[Ashborn-B1] 82. King (Patreon)

LXXXII

King

The disciples around Judith jerked to a pause. Even the scorn came to a brief stop.

‘I suppose waiting is no use.’

She’d have to hold Vyke off no matter what’d happened.

Despite his black wings striking the sky, the Vile didn’t bob in place. His obsidian pupils lied as silent as his oscillation and peered from between the slits in his helmet without emotion. They were like the moon: cold, revealing nothing to the admirer but a reflection of their very own soul.

A blurry image of her mother passed through them. She was sitting in front of their hearth in the living room, rocking in a chair, after Judith had told her she was entering Everwinter. Mother hadn’t even looked at her as she said: ‘I apologise, Judith. For making you dream.’

Judith’s shoulder drooped.

“What are you seeing, I wonder?” Vyke whispered.

As he spoke, the image in his eyes changed to another familiar face, which made her insides curl. She remained in enough control of her emotions to pause.

There was something in Vyke’s voice that hadn’t been there during the skirmish. He’d grown stronger since that time, of course, but this was more than that.

‘What did he recover in the Tomb?’

She’d received a spirit. It wouldn’t be unthinkable for him to have gotten something of equal value.

‘Can you sense anything, Dorothy?’

The spirit mentally shook her head. His aura is blocking my senses. Be careful, Judith. He’s a formidable opponent.

She didn’t need to tell her that.

‘Let’s test that waters.’ Her staff whipped the air. ‘First Commandment.’

The moment the cone of light shot from her staff, the scorn and disciples around them hurled back into battle.

Vyke’s wing struck and the boy shot up and out of the way. Judith whirled her staff so her light chased after him. But when Vyke dove and curved low to the ground, she abandoned her attack lest she hit one of her own.

She grimaced. ‘He really is fast.’

A swathe of blades formed over her head and whirred forwards. They cut Vyke off from charging straight at her, but the boy twirled between them all and looped around for another go.

Her scowl deepened. Tirion’s earlier statement was true. He knew what she was going to fire in advance. Which meant her old strategies wouldn’t work.

‘I need to take him by surprise.’

Though her eye had changed, Vyke shouldn’t be able to pinpoint Dorothy as the source of her new powers—he wasn’t Scar. But Judith didn’t have any new skills since Dorothy merely empowered what she already had.

Her breath whistled from between her lips. If she had no new skills, then the solution was simple.

She had to create a new attack on the fly.

The black blur that was Vyke hurled through the sky. He was like a missile of death that promised the darkness of an ever-lasting sleep.

‘First, I need to get him where I want him.’

The skull on her staff cackled. She shoved essence down its throat and repeated her attack from before—but she thinned the blast and cut off the beam at intervals.

Slicing rays hounded the Vile. All but one missed. The ray that did find its target left only a slight burn mark.

Her options were too limited with him flying near her army.

‘Dorothy, help me control the flow. I’ll focus on aiming.’

Her partner pooled and pushed essence through her veins and into their weapon. Another volley built in her staff. She channelled her first commandment into the art so he thought she was sticking to the same strategy.

Beams fired wide as Vyke flew above a fellow disciple’s head (his spear carved through their skull despite her efforts to spare them), but a few well-placed shots forced him to a higher elevation.

‘First one,’ she thought.

The blowback of the beam made her take a step back to stabilise. Nothing about the attack had changed outwardly, so Vyke spun out of the way like he’d done before.

The intent hidden inside the beam exploded. A whirling column of blades burst into existence right beside Vyke’s head. He whirled, which stopped his face from swallowing the attack blade-first, but the rest of his body wasn’t so lucky. The blades tore into his wings and legs. No blood sprayed, but the holes in his wings would affect his flight.

Judith didn’t allow him room to breathe.

She had no control over the Second Commandment. However, infusing her arts like this worked in her favour exactly because her control was shaky; her beams were ready to burst at the barest flex of her will. By also changing the nature of the light she fired, she forced Vyke to dodge wide every time or take a guess.

This was all a good start. But she needed more.

The skull of her staff came to rest in her hands. Her training with this was limited, yet she had to go for it:

It was time for her third core aspect.

My assumption was right. The second we headed in the direction of the king, the crane released a screech anyone in the shrine could hear no matter where they were.

The skies froze. The icy plateau hanging in the air grew wider, denser. The beasts popped out so quick they may as well have been wished into the world.

‘Will we even make it?’

The king wasn’t far but he wasn’t a stone’s throw away either—

I bit down on further doubts. ‘We have no choice.’ Even if we retreated, fighting the crane was no use. We’d merely be playing to delay a losing battle.

That said, there were too many enemies.

The flying golems soared overhead and hurled daggers of frost. I leapt off Ashwing’s side, who caught me by her feet. Erri slithered between the spears falling like rain, Jake fired his own shots to block part of volley, and Ren melt everything in his path as she blast through the air.

Ashwing’s upper body thudded. The natural heat of her body and her toughness resisted most of the attacks, but the shallow wounds would build up. I did my best to power her agility—

My heart skipped. Shards curved below me and shot upwards.

However, my heartbeat continued when I noticed the energy signature attached to the attack.

Icicles, each carrying the momentum of an airship cutting through the clouds, bore through the mass produced golems.

Aurille’s daggers didn’t only pierce her targets but also smashed their bodies to pieces.

‘Her moves really are more effective against her own element.’

I couldn’t have been happier that she was on my side.

My chin poked past my shoulder. The crane had closed the distance while we dodged for our lives.

‘Shaking it was always a long shot.’

Even if Aurille and Gaje could slow it down, there was no stopping a beast of that size if it wanted to go somewhere.

Aurille wove a set of platforms. “We’ll have to fight it near the king!”

I yelled back: “Agreed! Let’s hope they don’t wipe us out in a single strike.”

Aurille and Gaje played defence while our party rushed ahead. The frost clinging to the landscape darkened and thickened as we neared the king. Flames coursing through me failed to stop a chill from digging into my skin. It was cold beyond just the drop in temperature.

“It has an infantile domain,” Gaje said.

Ashwing dodged a zealous golem diving for her neck. My gaze narrowed. A domain was an expression of a cultivator’s inner spirit layered onto reality. I didn’t even know how one went about unlocking it. Safe to say, though, it was the product of years if not decades of training.

It also came easier to monsters than humans.

‘All of its skills and abilities will be amplified in a domain.’

…I had a bad feeling about this.

The air’s frigid touched slapped us in the face when we entered the core of the king’s domain. The crane was right behind us and the the sky crystallised further upon its entry. The natural light radiating from the shrine caught on the outgrowths of frost. Part of the luminance didn’t shine through the ice and was absorbed instead. The result was a blackened sky, one the deep blue of an ocean at night.

Almost no distance remained between us and the king. I couldn’t see its face even after craning my neck.

‘It’s not attacking,’

Maybe that’d change once we launched an attack of our own, though.

“What now?” Erri asked.

Blindly attacking a creature of this size was the plan of a fool. What we needed to attack was the king’s connection with the leylines. As long as we cut off its source of power, the waves of monsters would thin and become easier to manage.

However, the leylines were deep underground. It wasn’t like we could quickly dig a hole and sever them directly.

So what to do?

The crane didn’t wait and give us time to think. Now that we were in front of its king, spawning a horde was no longer enough. A wedge of the frozen star behind it separated from the main body and formed a second moon. The celestial body rose until it hovered over us like a sun.

“Behind me!” Aurille yelled.

She fell to the ground in front of Erri and crafted a giant wall. Ren and Ashwing landed at the same time. Gaje appeared inside the barrier out of thin air.

Then the crane’s voice rose into something akin to a song. The star spun on its axis and created a terrifying gust that rammed into Aurille’s barrier. Layers upon layers of frost carved across the ground. The ice was so thick it almost reached halfway up my shins.

Aurille’s barrier splintered. The shards whirred overhead in the direction of the king.

‘We’re trapped.’

How long was this going to continue? If the crane or king summoned more golems now—

A hunch made me spin around. The king’s finger had moved. However, he didn’t point at the landscape as he always did.

Instead, his icy blue fingertip flashed with a cold so deep it could freeze souls…

And he aimed directly at us.