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Saturday 2 June 2018

Episode I - XIV A Vengeance of Fire (Shard II)



A Blood-soaked Legacy


XIV
A Vengeance of Fire
(Shard II)


The archer watched him from the tree-line and with precise movements pulled another three arrows from over her shoulder and notched them into her bow. Time seemed to dilate as Tyverus made his way closer to her. He could see her slowly draw her bow-arm back to the full extent of her strength. The bow seemed to distort under the strain as the arrows were drawn to their heads.

Tyverus kicked up the flames around him from his sword. The heat licking at his face was enough to burn the stubble from his tired skin. The flames roared with more life and seemed to well up in front of him like a shield. The heat soon became unbearable, but he ran on. To offset the pain his hand and on his exposed flesh, he howled in rage. He began to yell like the Khollis berserkers would do before running into battle. The bellows of rage sent his mind behind him and the pain seemed to dissipate.

The archer loosed her arrows once again while holding her stance to watch them as they neared the screaming knight. The flames around Tyverus grew with an even more fevered heat. The arrows impacted the fires around him and burnt to cinders in the air.

The archer’s eyes shot wide open as the Guardian Knight covered more ground towards her. She didn’t reach for another set of arrows this time. She lowered into a crouch with her bow dropping to her waist.

Tyverus continued in his run and now needed to release the built up fire in front of him. With a flash, the fire abated and roared into a swirl around his sword. He raised up his sword and aimed it ahead of him like he would with a bow. The archer continued to stare at him, wondering what he was about to do, and that is when he unleashed the fires upon her.

A gout of flame erupted from the tip of his sword and flew through the air with a howl sounding like wyverns taking to the skies in hunger. The rippling plasma launched itself into the trees as the archer turned on her heels to run for cover. Her reaction didn’t help her as the forest around her lit up under the heat of the flames.

The sound of thunder went off around Tyverus as the gout of fire exploded and spread into the trees like dragon’s breath. He aimed the sword in front of him, stopping his run, and swept the flames from side to side. In the distance, he could hear the archer howl in pain as her body alighted and burned away.

Yes, Tyverus knew that the only true gift that gods gave to humanity was that of war and horror. When man fell against man and the seas turned red with the blood of the innocent, that was the only time the gods were sated. In all the horror he had unleashed over his short life, all the lives he had taken, each of them was a sacrifice to the hunger of the distant gods above.


* * *


Tyverus opened his eyes slowly, as each lid felt like he was lifting the entire weight of the world. It took a few moments for the blurry and dazzling light before him to become coherent images in his mind. He fluttered his eyes several times and the world returned to a focused state.

His gaze was upturned towards the destroyed ceiling above. Great rivers of water followed on the air between innumerable chunks of rock. Glowing crystalline lights continued to sway on nothing as they shot out erratic streams of lightning at nearby boulders.

The pain began to soar within him as he pushed against the rock floor to try and get up. He could feel the cavern wall against his head and he used it as leverage against his neck to get up partially. As his head moved, he was able to look down at the devastation of his body.

The rock and metal he had summoned as armor had fallen away into crumbled heaps around him. His body was fully exposed save for the plate and leather armor he usually wore. Both of his legs were broken in several places, his left arm was shattered beneath a large rock. His right hand was a mass of burnt flesh grafted to the metal slag that was once his sword. Somewhere inside of him, he felt a shudder and blood began to leak through the leather covering his abdomen.

He knew that he was mortally wounded and could no longer fight. He closed his eyes once more and reached out to the power of his mantle. The energy within surged back to him, dulling his immense pain enough for him to breath normally once more. The energies within his mantle were at their last dregs. He had enough power to either keep his body alive for a few days, hoping that someone might save him or for one last desperate attack. He didn’t know which would be the best course of action, but he knew being saved was beyond hope at this point.

Tyverus opened his eyes once more to the elemental chaos around him. He watched the sight before him and began to wonder if this was a vision of what Gehemol might be like: The realm of the damned, deep beneath the world-plane. For a few deep breaths, he remained motionless and lost in contemplation of his own mortality. That is until he saw some motion from across the cavern.

Something was shifting beneath a pile of rocks and skulls, between the shattered pieces of the altar at the very farthest edge of the cavern. Within a moment a hand reached up from the debris. Lengthy and skeletal fingers reached up to the chilled air above followed by a broken arm. The bones of the arm snapped back into place and began to push a nearby boulder away.

With an eruption of dark energy, the debris was blown apart and the broken body of Merithault was laid bare. Tyverus pushed himself up a bit further against the far wall in fear and preparation. As he did so, so did the monster before him. She raised slowly to her broken legs.

The image of her body was unfathomable both in the damage he had done to her, but also in her inhuman resilience. No creature could have survived such an onslaught of energies. Yet, here she was crawling up to a standing position on legs that were nothing more than broken bones and pulped flesh. He couldn’t understand if it was telekinetic energy that was keeping her aloft, or some ability to completely remove pain.

Merithault was on her feet, such as they still were, and she lurched forward a few steps on broken limbs. Each footstep echoed out with the crunching of shattered bone and torn sinew. Her arms were useless and her body was sundered in several places. Portions of her skull were impacted and her jaw hung at a strange angle.

The beast continued to make slow and agonizing steps toward Tyverus. With the first few steps, the monster managed to snap portions of her legs back into place beneath her. A few more steps as she neared the crest of the bridge let her snap her arms back into place. Several more steps saw her use her clawed hands to snap her jaw back into place. A few more allowed her to heal portions of her skull, or snap bones back into place on her chest.

It was obvious that the previous element that Tyverus had assaulted her with was not sufficient for killing the creature. He only had enough in him, if he sacrificed everything, for one last attack. If blades, strategy, the powers of the air, the earth, and water itself weren’t sufficient to kill her, he only had one last recourse to try.

Tyverus painfully lifted his sword-arm up and set the heavy blade on his shattered knee. He kept his eyes locked on the icy stare of Merithault as she continued to near him with each slow step. He closed his eyes once more and reached out to the last bit of energy within him and his mantle. He turned off the enchanted safety mechanisms that held his body together. He tore through the last runes instilled in his mantle and let the raw energy cascade through him.

His eyes opened and he could see himself glowing. Tongues of plasma danced along his body, the fires burning the top layers of his flesh away. Rage pooled up inside of him once more and with a smoke-filled breath, he launched all of his excess energy through his blade and outward from it.

Tiny strokes of lightning jumped from his body to the metal of his blade causing the air around the blade to ignite. The energy quickly ripped into a frenzy of crimson bolts that soon shot out from the sword.

The air around Tyverus squealed and then roared as the flames were given life as they bolted at Merithault who was only a few yards away. The flames struck her in the chest, bowling her back a few steps. The first impacts only seemed to stun her, but the second volley of flame melted her in place.

The fire continued to roar from Tyverus’ body, through his sword and out into Merithault. The flames roaring forth began to spread out like a dancing river of plasma let loose. The smell of burning flesh, bone, and ichor welled up on the smoke from her body. She gave a loud scream of pain as the flames dissolved her unholy flesh.

Merithault dropped to her knees as the flesh was flayed from her bones. The waves of flame continued to wash over her as her bones began to sizzle and char. Her screaming ceased as her body collapsed to ashes and smoldering shards of burnt bone.

Tyverus kept the energy coursing through him even after he saw the Mad Oracle’s body collapse. Fire still roared through him as the flames began to melt away to the rock before him. His body went cold as the last vestiges of energy were sucked away. Pain filled his mind and his breathing slowed.

His sword gave one last sputter of lightning and flame and then went quiet. He gave a few pitched breaths, feeling the last bits of energy leave him. He could feel his body dying and growing cold now. He gave one last look at the charred heap of ashes and blackened bone on the ground before him before he closed his eyes.

In the darkness behind his eyes, he could hear the slow beating of his heart. The time between each beat grew longer and longer. The pain coursing through is body began to numb. In his mind, he reached out to whatever was beyond life and wished for it to finally take him away from this world of the living.

There came a sound of soft pattering from in front of Tyverus. At first, it was hard for him to hear it over the beating of his own heart, but as he began to realize the sound, he opened his eyes once more. Before him, he gazed a humanoid form coalescing from the smoke of the cavern.


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