Chapter 24
Don’t go crazy, Harald cautioned himself. The mania that had seized him on the level above was fresh in his mind; though scales had healed and restored him, the memory of pushing himself nearly past his limit was scalded into his mind.
Which meant this was, in turn, a unique opportunity to test himself.
But you don’t have all your powers. You don’t have your Artifacts. Your Servitors. It’s not a real test. You’ll tire before you can get even halfway.
True enough.
And yet.
And yet.
Harald flourished the Dawnblade nervously, just a quick circle by his side, and then snapped the blade down and to his side. He wouldn’t push too far. Just a little.
Just to see what he could do.
Harald strode forward, Thrones quiescent, wary, listening intently. His boots crunched lightly on the chalky gravel underfoot. The air was cool, fresh; was there a subtle breeze? Light without a source caused the rough walls to almost glow, and faint blue tints were hidden in their depths.
The tunnel curved gradually to the left. Harald ignored the caves that led off into side tunnels. Kept his gaze fiercely focused ahead.
And then, movement.
A small stone golem, moping along, rough head bowed as if in contemplation or guilt, stubby arms hanging by its sides, crudely carved as by a child.
Harald fired up his Thrones and swept his blade forward.
Demonic Edge manifested as a great crackling arc of black fire that leaped down the length of his blade in sparking crackles and then flew forth to grow wider and wider as it went down the tunnel so that when it hit the golem, it was nearly five yards across.
The golem toppled into two pieces, its wound blackened, its legs remaining upright, its torso crashing to the ground with a thud.
The arc of black fire had flashed into the wall beyond it, and cut a deep, cindered slash into the white stone. From where he stood, Harald couldn’t guess how deeply it had gone.
Four Thrones and a Crown apparently made for an effective upgrade to his old standby.
With a grin, Harald jogged over to where the golem lay bifurcated, collected the Copper Crescent, then peered into the gash in the wall.
As wide as his thumb, it seemed to recede at least a foot into the wall before it got too dark for him to tell more.
“Damn,” he whispered, and stared at his blade, mightily pleased.
The tension left him. Restraining the urge to whistle, he strode on, blade resting on his shoulder.
He came across a handful of the small golems as he went, none of them taller than his waist, all strangely childlike and adorable, with their heavy, rounded heads resting snugly on their shoulders with a neck, legs small, shoulders broad.
They waddled along, and none were able to react in time before he cut them apart.
Harald started to feel vaguely guilty about killing them. Sam, he was sure, would want to adopt one as a pet.
Finally, rounding a new curve in the main tunnel, he saw a different kind of golem.
It was larger, its head perhaps reaching Harald’s sternum, but looked in almost every respect like the lite golems’ older brother.
But with the limbs being longer and better articulated, it was clearly more mobile.
It heard him approach and twisted about to glare at him just as Harald unleashed another Demonic Edge.
Larger it might have been, but it fell apart just like the first kind.
A Silver Starburst appeared above its remains.
Harald wandered over, curious, and studied the toppled fragments. At what point in his career would it have really challenged him? Must have been right at the start, when its stone form would have made it hard to wound. Would he have been able to hew it apart with Abyssal Attunement?
Possibly. No way to know now.
Impatient, Harald broke into a jog and followed the curving tunnel as it ran on and on.
He came across another ten of these older brother golems, always alone, and just as before, he cut them down with vicious sweeps of Demonic Edge.
Nessa had warned that the real danger lay in their being able to summon reinforcements.
It was why they’d taken such care in killing them as swiftly as possible while making their way to the well.
But his Demonic Edge was doing the job just fine.
Shortly thereafter, he found the Golden Dawn equivalent.
Bigger, broader across the shoulder and chest, its head boasting the same black holes that served for eyes, its abdomen now defined over hips that allowed swiveling, its shoulders now boasting the stone equivalent of plain pauldrons.
The top of its great rounded head reached the bridge of Harald’s nose, and it was striding confidently down the tunnel toward Harald as he came into view.
The golem reacted far more quickly than its fellows. It sidestepped and ducked at the same time, its footwork more adroit, but the Demonic Edge was five yards in width. It simply couldn’t move out of the way in time.
The black sizzling fire caught it around the waist and cut clear through it once more.
The large upper body crashed to the ground.
Harald blew out his cheeks. It hadn’t been terribly fast, but in comparison with its awkward cousins, along with its more armored form, it had seemed momentarily formidable.
Harald resumed running.
He lost track of how many Golden Dawn golems he killed before finally coming across something new: a formal archway.
For the first time, there were straight lines in this dungeon level.
A great rectangular lintel depicting angels at war with demons.
Over them were the Four Archon angels, faces distraught at what they observed.
Harald drew closer.
Mirathal clothed in silver. Galdoreth garbed in pale gold. Nenya in deepest blue, and Tavaril in indigo. All four idealized, all four watching the battle taking place below.
Was it true? Did the Archons watch from the Pleroma, grieving over the violence of the mortal plane?
No sign of the Fallen Angel. Though was that a gap between Nenya and Tavaril where a fifth Archon could have once stood?
For a moment, Harald just puzzled over the deepest mystery of them all: what had caused the Fallen Angel to fall? What could cause an Archon to die? Why had she crashed to the earth and set all these events in motion?
Then Harald shrugged and passed beneath the archway.
The tunnel beyond was no longer of raw stone with curved walls, but rather geometric, the floor paved in white, with columns set against the walls every dozen paces.
The illumination was still general and without source, but it felt as if he’d passed into a white castle.
All he needed was for a window to appear, and Harald was sure he’d gaze out over clouds.
A golem strode out of a side entrance, and everything about it screamed danger.
Taller than Harald, it was built along the same rough outlines as its predecessors, but in every way it was more.
The stone that covered its form was akin to crude plate armor, complete with pauldrons, cuirass, vambraces and greaves.
This stone was also subtly cracked, giving it a more fluid texture, so that its movements were lifelike, natural, dangerously dexterous.
Its head was still the same broad rectangle sitting athwart its heavy shoulders, pauldrons rising nearly above its scalp in height, but the eyeholes were no longer perfect circles bored into its skull, but tilted slits, with a faint intimation of nostrils cut between them.
The Aurora Veil version.
Its reaction was fast: instead of charging, it raised one arm before it as if lifting an invisible shield so that Harald’s Demonic Edge impacted a shimmering curvature of white light that flickered into existence even as he swung his blade.
The white light flickered and the shield shattered, but the Edge was diminished. It slashed into the golem, but for the first time, didn’t cut it completely in twain, instead simply severing an arm and gashing a deep cut across its chest.
“Well, all right—” said Harald approvingly, but the golem stomped on the white ground, and the floor beneath Harald buckled.
He leaped aside, summoning Aegis just as spikes of stone burst upward, catching his leg and spinning him over to crash on the ground. It didn’t hurt. Other than the shock, Harald felt fine, and rose quickly even as the golem charged, a blazing white sword in its remaining fist.
“A sword?” Harald grinned. “Well done!”
The Aching Depths smothered the hallway, and the golem’s charge lost momentum, its armor ashing.
Harald’s Aegis matched the golem in terms of armor, so he moved to engage, emboldened and eager. The white sword descended in a spitting arc, its brightness dimmed, and Harald turned the sword aside without even entering the bind, then lunged to spear the golem square in the face.
Its head split, it decohered, and tumbled to the ground.
“Good, good,” muttered Harald, reaching out to snag the Aurora Veil. There was a time when such a scale would have been worth a small fortune to him. Now he pocketed it for a future emergency healing.
On he ran.
He fought four more of these upgraded golems before entering a large, formal hall in which four of them stood guard. At the hall’s end, a new archway.
The four golems oriented on him smoothly, quickly, and as one did their stone stomp.
Harald was ready. Aegis enveloping him, he leaped aside—only to realize his foes had been smarter than he’d expected.
They caused stone spikes to appear not just under where he’d stood, but on both sides of him.
For the second time, he was knocked off his feet, the shadow armor insulating him from damage but causing him to go down.
He rolled, came up, and saw that two golems were closing to engage, the other two approaching more slowly and already unleashing another stomp attack.
So that’s how it was.