CHAPTER 14 – THE SHOWDOWN
Labyrinth of the Shade – Gideon Sho – Final Boss
***
Gideon stayed in [Stealth] cloak pulling every piece of darkness it could while he quietly and quickly asked Freddie to stay silent. He didn’t want anything to alert the Alpha to his presence, not until he had even the smallest clue in how he would take a target so much more powerful than himself. Earlier he’d thought to himself Attribute wise he could match a Mid-Tier Iron Rank Citizen but the issue here? What was the difference between that and an Iron Ranked Monster?
He didn’t think monsters as far as he knew had Classes nor Sub-Classes but instead gained evolutionary traits as they went up the ranks and occasionally aberrant tricks through unique mutations and then bonus Abilities through variations or versions, Elites, or in this case Alphas. He remembered talking to Freddie about it a couple times during the rare moments when shit wasn’t trying to kill them. The biggest threat assessment was some type of breath weapon with the Behir. He remembered the original they fought having showed signs in a previous battle in the terrain of having the ability or something similar but they had gone at it out of [Stealth] and hit it so hard and quick they’d never given it a chance to use whatever abilities it had.
On the safe side he assumed it had it and probably a few other tricks. He also remembered the speed of the beast. It had been much quicker than its size would suggest and could strike out with it’s elongated neck just like the mix of snake and dragon it looked like. And if it matched up to his experience already with Iron Rank vs his weapons, it was going to be a tough son of a bitch to pierce its scales, even with Skald and probably no chance with his daggers or kunai unless he could hit it’s eyes or the inside of its mouth and with this creature if it had the same kind of speed or even greater than the first example he had, would be miraculous.
He’d had L’Sana helping him when they’d taken down the original Gloam Behir (Alpha) and it had been Low to Mid-Copper. He hadn’t even clocked it visually yet but just thinking the power jump from that to an Iron Ranked version made him wary of his ability to kill it. He would still do everything he could to accomplish it but for how tough it had been to take down the already mortally wounded Iron Ranked Barghest (Alpha) let him know this was going to be a huge hammer to swing.
This entire thing was brought here to do one thing and one thing only, end him if all the other plans laid out by the asshole Alpha AI had gone tits up. This had been its ace up its metaphorical sleeve. Gideon planned to fuck up the agenda. Nothing would keep him from L’Sana, Ari, little Shira, and the rest.
One step, next step. Deep breath. With the heavy trees thick as hell everywhere in and out of the swamp that dominated the middle he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to catch sight of the creature from up on the lip of the overhang. Though it didn’t come across as an ambush predator from the one time he’d fought one he couldn’t dismiss the possibility as he had too little experience with it. Freddie would know but once again the lack of access to the Party Interface made that impossible. He had no understanding how fine tuned the beast’s senses were especially at Iron Rank.
Then as he was about to start slinking down the path to reach the floor he caught it, deep in the shadows of several trees about a third of the way into the swamp. It was barely discernible in the darkness beneath the heavy boughed trees. It looked exactly like the other one except bigger with more horns on it’s head and spikes running the length of its body. A long sinuous snake like frame at least thirty feet or more, a bit bulkier than the first one he’d faced back in the Tutorial. If his Perception wasn’t so high and boosted by his Titles he’d probably would have missed it. It barely moved occasionally shifting its frame in small rippling movements. It looked to be resting if not straight up asleep, laying on its endless amount of legs. Well not endless but a shit ton, ten to be exact, and the heavy mix of snake and dragonoid. Dragon in it’s head and legs, snake in its body shape and the way it moved.
His mind wracked itself to come up with something, anything that would give him an up on this enemy but was coming up blank. His feet without impetus or thought started carrying him down the slope in a cautious crawl as his brain worried the problem. Maybe just maybe if he got a closer look it would chew on something that would be a solution. The Moonshadow Lightning of Skald was his biggest offensive weapon but against and Iron Ranked Monster he wasn’t sure it would be enough unless he could a rinse and repeat of what he did with the Barghest and somehow got the spear inside its body. This time though he would need to do so and actually have his hand on the spear. With the trap of drowning umbral runes in the atmosphere he didn’t think using his runic sight a second time would go well.
He kept his steps small and relied on his Uncommon Ranked [Stealth] and more importantly his cloak amplifying it to keep him unnoticed. The air was muggy, heavy as a sauna in humidity and he already felt himself sweating though not anywhere near what it would have been if he was still human. Win for a scaly Bloodline. Did reptiles sweat?
He kept making sure of his grip on Skald as he made his way down the hundred foot slope to the floor below. And it seemed to be the catalyst, his mind letting go of the challenge, the adversary, the need to punch up, everything. Back to basics Gideon. And as his eyes scanned the area as he came off the sloping ramp and onto the ground floor he paused.
It took a moment but his eyes once more locked onto the shadowed beast realizing it had some kind of natural or passive ability to blend into shadows which made sense as it was of the Umbral lineage. In this arena the Alpha Avatar had chosen wrong, chosen something of the same birthing arena as he himself. He had a feeling his immense affinity with Umbral made him able to cut through the passive to a certain extent combined with his high Perception. Most others wouldn’t of seen the beast before it had struck out.
Add to that that it was snoozing and sitting under a large tree with heavy and thick branches overhanging and an oldie but goody sprang to mind. He activated [Birthed of the Eternal Eve] and became a shadow that gave the Behir Alpha big space as he circled around within the heavy draping darkness of the cavern sliding across the ground than up the tree from the other side shifting back to his form on a heavy branch twenty feet above the snoozing creature, Skald tightly gripped.
Gideon Sho looked upon his prey as a hunter, stalker, the War Crow. Skald pointed to kill. He took a breath, legs bunched and….held. Did he think this would work? Iron Ranked scales vs Skald’s ability to get through them? If it didn’t work he would be in melee with something far more powerful than he was. Violet eyes flashed into his head. Than her face followed like moon to sun or sun to moon, whatever. The new fangs, the sharp mind, the muscular athletic body of a warrior born, the spirit and soul that would move mountains for those she cared for. It was followed by Ari and her vibrant ever shifting excitement and passion, her never ending energy, then to the newest of their family, little Shira, the most balls deep courageous kid ever born. He would never in this life forget her falling onto a two story Wyvern with a tiny toy of a blade nor that of her being eaten by acid yet still swinging that same edge against scales it would never damage.
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He promised himself when he entered this place, to go back to the beginning, become the man that spent two years slaughtering his way up the gang bangers, the corrupt military, the rich worms that had funded and made possible a ring of traffickers to operate with impunity. All of them had the means to kill one man without much effort yet he’d not only been able to kill them all without as much as getting shot but kill them and slide out without anyone knowing either.
He’d been able to do it not cause of his skills owned since childhood or those being further refined to a razor’s edge in the military and FBI though they helped but because of his mind, his ability to out-think those he was moving against, use their arrogance, their hubris, their own strengths against them. To plan, to strategize and to implement were his weapons, the deck of tarot carving his fate.
In the deep of the empty, the heart of his truth, an answer sparked or at least something that might work better than just falling on the Alpha with Skald in hand. It would still be a one hell of a gamble, an untested tool, a street corner strategy to win the bet or find his cliff edge to a corpse but a slightly better one then what he’d planned on doing.
He couldn’t use his runic sight, not with the damn purple torches flooding everywhere with umbral runes. And this cavern was no exception as he saw an endless population of them high up on the cavern walls. The System was taking no chances in its attempts to end him. But it was those torches that had ignited the idea. Why was he seen as such a threat? What was different about him and the other Scions whom he’d heard mentioned a few times as targets in addition to himself both by the Shadowborn and the Umbral Primordial.
What made him such a popular light in the tapestry in the endless sea of Citizens to the Alpha Prime Avatar of the System? An entity who normally only interacted with Gods. What would spur such a great and full of itself being to take time out of its day to take pot shots at little old him? He didn’t have a true answer but he did have the beginnings of a thread, one that became more pronounced with the reforging of his Soul-Pillar. He would have come to the conclusion much earlier if he ever had a spare few days without constant battle or preparing for the next fight and it seemed obvious in retrospect.
He slowed his breathing and stayed still. Hopefully the sleeping creature below would cooperate and stay asleep but he had every faith that Freddie would alert him if needed. He kept his eyes closed tightly as he pulled [Runic-Mastery – Umbral] up and threaded it to his eyes and spirit as he dove inside himself. The answer to every tomorrow he’d ever see was at the cusp of a beginning.
***
Umbra Mortem – Erebus
***
Shira leaned against the base of Gideon and L’Sana’s bed and wept. It had been almost seven weeks and Giddy still hadn’t come. Even the people that believed in him the most thought he was dead. Shira even caught Sana crying at night and Ari too. She wiped her pudgy tear stained face. It wasn’t fair.
She was ugly, and would always be ugly forever and ever, her acid scarred face hideous. All the kids thought she was a monster and now Giddy was gone forever. She was young but she knew what dead was, gone forever was. Her Daddy was gone so long ago she didn’t remember him but her Mommie died in that awful place they met Giddy and Sana in. She died helping Shira get away from the bad light shining people with Nana Unie. She saw her Mommie cut down, a blade coming out her chest before Nanna picked her up and ran.
Her small pudgy fingers gripped her tiny broken knife harder and harder till her fingers hurt. They was starting to get all swollen again from always holding her knife so hard but she couldn’t help it.
Giddy had asked her to be his family. He was gonna be her new Daddy and Sana her Mommie and Ari her Sissy and Freddie her Robie Brother. And now Giddy and Freddie was both gone and all she could do is cry. Even Tolky would turn his head and not look at her monster face. She’d been hiding from him and everybody. They’d tell her to go to the Playpen but all the kids ran away from her or stood there and made fun of her and Tolky was always getting in fights cause of her. No one would play with her ‘cept Tolky but then he couldn’t look at her, not even her bestie. He used to tell her how pretty she was. He didn’t say that anymore. Giddy was gonna make her a moon mask and make her look pretty again. He was gonna love her forever and now he was gone, dead.
Her fingers started really hurting and when she looked down they looked like big sausages, black skin all pale gray from being swollen but she couldn’t help it, life was unfair and the broken dagger was all she had to remind her of the moment, her nightmares, the pain, the big baddie with the green juice that burned and burned and burned but she knew she had to be brave and kill the big baddie, save her new family, so she kept stabbing and stabbing but the pain was so much, so so much. Giddy called her a hero, said she was brave but all she remembered was the burning, the burning and the need to save those she loved.
Now she would always be ugly with no moon mask and nobody but Tolky who couldn’t even look at her. The crying came again then, hard and unrelenting as she went to the floor burying her scarred ugly face into her small arms. After a time and a river of liquid and heartache, she fell asleep, the river sending her off to dream land and just as her spirit settled into the first moments of subconscious landscapes. The same dark nightmare that always plagued her, a loud thud jerked her awake.
She raised her half groggy eyes and made the mistake of pushing herself up with her sausage inflamed fingers still iron gripping her broken knife and hissed and half-fell face first into the floor before catching herself with her elbow. As she started to get back up using her other arm while she finally and with a lot of trouble put her broken knife back in its tiny sheathe at her waist, she froze. Red liquid, blood, a lot of blood, was dripping down the side of the bed in an ocean, a waterfall. She leapt to her feet and there sprawled across the bed was Giddy, a very bloody, barely breathing Giddy. He had claw marks and bite marks and whole chunks of his scales and flesh torn out of him. Every part of him looked like the worst nightmare shed ever had, worse then the big baddie and her burning. She screamed, a primal scream, a scream that wanted this image to not be real.
“GIDDY!!!!! GIDDY!!!! Don’t die!!! Please!!!!”
She climbed up onto the high bed and held his bloody, torn and bruised head then started screaming her head off.
“HELP!!!!!HELP!!!!!GIDDY’S HURT!!!!! SOMEONE HELP ME!!!!!!”
Someone had to come. They had to save him. She kept screaming and screaming then Freddie’s voice finally cut through the screaming.
“It’s okay little Shira, it’s okay. We joined the Party Chat once again as soon as we arrived. I’ve already informed Lady L’Sana. She is on her way with a healer and a Life Elixir. I just, I hope they are in time. His Health is in the Low-Red, really low, a sliver. He fouht so hard, so so hard to get back to you all but the beast, that creature would have given a party of Iron Ranked a run for their money and he was, was all alone. And I, I couldn’t do anything, just a useless AI in a bracelet. Hold on Gideon!!!”
Shira’s eyes became a river of tears again. No!!! No!!! She just got her Giddy back. He cant’ die!! He cant’!!! She could hear Freddie crying so she went back to screaming, screaming for Sana, for anyone to come save her new Daddy, her Giddy.