“N-no.” His voice strained with effort - and fear. “No! I did everything he asked of me!”
“He does not tolerate failure.” The Void Wraiths had voices that slithered across your skin with an oily, moist sensation that made me come up in gooseflesh.
As they slowly moved in toward Andrik, Ignas backed away from them, panting with fear.
“No! I got the dragon! Ignas can’t become the Volod!” Andrik croaked, trying and failing to push himself upright. “I won! I-I just need a little more help! That’s why I called-”
“We have given you a great deal already,” one Wraith whispered.
“Why is the dragon still in the circle?” the other asked.
“She is inaccessible to us.”
“She cannot receive our gift.”
They began to close in on him.
“Were you planning to double-cross Him?”
“The Architect?”
“No!” Andrik watched them, terror-stricken. “No!”
The sounds of fighting behind us had died off, and I turned my head as I felt someone approach - Ebisa and Rin, and one of the tougher Nightstalkers had survived. Everyone else was dead.
Rin gasped. “Kanzo!?”
“Ignas!” Ebisa took a step forward.
“Don’t look at the Wraiths!” I hissed, holding up an arm as they surrounded Andrik, pinning him against the tomb. Kanzo had folded up around the dagger still buried in his chest.
“Kill him!” Andrik screamed, eyes dark and wild with hate. “Why are you menacing m-me when you could kill Ignas!!!”
“This place is anathema to us.”
“We are hungry.”
“We sense weakness.”
“Victory belongs to the strong.”
Andrik struggled up to his feet. He was milk-white from blood loss, but terror drove him to stand and stumble away. “I served him well! I did everything-”
The Void Wraiths flew at him. Andrik got off one blast of fire before they twisted reality around themselves and merged into his body like a virus.
Chapter 44
“Andrik!” Ignas cried his name in anguish.
“Mercy! MERCYYYY!” The Volod was engulfed by the shadows, clawing at his face as his entire body distorted and blurred.
[Warning: The Void draws near! HP regeneration is no longer effective! The effect of healing items is halved!]
[Void Horror is weakened by Holy Ground! Level halved!]
“They’re Stranging him! Preemptive strike before they take him over!” I dashed forward, jaws clenched, fists raised to strike.
Rin chanted a spell as Ebisa and Ignas rushed from the sides. A Haste buff hit me like a splash of cool water, and suddenly I was faster, keener, and better able to dodge the whip-like lash of void energy that cracked out from Andrik as he stumbled to his knees.
Insectoid legs burst out of Andrik’s back - his own ribs, extending and forming joints that lifted him back off the ground. His legs snapped and reformed, and his howls of pain and terror became garbled as his head caved in like rotten fruit.
I drove my knuckles into the still-forming [Void Horror] in a one-two punch, crushing malformed flesh.
[You used a Darkness attack! It’s super effective! x3 damage!]
[You deal 747 Darkness damage to Void Horror! HP: 6253/7000]
As soon as the Void Horror finished forming, it emitted a pulse of anti-energy that sucked the strength out of my limbs. I began to feel sick. My nose and eyes ran, my jointed ached, my temperature spiked. It felt like the first day of HEX’s five-day life cycle. A Curse debuff appeared on the inside of my blindfold, along with a 60-second countdown.
[Void Horror uses Harbinger! You are marked for death!]
God dammit, Karalti - I need you! Relying on my blindsense and aided by the Haste buff, I dodged the side. A pair of spiked limbs struck the floor instead of my body.
Ebisa came in from my left, swiping at the Horror’s body with her daggers. She landed the blows, but the monster backhanded her and sent her flying. She hit the far wall and bounced, falling to the floor.
“Normal attacks don’t do any damage!” Rin called. “You have to use Dark or Light element magic!”
“Just as well I’m a specialist!” I shouted back, circling and feinting to draw aggro instead of taking an attack turn. Fifty seconds left. “Rin, was that your Haste spell?”
“Yes!”
“Then just keep buffing. I can take it!”
Ebisa pushed herself up with the help of the wall, and Ignas ran to her. The pair of them staggered off to join Rin at the front of the vault while I danced with the Void Horror, drawing its attention away from the escaping NPCs.
The creature slashed and thrust and stabbed with two of its skeletal limbs as it slammed the other seven deep into the stone floor. Now anchored, it hoisted itself upward, pulsating like a rotten black heart. Ignas and Ebisa had almost reached the door when that heaving core tensed up and emitted a wet, gurgling bellow.
[Void Horror uses Antigravity!]
The entire place dissolved into chaos as the Void Horror made Upside become Down, sending me, Rin, Ebisa, the sarcophagi, even loose dirt and grime, all hurtling towards the ceiling. Rin's shriek of shock and surprise pierced the air as the polarity of gravity reversed even as my innate gyroscopic ability kicked in. Instead of slamming hard into the ceiling, I dropped onto it on my feet and ready.
[Rin take 65 damage!]
[Ebisa takes 91 damage!]
[Ignas takes 65 damage!]
The coffins did more than just open. They all but exploded, ejecting their dusty, wizened contents through the air, scattering the remains of the royal dead onto the ‘ground’ around and on me while the Horror recovered below. With my feet firmly planted on the ceiling, I ran at it and Jumped
I couldn’t actually strike it with Jump. Jump, Blood Sprint, and most of my other heavy-damage strikes required a polearm to be equipped. But there was one attack I could use with any weapon - Umbra Burst.
“KI-AHH!” I activated it and slammed into the [Void Horror] with fists of cold iron. Dark energy rippled around my arms as I bounced away. The Horror was immune to the Frozen debuff inflicted by the maneuver, but it took massive damage.
[You used a Darkness attack! It’s super effective! x3 damage!]
[Void Horror is immune to Blindness!]
[You deal 2988 damage! HP: 3265/7000]
The antigravity effect ended, dumping us back onto the floor - and as I fell, the Haste buff timer ended. I landed on my feet like a cat, but the Horror’s polarity change was instantaneous, and it caught me with a long, hooked claw and began to drag me in toward it. The blindfold was still on, so I couldn’t see its mouth, but I could feel the frigid breath scalding my bare legs with cold. Even as it hauled me forward, other legs stabbed out into the corpses on the ground. Fresh or dry, it didn’t matter to the Void Horror: power pulsed through its limbs, and the corpses got to their feet. We had 25 seconds left.
[You take 135 damage! HP: 49/738]
“Spera, Cil, Kain!” Rin shouted. Her voice shook, but Haste suffused me again, speeding my limbs.
Two more hits.
Ignas snarled with frustration. “How do we lift this curse?! We only have twenty seconds left!”
Rin’s turrets began firing on the crowd of [Breathless] now shambling toward her, Ignas and Ebisa. I tuned out the sound of combat, barely inches away from the crackling, frigid body of the Void Horror. I kept my face forward, staring into the unseen mouth about to engulf me.
The creature lifted me up. And as soon as the toe of my boot froze, I triggered Umbra Blast a second time.
The energy of potential - of Life - flashed through my body and blasted out through my hands. 118 base damage times my Will modifier, times three.
[You used a Darkness attack! It’s super effective! x3 damage!]
[You deal 2988 damage!]
The Horror screeched, and flung me away with a whip-crack of its barbed tentacle. Even Hasted, I
couldn’t correct my course in time. I flew through the air and landed in the crowd of zombies, scattering them like bowling pins. They softened the impact, but not enough. My ribs connected with a hard shoulder, cracking in toward my lung.
[You have taken 41 impact damage!]
“Fuck!” I coughed blood, and the sound - or smell - caused every one of the zombies to aggro on me.
“Hector! Hold on!” Someone came running toward me - it was Rin. She charged through the zombies, taking hits from every side as she bodily leaped onto me and shielded me.
[Rin takes 102 damage!]
[Rin takes 88 damage!]
“Rin! They’re-” I struggled under her, only to feel her almost ram a potion bottle into my mouth. The herbal liquid poured down my throat, bringing blessed relief.
[Rin takes 29 damage!]
[Warning! Mana concentrations are increasing!]
“I’ll be okay!” Her voice cracked as she fed me a second potion. “Get up!”
We had ten seconds left on the clock. Ignas roared as he charged into the pack, swinging his mace. His desperate rush cleared enough space for me to get to my feet. I was back to 120 out of 738 HP.
[Void Horror uses Abyssal Gaze!]
“Eyes! Eyes!” I shouted, lunging forward. The same entropic energy I’d felt in the dungeon rolled over my skin in a blistering wave, like passing through a veil of liquid nitrogen. “Fuck you, fuck you, FUCK YOU!”
Seven seconds remaining.
I Jumped as high as the vaulted ceiling allowed for, and somersaulted down onto the Void Horror knuckles-first. A bone claw as long as a sword tore down my leg, opening it from hip to knee like a zipper, but not before I smashed into the monster with my fists and began beating the shit out of it. I didn’t even see how much HP I’d lost.
Three seconds.
The velvety energy of Darkness pushed into the Void Horror’s body and inflated it, overwhelming its entropic nothingness, and the thing that had been Andrik Corvinus shuddered.
Two... One.
The crypt rumbled around us, and my ears popped as the Void Horror wailed and inverted, shrinking in to a super-dense core that fell and shattered on the ground like charcoal.
[You have defeated Void Horror!]
[You gain 1021 EXP!]
[Your friend Rin Lu is Level 11!]
The undead tumbled to the ground, the source of their animation vanished, and we were left in the eerie silence of a deserted tomb. I pushed up my Blindfighter’s Fold, squinting down at the floor.
“Hector! Are you okay!?” Rin ran to me, limping. Her silicone skin had long gouges taken out of it from the zombies, though she did not bleed.
“I just punched a Void Horror to death. Bitch, I’m motherfucking Sabin.” I blurted the ancient meme out before I thought that through, but to my surprise, Rin laughed a girlish, tinkling laugh.
“But you didn’t suplex a train!” she said.
I grinned back at her. “I’m not the only antique games collector here, huh?”
She smiled shyly. “No. And my dad loved that meme, and the game. All those games, actually.”
“Help me get Kanzo!” Ebisa called to us as she ran past. “He’s still alive!”
I was startled by the panic in her voice, but reacted without thinking. Rin and I both ran to her and helped her pull a fallen sarcophagus lid off Kanzo’s body. At first glance, I thought she had to be mistaken about the ‘alive’ thing. Kanzo lay still, his silvery skin bleached chalk-white. But when Ebisa crouched down and slapped his cheeks, the Mercurion stirred. He looked up at her with eyes that were now almost a flat, dull gray. The mana - and life - that animated him was nearly gone.
“Ebisa,” he rasped. “Rin. I... got to see you both... one last time.”
“What are you doing here?” Ebisa’s shoulders hunched as she saw what was buried in his chest - the Ravenstar, the dagger that had been gifted to her by Ignas. Her fingers hovered over the hilt, barely touching it.
Kanzo blinked slowly, laboring for each raspy breath. “I... thought about it all. And I realized... how much this means to you. You said you would come here. I decided I would hide myself and... and observe. Make a judgment. I saw Andrik for what he truly was. I... decided to kill him. For you.”
Rin’s face contorted with grief. “You...”
“Rin. Ebisa. Listen.” He licked his lip with an iron-gray tongue. “Even if you do not... recycle my body... please take my heart. There is a memory stone in there. I put it there m-myself, when I first learned the properties of Ruby Mana. It has... it has all my knowledge. All my art lives there. Take it... use it... however you will. Ebisa... if you use it, you will g-gain my power. All you will need is... is practice.”
The juchi reached up and removed her mask, looking down implacably at her creator.
“Please...” Kanzo gasped. “For... for the realm.”
The last of the light drained from his eyes, and he sagged against the floor.
Ebisa shook her head as she stood. Rin stayed crouched down, sobbing into her hands. Ignas hung back, his stern face grave and pale.
“A liar to the end,” she said heavily.
“What?” I looked over at her. “I saw him jump down and stab-”
“Not that.” She bent down and pulled the Ravenstar from his chest. “I mean the melodrama. He always told me that if there was one thing worth dying for in this world, it was art. His art, specifically. He spent years of his life trying to transfer his work to his students, but he was never happy with them. They changed his work in subtle ways... they had minds of their own. So he created me. That stone he was talking about? He always intended for me to have it. This was his last, desperate attempt to convince me.”
“Oh.” I looked down at the ashen Mercurion. Even in death, Kanzo was beautiful… a work of art.
Ebisa looked down at Rin. “You’ll be alright, girl.”
“No I won’t! I don’t want to be alone!” Rin shook her head, her face buried in her hands. “I hate this! I hate fighting... I hate being dead!”
The other Mercurion cocked her head in confusion.
“B-Before I came to Archemi. My dad died, then I died.” Rin hunched in on herself. “Everyone’s dead! I-I just wanted to be okay!”
“Hey.” Ebisa crouched down, and awkwardly patted Rin on the shoulder. “The time for fathers is past. Now, it is time to make choices about our future. You have a House, surely?”
“They’re in Zaunt. And I don’t want to go there. It’s horrible... nothing but war and more war.”
“So I’ve heard.” Ebisa sighed.
Ignas grimaced, and walked over to the scattered charcoal on the floor, toeing it with his boot. Then he grunted, and bent down to pick something up. I went to go retrieve the Spear of Nine Spears. The metal felt fragile and crumbling, and sparked when my fingers touched it. I re-joined them, aching and bone-tired, and so did Ignas. He held out a stone to us - a ruby about half the size of a golf ball.
“Andrik was carrying this,” he said. “This is the... wait. Look.”
The stone had started to glow, the light building strength as I came closer. The Spear crackled in my hand, and then suddenly sparked with light. Red light. “This is the Ravensblood Ruby?”
“Yes. I’ve never seen it do this before.” He motioned the ruby toward the Spear. “How fascinating. It’s reacting with your weapon.”
I held the spear up for him to look at. “This is the Spear of Nine Spheres - the weapon that bound the Nine themselves. It is the key to the seals that trap the Drachan in the north. Your Majesty, the Void Terror we just fought and the cult your brother was in are connected, and I’m making an educated guess that if we’re seeing Void monsters in Archemi, it’s because the Drachan are starting to shake off their chains. Ebisa, I know you don’t want to follow in Kanzo’s footsteps as an Artificer, but I need ask you for a favor. Please.”
Ebisa regarded us levelly, then looked back down at Kanzo’s body. Her brows furrowed.
<
br /> “I’ll think about it. Leave me.” She put the gray fox mask back on, and turned away from us to point at the corner of the room. “And take your survivor. He is your key to the throne, Your Majesty.”
“Survivor?” Ignas frowned, puzzled.
One of the Kingsguard struggled weakly on the ground, his leg pinned by a fallen sarcophagus. It was Tomaz - the second in command.
The new Volod of Vlachia nodded, and looked to me and Rin in turn. “Then I have one last request: that you help me take this man home. We can heal him, and put the court to order. I only hope that I can make things right after all of this suffering.”
Chapter 45
This kind of victory was usually the kind where I took my headset off, sat back into my shitty old armchair, had a beer and congratulated myself on a story well-told. Maybe after that, I’d go back into the game and try out the different endings to see which one I liked the best.
But here, there was no headset, no armchair, and definitely no multiple endings. I wasn’t even sure we were the good guys.
In the dust and haze of the ruined crypt, I watched Ebisa and Rin collect Kanzo’s broken body and wrap it in a shroud, and helped them load the bodies of the dead onto wagons. I watched Ignas dejectedly sift through the corrupted remains of his brother’s ashes. I felt like we’d done the right thing… but it was hard to pick a winner here. The murders had been stopped, the girls were about to be saved, peace would soon return to the kingdom. Theoretically.
I left the business of cleanup to the new Volod and his crew, jogging through the streets to the morgue. Fifteen minutes or so later, Cutthroat and I thundered through the gates of Vulkan Keep, headed for the stables. I left the exhausted dinosaur in her corral with an extra helping of food, and ran for the dungeons with a ring of keys liberated from the corpse of one of the Kingsguard.
My heart was in my mouth as I unlocked each door, following the same route that Garen had taken me. When I reached Karalti’s cell, I equipped the Blindfighter’s Fold, listening for any sound. There was nothing.
“Karalti!” I called to her as I unlocked the barred metal doors. “Karalti, can you...?”
Trial by Fire: A LitRPG Dragonrider Adventure (Archemi Online Chronicles Book 2) Page 39
