Sunfire trembled as the Shadow Queen Turned in their direction. The shriek froze her thoughts as fear gripped her heart and she began to panic. She was not the only one.
“Spirits of the dead, remember my name…” Torin kneeled on the ground while mumbling a mantra to calm his mind. His tower shield lay before him as he drew sigils on it with his blood. He took a handful of Spirit Stones and inserted them into the holes at the edges of the shield with trembling hands.
As he continued his ritual, the Shadow Queen came up to their platform which was quite high on the cavern wall, and looked at them up close. Her glowing red eye covered their vision. She was so large, so impossibly huge, just one gentle tap of her limbs could crush them.
Torin trembled and began to cry, the large man shaking as he felt death looking at him. He kept placing down stones and treasures while connecting them with his blood. Qi spread out of him like a web, touching every intricate detail.
General Red slowly approached and placed his hand on the man’s shoulder, lending him his energy while keeping an eye on the Shadow Queen. He knew they were doomed, yet he refused to simply fold over and die. They would resist, together, for as long as they could. Even if their best efforts would only amount to a few seconds.
The rest of them also approached in a somber silence, piling their Spirit Stones around them in a circle, before placing their hands on him as well.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity under the Shadow Queen’s watchful gaze, the ritual was complete, and Torin spoke his voice trembling. “By my blood, and the sacrifices of the dead, protect us. Eternal Bastion.”
Energy swirled, extremely gently for the amount gathered, and a soft glow emanated from every team member present. Torin released a breath he didn’t even know he was holding and then sweat began to pour out of him and he collapsed.
“It is done.” He said and then sighed.
“You did well.” General Red said and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Rest now.”
While his words sounded calm, the man was anything but. Eternal Bastion was just that. Eternal. For as long as it had energy, it would not break. It also could not be moved. That meant that they were stuck in that one place, possibly for decades, if the Shadow Queen decided not to kill them.
A circle not even five meters in diameter.
He nervously licked his lips to moisten them and pulled back his shoulders, staring at the colossal beast in defiance.
In turn, the Shadow Queen slowly pulled back as well, and he could feel amusement from her look. She lifted her front limb, a massive chitinous blade dozens of meters long, and slowly dropped it on their camp.
Just as it looked like they were going to get squashed, and white barrier appeared, stopping it on the spot. The Queen lifted the blade up again and slammed it down with significantly more force.
The ground beneath them shook as the blade’s momentum was arrested in a split second, yet the Eternal Bastion held.
The beast hit them again and again, each time with more force, yet the barrier didn’t break. They could feel annoyance oozing out of her, yet general Red knew she was simply testing their resolve. Those strikes, no matter how powerful they looked, were nothing but a flick of the finger compared to her true strength. If she so wanted, she could crush them easily, Eternal Bastion or not.
If she used her ultimate technique again, the one that killed…
He felt a sting in his eye and rubbed it, stopping his train of thought. To distract himself from the terrifying rumble from the Shadow Queen’s attacks, he went over to Sunfire and sat down beside her, offering her his shoulder to cry on.
The woman quietly sobbed, her tears turning to steam as they rolled down her cheeks.
“I’m scared.” She said as she buried her head into Red’s shoulder.
“I know…” He answered and gently caressed her head. She was the youngest among them and also much weaker than the rest of the team, even though her attacks were the strongest, relatively speaking.
“He’s dead…” She cried.
Red never thought they would go like that. Afraid, forced to huddle together, hiding from an impossibly stronger foe. Red always knew he would die fighting. He had seen death up close many times before, yet he never felt so hopeless. It was unfair!
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“I don’t want to die…” He heard Astrid quietly whisper. She always looked so lively, so noble in her heavy armor. Yet as he looked at her, her eyes appeared hollow and without life, as she held her hands over her head in a futile attempt to block out the sound of their final barrier breaking.
Indeed, the Queen was already breaking through. The Eternal Bastion could only last so long against an unrelenting assault of a Sky Realm beast. Although, even if it didn’t quite reach that height yet, it would make no difference. She would break their shell apart soon enough, and then, they would be doomed.
----------------------------------------
Ha… Ha…
Haha…
Ha...Hahaha...
General Red thought he was going nuts when he heard a distant, distorted laugh between the heavy blows.
“What is that?” Sunfire said, lifting her head. That’s when he knew it was real. She heard it too. A quiet, distant, angry laugh.
There was suddenly a flash of light, and the chest of the Shadow Queen exploded. Blood poured out like a fountain, nearly drowning the trapped group. The beast screeched and turned, guarding itself with its front blades.
[Hehehe… Not so funny getting sneak attacked, is it?!]
The laughter stopped and the angry booming voice resounded through the cavern. In the distance, they saw a mountain of flesh slowly changing shape. The bits of mangled flesh took form, forming skin and bones. The outside got covered in dark crimson scales and spikes grew in certain places as the mountain took the form of a man.
He was small, smaller than the Queen, but then he began to grow. He grew until he could nearly touch the ceiling, and giant, leathery wings sprouted from his back, covering the cavern whole.
The Shadow Queen Screeched again, her voice laced with malice and hate, but then the space split, and a crack formed, large enough for her to slip in.
[Hehe… Nah. You will stay. DISRUPTION!]
The Queen stumbled as the crack closed, cutting off a small chunk of her foot, and then turned in palpable horror to protect herself with her blades.
General Red couldn’t believe it.
In a single blink, he was upon her, hammering his skyscraper-sized fist into her insect-like head. The body of the invincible giant was smashed into the wall of the cavern, the impossibly hard rock breaking as if it was nothing but common stone.
The beast released a scream of pain as her body fell down, nearly landing on top of them. She scrambled to her feet, trying to escape.
[Where are you going?! Get back here!]
The order was so powerful, that even they felt compelled to obey, despite not being the main target. Cold sweat poured down general Red’s back. That power was terrifying! The guy had just reached the Spirit Realm! That confirmed that his Cultivation was real and not a trick, but… How was he so powerful?!
The Shadow Queen’s body bounced off the cavern walls with a boom once more. Each strike came stronger and faster than the last, dealing huge amounts of damage to the environment, but comparatively little to the creature herself.
But then, just as they all realized the effect was minimal, small balls of golden light began forming in the air and were shot at the giant beast. Thunderous explosions rang out, and with each of them, a small chunk of her chitinous armor was blown off.
And, as expected, realizing she could not escape, the Shadow Queen changed her strategy and began to fight back.
Her front limbs, the giant chitinous blades, flashed with such speed and precision, that none of them could follow. Shallow cuts appeared all over Gerald’s body, but the man-turned-monster just laughed.
[Not so mighty now, are you?] With a flash of flames, the wounds mended, disappearing like they were never there. The five stared at it all in a stupor. [This changes everything. Now that I can finally use Spirit Qi, your attacks can’t hurt me anymore.]
The Shadow Queen screeched, unwilling to accept the result. She attacked again, but then they heard a loud clang. Her blades failed to even pierce his skin.
“How… How is this possible?” Torin stammered. “He was cut to pieces just minutes ago!”
General Red swallowed hard. “I don’t think… I don’t think he was using Qi to empower his body before…”
“And now he is…” Astrid whispered. “And look at his healing, it’s perfect.” Stars formed in her eyes as she replayed the sight of his wounds mending in a split second in her mind over and over. It was... beautiful.
[Hahaha! That… tickles.]
A booming laugh resounded across the cavern and they realized the Shadow Queen was trapped. One of his hands gripped her head, the long obsidian claws digging into her skull. She desperately tried to escape, slashing at his chest and face as hard and as fast as she could. Her Avatar also formed, doing a similar, fuck all, damage.
[Say goodnight.] A glowing sphere formed in Gerald’s free hand and he pushed it into her chest.
The Shadow Queen screamed, mental and physical attacks flying out desperately, but it was futile. They just bounced off. It was like throwing rocks at a mountain.
[Oh, almost missed you there…] The group heard and saw Gerald grin, before turning away from them, bringing the Queen with him. The magic power gathered in that sphere was… unnatural. There was no way anyone could gather so much and not be considered a god!
There came a second of silence.
And then, it detonated.
There was a blinding light and the Eternal Bastion they were hiding inside shattered in mere seconds from the aftershocks alone. They were thrown back, their personal barriers breaking almost instantly, and were hammered into the solid stone wall behind them.
The echoes of the explosion rumbled for a full minute, the tremors only gradually dying down.
“Ugh… My head…”
As the dust settled, they looked out to the place of the destruction and were horrified. The cavern was clean, spotless. The hundreds of corpses that previously littered the ground were gone, and the hive all the way in the back was gone as well, together with the stalagmites and a great chunk of the wall itself.
What remained was a glowing tunnel of molten rock, roughly circular, and extremely deep. Gerald stood, hands on his hips as his thick, scaly lizard tail was lazily moving side to side, while he marveled at the destruction.
The Shadow Queen was nowhere to be seen. The only thing that remained of her was the head which he still held in his grip. But then, with one forceful squeeze, that too shattered and dropped to the floor in a heap of ruined brain matter.
A flick of his finger later, even that was incinerated, and he turned back around, showing his sharp white teeth with a gin.
[It’s a good day to die, isn’t it?]