Chapter 23 - Hurtful…

The first died not long after I started exploring the warren of tunnels that shouldn’t have been possible beneath the barrow.  They moved up and down and if I’d been able to pour liquid metal in the opening and get a cast of the system I suspected it would look like an ant’s nest.

Various side rooms had yielded nothing, just barren spaces filled with dust.  I was using the age-old trick of always turning left, based on the theory that I’d eventually get to where I needed to go as long as I was consistent.  The passages, illuminated by dim lighting that had no obvious source, kept winding around themselves into ever more elaborate seeming loops and twists.  It was hard to say for sure.  Being locked away from all points of reference beyond the smooth stone walls that stretched away in every direction made keeping track of my position almost impossible.

I gave up on torches after the third one guttered out.  The weird light made seeing my immediate area easy enough and as my eyes adjusted to the gloom I found it wasn’t so bad.  Hardly comfortable, the weight of dirt and stone held precariously over my head filled me with a primeval dread, like a mouse faced with a T-rex, that seeped through my bones and left me jumpy and nervous.  

I rounded yet another grey stone corner and threw myself sideways and backwards, the jitters that had snuck into me over the last however many hours serving to save my life.  A bronze blade had slammed into the stone wall where my neck should have been.  Sparks flew as the metal ground against the granite and I recovered my balance so I could launch a vicious thrust of my sword into the torso of the thing that attacked me.

The blade slipped straight through the bronze body and I yanked it sideways even as I was processing what the hell the thing was.  It was a bronze statue or golem, a miniature version of Aresk’s form when in his god-world.  I grinned as the realisation that this was going to be cathartic settled into my mind.

Wargod’s Golem slain x1

Fifty Souls harvested.

Oh this was going to be more than just cathartic.  I was going to positively enjoy this experience.

Hurtful… Aresk sent to my mind.  I ignored him.

A few corners later and I walked into a larger space, the walls stretched away from me in every direction to vanish into the fading light.  A dozen golems spun their heads in my direction.

“”Evening blokes.  Time to die?” I said as I fell into a guard, the blade held horizontally ahead of my body at waist height.  Their bodies spun to match the alignments of their heads in an effect I could only describe as uncanny-valley-terrifying. The only sound they made was the quiet clangs as their feet hit the stone to launch themselves in my direction.

I ducked sideways as the first to arrive threw a straight at my face.  My sword cut upwards to remove a chunk of its chest, shoulder, arm and part of its face in one blow.  I didn’t have any time to celebrate as his mates were upon me a moment later.  Every fist I ducked received a retaliatory slash but I couldn’t move fast enough to avoid all the blows.  I was battered and bleeding from a dozen blows by the time I spun past the last golem and cut it in half with a backhand swipe.

I turned to find almost all of my earlier attacks had merely injured the golems and the bits of them were stumbling, hopping or crawling towards me.  I grimaced as I panted for breath.  These bastards had body stats that weren’t far off my own.  None of them could be taken lightly.  Equipment! Aresk had said I couldn’t use my spells but he’d put a funny stress on the word equipment.  I looked down at the iron rings that I’d enchanted myself with my most potent versions of Heal and Fireball.

My skin knit itself closed and I breathed a sigh of relief.  A single Fireball turned the brassy scrapyard crawling towards me into molten slag.  The blast was concentrated by the low roof, knocking me backwards, and instead of leaving a glassy sphere of incinerated rock behind all it did was char the floor and ceiling.  There was some god-fuckery going on with the materials of my surroundings.

Wargod’s Golem slain x23

One thousand, one hundred and fifty Souls harvested.

I rolled my shoulders as I headed deeper into the cavern.  It gradually thinned down to a tiny tunnel, maybe six inches across.  From the tunnel blew a strong current of fresh smelling air but there was no way in hell I could squeeze through.  I turned back and went back to the last left turn I’d made.  

A dozen deadends later I was starting to get annoyed.  I’d been wandering whatever the hell this place was for hours and all I’d done was kill a few shitty robots.  I’d seen nary a sign of the Source and my patience was starting to wear thin.  I had an army coalescing on the surface and a war in the south to plan.  Before that I needed to find out what Klip and Sulk had achieved at Velkit’s Source.  I had stuff to do and wandering in the dimly lit tunnels was starting to annoy me.

“Just point me where I need to go!  I’ll kill the bastard no worries but I’ve got better things to do than wander around in the dark for days!” I snapped at the empty air.

No response.  God, I hated the tunnels.  It wasn’t as though I had a lot of choice so I just kept turning left every time until I hit yet another bloody deadend.  Then I’d backtrack and repeat the process from where I went wrong.

Time meant nothing to me.  It was like hanging on the wagon again, just slow and steady torment.  I wiped out groups of golems with ring-fire or disassembled individuals with the sword.  I was getting worn down.  None of the fights went entirely my way.  Even the solo golems would usually hit me from ambush and slice off a chunk of health points.  I had two rings enchanted with Heal and eight with Fireballs.  I was down to three Fireballs and two casts of Heal remaining when I finally stumbled into the cavern that was my destination.  The bright light coming down the corridor alerted me and I advanced cautiously with my sword held in front of me.

It was another one of the long cavern-like spaces.  This time the roof was a good four metres above my head and it was much more brightly lit than all the previous tunnels and rooms I’d explored.  At the far end a much larger version of the golems rose to its feet from a familiar throne made of shields and spears.

“Knew you’d get here eventually!” boomed the golem in Aresk’s voice.

“So I have to beat you to get access to the Source?” I asked as I flicked the sword back and forth to my side.

“Of course!  I can’t go easy on you though!  Look, the prize you sought all these days.” Aresk waved a hand and his throne collapsed to reveal a bronze pearl of power.  His aura filled the room but it didn’t slow me or impede me.

“Days?  You fucking metal prick!”  I charged forward and the sword flicked out but a spear grew out of the statue's hand like it was made of liquid metal and parried the blow.  

I threw myself to the side and rolled back to my feet to dodge the counter then had to lean back as the leaf-shaped spear tip swept back and passed less than an inch in front of my eyes.

Rolling forwards I sliced through the things legs as the spear crashed down behind me and dug a line in the stone that my hottest fireballs had only been able to char earlier. His shins slipped off the angled cuts and slammed into the stone with a clang.  I jumped back to buy some time and space as the oversized golem collapsed to the ground with a sound like a box full of pans being dropped.

The impulse was still on the way from my brain to my legs, the instruction to launch forwards and take advantage of the damage I’d already done, but as I started to move the severed legs dissolved into bronze liquid and flowed back into the golems body.  I was committed as the body rolled over and the spear rose up to meet me.

Snatching the haft of the spear just below the tip I managed to turn my imminent impaling into a glancing wound across my left shoulder, marring my skin but not the golden tattoo.  I pivoted from the connection and brought both feet down into Aresk’s face as my Shop bought sword sliced a clean line across his chest, separating the body into two parts.

The spear shrank and lunged at me, forcing me to dodge backwards again.  Before I could do anything else the torso of the construct flowed back together, strings of liquid metal reaching out from either side to drag the parts back together.

I threw myself back again and cast a fireball at the unkillable thing.  The spear morphed into a shield and took the magical attack head on.  The whole thing was blown backwards, clattering across the stone to finish in a glowing tangle of limbs and twisted threads of metal.

“That wasn’t very nice,” Aresk grumbled as the golem flowed upright.  It wasn’t as tall now.  It had lost perhaps a quarter of its height.  Before it could finish reforming I dashed forward with a yell, sword held out behind me at waist height.

The spear moved to intersect my path but I swerved to the side and sliced it off just above the bronze hand holding it.  Before it hit the ground I closed the distance and flickered through a complex pattern of cuts that turned the golem into a pile of chunks.  I cast Fireball again from my last charged ring, leaving me with one more use.

I should have jumped backwards before using the spell. The detonation threw me back and I bounced off the wall of the cavern.

Health Points: 243/500

I cast Heal again but I began to appreciate Mulius’ perspective on the spell.  Ten Health points was nothing in the grand scheme of things.  Time and repeated castings were needed to make the spell useful and neither of those were available to me.

When the golem reformed he was barely taller than I was.  Not being able to actively defend had resulted in much more significant damage than the last fireball.  I was considering the best way to gain another opening to repeat the tactic when it moved.

The loss of mass clearly affected its speed as it moved almost too fast for me to follow.  I was backing away and frantically blocking.  Cuts and slashes began appearing across my limbs and face as I tried to dance away from the blur of razor-sharp death the golem was wielding.

The stone hit my back and I ducked sideways as the spear scored a line in the rock behind me.  As I rolled to my feet the golem grinned and the spear was absorbed back into its body.  Its hands dissolved into whirring circular blades that reminded me of angle grinders from Earth. 

With a single step it closed the distance between us and I was more on the defensive.  My sword dug lines through the body but whenever he blocked with circular saws he’d turned his hands into the blade bounced off.  I could block his attacks but he was somehow stronger than me and I’d be pushed back.

For a minute or more I was being driven to retreat.  I flashed out with the sword, looking to remove one of the angle grinder limbs on a parry but the weapon flowed down his limb so the spinning surface was protruding from the elbow I’d been trying to cut through.  With a scream of sparks my sword slipped from my grip and flew into the shadows around us.  I bolted backwards as Aresk started laughing, the booming sound echoing out into the cavern.

The damn thing took chase and almost flew towards me, its feet barely touched the ground as it closed the distance.  I glanced back then slapped the haste enchantment Kril had put on the little rock I wore on a necklace against my chest.  

Suddenly the roles were reversed.  I was the blur and this automaton was a sluggish, lumbering thing.  I made a beeline for my blade and as I passed, the golems eyes trailing behind me as I moved I threw a hand in its direction and launched my final Fireball.  It couldn’t move quickly enough to block the attack and the main body of the monster was consumed in the ten metre star that erupted.

I snatched up my sword and spun in time to see what was left of the golem reconstitute itself into something that only loosely resembled its original form.  It was spindly now, not a hulking sculpture of a gym-rat.  It barely came up to my shoulders.  I advanced as quickly as I could, the Haste spell would only last a few more seconds.

“Let’s talk about this!” The thing said as my blade sliced through it a dozen times in less than three seconds.  I felt some resistance on the final cut, I'd finally hit something vital.  A lozenge of yellow metal flew out of the golem and cracked against the wall.  “Good job!” said the head of the golem as it began to fall apart.  I picked up the cracked bronze orb and stuck it in my pouch before limping towards the Source that had been revealed when the throne had dissolved. 

Avatar of Aresk (lesser) slain x1

One hundred Souls harvested.

The Source was a vortex of shining bronze and I reached out to brush a finger against it.  Glancing down I noted I now had three golden dots on my tattoo and then the world blurred away.

I didn’t come round in Aresk’s little pocket universe. Instead I appeared back in the chamber with the three doors.  

“Good job, kid,” said the crow-door.  “No one can say I went easy on you at least but did you really have to make it so personal?  I really am on your side you idiot!”