Chapter 63

Nic materialized a long, long ways away, on a ruined island where he’d once planted one of the Wind Palace Lotus seeds. A field of hardy flowers now extended across the shattered statue of the goddess, and the desolate rot where grass and palm trees had been destroyed by the Aleph’s corruptive influence.

He slumped onto one knee, gasping. The stump of his arm was a slithering mass of tendons and red meat, slowly solidifying into a new limb. At first it was skeletal and weak, but slowly it began to fill out, and Nic noted something horrifying.

During the battle, a fault of his cultivation base had torn one of his meridian lines in that arm apart. Now, as the arm grew back, clusters of plagued flesh swelled out, distorting the shape of the limb. He was left lopsided, barely able to close his fingers.

“Dammit…”

There was still a bleeding gash across his chest. The thousands of glass shards embedded into the wound were keeping it from closing. He ran his hand along the wound, filling it with sticky tar, and then ripped the substance away once it had adhered to the glass shards. Even for Nic, the pain was too much; the world burned out of vision and was replaced by a white-hot expanse of blank, numb agony. He toppled over and caught himself with his crippled arm, gasping…

The wound slowly closed, all the bristling porcupine shards of glass ripped free with the tar.

Peacemaker was tucked under his arm. He used its haft to get himself to his feet, stabbing into the ground and pushing himself up.

From the island’s edge he could see a distant flash and crack of lightning in the sky, over the battlefield where Seoona and the pygmy fought.

For all that it had cost him, Nic had been successful. He’d dragged out the fight and sowed discord between the two factions against him; he didn’t know why Seoona was so protective of the elf-devil, but he’d been right to leave her alive, tempting the pygmy to kill her in retribution for Seoona killing off the musician…

And Seoona had stepped in, like he’d hoped.

Before, Nic wouldn’t have imagined the pygmy would do much besides slow Seoona down. But if Blackleaf was correct, and the hunchbacked creature really did contain an avatar-shard of the Ghost-Toll’s patriarch, anything was possible…

Perhaps they’d even both die together, with their hands wrapped around the other’s throat. Nic could dream, at least.

He could be grateful for his body’s regeneration, at least. With every second the weakness left him, aura replacing flesh, revitalizing depleted muscle, easing the ache of being broken nearly to the point of extinction and having to push himself forward even so.

He kicked up into the sky and soared.

The weight of the world gave way and Nic grinned as he shot upwards, feeling the wind whip through the long furled tendrils that extended from the back of his skull. This was something he’d dreamed of for years; flight under his own power. As he sailed up, he let his arms and legs reach out, feeling the wind buffet him about like a kite.

He dropped onto a floating island that hung suspended along the course of the river that hovered in the Dungeon’s sky, a bounty of water that the bone-dry land below would never touch or know. Not until someone ended the Dungeon’s curse.

Massive jungle frogs peered out at him from the remains of a wilting pond. The Aleph’s energy had poisoned everything here; the frogs were mutant and bulbous with cancerous sores, the pond was full of corpses, the greenery was wilting to brown and black slime.

But as Nic cast his eyes over the sad scene, something caught his gaze. There were tiny scarab beetles utterly thriving in the waste, chewing up the dying flora by the dozens. They seemed totally unaffected by the rot of the Aleph. If anything, they had prospered as the frogs began to sicken and become too weak and too few to cull the beetle’s numbers.

Similarly, as the forest died, hardy grasses and weeds were pushing their way up, defiant of the Aleph’s wrath permeating the air.

Nic smiled. It was nice to know that this place would survive. Somehow, and likely that ‘how’ wouldn’t be pretty, but…

There would be life at the end of this.

He shot away, leapfrogging to the next island in the chain. Tangled lumps of river-smoothed wood sat along the course of the river where it splashed through the middle of the island. Ancient stones covered by moss defined small temple shrines, each one containing a mummified body.

The mummies sat cross-legged and held small reliquary boxes. Nic considered the loot carefully…

Did he have time…?

He paused and looked back. The storm was still raging in the distance, flashes of light erupting from below where the two combatants were locked together in a dance of death.

Nic turned back to the mummies.

“Some other day.” He promised the treasures sitting in their hands.

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The next islands were the same way; treasures and trials awaited among the verdant sprawl of palm trees and blue waters, marred by the wilting and dying that was already underway. There was enough in the Dungeon’s wilderness to sustain another few days of adventure…

But Nic had already run out of time.

Ignoring every instinct, he leapt past treasure and past chances to risk his own life in battle. He left behind ziggurat temples, swarms of golden beetles, oasis pools in which the reflections of ancient warriors awaited worthy duelists…

Adventures left behind.

As he jumped from one island to the next, he kept an eye out on the storm. The clouds were beginning to disperse. Flashes of violent power no longer shook through the air with thunderous force…

It was over.

Someone had won, and someone had lost.

Nic hurried on, pushing himself, and soon enough, he caught sight of the ship sailing down the river. Several more harpies had joined Enefta and Blackleaf– Nic breathed a sigh of relief to know that some of the village had managed to escape and survive the Ghost-Toll’s wrath. Altogether they were leading the ship down the river, crashing through waves and clear blue waters with the wind at their back and in their favor.

Nic dropped onto the deck.

“Nicolas!” Enefta rushed towards him. She grabbed him, and looked him over, wincing at the state of his crippled arm. “What happened? Are they dead? Tell me they died…”

“I got one of them.” Nic said, grimacing. He was beginning to use Antares to burn away the mutations in his right arm; they didn’t come from the Aleph, but they were similar, the result of his regeneration being warped by the destruction of the inner meridian lines. Untamed growth, swelling into tumors.

The process was painful, but it left his arm whole again.

“I got one of them.” He repeated. “And left the other fighting to survive. But we don’t have much time. Whoever won that fight is coming for us, and there’s no promise that either of them are dead.”

She nodded, slowly. “When you’ve beaten the Master of the Hall…” She turned and looked into the distance. There, rising up like a shadow against a sun, a black pyramid floated besides the river. It was a tomb the size of a palace; golden pillars rose around it’s foundations and lifted up balconies where plants grew in great abundance.

The Dungeon’s final challenge was on the horizon.

“When you defeat him… Will you have the power to kill those monsters?” She asked.

And Nic hesitated for a moment, and lied, “Yes.”

Because the truth was…

He didn’t know. Clearing the Dungeon was the last chance he had to vault up in power, the last grab for strength from this dying world. By the time he was done, he’d either be strong enough to contest Seoona and the pygmy for the Aleph Heartstone within the All-Storm’s heart…

Or he wouldn’t be.

And if he wasn’t then what would happen was, he would be forced to retreat. Likely, he’d struggle to protect Winterhome from whichever faction won the contest for the desert. Whether it was Seoona or the Ghost-Toll Legion, their resources would outnumber his, and their top-tier fighters would outmatch him.

The only way to survive would be to retreat, taking the whole flying city to a new location to escape the enemy’s influence.

But at that moment, Inkspur dived from the sky, landing beside Nic with a flutter of wings that stirred the air and made Enefta step back.

“INSOLENT SPOILED WHELP!” The wyvern cried out. “Are you UNAWARE of the LORD WINTERHOME’S WORST QUALITIES? He is UNKILLABLE! A PLAGUE UPON HIS ENEMIES! Their irritation, vexation, and RUIN! This world will be burnt to a HUSK before they manage to stomp the DIVINE COCKROACH that is LORD WINTERHOME!”

Nic snickered, and Enefta just gave Inkspur a slackjawed look of incredulity.

Well…

He’d been planning to let her down gently, and say there was no promise that they’d get revenge; that surviving had to come first.

But after that…

Nic supposed he’d just have to win.