Chapter 22 #3
Carys didn't hesitate. She pulled a small, jagged piece of obsidian from her satchel and went to work, frantically cutting and peeling away the mangled, ruined Solar-Crest plate, exposing the horrifying, bloody ruin of Vael’s lower back.
Riven turned to the pile of crushed Inquisitor armor.
He placed his bare hands flat against the cold, bloody steel.
He closed his eyes. He didn't search for the deep-earth battery. He reached inward, tapping into his own mortal bio-aether, the spark he had used to amputate the Leviathan. He ignored the screaming protest of his exhausted cells.
"Ignite," he whispered.
The dead circuitry on his arms flared to life, burning with that harsh, erratic crimson-gold light.
He channeled the searing, localized heat directly into the crushed white-and-gold armor. The runic steel hissed, rapidly heating, turning a dull, glowing cherry-red. Riven didn't just melt it; he commanded the atomic structure, drawing the molten metal upward into the air like thick, glowing clay.
He moved his hands, guiding the hovering, molten mass of liquid steel directly over Vael’s ruined lower half.
"Hold her down," Riven barked.
Carys threw her entire body weight across Vael’s shoulders, pinning the Vanguard to the mud.
Riven lowered his hands.
He drove the molten, heavy iron directly into the open, bloody wound of her lower spine.
Vael’s scream tore the darkness apart.
It was a sound of absolute, inhuman torture. Her back arched violently, her body bucking with terrifying strength against Carys’s hold. She bit down so hard her lip split, blood pouring down her chin, her knuckles turning stark white as she gripped the haft of the Abyssal Cleaver.
Riven didn't stop. He couldn't stop.
He poured his intent into the molten metal.
He visualized the geometric structure of a human spine.
He forced the liquid steel to cool and harden instantaneously as it touched the bone, driving jagged, microscopic iron roots directly into her healthy vertebrae.
He acted as a living welder, bridging the catastrophic gap in her nervous system with highly conductive, dense runic iron.
The stench of scorched flesh and boiling blood filled the damp air, thick and nauseating.
He shaped the metal downward, wrapping it around her crushed pelvis, forging a brutal, mechanical chassis of jagged, blackened steel that seamlessly replaced her shattered hips.
He reinforced the structure, weaving the golden circuitry of the Lexicon directly into the cooling iron, creating an artificial, magical nervous system to conduct her brain's commands into the dead metal.
The excruciating process lasted for two agonizing minutes of sustained, blinding horror.
Finally, Riven pulled his glowing hands away.
The heavy, metallic structure covering Vael’s lower half ceased its violent, glowing heat, settling into a dull, matte black.
The crimson light on Riven’s arms violently flickered and died. He collapsed backward into the mud, completely spent, his vision tunneling to a tiny pinprick of grey light. He lay there, staring blindly upward, his heart hammering a weak, erratic rhythm.
The cavern was entirely silent, save for the ragged, tearing sound of Vael’s breathing.
"Vael?" Carys whispered, slowly backing away from the warrior's prone form.
Vael lay perfectly still in the mud. Her hands were still locked in a death grip around the Abyssal Cleaver.
Slowly, agonizingly, she turned her head. Her face was a mask of dirt, sweat, and fresh blood.
She let go of the halberd with one hand. She placed her gauntlet flat against the freezing mud.
A loud, heavy, metallic clank echoed in the dark.
Vael pushed her upper body off the ground.
Below her waist, the pristine, golden Solar-Crest armor was entirely gone.
In its place was a brutal, terrifying lower half forged from the crushed ruins of the academy's elite guards.
Jagged, thick plates of blackened runic iron fused seamlessly with her skin.
The metal didn't look like armor; it looked like an exoskeleton, a biological manifestation of the dungeon itself, pulsing with faint, captive golden circuitry.
With a terrifying, mechanical grinding of iron joints, Vael brought her newly forged right leg forward, planting the heavy, clawed steel boot into the mud.
She pushed upward.
The Vanguard stood.
She was taller than before. The jagged iron chassis added brutal mass to her frame. She looked down at her mechanical legs, flexing the heavy steel joints. She didn't look horrified. She looked lethal.
Vael reached down and picked up the Abyssal Cleaver. She spun the massive, anti-magic halberd effortlessly in her hands, the black blade devouring the shadows around her.
She turned her golden eyes, burning with a renewed, terrifying fire, toward Riven lying in the muck.
She was no longer a noble pawn. She was a weapon forged in the dark. She was the first Vanguard of the Architect.
"Get up, Riven," Vael said, her voice dropping into a heavy, metallic resonance that echoed the grinding of her new iron bones. "We have a high tower to burn."