12 – To stand before…

Lisa eyes glowed white, as her body was floating in the air held aloft by unknown powers. Above her, the Rune Arc shone in its bright gold, tall and mighty, huge like a sun in the night sky. The runes invaded her body, shining from inside with the intersecting curved lines of the Elden Ring, and she lifted her hand up high, holding the hammer solemnly, holding it there like a miniature fallen star, staring down at the rushing enemies coming from the forest.

Seeing the blatant target, the monsters rushed at her, shot her with their varied projectiles of poison, stone, stingers. She didn’t even flinch, the golden light surrounding her swallowing everything that was thrown at her. The monsters charged, and she waited one last final moment.

She slammed it to the ground, staring at the incoming wave as a shockwave propagated from her hammer. The ground lit up with a crisscrossing web of fine golden lines, advancing fast towards the monsters, that erupted with the force of the golden order’s reckoning. Again she slammed it, and even the stronger monsters were thrown into the air by the exploding ground, the golden light shining from within the detritus rising as if gravity was no longer holding it down.

Thrice she slammed. And with the final slam, three long lines and a circle grew from where she was, painting the silhouette of the Elden Ring on the ground. They erupted in the single largest explosion of the whole battle, making short work of everything in their path.

As light died, Lisa collapsed on the ground, behind her only scorched earth and a deep gorge in the ground that was rapidly filling with rainwater.

A voice called to her, resonating deep within her. She felt her unique, innate magic skill stir awake.

***

Edmund examined what was left of the hammer: a crumbling piece of burnt wood reminiscent of what he remembered of the Erdtree from the game he used to play so long ago.

Maybe I overdid it with the Elden Ring stuff. Is copyright still a thing these days?

“You had to: the clearer the reference and mental image, the better. In time you will surely develop enough power and skill to use your own creativity.”

Toora was tending to Lisa, and everyone else was cheering their lungs out. After a brief moment of confusion, the realization had hit them: they had won. Cheers erupted from the battlefield, and men, women and children rushed to each other to hug, cry and finally let out all the bottled up emotions of the last few days. It had been a long and hard road getting here.

Edmund did not join the crowd, choosing to sit on the wet stone of the wall and watch. He felt no joy, no desire to partake in the festivities. The sole thought of hugging someone disgusted him. Besides, he wondered, it would be more fun to just murder them all while they were tired, take the guild clerk hostage and force her to give him what he needed.

He shook his head.

Intrusive thoughts. The easy way is never the best way. Except when it is.

He looked towards the horizon. The night was over, and light was already banishing the dark, reclaiming the shadows one by one. The sun was not up yet, but the first rays of dawn were shedding a dark blue light on the bloody battlefield revealing corpses of monsters and men alike.

A sense of doom washed over him, and his gaze went from the field of death below to the edge of the forest deep within the crater. He almost wished he had some Humes left, so that he could summon a rocket or something, and fire it at the silent line of trees to shake them up. To see if they still held secrets. To see if something was still hiding.

Praetor?

“I’m sorry, sir. Summoning a rocket or even flinging a crude explosive is beyond your current capabilities.”

You mean the reserves are too low?

“The design would still be too complex for your current mind to grasp it fully. I would need to step in.”

He sighed. How much do I have?

“13 Humes, sir.”

He nodded, seemingly to himself. He looked at the bow, and with a thought he made it disintegrate into a swarm of butterflies. They flew over the tired and bloody bodies below, and the villagers looked up in awe at the silly magic trick. He saw their surprise and scoffed, half satisfied and half in contempt. Look at them…

The butterflies flew away, and some of them went in the direction of the forest. He could see them very well: viridescent blue against the dark backdrop of trees, he had made them ever so slightly luminescent, and they were eerie and magical. He followed them with his gaze, until they disappeared them all one by one in the thick leaves of the faraway trees.

That’s when the sense of doom resurfaced, stronger than ever. Every instinct told him that something was wrong. He focused, but he couldn’t see anything wrong with the forest. It was still, and silent.

“You feel this too?” Toora said from beside him, startling him.

“What is it?” he asked, noticing that Lisa was now sitting up against the wall at the bottom of the stairs.

Toora shook her head. “Bad news. How much magic do you have?”

He felt silly. “I’m dry.”

“Well, shit. Me too.”

A roar came from the trees, which started to shake violently. Sounds of breaking wood and stomping came in a cacophony of noise, and before long… they could see them. Monsters.

“That’s…”

“That’s more than before! What the fuck?”

Everyone stared in silence and disbelief.

“Toora, this is not looking good.”

“No, it’s not.”

“We ditch the plan. We cant defend.”

“Agreed.”

“We run?”

“We run.”

The monsters were charging already.

“We go through the city and out the back. If we’re lucky enough, the villagers will slow the monsters down enough for us to escape.”

She nodded. “Good idea. I remember that there’s a cave system nearby, carved long ago in the side of a hill that goes all the way to the other side. We can hide there.”

Edmund nodded, and then they took off. Toora went to shake Lisa off the ground and pulled her on her feet, then the trio met up at the gate and took off towards the heart of Farcall. Edmund didn’t look back once, although he could hear the shouts of someone who had seen him flee, and was chasing after them.

He ignored the shouts. He knew the monsters were nearby, their feet stomping the wet ground just as the first rays of sun were bathing the world golden. Lisa was barely holding herself up on her feet.

Toora saw her stumble, and moved to catch her. “Lisa!”

Edmund kept running. He made his way though the city, on the large straight central road towards the gate on the other end of the circle of walls.

He looked back, and felt his stomach in his throat.

“Toora, they’re behind you, quick!”

He regretted looking. With a grunt, he gathered all his willpower and turned back reaching Toora and Lisa, putting Lisa’s other arm behind his back to help carry her. He could feel in his mind the hot breath and the stench of the monster behind him. he knew it wasn’t real, that the monsters were still a hundred meters away if not more, but he swore he could feel it.

His heart pounded. His ears rung. He ran with all his strength. A house nearby exploded in a shower of splinters and rubble, and a monster erupted from it.

“Watch out!” with a grunt, Lisa pushed the two away from her and put her shield up to protect them.

They rolled on the ground, and saw the giantess go down on one knee under the pressure of the monster. The shield held, and she slammed the beast away like swatting a fly. Immediately afterwards, she ducked behind the protection of the metal just as a huge maw slammed close around it, and tried to swallow it whole. It pulled on her, and Edmund and Toora joined Lisa in trying to dislodge the shield from the thing’s mouth.

It looked like a serpent with legs, several meters long and with a mouth big enough to swallow all three at the same time. The shield was lodged between its sharp teeth, and was not coming off.

“Leave it, dammit!” Edmund shouted.

“I can’t!”

“What the fuck you mean? Leave it! I’m not dying for a shield!”

“No!” she shouted.

“She can’t!” Toora said. “If she loses it, her whole set of armor becomes useless.”

Edmund shook his head. “What the fuck?”

They pulled even harder. The shield wasn’t moving, and neither were they, locked as they were in a tug of war with a gigantic monster. Other creatures were approaching from the breached gate and from the air. Looking around, Edmund saw several silhouettes in the air circling over them, and on the ground, charging on all fours. Taller shadows followed behind, staggered just like in the last assault during the night. Colossi in the distance.

“Tell her to leave it.”

Toora looked at him in the eye.

“Leave. It. It’s that or death.”

She nodded. “Lisa. Leave the shield.”

Lisa said nothing and, for a moment, kept pulling with all her might. Then, suddenly, she let go. The monster lost its balance and fell backwards, and the trio made good use of the opening to put some distance as fast as their legs could carry them.

“There!” Edmund pointed at a narrow passage between two buildings.

They ran into the passage, squeezing in the narrow street one by one, then stopped to catch their breath. The main road was full of monsters everywhere, roaming around, destroying buildings and busting down doors in search of anyone who was hiding in their homes.

They heaved.

“You have any healing for Lisa?”

“Yeah,” Toora pointed the staff at her friend. “This is gonna hurt.”

Lisa grunted as a green light, faint and soft, enveloped her.

“Here. It’s all I can do here without being detected. It should last long enough to escape.”

“Thank you.”

“Good,” Edmund said. “Now, how do we reach outside? We’re trapped here.”

“We cant hide either. The mosnters will find us eventually.”

“Yeah, this city and its walls have become a death trap. We need to find a way out.”

They walked down the small, winding street. The building were encroaching from all directions, barely leaving any space above them to see the sky. The couldn’t see the walls, or the towers, or any other reference point to understand where they were in the city. Edmund felt the powerlessness of being without Humes, and thought back to when he could do whatever he wanted.

Praetor, tell me you have something that can help.

“I’m sorry, sir. I do not have enough data about the city to project a map.”

He swore.

“Stop.” Lisa, who was at the head of the group, suddenly stopped and put her shield up.

Toora prepared a spell under her breath, and Emdund peeled his eyes. There was sound coming from behind a corner, like steps and a ragged, fatigued breath. It could be a monster that had managed to end up lost in these streets, or maybe had flown down from above. Edmund gathered what he could of his power, and prepared to strike.

The sound grew closer.

Toora was about to release her spell.

“Hold it!” Edmund said, recognizing the shape that had appeared from behind the corner. “… Maliketh?”

“Edmund! You’re… alive! Everyone else is… dead. I…”

Edmund rushed to him, and clasped the man’s shoulders. “Dude. Dude. Focus. Right now, I need you to tell me if there’s a way out of the city, possibly without monsters in the way. You can give in to despair once we’re safe, okay?”

The man looked lost. His eyes were unfocused, dull.

“The monsters… they killed every single one of them.”

“I know! But we’re alive, aren’t we?”

He nodded. “Yea. We are. But what’s the point?”

“The point?” he felt suddenly enraged. “The point is that I’m not dying here in this useless place. You hear me?”

Maliketh shook his head. “Fool.”

Edmund let the words sink in. fool… “I’m gonna show you who’s the fool.”

He gathered the Hume energy he had left, and let it build up on his fingertips. He pushed Maliketh against the wall, without any resistance from the traumatized and broken man, then plunged his fingers into his forehead. They sunk in without any wound, like a hologram.

Toora watched him work on the man in absolute concentration for a good minute, and she saw that Lisa too was watching intently with an expression of horror crystallized on her face. When he retracted his fingers, Edmund left Maliketh in a state of unfocused trance.

“Take us out of the city through a safe route.”

The man nodded and started walking without saying anything, like a zombie. They reached the walls a few minutes later, undetected by the monsters, and there was a small metal door that was closed shut before them. Edmund snapped his fingers, and whatever he had done to Maliketh came undone and them man collapsed to the ground in a sobbing mess.

“Alright,” he said. “We need to open this. I’m at zero.”

“I got this,” Toora said, then touched the lock with her staff. The lock glowed red, then yellow and eventually white before melting off.

Behind them, a screech of a monster told them that they had been spotted.

“They detected us! Run!”

The rushed through the door and outside.

“I know where we are! This way!”

They ran as fast as their legs could carry them. Behind them the monsters were chasing, both on the ground and though the air. Toora was shooting fireballs at the airborne enemies, trying to shake them off their tail, but they were relentless.

At least the ground ones were not the fast boarts, but a species of malformed rodents that were unable to keep up for long. One after the other they stopped chasing and waddled back towards the city on their stumpy legs, with some even falling over dead because of overexertion.

I wish I could open them up and see what’s inside. Edmund thought. For a moment, his brain was almost telling him that it would be an acceptable risk to turn around and snatch one of the bodies. He didn’t.

A bird, with wings made of razor sharp keratinous feathers and a beak of bone plunged towards the group. Toora’s fireball missed, and Lisa was too far. Edmund watched in horror as the beast approached at incredible speed from above, and he found himself unable to react to it. He was just… stuck running in a straight line.

Just dodge. Dodge, damnit! He kept running, and at the last second he found his wits and threw himself to the ground, landing amidst the wet tall grass and mud. The monstrous bird plunged into the ground where he stood but a second ago. As he got up, he took a good look at the upside down beast, stuck as it was in the mud. He kicked it and stomped on it with his foot, feeling its skull break and brain gush out of the cracks in a mush. He twisted the foot, and stomped again, almost to the euphoria of the feeling of the bones break. Toora had to pull him by an arm, and he resumed running.