by Dante King
She wheeled on me as I dived away from a vicious stab from the golem. “Ethan, can you open the door?”
“Little busy!” I shouted back.
The roar of the ice golem filled the whole shrine, echoed off the walls, and battered my ears.
Vesma and Kegohr moved up to my flank. Flames flickered from our weapons as we stood together to face this new monster.
The golem turned its icicle around and swung it like a baseball bat. The blunt weight scythed through the air, and we were all forced to jump back. Kegohr was a fraction of a second too slow, and the blow caught him in the chest. He wasn’t light, but the strength of the golem was still enough to toss him across the room like an empty soda can. He crashed into a pedestal and slid to the ground. Kumi blurred away from the doors at the impact.
Vesma and I went on the offensive. I swung the Sundered Heart in a series of swift attacks as she darted around the golem and probed for weak points with her spear. Shards of ice flew as blows landed, but nothing seemed to do any serious harm.
The golem turned on her with movement surprisingly fast for a creature of its size and lashed out with its improvised spear. Vesma flung up a Flame Shield just in time to block the hit, and there was an angry hiss as the first six inches of the golem’s frozen spear evaporated. Vesma tumbled across the smooth floor as her shield dissipated and left her sprawled out on the ground.
I ran in and hacked at the creature’s arm to take its attention off Vesma. My blow landed where water formed an elbow joint between the plates of ice. The Sundered Heart bit through with a sizzle, but the water reformed behind it. The golem barely seemed to feel my strike despite the flames that rippled over my sword.
Kumi crouched over the unconscious Kegohr and chanted urgently. Water flowed out of ceremonial bowls positioned around the room, ran across the floor, and formed a layer over the half-ogre. He opened his eyes, grinned, and lumbered to his feet.
“Are you back with us?” I called out as I dodged beneath a swing from the golem.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said. “Never felt better.”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. His body started to glow, and flames flared in his eyes.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “That’s more like it.”
Kegohr joined the fight with his mace swinging, and he hit the golem with a massive strike. His half-ogre strength, fire magic, and momentum combined to smash into the animated statue’s chest. The golem staggered back, clutching the gap where Kegohr had taken a chunk out of its side.
The colossal guardian righted itself against a wall, pulled its arm back, and flung the remains of its icicle at Kegohr. I sent a flash of wood power through the ground and up. A thin Plank Pillar materialized in front of Kegohr, and the icicle sank halfway through the wood before it halted an inch away from his eye.
I concentrated on the golem’s head and summoned a cloud of ash. Blackness appeared out of the air around it and blinded it for a moment. The golem still needed to see, even if it was a magical construct. The creature flailed its arms in an attempt to disperse the cloud.
I looked to Kegohr and Vesma and communicated an unspoken plan. They knew exactly what I wanted to do. It probably wouldn’t work, but it was the surest way of dealing with this monstrosity before it dealt with us.
“Now!” I shouted.
All three of us blasted the golem with a simultaneous Untamed Torch. Blinded by the ash, it was completely unaware when our streams of fire plowed into its body. Steam fizzed as the scorching flames bombarded its frozen exterior. Then, it barrelled forward and forced us to split up to avoid being crushed.
“We’re getting there!” I called.
“Maybe,” Vesma said and pointed. “Look.”
The golem raised a hand, and water flowed from the ceremonial bowls before streaming across the floor. The liquid surged toward the creature until it coalesced up into its legs. The water settled into gaps we had melted away from its body, froze over, sealed the wounds, and left our foe intact and very pissed off. It emerged from the fading remnants of the black cloud, its face gray with ash.
“You teach the golem your tricks?” I asked Kumi.
“It isn’t part of the temple. Someone must have brought it here.”
The golem launched toward me. I spun aside a second before it would have pulverized me and shot a barrage of Stinging Palm into its back. The thorns bounced harmlessly off its hardened outer shell, and I cursed as I realized just how much Vigor I’d need to pump into the technique to harm the golem.
“Someone must have poisoned its mind.” The princess jabbed our icy enemy in the side with her dagger. It whipped around and backhanded her across the room.
“We can’t just whittle it down,” I said as I pulled Kumi to her feet. “We need something bigger. A killing blow.”
I glanced up at the ceiling and found the huge ice sculpture above us. I dived away from a bone-crushing punch and gestured for my friends to follow me.
“This way!”
We regrouped behind the golem as its eyes shone with an elemental menace.
“Keep backing up,” I said as Kegohr made ready to attack.
“We’ve gotta get to it,” he said.
“And we will. Trust me.”
The creature lumbered after us as its footfalls shook the room. It roared and swung its arms around, a display that might have intimidated lesser heroes than three Outer Disciples of the Radiant Dragon Guild.
I flung up a Plank Pillar in front of the golem as it reached the center of the room. It roared again and took a step back, but I’d put another pillar behind it, and more to either side. I summoned three more wooden walls to increase the thickness of the golem’s prison. The monster bellowed as it attempted to break free by smashing its fists against the planks.
“Untamed Torch, on my mark,” I said to the others and pointed at the ceiling above the golem. “Up there.”
They looked up to see what I’d seen on the way in. We flung blasts of fire at its base and wore away at the ice fixing it to the ceiling.
The golem grabbed hold of a pillar and tore off a plank. It battered at the others with a sound like the beating of a drummer who couldn’t find their rhythm. Splinters clouded the air around the creature.
I poured more Vigor into my Untamed Torch until it burned so bright, it started to flare. Water ran down the icicle as the base melted, but it still clung tenaciously in place.
The golem continued pounding at the planks and started to break down a pillar, but the gap wasn’t wide enough for it to squeeze through. The animated statue dropped its plank to wrench at those still standing. There was a creak, a splintering crack, and a thud as the golem wrenched another Plank Pillar loose and flung it aside.
I poured all my Vigor into Flame Empowerment and enhanced the burning techniques of Kegohr and Vesma while continuing my own Untamed Torch. The flames engulfed the base of the huge sculpture. It shook, swayed, and fell.
A bombardment of icicles slammed into the top of the golem’s head point-first. Ice shattered and water sprayed as our improvised weapon obliterated the hulking guardian in a single strike. The shrine rumbled with the impact, and I glanced up at the ceiling. It didn’t look like it would cave in, and I breathed a sigh.
“Got it!” Kegohr bellowed. “Oh, yeah!”
Vesma nodded. “That was rather difficult.”
“We need to speak with Father and tell him what happened to his trident,” Kumi said. “And that his guards have been compromised.”
“How you gonna get through the doors?” Kegohr asked. “The guards locked them, remember?”
“It’s made of wood. You can all blast it down.”
“Wait. We don’t know what else could be waiting for us out there. I’m running low on Vigor, and the others could use some of your magic. Whoever took the trident is probably long gone by now.”
She stared at me blankly for a moment. She nodded and raised her hands.
She sang a somb
er tune as what water remained in the bowls drifted into the air and bathed Vesma and Kegohr. I hadn’t been injured in the fight, but my friends had sustained minor bruises. It easily could have gone far worse.
I hated being this low on Vigor, so I spent a few minutes meditating and studying my internal pathways. Soon, my magical stores started to replenish, but they were still lower than I would have liked.
“What’s this?” Kegohr asked as he reached behind a statue’s plinth and picked up a glowing object by a chain. Connected to the chain was what looked a tiny bird cage.
“A monster lure,” I answered, recalling the lures we had used with Master Rutmonlir. “Now, we know why the monsters left the Vigorous Zone. But a lure that could bring them from so far away must be very powerful.”
“And expensive,” Vesma added.
“Who’d spend a bloody fortune on luring monsters to Qihin?” Kegohr asked the question with an answer so obvious, I almost palmed my face.
“Resplendent Tears,” Kumi said with a snarl. “They’re the ones who stole the trident; I’m sure of it. Horix has always envied—” Her eyes suddenly widened. She gasped and shuffled sideways, and I saw a figure standing behind her.
It was impossible to mistake that white hair, those slender features, or the fancy blue robes.
Cadrin.
He held a blue-metal trident glowing with an inner light and pressed its longest prong against Kumi’s back.
I unsheathed the Sundered Heart, the sound almost deafening in the dead silence.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I tried to calm myself and squash my desire to run him through. I wouldn’t reach him before he skewered the princess with the stolen trident.
“Such prowess,” he said in a voice dripping with disdain. “It would be a shame not to test it properly. I see the half-breed has already found one lure. With two, the wyrm won’t be able to resist.”
He unclasped a cage almost identical to the one Kegohr had found and flung it into the center of the room.
“Enjoy yourselves.” He laughed as he backed away, Kumi still held captive at the point of the trident.
Cadrin vanished through the door. I would have bolted after him, but the ground suddenly shook with violent tremors. I staggered and caught hold of a statue, straightened myself, and made ready to pursue Cadrin. He was already out of the hall, pushing Kumi ahead of him down a side passage.
“We gotta catch that bastard!” I shouted as I made for the doorway.
Before I’d taken three steps, the floor beneath me ruptured, and I was thrown to my feet in a shower of brick. I continuing rolling and jumped to my feet.
“Wow, wow, wow!” Kegohr exclaimed.
In the middle of the inner shrine, blocking the exit, was a gaping hole. A serpent as wide as a sedan rose up from it, opened its mouth, and bared teeth the length of short swords. Water blasted from its gaping maw in a focused jet. Ice gave way under the powerful stream and smashed a statue. The doorway caved in under the falling statue and trapped us inside with another fucking monster.
“This isn’t good,” Kegohr muttered.
“No shit, big guy,” I replied.
Chapter Twelve
The creature turned its attention to us and filled the shrine with a rasping hiss. The monster’s muscles flexed as its deep-blue body slithered out from the hole in the floor and coiled into the chamber. It slammed into a pillar, knocked it to the ground, and dislodged tiles and chunks of ice from the ceiling above.
My heart hammered in my chest as my mind struggled to make sense of what we were facing.
“What the hell is that?” I shouted as the ground shook beneath my feet.
“Tidal wyrm,” Vesma answered. “They’re legendary monsters that live out in the ocean Vigorous Zones.”
“How the hells do you always know this stuff?” Kegohr yelled as he darted clear of a chunk of ceiling.
“I read a lot, okay?” Vesma replied as she engulfed her spear in flames.
The tidal wyrm reared up and paused to sniff the air. A forked tongue as thick as my forearm flicked out from its massive maw. In a flash of movement, the giant snake slammed face-first into the floor. Tiles tore themselves free as it burrowed into the ground and made another gaping hole. The floor ahead of it rippled and shook as it wormed its way through the earth beneath and left a ridge of dirt and shattered mosaic tiles in its wake.
Vesma dived clear of yet another statue as it wobbled and crunched into the ruined floor where she had been a moment before. The ground between us ruptured as the wyrm burst to the surface once more. The long, scaly body came tumbling out and slithered toward a lure. The scraping of its scales against the tiles rasped and created a wall of noise that grew as it reverberated through the room. Icicles fell from the ceiling and disintegrated harmlessly against the beast’s hide.
One of the icicles plummeted toward me, and I dived away before it exploded on the ground from away from my face. Razor blades of ice hurtled past my head and sliced the skin of my arms. Thin rivulets of blood splattered across the white and blue of the tiles.
“What’s it doing?” Kegohr asked as he scrambled out of the wyrm’s path.
“Looking for the lures,” I said. “Though I don’t know why it doesn’t just go for them.”
My Vigor ebbed low within me; I didn’t have enough juice to take this thing on with pure Augmenting power. The minutes I’d had to meditate hadn’t been nearly enough to replenish my stores.
“A tidal wyrm’s senses become addled on land,” Vesma said. “It takes it time to adjust.”
“So, it’s just going to keep thrashing around like this?” I asked.
“Until it spots the lures, yes.”
“Then, let’s help it.”
I dodged falling icicles and the wyrm’s erratic path as I ran across the room and snatched up the lure Kegohr had found behind the statue. I danced around the monster’s rippling body, leaped over a statue, and grabbed the other lure, the one Cadrin had left behind. The chains of the magically imbued cages were icy cold in my hand, but I ignored the sting and clung to them tightly. If we allowed the monster to run riot through the temple and beyond, countless people could be injured or killed. My friends among them.
This ancient building, the religious heart of the Qihin Clan, would be destroyed. And a beast like this, a powerful monster out of the ocean’s Vigorous Zone, had to have a powerful core. This tidal wyrm’s body likely contained an astonishing technique. And that was something I wanted.
“Hey!” I shouted, waving the lures over my head. My hope was that once the wyrm had spotted the glowing lights within the cages, it would follow them. And if not… well, I’d work something else out.
“Kraken reject!” I yelled as I continued brandishing the lures. “Over here!”
The wyrm halted its erratic movements and turned to look at me. Its eyes were huge black bowls on either side of its head, and I felt the weight of their power bearing down on me.
I waved the lures through the air. “Is this what you’re looking for?”
The wyrm whipped its tail around. The tip hit a statue and sent it flying from its pedestal. It shattered against the wall, and broken pieces of some ancestral Qihin figure tumbled onto the tiles. Then, the wyrm shot forward, straight toward me.
I whirled around, thrust the lures through my belt, and ran as they dangled a few inches short of the ground. The wyrm slithered after me and destroyed sacred pedestals and precious artifacts as it went. I pressed my back against a wall and dived out of the way a second before the wyrm would have crushed me. Its head smashed into the wall and produced a small cavity.
As the wyrm circled back, I darted around it before running through the small gap in the wall and into the yard. I took a hard left, past the towering carvings of the ancient Qihin, and followed the line of the walls toward the temple’s exit.
I tried to work out a plan as I ran. I didn’t want to lead this monster back into the city, where it
would cause carnage among the already-traumatized population. Nor did I want to let it get away, not when I had the chance to harvest the powerful core of such an intimidating beast. That meant trying to deal with it inside the temple.
A chunk of the wall crunched into the ground behind me, toppled a corner of the guardhouse pagoda, and ripped part of a wing away from the entrance to the temple courtyard.
I dashed through the courtyard and caught sight of rocks rising in front of me. A broad staircase twisted up into the cliff beside the courtyard and rose to a plateau halfway up the towering formation of the temple structure. From there, a broad waterfall crashed past the temple and into the city below.
I headed for the stairs. It was the closest thing I had to a choke point. A glance over my shoulder told me that the wyrm was still in earth-shattering pursuit. Vesma and Kegohr chased after it with their weapons ablaze.
The stairs were wide and deep. I raced up them two at a time with a pumping heart and screaming legs as I tried to get a lead on the wyrm.
The monster shot up the stairs after me. My chosen pathway was broad for a human, but the stairs were still narrow compared to the vast body of my pursuer. The winding staircase left little space for the wyrm to flex its coils and drive up after me. I increased my lead on the beast while Vesma and Kegohr started to catch up.
The stairs doubled back at the first turn, so I ran past and above the space I’d just been through. After a dozen yards, I stopped, spun, and raised the Sundered Heart.
“And how will you escape from this little predicament, sweet man?” Nydarth murmured.
“Same way I always do,” I wheezed. “Grace, good style, and taking breaks to catch my breath.”
I forced air into my lungs as the wyrm slithered past below. I brought my sword down on its body as it struggled up the stairs. I’d aimed to slice through its neck, but my blade bounced off its scales with a flash of sparks. I swung again, two-handed this time, but the scales still didn’t part.
“It’s a rather dense creature,” Nydarth observed.