Savage Awakening 487. Exploding Golems (III)

It turned out Reina missed him too—

Level up!

Essence Level 563 -> 564

Afterward, he started telling her what had gone down the last couple of years—just catching her up. He went through Makos and Lam’s story. She figured it was Malzareth pretty fast and narrowed her eyes when she heard how it had ended.

Her grudge against the snake hadn’t softened any in the few years she’d been gone; it seemed like she didn’t like it setting the Slayer on him any more than he did.

“He just took advantage of Makos’s kindness,” she said, a dark look on her face. “It doesn’t take someone clever to do that, just cruel.”
Pretty much what he’d thought.

“Someone needs to punch that guy in the face,” was his conclusion.

She gave him a playful look. “Sounds like you’ve got someone in mind.”

He shrugged. “Give me a few decades.”

At her amused look—

“…I’m serious.”

“I know,” said Reina. “That’s why… never mind.”

She just closed her eyes, looking pleased, and snuggled into him.

“I’ve made some strides too, you know.” This close, he could feel her emotions quite clearly—she was feeling quite proud. She told him how the rituals had gone—they’d made her undergo some soul trials, kind of like in Zane’s Minor God breakthrough—stuff that had tested her wit and resolve. They’d made her command a tiny, trapped herd of bedraggled gods in a scenario when the World Tree was under heavy fire. She led a counterattack to drive off a monster horde ten times as big. They’d shown her stuff involving him too, but she looked a little mad—she didn’t really want to talk about it. He could imagine it was a little like how she’d shown up in his breakthrough.

She lifted her chin. “They said I was the First Mistress to gain the recognition of every Mistress Spirit since ancient times.”

“…Weren’t you the one telling off the snake for showboating?”

She looked up at him.

“Of course,” he added quickly, sensing danger. “That’s totally different.”

“That’s what I thought.”

She paused—he sensed her mood shift a little, to something a little tighter. He knew that look on her face, brows furrowed, like she was trying to solve something impossible.

“I managed to unlock some new strands of Creation,” she told him. “I think that’s most of why they gave me their recognition…”

“That’s a good thing, right?”

She nodded. “It’s made me stronger—physically, I mean.”

He did get the sense her physique had changed. With how much cultivating they’d done, nearly all their mortal impurities were gone. Physically, they’d reached nearly the peak of how they’d look—at least to the eye. Zane’s body was forged of enough high-quality steel to strain a Great Faction’s treasures, while Reina took in the purified Creation of the World Tree. He could sense the difference now that he felt closer and paid attention—just the quality of her body, the same way his body grew stronger when tempered.

He doubted it was quite like his tempering with her. His had a feeling of hardness and denseness—hers, more like a willow’s in nature—keeping that flexibility and softness, so it’d bend but never break in soft winds. It was the feeling her body gave off in the Astral Plane.

“You can withstand a lot more now.”

“Mhm,” she said. “It’s made me a vessel of the World Tree too, so I can hold a lot more Creation. It also means if something like that Slayer comes at me again…”

She looked a little flushed. “It won’t go like before.”

He realized she still hadn’t gotten over that Slayer fight either.

He remembered how embarrassed she’d been about going down like that. Now her chin was held high—she felt like she was redeeming herself, bit by bit.

He thought she’d move past it a little easier than he did. She’d done her job, after all; he was the one who couldn’t get back up in time. Still, though…

“I’m not done either,” she said confidently. “That was just the first ritual.”

He could see the look in her eyes. He got the sense that feeling had driven her all through that ritual, the same way it had lit a fire under him now.

It wasn’t all that surprising to him. He knew Reina—she was just as stubborn as he was in her own way. She had too much pride to stand going down like that.

Malzareth had gotten her mad now. That was a very dangerous thing to do, as far as he was concerned.

That Slayer had its chance to kill him and Reina. It failed.

By the look on her face, he had a feeling it might end up backfiring worse than Malzareth ever could’ve imagined.

The ritual also gave her a look into the Tree’s past, present, and future—it showed her visions. Sounded like pretty mystical stuff.

“It showed me how the Tree connects to Fate,” she explained. “It’s all intertwined, Zane, all the way to the roots…”

“You’re worried.”

She hesitated. “Just a little.” She met his eyes. “It’s not the past or present… well—a little of the present. It showed me all the places Corruption’s festering… there’s just so much of it…”

She shook her head.

She felt Aiwe was a genius for making the Superdungeon. It was the only thing that she felt gave Dragonspire a chance. She couldn’t even imagine the amount of Corruption festering in that great prison—even now, it was heavily suppressing Malzareth.

There were now just eighty-odd years before all hell broke loose. Not just a single hell, a single ruined world overrun by monsters. All the hells that had ever existed—all the beasts quarantined in that great vault—would re-enter reality again. Every monster mankind had ever faced, all at once.

He could imagine the kinds of things she must’ve seen in her vision, and he could tell it had shaken her—but it didn’t break her resolve.

“We’ve got this. There’s still so much I can do to awaken the World Tree—it’s just lost to time. But if it’s as strong as it was in the First Eras, it’ll do a lot to counter Malzareth’s Destruction, just by itself,” she said. “Besides that, we’ll just need the strongest of us to step up.”

She gave him another look, grinning.

“Sounds like you’ve got someone in mind,” he said, amused.

“I know a guy,” she said primly. “Give him a few decades.”

She patted his chest. “We’ll see what he can do.”

Her good mood faded fast again, though.

“That’s the present,” Zane prompted. “You saw something in the future too.”

She nodded. “Dragonspire being ripped apart at the seams,” she said, a bit distractedly. Then—“Zane. I saw a six-winged, a monster that loomed bigger than any other… a Rhino charged it. But it stabbed the Rhino through the heart… and it fell.”

Zane went still.

The image of Makos limp on that spike flashed through his mind—that great body reduced to nothing.

“That’s Fate?”

She nodded slowly. “I don’t think it’s you.”

“There’s some sign that it isn’t?”

“No, it’s just—you wouldn’t let yourself go down like that,” she said matter-of-factly. “So it can’t be.”

He felt a warmth in his chest again.

Even after she’d seen him go down to the Slayer, she still felt that way about him. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that Slayer fight had become something like one of those ‘heart demons’ for him. The ones he’d seen in his Minor God breakthrough. A small one, but it was there. It took getting this strong to exorcise it.

For Reina, though, she’d never doubted him. …This woman.

“You promised me you wouldn’t,” she told him. She shrugged—grinned. “You know better than to break that promise. Then you’ll have to answer to me.”

She believed in him with all her heart—he could feel it up close. At the same time, though—he knew that worry was still gnawing at her.

There was too much weighing on her right now, he decided.

“Alright, enough of that.”

She blinked, surprised.

“I’ll take down the monsters when they come,” he informed her. “Right now, I can think of better things to do.”

“Mhm?”

He kissed her. She giggled, rolled over, got tangled in the sheets—with a yelp, the two of them fell off the bed.

Hours later—

Level up!

Essence Level 564 -> 565

It turned out to be a very productive weekend.

More years passed. Time he put into working his Concept, bit by bit. He got some postcards from Evan and Avery and went on a few more dates with Reina.

Until one day, he decided it was the day.

He finally felt ready.

He’d spent so much time taking in that black-gold Fusion. Seeing explosion after explosion—looking up and feeling it happening in the distant suns… he saw it in his dreams now, pretty much—he closed his eyes, and there they were.

He had that tipping-point feeling down. It was just a matter of getting it working now, manifesting it in reality, making it himself. That was the hard bit.

Which was why he had a half-step Empyrean in front of him.

His new nemesis. The Green Golem-Lord.

He’d always needed a pretty serious challenge to bring out the best in him.

It growled, raising an earthquake through its universe.

He growled right back, grinning.

Then—at once—they charged each other.