City of Opportunities 10 – This was It.

Before Eldred knew what he was doing, he was meeting the charge of the golem halfway. Remembering the beating he had last gotten by a dwarf, he wisely chose to dodge rather than block. Displaced air rushed past his ear as he went for a forward tumble. The punch, with all of the dense mass of the golem behind it, stopped dead in the air.

The stone body had its drawbacks. Whatever magic animated the golem, it did not come with the same flexibility as flesh, bone and sinew. To swing sideways, it had to turn its entire body around.

Eldred’s roll was poorly executed. His shoulder took too much of the impact, the edge of his backplate pushed painfully into his ribs, and both pains were already forgotten by the time he caught himself. Crouched, he drew his dagger and shot upwards, aiming for the turning golem’s open flank.

The dagger met the surface, cracking the brittle outer layer of the Cannibal Golem and revealing the red metal beneath. A metal that Eldred recognized: Attarium.

A spark lit within him.

Eldred snapped back before the descending elbow could hit him. The distance between them grew, the man stepping further and further away from the construct. The Cannibal Golem was slow to start. Every motion had a windup, but once it was prepared…

Once more, the Cannibal Golem charged, its arms outstretched. Going purely by his instinct, Eldred charged as well. If he mistimed this, he would get clotheslined in the gut. His organs would rupture from the impact of… however many kilos of stone were heading his way.

All the same, Eldred leapt. His hands found the golem’s shoulder, using them to stabilize himself as he vaulted over the creature and landed on the other side. At the end of his momentum, he was almost face to face with Avari. The gremlin watched with wide eyes.

The spark burned ever brighter, setting flame to deadwood.

“Nyx! Scream!” Eldred ordered, his voice sounding foreign to his own ears. It was deeper, certain, brimming with authority. It was the voice he had been nourishing these past two days. It was the voice he had been about to lose.

The banshee followed his order immediately. The mixture of horrific and gorgeous sound echoed down the wide corridor they were fighting in. Despite being directly exposed to it, the Cannibal Golem showed no reaction.

“It’s an automaton, moron!” Avari managed to find her voice. “It doesn’t have emotions, only missions!”

The flame was growing, warming his soul.

“To the front of the building!” he gave his next order. Avari remained stunned for a moment. “Your arm is broken, not your legs! MOVE!”

The words tore the gremlin out of her stupor. “Don’t you tell me what to do!” she snapped back at him, but began to run all the same. Pain reflected on her features, but she utilized her broken arm all the same, keeping her crossbow pinned to her chest as she ran.

Eldred was right behind her. He could have overtook her if he had wanted to. Though her strength may have been relative to his, the shortness of her legs was a reality. Behind them, the footfalls of the golem echoed like an industrial beat. It was accelerating, the beat growing more insistent the closer it got.

They managed to emerge from the current building just before the dwarven golem caught up to them. Eldred swerved hard to the side, pulling Avari with him. The two of them hit the ground. The gremlin screamed, a horrid sound, when the impact was put on her broken arm.

Eldred felt for her, but he was burning inside.

“Aim!” he shouted at her, helping her lift her crossbow. He acted as her missing hand directing the crossbow roughly. Gaze feverish from the pain and drunk on adrenaline, the gremlin did not respond, just adjusted the aim with her good arm.

The golem had trampled right past them. Its remaining momentum carried it forward onto the bridge that connected this side of the upper layers to the opposite wall. The stone ground offered little chance for an abrupt stop. The railings had long since been shattered by the planetary crack.

Right when the Cannibal Golem was at its most imbalanced, Avari pulled the trigger.

It did not take much to make a creature this stiff begin to tilt. It stuck out an arm in an attempt to counteract the forces of gravity, but it was a doomed endeavour. Inevitably, it toppled, falling over the edge of the bridge. A five metre plunge later, it slammed onto the ground. Pieces of it splintered off, turning into shrapnel that bounced off nearby stone.

“Good… thinking…” Avari pressed out. She controlled her breathing while Eldred helped her to her feet. Together, they walked to the edge of the platform, peering down at the Cannibal Golem.

It stared back. Half of its skull had splintered off, leaving only one eye. Outer layers of stones had burst off, revealing more of the red-glowing, metal insides. Despite all that damage, it was moving, slowly rising to its feet. Its vertical rows of teeth wiggled like the legs of a vengeful millipede.

“We should scram,” Avari stated.

“What is that thing?” Eldred asked, calm and collected.

“A golem that fed on magical wildlife after its programming to ensure its operational integrity went haywire – there, cliffnotes version, let’s GO!” Avari was doing the same thing as the golem below, scanning the stairs and bridges for the optimal route. Of course, her optimal route was to the hole in the wall while it was looking for a way back up.

“I will not go.”

“…What?!” Avari was perfectly capable of continuing her search while chewing him out. “Listen to me, Eldred – that was impressive and all of that, but there’s no fucking way we get this lucky enough times to kill it with gravity. Neither of us have a weapon to actually damage it.”

“I’ll find a way.”

“How can you be so sure?!” Golden eyes jumped to him, only for further words to get immediately stuck in her throat.

Eldred was grinning. A manic smile spread from ear to ear while he stared at the golem. All of his being felt hot, like he was an iron in the fire of his own ambition, ready to be reforged. He knew no fear, no doubt, only the certainty that he would rather die here than subject himself once more to the dullness of a safe life.

“Nyx, whatever power you can channel through me – do it.”

“That will slow your reflexes further,” she reminded him. “Your chances to die are…”

“Irrelevant.” He took his eyes off the Cannibal Golem to fixate on his banshee. “It’s die or thrive. Are you going to advise me differently now or will you put all your trust in me?”

It was a selfish question, he knew that. If he died, she would truly fade herself with nothing left to anchor herself to. Whatever regrets or hatred had brought her back to life would remain unsolved. All the same, this was the only way forward Eldred could accept. To run here was to forsake the fire of ambition within him. Either one of them left this portal or both of them did.

Nyx’s icy gaze turned hard. “Die or thrive,” she echoed his conviction. “I only hope that this will work…”

His banshee disappeared, her corporeal form dismissed. For a brief moment, the strain of maintaining her was lifted, making his body feel light as a feather. Then, the cold enveloped him on all sides. He gasped for air, as if he was coming up from a frozen pool. When he exhaled, he could see his breath.

Despite the visual effect, the chill was purely magical. If it had been a physical reality, he would have instantly collapsed. A thousand ghostly hands grasped him, pulled his skin to the bottom of a frozen lake, and set every nerve in his outer layers alight with pain.

All of it focused around his right hand. Ectoplasm emerged from his skin, connecting in black rivulets to his blade, coating the plain steel in liquid black. Nyx focused her control into an extension of the blade.

All of the pain, all of the lifeforce she absorbed, it was only enough to turn a dagger into a shortsword. His back, his arms, his legs – they all felt like they were coated in ice. Yet inside, he burned. His core was alight, his soul roared like a blaze. Fire within, ice without, and the path to prosperity forged from both.

Eldred forced his body into motion. Calmly, he loosened the straps of his armour, putting the individual pieces on the ground. For no other reason than his own comfort, he even stripped out of his sweater and t-shirt. Bare-chested, he held the ghost blade.

It was no weapon of legend, he understood that. It was just a bit of ectoplasm, stretched into an edge. The esoteric substance had a multitude of uses. Whether one of them was hurting a creature made of divinely-infused fire metal was beyond him or Nyx. They had little of it. There was no secret reservoir of energy within him, no chosen one’s might that enabled him to do this. All he had was grit.

Eldred would make it count.

“MORON!” Avari shouted when he leapt off the platform.

Sweat slick fingers grasped a decorative overhang. He clung on just enough to slow his descent and swing towards a jutting platform of the layer between him and the golem. Relying entirely on instinct, he continued the motion before the shock could travel up his legs. Another plunge, then he was on the lowest layer. Artlessly, he rolled on the stone ground, feeling the lingering heat that had cracked the planet through lukewarm rock under his naked skin.

The golem immediately came for him. Eldred barely managed to get on his feet. He had managed to get used to the regular draw Nyx had on him, but this was a whole different level. The confidence with which he had dodged the golem moments earlier was gone, replaced with desperate backsteps.

The knuckles of the creature’s fist caught the skin of his biceps, chaffing a bloody trench across the skin. Eldred knew it was there, but he barely felt it. It was just another layer of pain to ignore. A loud, manic laugh tore from his throat as he went for the counter swing.

The ectoplasmic blade travelled clean through the arm of the golem. It sliced without parting any matter, simply emerging at the bottom of the biceps without any sign of physical damage.

But the arm dropped. The clenched fist forcibly relaxed. The golem produced an alarmed noise akin to a hard drive in operation upped in volume four times. Eldred clenched his teeth, forcing the air out of his lungs and past his grin. The hissing air surrounded him as clouds of fog.

This was it.

The golem spun on its axis. Lamed as he was, Eldred could only barely put both his hands up before the forearm came for him. The shock went up his arms. Jumping along with motion prevented the worst. The overbearing might of the golem catapulted him backwards. Some pointy decoration cut a trench across the back of his ribs.

This was what he had been craving.

Eldred laughed and bridged the distance again before the golem could regain its balance. He assaulted the lamed arm mercilessly, always staying on the golem’s bad side and making it even worse. The ghost blade was crippling the creature’s operation, but was it actually damaging it or was it merely an annoyance?

Every cut was another mark of satisfaction, proof that he could fight!

The golem suddenly crouched and jumped. To call it a jump was to overstate the matter in actuality. It was more of a hop, but it was the hop of a creature easily three times Eldred’s weight. For the sake of his feet, the man had to back away from the machine. It spun halfway, presenting its bad shoulder, raising the good arm as a deadly threat.

“Good!” Eldred pressed out, his voice reverberating with his newfound revelling. “Be a threat. Be dangerous. Make this worth my while. Make this life worth living. Make my heart pound. MAKE ME FIGHT FOR MY FUTURE!”

If the golem had the mind to understand, it did not have the mouth to answer.

Eldred broke their staring match by charging in. The golem met the motion in kind. Eldred prepared himself for the fist. The golem’s elbow dropped.

Instincts screamed at Eldred at the very last second.

The golem’s arm attempted to hook around his midriff, to pull Eldred into an embrace that would turn his chest into mincemeat. The vertical teeth wiggled, the tips wiggling to tear flesh that wasn’t there. Simultaneously, Eldred stepped past the Cannibal Golem’s bad side, the black ghost blade devouring the crystal light of the ancient hold as it emerged from the back of the malformed neck.

A crashing computer. Colliding sheets of metal. A scream. A thankful sigh. Rocks grinding against rocks. All of these and none of them described the death wail of the golem. The ectoplasm had disrupted a vital connection within. For one more second, the creature remained standing. Then, without any magic in it left, it surrendered to gravity one last time.

The cold receded from Eldred’s skin immediately. He giggled, then laughed, then roared in victory. “That’s what I am ta–.” ‘Huh?’ he barely managed to utter the confused sound in his mind. The ground rapidly approached. The corners of his vision were all darkness and dancing dots of silver.

Consciousness was gone before he met the ground.