Throne Hunters Book 4, Chapter 8

A great weariness befell Harald as he walked away from his friends. The austere and bleak chamber reminded him of the terror and fatigue he’d felt the first time he’d explored this level, and the endless flight through darkened corridors and into life and death battles with the scarecrows. He turned to glance back just before entering a side tunnel, and saw Sam laying out her bedroll as she spoke quietly with Kársek, who continued smoking his pipe, rune hammer laid across his knees.

His gaze lingered on Anna’s exhausted posture, head tilted back awkwardly against the wall. Nessa’s curled form, as if she could protect herself that way against the pain of living.

A twist of anger twinged his heart, and he felt bitter resentment at the forces that had forced them down here. Gorkin and his depravity. The Houses and their corrupt self-interest. The demons and their political games.

One day, he vowed, as he stepped into the darkness, one day he’d cease to be a pawn, and would destroy everything that made them suffer so.

Shadowpaw appeared by his side, his shaggy coat reaching almost hip-high on Harald. The mastiff let out a whuffing sound as Harald reached down to scritch behind his ears, then raised his massive head to encourage deeper scratches. Soon the last vestiges of light faded away, and they walked in complete darkness.

And with that blessed obscurity came power.

At first it felt like his eyelids were simply growing less heavy, and then he found himself taking deeper breaths. He straightened his back, squared his shoulders, and soon found a spring in his step that hadn’t been there in far too long. But it was a feverish energy, stolen from the night, gifted to him by his Shadow Fortitude.

Still, his mind cleared, and before they could reach the next chamber and a possible fight, Harald lowered himself into a crouch beside Shadowpaw and took stock.

So much had changed since he’d last been here as a Level 1. He was an Abyssal Master now, Level 5, and equipped with incredible Artifacts, accompanied by a Servitor, and with so many new Abilities that he hadn’t even had a chance to experiment with them all yet.

He needed to go into battle prepared.

It was time to take stock. Harald summoned his window, and marveled at how much had changed:

Name: Harald Darrowdelve

Soul Nature: Insatiable Void
Soul Rank: Divine
Soul Ability: Condemnation of Success

Class: Abyssal Master 1
Class Actives: Abyssal Attunement, Dark Vigor, Demonic Edge, Abyssal Grasp, Shadow Dominion
Class Passives: Aura of the Aching Depths, Shadow Fortitude, Umbral Aegis, Veil of Shadows, Thronebound Mantle

Endowments: Demon Seed

Strength: 13
Dexterity: 13
Constitution: 14
Ego: 26
Presence: 13

Thrones: 3/7
Scales: 1,435,333/10,000,000

Artifacts: Goldchops, Chyron’s Scourge, Death’s Proxy
Servitors: Shadow Mastiff (Uncommon), Hobgoblin Boss (Uncommon)

Harald couldn’t help but grin with pride. He’d come a long way since being a mere Hero’s Son. And when he armed the Goldchops and Chyron’s Scourge, he’d gain +6 to Strength, +2 to Dexterity, and +5 to Constitution. Add in Dark Vigor, and that would give him:

Strength: 21
Dexterity: 17
Constitution: 21

He was solidly placed in the Silver-ranked raiders cohort now, if not even edging toward Gold-ranked. His stats were formidable, at any rate, and he was wielding two Masterwork and one Epic level Artifact.

Damn, it felt good to have come so far.

Harald sighted toward the distant glow of light that betrayed the next chamber. What would his plan of attack be? Before, he’d have sent the Goldchops flying ahead as he tried to ambush a scarecrow, then basically allow the flying hatchets to harry his foe until they chose to close, at which point he’d do his best to hack them apart.

Now?

Harald examined his Abilities. He’d get close with Veil of Shadows, enhance himself with Dark Vigor, and then activate Shadow Dominion to see if he could exert control over the scarecrows. Seeing as they were Level 27 monsters, there was a good chance they’d simply be too powerful, in which case he’d hit them with Abyssal Grasp while activating Aura of the Aching Depths and Thronebound Mantle.

It’d be interesting to see what his Level 5 Passive did.

Regardless. That done, he’d close with Chyron’s Scourge, enhance it with Abyssal Attunement, and unleash a Demonic Edge. If there was more than one, he’d tap Umbral Aegis when needed for protection, and see why the Scourge could do up close.

Harald considered, digging his fingers into Shadowpaw’s hide the whole time, and then nodded. That was as good a plan as any. The Disc would have helped even further, locking the scarecrows into place, but it was better used by his friends.

“You ready to hunt, boy?” Harald rose to his feet, and felt a tingling run through him at the prospect of battling his own foes. “Ready to see what we can do?”

Shadowpaw gave himself a swift shake and resumed padding down the corridor.

Harald followed after.

With Shadow Fortitude and Veil of Shadows up, he felt himself a consummate predator, capable of hunting for endless hours. Soon he moved into a slow lope, the light ahead swiftly approaching, and when they finally drew close he slowed to listen and peer out.

A square chamber, standard issue for the level, with a partially melted-looking stone statue of a humanoid figure upon a pedestal in its center. Gray arms were raised to the ceiling, the back arched, but all features were lost to time or whatever attack had reduced it so. The floor was patterned in great diamond flagstones of black and orange, while the walls here were smooth, devoid of the usual balconies, and rising three stories to a vaulted ceiling.

Two other exits, one of them grand, but Harald’s attention locked on the sole scarecrow who stood frozen beside the pedestal, back arched, clawed hands extended skyward in strange simulation of the statue’s pose.

It felt so strange to see one at long last. The same hempen robe, the eerie long beak that he’d once thought a mask, the great, sinewy talons that could tear furrows into rock. A rope was tied about its waist from which hung a heavy pouch, but it was otherwise unadorned.

Then the scarecrow hitched its shoulders and gave itself a little shake before resuming its posture.

Strange.

But no matter.

Harald activated Dark Vigor and summoned both the Goldchops and Chyron’s Scourge. The trio of hatchets appeared about him, bobbing as always as if on a gentle current, while the huge stone blade materialized in his grip. He felt his body course with power as if heated fuel were suddenly pumping through his veins, his muscles growing dense and hard, his resilience and sense of endless energy doubling.

The Scourge was visible in the dark, the emerald raindrop circles that overlapped each other glimmering in the black rock’s depth.

The time had come.

Harald activated Shadow Dominion and willed the abyss to manifest itself. Tendrils of darkness arose from around the scarecrow with the speed of rising serpents to coil about its legs, and the moment they made contact Harald felt the monster’s mind.

It was fey and alien, a coruscation of fire and angular iron bars, driven by cunning and a need for artistic expression that he couldn’t comprehend. He couldn’t read its thoughts, but he sensed its might, and knew immediately that this monster was too powerful for him to bend to his will.

But to his delight, in that moment of realization, he saw a second truth: Shadow Dominion and Abyssal Grasp were flip sides of the same coin. With but a flexion of his will, the coils ceased attempting to control the scarecrow and instead began to gruesome process of draining its vitality.

Power began to flood into Harald as he proceeded to activate Aching Depths and the Thronebound Mantle, plunging the room into the aching chill of the abyss even as his presence unfurled with dark majesty, suffusing the air with the power of his presence.

He felt his trio of Thrones begin to roar as they poured the Fallen Angel’s might into his being, but at a far lesser rate as Abyssal Grasp supplemented their power with the scarecrow’s own life force.

All of this in a single moment.

The scarecrow was a formidable foe, however; it reflexively sought to teleport away, not even waiting to determine what power attacked it.

Abyssal Grasp, however, fortified by Shadow Dominion, thwarted the scarecrow’s attempt. Mighty as the monster was, it couldn’t tear itself free of Harald’s will and the paralyzing power of the Grasp.

Now did the scarecrow twist about to glare with burning eyes carved deep into its wooden face at where Harald had emerged. As expected, it blasted Harald with its mental attack, that deluge of overwhelming mind-breaking power that had reduced him to nausea and almost his knees before.

But his Ego was even higher now.

26 as opposed to the 18 it had been before, and Harald weathered the assault with little more than a flinch, feeling the howling storm of energy flickering around his head but able to walk right through it.

The scarecrow wrenched at the coils, but the combination of Harald’s powers held it fast. Thronebound Mantle coupled with the Aching Depths utterly sapped it of its will to resist, while its very spiritual essence fled its body to seep continuously into Harald’s soul.

It jerked and twisted, fighting to break free, and again unleashed a mind blast that did little more than the first. Its reservoir of power was formidable, but with so many Abilities up Harald was draining everything he was pulling from it and more.

And then a new emotion came through the dim connection forged by Shadow Dominion: fear.

It tried to draw away from Harald, raked at the dark tendrils that held it in place, but only feebly. It was unable to manifest its true strength. Harald’s will was crushing it in place. Rank fear arose and became terror, and it whipped its head from side to side in blind panic as it writhed.

Enough.

Clutching the long hilt with both hands, Harald took three strides and brought Chyron’s Scourge tearing around in a great arc.

The green dapples within the stone blade flared, and Harald sensed how the sword changed as he swung it. Flicker flash, faster than he could track, its great wave-form passed from Level 27 to somewhere else and back, once, twice, until its leading edge was bleeding green light, as if he hewed through a noxious miasma, and the Scourge slammed into the scarecrow.

Strength 21 powered the blow, but the damage it dealt was far worse than anything a mortal blade could have done. The scarecrow died immediately, its fear and power snipping into nothingness as if Harald had cut the stem of a flower.

Shadow Dominion and Abyssal Grasp disappeared, allowing the corpse to fall.

For a moment Harald remained still, the blade extended to the far reach of his swing, and then he lowered it and straightened to see what the Scourge had wrought.

The wound was terrifying.

It was as if the Scourge had become superheated and partially melted its way through while embedding alien crystals into the rent it had torn open. The scarecrow’s shoulder, neck, and lower half of its head had mutated, been burst open and then frozen in place, as if Harald had dashed a rod through a column of water. Crystalline facets glowed the deepest green, turning the hollow of the monster’s neck and mouth into something akin to a geode, and all if it reeked of unholy power, so that Harald took a step back despite himself.

“Holy shit,” he murmured, and raised the Scourge to stare at its quiescent depths once more.

So that’s what an Epic ranked weapon could do.

Shadowpaw stepped up to the corpse, sniffed, then growled and stepped back.

“No kidding,” said Harald. “Stay away from that thing.”

It hadn’t been a contest. True, Harald was perfectly positioned to leverage all of his strengths against these particular foes, but he hadn’t for a moment been in danger. The Goldchops simply hung about him, unneeded. Shadowpaw hadn’t had to even bay. The mental blasts had poured off Harald’s mind like a bucket of water tossed on a statue, and a single blow had been all it took to drop the scarecrow.

Incredible.

Harald studied the Scourge again. What had it done to the monster? Strikes damage the soul and leave psychic scars, the description had said, but it’d have been more accurate if it had read instead: Strikes will fuck the shit out of whatever you hit.

He let out a weak laugh, then took another step back and studied the corpse again. No contest. Between the Shadow Dominion/Abyssal Grasp combination and Thronebound Mantle locking the scarecrow in place, he’d overwhelmed his foe completely.

“Damn.” He felt exhilarated but also nervous. As if he’d mistakenly added too much fuel to a bonfire and just had it explode in his face in a terrifying display of heat and flame. He ran his fingers through his hair and turned about, checking the corners, the exits.

No other foes presented themselves.

Was this what other Level 5’s could do? Minus, of course, the enormous edge his Artifacts gave him?

No.

Probably not.

There was no way a Level 5 Skullcrusher could pull something like this off. Perhaps one of the rarer classes, like a Stormblade or a Blighted Champion, but…

No. Of course. It was the Demon Seed that was pushing him farther, faster, to greater heights than anybody else could reach.

Harald’s hands began to shake, so he dismissed the Scourge and squeezed them into fists. He didn’t want to look back at the horror that the scarecrow had become. What would Sam say? Vic would laugh and love it, but Vic was gone now, and he had to take care of them all, take care of Nessa, Anna.

Would Kársek look at him differently when he saw the damage he could do?

No. Kársek would understand. That was the Scourge. It wasn’t as if Kársek’s own rune was any neater.

“All right, all right.” He bounced on the balls of his feet as he dropped the rest of his Abilities, that sense of turgid power falling away at last with Dark Vigor. “You’re on Level 27. Utterly annihilating your foes is a good thing. Let’s try it against… I don’t know, two or three of them.”

Shadowpaw looked back over his huge shoulder at Harald in disapproval.

“Yes, I know I’m talking to myself. And no, it’s not a bad sign. It’s fine. Everything is perfectly fine.”

Shadowpaw’s expression was far too communicative for Harald to feel any doubt as to the mastiff’s opinion.

“Let’s hunt some more. Think you can find a couple of them? Maybe three?”

That Shadowpaw could get behind. He let out a low bark and loped across the room to the grand tunnel, its mouth framed by rusted iron, easily twice the size of the other tunnel mouth.

With distaste Harald drew close to the corpse and pulled the pouch free. It was full of scales, but he didn’t have the stomach to count them, so he dropped them into his pack instead.

Shadowpaw ran, and Harald chased after. Shadow Fortitude kept him moving, and they passed a series of empty chambers before at last they found what Harald had been hoping for: a true test.

From the second floor, he and Shadowpaw peered down at the central well around which three scarecrows danced. It was the same hopping, lilting, strange ceremony without music or demonstrable purpose that Harald had witnessed before. There was no indication that each scarecrow was aware of the other, though of course they had to be.

Three.

Harald wavered between blustering confidence and wary indecision. With one foe it had been easy to just overwhelm him with all his Abilities. But three? What was the right play?

Harald retreated a little into the darkness and summoned Chyron’ Scourge. It was eerie how light it felt in his grip. Power filled him anew, but he restrained the buoying effect it had on his confidence.

All right. He’d try to catch two of them with Shadow Dominion, and send the Goldchops after the third. He’d swamp the room with Thronebound Mantle, and leap down to kill one as Shadowpaw took out the third.

It felt too simple.

Something would go wrong.

Harald rubbed at his face. Despite the feverish energy Shadow Fortitude gave him, he knew he was exhausted. Was he overlooking something? One mistake and he’d die, leaving his companions to wonder what had happened to him as they died one by one on this floor.

Shadowpaw licked his face, the hound’s huge, coarse tongue taking him by surprise. Good humor pierced the bleakness, and he pressed his brow to the hound’s cheek.

“All right,” he whispered. “I hear you. Let’s just get it done.”

Dark Vigor caused him to grow even more powerful. With the Goldchops summoned, he crept forward once more.

The three scarecrows were cavorting on and on, as if they intended to dance till the Fallen Angel awoke.

A deep breath. He rippled his fingers on the Scourge’s hilt, and summoned Shadow Dominion.

Ropes of shadow immediately arose from the ground to ensnare two of the scarecrows. A rope for each leg, and each rope as thick as Harald’s forearm. At the same moment the trio of Goldchops blurred forward, hurling themselves head over haft at the far scarecrow who wheeled about in shock.

Thronebound Majesty flooded the chamber as Harald leaped down, the Scourge held gripped with both hands high above his head. He let out a yell of fear and defiance as he dropped, power already pouring into him from both trapped scarecrows.

Two mental blasts caught him simultaneously, but gravity did most of the work: he fell right atop his prey, and the Scourge clove it in twain, flickering through realities before passing through the scarecrow’s chest and splattering and encrusting it with crystals.

One of the sources of power snuffed out.

The mental blasts had rocked him; there was no denying their power. But though his eyes watered, Harald felt no pain due to Shadow Fortitude, and his impossibly high Ego kept him moving. Shadowpaw had dropped atop the second scarecrow, huge jaws clamping down on its shoulder and neck, and was now shaking it back and forth like a ragdoll even as Shadow Dominion’s ropes stretched and held it in place.

The third scarecrow what had it - there! The monster appeared high on the third balcony, but two of the Goldchops soared up toward it. It teleported across the room, but the third hatchet was already flying in its direction. The hatchets gleamed as they flashed through the air, pursuing their prey with relentless ferocity.

Shadowpaw’s huge jaws crunched shut, and the second scarecrow died.

Taking a deep breath, Harald summoned The Aching Depths and saturated the room with the abyss’s enervating might. Combined with the terrible grandeur of his Thronebound Mantle, the scarecrow lost its focus. It failed to teleport in time, choosing instead to step back and press itself against the wall, just as one, then the second, and finally the third hatchet buried themselves in his head and chest.

The monster keeled over and fell out of sight.

Harald turned in a slow circle. Three scarecrows killed with only a little more effort than the first.

Incredible.

Harald snorted in disbelief. And he hadn’t even earned a Level for the remarkable feat. His Demon Seed must not be impressed. How many would he have to take on to gain more power? Five? Ten?

“Good job, boy.” Harald patted Shadowpaw who sat proudly beside his kill, huge crimson tongue lolling out. “Good job. I don’t think we’re going to be in nearly as much danger here as I thought.”

“Don’t be so hasty,” called down a man’s voice from the third floor.

Harald whipped around, Chyron swinging up even as Shadowpaw rose to his feet to growl menacingly up at the shadows.

That voice.

He knew that voice.

Thracos stepped into view, his verdant cloak writhing, his eyes closed, his smile infinitely self-satisfied. “Hello, Harald. Ready to die?”