Nighthand was furious that the hacker would go to such lengths to taunt him about his blade, only to summon a pair of golems to hide behind. The sheer dishonor of the thing drove him nuts. Enraged as he already was before, the swordsmage decided it would be his immediate goal to destroy the golems as quickly as possible so he could get back to slaughtering the hacker.
Stepping out of their easy reach, Nighthand actually took the time to study his two new opponents. Outwardly they looked similar, a pair of golems standing erect to guard the hacker. Upon closer inspection, they were each fundamentally different.
The first was a golem seemingly made out of pure packed mud. It wasn’t your typical sludgy image of mud, either. It was drier than the cliché, undoubtedly able to move fairly quickly, while still able to absorb plenty of damage. The good news was it wouldn’t be able to sit on you and suffocate you. Well, at least not as easily.
To its side stood a distant cousin, a golem made out of rocks. This one looked to have a stronger defense, possibly a stronger blow due to its more solid nature, but not much other change. Indeed, they were virtually the same.
Both of them were obviously creatures of earth, so wood should be a handy device for the battle.
Nighthand narrowed his eyes to slits, and sensed the earth energy pulsing through the beasts. He grasped the energy with his full might, feeling his power take hold as it used to, and he gave a mighty yank on the bonds holing the life to the stone. Try as he might, however, the bonds would not budge.
"Interesting. But do not think your control over Earth can surpass mine."
Nighthand withdrew his grasp and opened his eyes fully in a glare at the hacker.
”Fine, then. I don’t even NEED my powers to beat these clods.”
”Have fun.”
The heavyblade shrugged, and lofted his Nightblade. The facets gleamed darkly, reflecting only a fraction of the light they should. The whip twitched and writhed like a thing of life itself, feeling its wielder’s hatred and bloodlust. As the golems converged on him, Nall was finally back into the fray. The frenzied blademaster had long since abandoned any hope of fighting with strategy, restraint, or intelligence. He was simply a mindless machine, designed for and acting on one purpose alone; the attack, to hit, and to kill.
A machine which, apparently, needed some oil. Nall let off another Rue Crack, but Jett didn’t even bother to look at him. His eyes swept over the rest of the mountain top, taking in the damage to his lair and pet with dispassionate ease.
The golems closed in on him, lacking strategy almost as much as Nall. What they lacked in brains, however, they made up for in brawn. As one, they both threw punches fit for tanks. Nighthand leapt back, landing on his hands and springing off them backwards. The Nightblade curled the base of the whip around Nighthand’s wrist, keeping itself out of the way for his handspring but refusing to be left behind.
For a moment, Nighthand almost suspected the weapon of having some dark intelligence. It was rare, these days, to find a darkness weapon that didn’t. The idea was quickly dismissed, though. The only intelligence that could bless, or curse, his blade would be Wryneck’s, and that dark god couldn’t fit his power in such a small vessel without it radiating power. No, the only intelligence controlling this blade was Nighthand’s own.
Nighthand landed from his handspring on his feet, the Nightblade snapping back into his grasp and releasing the whip from his wrist. He held it level, his arm drawn back so the blade stretched right by his face. He could feel its subtle pull, even now drawing in fractions of energy from everything nearby. He grinned, waiting for the golems to approach once more.
Approach they did, predictable as a glacier. His grin fading, Nighthand lunged and rolled between the golems as they prepared their fists. The stone golem, slightly faster on the uptake, raised its foot to stomp, but Nighthand was up and behind them before he could be squashed. Shifting much of his energy into strength, he swung his blade twisting at the mud golem.
He was far enough away that only the tip could hit the creature. It struck, losing most of its momentum, and slid through. He put as much power into the swing as he could muster, feeling the blade respond easily, and continued his spin into the chest of the oncoming rock golem.
The blade stopped dead. His arms tingled with backlash. Of course, he should have expected slamming a sword into solid rock to feel just like slamming a sword into solid rock. Nighthand quickly drew back the blade in time to block a punch coming from the mud golem. The force was blunted somewhat, but even still it shoved him back a good ten feet.
Nighthand quickly looked around the area. Nothing much was happening. Reinier lay helpless on the ground, Zan full-on beast form tore at the bird’s wings. A few broken shafts of the spears lay on the ground near the throne where they had been blown by the bird’s wing storm. Jett stood still, face impassive, as he watched Nall fruitlessly batter at his Earth Barrier. The whole where Nall had fallen through the floor gaped like a dark mouth a short distance to his left.
The hole where Nall had fallen through…
Nighthand’s eyes lit up. His goal wasn’t to destroy these monsters, they were obviously a lot tougher than he had given them credit for. Rather, he would take them out of the picture.
Nighthand ran for the stone golem, leaping and kicking off its heavy chest. It didn’t even budge under his weight, but it did irritate the beast. Flipping through the air, he came out with the mud golem in between himself and the stone one. Still showing off a lack of cooperation and teamwork, the golems both charged him in a line.
He led them around, ever closer to the hole. Finally he neared it with them both in the proper orientation. They still approached him, slow enough to dodge. The mud golem stopped and reared back its fist, slamming it down at his crouched form.
Rolling forward, Nighthand came up just barely behind the bent-over mud golem. Leaping back quickly, he landed on its back as the stone golem approached. It acted exactly like its cousin, slamming a punch for him. Once more he kicked off, moving somewhat slower than he would have liked due to the softer golem he stood on. The stone golem clipped him as he leapt, dealing some damage to him, but the full brunt of its punch slammed into the mud golem’s back.
It had hardly moved when Nighthand’s strike had torn through it, but it was certainly budged by this display of force. It threw its arms out to the sides, windmilling in an oddly human gesture as it lost its balance and fell through the hole. Its head, or what passed for a head on a beast made securely out of mud, clipped the other side of the hole. It tore off another chunk as it fell through, landing with a heavy thud far below.
Nighthand, meanwhile, was behind the stone golem. It, unfazed by its sudden burst of team damage, turned around and raised its leg for a heavy stomp. Nighthand could barely roll forward fast enough to avoid a direct hit, and was caught in the shockwave that emanated out. The ground bucked under him, and he sprawled out.
Quickly he rolled to the side, avoiding a second quick stomp, but the ground’s shuddering kept him from leaping to his feet. The golem was in frenzy, stomping with one foot, then the other, as an irritated human would stump on a colony of biting ants.
Nighthand liked to think he had somewhat more intelligence than the average ant, and on the next roll proved it. He drove his blade into the ground as he twisted, using it as a combination lever and vault, lifting himself to his feet, into the air, and some distance away from the raging golem. Grinning once more, he ran right for his foe while it was still recovering from its latest stomp. Rather than leap and kick off it, however, he dug his feet into it. First into the knee, then the waist, then a stomp to the chest, and he was flying high above it.
This time, it wouldn’t have a chance to react.
Reversing his blade, Nighthand drove it with all the force he could muster into the ground. His rolling had kept the golem fairly close to the hole already made, and its frenzied stomping had done nothing to help the support of the ground beneath. His blade struck like a wedge into the weakened rock, causing yet more to crack, crumble, and drop below.
Unfortunately, Nighthand was among the pieces that fell below, into Klippe’s lair.
He landed hard, twisting and rolling as he hit to try to lessen the fall. The maneuver would have worked perfectly on a flat surface, but in a cave with the ground littered with rubble, he only succeeded in not breaking any bones. A particularly sharp piece of rock, whether from the Klippe’s jewel-like shell or from the rocky roof above, tore a long slash open on his back. He winced, but ignored the pain. He had bigger things to worry about.
Particularly, two much bigger things standing over him now.
Hoping he wouldn’t get stomped, Nighthand threw himself forward into another roll, ripping his back open further and leaving a smear of blood on the floor. The golems turned, and began to follow him.
He shifted a little to speed and dashed forward to get a lead on them. He headed, not for the ramp upwards, but for the exit to the sheer cliff face. He kept ahead of the golems, who had to squeeze single-file into the tunnel to follow after him.
The stray bits of a plan falling into place in his pain-clouded mind, Nighthand was sure to keep just close enough to the chasing golems to keep them interested in pursuit. Finally, he neared the entrance.
With a silent command, the Nightblade’s whip stretched and shot out into the corner near the doorway. More of a hole than a doorway, actually. Nighthand prayed that the whip was as strong as it seemed, and stopped abruptly at the edge of the cave.
The golems, seeing their quarry with nowhere left to run, put out a surge of energy and headed right for him. They were right, at least in part. He had nowhere left to run.
Nowhere, that is, except out the door.
As they barreled almost on top of him, he leapt out into open sky. Falling freely, he could feel the Nightblade send out an extra tendril of its whip to wrap around his wrist once more.
As he had hoped, the whip’s tip has anchored itself firmly into the rock above, leaving him to swing down. Above him, the mud golem screeched to a stop at the entrance, teetering like it had on the hole above. The stone golem, close behind, slammed into its back and carried them both over the edge.
A tangled mass of rock fell above him. Finally, he commanded the whip to stop lengthening. It did so, slamming him to a halt abruptly and swinging him into the cliff face. He felt sorry for what he’d done to Lighteria, as pain lanced through his entire arm, back, and side. The golems tumbled past, growing smaller and disappearing from sight.
With a sigh, Nighthand ordered the blade to pull him up. It did so, but with a total disregard for his pain. If anything, his arm grew even more pained. It felt as if it were about to fall off. Not to mention the flesh being scraped off by the cliff face.
Finally, he was able to drag himself into the cavern opening. He lay, panting and bleeding on the floor, barely the strength to move. His arm was almost certainly dislocated, he was bleeding heavily, and he’d already lost most of his hit points.
Willing all the energy he could, he pushed himself to his knees. Gritting his teeth, he grabbed the Nightblade with his other hand and jabbed it into the ground, propping a foot against it. The whip still curled around his wrist, keeping the blade attached to his hand.
With a jerk and a cry of pain, he kicked and pulled, ripping his dislocated shoulder taut, out, and into its socket. Panting, he rested his head on the floor for a moment.
Finally, he cast an Ol Repth on himself. He had more than enough SP to handle the spell, and it quickly closed up the wounds on his side and back. But still the pain lingered, lessened, but not gone. Perhaps it was something of the nature of this place, or perhaps it was a nasty side-effect of the blade he held tight. Whatever the case, his spell only healed his hit points and his wounds. He would probably ache for days.
At the least, he was back in action.
Shifting all the points he had into speed, he could nearly match the movement Nall could achieve without Ap Do. He did this now, racing as a blur back the way he had come, through the Klippe’s cavern, and back up the ramp to the hacker’s mountaintop lair.
Arriving at the top, absolutely nothing had changed. Jett still idly watched Nall batter at his shield, and the others did a mediocre job of keeping the bird from plucking them into the air. Nighthand, despite his pain, grinned. He strode slowly and purposefully towards the hacker’s back, his stats leveled out to normal and his blade balanced on his shoulder.
”Jett! It will take more than those pushovers to take care of me!” He called, hoping to startle the Master of Earth enough that Nall could get another hit in.
|