Dissonance 19 – Fighting Monsters

Eldred had ice on his skin and fire in his veins.

Hands clasped around his arm. With all of their shared might, Nyx tried to slow his descent. She slowed him somewhat, a difference that mattered. The floor was fast approaching. Landing on his back meant landing on his remaining arsenal – a fact he absolutely wanted to avoid. His banshee’s hands gave him another choice.

The shock of the impact went up his shins and into his knees. He felt a grinding in his joints and heard it echo in his ears. Calling it unpleasant would have been to understate the matter tremendously. He was, however, capable of straightening up.

Immediately, a burning sword swung at him. He parried with the dagger. The entity holding the sword, an elemental made of living flame and swirling ash, pressed down. Eldred could hold against the force, but the heat seeping into his weapon was a problem. Focusing his mind, the driven man drew the fire from his own Core. Before the dagger could deform, one supernatural flame counteracted the other.

Eldred shoved the sword back, then sliced through the elemental. It dispersed into black particles that joined others of its like on the red stone floor.

This second layer of the temple was of an altogether angrier design. Sharp representations of flame lined every corner of the senselessly shaped room and its adjacent corridors. Uniformity in shape was a distant suggestion to the god who had made this space. It all resembled a molten cave system crossed with the designs of a mad architect.

Eldred did a quick check on himself. His stomach ached slightly, though adrenaline kept him from feeling too much of it. He was at least fairly certain that Otto’s punch hadn’t broken nor ruptured anything. The wound on his head was bothersome, but his hair soaked up the worst of the bleeding.

Craning his neck back, he watched as the ceiling flowed closed. Within seconds, he was shut in, trapped in the ambient glow of this complex of chiselled flame. Heat summoned sweat to his brow. He focused on his Core, asserting his will over the temperature on his skin. It took him a great deal of concentration, but slowly he surrounded himself in more agreeable air. Nyx elected to disappear entirely, reducing herself to a voice by his ear.

“This is a most concerning situation,” she whispered, sadness and cold rage intertwining into a flat tone.

“Exciting, isn’t it?” Eldred responded, still grinning widely. He set out in the direction of a random corridor. “How do we get out of this?”

Two shadows rose from the ground, their ashen silhouettes filling with flame as they assumed a humanoid form. Eldred sheathed the dagger and unfurled the whip. He had little experience with the weapon, having only used it a couple of times in the training room. For an artless, horizontal swing, it was enough. The two shades dispersed on impact.

More of their ilk began to manifest around them. Eldred kept swinging the whip, disappointed each time his unskilled motions failed to produce a satisfying crack. The phantoms were dispersed each time with a singular attack.

Nyx answered his question in her forlorn voice as he cleared the area. “This is a trial of the divine variety. Otto seeks to weaken or kill us by letting these monsters fight us. Yet, if we succeed in this trial, then certainly there will be a reward to compensate us for the trouble?”

“You don’t sound quite certain,” Eldred pointed out, then laughed when he finally managed to get that satisfying CRACK! once. He tried to commit the way he had moved his arm and wrist to memory. ‘I like this.’

“Gods are fickle beings and we do not know whose temple this is. Regardless, I retain that this is our best course of action.”

“Sent to find out what purpose this temple serves, now we’re going to claim it for ourselves.” Eldred slashed through the last of the spawning fire elementals. “Only way out is to win! I can deal with this.”

Nyx let out a sound between a sigh and a swoon.

Eldred continued down his randomly chosen corridor, re-creating the environmental protection as he went. It had broken the moment he had started swinging, but the surrounding heat wasn’t quite so bad that he couldn’t withstand it normally. This way was just more comfortable. It also made for good training.

The spawning fire elementals were a persistent problem. Eldred had to remain constantly vigilant, looking over his shoulder every few paces to make sure none of the fiery phantoms had manifested behind him. Rest in this space was non-existent. He would reach whatever the goal was or die in the process.

“Die or thrive,” Eldred muttered his mantra to himself yet again. The words seemed to resonate with the walls. Whoever had tossed this Tumbling Temple into the Universal Sea likely had a similar creed. Fire gods and fire Cultivators would have at least some rudimentary overlap, he reckoned. ‘Then again, I could have Cultivated another element,’ Eldred thought. ‘The choice was entirely mine.’

Eldred wasted no thought on the connections between chosen Core types and personality traits. Accelerating his pace, he went deeper into the complex, trusting Nyx to keep a mental map of the place.

The neighing of a horse warned him of the creature just as it began to charge down the long corridor he now entered. It was a creature as depicted above, formed from stone with burning eyes and a burning mane. It closed the distance rapidly, not caring about the whip that struck it in the snout. ‘I wish this had more weight to it!’ Eldred thought and leapt out of harm’s way.

Casting the whip aside, he dragged the heavy sword from his arsenal next. It was the most fitting weapon he had access to against a creature like this. Neither a dagger nor his old knife would have done much. The warhammer strapped to the side of his backpack had some potential, though it didn’t have the reach.

The thick sword was one and a half metres long, single-edged, and certainly no finesse weapon. Getting the edge alignment right was less of a concern when weight and raw force did more of the work. It was exactly the kind of sword Eldred was currently fit to use.

He did not quite like the way it felt in his hands.

The horse slowed, trotted in a wide circle, then charged at Eldred once again. Flexible lips pulled back to reveal sharp, black teeth. Flaming breath flowed from the creature’s nostrils as it closed the distance. Eldred stood his ground, waiting until the last moment to step aside.

Obsidian hooves screeched angrily over the red floor. Eldred twisted around his own axis. The back legs he aimed at were raised above the slashing sword. The burning equine slammed one of its hooves into Eldred’s shoulder. He barely remained upright, stumbling several steps back. The horse kicked the empty air a couple more times before gaining some distance.

Time enough for Eldred to grab his shoulder and pop it back into its socket. Another pang of pain and a ready arm were his reward. He steadied his gaze on his opponent. Fire flowed up the length of the heavy blade. His senses sharpened as the elemental energies fuelled the thrill in his blood.

The horse bristled, then charged at Eldred again. This time, he simply stood his ground. Unnerved by this, the horse slowed down, reared up, and attempted to pelt its opponent with a series of strikes with its front hooves. This time, Eldred was faster. The readied blade swung upwards, to devastating effect. The stone body of the creature cracked, revealing thin veins of red metal inside. The horse, as a whole, was thrown off its already precarious balance.

Hard, it landed on its side. Swift, Eldred brought the blade down on its neck. He hacked away at the stone until the creature stopped twitching.

“Ragthar,” Eldred said.

“What?” Nyx asked, confused.

Eldred pointed at the metal veins inside the creature. They were thin, much thinner than the last time he had seen that material, but he recognised it all the same. “The god that melted that planet that we had our first adventure on.” He made a sweeping gesture at the surrounding temple. “This belongs to him.”

“…A cosmic coincidence…? No… oddities are mounting.”

Eldred just nodded. Between Otto finding him here as quickly as he had and the specificity of the temple, things just felt off. ‘Have I been set-up? Why? I am driven but I am not special…’ His mind returned to the meeting with New Foundation’s CEO. “Larger corporations are positioning themselves for the day that the portal collapses,” he thought aloud, “I get that much. Why send that coward Otto to kill me then?”

“We will find out in due time,” Nyx responded.

Eldred just nodded. A new wave of fire elementals appeared around them. He looked to the whip and clicked his tongue. The presence of one of the elementals had set the leather on fire. There was no point in retrieving it.

‘Hacking and slashing then,’ he thought and sprang into action.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Eldred dropped the heavy sword. Its dented and deformed blade, bearing the scars of melting he couldn’t prevent, was not even worth hauling around anymore. His body, too, was marked in several spots by the injuries he couldn’t prevent. His suit was torn and burnt, the body beneath covered in bruises.

After several hours down in the corridors, he was in a strange state of being. Fire elementals kept him on his toes and burning beasts from horses to large cats challenged him in every other corridor. He was allowed just enough rest to prevent exhaustion, but not enough to truly recover. In the space between, he was left smiling as he explored the guts of the temple.

He grabbed both the hammer and dagger, dual-wielding the very different weapons simultaneously. The bubble of controlled heat around him stayed consistent. Maintaining it was becoming second nature, alongside the almost boiling heat in his blood. It was like having manual control over his own adrenaline. His body was lighter and faster, his reflexes sharper and more keen.

Was this what coming closer to Elemental Mastery felt like?

Eldred had a light limp to his steps. He had rolled his ankle during one especially daring dodge. His heartbeat throbbed against his left temple, where a boar’s tusks had managed to deliver a blow.

A distant laugh reached Eldred’s ears.

“He’s back,” Nyx hissed, hatefully.

Her man just nodded. Seemed like enough time had passed for the half-ogre to carry his injured henchman to a hospital and catch up. With more hands and the trail of dead beasts to follow, Otto would catch up in no time. In his current state, Eldred did not like his chances. Still, if he had to play them out.

“Keep moving forwards,” his banshee insisted.

Eldred growled, almost more animal than man. Between his instinct to fight and the advice of his love, he chose the latter. With newfound urgency, he stormed down the corridor.

By luck or fate, he reached what appeared to be the final destination of the complex. A large, religiously ornamented chamber appeared before him. It was easily thirty paces across. The circular floor was laid out in a flame pattern of stones in various shades of red and orange. The ceiling was akin to molten wax, stone eternalised in odd shapes. In between, statues of black-clad warriors, each armed with a different weapon, all stared at a central altar – an anvil of red and black metal.

Eldred approached. A strong gust made him stumble forwards. Ash dragged past him on unnatural winds, consolidating in front of the altar. It was not just another elemental. Rather than a roughly humanoid shaped silhouette, this time the black particles formed a proper body. Pieces of plate armour hovered on top of a dense cloud. Red fire within poured through the gaps and emerged from eye slits as burning embers.

One final challenge.

Laughing, Eldred charged forwards. The fire elemental thrust its hand out to the side, summoning a curved sword of volcanic glass. The curved weapon immediately swung towards Eldred’s head. He dove under it. He felt the rise of a chill in his spine. “Don’t!” he ordered Nyx, before she could intervene. It was no cry from honour. That singular slash told the driven man that this was going to be too taxing to split his resources.

The chill subsided. His hammer slammed into the side of the creature. The ash-made plate was both solid and soft, like punching into a densely packed sack of wheat. Eldred jumped back, then threw the useless impact weapon at the elemental’s head. In a smooth motion, he drew the old knife from its sheath. It was shorter than the dagger, worn, and of a material that would certainly not survive use by a Cultivator. All the same, it was what he had.

The elemental shook its helmet-like head, then charged at Eldred. It was less of a run and more of a hover, occasionally accelerated by the excuse of a step. Arm raised, the creature arrived.

Eldred deflected the descending swing with his dagger. The knife went for the elemental’s side. It side-stepped the attack. Its shoulder slammed into Eldred’s armpit, preventing a downwards stab. They both jumped back, readied their weapons again, then both lunged. Stone and steel met repeatedly, filling the chamber with the screeching sounds of weapons. In the distance, a craven half-ogre shouted something.

Time was running out. Eldred needed to claim the boon of the temple. He needed to maximise his chances. He needed to live. For his own ambition, for the women he loved, for the child he may have sired – death was no option. The reasons to live just kept on mounting.

He poured fire into his soul, pushing his Core and his body for all that he had. The elemental’s speed remained static. He accelerated. He went faster and faster. He opened up the elemental’s guard. One stab, delivered to the gap between chest plate and thigh. It went into a defensive stance. Another stab, severing its left arm at the elbow. The dismembered piece dropped to the ground, turning into a pile of ash.

The elemental ripped its sword up suddenly. Eldred tried to block with the dagger. The weapon shattered under the brutality of the impact. It bought him just enough time to tilt his head back. Obsidian cut a shallow trench up his chin. Just as it had passed him, Eldred snapped forwards. The knife plunged into the neck of the fire elemental. The creature contorted, then all of it turned to crumbling, black dust.

Heaving, bleeding, covered in ash, and left with only a dagger as his weapon, Eldred stumbled towards the altar. “There you are!” Otto shouted. “That’s a good look on you!” Eldred didn’t care to listen. He reached the anvil. “Don’t touch that!” the half-ogre roared.

Eldred slammed both hands down on the altar. “I passed your fucking test! Make it worth my while, Ragthar!”

A scorching gaze pierced through the Great Beyond.