Four silver lines appeared to his left. Sound erupted in a controlled, cold rage. “They destroyed my village. Scattered my family.”
The pillar exploded into rubble as Amon’s tail once again uncoiled with force and incredible mass. Forcing a croaking rumble to moan out from the rest of the structure. It was a terrible idea to destroy valuable support struts, but the Vizier was too engrossed in thinking about how to silence this… unexpected Emerald Eye development. He called for his aides. “Guards!”
No response came, and the bronze door remained closed. He hissed in anger, flooding the entire space of his private chambers with the caustic disintegrating foil. If he could not locate his opponent, he would make it so he did not have to. The voice was heard again, this time directly above him. He knew better than to fall for a ruse a third time.
“I was content. I was going to pass. Then. This.”
Artorian’s foot coated in Essence identity countering the disintegrating flood. He had faced worse, and he had faced better. Amon’s face was crushed into the floor as his assailant plowed into his skull from above. Acidic blood sputtered from the cobra’s nose, mouth, and eyes as the crunching impact splattered him on the ground.
Artorian felt his foot thunk against bone, signaling his enemy wasn’t going to compress any further, and made himself scarce from the location before spikes of burning, venomous darkness splintered into the space he had occupied a second ago. It grew from Amon’s head like a fire, wildly sprouting with a crackle of thunderous infernal energy.
The Vizier howled in pain, swiping wildly with his tail. He couldn’t afford to keep taking damage like this. He exhaled his last breath, and a lime-green brightness built in the back of his throat, taking over the light behind his vertically slit eyes.
Artorian knew something was wrong. He felt it as his Presence… tingled unpleasantly. A higher category of power was intermingling itself into the Vizier. Mana…? Or not quite? He couldn’t take the risk to have his Presence fielded across anything Mana related. A drop of it would splinter his every trick into tiny smithereens. Tutting, he pulled it all back to his form, slipping his back against an unbroken pillar as his advantage was removed.
Bathed in lime colorations, the green thrummed until it matched the beat and consistent tremble of a heartbeat. Amon’s voice altered from slithered difficulty, to an undead rumble as the human aspect of his voice easily returned. He was no longer using a voice box of flesh to speak, after all. “Filthy upstart, I shall feed you to the flame of the moths. Your feeble attempts at assassination are void. I know not how you tricked my servants, but I care not. You shall not exit my chambers alive.”
Artorian considered a cute retort, but thought better of it. He should start keeping a running tally of the amount of death threats and wondering if he was going to die. It was a sizable number by now. Just for fun? There would be no further talk with whatever the flesh-creature had turned into.
Sneaking a peek, a gargantuan skeletal cobra covered in crystal goop and a coral coating had replaced what had originally been a decently pretty snake. So much for blunt impact… that goop layer definitely looked like it would absorb kinetic energy.
His plan to stay in the enclosed room… alright. Bad plan. Backfired quite a bit. He should leave. Artorian wasn’t going to be able to distract the thing, he couldn’t get a grasp of how it sensed the world. He’d also used the element of surprise… so… run for it!
Without another thought, he bolted quick as the wind to the bronze door, but failed to reach it as a batting tail caught him right in the chest and sent him barreling back in the opposite direction. Artorian crashed hard into the now crumbly stone wall. He cried out in anguish, armor cracking and tearing from the raw strength of the blow. “Oof!”
It hurt more than an ‘oof’ could convey, but that’s what he got before cracking with a clang against the ground. He did not roll out of the way in time for a follow up tail strike to repeatedly bash him down into the metaphorical dirt. Artorian learned what a drum felt like, funneling Essence into his armor to repair it as a proficient tail kept dribbling him. Blunt bouncing damage hurt, and the massive snake was not letting up. His vision fizzled out hard as one of the slams put a chink into a Rune that helped make the visual effect.
Artorian’s world went dark, feeling only the pain of being ragdolled as he was thunked through the Vizier’s chamber like a rubber ball being struck every second and a half by a gargantuan tail that didn’t have the slightest problem keeping up with the rapid projectile. His Presence was neutralizing the disintegration effect, but that was a minor boon.
Faintly, he could hear amused undead laughter from the massive creature. Shielding himself with Essence and tucking in arms, he raced for ideas. He couldn’t risk extending his Presence, the armor was toast, and he couldn’t remove it because if even one of those slams would do to his bones what it had done to that support pillar. He was being batted around and… wait, bat? Echolocation!
Air Essence activated as the pounded cultivator shifted to external Aura usage, and hummed. His armor turned it into a thrum, but the air Essence fueled waves bounced across the room and came back to him faster than the massive snake was batting him around. While details were rough, the layout of the room appeared in his mind. Like a fading blueprint that was constantly updated each time a sound wave returned to him. To be frank, it was pretty fantastic.
A loud lurching metal groan of chestplate bending and twisting asunder made Amon cackle. Catharsis! He’d never felt the need to pull on the borrowed Favor power, because it was fleeting. He’d also not known it would turn him into an undead crystal cobra. His Queen would be furious with him for wasting all her hard years of work if this was permanent. He’d cross that bridge when it was time, for now he had a bug to crush. The sound the bug made went ignored, until a slicing air blade crackling with hard light forced him to swivel his head out of the way. Abyss!
Amon missed the next strike, and Artorian landed hard on a shoulder. It popped out of its socket with an unpleasant snap, but the old man was on his feet and already darting to the bronze door. He didn’t have earth Essence, nor the means to affect metal. He also knew Tychus was helping to keep it shut. How could he force Tychus to let go, and get rid of the door? A thought struck him. A simple, repeated thought that must have been a universal truth. He didn’t know how he’d never considered the option before, but it rang loud and true. When in doubt…
Fireball.
Chapter Forty-Five
Why use one fireball, when you could use two? Around his good hand, Artorian charged his starlight Essence. Unlike the normal identities to ‘soothe’ or ‘lance’, he tapped into a third one. Equally as natural. Equally as common. He spoke the words, not realizing he did so with as much venom as Amon was filled with.
“Burn.”
Spheres of power surrounded Artorian’s hand. As fire, it burned a hot white phosphorous bright. He’d have been concerned about being permanently blinded by being so close to his own effect. So harsh was the brightness that if it hadn’t been for his current blindness, he’d have used just fire. He didn’t have the time to fine tune the light away to maximize the heat effect, and hurled one orb back at the undead snake, who sizzled from sheer proximity to the starlight effect while the other flung towards the gateway.
Would his orb be hot enough to get through a thick bronze door? He didn’t know, and was unable to see the craft turn red, then orange, then white as the orb stuck to it like a sticky wet grape. Screams made it through from the other end. Well… it was successful in forcing Ty to let go, but based on his echolocation returns, a door remained. Abyss!
Glancing in the other direction, the Vizier had dodged the ‘fireball’ and was charging in his direction with a swift lunge. The light from the burning ball sticking to the far wall was suffering to all of Amon’s existence. His body burned, his mind burned. He shrieked in maddened outcry as he shot forward, completely in the dark on why his world was made of ago
ny.
Jumping out of the way, sadly not entirely in time, Artorian lost feeling in the same arm he’d fallen on earlier as the burning, disintegration effect coated mass slammed into his side and crashed into the space that used to contain the bronze door. Used to, as the molten slag now coated the undead monstrosity, adding a third kind of burn to the Vizier. Ha! Artorian winced, surprisingly winded by that last blow. He staggered his functional shoulder against a pillar and pulled his Aura in, covering himself in starlight Essence. Shifting to Presence, he coated just him and his gear as the echolocation information dimmed away. How was he doing?
C-rank four. Eesh, costly. He let much of his Essence flood free, feeding the self-repairing and form shaping Runes on the armor that drank it in. His protections were trashed by being pinballed across the room. Countless imprints now littered the space in his embarrassing impact positions. He chanced a breather, listening to the massive snake deal with his burning orb in the gateway.
Artorian had a moment to decide how much he was going to invest in repairing his armor. The analysis was swift: cost was irrelevant. He was dead without the hardened exterior shell. He pulled a mental lever, and let the Iridium plate have everything it wanted. His cultivation lurched, and Artorian dropped to a knee as a full three and a half cultivation ranks were ripped straight out of his Aura. The only plus was that his shoulder popped back into place from raw Essence expenditure. His fingers tingled before regaining feeling and functionality, nerves and muscle mending from the soothing starlight healing surging through his frame.
He squeezed his grip open and closed, jumping away from a thrashing strike just as he heard it coming. Artorian was too slow, and groaned as he was blown back to a mere three feet away from his still burning starlight-ball embedded in the back wall.
Oh, that had hurt! It hurt bad. His Presence was mending him, and the armor was finally reconfiguring itself into a stable protective form as he peeled himself free from the rock. Falling seven feet was no fun, but with the armor molding and forming around him, he hadn’t the use of his legs to catch himself. Complaining on the ground, he remembered he could use air to soften his fall. A little too late with his face already in the crumbled gravel.
He pushed himself to his feet, and rolled his working shoulders. “Over here, you dried up carcass. I have a gift for all the misery and stress you’ve caused me over all these many years.”
Glancing at his starlight sphere, he considered pulling it from the wall. But no. No, there was wisdom that needed tending to and just as before, the truth was clear. If in doubt, use more fireballs.
A very much on fire Amon raged and slithered towards the outline of the heat form he could see. Being undead gave an entirely different perspective to the world. He saw that which was alive, and it didn’t matter if a little bit of rock got in the way. A soft heartbeat was as loud, and as irritating, as the steady thudding of war drums. Other heat signatures in the area he noticed as well, but the balls of burning light were tearing at… everything. They didn’t just lance his senses, but attacked his mind, his body, his Aura, his power. It burned him at a depth he could not perceive.
Amon could not have known that starlight was a particularly potent antithesis against undead. He could not have known that the borrowing of Favor’s power siphoned away his Aura to dump all the force fully into keeping up his empowered, far superior undead body. Several components of him dropped radically in defense, because the particular threat he faced was simply not something that otherwise existed.
More prominent threats he became immune to, yet he did not face melee nor weapons. Neither arrows nor spears mundane struck him, nor techniques not steeped in celestial. Facing him was a problem that functioned with celestial, but took it to a compounded category. He was fueled with maddened rage, and did not know why as memories burned away. A more serpentine, base level instinctual mind replaced him.
Artorian stood, calming himself as he focused not on the charging momentum of death, but on the numerous circling pea sized orbs that hovered around him in a gyroscopic formation. He inhaled and took a wide horse stance, spreading his arms out. Exhaling, he circled his arms. The orbs followed suit before they erupted into the size of apples, then melons. The orbs spun faster and faster, and Artorian heard a *fizz* as his sight partially restored when the vision Runes mended.
Not that it did much. The blinding brightness directly around him caused the view to melt into a crackly, uncertain, shifting screen of frazzled and fuzzy static. The Runes couldn’t process or render a view where so much energy was interfering. Only hazy bits and pieces made it through in a muddled greyscale.
The first sight that properly processed made him tense in fear. More in panic than through actual planning, he thrust his hands forward in a *gnnn* of heart-gripping fear, not having known before just how close his opponent had been. The gaping, hungry, venomous fang-filled maw of the biggest crystal cobra he’d ever seen lunged at him, only to take a chest full of sequentially launched orbs that tore holes right through the undead’s weakened defenses.
As with the others, the solar orbs stuck to the far wall, smoldering the surroundings as their light lanced and scalded layer after layer from the Vizier’s mutated body. For a moment, Artorian believed victory was in his grasp. He lost that feeling as the gaping maw snapped shut around his being. Even if the head of the cobra had been ripped and rent from the rest of its body, it wasn’t neutralized. Important life lesson: even a beheaded serpent head could still bite.
The scream that erupted from Artorian matched the shrill sound of venomed fangs piercing through iridium armor. The massive, curved bones stabbed deep into his being, and the weight of the skull alone pinned him to the ground.
The Vizier’s borrowed undead light winked out. The lime-green light vanished from existence in the span of a single breath. Across the area of the Ziggurat, bone bracelets crumbled as the opal keeping them together fractured and pulverized from feedback shock. Tychus too watched his restraint dangle, tumbling from his wrist before becoming bone dust on the floor. He grit his teeth when it happened, infernal Essence still restoring the damage done to his hands from sudden door burns.
Elation replaced pain. He was free!
Bursting from his hiding place, he ran as fast as he could to the Vizier’s chambers. Acrobatics snuck him through the wrought and wrecked hallway, and some blinding lights inside of the chamber were winking out one at a time. When he shoulder-checked through the rocks to form a new passageway, the dying light of the last orb was swiftly weakening. It was enough for him to see the slumped figure of his grandfather, pierced through by both of the gargantuan serpent’s envenomed fangs.
“Elder!”
Artorian drew a labored breath. His Presence remained pulled around his form, doing what he could to prevent the crystal venom from getting into his vitals. Even with intricate knowledge of the venom, the quantity of it that he was fighting off was going to result in a loss. He didn’t heal as fast as he needed to during purging. This was accounted for by the fact that he still had two very sizable fangs piercing him, and getting those out needed to be a slow and carefully monitored process. Just tugging them out would kill him. He’d in no way heal the gaping damage left behind with the pitiful Essence he had left.
Where was he? D-something? D-rank five. Ew. Here comes another few years of recovery. He pushed weakly against the snout. It didn’t budge. Crackers and toast! Faltering and about to lose hope, he heard the voice of his son. *Cough*. “Ty… Tychus! Break the fangs!”
The Mountain was at Artorian’s side with the speed of darkness. The environment reacted to his heavy expenditure of Essence and pushed him along as light faded. With a glance, he could discern the situation was dire. Clear directions helped significantly, and with a roar he smashed through the brittle, greying fangs using a hammerfist. Both loudly shattered. Without that support, the entire head fell sideways. Gently flaking away in the remains of the dying starlight.
Artorian d
idn’t know how many more words he was going to get out. It didn’t feel like either of the stabbers had gone through his lungs, but it hurt regardless. “Ed… edge of the refugee camp. Dwarven caravan. Two axes behind a stein of ale as sigil. Hu… hurry please.”
Tychus was a doer, not a thinker. Scooping his grandfather up, he took in the need with the same direction and haste as he did when Grim laid out a plan. There didn’t need to be questions. Only action. Like a hurled projectile, Tychus shoulder bashed his way out of the Ziggurat as an unstoppable obsidian electricity coated freight train. His footfalls thundered with each impact, and the approach of his charge was noticed by all.
People who didn't literally jump or throw themselves out of the way in time were bowled over and used as flooring. Palisades exploded into splinters when the massive man barreled through, Artorian kept tight and safe within his arms. Tychus could feel blood that wasn’t his seep from between his fingers, and his grandfather hadn’t spoken a word since going limp in his grasp. That venom was doing its work.
No thinking. No thinking! Thinking led to second guessing. Assumptions. Worries. There was no time for those. There was only time for the one thing he excelled at: charging in a straight line.
Chapter Forty-Six
Don Modsognir squeezed the bridge of his nose. Several more of his clan stood in a loose circle with him, while a very confused Dimi held a dapper gnome in an upturned hand. This was a topic that… honestly, it would help if they had a philosopher present. What this intelligent Gnome was telling them was difficult to understand, and he for one didn’t have enough firebrandy in his caravan for this kind of talk.
Artorian's Archives Omnibus Page 109