Enjoy today's chapter!

-Plum

33 – Into the Oven

Andy had time to say, “What?” before the ground began to rumble and then the earth rose up behind them—a wall of caliche that rushed toward them almost before they could understand what was happening. “Look out!” Andy cried, and the three of them stumbled farther into the archway as the wall of damp earth slammed against the dome, blocking them in. As they stumbled into the massive open space, the grating, discordant voice resounded.

Lucy slammed her hands to her ears and yelled, “It says there’s no hope to run. It’s calling us vermin! Look!” She pointed, and Andy whirled to see the jagged black crown moving around the pile of timber. The creature that came into view was neither like the Gavax warriors nor the workers, but something entirely different.

Beneath the jagged crown was a creature that looked to be made from clay—not the red-tinted caliche of the desert, but pale gray stuff. It had eyes that glowed with an eerie red light and wore an apron of thick, mud-stained leather. In its left hand was a hammer, and in its right, something that looked like a cleaver. Andy guessed the being was at least ten feet tall, though the spiked crown stood up another foot from the top of its smooth gray head.

When it looked at them, it opened its mouth, revealing toothless gums and a slick, wet clay tongue that danced around as it screamed its weird language at them again.

Lucy translated: “It says that he is Gavax! He says this world is his. He wants us to kneel down and be honored that he’ll mold us into his next children!”

“Forget that,” Andy said, stepping to the side and forward. Without taking his eyes off Gavax, he added, “You guys know what to do.”

“We’ve got you,” Denise replied, and Andy heard Lucy running away, her steps thumping on the hard clay as she traced the inside of the dome, giving herself more range.

Gavax roared and waved his hammer-wielding hand. The earth rose around Andy—a wall that rushed toward his head on all sides, trying to close him in. Andy was quick, though, and as soon as he saw what was happening, he leaped, diving over the edge of the wall and rolling over his shoulder until he was back on his feet. From there, he leaped at the giant figure—three quick, lunging steps, and then a jump.

Gavax seemed surprised by the suddenness of his attack, but he swung his cleaver in time to make Andy twist, lowering his spear from his original target in the giant’s chest to his stomach in order to avoid the hack. Scirocco slammed home, sinking a full foot into the clay body, and Andy watched as his balefire spread through the apron, burning a huge hole, but failing to catch the monster’s clay flesh alight.

Scirocco’s voice echoed through Andy’s head as he pulled the spear out and leaped back, avoiding an overhead smash from Gavax’s hammer. “He resists my venom!”

Two arrows slammed into Gavax’s chest, flickering with flames that immediately sputtered out. The monster didn’t seem to notice the arrows, even though they sank several inches into its chest. Andy backpedaled, watching as the hole Scirocco had made squished together and vanished. His confidence wavered as he began to wonder if they could even hurt the monster.

“Back up!” Denise cried, and then Andy felt the familiar rush of mana from her quagmire spell. He jumped back, spear held out, ready to fend off the giant clay man, but then the earth grew wet and loose, and Gavax’s legs immediately sank to his knees.

The monstrous man or creature—Andy was having trouble categorizing Gavax—didn’t fall; he made a sound that almost sounded like laughter. As Andy contemplated his next move, the giant lifted his hammer, and suddenly the mud at his feet streamed up into the air, split apart, and formed a hundred spinning, baseball-sized balls. Gavax swung his hammer forward, and the balls ripped through the air. Some of them came at Andy, but some flew past him in two different directions, toward Lucy and Denise.

Andy fell flat, his reflexes up to the task, and the muddy missiles split the air above him with whistling whooshes. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Lucy diving and tumbling, and Denise held her staff before her with a shimmering blue mana shield, spreading out from either side of it. The mud balls slammed into the shield, and Denise was driven back, but she stopped them.

Growling, Andy leaped to his feet, gathered his mana and exhaled a Cinderstorm Blast. For the first time, Gavax reacted with something other than amusement. As the hot, roiling smoke surrounded him, he roared discordantly and churned his legs, kicking his way out of Denise’s muddy trap and moving as quickly as he could toward the edge of the cloud. Andy pursued him, and, inside the smoke with vision clarified by the simplicity of a monochromatic world, he saw what was happening: the heat of his Cinderstorm was baking the clay that made up Gavax’s body.

Andy pursued the giant clay man, but Gavax’s legs were long and he was moving with panicked haste. By the time Andy caught up, he was out of the smoke. He wasn’t sure either of his companions would hear him clearly over the rumble of the earth, Gavax’s discordant screams, or the sizzle of his fiery cloud, but he shouted, “He doesn’t like the heat!”

Cinderstorm Blast was an expensive spell, and there’d been a time when two or three would have drained him of mana. He had over a thousand in his pool now, though, and Andy knew he could cast seven or eight of the blasts comfortably, especially when he considered his passive regeneration. That being the case, when he tore through the air, spear out, he exhaled another cloud of fiery smoke.

Gavax had whirled when he’d cleared the smoke, pulling back his massive cleaver, ready to cut Andy in half as he flew through the air, but when that cloud of hot smoke roiled forth, the giant’s strange glowing red eyes flew wide and he turned to run again. Two fiery arrows pounded into his broad back, and Andy saw chips of hardened clay fall away from the impacts.

It was hard to run and exhale his Cinderstorm Blast at the same time, so he lost some distance on the giant, but as his cloud enveloped the monster, a ball of fire smashed into Gavax’s back; Denise had gotten the clue about fire, too. When his spell was fully unleashed, Andy charged, leaping with all his speed after the fleeing giant, and just as Gavax reached the edge of his burning cloud again, Andy smashed Scirocco into the bend of the giant’s left knee.

Hunks of dried clay fell away from the impact, and that time, Andy saw the spear’s Balefire enchantment take hold, sizzling in reddish-orange rivulets into the giant’s leg. Gavax screamed, but didn’t turn until he was outside Andy’s cloud again. They’d run halfway through the dome, around the giant stack of cut trees, and when Gavax cleared Andy’s cloud, he gestured with his hammer, waving it in the air.

Andy didn’t know what he was doing at first. He thought maybe the strange clay giant was taunting him. Another fiery arrow punched into Gavax’s shoulder, but then the grinding rumble of wood smashing against wood took Andy’s attention, and he glanced over his shoulder to see two massive felled trees lifting off the stack. Gavax roared, and the trees broke apart into thousands of splintered shards and then streaked through the air toward Lucy and Denise.

Effectively, Gavax had launched a thousand arrows at each of the women, and Andy’s stomach sank when he saw poor Lucy trying to sprint to safety; she wasn’t going to make it. Denise was better off; her magical shield came up again, and though he lost sight of her amid the deluge of wooden shards, he thought she might be okay.

The drumming of the shards striking the ground was cacophonous, but Andy thought he heard Lucy cry out. Rage and panic filled his chest, and he spun, charging for the huge mound of cut trees. When he was ten yards away, he cast Cinderstorm Blast again, pouring out a cloud of burning smoke onto them. They took flame like logs in a furnace. He couldn’t go back in time and undo Gavax’s first splinter attack, but he could keep him from doing it again.

Gavax roared in fury, but he didn’t give chase; the ambient temperature in the clay dome was rising rapidly, so much so that Andy felt they’d all be in trouble if something didn’t change soon. Even so, he ignored the giant clay man for the moment, sprinting around the mound of burning trees and racing toward where he’d last seen Lucy. As he ran, he summoned one of Bea’s special healing waters from his ring—the kind with regenerative properties.

When he found Lucy, she was lying on her stomach with her left leg and right shoulder pinned to the ground with yard-long wood fragments. She bore cuts and scratches elsewhere, but those were the big wounds. Andy thought the worst, but when he slid down beside her, he saw her struggling, grunting with reddened eyes as she tried to pull the impaling shards out of the hard clay.

“Drink,” he commanded, holding the potion to her lips.

Gasping, Lucy put her lips to the edge of the jar, and he tilted it, pouring the water into her mouth. She gulped greedily. As soon as it was down, he grabbed the shard in her shoulder and yanked, pulling it out. Lucy screamed, but Andy was already grabbing the one in her leg.

“Sorry!” he said, pulling hard. “I have to get them out while the potion is working!”

Again, Lucy screamed, and she might have fainted if not for the magic of Bea’s water. Andy watched as the flow of blood stopped, and when he brushed his hand over the back of Lucy’s leg, he found the wound already half-closed. Before his eyes, it finished stitching shut. “You’ll be okay! That potion will keep healing you for a while.”

He stood and spun, spear ready, afraid the giant would be coming at them, but instead, he saw Denise jogging their way. “He’s trying to get to the tunnel, but he’s moving slowly! I think the heat is baking him!”

Andy nodded. “Start blasting him with lightning! Break off the cooked clay so the moist stuff underneath cooks!”

Denise grinned, glanced at Lucy, and then nodded. “Let’s kill his ass!”

Lucy pushed herself onto her hands and knees. “Go! I’ll be okay.”

Andy charged, running back toward the enormous fire. For a moment, he wondered if he’d be able to get close enough to do any damage, but then he remembered his Firewalk spell. It wasn’t cheap, but at fifty mana per ten seconds, he could keep himself effectively immune to the heat for a short while. He held off, waiting until he had to use it.

When he rounded the burning log pile, he saw Gavax slowly moving, stiff-legged, toward the huge tunnel opening where several abandoned ore carts lay. Had his workers fled? Had he ordered them away? It didn’t matter, Andy decided. With the bonfire behind him and the tunnel ahead, Andy knew what he had to do. He ran right up behind the clay giant and threw out another Cinderstorm Blast, laying a huge cone of burning smoke over the giant and all the way to the edge of the ramp leading down into the tunnel.

“You won’t find relief down there, buddy!”

Gavax whirled, hammer high, and Andy felt the earth begin to tremble—then a bolt of lightning slammed into the giant clay man’s chest.

“Yeah!” Andy howled, then he charged in with Scirocco and yelled, “Don’t hold back, brother!”

“I will unleash hell!” the spear cried, just as Andy drove Scirocco upward, right into the center of Gavax’s chest. Maybe it was dumb luck, or maybe Scirocco was getting better control of his random magical effects, but when he sank home, thunder pealed like a bomb going off and a bolt of lightning rippled into being, blasting Gavax’s crown. The impact and concussive force threw Andy back, but he held onto his spear, pulling Scirocco with him as he rolled back toward the fire.

The giant clay man didn’t die, but massive hunks of clay sloughed off him. As he climbed to his feet, Andy felt a surge of mana and watched as Gavax reshaped himself, fixing a broken arm and a chunk of missing torso, but reducing his overall size by a third. Andy charged, circling the clay man, until he was between him and the tunnel. Then, he drove him back, pushing him toward the fire with a flurry of spear attacks. Fiery arrows streaked out of the distance, slamming into Gavax, and every time the strange alien being began to cast a spell, Denise would pop him with a bolt of lightning.

The heat became unbearable, even for Andy, so he cast Firewalk, and suddenly he was at home in the hellish environment. Gavax tried to resist him. He tried to push past him, but Scirocco was relentless and he met the clay man with puncture after puncture that Gavax’s stiff, drying clay couldn’t heal. Soon, Gavax’s back was right against the fire—only ten feet from the raging inferno—and Andy held him there.

The monster’s clay body was too stiff by then to move; he couldn’t take steps and his arms, held up in a defensive pose, hung there, unable to move to swipe at Andy’s spear attacks. Andy stabbed Scirocco up under the former giant’s chin and pushed with all his might; Gavax toppled back toward the fire, and when he hit the ground, his arms and his head broke from his torso.

Andy wanted to celebrate, but when he looked to see if Lucy and Denise had seen Gavax go down, he saw them running toward the tunnel, shielding their faces against the smoke and heat. Still protected by his Firewalk, Andy picked up Gavax’s head and, with a grunt, tossed it into the fire. He did the same for his arms and then his legs. Then he picked up the crown, the hammer, and the heavy knife, sending them into his storage ring.

His mana was running low, but he still hadn’t gotten a message from the System indicating that Gavax was truly dead, so he used Scirocco to break up the clay torso into five hunks, and he heaved them into the fire, too. Then, as yellow text washed over his field of view, he ran for the tunnel.

***Congratulations, Andy! You’ve slain Gavax, the leader of the Gavax Collective. He was a powerful Elementalist and Animancer, a being with a rare gift for the animation of semi-living constructs. For your victory, you’ve gained a level in your Brimstone Stalker class, earning an additional 15 maximum mana.

New Quests:

Demise of Gavax, Part 1: With his death, the Gavax Collective System Node is ripe for the taking. Claim the node before someone else does, earning a portion of any spent Boons for your own Settlement.

Demise of Gavax, Part 2: There are nearly a thousand Gavax Collective citizens left in the fallen settlement. What will you do with them? The System will evaluate your treatment of the Gavax remnants and may generate a special reward if it approves.***