My heart and body became accelerated through the power of my domain, casting me forward at ten, then at a hundred times the speed of a mundane man. Time slowed its run, the falling massive columns gliding down onto my head at an inevitable pace.
I grabbed onto the strange, tall girl in front of me and pulled her after myself, into the open door of the sleigh where a black kitten was sitting, staring with violet eyes right at us, meowing in slow motion, her mouth wide.
I had thankfully foreseen the cavern collapse and determined which part of the cavern was the most stable and created a small, reinforced crevasse for the sleigh to exist in by using my domain’s power and scooping rocks out of the wall with my liquefaction remote. Just a few days ago I pushed the sleigh into this crevasse.
I crashed into the sleigh's open door with the girl in tow and pulled the door shut behind us. The mountain of rocks crashed into the sleigh’s exposed front, but thankfully didn't pulverize it completely, as the sleigh’s walls had been quite thoroughly reinforced by me with several layers of witchglass, ferronite and liquefied rock over the past weeks.
“Aha! I see your hidey-hole!” Bobliss announced, descending into the collapsed space. Pulling more rubble away, he threw gargantuan columns up into the air as if they were made from Styrofoam.
He looked like an angel of vengeance, blood wings stolen from Mooni's flying-taxi Champion Gregor unfurled from his back.
I looked at the girl in my hands.
It seemed like she was formed entirely from Teya’s Chronacist, somehow cleansed to brilliant, diamond-white through the power of the Builder artifact. A dark patch of the snowflake was visible through her semi-transparent chest. She wasn’t breathing, wasn’t moving, wasn’t doing anything.
She was simply a crystalline statue seemingly made up from various features of Mooni, Cali and Teya somehow fused together into one.
Three sets of eyes were open, staring out onto the world. The way they were set in her head reminded me of how Jotuns looked. She was longer, taller, lankier, more solid than all three girls, a bewildering, inexplicable crystalline amalgamation of all of them.
Was this what I really wanted?
Was this the end result of my mad scientist Astral Abyss machinations with the Builder technology? A crystalline Jotun-thing that was neither Cali, nor Teya, nor Mooni…
“Almost there!” Bobliss growled, demolishing the tons of rock between us. “I hear the beating heart of that cat of yours! Soon, soon I will unmake you both and then I will feast!”
I remembered it all then.
The remotes!
77, 41, 19.
I looked at my amour and reached under the ferronite plates and my finger went right through the spot where gem 77 hung just a few minutes ago. It was gone, no longer physical!
They were still there though, visible in the Astralscope, simply submerged directly below the physical plane.
Anchors.
Remotes!
I dug through my pile of wooden-paddle remotes stored in the back of the sleigh, pulling out the ones numbered 77, 41 and 19.
Which one to use? Which talent? Which skill could help me beat the Immovable man?
The answer was obvious. It was the reason why I made this crystal amalgamation.
I needed all of them.
I spun the dials on all three remotes to their maximum setting and flipped three switches on.
Three sets of eyes suddenly ignited with life, looking left and right and then settled on me.
“Administrator Starfall,” the crystalline being said in a trio of voices entwined into one, sitting up in the same unnerving way that Jotuns moved. “Fold Cantigeist Chronacist Automata online. State our designation. State mission objective.”
“Designation… uhh,” I stumbled over my own thoughts, not expecting this thing to be so robotic. Then, again, Jotuns seemed like machines of flesh, while this amalgamation was a machine made from Teya’s crystals being controlled somehow by the Builder Artifact heart.
Gemstone. Geo…
“You’re a… Geolith!” I said, having arrived at a proper title for my crystalline Frankenstein’s monster. “Geolith Calemea!”
“Acknowledged designation Geolith Calemea,” the Geolith nodded, six arms uncannily unfolding from her body.
“There you are!” The door of the sleigh groaned as Bobliss reached it, punching it with his fist. It didn’t come apart, but it warped inward with a groan of ferronite and snapping of witchglass.
“Calemea!” I ordered, pointing at Bobliss. “Help me stop him!”
The Gygr’s Champion thrust his blood sword forward, slicing a deep gash within the door. He began to pry it open with his fingers, snarling madly.
“Here’s Bobby,” I thought as the Immovable man tried to force his way into the sleigh. Time slowed itself to a crawl as I pulled my rifle from my side, pulling the trigger.
With a bang of ferronite spheres surrounded with dragonglass, the Immovable man was sent flying backwards out of the sleigh.
Calemea raised two of her hands which looked quite human and likely belonged to Galateya. The lake behind Bobliss churned as two massive watery hands emerged from it.
Before Bobliss could reorient himself, they smashed him like a mosquito, tearing apart his blood wings.
“Pitiful,” Bobliss spat as his figure quickly reformed, healing itself.
The Geolith stepped through the torn-up hole he made in the door, walking towards the fallen hero.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“And who might you be?” Bobliss blinked in surprise at Calemea. I watched as the dark fractal hexagram on his chest ignited and tried to grab the Geolith with its dark threads, tried to infest Calemea’s mind. The hands belonging to the Felix Arcanicx extended, feline claws tearing through the mind-controlling magic.
The crystalline girl advanced towards Bobliss, her body shimmering and sparkling with a million facets in the rays of daylight coming through the broken ceiling.
Bobliss thrust forward with his blood sword, but the hands belonging to Mooni reached to the ground along with Teya’s hands, pulling a current of water from beneath. Four hands worked in unison, weaving a shield made entirely from compressed water in front of the crystalline girl.
The Champion’s blood sword met the compressed water shield spiral and somehow began to dissolve in it, becoming trapped within it.
“WHAT?!” Bobliss cried out, letting go of his sword which came apart within the shield spiral. He stared at the dark snowflake suspended within the chest of the crystalline girl, his face lengthening in shock. “You… the Forgestone does not belong to you!”
Spiral.
The spiral water shield worked similarly to the black spiral of Chernobog. It sucked the Champion’s blood into it, absorbed it, unmade it and sent whatever remained to Endalaus. Somehow through my self-guided steps, I sent myself on a quest to create the only weapon on Thornwild that could unmake Bobliss and his friends… permanently.
Bobliss must have come to this conclusion too.
“My blood!” He cried. “Give me back my blood, you vile crystal abomination! That does not belong to you!”
“Request denied,” Geolith spoke in an entwined trio of voices.
The water shield relocated itself to the Geolith’s left hand belonging to Teya. Mooni’s crystal talons tapped the air around Galateya’s right hand, forming what looked like a gun made from water. The ground beneath the Geolith’s crystalline body cracked, water pouring out, heading upward, compressing itself more and more within the barrel of the gun made of water.
Bobliss, seeing that something freaky was happening, formed a blood shield in his left hand and a blood hammer in his right.
“I will smash you to bits, abomination!” He snarled, accelerating himself forward.
The water-gun fired across his shield and hammer, cutting across him like a laser as soon as Bobliss got close enough to Calemea. Blood gushed from the man in a sideways spray, becoming devoured by the watery shield spiral.
“You…” Bobliss croaked retreating, his body repairing itself and growing thinner and lankier. “I will not fall to you, monster!”
I hadn't been simply idly sitting by while all of this was happening.
I had donned on the invisi-cloak and slowly been creeping towards Bobliss from the side. As soon as Bobliss became focused on reforming his weapons, I fired the rifle from his blind spot right at his head.
The Gygr’s champion fell sideways. As his blood splattered over the walls and ground, it became quickly absorbed into the water flowing all around the cavern into Calemea’s shield, where the blood permanently vanished into the Fold.
“No,” Bobliss hissed as his body healed. “I will not be unmade… I must…”
Calemea’s incredibly compressed water-gun fired again, cutting another deep gash across the body of the Immovable man. I moved again as Bobliss tried to swat where I had been just a moment ago, firing the pistol at him, making him lose more blood.
“Have to… help… Christi…” Bobliss croaked as Calemea’s six hands came together, the water shield and gun reforming into the shape of a massive hammer.
“Justice for Fold Callista Liesl,” Calemea sang in a chorus of three voices as her hammer swung through the air, sending Bobliss flying backwards into the lake.
The lake, which was already filled with a thousand sharp, churning rocks, spinning in a spiral like the blades of a thousand saws.
The Immovable man flailed and thrashed in the watery trap, screaming and quickly losing even more blood. His face became that of Gregor, then some other man, then another. One face after another formed on his rapidly emaciated figure as if layer by layer the other Champions he had consumed over his long life were peeled away by the spiral of water cutting him apart.
Calemea simply stood in front of the water spiral, holding the Fold shield in front of herself, absorbing and grinding Bobliss out of existence.
The Immovable Champion gurgled and made inhuman noises, flailing in the water reforming again and again as he was ground down more and more.
“Justice for Fold Karpathy Galateya,” Calemea sang dispassionately in a harmonic trio.
I pulled off the invisi-cloak, walking to stand at the crystalline girl's side. I reloaded the rifle and pistol and aimed the rifle at the slowly dissolving fallen hero, just in case he tried anything clever.
He did not.
In about twenty minutes of the watery grind, Bobliss became but an emaciated stick figure, hands only a few inches thick, most of his finger digits broken off, feet gone, his face just a skeletal blood mask featuring a single eye that barely functioned.
“Knowledge for Fold Moonalia Cavil,” Calemea sang, clawed hands belonging to Cali grabbing what remained of the Immovable hero and pulling him from the water. The pair of feathered crystalline hands ending in talons began to tap a rapid staccato over the body of the emaciated hero.
“You…” Bobliss croaked, staring at the crystalline construct. “What… the… shit… are you?!”
“We are Geolith Calemea,” she replied, Cali’s claws tearing the hero’s chest apart, revealing a hollow space there that would have otherwise contained his heart.
A yellow eye formed from rotating crystals within one of the hands belonging to the Corvix, examining the hollow space.
“A Jotun,” Bobliss exhaled, staring from Calemea at me. “You… have… created a new kind of Jotun. Just one… it… won’t help you… win...”
“No?” I arched an eyebrow. “Seems to have helped me so far.”
“You… are… walking the same path as my… love…” Bobliss gurgled. “You… won’t succeed… I will... return... for my heart isn't here..."
“Succeed at what?” I asked. “I don’t intend to stop the glaciers.”
“Not unless I accidentally jump-start the industrial revolution,” I thought to myself, wondering what other secrets this fallen champion might reveal in his final moments. Aloud, I asked Bobliss, "What exactly was your boggy sweetheart trying to accomplish? Why go to such extreme lengths?"
Bobliss coughed, blood seeping from his entire skull into the all-consuming shield-spiral directly beneath him held by Teya’s hands. His remaining single eye, once filled with rage, now held a mixture of defeat and something else - was it pity? Fear? Despair?
"You... don't understand," he wheezed. "The ice... it's coming. Unstoppable. My… Christi... she saw it all. Thousands of years into the future. The end of everything."
I frowned, processing his words. "And her solution was to, what, fold everyone away into the void?"
He nodded weakly. "To... preserve. Until the time was right. Until we could... fight back."
"Fight back against an Ice Age?" I asked, wondering whether it was Mooni or Cali who were somehow making the Champion spill all of his secrets to me.
Bobliss's laugh turned into a wet cough. "Says the boy... who made a crystal Jotun. You're not... so different from us. It’s not just the ice… the Arcanicx abominations, they will find a way to break… the last… wild bastion… take the North…”
“Amari’s Skulldug?” I asked.
“Yes…” Bobliss gurgled as Mooni’s talons tapped at his skull. “Skulldug has no men left, Amari’s power is fading… her hunters… dying off… The Arcanicx multiply… spread like vile insects… Christi…. We… we were going to… stop them… You… you have ruined everything… the world will die because of you, Stillwalker… and humanity will end…”
“Maybe humanity deserves to evolve into Arcanicx,” I mused, mostly to annoy Bobliss. “They’re evolving pretty fast, I hear. Maybe they’ll figure out how to move the planet in a hundred years time, hrmmm?”
“You… don’t… don’t understand anything, fool,” Bobliss coughed, more blood seeping into Calemea's shield-spiral. His remaining eye focused on me with sudden startling intensity.
The face of the fallen champion warped, twisted into that of an extremely emaciated, ancient crone.
“A bit late for the party, Christi,” I commented, leveling the rifle at the Gygr’s head, finger on the trigger.
“Foolish child of sister-mine,” The Gygr stared at me with absolute hatred. “Nordstaii, original humanity… must… Must not be extinguished, must not be changed. Humans… human individual minds are… the only thing that holds back… the radiance of Endalaus, which draws ever closer with each decade. When… when Arcanicx and the cold… exterminates the rest of us… when there are not enough humans left on Thornwild… the Void-Storms will… begin and all will be… unmade.”