Divine Apostasy Book 7 - Chapter 33

Chapter 33

With the debuff gone Ruwen moved his feet, gauging how it affected his balance, and instinctively compensated for the unstable mud and added water resistance. “Why did you attack me?”

A fragmented hissing sound that Ruwen guessed passed for laughter came from the Gloom Stalker. “That was no attack, Light Walker. Only encouragement to answer truthfully. I do not like liars.”

The Gloom Stalker’s Disposition Aura had lost most of its color, although a small amount of red remained, barely visible.

“Like I said before, I’m not lying, and you don’t make sense. I don’t know what holding darkness is, or a true shadow, or how my shadow upsets you.” Ruwen raised a finger and pointed at the Gloom Stalker. “But if you target my Spiritual elements again, I’ll take you up on that fight.”

The Gloom Stalker shifted to the right, sending ripples through the water as it passed, but it didn’t do so by stepping. From the pressure waves generated underwater, it appeared the creature had created a platform for itself. The platform had a dozen tendrils snaking through the water to the surrounding shadows.

Ruwen wondered about their purpose. Did they power the platform and the Gloom Stalker, or did they act as anchors?

The Gloom Stalker continued to move right, entering Ruwen’s peripheral vison. He didn’t bother to turn, confident in his abilities to sense the creature’s attack.

Just before disappearing completely from Ruwen’s vision, the Gloom Stalker switched directions and in two seconds had returned to face Ruwen directly.

“You are not a prisoner to the light?” the Gloom Stalker asked.

“If you’re asking if I need my vision to fight, then no.”

“You are a curiosity.”

“I’ve been called worse.”

Ruwen remained calm and relaxed. While difficult to read the Gloom Stalker’s body language and posture, he sensed impending conflict in the creature’s voice. He hoped to get a little more information before the situation went sideways.

“What do you mean by ‘hold darkness’ and how can you tell?”

“I almost believe you are ignorant.”

“I’ve learned enough to know I am.”

“True or not, prepare yourself.”

Six booms occurred simultaneously as six black rods the size of fingers ripped the air as they sped toward Ruwen. None of the spears would strike his spiritual components, and he guessed the Gloom Stalker wished to test his reflexes without hurting him permanently.

Ruwen lifted his right arm, turned his body thirty degrees, and bent backward, arching his back and leaning his head forward. At the same time, he stepped to the left, taking his legs out of reach of the two tendrils the Gloom Stalker had launched under the water.

All the tendrils missed Ruwen, only the pressure waves of their passing striking his body. The force of the air, ripped violently apart, would shred a normal body, but he ignored it.

Ruwen considered grabbing one or more of the tendrils and using them as leverage, but the long black fingers continued past him, striking pools of shadow around the swamp and disappearing.

Instead, Ruwen stepped closer to the Gloom Stalker, narrowing the distance until only two feet separated them. If the creature wished to test Ruwen’s Gem body, he would happily demonstrate.

Ruwen swung his right-hand using sixty percent of his speed, aiming for the Gloom Stalker’s cheek. A massive boom surrounded them as his hand sliced the air. Half an inch from the Gloom Stalker’s face, Ruwen stopped his hand.

The Gloom Stalker’s face distorted as the pressure wave passed over it, and to Ruwen’s surprise, partly through it. The creature, while in the Material Realm, didn’t completely reside here, nullifying part of the physical impact of Ruwen’s almost slap.

Water vaporized to Ruwen’s left, turning into a mist twenty feet away, and into a tidal wave fifty feet away. The nearby trees toppled with loud cracks as the pressure wave minced the trunks and sent slivers of wood into the swamp like siege bolts.

The Gloom Stalker’s platform allowed it to remain upright, and the creature jumped backward ten feet in surprise. To its credit, it didn’t rub its face or show any signs of pain.

Ruwen believed the creature had reached Diamond but wasn’t sure if it had attained peak yet. Regardless, he doubted the shadow had encountered anyone like Ruwen short of facing a Divine being.

More tendrils launched from the Gloom Stalker and this time Ruwen didn’t bother dodging. Instead, he swatted them away. Two of the tendrils stuck to his left hand, immediately wrapping themselves around Ruwen’s wrist.

Ruwen jerked his left arm downward, the movement short and violent. The tendrils snapped off the Gloom Stalker and almost immediately dissolved.

Under the water, the platform shifted, and Ruwen felt the pressure waves approaching from above and around him. Shadows fell toward him like black streaks of lightning. In a blink, a surge of dense shadow rose from the water, fed by the Gloom Stalker’s platform. It merged with the shadow lightning and surrounded him, encasing him in a sphere of darkness.

Ruwen didn’t need light to see and still sensed everything around him. Even though the shadow construct mitigated part of the Material Realm’s physical damage, the creature couldn’t ignore it.

Ruwen snapped his right hand forward, palm outward and fingers raised, launching a burst of condensed air like a battering ram. He immediately replicated the movement with his left hand, repeating the attack. Over and over, as fast as he could manage, he threw bolts of air.

The space inside the shadow bubble roiled and exploded, turning super-heated and baking the mud on the swamp floor surrounding him as the water had yet to refill from his previous attack.

Instead of single air explosions from Ruwen’s movements, the speed of the attacks created one long howling whistle.

The shadow sphere disintegrated and moss on the surviving trees near them burst into flames, followed a moment later by the trees. Farther away, the trees bent, and the moss disappeared as the pressure wave flung it away.

The Gloom Stalker remained standing five feet from Ruwen, as the world ignited around them.

Ruwen clapped, creating a savage explosion and causing the ground to shudder. The fierce wave of air snuffed out the surrounding flames, pushing the water away from them in a hundred-foot radius.

The force pushed the Gloom Stalker backward as all its tendril shadow connections disappeared, along with everything near it capable of creating a shadow. The creature stopped itself mid-air as it latched onto distant shadows.

As the water returned in a rush, the Gloom Stalker floated back to the scorched mud. Ruwen stood in the middle of a giant circle of destruction.

A twenty-foot-tall creature emerged from a shadow fifty feet behind the Gloom Stalker. The beast had the front of a crab and the rear of a scorpion. It surfed on the water as it returned and in seconds had reached the Gloom Stalker, who lowered himself onto its back.

“Your power is formidable, Light Walker,” the Gloom Stalker said. “I cannot match it here. I look forward to our fight when you enter the true realm. Perhaps then you will reveal the truth.”

Ruwen placed a palm over his right fist and bowed. “The truth sounds the same in every Realm.”

“Indeed,” the Gloom Stalker said. “But it looks different. Until then, Light Walker, may the shadow guide you, may it surround and protect you, may it bring you peace. Farewell.”

The shadow crab leaped a hundred feet and disappeared into the shadow of a damaged cypress tree as if walking through a door. As the water swirled around Ruwen, he considered the encounter.

The Gloom Stalker had, without a doubt, targeted him with a Shadow Step. No, not a Shadow Step, as the creature didn’t appear to practice the Steps. Regardless, it had known the exact location to strike, and that could not be a coincidence. Not here, in this place, during the Master’s trial.

The water calmed and revealed hundreds of snails, their perches destroyed by Ruwen.

“I’m sorry,” Ruwen whispered. “I didn’t consider your homes in my race to end that fight.”

The snails ignored Ruwen. Instead, they slowly formed lines, spaced twenty feet apart. They floated in the water, one line moving clockwise while the other counter. Without destroying such a vast area, he would have never noticed the odd behavior.

Ruwen turned toward the fortress. He’d had enough of this swamp.