39.

The heavy metal club smashed into the ground in a plume of dust, sending out a wave of dirt at Santi as he leapt back. His morph extended from a spear into his favored tendril whip, snapping the whip at its eye. The cyclops closed its fleshy eyelid and blood welled from the cut and flowed down its face. It screamed a guttural warcry, mixed with pain and anger as it wiped at its eye.

Santi kept dancing backward as the team tried to hold a second cyclops from pincering him. The third was struggling to its feet, hamstrung by Daniel and Hana. The cyclops was lashing out, slamming its club around itself as it tried to crush the two scouts.

The fight had devolved into a slaughter. The cyclops were still alive and fighting back, but their lack of coordination and tactics had let them be brought down like an elk by a wolf pack. The final battle was anticlimactic. The threat posed by the rift was in brute strength and numbers and when matched the monsters had no answer to it.

Santi waited for the club to pass by, air stirring in its passage. He darted in in its aftermath, spearing it in the knee. The kneecap split like rotten fruit and the big monster crashed to the ground. Santi disengaged and leapt toward the others who were holding their own.

In the long term, they would have finished if off, but he could speed the process up. Their cyclops was covered in wounds, blood flowing like water down its legs. It still hadn’t slowed down, its blows coming like thunderstrikes.

Cameron couldn’t stop the blows, but he could force them off to the side. Chloe and Bianca were whirlwinds of violence while Tank hung back, waiting to intercede. Santi sped up, coming behind the monster.

The morph blade transformed into a long spear as he leapt into the air. He struck hard, the wide speartip cutting through its thick spinal cord. The creature stiffened for a moment before starting to fall forward. Santi rode it down, the monster not dead but paralyzed.

He glanced back to where Daniel and Hana were running around their monster and decided he’d let the two vultures try to bring their own prey down. They were in a good spot and he didn’t see any undue trouble coming unless they really fucked up.

His own target was trying to get back on its feet, with blood coming down its eye and its leg useless. Santi twisted his spear, bone cracking and splintering under his feet. The morph blade slithered back up his arm and he hopped off the cyclops. The others needed the clean experience points for killing it.

With it laying there unable to move the girls gave him a look of self awareness, before they did their duty. They slashed quickly along its throat on both sides and watched as it bled out into the dry dirt. They walked back to his original foe and the work took only a few minutes to finish it off.

They all stood and watched the scouts struggle to finish their opponent. They couldn’t be hit, but they were giving the cyclops a death of a thousand cuts. It was inhumane, but there was certain inhumanity in fighting these creatures. A ruthless ferocity that was needed to survive. So, they watched.

And watched.

And watched.

Finally it died.

“Let’s go to the foundry. We need to get the rift heart and this thing will collapse,” Santi told them as Hana and Daniel limped over to him. Both of them were drenched in sweat and cyclops blood, looking mightily disgruntled. Santi ignored them and started on towards the foundry. Daniel hung to his side and he asked the other man to make a quick run through the rift portal to have the salvage team come out.

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Daniel disappeared again and the team kept moving to the foundry. Santi took a glimpse back to see the salvage team come through the rift. Rayleigh led Abraham’s team as they started to drag out the mana purified golems. There was plenty of regular scrap inside of the foundry, but the mana purified metals were the most valuable.

Santi was happily imagining a set of weapons and armor for his team that wouldn’t break under their full strength as they walked into the foundry. Hana and Daniel reconnected and slid off to the side, off to go and search for whatever it was they looked for. Treasure hunters more than fighters at times.

“So what are we looking for?” Cam asked. His voice was hoarse and he had a ring of dried sweat around his scalp.

“Glowing stone.”

“Ohhh. Ok.”

They all broke off heading around the cavernous facility in search of the rift stone. Santi figured it’d be where all the mated pairs of cyclops had been gathered, but there could be plenty of things in the foundry to take for themselves. To the victor the spoils after all.

Most everywhere he looked was defunct machinery. What little that was intact was written in languages he couldn’t parse or had controls he lacked the appendages to make work. Lots of slots for thin prehensile appendages.

Santi tried to ignore the bones on the ground and threaded through the machinery. If he squinted hard enough the femur bones looked like an animal’s. It was part of what drew the savagery out of him. Walking these vile dens of voracious cruelty drew him back to the future. His early months he had been weak and slow. His friends and family had ended up as food on floors like these, their bones scattered and gnawed on.

His hands were shaking and he could feel hot rage boiling its way up, wanting to come out. He wanted the cyclops to be back so he could watch them bleed out at his feet again. Santi fought back against the rising tide, the battle was over and he was victorious. Part of his spirit hadn’t been exorcized though.

A mean dribble of spirit that hadn’t been pushed to its breaking point. The last monster dens hadn’t taken everything he had to win. This one was just…boring. A fight in which he hadn’t truly been in danger. People had died all around him in the first battle, but he hadn’t been in danger.

Not like when he killed the hag. Or the goblin. This just left him feeling unsatisfied. Part of him wanted the challenge. The challenge of something strong and intelligent, that would press him in the way he desired.

Downtown and the Primus. It was the whisper in the back of his mind. He knew it was there. The Infernal had practically guaranteed it. It was smart, powerful, and had some type of elemental mastery. That monster would be the challenge he needed to feel better after this lackluster disappointment.

The others were searching, climbing up and down equipment all the while Santi marched straight to where the Acolyte creatures had camped out. Their small section of the camp was nothing more than some twisted pieces of wood with badly cured animal hides stretched across them. The walls were twenty feet high though and Santi sliced a skin open and stepped through the ribs of the wall rather than look for the entrance.

The smell of rotting meat and unwashed bodies hit him like a wave, overpowering the ferrous smell that was the primary scent in the building. Trying to hold his breath he looked around for the riftheart in the piles of “clothing” the cyclops had used. A small pen off to the side held more bones of animals, looked like sheep, and the wonderful scent of dung added itself to the menage.

He passed the pen and found a tent hoisted up in the center of the walled out section. Thick scaly brown hides hid it from prying eyes but Santi was quick to cut it open and walk inside.

The first rift heart had been a wonderful amber shade while this one was closer to a muddy brown. The glow reminded him of thick and rich fertile soil and Santi could feel the absence of mana around the sphere as a thinness to the world.

This one was the size of a small cantaloupe and when he grabbed it from the metal pillar it rested on, there was a resistance. Not physically, but mentally. A whisper to leave it be. Or better yet, sit here next to it. Touch the riftheart and be granted its strength as he drew on it.

Santi marshaled his willpower and broke through the suggestions with relative ease as he hoisted the heart up and off the pillar it sat on. The moment the heart came off the pillar, the mental suggestion faded away. The bloodlust that was sitting in his chest faded and the smells grew distant and not as overwhelming.

“What black magic fuckery was that?” Santi whispered as he looked down on the metal pillar.