Chapter 64

Nic climbed the steps. They were vast, obsidian, black monuments to the ancient power of this place. They were sized for a giant; each stair forced Nic to grab the edges and haul himself up like a climber. The ship was behind him now– he had left Enefta, Inskpur, and all the rest behind.

This was a matter for him alone.

Flopping and struggling to climb up the giant’s path, Nic gritted his teeth and continued forward. Above him towered gates of ivory. They were made of that pale, yellow-white bone, a monolith carved with the images of gods and kings. After so long struggling to overcome this dungeon…

Nic didn’t know what to expect. But he wanted a good fight. A chance to prove how far he’d come.

This dungeon…

It represented the span of his life between nothing and everything. Between being nobody, fighting brutal battles in the jungle, and being Lord Winterhome, the man who held up the sky so that others could live below in his shadow.

It was the final hurdle to calling himself someone.

Not one in a thousand hoping to be one in a million. Not a statistic drowning in the scale of the System. No. A rising star, someone for whom the rules no longer applied. A statistical anomaly. An outlier.

Someone who had escaped the inevitable arc of a human life, sad and anonymous, lived in back-breaking labor until the weight of living ground you into the dust.

And before he knew it…

Nic stood on the final step, sweat dripping down his face. He unslung Peacemaker and advanced on the doors, ready to push them open.

But they parted for him.

The ancient gates creaked open with a slow breath of dust and long-decayed air. A darkness yawned in the space between the double doors.

Nic advanced.

His eyes blinked, once, brushing away the darkness inside the temple and viewing the ancient glory through lenses that saw in deepest night as easily as daylight.

There were enormous godly statues lifting towards the ceiling, holding up the rooftop with bent backs. The statues were bent low beneath their burden, as if the sky was pressing down upon them. Their faces were the faces of animals– jackals, herons, owls, lions. Water poured from spaces in the wall between them. Vast tangles of green vines clung to the walls where the waterfalls tumbled past. The pouring water fed channels that surrounded the central chamber like a moat, so that Nic had to walk across a bridge to reach the platform in the center.

A final statue stood in his way.

It was an image of an ancient king, wearing his crown and gilded beard. He was bent low, arms reaching behind his back to cradle a vast weight set upon his shoulders. It was a gilded sun, a vast sphere of bronze polished until it shone like gold, the surface decorated with countless hieroglyphs. The statue was sunken into the moat, so its chest stood level with the platform. A bridge reached into an empty archway set over the giant statue’s heart.

And from that doorway, a golden light shone.

This was where ancient pharaohs had passed through into eternity. This was where they’d faced their final trial to become gods.

Nic felt a heartbeat within his bag. It was the four stone organs, beating with sudden anticipation.

“Alright…”

He spoke to the darkness and the empty space.

“We both know it’s time to fight, so why don’t you show yourself!” Lifting Peacemaker, he slammed the haft down into the earth. The sound echoed, echoed, echoed…

And his enemy arrived.

It stepped through a door of night, a black silhouette cut out from reality and staring into a starless void. From this portal stepped his opponent. It had the body of a man, but made giant, tall and powerful with bronze-skinned muscle; the head was the head of a jackal, with long fangs and tall ears. Golden paints anointed its skin. Blue shadows surrounded its eyes.

It carried two jade khopesh blades, heavy swords that bent into axehead curves and terminated in hooked points. The weapons of royalty.

“I can’t offer you any mercy.” Nic said. “What’s happening now is too important. But if you have any last wishes… Leave them with me. I promise, if you have a message, a last word, I’ll deliver it to your loved ones. That’s the least I can do.”

And the jackal-headed god spoke.

“I see nothing before me but a stripling.” It shifted, raising its swords. “I refuse to accept you have a chance. If you want to speak to me like a dead man, show me some power! It won’t be words that decide this. No matter how confident you are, this old man will show you the benefits of experience. I’ve outlived countless rising stars! I’ve watched them fall from the heavens! I won’t let you end my story here.”

Behind the words, Nic could feel the ancient pride of a cultivator who had lived for countless years. The unconquerable pride; after surviving so many epochs, outliving so many so-called geniuses, the spirit was unwilling to believe that this would be the fight that ended its legacy.

“Alright.” Nic said, swinging Peacemaker around him and sliding his feet into a martial stance. “Then let’s not waste words.”

And as one, they stepped forward.

As Nic walked, his Domain rose around him. Phantom banyan trees and mangroves grew as a layer of water and mud extended outwards from each footstep, concentric ripples turning the solid ground of the temple to a mire-choked earth.

Nic was cautious, moving carefully, Peacemaker raised in a guard. The jackal-headed warrior barely seemed concerned. His stance was loose, relaxed. One blade was raised to shoulder height, the other allowed to linger low, waiting to come up from beneath and strike. A pincer stance– two blades against one.

One step after another, they circled one another. The emptiness of the tomb echoed with their footsteps. Their eyes were locked, their bodies held like statues, maintaining their stances with rigid efficiency. They each felt the same pressure– the knowledge they only had to find the right moment to strike. Nic’s grip on Peacemaker tightened until his knuckles ran white, all the blood forced out.

“HA!” The jackal-beast feinted forward suddenly, slamming it’s foot into the ground and shouting. Nic barely flinched– barely. The beast leaned back and resumed its pacing, circling around him, not finding the opening it had hoped for, the overreaction and the weakness.

“Ha.” Nic repeated, quieter, the enemy’s call still echoing and echoing in the hollow space. As it faded…

Nic smiled.

The enemy was afraid. Not in a cowardly, trembling way. In a way Nic understood. This was someone who’d fought against the odds every step of their journey, and looked death in the eyes so many times. This was someone who knew they could die, every time they fought. Someone who knew to treat war with the respect it deserved and do anything to win.

Nic felt the same kind of fear, the reverence for life and death, echoing down in his lungs whenever he breathed.

“Push it away.” Sofia said. “Focus.”

“This is focus…” Nic said, with a loose smile. “This is focus. Not feeling less, not shutting it off. Living it…”

In that moment–

Maybe thinking Nic was distracted–

The jackal-headed warrior lunged and struck out, upper blade flicking around in a quick, beheading circle. Nic turned into the blow and caught it against Peacemaker’s edge, turning it aside.

The lower blade stabbed upwards for his throat. A quick forward jab.

Nic leaned back to buy him the split instant he needed to turn Peacemaker around and knock the strike aside, defending himself. But that motion was too much, too extended. He had leaned back until his center of mass wasn’t over his legs anymore, leaving him with no ability to maneuver until he snapped back into a balanced stance.

In that moment the upper blade chopped for his legs. Nic saw the blow and applauded the quiet precision with which he’d been maneuvered into death. He had no chance of blocking with his current footing. Peacemaker was still lifted high– too high to guard.

But Nic could move through the mud like it was water. He simply sank, shooting down until he was buried up to his hips and his legs were safely underground, a drop that positioned Peacemaker to catch the incoming strike and flick it aside, darting out. That same motion brought Peacemaker’s blunt end trailing through the earth, and Nic gathered a hammer of mud around the haft.

With the momentum he’d built striking his enemy aside, Nic swept the hammer into the side of the warrior’s knee.

For a moment, the jackal-headed beast buckled, nearly falling. It pushed hard against the earth with its good leg, already seeing Nic’s follow-up coming– a lightning quick sweep that reversed the direction of the blade and brought it scything for the jackal’s throat.

To capture that pressure and seize his opponent’s weakness, Nic unleashed a burst of primordial mist, spitting out a wave of fog.

Behind his opponent, Nic’s domain was sprouting upwards, the mud growing dozens of long reeds with points as sharp as any spear. Roots and vines reached up to entangle, and that clumsy, backwards step was throwing the jackal-warrior dead into Nic’s grasp.

“Leash!”

This was the moment.

Nic kicked off and retreated without a single thought to chasing his opponent’s seeming weakness.

The jackal smiled, baring long teeth–

In the instant before it was swallowed by the mist, before the mud underfoot could claim it, before the reed-spears could cut into its back, before the vines could hold it and seal its fate–

The jackal-warrior let out a gruesome scream. A wave of force exploded forward, throwing back the mist, the reeds, the vines, throwing the mud and water away. Nic felt a punch to his cultivation core as the whole domain shook…

And the jackal-warrior shot forward. Momentum built around its skin in a rippling armor of pure force, pure power. In that moment as the mire was forced back, a clear trail was cut towards Nic as he leapt through the air.

Following that trail like a bullet down the chamber of a gun, the jackal flickered forward in three sharp steps and Nic saw it loom over him, sweeping down with both blades in a cross that aimed to kill him or force him to turn his momentum entirely, ceding everything and going into full retreat.

Nic simply smiled.

Trailing from his right foot down to the earth where he’d kicked off was a thin, almost invisible ribbon of slime. Concealed within the mist.

“NOW!”

His direction reversed and he snapped down, shooting between the jackal-warrior’s legs. Peacemaker ripped a red cut through the depths of the enemy’s calf, right where the achilles tendon was. Nic hit the ground with both legs, shouted– “BREAK!”– and released the thread of slime to snap back to its original position without him. He was turning, cutting, Peacemaker spinning deftly through his hands into a stance like a scorpion’s sting, held up high over his shoulders. He stabbed down towards the enemy’s good leg, the heel, right where it would cripple the foe most–

The jackal roared again, lifting its head to the sky. The wave of force slammed into Nic and threw him like a bug across the temple’s dark interior, flinging him back until his vines and banyan trees could catch him.

The jackal-warrior was panting hard, gasping, blood dripping. It had no ability to stand– its right leg was crippled and broken. But it pushed a hand down against the wound, and a green light poured out between its fingers. When the hand lifted the wound was gone and the beast stood back up, tall and powerful.

Nic was already rushing, each step kicked forward as the earth underfoot lifted him up and launched him into a long stride, skipping across the earth in a rush.

He swung for the jackal’s neck, but it was already too late. The window of weakness had passed.

The jackal swung around and caught his blade against its own. The ring of colliding weapons sung out, and the arm holding the khopesh-blade was like iron, unbothered by Nic’s own strength. Able to meet and exceed his full power…

The movement– the turn– brought its second blade into play again. It scythed in a wide cut that would have split Nic in two, if he hadn’t abandoned the attack, stepped back, and took a guarded stance to receive it.

That was not the last blow. Instead, abandoning caution for momentum, taking the risk of losing everything for the chance that Nic would be the first to make a mistake–

The jackal-warrior went all out. It swung again and again, the ring of blades building from a single, solitary warcry to a chorus, a battlefield, a war of jade-edged khopesh against Peacemaker’s resilient bone. One strike flowed into another without pause or relent, a web of steel that left Nic penned in, defending in tight, restrained motions, feeling the sweat begin to build upon his skin. The reach of Peacemaker became an island within a sea of attacks that came from every direction, one wave leading to the next, leaving no space between– he was caught in the enemy’s momentum and it was pushing him backwards one step after another.

When he reached the wall, his life would end. The jackal-warrior only had to unleash its wave of force, and Nic would be thrown against the barrier. Anywhere else, the same force that broke his guard would send him flying back, giving him a chance to recover. Against the wall? He’d be crushed.

Nic lifted a wall of mud.

The enemy crashed through–

But Nic was already gone, kicking back, hitting the wall, and rebounding. He leapt overhead as the jackal screamed, letting a wave of force extend from its outstretched sword to crash into the wall where Nic had been a moment before.

He landed, skipped back, and grinned.

Peacemaker was thrust, blade down, into the earth. Nic brought out his bow.

This entire time, Nic had been moving, weaving the Mistwater Step behind him. His blast of Primordial Mist had disguised the true nature of the fog that crowded the floor. Now that mist was rising up, and shadows of Nic were appearing, grinning, a small army of illusionary doubles–

Every one a landmine waiting to explode.

And even beyond them, his domain had been slowly corrupting the earth, turning it to a dense, grabbing mud. The ground was his.

Nic drew out his bow and nocked a talisman arrow as the jackal’s brow creased with worry.

With that one leap, Nic had crossed the length of the temple. He had opened all that space between them–

And now the jackal would have to fight through the mist, Nic’s doubles, fight against the earth itself, just to reach him.

Still smiling, Nic stepped back, and vanished into the mist– his first arrow nocked to the bow and waiting for the first sign of weakness.