Chapter 19

David, I thought to myself, looking down from the balcony set into the top of the tower. I could see where he had fallen, and the flames greedily entrapped him, as if in revenge for his mastery over them. I leaned the hammer’s haft against the balcony railing, no longer strong enough to even carry it over my shoulder.

I had known that fool of a boy for years; no one paid much mind to the man with a mop, so I doubted he even knew who I was. When he got canned for trying to expose the CEO’s son, word made it around fast; it was a nice thought, but David had fumbled the whole thing and ended up taking the blame for it instead.

See, I’d been working jobs like that for years. The guy with the mop, or the broom, or the bag of tools, keeping the gears turning so the big dogs could keep barking. In that world, money had been the true power, and the only path to it was having the right family, the right connections. If you were born in the shit like me, you fought and scraped for every inch you climbed, and watched people far less deserving climb far higher than you could ever reach.

Even though he didn’t cover his face, it took me a while to recognize David again. He didn’t look miserable, he didn’t look like a beaten hound. He was smiling, confident; nothing like the David who’d passed me in the halls a hundred times if it was once. Of course, even face to face, he probably wouldn’t recognize me, either. He’d never seen me looking up. He’d never seen me as powerful.

I wondered how I looked, if everyone could see the way that I felt. I flexed my hands, and even despite the exhaustion wracking me, I knew I could still crush simple stone in my hand. My start had been a simple one, clear and straightforward. It was me, and a giant, four eyes bright with intelligence, four arms emerging from a torso so broad it looked like the blunt nose of a freight train. His muscles had muscles, and he was so strong that he felt strong, like standing in his presence made you feel weak. I was used to feeling weak; if he wanted to beat me up or throw me around, that was his own damn problem. I was going to lift that hammer.

It was a ton if it was a pound, far heavier and denser than any chunk of metal ought to be. While I struggled, while I trained, the giant explained to me the way of the world. He was my Shepherd, and it was his job to teach me these things. He told me everyone had a Shepherd, and that I was likely far from the only one who had him teaching me. He told me that the Shepherds were engrams, encodings of the will and minds of some of the multiverses’ most powerful entities. We lived and died by the will of the Scribe, our story written from start to finish. He didn’t talk about free will or self-determination, but instead he kept hammering into me the futility of fighting fate. He told me about how this tutorial revolved around the Greenwarden and his towers, and how each was an obstacle to clear. How each would have something needed to summon the Greenwarden himself. In the same tone, he told me how it was my fate to leave the clearing a failure, too weak to lift the hammer.

And he was right. But after a full day of fighting everything I could get my hands on, pouring every free point into my Strength, I returned. I could lift the hammer, but it immediately tore my muscles, the strain of bearing it far too much for the weakness of my body. So I took another day and fought like a lion, pouring points into my fortitude. This time, when I returned to the clearing, I lifted the hammer over my shoulder, and chose my Class. He was right; I left the clearing a failure, too weak to lift the hammer. But I came back. In this world, power was power. The Merciless Stars didn’t give a shit about you unless you made them care. I’d fought my whole life in the old world; finally, I could start winning.

So I took that hammer over my shoulder, and the armor that I had gained from slaying beasts, and I cleared my first tower just in time to find out that I had been second. When I found this out, my rage had called to me; even though I’d just fought my way through my first tower and been grievously wounded, my anger wouldn’t let me rest. I gathered up the fragment and the helm that I had gotten from the chest at the top, and made my way toward the next closest tower, only to find the gates already shut against me, and the power having faded from the stones of the tower. With the magic having dissolved after the Disciple’s death, the iron-bound doors were no obstacle to me.

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I had chosen the path of Martial Might, and when I had reached tenth level, I had been offended by the offer of my class. Ironbound Savage. I abhorred the idea of becoming a savage; the bindings of the old world were only slow to loosen. It was only then that I realized the old world was dead, truly dead, and that only those who embraced the new one would rise to great power.

My name is Marcus, and I am the Ironbound Savage. My weapon is my rage, with which I wield the hammer of a God. Every wound inflicted against me only heightens my rage, increasing my power nearly endlessly; the only limits were the strain my body could take, and the immense Vitality it took to sustain it, as the power enhanced my muscles until they strained and tore. Once the rage faded, it took me a while to be able to even lift my hammer again, much less fight.

So for now, I waited. I meditated upon the balcony atop a tower drenched in flame, the last fragment of the Greenwarden’s Seal straining against my hands in its’ desire to be united with its’ brethren. I would release it when I was ready, and not a moment before. People like David and Jake had held the old world by the throat; I had struggled and fought for every scrap I had been given. This was my world, now, and here only those with the strength and determination to do what they must could succeed. To die was weakness, and the Merciless Stars did not reward weakness. In this new world, there were no more second chances. I had mine when we were dragged into this new world, and David… had his, lying there at the foot of the tower. There would be no more.

When I finally felt recovered enough to stand once more, I took the hammer up over my shoulder, and strode to the pedestal where four of the five fragments hovered, awaiting the last of their brethren. When I pressed it into place, pushing all of them down with an open palm, a ripple went out through the world, an endless shuddering instant like a lock giving in to the relentless key; a prison gate swinging open upon hinges made to outlast the universe that held its’ cage. The mountains shuddered in sympathy, falling stone like groaning voices heralding the coming of the end times.

The forest itself writhed, and I could see the furrows where the vines withdrew from three of the five towers; the first, where David and I had first met, had collapsed, and nothing there remained to draw in. The tower I stood upon was similarly untouched, the firestorm having slain entire the vines which enshrouded it. The forest itself trembled and collapsed as vines wrapped as big as freight trains drew back from beneath the soil, carving wounds in the earth itself. I wondered, for a moment, if he had somehow known that this would happen, and that the towers held the sleeping bones of a giant. The destruction of two towers had greatly weakened the rising creature, though it was difficult to think so with the immensity of its’ body. Hunched over, wearing a hill upon its’ back, with a crown of saplings sprouting into oaken majesty ringing around the fringes of a head the size of a house, eyes the size of doors opening to regard the world before it. The head slowly swung to look down at its’ malformed left side, immense right arm separating itself from the ground to reach across and touch the vine-wrapped stump where an arm should have been. Its’ body was a thing made of vines and trunks, the trees forming interlacing patterns of armor, the vines binding it all together in a shell so strong and tightly wrapped that it seemed to be a solid surface. When it roared, it was the sound of an earthquake, the violence of a stampede, and rich with all the threat of danger that dwelled in the dark places of the old forests, where no man had ever tread.

And I, Marcus, raised my hammer in defiance to it, exulting in the challenge arising before me. I bellowed my challenge to it, and an answering roar battered my body like a hail of stones.

I welcomed the pain. I welcomed the challenge. In this new world, power was the only thing that mattered, and as powerful as this beast may be, it had already reached the pinnacle of its’ existence; its’ death had been foretold. It was no match for someone whom still had the craving for power burning bright within their soul.