Chapter 738: A Fruitless Struggle May Lead To Salvation [Bonus - ]

Chapter 738: A Fruitless Struggle May Lead To Salvation [Bonus Chapter]

The skysteel shield buckled down its center seam and folded in half like a sheet of tin... The feedback shot straight up the Shield Knight’s arms and snapped both forearms with a wet crunch that rang out over the wind.

"Aaaagh!" the knight roared in agony as the folded shield was driven back into his own chest.

The entity stepped forward and brought its rubbery foot down on his armored knee.

CRUNCH!

The joint bent backward at a sickening angle... The seven-foot tank of the Verinda Garrison toppled to the frosted stone like a felled oak, choking on blood inside his visor, completely out of the fight.

...Three left.

"Now!" the Archer screamed. "Together, while it’s standing still!"

The Frost Mage understood at once as she snapped her spellbook open and dragged her free hand upward.

"Glacial Prison!"

CRASH!

The pillars rose again, but this time they didn’t stop at the knees.

They climbed past the entity’s waist and chest and closed over its head in a sealed dome of blue ice like a coffin of permafrost with the creature locked inside.

At the same instant the Archer loosed straight up into the sky.

"Hailstorm Volley!"

The arrow burst into fifty darts at the top of its arc, and every one of them came screaming down onto the ice coffin.

They punched into the dome and froze in place... as the Mage fed them her mana, and the dome grew spikes on the inside.

’We need to end it... NOW!’

Fifty spears of ice stabbed inward at once at whatever was trapped in the middle!

"Frozen Coffin!" the Mage roared.

KRRRRSSSHHH!

For one breath the garrison was quiet then the dome went gray.

A web of black cracks spread across it from the inside, and the whole coffin slid apart into dirty slush that splashed across the flagstones.

The entity stood in the middle of the puddle with its head tilted, exactly as it had been, and every one of the fifty ice spears lay melted around its feet.

’It didn’t even break it,’ the Archer thought, his knees going weak. ’It just made it stop being ice...’

On the terrace the frost around Elora had climbed past her waist. Her robes were stiff as a board and her eyelashes had frozen together at the corners.

’Almost,’ she thought. ’Almost there...’

"Fall back! Scatter!" the Battle Cleric cried, his voice breaking as he grabbed the Frost Mage by the sleeve and tried to haul her toward the outer courtyard.

The entity didn’t let them run.

It twitched, its torso whipped around, and in the next instant it stood directly between the Cleric and the Mage.

The Cleric reacted first... He slammed the butt of his scepter against the ground with every scrap of faith he had left.

"Sanctuary Seal!"

DONNNG!

A pillar of golden light crashed down around the Frost Mage like a bell made of sunlight, a holy shell meant to keep anything unclean from touching what was inside.

It was the strongest ward the Cleric knew and he had never once seen it break, however the entity reached out and laid two fingers against the golden wall and the light dimmed.

...It flickered, sputtered and went out like a candle someone had pinched between wet fingertips.

The Frost Mage tore her spellbook open to its last page and threw her final reserves into a desperate point-blank wave of freezing needles.

WHOOSH!

The entity didn’t bother dodging as it grabbed the Mage by the throat with its left hand.

The needles struck its purple arm and broke harmlessly into snow.

"Guh...!" the Frost Mage gasped as her feet left the ground and the rubbery fingers closed around her windpipe.

’It’s cold,’ the Mage thought as her hands clawed uselessly at the creature’s wrist. ’Colder than the ice... It’s eating my mana...’

The entity didn’t crush her neck.

It simply squeezed once, and the light in the Mage’s eyes went out as the last of her mana was dragged out of her.

It opened its hand as the Mage crumpled to the flagstones like an empty sack of robes with her chest barely moving, and her white-leather spellbook slid away across the slush.

...Four.

The Battle Cleric fell to his knees.

His silver war-scepter slipped from his trembling fingers as he looked up at the purple horror towering over him and his lips moved in frantic prayers that found no answer in the frozen sky.

"Light... preserve us..." he whispered.

’Is this the end?’ the Cleric thought, staring into the smooth featureless face. ’Has the light turned its back on us?’

The entity looked down at him.

Its arm twitched and it backhanded him across the side of the head.

THWACK!

The blow stripped the last of his blessings away in a burst of amber sparks and launched him ten yards sideways into the stone pillar of the commissary.

His head cracked against the granite and he slumped forward into the snow, completely still.

...Five.

Only the Archer remained.

He stood forty paces away with his back pressed against the timber racks of the archery pavilion.

His hands were shaking so hard he could barely nock an arrow... however there was an even greater and more terrifying thought, he was alone.

The Lancer lay broken against the stables... The Swordsman lay headless in a pool of his own cooling blood... The Shield Knight was crippled and unconscious... The Mage and the Cleric lay silent in the snow.

’I can’t pierce it,’ the Archer thought, tears of terror blurring his left eye as he drew the bow with trembling fingers. ’The arrows don’t work. The armor doesn’t work. Nothing works. It’s not a beast... it’s an executioner from the void...’

He gritted his teeth and poured everything into one last draw.

The bowstring bit into his fingers until they bled, and the yew groaned as if it were about to snap in two.

Blue light gathered at the arrowhead, and then more, and more, until the whole shaft glowed like a falling star.

"Frost Comet Shot!"

THWIP!

The arrow tore through the freezing air and aimed dead center between the entity’s nonexistent eyes.

SNATCH!

The entity caught the shaft an inch from its face, pinched between its thumb and forefinger.

It looked at the arrow for half a second then it flicked its wrist and threw it back.

FWOOSH!

The arrow flew back five times faster than it had come and split the freezing gale with a deafening crack.

SPLAT!

It tore clean through the Archer’s right shoulder, punched through his boiled leather armor and his collarbone and the timber post behind him, and pinned him to the wall like a slaughtered hawk.

"Aaargh!" the Archer shrieked. His bow fell to the ground and his head lolled back against the wood as his vision swam into black.

...The six Heroes had fallen.

On the terrace Elora stood frozen with her heart stuck in her throat.

The howling wind died away, and an unnatural stillness pressed down on the courtyard like a lead shroud.

There were no groans from the wounded and no shouts from defiant soldiers.

The two hundred men and women of her garrison lay silent across the stone, and now her six champions were scattered across the frozen flagstones, broken, dying or dead.

The whole Verinda Garrison had gone completely silent.

The entity stood alone in the middle of the crimson slush with its arms dangling at its sides as its head twitched once to the left.

Then, slowly, its featureless face turned toward the terrace and locked onto Elora.

Every instinct of self-preservation and every drop of noble pride inside her exploded in a white-hot flare of panic.

Her heart slammed against her ribs like a trapped bird beating against iron bars.

’No... No! I’m the daughter of House Verinda! I won’t die like an animal in the mud!’

The spell wasn’t finished, but it didn’t matter anymore... She didn’t measure the flow and she didn’t save a single drop for an escape.

Elora tore open every seal she had and drained her channels until the veins in her arms burned with a dry agonizing heat.

The spellbook beside her flared with blinding intensity as its pages whipped so violently that their edges tore, and the light pouring out of them drowned out the afternoon sun.

"Die!" Elora screamed, her voice cracking into a jagged shriek that tore her throat raw. "Die, you disgusting monster! DIE!"

She slammed both palms forward.

"Winter’s Requiem!"

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

The courtyard exploded into a storm of permafrost...

A roaring fifty-foot lance of crystal glacial mana burst from the terrace, dense as diamond, sharp as a thousand scalpels and cold enough to freeze motion itself.

...The flagstones beneath its path shattered into a trench of gravel.

The air screamed as every drop of moisture within sixty yards turned into flying razor shards of ice... It was everything Elora had, a single strike meant to wipe out an ancient behemoth in the blink of an eye.

The blast thundered across the courtyard and tore straight for the entity’s chest but once again, the entity didn’t flinch.

’N-no...’

When the lance was three feet from its chest, its right arm gave a sudden jerky spasm.

FZZZT!

Its long purple hand rose with the fingers spread and swatted the air in front of its chest, the lazy irritated motion of a man brushing away a gnat.

SLAP!

There was no thunder of clashing magic... it was just a dull wet crack, like a palm slapping a damp leather coat.

The fifty-foot lance didn’t pierce the hand at all, the whole terrible weight of freezing mana simply stopped moving forward.

BANG!

The spell burst apart in midair right in front of the creature as it fell apart into a soft harmless cloud of powdery white snow.

The howling blizzard died on the spot and the blinding cyan light went out like a snuffed match.

Millions of delicate white flakes drifted down through the dead air, settling softly on the bloodstained flagstones, dusting her fallen Heroes and melting gently against the creature’s purplish shoulders.

Elora’s breath left her in a sharp wheezing gasp and her knees buckled.

THUD!

She dropped hard onto the freezing stone of the terrace and scraped her palms raw on the frosted granite.

The spellbook fell out of the air and its pages snapped shut with a dull hollow thud with the glowing script fading into dark lifeless ink.

Black spots swam across her vision as her channels throbbed with the sick empty ache of a body that had nothing left to give.

’It... it swatted it away,’ she thought, and her mind refused to accept what her eyes had just seen. ’Full power... everything I had... and it swatted it like dust.’

A cold heavy gulp caught in her throat.

Down in the courtyard the entity began to advance.

It stepped forward with a disjointed spasming gait, its hips slightly out of line with its torso and its left elbow twitching every third pace.

The soft snow crunched under its rubbery feet in a slow steady rhythm that sounded like a funeral drum beating inside Elora’s skull.

Crunch!

Crunch!

Crunch!

Elora threw herself sideways and clawed across the terrace toward the spellbook.

Her frozen fingers closed on the leather cover and she dragged it against her chest, flipping it open with shaking hands, searching for anything, a ward, a shield, a single spell that might still answer her.

The pages were blank.

Every line of glowing script had burned away as the book lay cold and silent in her hands like a dead bird.

’No... no, no, no... answer me... please answer me...’

Every step sent a fresh wave of paralyzing terror crashing over her.

Under the surface of its purplish skin something rippled, and the bruised-violet color shifted like swamp water under an oily sheen.

’It’s coming for me,’ her mind screamed, and the animal need to survive stripped away every scrap of dignity she had ever cultivated as the City Lord’s daughter. ’It’s going to crush my skull like it did his. It’s going to pop my head like a fruit...’

"No... please..." Elora whimpered, scrambling backward on her hands and knees until her spine slammed against the stone balustrade. "Stay back... stay away from me!"

She looked out across the courtyard with wild bloodshot eyes at the bodies of her people.

"Get up!" she shrieked at the top of her lungs, clawing at the stone. "All of you, get up! Infantry, assemble! Shield Knight, on your feet! Protect me! Cleric, where are your prayers?! Somebody get up and kill this thing!"

Her frantic gaze landed on the headless body of the Swordsman lying ten yards away in the red snow.

"You!" she sobbed, pointing a trembling frostbitten finger at the dead man. "Get up! Take your swords! You swore an oath to me! I ordered you to protect me! Get up and fight for me! GET UP!"

The dead man didn’t move... The crimson puddle under his ruined neck kept freezing into dark glassy ice as the garrison stayed silent, deaf to her screaming.

Desperation tore through what was left of her composure.

Elora lifted her trembling right hand toward the advancing figure, her teeth clicking together as she tried to force her empty core to light.

"Freeze..." she rasped with warm tears carving tracks down her freezing cheeks. "I command you... freeze!"

Pfft!

A tiny pathetic wisp of pale-blue vapor drifted up from the tip of her index finger... It rose two inches, fluttered weakly and vanished on the breeze without chilling anything at all.

"Freeze! FREEZE!"

Pfft! Pfft!

Two more wisps, each thinner than the last, curling away like smoke from a dead candle as her core was a dry well... There wasn’t a single drop of mana left in it.

The entity reached the bottom of the terrace steps.

It climbed the four stone risers without a sound, its twitching limbs carrying it onto the landing until its shadow fell over her trembling body.

The smell that rolled off it wasn’t blood or rot, It was the absence of any life at all, like breathing air pulled from the bottom of an ancient sealed tomb.

Elora curled up against the balustrade with her knees pulled to her chest and buried her face in her arms.

"Please..." she wept, her voice shrunk to a broken squeak. "Please don’t kill me... I have gold... House Verinda has resources... territory, credits, artifacts... take whatever you want... just let me live... please don’t kill me..."

The entity stopped two feet in front of her.

It didn’t raise a long lethal hand to crush her skull. Instead it slowly bent its knees.

With an eerie fluid motion that had no creak of joints and no strain of tendons, it squatted down on its haunches and brought its smooth featureless purple face level with hers.

Elora squeezed her eyes shut.

Her whole body shook like a dry leaf in a gale as she waited for the blow that would splatter her across the balustrade.

’This is it,’ she thought. ’This is how it ends... On my own terrace, in my own garrison, begging like a beggar in a gutter...’

"I’m not going to hurt you..."