NOVEL NEXT 80 - It Actually Just Looks Similar But Is Completely Different
One second, Archmund had been surrounded by his allies.
Rory in front, Beatrice and Gelias to his sides, Mary guarding his rear.
And the next second, when the Ghost of Granavale rent space, sent a ripple in the fabric of Where burrowing towards them — he stood alone.
He was alive. He had all his limbs. Nothing had exploded.
"What the hell was that?" a voice shouted.
Beatrice.
She was alive, and more surprised than harmed.
He whipped his head around.
Had the room been so large before?
It hadn't. Or had it, and something had kept him from noticing?
Before it had been like an office with an open floorplan. Wide enough to see everyone working there, to assess how much they were doing at any given moment, but still tight and stringent enough to evoke constriction, corporate control, imprisonment. Despite the openness, the wideness of the atrium, the ceiling had felt just nine feet tall, just short enough to feel oppressive, drab gray Dungeon stone glowing with fluorescent half-light.
But now…
His eyes darted back and forth, gathering his bearings.
He saw Beatrice a hundred meters away, stuck atop a bookshelf. That bookshelf had been distorted, becoming three caves stacked atop each other, thirty meters high.
Mary, somehow thrown to the front of the room, fleeing furiously towards him from the Ghost of Granavale. He could sense her terror, her fear, the magic flowing from her Gemstone Handfan to propel her legs forward one step at a time.
Gelias, next to the fountain, which had become a hundred-foot cataract that rivaled Niagara Falls, shrouded in the mists of the falling waters, precariously balancing atop an out-of-place palm tree that loomed twenty feet high.
Rory, cast all the way back to the entrance, rushing to rejoin the fight from half a mile away.
Had this opening hall always been so cavernous and expansive, but he hadn't noticed because of forced perspective— when he saw tables and bookshelves and corporate paraphenalia, had his brain assumed their size matched what he knew? Or had the Monster's attack ruptured the fabric of the Dungeon, making it larger, fractal, turning what had seemed like a reflection of drab corporate campuses in his old life into a grand arena of war?
Either way — whether the room had been expanded or whether they'd "merely" been thrown to the four corners of it — that attack had been the twisting of space. A grand magic operating on a level beyond what he'd known so far.
Bodily transformation. Force redistribution. Light production. Energy manipulation. Instinctive combat skills. Perception and illusion.
He could square all of these powers somehow.
But the ability to warp space itself disturbed him. Bending space was… powerful in a way that conjuring fire was not.
What were the limits of bending space from afar? Could you tear someone apart at the subatomic level? Probably not, since they all still lived.
But could you make the distance between you and a blade infinitely large, so it never struck you? Could you make each of your steps cross a thousand leagues, and never need for a carriage again?
But that all depended on actually being able to steal this power from the ghosts of the wrathful dead. Monsters could regenerate and manifest weapons of Gemstone, while the living could not.
Or maybe it was a characteristic of the Dungeon itself, that they exploited cleverly.
Maybe it was just a perception trick — but his innate sense of magic told him that, no, Mary really was all the way over there in front of him, almost beset upon by the Ghost of Granavale and its long, clutching talons.
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He fired an Infrared Lance straight at the Monster's chest. Even if it could regenerate, a hit would distract it, slow it down, give Mary valuable time to keep running.
The lance was light, and so it traveled like light, as fast as all possibility. And the Monster did stop, for just a second, letting Mary get ten meters closer to safety.
A black, charred spot appeared on its chest, smoking and sick, but not gored through. By eating its Gems, it had become more durable.
But then the Monster raised its hand before it and splayed out its fingers, just as Archmund fired again.
And it seemed like nothing happened.
Perhaps it was a barrier like the one he'd faced before, and he'd have to get close and personal.
But was there enough time?
The Ghost of Granavale skittered forward once more, again hot on Mary's heels, as she threw herself forward in terror. Her eyes met his.
He had to stall it, keep it from hurting her, before he could get close enough to fight it.
If the Lance didn't work, maybe something more diffuse might.
He jerked his hand to his right. She nodded, briefly. She changed tack, ran towards his right, giving him a clear shot.
"Heat Wave," he muttered.
His magic bloomed through his Gem, but he forced just a bit more, just a bit more in — it had to be hot, had to burn, had to catch the Ghost on fire, as effectively as the lance, hot enough to melt steel and burn flesh — and he fired.
And it didn't work.
But he could see why.
A charred patch on the wall behind the monster.
A perfectly circular burn.
If he looked at the pattern, it almost felt like the energy hadn't been redirected or deflected — But like space itself had warped. His beam attack had gone straight and true, but space itself had bent as if around a black hole.
(Was that what disconcerted him? In nature, the power of immense gravity was necessary to bend space and time. And yet here, magic could achieve the feat without such oppressive and destructive effects. He had to be missing something, he just knew it.)
He ran forwards.
"Archie!" Mary cried as he approached her. She opened her arms, as if to welcome him, and he just kept on running. Ran right past her, ignoring her. Yep.
It was far better if he pretended that she wasn't there at all.
He reached for his back and drew his Gemstone Sword.
Not his Rapier, that high and noble weapon of glory and dominion.
The sword, that which bore the vicious violence of death.
That turned him against all who dared to face them.
It was best if they were not there.
Draw the sword. Close the distance. Get up in its face.
And start stabbing.
Did it matter what Rory and Gelias and Beatrice were doing?
No. It didn't. This time it would be him.
If they got too close, they too might be at risk of getting cut down.
The Skill was called the Channeled Rage of the Dead, but he knew it was a wild, lethal current. It was the rage of the dead and he was but a living vessel. Like riding a horse or changing the direction of a river. He could nudge it, guide it, direct it — but it was a dance, a flirtation.
It was his power and his anger. He could let anger rule him if he so wished.
It would let him win. He couldn't guarantee their safety.
He got in close.
Arrows flew towards him, but bent away, their paths warped by the folded space around this Ghost of Granavale. But he was too large to redirect. If it wanted to get him, it had to "get" him. They had to truly engage with each other.
And he drew his sword.
From the corner of his eye he saw Beatrice raise her daggers in threat, only for Rory to grab her hand and hold her back. Good. They knew their places. Beatrice couldn't harm him even if she tried. He knew that much. And Rory did well to keep her in line.
The Ghost swiped at its hair with its long distended fingernails, and he dodged by half an inch. He remembered how his mother's ghost had caressed his face, how its nails had been gentle, careful, restrained.
There was none of that here. These claws struck like a vicious beast's.
Slash. Hack.
His blade met its flesh and then it bounced off with the sound of Gem on Gem.
It had flesh like diamond.
That just meant he needed to hit harder.
More magic flowed into his cursed blade. More magic into the Skill. Towards the inevitable limit where it no longer obeyed him. When the magic flowing the blade to his soul overwhelmed that from his soul to the blade.
He needed to do this to win.
He could see the pain points. The exact places to hit to inflict the most hurt.
And so he did.
Diamond was hard, but it could be cut. It could shatter along cleavage points. And the harder the crack, the sharper the break.
[Skill: Disarm].
The Monster's arm, up to the elbow joint, went flying through the air, twirling and gyrating.
A bit of a literal interpretation, but he'd take it.
Suddenly Gelias's arrows no longer bent away. Now, the arrows hit the Ghost of Granavale and bounced uselessly off the diamond-hard hide.
One struck Archmund, and though it didn't hurt him through his Bodily Barrier, he felt very, very annoyed. He half considered grabbing the arrow and throwing it right back at that weaselly elf, right through the eye.
This was the influence of the blade. The bloodlust. He was still aware of that much; he'd experienced it enough times to buffer his mind against its influence, the same way he buffered all bad thoughts.
The Ghost did not relent. It did not regrow its severed hand, but sharpened it like a blade against its own hide. It swung, a vertical strike from ceiling to floor. The ground shattered
Eggs cracked under pressure. Coal hardened to diamond. But diamond could shatter.
Perhaps his allies would have the secret to breaking this diamond into tiny little particles.
Or perhaps he could do it himself, like he always could.