The general’s towering spear whistled past Elia as she turned to parry it, pushing herself out of the way more than the weapon itself. The air was hot and his attack was heavy against her guard. For a moment it cleared her mind of the constant din of worries and thoughts vying for her attention. Steel screeched against steel as she turned the parry into a counter, cutting a streak across the general’s pauldron.
They separated, him landing on a pile of corpses that hissed like frying a steak, her flipping majestically until she landed atop a pedestal that once held a statue.
Shoulda put more magical oomph into that hit, might’ve taken his arm off.
“I did.” The fact that it hadn’t meant that his armor was just that strong.
Brod wasn’t doing much better in the first exchange with his foe. Already there were red welts healing across his forearms where the partially melted golden woman, called Effulgent Render by the haze, had cut him with her glaive. She moved on two impossibly thin curved blades for legs as if it was natural, with movements like a hypnotic dance.
Not an easy fight. But at least she was keeping her fire inside, while the general was spilling sizzling bits of himself everywhere. Surprisingly enough, his liquid-fire blood that gushed from his bones pearled off of Elia’s skin with minor damage.
“[Waterproof] for the win.” Elia coughed as the corpse-smoke seemed to grow a will of its own, bundling around her body. “Gah, I hate that smell.”
She bounced down and they exchanged another couple of blows in the searing heat. Fighting with only one life was proving difficult. Elia had to hold herself back from capitalizing on every perceived opening until she was absolutely sure her opponent could not hit her back. Her finesse helped immeasurably at keeping her distance, turning the fight from a brawl into a game of cat and mouse.
The general supposedly was some hero on par with the gods, and he had the strength and speed to prove it. But the way crawled on three of his four limbs like an animal was creeping her out. He was feral, and that ferocity was keeping Elia on her toes. Between ducking and dodging she noticed how battle-worn his armor was, how many spear-shafts were sticking out of his body, how the knuckles of his gauntlets were razed until there was barely any metal left.
He had fought hard for so long. A torso-long gash across his chest proved as much. But something felt off.
She used [Frog leap] to get out of his reach again. The temperature of the area around his chest was fluctuating wildly, reaching from hot as an oven to only slightly scalding.
“I wonder,” she muttered, then leaped forward and under a wide swing, skidding under his body.
His hand came down in a mighty palm-stomp that sent a cloud of ash flying everywhere, but missing. With a quick burst of reservoir, she cut into the old wound, then rolled herself out from under him, jumping over another slash in the nick of time.
She backed off to observe again. And there, just as she suspected, something was moving inside his wound. The mass roiled and dripped like thick globs of coagulated blood, but the smell was something she could never forget as it caught fire and created a curtain of thick black smog.
Tar.
“He’s infected by it.”
Think he’ll blow up like the other ones?
“Well, he’s certainly up to something.” Elia licked her dry lips. “Here’s to hoping he doesn’t go supernova.”
The smoke curtain pulsed with red light like a heartbeat. She thought he couldn’t have many more surprises left in store. But just as she settled into a defensive stance, a fiery whip caught her in the side by surprise.
The impact hurt first, then it burned. Elia screamed, as she felt the fire eat into her body inch by inch, felt it dig deeper and attack her very self. It only stopped after she poured enough bowl water on her arm to drown a cat, but even worse than the pain was the definite feeling of loss.
He took something from us. All accounted for?
Yep.
Yep.
I am here and ready to fuck some shit up.
Elia shook her head. The smoke was dissipating and there stood the general, just as undead as before except for his left arm which was encased in a whip of molten fire at least fifteen feet long. It tapered into a thin line at the very tip. She was watching it when with a sudden jerk, it blurred.
Instinct saved her life as the whip exploded the stone right next to where she had been standing half a second ago. She had to dodge a spear thrust and a rolling cloud of deceptively hot ash just to get a bit further away again, but the arena was not large enough. She was still in his reach.
A thin tendril coiled around her ankle, but this time she was quick. She cut the tendril off and only needed a single splash of bowl water to put the fire out.
“I’m getting the hang of this second phase,” she muttered, as the general sprung into action.
The shockwave of his impact sent rocks and discarded weapons flying, but Elia was already on the move. She used her [Frog leap] in combination with a fully charged Moony to leap into a series of hit and run attacks. He could barely do more than flail his weapon, always parrying after she already had sewn him with a series of cuts.
“You’re not that strong at all, mister mostly-ash.”
He roared like a beast, his limbs clacking in frantic frenzy. Jumping over another stab of the spear, she used it as a platform to vault over his back and stab him with the last chunk of her reservoir.
“Maybe I’m just that good.”
Oooh, she’s getting cocky. Let me in on that action.
She felt a part of herself slither down and sidle right in next to her. Every cell in her body felt like it was listening to her now and she could picture clearly where she was or where she would be after a twist here and a hop there. Her movements turned from quick to blindingly fast. She was on top of the world.
“Or maybe, the gods aren’t that big of a deal.” Catching his spear-hand by the vambrace, she summoned her [Right Gauntlet of the Cobra] and began siphoning off his reservoir. He had plenty reserves, as that fire-whip had to come from somewhere. “Maybe they’re all just as sick and decrepit as you.”
He pulled her in for a grapple and this time – with Moony charged from his own reservoir – she cut into his armpit and wrenched upwards. There was no sensation of snapping tendons and cut muscle, just resistance like a rock, then the snapping of bone.
“Easy,” body huffed.
It was only with a belated realization that she noticed that even in his confused state, the decades of campaigning he must have gone through were etched deep into his soul. Even now, he could still think up a plan, a scheme, a trap. His spear-arm fell to the ground in the same motion that the fire-whip wrapped around them both.
“Shit.” She smacked him on the head with her pommel. “Shit, shit, shit.”
His nosebridge cracked. He drew in close, and from within his skeletal body came the voice of someone with only a tenuous grasp on reality. “I will burn. Burn. Burn for our lady.” He made a gulping sound and a breath of hot ash blew out of his mouth. “Why? Why must we wait? My apologies, but I cannot.”
His tone only furthered her panic. It was the tone of a dead man.
Body, pull out you idiot!
He grew hot, hotter and hotter, those ash-covered bones suddenly glowing with the intensity of the inside of a volcano. His cloak billowed as it caught flame and for a moment, he was the exact image of the fiery eagle emblazoned on his back.
Elia couldn’t appreciate this, as she was being toasted alive. Her scaled skin and [Waterproof] were working overtime to deal with some of the heat, but when the air was hot enough to cook an egg, it could cook an eye too. Soon the cracking of her ribs joined the chorus of pain drawing tight around her body. It seemed like she was witnessing the birth of a star, with front-row seats and no protective sunglasses.
The general’s flame never reached that far. It sputtered out just as the stone began cracking beneath his feet, his body finally burnt to the last. Elia didn’t notice how the last of it dissolved into ash and was washed away by the wind. She didn’t have the nerve receptors to perceive anything except some sound, a small amount of touch, and an inexorable amount of wrongness.
Why am I here? Where is here?
Everything was going to end soon. It was alright. It was what she had always wanted. It was the natural way.
Then she was walloped by what felt like a large backpack, its leather torn and contents strewn about. She knew there was at least one bottle of water left. She heard a drop fall onto a brick, heard it touch the ground that drank it with a hiss.
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Moss. It would be nice to be a patch of moss. Drink up all the water I want, day in, day out.
She rolled on her side and heard a sizzle. She rolled again and felt something sticky at her feet. She groped her body. Her chainmail was slagged and sloughing off in bits. Her skin felt hard and brittle like an ember someone had fished from a fireplace.
I’m a dragon now. Do I breathe fire?
She exhaled, but all that came was ash. For some reason, the feeling shook her. She wanted that water. She needed it.
Slowly, she felt around for the soft plastic shell and slowly undid the cap. It stuck to her fingers, which was quite handy.
It’s going to feel so cool. It’ll help me remember why I’m here.
She was drinking it through her finger tips long before she tore the cap off and gulped it all down. A wave of nostalgia washed over her, and a memory from that one time she was playing in a sandbox. Her goal had been to create a tyrannosaurus rex out of sand and snot, but she settled for a molehill. It wasn’t pretty enough to attract any moles yet, but just as she realized she had been at this for hours, Dad had picked her up and offered her an ice cream.
Vanilla. Ice cream. Ice.
Hot. Cold, hot, fuck, I’m ON FIRE–
She blinked as a layer of ash poofed off her chest, which was now bare like all the rest of her body. She felt around, then buckled over and vomited a sea of wet and burnt sludge out of her lungs.
“Shit. Mind, you alright?”
There was a mental whimper. Her head was writhing.
We lost her, came a voice.
Her face turned ashen. “Mind?”
I’m here, Mind said, sounding detached. Body’s gone.
For all that she was still feeling like the inside of an oven, Elia felt cold. She felt around for the snakes on her head. Three of them were unmoving, and when she pet them, they crumbled like old coal.
“Fuck.”
That’s all you have to say? Insert-expletive-here? She was one of us, Elia, and now she’s dead.
“I know! She was right there and… it could’ve been me.” She stroked her hair snake and felt colder still. “Is this really worth it?.”
Oh, g-getting doubts now, are we? Sense asked. I-I’ll have you know I’ve had doubts right from the start. You knew things could go bad, you just chose not to confront it. Look at where we are n-now! ‘Nobody will suffer like I did ever again’ my butt; do you think we got here all on our own?
She looked around. Brod was still fighting. He must have thrown her the pack. He was not winning.
“No.”
Exactly, and that means–
“– means we have to make this count.” Once they got to the grail, once they were at the wheel, they could undo so much wrongness. Elia groaned. “Still one left.”
With a grunt she got on her feet and staggered towards the fight. Her grip on her sword grew tighter, and her stance more sure with every step.
***
Brod always knew he was a coward. Where other giants would – after failing an ascension – gladly throw themselves at the nearest forest-monsters in the hopes of making up for their dishonor with a final frenzy at the end of their lives, he had run away.
Instead of seeking a good death, Brod had turned around and run, searching for another kind of immortality so that one day he could meet his family again. Father was a born hero, and his sister took after him. They had both already been immortal as Brod ran from the dusk of his years. In the end, he had found the Xandrians, and after defeating some number of monsters hidden in the sands, he was granted their version of immortality.
At the start, an everlasting life seemed to have been the answer to all his woes. But then Xandria was razed, and its inhabitants cursed, hunted, reviled by society. Even without their marks, the gods wouldn’t allow him to ascend a second time, not after he turned his back halfway up.
And so he had spent time waiting. Seventy years as a carpenter. Fifty years as a fisher. Fourteen years as a smoker, though he enjoyed those more than all the rest. He waited until the power of the gods started to wane, and the lands of mortals fell into disarray.
It was so easy the second time. Strengthened by his regeneration, he even had energy to spare on worrying about the little ones, who kept on joking about souls and boons and other rewards when they reached the top of the mountain. When, not if. To them, the state of failure was temporary by nature. They could always come back after all, again and again.
Elia was the exemplar among them.
The little girl fought with the wild ferocity of a dozen giants, parrying blows and dodging decapitating strikes by a hair’s breadth as if tomorrow was her last day alive. Surely she had to know that the call to the grail was a false siren’s song for the terminally loyal and naive. No one was allowed to so much as look upon the grail, none but Ruthe himself or one of his children when they asked for a great change in the world.
But if she knew, then what was she fighting so hard for?
Maybe Brod ought to find a little bit of that ferocity within himself too.
The blows came and though he tried to deflect them, they were too many, too fast, and too heavy. He had neglected to learn the art of killing for more than half a century, and was still cursed with that oath from eons ago to never bear arms while on divine soil. He found himself outclassed in everything but raw power and regenerative ability.
Even then, every now and again there came a slash or stab that he could block with ease. It felt familiar, like a song from so long ago. As he let himself be guided into her rhythm, moving in to turn debilitating blows into shallow cuts, forcing her to adapt to his pressure and vice versa.
It was a pleasant feeling, the pain long forgotten in the hot wind. He barely noticed when the blade slunk into his chest between the ribs, grabbing it out of reflex so it would be stuck. He smiled as he saw Elia stagger over.
“I didn’t run away this time, Sister.”
The Effulgent Render seemed to pause, cocking its head in confusion. All that came from its mouth was a gurgly rasp. She twirled, cutting off his arms with her leg-blades and wrenched the glaive out with a cold elegance. Brod fell, his heart severed in two, but already regrowing.
All he felt was a profound sadness. “Sister, what have they done to you?”
Even just looking at her marred skin and the armor which now seemed like a cage filled him with grief. He didn’t have much to go on besides her build and skills with the blade, yet he felt sure that it was her.
But as she turned aside, assured that his pool of blood was large enough to kill even a giant, he noticed a symbol on her neck that was starkly contrasted with the charred flesh. The sign of undeath.
For a moment, he just stared. The immortality of the gods was legendary, supposed to last until the end of time. But if an immortal can become undead, and undead can rot and decay, what did that say about the gods?
***
Elia had set out to write a requiem on the Effulgent Render’s corpse, one performance dedicated to her lost self. But after a few exchanges, she had to admit that her opponent was more than just an obstacle to overcome, that she was unlike the great general. Where he muttered incoherently, the Render took her in with composed silence. Instead of fighting with a bestial abandon, her grace was like nothing Elia had ever seen before.
It would have been beautiful, if she weren’t fighting for her life.
Parry, dodge, hop away, she thought. Lunge in, twist, then sidestep, and keep up the pressure. Always keep up the pressure.
She was forced to back off after an exchange left her with a gash across her freshly regenerated scale-skin. The problem wasn’t just that the Effulgent Render was showing an amount of skill Elia would call ‘above passable’. Her glaive was three meters long, giving her a dangerous amount of reach.
And then there were those legs. She was slower than Gnawen, and didn’t look half as durable with her melted armor, but even then Elia didn’t see a way to win this quickly. And besides, it was fun. Just a straight-up fight against someone without all the fire and tar bullshit, nothing to get in her way.
The dance went on, and on, and on. A cut along the render’s arm was mirrored in a cut along Elia’s cheek. The quick pace at the start mellowed out, like a spinning top starting to wobble. Patience ran thin.
Elia cursed under her breath, then went for a risky assault. She launched herself forward, bounced off of three walls and came at her from the side. Her insane finesse was the only thing that allowed her to flex her spine fast and precise enough to tumble over the glaive’s blade. She hit the haft with her back, pushed herself off it with one hand, then transformed her momentum into a killing blow filled with all her reservoir.
The attack parted three golden crown-spikes, the arm holding the glaive, and drew across the golden armor, drawing some of that liquid fire blood. It splashed harmlessly off of Elia’s face, but obscured her sight just long enough for a kick to sever her own right arm.
The sudden influx of sensation would have normally given her halt, but Elia was a bit out of it.
Compared to burning alive, this is downright refreshing.
Y-yeah, haha. Ow.
Before her arm could reach the zenith of its arc, she grabbed it, stepped under another kick, and stabbed her through the chest as the last of the moonlight faded.
Immortal slain
You have gained: Soul x60.000
You have gained: Bone shard [Common] x24, [Uncommon] x10, [Rare] x5, [Epic] x2, [Legendary] x1
It felt like ages until she finally toppled with a thud.
That was beautiful, Mind-Elia commented.
Elia sniffed. “Body would have enjoyed that.”
Is it over? Sense-Elia asked. Can I open my eyes?
“It is.” She looked around. Brod had stopped leaking blood, though his arms were still little stumps.
“Give me,” he said.
“Give what?” She looked around, finding a beautifully shining greater soul.
Soul of the Effulgent Render
The Effulgent Render, a giantess of much renown, was shaped in the image of Worga and given the twin-leg blades when she lost hers fighting traitors in Viln. Left behind by Worga’s host to bar the gates and let none pass, even through the degradation of her mind and Wroti’s violent return, she never shirked her duty.
“Please.”
Elia pondered. The corpse had given her a legendary boon shard, which was likely the level above epic. Did that mean the soul was legendary too?
She shrugged and tossed it at him.
“Didn’t see any attendants this far up anyways. But I will take this.”
Champion’s Glaive
A heavy glaive passed down by the champions of Worga’s immortal legion. Made of an incorruptible alloy of copper and silver, it retains its sheen even after all this time. Can change its size to fit the wielder, yet always retains the same weight and shape.
She hefted it, and though it was too heavy, she felt better with it in her hands. Brod seemed entirely uninterested in it as he crawled over to the prone woman and gently pressed the soul back into her chest. It was a weird way to revive someone, but she supposed it didn’t matter to her what he did.
The gates to the core of the domain of gods was just ahead, a pair of bronze monstrosities that absolutely brimmed with fuck-you energy. She took some of Brod’s plastic bottles and with their water fused her arm back onto its socket again. She rolled it a few times, then felt ready to move on.
“I’m going ahead now.”
“I see.”
“You’re not gonna follow me?”
“No. I am… still a coward.”
“Dude, your arms are on the floor and you bled a lake just to buy me some time. Nobody’ll call you a coward.” She sighed. “But don’t change your mind. I’ve got some private business to attend to.”
Aurana is incensed
Your bounty has increased
Current bounty size: Soul x230,000
Valti smiles upon you