Kingdom Come

by James Osiris Baldwin

  “Fuck fuck fuck!” I began running again, vaulting the fallen trees as the Warsinger picked through them. There was a squeal, and I looked back to see the Prototype popping a struggling boar into its mouth like a bon-bon.

  My confidence was faltering. There was no way I could do this. This Warsinger was the kind of boss you needed an army to defeat… or another Warsinger.

  The huge machine began to charge after me again. I had some distance on it this time, which was what I wanted. It forced it to move fast, building up heat and burning off mana. The tiny amounts it was extracting from the animals it had eaten were only going to last it so long. If I could wear it down, it would start to slow. It was a question who wore out first - it, or me.

  I led it on almost a mile before it caught up, charging down the canyon with one shoulder down, the lance raised in the other hand. I tensed, ready to dodge, but the Warsinger didn’t aim at me. It threw the Spear at the base of the cliff instead.

  Holy shit. It’s smart. Famous last thoughts, as the shockwave flung me into the air like a ragdoll.

  The Revenant let out a mournful foghorn blast of sound as it drew the Spear back, then thrust it deep into the ground between its feet. As I sailed through the air and time dilated, I spotted what I’d been looking for. The Warsinger’s shoulder guards lifted, thrusting an array of red-hot heat sinks into the air that began discharging clouds of steam. As it did, the machine began to sing an eerie, mournful song. The weapon picked up the resonance like a tuning fork, and the earth began to rumble.

  [Prototype Revenant uses Seismic Dirge!]

  The song deepened to a tooth-shuddering bass roar, a sound of destruction so intense that my flesh crawled on my bones. There was no dragon to catch me as I fell. I soared down toward the enormous mecha as the soil and rocks below surged like waves, and in desperation, called on the Mark of Matir.

  Spider Climb kicked in just in time. I smashed into the side of the giant spear hard enough to almost feel my soul leave my body, clinging onto it until the earthquake stopped quaking, and the Warsinger began to pull the Spear out of the ground.

  I held on, teeth gritted, as it swung the weapon up without even seeming to notice me. The metal haft was rough, it's surface so pitted that I could cling like a rock climber. When the shaft became horizontal, I scrambled up and sprinted until it became impossible, hung on for dear life, and then ran when I could. The Warsinger swung around to stride back the way it had come, sending me flying just as I tried to Jump onto its clenched fist. Suddenly, I flashed back to the moment I had tried to land on Karalti’s back and failed. I couldn’t let that happen this time.

  I used Umbra Blast to push myself into the air, then dashed forward. The edged cuff of the titan’s gauntlet swung up to meet me, and I landed - not from a 90-degree overhead drop, but on a 60-degree slope. My feet hit the angled surface. The cleats of my boots dug in, and I was able to find a handhold and cling on like Spiderman. With a touch of awe, I realized why I hadn’t been able to stick the landing on my dragon.

  No sooner had I begun to revel in my own genius than the Warsinger realized it had a passenger. It looked down at me, almost as if curious, and reached over to pluck me off its wrist. That meant it held its wrist steady, long enough that I could vault the rim of the gauntlet and run up along its forearm. It clumsily slapped down like it was trying to crush a mosquito, then tried again, higher. I circled around to the inside of its elbow. There was a narrow ledge formed by the edge of its forearm, and a rail around. Great, dust-choked, greasy gears ground silently inside, the metal covered in lines and lines and lines of glowing magical symbols.

  “It slices! It dices! It blends!” I held on for dear life as the Warsinger picked up its arm and tried to shake me off. “It has orifices where nothing should ever have orifices!”

  My stamina was draining with terrifying speed. Just when I thought I couldn’t hang on any longer, the Warsinger stopped shaking. Its arm sagged, and above me, the shoulder guards lifted and the heatsinks ejected, along with a billowing cloud of scalding gas that wreathed around its head. And then it began to hum again, just like it had when it had when it used its cloak of mist to catch, and then eat my damned quazi.

  “No! You junkyard piece of shit!” I snarled in Korean, too frustrated to remember English for a moment. I chugged two stamina potions and Jumped as high as I could up along its arm. It got hotter the further up I went. I caught onto the edge of the upper arm plate and groaned as the air thickened, my lungs struggled, and then gravity pulled me down in the direction of the earth.

  I hooked my fingers and dug my feet and hung on as what felt like half a ton of pressure tried to drag me from the Warsinger’s body. My elbows popped. The muscles in my arms began to tear with a prickling pain, and my HP began to trickle away. Twenty, fifty, a hundred points. There was just enough traction that I could stay on, gasping, bleeding from the corners of my eyes with the terrible pressure that bore down on my body.

  [298 damage! You are suffering Internal Bleeding! -5 HP per second, -20% strength! Heal at least 150 HP to staunch the wound.]

  Cursing, I chugged a healing potion and scrambled as a five-fingered shadow loomed above. The Warsinger couldn’t bring its arm all the way across its chest to slap me. The limb jerked and shuddered with effort as it held it level, trying to track me with its harpoon fingertips as I zig-zagged up to its shoulder. The ground was now hundreds of feet down, the platform I was running on both extremely unstable and extremely hot. Steam boiled out from under the edge of its shoulders, channeled up from deep within the Warsinger’s body.

  I hacked up some blood as I Jumped and drove the Spear down into the thick arterial cables between neck and shoulder. The blade barely scratched it, but as soon as it bit into the metal, I roared and charged energy through my body and the weapon. Dark energy peeled out from me, forming into jagged bolts that struck the monster and seared the corrosion off it. “HURRRRAAAAGH!”

  The golem bellowed, swinging its tail down toward my back. I saw it coming from behind my head, and Shadow Danced just in time before the Warsinger punched the stinger-spine straight through its own armor.

  The mecha made a strange squealing sound, struggling to pull its weapon from its shoulder. A pulse of white light shot through the tail and seared my eyebrows from my face. I backed away with a shout, and got nailed through the calf by one of the Prototype’s fingers. The retractable, prehensile cable burst through my armor and flesh beneath like it wasn’t there. I desperately caught onto the edge of the Warsinger’s shoulder guard, snarling in agony as the finger retracted, leaving a gaping hole that poured blood into my boot.

  [You take 550 damage! You are hemorrhaging! Heal at least 225 damage to staunch the wound!]

  I spammed three healing potions from the hotbar as debuff icons flickered to life, then extinguished as the potions took hold. The Revenant began to shake again, slapping me from side to side. My stamina sunk down to 10%, 9%...

  There was a deep screech of metal on metal, and the Warsinger’s tail pulled free - with the shoulder guard still attached. A wave of light and heat washed over me. When at rest, the heatsinks were held at an angle over the massive turbines that funneled hot air out of the torso. With the removal of the armor and the magical muffling, they roared like jet engines. Like jet engines, they were capable of turning me into mincemeat if I fell into one.

  “What is with this fucking game!” I roared, swinging up onto the thin ledge now exposed by the removal of the armor. Clutching the rail, I turned, watching as the Prototype Revenant got its hand in position to try and nail me a second time. The little finger was still stained with my blood.

  “Come on!” With an eye on my adrenaline point, I jumped up to the Warsinger’s neck, careful not to fall onto the heatsinks, and drove an Umbra Blast into the exposed cables.

  Elemental darkness burst out from the spear of nine spheres like a huge flower, searing through the metal with spikes of ice. When the energy contacted the smoking
hot metal, it groaned. The Warsinger stabbed down with its fingers - driving them right into the heatsinks as I leaped the fuck out of the way.

  A booming explosion rolled through the valley as the Warsinger hooted and thrashed, twisting away from me and trying to pull its hand free of its own turbines. I was flung off into the air. There was nowhere to land and nothing to do but take the fall.

  “FUUUUCK!” Just before I hit the ground, I tucked into a roll and Shadow Danced. I disappeared into vapor, then reappeared, tumbling head over ass and coming to an ungraceful stop on the ground, sans 773 HP: 20% of what I would have taken if I’d not saved it. I rolled to hands and knees, blood pouring from my mouth.

  [You are hemorrhaging! Heal at least 386 HP to staunch the bleeding!]

  I was going to die. There was no way I could take another fall like that and live. I had five Concentrated Moss Tinctures left. I chugged two, bringing myself back to 768 HP: slightly over half. Stage one of the titan boss fight was over. Now the attacks would intensify, and I only had three potions left.

  There was no time to plan before the enraged construct raised a bus-sized foot overhead. I sprinted along a narrow, brittle platform over the honeycomb of sinkholes and crazed stone, barely avoiding the towering leg that plunged down behind me. It broke through the surface of the ground, shattering it and sending chunks of stone zinging past. The ground rippled, launching me up and to one side. I fell awkwardly and was flung as the giant plunged his spear down into the earth as well. I couldn’t orient in time before I smashed spine-first into the side of the cliff, bouncing to a stop among a tumble of basalt rubble.

  “Fuck.” Heart pounding, mouth dry, I crawled up and turned to look at the Warsinger.

  It was stuck. The enormous foot had broken through the porous volcanic ground and had sunk up past the Prototype Revenant’s calf. It was trying to lever itself up on the spear, but every ton of weight it put on the weapon only drove it deeper into the rock. My pulse skipped a beat. This was my chance.

  ‘Cojones... ENGAGE!” I banged my fist against the haft of the Spear, shook my head, and ran right at it.

  The Warsinger’s head turned to watch me as I sprinted in. Its left shoulder was a smoking ruin, greasy smoke boiling off into the air, but its other arm - and its tail - were just fine. It began to slam the tail down, churning and weakening the ground in its desperation to hit me. I Shadow Danced and dodged, rolling and running on feet and hands alike when I fell, until I reached the titan’s trapped ankle and Jumped straight onto it.

  The Warsinger’s resonant moan built like a chant. It splayed its good hand flat against the ground, and the mana in its corona, tail and joints began to blaze bright blue.

  “No you fuckin’ don’t!” I vaulted up onto its knee and ran the length of its thigh. “HUURAAGH!”

  Sensing the AoE, I leaped - and as I did, a huge cloud of searing cold frost burst out of the Warsinger’s palm like a cloud of crystal shards. Spears of ice erupted from its body and the ground. The river crackled as it froze. The remaining plants shriveled and died. The water vapor sucked in and coated the titan in a layer of frost.

  The Tuun boots were all that saved my ass from sliding off the slick metal surface. The cleats shrieked against the ice, catching just enough that I could jump and cling to the Warsinger’s breastplate. That was a mistake. He reared up and slapped his hand over me before I could spider my way across to his other arm. The hand came down over me like a cage, and then closed I dropped, hoping to squirm through the fingers before they closed, but only ended up getting my leg trapped between them. The machine’s joints groaned as it swung me away, upside down, and lifted me up level with its face.

  “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck YOU!” I ranted the whole way up, struggling with everything I had - which against a 200-foot tall magical robot, was just about nothing. I discharged an Umbra Blast, stabbed it with Shadow Lance, tried to dash - but Shadow Dance didn’t work unless you were able to move. The moves chipped at its HP, but none of them made it drop me.

  The Warsinger’s jaws parted, and Belt of Tiger’s Spirit or not, my stomach began to quake for real. I was dangling face-down over an interlocking triangle of industrial-sized grinders that vanished into a steaming pit of a gullet. There was still blood and bits of shredded flesh clinging to the machinery.

  It lifted me up high. The grinders all activated with a rumbling roar, and began to lower me inside.

  Chapter 36

  There were some ways of dying I was okay with - like falling heart-first onto someone’s pike, or even just falling from a great height. Gunshots? Fine. Decapitation? Whatever.

  But this - this was not okay.

  I hurled the second grenade with a roar, and the Warsinger flinched. The thing bounced and clattered on top of the grinders, and when it went off, the machinery stuttered and the huge artifact flinched. The explosion knocked them out of sync and slowed them down, but that was all. Great. Now I was going to live longer.

  “Bitch, bitch, BITCH!” I just began throwing everything I had at it. The acids, the bases, the monster blood - still in its bottles - and then all 140 samples of Swamp Hag slime. The slime whipped around and around in long translucent ropes that seemed to get denser and tougher with every rotation until the crushing gears jammed.

  WRRRRR. WRRRRR. The jackhammer-like sound of the grinders made my ears and teeth ache to hear it. The Warsinger seemed confused. It intensified the pressure of its grinders, trying to break up the substance fouling them. The Warsinger’s arm began to wobble with the effort of holding me in place, jerking and sagging down with every passing second. I descended closer to the pit of slime and broken glass, quicksand almost as deadly as the mouth itself. My heart felt like it was going to burst from my chest - part fear, part anticipation.

  Then it happened. The Warsinger’s fingers twitched spasmodically, and I fell.

  I hit Jump, then Master of Blades, then Rain of Glass. The idea wasn’t to deal damage - it was to push me back into the air. I flew back as the bolts of energy smashed into the Warsinger’s upturned face. It gurgled and churned, clutching at its neck.

  I somersaulted back and landed on its other shoulder, landing on the armor as it lifted to eject the heatsinks on that side. With a roar, I unleashed one of my rarely used attacks: Shattering Darkness. Matir’s mark burned cold on my skin as I jammed the head of the spear in the joint between neck and armor and discharged a crystalline burst of blue-black energy through my arms. Veins of black ice shot through the thing’s armor, penetrating the nearest heatsink. The blazing red-hot panel squealed, then cracked like a rifle shot.

  I jumped out of the way just as the scorpion tail smashed down into the Warsinger’s shoulder. This time, it piledrived the shoulder plate down onto the heatsinks, breaking off the damaged one like a broken tooth and smashing the others flat. The Warsinger boomed, a sonic discharge that made my hair fly up and crushed my breath in my chest, distracting me long enough for it to snatch me in its massive hand a second time.

  The vents on that side exploded, and the Warsinger sunk to its knees. I let out a cry as it began to squeeze, hammering my fists against its palm, writhing and twisting. “Let me the fuck go, you stupid thing!”

  My struggling seemed to excite it. The Warsinger lifted me back toward its mouth, spasming on every motion. The drill-like grinding of the caught gears in its head intensified - first a little, and then exponentially. Oily smoke belched from every joint.

  “Put me down!” I pulled my knife in desperation and began to stab as hard as I could as the vice grip clamped down, crushing my legs against the haft of the Spear. “Put me down, you piece of-”

  My fecal expletive was drowned out by the sound of crumpling metal. The Warsinger swayed, and its grip loosened but didn’t relent as it began to shake uncontrollably on its knees. The grinders built to a fever pitch... then tore themselves apart in a belching cloud of twisted metal and black smoke. The smoke billowed out of the Warsinger’s eyes and mouth as the jackh
ammering became an insane, eardrum-rending shriek of shattering steel.

  A deafening explosion pierced the air. I squeezed my eyes shut as my hearing cut and the world spun end over end, bracing myself against the inside of the machine’s fist like a roll cage. It shielded me from the shrapnel raining down, and then from the shockwave of a bigger, more resonant explosion. The Warsinger toppled forward, and I flashed back to the way the Arabella had careened toward the tundra while I clung to the mast. I’d felt the same way then as I did now- strangely determined, free of fear, wrapped around an icy hard core of self-control and resignation.

  The collapsing Warsinger drove up the earth, caved the cliffs to either side, and smashed the ice. The light of the moon was swallowed up by darkness. Just when I thought it was over, we kept falling. The wind whistled through its fingers in the utter blackness.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “Matir, if you’re listening, you self-entitled asshole, I’m going to punch Vash Dorha in the dick and tell him to pass it on to you!”

  As if in response, the Warsinger’s hand opened, loosened in death. There was a moment of perfect stillness, perfect silence, as if I were falling end over end through a void... and then a thundering crash that knocked my ass the fuck out.

  ***

  I woke in stages. My hearing back first, then my sense of touch. Then my sight, kind of. I opened my eyes perfect darkness - darkness so thick it felt like I'd been buried in a pit of soft fur. I waited for my night-vision to build, but it never came. There was no light down here at all. I could smell water, dampness, and a faint metallic odor. Not blood - actual metal, like rust. The only sound was a thick, rushing silence.

  My skin came up with goosebumps as I pushed myself up to sit, reaching out blindly to feel around for anything nearby. All my hand found was the open palm of the Warsinger. I checked my log: yup, won the battle, but I hadn’t gained any EXP for defeating such an epic boss. Stupid redemption quest.