Victor of Tucson-12.8 A Clash of Titans

Victor of Tucson-12.8 A Clash of Titans

8 – Clash of Titans
As he flew toward the gigantic skeleton, Victor cast Imbue Spirit on Lifedrinker, fueling the spell with rage-attuned Energy. Then, as he felt a fraction of his power drain away, taken by the spell and granted to his axe, he cast Iron Berserk; his full madness-powered strength would be needed. Together, he and his axe swelled with a hot rush of rage. Victor’s vision tinted toward red, and he opened his mouth in a barbaric roar of eagerness as he descended toward his foe.
The skeleton, Dragomir, stood in the shadow of the ruined World Tree, its root bulb bigger than a palace, looming over him. The skeleton’s bones were black, and Victor knew they were harder than diamonds. Still, like a fragment of a shattered moon, he fell, axe high, screaming with glee as he aimed a devastating blow at the crook where the undead titan’s bony neck met his shoulder.
Despite Victor’s speed and the immense power of his attack, Dragomir lifted his long, bony arms, holding them wide as if he welcomed the attack. Victor snarled viciously as he saw the act and threw his entire body into his cleave, wrenching with his arms, shoulders, and back, aiming to utterly annihilate his foe with his meteoric descent. At the last second, Dragomir summoned an enormous axe, crude and brutal in design with a gnarled tree-trunk-like haft, and a stone blade as big as a car.
Lifedrinker smashed into the haft, and the impact was like an atomic bomb going off. The force traveled through Dragomir and into the ground, exploding the earth and creating a crater a quarter mile wide and fifty feet deep. The shockwave lifted the World Tree’s root bulb, sending thousands of tons of dead wood and dirt bouncing, rocking the world with each impact. Meanwhile, Lifedrinker’s edge sliced about halfway through the petrified haft of Dragomir’s axe, and the titanic skeleton quaked with the effort of holding it aloft, blocking the deadly blow.
Victor was enraged, and he hardly felt the force of the clash. All he knew was his dogged determination to keep driving his axe down, and all Lifedrinker could do was scream her fury at being stopped. Her mirror-like surface was aflame with the rage that coursed through her, red and roiling, hot like superheated steel, smoking as she ground against the magical, petrified wood.
After several seconds, when Lifedrinker moved no further and Victor felt Dragomir gathering a torrent of death-attuned Energy, he yanked her free, cast Velocity Mantle, and went to work. He hacked, he cleaved, he thrust, and when Dragomir not only blocked, but counter-attacked, he parried, dodged, and riposted. The impacts of the two tremendous axes shook the earth; the sounds were like thunderclaps, and dirt and ash exploded away from the crater with each blow.
###
“Move!” Arona screamed, sensing a familiar surge in hot, furious Energy. The soldiers were already double-timing it, responding to the shouted, frenetic orders of their commanders, but even so, the captains near Arona took up her latest command. Horns blew, and the tempo of the drums increased. Sergeants called out rapid cadences, and the vast army increased its pace.
They’d started out more than two miles from the trunk of the enormous, dead tree, and they’d already put another mile behind them. Even so, Arona still felt a deadly urgency; the Energies mounting behind them felt like forces of nature—calamities like hurricanes or volcanoes. Even as that thought passed through her mind, the sky ignited. It was like a prolonged flash of lightning, brightening the daylight. Then, an ear-splitting crash thundered over them, carrying with it a wave of ash and dust. It wasn’t until she was off her feet, soaring face-first toward the rippling earth, that Arona realized a shockwave had tossed her like a doll.
Reflexively, she cast a much smaller version of her Solar Barrier spell and saved herself from the impact. No sooner had she slid to a halt than the earth shook again…and again…and again. She bounced twice before she got her bearings and used her dwindling supply of Energy to cast Sunbeam Drift, flying several feet in the air to avoid further quakes. She scanned the southern horizon, where the battle was taking place, but, once again, ash and dust filled the air, and only an occasional flash, followed by the sound of a clanging impact, broke through the haze.
Closer to hand, the army was struggling to recover from the initial wave of destruction that had rolled over it. Tens of thousands of soldiers were down, while thousands more were in the air, flying with various abilities, all thoughts of maintaining orderly ranks lost in the chaos. Commanders fought for discipline, and Arona nodded, knowing there was little she could do to help the situation. Instead, she streaked ahead, glowing with an aura of solar Energy—a beacon for the others to follow away from the titanic clash.
She wasn’t sure what she’d expected—what
Victor
had expected. It was foolish to think the army could stand close enough to witness a fight of that magnitude. It was a clash of demigods, and her primal instincts urged her to flee with all haste, not unlike the creatures of a forest might run before a fire.
###
Victor’s chest heaved as he grinned. In his berserk state, Lifedrinker was a battle axe in his hand, nimble, dense, and impossibly sharp. Her hot, furious blade smashed into Dragomir’s less nimble greataxe again and again, each time leaving behind a scar or, worse, shaving off a bit of petrified wood. She screamed her delight, “
Bleed! Break! Weep to your ancestors! Ayeee!
”
Victor’s grin widened, but he didn’t shout or join in the taunts. He was focused on the battle, a furious axe-fight like he’d
never
had. Dragomir was slower, but he was tireless and powerful, and he had an uncanny knack for putting that big axe right where it needed to be. Victor was incredibly fast, his moves impossible for a natural eye to track, but Dragomir could match him, at least enough to parry, though the offensive was decidedly one-sided; for every ten attacks Victor launched, Dragomir managed to sneak one in.
Neither titan had struck the other, not since Dragomir summoned his axe. Still, Lifedrinker took her toll, whittling away the petrified haft of Dragomir’s weapon, and, moreover, Victor was learning his opponent’s style. He didn’t let on; he didn’t want Dragomir to panic and resort to some other type of Energy attack. He wanted to lull him into a state of complacency, comfortable in his ability to counter Victor’s furious onslaught. In fact, as he began to recognize the patterns in his foe’s style, Victor slowed, feigning exhaustion.
To his credit, Dragomir didn’t speak. He didn’t try to taunt or insult; he silently battled, his glowing green-blue eye sockets the only sign that his skeletal frame had any life in it—other than its movements, of course. For his part, Victor reveled in the contest, rage heating his blood, but the joy of battle singing in his chest as the fight wore on. Each impact of Lifedrinker against that stony axe was tremendous, each duck, dodge, or parry like a glorious exhibition of his seldom-tested talents.
He watched Dragomir, studying his movements and memorizing the patterns he observed, though he remained patient, waiting until he was certain he had what he wanted. Meanwhile, Lifedrinker burned, Dragomir stomped and hacked and parried, and a ghostly edge began to take shape, inches from Lifedrinker’s blazing metal one. The Paragon of the Axe had been summoned.
###
As the army put another mile between itself and the battle, the echoing, thunderous clashes grew less intense, like a distant storm—frightening, but not close enough to inspire flight. Arona, still flying, turned to watch the distant contest while the captains and other officers furiously attempted to restore order. Much of the dust and ash had been blown away by the roiling winds; it seemed as though nature itself didn’t know how to respond to the titanic battle. Storm clouds brewed, but the distant lightning paled beside the flashes that Arona suspected were the impacts of Victor’s axe.
Her Energy was still low, her flight having interrupted her regeneration, but she held her thumb and forefinger before her eyes and cast Light Lens, a simple utility spell she’d designed that warped the light in the air and made distant things appear close. At first, she struggled to find Victor and his foe, but then she caught a flash of light and movement, so she poured a bit more Energy into her spell, stretching the light further. She inhaled sharply at what she saw.
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“What is it?” Nia asked, gasping, leaning with her hands on her knees, as she finally caught up to Arona.
“I see them. Victor battles a gigantic skeleton; those claps of thunder are their axes smashing against each other. I have to alter the light through my spell in order to make out the movements because of their speed.”
“A skeleton?” a new voice asked. Arona didn’t look; she didn’t want to lose her focus. She thought perhaps it was another captain, one of the men that Bryn had recruited from Ruhn.
“A skeleton like none I’ve seen. It’s taller than Victor with bones as black as coal. Ancient gods! It must be Dragomir! The Energy he exudes—it feels more dense than my old master’s.”
“Your master?” Nia asked.
“A legendary Death Caster—at least on certain worlds.”
“And yet Lord Victor stands against him?” Nia whispered.
Arona snorted. “Girl, you knew this veil walker styled himself a Great Master. You knew Victor would fight him. Did you think he meant to die today?” While she spoke, Arona adjusted her lens for a wider view, and the devastation surrounding the two titanic brawlers finally registered on her shell-shocked brain. It looked like a wasteland that stretched for miles. “Ancient gods!” she swore again. “So much more than the lesser lords he’s faced. If this battle were in a city, it would be ruins!”
“What of the vampire’s treasure?” the masculine voice asked.
Again, Arona snorted. “Counting your shares before our great commander has even won?” She glanced at him, confirming her earlier suspicion. A giant from Ruhn—black hair, sharp gray eyes, a crisp military uniform, and dual rapiers. “Suffice it to say,
Lepan
”—she tried not to sound sharp, but her nature asserted itself—"that if we want treasure, we’d best hope the Earth Elementalists are ready to dig.”
As she refocused on the battle, using her mastery over the light to bring their lightning movements into crystal clarity, she smiled when she saw the ghostly second edge on Lifedrinker’s blade. Victor had awakened the Paragon of the Axe. The battle continued to rage, the impacts of those great axes like distant explosions, and then, seemingly out of nowhere, a globe of white-gold light expanded from Victor, encasing the battlefield in its glowing aura.
“What’s that?” Nia gasped, and when Arona looked down, she saw the young woman held a spyglass to her eye.
“Victor’s domain.”
“Will he win?” Lepan asked. “It seems a colossal amount of Energy to expend for a steel seeker.”
Arona sighed. The man would know; he was a steel seeker and had been longer than either she or Victor. “Captain, our commander may be a steel seeker in the System’s eyes, but he is far from ordinary. Ask yourself how well you’d have fared against that wave of death Energy.”
“I respect the man, Legate, I only ask out of concern.”
Arona looked at him again and realized that behind him and on either side, most of the other captains had gathered—the army had fallen back into proper ranks while she’d watched the battle rage. She raised her voice a little as she replied, “Lord Victor will prevail. If you doubt me, then look upon yonder light and tell me what you feel!”
Tasya spoke up immediately. “Inspired, milady!”
Arona grinned. “That’s right. Inspiration is not an Energy that Lord Victor spends when he’s desperate. He’s seeking a breakthrough.”
###
As the Paragon of the Axe grew brighter and Victor had to hold back to keep Lifedrinker from shearing through the Death Caster’s axe, he plotted out a dozen, then two dozen moves in advance. He could see Dragomir was beginning to recognize his plight; he wasn’t a novice with the axe. No, he was a master who’d come up against another master who was quicker and who possessed a superior weapon. He began to lean on his death magic, though Victor could feel that his well of Energy wasn’t nearly as bottomless as it had earlier seemed.
Victor shrugged off the miasmic bursts, the ghostly blades, the howling specters with their razor claws. His scales were more than a match, and those added dangers and distractions only forced him to hone his style further, which, in turn, brightened and solidified the Paragon. When he’d managed to learn Dragomir’s style to the point where he was sure he was thirty moves ahead of his foe, Victor tugged a thread from his hope-attuned Energy pool and poured it into the pattern for Core Domain.
The world exploded with white-gold light, and the brilliant Energy banished the dust and ash of the blasted battlescape. The air clarified in his vision; millions of tiny crystalline pebbles covered the ground, reflecting the light and reinforcing its effects on Victor and his foe. To Victor, everything became plain. His battle plan solidified, and his understanding of the dance stretched beyond the next thirty moves to nearly fifty. He was so far ahead of Dragomir that his parries and dodges looked almost lazy or accidental.
Dragomir, on the other hand, that great, dark skeleton with its fiendish, glowing eyes, began to stumble. His attacks seemed clumsy and ill-timed. For the first time, an unearthly blood-curdling wheeze of discontent began to emanate from his fleshless maw. Victor grinned fiercely, enjoying the plight of his foe. “Okay,
chica
, it’s time,” he grunted, and then he proceeded to take his enemy apart.
He ducked a wide hack, slipping effortlessly under it because he’d known it was coming. On his way through the gap, he cleaved Lifedrinker with all his might into the skeleton’s femur. It was the first hit against the monstrous skeleton since imbuing Lifedrinker with his spirit. His first full-powered strike with the Paragon present. The result wasn’t disappointing—the ghostly edge cut the bone to the marrow, and Lifedrinker’s dense, smoldering edge finished the job, slipping through the bone with a
crack
that echoed for miles.
Dragomir screamed, but Victor was already gliding around behind him, and drawing Lifedrinker up, dragging her edge against the skeleton’s spine, on the backswing. The twin edges—hers and the Paragon’s—carved a deep groove through those vertebrae, and ghostly, death-attuned Energy splashed out, almost like blood. Down a leg, clearly in agony, the skeleton fell forward, driven by the deadly blow. Victor knew things would go that way, so he was already mid-stride, moving in the same direction and bringing his wonderful axe down with a horrible finality against the base of the Death Caster’s skull.
“Drink!” Victor roared as, guided by the Paragon’s edge, Lifedrinker buried her blade deep inside the Great Master’s skull. Victor bore down, pushing the skeleton with his axe, grinding the tremendous skeleton into the ground with a thunderous, earth-shaking crash. The Death Caster tried to thrash—to shake him and his axe loose, but Lifedrinker had her teeth in, and she wasn’t letting go. She vibrated with excitement, screaming her bloodlust as she drew on Dragomir’s Energy, interrupting the flow in his pathways, spoiling his attempts to conjure his way out of the mess.
Maybe it was all Lifedrinker, but Victor had a feeling his domain was having an equal effect. Where he was inspired by the Energy, Dragomir was confused and muddled. His spells were slow to form in his pathways, and Lifedrinker drew Energy out of them before anything could form. The Death Caster was exhausted. He’d already spent enough Energy to level a city—more! His nigh-indestructible skeleton was battered and maimed, and Lifedrinker was a hungry, legendary weapon.
Huge veins of blue-green Energy pulsed through her dark, rage-inflamed metal. She took the torrent in, ripping the attunement from it and processing the raw Energy like a wolf eating a fresh kill. Victor held her haft for a time, driving her down, pinning the thrashing skeleton at his feet. When the spasms grew feeble and the horrific howls and groans faded to hoarse whispers, he let go and let his axe feast at her leisure.
He sighed heavily, put his hands on his hips, and stretched. He was tired, but he felt
good
. Looking inward, he chuckled a little nervously when he saw his Core was more than three-fourths drained. If he’d dragged that fight out too much longer…
He laughed, shaking his head. “But I didn’t need to, did I,
pendejo
?” He nudged the rib-cage of the weakly thrashing “Great Master.” Lifedrinker pulsed and hummed, shaking as she dug deeper into the gigantic skull. The fires in the Death Caster’s eye sockets were dim—just flickering green candle flames. He wouldn’t live much longer. A thought occurred to Victor, and rather than count his chickens before the eggs were hatched, he poured a torrent of his remaining Energy into his Core Domain spell and cast it again.
The sparkling, wondrous realm of inspiration shattered like a crystal vase, and a dark, labyrinthine world of horror took its place. Tentacles sprouted from the ground, great webs stretched into shadowy trees, and horrific nightmares howled in the distance.
His quick thinking was just in time! As the sparks in Dragomir’s eyes fully faded, a ghostly, green apparition rose from the skeleton. It was a bearded man with deep-set eyes and a heavy brow. He looked at Victor, opened his spectral mouth, and wailed noiselessly before rising into the air and taking flight.
A shadowy, purple-black tentacle snapped out and caught the spirit around the ankle. It thrashed, pulling hard, only for one of its spectral arms to be caught in a clinging web. Victor grinned, approaching the spirit. “Thought you’d fly off to a phylactery? Do you have another vessel ready and waiting? I guess you would, wouldn’t you?” Victor inhaled sharply, filling his lungs to bursting, then he blasted the titanic spirit with a wash of Abyssal Magma.
His fiery, void-touched lava shattered the spirit, ripping it apart. Victor thought, perhaps, some of it escaped through the veil, possibly on its way to the next life, but he wasn’t sure; it honestly looked like he’d utterly destroyed it. He wondered about that; was tying one's spirit to a phylactery dangerous? Did it leave the spirit vulnerable?
“I’ll have to ask Arona about that,” he muttered, looking down at the inert skeleton and smiling as he saw the tremendous globes of shimmering, iridescent Energy gathering around it. He sat on the blasted ground, folding his legs beneath him, as he watched his reward coalesce. “Let’s see what kind of boost a real veil walker is going to give me.”

12.8 A Clash of Titans