Echoes of War 38: Void Battle (Patreon)

The Fourfold Star formation shot toward the Vos’Rekan as the mile-long fangs snapped toward them like meteors. The beast’s mouth was massive, but it wasn’t slow. Sam’s formation was about half a mile wide, and it looked like a firefly in front of that massive cavern.

The beast was planning to tear Sam apart before swallowing him, but the dimensional vortex still lurked in the depths of its throat, like a whirlpool of black nothing, waiting for them to fall inside.

The silver lines of the star blazed as Sam pushed essence through it. The Vos’Rekan’s dimensional bubble locked down space in the area, but this formation was designed to cut through that. With its help, he teleported away. He couldn’t jump onto an astral path from here, but he could manage something much shorter.

Instantly, the army reappeared in a wave of silver light on the far side of the Vos’Rekan’s head, just above its neck. His instructions to the Silver Army and the golems were managed by his avatars, while his Leadership skill and Commander of Many trait helped to keep the entire formation organized and moving as one.

The Titans had developed many tactics to use against Vos’Rekan, but one rule that always held true was to never be in front of a Vos’Rekan’s mouth if you could help it. That hadn’t changed over the years. It was the most dangerous place to fight.

He might not be as strong as the beast, but with the army and his avatars as support, he had closed part of the distance between them. The formation’s strength was almost the same as four of him. Alone, he had a tenth of the Vos’Rekan’s power, but together, that was more like 40%.

On a beast this size, that mattered. Its defense wasn’t perfect everywhere, and if they could keep moving, they could rain attacks down on it. His plan was to maximize the strength of the Fourfold Star and attack the Vos’Rekan’s weak points, damaging as much of its body as possible.

With five hundred miles of rocky hide in front of him, he didn’t lack for targets. Even as the teleport left them coated in a haze of silver light, a torrent of magic rose up from the other three points of the star. The nagas were fusing together their offensive ability from the Blessing of Silver Stars, creating a joint attack, and Sam reached out to gather it to him.

The energy of a massive Astral Strike roared through his hands and wove around those three columns of energy, braiding them into a burning halo around the spear in his hand. A massive silver and golden comet shot down toward the Vos’Rekan’s neck.

The edges of the spell roared with cutting silver force, while the center was as bright as a golden sun. It tore through the Vos’Rekan’s hide, sinking four hundred feet deep as it carved a burning channel of molten stone. The beast’s body was living rock, and it melted the same way. The wound was a glaring gash like the mouth of an open volcano.

The Vos’Rekan roared in response, but its neck was dozens of miles thick. Even as Sam drew his spear back for another strike, the molten stone began to cool, sealing over the base of the wound, which could only be called a flesh wound for it. New rock began to form from the walls of the gap, pushing inward as it started to close. Its Eternal Body of Stone and Dust was no joke.

It also wasn’t defenseless, even against Sam’s mobility and smaller size.

As Sam was recovering his balance, one of the Vos’Rekan’s claws slashed through the Void toward them. The shadow of the other three arms hung in the darkness behind it, as it prepared to tear them apart. Each of the claws was thirty miles across and the bladed tips were like five massive swords covering the sky as they sliced down.

The beast was also twisting around to bring its jaws toward them again. Its movement was like watching a mountain range twist below them, the vast expanse of rough stone shifting like liquid.

With a surge of astral energy, the Fourfold Star teleported again. With the formation, it was easier than taking the Ice Drake along on the astral paths. This time, they reappeared over the beast’s shoulder, where there was a joint between its limb and main body.

This joint was one of the Vos’Rekan’s weak points, as much as the beast had any, and it controlled the movement of its arm. If he could disable it, the limb would take time to recover. Another Astral Strike braided together with the three streams of energy and descended in a silver-gold line.

The attack ripped through the beast’s outer hide, digging an even deeper molten trench into its body than the last time. Red stone glowed from every side and the dark grey of the Vos’Rekan’s bone was exposed at the bottom, but the attack only dug into it by a dozen feet. It wasn’t deep enough to break the joint.

Even as he struck, another of the beast’s claws was already descending toward them. The Vos’Rekan’s sense for dimensional space made it easy to track them, and it forced Sam to teleport again to dodge it. This time he reappeared farther down its back, closer to its tail.

The Fourfold Star wasn’t easy to maintain. For now, his avatars were supporting the majority of the cost by combusting auras, but they would eventually run out. He needed to be efficient with his energy before that happened, and he also had to maintain the advantage of his mobility.

Short-range teleports could send him anywhere within 150 miles of the beast, and it was his best tactic right now to keep them alive while he tried to kill this thing. Even if he had enough strength to hurt it, it was still at the Fifth Star and it wasn’t slow.

The two blows had allowed him to get an understanding of his strength with the Silver Army supporting him, as well as the beast’s resistance, but neither strike had done enough damage. The beast would regenerate soon. If he could layer attacks or if he had hundreds to use at once, it might work to injure it enough, but one by one wasn’t going to cut it.

He would have to try a more powerful attack.

Inherited memories flashed through his mind, combined with his own insights into the Void. He could sense a threatening pressure from the beast, but there was a familiar sense from it too, the feeling of stars stretching into the distance forever as space boiled around them. He knew what it was.

Vestiges of the early Void were still held deep within the beast’s body like veins of ore in a mountain. The Vos’Rekans consumed everything, and once it was part of them, it didn’t leave, whether it was essence, rare magical ores, or strange auras of the Void. Sometimes, things it devoured were stored in its flesh instead of being completely broken apart, especially if they were difficult to break down.

Trapped among the layers of stone and muscle, there were fragments of the past, condensed energies that had once existed, rare materials that formed under time and pressure, and more. There was probably even some equipment from the last guardians and other sentient life that it had eaten, and perhaps the energy of their spirits if it hadn’t been completely torn apart.

A Vos’Rekan was a massive threat, but it was also a treasure trove.

Those thoughts were punctuated by the Vos’Rekan’s back rippling as its spine rose into the air. Its body twisted around, sending the great spikes along its length hurtling toward Sam like mountains. The beast was rolling in space and trying to crush them with its body.

They were so close to its body that the teleport was almost too late. The spikes slammed through the area where they’d been standing an instant after they turned into a streak of silver light. When Sam reappeared, his expression was hard. The golden spear traced out a series of runes as he began to carve a more complex spell into the air in front of him.

He didn’t have a lot of time to make up complex enchantments while dodging the Vos’Rekan’s attacks, but he did have some things he could use. In his free hand, an unused golem core appeared. It was made out of silver-swirled ice as hard as diamond. This was part of a new golem he’d been making, but he hadn’t had time to finish it.

Now, he began to alter the core enchantment on it to explode at his command. The core floated in front of him as auras appeared like a small sea above his head. He chose the most caustic and venomous ones he had and infused them into the golem core, and then he charged it full of essence.

Venom wouldn’t do anything to the Vos’Rekan on its own, but the corrosive nature of the magic was still useful.

It wasn’t a traditional tactic, but he was going to give it a shot anyway. Against a Vos’Rekan as old as this one, staying agile and damaging it over time was the main method for a group of young Titans. They had to cooperate to survive. If he’d had three other Titans with him, they could have done exactly that, slowly tearing away at its body until it expired, but that could take weeks of battle, and he didn’t have that much time.

He had to speed things up.

Fortunately, he had a lot of spare equipment. All of it was charged with essence and made from strong materials. His many years of accumulation were helping him. A wave of other artifacts followed the core into the air around him. Some of them were single-use items and others were weapons or armor.

Tricks and games were useless against a Vos’Rekan, so all he could do was hit it with the biggest damage he could create, and for that he was relying on these artifacts that he’d built over dozens of years. Nearly all of his remaining pieces went into the mix as he continued quickly infusing them with random auras.

He pulled all of them into the enchantment he was weaving, adding quick runes to overload their capacity. It took a little time and he had to keep teleporting around the Vos’Rekan as he worked, but eventually he had a giant halo of artifacts that were chained together by a web of silver lightning.

The golem core floated at the center, its surface a rainbow haze of crackling aura that was growing more intense by the moment. That was the key device, the one that would set off all the rest.

“Channel Earth Manipulation and prepare to attack.” The order rang out from the mouth of every avatar, signaling the nagas with Earth-based abilities like Sleset to pour their talents into the spell, while the others activated scrolls and spells of their own.

A moment later, the star formation dived toward the naga with Sam leading the way. As they fell toward it, he teleported them again and they arrived over the Vos’Rekan’s neck, near the same area he’d struck at first.

“Disrupt the stone below!” Sam called out across the formation as he pointed his astral spear downward, marking out the target. The Vos’Rekan’s body was living stone, so elemental manipulation wouldn’t have a full effect on it, but it would still do something.

Even as he spoke, he focused on his own Elemental Mastery, feeling for both the essence and the Earth element that made up the Vos’Rekan’s hide. Every titan had a different innate ability. Elemental Mastery was his.

A whirlwind appeared around him, spiraling as it swiftly gained force. Chunks of rock and stone were dragged through the air, forming along the wind as he flew downward, his spear pointing directly at the target.

Behind him, the halo of artifacts crackled with restrained force. There were hundreds of them all together, most of them equal to at least one attack at the Third Evolution, and many had dozens of that level stored inside. Unstable, glowing lines of essence were burning on their surfaces as the materials warped.

They were on the verge of exploding. Only a thin web of silver essence kept them all restrained as they followed him.

He was at the tip of the Fourfold Star as they slammed into the Vos’Rekan’s neck. The whirlwind around him buffered the impact, gathering up the massive fountain of molten stone that poured up in every direction and making it spin like a tornado as they cut deeper.

He’d wanted to maintain some distance for safety, but it wasn’t going to be possible. He had to put everything he had into this attack. He raised the spear in his hand, his muscles bulging as his battle aura sent the full force of his essence attributes into his body.

His Strength was on the border of 49,000 points as he slammed his spear down, tearing into the beast. It was enough Strength to tear through a mountain, and he did. Blow after earthshaking blow landed against the Vos’Rekan’s neck as he drove down.

The hole he made was a half mile across and ten miles deep.

The Vos’Rekan’s neck collapsed inward as the enormous gash ripped toward the center. Space crackled along the edge of the strike, folding along with the blow as stone melted and the bones of the beast’s spine was revealed below.

The bones shone with a tempting dark grey light, pulling Sam toward them as he sensed the dense essence they contained. It wasn’t just the temptation of essence, but an actual devouring attraction. The bones were dangerous as long as the Vos’Rekan was alive. Anything near them would be consumed, becoming part of their structure.

He wanted to stay longer and attack the spine directly, but the force of the attack was already fading. At the same time, a heavy dimensional pressure from the Vos’Rekan’s body was crashing down around them, its edges dark with a devouring force.

The artifacts behind Sam shot downward, sealing themselves onto the Vos’Rekan’s spine as he gathered himself and leapt upward again, dragging the rest of the formation with him. The blazing star rose back up through the chasm he’d carved into the beast’s neck, heading for the open Void.

Digging into the beast’s body like this was incredibly dangerous. Teleportation was completely blocked here, suppressed by the beast’s natural dimensional resistance and the pressure of its essence in every direction. It was like being trapped inside a volcano that might close at any moment.

Stars shone in the distance as they got closer, but at that moment, a massive dark shadow slammed down on top of the hole, blocking out the view. Rough stone was visible across the surface as the chasm around them trembled from a horrifying impact.

An enraged roar of pain thundered through the area, carried on a wave of dimensional energy that sliced at Sam’s skin. Enchanted equipment on the nagas exploded under the pressure as their blood ruptured from their hide and their scales flew through the air. Hisses of rage and pain cracked through the formation, piercing Sam’s ears.

Sam sent out a wave of energy in an Astral Shield, reinforcing the structure of the formation as he tried to block the Vos’Rekan’s scream, but the energy behind the attack was everywhere. One of his avatars shuddered, a handful of golems shattered in silver blue shards that shone with bright essence, and a dozen of the younger Silver Nagas exploded under the strain.

A spike of pain tore through Sam’s heart as he saw them die, but he wasn’t able to prevent it.

Then the Vos’Rekan twisted in the Void. The injury was painful to it, and it was rolling, trying to escape from the damage. The walls tilted toward them as the orientation of their flight shifted, and they hurtled toward the stone surface on the side of the chasm.

A wave of shining silver stars surrounded the formation as the nagas activated their joint defensive shield, creating the group blessing called the Field of Silver Stars, but it only reduced part of the impact as they were all flung against the side of the wall like pebbles in a can.

As they struck, a wave of devouring essence flared outward from the stone, slicing into the formation and engulfing another half dozen nagas. Their bodies dissolved into a cloud of darkness and blood that was swept into the surface of the stone, absorbed by the Vos’Rekan’s hunger.

The devouring force didn’t stop there. Fueled by the death of the nagas, it swept through the formation like a blade, tearing apart two dozen golems and another dozen nagas until one of Sam’s avatars leapt toward it with a golden astral blade in his hand. Silver enchantments from the Amulet of Stellar Deflection burned around him as he slammed into the cloud of energy.

The astral blade sliced through the devouring force, severing its connection from the wall, but at the same time, the blade began to dissolve. Motes of golden essence disappeared from the edge as a quarter of the weapon disappeared into nothing, consumed by the force. A sharp stab of lost essence drove its way into Sam’s veins as the Vos’Rekan tore it away, weakening him by a few hundred points.

At that moment, the seven artifacts supporting Sam’s Armor of Ethereal Frost flared, creating a defensive shield that drove the Vos’Rekan’s devouring essence back. Silver and black essence exploded into a cloud of roiling force as they met, sending nagas and golems flying away from the center of the impact.

The silver lines of the formation blazed as a web of restraining energy caught them before they could leave its range, buffering the impact as it pulled them back. A wave of astral ice coated them in a defensive layer as they returned to their places.

Sam’s bracers flared as he targeted the cloud of essence and released a wave of icy stars that burned through it. He needed to destroy it before it could cause more damage to his people. But at that moment, a much larger wave of essence poured out of the stone walls around them like blood from a wound, heading straight toward their group.

Sam looked up at where the Vos’Rekan’s claw was sealing off the escape route, ideas flying through his mind. They were still two miles below the surface and with the claw there, they were too close to detonate the artifacts, but if he left them there, they would be consumed by the bones before they could explode.

Every moment was wasting the potential that his army had bought with their lives..

A wave of silver flame coiled around him as he reached out through the formation links. His avatars also turned into pillars of astral flame that spread across the area. Then, instead of stopping, he accelerated upward, heading directly for the claw.

At the same time, he triggered the explosion on the artifacts behind him. A shudder of exploding energy tore through the area as the bottom of the chasm turned into a blinding chaos of silver flames and exploding artifacts. Runes clashed with each other in a wild chain of chaos as spell forms were cannibalized by other spell forms and then broke apart, releasing unstable energies in every direction.

A sphere of expanding force swelled up from below, swiftly rising toward them. As it passed by  the cloud of devouring essence, the edges of the silver light disappeared, but the Vos’Rekan’s essence was torn apart at the same time, burned away like mist in front of the sun. Layers of stone boiled away, evaporating at the same time as the chasm was torn open wider.

In front of the explosion, Sam continued to fly, swiftly approaching the Vos’Rekan’s hand with his army, but he wasn’t going to make it before the blast arrived. The golden spear in his hand glowed brilliantly as he gathered his strength and lashed upward, aiming for the crack between the beast’s claws.

“Shield!” he called out across the formation, leading the way with his avatars as all of their strength poured into the joint defense. The cutting blades that connected the four points of the star blazed with light as dimensional ripples intensified around them, trying to break through the Vos’Rekan’s hold.

The nagas responded instantly, pouring their mana into the group defense from their blessing. The Field of Silver Stars intensified around them, making the formation shine like thousands of miniature stars were hung between the four major points.

At the same time, Sam released all of the energy in his Armor of Ethereal Frost, hardening the surface of the formation below them like a sphere and creating a diamond point at the top where he was standing, which merged with his spear.

Then he braced for the impact, his essence pouring outward as he focused all of his abilities on strengthening this one attack.

At that moment, the blast of energy from below crashed into the hardened shield, stripping out 700,000 points of stored essence in an instant as it hurled them upward. The artifacts across his body smoked as a thin line of invisible cracks formed on the edges. It was a third of the stored essence gone in an instant, and another hundred thousand was disappearing with every moment.

The formation was hurled upward a hundred times faster than before under that pressure and Sam’s spear struck the stone claw of the Vos’Rekan with a force strong enough to shatter a moon. The point tore a hole through the miles-thick claw as they rose upward and stone boiled away from every side in molten red streams.

It felt like ages passed as they traveled across the inside of the Vos’Rekan’s appendage and the shield ticked downward. All around them, the points of the Fourfold Star carved deep trenches through the stone as the force of the blast continued to drive them along. Then a point of light appeared as Sam’s spear ripped through to the open Void above.

Sam’s mind was locked on the space around them, his attention merged with the dimensional energy, and as soon as they crossed the outer edge, astral energy flared across the formation as they teleported away.

Behind them, a massive column of silver, red, green, purple, and black light shot into the Void, so powerful that it made the Vos’Rekan’s claw lift like the lid on a boiling pot. Unknown to the Vos’Rekan, in that instant, the claw that it tried to use to trap its prey was like a cork in a bottle, suppressing the power of the explosion inside its own neck.

In the chasm below, the eruption drove down farther and spread out, tearing through the bones of the spine and searing through a massive cavern that it carved into the walls. Stone boiled and surged, mixing with dissolved grey bones into a dark black mass like molten obsidian.

In the Void above, Sam and the nagas reappeared above the Vos’Rekan’s shoulder a hundred miles away. Then he turned to look back at the explosion. A brilliant column of chaotic energy had pierced through the Vos’Rekan’s claw on one side and straight through its neck on the other, making it look like the beast’s neck had been pierced by an enormous spear.

The energy was beginning to collapse back on itself, but the damage was done. The beast’s gigantic skull tilted at an angle as the bones in its neck shattered and it lost control of its mouth.

A surge of grim satisfaction erupted in Sam’s heart at the sight, but even with that amount of damage, he knew it wouldn’t be enough to kill the thing. The beast was thrashing in the Void, its body rolling in shuddering arcs as it tried to claw at its neck, but a flow of stabilizing essence from the rest of its body was already surging toward its neck.

Vos’Rekan were difficult to kill.

You had to tear them apart and let the essence dissipate, or their natural regeneration would heal almost anything. It would take the beast time to recover from the wound, but he wasn’t sure if it counted as enough damage to drive it away from Aster Fall.

The only other effect was that the dimensional bubble around the Vos’Rekan disappeared as it thrashed. Apparently, it was unable to maintain the concentration necessary when it was in pain.

The area around Sam blazed with astral energy as he looked across the formation and counted the losses. 28 of his Silver Nagas had died, their bodies dissolved into the Vos’Rekan’s energy, and dozens more were wounded. Forty of the golems had shattered completely, while half of the remaining ones were covered in cracks or had chunks missing. His ethereal armor was almost entirely drained, and his bracers were only at half of their charge.

At that moment, however, a flare of sapphire flame rose up from the space beside Sam, swiftly turning into a geometric pattern shaped like a sphere. An intense burst of mana filled it, followed by a very familiar aura, as the sphere expanded into a gateway ten feet tall and the same across.

The inner field of the sphere shimmered with flames like it was made from cut crystal as it began to spiral into a vortex. A moment later, a tall, humanoid figure made of angular edges stepped out. His body was made completely of shaped crystal, with protrusions of sharp edges for limbs and eyebrows, and his eyes were brilliant points of living flame inside gleaming blue stone.

At the center of his body, an intense flame burned like an endless torch, radiating through the crystal that made up the rest of his form. His eyes were piercing and heated as he took in the sight around them and then looked at Sam. The pressure he gave off in person was far greater than Sam had ever felt before, the difference between an avatar and his real body.

“The dimensional barrier around the beast failed, so I came as quickly as I could,” the guardian sent, his familiar voice echoing inside Sam’s mind. “You’ve done more than I thought possible. This might be enough to change the situation.”