Victor of Tucson-12.6 World Tree

Victor of Tucson-12.6 World Tree

6 – World Tree
Victor stood before the enormous trunk of the dead tree—testament of the undead scourge that had befallen Dark Ember—and stalked toward a vast opening in the gnarled, gray trunk. Smoke sat heavy in the air, and it would have stung his eyes or made him uncomfortable if not for his titan blood and the many feats that bolstered his resistance to the elements. He kicked his feet through the ember-thick ash, sending sparks and cinders flying as he approached the opening.
Had it always been there, that gap in the wood? It looked almost natural, like a split in the trunk that had grown smooth around the edges, coated with the kind of scar tissue trees develop when they are damaged. To him, that implied the passage into the heart of the tree had been present before it died, before the undead had made it their home and stolen its life’s essence. If one stood back and looked at the gigantic tree, the opening seemed small, but up close, even at his full natural height, there was room for him to proceed.
Hefting Lifedrinker and with his standard blazing behind him, he walked into the opening. When his army had first found the tree, it would have been unthinkable, even for him, to get that close, let alone go
inside
the tree. The miasmic entropy of the death-attuned Energy in the air had been too severe, too draining. He could stand against it for a time, but every step would have been torture, and his Core would have been drained before he found his quarry. Now, though, he hardly felt it. Was the Great Master so defeated? Or was he simply withdrawn, holding his power close, readying himself for the final confrontation?
The smoke fell away as he ducked into the opening; some invisible pressure kept it outside. It almost made him wonder if a tiny spark of life was left in the great organism, but he supposed that was just wishful thinking. No doubt it was the residual pressure of the death-attuned Energy that kept the smoke and ash from filtering into the wood-lined tunnels.
The ground was dry, and his boots scraped over ancient wood that was worn smooth by the passage of thousands of feet—no, he supposed it was millions. Hadn’t they slain more than a million undead? Surely their enemy had moved through that tunnel more than once.
There was no light, save for his banner, but it was more than bright enough. The harsh, glory-attuned Energy banished the shadows from the high ceiling, exposing thick spiderwebs and the corpses of birds, bats, squirrels, and mice by the tens of thousands. On the edges of the broad tunnel floor, where it met the dusty wooden walls, were piles and piles of skeletons—human, animal, and everything in between.
The trunk of the tree spanned more than a thousand feet, so Victor wasn’t surprised to see the tunnel disappear in the distance, but he could also discern a slight downward slope, so he figured he was on his way to the roots. The experience reminded him of the tree whose spirit he’d rescued on Fanwath. It had been corrupted, but still alive. He supposed that might be at the heart of his faint hope that the tree wasn’t yet dead, that he might find some spark of life down there, and that it might recover from its ordeal with the undead once he slew Dragomir Veselov.
“Wishful thinking,” he muttered, as he brushed Lifedrinker’s edge against the side of the tunnel and watched the dead wood crumble and tear at the slightest touch. By then, he was very deep, and he had a hard time believing that, if the wood was dead that far in, he’d find any trace of life in the roots.
He walked for several minutes, passing branching passageways. He could feel the faint, flickering auras of lesser undead up those narrow corridors, but they were weak, and they cowered before his presence, unworthy of his attention. He continued, and when the passage slope became steeper and curved to the right, he nodded. He was moving into the depths, and he could feel more death-attuned Energy ahead.
A dozen steps down the steeper incline, the ceiling began to encroach, and Victor had to reduce his size. A dozen more, and he was forced to pull himself in, merely half as tall as when he’d entered the tree. By the time the tunnel floor leveled off again, he stood only fifteen feet tall. He hated being
forced
to reduce his size, but, in truth, he didn’t mind. Most of his days were spent as a very large human. It didn’t reduce his power at all, though size certainly had its advantages in a fight.
Standing in the narrower tunnel, looking down its length, he figured he’d descended several hundred feet beneath the tree, maybe even a thousand. He was down among its roots by then, and he could feel the coldness in the air, the sapping miasma of death magic tugging on the Energy in his pathways. He hardened his aura, pushing it out around him like a barrier of willpower, and the miasma fled before it.
With his banner lighting the way, Victor proceeded, once more, out of habit, checking to see that he was bolstering his agility and vitality with his Sovereign Will. He wasn’t worried about his strength; it was already more than sufficient. In fact, when he cast any form of Berserk, the only words one might use to describe his strength would be
titanic
or even
deific
—there was simply no metric by which to measure it properly. No being he’d ever met, save Azforath, seemed capable of matching his might. He doubted even Chantico was
stronger
than he, though he had no doubt she had other attributes that would embarrass him.
He took a step toward the distant darkness, and a voice rolled into his mind. It was a grinding, grating sound, like vocal chords of rusty iron that hadn’t been lubricated in a thousand years. “
Interloper
.”
Victor ignored the voice, though a part of him acknowledged the weight of the power behind those words. Was this a
true
veil walker? Was he about to stand against someone with might on par with Ranish Dar or Ronkerz? Had he taken on more than he could handle? Those tiny doubts nagged at him, products of his fear. He recognized them, of course; was he not a Spirit Caster with a rich affinity for fear? Had he not conquered that dark, twisting Energy?
He came to a vast well of darkness—a sheer drop that echoed with the last step he took. Peering into the depths, he let his eyes adjust as his blazing standard fought to pierce the black. After a while, his eyes spied something down there. Two baleful red lanterns shone back at him, and he knew Dragomir was watching him. Victor summoned his fiery wings and launched himself into the dark, streaking toward his foe, expanding to his full size as he went.
Suddenly, the world was aflame. Red fires exploded around him, and he realized they were torches held by monstrous shadows. A million tons of pressure hit him—death-attuned Energy that the Great Master had held in reserve. The shadowy creatures were like batteries filled with it—No,
reactors
! The cavern, at least a mile in diameter and a thousand feet high, filled with the miasma, and Victor felt his Banner of the Conqueror snuff out.
He didn’t need the light—the red fires were enough to fill the underground hall with a matching glow. Still, the loss of his banner affected his outlook, his pride, and his eagerness to fight. Only a little, however. Lifedrinker screamed her excitement, and Victor’s eyes filled with fire as he descended, summoning the heat of his magmatic wrath. In a single heartbeat, he cast Volcanic Fury and exhaled a plume of lava that sprayed in a broad swath over a dozen of the enormous shadow creatures.
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When he hit the ground, his wings flickered out, and Victor spun, whirling Lifedrinker in wild cleaves. Her blade came alive with the heat of her fury, mirroring his own fiery madness. No shadow stood against he blows. They were ripped to shreds, and Victor laughed as the miasma of death retreated before his onslaught. He’d lost track of Dragomir when the shadows appeared with their torches, and he began to wonder if those two flames he’d first seen had truly been his eyes; perhaps he’d only caught a glimpse of the first shadows.
He didn’t care; he went wild, hacking with abandon as he ruined the shadowy army. Lifedrinker grew hotter and hotter as she absorbed their Energy and channeled it into her battle lust. Her blade was white hot as she shredded undead, shadowy constructs left and right, sending the screaming spirits back through the veil, free of their master’s control.
Even so, the shadows kept coming. They were things from nightmares. Shapeless and monstrous at once—claws, teeth, tentacles, stingers, talons, acidic breath, venomous fangs, furry, scaly, slippery, and rough. They charged him. They dove at him. They coiled around him. They piled atop him.
And Victor raged
.
He abandoned himself to his fury. He allowed it to run thick through his pathways, to permeate his every cell, and to consume his thoughts. He went berserk like he hadn’t in a very long while, and the underground hall echoed with the madness of his insatiable desire for destruction. He roared, he screamed, and he breathed molten stone. Lifedrinker crashed against rock, against root, and against the shadowy flesh of his foes. The ground shook, massive stones and tons of dirt fell from the heights, and still he stomped and howled and
smashed
Lifedrinker’s unearthly weight around.
He vanquished a hundred, then a thousand, then
ten
thousand of the shadows, and his steel seeker Core flared, bright as a sun, hardly dimmed by the outpouring of rage into Victor’s pathways. He didn’t cast spells. He had no need. He fought for the joy of it, the
release
of it. Despite his incredible armor, he suffered thousands of cuts, stings, burns, and bites. Every time, his titanic flesh recovered. His nigh-immortal constitution rejected the poisons and venoms.
When Victor realized his armor was failing to stop the shadowy attacks, he covered himself in dragon scales, and the injuries stopped mounting. Whatever phantom quality of the shadowy monsters allowed them to bypass his artifacts failed to pierce his Energy-infused natural armor. And so, he continued to slaughter, and the underground hall continued to shake.
Over the years, Victor had learned to exert more control over himself while under the influence of his Volcanic Fury, but only when he made the effort, only when he focused his will and fought for it. He was doing the opposite of that, however, and so there wasn’t any surprise in the small rational corner of his mind when he stomped a foot and cast Wake the Earth. It was a natural attack for his furious alter ego, after all.
The earth rolled beneath his feet, lava erupted from massive fissures, and something enormous
cracked
above him. Madness infused his furious glare as he looked upward, and rather than panic or dismay, his face displayed glee when he realized that many of the dead, dried-out roots that bordered the cavern were shattering under the strain of the shifting earth. The tree above must have been swaying with the movement of the quakes. Victor roared his laughter when he realized the shadows had stopped coming and that he stood alone in the great, crumbling hall beneath the earth.
“Where are you?” he roared, chasing the words with a mad laugh. Fire filled the hall, most of it made by Victor’s fiery breath or the explosions of lava when he cast Wake the Earth. He turned in a slow circle, the ground’s swaying affecting him not one bit. He rode the bucking earth like he was born to it. He saw no more shadows, but something was stirring on the far side of the cavern. He leaped toward it.
As he soared through the air, focusing on a pile of shifting bones—a skull larger than his own—the voice came to him again: “
Interloper. You dare! For thousands of seasons, I’ve gathered my strength. For eons, I’ve feasted on the blood and spirits of lesser beings. A hundred times, I have crushed challengers mightier than thee. You slay my pets, my playthings, but it only makes room for more. You will be my new pet. You will be my—”
“
Shut up
!” Victor roared, blasting the shifting bones with a torrent of abyssal magma. As his breath coated the pile of bones, he landed with a crash and brought Lifedrinker’s impossibly heavy blade down atop the gigantic skull. For the first time, he felt some surprise as her edge came to a bone-jarring halt, hardly scratching the bone as she slid over the adamant surface. Then, the pile of bones surged with a cyclone of blue-green death-attuned Energy, and a gigantic skeleton rose up at the heart of the burning, quaking cavern.
“
Titanblood of the setting sun. Child of my foes. Look upon the visage of Dragomir Veselov, God of the Mountain, King of Stone, Breaker of Men, Eater of Dragons, Doom of the World Tree.”
Victor stumbled back, knocked off-balance by the surge of Energy and the explosion of the ground as the enormous skeleton rose. Despite his size being enhanced by Berserk, the skeleton, comprised of black, petrified bones, loomed over him—greater than any giant. Was this another titan? A species from Earth other than Quinametzin? That small, doubting voice, fueled by his fear, gained a little volume in his mind as it asked, again, if he’d taken on more than he could handle. If Dragomir was an ancient titan, what hubris made Victor think he could stand against him?
Luckily, his hope was louder than his fear, and he reminded himself that Dragomir, titan or not, was undead. He knew from first-hand experience when he’d almost consumed an undead heart that, with the benefits of undeath, came a host of detriments. So, standing before the massive dark skeleton, he held Lifedrinker ready and growled, “You’re no titan. You’re a dead thing, and the veil calls for you. Lie down, and I’ll end things quickly for you.”
Dragomir opened his fleshless mouth, his sharp, black teeth yawning wide as he leaned forward and
roared
, pummeling Victor with an onslaught of death-attuned Energy that took the shape of a storm of razor-sharp blades. They slammed into him, denting and ripping his aegis, tearing his leather, grinding against his scales, and piercing his flesh. Victor held a hand up to shield his eyes and face, and his gauntlet, hard enough to survive a thousand years of pounding against stone, failed to stop the blades of Energy—they pierced the metal and his dragon scales alike, burying themselves in Victor’s bones and flesh.
The attack was brutal and devastating, and if Victor weren’t
Victor
, he might have succumbed then and there. He was who he was, though, and with a pulse of furious Energy, he dissolved the death-attuned blades and his flesh closed up, made whole by his monstrous regeneration in less than a heartbeat. He took the opportunity to answer Dragomir’s roar with his own, sending a cone of nullfrost out with his breath.
The icy, void-tainted Energy splashed against the giant skeleton, and Dragomir fell back, flailing his arms, wiping the stuff away. Victor seized the opening, leaping forward and hacking Lifedrinker three times, left, right, and left again. She chipped at ribs, and with the final hack, bit into Dragomir’s shoulder, but only the barest, thinnest edge of her blade found purchase, and Dragomir’s flailing arms threw her off.
Victor took a step back and screamed his frustration, and, without any thought, he stomped his foot and, once again, cast Wake the Earth. The ground split beneath his stomp—a chasm took form, widening more and more the further it stretched. Dragomir, having finally recovered from Victor’s breath attack, tried to leap free, but his left foot was directly centered on the chasm, and he fell, the ground crumbling away beneath. Victor roared his mean-spirited glee as he saw his foe tumble toward the lava waiting below.
As Dragomir fell, so too did great hunks of stone from the cavern’s ceiling. More roots shattered, exploding into shards of dusty wood, and then, something huge shifted, and Victor was momentarily disoriented. It seemed to him that the source of gravity was moving—like the ground was rising up behind him and rolling over his head. He felt like, though he stood on stone, he was doing a forward flip. For a moment, he was weightless, and then gravity found him again, and he slammed forward, falling straight into the chasm behind Dragomir as the enormous cavern collapsed.
Victor’s confusion was fueled by his rage, but the deepest part of his mind knew something was wrong. He took hold of his will, wielding it like a weapon, and drove the fury from his mind. As rational thoughts took root, and he splashed into a river of lava that heated his armor and burned his flesh, he realized what had happened. The great tree—larger than any skyscraper Victor had ever seen—had fallen, and its roots ripping out of the ground had buried the cavern in which he and Dragomir had been fighting.

.
!
12.6 World Tree