“Seems reasonable, but I’m still not familiar with the Red Steel,” I said, reaching out toward it with my power. It was way down there, and it took a bit longer than I was used to for my power to grab ahold of it. Only as I tried to tug it free like I had with most of the other stones, the thing barely moved. What’s more, it was so difficult stars practically flashed across my vision.
“The thing about Red Steel is that it sort of wants to come up out of the ground. It is often shaped with a fat blunt end on one side that tapers off, giving it little hang-ups. Typically, when it’s mined, we drill down to it and attach an anchor to the chunk. Then we use Earth magic to sort of squeeze the ore up while pulling on the chain. Only, the ground here is too hard to do that, being frozen and all. It’s why we’ve never mined here.”
“That and the guardian, anyway,” I murmured as I thought about what she’d said. The words made sense with what I could feel through the gauntlets. I could feel a massive lump beneath the surface that sort of reminded me of a pimple. Only it was way the fuck down there.
“That too, yes,” Mina agreed as I let go of the Red Steel. She’d said the ground here was too hard to dig, and while I agreed with her in principle, I wasn’t trying to dig the ground. I was trying to pull something through it via magic. That might prove to be impossible, but I had an idea.
Concentrating on the Red Steel once more, I focused on the earth beneath it and above it. The whole thing appeared in my mind’s eye as I pushed power into nudging the rock above the steel out of the way while pressing on the earth below. My chest started to heave, and sweat dripped down my face as I forced more power into it, and the weird thing was, it worked.
As the Red Steel shifted upward, the displaced earth was drawn in by my power and sucked underneath it, making the whole thing seem just this side of possible.
Sucking in a deep breath, I reached out with the power the Archangel of Greed had given me and infused it with that of Envy and Wrath. As I did the heat in my chest began to pulse once more. The ground beneath my feet began to steam again, and the snow began to melt as the metal was thrust up from the ground.
“Holy shit!” Mina said, staring at me open-mouthed. “You did that in only a few minutes.” She moved toward the rock as I sat down on the snow, trying to catch my breath as the power I’d called dissipated. I was suddenly ravenous.
“This is really high-quality stuff.” She held up the baseball sized nugget of Red Steel. “You see this blackened area around the bottom?” She touched the tail end of the ore where it looked like it’d been dyed black. “That’s all Stygian Iron. Normally Red Steel tapers off pretty severely, so I’m guessing at least half of this area is Stygian Iron.”
“Great,” I said, getting to my feet. “How do we extract it from the Red Steel?”
“Oh, you’d need a really skilled Blacksmith for that.” She shrugged. “You’d have to ask them, but even still.” She glanced at the other markers. “Let’s get the others done before we worry about the details.”
21
I spent the next eight hours mining as well as I could, and it’d been pretty much the same routine the entire time. Mina would tell me how the dwarves typically mined a type of ore, and I’d try to mimic the system with my Gauntlets. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, but after eight hours we had what I thought might be enough even if it was only about half of what was here.
That said, I wanted to get it all just in case, but that’d involve spending another day out here, and as much as I wanted to press on, Mina was definitely starting to get worried. She kept glancing at the sky and hounding me. It was starting to piss me off. For one, I didn’t have time to runaway and hide from a goddamned urban legend. For two, this mountaintop was mine. I owned it, and no ghost was going to scare me away before I was ready.
“Just one more,” I said, looking at the marker for number seventeen. “That’s just Red Steel, and I’m getting pretty good at it.”
“No.” Mina crossed her arms over her huge chest. “I don’t want to get eaten by the guardian.”
“There is no guardian,” I said, and as I spoke, the heat in my chest pulsed. It’d been doing that more and more over the last eight hours, and now it felt like I had a sun beneath my ribcage. Thankfully, it didn’t hurt, or I’d be worried, but either way, I was content to ignore it for one simple fact. It was definitely helping me extract the ore, and I knew that if we came back tomorrow, I’d have to start over building whatever charge had filled me.
“Spoken like someone too stupid to live,” Mina replied, turning and moving back toward the camp. “Now come on. We only have a few minutes left before the second log goes out.”
“Put the third log on, Mina.” I gestured at the marker a few feet away. “I’ll be there as soon as I get this one. Unless you have some way off the mountain that doesn’t involve me.”
“You’re going to get us all killed,” she cried, glaring at me with a mixture of anger and fear. I had the upper hand though. She couldn’t teleport back without me. She’d just have to wait a few more minutes.
I turned back toward the Red Steel and looked at the tooltip.
Red Steel
Material Type: metal
Grade: A (Average)
Depth: 3,464 meters
Difficulty: 7
Proficiency: 10/100
Overall Proficiency: 12/100
A type of hellion metal typically used in the construction of projectile weapons.
“Well, that’s interesting,” I mumbled, circling the marker. All the Red Steel I’d pulled up before now had been difficulty eight and had been a lot deeper. Why was this one so much higher? I wasn’t sure, but I felt a bit dumb as I looked at it. I should have started here. “Well, guess Mina will get her wish.”
Using the gauntlet’s power, I reached out toward it with my mind. As I grabbed hold of it and mimicked the extraction technique I’d used about a half dozen times so far, something punched me in the side of the head.
My temples exploded with agony as I went flying across the frozen plain and slammed into a rocky outcropping. Spots danced across my eyes as a shadow fell over me. As I tried to blink back my suddenly blurry vision, I found myself looking at a Ravager.
The damned thing was huge and black even compared to the ravagers I’d seen before. Its many limbs undulated with pure darkness as it leaned in close to me, chest eyes narrowed angrily. Its fetid breath hit me with enough force to melt the surrounding snow, and as I looked up at it, I saw purple energy glowing within it.
“You shall not have her. She is for the Destroyer!” it screeched, and the words raked across my mind like a cheese grater. My vision went black around the edges as it raised one clawed foot to stomp me into a pancake, and crazily, the only thing I could think was, “it can talk?”
The Darkness creatures I’d fought until now had hardly spoken a word. Hell, I hadn’t even considered whether they could. Even when we’d captured ravagers, they hadn’t exactly been brimming founts of conversation.
“Have who?” I asked, rolling to the side as the ravager stomped a hole in the snow where I’d been a moment before. Power thrummed through me as I pulled my sword from its sheath. My three Armaments began to blaze with light as I pointed my sword at the creature and unleashed a Sapphire Blast.
“You shall not have her!” it repeated, shrugging off my attack like I’d thrown a fly at it.
The ravager stomped toward me, and the whole world shook as the sky flashed and thundered. It was then that I realized I could see the crackling outline of a portal above. Only this one was different. Purple energy tethered it shut, and what’s more, those same tethers were linked to the ravager.
“I don’t know what you’re babbling about.” I dodged as another blow whipped by me with enough force to ruffle my hair. Even with the enhanced speed granted to me by the Armaments, this motherfucker was as fast as I was.
“Stop moving,” it snarled, the words spraying fetid green slime acro
ss the snow that sizzled and popped. The smell of sulfur hit my nose as I called upon the strength of my Armaments, and as I did, I felt Sathanus take notice of the creature. It was weird, knowing she could see through my eyes, but I was sort of glad it had happened.
Why? Because she got pissed, and not in the ‘oh no there’s a Darkness Warrior’ way, I’d seen before. No. This was an immense, gut-churning hatred.
The ravager swung at me again. As I tried to leap the blow, a tentacle exploded from its flesh, lashing around my ankle and flinging me to the side like I was the end of a whip. My entire body snapped painfully, and my sword slipped from my hand.
As it flew across the tundra, Sathanus appeared beside me and swung her axe. The blade hit the tentacle with a loud thwack that sent me flying off after my sword. My body slammed into the ground a few feet away, carving an agony-filled furrow into the snow.
“Release her!” Sathanus snarled, her massive wings unfurling to glint in the light. “Now.”
“You shall not have her!” the ravager replied right before it stomped on the dwarf. Sathanus’s free hand shot up, catching the huge foot and holding it aloft. Her muscles strained, cording with effort as the ravager used the combined force of its weight, its strength, and gravity in general to push down on the dwarven archangel.
The ground beneath her feet cracked, furrows rushing out in every direction, and as it did, the heat inside me pulsed. Purple fissures opened across the flesh of the ravager, and it screamed loud enough to shatter my eardrums.
“What’s going on?” I cried, getting to my feet so I could help Sathanus. Only I wasn’t sure how. Never before had I even seen a ravager get hurt. The only time I’d ever seen them die had been when I’d broken the Graveyard of Statues free, and the resulting explosion had melted them. Only there was no way to mimic that, was there?
“Arthur, I can’t beat it alone,” Sathanus said, conceding the test of strength with the beast and leaping to the side. The ravager’s foot slammed down, burying itself to the halfway point in the stone.
“What can I do?” I asked, picking up my fallen sword. I wanted to fight the ravager, but I wasn’t sure how. The damned thing was so big I could hardly hurt it with my sword. “I’m not sure how to stop it.”
“Get my sisters. Bring them here.” She glanced at me. “Envy first, preferably. She’s bigger.”
“Right, okay!” I said, not sure I wanted to leave Sathanus here by herself. Still, she was the Archangel of Wrath. If she couldn’t hold this thing back, what chance did I have? That was also when I realized something. The greaves I wore meant it took seven times the damage from every hit it had dealt me, and from the look of things, it wasn’t fazed at all. Damn.
“Now would be good,” Sathanus said, slashing at the ravager again, and as her axe bounced off the creature’s flesh in a flurry of sparks, I teleported.
I appeared back in the room where I’d last left the goblin. She lay in a pile of clothes that looked more like a nest than anything else, and as I approached, her eyes snapped open.
“You!” she screeched, leaping to her feet and coming toward me, only it seemed like she wasn’t looking at me. No, she was looking off into the distance. As she reached me, she blinked a couple times, eyes finally focusing on me. “My sister needs me. Take me to her.” The final words came out in a hiss, and I could already see her body elongating as I grabbed her arm and teleported back to the summit.
As we reappeared, the heat inside my chest became so intense, I could barely breathe. Sathanus was airborne now, busily slashing at the ravager’s thick hide. More purple fissures had opened up along its body, and the portal above pulsed and sparked.
“What’s going on?” I asked as Leviathan tore herself from my grip.
“Stole what’s mine!” Leviathan snarled, her body elongating into her monstrous dragon form. She leapt for the ravager like she was going to smother it beneath her bulk. “Must give her back!”
I wanted to ask more, but now wasn’t the time. No, now was the time to get Mammon and complete the triad. I vanished once more.
“Arthur? How’d you do that?” Gwen asked, her face awash with shock as I turned to Mammon who was standing just a few feet away. The two of them were in the middle of what looked like a hotel room, and there was a half-eaten meal on the table as well as two empty bottles of wine.
“We don’t have time for questions,” Mammon said, grabbing my arm. “Let’s go.” She took a deep breath before turning her gaze to Gwen. “You too, Gwen.”
“Wait, what’s going on?” Gwen asked. “One second we were eating, and the next you were saying we needed to go, and Arthur would come.” She met my eyes. “Just give me a second.”
“Sorry,” I said, doing as Mammon said and grabbing Gwen’s wrist. “It’ll make sense when we’re there.”
I vanished, and as I reappeared, my chest suddenly felt like it would explode. Gwen’s scream filled my ears as darkness exploded across my vision. I felt myself falling into a blast furnace as heat ripped up through my chest. Beyond the heat, I could feel was Gwen’s wrist in my hand. Her power pulsed like a live wire, far beyond what I’d ever felt from her or anyone save the archangels.
22
“Arthur, get up!” Mammon cried, and her voice was like a bucket of ice water. It washed away the flame threatening to consume me from within, driving the fire back enough for me to think, to move, to do something.
Gwen lay on the ground beside me, her mouth open, and her eyes distant. Purple flames writhed along her flesh, and as I moved toward her, I realized they weren’t actually burning her. Relief swept through me as I turned toward Mammon.
“What the fuck is going on? She’s on fucking fire!” I cried as purple wings burst from the ravager’s back. The massive creature sprang into the air, chasing after Sathanus who had taken to the air. A quick glance around the battlefield revealed why. Leviathan had reverted back to her goblin form and lay unconscious on the tundra. It was back to a one-on-one battle. That should have scared me, should have made me want to run away, but I was too concerned for Gwen to do that.
“That’s no ordinary ravager,” Mammon said, her eyes full silver as she drew out her left hand, causing a silver cat-o'-nine-tails to appear in her grasp. Its silver-hewn form glinted in the light as her silver wings extended from her back.
“I got that,” I snarled. “How do we stop it, and more importantly, what happened to Gwen?”
“She’s a succubus,” Mammon said like that explained everything.
Overhead, Sathanus dodged a series of tentacles too numerous for me to count as she plunged through the mass and smashed her axe into the underside of the ravager’s chin. The blow snapped the creature’s head back, but before she could capitalize on the blow, more tentacles shot out, knocking the Archangel of Wrath away.
“I know she’s a succubus,” I snapped, glaring at Mammon. I was torn between wanting to help them defeat the purple-winged ravager and wanting to teleport Gwen away. Only, I wasn’t sure doing that would help. More importantly, though, I needed to know why Mammon had wanted Gwen here because it seemed like she’d known this would happen.
“Because right now, that ravager is the host for Asmodai!” Mammon pointed at the ravager. “And as you can see, the thing is doing a piss poor job of it.” Her gaze flicked to Gwen. “Gwen will be better.”
“I’m not following,” I said as Mammon lifted into the air, intent on helping Sathanus.
“Arthur, we only have one shot to crack that son of a bitch open and pull Asmodai free of the darkness twisting her soul. Do as I say and we might live.” Mammon reached out one hand toward the portal. “Cut those bindings open and throw Gwen inside. Doing so will cause what’s left of Asmodai to leap from the portal she bound shut with her power into her new host.”
“I won’t sacrifice Gwen,” I said, glaring at Mammon. “I can’t do that.”
“She’ll be fine,” Mammon lied before her face softened. “Well, mostly. Either way,
it’s our best bet at stopping this ravager. Those things are designed to take down archangels. Their powers nullify a lot of our strength. Our magic just slides off of them.” She took a deep breath. “I have to go now, Arthur. Trust me. Do this, or we lose.” She took off, hurtling toward the creature as it pounded on Sathanus, knocking the dwarf around like a ping pong ball.
“Fuck!” I cried, feeling suddenly helpless as I watched the battle because I knew Mammon was right. That thing had already taken down Leviathan, and from the look of things, Sathanus was going down next. Worse, I had the sneaking suspicion that while powerful, Mammon wasn’t on the level of Wrath.
While I wasn’t sure what had happened with Asmodai and the ravager, it was obvious this fucker was going to kill Sathanus and Mammon. It became even more obvious when Mammon smashed into the monster like a runaway train, and the blow from her cat-o'-nine-tails didn’t even cause the behemoth to look up.
“Arthur, do it,” Gwen said from next to me, and at her words, I felt the warmth within me pulse. She swallowed hard and sat up. “I can feel something in there calling to me.” She pointed toward the portal. “It’s so familiar.” She took a deep breath. “I can’t explain it, but I know what I need to do.”
“We don’t know what it is, Gwen.” I took a deep breath, meeting her eyes. “I can’t lose you. I won’t—”
“It’s not your choice,” Gwen said. Flame licked up and down her body as she got to her feet and faced me. “It’s mine.” She stumbled slightly, and I reached out to catch her. The moment I touched her flesh, a firecracker exploded inside my chest. Warmth and pain beyond my imagining seemed to electrify me to the core of my soul.
The Builder's Pride (The Legendary Builder Book 3) Page 14
