Chapter 24 #2
Harald took off at a run. The Aching Depths smothered the golems, blessed them in the name of the abyss, and stole their edge, their assurance, their vitality.
Stone spikes erupted behind him, then before.
Harald took to zigzagging so as to not provide a predictable path, and hurled Demonic Edge after Edge at the closest golem, shattering its defensive light shield, then slashing it into chunks before repeating the attack on the second.
Movement and ranged attacks were all it took. It wasn’t glamorous, but soon the four golems were demolished. Harald came to a stop, breathing heavily, and waited.
Nothing.
He snorted and shook his head. That parsimonious angel.
Maybe that’s why she was cast down.
Too tight-fisted.
He collected the Aurora Veils and moved up to the next archway.
Beyond stretched a larger hallway, twice as big as those he’d been traversing, which wasn’t reassuring. The one constant he’d been facing was ever larger golems.
The air beyond was bright, the walls now carved with tessellating patterns. Patterns, he realized, which displayed interlocking demons and angels at war, cunningly wrought.
“Getting fancy,” Harald muttered, and passed through.
Time to fight Zenith Tide golems. Each of these would be worth 10,000 scales.
And him still stuck at Level 3.
Time to be wary.
Harald padded forward, listening intently and peering ahead.
Silence.
But this network of hallways wasn’t laid out at right angles any longer. They split at Y-shaped junctions, or had halls open up into the main hall from oblique angles. It forced Harald to slow and approach each entrance carefully, only to peer into the intersecting hallway before passing on.
The air was naturally cold. And was the floor vibrating? He paused to check. Yes. Every so often, like a beat.
A heartbeat?
Ominous.
To his immense relief, he saw the next golem before it espied him.
It was walking away, down the hall, massive and limber.
This one would tower over Harald, easily almost seven feet in height, and was twice as broad as he was.
Again, it looked similar to the previous golem, but only more in every way.
The armor was bulkier, heavier, yet seemed to weigh it down even less. And its fists were no longer crude three-fingered affairs: they were massive five-fingered gauntlets of rock.
Harald considered. The previous iteration had special Abilities. It stood to reason this one would have more of them. He had to hit it with everything he had at once.
Harald tried to get closer by sneaking up, but it heard him—faster than Harald thought possible, it swung its arm about, the rest of its bulk following smoothly as it turned 180 degrees, and its swung arm unleashed a white blazing arc of burning light.
The angelic version of his own Demonic Edge.
“Fuck!” Harald wreathed himself in the Aegis as he brought his abyssal blade down to parry the white fire. It came simply too quickly for him to dodge or duck .
The white arc burst apart as it hit his black edge, its remnants washing over him in scalding radiance. Harald felt his armor thin, as if its shadow matter were negated across his front, but it took the damage and Harald felt nothing get through.
But he’d spent too long parrying that initial attack.
The Zenith Tide golem wasn’t done. Even as a white sword blazed to life in each fist and a sphere of burning white fire appeared about it, the walls on either side of Harald suddenly exploded, sending huge raw chunks of rock flying toward him.
Harald barked out a panicked shout and dropped to the ground. Or tried. Something caught him by the shoulder as he fell, flipped him over, spun him about. He slid across the ground, shattered boulders raining down on him, his Aegis crackling and protecting him as it took the brunt of the damage.
Bewildered, Harald leaped up just as the first of the burning white blades descended upon him. Arm upflung, he parried recklessly and staggered upright and back, parrying blow after blow.
The golem knew how to fight.
Worse, it knew how to fight with two blades.
Harald gritted his teeth as he fought over the uneven ground. The white curved swords flashed at him from both sides, then sometimes twice from one side, then swept up from below, followed by a thrust.
It was a ridiculous jump in skill and power.
Harald parried, deflected, dodged. He was rusty. He’d spent too much time depending on the Chyron Scourge’s vast power and not enough actually practicing the blade. Nessa’s lessons came flooding back, but the golem wasn’t intent on warming him up.
It was coming for his head.
Harald caught hold of himself and stopped just giving ground. Circled out, saw a large chunk of rock he could put between them, darted behind it. The golem leaped to clear the rock, because of course it could leap over yard-high obstructions—and right into Harald’s Edge.
The black searing arc flashed into the golem’s shield, which flared into view. This time it splashed off the white shield, which flickered and died.
Completely blocked.
But the attack had thrown it off-balance. It landed awkwardly, a rock rolling out from under its stone sabaton, and Harald lunged, impaling it in the chest between its twin burning blades.
The Dawnblade sank a foot into the white stone cuirass, which blackened immediately as the abyss flooded into the golem. A large pulse of vitality flowed into Harald, renewing his vigor, but as he drew back, immense relief suffusing him, the golem didn’t topple.
Instead, it resumed attacking.
“Gah!” cried out Harald, caught flat-footed by his own erroneous assumption.
He parried one blade, but the second caught him across the shoulder, shattering the shadow plate.
He leaned back desperately as another slash passed by his face, and then focused on the Aching Depths, willing it to drain the golem faster, even as he unleashed a Demonic Edge at point blank.
His sword swept up, only to be parried before it could fulfill its cross. The black fire flashed downward, splashing into the golem’s leg and shearing it away at the knee.
The golem toppled, one sword disappearing as it caught itself with one hand on the ground, keeping itself propped up.
“Die!” shouted Harald and booted the thing in its rotting chest. Stone gone bad crumbled like schist under his heel, and black chunks fell free. But the golem didn’t topple. It swung its blade at him, and returning kind for kind, unleashed a white arc of its own.
Harald jerked back so hard he toppled to the ground. The white fire flew past him, missing by inches, but he didn’t have time to praise his fortune. Guided mostly by instinct, he swung his blade out wide and hewed through the golem’s load-bearing wrist.
The arm crumpled, black abyssal energy flooding up to its shoulder, and it collapsed to the ground.
But it still wasn’t dead.
With grinding persistence, it began levering itself back up to sitting.
Harald bounded to his feet, panting, with sweat burning into his eyes, and swung a final Edge.
This caught the golem across the head, severing the upper half, and with final, sweet finality, the golem fell back and lay still.
Grimacing, Harald bent over, hands on his knees, to glare at his dead opponent. That had been an absurd jump in power. Then again, it was a Zenith Tide foe, right? That would make it equivalent to Levels 40 plus in the dungeon proper.
Loud footsteps sounded behind him, coming at a run.
Harald rose, turned, and saw three new Zenith Tide golems race around the far curve of the tunnel into view.
But even as he backed up, a message appeared in his vision.
The abyss approves of your desperate desire.
Your temerity has been noted.
By the decree of the Fallen Angel, you are granted the next echelon of your destiny:
Abyssal Acolyte 4