It reeled back only momentarily, before wordlessly charging towards us.

  Viluna slammed her hammer into its face, diverting it into the wall, but one of its extra limbs whipped out, sending her tumbling across the cavern floor.

  After that, it was chaos.

  The thing lashed out constantly and in all directions, seemingly without any real intent or plan. Xera tried to circle around it and Viluna was back on her feet immediately, both of them trying to get in whatever attacks they could.

  Sarin and I peppered the thing with magic, breaking off many of its spikes and cracking its face, but if it felt pain, it didn’t show it. I fired my patented shield arrows into Viluna and Xera, letting them absorb the many blows they couldn’t avoid.

  Sarin reached out with tendrils of magic, binding the thing’s feet, making it stumble and fall.

  The other two were about to pounce, but it roared in anger, dark magic coalescing all around it before springing out in all directions. Wherever it touched, great lances of rock shot out from the cavern walls and floors. In other places, holes opened, huge cracks instantaneously forming, trying to swallow us up.

  In the bedlam, I lost sight of what anyone else was doing; I wrapped myself in as tight a shield as I could seconds before a spike of rock stabbed me mercilessly in the back, so hard that I was lifted off my feet and thrust into the air.

  I was sure that even though my shield and armor had stopped me from getting skewered, something had broken or torn in my back as pain shot through me. I landed on my feet, somehow, but I wasn’t able to stay that way, falling and rolling until I found myself face to face with the monster.

  I tried to do something, anything, but before I could move a muscle, one of its sharpened limbs slammed down into me, and in a shower of explosively failing blue magic, it sank into my abdomen, through my body, and out my back.

  I thought I’d known what the word agony meant.

  I had not.

  It was overwhelming, mind-crushing pain, so intense my whole body stopped working. I could only scream and flail and I was in control of none of it.

  The beast flicked me away, and I fell into one of the fissures in the floor, watching the light above me fade as I plummeted to whatever lay below.

  56

  It was over; I was going to die. I was sure of it.

  As I looked up towards the sliver of light, a figure moved into it, and I struggled to comprehend what I was seeing next. Finally, my pain-addled brain caught up with reality, and it was Viluna. She’d slid into the fissure, pushed off the edge, and was rocketing down towards me.

  She slammed into me with no subtlety, but she wrapped me up as tightly as she could and tried to spin us so she was underneath.

  Thankfully, we didn’t hit a flat bottom, but the walls came in and we made contact with them hard, rolling and crashing our way down, and it did slow the deadly descent enough for it to not be quite so deadly.

  Viluna’s armor took hit after hit, slamming into the rocks and bouncing off of projecting spikes. It all hurt, but it was a drop in the bucket compared to the pain I was already in. Finally, we rolled to a somewhat gentle stop and Viluna uncoiled from me.

  Without comment, in the pitch black, she rolled me to my back and slid her fingers into my wound.

  I screamed, bucking wildly, but she held me in place with one merciless hand pressed down onto my chest. I tried to pull her hand out, my bloody fingers slipping uselessly against her now cracked armor that I could only feel in the dark.

  She scoffed and looked down at me. “Oh no you don’t,” she said, but she wasn’t talking about me trying to push her off. “You don’t get out that easily.” Her entire body blossomed into a blinding green light, and I could see the magic flowing from her body, down her arms, and into my abdomen.

  The pain immediately lessened. It was still there, but it was a shadow of what it had been a second before. She rolled me to my side and poked and prodded the exit wound on my back, her fingers still in my abdomen. It didn’t hurt as bad, but it was a supremely unnerving feeling. I can’t say as I liked it.

  Wherever her fingers touched, I could feel my flesh knitting together, and she slowly worked her way from the inside out, blood trailing out as she went. When she was done and my skin was smooth and unbroken, I shuddered violently. “Holy shit,” I muttered. With what energy I had, I conjured a little light from my omnis, but I found I couldn’t get it to form a ball like Sarin had done. “I did not like that one bit. But, you saved my life. Thank you.”

  She raised her helm to look into my eyes, and she said, “Of course. But don’t think I did it solely for your sake. You’re very important to me, and not only because we’re friends.” She smiled, but then she added, “You don’t get to leave until we’re done.” The smile slid away. “I won’t let you.”

  I shuddered again.

  There was nothing to say in the face of that, but thankfully, the awkward situation was broken by the body of the cultist monster thing tumbling down from above, rolling to a stop near us, unmoving.

  “Is…it dead?”

  Viluna pulled her helm back on and drew her hammer from her back, where I noticed it was being held in place by a vine that let go when she put her hand on it. I was pretty sure the thing was already dead, but she smashed its head into a fine paste, slamming her weapon down over and over again.

  “It is now.” She glanced upwards and said, “You have some way to get back up there?”

  “Uhh…”

  While I was standing there dumbly, a long blue trail of magic reached down from the fissure. It didn’t make it all the way, but I could kind of see what Sarin was doing, so I channeled into the omnis and sent a coil of magic back up to meet hers, where they intertwined. “Magic rope okay?”

  Viluna chuckled. “Whatever works.”

  I crawled onto her back because it sure wasn’t going to work if she crawled onto mine, and she strapped her hammer to her leg with another convenient vine.

  I wrapped us both in the magic, binding to our bodies in a way that seemed natural but wasn’t something I’d ever done before, and shortly after, we were being pulled up very quickly. I looked down into the pit we’d fallen into and mentally prepared myself to add it to the nightmare list.

  We were up and over the edge quickly, and it turned out that Sarin was magicking us up instead of her and Xera just pulling. Relief flooded through me at the sight of the two of them safe and sound.

  Apparently Xera also had that reaction, as she sprinted towards me and wrapped me up in a too tight hug, saying, “Don’t ever do that again.”

  “Oh, trust me,” I said softly, “I’m not planning on it.”

  “We should keep moving,” Sarin said, and before the words were out of her mouth, Viluna had taken off, so we all hastened to follow.

  “How were you able to kill that thing?” I asked Xera.

  “Sarin finally got it wrapped up in a primal net from her device. I stabbed it like a million times while it flailed. It was all I could do to not panic about you, but if anyone was going to save you, it was Viluna, so I tried my best to just do what I could.”

  “Feel later,” I said.

  She smiled. “Yeah. It was…not very possible, but we got it done. And I really hope we don’t run into any more of those things. I didn’t know the corruption could even get that bad. I’ve never seen anything like that monster.”

  “Yeah, let’s hope it’s a one time thing.”

  I thought it was likely enough that we’d never see anything like it again, but I couldn’t imagine what other horrors awaited us in the future.

  57

  Luckily, we didn’t encounter any meaningful resistance for the rest of the journey. There were a few scattered cultists with varying degrees of corruption, but they were easily dealt with, either with a headshot from me or Sarin, Viluna knocking their heads off their shoulders, or in two cases, Xera splitting them apart, cleanly down the middle. It was horrifyingly impressive.

  As we got closer, Xera grumbled more and more; she could feel the corrupted magic, and while it wasn’t painful she said, it was unpleasant.

  Finally, we entered a massive room, so big that we couldn’t see the top or the far wall in Sarin’s light. She conjured a few more, sending them out and away, and when they finally hit something, it wasn’t rock.

  We were standing in a pocket of pulsating, black…stuff. Black shadows pressed in against Sarin’s lights, and they faltered in the face of it.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “This is the deadgod’s brain. A small portion of it, anyway. It seems this space was cleared out, probably because they harvested the material for, well, lots of things. It does mean, however, that we’re exactly where we want to be.”

  I sat down hard on the floor as relief washed over me. “Good! Let’s get the shit out of here and be done with this place.”

  Sarin nodded emphatically while looking up. “Yes, let’s. We’ll need to find a section of brain nearer the floor, however. We’ll all need to be close to it.”

  We took off into the room, Xera grumbling even louder. We’d gone quite a ways, my feelings rather high, thinking we’d be out of here soon without incident, when a voice rang out above us.

  “Worthless wretches!”

  Sarin sent more lights up towards the sound, revealing a Golreq woman floating high above us, thick shadowy tendrils trailing from her body in all directions, most likely connected to the deadgod’s brain. Despite the black magic roiling around her, she still looked to be uncorrupted, her skin clear and her hair bright white. She had thin horns that stood almost straight up.

  “I see you, exalted, and your minions! You’re the ones that sent the army of mindless automatons at us, aren’t you! You think to sneak in here and slay me, like your kind slayed Ono! But your power is broken! Oh yes! You’re nothing compared to what you were. Your lives end here! You stand before Onori, NASCENT GOD!”

  Sarin scoffed and shook her head. “Not even close,” she said softly. “She only has the barest, tiniest fraction of Ono’s power. Maybe, maybe, in a decade or two she could become the Deep god, but she sure isn’t right now. I am impressed she’s connected to the Deep corruption without it altering her body, though.”

  “Do you see, mortals?” Onori screeched down at us. “You see how hopeless it is for you? Submit to me, and I’ll grant you the mercy of a quick de—”

  “Oh would you just shut the fuck up!?” Viluna yelled. She’d broken off a hefty bit of rock while we’d been talking, and she whipped it up at Onori with lightning speed and incredible precision; it smashed her right in the face.

  She grunted and was pushed back in the air, grasping her face. Once she’d shaken off the pain, she bellowed back down at us, “You impudent, wretched, lit—”

  “I said SHUT. UP.”

  Viluna whipped a second jagged piece of rock into the air, sailing quickly and squarely into Onori’s face. Again.

  She just screamed at us after that, sending a swarm of dark magic projectiles into us.

  We shielded ourselves rather easily, but it turned out that the attack wasn’t really an attack. Everywhere along the floor that was touched by the Deep magic, stone golems pulled themselves up from the ground. They were crude, only vaguely humanoid shaped, but they were huge and left uneven ground in their wake.

  Sarin was immediately shooting into the air and yelling at us all, “Viluna, take out the golems! Xera, find any Deep tethers you can reach and sever them! Ian, go with her!”

  We ran.

  It looked like Onori wasn’t going to do much of her own fighting; she sent out more magic, spawning more golems, while trying to hit us from high above.

  Viluna smashed through the golems easily enough; they were really no match for the force of her swings, but there were a lot of them, and more and more as time went on.

  Xera and I sprinted away from the battle, looking for ways to bring Onori down. The commotion must have been echoing through the place, though, as a number of confused looking cultists appeared from all directions.

  We sliced through them somewhat easily, and we even found a Deep tether to cut, Xera’s sword passing cleanly through it with little resistance. Onori’s scream echoed through the room afterwards.

  We kept running and were able to cut two more tethers, and while the amount of cultists was declining rapidly thanks to my constant headshots, the number of golems was steadily increasing. I caught a glimpse of Sarin and Viluna, fighting against the growingly overwhelming tide, unable to do anything impactful to Onori. I had to admit that while Xera and I were making headway, it looked like it might soon not be enough.

  “Xera, we need to get back and help the others!”

  That’s what I said, but I wasn’t the least bit positive it would make a difference.

  My arrows weren’t nearly as effective on stone enemies, and it took me multiple strikes to take down a single one. Xera did better than me, but she still needed a few hacks to completely immobilize the golems. Viluna was doing the best, but she was only one person.

  “Sarin!” I yelled, although I didn’t have anything useful to add to it.

  “Just a little longer!” she said.

  I didn’t know what that meant, but I hammered arrow after arrow into the golems that were crowding around us. Viluna was practically spinning, she was swinging so much in all directions.

  But it wasn’t going to be enough. More and more golems were raised, some composed of the remains of the ones before. And then, to my horror, I heard the strange cries of the massively corrupted cultists. Over the melee, I could see at least two joining the fray, but it sounded like many more had appeared.

  Onori was still high in the air, laughing at us while we struggled.

  But then the dolls came.

  At first, I couldn’t understand what the commotion was; some golems broke away and I heard many of them being shattered, pieces flying in all directions. But once enough were down, I could see through the crowd to the tidal wave of faceless, almost featureless dolls that were pounding them into bits.

  They were even more horrifying than I remembered. They didn’t have any clothes or the colorful ribbons that the ones in the Spire did. They were just pale manikins, some with hands and weapons, some with arms that just ended in weapons, swords, spears, hammers, and maces.

  And they were totally, completely silent.

  They didn’t scream or yell; they barely made any sounds when moving, and they fought with a grace I hadn’t imagined an artificial being could have.

  The only sounds were the impacts of their weapons.

  In short order, the golems were pressed back and I was able to take a breath.

  One of the corrupted monsters tried to wade in towards us, but it was enveloped by dolls who swarmed over it, stabbing and smashing, ripping off its extra limbs and tearing out its teeth when it roared.

  Brutal.

  Unable to stand for it, Onori swooped down, readying a massive gout of dark magic, looming over us with a crazed smile.

  “Gotcha,” I heard Sarin say.

  Bright tethers of blue magic burst forth from both her devices, wrapping tightly around Onori, cutting off her magic and pulling her down.

  “Xera, now!”

  I thought Xera would slide in and cut the remaining connections to the brain, but instead I saw her hands explode in black magic, stone replicas of them forming from the rock and reaching up to grab Onori and drag her all the way to the ground.

  Sarin herself bolted in, using both devices to create a huge sword, many times taller than she was, and she slid it through all the Deep tethers at once, severing all connection Onori had to the deadgod.

  She wailed and writhed, cursing us all, but it was no use. It was over. Almost.

  Viluna tossed her helm away and threw her hammer down and pounced on Onori’s prone form. Her eyes were wide and contained all the madness in the world as she slammed her fists into Onori, over and over again, wailing wordlessly before her gauntlets formed into huge, savage claws.

  “WHO’S A GOD NOW!?” she screamed as she began to tear Onori apart.

  I looked away. I didn’t want that memory. Hearing it was bad enough.

  The golems all faltered and broke, I assume the moment Onori was truly dead. Whatever cultists or abominations that had been here were either gone or under enough dolls that they soon would be.

  58

  It was the most metal thing I had ever seen.

  Viluna knelt among the ripped and shredded remains of an aspirant god, soaked in blood, her face a mask of rage. Her eyes were wide and her teeth were clenched as she bent over, breathing heavily. Intermittently, she growled, low and feral.

  The danger from the enemy had passed, but it was very unclear whether Viluna was still in her right mind.

  Sarin stood beside me, channeling to create a huge, heavy shield of primal magic around me. I could feel the weight of it; it was made to protect at the cost of almost everything else. One of the later categories of shields. “Go speak with her,” she said.

  “Me!?”

  “Well it’s not going to be Xera, and she gets on better with you.”

  “But I—” I sighed. “Okay. I’ll try.”

  “Be careful, Ian,” Xera said.

  I walked very, very slowly over to Viluna, careful to approach from where she could see me. “Uh, Viluna?”

  Her eyes flicked up to me and I flinched.

  With a strength of will I didn’t know I had, I took two more steps towards her and bent down on my knees. “Are you…okay?”

  Her clenched teeth turned into a brutal smile. In a very, very soft voice, she asked, “Is this what it will feel like?”

  I certainly didn’t want to entertain wherever this was going, but it seemed I had little choice. “How what will feel?”

  “Ripping the Living Queen into little, bloody chunks.”

  I’d been accused of using levity when it wasn’t warranted a few times in my life, and this was almost assuredly one of those times, but I went for it anyway. “I thought you wanted to burn her up instead. You know, into ash?”

 

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