RE: Monarch-Chapter 249: Fracture LIV
First I saw it, a shimmering presence at the edge of consciousness. Then I felt its need—a squeezing, wrenching, ever-present hunger that remained unsated, even as it fed. I watched it roam a distant, barren landscape, cold and desolate. It searched for sustenance, dragging itself on its belly, lacking both the power and knowledge required to compose a more appropriate, less humiliating form.
The power grew overwhelming. The desert sun beat down, sweltering, its heat intensifying until sweat slicked my skin and my lungs burned with each breath. All I could do was scream as my mana pathways widened in a way they hadn't since I'd first set foot in the sanctum. That feeling—the unrelenting sensation of being charged beyond capacity—escalated, accelerated, until the burgeoning desire to do something became impossible to ignore.
Somehow I existed in two places at once, seeing two different versions of reality. I stumbled backwards, the intricate chitinous detailing of my gauntlet lost as it glowed molten red. Every gem within it burst in a rapid staccato of tiny detonations, each one piercing the air with crystalline shrieks.
My panic grew. I'd taken on far more than I should have been able to manage. The gauntlet struggled with particularly powerful spells, and when used to catch something far beyond its innate capacity, it would discharge what it held in a destructive manner.
Rattled and blinded as I was, I remained dimly aware of the battle raging around me. The fetid stench of sewage mixed with the acrid smell of burnt stone and the metallic tang of blood. The clash of weapons and shouts of combatants echoed off the curved tunnel walls. Anywhere I aimed was highly likely to result in friendly fire.
Unless
I raised my trembling gauntlet, aiming my palm straight up toward the vaulted ceiling.
And released.
My vision narrowed as an impossibly bright golden beam, wide around as a wagon, erupted soundlessly from my palm. My hearing hollowed and muffled as something wet seeped from my ears. Stone and earth rained down, pelting my shoulders and neck, the debris striking like hailstones against my armor until a weighty piece of foundation collided with my skull.
It was a bad knock. I still remembered what I was doing and why, but my reasoning and resulting actions slowed infinitely, as though I moved through honey rather than air.
The core—I needed to grab the core and continue to drain it before it fled.
It pulsed violet before me, less vibrantly than before, easily within arm's reach. But my body refused to cooperate, to so much as raise my arm, even as I willed it to move.
Someone grabbed me from behind. Long fingers with dark nails dug into my shoulder, and the verdant warmth of life magic flooded through me, bringing with it the scent of spring leaves and fertile soil. A familiar voice hissed into my ear. "I've got you. Don't let up."
Still too stunned to respond, I reacted instinctively, grabbing for the descending core before it sunk too far into the dark mass. The slick, cold surface of it burned against my palm even as its power tore through me again. This torrent of energy warred with the healing magic coursing through my veins. My hearing returned just in time to pick up a distant, keening howl that must have been the lithid, a sound like steel dragged across stone.
"Who... is... your... master...?" I growled out, each word an effort that tasted of copper and ash.
Instead of a reaction, another memory overlapped my mind, scrambling my senses. The bars of a cage manifested, a thin shimmer between them like heat rising from summer stones. It still only cared about eating, but what it wanted to eat was more specific than before. Far above in the distant ceiling, a hatch opened with a rusty groan. A demon stared down at us, crouched beside the hatch. His bones themselves seemed to glow through his skin, making any distinctive feature difficult to make out. For the first time that I'd witnessed, the lithid felt something other than hunger or fear.
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Curiosity.
A distant pondering for who its contract holder was, what purpose they intended it to serve. It only lasted for a moment before the man disappeared, the hatch still open. An arm appeared over the hatch, the rest of the body following it as it was summarily shoved in. The corpse was unfortunately not a corpse—lapsing into screams as it struck the ground—
I raised my arm, barely diverting to the ceiling before the beam fired again. The concussion of it sent tremors through the stone beneath my feet. Still behind me, Maya stopped healing long enough to cast a convex aegis overhead, the translucent shield shimmering with emerald light as it deflected the debris. Chunks of stone and mortar clattered against it like rain on a tin roof.
"Who is your master?" I shouted again, my voice echoing across the damp chamber.
Instead of answering, the increasingly dim core was suddenly flung by its oily cradle, sailing in a wide arc towards a group of shadows tripping over each other, intending to catch it. Maya's hand left my back as she rushed forward, stolen darkness forming steps beneath her as she leapt up and outward, the blade she'd forged cracking out like a whip towards the fleeing core.
At first I thought she'd missed. It'd all happened so fast.
But when the core splashed into the sewage, one half after another, the sound like a stone dropping into mud, none of the shadows moved to seize it. They stood there impassively, shuddering, before the darkness fell away. No longer shrouded by the lithid, the shriveled corpses of countless nonhumans fell, some sinking into the sewage with soft plops, others collapsing on the walkway with hollow thuds. A stunned, exhausted cheer echoed across the sewer walls, the sound rippling through the tunnels like disturbed water.
It was finally over.
/////
By the grace of the-probably-dead-gods, my father was true to his word. He'd more than come through. More than half the Royal army was posted around every entrance and access point, and as soon as word spread that the hard work was done, we were under siege and drowning in help. 'Assistance' was a thinly guised excuse for every man and woman in the King's service to get a closer look at the monster they'd been apparently sleeping above for months, but we needed all the help we could get to catalogue the bodies.
"We found another one." A lieutenant from one of the many outside regiments signaled to me, his mouth drawn and grim, the flickering lantern light casting deep shadows across his face.
"Same as the others?" I asked.
"Aye," the man nodded. "Lined up beside each other. No sign of injuries, on the outside, at least. Just wasted away to nothing. Starved to death."
I nodded apologetically to the man I'd been speaking to prior to the interruption and followed the soldier down a nearby maintenance tunnel. The air here was stagnant, thick with the scent of mildew and decay. Our footsteps echoed softly against the stone, the only sound besides the occasional drip of water from the ceiling.
Same as the Lithid's other graves, the corpses were lined up beside each other. There wasn't much decay for how long they'd been down here. Given that, the non-combat members of the team believed they were being artificially kept on the precipice of death. Effectively farmed for their vitality.
It was a dark day.
With as much care as possible, the bodies were loaded into several carts narrow enough to navigate the walkways. Maya raised her arms, as she'd done for several such graves, and lifted the fallen gently into the vehicles that would transport them to their much belated resting place. I'd wondered if that was going to cause a problem, but to their credit, no one really looked at her twice. The magnitude of the event was simply too great for the average soldier to be distracted by an infernal using uncommon magic.
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As we followed the carts transporting the dead, the wooden wheels creaking against the uneven stone, I noticed a group of soldiers attempting to clear a caved-in tunnel that must have fallen during the chaos. A particularly large man worked alongside them. Despite the obvious stature, I didn't identify him right away, as the man rarely wore something as low-blooded as leathers outside the castle's training grounds. The man picked up a small boulder of debris, hefting it on his shoulder and carrying it over to a cart where waiting oxen would haul it out later in the day.
"Father?" I said, surprised. I thought he'd be waiting on the surface, relegating the recovery to lesser men.
"Boy." He eyed me and approached, looking me up and down. After a long silence, he wrinkled his nose. "Gods. You reek."
