
“Bone Prison,” I muttered as I reached it, grinning. “This will definitely come in handy.”
A jolt ripped through my body as I grabbed the fruit and this new ability became part of my magical skillset. I was itching to try it out, but first I had to grab the other skill, which was a branch or two above this one.
This one looked as if it would be perfect for taking on multiple opponents; the image was a vividly lifelike picture of me, holding a crossbow made entirely of bones, which shot sharp shards of bone. Being a magical weapon, the bow didn’t have a string, and it didn’t need to be cocked or reloaded. The image showed bone shards coming up out of the ground and flying straight into the weapon; it seemed that my supply of ammunition would be limited only by the amount of corpses in the dirt beneath me.
This skill—Bone Bow—I guessed I would be able to try out while still flying in the harpy’s claws. There were a good few more skills in the heights of the tree above, obscured by fog, so I wasn’t nearly as strong as I could be…but that didn’t matter. Not much at all mattered right now, really, aside from doing everything in my power to prevent my uncle from sacrificing Lucielle at dawn.
Part of me was quite tempted to just stay on this plane; it was peaceful here, and there was no Blood God, no Demogorgon, no horde of enemies waiting to tear my guts out. I could just lean back against the smooth trunk of the enormous gray tree and not worry about a damn thing.
But where was the fun in that? I’d been waiting to tear my uncle’
s head off his shoulders for years now, and this time I was going to make sure he didn’t escape through one of his portals again. This time he and I would fight, and there would be no quarter asked, and none given. Only one of us would walk away from the encounter alive, and I fully intended that to be me.
Feeling a surge of fresh confidence rushing through me, I jumped out of the gray tree, and before I even hit the black, glossy ground below I was back in my body, back in the real world, rushing through the air at speed, gripped by the claws of an undead harpy—and I was ready to kick some ass on an epic scale.
We were currently flying through dense clouds, which made it pointless to try out the new bone bow for the moment. As soon as the clouds began to break down into wispy rips and semi-translucent lumps, and I could see the ground again, I closed my eyes and pictured the Bone Bow I’d seen in the skill tree.
Instantly I felt a weight in my hands, and I looked down and marveled at the sight. It was a thing of magic, of course, and could materialize or dematerialize in the blink of an eye, but when it was here in physical form it felt as solid and heavy as any earthly crossbow.
The entire weapon was constructed of bones of various shapes and sizes—all of them human—and while it had the shape and dimensions of any regular crossbow, the bones gave it a very unique look. One visual touch I especially appreciated was the human skull with a wide open jaw at the front of the weapon. When the bone shards were fired off, they would pass down the rail of the crossbow and through the jaws of the skull, as if they were being spit out of the skull’s wide-open jaws.
“All right,” I said, chuckling eagerly, “let’s give this motherfucker a few test shots, shall we?”
I wasn’t quite sure how to load the Bone Bow, but, as had turned out to be the case for many of the magic skills I’d acquired since becoming the God of Death, the process was pretty much automatic; all I had to do was think about what I wanted to happen, and it would happen.