Chapter 8
The architecture of the warzone funneled them downward.
Caelan Cross stepped off the jagged, pulverized edge of a ruined Vanguard bunker.
He dropped into the narrow, claustrophobic nightmare of the forward trenches.
The open, flooded plains of the Shattered Front were gone. The Spire had carved deep, brutal geometric defensive lines directly into the continental bedrock. The Abyssal Tide had filled them.
The sludge here was not freezing.
It boiled.
Deep-crust thermal vents, cracked open by the leviathan’s massive weight, vented superheated gas directly into the black water. Thick, noxious bubbles of ozone and sulfur rose to the surface, popping with wet, hissing bursts.
The heat baked against Caelan’s shredded trench coat.
He dragged his steel-toed boots through the knee-deep, boiling muck.
His human biology was failing.
The [Venomous Chitin Graft] was a localized furnace of agony. The glossy black arachnid scythe hung heavily from his left arm. The caustic green neurotoxin pumped relentlessly into his cardiovascular system.
He was sweating profusely. His heart hammered a desperate, irregular rhythm against his fractured ribs. He was burning massive caloric energy just to keep the apex predator's limb from rotting the human meat attached to it.
His vision swam with a sickly, pale green static.
He pushed the pain into a heavy mental vault. The Warlord did not have the luxury of fatigue.
Behind him, Jax limped heavily.
The Cartel scout used his arachnid-barb crutch to test the depth of the boiling sludge before every step. Zylia Vex stayed close to the scout's flank. The shadow-weaver’s hands were wrapped tightly around her scavenged golden kinetic rifle.
"The water is getting hotter," Zylia rasped, coughing against the sulfurous fumes.
"Keep moving," Caelan commanded.
His voice was a dry, mechanical grind.
"Do not touch the concrete walls. The acidic residue will melt your skin."
The trench was a labyrinth of twisted iron rebar and dead Zenithar Schola infantry. The pristine white armor of the fallen floated in the boiling mud like discarded shells.
Caelan’s [Anatomical Insight] violently glitched.
The ambient magical density of the deep-crust rot scrambled the silver runes in his vision. He could not map the corners. He could not read the structural integrity of the earth.
He was flying blind in a boiling grave.
A heavy, wet slap echoed off the concrete directly above them.
Caelan stopped.
He looked up.
Clinging to the jagged, ruined rebar overhanging the trench were three abyssal trench-stalkers.
They were heavily mutated variations of the oceanic horrors. Their hyper-dense, translucent grey blubber was covered in thick, barbed scales. Their jaws were elongated, filled with rows of needle-like translucent teeth.
They did not roar. They simply dropped.
The narrow confines of the trench instantly erased Caelan’s tactical advantage.
He could not swing the massive, three-foot arachnid scythe. A horizontal arc would simply bury the glossy black bone deep into the reinforced concrete walls.
He had to instantly adapt his entire martial geometry.
The lead trench-stalker fell directly toward his face, its jaws unhinging.
Caelan did not step back. He stepped under.
He planted his boots in the boiling mud. He dropped his center of gravity.
He drove his left arm straight upward in a brutal, concentrated vertical thrust.
The razor-sharp tip of the [Venomous Chitin Graft] bypassed the barbed scales. It pierced the soft, unarmored blubber directly beneath the beast's lower jaw.
The scythe punched through the skull.
The smoking green venom transferred instantly.
The beast’s nervous system flash-boiled. It convulsed violently on the end of the blade, thrashing in absolute, chemical agony before going completely limp.
Caelan wrenched his arm downward, ripping the scythe free.
The dead mass of blubber splashed heavily into the boiling water.
Xyrielle engaged the second beast.
The Abyssal Spellblade could not blur. Her flash-frozen right leg dragged heavily in the mud. She stood her ground, crossing her dark-silver Aether-blades.
She caught the falling horror on her crossed swords, the corrupted kinetic energy shearing cleanly through its thick chest cavity.
The third stalker lunged past the vanguard.
It aimed directly for the crippled Cartel scout.
Jax screamed, raising his crude crutch in a desperate, pathetic defense.
Zylia didn't hesitate. She leveled the heavy golden kinetic rifle. She pulled the trigger.
The weapon barked violently.
A concentrated burst of holy Light slammed into the side of the stalker’s head. The kinetic impact blew a massive, smoking hole through the blubber. The beast crashed into the trench wall, dead before it hit the mud.
Caelan did not praise them.
He lowered his venom-dripping scythe.
"Reload," Caelan ordered the shadow-weaver.
A high-pitched, mechanical shriek suddenly tore through the suffocating black sky.
It was a sound Caelan recognized from the rim of the crater.
It was the sound of heavy artillery falling.
"Incoming!" Jax roared, diving face-first into the boiling sludge.
The surviving deep-artillery emplacements of the Continental Vanguard were firing entirely blind. They were dumping their massive golden kinetic payloads directly into the flooded grid, desperately trying to stall the leviathan’s advance.
They did not care who was in the trenches.
The bombardment hit.
The world turned into a blinding, deafening nightmare of holy Light and shattering bedrock.
A massive golden shell detonated against the surface thirty feet away.
The concussive shockwave ripped through the narrow trench corridor like a solid iron fist.
Caelan was thrown against the left wall.
His silver-etched foundry iron arm slammed into the concrete, absorbing the brunt of the kinetic transfer. His fractured ribs ground together with a sickening crunch. His ears rang with a high-pitched, agonizing squeal.
He pushed himself off the wall, shaking the dust and acidic brine from his silver eyes.
Another explosion rocked the earth.
He looked for his retinue.
Zylia and Jax were buried under a wave of displaced mud, but they were moving.
Xyrielle was not.
The shockwave had thrown the vanguard violently against the jagged, reinforced steel rebar jutting from the right wall.
The impact was catastrophic for her ruined anatomy.
The thick, localized alchemical cement—the flash-frozen Cartel stasis-fluid Caelan had used to fuse her crushed right knee—violently splintered.
The rigid ice-and-bone matrix cracked open with a sharp, resonant snap.
Xyrielle collapsed into the boiling black mud.
The Mutated Apex Shadow-Core inside her chest stuttered erratically. The engine was violently protesting the sudden, catastrophic loss of structural leverage. The crimson fire in her eye socket flickered, dimming to a weak, dying ember.
She could not stand.
A vanguard on the ground was dead scrap.
Caelan did not seek cover from the falling golden shells.
He waded through the boiling mud. He dropped to his knees beside the Abyssal Spellblade.
The water burned his legs. The toxic smoke stung his eyes.
He didn't care.
He swung his heavy iron-wood rucksack around to his chest. He ripped the leather flaps open with his iron claws.
He reached past the cheap, low-grade bandages he had looted earlier.
He pulled out the heavy, waterproof canvas medical pouch he had extorted from the cynical Vanguard medic, Kaelen Thorne.
He ripped the seal open.
Inside were premium Spire surgical salts and two thick, pristine glass vials of high-grade Aether-stasis-fluid.
The Warlord’s hyper-analytical mind raced.
He could not use a full vial.
He needed this inventory. He needed the premium freezing agent to stabilize the necrotic shock when he eventually attempted to harvest the Sovereign's core.
If he spent it all on a knee joint, the expedition ended.
He had to perform crude, rapid-fire alchemical maintenance under heavy kinetic bombardment. He had to execute the exact, microscopic mathematical dose.
He uncorked the vial with his teeth.
"Hold the joint," Caelan ordered the vanguard.
Xyrielle did not flinch. She grabbed her own shattered thigh with her pale marble hands, forcing the cracked crystalline bones back into crude alignment.
Another golden artillery shell slammed into the earth nearby.
A massive shower of pulverized concrete rained down on them.
Caelan ignored the debris bouncing off his shoulders.
He poured a tiny, carefully measured fraction of the freezing blue Spire stasis-fluid directly into the jagged cracks of the fractured ice-matrix.
The chemical reaction was instant.
The high-grade fluid hit the immense ambient heat of her core. It flash-boiled, then aggressively solidified. It expanded rapidly, filling the microscopic fissures and re-fusing the crystalline bone into a rigid, unbreakable block.
He quickly jammed the cork back into the vial. He shoved the precious remaining fluid deep into his rucksack.
Xyrielle gasped, her back arching as the searing cold locked her leg back into a straight, immovable pillar.
She pushed herself up from the boiling mud.
She stood. The crimson fire in her eye re-ignited with a heavy, steady burn.
The maintenance held.
"The walls!" Jax screamed, pointing his crutch upward.
The continuous, devastating artillery barrage was permanently destabilizing the structural integrity of the trench network.
The massive, towering concrete and mud walls above them were groaning.
Thick, heavy chunks of earth began to sheer away. The black sludge poured down the sides.
The trench was collapsing inward.
If the walls fell, they would be buried alive beneath hundreds of tons of boiling, acidic earth.
There was no exit. The corridor was too long.
Caelan did not panic.
He closed his silver eyes.
He projected his unyielding will entirely into the biological tether. He bypassed Xyrielle. He reached back to the bunker.
He summoned the god.
A massive, deafening roar of grinding tectonic plates and heavy footsteps shook the earth behind them.
It was louder than the falling artillery.
Kragga Iron-Maw stomped heavily into the narrow trench corridor.
The four-ton siege engine had abandoned the triage center. It churned through the boiling mud, its golden heart pulsing with blinding, heavy Light.
The massive mud walls violently gave way.
Thousands of tons of earth and concrete collapsed inward, dropping directly toward Caelan and his retinue.
The siege engine stepped directly over them.
Kragga Iron-Maw became an indestructible pillar.
The massive construct drove its four colossal Gorger arms outward. It slammed two hyper-dense grey fists against the collapsing left wall, and two against the right.
The physical torque was impossible.
The Thall torso caught the collapsing earth.
The glowing blue arachnid-silk ligaments lacing the massive spine snapped taut. They flared with brilliant bioluminescent light, absorbing the sheer, crushing weight of a falling mountain without fraying a single thread.
The trench walls ground to a halt.
The path forward was held completely open by the sheer brute force of Caelan’s architecture.
The retinue crouched in the boiling mud, perfectly shielded beneath the massive, muscular archway of the beast's body.
Caelan looked up at the glowing blue stitches holding the spine together.
The math of the Warlord was absolutely flawless.
"Move under the chassis," Caelan ordered over the deafening groan of the earth.
He did not wait for the artillery to stop.
He marched directly beneath the massive legs of his siege engine, leading them deeper into the warzone.
The games and trials of the Shattered Front were merely a test of his inventory.
He was ready for the Sovereign.