Lokir’s POV

I grunted in annoyance, marshalling my power to prevent yet another incursion from Apophis into our realm. None of us knew what Sean had been up to in the last two days, but we had all felt brief flashes of the enemy power deep within our territory. Or at least, we didn’t know until Shalora used a bit of her power to bring him into her dream realm. She was able to put it all together, but the damage had been done.

The building shook as a portion of an attack got through. “Damnit woman!” Grumbled Bruin as he opened his eyes for a second to glare at Shalora.

“Apologies. I didn’t see the piercing aspect until it was too late.” She said.

“Aye, and ya wouldn’t have had any issues if you hadn’t kept him in yer dream realm for so long.”

“Enough.” Ariana snapped. “What’s done is done, now focus on the job at hand.”

“I agree with Ariana.” I said, sending a cloud of flammable gas to encompass a swarm of insects before setting it ablaze. They would avoid the flames if they could, but there were plenty of odorless, colorless gases that just loved to burn. By then it would be too late, and you could get the entire swarm. Before we could do anything else, a pulse of power rippled through our dimension.

“That, was not Apophis.” Shalora slowly said, and I couldn’t help but agree. Even the enemy’s attacks had slowed as he tried to locate the cause of the disturbance.

“If it wasn’t him. . .” Bruin trailed off.

“Sean.” Ariana said. “Though we don’t have that strong of a bond, I can tell he has taken the first step along the path. I doubt he realizes it, but he’ll understand soon enough.”

“Think he’ll join? There are plenty of aspects that haven’t been claimed.” Shalora asked.

I shook my head and replied immediately, “Not a chance. Even if he didn’t hate us for the things we’ve done, we tore him from his family. Between them and Elendria, he won’t try and limit himself to simply Vitae.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Sean’s POV

The city had just come into view when Elendria pulled up short, hovering in the air as she looked at the scene. “Sean.” She said, turning her gaze onto me. “Maybe I missed some things because I was being chased by a horde of ghouls yesterday, but I’m fairly certain that all the towers were intact when we started.”

I had one of those moments. I knew I was busted, but I couldn’t remember why it was a bad thing. “Well, you see.” I started, running a hand through my hair. “I had a bit of time while I was waiting for you, so I wanted to see just how hard it was to knock down a tower.”

“I see.” She said. Then waited. And waited.

“And?”

“And what happened to not getting close to the city walls in case they managed to knock you down? I distinctly recall you telling me not to do that, with those exact words.”

“Elendria, it’s not like that! You were being chased by a horde of ghouls, and had to keep them close enough that they wouldn’t give up. Splitting your concentration like that can lead to mi-eeting greater dangers.” I said, changing mistakes to meeting greater danger at the last second.

“Uh huh.” She said, staring at me. After an uncomfortable moment, she continued, “I guess you do make an acceptable point. And I assume you took proper safety measures?”

“Yes dear.” I said, pointing out where I flew. “I came in with a direct line to the tower, using it to block the siege weapons.”

“Ok. Well, let’s get this done. It looks like your work yesterday might have stirred them up a bit. Whether that’s good or bad remains to be seen. Should we continue clockwise from where you left off? Or head to the opposite side of the city gate and work counter clockwise?”

“Let’s go clockwise.” I said. “If I were defending, I would put my strongest guy by the front gate.”

“You don’t want to take them out right away?”

“No, I think we should do what damage we can first. Come on, I’ll shield us.” I said, making a large circular barrier. The outer layer was set to block most physical elements, while the inner portion was set to stop holy magics.

“Holy barrier?” Elendria asked.

“They managed to twist a divine spell. I’m sure that whatever priests they had can now cast curses, and I would rather have a barrier that can block it.” I explained as we entered the range of their siege weapons, though we mostly ignored their attacks. The shield was more than up to the challenge of stopping small spells and arrows, and anything they could fling with a trebuchet was immediately met with a blast of lightning to shatter it. Not that many of them looked like they would hit us, but it was the principle of the thing.

“So, deep freeze the front half here?” Elendria asked, having to slightly shout over the noise of impacting spells.

“Yeah. I’ll smash the ice and hopefully stone after that, and the tower should drop onto these annoying bastards.” I shouted back.

“Creeping ice, deep freeze.” Elendria said, sending a cone of icy energy into the tower. I watched in fascination as the ice slowly crept outward, smiling as I saw the mortar between the stones cracking under the strain of the expanding ice. It took a good ten minutes to get the majority of it set up, but that was fine. While she worked, I set up a string of void bombs, leaving them just outside of the tower itself.

“Alright, all done.” She said, and we retreated to a somewhat safe distance.

“Void bomb.” I said, detonating them starting with the central one, moving out in a symmetric manner. It made a beautiful series of black spheres, but that was where it stopped.

“That’s it?” Elendria asked, looking at the now jagged lines on the tower.

“Oh screw it. Gravity well.” I snarled, pulling on the top of the tower like I had done yesterday. With a loud crack, and the grating of stone sliding, the tower slowly toppled onto the mostly empty siege platform. The only thing of value it truly took out was a pair of trebuchets.

“Yep. Looks like they are onto your plan there hun.” Elendria said, pointing out the lack of kills. “Do you mind if we use my plan next time?”

“Go right ahead.” I said, frustrated that my plan had failed. I was too used to thinking of most undead as being mindless, and these transformed really proved me wrong.

*BANG*

The shield around us immediately darkened, though I felt a bit of a backlash as the explosive arrow detonated.

“You ok?” Elendria asked.

“Yeah. Let’s get out of range though. I have a feeling that is the least of the tricks they have available.” Elendria chuckled, but led us out into the desert. Once we were out of even an enhanced arrow shot from the top of the tower, she turned and gained a bit of height. I really wanted to interrupt her, but she seemed to be concentrating as she measured some distances and angles. Nodding, she started a chanted spell, something she hadn’t done since evolving. “Lone traveler, bringer of life. The stars give birth to your tails. Streak forth, and annihilate my target. Comet.” I dropped our shield, watching in awe as she deftly built the comet above us with her magic. The leading edge came to a point, slightly sharper than a normal bulled, but nothing like an armor piercing tip. When it was just about the width of the tower, she unleashed her spell.

Seeing someone else cast a spell like that, it was amazing. It hurled through the sky, and though it didn’t hit the tower square on it didn’t matter. The power of the impact blew out a major chunk of the tower, sending it crashing to the desert floor below. The momentum kept the ice moving, obliterating everything on the platform behind the tower in a rain of razor sharp shards of ice, while the core of the comet remained intact enough to smash through the top of the platform and start crushing things below. The city shield flared to life as shards of ice were obliterated with bright flashes of blue light.

“Sometimes you overthink things Sean. It’s much easier to blast through the tower and destroy what is on the other side rather than try and get the tower to fall on it.” She said with a grin, winking at me before we moved on to the next tower. There were originally seven towers evenly spaced, with the south point being replaced by the entrance to the city. While I started casting my own comet spell on the next tower, Elendria moved on to the one after it. Changing positions and casting the spell took us about five minutes per tower, and fifteen minutes later I was hovering next to Elendria as she cast the final comet.

“GIANT SOLDIER OF STONE!” Just as Elendria was finishing her own spell, a counter spell came from a lone figure that had appeared at the top of the tower. I watched in amazement as a massive golem the size of the tower itself appeared, and casually swatted Elendria’s comet aside with the flat of its sword. “Did you fools honestly think that we would let you terrorize our city without any response?” Came a call from the figure.

“Honestly? Yeah!” I called back, chuckling. “But do you really think that a simple stone golem will be enough to beat us?”

“Simple stone golem? Oh you pitiful fool. Things must have changed a lot during our curse, that you can’t recognize the epitome of dwarven craftsmanship. Plasma cannons, fire!” With the order, what I thought were decorative rivets along the collar bones of the giant opened up to reveal six barrels pointing at us, with a dangerous orange glow that rapidly charged to blue deep within.

“Climb!” I shouted to Elendria, creating a moving gravity well above us as well as the most powerful shield I could. Then the world turned white as the cannons fired. The heat was intense, even if it only lasted for a few seconds. We were soon under clear skies, though we were both panting.

“You ok?” I turned to ask Elendria, concerned over how pale she was looking.

“I’ll be fi- SEAN LOOK OUT!” She screamed as the shield bubble we were in lurched under immense pressure. The next thing I knew we were rocketing through the sky, plastered to the inside of the shield as the weakening gravity well above us held us aloft. I burned through my meager mana reserves to create another gravity well to slow us down before gently lowering the shield sphere to the ground and dismissing it.

“Ugh, that hurts.” I groaned, grabbing my head. I hadn’t burned through over ten thousand mana in seconds before, and I wasn’t going to be doing it again if I had a choice.

“You ok?” Elendria asked, slipping an arm around me to help hold me up. “We got hit by the golem’s sword.” She answered the question I couldn’t quite put together the mental fortitude to ask.

“Bastard. I am going to shove that golem’s foot up his ASS, AND BREAK IT OFF!” I screamed the last bit, glaring in the direction of the city for a second before slumping down onto the sand. “Just as soon as I recover a bit first.” I muttered. It was five minutes before we started feeling a rhythmic thump in the ground, and nearing seven minutes before I could see the giant working its way towards us.

“Elendria, this guy is likely loaded down with a ton of fire spells. I want you to head off in a random direction and recover for a bit. Once you have half your mana recovered, come back in and kill the bastard if I haven’t managed to yet.”

“Sean-“ She started.

“Just do it!” I interrupted. “You already have a vulnerability to fire that he can exploit in a desert. If you can come in and kill him while I have the golem distracted we’ll have a much better chance.” I could tell she wanted to argue more, but didn’t want to let whoever was controlling the golem know where she went. To help her out, I took to the sky even though I wasn’t even at half mana myself. As I neared the golem, I took a closer look.

It was made of stone shaped to look like plate armor, and carried a hand and a half sword in its right hand with a kite shield in its left. A golden sunrise was emblazoned on the shield, and mirrored on its chest. Beneath the skin I could sense a series of interconnected stones that were channeling massive amounts of mana, with one that was visible in the middle of the forehead.

“Oh ho! I had a feeling you would survive!” Came a voice, and the shield shifted to reveal a four-armed skeleton inside a clear gem on the golem’s chest. Two hands were on something similar to a joystick, while the other two were free to press any number of buttons surrounding him. “What happened to your friend?”

“Oh, you won’t be alive long enough to worry about that.” I snarled, looking around. While he was getting closer, I had sent a mana packet towards the gem on the golem’s forehead, as it just screamed ‘weak point’ to me. “You ready for round two? VOID BOMB!” I snarled, detonating the mana packet and consuming a portion of the gem and a good bit of the golem’s face. I couldn’t see what else happened, as I was immediately taking evasive maneuvers from a seemingly endless rain of arrows that were being launched from the shield. One smashed into my arm, and I quickly realized that it was magic arrows instead of real ones, and the golem was likely to unleash them for months with its power supply. I quickly countered with my mana armor, flying around so that it would constantly have to reposition to keep the shield pointed at me.

Laughter came from the golem as it’s driver spoke, “Did you seriously think that we would leave the control core for the golem in such an accessible place? This golem has over 40 cores! Any of them are able to act as a functioning core you fool! Now, let’s see how you handle some lightning!” With that, I turned to see the mouth opening to reveal a giant crystal that was tracking me much faster than the shield. As I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise, I activated Ride the Lightning.

It wasn’t as effective as I hoped. Even while moving in the lightning bolt, I could feel the attack following my tracks. I used my second use of the skill per day to immediately move me towards the golem, conjuring a metal tether to the shoulder of the golem as I passed and praying that it was thick enough.

*BOOM*

The shockwave sent me tumbling through the air for a bit before I managed to stabilize myself and take a look at the damage. The golem was turning toward me, though the right shoulder was missing a massive chunk. I hadn’t managed to completely remove the arm, but it was definitely nonfunctional at the moment.

“HA! YES! STRUGGLE MORE! I HAVEN’T HAD THIS MUCH FUN IN CENTURIES!” Came the golem’s cry. I kept moving clockwise around it, forcing it to keep turning. Unfortunately, because of the distance I had to keep we were in a stalemate. That is, until the head started swiveling and the eyes opened. I immediately launched myself skyward as two beams of intense cold lanced through the area behind me.

“Come back here little bug! I’m going to pluck the feathers from your wings, one at a time!” I swore as I dodged more blasts of cold, zig zagging through the sky like a dragonfly on crack. Peeking in, I could see that even now the golem was slowly recovering from the wounds I had given it already. My mana was recovering, but I was going to have to use some big moves to take this monster down.

Getting fed up with playing chicken, I decided to go on the offensive. Diving down, I built up an insane bit of speed, pouring mana into a spell that was only fifty feet behind me. One thing I noticed was that the golem’s recovery was limited, and the more damaged areas there were the worse the recovery would be. It seems that the dwarves never realized that the golem might need to prioritize some damage. Once I was chest height to the golem, I changed direction and headed straight toward it. I didn’t need to chant a spell anymore, but didn’t want to fully reveal that so I said, “Let those who dare the skies face the tribulation of the heavens! A hundred motes of light become a thousand burning arrows, streaking forth with your doom! METEOR SHOWER!” Like a madman, I cast the spell behind me with myself as the target. As I neared the chest, I could see the battle madness in the eyes of the skeleton. This close, I could see it was pitch black, with scale mail chest armor emblazoned with the same rising sun only with inverted colors on the chest. His eyes burned with a purple light, the flames so intense they licked out around its sockets. With a grin, I used my last charge of Ride the Lightning, sending myself down to the golem’s knees and leaving the main body to deal with the impact of my spell.

One thing about plastering yourself to the side of a stone golem, it is a lot easier than flesh. Even as the golem staggered backward under the repeated impacts of the meteor shower spell, there was no change in the stone of the leg. No shifting muscles underneath and no sweat to loosen your grip made things a lot easier.

“Impressive spell, but I’m still here little bug!” The golem screamed, stomping in a circle as he searched for me. While it was doing that, I was plastered to the leg and trying to figure out how I was going to disable the joint just below me. I had initially gone for ice, but it was shielded against elemental strikes and I didn’t have the mana to waste. Coughing against the dust from the last stomp, inspiration struck. We were in a portion of the desert that I hadn’t stripped of sand, so I made a decent magnetic field and started collecting bits of it. I then shot the magnetic field into the knee joint, chuckling to myself as the iron sand followed it in and made a mess of things.

“Bastard! Here’s how we deal with leeches like you!” I felt the hair on my neck rising and managed to launch myself just as a series of spikes erupted from the skin of the golem and electrified the air where I just was. A few stray bolts followed and numbed my leg, but that was the worst that happened to me. As I climbed, I smiled when I realized that the golem was immobile, too heavy to move without both legs. Circling about up above, I could see the front of the golem was in terrible shape. The shield was missing the top third, and had several dents and a few holes in what was left.

Unfortunately for me, the golem must have some sort of tracking mechanism as the assaults never stopped. The cannons would fire plasma blasts at me, while the shield was maneuvered around to keep a shower of arrows in an attempt to cut off my escape from stronger attacks. The head also seemed to be able to freely rotate, and was tracking me as well. Lonely hunter of the desolate plain.

“A land ever devoid of the sun. Come forth now and obey me, for my word is law. Let your lonely howl freeze their very souls. Your claws shall rend their supple flesh. Your fangs crack their bones. The icy wind of your passage makes the north wind feel like a summer breeze. Remind them to fear the killing cold, frozen famine, and endless despair. Embody my ice wrath, and leave behind the white death. Frozen hellscape!”

I smiled as I moved through the barrage of magic arrows, as a white wolf shape tore through the golem, freezing it despite the shielding it had. “What is this?” Came a panicked cry from inside the golem, but it was too late. I circled around to the back, lining myself up and preparing a spell combination. Despite all the action, I was still sitting near half mana. This wasn’t enough for me to use a barrage of void bombs to break the golem in half, but I had a different idea. I created several powerful gravity wells in a circle, while in front of me I made a large chunk of lead. Once I linked them, I let the gravity pull in the lead as fast as it could. I had learned from the sky master battle: no matter how armored you are, impacts hurt. So I wasn’t going to be a part of the impact.

The gravity wells shot the lead like a bullet, and it shot straight through the circle and smashed into the frozen waist of the golem to devastating effect. Large chunks of ice were smashed off, and with a lovely cracking sound the golem split in half and smashed to the ground, the impact enough to shatter the frozen shoulder still holding on to the shield.

“Thanks babe, that was perfect timing.” I said as we both landed on the chest of the golem. We had apparently done enough damage to the thing, as even I couldn’t detect any mana flowing through the thing anymore.

“Sorry it took so long. I headed back to the city to take out that last tower.” She said, pulling me into a hug. “I knew you wouldn’t be hurt too bad. Don’t worry, I’ll massage those bruises tonight.”

“Deceitful bastard. You had me thinking we managed to kill one of you.” I looked inside to see the skeleton, a bit worse for wear. One arm was completely gone, and he had lost both legs at the knee. A void bomb blasted a hole in the crystal shield separating us, and I saw him resign himself to his defeat. “Though I am impressed. I don’t believe two people have ever managed to take out our golem before. If you are smart, you won’t press your luck. Just kill me and leave.”

“Can’t do that.” I said, shaking my head. “We’re going to be freeing you guys, so we are going to have to head into the ziggurat.”

“I see. Well, I wish you the best of luck then adventurer. Not many know this, but if you die then you will join us in the curse. For all those who come after, I sincerely hope I never see you on my side of the curse.”

“Thanks, but we are already aware of the risks. Go on to your rest. We plan on fixing this curse before you are reborn under it.” I said, sending a bullet into his head and shattering his skull.

Hidden quest completed!

You have taken out the towers powering the city shield, destroyed the Ancient Dwarven Golem that protects the main gates and slain Guard Captain Marcos. Even should you leave and return after the towers rebuild themselves, the city shield will never again be a barrier to you or your party.

Small party bonus:

For completing such a quest with a party of two, you have earned additional awards. Experience in the former Solaris Empire is doubled in small parties (less than 5 people).

“Oh, this is nice. Double experience when it’s just us?” Elendria smiled, having gotten the same prompt I had. “I guess killing the golem got us experience as well. I leveled up to 8, that’s 6 levels. What about you?”

“I just hit level 13, that’s a gain of four but I was almost ¾ the way to 10 when we started today. Not bad, I don’t think.”

“Not bad at all. What do you say we head back and call it a day? Tomorrow is likely to be intense fighting in the city itself.” Elendria asked.

“Sounds good to me.” I nodded, following her. I turned back as we left to see the golem turning into black sand and being swept away by the desert wind. “I wonder if we can get one of those if we free the city?” I murmured to myself before turning away. That would be an awesome bonus.

Name: Sean O’Carrol

Age: 33

Titles:

Chosen of Ariana

Blessed by Lokir (hidden)

Otherwordly traveler (hidden)

Summoned Hero (hidden)

Grandmaster Sage

Divine mage

Heretic

Shalora’s Gratitude

Calamity Bane

Attributes:

STR – 20

AGI – 57

DEX – 60

INT – 48

WIS – 75

CON – 109 (124)

END – 42 (72)

Health: 670/670

Mana: 13290/13290

Health regen: 0.318/min

Mana regen: 705.47/min

Spirit: 360/360

Spirit regen: 1.8/hour

Level: 13/100

Exp to next level: 4%

Free attribute points: 80

Major adaptations: 1