Leon, Maia, and Gaius arrived in the colossus chamber ready for a long and protracted battle. What remained of Leon’s armor adorned his body, and his family’s blade was in his hands; Maia looked about ready to cleave a mountain in twain, and the water dragon she immediately conjured to her was more than powerful enough to follow through on that implied threat; Gaius was the least threatening of the three, but the blade he’d borrowed from Leon was brandished and his aura was laced with killing intent. The three were ready for a fight.

But it didn’t seem like they were going to get one. As they stood there, waiting for something to happen, Leon noted that the golden serpents that had melted down into the joints of the colossus were all back to where they were originally: numbering in the thousands, frozen in place as they writhed and slithered over each other in an attempt to climb the colossus and reach the ceiling that it acted like it was holding up.

Aside from the hole in the silver wall that Leon made with his lightning in order to access the enchantments, the massive chamber looked about as it did when he first arrived.

“Back already?” Jormun’s voice rang out through the chamber, sounding more than a little disappointed. “Damn, Leon, that was efficient. I’m surprised.”

“Ignore him,” Leon ordered the other two. “Look for any way out of this place.”

“Oh, you needn’t bother,” Jormun said, his tone turning almost seductive. “If you chat with me for a little while, I’ll open the door for you to come visit me. I’ll roll out the red carpet, as it were.”

His words fell on deaf ears—at least in Leon and Maia’s case. Gaius had a little more trouble ignoring the man, but he stayed true to the spirit of Leon’s order, at least, and didn’t respond to the pirate.

“If you don’t want to talk, then I suppose I can just activate the colossus again,” Jormun continued, the seductive tones in his voice wavering. “You are just dead set on standing in opposition to me, aren’t you?”

Leon began to scan the walls again, searching for any sign of a doorway, whether magical or material. He did his best to ignore Jormun, but he had to admit that the words the pirate spoke struck something of a chord within him. As a rule, he wasn’t necessarily opposed to peaceful solutions, and he even acknowledged that he should seek them out more often. He’d even managed to get Justin’s cooperation, and in doing so, acquired more benefits for himself than if he’d given into his murderous urges and killed the man.

However, he couldn’t get the memory of finding that ritual site out of his head. So many dead, and all killed in horrible ways. Leon had been on many a battlefield, and so had seen great many people die, but that ritual site had been something else entirely. Those people were executed in some profane ritual to a sealed primordial god.

There were limits to his desire to seek out more peaceful solutions, and Jormun had flown past all of them. Every time the pirate now spoke of peace, Leon just thought about those people, and showed Jormun’s words to be hollow at best—and that wasn’t even touching on everything that had happened since he’d entered the temple.

“All right, fine, you asked for it,” Jormun said, and a moment later, the golden serpents covering the serpent-man colossus all began to melt once more, filling the colossus with their molten gold. “This place was always designed to strike awe into the hearts of those who arrived, having successfully passed their trials,” Jormun smugly stated. “How’s it doing? Do you feel awed, yet? It doesn’t look like it, but let’s see how you feel in a couple minutes…”

Without a word, Leon, Gaius, and Maia all turned from their fruitless search for an exit to the chamber and faced the colossus, which began to slowly move.

When it had first begun to move before Leon had ventured out into the trial worlds, he’d sensed an enormous amount of magic flowing through it. He hadn’t questioned much about it, reasoning that it made sense for something guarding a temple like this to be immensely powerful, much like the similarly-sized colossus of the Thunderbird outside of Nestor’s lab. However, now that he was properly facing it with Gaius and Maia at his side, no way to escape in sight, he analyzed the golden thing a little more closely.

What he saw, while not entirely encouraging, gave him more hope than he’d had before.

This thing, while powerful and animated with a great deal of magic power, didn’t feel as powerful as the colossus of the Thunderbird. Most of the magic that flowed through it was for the purpose of keeping it moving, at least as far as he could tell. There were no special weapons built into the massive golden statue, no fancy magical tricks spooling up beneath its golden chassis that might give the three of them some trouble. Even the emerald eyes, glowing with some strange power, seemed more for show than anything.

It was just one big moving statue. It was heavy and strong, but there wasn’t much power beneath those golden plates.

“We can do this,” he stated confidently as the colossus took its first ponderous step in their direction, its snake-like head locking onto him as he spoke, its ivory horn practically glowing in the strange, omnipresent light that filled the chamber. “This thing isn’t invincible. We can bring it down.”

“Gold is soft as far as metal goes,” Gaius pointed out. “It can hold significant amounts of magic, though…”

“Not as much as silver,” Leon replied. “Still, I get your point. It shouldn’t be too difficult to damage this thing. The key will be how much damage it can take; it’s big enough to soak up quite a bit that we’ll be able to throw at it…”

As Leon spoke, Maia raised her hand and sent her readied water dragon careening at the colossus. Clearly, she was tired of the talking and wanted to get to fighting. Leon couldn’t blame her, but he held back a little bit to watch, first.

The water dragon crashed into the colossus’ right leg, sinking its teeth into the massive construct’s ankle. Its aqueous form surged forward, wrapping itself around the colossus’ leg as its teeth tried and failed to sink in deeper and deeper into the gold.

Throughout this, the colossus stopped moving and slowly bent over and reached for the water dragon in an attempt to pull it off its leg. Just by how languidly it moved, it gave the impression that it hardly cared about the water dragon gnawing on its ankle. Its golden fingers started to dig into the dragon, causing much of its body to lose cohesion.

Leon had seen enough, he wasn’t going to just sit there and watch the colossus rip his river nymph lover’s dragon apart; he conjured a lightning bolt and hurled it with pinpoint accuracy. The bolt splashed across the colossus’ serpentine head, showering it in so many sparks that it momentarily vanished behind the light.

When the lightning died down, Leon was disappointed to see little damage, but the snake-like features of the serpent-man’s face had been somewhat warped by the heat, and the bone-white ivory had new black vein-like lightning patterns burned into it.

“It’s strong,” Leon muttered just before the colossus finished tearing the back half of Maia’s water dragon off of its leg, causing enough trauma to the summoned magic to cause its entire body to fall apart.

Maia wasn’t done with that one water dragon, though. With barely any change in expression, both of her arms fell off, collapsing into water that immediately ballooned into another water dragon, this one gargantuan in size, easily a match for the colossus.

The water dragon charged, and Leon was right behind it. The colossus charged as well, and it crashed into the water dragon with enough force to shake the ground. The two titans began to wrestle for dominance, and despite their equal size and Maia’s prodigious power, her water dragon wasn’t able to do much, its teeth only scratching the colossus’ golden armor and its body not enough to do much more than immobilize the massive construct.

Leon dodged and weaved through these two clashing behemoths as best as he could. Given their size, this wasn’t easy, and he had to keep his magic senses projected at all times so that he could dodge before being stepped on and crushed.

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This was harder than it initially seemed, though. The colossus moved faster up close than it appeared from a distance, and its every footfall shook the ground and made it difficult for Leon to maintain his footing. However, that wasn’t enough to prevent him from launching a barrage of lightning at the colossus’ legs, using his blade to direct and amplify his magic power. In a matter of seconds, he’d scorched the gold of the colossus’ legs a delicious shade of golden brown, and it was starting to glow from the transferred heat.

A couple times, Leon also managed to get in physical attacks on the construct, gouging out bits of the soft gold from the massive thing’s ankles.

Unfortunately, for all of this, Leon didn’t feel like he was having much of an effect on the colossus. It barely seemed to pay any attention to him, using far more of its time wrestling with Maia’s water dragon than it did sparing him even so much as a single swipe of its massive hands.

To say that Leon’s frustration was growing would be to put it mildly, but he at least comforted himself with the knowledge that the colossus wasn’t attacking any of them directly, instead filling its hands with water—

With a startling degree of alacrity, the colossus suddenly knelt on the ground, shaking the ground with its impact and nearly knocking Leon on his ass. With this sudden shift in balance, Leon was unable to respond properly when one of the colossus’ massive hands came careening in from the side in a vicious swipe and crashed into his body, sending him flying through the air as his mind just about exploded with pain. He felt some of his bones crack on impact, and when he hit the ground a moment later after sailing through the air, the pain that wracked his body nearly left him gasping on the floor.

“Ahh! That looked like it hurt!” shouted Jormun, his tone sounding so smug that Leon started to struggle to his feet just to spite the pirate, even as the pain began to fully assault his senses. The colossus had immediately stood back up to deal with the water dragon, which had used its momentary distraction to latch onto its long serpentine neck behind the construct’s ivory horn and start tearing into the gold. With that being the case, Leon would’ve been tempted to lay on the ground for a few more seconds to gather his breath and try to suppress his pain.

“Eat my ass…” he quietly grumbled in response, unable to speak any louder than a pained whisper as he pushed himself back into a standing position.

After that, however, he paid no attention to whatever Jormun responded with. He just took a deep breath, spared only enough time to slap a healing spell onto his chest, and then charged back in.

Leon took a more circumspect strategy this time. He needed to use his head, not just try and overpower this thing—the colossus, despite the damage it had sustained, didn’t seem at all slowed down, showing that it had far more power than Leon did, and thus couldn’t be overpowered. He needed to use his power more judiciously, then.

He was encouraged to see that the behemoth still wasn’t using any elemental magic of its own, but that encouragement faltered when the massive construct rent the water dragon apart, sending at least half of the water that made up its body falling back to the floor in a great flood. Leon had to brace himself to not be swept off his feet, but in this, he saw an opportunity: the colossus had covered itself in water. It was possible that that might make it a little more vulnerable to his lightning attacks.

Leon conjured a bolt of silver-blue lightning in his off hand, and with a slight wince of pain as he raised the bolt up to his ear, he hurled it at the colossus. The bolt splashed across its form, inundating the construct in lightning, but unlike the last time, the colossus froze for several long seconds as lightning danced across its frame, sinking into cracks and joints that the lightning hadn’t been able to reach before until the great golem was doused in water.

More importantly, Leon saw the light that perpetually shone from the glittering emeralds set into its eye sockets momentarily dim, and he knew that was on a right track.

[Fill it with water!] Leon shouted to Maia, hoping his intention carried through as he began to let his power build up in his body for a massive lightning strike. He wanted the behemoth so drenched in water that Leon’s lightning had an easy time entering its chassis; Maia’s water should be able to seep into the colossus’ chassis better than his lightning, so if his lightning could use that water as a medium to enter the construct and destroy whatever internal enchantments drove it…

It seemed that in the brief fractions of a second that all these thoughts raced through his mind, and while he was starting to build up a massive charge, the colossus altered its priorities, either by itself or with a little help from Jormun. The pirate had gone quiet, but for that, Leon only thought himself blessed to not have to listen to the cretin anymore.

The colossus started to charge at Leon, ignoring Maia as she conjured another water dragon, this one, once again, even bigger than the one she’d conjured before.

Before his attack was ready, Leon had to dodge backward to avoid a swipe from the golden giant. He swung twice with his blade in rapid succession, sending a few bolts of lightning dancing across the colossus’ arm and gouging out a couple more long slivers of gold, but the massive construct was largely unaffected, shrugging off his power.

The colossus struck again and again, ignoring everything else except Leon. It ignored the water dragon rapidly closing in on it from behind in its single-minded desire to strike at Leon, who nimbly put the speed of lightning magic and his own dexterity on display as he dodged and weaved in and out of danger. The colossus was surprisingly quick for its size, and even seemed to be speeding up, but there was no way it was fast enough to catch Leon.

After several agonizing moments—Leon was dodging relatively easily, but he knew that even one mistake could have lethal consequences with the colossus’ colossal strength—the water dragon finally crashed down onto the colossus’ back. Instead of trying to wrestle and grapple with the golden behemoth, however, it immediately lost all cohesion, collapsing into water that encased the construct.

[Ready,] Maia said to Leon.

Leon didn’t hesitate. He let loose with a stream of lightning at the golden giant, letting his power fill the water conjured by Maia and inundate the colossus. The water began to boil, but Maia kept it steady, and the colossus froze as its body was filled with Leon’s power. Its limbs began to glow with heat, and Leon could feel the magic flow in the air change as the colossus’ internal enchantments broke one-by-one.

They were beating it, and all he had to do was keep up his stream of lightning—

Suddenly, the serpentine head of the colossus slithered out of its body that had been restrained by Maia, like it had been a snake piloting a suit of armor the entire time. The massive golden serpent hit the ground and shook it hard enough to break Leon’s balance, and then pounced on him far quicker than it should’ve been able. Its great mouth opened, golden fangs extended, emerald eyes gleaming, and it struck.

Leon sent a blast of lightning through his body, which detonated right next to him. This threw his body to the side, but not quite far enough; one of the golden fangs sank deep into his right shoulder, the thing larger than even the biggest lances Leon had seen cavalrymen wield. He had to almost bite his tongue to keep himself from roaring in pain.

A moment later, something slammed into the side of the serpentine head, sending it reeling off of Leon and pulling the fang loose from his arm. Leon expected to see Maia or one of her water dragons standing there, but instead he was surprised to see Gaius standing over him in a protective stance, a determined look on his face.

That moment passed quickly, and Leon swiftly hopped to his feet. The massive golden serpent hadn’t been knocked far, but Gaius had managed to drive his borrowed blade fairly deep into the soft metal around one of the serpent’s eyes, knocking one of its emeralds loose.

The golden serpent flailed weakly, its body acting sluggish and seemingly not quite in control.

Leon smiled, and he darted forward, ignoring his bleeding arm and the pain it was trying to flood his mind with, and slammed a lightning spear into the other side of the serpent’s head, sending the other eye flying across the chamber. Gaius was right behind him, and he grasped his borrowed blade like a crowbar and pried the other, already-loosened eye free of its socket.

And with that, the colossus finally went still and silence filled the chamber.

Leon only took a moment to savor this victory before he was pressing one of his most powerful healing spells against his shoulder and sighing in relief as his pain immediately abated. The other healing spell had largely fixed his cracked ribs, though he was still very sore.

In an instant, Maia appeared at his side, a look of almost violent concern on her face as one of her hands lightly brushed against the healing spell on Leon’s shoulder.

Leon smiled laid one of his hands on hers, and whispered, “I’m all right.”

Maia seemed a little skeptical and didn’t remove her hand, almost defiantly continuing to press the healing spell into his wound. It hurt a little bit, but the pain was continuing to lessen, and Leon considered it a small price to pay for his lover’s peace of mind.

A moment after accepting her concern, Leon turned to Gaius, who was crouching on the ground, examining the massive emerald that he’d pried from the colossus’ head.

“Damn…” the nobleman muttered. “This thing has to be worth at least a gold talent, if not more!”

“Then we’ll take it,” Leon said. “And the other one, too. You can have them both.”

“Huh? Really?” Gaius asked, his tone somewhat disbelieving and quite surprised.

“Sure,” Leon replied with an easy smile. “You saved my ass a moment ago. If you want those things, you’re welcome to them as far as I’m concerned—after we verify that they’re not dangerous, of course. Consider it my way of saying thank you that’s a little more impactful than words.”

“Uh… sure,” Gaius replied, looking more than a little frazzled. Leon could understand that, though, he’d just dumped a fortune into Gaius lap, and he’d done it seemingly on a whim.

So, to make sure that Gaius knew that this wasn’t just passing whimsy, Leon said with quiet seriousness, “But still. Thank you.”

Gaius, who’d spent the previous second or two staring slack-jawed at the massive torso-sized emerald at his feet as it glowed with odd, sea-green eldritch light, snapped his jaw shut and glanced back at Leon.

“Sure thing,” he said. “Anytime.”