Edited by:Flubbykin

Golem raised up from a kneeling position. Golem-my-ass.

It’s fucking mech! I know a mech when I see one! Seriously, what the hell is wrong with this world? It’s like badly written story reaching the point where the author is running out of ideas!

Priestess quickly moved the machine’s limbs a few times to check if everything was working correctly. I couldn’t not notice how fluent the moves were - such huge structures couldn’t move freely - the law of inertia - the heavier the body is the harder it is to change its current state. If it is lying dormant, forcing it into move will require more force and time than it is needed to do the same with a lighter body.

Then again, the structure appeared very complex. I saw reddish light of magic heating the structure up and dense clouds of steam as the inner mechanism tried cooling systems down.

She jumped from the pedestal, got up…

… and bolted with insane speed right onto me.

I lowered my body and head pointing a horn in her direction bracing for impact, yet as she was merely five or so meters away from me (which taking in consideration our sizes was quite a short distance), she stopped right on the spot and bolted to the side moving on the trajectory of a perfect circle. Crystals on golem shined before shooting a tempest of magical bolts which exploded upon contact with my skin.

Parts of my exoskeleton were sent flying in the air as they were painfully torn off my body, at the very same time, the explosions caused dust being cast into the air disturbing my sight. Ancient used the smokescreen attacking me from the side with a mad charge.

One of her golems limbs turned into the blade with which she tried to penetrate my body. Thanks to my instincts, I managed to turn my body to the side just in time to let the blade slip across my white armor.

I changed my footing putting one of my feet a little bit back and performing a quick punch using my whole upper body strength. But one again golem’s mobility and priestess reaction time let her completely avoid my attack.

Once again she gathered distance and unleashed another hail of magical bullets.

This time I covered myself with my left arm - these parts were covered in the denser layer of external bones, it still hurt like hell.

With the difference in our mobilities, she should just focus on avoiding direct combat and attack me from a distance, yet once again, after a few more shots she once again charged.

Why? Was it overheating her systems? Did she need some time to recharge? Or was she merely trying out a new piece of equipment? If it’s the last case and I would attack her head-on thinking she is defenseless… that could be my end. How many times I won only because I let my enemy believe he learned my pattern? Let’s not get too impatient.

This time seeing perfectly from which angle she is attacking I decided not to avoid, but to counter her attacks.

Again - a frontal pierce - I moved one step back and raised one of my hands from below trying to change the trajectory of the blade, but she didn’t let me just to grab her, no, she made a full pirouette mid-charge and slashed with her other blade-limb from my left.

… what the hell was that?

Almost effortlessly I grabbed her other arm far from the cutting edge and using her momentum i throw her into the opposite wall. Golem itself didn’t suffer much damage, but I simply knew that the girl inside got shaken quite a lot.

She may be a great tactician, strategist and engineer, but in actual close combat her she acted like a child with a wooden sword.

Indeed - she didn’t train the hand to hand combat. I doubt if she trained any combat at all, maybe some basic self-defense using different tools and weapons. I almost wanted to mock her. What was she thinking? Pirouettes, stomps, full swings… she wasn’t fighting, she was dancing - and, no. No war-dancer dancing.

She was just making a shitload of unnecessary moves which left her defense wide open.

I didn’t want to give her time to regain her balance, so I pounced on her landing on the back of the colossal machine. I used my claws on my upper arms and legs to “attach” myself to the golem while I kept using my lower set of arms to attack its weaker points - welding spots which were keeping metal plates together, I managed to dent it quite a lot here and there, even damaged some inner systems as from a crack a huge stream of steam and sparkles started escaping.

Yet, crystals on its back shined once again. I thought I would manage to jump away in the very last moment, yet this time it didn’t shot bullets, but beams of light.

One of such beams pierced through my shoulder and collarbone leaving an open hole in my body. Pain flooded my mind. It wasn’t that bad in terms of pure pain, yet it clouded my mind with hatred. Once again I forgot all my plans and strategies. It happened a lot during this combat, must be effect of “Wrath” and venom, which greatly reduced my mental capabilities.

I cursed under my nose.

My body was moving more or less on its own, following my general intentions, as if controlled by somebody else.

I looked at my wound. The heat of a beam scorched my flesh. In regular combat, such an occurrence would be a bliss, as it didn’t let the wounded bleed out, unfortunately, it slowed down my regeneration. something that would be a matter of seconds, maybe a minute or two to completely heal would now require much more time, maybe even hours leaving me with one inefficient arm…

Priestess used that time to regain her footing.

“You shouldn’t have entered this machine, ancient-one. Your only advantage over me was your leadership. Yet, as you are not a fighter it would be better if you used that machine as a drone. No matter how strong this machine is, it is limited to the abilities of its pilot.” “You are speaking some big words for someone with a hole in his body.”

A voice slightly disturbed by machine echoed across the room.

“This is not a wound. It’s a lesson. Opportunity lost.”

I wasn’t bluffing. In the end, she was just a novice that cast aside her only handicap.

I faced her frontally, legs wide, palms stretched close to the body.

“Are you… provoking me?”

To her, it appeared as if my stance was full of openings, in reality, it was quite the opposite - I had perfectly balanced footing and my arms were covering every possible blindspot while being just close enough to react to every direct hit.

Yet, there was more to it, something that I hid with my whole body.

She charged, once again. From behind my back, I picked one of the sickles of colossal insect that I tore off as I was previously fighting with it.

She raised both of her hand-blades preparing to pierce through me. I blocked the atack with my opened palms. Exoskeleton on my hands blocked the attack for a split of a second, cracked, and broke. Blades pierced through my hands yet I kept pushing onward letting needle-like swords pierce further and further enlarging the wounds. Then, I closed my palms trapping her in a deadly embrace. With my spare arm holding the limb of templar I slashed across the golem’s corpus. Again, again and again.

Pieces of black armor were sent flying, quite a few red crystals cracked sending clouds of steam. She tried escaping my grasp, one my hands was vertically cut open releasing one of the blades, the other one was holding tight.

I dropped the blade and dug my claws in a crack in the armor. Her freed arm was madly slashing and piercing, I kept blocking her strikes with my already damaged hand.

“Open… Sesame…” I growled in a low voice while forcing metal plates apart.

The last piece of armor was thrown to the side revealing priestess inside. I lowered my head facing her. Much to my surprise, she wasn't scared. Even more, the grimace of determination was covering her whole face - pure focus.

I opened my mouth and roared showing all my teeth. I was about to bite her body in half, yet, because of my now stretched mouth, I couldn’t see her attack.

Crystals shined again - yet not those of golem - the one on her suit.

A powerful explosion tore my jaw away. The noise of explosion turns into deafening whizzing sound in my ears.

I took a few steps back and collapsed on the ground. Her golem once again got up and started approaching me. It was highly damaged too - it couldn’t walk perfectly straight, dragging one of its legs behind.

Fuck. FUCK! Not while being so close! With victory just within my reach…

… I will not end as some fucking lab-experiment… I will not…

Flashbacks of my previous life momentarily covered my vision.

I saw a hospital bed and me lying atop of it, bound to it with belts. Back then, I was in a coma for a few days. They tied me to bed so I wouldn’t pull off drips attached to my body. I remembered waking up, I remembered helplessness, drugged, not being able to move my body except my fingers.

I remembered the panic. The breathing-helping device forced into my lungs, choking me and not letting me die at the same time.

I remembered how I was crying in my mind begging someone to end that suffering, even if it meant killing me.

Back then, I was weak. I was a child lost in the dark.

Back then, I promised myself to never be this weak again. This pathetic. I will NOT end up tied to another bed. That I would never again be afraid of the dark.

My lower jaw already started regrowing causing an extremely annoying itching sensation as a new bone was growing, replacing damaged shards of my mouth.

And then, crawling and bleeding in dirt, I noticed her. The girl about who I already managed to forget in the heat of battle.

Blanka was standing in front of me, she had to hide away when the last of the monster fell dead and giants took over the battlefield. She was looking at me with fear, disgust, but also compassion plastered on her face.

That was my chance. SHE was my chance. Though… can I trust her? Can she trust me?

In her eyes, I was just another monster. It’s in her best interest to let us kill each other.

… but I had no other choice. I couldn’t keep up with regeneration, especially now, as the mana-flow in my body was disturbed. I stretched my damaged hand in her direction and moved soundlessly my mouth, or at least with the bloody pulp that was placed all over my face.

I said, though no word was spoken.

She hesitated.

In the meantime, the golem managed to close the distance. It raised one of its blades and pierced the ground on which I was lying. I had to roll to the side, she repeated the action, and so did I.

She corrected her position and lift her arm for the third time.

I raised one of my feet and kicked her away. At this point, it was just a desperate struggle on my part.

I managed to kneel up, then raised. And on the tip of my tail I felt something, or should I say - someone.

All on this one attack Putting all strength I could muster I charged onward, close to the ground as if aiming for the legs of the collossolous, Priestess instinctively lowered her arms focusing me, leaving her corpus unprotected.

Using my tail as makeshift catapult I sent Blanka flying above me. I collided with the golem, occupying its body and weapons completely securing Blanka’s landing. Still flying she raised her blade above her head preparing herself to strike, ancient couldn’t react on time.

Wariorre’s blade landed perfectly - not on the golem’s pilot, but on the huge crystal, she was sitting on.

It cracked, sparkled and exploded. In very last second I managed to catch Blanka, bring her closer to my body and turn my back toward the golem protecting her from the impact.

Then, the whole chamber became completely white.

Things that happened next I can hardly remember. I was feeling like a drunk-head. I was laying on the ground, above me, I saw Blanka’s face. Her mouth was moving, though I couldn’t hear the words. I could read from her lips’ movements, yet my brain was acting… slow. I wanted to just roll to the other side and fall asleep, actually, that’s what I was about to do, yet seeing my action Blanka slapped my face.

Once again, I almost didn’t feel anything.

And then a beam of red light throw Blanka away.

This time, above me, the ancient appread. Her armor was damaged, the steam of blood was lazily dripping from the corner of her mouth, one of her arms was hanging from her side as if numb. No, on closer inspection, one of her joints was hanging much lower than it was supposed to. Dislocated? No, it looked cut off, hanging on the armor alone.

Why was she so expressionless? It was almost driving me crazy. Say something! Yell at me! Scream! Be in pain or extasy!

Nothing. Her expression was like that on the golem. Cold, sophisticated - dead inside.

I noticed that I morphed back to my human vessel. Apparently, my body did that on its own. Clever move, by doing so it detached damaged and burning exoskeleton reducing the damage taken. Neat, I didn’t know I could do that.

Though a hole in my shoulder remained.

~ Zariel. Wake up. Get yourself together! You hear me?! Get the fuck up shithead! I am almost done! The blood you spilled! The chaos you caused! Do you have any idea how much magic I stored!? I need just few more drop of blood! Few more ounces of suffering! FOR FUCK SAKE MAKE HER BLEED! JUST A LITTLE! SCRATCH HER! BITE HER! TAKE HER VIRGINITY FOR FUCK SAKE DO SOMETHING!

So noisy…

Priestess made a gesture with a gauntlet located on her healthy hand. Some kind of magical bonds appeared out of nowhere, binding me and started rising up. I was facing her. Slowly, my senses started returning to me, just enough to make me realize what kind of shit I have just stepped in.

Few more drops of blood, you say?

I was “standing” very close to her, in one more act of desperation I tried to bite her neck. She made a step back, as if annoyed, and hit me in the face.

She landed her blow perfectly on my nose, causing me to bleed a little bit more.

The stream dripped down my lip, chin stopped there, formed a single drop and fell on the ground.

At the moment it touched the floor, it vaporized.

And then, my mind went blank, as if someone had turned a switch in my head off.

At the moment blood fell off his face, his eyes turned completely black. No pupils, no iris, just one pure ocean of darkness, the one you could sink in.

A black book covered in chains appeared between him and the ancient, the shackles twisted, broke and fell down. Grimoire opened up and started quickly flipping pages, till it opened on one, perfectly blank page. Suddenly, words started appearing as if written with an invisible pen. The words were red like blood and black like suffering.

And Zariel, though he was clearly unconscious, opened his mouth and started singing, in an unnaturally deep voice that was clearly not his.

“As at the beginning, so in the end,

The black havens shall cover the earth,

There can be no creation,

Where the Evil lies.

So rise from the slumber,

Grown tall and wide,

The unspoken madness where the shadows fall.

For as it was proclaimed, when the sun would die,

The day would come when he would be born.

With hatred, with hunger and boiling blood.

His wings so splendidly Shall cover the world,

And wait for the final hour,

When humans devilry,

Forever shall die.

Starting our revelry,

Till that hour shall ring,

We shall stand our ground

Till branches would grow.

So we could too rise,

And fight till the end,

Singing our Prayers,

Till the moon would cry.

Calling old heirs.

Oh, tree-of-all,

Feasting on the sinners,

In hall of forgotten,

Chambers of inners,

Rise from the bottomless pit of abyss.

The endless darkness where death is bliss.

Spread your branches, spread your roots,

Embrace this world in your selfless hug.

For the hour is coming - of darkness and rage.

That shall cleanse this world like a breathless plague…”

Words paralyzed every living being around. They couldn’t move, could barely breathe. What Zariel called was magic so ancient that no-magic. A prophecy of the void, the words of forgotten scrolls, the promise of end and the first teachings that gods gave to their believers, yet they decided not to write it down, for they were dreadful enough to cause panic in the heart of everyone who would dare to hear them - the words that negate their existences.

The song kept on lasting more and more, and every single word was enough to make grown people cry.

Magician one last time raised his arms to the sky

“So it was told,

Your creation - a certainty that we have sworn to follow,

Arise, oh all-tree, arise from the void,

Come out with your mightiness that splits even gods!” You succeed casting [Growth of Black Tree of World] spell