Iskander
The climb of the mill became a ritual. Hand over hand, fingers finding purchase in the rough-hewn stone of the mill tower, legs driving with divine power, breath coming in controlled bursts despite the exertion.
Up, grab the lip, haul myself onto the roof. The vast chamber stretched below, bathed in the warm, golden light of the Vivum orbs already secured, a stark contrast to the consuming darkness beyond the spiral door.
Each climb felt like a prayer, a defiance against the lurking horror. Then the leap: crouching low, muscles coiling like springs wound to breaking, eyes fixed on the next pulsing orb hovering impossibly high.
Launching upwards, the air rushing past, the world tilting, fingers straining, stretching, brushing cool crystal—grasping! The satisfying weight settling into my hand, the immediate, gentle descent as the orb seemed to accept my touch, shrinking from a head-sized globe to a fist-sized sphere of condensed sunlight, warm and humming with life-force.
Ten times I repeated this sacred, terrifying yet thrilling dance. Ten orbs of captured Vivum were under my arm, radiating a soft, golden luminescence that bathed me, seeped into my skin, a comforting, energizing hum resonating with the latent aether within my own stolen flesh.
Ten stolen little suns.
"What is your plan, Child?" Sylvia's voice was a low murmur beside me, laced with maternal anxiety that cut through the hum. Her spectral form seemed to draw closer, her lavender eyes wide and worried in the orb-light.
"You have a plan, right? Beyond… punching?"
"Of course I do, Dragon Mama," I grinned, the expression fierce and reckless in the golden glow. The knuckledusters scraped against the orb I held.
"First, I turn the Office Zone into my territory. I place these," I hefted the orbs, "at key intersections. Corridor to the Mill Chapter? Orb. Halfway to the Shell Room? Orb. Creating pockets of light, safe zones where that darkness-dweller hates to tread."
"Then," my grin widened, bordering on feral, "I keep one with me. And when I get close enough… I shove it right down its disgusting throat!"
Sylvia sighed, a sound like wind through ancient, sorrowful trees. "Child… a weakness to light doesn't equate to fatal vulnerability. Discomfort, disdain, perhaps pain… but not death. This 'Thing', as you name it, is a predator honed by the Relictombs, steeped in aether for millennia. Light might irritate it, slow it, but it won't kill it."
"Then I punch it," I declared, flexing my knuckledustered hand. The crude metal pens gleamed wickedly. "Repeatedly. With extreme prejudice. I just need it to stay put long enough for me to do the shoving and the punching."
"Do you even know how to fight?" Sylvia asked, her tone softening with a mixture of exasperation and fondness. She already knew the answer. My life had been one of observation, not action.
"No," I admitted freely, the reckless fire undimmed. "Absolutely not. But I know pain. I know desperation. And I know how to hit hard. I'll improvise."
"Please," her voice dropped to a whisper thick with concern, "be careful, Iskander. We are deep, impossibly deep, within the Relictombs. Agrona's Ascenders, seasoned hunters of these tombs, have likely never breached a zone like this. The rules here… they are written in blood and shadow."
"Sure thing, Sylvia," I said, the lightness belying the gravity settling in my gut. The warmth of the orbs was comforting, almost like sustenance, but a deeper strain was making itself known.
A hollowness beneath my ribs, a faint tremor in my hands that wasn't fear. Food. Water. My magnificent new body wasn't infinite. It needed fuel, fuel I couldn't draw from aether alone… not yet at least. The orbs hummed against my skin, a tantalizing promise just out of reach.
Stepping back through the spiral door into the Office Zone corridor felt like diving into an icy pool after basking in sunlight. The golden glow from my armful of orbs pushed back the darkness only a few feet, creating a small, mobile sanctuary around me.
I paused, directing the light upwards. For the first time, I could truly see the impossible height. The walls soared upwards, converging in a dizzying perspective that defied logic—hundreds of feet? More? The pearlescent material seemed to twist the eye, making distance and scale fluid, unsettling.
Methodically, I began placing my stolen suns. One nestled in the recess where the corridor met the Mill Chapter's spiral door, its light spilling onto the threshold.
Another placed strategically halfway back towards the Shell Room, a beacon in the long stretch. I was positioning the third near the junction facing the unexplored corridor—the one where The Thing had first appeared—when the sound tore through the silence.
Not the insectile drone. A screech. Raw, furious, vibrating the very air. It came from the left, echoing down the corridor I'd just illuminated near the Mill door. My blood turned to ice, then ignited. It found me. Good.
I carefully placed the remaining orbs I wasn't holding on the floor behind me, their collective glow brightening the junction. Then I picked up one sphere, its warm weight solid and reassuring in my knuckledustered hand.
I turned, planting my feet, facing the direction of the screech. The golden light spilled down the corridor, illuminating the polished floor, the scattered debris… and then, the eyes.
They ignited in the darkness beyond my light's reach. Twin furnaces of smoldering crimson, blazing with unmistakable fury—and was that a flicker of something else? Fear? Hatred of the light? They fixed on me, burning with predatory intent.
"Come on, beast!" I yelled, my voice echoing defiantly. "Dinner's served!"
I hurled the Life-lantern. It flew, a comet of captured sunlight, trailing golden radiance. The corridor flooded with light as it arced through the air, finally revealing The Thing in its full, horrifying glory.
Jet-black, chitinous plates absorbing the light rather than reflecting it, giving it the appearance of solidified void. Its oblong head swiveled, the rows of crystalline fangs glinting wetly. As the orb neared, it didn't roar. It moved.
With terrifying speed and impossible agility, it launched itself upwards. Not away, but onto the ceiling. Its massive claws dug into the seamless material with a screech of tortured stone, its thick, plated tail lashing for balance like a grotesque fifth limb.
It clung there, a monstrous spider of shadow and hate, crimson eyes glaring down from its high perch, well out of reach of the orb that shattered harmlessly against the floor where it had stood. The light now clearly revealed its domain—the entire vertical plane was its battleground.
Before I could react, the mace-tongue snapped out. Not a probing strike. A killing blow aimed directly at my skull. Ruthless. Efficient. But now I had sight. The golden light from the orbs behind me banished the disorienting shadows.
I saw the blur of spiked chain, the contraction of the throat sac. I threw myself sideways, not gracefully, but effectively. The tongue-mace slammed into the floor where I'd stood, cracking the pearlescent tiles like eggshells, sending shards flying.
"Sylvia! Any tips?!" I yelled, scrambling back, keeping the Thing in sight as it scuttled sideways on the ceiling, its movements unnervingly fluid for its size. "It won't come down!"
"Use the environment, Child!" Her voice was tight with urgency. "It is your only ally! Think!"
Environment. Tables. Chairs. Debris. The Thing hissed, a sound like steam escaping a ruptured boiler, and the tongue retracted with terrifying speed, coiling back.
Crimson eyes tracked me. It scuttled further along the ceiling, positioning itself for another strike, trying to flank me, to get me to turn my back. It was playing a deadly game of cat and mouse, and I was the mouse under the gaze of a starved feline the size of a truck.
The tongue lashed out again. I ducked behind an overturned table, the spiked mace whistling over my head and embedding itself in the wall with a sickening thunk. It retracted, leaving cracks radiating from the point of impact. Another strike came low. I leaped backwards, landing hard, the impact jarring my knees.
The tongue slammed where my legs had been. It was relentless, probing, testing my reflexes, waiting for a mistake. The crushing aetheric pressure I'd felt before was absent—Sylvia was right. It needed the pure, consuming darkness to manifest that horror. Here, in the light, it relied on speed, reach, and brute force. I could breathe, even if I was running for my life.
Stairway. The idea crystallized amidst the chaos. I needed to get it off the ceiling. Bring it down to my level. I started moving, not away, but towards clusters of furniture, my movements a desperate dance. The Thing struck again.
I saw the telltale ripple in its throat, the slight coiling of the tongue. I pivoted hard, using a low table as a slide, skidding beneath it as the tongue-mace shattered the space I'd occupied a split-second before. Splinters rained down. I was up and moving before it retracted, grabbing a heavy, alien-looking chair.
As the tongue snapped out once more, aiming for my center mass, I didn't dodge. I spun, putting all the torque of my new body into the movement, and hurled the chair upwards, not at The Thing, but into the path of the tongue.
CRUNCH!
The chair exploded into fragments of strange metal and composite material. But it worked. The tongue-mace impacted the chair, its trajectory deflected, the spikes grating uselessly against the debris. The Thing shrieked in frustrated fury.
I used the moment. I grabbed another chair, heavier, more solid. Another table. I dragged, shoved, piled. My improvised stairway began to take shape near the junction, bathed in the light of my placed orbs. The Thing watched, scuttling agitatedly, its crimson eyes blazing.
It understood. It saw my intent. Another tongue strike, blindingly fast. I was ready, diving sideways behind my growing pile, the mace slamming into the floor beside me, cracking tiles. I grabbed a splintered table leg, hurling it upwards like a javelin.
It clattered harmlessly off its armored flank, but it forced it to flinch, buying me precious seconds.
Sweat stung my eyes, mixing with dust and the metallic tang of fear. My breath came in ragged gasps, but beneath the exhaustion, beneath the terror of each near-miss, a fierce, undeniable joy burned.
This wasn't the slow decay of my past life. This was living! Raw, desperate, exhilarating! Every dodge, every frantic scramble, every defiant throw was a middle finger to the universe that had caged me. I was moving, fighting, surviving!
Finally, my stairway was complete: a precarious ziggurat of overturned tables, shattered chairs, and piled debris, rising nearly fifteen feet towards the impossibly high ceiling. It looked like the lair of a madman. It was my battlefield.
The Thing saw my perch. It saw the challenge. With a guttural sound like rocks grinding together, it flowed across the ceiling directly above me, blotting out the light from the orbs below. Its shadow fell over me, cold and suffocating. It lowered its head, those furnace eyes fixed on mine, the mace-tongue coiling back like a viper ready to strike.
Perfect.
I stood atop my rickety tower, one Life-lantern clutched tightly in my knuckledustered fist, the golden light reflecting in my violet eyes. I grinned up at the nightmare.
"Come and get me!"
The tongue snapped out. A killing blow aimed to pulp my head. Time slowed. I saw the individual barbs on the chain, the glint of saliva on crystalline fangs.
Instead of dodging, I did the unthinkable. I stepped into it.
With a roar ripped from the depths of my being, I threw my left arm up, wrapped in leather and spiked metal. Not to block, but to grab. My knuckledustered hand closed around the thick, slimy base of the tongue-mace, just behind the spiked head. The impact slammed through my arm, threatening to dislocate my shoulder.
The barbs tore through the leather straps, scraped against the metal pens, bit into my flesh beneath. Agony screamed up my arm, but I held on, anchoring myself with every ounce of strength.
The Thing shrieked, a sound of pure outrage and surprise. It instinctively retracted its tongue with terrifying force, trying to yank me off my perch or rip my arm off.
I rode the pull, letting it lift me momentarily, using its own strength. In that suspended moment, dangling from its grotesque appendage, I swung my right arm—the one holding the Life-lantern. Not at its body, but at the rope I'd pre-glued to the orb's surface. I slammed the glued end against the Thing's cylindrical head, right between its burning eyes.
THWACK!
The glue held instantly. The golden orb stuck fast to its chitinous forehead like a bizarre, glowing barnacle. The Thing recoiled violently, shaking its massive head, trying to dislodge the sudden, burning light stuck to its face. Its shriek turned piercing, pained.
The retraction of its tongue faltered. I dropped back onto my pile, my left arm screaming, blood welling from torn leather and flesh.
NOW!
Ignoring the agony, fueled by adrenaline and sheer, desperate will, I leaped upwards from the top of my pile, using every ounce of power in my legs. Not away. Towards the panicking horror. My hands, one bleeding, one still clutching nothing, reached for its neck—a thick column of armored shadow beneath the oblong head.
My fingers, strengthened by fragmented divinity, found purchase on the chitinous plates. I gripped with the strength of a lifetime of pent-up fury and the raw power of my new body. I swung my legs up, wrapping them around its torso, anchoring myself like a limpet on a monstrous ship.
"GET DOWN HERE!" I bellowed, and then I pulled. Not just with my arms. I arched my back, driving with my legs, pouring every iota of strength, every ounce of defiance, every memory of helplessness into one catastrophic effort to uproot this abomination from its perch.
For a heart-stopping second, it resisted. Its claws held fast to the ceiling. Its tail thrashed wildly. Then, with a sound of tearing stone and a bellow of pure rage, it came loose. We fell.
And then the pressure hit.
Not darkness. Pure, crushing aether. It slammed down on me like a mountain falling from the sky. It wasn't gravity; it was the weight of the void given form, concentrated malevolence.
It crushed my lungs, flattened my will, threatened to snap my spine. Agony, deeper than the torn flesh on my arm, exploded through every cell. I screamed, a raw, animal sound ripped from my throat. The world blurred. My grip faltered.
NO! The denial was fire in my veins. Not now! Not after this! Through the blinding pain, through the crushing pressure trying to force me into submission, I saw the cracks.
The impact of the Life-lantern glued to its forehead had fractured the thick chitin around its eyes. Beneath, I glimpsed softer, vulnerable tissue.
I let go with my legs, letting my body swing wildly by my weakening grip on its neck. I drew back my right fist, the knuckledusters gleaming, slick with my own blood. With a guttural roar that tasted of copper, I drove it forward with every shred of strength left in my screaming body.
CRUNCH!
The reinforced pens, backed by demigod muscle and indomitable will, punched through the fractured chitin. I felt the sickening give of softer tissue beneath. The Thing's shriek reached an ear-splitting crescendo. Crimson ichor, thick and foul-smelling, sprayed across my face.
"TAKE THIS!" I screamed, pulling my fist back, ignoring the shards of chitin embedded in my knuckles, the burning agony in my shoulder, the crushing weight trying to flatten me. I punched again.
CRACK! Another fracture spread. Another spray of ichor.
"ONE MORE!" I was sobbing now, tears of pain and fury mixing with the blood and gore on my face. I punched.
SHLICK! My fist sank deeper. The crimson eye on that side winked out, ruptured, replaced by a fountain of viscous darkness.
"BEGONE!" The fourth punch was a hammer blow. The oblong skull deformed inward around my fist. I felt something vital give way deep inside its head.
We hit the floor.
The impact was cataclysmic. The piled furniture beneath us exploded into splinters. Stone tiles shattered. The aetheric pressure vanished instantly, replaced by the brutal shock of landing.
I landed on The Thing, my fist still buried in its ruined eye socket. It landed beneath me with a sound like a mountain collapsing. The force hurled me clear, tumbling across the shattered floor like a broken doll.
Pain. Infinite, all-consuming pain. It wasn't localized; it was a universe of agony exploding from every point of contact, every strained muscle, every torn ligament, every shattered bone I knew must be there.
My left arm was a mess of shredded leather, embedded metal, and deep, bleeding gouges from the tongue's barbs. My right hand was a pulped ruin inside the knuckleduster, sticky with ichor and my own blood.
I felt sharp shards in my back, my legs screamed, and my ribs felt like they'd been used as anvils. Blood filled my mouth, hot and metallic. I retched, vomiting a stream of crimson onto the cracked tiles beside me. The world swam, dark spots dancing at the edges of the golden light.
The Thing wasn't moving. Its massive form laid twisted amidst the wreckage, one crimson eye extinguished, the other dimming rapidly. The Life-lantern still glowed faintly, absurdly, glued to its cracked forehead. Its chest didn't rise. The insectile drone had ceased.
Victory. Bitter, brutal, purchased with my own flesh and blood. But victory.
"Child!" Sylvia's voice was a distant shriek, frayed with terror. "Please, Child! Answer me! Iskander! ISKANDER!"
I tried to speak. Only a wet, bubbling rasp emerged. I tried to move. Agony lanced through me, stealing my breath. But my eyes… my eyes focused. On the dying beast.
On the fading glow of the lantern stuck to its head. On the deep, dark energy swirling within its form, visible now only in its death throes, a well of raw aether finally exposed.
Beautiful… was this aether? No... but it must have contained loads of it.
With a groan that tore at my ruined throat, I pushed myself up onto my elbows. Agony screamed through my abdomen. I looked down. The Thing's scorpion-like tail, in its final death spasm, had lashed out one last time.
The hooked spike was buried deep in my lower abdomen, punching out through my back. I was impaled. Blood pulsed around the wound, dark and terrifyingly fast.
I had no time.
Ignoring the blinding pain, the encroaching darkness, the sheer impossibility of movement, I dragged myself forward. Inch by agonizing inch, leaving a slick trail of crimson, I crawled towards The Thing's massive head
Its remaining eye was glassy, fixed on nothing. I reached up with my mangled right hand, the knuckleduster hanging by shreds of leather. I fumbled at the Life-lantern still glued to its forehead. The glue held fast. With a final, desperate wrench fueled by pure adrenaline, I ripped it free, taking a chunk of chitinous flesh with it.
I collapsed back onto the floor beside the beast's head, the warm, humming orb clutched to my chest with my ruined hand. Blood soaked my stolen tunic, pooled beneath me. Sylvia's voice was a fading echo, drowned by the roaring in my ears, the frantic, faltering drumbeat of my own heart.
Cassian's voice surfaced from a distant memory, calm and instructive, teaching anatomy to his bedridden brother. He taught me where the solar plexus was, where to place this new toy.
With the last vestige of my strength, my vision tunneling, I lifted the Life-lantern—this orb of Vivum aether, crafted by peaceful Ancient Mages to nurture life—slick with my blood and the Thing's ichor.
I placed it directly over my solar plexus, where the mana core should be, where Agrona had left only a void. The warm light pulsed against my skin and flesh, a counterpoint to the cold spreading from the tail-spike still impaling me.
"Hello…" I whispered, blood bubbling on my lips, a crazy, triumphant smile spreading across my broken face despite the agony, "...my new aether core."
I pressed down with the last of my will, forcing the orb against my skin, against the void within, as darkness rushed in to claim me. The smile remained, frozen in defiance.
The orb pulsed once, brightly, then dimmed as my hand fell away and my mind slipped away.
Come on aether, now do your thing.