Victor of Tucson-12.39 Shattered Designs
39 – Shattered Designs
The heat of the approaching meteor turned the pyramid’s stone blocks black as it washed over Victor. Grass that had taken root in the cracks flash-burned—reduced to ash in an instant. He felt the heat, but to his magma-bound, titanic flesh, it was just a warm summer’s day. His armor, too, was up to the challenge, weathering the inferno with aplomb. Meanwhile, Victor swung his axe.
Lifedrinker—impossibly dense, harder than diamond, rich with potent Energy, driven by Victor’s titanic arms, guided by a frenzy-enhanced mind—screamed her battle-cry as she collided with the building-sized lump of white-hot metal…and the world exploded.
Or so it seemed to Victor. The world went white, his eardrums burst, only to heal and burst again. Despite the meteor being larger than Lifedrinker, she was more massive. Moreover, Victor could not be moved. Despite the concussive force of the blast shattering and displacing millions of pounds of stone around him, he stood his ground, and due to the remarkable nature of his Roots of the Angry Mountain, the stones on which his feet were planted didn’t move either. Still, the pyramid around him deformed.
Thousand-ton stones flew through the air by the dozens, and lesser stones by the tens of thousands, too. A shockwave traveled up and down the slope of the mountain-sized structure, blasting away any dust—any less sturdy structures built on those granite slopes—and utterly annihilating the city at the base of the western face.
All that was a result of the initial impact, but there was more. Lifedrinker won her battle with the smoldering orb from the heavens. She bit into its molten surface and redirected it, sending it streaking away, where it impacted the southwestern corner of the pyramid and carved a groove a quarter-mile wide as it blew through the stones. Then, it carried on and impacted the southern quarter of the city. It hit the ground with enough force to send shockwaves rippling through the world for a hundred miles. The ground buckled, then puckered up, and erupted into the air in a great cloud of stone, dust, and smoke.
As that was happening, the force of the impact absorbed by Victor’s Roots of the Angry Mountain traveled into the stones at his feet, carried on rivers of magma-infused Energy, only to erupt upward, channeled by his spell. The stones of the pyramid and whatever earth or bedrock lay beneath it liquefied and geysered from its slopes, showering the world with lava and sending a massive plume of black smoke into the air to vie with Xelhuan’s miasma.
As his flesh healed and his vision and hearing returned, Victor screamed his fury into the smoke and dust and fire. He roared with exuberant pride, his chest swelling with the glory of the standoff he’d just had with a city-destroying meteor. Even so, even with his heart pounding with adrenaline and the urge to smash something more, he maintained a flow of Energy into the rift he’d torn through the veil. The spirits, untouched by the physical destruction around them, flowed through in a constant rush. Hundreds of thousands had already passed through, denying Xelhuan their rich spiritual Energy.
Sheets of lava continued to geyser into the air, only to fall like rain, utterly destroying any structures left standing in the city. Fires burned everywhere. The side of the pyramid was cratered, and massive fissures ran through it, exposing innards that had long been hidden away from the light. Ghouls and vampires fell screaming into the roiling lava rivers that were now bisecting the tremendous structure, stirred from their dark burrows by the cataclysmic strike.
As he recovered his bearings in the blasted hellscape, leaping from the fragile pillar of stone at the center of the crater, Victor heard Xelhuan’s reaction to his interference in the Death Caster’s great working: he screamed his fury, his roars echoing through his blasted nightmare realm, amplified by his currents of death-attuned Energy. From above, the sounds of drums thundered through the sky, and when Victor looked up, searching for the source, he saw Xelhuan’s latticework of death Energy throbbing with the beat.
Victor looked at the rip he’d made into the spirit plane, watching the river of spirits slipping through become more of a gathering of scattered streams. He’d saved as many as he could—more than half, that was certain. He couldn’t imagine Xelhuan’s ritual would succeed after such a setback. With an eager fist gripping Lifedrinker’s haft, he leaped into the sky, his massive fiery wings crackling through the air with a great whoomph. “Come on, pendejo. Let’s finish this!”
###
Tes continued to glide in a slow circle above the citadel, watching the flow of undead from the portals—hundreds of thousands, if not millions, by then. Two of the rifts had closed, and still not a single Core shone among the teeming masses bright enough to be one of the undead kings. Even Citlalmina, admittedly weaker than the kings, had a Core that outshone those throngs of undead beings.
Lesh and Bryn still held their armies in check, waiting for the field of battle to stabilize, but the defenders in the citadel were doling out punishment aplenty. Grand displays of magic lit the night; it was a truly awesome battle…at least visually. Fireballs in every hue imaginable exploded on a near constant basis; lightning flashed in purples, blues, and more mundane yellow-whites; the earth erupted with fissures and magma; webs and ice balls flew from the walls; beams of Energy flashed like kaleidoscopic rainbows; and at the other end of it all, the undead perished—shattered, burned, dissolved, and smashed.
Even so, their numbers were great, and they kept coming. Tes hoped Arona was managing the defenders well, rotating them out to allow them a chance to regenerate their Energy. “Of course she is,” she rumbled. Arona was no green recruit. It may have been a coincidence that it happened while she was wondering, but Tes couldn’t help the smile that curled up her blue-scaled snout, revealing saber-like fangs, when the first of the undead kings made an appearance.
As the initial portal—a giant rectangular doorway on the southern plain outside the citadel—crackled and snapped closed, a final traveler appeared on the blasted grass there. He was a giant of a man, perhaps twelve feet tall, clad in gleaming golden armor and wielding a huge, skull-topped scepter. His hair hung in a gleaming white curtain beneath a jewel-encrusted crown, and his Core blazed with the telltale blue fire of death-attuned Energy.
Unbidden, a rumbling growl sounded in Tes’s great chest as she banked toward the interloper, but then a huge shadow appeared on the plain, and when Tes searched the sky for its source, she saw Ronkerz, hurtling through the air, a massive cleaver in each simian fist, his mouth a rictus snarl exposing great white fangs. “Eager,” she rumbled, irritated, but not overmuch; let the great brute have his fun—there were two more kings coming.
###
Arona stood on the battlements of the citadel’s command tower, watching the clash below. Ronkerz had shouted his Big Ones down, telling them to kill undead “somewhere else,” as he leaped from the tower, arcing so high that Arona thought perhaps he could fly. His aim was perfect, and when he reached the apex of his leap, he descended straight toward the gold-gleaming undead master.
They were nearly a mile distant, but Arona could magnify the light with a thought. To her, the battle unfolded just a dozen paces away. Their blows were fast, supernaturally so, bending space with Energy to achieve the blurred, impossible speed that veil walker duelists loved to display. Even so, Arona’s magic made them easy to follow. Ronkerz had a rage affinity; that much was clear. His cleavers and body were limned with an angry red aura, but there was something more.
The edges of his weapons flickered with something dark, something that reminded Arona of the void—an affinity she’d grown intimate with during Victor’s tribulation—but it had a different quality. It somehow reminded her of weight and the vastness of certain heavenly bodies. Whatever it was, it was taking a toll on the undead king—Draugr Sveinbjorn, according to Citlalmina.
Ronkerz’s blows were like staccato thunder echoing over the battlefield and off the citadel’s walls. Each one heavy enough to destroy a granite boulder, but somehow Draugr defended against them, his skull-topped scepter absorbing the blows in a shower of blue-tinged sparks. Ronkerz was relentless, though, constantly on the offensive. The fight had been one-sided from the moment he had crashed down onto the field. Even his roars were attacks—waves of sonic Energy that staggered the undead king.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from novelbuddy. Please report it.
None of the hundreds of thousands of undead out there could even approach the fight without being shattered by the rebounding Energies. Several vampiric knights tried, mounting a charge on massive undead chargers. Ronkerz roared in their direction and broke them apart like sand sculptures melting under a salty wave.
“Milady,” the strange mage, Arcus, said, stepping close. When Arona looked at him, he nodded toward the eastern shore where the largest of the airborne rifts hung in the midnight sky. “Something comes.”
Arona stared at the portal and, sure enough, something began to breach—something huge and dense with Energy that was all too familiar to her. At first, the fluctuating waves of the rift obscured the form, but then it reached some critical pressure and burst through. It shrieked into the night—a cry that spoke of pain, regret, and endless hunger. It was a white-scaled dragon, corrupted by undeath, but not like a simple animated skeleton. This was a being of great power, a lich. Arona inhaled sharply as she felt its glare and saw the hatred in its enormous blue-glowing eyes.
“Nesut-Karemet,” a soft voice said behind her, and Arona whirled to see the titan standing inside the tower’s archway.
“That is one of the undead kings? A dragon?”
Citlalmina nodded. “It is.”
Ronkerz’s second in command, the veil walker avian named Lira Stormclaw, stepped forward. “We must—” Before she could finish her thought, a roar shook the citadel, and they all looked up to see Tes, her enormous wingspan like a dark cloud as she dove toward the undead dragon. She was still a great distance away—miles—when she opened her great maw and, for the first time, showed everyone the true power of her breath attack.
Arona had altered the light, piercing the gloom that hung around Tes’s huge winged form and revealing the dragon’s glittering blue scales that coursed with flickering electricity. She was therefore looking right at the great dragon as she spread her jaws wide and a beam of blue lightning shattered the night. Everything faded to black in the face of the bolt—all the other spells in the air, all the explosions and lightning strikes in the clouds.
Even Arona had to blink for several seconds before her vision recovered enough to see past the lingering afterimage. The whole while, she imagined the white-scaled undead dragon must have been obliterated. Surely no Death Caster, dragon or not, could stand against a bolt like that. She wondered if even Victor could walk away from such a blast. So, it was with some surprise that, when her eyes finally focused on the distant sky, she saw the two dragons entwined, clawing and biting at each other as they plummeted toward the sea.
###
Edeya cloaked herself with Night Mist’s Embrace—a spell that used a mixture of her water- and moonlight-attuned Energies to cloak her presence. She flew against the wind, following the tug of the talisman that Olivia had given her. She’d thought it sweet at first, though something in her had balked at the idea of confronting the Death Caster. Still, Olivia was insightful, and she had an uncanny knack for seeing what was in a person’s mind. She’d gone to Dar for help because he’d gotten a taste of Catalina’s spirit when he’d rescued Edeya, pulling her home through the void. Now, the lovely little pearl was leading her right toward the vile, undead woman.
Unfortunately, it was also guiding her over an entire army of vampiric reavers. They rode skeletal steeds and wielded wicked, gleaming polearms, and their sharp eyes scanned the countryside…and the sky. Edeya would never admit it to Lam, but she was terrified—not just of the hordes of undead clamoring for the blood of her allies, but of Catalina. Could she really beat her?
Much had changed since she’d last faced the woman. She was forty levels stronger, her bloodline far more advanced, her experience with war and battle a thousand times more robust. She was no girl playing at war any longer; she was a captain in the greatest army she was likely ever to see. Her cohort had conquered a dozen towns and cities; they’d even—working with steel seekers from Ruhn—taken down two of the undead lords of this dark world. So, then…why was she afraid?
That sliver of rational thought still clinging to consciousness told her it was because Catalina had done something terrible to her. She’d taken her spirit from her body, and she’d tortured it. She’d stripped her of hope and free will. Though she couldn’t remember any of that, thank the Roots, some part of her, some echo of her spirit as it used to be, dreaded confronting her tormentor.
She flew higher, trusting her magic to hide her, trusting her sturdy, powerful wings to carry her against the stiff, magic-infused winds. With quick glances left and right, she surveyed the countryside and saw that almost all the portals had closed. Flashes of blue lightning ripped the night near the ocean, but she couldn’t see the source. Monstrous screams and explosions echoed from every corner. Soon, Arona would light the signal and the attack would begin; Lesh and Bryn would unleash their legions from the north and south, smashing the undead against the walls of the citadel.
“All I have to do is find her,” Edeya whispered, scanning the air and ground beneath her. If she could locate Catalina before Arona’s signal, she could use the chaos of the ensuing battle to give her cover long enough to close with her former tormentor and deliver her vengeance.
###
Victor saw Xelhuan immediately. The undead titan was standing atop his pyramid, arms outstretched over a gold-lined well, from which his torrents of death-attuned Energy poured. With his veil walker’s senses, Victor could see the threads of Energy binding the stones of the pyramid’s top, keeping it from splitting in the aftershocks of the meteor’s impact. Victor streaked down, a great, fiery avenger, axe high, ready to smash the skull-faced asshole and put an end to his magic.
He was perhaps a hundred yards from impact when the last of the spirits passed through his rip in the veil. Xelhuan lowered his arms, and the death-attuned Energy ceased its flow from the depthless well. He lifted his macahuitl and braced himself. Victor felt his fury sing, eager to meet the challenge. Just as their weapons were about to clash, however, Xelhuan flickered and then he was gone. Victor hit the stones with his boots, running forward to slow his momentum as he spun, scanning the pyramid’s expansive peak for his foe.
Xelhuan stood on the other side of the square, his body cloaked in shifting black flames as he stalked forward. His face was a mask of fury as he roared, “Fool!”
Victor towered head and shoulders over him; his berserk state had further expanded his size advantage. He lifted Lifedrinker and walked toward the ancient titan, shaking his head. “No talking. Just die.”
“You think to challenge me here? At the seat of my power? Your Core is drained, and all it took was a flick of my fingers to draw that star-metal from the sky.”
“I ruined your ritual, pendejo. Your sacrifices are free. Just lift your macahuitl and fight me like a man. No more crying.” Victor narrowed his eyes as the Death Caster began to laugh.
“You’ve stopped nothing. Well, you saved much of this world, but I don’t need it. This island, this continent, will be enough.” He lifted his eyes, tilting his chin in a gesture that said, “Look.”
Scowling, Victor glanced up, and sure enough, his veil walker’s senses could see what was happening. The Death Magic latticework in the sky was brighter, and the spiderweb cracks in the fabric of the universe were widening. “I guess I’ll just have to kill you quickly, then.”
“Even if you could, that wouldn’t save you. The process has begun. Whether I live or die, it will happen.” He shrugged, twirling his macahuitl in smooth arcs that made the teeth whoosh through the air. “My Citlalmina has betrayed me. Perhaps my apprentices will find and capture her; perhaps not. Either way, she will no longer trouble me.”
Victor scowled, his mind racing through the implications of what the Death Caster had said. Within a heartbeat, he’d figured it out. His promise to Chantico drifted down his list of priorities. His hunger to kill the undead fiend before him fell to the bottom. Without another word, he leaped into the air, pouring his dwindling Energy into his wings as he streaked like a missile to the northwest. He had to warn his friends. He had to evacuate his armies.
Mocking laughter chased him, and Xelhuan’s voice came from the air as though he flew beside him. “Too late, hero. Watch.”
Victor’s impulse was to close his eyes and fly harder, simply to spite the bastard, but he didn’t. He watched the sky ahead of him—watched as the spiderwebs of death-attuned Energy stretched, vibrated, and snapped. Then, with his veil walker’s senses, he witnessed every flow of Energy in the sky sever as Xelhuan’s island disappeared from Dark Ember.
###
Arona tried to watch Tes’s battle with the undead dragon, but their chaotic screaming, clawing, biting melee, punctuated by blasts of lightning and other spells, had carried them down into the water. She could still hear them fighting, and blue flashes continued to overshadow all the other spell effects, but Arona no longer had a clear line of sight to their struggle. Ronkerz, on the other hand, was thrashing his undead king—or he had been.
Unfortunately, the third king had appeared—Acheron Dysios. He was a human-sized figure clad in burgundy robes and wearing a tall, diamond-studded crown. He drove a chariot pulled by flying nightmare spirits. Upon his arrival, he’d done something to heal Draugr. Together, the two Death Casters were working to torment the great simian. Ronkerz had help coming, however; his Big Ones were en route, ready to help him split the undead kings’ attention.
Arona wanted to join in, but she had to stay with Citlalmina and oversee the battlefield. Someone had to call the commands. As the thought passed through her mind, the last of the rifts closed. She nodded slowly, watching as the hordes of undead converged on the citadel. Soon it would be time for her beacon, soon it would—
Her thoughts froze in her mind as something happened. She wasn’t sure what it was, but something in her primal mind screamed for her to flee. Cold shivers ran up and down her spine as a strange, rushing wind came from the west and north, flowing over the citadel toward the ocean. As Arona tracked its passage with her eyes, she saw the strangest thing: the ocean was pulling away from the shore, flowing outward, as though a drain had been pulled somewhere out of sight.
“He’s gone,” Citlalmina said, coming to stand beside her.
“Wh-who is?”
“Xelhuan. I no longer feel him in this world.”
