Chapter 134
Shit!" The words came out of me automatically, without target or intention. I dove aside with more urgency than I had ever felt in my life.
The monstrous thing struck the tier where I had been standing, exploding through the boards and crashing to the floor of the arena. It was ungodly fast for something so big. It was ungodly fast, period. It spun on the floor of the arena like a dancer.
I rolled to my feet. The suit was still forming around me, the stream of mystorium from Lance uninterrupted, following me easily as I dove aside.
Lance!
His battered form still lay on the floor of the arena, now just a few dozen feet from the beast. He would be defenseless if it turned to him. But Lance remained immobile. I didn’t know if he was unconscious or simply sensed that movement would draw the thing’s attention, but he didn’t twitch a muscle as the suit continued to melt from him.
It mattered little. The creature seemed drawn to my movement, and it thundered forward again.
Four gangly, corded limbs churned the ground, each ending in metal-clawed, grasping hands. The torso resembled a stretched-out tuber, ending in a gaping maw that could have swallowed a cow. Eyes littered the front end of the bulbous body, and I could see the melted faces of fiends there as well—a wolf-like snout moaning in pain, an ape creature’s expression of rage. Trailing behind it was a flailing tail, the end split into strands like a cat-o'-nine-tails, each strand gleaming like metal. It was a waking nightmare.
What is happening? I directed my thoughts to the voice as I adopted a fighting stance. The armor of a true Griidlord was still forming around me. I wasn’t defenseless, but it was disheartening how the powers that had felt so god-like moments ago suddenly seemed to pale against the mountain of this task.
The voice said, "It’s a fiend, genius, you have to kill it."
I snarled, "I know it’s a fucking fiend! Where the hell did this come from? What the hell is it?"
The monstrosity launched itself again. It was too fast. It couldn’t be that big and that fast at the same time—it defied physics. I let AGILITY take me, leaping high and away, up a few tiers. The heat of the spreading fire warmed my left side. The smoke swept between us, not hiding me, but at least obscuring me. The creature smashed into the tier I had been standing on, burying itself in a tomb of splintered boards. Instantly, it was scrabbling with intent lunacy as it started to climb free.
The voice said, "It’s an amalgam. Some of the worst creatures of God's green earth are amalgams—fiends formed by the combination of many lesser creatures, fused together into something greater than the sum of its parts."
As the thing found its footing and started to bound towards me, I let it feel my BEAM. I noticed that as the mystorium bound itself to me, even my sword was changing. The simple weapon I had used throughout the Choosing was morphing into something greater. The color of the blade was changing, dark hues of red appearing. Even the color of the kinetic pulse mirrored this change—the BEAM I sent forth was almost the color of old gore, or dried wine.
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There was some hope. The thing wasn’t impervious. My BEAM hit its clawed hand just as it was about to grasp the floor of the next tier. The impact snapped the hand back. There was a sound like a thousand pained sighs erupting from the creature's body. It lost its balance and crashed back down to the tier below. Then, just as quickly, it was climbing again.
“I know what an amalgam is!” I said, frustrated, urgent. It was theoretically true, though I had never witnessed such a thing. Few had. Even fewer had survived. My mind raced for options. “What the hell is it doing here? Where did it come from?”
The voice stammered slightly, saying, “Who can say? It’s… well, it’s quite the coinkydink, isn’t it… maybe the bishop had one last card up his sleeve?”
The voice sounded more like it was asking a pleading question than answering one.
Every part of me wanted to flee. My human mind and body urged me to escape. I probably could have. I could have activated POWER and sped away. But if I did that, the task of containing the thing would fall to the mortal men who guarded the arena. The beast might turn on the suddenly panicked and screaming crowd of spectators. My first act as Sword could not be to run and let the people of the city bear the brunt of my cowardice.
The thing bounded up the structure at me and raised a claw to swipe. I embraced POWER, my visor blazed, and everything became that bit slower. I took a breath, stepping into the arc of the swipe rather than away, pivoting, and CUT blazed from my sword. I aimed at the upturned wrist of the attacking arm.
The impact ran up my right arm, jarring my injured wrist. This thing was made of much more than meat and bone. Blood and ichor sprayed, and sinews writhed like worms in the wound I had opened in the fiend’s arm. There was the ring of steel on steel as my sword struck its bone.
Even with POWER boosting my speed, slowing time around me, I had little time to react. The injured arm didn’t pause—it raised again to swat at me. I prepared to CUT again, acting on instinct, with only the vague notion that I could maybe take off the clawed hand.
Like a diving falcon, the tail soared over the creature’s body, the frayed ends coming together like a spear. The smoke obscured the attack until the last second. I pulsed SHIELD just as the blow connected with my chest.
The armor on my chest had thickened, thanks to the Oracle. Without it, the training armor would’ve been shredded by such a blow.
Even with the stronger armor, the hit hurt. The energy of the attack spread over me, diffused by SHIELD, but every inch of me ached as I was rocketed backward, smashing into the wall behind me. I crashed to the ground, rolling, ready to move or lunge—but I had no time.
My vision filled with the descending clawed hand. It engulfed me, pressing me into the wreckage of the tier. Tons of weight, an unbearable force, pressed down. The armor groaned and sparked under the pressure. I couldn’t breathe.
Through gaps in the thing’s fingers, I could see clouds of black smoke filling my vision. Then, a gaping maw, filled with thousands of mismatched teeth, eclipsed everything. The maw loomed and lowered, closing toward my face, tendrils of acidic, stinking drool preceding it.
I had no power to fight this. I clenched my fist around my sword, the blade blazing with BEAM, but my arm was pinned, and the shot couldn’t reach any part of the beast.
I didn’t close my eyes as death lowered itself to take my head. I kept them open, frantically searching for any resource, any last hope, to save myself.
But in that moment, I was powerless.