Anima: A Divine Dungeon Series (Artorian's Archives Book 6)

by Dennis Vanderkerken

  To his credit and good fortune, the attack patterns were predictable as could be. He even had several seconds of warning and heads up from whatever patch of space the goose was going to burst free from, since a visual cue occurred before a head sprang forth.

  He hadn’t understood at first, but when you got attacked by the same method over and over, you started to see how it worked. What he had forgotten was just how massive Hel was. Just running wasn’t going to cut it. He needed something faster. Something that didn’t drain his mana. A Nixie Tube flickered above his head. “Deverash, you devilish die!”

  Using any more Mana was dangerous, but what choice did he have? Extending a hand, he gritted his teeth and cried out as he ate the cost of an item teleportation. The racing platform warped in with a pop.

  His speed balanced out with the platform’s stillness, momentum equalizing him to a swift heel-dug standstill while the goose tumbled over him from above. It tripped over a soot hill more than it did his stilled form, but the mechanical marvel’s messy fall was enough for a pained Artorian to bite through the agony. He rumble-revved the palanquin into activity as he rolled into the control seat.

  Thrusters flared to life, and Artorian barely got the goggles over his eyes before jamming the Oomph lever forwards. The thrusters roared! Soot burst off the ground, forming vast clouds behind him as he sped off with a sonic boom. Breaking the sound barrier right away as he forced the platform to go as fast as it could, as quickly as it could. Abyss the threats! There was nothing to bash or crash into while on Hel, nothing but soot hills and cracked landscapes all around. He had a need, a need for speed!

  Breaking Mach three after half a minute, he glanced over his shoulder to notice that fire-spewing mechanical menace was hot on his exhaust trail. A pain struck his stomach, and he sucked in a breath as his hand snapped to the wound. He only had to glance down to finally see what burnout actually did to a Mage. It was literal. Both his legs had burned out from within, nothing more than hollow husks that looked like logs in a fire. Well, it wasn't like he’d done a good job walking with them regardless!

  The damage spread to his midriff, where the burnout stabilized. He had enough Mana to retain healthy control of everything above the waist, but not a drop of Mana more for anything else. Biscuits! He had tried so hard not to damage this body! Gritting his teeth, he forced the damage out of his mind, needing to sharply veer left when he noticed the needle on the compass flick to the right.

  That blasted goose had learned! There had been no visual cue for the incoming attack, but the compass to track rogue iridium was still perfectly functional. Needle to the right? Threat to the right! He looped in a circle to avoid blasts of fire, cones of acid, and lines of electricity before resuming the beelined path towards the beacon. So much for trying to turn into a bee! “Survive, old man! Just survive!”

  *Honk*!

  The mechoose bleared at him. Miffed that this nest-intruder was still not dead. Artorian didn’t care, and just needed to get off this rock. “Complain all you want, you feathery mongrel! You won’t get me this time!”

  Artorian punched it to Mach seven. He finally heard something break inside of the platform from the turbulence he was putting it through, the controls were shaking in his hands! A flash of light blipped in the distance. His beacon!

  Tatum stood upon the platform, frantically looking around for something, or someone. The Incarnate spotted Artorian from the soot cloud his racer kicked up, thrusters burning bright and on the verge of joining the old man in burnout. Though, the angry sounds of his not-very-cooperative-chosen may have had something to do with it as well.

  Tatum planted his feet, and outstretched an open hand to the side as if to catch an incoming projectile. Artorian understood. He just had to touch him, and they’d be abyss-free.

  All he had to do was grab. That. Hand!

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Roaring over a particularly tall soot hill that made the racer veer up and over, the teleportation beacon cleanly entered his sights on the way down. A straight shot. He was so close. “Biscuits! Finally!”

  Racing right to the escape point in as direct a line as he could, Artorian was at risk of failing a few dodges when one of the side-thrusters spectacularly exploded. For a powerful Incarnate, the goose was surprisingly easy to circumvent. His entire driving method had adopted several patterns specifically for avoiding all of the attacks his assailant had within its arsenal. It was surprising how good you got at dodging when you really couldn’t afford to haplessly throw your life away.

  Tatum impatiently waited, and Artorian could swear the man was yelling ‘Come on!’ at him. Well, he was trying! With a hop, skip, and a jump that stalled another set of thrusters, he banked the palanquin hard to the right and stretched out his hand while nine open goose bills converged on his location. Tatum shifted his foot upon the beacon, and smirked as his wrist tightly clasped with Artorian’s, easily accommodating the speed of the burning racer. “A new hand touches the beacon. Ha!”

  The mechanical heads bore down on him, maws wide open and eager to finally gobble up the prize. Tatum squeezed Artorian tight and folded into nothingness, dragging both him and the platform right into the void as the goose snapped its iridium beaks shut on empty space.

  Denied!

  Artorian was happy as could be when he came out the other end, falling face-first to the floor of the living room in his archives as the palanquin sputtered and fell to the floor with a thruster cough, its power supply fried. He was heaving while lying cheek-down on the floor of his solar foyer. Oh, how he’d missed this place.

  Dawn’s voice chirped. “Are you going to kiss the floor because you’re so happy to see it again, or are you going to wash and save those for me?”

  Tatum snickered, helping the Administrator up since it was clear he was entirely unable to stand on his own. Not with those legs the way they were. “See? I told you that if I just kept paying attention to the beacons, he’d show up eventually. Ta-da. Tatum twelve, Dawn eight!”

  *Mhm*. Dawn slid from her seat, decked in full armor as she rose from the dining table to take over supporting her Sunny. “We’ll fix that number next time there’s a demon breakout. It’s your turn for the dishes. I’m taking this one to the baths. He clearly needs it.”

  Artorian didn’t fight the assistance. He was glad for the company. Glad for the help. Glad to be away from Ghreziz and Wagner the Relentless. A little dull… but relentless! “Thank you, Dawn. It’s good to see you again. Nice armor.”

  She nodded quietly, taking his filthy soot-smeared robe off just to hold it by the tips of her fingers in disgust. “How is this…? Never mind. This isn’t salvageable.”

  Flames licked his self-made robe, conflagrating the entire thing in seconds. It didn’t matter. It had held up well when it needed to. Bundling in an oversized towel while in the baths, he was far too busy wading neck-deep in a nice large vat of hot water to mind the robe. It was high time to indulge in a break, and the second half of the Asgard baths as he sat on the vat stairs. “Aaahh… sweet relief.”

  Artorian had questions.

  As usual, they would have to wait until later. He needed a break, and to somehow mend his legs. “Dawny. How does one repair burnout damage? I didn’t expect the effect to be… Well. I understand why it’s called burnout.”

  Dawn’s heavy plate thunked onto a storage spot on the nearby shelf, changing her attire out to something more comfortable that she could bathe in. “That’s but one of the possible burnout symptoms. It can be much worse. Be glad you didn’t shatter like spun glass—that’s what happens to the lower Law tiers when they overdo it. I’m also fairly convinced that you’d have outright cracked to pieces if that wasn’t a Spirit body you were in. It held up against the damage far better than an A-ranked one would have. You best thank Cal later. Now sit back and don’t ask me questions. I can mend the damage, it’s just going to take me a while. Relax.”

  Artorian gave a quiet thumbs up, and sunk
into the water just to blow a few frothy bubbles. He felt crabby. “Not even one q—”

  *Bop*.

  “Ow.”

  “No. Not even one question.” Dawn was short with him, and his bubble blowing intensified. Dawn had just begun with healing when Tatum dragged himself in. He didn’t even bother disrobing, and walked straight to a free vat to dramatically fall face-first into it. He was just done with the world, and too tired to care about social convention. Artorian looked at the other tub, gently chancing a question anyway. “You alright there, buddy?”

  Tatum heard him just fine. Water or no. A line of bubbles garbled from the bottom of the vat, but unlike Dawn who smiled and snickered at the response, Artorian had no idea what was said. He glanced at her, and she softly shrugged. “He spoke a line of egregious expletives. We didn’t have a good time handling that S-ranked demon, though we managed to defeat and Core him. If you wanted to know how bad that brawl got, I needed armor for it. Also… don’t go to Vanaheim for a while. It’s not pretty. Don’t be surprised if all you hear from Dev for the next few years is nothing but screeches and crying. We broke that realm to ugly pieces trying to bring Yasura down.”

  Artorian quietly nodded, and reached out a hand. She held it pleasantly, giving it a squeeze as he felt hot lines of Spirit energy stab into his digits and course through his veins. He tried to tug away from the sudden pain, but Dawn didn’t let go. “I told you to relax. Healing burnout is possible, not pleasant. Be glad you have a Spirit body and that I’ve had to put my own back together non-stop since the earliest days of our Soul Space jaunt. Outside of Cal, it would have taken me a century, here I can accomplish it in a day. He’s not going to be happy about the Essence expenditure we’ve drained from his Soul Space, but it was for the best. Now lay back, much like that time I was surprised I could heal you in the Phantomdusk. This is going to burn.”

  Artorian did as told, but felt no noticeable difference. “Okay… anytime? I suppose?”

  He peeked at Dawn, but she was stumped on something. “Is this a humanized body, with something else as the base? You can’t be a three-hundred-foot-long noodle thing. I’m sensing this wrong.”

  His finger swiftly shot to the air. “No, that’s correct! I nicked this body, since my original one got… goosed. I have a spare in Eternium, but that’s no good since I can’t get to it. Henry figured out a way to make this look easy, but I’m expending my Presence in order to stay like this.”

  Dawn ground her teeth together in contemplation. “Would be easier to just ask him, but the senate is down. Nothing but static.”

  Artorian considered it, but recalled something odd. Hadn’t he successfully talked to Zelia? Out of raw curiosity, he tried knocking on Henry’s forum door. The burning in his legs spread up his spine half an inch from using Mana, and he hissed in pain with his eyes shut. “Ow!”

  Dawn didn’t feel a need to chide him. It just meant mending was going to take that much longer. “What did you think that was going to accomplish, burnout boy?”

  Artorian winced, but a smile slowly spread across his pained features as he spoke through the discomfort. “No… static.”

  Tatum was upright so fast that he caused a wave to roil and turn over inside his vat. “Did you just say no static?”

  Getting a weak thumbs up as a response, Tatum closed his eyes and checked out. Dawn and Artorian shared a look, but had to shrug since they had no hope of following wherever it was Tatum was going. Dawn had a clue, but her attention was entirely on mending Sunny’s burnout. Which she couldn’t currently proceed on since the base form was… a problem.

  When Occultatum vanished from the baths, his voided out Presence created a vacuum that the water happily filled in order to settle. A *vwop* popped in the air a few seconds later. Given the girly screams that accompanied Marie’s surprised yelp, they could both discern that Tatum had both found and fetched the Royal duo. Artorian didn’t know Henry’s pitch could go that high. They’d prod him about that later, and snickered as his voice retained the pitch during his outburst. “How did you do that!”

  Laughter erupted from the baths. Both Dawn and Artorian could feel the gazes of the Royals turn regardless of there being walls in the way. Artorian smiled, finally relaxing a little as he leaned back against the vat’s wooden wall. “I needed that. Some lively stupidity…”

  Dawn nodded. “We all needed that.”

  Tatum started laughing at something Henry had just told him, and his stomping could easily be overheard as it trekked towards their direction. “That’s it? You’re kidding. That’s all you did, and it worked?”

  Henry followed the best he could, and his eyes lit up at the sight of the baths. He caught his reflection in one of the mirrors. Oh, wow, he was dirty. Something had liberally dragged him through the mud. Possibly some rock. Artorian’s money was on a mountain that now had a Henry-shaped hole in it. Hehehe.

  Henry was still speaking to Tatum, but his attention turned to the Administrator mid-sentence. “Yes, really. Artorian, did you not use the title?”

  Artorian’s head was turned to look up at the filthy King, but he had to blink as an initial answer, not following the thread of conversation. “What title?”

  Henry tried to pull up his status screen, but winced from the sheer raw static. “Looks like I can’t show you. I unfortunately don’t know how to assign it to you. Marie told me we got this body to work the way it did because you found out that Spirit body creatures could be humanized. So she assigned me the title that makes it not cost anything, and something about it being counted as a secondary base form? I didn’t follow that part, but I can go back and forth between human and creature at will. I won’t do it here, though, no room.”

  A Nixie Tube flared to life above Artorian’s head. The title Decorum had! That’s right! His hopeful eyes snapped to Tatum, but the Incarnate was already one step ahead of him. “I didn’t imagine circumventing Cal’s system on the regular would come in handy like this. There we go, and select, and paste, and finish!”

  A light flickered around Artorian. An instant soothing coursed down his spine as he happily melted into a puddle, the pain fading while his Presence unlocked. Dawn’s Spirit didn’t burn as bad as he thought it might as the nerves in his spirit frame slowly healed. “Ohh… thank you.”

  Tatum proudly smirked a toothy smile, though he was getting demanding glares from the others. Marie was at his side in moments, her accusing digits digging into his chest. “How exactly are you able to access the system while it’s static for the rest of us?”

  Tatum merely winked in response. “Same way I always do it. Pylon-direct. Bypass the will of the system entirely. The Pylons light up all the same if you give them a little zap in the right order, and Eternium and I have had plenty of chats on Order.”

  Dawn squeezed her eyes suspiciously and turned her head to face the boasting Incarnate. “Didn’t we break most of Vanaheim, including Pylons?”

  He nodded in a hurry. “We did! Though the record for breaking the most in one go is still held by Sir Burnout over there. We have backups in other realms. Vanaheim is just the main hub that we are going to have to fully replace. That’s going to take… a few millennia.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Thinking about how long this project was going to take made Tatum sigh and hang his head. An act which got Marie off his case while Dawn resumed mending. Now that the human form of Artorian was a base form, it could be treated like one. They all found a place to sit, and decompressed in silence as they all lounged, exhausted.

  Tatum left again for a while, returning with a moody Chandra who was still cleaning tar from her thorns. “There’s a secret hideout in the sun and nobody told me?”

  She flashed a dangerous green spine at Tatum, but his hands were already up. “We all have private, personal little spaces. This one is Artorian’s. It’s called The Archives in the beacon system. You remember? The gray one you couldn’t access when you tried to see where all you could go?�
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  The spine went away. Chandra tiredly took a seat at the edge of the baths, wading her feet in for comfort. “Can anyone explain to me what the abyss has been happening? Cal getting hurt was one thing, but a demon outbreak? Someone pinch me and tell me it’s not real.”

  Tatum sat down next to her, and while many didn’t turn their heads to look, their ears were very much paying attention. Tatum sighed and spoke. “Barry. It’s all Barry. I didn’t have much time to dig around, but here’s what I’ve found. Barry, the S-ranked or double S-ranked cultivator from the old world we all know as the Devourer, is stuck in a Core in Eternium’s version of the moon. When Cal Incarnated, he gained access to free-floating Spirit energy, since that’s what Cal was forced to upgrade to. While I can’t be certain of what cracked the Soul Space, the demons are all Barry’s doing. I’m not going to blame Eternium for bringing them along. His Law required it, and we all know how that can get.”

  A few grumbled nods did the rounds, which told Tatum essentially everyone present was paying attention. It didn’t change his explanation. “Whatever tasks or requirements we may have had before? Forget them. They no longer matter. While we can’t be sure all the demons are under his influence, it’s safe to guess most of them likely are. So just like the old times, if you see a demon, smite on sight.”

  Tatum counted on his fingers, mentioning what was on his mind. “Until Eternium can be reconnected, and we can go in to look, we’re stuck in Cal’s Soul Space. Based on what I can sense, we have slapped down all but one demon. It’s the one on Hel, though based on what I can tell from a feeling, he is fighting something that is thoroughly matching him. I cannot pinpoint or recognize the energy signature, but it’s got Artorian’s fingerprints all over it. Administrator, mind explaining that one?”