Book 2: Chapter 17: Wyrm-Heart

  The beast howled again. Letting out a deep, soul-rattling sound with an accompanying shockwave that bent tree limbs around it. Alex stood his ground but the felt the howl stirring up the blood in his veins like a war drum beating in counter-tune with his heart. The runes that were etched across its spine flared with an angry red light, flames flickering and dying around its body before igniting once again. The well of aether pulsing from the den surged, twisting the very air.

  The whistle of Peter’s spear flying through the air sang first.

  He loosed the weapon from his hand with a bloom of glowing aether. The tip of his weapon shone with light, similar to Allie’s first spell. The spear flew high, not aimed at the beast, but just above its head. There was a flash and burst of pressure.

  It wasn’t meant to damage the wolf, just meant to be a signal for everyone else.

  Garret charged first. Boots pounding the earth, his shield crackling with raw kinetic force, he sprinted into the beast’s blind spot and swung. The slab of metal connected hard, one-two-three concussive strikes that rattled the Alpha’s ribs and sent splinters of bone flying from a cracked forelimb.

  “THAT’S FOR MY LIZARD BUDDIES, YOU SHAGGY BASTARD!”

  The beast turned, rage, fire, and blood leaking from its mouth. And lunged.

  There was nothing he could do, he was a Mortal Tier mage still. The wolf was too much in a one on one fight. Too fast, too angry, too powerful. But Garret didn’t die. Because Cole slammed into him with a shield wall just as the jaws closed in. The teeth scraped off enchanted metal with a shriek of friction. The beast reared back, stung.

  Only to be met by Henry, whose large halberd blade drove low, catching its weight and redirecting it sideways. The two held, muscles trembling, aether flaring bright.

  “Go!” Henry barked. “Move now!”

  Allie moved.

  A blast of light left her hand as she darted in, flashing the wolf’s eyes with a glaring illumination. At that same moment, Holly arrived just above the wolf’s head.

  Poised with her sword drawn above her head, hair billowing behind her, it looked as though she hung in space for a moment, and then her arms fell. The blade of her weapon sliced through fur and muscle, a crescent shape of glittering white aura flaring from the sword mid swing.

  A rain of blood fell as Holly landed on the ground.

  The wound was deep, but not at all fatal. It was the first real strike they had managed though the result was only a gash along it’s scalp behind the right ear. Nothing like the wound in its shoulder that the cheiftain had made.

  “We can hurt it, we can kill it!” Alex shouted over the battle, making sure no one got discouraged.

  A flurry of claws and teeth counter attacked as Holly back peddled. Everyone else dodged and dove away to get out of range, while Holly ducked a claw swipe, followed by a bite attempt and then was forced to block a second claw which sent her hurtling backwards into some rocks.

  “Allie, get to Holly.” he shouted, pointing to the crumbled form at the base of the stones.

  “Zach, cover. Kate, you're up.”

  A sudden bolt of shadowy energy sliced a straight path through the air, slamming dead-center into the head of the alpha wolf. Unlike Allie’s light flash, this energy didn’t stay stationary. It crawled along the beast’s face, and seemed to attack it’s eyes directly.

  The wolf roared, its flames rising suddenly.

  But that didn’t perturb Kate. She met the wolf’s flames with her own. The red-orange of her fire against the blueish purple of the wolf. Of course the sheer quality of the energy meant it was no real match. Even if Kate was Adept tier, the wolf was in the middle stage; the beast’s flame ate at Kate's with abandon, swallowing them.

  But it was instant, and it gave Kate just enough time to strike as well. Her blade rammed forward point first, striking the open wound Holly had left. A swirl of aether appeared at the tip and Kate struck. The energy tore and bit off the wolf’s flesh, leaving room for her to drive the point as deep as possible.

  Alex guessed this was a part of the Martial Style that she had bought in the dungeon. Kate had apparently purchased only two items, her new sword, and a fighting style. The results spoke for themselves.

  Kate pushed off from her attack, landing a couple dozen feet away. The gash Holly had created was now widened, exposing the skull beneath and the already marred surface of the bone from Kate’s sword.

  “Allie? How we doing?”

  “One second!” She called out from the rocks. She pressed her palm to Holly’s chest at her side, and who knew what kind of internal damage was done. Allie’s spell flared.

  “Martyr Transfer.”

  Light poured from her into Holly. The wound closed. And Her side split open in response.

  She gasped, nearly falling over. Cole was already there, catching her with one arm, pressing an alchemical salve into the wound with the other.

  “Nice work. You don’t get to martyr yourself alone though,” he muttered.

  Meanwhile, the Alpha reared up now, sigils spinning around its jaw, its mouth glowing dark in preparation of some kind of attack.

  “Pulse incoming!” Devon shouted, already kneeling. His fingers moved fast, drawing counter-runes into the dirt, flickering with borrowed energy that he extracted from a small crystal jar in his hand.

  “Disruptive shield… now.”

  The Alpha’s mouth released a compressed fiery pulse from its mouth. Alex saw it as similar to his [Flare] spell, but more advanced. The pulse shot outward quickly closing distance between them, then it suddenly shattered into static halfway through as it came in contact with the shield that Devon produced from his glyphs. The high-pitched whine of the wolf’s spell was cut and morphed into fizzing sparks that exploded backward into its own muzzle. It staggered from the effect, dazed.

  A silver blur streaked in—

  Holly was up again. She didn’t hesitate or wait. She landed on the beast’s snout and stabbed down. Right into its remaining good eye.

  The beast screamed and a blast of dark fire erupted outward as the runes on its spine flashed once more.

  Alex watched as Holly was flung out across the clearing and caught midair by Eric, who skidded back across the grass,his arms shaking from the force.

  Tom-Tom scampered from behind the shrine. “HEY DOGGIE—CATCH!”

  He flung a smoking vial.

  Boom!

  And then, silence. The world held its breath. The squad fell back, panting, bleeding, barely standing. All but one of them.

  Alex stepped forward. Just like the Chieftain had back in the ravine valley, he didn’t rush. He didn’t shout. He moved like a wave in an ocean, his movement slow and inevitable. His upper armor was already removed and tossed aside, revealing Alex's bare chest. Leaving only the bracers on his arms, his pants and his boots were all that separated him from the monster they had come to kill.

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  The Alpha snarled as it staggered sideways a moment before righting itself. It sniffed at the air, still blinded, and turned toward him.

  And he struck outward, blue-black aether ignited around his arms, as he moved into a martial stance. His fist moved first, slamming into the foreleg of the wolf. The impact jarred the animal, making it flinch as the blue-black aether of Alex’s martial style wormed its way inside.

  He followed up with a rapid rain of blows. Aimed at the same leg, and the underside of the wolf’s jaw. Fist, kicks, elbows and more, Alex flowed through attack after attack, the stances of the Demon Asura Style moving across his body like water over oil. Machine gun of impacts rocketed the clearing and every blow injected the caustic aether of his [Burning Strike] passive.

  The wolf took it all, flinching slightly under each hit, but not buckling, never falling. And as he felt his rhythm change a bit, his breath catching from the exertion, that’s when the wolf struck back.

  A claw swipe, a snap of teeth, the sudden gout of blue-purple flames licking across his back. His stances changed from offensive, to defensive and it was his turn to endure an onslaught. He dodged as much as he could, and blocked the rest. Using his bracers to their fullest as he began draining the aether in the gems as he cast and recast his [Shield] like the integrity between his head and his shoulders depended on it, because it did.

  He struck back, pushing the advantage as the wolf waned, and then retreated when it countered. A flurry of strikes and blocks. Dodges and counters. Limbs, fist, teeth, claws, flames and flickering shield flew about in a torrential hurricane of battle.

  It was something Alex knew he wouldn’t be able to manage with the wolf at full strength. At peak condition, Alex would be swatted away just as Holly had, just as he had been when the pack attacked the kobold settlement.

  Now though, thanks to the sacrifice of the Adept kobold warriors, the Chieftain, and his own teammates, the wolf was not at its peak. Far from it. And because of that, Alex was able to fight toe-to-toe with a beast a stage higher than himself in the Adept Tier.

  The aether contained in the gems was beginning to wane, and while he still had all the energy in his body, Alex knew it was time to try to finish this. A prolonged battle didn’t favor him. Taking advantage of the wolf’s weakened state was the only way they could hope to win against the thing in the first place.

  He began forming his aether into the spell pattern for his newest spell. If he stopped it’s movement for a moment, he could move in for the kill.

  The break in his rhythm was like a beacon for the wolf. It noticed him preparing something, and it lunged. Suddenly, he felt the beast’s strength surge, the runes along its pine increasing in intensity by the moment.

  Fuck, that’s not good!

  He changed the flow of his aether immediately. His [Flare] spell erupted from his body at full power just as the wolf’s mouth released a pulse of compressed purple flames.

  Exactly as he had surmised, the wolf’s attack was superior. His spells’ energy pushed against the flames for a bare moment, and then collapsed. The aether of his spell was consumed by the inferno that rushed at him. He only had time to cover his eyes to protect them from the flames before the attack washed over him entirely.

  It felt far more solid than he imagined. The condensed heat was more shock wave than fire, slamming into his body with an agonized crunch. Suddenly, he was airborne, and then just as quickly, he was slammed against the stone cliff save outside the clearing.

  Joints were pulled from the sockets. His left leg snapped at the shin, His skull cracked against the stone, and he somehow felt as a rib broke free and punctured his lung.

  He fell to a heap as blood splattered over the stones where collided, where he landed, and everything in between.

  “Alex!”

  “Alex?”

  “Meatsack?”

  His entire body burned, arm unmovable, leg useless. His breath was caught somewhere between his asshole and his elbow. Blood obscured his vision, and his hearing rang like he’d stepped on a land mine. Actually, that might have been better.

  As he tried to get himself to stand, he found he wasn’t even able to move his limbs correctly. His breath still not able to come to him. Dizzy, he was so dizzy.

  Is my body normally this cold?

  Then, without warning, a wave of pressure assaulted his soul space. The pressure didn’t from somewhere outside, but from within.

  He looked inward, trying to find the source of the pressure, trying to figure out what was happening in his spirit. In the deepest reaches of his soulspace, where the mists never shifted, giving the impression of an endless void, reality tightened. Threads of purple-blue light pulsed through the gloom and rushed towards the center, like veins that were trying to carry blood again after centuries of atrophy.

  The heart, floating above the remaining fragments of his shattered core at its center, began to stir. While normally dormant from what Alex could gather, it suddenly glowed like a forge stoked to life. The muscle and scales of the organ emitting a strong light. It beat once, slow and thunderous. Then it beat again, faster, louder, stronger.

  A roar, low and bitter, echoed across the soulspace like a memory. Not Alex’s, it belonged to something else.

  “We. Do. Not. Kneel.”

  Aether exploded outward as the heart cracked wide open, spilling molten blue-purple aether and liquid rage into the void of his soul. Alex screamed without sound as it coiled around his consciousness like a vengeful serpent, talons of aether clawing into his soul gate, forcing its way through and flooding his body.

  His body arched out in reality, the air around him vibrating with a heatless distortion. Blood pooled beneath him but it began to sizzle with an audible hiss. Steam wafted off the ground. His skin, deathly pale a second ago, became flushed as if fire was coursing just beneath the surface.

  Then came the light.

  His veins pulsed, bulging purple through his skin. They started at his heart and spread out in ever direction to each of his limbs, and up his neck. A low hum built in the mind, seemingly rising in pitch over the course of a few seconds. The edges of his eyes burned in agony, then his pupils narrowed , constricting into serpentine slits, golden irises glowing through the blood and grime.

  His broken leg twitched violently then locked into place with a sound like cracking stone. His skin scaled over by dark blue patches edged in ember-bright purple lines. Cracks split across his arms as jagged draconic scales emerged, rough and raw like freshly formed obsidian. He could move his body again, not because it was healed, but because the scales forged over it let him support his weight despite the agony he still felt.

  The wolf hesitated. And then Alex stood.

  “A. Dragon. Rises.” He didn’t know why he knew the words, he just did. And they fell from his lips without thought.

  He was unsteady at first, just for a moment. Then figured out the feeling his body beneath the scales, and he stood firm, shoulders squared, spine straight. Flames curled from his fingertips, not from any spellwork, but from sheer internal pressure of the aether leaking out through his pores.

  “You wanted to kill me?” His voice was hoarse. A growl layered with his own voice beneath the words. “You should’ve done it right.”

  A second heartbeat thundered within his own in his chest, the second heart was not of blood but of fury. The [Wyrmblood Rageheart] had awakened.

  He wasted no time, didn’t play with his new body, or practice any new powers. His eyes narrowed on the wolf in front of him, his slitted pupils closing in razor sharp. His knees bent, and he lunged forward, the stone cracked underfoot from the movement.

  Middle stage Adept Tier beast or not, he was not going to let this beast retaliate this time.

  Aether coiled around his arms and his back as he shrank the distance between them. Every muscle screamed, his injuries still present, and now the pressure on his body increased once again. His breath, whatever was left of it, left him in a low growl.

  Aether gathered in the form a large demonic arm from his back. Building, pulsating muscles of blue-black energy like coiled roots matter together. The same aether formed ethereal horn on his head, sprouting a couple inches from his skin. All of these things he ignored.

  He ducked under a wild swing from the wolf as he landed in front it, planted his foot, and… he punched.

  The strike landed beneath the beast’s ribs, where the runes spiraled out from its core. Aether surged from his knuckles like a collapsing star. The demonic arm at his back followed his own like a shadow of death, and struck the wolf along with Alex.

  The runes on along its body and spine all cracked at once. The light died. The Alpha collapsed with a final, broken exhale.

  Alex stood there, chest heaving, eyes growing dim.

  He dropped to one knee, sweating, a hand pressed against his side then collapsed over on the ground as the ethereal energy dissipated around his body. The scales receded away, the heartbeat that beat with own retreated back to his soulspace.

  He was still alive. Barely.

  The others surrounded him. There were no cheers. No roars of victory as he landed the final blow and the beast died. Just breath, and blood, and worry. Quiet.

  But they were together, they had lived. And the beast was dead.

  ***