Throne Hunters Book Four, Chapter 40

Kessa sighted up at him. The air shimmered with heat from the molten ground, and the orange light glimmered on her strange glass visor. For some reason Harald thought she was grinning behind that crimson glass.

Then she raised her gauntlet and unleashed a gout of alchemical fire at him. He caught a fragmentary glimpse of her fist turning into a canon mouth, and then the torrent flooded up at him, a plume of flame so hot it was hued white and blue.

The Aetherlight Circlet activated as a great wash of dispersing light intersected the attack, casting the flames aside so that they scorched what remained of the grass and earth to Harald’s left.

He flexed his knees and leaped. Already a good three or four yards above Kessa, he soared above her, Scourge double-handed over his head, to descend like an meteor straight from the void. Even as he reached the apex of his jump he activated Tenebral Surge, but angled it so that it extended on the vertical plane instead of horizontal, the blast of black radiance blasting down ahead of him, prefiguring his own attack.

But Kessa wasn’t done.

Her armor, tamped down as it was by the combination of his auras, suddenly vented its core heat. Everything flared white as if she’d turned into a miniature sun, and then a geyser of heat roared upward, an incandescent column that would have immolated him in midair were it not for the Surge meeting it full on and melding and mixing and neutralizing most of the attack.

He’d not given the Aetherlight Circlet time to recharge. Her eruption of heat, greatly diminished, engulfed him as he fell.

The Umbral Aegis grew attenuated, his vision blurred, and a scream tore itself from his throat as he fell, Ego 32 ensuring he never deviated from his intent.

The Scourge howled as it slashed downward through the roiling superheated air, and slammed into the ground with sufficient force to buckle the glass surface and cause gouts of lava to burst up around him.

The ground?

Instinct had Harald leap back just as Kessa’s maul whistled through where his head had been. He swung the Scourge up, deflecting her follow-up blow, and for a panicked handful of seconds he simply staggered back, parrying and swaying aside from her swings.

How the hell was she so fast, even while under Sovereign Silence and with the maul looking to weigh as much as a cart? One blow from that monster would jelly him.

Then Sir Gale Rordan leaped atop her back, wrapping an arm around her gorget.

Kessa grunted, ducked one shoulder and heaved the dead raider off, but the headless woman swarmed in amongst her legs to grapple one knee.

Harald took advantage of the confusion to step in and swing the Scourge. It crashed at a downward oblique angle across her chest, and for a second Harald felt a jolt of joy, sweet victory—only for the armor to flare again and the purple crystals of the Scourge to sweep out across its surface instead of destroying its integrity altogether.

Instead the purple growths rimed its huge curvature like a winter frost, the Scourge actually bouncing right off the chest plate, the Forgeheart’s burning glow dimming beneath the purple crust.

Kessa decided to ignore the dead assailants and swung her maul out wildly, gripping it with just one fist just above the pommel so that its entire length sang out and the huge head crashed into Harald’s shoulder.

His Umbral Aegis shattered, the blow pulverizing his shoulder, his hand opening against his will to drop the Scourge. A second later, however, a shimmering ghost-like replica of the maul appeared even as the original swung away, and this replica hit him right on the ruined shoulder again with equal force, sending him spinning around to crash down to his knees against the hot glass floor.

Awareness washed over him.

Shadowpaw was back in the game.

He summoned the mastiff even as he fought to rise to his feet. The huge hound appeared to the left of Kessa, bayed, and pounced, closing his huge jaws around Kessa’s arm and mangling the metal.

The two dead raiders were cooking on the lava-floor, but still they grappled the raider as best they could.

Kessa laughed and then she cursed and swung her arm so that Shadowpaw swung away, sheer momentum tearing him off her arm. A downward punch shattered Sir Gale’s head.

Harald picked up the Scourge with his left hand. His vision was doubling, tripling. If he didn’t end this now he’d not have the structural integrity to keep fighting.

Abyssal Grasp.

The ropes of shadow wreathed around  Kessa’s legs, grappling tight and feeding Harald newfound power.

Black Halo.

The abyss flowered within him once more. It blossomed outward, a rising tide of lethal fragments that glimmered in the purple light of Sovereign Silence, and once more they began cascading into Kessa’s wounded side, flaying open the arm Shadowpaw had mangled, flensing the armor off her shoulder, her hip.

Tenebral Surge.

Empowered by Black Halo, the detonation was primordial, unstoppable, ridiculous. The blast incorporated the deluge of shards and slammed into Kessa, lifting her off the ground and hurling her across the crater, her armor denting and tearing apart. She hit the far wall so hard she embedded herself in the glass and rocks a foot deep.

Harald gasped, reeled, but somehow she wasn’t dead. Her Forgeheart yet burned beneath the Scourge’s purple toxins, and though her armor was practically ruined, still she grunted and began prying herself out of the wall.

Harald took a deep breath and ran down the crater, leaping rivulets of flame and lava, to cross the center and begin climbing toward her. He was too battered, too burned, to fucked up to do more than jog.

“Fuck me,” groaned Kessa, sitting up. “Looks like it’s time for Pressure Vault Overload. That’s a first. It’s been a fun fight, Harald. See you in the afterlife.”

Her Forgeheart blazed through the purple ice, melting away the toxins in less than a second. Harald was forced to narrow his eyes as he charged up the slope, Kessa’s chest blazing so bright he couldn’t stand to look directly at her. He dimly heard her tear herself half out the sloping wall.

Now or never.

Live or die.

Gritting his teeth, Harald summoned the last of his Constitution 36 resilience and leaped up, Strength 24 allowing him to fly up the remaining yards to crash right into her, knees slamming into her chest and drive her back into the hole.

Tenebral Surge.

His void blast exploded into her just as she unleashed the power of her Forgeheart.

At the very last moment Harald managed to warp both hands around the back of her neck, and held on.

Flame and heat roared through him. All thought, all sense of self, disappeared before the assault. Shadow Fortitude held, held, and then shattered.

Pain.

The first agony he’d experienced in what felt like forever.

Raw, livid pain suffused him as his body lifted up and went horizontal, but still he held on with both hands, clutched at her neck.

The blast washed out across the crater, and Harald sensed Shadowpaw return to his Cosmos, incinerated.

Then he crashed down upon Kessa’s armored form, limp and charred, barely alive.

Abyssal Grasp.

The shadow ropes formed around her, wrapped her tight, and power, sweet crucial power, poured into him anew.

Where before she’d been a limitless bonfire of energy, now she was barely a smolder.

Still he drank deep.

“What the hell,” he heard her mutter as if from a million miles away. “Why won’t you fucking die?”

Tenebral Surge.

The black abyssal blast slammed into her chest and drove her a foot deeper into the soil. She grunted in pain, then convulsed and her heard her spit or vomit within her helm.

Still not dead.

Blood was coming up his throat. He couldn’t breathe.

Tenebral Surge.

Another blast slammed into her with such force that her pauldrons were torn off, one leg ripped clear out her hip. She pounded deeper into the boiling earth, steam arising from around her burning armor.

He couldn’t feel his hands. His arms were little more than bone and tendon. All that was not implacable will and murderous desire was flensed from his soul.

“Stop!” Kessa was screaming. “I surrender, stop! Fucking—”

Tenebral Surge.

She grunted as she was slammed deeper into the ground. Her huge armature, her impossibly dense and wondrous defense, was ruined. All that remained was the Forgeheart, barely glimmering on her chest. She was so diminished. So small in comparison.

“Not…” he managed to rasp. His thoughts were scattered and adrift on an ocean of pain. “Not…”

She was gasping within her cracked helm. Trying to say something.

“Not… a game.”

Tenebral Surge.

He felt her power drain dry, the Abyssal Grasp tearing the last of it free from her Cosmos as his final assault tore her body apart. She simply fragmented before him, came apart in a welter of hot blood and flesh, her head coming free so that when he fell back and crashed onto the glassy slope and rolled to the bottom her head came with him, bouncing and rolling till it fell into a heated pit and there stopped, facing him, her startled expression barely visible through the lava-illuminated glow.

From another universe, a different life, Harald heard the sound of metallic stars ringing out against the void.

The Demon Seed Has Stirred

Your Strength has risen from 16 to 17
Your Dexterity has risen from 16 to 17
Your Constitution has risen from 16 to 17

But it was too little, too late.

Harald groaned and tried to roll onto his side. He couldn’t. His left side was reduced to burnt steak. His right shoulder was soft in all the wrong ways. His right arm useless. His legs didn’t respond to him. His hands were reduced to blackened claws. Slowly Shadow Fortitude asserted itself so that the mind-weeping pain faded away, but it left him in a island of clarity that brought upon a single realization: he couldn’t heal back from this.

Not unless he had days and a Nightshard to absorb.

Only Constitution 36—no, Constitution 37, now—was keeping him alive. Any doctor, any healer, would have recoiled in horror. His friends would have killed him instantly out of abject mercy.

Harald couldn’t help it.

He chuckled, but his laughter became a dry hacking cough.

Any moment now the fourth and strongest raider would come for him. Sure he had the Solace, but if this raider found him this helpless, he’d be dispatched, heal back, and instantly dispatched again.

There was only one solution.

Harald’s breathing stilled. Not even much of a choice, really, given the direction his body was going in. Any minute now it would relinquish his spirit.

But he couldn’t wait. Couldn’t lie here like this until his absurd Constitution finally gave out.

With immense effort, Harald turned his head to the left, then the right. What could he use?

There.

The Scourge.

Caught in a small rent in the glassy rock, its huge blade propped up at an angle.

Fitting.

Harald turned over onto his side, and with his functioning arm and feeble kicks from his leg he pushed himself toward it.

Almost he blacked out.

But that wouldn’t do. Lying there unconscious was a death sentence.

Growling, the sound bestial, he forced his way over the remaining few yards of burning ground, and when he reached the Scourge he used the last of his strength and reared back just enough to slam his face as hard as he could into the Epic sword’s edge.

For the briefest of seconds he felt the toxic edge cut into the bridge of his nose, shatter his brow, and then—

And then.

Sweet golden light.

The Solace of Aurelum activated.

Gold light washed over him, joined bones, reknit sinews, regrew his flesh, soothed his scorched skin, unfused his fingers, cleared his lungs of ash and blood, regrew his hair, his lips, his nose.

Harald blinked.

It was done.

Faster than any set of scales, more profound and immediate than Sam’s healing, he was utterly and completely restored.

The difference was shocking, overwhelming. It was like the sun abruptly piercing the grimmest storm clouds, blazing a dark day into blazing brightness. His mind was sharp, his energy restored, his strength and resilience once again offering him the illusion of infinite supply.

Text filled his vision, surprising him.

The abyss adores your embracing death.

You are become one with the void.

By the decree of the Fallen Angel, you are granted the next echelon of your destiny:

Abyssal Master 8

For a moment all Harald could do was stare.

No fucking way.

He’d been rewarded… acknowledged… for taking his own life?

No time to think, no time to read the details just yet. Ego 32 allowed him to set his awe aside, his exhilaration, and leap instead to his feet. He spun about, searching the rim of the crater. No sign of his next foe.

He scooped up the Scourge, the great blade as undamaged as when he’d first found it. The ground was burning hot under his naked soles. No pain, but he didn’t want to be walking on blisters.

Harald reached into the pothole and scooped out Kessa’s helm. Grimacing, he opened the strange glass visor and pushed her head out the bottom. He didn’t want to see her horrified expression, the blood smeared ruin of her visage, so he simply shoved it out, hopping from one foot to the next, and considered her body where it lay five feet deep in the wall above him.

Her armor, wondrous Artifact that it had been, was utterly ruined. Her maul? He jogged over, scooped it up, and then climbed out of the crater. Hissing and moving as quickly as he could, he avoided the worst of the burning spots and scrambled up to the crater’s edge.

If his opponent was to ambush him, it would be now. Harald summoned Veil of Shadows and Umbral Aegis, then crawled out over the edge onto ruined lawn and glanced about again.

Still nothing.

Other than this section of the Celestara gardens looking like a hellscape. The crater and consumed most of the lawn, and even now emitted its own fiery light. The environs were ruined, torn up, scorched and cindered.

Hunkering down low, Harald took off as fast as he could, expecting an attack at any moment. But he hit the treeline without problem and kept going, putting as much distance between himself and the crater as he could.

Only when he reached the far western edge of the rambling gardens, a section allowed to grow picturesquely wild with little dips and tiny hills, did he slow. Moving cautiously up to some standing stones, he surveyed the immediate environs one last time, then crouched in the darkest nook between two boulders and allowed himself to exhale.

That had been…

That had been insane.

Harald dropped the maul, propped the Scourge beside him, and pressed his thumbs into his eyes.

For a moment it was all he could do to just crouch there, to be utterly still, and allow his heart, his soul, his very essence absorb the intensity of what he’d just experienced. He saw a flash of the Scourge rising up to meet his face, felt again the crunch of its edge slamming into the bridge of his nose—

Harald shuddered and thrust the memory away.

What was done was done.

And he had one more foe to kill.

Time to get to work.

Even as Shadow Fortitude slowly empowered him in the darkness, he felt his mind still reeling. Inhaling deeply, feeling wild, ragged, barely able to focus despite his insane Ego, Harald summoned the text once more.

The abyss adores your embracing death.

You are become one with the void.

By the decree of the Fallen Angel, you are granted the next echelon of your destiny:

Abyssal Master 8

Active Ability Unlocked: Maw of the Starless Deep

Tear open a rift to the Abyss. This rift swallows spells, projectiles, and lesser creatures. Foes within its immediate vicinity are stunned, and any defensive enchantments are nullified until they regain their wits.

Passive Ability Unlocked: Dread Wellspring

The longer your enemies suffer within the shadow of your influence, the more powerful you become. Each passing moment that your foes languish within Aura of the Aching Depths bestows a cumulative +1 to all your stats, with the cap being your number of Ascended Thrones. Upon reaching the cap, your next Active Ability attack is augmented by the void.

Harald forced himself to reread the two descriptions several times before their import sank home.

A chill passed through him as realization rocked his core: he was Level 8 now. More powerful than even Thracos had been.

In fact, if he were to fight Thracos now…

Harald knew he could probably take him alone.

The angels wept.

Harald rubbed at his face, blinked away the stars, then took a sharp breath. He had to internalize these powers. Against Kessa he’d been too scattered, his approach haphazard.

It was more imperative than ever that he open each combat with The Aching Depths. That would begin his accumulation of stat bonuses, up to a +5. Would the Aureate Master double those? For an insane moment Harald felt the urge to laugh bubble hysterically up his throat, but no—the Master only worked on Artifacts.

Still. He could end a fight with a +5 to Constitution. That would tip into the…

Again Harald was forced to catch his breath, to ease his panicked emotions. It was all too much.

That would nudge his Constitution into the 40’s.

What would that even look like?

Constitution 36 had kept him alive when he was little left than a charred corpse. With his recent rise in Con, plus this potential bonus of +5, he’d reach, what, Constitution 42…?

Could he even be killed at that point? Or would he remain alive no matter what was done to him?

Harald shuddered and buried his face in his hands. It was too much. He felt the fabric of his soul ripple under the barrage of power. Too much.

But no.

Harald dropped his hands and stared out grimly into the dark.

What was he talking about?

His emotions settled.

His hunger arose.

Nothing would ever be enough.

This was just a taste of the power that lay ahead of him.

So, focus: open combat with The Aching Depths. Open the Maw to stun his foes, even as he overlaid it with Thronebound Mantle. Then Abyssal Grasp to weaken his enemy and empower himself, followed by Sovereign Silence to further slow them down and weaken their wills.

Once he had them at their nadir, he would lay into them with Black Halo, Demonic Edge, and Tenebral Surge.

Harald exhaled sharply.

Madness.

But now.

Now he had a fighting chance against whomever was coming next. Someone more powerful, even, than Kessa Blaze.

Harald frowned. Wait. Kessa was House Emberfell. The guard captain had told him that only the other four houses had bid to hunt him down: Silvershield, Drakenhart, Thornvale, and Veridian. Celestara was hosting, and Lord Blaze was going to duel him at Ninth Bell.

So why had Kessa come after him?

Harald rubbed at his jaw. Something had changed. Perhaps Blaze had grown impatient, or worried of being left out. Perhaps Kessa had cajoled him into allowing her to flex her powers.

But did that mean there were two raiders still to go? Sir Gale had the air of Drakenhart to him, while the other woman had felt like a Thornvale. Kessa had been House Emberfell through and through, which left Silvershield and Veridian.

Not Gold-rankers.

Two more Silver-ranked raiders.

Harald blew out his cheeks.

And his Solace of Aurelum was now used up. He pulled the golden sphere out of his Cosmos, considered it, then severed the connection. The +4 to Constitution became a +8, which was fantastic, but if he got so wounded that he was reduced to a charred skeleton again, having that absurdly high a Constitution would be a waste. Better to equip himself with something that would prevent him from getting massacred in the first place.

So thinking, he took up Kessa’s huge maul. The weapon was absurdly huge, incredibly heavy, and were it not for Harald’s Strength 25 he’d barely be able to lift it off the ground at all.

Artifact: Ember Maul
Quality: Masterwork
Special Ability: Impact Shatterfield
Activation: On a successful melee strike, has a chance to create a heat mirage shockwave that duplicates the original blow in all its strength, targeting the same location that damage was dealt.

+4 Strength
+2 Presence

Limitation: Should an attack miss, you are left briefly off balance and vulnerable to counters.

Impressive, but not what he needed. Setting the maul aside, he took up the helm. It was a beautifully crafted object, its visor of deep crimson glass, cracked now, and with metal feathers affixed to the temples and sweeping back so as to give the illusion of wings.

Artifact: Ashplume Visor
Quality: Rare
Special Ability: Blazing Sight
Activation: Once per day, the helm can grant the ability to see through all illusions, detect stealth, and halve damage from all incoming blows for a short duration.

+3 Dexterity

No limitation, which was rare. And the ability to pierce illusions and stealth was wildly useful in his current situation. But…

Harald considered the other items at his disposal.

The Rootheart Sigil. His powers were growing more and more into draining and debilitating effects. Having an Artifact that could further root his foes in place would complement his Abilities best. Not only that, but the odds of facing another fire-based foe was slim, while the garden’s riotous growth was the perfect arena for its powers.

Harald set the Ashplume Visor aside.

He definitely wasn’t choosing to not use it because of all of Kessa’s blood on the inside.

Harald took a moment to reconnect to the Rootheart Sigil, and checked on his Servitors. He waited a few moments till all three were available again for combat, then stood.

He was eager to try out his Level 8 powers.

Activating Veil of Shadows, he stalked forth into the mock-wilderness, moving quietly around the pruned bushes and between trees, pausing on occasion to listen.

Nothing.

But the next hunter had to be out there.

Harald caught sight of the Celestara Manor in the near distance. What were the lords and ladies thinking, as they watched their champions fall one by one to Harald’s wrath? The losers had to be furious. Doran Blaze drenched in grief and rage. But the remaining two had to be ebullient.

They’d wagered on fielding stronger raiders, peak Silver-ranks, and now their elites would surely cut Harald down.

Or so they thought.

Harald grinned in the darkness and resumed stalking through the shadows.

There.

Movement up ahead.

Wait a second.

Harald dropped smoothly but slowly into a crouch and edged behind a tree. Then, with utmost care, he leaned to the side and peered into the darkness.

Damn it.

He’d not been mistaken.

There were two figures moving toward him.