As Victor’s rage grew and he pushed his conscious mind into control of his body, he felt his Aspect of Terror begin to fade. He knew he could fight the change and maintain the aspect, but he never felt good when he came back to himself after running amok as an incarnation of fear. He wanted out of it. Flexing his wings and angling downward to swoop around a massive stalagmite, he fought to push away the stomach-churning waves of guilt and paranoia that came to him the same way they might a drunk after a blackout binge. No, he was done with fear for now; he was ready to embrace some good, clean, hot-burning rage.
So, as he scraped his talons on the stone, coming to rest behind the giant stalagmite, he pushed the fear out of his pathways, flooding them with rage instead. The shadows swirled around him, taking with them the strange fur, scales, and feathers of his terror form. The hot fury boiling his blood straightened his limbs, pushed his muscles to the point of bursting, and tinted his gray, monochrome vision into shades of blood. Victor cast Iron Berserk and tilted his head back to roar into the echoing cavern.
It was then that he noticed a System message lurking in the corner of his vision:
***Congratulations! Your Impart Nightmare – Basic has become Impart Nightmare – Improved.***
***Impart Nightmare – Improved: While wearing your Aspect of Terror, using gathered fear-attuned Energy, you can corrupt the spirit of another being with a seed of fear, sending it to dwell in their Core where it will grow and fester. This ability will fail upon those whose will can resist your intention. As you improve your mastery of this spell, it will become harder to resist and spread its roots more rapidly. Energy Cost: Minimum 100, scalable. Cooldown: Dependent on harvested fear.***
Victor brushed the message away; he didn’t have time to contemplate the repercussions. He was aware of what the Aspect of Terror had done while he’d taken a back seat. He knew only three enemies were left in the dungeon, and, with the simmering heat of his rage stoking the fire in his chest, he didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to feel sorry for Sora or the pitiful Nature Caster he’d feasted upon.
He could feel his swollen, fear-attuned Core and knew he’d taken much from them both, even with the interference of the Lifesaver charms. He gripped Lifedrinker, comfortable and eager in her proper, axe-shaped form, no longer the talons on his nightmare alter-ego. “Let’s slay,” he rumbled, lifting her in one titanic fist, his smoldering gaze scanning the darkness.
#
Arona crept through the shadows, following behind Brontes and Valeska, pondering the sound of that great roar as it echoed through the cavern. It was of a decidedly different timbre than the screeches and shrieks that had pounded on everyone’s psyche for the last several minutes. Had the stranger changed again? This new sound was that of a great beast—a predator staking a claim, a primal challenge for territory.
She’d anticipated losing some of her team in the confrontation, but not two, not before they’d managed to harm their adversary in the slightest. For all she knew, he was fresh and whole, undamaged by Sora or Elandor. She couldn’t stop the doubt from creeping into her mind—could he handle them all at once? Was it wise to throw her lot in with these “friends?”
That last thought stung, but she couldn’t help herself. What would Master Vesavo say? He’d mock her for any sentimentality. He’d remind her that the universe is cruel and friendship mere currency, meant to be spent for the greatest profit. Wouldn’t it be wise to hedge her bets? As the so-called titan bellowed again, much closer, and Brontes began to surge with hot, golden glory, she rasped, “I will try to flank.” Then, she cloaked herself in cold, dark mists and drifted away to the northwest, where they’d earlier mapped out the exit to the fifth floor. Let these brutes thrash about, distracting each other; she would finish the dungeon.
#
“Thash right,” Lesh slurred, slamming his sack of arcanite billets on the table. “Pure arcanite. I’ll wager it on Victor winnin’ tha’ fight.” The bet-taker, a man who likely shared some common ancestry with Lesh’s people, ran a thick, pink tongue along the lip of his crocodilian snout.
“May I weigh it?”
“Yesh,” Lesh peered at him through a bleary eye while still trying to focus on the viewing window at the center of the big wall. Through one of the smaller, magical windows, he'd seen the Death Caster slink away, abandoning her companions, and he had confidence that Victor was about to lay out a titan-sized thrashing.
“Lesh,” Valla said, reaching across the table to grip his wrist. “You’ve had much to drink . . .”
Lash waved her hand away, snorting. A fine mist of acid escaped his nostrils, spotting the table and sizzling as it sank into the dense, heavily stained wood. “Am fine!” he grunted, working hard to enunciate each word. “Weight it!” he growled, “But be quick before my bet is too late!”
The man’s scaled, clawed fingers hefted the bag, and he grinned. “Very well. On condition that it’s proven to be pure arcanite, I’ll value this sack at 200,000 beads.” He turned to glance at the various viewing windows. “Seeing as your boy is now only facing two enemies, and considering his earlier victories, I’m only willing to give one-point-three to one odds. That work for you?”
Lesh nodded, waving him away. “Yesh.” The bet-taker scribbled something in his notebook, hefted the sack, and wandered over to another table where patrons shouted for his attention. Meanwhile, Lesh turned a bleary eye on Valla. “Should’ve bet earlier. Don-shu think he’ll win?”
Valla sighed and shifted on the hard, wooden bench. He knew how she felt; his arse felt sore, too. “I have to believe he will. Still, Lesh, those are powerful people, and they don’t seem to be the soft, untested sort. The only thing keeping me sane right now is that I don’t believe anyone in there can kill Victor so quickly that the Lifesaver won’t function.”
Lesh shook his head. “He’ll be pished if he gets reshcued.” He narrowed his eyes at the woman. He’d never considered that Victor might die in that dungeon, but, for the first time, he let his mind wander down that path, wondering what Valla would do. Putting that aside, he wondered what he’d do. Seek vengeance against whoever killed him? Yes, he supposed that was the only honorable thing. He couldn’t progress, couldn’t move on with his life, with Victor’s unavenged specter haunting him.
Would Valla return to Fanwath? Would the others? Not Darren. No, Lesh would keep him close and train him properly. He was making progress, changing his outlook, turning away from his old habits of blame. When the youngster had built his own Core, Lesh had been surprised and proud, but he knew better than to offer too much praise too soon.
“Where did you go?” Valla asked, chuckling. She pointed to the viewing window. “Look. The two fighters close with Victor.”
#
Victor didn’t hide or stalk. He was ready for a brawl. He pumped his Sovereign Will boost into strength and vitality, summoned his Banner of the Champion, and stood waiting. He held Lifedrinker loose but ready; he and she both were limned with a red halo of rage, and Victor’s eyes smoldered balefully under the golden light of his banner. Of course, his aura was enormous in his titanic form, and so, too, was the area affected by his banner’s glow. Not a wisp of shadow surrounded him as the bloody sun sparkled in the air behind him. He breathed deeply, with purpose, stoking his breath Core, fanning the flames of his magma, priming it for the fight to come.
When the giant, fur-and-leather-clad warrior stepped around a stalagmite into his banner’s light, Victor’s grin widened, his white teeth glinting as his keen eyes tracked the challenger. He recognized the answering gleam of golden Energy in the aura of the giant; here was another Spirit Caster, another glory hound. Something deep in Victor rejoiced—had he, at last, found a worthy opponent? Victor lifted Lifedrinker and roared a challenge. By way of answer, the burly giant smashed his club onto the stone floor, shaking the ground and cracking a nearby stalagmite. Victor’s furious Core surged at the challenge, and he cast Energy Charge, fueling it with glory-attuned Energy.
Iron Berserk allowed Victor to control himself and think with a rational mind while driven to the brink of frenzy by his rage, but it only worked that way if he consciously exercised his will and made an effort. When his titanic pride and hunger for the glory of battle goaded his furious temper, there wasn’t much thinking taking place in his head. It seemed the big, mumbling giant didn’t suffer similarly. He’d been ready for Victor’s charge, and, using some movement skill of his own, he flickered, almost like a ghost, and shifted behind an enormous stalagmite.
Victor was moving too fast to correct his course, so he propelled himself into darkness, bathing the new space in light as he moved, revealing the tall, hatchet-wielding warrior-woman. She stood to the side of his streaking path, hacking those deadly crescent blades deep into Victor’s side and hip as he passed by.
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Victor roared in fury, sliding to a halt, spinning with Lifedrinker arcing out, cleaving the space behind him, anticipating a follow-up attack. No one was there, but he saw the woman to his left and the giant to his right. Victor’s instinct was to charge again, but he forced himself to breathe and think, giving his rage a moment to heal the deep cuts the woman had imparted. Had his wyrm-scale helped at all?
The woman, Valeska, was half his size, made larger by some magic of her own, but the giant had swollen further still, probably two-thirds as tall as Victor but significantly bulkier. As Victor glowered at them, his mind going through a dozen attack scenarios, Valeska laughed, a sound full of confidence and genuine mirth. “He struggles to think, Brontes.”
“Rage ca’ make tha’ har’,” Brontes chuckled, his voice rumbling, his words flowing together, muddled by his lazy tongue.
Victor had been goaded before. He’d experienced a lifetime of trash talk long before he was ever summoned to Fanwath. It didn’t further enrage him. In fact, it had the opposite effect, convincing him that these two were afraid. He let go of Lifedrinker with his left hand, reached to smear the blood off his side, and drew it across his face, grinning madly as he did so. If they thought he was enraged, they hadn’t seen anything yet.
Valeska stood beside a stalagmite, and Brontes leaned on another. Two dozen yards separated them, and Victor knew they aimed to bait him, get him to charge again. They wanted to set him up for another sneaky attack, but he had other ideas.
The fact was, he’d expected something more; he’d expected something from the Death Caster, but he’d gotten a good feel for her aura, and there wasn’t any sign of it. Was she lying in wait, hiding herself, looking for the perfect opportunity to strike? He figured that was the case. Still, he couldn’t find it in himself to care all that much. He wanted to hit one of these two fighters, wanted to make up for that charge into nothing. As far as he was concerned, he’d deal with the Death Caster when she showed her face.
So, grinning, face bloody, Victor reached into his Core, pulled forth a torrent of inspiration-attuned Energy, and summoned his great bear, willing him to appear behind Valeska. He chose inspiration because he had plenty of it and because the bear would coalesce out of a cloud of white-gold Energy; it wouldn’t be obvious in the light of his banner.
Stalling momentarily, giving his bear time to appear, Victor slapped Lifedrinker’s haft into his left palm and growled, “So? Two at once, then?” He kept his posture neutral and relaxed, almost lazily looking from Valeska to Brontes and back again. They both had eyes only for him, so neither saw the cloud of Energy behind the woman.
“He just cast something,” Valeska said, staring hard at Victor. “Maneuver two . . .” Her words were cut off by a bone-rattling roar as Victor’s bear burst into being—tawny, almost golden fur covering a mountain of bone and muscle, bright, yellow-gold eyes, and teeth like gleaming sabers spread wide as it emptied its lungs directly behind the woman. Just as he’d hoped, even Brontes couldn’t resist looking to see the source of the roar. In that split second of distraction, he filled his pathways with fear-attuned Energy and charged again, rippling over the cavern floor in a cloak of purple-black shadows.
Valeska rolled to the side, avoiding a double swipe of the bear’s saber-like claws. Brontes turned back to Victor, but only in time to register the streak of shadows flying his way. His eyes opened wide, and he jerked his club before himself and channeled his Energy, blazing with brilliant golden light, as Victor smashed into him. Victor had timed an overhead chop with Lifedrinker, aiming to split the giant’s sternum, but the great, gnarled club got in the way. Lifedrinker flared with molten fury, and her razor edge cut into the trunk-sized bludgeon, biting deep. Meanwhile, the force wave of Victor’s charge washed over them both.
Victor’s pool of fear-attuned Energy rapidly poured into the effort of shielding him. At the same time, Brontes flared with golden, sparkling light, his entire body rigid with the strain of holding his club up and weathering the storm of the collision. As they stood, two juggernauts in a whirling tempest of destructive forces, the shockwave propagated, shattering stalagmites, sending fragments of rock, showers of dust, and palpable, roiling waves of Energy outward. Valeska and the bear tore into each other, slashing, hacking, gnashing, ducking, weaving, and stumbling in the force blast from Victor’s charge.
As the collision resolved and Victor’s fear-attuned Energy stopped pouring out to protect him, he jerked Lifedrinker, pulling her from the club, and began hacking in earnest, working to get past Brontes’s guard. The stout warrior was surprisingly nimble and skilled with his bludgeon. Moreover, he used his glory-attuned Energy in weird, showy maneuvers that erupted with blazing sparks or false images—flickering copies of the club, the giant, or both that served to distract Victor or even draw strikes away from the real target. If they weren’t both moving with lightning speed, Victor was sure the dazzling echoes of reality wouldn’t be so effective, but when a tiny fraction of a second meant the difference between landing a blow and striking nothing but air, they took a toll.
Brontes was strong, his girth giving him what it took to absorb Lifedrinker’s hacks, soaking them up as she bit into his enormous cudgel. The weapon was sturdier still; each deep, smoking groove Lifedrinker tore into the wood closed before Victor’s eyes as he pulled her out. Even so, Victor maintained the offensive, pushing Brontes around and forcing him to expend his Energy abilities just to keep from being dismembered. He grunted and groaned, great gouts of golden Energy surging through him, bolstering his movements, distracting Victor, and drawing things out.
Of course, the constant rebuttals to his masterful strokes began to wear on Victor’s state of mind. More and more rage seeped into his pathways, turning his vision darker and darker shades of crimson. He’d forgotten Valeska and his bear, their contest nothing but a token afterthought in the focus he devoted to breaking through the giant’s resolute defenses. Just because he’d set her aside mentally, though, didn’t mean the axe woman had forgotten him.
If Victor were paying attention, he would have known his bear had been vanquished. He would have probably backed off on his furious assault and tried to get eyes on the woman. He didn’t, though, and she caught him mid-attack, using a charge of her own to streak through the air and bury her two hatchets into the meaty spaces beside his upper spine. They snipped through his armor like it wasn’t there, and he knew they’d buried themselves to the wooden hafts. To a man Victor’s size, the wounds were an inconvenience, but he’d taken much worse.
Roaring in fury, he backed off his attack on Brontes, bunched his legs, and launched himself into the air, using Titanic Leap. Valeska was still clinging to her axe hafts, hanging from his back, and Victor aimed to impale her on a stalactite. He was so committed that he fully expected to do the same thing to himself in the process, but he was banking on being able to recover faster than she could. Valeska was no slouch; she grunted with surprise as they exploded into the air but braced her shoulder against Victor’s back, holding onto one of her hatchets for purchase. At the same time, she somehow created a silvery shield of Energy with her free arm.
The glowing shield shattered the stalactite, sending a rain of rubble down toward Brontes. Victor careened sideways from the impact, tumbling in slow motion as he fell toward the ground. At the last minute, he jerked his shoulder, rolling, trying to smash Valeska into the stone floor beneath him. She, too, jerked, pulling on the hatchet she still held, sliding it out of Victor’s flesh, and rolling over his side, bouncing off as he hit the ground. Victor roared in pain and fury as the remaining hatchet was driven further into his back, and he bounced with a cavern-shaking crash.
He’d barely managed to get up to a knee before Valeska was on him, hacking her single hatchet like a mad woman, left and right, then downward and reversing the blade to hack it up toward his chin. Victor bobbed and weaved, got an arm in the way, and then, as he bled from three or four deep gashes, finally brought Lifedrinker around in a terrible chop that caught the woman on the side of her helmet, sending her much smaller frame tumbling and bouncing over the stony ground. Victor couldn’t savor the perfect hit—Brontes smashed into him. The fur-covered giant had bounded across the cavern on floating discs of sparkling golden Energy, building momentum each time he pushed off.
Victor grunted as thousands of pounds of meat, bone, and enormous club barreled into him, driving him back into another stalagmite, shattering it. The two giants tumbled through the stone fragments, acquiring cuts in their flesh wherever they weren’t armored. Victor was nearly blind with rage by then; everything was crimson, and he moved by touch, grabbing Brontes under one arm, then over his neck with the other. He arched his back and pulled with all his might, flinging the gigantic man over him, sending him flying over the rubble-strewn cavern floor. Grunting with fury, Victor lurched to his feet, dimly aware that Lifedrinker had slipped from his grasp.
He turned, scanning the floor, trying to spot her gleaming, burning axe head in the crumbled stone. Struggling to focus with the rage clouding his sight, he just caught a glimpse of flickering silvery light coming toward him. Knowing it was Valeska charging him again, Victor growled, lowered his helm-covered head toward her incoming form, and cast Roots of the Mountain.
Maybe it was clever, or maybe it was stupid; he didn’t know yet, but he was pleased by his quick reaction, regardless. Valeska’s single hatchet led her charge, much like Lifedrinker usually led Victor’s. The blade hit him square on the crown of his Kethian Juggernaut helmet, and Victor’s head and body didn’t even flinch. His spell had made him unmovable. Instead, a hundred percent of the impact was absorbed by Valeska’s hatchet, Victor’s helmet, and Valeska’s body as she crumpled against him.
With a terrible screeching explosion, the magic that bound the incredibly dense metal of Victor’s helmet failed, and he felt it loosen on his skull as it split. The hatchet must have been made of amazing stuff because its bright blade survived the destructive forces, but the handle turned to splinters and dust in Valeska’s hand. Her fingers twisted and snapped as they hit Victor between the eyes. Then, as her body crumpled against him, he heard several more sickening, wet snaps as larger bones broke. The entire collision lasted a split second, and then Victor was left reeling, blood dripping into his eyes, his ears ringing. Valeska writhed in agony at his feet.
Growling, Victor reached up and pulled off his damaged helmet, shaking his head, trying to get his ears to work properly again. The mighty helmet was split from the nose-guard to the crown where the axe had hit. Worse, it didn’t feel as heavy as it once did. Victor frowned and sent it into his storage pouch. Then, blinking and swiping at the blood in his eyes, he canceled the Roots of the Mountain spell before it drained his Core of Energy. He saw a glimmer in the dust to his left and stomped toward it, hoping it was Lifedrinker.
His foot touched something soft, and he remembered Valeska. She was still alive, grunting and gasping, struggling to turn from her twisted back onto her side, away from him. Her broken arm was pitiful, curled up and bleeding with fragments of bone sticking out of the flesh. Victor couldn’t find the rage in him to stomp on her, to break her neck, or shatter her skull—whatever it might take for the System to recognize she was done and activate her Lifesaver. Instead, he growled, “You have until I pick up my axe to use your charm.”
As he stalked over to the shiny glint of metal, he was well aware that he’d lost sight of Brontes. His ears still rang, but he glanced left and right, thankful for his banner’s light, as he glared through the blood in his eyes. The giant didn’t make an appearance before he stooped to pick up Lifedrinker, but as soon as his fingers closed on her haft, the System announced Valeska’s removal:
***Valeska Thornrend has been rescued from certain death and removed from the dungeon. Three entrants remain. Prepare for an Energy infusion.***
The message was a splash of cold water on Victor’s muddled thoughts—he’d yet to see the Death Caster, and several of his Energy pools were running perilously low. Thanks to the System's strange, hidden rules, he couldn’t count on that Energy infusion until the fighting was done. Tumbling stones and rubble got his attention, and he turned in time to see Brontes lifting himself from the broken rubble of a stalagmite; he’d, apparently, tumbled into another when Victor had thrown him.
The giant lifted his great gnarled club, and then, surprising Victor but sparking something like respect in his heart, the giant began to flicker with a strange, hazy, yellow-green aura as he strode toward him. He felt that weird spirit Energy immediately; it was something that pulled at him, digging up haunting moments of failure and secret regret—his inability to return to his abuela, his rejection of Chandri and her simple, peaceful life, and, most damning, his choice to be with Valla rather than wait and see if he could ever measure up to Tes. A dozen more shame-inducing thoughts fought for attention in his mind, and Victor felt his grip on Lifedrinker loosening.
“I didna’ wan’ ta use this,” the stout, bloody, dust-covered giant rumbled as he drew near. “Makes things too easy.” He lifted his massive club and, with a belly-shaking grunt, jerked it down toward Victor’s unprotected head.
Now, Victor might have been troubled, shamed, and even dazed from the onslaught of the giant’s unpleasant spirit Energy—Shame? Regret?—but his will was like a mountain fortress, and he saw the giant coming his way, saw him lift his club, and fully recognized the threat. As the massive cudgel fell toward his head, he lifted his left hand and caught it, the fury in his eyes flickering red like twin torches in the face of that sickly yellow-green aura.
Brontes grunted, jerking with his two arms, but Victor didn’t let go; he squeezed his iron fingers into that hard, uncaring wood and felt it give. He felt his mighty grip find purchase, and his mad grin returned as he stoked the fires of rage in his pathways with something extra—the furious fire of his magma heart. Flames began to flicker between his teeth, licking upward, as black smoke drifted out of his nostrils. He didn’t speak. He simply continued to squeeze that cudgel, looking down at the enormous fighter as the magma spread through his pathways, and he activated Volcanic Fury.