Savage Awakening 506. The Good Life

A/N: Bonus chapter! Things are back on track

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Late the next day…

Zane was bleeding from a thousand cuts, and more were coming yet.

Hundreds of spears of hardened blood sailed through the air.

A good chunk struck his body. He took plenty to the face too. None of it managed to cut him very deeply, but they scratched new bloody lines, making it even harder to see.

He growled, wiping away a trickle, trying to clear the ringing in his ears.

Hundreds of feet above, masses of undead elf-cultists began reloading, half-hidden in the boughs of the ash trees.

In seconds, he’d bled a surprising amount—streaks of blood splattered dozens of feet, bright red against ashen snow. Corruption played over his blood, trying to darken it, to claim it. Most of his vital energy was too potent to succumb. So far, anyway—but with how many of those dark elves were battering him, how many shamans he saw up there working their curses.

He’d already seen some of them seize a few streaks of blood. They used it as fuel for their spells—used his own vital energy against him. They’d already stacked a flurry of fatigue spells on him—stuck him with hundreds of little drowsy spells in heartbeats.

It was starting to have an effect.

There were far too many of these cultists, and they’d caught him off guard. Melting out of the shadows just as he and the Sage passed through this giant ash forest—before he knew it, he’d gotten whacked with nearly a hundred blinding and leeching spells. The onslaught just kept rolling.

Somewhere in the distant sky, he heard the Sage roaring encouragement. It was mostly drowned out by the ringing in his ears.

He knew he had what it took to steamroll right through this place. It was just a distraction on his way to the Rhinos.

They’d just caught him off guard. He clenched his jaw, made himself focus.

There were at least six half-step Empyreans hiding in those trees. At least four struck him with arrows just then—poisoned, he was pretty sure, by how his wounds refused to close. And this chunk of the Ruins was so dense with ice Laws it put a dampener on his Red Giant.

He wasn’t much hurt so far. But it was like this fight was made to slow him down.

He was just thinking he’d have to bite the bullet and power through when he felt a fist of raw cold seize his legs.

A chunk of corrupt ice had encased his feet. It was up to his waist in seconds.

Frowning, he sent Red Giant essence searing down his legs and gave the stuff a trusty kick. He only managed to crack its hold, not shatter it—a bit of a surprise.

That frost redoubled its efforts, thickening fast.

He glanced around, trying to figure out where it was coming from. Then he realized the answer was everywhere. Shamans from every tree poured in essence. The bulk of those half-step Empyreans were working on it. And all the while, grunt cultists just kept peppering him with spears. They kept sticking him with blow-dart needles—needles that administered those drowsy spells straight into his bloodstream. At first, he’d thought it was cute that they thought they could take down his body with that kind of sedative.

But once he took a few waves of them, he did start to feel a little woozy…

“They can’t take your hits, and you know it!” roared the Sage. “Don’t let a few bee stings get to you, lad! Don’t let ‘em bully you!”

He felt like a rhino trying to fight a swarm of stinging flies.

But this latest attack was no mere sting, he quickly realized. This one was their attempt at ending him.

He kicked and stomped, but that ice was backed by too much True God and half-step essence. And every time he got a chunk off, it just re-formed—along with new chunks numbing up his chest, his arms—

He punched a few Red Giant Smashes, managed to clear his hands. Then a chunk of it got over his eyes, and he stumbled.

It encased him in full.

He found it very hard to move. That was the nature of the bind—that glacier was so unyielding it felt like he’d been cast in Divine Profound steel.

The stuff felt as heavy as infinisteel, too. He wasn’t sure what they put into this ice, but it was clearly meant to hold down creatures like him. And it was growing exponentially. In heartbeats, it had risen to the size of a glacier, with Zane frozen stuck at the center.

By then he’d just about had enough of this nonsense.

It was strong enough, this glacier. It had to be, with that much essence, that much Corruption stacked on. But it was brittle.

One good solid flex sent cracks shuddering through the glacier. He bucked harder, roaring, flexing every muscle he had—

CRACK!

And it all collapsed on him.

***

Those elves came out of nowhere, the Sage had to admit—whacked the lad pretty good before either of them had any clue what was going on.

But they were rats, at the end of the day. He figured it was nothing the lad couldn’t handle once he got his legs underneath him. He crossed his arms, cheerfully anticipating the turn.

At the moment, the lad did seem a bit stuck, granted.

The Sage let him do his thing. He’d figure it out.

Just a few seconds in, one fat crack shivered the length of the thing. The trouble was—it was a very heavy glacier.

It all collapsed in a plume of frost and ash, right on Zane’s flattened body. Some of his blood splattered near the base.

The Sage winced. He figured it was alright, though—the lad had plenty to spare.

“Great start, lad!” he roared. “You keep that going!”

The shamans were already pouring more essence in. Solidifying that ice mountain again, stacking it with new weight.

Then the Sage saw Zane put his hands up against that ice. You couldn’t see much through that blurry ice, except his gritted teeth.

The lad roared.

And bench-pressed with everything he had.

And all that glacier went BANG!

It ruptured with such force an icicle nearly skewered the Sage himself—he had to slap it out of the way, laughing as he did.

The rest of the dark elves down there weren’t so lucky. A good hundred or so ate a faceful of their ice, which didn’t work out so well for them. Even worse, the ice shards went right through the trees, dicing them like carrots. Splitting chunks of log that scattered all over the forest floor.

And all of a sudden, you had a stunned few hundred dark elf cultists—and one very angry Zane.

The Sage wasn’t a betting man, but if he were, he’d bet on his disciple beating the stuffing out of the lot of them.

And that was exactly what happened.

***

They had some roc legs after. The forest was a lot quieter now—less a forest now than a tundra; all those trees had gone to smoke in the battle.

Forests were nice. But the more time Zane spent out in the wilds, out near the fringes of the Galaxy, the more he appreciated a good desolate stretch. It was beautiful in its own way, and all that dark and glittering ice only made the crackling bonfire stand out.

“We’ve got to be close,” said the Sage. He dunked down a leg in some black sauce and took an educated nibble. He consulted a tattered map. “Says right here, the First of the Rhinos settled just outside the Whitewoods! This’ll be a good spot to make camp for the night. We’ll go for that Prime Blood first thing tomorrow.”

“Sounds like a plan.” They drank to it, grinning, and settled onto their furs. Staring up at the sky—this section of the Ruins went so high it had its own stretch of space.

It felt like a sheet of quiet had settled over the world. Stars twinkled high above in perfect silence. The snowy plains rolled on and on, blurring into the horizon.

“There was this old Rhino I knew, back when I was an upstart in the Desolate Wilds,” said the Sage. “Elder Grom—wrinkly old curmudgeon… used to tell me he liked nights like these even better than a good battle! Thought he’d taken a few too many knocks to the head, back then.”

The Sage chuckled, leaned back, hands behind his head. “Well—after all these years… might be the old guy had a point.”

He frowned. “Guess I’m the old guy now, eh?”

“Guess so.”

“…You damned brat!”

They lay there for a bit.

“There was a good death, Elder Grom,” said the Sage. “Went up against seven of the Sun Lions’ best, back in the Battle of the Red Hill—held ‘em all off long enough for the Rhinos to fight another day. Might’ve saved the whole tribe that day… that’s a hell of a way to go out.”

He didn’t seem cut up about it. If anything, the Sage looked proud.

“Back in my world, some folks thought if you went out fighting, you got sent to this hall of glory where you’d get to fight and feast forever.”

The Sage chuckled. “That’s a nice thought. I like these folks. You’ll have to introduce me.”

“Sure,” said Zane agreeably. He actually knew a fair few Vikings back home from his globe-trotting journeys, clearing dungeons—Jarl Erik and his crew. It felt like ages ago. “Do Rhinos have anything like that?”

“Nah,” said the Sage. “Rhinos are a very practical folk. You don’t get rewarded with anything for a good death. A good death—now, that’s the reward unto itself! It’s hard to die well, even for Rhinos. But doing that—it just means you were true to who you were. Even up ‘till the end… a true Rhino doesn’t need anything more than that.”

Zane chewed on that for a bit. He chewed on his core, to be sure, but he also chewed on that.

“I like that too.”

“Mm. That’s the mark of a good life, I say. Head up! Doesn’t matter where you are. In a damned cell, on the brink o’ death, in the midst of battle—don’t you bow that damned head. Not for anyone.”

They were quiet for a bit. The only sound was the crackling of the embers. The juices had run their course on the grill, and the bonfire had gone to a low burn.

Zane found himself thinking about Reina and Evan and Avery. It was just that time of night.

He didn’t mind sleeping on hard ground, but it was nice waking up with her sprawled over him with messed-up hair and a sleepy smile. She had to be working hard on her ritual too right now. He hoped she was doing alright. Knowing her, she was killing it.

Evan had made him a batch of cookies shaped like pumpkins before they left. They were just the right amount of sweet, and he’d taken to working through them one at a time each night. They were the tastiest stuff he’d had down in these Ruins. He made a mental note to praise Evan when he saw him again.

It did feel a bit quiet too, at times, without Avery blowing something up or launching something into space. Though the Sage’s snoring did make up for it.

He yawned and closed his eyes. Best to get some rest, he figured.

He had a feeling tomorrow would be a big day.