by Ian Rodgers
“The hand is the appendage that does the most work for bipeds,” Selquist explained, causing me to wobble in surprise. I wasn’t expecting a villainous monologue, but I’d take it!
“In fact, one could even argue that it is the hands that are the source of civilization. Even if you have the intelligence to build a hut or a tool, it’s pointless if you can’t actually do so!” Selquist asked, wiggling his fingers at me. “I was born from the severed left hand of my dear father, Typhon. And all creatures that use their hands are my playthings!”
“I can possess any living creature that has a left hand. And, in doing so, I can copy whatever they do. If a person I possess wrote a play or speech with their left hand, so too can I! If a person I possess casts spells with their left hand, I immediately know all the spells they’ve ever cast with that hand, and naturally, how to counter them. My title is the Last Act! And anything you mortals can do, I can do better!” it sneered.
His expression changed a moment later, however. While the hand had been explaining its powers to me, I had taken the chance to gather mana for a massive spell.
“Annihilation Ray!” I roared, and I unleashed a piercing beam of raw destructive power. Everything in the ray’s path was vaporized. Several of Grandor’s master class weapons were reduced to less than ash as the spell passed by them.
Selquist’s eyes narrowed at the attack, but didn’t flinch. Instead, it opened its mouth wide and bit down on the ravening blast of energy.
“I might not be able to devour anything and everything like dear Bolgoros can, but I’m still more than capable of nullifying an attack of that magnitude,” Selquist scoffed, his mouth full of destructive magic. He then swallowed, and continued to sneer at me. “Though I must thank you for that tasty little snack. Is that the best you can do?”
I discreetly glanced over at Gaelin, who was also struggling against his opponent. No matter how many times he cut or gutted the obese entity, the wounds did little lasting damage as Bolgoros’ regeneration countered every attack. In fact, the fat Void abomination merely looked amused at Gaelin’s attempts.
Worse, the halberdier was growing tired. I winced as Bolgoros lunged at him, managing to clip the human with a meaty fist that sent Gaelin spinning through the air, his right arm broken in three different places. Even though his Berserker armor immediately fixed the damage, and the golden crown on his helmet was adding some Healing magic to the battle, it couldn’t last forever.
‘This is bad,’ I thought, glancing between Selquist and Bolgoros. ‘We can’t handle these two alone!’
I looked over at Dora, but she was no help, trying and failing to stem the tide of rank black ichor pouring from Long-Tail-Shadow’s torn arm. If anything, the Light magic the half-orc was using only seemed to hurt the Rakkar.
“OI! CATCH!”
I reacted on instinct, jumping high into the air, and managed to grab something that had been hurled at me from the direction of Grandor’s forge. Landing back down on the ground, I looked at what I’d snagged.
The first thing I saw was twenty-five feet of golden silk, laden with enchantments of size alteration. Combined with the Goldrift Spider silk’s natural elasticity, I could stretch the length of cord out to about two hundred feet.
Next was the hammer part of the weapon. Grandor had definitely put the ‘meteor’ in Meteor Hammer, as there were a pair of fist sized orbs of adamantium, one on each end of the rope. Powerful runes of Crushing and Destruction had been carved into their surfaces, turning what were already hefty and painful objects into miniature cannonballs. If I managed to gather enough kinetic force behind my blows, I could potentially crack even Gaelin’s nigh impenetrable Berserker armor.
The moment my tendrils had touched the artifact, I was instantly filled with knowledge of how to use it. My mind raced as the advanced Tutor spell Grandor had placed upon the Meteor Hammer gave me a crash course in wielding this unique weapon.
In addition to this knowledge, a great deal of insight into the battlefield slotted into my thoughts as well.
‘Grandor really did think of everything,’ I thought, already thinking about how to implement my new plan.
“A puny little weapon won’t change-!” Selquist began, but I whipped the Meteor Hammer around my body, twirling it so it built up speed, and then smacked the Void spawn in one of its eyestalks.
Selquist cringed in pain and let out a pitiful moan as the brute force attack cracked some bones. Seeing that, I laughed.
“Your plan ends here!” I declared, before bouncing up into the sky and lashing out with my Meteor Hammer at Gaelin. It wrapped around his right leg and I dragged him down out of his sky duel with Bolgoros.
“They separated us on purpose! You take the hand, I’ll deal with fatty!” I told him as we switched places. Gaelin’s eyes widened behind his helmet before he nodded resolutely.
“Oooo! I get to fight the squishy morsel, now?” Bolgoros asked eagerly, and I spat a blob of sticky acid at his face. It splattered all over him and began to eat away at his flesh, the obese entity howling in pain as his regeneration tried to keep up with the melting speed of the acid.
“Yes, you do. And I figured it out. Against someone like Gaelin, you’re the perfect match due to your regeneration and size. His physical attacks, even augmented with magic, won’t hurt you. Same with me against Selquist! His knowledge of magic trumps mine, letting him counter any spell I threw at him. But I’ve figured it out! Let’s see how you fare against an Ooze!” I cried out.
A dozen tendrils grew from my body, and a barrage of acid, fire, and lightning collided with Bolgoros, who cried out in pain. He shot out of the cloud of smoke and dust my spells had created, but I easily dodged. I was much smaller than he was, and being able to change my size at will meant I could get big when I wanted to attack, and shrink whenever he swung his fists at me.
Down below, Gaelin was finding Selquist an easier foe than the one he’d been against before. The spells the hand hurled at the halberdier were negated by the anti-magic runes inlaid into his Berserker armor, and the Void-tainted attacks dissipated upon contact with the divine blessings upon his equipment.
“HA! Take that!” Gaelin laughed as he shot forward through a volley of stone spikes and lobbed off the thumb with his halberd. Silver flames gushed forth from the wound, and Selquist fell back, shrieking in unholy agony as the divine fire tried to devour the rest of its body alive.
“Brother!” Bolgoros cried out in panic, but as the big lummox tried to rush towards his brother to rescue him, I attacked him with the Meteor Hammer, wrapping one end around his waist and tugging hard in the opposite direction. He floundered in the air as he tried to reach his sibling, but I just grew bigger, and added some extra force to my actions. I spun him around and around before sending him crashing down into the lava that surrounded Grandor’s forge like a moat.
His screeches of pain as he was burned alive by the molten earth were music to my ears.
“Heh! Take that, ugly! One down…” I began, but an explosion of Void energy halted my self-congratulations.
With a scream of pure rage, Bolgoros erupted from the lava, rivulets of fire dribbling down his skin. He glared at me with eyes full of hate, and snarled animalistically. The black marking all over his body writhed and spread, until his flesh was the color of tar. Then, his bone spikes darkened as well, turning into shards of obsidian.
“NO MORE GAMES!” Selquist screeched from below me, and Gaelin leapt backwards as his silver divine flames were swallowed up and quenched by tainted black ichor that poured from his eyes, ears, and nose. The foul liquid didn’t stop there, though, and wrapped around his body much like it had for Bolgoros, burying his once pale grey skin under a sheath of glistening black Void matter.
“Son of a sword!” Gaelin swore, dodging a blade launched by Selquist that had formed from the Void gunk.
“You dare mock us?! Dare treat us as fools?! We are the scions of the Void itself! Our father was none other than T
yphon, the Father of Monsters and Maker of Beasts, and our grandfather is Zard Himself, the Dweller in the Void! You puny mortals are nothing compared to us! NOTHING!” Selquist screamed at Gaelin and me, infuriated. “BOLGOROS! CRUSH THAT SLIME AND DEVOUR ITS CORE!”
“Yes, brother!” Bolgoros roared back. Then, he turned into a blur, moving faster than I could track him.
It was the instinct for sensing danger that I gained from surviving on the world of Carnivore that saved me, for at the last moment, I shrunk myself down to avoid being struck. Even so, the force of the blow was still strong enough to send my small form flying, and I collided hard with the wall of the cavern.
“Argh!” I grunted out on impact. Striking the stone wall jarred my core, my one weakness. Hastily, I checked it to make sure it wasn’t damaged.
“Thank the gods,” I murmured. I peeled myself off of the side of the cavern and ‘glared’ up at Bolgoros, who was hovering above me with an insane grin on his face.
“Take this!” I shouted, and hurled a bolt of rending lightning up at him. To my shock, the darkness shrouding his body rose up and absorbed the spell, tiny ripples appearing on his flesh.
“Uh-oh,” I mumbled, stunned. The obese entity simply smirked in response, his white teeth standing out in stark contrast to his darkened flesh.
“Die.” Again, with movement faster than I could track with my senses, Bolgoros turned into a speeding blur and shot towards me. I bounced off of the wall and evaded the blow while flinging some minor spells of varying elements at him to try and see what might work against him.
Fire, Lightning, and Wind Elemental spells didn’t harm him, and neither did my poison and acid attacks; everything I attempted was absorbed and negated by his strange fluid armor.
There was some good news, though. Light magic seemed to scare the darkness away temporarily, which was interesting, and Ice magic froze around the armor Bolgoros now wore, so it slowed him down, if only by a second or two.
‘If only there wasn’t so much damned fire and heat in here, I could use more Ice spells,’ I griped as I avoided getting turned into a smear on the wall by the Void spawn’s fist.
The rocky wall exploded as Bolgoros’ fist struck it, a massive crater appearing in the cavern’s side. Stone shrapnel flew about, one shard coming uncomfortably close to Dora, who flinched. She was still helplessly trying to treat Long-Tail-Shadow, a look of desperation on her face. From what little I knew of the half-orc’s past, Dora was afraid of losing another friend, hence why she was so focused on the Rakkar, despite her betrayal.
Luckily, at least for me, the blow disrupted what appeared to be an underground river that flowed through Gaeum. His punch opened up a hole into the aquifer, and a torrent of water gushed forth, pushing Bolgoros into the lava. There, the water and molten earth mixed and began to solidify, trapping him in a crust of stone.
‘And with water cooling the otherwise sweltering cavern, I can use Ice magic more easily!’ I cheered. I turned towards Gaelin, intent on giving him the good news, when I let a hiss of worry escape me at the scene below me.
The halberdier had not dealt with Selquists own transformation as easily as I had with Bolgoros’.
Gaelin was a physical combatant. He fought in melee, and though his weapon could be augmented with magical power, his halberd still dealt physical damage first and foremost.
It looked like Selquists ichor-forged armor was quite different to the kind Bolgoros had created. In the hand-thing’s case, rather than focusing on negating magical effects, it nullified physical damage. Every blow I saw Gaelin land on the abomination either rebounded off, as if striking some sort of rubber, or got lodged in the sucking mire that was the black goo on its body.
As a result, Gaelin was left open to attacks, and though direct magical attacks did nothing to his Berserker armor, Selquist was more than capable of using geomancy, attacking my fellow Chosen One with spikes made of stone and hefty clods of compacted dirt.
‘Why is he letting so many of Selquist’s attacks hit him?’ I wondered, bewildered by Gaelin’s actions. ‘He could have easily used his Shapeless Raiment to dodge that rock! OW! Why’d he let that sand cannon strike him dead on?!’
Until I saw what – or rather, who – he was standing in front of.
“Oh, crap, Dora!” I gasped aloud unconsciously. She was still distracted by the dying form of Long-Tail-Shadow, apparently blind to everything else going on around her.
‘I’ve got to snap her out of it!’ I decided. ‘We need her Light magic to counter their Void armor!’
Unfortunately, I didn’t get the chance. A fist slammed into me from below and I deformed like a pancake. My gelatinous body slammed violently into the ceiling of the cavern, and I let out a shrill gurgle of pain as I felt a crack worm its way across my core from the impact.
Looking down below me, I saw Bolgoros hovering near where I’d previously been floating, left hand clenched into a fist. Chunks of hardened lava clung to him, but were slowly being dissolved by the Void armor he was wearing.
Glancing further down, I was able to glimpse the steam-filled hole in the hardening molten rock out of which the fat Void spawn had burst.
The raw hatred and insanity that burned in Bolgoros’ eyes as he stared up at me sent shivers through my core, and I winced as the crack in it was agitated by my fear.
‘This isn’t good, Gaelin and I can’t do this alone! We need Dora’s help!’ I thought frantically.
I spared a glance down at the half-orc, but she was still trapped at that Rakkar’s side.
‘This is strange… has she been enraptured or cursed by the black ichor? I know I haven’t known her long, but to me, Dora isn’t the kind of person to be so distracted by one thing,’ I wondered to myself. Then, an idea struck me like a thunderbolt.
‘I have to get Dora away from Long-Tail-Shadow! It must be the fault of that ichor!’ I decided. ‘But how can I do that while fatty is trying to pulverize me? …Actually, I think I can use him and his unbridled rage!’
I peeled myself off of the ceiling, holding back a cry of pain as my core protested the sudden movements. I let myself fall, like a gooey purple raindrop, before expanding to a bigger size. More mass made me an easier target, but it also provided a greater cushion for my core, which I desperately needed at the moment.
Bolgoros lunged at me the moment he spotted my shift in size, and tried to slam me right back into the ceiling, but I lashed out with my Meteor Hammer, wrapping one end around his outstretched wrist. Then, I swung myself around him, flipping him off course and propelling me down towards Selquist. At the same time, the obese Void spawn slammed face first into the ceiling, and I cackled aloud, mocking him.
“How do you like the taste of rock?!” I shouted at Bolgoros. A grinding ‘Crunch!’ was my reply, as when my opponent pulled his head out of the stone, he was holding a large chunk of granite between his teeth which he slowly and menacingly chewed up and swallowed while staring straight at me.
“Duly noted!” I gulped. ‘Oh gods, that is terrifying!’
I continued my dive towards Selquist, praying to Nia, Cynthia, and any deity willing to listen that my plan would work. As I approached the hand-shaped Void abomination, I took a deep breath and tripled in size. Now I was easily the size of an elephant.
I tightened up my outer layer, so it was as hard as rubber, and slammed into the unaware hand-creature like a runaway wagon. Selquist was bowled over by my size, and let out a howl of surprise as my rubbery hide soaked up a good portion of his physical attack-proof Void armor.
Without stopping, I detached the parts of me that’d been stained with the tar-like ichor, but not before transmuting it into a sticky goop I left all over Selquist. The glue-like gunk clung to its ‘fingers’ and soon the hand was stuck to itself, limbs bound to each other by my artificial glue.
I landed hard onto the ground, bouncing twice before rolling to a stop next to Gaelin’s left boot.
“You okay?” the halberdie
r asked worriedly, and I gurgled. He winced when he spotted the crack running through my core and he bent down to pick me up.
“D-dodge!” I managed to hiss out, and to his credit, he only blinked in confusion once before taking to the skies with his Shapeless Raiment.
A second later, Bolgoros slammed down into the ground like a comet, creating a massive crater with his landing. And, to my delight, sending his own sibling tumbling off the edge into the lava. The fat Void spawn only noticed his mistake when he heard Selquist’s tirade against him. Bolgoros spun around and tried to grab his brother before he fell into the lava, and managed to succeed, but now his hands were stuck to his sibling thanks to the super adhesive slime I’d left all over Selquist.
“We don’t have much time,” I croaked out. “They’ll get free soon, so we have to take this chance to snap Dora out of her funk!”
“Agreed, we need her Light magic,” Gaelin replied, nodding at my words. We hurried over to her side, gagging at the stench of rot that permeated the air.
The half-orc was stained with the strange black substance that had poured from Long-Tail’s wounded stump of a wrist. The ichor’s flow had abated, but it refused to leave, clinging to both of them like the tar it resembled.
“Dora!” Gaelin shouted, trying to get her attention. It was no use. She remained focused on trying to tend to the Rakkar’s wound, but she was only using her hands to stem the bleeding. Dora wasn’t even trying to use Healing magic on the injury, which showed how much the substance was affecting her.
I hesitantly reached out with a tendril and bopped her on the side of her head. She flinched but kept her eyes firmly on Long-Tail-Shadow and muttering to herself.
“We need to get that gunk off of her,” Gaelin said, eyeing the pitch-black goo warily.
“It’s related to the Void somehow, so only divine magic or a powerful Light spell can banish it,” I pointed out. “You’re the only one who can do it! My Light magic is nowhere near good enough for this, but your armor and weapon are heavily blessed!”
