Chapter 140. The Cuna (Patreon)

The wyrm barreled into the first of the earthen walls, its skull rotating like a drill to ease its passage. It tore through, but half of its skull was missing. The bone looked as though it had been ground down by a sander.

That’s not earth elementalism, but Mountain affinity at play, Ian realized, intrigued despite the current situation. His mind flitted to his first opponent at the Fassari Summit, a woman who only had a Mountain affinity. She’d used it to change the properties of the earth itself, slipping through it as though through liquid.

“If you can break through the next barrier, your constructs will be able to corner someone. Watch out for the hand and plasma beams while you do so.”

“If?” Ian quipped. He fixed his eyes on the pyramid of earth that had sprung up over the Cuna. The human-limbed mountain hadn’t yet tried to strike against the wyrm–likely because the flying construct was too agile for the mountain to score a hit–but if it landed a blow...Ian and Euryphel would go flying.

Ian directed the wyrm forward, violet light flaring out like lightning. His body was completely still as he moved his construct pawns and his toothy whip. Only his eyes narrowed as they took in the surroundings with mundane sight and vital vision, the latter giving him radial perception around his position. Ian locked in on the vital signature of a target beyond the closest earthen barrier, her arms cavorting to dredge up defensive slabs around herself.

Here goes. The wyrm corkscrewed into the air, twisting narrowly between spinning discs of earth launched by elementalists further away. When it smashed into the barrier, Ian increased the density of the protective Death cocoon around the skull, insulating bones from abrasion.

“You’re through. Your target is defending herself from five of your constructs.”

Ian didn’t need combat narration to see what he needed to do next.

An earth elementalist was hidden between roughly-hewn slabs of rock. Ian could see her movements from within her defenses, vitality highlighting her silhouette as she punched and stomped, forming earthen spears and projectiles that smashed into bone constructs. Ian could see that the woman had already disabled two smaller constructs, their soul gems smashed into crystalline powder. The five heckling her now were a grim mix of bear and hyena. Bear paws batted away and mauled the earthen defense while shark-tooth-lined jaws crunched menacingly.

Ian joined their assault. He sent out several handfuls of shark teeth, spinning them into three separate drills. The earth elementalist intercepted them with projectiles of dark stone, but Ian responded by sending out ten more. When one of the drills managed to carve a hole to the earth elementalist’s position, Ian lashed the tooth whip out, guiding it into the hole and spearing the woman through the heart with the speed of a viper.

Ian’s turned away, pupils dilating as beams of plasma converged on his position. Potent Sun and Light practitioners interfaced with artillery tower foci to strike the wyrm on all sides. The beams shot down several of Ian’s flying bone constructs, cartilaginous corpses falling listless to the battlefield.

“We can’t keep this up until Ari arrives. Ian, this might sound crazy, but we need to enter the Cuna.”

Ian’s face was expressionless, his attention split between conversation and offense. “How? There’s an empowered mountain on top of it. A mountain with arms and...is that a face?” Ian could swear the craggy rock face was contorted into a menacing frown. “I can break through these relatively thin barriers, but I don’t think I’ll be able to drill through a city block’s worth of empowered earth while said earth is trying to crush us.”

“They can’t just conjure earth out of thin air; they had to take it from somewhere. The mountain’s surface might be dense, but it won’t stay that way as you go deeper. You just need to pierce through and drill deep enough to enter the Cuna. At this point, it’s the only place where I think we’ll be close enough to destroy the Eldemari’s arrays.”

“Even if I get past the mountain, won’t the Eldemari be inside?”

“And? If you can shrug off her entire skill set by killing yourself and wielding constructs, I think you’ll hold your own. You’ve foiled her plans so far today.”

While Euryphel wasn’t wrong, Ian had the feeling that battling the Eldemari within her own palace might not be as easy as the prince hoped. Still, Ian agreed that they needed to change strategies.

“Just envision Ari coming after you,” Euryphel added. “Imagine her smashing through the gilded halls of the palace, hammer braining sycophants left and right, reducing granite tile and scarlet walls to rubble.”

Ian’s lips twitched into a smirk as he drove the wyrm through a triplex of barriers. “We have no idea what the Cuna looks like on the inside.”

Euryphel glanced his way, flashing a smile. “I have an active imagination.”

“We never planned to enter it, not even in any of our contingencies.”

“For complex operations, sometimes all the contingencies in the world won’t be enough,” Euryphel replied. “We think through scenarios and describe strategies, articulate tactics...but what we most hope to gain from such exercises is an improved understanding of the opponent and battlefield.”

“Adaptability.”

Euryphel nodded. “With rare exceptions, Regret practitioners are typically weak, having no physical or mental enhancements, no elementalism...and yet they’re often who practitioners of other affinities fear the most. We’re unpredictable and, above all...adaptable.”

“I’m convinced; just tell me how to maneuver to enter the mountain.”

Euryphel spent the next minute feeding Ian painstakingly specific instructions, gently adjusting the wyrm’s trajectory whenever Ian over- or under-compensated.

“Just through these barriers, the mountain is going to try and clap you between its palms. You’re going to need to beat it back with sheer force, then you’ll have a clear point of entry into the mountain.”

“And what’s Ari’s progress?”

“She’s still being held up by a slew of Selejo’s peak practitioners. What she really lacks right now is intelligence: She has no idea where you are, just that you’re somewhere in the city.”

“Couldn’t she just find where the only other battle in the city is?”

Euryphel sighed. “Ours isn’t the only other battle in the city. Seems that some other powers took advantage of Selejo’s moment of weakness.”

Ian’s eyebrows rose. “What? Who?”

“Likely some people in the East mixed with Selejan dissidents. Selejo failing to find and kill a single rogue practitioner is an embarrassment. Given that a descendant’s arrival also spelled the probable end of Pardin, Selejo’s commercial capital, I can see why people seized upon the moment to strike. I didn’t account for opportunists in our plans, but they’re only helping us: I won’t complain.”

Ian didn’t have time to inquire further: The wyrm skull corkscrewed through five stacked earthen barriers, the bone wearing away even further despite Ian’s attempts to insulate and protect it. Meanwhile, targeted beam attacks struck at the wyrm from behind while it rotated in place.

Ian gritted his teeth in concentration, forcefully holding the increasingly-brittle skull together. Just a little more...

With a shower of stone, the wyrm surged forward, throwing Ian slightly off balance. Just as Euryphel warned, the humanoid mountain’s hands were poised to strike and reflexively clapped together. Ian had a split second to reorient the cloud of bone shards within the Death cocoon to the wyrm’s sides. Euryphel lended his own assistance, a wind buffering out.

It wasn’t enough: The palms smashed into the wyrm, cracking the last line of defense: its rib cage. Ian and Euryphel smacked into one another as the wyrm caved inward, Death energy flaring wildly as bones snapped and bent.

“Push through it!” Euryphel commanded.

Though stunned, Ian never released his hold on the wyrm, manually holding its shattered bones together. “I know. I’ve dealt with worse before.”

With stuttered breath, Ian weaponized the Death cocoon’s bones to pry the hands apart. The bones strewn throughout the Death cocoon pushed up against the hands, but were ultimately unable to do much more than prevent the wyrm’s complete collapse. Ian felt like he was in the closed jaws of a crocodile.

With a grunt, Ian opened his void storage. Bones flew out and joined the others accumulating on the wyrm’s surface like a jagged mosaic. Shark teeth came next, swiftly filling the scarce remaining gaps.

Ian’s void storage was spacious by any measures, but it wasn’t limitless: Soon Ian had exhausted all but a small number of bones kept in reserve. It’s going to have to be enough. The soul gem on Ian’s chest flared with dark light, cyan crackling on its surface. He groaned and gritted his teeth, his eyes closed in concentration. The bones around the wyrm began to rotate like a drill, the shark teeth serving as saw blades.

“Can I get some help?”

“Was just about to.” Euryphel narrowed his eyes and pulled his arms back. “This is just going to do it. Get ready to push.” The prince pushed his arms forward, muscles shaking. Tendrils of air began to filter through the cracks where Ian’s bones cut through the earthen palms. The wind fomented to a torrent; working with Ian’s bones, the palms were pushed slightly more apart.

Seizing the moment, the wyrm slipped forward. Its back half didn’t make it fast enough, the palms smashing together again and pulverizing the wyrm’s tail. The rest was a cracked ruin, the already-brittle skull having shattered into tiny pieces. It wasn’t even a proper flying construct anymore, the flight focus between the wyrm’s eyes crushed beyond repair; as soon as Ian stopped manually controlling it, the wyrm would crash to the ground.

Just a little more, Ian told himself, eyes glowing bright violet. The mountain’s a five-second’s flight away. Ian dedicated his complete focus to throwing the battered wyrm toward the mountain. He even let his control over his constructs fall away, relying on them to do as much damage as they could without his conscious tactical maneuvering. Whatever bones the wyrm shed as it flew, Ian grabbed and added them to the Death cocoon. Finally, he pulled the cocoon inward and disassembled his screaming pseudo-spirits, creating a dense bubble of protection around the wyrm for the final push.

Beams of energy fell over the bone wyrm’s cocooned surface while a barrage of rapid-fire earthen projectiles probed for a lucky shot. Behind, the massive hands opened back up and shook off the pulverized bones of the wyrm’s lower half.

One of the hands pulled inward and swatted the rock face of the mountain like a man trying to crush an insect against his stomach...but it was too late: The wyrm was already inside, though only barely.

“The wyrm’s not going to be enough to drill through the mountain to the Cuna,” Euryphel cautioned. “You need to forget it. Pull the cocoon around us and put up your layered bone shields, then use what remains of the wyrm to form a drill.”

Ian followed the prince’s advice without hesitation, disassembling the bone wyrm into components and integrating them into his defenses. In the span of a second, he formed what large bones he had left into a drill bit, then arrayed smaller bones outward in a spiraling pattern. Euryphel stood behind him, hair streaming wildly as he funneled wind around their earthen entrance wound.

“Ian, the pinky finger is small enough to enter this hole; we need to go, now!”

The drill ripped forward, cutting through the mountain. The hole it made was significantly smaller than that made by Ian’s large bone wyrm, barely tall enough for the duo to fly through with their heads forward and legs back, but its small size facilitated cutting through the empowered rock.

“The second you release your hold on the bone shield, the mountain’s going to crush us,” Euryphel cautioned. He massaged his temples as he flew, his eyes glowing violet with the Death energy of a crushed soul gem.

Ian snorted. “That much I can guess.” He wasn’t ignorant of the mountain pressing in to repair the drill’s damage; he felt its continuous pressure on his shield, his bones straining to keep it at bay.

“When we enter the Cuna, we’re going to get a momentary break,” Euryphel said.

“We are?”

“It’s close quarters combat. People don’t do particularly well up close against you. Rest assured we’ll be engaged in combat eventually; I anticipate the next few minutes being...fairly unpredictable.”

After what felt like an eternity of traveling through lightless rock, the drill breached the palace. The room they found themselves in was small and bathed in darkness, tall windows no longer peering out into Cunabulus. Ian thought it might be a small parlor based on the numerous paintings, tables, and couches throughout.

“I don’t need vital vision now that there’s enough space to fully leverage the wind to make out the surroundings,” Euryphel said.

Ian waved his hand absently and the violet pooled out of the prince’s eyes and condensed into a single soul gem. Ian handed it back to the prince. “Like before, if you need it, just crush it and remind me: I’ll make sure it gets to your eyes.” Ian hoped that Euryphel wouldn’t be encased in water, earth, or fire in the coming minutes, but in the unlikely event that he was...they couldn’t afford for the prince to be blind without a light source.

Euryphel fell down to the floor, slowing his descent so that he landed gracefully on the hard stone. Ian followed him down, though hovered slightly above the ground.

“We’re not going to be attacked for at least a minute,” Euryphel reminded him. “You should take a break and let your mind relax...ah, what’s the use: I won’t convince you.”

Ian raised an eyebrow. “I–”

“Don’t need a break, I know. You’re happy to puppet yourself around until the end. I’m not sure I’ll ever understand why that’s your preference.”

Ian blinked. “Eury, you’re rambling. What’s wrong?”

The prince breathed in deeply, then exhaled. “I’m...restless. I don’t like that I can’t see anything attacking us; it means that people are preparing things that haven’t triggered yet. They know our strengths, but they also know our weaknesses, and they’re capitalizing upon them.”

“And you still have nothing on when Ari’s going to find me?”

“At this point I have no idea what she’s doing. The glossY can’t connect to the distributed network and it takes too long to breach the surface to scout for her location. I’ll know the minute before she comes and likely not a moment sooner.”

Ian nodded and glided forward. “The longer we wait here, the longer they have to prepare. If you can’t see anything, it’s best to go forward, wouldn’t you say?”

Euryphel sighed. “It’s hard to tell without more information. I’m more inclined to build up our defenses here and just wait for Ari to arrive.”

Ian turned around and flashed a grin. “And that’s why we should go forward. We’ll have a minute’s warning no matter where we are: It’ll be plenty of time to prepare.”

The prince returned the smile. “We’ll be giving it our all until the end, I suppose?”

“What other choice do we have?”

Euryphel didn’t reply. He walked behind Ian, footfalls falling softly on a carpet leading to the room’s exit.