Savage Awakening 513. Castle Crashers (II)

That was the final resting place of the greatest of the First Ones.

Those knights had managed to lay some heavy damage on him. The deadliest of them wielded two hammers like meteors, trailing clouds of embers. There was a messy melee before three knights got on him at once, pinning him down for just a moment—enough for the hammer knight to line up two clean blows.

The firepower in those hammers doubled every few feet they traveled. The knight had them cocked halfway to space before bringing them down on Zane.

The blows shattered his left arm.

That was what put him under 50%. It almost sent him to his knees.

But he just bit down, flexed that arm, and it ran thick with silver light. Four seconds was all it took to knit the bones, then the muscles, then the skin together.

He used that same arm to crush the knight’s face in.

…

He and the Sage stood at the castle gates, staring down the end of their run.

The Levels poured in.

Level up!

Level up!

Level up!

Level up!

Level up!

Essence Level 585 -> 590

Skill up!

Skill up!

Red Giant Smash VI -> VIII

He had to admit, he’d had quite an enjoyable time farming that kingdom. He spent most of it in a pleasant flow state. Smash one chunk, smash another chunk, forge on.

“Looks like we’re just about at the end,” said the Sage. “Pity, eh?”

Zane nodded.

“That gravity of yours sure is coming together. Don’t think I didn’t see that. I saw you take down that castle!”

Towards the end, Zane had faced down a castle just about ready to burst. But just before it could, he’d clenched his fist and dropped all the gravity he could right on it.

He’d flattened it like he was crushing cardboard. It was actually quite satisfying seeing all that stone crumble. It wasn’t enough to take out all the Monsters within by itself. But holding them down with gravity, then ramming in a series of hammers, had done the job nicely.

This journey also turned out to be a great workout for his Gravity Law. He’d gotten his reps in dragging, smashing, pinning, crushing—the works.

Gravity was most useful to him like teeing up a ball so he could whack it even harder. He was getting the hang of its anti-bird tendencies too. A few wraith-witches tried fleeing after they’d peppered him with curses. They pulled out brooms and shot away, but one good gravity core grounded them fast.

“I think I’m just a good fight away from the full Concept,” he informed the Sage.

“You’ve got most of it down, I’d say. You ever try grabbing essence? Loads of fun, that.”

Zane nodded. “Didn’t get very far, though.”

He remembered the Sage’s gravity being so strong he could rip essence strikes out of the air. “I figured it might take a higher level of Gravity Law.”

The Sage’s gravity was at least Tier 7, and he was pretty sure it was stuffed with Destruction too.

“That’s if you want to take down Empyrean-level attacks,” said the Sage, scratching his chin. “With how strong your Concept’s gotten and that damned soul of yours too, you ought to be able to shake half-steps, no problem! Especially if you just want to throw some of their strikes off-course.”

“It feels like grabbing smoke,” he told the Sage. “Doesn’t feel like I can get a great hold on it.”

Something about how intangible it was. It didn’t feel very intuitive, which made sense. He was a pretty physical person.

“I felt that way too, at first. Not to worry. Might not feel like you can grab hold of it, but you can pull anything if you set your mind to it. That’s the mindset you’ve got to have. You believe you can do it, you set your mind to it—then it’s just about willing it to happen. All of a sudden, you’re snatching Skills right out of the sky.”

“I’ll give it another shot.”

“Good lad.”

The two of them stood on the precipice. The Sage wiped some sweat off his brow. “Shame it’s come to an end… those are the first real fights I’ve had in ages.”

Zane grinned. “How’d it feel?”

“Like a damned shame. I could do a crush like that every day.”

He felt the same way.

They looked at the final lair again. Those walls must’ve once been majestic—striking eight or nine hundred feet high, all forbidding stone. Shattered as they were, they seemed a dark mountain range. They were still smoking after all these years.

Zane took some time to load up on steel one more time. He was more than halfway through his Dreamer’s Core now.

The Sage, meanwhile, took up an oily Drake leg.

They spent a solid half-hour setting up. Zane was pretty much fresh after a few minutes. The Sage was too, but it was always good to take a breath before things really went down.

“Damn!” The Sage finished off his bone. He leaped to his feet.

“What’s up?”

The Sage chuckled. “A man’s got to fight, eh? Just the way it is. Don’t you forget it, lad—don’t you ever forget it! Settle down when you’ve got no heart left, no muscle, when you’ve fought the last of your life out. When you’re bones and dust, then you can settle. ‘Till then… you keep on fighting!”

The Sage was as fiery as Zane had ever seen him. That brawl seemed to have rekindled something in the old fellow. He was glad to see it.

They took one last look back the way they’d come.

When they’d entered, there were kingdoms, plains, and forests, all rife with Destruction. The place had been stuffed full of Monsters.

Now it’d been flattened. Lots of signs of hammering. Reality was a great deal more torn up too, where some of the fiercer fighting took place.

They’d been clearing out the trash, but it still felt like a bit of a shame. These were the makings of a strong folk once. A Rhino tribe too. Now it was all lost to ash.

The Sage seemed to get what he was thinking. He mulled it over too.

“Lad, you ever shove a broken nose back into place so it heals right?”

“Yeah?”

The Sage gave him a slap on the back and wandered off. He got what the Sage meant.

Fifteen minutes later, he and the Sage made for the final battle.

That colossus of Corruption still loomed beyond those walls, just waiting.

They leaped through the fissures and landed in a grand courtyard on the other side. A courtyard strewn with rubble. You couldn’t go five feet without stumbling over a chunk of toppled-over spire. But what caught their eyes was the display at the heart of the yard.

Eight huge spikes of bone, sick with streams of Corruption. Bodies were impaled on each one, groaning and writhing—Corruption streaking into them like IV tubes. By their hoarse whispers, it seemed they’d howled their voices out long ago. Each creature had the aura of an Empyrean.

You could hardly tell it. Their auras were crushed to near-nothing. The bodies were shriveled, waxen, barely clinging to life.

“What the…” muttered the Sage. “That’s a Deep Earth Hall Elder’s cloak. Eternal Ice, too.”

It was hard to tell just how old they were.

They were the closest thing to a corpse without being dead. Just wasted flesh.

One body wore a mask that looked like a plague doctor’s. The figure still spasmed, gurgling.

A murder of crows lay at its feet, all dead.

“I’ll be damned. That’s ol’ Crowfoot right there,” said the Sage.

Zane gave the Sage a look.

The Sage crossed his arms. “They called him the Crowfoot the Godly Thief—mad bastard. Never got caught in all his time—stole from the treasures of half the Great Factions. Never liked the fellow. Still, putting him up like this…”

The Sage’s expression darkened.

Without warning, he wrenched out his spear. In a heartbeat, he’d wiped the victims from existence.

"Hmph."

Zane wasn’t sure if that display was meant to scare them. It didn’t do a very good job of it. He had no respect for this kind of thing. The Sage seemed to think the same.

The two of them made their way into the grand hall beyond in silence. A sense of doom smothered the place. There was so much Corruption sunken into the shattered walls that it seemed the only thing holding the place together.

There was an ugly, overbearing beauty to the place. Green flame torches lit the wall, but they weren’t the bulk of the light. That came from the stained glass windows stretching from floor to arched ceiling. The glass had been shattered and put back together, but not in the right order, so it looked like a gorgeous puzzle haphazardly slapped together. Bodies flailing headless. Chunks of limbs broken off, heads turned upside down. Everything was broken and nothing made sense.

A sickly light poured through the mural, drowning the chamber in twilight.

There was a blood-red carpet stretching the length of it, going from the door to the dais. As they strode in, each step echoed six or seven times.

Welcome…

The word came as a raspy sigh.

A lich stood dressed in black robes. Its robes bore the symbol of a six-winged serpent.

Its Bloodline felt like Malzareth’s. It was on that tier. The Monster didn’t seem to care to flex it, at least not right now. But even restrained Zane felt its quiet menace. 

The lich’s eyes were pits of black, and its mouth was bound in a perpetual grin. The very same grin leered from the moon high above.

Skeletons were piled around its feet.

Visitors… after so long…

Draegmir the Damned (Monster Emperor)

Essence Level 782

“You the bastard who did that?” The Sage jerked his head at the courtyard.

That is I. Draegmir’s face never changed as it spoke.

“...You’re a piece of work.”

It is dull, in this prison of mine… As Draegmir breathed, chilling the air. Dispatched to rule this galaxy…betrayed… trapped… so many aeons, alone… 

It cocked its head.

You would begrudge Draegmir a little… company… you have not felt the weight of time…

Draegmir’s grin widened.

“I’ve got a bone to pick with you Monsters, true enough,” said the Sage. “But most of you’ve got the courage to finish a man, at least. You beat a man, you grant him a clean end.”  

Draegmir gave a hacking, wheezing laugh.

You will make a fine addition to Draegmir's collection… yes... and the youngling… Such vitality… Draegmir can break him over and over again…

The lich shivered.

“You’re a weirdo,” Zane informed Draegmir. He was a bit perturbed. 

This comment seemed not to register to the lich.

Two against one… poor odds… But a lich is never alone. Sons of man… witness the greatest of you.

The skeletons at its feet began to stir. Knit together.

Nine distinct skeletons rose from the dust, every last one giving off an incredibly potent aura. Each with a million-year Corrupted Bone spiked through its chest.

Each dressed in the tattered robes of a great Faction. Some squat, some tall, some hunched. One with the bone structure of a dragon, horns and all. Another the thin bones of an elf.

Up in the front was a squat, extremely big-boned fellow. It had to be a dwarf, clad in fine Steelheart mail.

They had to be the strongest half-step Empyreans Zane had ever felt. He had a feeling who they were.

“You damned rat.” The Sage laughed. “Thalgrim Titanborn, eh?”

He grinned, jaw clenched. There was a fierceness to his expression now.

“Now you’ve done it,” he growled. “Someone’s got to beat some damned respect into you. Might as well be me. Lad?”

Zane nodded. He set his gaze on the founders of the Nine Great Factions. 

Together, they attacked.