by David Burke
What wasn’t hard to see, was the massive metal sculpture standing overtop the forge. Its body was huge with tripod legs and three arms spread equidistant around its upper torso. What passed for its head was a grim parody of a humanoid face, complete with square metallic teeth, a hinged jaw, a flat nose, and a pair of foot wide eyes set into its smooth face.
Even as he was taking it all in, the first Mor’dverg warrior reached him. It swung a wicked two-handed hammer at Kyle, but he pivoted just enough that the horizontal blow missed. Then, he brought his leg up and drove his knee through the chin of this enemy. His superhuman strength crushed the dark dwarf’s jaw, sent teeth flying and snapped the head back so violently, that he snapped his foe’s spine.
Kyle then danced between axe slashes, sword thrusts, and mace bashes. Each of his hands and legs moved in perfect synchronicity. Whether it was a smash with his hammer, or driving the pick end through a skull, each attack caused a fatal wound. Even his elbows, palm strikes, knees, and thrusting kicks all proved deadly, as he draped his entire body in an coating of War Essence.
Killing intent oozed off of him, but it was pure and free of malice, unlike the Death Essence that corrupted the Mor’dverg and which turned their already dark desires into a lust for death and the extinguishing of all life. No matter how hard they tried or how much they wanted to kill him, though, Kyle was always one step ahead of them.
This was another way for him to cut loose. He learned to synch his expanded senses with his precision strikes and well-timed movements. Simple half steps, dips, jumps, or pivots took on tremendous meaning as Kyle seemed to know just where to position himself. It was as though he and the enemy warriors were all in one big symphony of violence choreographed by Kyle. He always knew what the next note was going to be and never fell out of tune.
A second, third, and fourth squad of Mor’dverg attacked him and when the rest of the team wanted to join in, Lash held them back. Kyle heard her say, “He is in his element. This is why we follow him.”
Hilde had only laughed as she said, “Let him play and have his fun.”
The stream of warriors soon faded to a trickle but not before Kyle had really gotten into his groove. Essence was so dense down here, that he was absorbing it faster than he could spend it. He had thought that he’d felt alive playing baseball, but that had been nothing compared to this.
He started stalking towards the forge. As he got closer, it appeared almost to be an altar, in that the sides were covered in runes and the object sitting atop it pulsed with dark energy. Even though Kyle had never seen it with his own eyes, there was no mistaking what this was—or at least what it once had been.
It was clearly a fragment of Dod’s scythe.
The blacksmith Mor’dverg shouted out at him. “You may have killed my brother. You may be able to stop our warriors, but you will never have my prize. It is mine.”
Kyle’s grin was positively wicked. “I don’t see that you can do much about it,” he said. “If you’ve got more warriors, send them out. Otherwise, why don’t you hand over the artifact. You don’t know what you’ve got there, and don’t understand what it is doing to your people.”
“I would sooner set my creation loose than let you have this,” the Mor’dverg smith shouted, spittle flying from his mouth.
Kyle began to seriously doubt the creature’s sanity.
He stopped to send out his senses to check the room for any more enemies before he made another move. That delay was all it took for the black smith to jump forward and pull on a lever. A pulse of energy shot out from the altar/anvil and blasted everyone including Kyle to the ground. The entire room around him was destroyed as glass broke, metal shards flew, and the few remaining Mor’dverg collapsed, as though the very life had been sucked out of them.
After the thirty seconds that it took Kyle to recover, he looked up at the shattered ruin of all around him. The Mor’dverg lay where they’d fallen, nothing but dried out husks, including the blacksmith. Kyle’s team had been knocked unconscious by the explosion’s shockwave.
Where the altar had been, the giant sculpture now squatted. Its tripod legs bent and lowered its body to the ground as if the altar was a metallic egg it had been trying to hatch. But then, Kyle heard the sounds of large gears whirring and grinding and without warning, steam poured out of the nostril vents in the statue's flat face.
A sense of dread washed over Kyle, prompting him to reach out with his senses to examine the statute. As he’d feared, he determined almost immediately that it was a mechanical creature composed entirely of gears and powered by essence crystals. His senses told him little about the gears and metallic parts beyond their composition, but he had no trouble seeing the mechanism designed to transport energy from those crystals throughout the creature's massive frame. Worst of all though, the broken fragment of Dod’s scythe now formed the creature’s core and fed the golem Death Essence through those same channels.
Kyle walked up to the clockwork golem carefully, hoping that it was still in some sort of activation stage. Meanwhile, he prioritized a portion of his senses to scan his party. His team was down, but none of them were dead.
His senses told him that they were all okay, just in various stages of being concussed. The cuts on Kierra’s arms were healing already and, despite having been run through by a long metal spear, Skrug was struggling to get to his feet, as well. He just needed to be cut free, so that he could fully heal.
The golem began to stir. It’s forty-foot height was impressive, and Kyle had to wonder how durable the metal creature might be. Its legs straightened, and the golem’s torso began to hum and buzz. It stood to its full height of over fifty feet tall; the ceiling was only ten feet above its head. It was twenty feet across at the torso, and the entire cavern of a room was only a bit more than a hundred feet across. There wasn’t going to be a lot of room for anyone to move, not while trying to fight something like that.
Kyle decided the first move was to get his team up and moving. He needed to get them to retreat. He might do alright against this creation, but somehow, he doubted the others would fare well at all. The thing’s wide, tripod legs would make it hard to topple over and he feared that, even if he could unbalance the thing, it would land on one of his teammates.
A blast of electricity shot up from the corner where Gilthan was. The brilliant flash slammed into the golem and danced all over its frame without appearing to cause any harm. The construct was made of the same mithril, adamantium, and elementium alloy as the Mor’dverg’s weapons. Or rather its armor plating and weapons were similar in composition to theirs.
In response, the massive machine’s upper half spun while its legs and lower torso remained stationary. One of its three arms extended out a full thirty feet and swung down to smash the elven sorcerer. Fortunately for Gilthan, Kyle was faster than the machine.
Kyle surged across the space faster than the eye could follow. He had loosened any and all restraints on the flow of essence within him. His body was working at a Spirit Tier higher even than Hilde. As the golem’s hammer shaped hand came down, Kyle swung his own hammer up into it.
Kyle’s upward swinging irresistible force met the downward irresistible force and proved to be the stronger—not by a lot, but by enough. The golem’s arm was knocked back and its body rocked in place before stabilizing. In turn, Kyle was knocked back into the wall. The stone shattering around him.
As he caught his breath, Kyle barked at Gilthan, “Get up and get the others. I will keep this thing occupied.” His tone wasn’t that of a team captain issuing an order that could be argued with, it was that of the war god demanding immediate obedience.
Confident that his order would be followed, Kyle went to work on the clockwork golem. He ran underneath it and jumped upwards, trying to slam his hammer into the knee joint where the thing bent to squat down. Its torso suddenly spun, flinging a backhand to intercept him that sent him flying.
Rather than slam i
nto the wall, Kyle managed to reorient himself in mid-air. Air essence flowed all around him and slowed his momentum enough that he was able to get his feet behind him. When they struck the wall, Kyle collected all that kinetic energy in his legs and used it to launch himself back at the golem.
His mind expanded and he kept going for what he knew was its weakest point: the knees. Every time he was pushed back, that didn’t stop him from also using Earth Essence to cause stone to soften under one foot while solidifying into boots around the other two.
The ability to multi-task in a fight was everything when battling such a powerful enemy. Small essence crystals slid out of the golem’s side and bolts of black lightning lashed out at Kyle. He managed to dodge most of them, but one struck him, and he felt a surge of death essence go through him.
A mortal would have been killed instantly, their soul reaped from their body, but Kyle was well beyond that now. It still stung, but the War Essence within him automatically fought back. Frustratingly, the golem was fighting back too.
The leg that had sunk into soft stone burst upwards, ripping up the floor with it. Its other two legs broke free from the stone boots he had formed around them. Now it was starting to chase him around the room; Kyle didn’t like being on the defensive.
He checked and found his team was clear of the room. Based on his connection with Gilthan, they were now working their way back up the stairs. He was grateful that Hilde or one of the others hadn’t fought him on this, but apparently his command to Gilthan carried more weight than he realized.
At least now, he could go to work without holding back.
He released a Rage Burst at full force, trying to slice through the thing’s metal legs and bring the golem to the ground. The stone chamber was ripped apart in all directions by the blast, but the metal legs held. It was not just the powerful alloy that resisted his Rage Burst, but also the death energy flowing through the golem.
The legs were too thick for his hammer to smash. With a start, he realized that this was his soul bound weapon—it only took on this form, because he willed it so. And he’d only willed it so because he had been first become acquainted with it as a mining pick back at the quarry. That meant that he could reshape it.
A hammer fist the size of a compact car came down on top of him. Kyle was strong but knew that this monstrosity of essence and machinery was even stronger, at least for now. Rather than brave a direct confrontation, he rolled to the side, out of its way.
Now that his mind had determined the feasibility of a new approach, his will set about making it happen. The war hammer in his hands became fluid, shifting into a long lance with a four-inch wide, two-foot-long blade at the end of the shaft. With it, Kyle took careful aim. War Essence danced along the edge of the lance and captured the metaphysical concepts of cutting and piercing. Kyle borrowed extra strength from the earth and leapt upward, using Sky Essence to mold air around him, removing all resistance in front of him and accelerating himself even more, so that he became his own fastball special.
The combination of essences worked like a charm, and unsurprisingly, the aim of the war god was dead on. He drove the lance straight into the center of the massive construct, piercing through its metal armor, gears, tubes, and all of its innards to strike the divine fragment that made up its core.
As he hit the core, Kyle willed his lance to extend even further, until it burst out the golem’s back, carrying with it the fragment of Dod’s shattered scythe. Instantly, the Death Essence that powered the construct drained from its channels, its whirling arms stopping mid-swing. The entire golem froze back into its pre-animated state, as a massive, bizarre statue.
Kyle flipped backwards from the apex of his leap and landed on both feet. The impact threw up a cloud of dust around him, but he had a wide grin on his face. The monster was down, and a divine artifact was his to claim. He sprinted around the defunct golem, scanning the room for any other dangers. But all thought of that fled his mind as soon as he saw the fragment.
His lance had returned to the original ten-foot length he had created it to be. He tried to call it to him, but the blade was driven through the shard and something about the two soul bound items being in contact kept his weapon from obeying his command. As he focused more closely on the shard, he realized why.
This was not just a fragment of Dod’s soul bound weapon. No, this was one of her divine splinters. His mind raced as he realized that if Dod had imbued her weapon with a single splinter, then it would either neve have been able to break, or it would have healed itself already.
But then the awful truth dawned on him. Dod had sought to make the scythe the focus of her divine power and in so doing, had placed not one, but multiple divine splinters into one object. He pushed his senses deeper into it and realized that it had been one of three.
That is why those splinters now lay spread across the land. But then he had to ask himself, how was it that Dod had not reclaimed them?
That too became obvious. When Krig had shattered the weapon, his War Essence had broken the three splinters’ direct connection with Dod. They were now pieces of her power but removed from her influence. She was probably blind to their existence. It was likely that she knew they were out here somewhere in the material plane, but she would be unable to sense them.
Now, he just had to figure out what to do with it. He was unwilling to lose his soul bound weapon. His first instinct was to try and use his divine will and creation ability to fuse the divine fragment into his weapon. The problem with that, though, was that such a strategy had not turned out well for Dod.
Kyle was a firm believer in learning from the mistakes others made.
There was another option, but it might be risky. He had set himself on the path of becoming the one head god of Verden. In order to do so, he would require as much essence as he could obtain. So why not? He thought it through and tried to assess the pros and cons, but in the end, his penchant for decisiveness won out.
Kyle decided to take the risk.
He knelt down next to his lance and placed a bare hand upon the scythe’s shard—or more properly, upon the divine fragment. He felt it pulsing under his touch. As he pushed raw essence into it, he realized that this was going to be possible, but painful.
Without giving himself time to second guess his decision, Kyle took a deep breath, put a shredded leather strap between his teeth, and bit down hard as he willed the divine fragment to enter his body.
Death Essence swept through his system and he was sure he screamed but there was no one else on this level to hear him. He wondered if Hilde and the others could hear him, up on whichever higher level they had reached by now. It didn’t matter. He was fighting a war—a war between his own divine soul and a splinter of Dod’s.
Back and forth, divine energies flowed, threatening to drag him down and turn him into Dod’s puppet. That was the great risk he’d decided to take. But whether man or god, Kyle knew what he wasn’t, and that was anyone else’s puppet. His will would win.
Could he have beaten Dod herself in such a contest of will? It was highly unlikely, and Kyle knew it. His destiny might be set, but he still had to walk the path. He wasn’t yet in possession of enough of his power to contest wills with any of the other gods, but he had enough to master this splinter.
Once it finally merged with him, Kyle felt a surge of power swell through him. And then, he passed out. It was only for a minute as his body adjusted to this new power, but when he woke his bright blue eyes had a single black speck that danced back and forth across his irises.
He was something… more, now. He pulled up his character sheet, to see just what that was. He only focused on the part that had changed.
Name: Krig-Kyle Hudson
Race: War Godling/Demi-god of Death
Stats: (Current/Max)
Strength: 22/42
Agility: 15/42
Constitution: 22/45
Will: 30/45
Mind: 15/39
Charisma: 20/29
Essence: Current/Max
Sky: 7/12 Conversion rate: 1/5 seconds
Death: 25/25 Conversion rate: 1/5 seconds
Sea: 0/12
Deceit: 1/13 Conversion rate: 1/10 seconds
Earth: 17/33 Conversion rate: 1/3 seconds (Durability)
War: 27/50 Conversion rate: 15/second
Raw Essence: 5,319,756 (construct)
631,023,501 (mantle inside you)
His War, Earth, and Sky Essence had each gone up by at least a point, as had all of his attributes. His Strength and Constitution had pushed into the Spirit Tier. The biggest change though, was that his Death Essence had shot up to 25/25.
He had bypassed making a connection with the concept of death, as he had with Earth Essence’s durability. Dod’s divine splinter must have made that unnecessary. A part of him wondered if it was a shortcut that he shouldn’t go back and remedy.