“There was plenty of death and destruction at Silverton,” I said. “Then even more, when you sent the Necromancer to crush Homehold.”
“Water under the bridge,” the Emperor said.
“No, I don’t think so,” I countered. “You and the Dark King are a lot alike.”
That was the first time that his warm smile seemed to falter. For just a moment, I saw hatred boiling in his eyes, though he tried to suppress it. “Surely you jest,” he said. “I’m nothing like that no-good demon. Mother Gaia has blessed me to rule my people peacefully and justly.”
I snorted. “Yeah, but the Dark King came to talk with me, same as you,” I said. “And that tells me a lot.”
“Does it?”
I nodded. “It tells me that you’re not half as confident as you pretend to be,” I said. “You’re afraid of us. You’re afraid of the rebellion.”
“Oh, great Champion, you’re mistaken about that,” the Emperor said. “You see, the Dark King, powerful as he was, was always a cowardly creature. He knew you were a formidable opponent, which was why he let his underlings get slaughtered before he rode out to face you.”
“Yeah?” I said. “Well you seem content to do the same.”
He sighed wistfully, looked skyward, and smiled, as if gazing up at the heavens. “Mother Gaia, sweet queen, give this humble servant of the people the strength to keep this Empire safe,” he said.
Then, he turned back to me. His eyes had gone black. A thrumming, ominous energy seemed to run through him.
“I’ll be taking that stone now,” he said, then reached through the watery void and grabbed me firmly by the wrist.
*****
I slammed back into my body, back into the physical world, only to find out that the Emperor had brought himself along for the ride.
“A pity that we can’t do this like civilized folk,” he said, then unleashed a combination destruction spell, fire laced with lightning. Just as it struck me, I managed to grab my pack – with the Spirit Stone still inside of it – before his spell blew me right through the goddamn wall.
It hurled me clean through brick and plaster then sent me sailing out into the trees.
“Fuck!” I grunted as I crashed into a tree then fell roughly down to the ground.
And that was when I saw that the Emperor hadn’t come alone. I heard them first, growling all around the perimeter, and at once I understood why we’d seen those werewolves in the forest the other day.
The Emperor had brought them, and now that they had our scent, they were climbing through the illusory effects of Corvus Gavrus’ magic…but soon, they didn’t even have to do that much.
The Emperor came floating down quietly as the Mananymphs and Corvus came rushing outside to help me.
“It’s him!” Pandora shouted. “It’s the Emperor!”
“Yes, in the flesh,” the Emperor answered with a smile.
Corvus ran to the head of the group, fists glowing with illusion magic. “You’re trespassing in these woods, your highness!” Corvus shouted, then promptly created a demon knight with his illusion magic.
“That’s where you’re wrong, sir,” the Emperor said, smiling. “For the sun never sets on my Empire.”
At that, the Emperor cast another combination destruction spell. A long, deadly spear made of ice and fire appeared in his hand, and he hurled it effortlessly. It ran through Corvus’ illusory demon knight…and then, struck Corvus right through the heart.
Corvus’ eyes bulged wide as blood began to run out of his mouth. He fell down to his knees, gurgling on his own blood, then fell dead into the dirt.
“Corvus, no!” I shouted, drawing my amber longsword.
I’d lost sight of my pack, but I had no time to look for it, because now the Emperor was coming at me again, and so were the wolves.
“Take the Mananymphs alive,” the Emperor said lazily to his werewolves. “The Champion is mine.”
There must have been fifty werewolves, lean and starving. The Emperor must have kept them hungry and desperate, which made them all that much more vicious.
The Mananymphs drew themselves into a circle.
“Keep them at bay!” Pandora shouted, taking the lead. “Sisters, remain at each other’s backs!”
“Always!” Sephara answered.
Esmerelda’s hands were sparking with fiery destruction magic. “They’ll have to kill me before they get to my sisters.”
And there was Bella, now creating a small army of seraphs. She could have created more, if she hadn’t been over-extending herself previously. “Let’s show them the might of the Mananymphs!” she shouted.
Growling, I charged an ice storm spell in the Soulguard, then launched it at the Emperor. He let out a bored sort of chuckle as he absorbed the spell in his knockoff Soulguard and hurled it back at me.
I dodged it, just barely, then tried to cast an invisibility spell. The moment I vanished, I felt a tight force around my neck, then realized the Emperor had me by the throat using telekinesis.
“ACK!” I grunted as he lifted me several feet into the air, then hit me with a dispel blast that knocked the cloak of invisibility right off of me.
He flung me aside, into another tree, but I merely healed myself, fortified my speed, and got right back up to my feet.
“Oh, the Champion is a willful one!” the Emperor said.
“Yeah,” I said, gasping for breath. “You got that right.”
As I charged him, I cast another fortify speed spell, stacking my stats, and hacked toward him with the amber longsword.
The moment I did, the Emperor drew his own blade, a massive seraph claymore, pulsing with righteous magic, an almost blinding shade of white. He wielded the weapon single-handedly, hinting at the massive strength camouflaged by his apparent frailty.
The Emperor laughed once more, easily parrying each one of my strikes, despite the bulk of his massive sword. He handled the weapon as if it were not even a quarter of its actual weight.
Even with my speed boosted, I never came close to even scratching him. He parried my last strike, then quickly kicked me in the knee. I went down hard. He hacked down at me with his seraph claymore and, when I tried to block it with my amber longsword, it shattered the amber blade in half.
“Such a disappointment,” the Emperor said as he stood over me. He smiled. “Perhaps, once you’re under my command, you’ll become a more competent fighter.”
The Emperor, then, didn’t seem to want to kill me. Instead, he finished me off with a quick boot to the chest that sent me sprawling to the ground.
He paused, sheathed his sword. Behind him, the Mananymphs were just barely holding off the werewolves, who were closing in on them despite their best efforts.
“Now, then, where’s that stone?” the Emperor said. He raised the white copy of the Soulguard and I knew what he was doing; he was feeling for the stone, calling it toward his gauntlet, the same way that I could.
Yeah, the Emperor was powerful. But I had a distinct advantage over him: Experience with the Soulguard.
As he telekinetically pulled the Spirit Stone from my pack and pulled it toward his gauntlet, I leaped in front of him, catching the Gaia Stone in the Soulguard.
“NO!” he shouted.
I smiled. “Oh yeah, bitch,” I said.
Chapter Thirteen
I grunted in satisfaction as the Spirit Stone’s violent energy surged through me and boosted all my stats. Plus, merely wearing the stone increased certain skills.
ENCHANTMENT SKILL INCREASED +1
SPELL ABSORPTION INCREASED +1
The Emperor took a reflexive step backward but was too slow to dodge the magical blast I hurled at him.
The blinding golden energy from the Spirit Stone struck him in his center mass and sent him flying twenty feet into the trees. He got up, snarling at the dirt he’d gotten on his immaculately white robe, and drew his sword again.
But I remembered my battle against the Necromancer. Even boosted
temporarily into a vampire lord, on top of wielding the Storm Gem, trying to defeat the Dark King with raw power had been a losing strategy.
No, I wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.
I clenched my fist and the golden light crackled and spilled from the Soulguard as I tapped into the Spirit Stone. I reached out, infecting the mind of every werewolf that was attacking the Mananymphs, and quietly imposed my will upon them.
At once, the werewolves stopped, turned to the Emperor, and bared their teeth.
“Attack!” Pandora shouted.
The Mananymphs quickly began to regroup as the werewolves fell upon the Emperor. Of course, ferocious as they were, they wouldn’t last long against the Emperor.
Quickly, he took the wolves out two and three at a time, using a combination of his wicked swordsmanship and overpowered magic. As I approached him with the Mananymphs moving in to support me, the Emperor hurled a lightning bolt at me.
SPELL ABSORPTION SKILL INCREASED +1
The notification flashed across my eyes as I caught the lightning then hurled it back at him. The bolt struck him in the shoulder, frying his white robe into a charred fabric.
DESTRUCTION SKILL INCREASED +1
I had the Emperor on the ropes, with the wolves almost getting the better of him now, but I knew better than to count him out.
Indeed, mere seconds later, the Emperor ripped through the wolves with a powerful, short-range circle of hellfire that vaporized every last one of them.
Quickly, the Emperor healed himself then cast a powerful fortify spell that boosted his strength and speed far beyond my own, even with the Spirit Stone in my grip.
I attempted to hit him with a destructive blast from the Soulguard, but he was too fast. He charged me, absorbed the magical blast, then blasted it toward me.
He snarled as the magic knocked me off my feet. He swung his fake Soulguard, bashing the side of my head with a vicious level of strength.
“This is mine!” the Emperor growled, eyeing the Spirit Stone. Pinning me down by the throat with his bare hand, he used his fake Soulguard to try to pry the stone loose.
And he might have, if not for the Mananymphs.
Pandora struck him first, teleporting right up to him, slashing his face with a dragontooth dagger, then shocked him with a TK blast. The blast only knocked him back briefly, and he blasted her right back with one of his own.
With Pandora on the ground, Sephara screamed a battle cry as she thrust her spear toward his throat. The Emperor quickly dodged the strike then knocked her thirty feet back with a blast of lightning.
Esmerelda came next, blasting the Emperor in the face with a gout of fire. The Emperor roared in pain, absorbed the spell, then effortlessly backhanded Esmerelda. The glancing blow nevertheless sent her sprawling.
I was still trying to get to my feet when Bella attacked, sending those half-dozen illusory seraphs at the Emperor. With his seraph claymore in hand, he cut them down within seconds, then knocked Bella unconscious with a blast of ice.
He caught his breath, stared down at me, and grinned. “I’ll be taking your Mananymphs along with that stone, Champion,” he said. “But you? I suppose I’ll just kill you now and be done with it.
He pulled me up to my knees, drew his claymore back, intending to ram it through my chest.
And he would have, if Pandora hadn’t teleported between us.
She slashed at his throat, nicking him just below the jaw. It would have been a mortal blow, if she’d only aimed an inch lower.
The Emperor, however, had her dead to rights.
“PANDORA!” I screamed.
He drove the tip of claymore right through her chest. The blade burst out of her back, painted red with blood as he stabbed her through the heart.
She looked back at me, wordless and in shock, and the flickering mysticism magic went dark in her eyes as she fell to the ground, dead.
He tossed her lifeless body aside. I was screaming in rage, a maelstrom of hatred that swirled around me and channeled the Spirit Stone’s power into the Soulguard. My vision nearly went blinding white as the golden energy tore through my body.
If it was supposed to hurt, I was so enraged that I didn’t feel a thing.
Roaring, I closed the Soulguard into a fist and drove it into the Emperor’s face. His face crunched under my armored knuckles and the Spirit Stone exploded, a mini-thermonuclear blast that knocked the surrounding trees loose from the ground.
GAIA STRENGTH: -100/100
The Spirit Stone shattered as I struck the Emperor with all its strength, and that single punch was enough to knock him back into the void from where he came. As he tumbled back into the ethereal void, he glared at me.
“This isn’t over, Earthman!” he screamed as the void closed all around him.
*****
Pushing my Gaia strength stats down to -100 had nearly killed me, but I didn’t care.
The Soulguard itself was blackened and dented at the knuckles, right where it had struck the Emperor. The Spirit Stone had gone dark, now reduced to dim shards that fell from the groove below the knuckles.
My entire body ached. The force of wielding the Spirit Stone so intensely had burnt my left arm to shit. My left eye had swollen shut and there was a painful flare in my ribs whenever I drew breath.
And still, I didn’t care.
I shrugged off the pain and fought back tears as I approached Pandora’s broken body. With the claymore still lodged in her chest, I grabbed the hilt and tossed it aside. I dropped down to my knees and cradled her.
For the most fleeting moment, I thought I’d be able to mend her with healing magic, but it was no use. Healing magic couldn’t heal death.
“Oh no,” Sephara said as she watched from a few feet away.
The rest of the Mananymphs were back on their feet now, staring in dread as I held their dead sister in my arms.
But I had one last hope.
“Sephara,” I called out, my voice trembling and ragged. “Heal me as best you can.”
Sephara nodded quietly and began using her restoration magic on me. While she did this, I pulled up my Second Sight then went to the skill tree.
There was a chance.
REVIVE ALLY
EFFECT: SINGLE-USE, ONCE-PER-DAY SPELL THAT REVIVES FALLEN ALLY
ONLY EFFECTIVE UPON FALLEN ALLIES WITHIN FIRST HOUR OF DEATH
AVAILABLE TO MASTER-LEVEL RESTORATION USERS ONLY
I scowled at the caveat, but I wasn’t going to let it stop me. With enough willpower, I’d be able to cast the spell, and I didn’t give a shit about the consequences.
“Earthman,” Esmerelda whispered. “What is it that you’re planning to do?”
She must have seen it in my face. Of course, I knew trying to cast this spell would be dangerous, especially after I’d pushed myself so far already.
But nothing could stop me, not if there was even a sliver of a chance of me saving Pandora.
The skill cost me five skill tree points. I wouldn’t have cared if it cost me everything; there was no price I’d be unwilling to pay for Pandora.
Esmerelda began to weep. Tears were running down Bella’s face. Sephara tried her best to hold her tears back as she healed me, yet every time she glanced at Pandora’s lifeless body that became more and more of a losing battle.
I ripped my pack open, tore off the cap of a restore mana potion, and downed it, then another, then a third. I guzzled a restore health potion, adding to the restoration of my body, but now, I was as healed up as I was going to be.
I stared grimly at the hole in Pandora’s chest, where the Emperor had run her through, and as I focused all my energy into the Soulguard, I lay my armored palm upon her wounded chest.
I attempted to make a save point, but I couldn’t do it.
I remembered the Failed Champion, how she hadn’t been able to revert to a save point after exhausting a Gaia Stone.
In wielding the naked power of the Spirit Stone, I’d temporar
ily severed myself from my ability to make saves. While I could sense that my ability would eventually return to me, I knew it would take far longer than a single hour.
If I waited that long, I wouldn’t be able to revive Pandora.
I’d have to make this work in one shot.
The magic was like a thing buried deep in my chest. Tapping into it was like trying to unearth a tree root with my bare hands.
I shut my eyes and grit my teeth, refocusing my attention on the Soulguard. The magic tingled throughout my body…but that tingling only lasted for a moment.
Suddenly, the tree root wiggled. A shot of pain fired down my arm, into the Soulguard, and I felt an immediate, stinging heaviness in my chest, as if I were about to have a heart attack.
Sweat dripped down my face but, still, I continued to cast the spell, even as I felt it sapping the lifeforce out of me.
“He’s trying to revive Pandora!” Sephara shouted to the others. “But sisters, he’s not strong enough to cast this spell yet! If we don’t help him, the spell will kill him!”
However, that didn’t mean the Mananymphs were going to try to stop me.
Instead, they merely let me tap into their power.
One by one, each of the Mananymphs lay a hand on my shoulder, willfully giving their lifeforce to me, which I channeled through the Soulguard in my attempts to complete the spell.
My vision had gone nearly black and I could scarcely hear a thing. I was never closer to death than I was right now...but still, I tried harder.
HARDER!
I threw my head back and screamed. The magic ripped through me like a lightning bolt cast inside my chest. A sudden tidal wave of crackling restoration magic blew out of the Soulguard, and Pandora’s body suddenly convulsed as if electrified.
I stumbled backward, knocked back by the force of the spell. Suddenly, I could breathe again, and that vise-grip pain upon my heart was gone.
I looked down at Pandora. The wound in her chest was healed. A bit of color had come back to her face…but she was still.
Unmoving.
Monstergirl Quest Book Three Page 10
