Savage Awakening 219. Stronghold Siege (IV) (Patreon)

Evan was padding up a few dozen paces behind Zane, picking off the Imps whizzing above.

The heavy-duty stuff was all up to Zane.

He remembered the last time he found these Wardens. They had ambushed, cornered him and his friends—he had to throw himself at them. Right in the midst of them. And all those fists crashed down on him… 

He frowned. 

He had fought like a cornered beast back then. Let himself go wild. It was how he could unleash the most damage. But that was how they had put him down in the end… 

It was easy to let that sense of burgeoning pride so fierce in his chest, that heady rush, carry him off—especially with his Bloodline burning at its peak, when godly powers coursed through him. He didn't even know he was doing it—not at first. Like being taken by any passion. 

They would not get the chance to put him down again.

He had known not let his pride carry him off. But he also hadn’t really, deep-down. Then he had his skull and half the bones in his body broken. It was not so easy to beat messages into him, but that did it. It was what the Barbarian Sage had said all along. 

He clenched his fists as he stared the Wardens down. Filing out in one bleak wall. Stomping over to face him.

He should not have let himself get dropped like that. Especially at just the front gate. Showing weakness when his friends needed him most... was not acceptable to him. 

Now when he looked again—even as his body raged and strained and burned, shot through with essence, when his heart beat  a war-drum in his ears—his eyes stayed narrowed. Focused. 

This time—no sloppiness. 

Now was time for execution. 

And he felt something resonate in his soul. The powers of his Bloodline, his Title. Going off all at once… 

He took the fight to them.

He unraveled his Chains. And set them all on Stormfire.

The Monsters stepped closer and closer, drowning him in CLANG-CLANGs, staring him down too—and those little gnarled souls began to smolder. Clouds of hate rose over them in the Astral Plane…

Zane raised his fists. His Chains whipped high. He looked back to Reina, and in their connection she got what he would do without his telling her. She nodded—and he knew she had his back.

Zane bellowed. 

The battle began. He had a very simple idea. 

Last time they had wrong-footed him. Changed the field in their favor, where they could swarm him all at once. Not this time. 

This time… he dusted off a very old Skill. One of the very first he had ever learned. Supercharged with Stormfire— and the monstrous amount of strength coursing through every fiber of him—

Skill evolved! 

Inferno Lash -> Stormfire Lash [Common (E)]

Zane smashed.

Not at the Monsters. He had not used this Skill in so long. He knew it would not be enough to wreck them. 

But it could wreck everything around them.

His Chains whipped high into the air—and crashed to either side.

The Fortress exploded in blinding light.

Stormfire ravaged the world. Chain Combustion ran its course, blasting over and over, bombing out the world in searing blue-white—and Zane changed the face of the battlefield.

A massive chunk of Fortress sloughed off to the right. Dropping fast down the slope in a sludgy pile, splashing deep into the lava ocean, Hounds scrabbling inside of it, going under, howling, crushed through the weight of it—

The same thing happened to the left, too.

Then there was just one path between them. And him. A quickly narrowing path. One high mountain pass with fire on either side—barely big enough for two of them to come at him, on either side…

They blinked. Stunned for only a second. 

Then began their whirring again. Then their cold confidence, their will to crush him, took hold. 

They came for him crashing, stomping, groaning deeply. 

Only now he had lined them up for him.

His Chains raced back to him, still blazing, coiled fast around his fists—he smashed them together, felt the satisfying ring of it…

It was time. 

Execution. 

*** 

Zane erupted. Slammed down a Stormfire step—and this time there were only two in front of him. A lumbering blow swung for him, an avalanche of an arm—but he had exploded so fast, so fierce, it hardly looked like it was moving at all. He easily ducked under. And slammed a Stormfire Punch through its giant belly. Sank deep in, grabbed the core, and ripped it out with bare fist—even as the explosion ripped through the hollows of its body, flared its red eyes blue-white. 

His other fist crushed its face in. And that massive tin can sagged. Ruined.

But more massive arms were still coming for him. The other Warden. And it wasn’t just trying to smash him—it was trying to grab him to hold him, tube-like fingers outstretched and he saw, just behind it, two other Wardens rushing up, arms raised, ready to clobber him—

But Zane still came too fast. 

His reaction time was still not the best. With his new tendons, though, his action time shocked even himself. 

An explosion of movement later and he grabbed the grabbing Warden right back. Slammed his fists into its chest. Then, straining and groaning, heaved it all the way up—just in time to ram it into the clobbers behind.

The Wardens’ own fists rained down on their comrade, crushing deep into its back, shattering well-oiled joints—and for a moment they were locked there. Zane, the crushed Warden as his shield. The other two Monsters on the other side, trying to crush him deeper and deeper. Steel-powered body wrestling against steel-powered body…

But this was a contest of power. Against Zane. You did not do that. 

His muscles alone would have gotten the job done. 

But he stomped, once, twice, and slammed through his makeshift shield, slammed the Wardens on the other side, toppling hundreds of tons of steel on their backs like giant dominoes—

At last he ripped out the core-heart of his shield-Warden. Heaved it down into the lava-sea. Leaped over, just as those two downed Wardens behind it were trying to get back up—to their knees, their feet—

Zane savaged them.

CLANG-CLANG! His fists dropped like hammer-blows. Crushing them to their knees. Then crushing them flat. Then gone. He remembered when this material had felt hard to him… now it gave so easily beneath his hands.

Smashing them was deeply satisfying to Zane. 

The spiking pain in his own hands was nothing to him. Already as he stood, heaving, it was quickly fading—he felt the bulk of Reina’s healing powers falling on just his big weapons. Mending the bones…

As he stood there, heaving in deep breaths, over the corpses of his fallen enemies, he felt a familiar swelling of pride—of Bloodline singing through every fiber of him… 

The rest of the horde was still marching for him.

He wanted in that moment to ram himself straight through. To bowl through them one by one, to get right in the thick of them, to test all the raw might of his body against theirs, all at once. And then they would see who would come out on top. He knew it would be him.

Still. That feeling was not so overwhelming anymore. He did not give himself to it so easily, did not let himself go like that. He stood there, whole body one great pyre of feeling, of essence, of Bloodline—felt that rush sweeping all the way through him—and held his will like an iron fist over his mind. 

He held his focus. He stayed in the eye of the storm. 

He put his fists up. 

Just as the next pair came for him. And he eviscerated them with brutal, sure strokes. Crushed, ducked, smashed—Sent one of them flying off the edge, folded another clean in two, crushed in the heart of a third. Pure violence. He felt just then he was wielding every ounce of the vast power coursing through his body to its maximum—

Skill up! 

Stormfire Punch IV -> V 

His head stayed clear, and sharp, and as he flowed through their falling corpses, streaming fire, driving the engine of his body—

He crushed in one more head. Bellowed.

Something clicked. Deep in his soul. 

The swelling of pride, of power, of spirit, running through him—the pride of the Titan Rhinoceros. Mastered at last. 

The image of the Titan Rhinoceros flickered over him. A shining phantom rising over his head—and when he bellowed, an echo of that ancient beast blasted out too. Shaking the world…

When he stepped then—it did not feel like just him stepping. There was an otherworldly weight to it, a weight of lost history—Titan Rhinoceroses across the  vast expanse of time lending him their strength. When he charged, the spirit of a Godbeast charged with him. 

And it felt like Zane’s body had shifted into a new gear. He accelerated so fast he almost lost control again—smashed through a Warden, sent it rocketing twenty, thirty feet back, smashing the Wardens behind it, and the Wardens behind those—it flattened. And flattened everything it passed.  

He blinked at the smoking wreckage of his fist. Still heaving in thick breaths.

Skill unlocked!

Titan Rhinoceros Bloodline Manifestation