Savage Awakening 135. Final Layer (II) (Patreon)

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Ninth layer.

Zane stood on a cobblestone bridge large enough for an army to march down. It ran straight out, ending at a castle marked out black against a swirling purple sky.

It was a night with no moon. The only light came from below, a deep somber red. He glanced down.

The drawbridge was dozens of feet up. It went over a moat of lava. The Law there were fascinating—some mixture of Elemental Fire and Elemental Earth, but that wasn't all. There were mysteries there... something profound, something he couldn't begin to understand.

He blinked. He got the feeling he was looking at true Lava then. It made all the others seem like pale imitations. It gurgled and swirled softly, pouring out reams of light, of heat. He could feel it blasting him, fluttering his hair. Even from all the way down there.

These Laws ran deep—a good deal deeper than Elemental. They felt to Zane like Stormfire.

If he fell in there, he knew it'd be bad news. Even for him.

Just then—at the very far end of the drawbridge, the great steel portcullis raised up.

And Monsters marched out of the castle. They came one by one in tight formation.

Each of them was ten feet tall, clad in huge clink-clanking suits of dense black armor. They wielded swords and maces and spears, all black-red, and the ones at the front hefted bulky shields. Each of them looked like they weighed several tons.

They came at him as one. Each step made a boom, rattling the drawbridge.

Blackflame Knight (Monster)

Essence Level 116

They didn't seem like dumb brutes. When their shields came together, the Skills blended, making one giant smoking wall, drawing closer and closer…

What was that element burning through them? A strange black flame. It felt kind of like Stormfire—only a little weaker. Some blend of Fire and Darkness. As smothering as the night, as hateful as a dying hearth.

Zane frowned. Then chucked up an Apocalypse Smash.

It rammed straight into their shield formation. The fires flared; a dozen Skills spiked up at once. For a second, Zane's white flame raged against a dozen black ones.

The shields rattled, staggered back a step, smoking slightly, dented—but they held.

At the same time, he looped his other one round the back. But a wall of shields thrust up there too, and he barely moved them.

Hmm.

Then he saw a second wave of knights pouring out of the castle, bristling with spears…

They just kept marching at him; he was forced to take a few steps back. Still frowning. How best to deal with these things?

***

"Here it comes!" said Tyler.

"For all our Zane fans out there, this is it! It's now or never," said Becca. She shuffled foot to foot, a little antsy.

Outside, the projector finally went live. And the crowd was treated to an astonishing sight.

Zane Walker was being forced back step by step. Waves of Knights pouring onto the bridge. They put up an ironclad defense. And Zane gritting his teeth, struggling—he tried smashing up front, but the force went through lot of them and dissipated. He tried switching to the axes, starting to spin—a forest of spears flashed up and shot him down instantly.

"Gotta say, not looking good for the Savage Sage,” said Tyler, tutting. "His main weapon's being shut down pretty badly. And he can't get that Cyclone Skill of his going either…"

"Maybe he's got something up the sleeve," said Becca, biting her lip. "Don't forget, the fight's just beginning!"

"Or just ending, it looks like," said Tyler.

Because not thirty feet behind Zane lay the end. A sheer cliff dropping straight into the lava… there was nowhere to go. He was getting overwhelmed.

Just then he tried leaping in with a smash. And got thrown back so hard he nearly went overboard. He anchored himself with a hammer and landed on a knee, panting hard.

The crowd gasped. So did Becca.

"C'mon, Zane!" she cried, glued to the projection. For a second it was like she forgot she was supposed to be commentating. "You've got this!"

Up in Seattle, Reina was clutching a pillow tightly as she watched the broadcast. Usually when she was this nervous she clutched Zane, but Zane was busy at the moment so the pillow would have to do. She frowned at Becca just then, suspicious. Some sixth sense of hers was tingling. I know why I'm nervous. Why's she so nervous?

By then, the whole bridge had filled up with Knights, an army of them stacked side by side. There was no escape—

But at the edge of the bridge, Zane was smiling.

"What's he doing?" said Tyler. "He's stopped fighting…I guess he's given up? Well.”

He chuckled. “With how things are going, I don't blame him! A solid run, Becca, but like I said—"

Then he choked.

Because right above the bridge, a star bloomed in the sky. A star that shone so bright it painted the soldiers white. They looked up, baffled. So did the crowd.

Then it seemed to hit them all at once. Suddenly, Zane's smile made sense.

"Oh my god!" said Becca. "It was a trap!"

The star made landfall right in the middle of the bridge.

And the dozen-odd Knights caught right under it had their heads crushed in.

Another few dozen were thrown flailing, falling down, down—splashing into the lava. It swallowed them whole; little bright spurts came up in their wake like the lava was licking its lips.

Suddenly the bridge wasn't an orderly march of Knights anymore. It was a bunch of ragged lines, poked through with holes, with missing members. The formations were broken…

Tyler's jaw hung slack. "Holy shit."

"Ha!" laughed Becca, breathless and grinning. "In your face!"

Then, at the same time, they seemed to remember there was supposed to be commentating.

Becca cleared her throat—

"A—a magnificent trap from the Savage Sage, and now he's back on his feet!"

And the big man at the end of the bridge had indeed stood up. Huge rivers of essence streamed into him from below. There was a flash—

"And he's Leveled up too!" gasped Becca. "He's in perfect position to counter!"

The big man got to work.

His Chains looped back around, smashed through the front lines, and this time they couldn't hold him off. Partly because he smashed from the sides now, sending them staggering toward the edges—

"He's not even trying to crush them, he's trying to throw them off the sides! He knows that's all he needs!" Becca cried.

And as Zane barreled forward, the lines just melted before him. He crashed right through, bowling them aside—

"They can't stop him!" choked Tyler into his listening crystal. He looked frazzled, spaced-out; all his smugness was gone. "He's going for all of them. He's a goddamn maniac!"

One blazing rush of Stormfire ran straight up the bridge, sending black flames splashing out to either side; Zane only seemed to gain power, gain momentum as he ran—he bowled his way all the way to the end. They tried stopping him, tried clubbing and slashing him, but he seemed to have some kind of instinctual sense for where they'd be—

"He's using Sage Mind!" said Becca. "The same Skill he used against Eze—it lets him put those Smashes exactly where he needs to throw them off!"

Zane still got minced. You couldn't run through an army and not get hit, even with perfect defense; by the end of it his face was bloodied, lips split, and cuts laced up his arms.

He was also running out of steam by the time he made it to the end. But he still managed to smash his way through the last few stragglers; he ended up picking up the last Knight and flinging it straight into the lava.

And then there was just one man left standing on the bridge.

Then, breathing heavily, he beat a fist to his big chest. And grinned.

The crowd exploded in cheers.

"Incredible!" gasped Becca.

"Fuck," whispered Tyler.

"How many fighters was that!?"

"Forty? Fifty, even?"

"He must be getting close to Eze's record—and he's Leveled up too! I don't know about you, Tyler, but I'm feeling pretty good about his odds!"

Another troop of Knights poured out of the castle, but Zane had their number now. And his Smashes seemed stronger now, sharper—maybe from all the Level-ups. Each Smash staggered them more. And he came at them from the flank now, trying to break them up, unsettle them before he bowled up the middle and knocked them off the side.

He was executing now with brutal, beautiful efficiency. Turning back line after line…

Becca narrated it all with enthusiasm. Tyler was just sputtering exclamations of shock.

Then a shadow loomed from the mouth of the castle. A shadow far bigger than all the rest.

"It can't be…" gasped Tyler. "That couldn't have been a hundred kills!"

“It wasn’t,” Becca confirmed. “Then—then how…?”

But there the creature stood, 20-odd feet tall, clad in smoking bedrock armor. Two red flames for eyes burned in a heavy-duty helm. In its hands, it held a sword and shield.

Blackflame Champion (Monster)

Essence Level 130

"Could it be a mini-boss?" said Becca, eyes wide.

"It's got over twenty Levels on him!" croaked Tyler. "That shield's the size of a freaking barn! How's he even supposed to hit it?!"

Zane frowned. But he didn't seem intimidated; he instantly went to work. He thrust out his Smashes, tried knocking it over—blocked. He earned two good dents on the shield, nothing more. He tried setting a tripwire for the thing—blocked. He tried looping around the sides, the back—blocked again and again. The shield was so big it hardly needed to move.

Soon it was scarred all over with craters. But it got the job done.

"See that essence glow? That’s a defensive Skill!” said Tyler. "As long as its shield's in front it can block anything coming at it."

"Zane's on the backfoot again," said Becca urgently. "Can he find another miracle?"

This Champion was strong too. Zane stepped back, parrying sword slashes, trying to find his way around that shield…

The only time it opened up was when a block knocked Zane all the way off-balance and it saw a chance for a killer blow. Then it lunged—and tried to skewer Zane through; Zane had to pivot hard to avoid being gored.

An assistant ran up to Tyler, whispered something in his ear, and he nodded. "I'm hearing we're just around sixty kills now. Which means this is about where Eze died too…”

"I don't know about you, Tyler, but after that last showing," said Becca fervently. "I'm not writing him off 'till it's over!"

But that last showing depended on having a supernova to bail him out. And as he got closer and closer to the edge, all he managed was to raise a few more dents on the thing's shield…

Then Zane sighed like he didn't want to have to do this. And that same fiery grin came over his face again.

All their hearts skipped a beat. He shouldn't have anything, couldn't have anything, and yet—when the crowd watching at the Array, when the newscasters watched slack-jawed when the millions of folk tuning in from hundreds of thousands of Factions around the world saw Zane Walker charging the Champion, Chains flailing, they believed. Something about that man made them believe.

They watched him rise, throw everything he had against that shield. Make a dent so deep it caved in the face of the thing…

But not deep enough to break through. And he was flailing, thrown out of position.

Then he got blasted. The shield rammed him hard. For a good second he was airborne, helpless.

The Champion seized its chance.

The shield came down. The sword flashed up—and skewered Zane right through the midsection.

No-one could believe what they were seeing.

But then, in almost the exact same moment—two Apocalypse Smashes cratered into the Champion's head. They snuck in just as its shield was setting back in place.

The shield came out. The Monster reeled back. It went over sideways, off-balance, shield flailing, and fell.

A second later it crashed into the lava below. The splash went halfway to the bridge.

There knelt Zane Walker panting. Grinning. Coughing blood, huge gouts of blood, but grinning. There was a hole in him going through the middle, so wide, so deep you could see air on the other side.

Then he stood. Stared, chin held high, at the castle. They could all tell what he was thinking.

Bring it on.

Weird thing, though—something no-one noticed, not commentators, who were losing it, or the fans, who were going ballistic.

He could still stand—because that sword thrust, in the middle of all his flailing, had somehow slid a curious arc. Right between all his vital organs.

It wasn't an accident.