Chapter 4 Part 1 of 2 (Patreon)

Chapter: Why?

The light of the totem disappeared. Erik scanned the ruins around him, pulling out his rifle as he jumped from his panther mount.

The hell? A formation underneath his feet faded away as if it didn't exist. He could see through the stone ruin, covered in moss and weathered by time.

The rest of the convoy had disappeared, leaving him in what looked like a cathedral's ruin

Everything was clear for several hundred meters around the ruin before reaching fog that hid the surroundings and the sun.

He only knew he was outside by the fact the fog was turned pure white by the sun above, as if formed from cotton.

The panther growled at the raised section of the ruin.

A section of the ruins started to shake, stone and dirt formed together into a golem as tall as Erik.

Erik shot the golem, scattering it across the ground.

"Come here," the panther obeyed and Erik put her away in his beast storage crate.

He couldn't feel the movement of mana anymore with his armor on, but he could feel the elements like a fresh breeze across his skin.

"Why do you fight Erik West?" A voice seemed to come from the world around him, curious, bland, it had a timeless quality to it.

"It's what I'm good at?"

"You will only pass this trial if you are true to yourself. Why do you fight?"

A section of the cathedral, near the open arches tore free with the sound of cracking stone. Erik fired, hitting the Golem's head, the golem hit the wall it had stepped out from but took another step forward as a sword of stone assembled in its hand.

A second and third shot hit the creatures chest, turning it into rubble.

Erik ran for the arch beyond the creature, escaping the ruin.

"Why do you fight Erik?"

A golem hand reached out of the ground and hauled itself up, another formed from one of the stone roof ribs, dropping to the ground below.

"For duty."

Erik fired into the golem coming from the ground. Another tore out the side of the cathedral.

"Because it is what I was trained to do."

He fired, his shots becoming frantic, feeling a pit in his stomach grow.

"Why do you fight?"

They're getting stronger.

Erik drew on the power of the elements, he cried out in pain as his skin cracked, showing the veins of magma beneath, a metal sheen spread over his skin as his reactions sped up.

"I fight for others, to protect them."

"Do not lie to yourself."

"You fucking voice! Come and face me!"

There were a dozen golems tearing free of the church, moving towards him, creating weapons of stone and clawing their way out of the ground, pulling up the dirt and grass with them.

Erik was moving and shooting, feeling the pressure as they moved in closer to him.

"I am the trial, nothing more. Why do you fight?"

"For Alva!" he dodged to the side and grasped a spear heading for him, turning he threw it back, smashing apart a golem in mutual destruction.

Erik pulled out his machine gun firing from the hip, the stream of tracers, cutting down several as he paused to throw grenades.

"Why do you fight?"

"I'm a soldier, a-a marine and a medic! I fight to save my patients. I fight for the United States. I fight for the people I want to defend."

The grenades went off in a spray of stone and dirt, clearing the last of the golems.

"Why do you fight?"

The remains of the golems started to flow back together, the ruins was coming apart as golems made of a darker stone and metallic flecks appeared two, then four, then eight.

Erik had given the damn voice his answer, as corny as it was, he'd gone to the depths!

"Truths and lies, your damn question is rigged I gave you your answer!"

"Search deeper, why do you fight?"

"To kill annoying pricks like you!" The world was drowned out in a stream of tracer as it ate through the stone golems, the ground had been torn back to show the stone square underneath.

Even as he cut them in half the golems started to reform and more were coming.

Erik threw out grenades getting him time.

"I fight for those who stand on either side of me!"

The golems paused for a half-second.

"Close, but there is more, Why do you fight?"

Erik yelled firing on the enemy.

The golems were swarming, closing in on him, he stored his machine gun, and reached towards a golem, tearing hammers from it.

He swung the hammers, smashing arms out of the way in a stream of shards. He knocked a golem head clean off as he jumped, calling on his dungeon core, a burst of air threw him across the ground. He hit the ground, rolling.

He came up to his feet, as golems charged him. The pain and adrenaline warred with one another as the shrapnel shifted.

He gritted his teeth with the pain, he welcomed it as he ran calling the elements into his hammers he hurled them.

"I fight because its what I do! I fight to protect others! Fighting is my profession."

The hammers smashed into the first golem, taking it and three others out, his second following afterwards as he formed and caught two more, crashing into a golem. He tried to dodge, but his body was too slow to react.

He hurriedly transformed his left hammer turning into a shield to deflect a sword aimed at his head as he used his hammer to hit the golem in the stomach, lifting it off of its feet, and feeling a tearing pain through his back.

Erik kicked the golem away with a shout fuelled with his own pain.

"I was born to fight! I fight against the ten realms against others that would harm my people and those I care for!"

He smashed arms apart, kicking and punching, launching his hammers as more golems piled in, still he heard that same voice, sounding tired and saddened.

"Why do you fight Erik West?"

Erik was hit in the back, clubbed with the flat edge of a sword.

Is this it?

Erik felt the pain from the beating, but that question hung above him, tearing his heart through his stomach.

Light wrapped around him and he found himself back in the cathedral again, the ruins were once again whole, the grass flat over the hidden stone.

He dropped into a fighting stance looking around and touching himself. He no longer could use scan on himself without control over mana. There were no broken bones or cuts.

"The golems are your doubts, your lies, the ones that you tell yourself. More insidious than any lie another can tell you. As you propagate lies, born of fears and others goals and truths you become buried in them. They multiply, creating layers of others ideas and truths. Once you know why you fight, you can change how you fight and only then can you look at who you want to become. Truth of the self. What do you fear that you fight so hard? Go back to why you started fighting."

Golden light surrounded Erik as he looked down he swore he saw a complicated magical circle. It somehow looked familiar as it passed over him and then he found himself at a totem in the seventh realm on his panther as if the trial had never happened.