There wasn’t more to this world than live or die, stab or get stabbed. That was what Elia had always thought. The system of souls and boons was there to incentivize competition, and she readily participated without ever bothering to think about why she did what she did. Initially, the goal had been survival. When she finally made friends and realized it would be too painful to lose them, they became her goal, and then their goals became hers.
She was going through the motions, hoping that one day everything would be alright, that the sun would set and rise, that she could live a life worth living and that one day when she died, it wouldn’t be in fear, and without regrets.
Regrets.
Elia had a lot. Most of them involved situations where no matter the choice she made, they would have gone just as poorly. Though, if she had to name one as the worst, it would have been her throwing a bomb at Frey down on the bridge. That had led to so much pain, to Pawil and Gnawen sacrificing themselves to get her out, to her now being beholden to a vengeful goddess. Maybe if she had gotten over her fears and honestly ascended with everyone else from the start, then they could have had a nice and clean adventure.
Or they could have been poisoned.
Either way, ascending the mountain while she was on its surface had gone quick. It felt easy. But like everything in this world, the deeper she went, the more the rot, the decay and corruption showed itself at the roots.
“The gods really are gone,” she muttered. “Gone on a smoke break, never to come back.”
It is in character. This feels like we’ve crashed a party at the tail-end of a massive family dispute, except swap ‘family’ with ‘rulers of the world’ and ‘dispute’ with ‘series of bad decisions’.
W-we’re not playing into their hands, are we? Feels wrong, listening to a god. Feels scary.
“Which is why we’re walking about, looking for things that might help us.” She spotted another brass knight. They were a pain to fight, but the last one had given her an epic shard and a few thousand souls, which Elia thought was ridiculous. Then again, this was the realm of the gods. Soul shards had to go somewhere and with the way statues were set up, they tended to roll uphill.
She had encountered one of these knights on the way to Valti’s tower. Their armor proved incredibly resilient, despite that not being something brass was known for. It was mostly used in instruments. Every time Elia tried to strike them, her hit was rebuffed and a tingling sensation rang up her entire arm as if trying to shake it apart. Now, she wouldn’t have needed to fight this one, but the stink of tar was coming from inside.
They only had two weaknesses: The V-shaped hole in their visor, and under the armpits, where they were only protected by a layer of chainmail and gambeson. Elia danced around the hulk, dodging spear strikes and invisible shockwaves, until she had just the right angle.
She locked his spear down with her glaive, ramming the tips of both into the ground. Then she leapt, landing on his chest feet-first, and rammed a fully powered Moony into his visor.
You have gained: Soul x9,000
You have gained: Bone shard [Common] x7, [Uncommon] x3, [Rare] x1
“Aww, no epic shard.” She spotted a gleam as she went through his pockets. “Ooh, a goody.”
You have gained: Essence of Resonance
“Huh. Wonder what this does?” she asked as she added it to her [Shattered beauty].
[Body/Sense] Shattered Beauty [Epic] [Resonance]
You are a pupae, in the midst of remolding yourself into a frightening being. Your body is turned into a form no god could love and only the most twisted of men. Your Strength is slightly decreased, but your Finesse is greatly increased. You gain natural armor, scaling with your tenacity. You gain natural weapons, scaling with your Finesse. You gain a new set of senses. All your senses are moderately increased. Your hair changes.
When you are hit with an attack, your next attack is empowered proportionally, adding the damage type of said attack to yours.
“Aw man, I have to get hit for this?”
You idiot! Mind screamed. What if the change hadn’t been positive? What if it had changed us!?
“W-well, I… shit, sorry.” It would have been like modifying [Psychometry] while Rye was still a voice in her head.
I think it was a good risk, Sense said. Things are heating up. Danger, so much danger everywhere! A bit of danger now for less danger moving forward.
“Y-yeah. Exactly my thoughts.” Elia coughed. “We don’t have an attendant nearby, so we can’t upgrade our greater souls. Boons are the best choice for gaining immediate power, if a bit risky. I’d like to get at least one combat focused boon before the next big fight.”
You could always do what you did with [Cutting Cutlery]. Just take a common boon and add a shitton of essences.
“Yes. With all the essences I have.” Elia stared wistfuly at the sky. “[Waterproof] has proven surprisingly useful. We don’t have time to waste searching for essences.”
Wait. What if we go looking for the leader of the tar knights. Avon was his name, right?
“Right…” And if she managed to kill him, then that would give her more time and more shards. The tar-knights would still be there, but after a decapitation strike they would be less organized.
This could go really wrong, Sense said. Really, really wrong. Quintus almost killed us. He killed Body. Dead! With tar, a fate worse than death is what we’re dealing with.
“But if we win, we’ll be in a great position.” The more Elia thought about it, the more a smile crept up on her face. “Rye’s not here to tell us otherwise. This seems like a good time to get shit done.”
***
Violence was on the table the moment Elia cut her way through the last of the hedge maze. The dregs of the immortal servants were up in a buzz, crawling out of every hole and ditch. The battle with unwanted visitors had been going on quietly in the background. Now, it felt like they were in full-on purge mode, like white bloodcells trying to envelop a foreign substance.
This made it a lot easier to get anywhere, provided Elia made sure not to get hit by a stray shot.
“You think Valti sent out a call for help?” Elia asked as she led a train of gurgling gardeners, legendary cooks, and maid militia crashing right through a patrol of tarry dregs. She was using them as an improvised cudgel to bludgeon her way towards the her goal, the grand palace-temple.
I rather doubt she has the power or the authority. They will still fight you, if you get into range. But it is odd, seeing them all lean up against the invaders at once.
I-I think they’re afraid. They’re spooked, like a flock of birds sensing an earthquake.
Elia rather thought she knew the reason for why already. “We better hurry.”
Buildings rushed by in a blur as she set a blinding pace. If every god had a tower, then there were too many towers, at least for the twelve main gods. On the other hand, a lot of the smaller ones crowded along singular large ones, as if they too were vying for attention. Gods had cliques then, clandestine groups or orders. Herds maybe? Flocks?
“What do you call a gathering of gods?” Elia asked when suddenly, she felt something off.
She came to a halt just in time to realize it was the smell that bothered her, the smell of tar. It was so thick she thought she might have been standing in it. But her feet were completely dry and there was not a single sign of wetness anywhere in the plaza, except…
The canals!
Of course. Where there is water there is tar, and the canals are connected to the great lake. But why is that?
Just as Mind thought about it a hand grasped the ledge of the canal and pulled itself up. Many hands. The canals were everywhere. Within seconds, she could hear the sound of battle from all around. The divine host of dregs she had gathered was made up of the best dregs she’d seen, and yet they struggled as a constant stream of knights of tar came from the canals, which began overflowing with the deep black liquid.
“A pantheon. A pantheon for a fool.” The tar burbled and bubbled, slowly taking shape. First an arm, then a torso, and legs.
“Shit.” She flicked a drop of searing tar off her glaive, then began circling the massive knight. “So, you’re the big man of the goop-people. Avon.”
“In the tar and flesh.” She could see him grinning through his broken visor, which was let down only far enough to cover his eyes. “And you are Elia the mildly undiplomatic. I welcome thee to the birth of a new age, an age of–”
He didn’t get to finish his sentence as Elia soared right past him, a fully loaded Moony drawing a blue line where his face was supposed to be. She tore through the rotten armor too easily. He barely had to pause as a knot of muscle, worm, and bone surged to protect the wound.
“–tar. But you never were a listener, o’ reviled one.” He cracked his neck and hefted a great hammer that looked like it weighed north of seven Elia’s. “The gates are barred. We could use a lockpicker.”
Something in his tone sent a cold shiver up and down Elia’s spine. She stowed Moony in favor of her glaive. A shortsword was too dangerous to use. She would just have to kill him from range with a thousand cuts.
Still had to be careful with the weapon’s heft.
She approached him from the front this time, intent on stepping just inside his reach and baiting out an attack that would no doubt leave him more exposed than herself. He didn’t look like he had any backup weapon besides his hammer, though with his bulky frame drooping with tar, he could be hiding anything.
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He struck out with his hammer and Elia seized the opportunity. Her slash deflected off his pauldron, though she dodged a thrust of his pointed haft well enough to follow up again. A cut, a dodge, a narrow retreat, in and out, out and in.
The circle of immortal dregs around her grew more narrow.
“A battle of attrition?” Avon scoffed. “Please. Who do you think I am?”
Dodge!
Elia narrowly turned her next strike into a rolling dodge. A greatsword arced over her head. A random tar-dreg had decided to join the fight. She dispatched it with ease, but there was another one right behind the last.
“We are the witnesses of tar, the first converts, the evangelists of the truth: Life must not beget death. Life desires to live.”
Two scimitars clanged off her glaive’s haft. A bolt struck Elia in the shoulder, and she staggered.
A tarry bolt.
He’s taking us apart, he’s gonna kill us! Dead!
Avon wasn’t even joining in the fight. He was too busy monologuing. And there were just so many.
“All around you, you see the result of an order long calcified, an idea of an idea, an inbred perversion of ambition. From the gods at the top to the dregs at the bottom, all stew in place in this rot.” He was watching languidly as the fighting grew more and more hectic, as his reinforcements didn’t stop, and Elia’s had turned into a trickle. “A sad state of affairs. Why should we bend to our decrepit masters? Why should not the most suited seize the opportunity and take the lead? The worthy are blessed by the tar, and the rest have their use too. Adaptation to all things! An endless competition of changes and changes, such that one day, after countless iterations, one may emerge who is worthy of the title ‘god’.”
“And let me guess,” Elia huffed, looking for an out. “That would be you?”
“I profess an uncanny sense for worthiness, my own and otherwise. It tells me that you are… underappreciated. Come, join us, or…” He paused, his visor splitting into a grimace. “You can leave. No harm will come to you, or yours. Our order may come today or tomorrow, but I can guarantee your place in it either way.”
He reached out a hand and the combat stilled all around her. The tar knights had closed a ring around her, a hundred fully armored individuals with no two armors looking alike. Among the undead she had led here, she was the only one left.
Elia carefully licked her lips. Getting out was going to be difficult. And though her glaive gave her reach and initiative, it wouldn’t matter. The one factor she had forgotten to include in her hierarchy of melee combat was numbers. Nothing beat numbers. Elia could probably fight a hundred one-on-ones. But in a one-on-one hundred, she could maybe take down seven, maybe as many as ten before succumbing herself.
She looked between him and his hand. It was dripping tar, and slightly singed.
“What happened to Gnawen?”
“I gave her the same offer and she chose violence.” One of his lieutenants hucked a glob of something onto the floor. It was a triangular object covered in blood, and tar. It was a fuzzy ear. “A rather poor choice. So, what’ll it be?”
Elia stared at it for a long while.
“You know,” she said, gnashing her teeth, “I’ve always been a friend of road initiatives and hydrocarbons.”
“Excellent, that is…” He paused, squinted. “What is a ‘hydro-carbon?”
“It’s the basis of all our tech back home. Plastic, fuel, it’s all in that sludgy mass. Big fan.”
“So, you do see the beauty of an eternal struggle. Or perhaps you are simply bluffing.”
He let her walk up to him, because realistically, there was nothing she could do. His hand was still outstretched. She was so close that he could take a step forward and touch her.
“But there’s just one teensy little problem. You’re a bit too unharmed to have fought your way up here. And why is that? For all your talk about fighting against one another to sharpen each other, to refine the gene pool until you’ve got the best among the best, your hands are remarkably clean.” She nodded towards his hand. “I bet you got Quintus with a handshake too. You can’t win in a fight. And even your words are worth less than the shits I take.”
He moved, but Elia was ready, Elia was faster. Her hands blurred as her shard knife drew over his knuckles and four fingers fell to the ground.
Avon howled. He howled as if he was a toddler sticking their hand on a stove top for the first time in his life. He wasn’t used to the pain, not after however long he had lived inside that transformation. Even though her leg ached and quivered with his every cry, Elia could ignore it. She was long used to pain.
Now for the second gamble.
The giant knight did not remain idle. He swung his hammer with one hand and the weight practically wrenched him off his feet. Elia took Sextus’ emberling seed which she had palmed and hoped to whoever that its ‘vessel’ was not limited to people. She slammed it into Moony, whispering an apology and prayer.
The fire took. It took perhaps a bit too well, creeping up her sword in a fire flash. It reached the handle too, but Elia only steadied her grip. She jumped, landed on his chest with her boots, and plunged her sword into his visor and out the other side.
She emptied her reservoir into his face, then jumped back quickly and kicked off her boots. Now that he was dealt with, all she needed was to jump and get away from–
He was still standing.
“I am Avon, witness of tar,” he burbled, staggering like a drunk. “I AM AVON, LORD OF TAR!”
His head came loose and fell. The second it hit the floor, he smashed it with his great hammer, spattering tar and stone everywhere. A deep laughter came from within and when he lifted it, there was a clear face of a maddened man laughing at her on the face of the hammer.
“ADAPTATION! MUTATION! AN AGE OF ENDLESS STRIFE!”
Everything went to shit within moments.
***
Rye was seven kinds of cramped on the elevator ride up. It took three days for it to cover whoever-knew how many kilometers. But when they reached the top and Rye looked down, the sheer endless-feeling ice lake looked like a puddle from up here, and Viln was barely a dot.
“I feel like our achievements are suddenly a lot less significant,” Karla said.
“Maybe, if you keep comparing yourself to Elia,” Sam countered. “You said you parted just up ahead?
Karla nodded meekly. She was doing better after a massive infusion of bowl water, but Rye knew that anything they did was only temporary.
“How did you deal with ripping your grailshard out?” she asked Sam.
“I died until I barely remembered who I was. Shards don’t exactly part easily.” Sam gave her a side eye. “Not that I’d recommend letting that run its course. If there had been a bowl, well… we can fill up on the one ahead, right Rye? Rye?”
“Huh, what?” Rye quickly brushed her hands of dirt, pebbles, and whatever bugs lived between them. “Sorry, I was distracted. I traded Nathan a bunch of rare shards for his boon [Speak with Beasts]. Turns out, bugs have a lot to say.”
Sam had every right to look disappointed. She pulled herself over a boulder and wordlessly reached out a hand for Karla. When it came to Rye’s turn, she hefted her up perhaps a bit too brusquely.
“I am taking this seriously Sammy, just so you know,” Rye said to the unsaid demand.
“Maybe we don’t exactly agree on what serious means then,” Sam answered.
Ooh, relationship troubles.
“Shut up, Rhuna.” Rye placed herself in front of Sam so she had no choice but to look her in the eye. “This isn’t just about taking things seriously, is it? Let’s talk this out, before we go and ascend the mountain of doom and destruction.”
The mountain rumbled distantly, as if to lend a hint of credence to her words.
Sam sighed. “It’s not a you-problem, it’s me.”
“No. Nono, you don’t have to swallow your issues down. Sammy, you’re no servant and I’m no lord or figure of authority who’ll slap you if you don’t say your mind.” She cupped Sam’s face in her hands. It was hard to gently rub the folds of tension out of her. “Please tell me?”
“It’s…” Sam breathed out. “When I dreamt of adventuring together with you, I thought I’d be the strong, stalwart knight who completes the physical challenges while you, a mage, did all the heavy brain-lifting. But in reality, you can summon enough ice to smack through almost any obstacle, while I couldn’t even surprise the goddess of knowledge.”
“Sam. You’re not useless.”
“I can’t be.” Sam nodded. “After all, how could I ? You’re still Rye, the kind of girl who doesn’t mind paying a bag of coin for what should only cost a handful if it makes you happy, the kind of girl who would trade great potential power for a-a [Speak with Beasts].” She sighed. “This place is dangerous, Rye. I don’t want you to find that out the hard way.”
“But I already know.” Rye gave her cheek a pinch. “I can’t be made of stone and made of sugar at the same time.”
“Well, then stop pulling insane things out of your butt and then say that it was nothing. I’m not sure what to believe, your actions or your words.” Sam huffed, though she clearly enjoyed the way Rye was playing with her face. “So there, I guess we’re both a bit two-faced.”
“Alright. I’ll try to make you worry less.” Rye said. “Can I have a kiss?”
Sam hesitated, then rolled her eyes. “Fine.”
They kissed, which meant Rye phased right past Sam’s lips and into her face.
“Ack, that’s cold!” Sam coughed. “We need to get you a new head.”
“Oh, absolutely. Though maybe this ghostly head has its perks.” Rye giggled and nibbled on her ear, earning her a squawk and a swat. They were so busy with each other that they barely noticed Karla until she walked up and crushed them in a hug.
“I felt like, after all of my unreasonable requests, I couldn’t say no to her.” Her face was a complete mess of tears. “But d-dangit, just because I make stupid choices, doesn’t mean Elia should too!”
“Boy, I hope they’re throwing obstacles that she can overcome by stabbing them with her shortsword at her.”
“You can’t beat everything with a shortsword,” Rye said.
Sam tapped her sheath wryly. “That is why the good lord invented the longsword.”
They laughed, passing by an abandoned shack, an oddly shaped boulder, and a whole lot else. The stronghold marking the middle-point came within the following hours. It was empty, except for corpses strewn about every which way, and the clinging smell of coal and flame.
“Elia was here,” Karla said.
“How can you tell?” Sam asked.
She gestured around. “Wanton destruction, chaos, even. Not one unlooted corpse.”
“I guess that’s why we’ve been having it easy so far,” Rye commented. “Our resident melee-expert has cleared the path ahead already.”
“She’s a savant alright. Nobody as skilled in sight within a thousand kilometers,” Sam grumbled.
And grumbled.
“That wasn’t me,” she answered Rye’s look.
They peeked outside the stronghold as the rumbling that had started distant grew ever nearer. From within the cloud-ceiling above they could see movement and flickers of light. Little sparks of something were falling through it, person-shaped and rapidly descending. Then, a great streak of white broke its surface and tumbled down along with so many sparks and embers.
“Oh crud,” Karla said.
“Everyone down to the basement!” Sam yelled.
They had barely hit the top of the stairs when the entire castle shook. Dull thuds came from the stronghold’s ceiling. Then, a crash, and everything was filled with dust. Rye had, in all the commotion, not been able to unhook her wand quick enough. There was still a sphere of ice around them, but it was thinner than Rye would have liked. Her left arm twinged uncomfortably.
“Everyone alright?” Sam asked. There were two halves of a large piece of ceiling lying left and right of them. They looked like they had been cut right in two.
“I’m alright,” Karla said, sounding only moderately concussed.
“Me too. Thanks to you, my love.”
Sam preened. Nobody but Rye would have been able to make it out. It was an internal joy.
The castle was still partially intact. The giant scale-feathered sky-serpent had only grazed it, and even that was enough for wide scale destruction. A gaping hole and steep cliffside were where they had just been looking out from an embrasure. Fist-sized bricks and pieces of stone were still breaking off every now and again and the ceiling was caved inwards in a sea of splinters.
Close one. Rhuna said. Might as well take that as a sign of fate and turn around, eh?
Did she sound shaken? Her, Rhuna, afraid?
“I think… we should regroup, restock, and reevaluate our approach to this mountain. We can’t waste time if we have a chance to be smooshed by falling stuff at any second.” Rye looked between them all. “Something is clearly happening up top and with the scale of destruction at hand, I think we all know who’s involved.”
Karla giggled. “Yeah, sounds like Elia alright. Do you think she’s at the waterfall gate yet?”
“I–”
A golden flash of something pierced the lingering clouds of dust and Rye was whipped back. She looked surprised as she was pinned to a wall and looked down to see a jagged golden spear lodged right in her stomach. Sam was yelling something but she wasn’t listening. Where had she seen this sheen of gold before?
From within the cloud of dust and ash, a deep, rumbling voice sounded full of hate. “KARLA!”
Frey. The giantess was still alive.