Chapter 15 #2
He leaped over a steaming fissure, landing hard on a smooth slab of black pumice. The impact drove a spike of white-hot agony through his ribcage. He bared his teeth, tasting fresh blood as he bit down on his own lip.
Keep them focused. Keep them angry.
He glanced over his right shoulder. The Vanguard was closing the distance. Their genetically engineered musculature and aether-assisted armor made them impossibly fast. They were two hundred yards away and gaining.
Drystan deliberately slowed his pace by a fraction of a second.
He needed to funnel them. The Caldera was wide open here. If they spread out, the trap would only catch a handful of them. He needed them densely packed.
He veered sharply to his left, sprinting toward a massive, bubbling geyser of liquid red mana. As he rounded the jagged crystal formation bordering the geyser, he stayed agonizingly close to the edge. The blistering heat radiating from the vent singed the edge of his duster.
The Vanguard, locked onto his signature, followed his exact trajectory. The massive golden zealots were forced to narrow their grid formation to navigate the narrow pass between the geyser and the crystal wall.
They were funneling perfectly.
"Come on," Drystan hissed through bloody teeth, his breath coming in ragged, searing gasps.
He broke out of the narrow pass. The ground leveled out, transitioning from jagged crystal to the smooth, flat basalt plain bordering the boiling river.
The river was a hundred yards away. The Vanguard was fifty yards behind him.
The heavy, mechanical thud of their boots vibrated through the soles of his boots. He could hear the deafening, high-pitched hum of the hard-light halberds cutting through the superheated air. The heat radiating from their pure Luminous armor washed over his back.
He didn't look back again. He channeled every ounce of willpower into his legs. His lungs burned, screaming for oxygen that the Caldera refused to provide.
The scattered path of floating pumice stones came into view.
Beneath the surface of the boiling red mana, cloaked entirely by the Shadow-Loom Relic, Nymeria Shade was waiting in the shadows of the bank.
Drystan hit the shoreline without slowing down. He leaped.
His right boot slammed onto the first pumice stone. It held. He didn't pause to balance. He bounded to the second stone, then the third. He was a blur of blood-red leather and silver hair, moving entirely on kinetic momentum.
Behind him, the Vanguard hit the shoreline.
They did not hesitate. Their programming dictated the absolute purge of the anomaly. The target was crossing the river; they would cross the river.
The lead executioners stepped onto the pumice stones.
Drystan reached the center of the river. He leaped toward a large, flat slab of rock.
As his boot left the previous stone, he felt the ambient temperature of the air beneath him drop drastically. The blistering heat of the river was violently contested by a sudden, localized burst of absolute zero.
Nymeria was executing the trap.
Drystan landed heavily on the far bank, collapsing to one knee in the black dirt. He spun around, clutching his chest with his bloody right hand, his chest heaving violently.
The Vanguard was piled onto the pumice crossing. Twelve heavily armored, seven-foot-tall zealots were crowded onto the floating stones, their halberds raised, charging across the river.
The thermal shock was instantaneous and cataclysmic.
The pumice stones, superheated on the surface and flash-frozen to absolute zero on the underside by Nymeria's twilight magic, could not withstand the structural contradiction. The addition of thousands of pounds of heavy golden armor was the final trigger.
CRACK.
It sounded like a glacier snapping in half.
The pumice stones did not simply sink. They shattered like brittle glass.
The foundation of the crossing evaporated into dust and shards. The lead executioners pitched forward. The mechanical synchronization of the Vanguard entirely collapsed into a chaotic, terrifying cascade of falling armor.
Twelve golden zealots plunged directly into the sluggish, boiling river of liquid red mana.
There were no majestic battle cries. There was no glorious combat. There was only the horrific, visceral reality of environmental execution.
The superheated liquid mana immediately engulfed them. The pure Luminous armor, designed to deflect kinetic blows and dark magic, was entirely useless against being submerged in boiling, localized aether. The heavy golden plates instantly turned white-hot.
The synthesized voice boxes of the executioners shrieked, a deafening chorus of digital static and grinding Eldritch-Cant as the intense heat melted the crystalline visors directly into their genetically engineered faces.
They thrashed in the thick, bubbling sludge, their heavy armor acting as anchors, dragging them deeper into the molten river. Hard-light halberds deactivated with soft, pathetic pops as the zealots were entirely consumed by the boiling current.
On the near shore, the remaining twenty-eight executioners halted their charge.
The golden grid was broken. They stood on the basalt plain, their featureless visors locked onto the bubbling, smoking patch of river where their vanguard had just been liquidated. They did not attempt to jump. The mathematical algorithm of their pursuit had encountered a fatal terrain error.
Drystan Harrow stood up on the far bank.
He didn't gloat. He didn't strike a heroic pose. He stood with his heavy leather duster hanging open, his white hair matted to his forehead with sweat, his ruined, brass-plated arm hanging dead at his side. He stared across the fifty yards of boiling mana at the remaining golden zealots.
His icy gray eyes were completely devoid of fear. He looked at the invincible army of Evander Cross, and he felt nothing but cold, predatory satisfaction.
The air near Drystan shimmered. A sphere of freezing, damp shadow expanded on the shoreline.
Nymeria Shade stepped out of the localized eclipse, the Shadow-Loom Relic clutched tightly in her hands.
The twilight skin of her face was pale with exhaustion, but her amber eyes were blazing with a fierce, terrifying triumph.
She had just killed twelve elite executioners without taking a single swing.
She looked at the boiling river, and then she looked up at Drystan.
The notoriously cruel tyrant and the outcast shadow had built a slaughterhouse, and the gods had bled exactly as planned.
"The crossing is broken," Drystan stated quietly, his voice carrying just far enough for her to hear. The execution countdown on his wrist immediately froze as he stepped back into the relic's radius.
"They have to go around," Nymeria replied, a vicious smirk cutting across her face. "It's a ten-mile march to the nearest land bridge."
"Good," Drystan said. He turned his back on the golden army standing helpless on the far shore. "Let them march. We have more traps to build."
The corporate victim was completely erased. The Doomed Mid-Boss had taken the field, and Kaelen-D?r was finally learning to fear the glitch.