York -- GrimDark LitRPG: Book 2 The Dream, page 13
He had no more time to think about anything, including the wacky weather that had gone from maelstrom intensity for days upon days to suddenly dry as an old woman’s cooch after menopause hit. The ground was still a muddy soup though less of a hindrance when both combatants had wings. Still could be an issue if it went to the ground, which fights eventually always did. Shai’ton knew he had Strength and power over the Viper though Gifts were not allowed in the Pits. It was a battle between Attributes and skill. The Pits had runic inscriptions put there by the few Techno-Mages still within the horde, humans left alone to keep their skills intact and treated mostly well for the same reason. Magi-Tech didn’t have the same power or intensity of focus real Soul Forging had but when a race only had less then one hand of humanity every found to have the Gift, Magi-Tech had been the salvation of the people, and still might, if Shai’ton’s inkling of what the Archeon planned came to fruition.
Get your head in the game Warlord. The Viper might be weaker but he was certainly faster, of that, he was certain. He could wipe the map with the upstart if Gifts and Tricks were allowed but that was not the point of the Pits and arenas had been an integral part of Infernal Society since the beginning. It had always been thus, no powers, just sheer grit, determination, and skill. It was the way to draw the eyes of the Infernal Lords to their people. The real reason from the memories of his infernal half was the Infernal Lords actually created the Arenas to win and lose massive amounts on bets and to settle disputes on territory and the like.
When Ne’Gra had announced him, he had tuned it out. He couldn’t do the same with the crowd as they lifted their sound of roars to a new level, and now he was announcing the Viper, and there were some ruckus crows but a lot of boos spread through the avalanche of spectators. The Ex-Lantern had never been any good at endearing people to him, hard facts that.
Shai’ton spread his furnaced wings and lifted himself up and over the balustrade separating the platform of the City Lord and the mud churned ground of the Pits. He landed softly, and was proud, not once, had he look back at Hell’s Daughter. He smiled, knowing it pissed her off. She deserved it and then some, for stealing all the thunder he’d planned, when he had chosen to travel here. He even sent the wrath infernals he had brought for intimidation back to the academy. Nothing came close to the horror in infernals minds then Hell’s Daughter brought by her sheer presence. He had also planned on announcing his decision to pummel and crack York when he was done here, he himself to lead the fight but now had held off. She would do something to fuck that up and steal the spotlight, he could feel it his bones. The woman was nerve wracking. He was always torn between wanting to fuck her, take her head, or put as much distance between them as possible.
His thoughts and eyes zeroed in as he heard the gate lift. His grip tightened on his flanged mace. He didn’t plan on killing the Viper but he would teach him a hard lesson with hard bruises, while at the same time, imparting that failure under his orders, brought harsh judgment.
With one movement of his wings he leapt twenty feet into the air, and it was a good thing he did, for the Viper jacked out of the tunnel in a furious growl, his eyes blazed with violence as he swept the blade Shai’ton had gifted him through the space the Wrath Lord had just vacated. With a sweep of his wings he spun in place to keep the Viper in front of him. Damn, he forgot how fast the Ex-Lantern truly was.
The Viper was already turning back around with a vicious grin, fangs splayed. He split like a bullet back at Shai’ton once again but this time the Wrath Lord was ready, mace switched to both hands he slammed his haft into the coming edge.
One of the disadvantages of fighting in the air is nothing to brace against, which tells pretty quickly with the Attributes the two combatants were sporting. Shai’ton got knocked to the side a few feet from the blow but with the advantage of mass and strength, the Viper found himself face first into the mud as he careened off towards the ground, hard. He was quickly on his feet and Shai’ton landed several paces away. The Viper scraped mud off his face and hissed. His words were sibilant bites.
“I’m gonna take what should be mine Shai’ton!”
The Wrath Lord would indulge him. The roars of the crowd echoed across the muddy sands. They both had to yell to be heard over the blood thirsty infernal spectators.
“And what is yours Viper?! Everything I have, I earned, something you are not well known for!! Sounds more like that bracelet of yours isn’t quite up to par in keeping the envy out of your thoughts!!”
The words shook the Ex-Lantern. He snapped his head and burst forward, blade leading, Shai’ton back pedaling, utilizing his mace to deflect the edge as much as possible, still, a few small wounds, edge slipping off shaft, to take scales, until he growled and slammed his head forward and down. The Viper stumbled back, his nose plastered in blood. Shai’ton’s two hands brought his mace over his head and down, hitting nothing but mud. The Viper was gone, the damn speed. He started to turn when the blade took him in the lower back and shoveled through his massive flesh, a foot of the weapon erupting from his stomach in a jet of viscera. If it wasn’t for his high Endurance and Constitution, that would have been the end. The Viper’s sibilant whisper was in his ear as the sword was twisted in his gut cascading a torrent of agony.
“Finally, you will be humbled you arrogant shit stain. I’m making you my bitch, and I will get what is mine. The title Lord Commander will fit me perfectly.”
Shai’ton grunted. He would not let this worthless envy puppet think he was an equal in any world or galaxy. He grunted through the agony of the pain and ripped himself sideways off the edge, the blade cutting through half his stomach and out his hip as he turned and grabbed the shock eyed Ex-Lantern by the throat, lifting him, then slammed his horned head again and again into his smug face. He was lost in fury as he dropped his mace, both hands grabbing the insolent wretch and nutting him again and again and again. The crowd roared. Thunder was the sound and the Dream above pulsed to his ballistic anger. Finally, he snapped his mind back out of the fugue of violence and saw a limp form in his claws. The Viper was unconscious, maybe dead. He didn’t think he would be that lucky. The blade Shai’ton had gifted lay amidst blood and mud, a good amount of it his. His voice was raspy and out of breath.
“Your envy is your downfall, leads you to rash choices that stumble you to failure every time, Bob.”
All he got was a grunt from a semi conscious Viper. Many would think honor would demand for him to stop now in victory but this was the infernal Pits and Shai’ton, the Lord Commander of all infernal forces, and honor had very little place in such.
He threw the Ex-Lantern, the body sliding through the mud a good thirty feet. His Peak Ruby Trick of Infernal Regeneration, that most Infernals got at higher stages, was already starting to stitch his everything back to where it should be, yet still, he was in horrific shape, and it had a ways to go. He was a leaking sieve of flesh and detrius. The Viper had done a number and had come close but close only meant shit with horse shoes and hand grenades and a cock at the sleeve of a woman.
Shai’ton swooped up his mace. He careened forward with a flick of titanic leg muscles and a pull of his huge wings, weapon smashing into the Viper’s chest sending the fool’s body rocketing out, a ballistic shot that saw him cannoning into the walls of the Arena, just below the feet of the City Lord’s platform. Shai’ton didn’t hesitate and shot the intervening distance once again. Both hands, and all the muscle he had, brought down his weapon on the back of the Ex-Lantern’s already battered head like a crack of thunder. Only the Attributes that went along with being a Peak Elite kept the Viper this side of the Long Night.
Shai’ton had a few more lessons to teach however before he relented upon the fool. With precision and power, he broke every limb on the already unconscious Envy Lord, then spat on his crumpled form. He lifted him up by his throat, the once beautiful white scales, cracked, blood seeping as forlorn sonnets to the sky and Dream, limbs deformed, spindly, broken things, with no value, and certainly, no use. He spun him, by one hand, to show the roaring crowd, who, expecting a better performance out of the infamous Viper, still, reverberated with the sound of watching the brutal violence.
He tossed the Ex-Lantern back into the pull of mud then turned towards the dais, eyes catching the cat’s paw smile from Hell’s Daughter and the lascivious pull of her eyes. He was still leaking too much blood but he exerted his will and ignored the reverberations of pain, monumental at the moment, with all the movement. Ne’Gra just nodded his head in respect. Shai’ton raised his blood covered mace to the sky and roared. The City of New Hades returned it with a fervor. Next was York, he vowed to himself, and then all the mistakes he had made would be rectified, his position secure once more.
The heat and fury in his body radiated hunger. He caught it returned in her eyes. Hell’s Daughter just might get what she has been begging for. Call it playing with fire or death’s door, it was both but he still had a shit ton of violence and pent up aggression to let out. He raised his mace once more and lit up the night with a howl. The City of New Hades shoveled its way into the annals of debauchery and lost memory, into the repudiation and murder on the hoof. This night would have a long memory into the eternal and infernal alike. The Dream cast its shifting lights onto the stars.
CHAPTER 23
CROSS THE BONES AND UTTER A PRAYER
Truth and time, similar in many ways, both ethereal and amorphous to any touch or concrete attempts to funnel into absolutes yet still in the basis of their foundation, immutable to their own reality. It is only in the perceptions and wants and desires of sapient entities is there any confusion or delusion or morphic transience to either. To the Dream, neither is of intrinsic value for neither has any hold or appreciative influence on the Wold of it’s movements and/or designs. Yet still, to mere mortals, they are the blade that can cut through fate itself.
***
The Father of Warlocks and Wytches, one of the elite Sorceres of Earth, post the Fall, the Occultist, Demetri Covens, was many things, savior or some benevolent leader was not one of them. There was one reason and one reason only that had led him to become a Legend, a purveyor of dark secrets, an omen to scare children and a harrowing motivation to create and justify the creation and sustaining support of the Judicars, the Archeon’s personal secret police he could use to stifle any unrest, rebellion or dissonant voices to his rule, under the guise of hunting down dangerous unrepentant homicidal aberrations. The reason was a simple one, he argued and disagreed with the Archeon one too many times. The Archeon was certainly not known for forgiveness or tolerance but had chosen to deal with Demetri’s recalcitrance due to the Occultist’s strength as a Sorcere, which in reality was just time, and an irritating lack of fear when faced with danger. Well he had chosen to deal with it until he hadn’t.
The final straw was when the Archeon had planned to sacrifice his own child in a foolish experiment to increase his own power, utilizing the Dream, and the strength between Ley Lines and the phenomena of their interaction with the other world, the world of demons. Demetri had made the mistake of attempting at first to convince the Archeon of his folly, then when that failed, on the quick, actually getting in a drag down street dust up with the most powerful Sorcere in the history of powerful Sorceres. Needless to say he had gotten his ass kicked for his temerity. He was by no means a martyr or some heroic jack ass who made a last stand in any world or reality where sentient thought held sway. He had unceremoniously ran his ass off like a frightened jack rabbit looking for a hidey hole when the big bad predator decided it was hungry for lunch.
In the end his attempt at doing the right thing had stopped nothing. The Archeon had killed his child, and committed other atrocities, no doubt of horrific proportions in his pursuit of power over the long years. The Occultist had no clue what they were as he found the darkest pit he could find in the far south on the edge of the Radlands, and hid. He was no true leader. He was a person with a propensity to stick his nose where it was not wanted and to fail and fall in an endless cacophony of idiocy that allowed things like the Judicars, mindless thugs and assassins, to be created by his very existence, and allow the man he hated above all else, to have even more control over the world and its people using the horror story of the wicked Father of Warlocks and Wytches to justify that control. Over the years, others with power who did not agree with or trust the Archeon sought him out and without even meaning to, he gathered a cornucopia of misfits to surround himself with, and made his corner of the world just a tad less lonely.
Granted, some of the ones who came to his camp were either spies or actually lived up to the bullshit stories spread about him, murderers, rapists and so on. Those he slaughtered quickly and efficiently or one of his self named acolytes did. What can one do when people refuse to listen to him tell them he is not some messiah, ignore him, and act like he is anyway. Then there were the Judicars. They had started within just a few decades of his falling out with the Archeon or Obidiah Fell, his real name. Believe it or not, they had been good friends at one point, before the Dream popped into being. Both academics and well, if one must know, military leaders of the Old World. In fact it was by their hands, the Great War had ended and the birth of the Dream had begun but that is another story better left to the ashes of myth.
Since the Fall, the Archeon seemed to want to stretch his newfound power and control, sending packs of demons to every corner of the land. Even the edge of the Radlands no longer held safety to its bosom. The haven that had held for so long, which by this time, over a thousand of years, was a thriving community with close to a fifteen hundred people, was found. At first they had fought, obliterating pack after pack of demons. Eventually, it was no longer an attainable or viable strategy as in every victory, there was a cost, in flesh, in people being scooped by the handfuls into the Long Night. This was not just Wytches and Warlocks paying the price anymore but their families, craftsman, even some Magi-Techs who wanted away from society. With each victory the slaughter and cost became heavier as there were less people to actually hit back. Eventually, he and what was left, ran.
Over the years they found places to lay low but every single time, whether it was within weeks or months, they were found, and had to run again. The survivors grew even less as more victims to the demons or eventually figuring out, their messiah was nothing of the kind, not all powerful, nor even a friendly personality. Now one who was less magnanimous then him might of pointed out that he had told them that a hundred times over the years before the shit hit the fan but it would have been wasted breath. They had finally understood the truth of it. Time does reveal all as the saying goes. This is what led a rag tag group of thirty to make their way north into the arctic cold, close to more Radlands. This time the Occultist had hoped the combination of the frigid shit weather plus the threat of the poisonous wastelands would keep the demons at bay and they could find some shelter from the deprivations. It had worked, to a degree. The only troublesome thing was well, the lack of easily attainable food and the exact thing that kept them safe, the arctic perma winter that coated the landscape.
They were on the verge of starving when the wolf hybrids found them. At first he thought they were mongrels but saw the armor and weapons and knew that was not the case. Him and his group could of obliterated them without much fuss but when the one that led them had said they would take them to safety he had ordered his people to stand down. Sela, one of his oldest followers and his lover had almost ignored him. He saw the flames begin to coalesce around her fingertips. Only a hard look by him kept her from following through. She gave him a wink and trudged along behind them.
He had used his Trick of Glamour to cast an illusion around his face. He had no clue where they were headed but out of the thirty or so that still survived, at least ten of them were Sorceres, a few Gifted, those being the leftover Magi-Techs that had stuck with them, and then the rest, Norms, family to the others, four of which were children, young teens. With that they were led into the jaws of the beast or in reality, which had shocked him, an advanced underground bunker full of strange hybrids he had never seen before, which, considering his age, was saying quite a bit.
***
They had spent several days locked up in a cell, well, really not a cell, it was an actually a very nice cavernous room with beds and couches and showers that could of held far more then the thirty of them that were still left from his Haven. Food was delivered, plenty of water but nothing else. There were cameras all over the room so they were definitely being watched and observed. He had relegated himself to keeping his hood up and pulled over his head as his Glamour Trick he couldn’t sustain for such long periods of time. He wasn’t even sure who he was hiding from but he had a gut feeling there was something very dangerous going on here. They had enough power to break out of the place, of that, he had no doubt. He himself was middle grade Sapphire and would slaughter any of the wolf creatures he had seen already by sheer Attributes alone much less all his Tricks. Most of his focus was illusions but he had a few that made him unique, namely his ability to manipulate Necrotic Flame, hence his moniker as the Occultist.
Necrotic flame still had a heat quality which is why it’s in the name but it was also mixed in with necrotic energy that made things rot or age, something similar to what most sloth demons did minus the flame part. He was the only one he had ever seen with the Gift which had made him one of a kind though the Archeon and his damn Lightning still made short work of him back in the day.
