I was a baker, once. It required rising so early that I used to joke about waking the sun with the light of my oven. I didn't like it, but it was a living. My father had done it, his mother before him, and my children would have continued that lineage had fate not intervened.
Now I rise early to slay thousands and bathe in the blood of a million more. I would give anything to go back to my bakery, to tell that idiot Hadrian that his eyes shine like the moon and that his smiles make my heart ache. I would give anything to feel something more than mild apathy.
I would give anything to care, but that won't last. There is comfort in numbness.
And numbness is all I have left.
Excerpt from The Beasts of the Dungeon.
REPLACE WITH LINE BREAK p^o^q REPLACE WITH LINE BREAK
"We should have brought a dedicated illusion mage," Marcus grunted, moving the grenade from one hand to the other. "Earth mages, maybe, to build temporary shelters. It was stupid to think the hunt wouldn't last longer than a few days."
Vess hummed. "You don't have a combat-ready illusion mage, and this is your first time hunting a Calamity. I think people will forgive the occasional mistake."
"Five people are dead," he replied, tone flat. "Five of my people are dead, and we got nothing to show for it but a slightly scratched enemy."
"Calamities wipe out entire armies. Five dead is nothing, and Elly tells me it would have been the end if you hadn't gotten them out."
Marcus tried to glare at her, not able to summon enough feeling to actually do so. "Your logical and reasonable arguments are getting in the way of my brooding."
"Brood later." Vess pointed, the massive beast of stone and granite having gotten closer still. "I think it's figuring out you're hiding behind an illusion again."
He sighed. "At least it's stupid. It would have been nice if someone had told me the stupid can still possess good fighting instincts, though."
"I think people expect you to know what you're doing, what with you being an Archmage now."
He was having less and less trouble summoning the annoyance to glare at her. "Thanks. I do so love having a massively overblown reputation. Now are you actually going to help, or is your curiosity not yet satisfied?"
"Why do you think it has that platform?" she asked. Marcus exhaled slowly, making her raise an eyebrow. "What? It's not supporting anything, and it must be cumbersome to carry that around all the time."
Oh, great, Elly had been drawn by the question. No, wait. Elly being drawn was actually improving his mood. This liking people thing was strange.
Marcus shook his head, trying to shake off the doom and gloom so intent on infesting his thoughts. He'd known the Calamity was dangerous, was hunting it for exactly that reason, and they had a plan now.
He could annoy Elly with his dislike of death later. She deserved it after all the poking and teasing.
"Everyone is ready," Elly said, raising an eyebrow at his confused blink. Right, she couldn't read his mind. Adrenaline was messing with his thoughts something fierce. "We have four tries at this, but if the first performs as expected, we're looking good. Vess."
The demon curtsied. "My Queen. The battlefield agrees with you."
Well, he wasn't going to say anything, but it did. There was a fire in her eyes that was hard to ignore, and seeing her enjoy herself despite the blood and death was strangely attractive. Not that he was going to tell her that, of course.
Imagine liking your wife. Royal marriages could never.
"It's doing something," Vess warned, Marcus snapping around to look. It was, indeed, doing something. What that something was he wasn't sure about, but he didn't like it. "I suggest moving, and quite frankly I've had my fill of looking at that monstrosity. Don't die."
Vess vanished between one moment and the next, Marcus far too busy relocating the hunting party to care. The dead had been stored for a proper burial—spatial enlargement once again proving to be his most useful non-combat skills by far—but that didn't mean everyone was ready to go.
Not that he was going to delay, of course. People sprawled as he moved them further away from the Calamity and up onto a small barren platform. No detonation of stone greeted them, which he was on the lookout for, but then he was also picking randomly between at least three places now.
Unless it had gotten lucky last time, that should decrease the chance of it anticipating them.
Unfortunately, it seemed to finally remember to use its disruption skills. It was relatively weak, something he could appreciate now that he wasn't surprised by it, but he doubted it was light on the reserves. Maybe it wasn't stupid, then, but just waiting.
Their cover was shredded all the same, and the Calamity jerked around to charge at them again. Able to feel when and where its attack met resistance, clearly, which implied some manner of feedback. Impressive for such a crude spell.
Right, the plan. He didn't much like the plan, in truth, but he'd been unable to come up with something better. His spatial arcs did little, Elly's arrows didn't do enough, and with their heaviest attacks being made ineffective they had to get creative.
So he waited. Elly shot some more arrows, regular ones that didn't do much more than annoy the Calamity, and then they waited some more. The ground erupted in spikes again, which they much more cleanly avoided than last time, and then they waited once again.
It wasn't until the thing was right on top of them that Marcus moved. Double-stepped to the side, teleporting everyone but Elly away, and grasped the grenade still in his hand. Elly fired her bow again, making it scream, and Marcus exhaled.
The teleportation matrix weaved together, his target small enough that it had to be close, and the grenade in his hand vanished. Reappeared inside the Calamity's mouth, which clicked shut a moment later. Marcus twisted to the side, double-stepping to avoid a stomp, and cursed as his path of retreat was blocked by Hounds.
This was why they took guards. Still, Elly was carving through them, and his moment's hesitation went unpunished. Marcus turned to look, not having heard the explosion detonate, but he heard the Calamity's screaming just fine.
Not in rage, this time, but in pain. Smoke billowed from its mouth as it did, though the thing didn't actually seem injured. Still, it was progress.
If only they'd brought a few dozen of those. Or possessed a few dozen in the first place.
Much more importantly, it was standing still. Elly appeared on top of its platform when Marcus teleported her, the Calamity not even seeming to realize, and he used the next moment to weave another spatial arc.
Not aimed at its legs, this time, but at its face. And his sixth-tier matrix exercises were paying off, because the straight line that came so intuitively was instead arched like a half moon.
Marcus strained as the spell very nearly destabilized, having put enough power in it to bring him to under half reserves, but it held. It held long enough to impact, though a last-minute shift from the creature let it avoid some damage.
Its face still nearly split in half, rock and stone falling away to no apparent effect. He looked up, drawn by how much power Elly was imbuing in both herself and her weapon, and watched her jump away as the platform erupted with spikes.
Marcus caught her, teleporting her safely to the ground some distance away, but it took a moment too long. A moment where he had to account for her relative velocity, to grasp where she would be and not was, and it was a moment the Calamity used to stomp down towards him.
He'd earned some not inconsiderable instincts from his spars with Elly, and had learned not to question them when they screamed in warning. It was why he double-stepped forwards, some half-formed thought insisting teleporting fully would take too long, and he was blown away as the massive pillar of stone impacted right next to him.
His shields strained and snapped like they barely existed, spatial warping doing absolutely nothing against an object that heavy. Marcus shook his head and just barely managed to roll instead of slide, teleporting away when his vision cleared, and wondered why his defenses had engaged at all.
The wind, he reasoned, and the debris. He spotted Elly moving away from the Calamity, weaving between its limbs and only just about managing to avoid them, and a single pulse of magic returned her to his side.
"Regroup," she gasped, actually seeming out of breath. That was… concerning. "Quickly."
He didn't argue, scanning around to find the rest of their party and ignoring a wave of fatigue. All that muscle he put on, all the energy he conserved by teleporting and double-stepping, and still he was tired. Embarrassing.
Marcus spotted his people, moving them towards an outcropping of stone and joining them a moment later. Elly waved off an immediate query of concern, turning to him with a half smile on her face.
It fell when she looked at him properly, and a moment later a searing pain demanded to be heard. Demanded to be felt, Marcus raising his hand to look at any potential injury.
Oh.
His left arm was gone. That made sense. His defenses hadn't tried to stop debris, they'd tried to stop him from losing a limb. And the warmth on his side had been blood. Yes, all very logical.
Marcus staggered, clamping down on a scream of pain a second after it left his mouth. Elly's hand shot out to steady him, barking for the healers in a tone that could have intimidated statues into moving, and Marcus had just enough awareness to stop them from fetching one of their dead.
A new limb wouldn't actually do much for his combat efficiency, and desecrating corpses wasn't going to do more than tire him regardless. His healers couldn't reattach limbs for him, a compromise having had to be made between combat-experience and healing expertise, so he would deal.
"Seal it shut," he ground out, clenching his teeth. "I'll keep us hidden."
The illusions were weaved with more difficulty than normal, the agony shooting up his arm being one Hells of a distraction, but once he did it was almost soothing. Almost enough to distract him from the fact he had lost his left arm.
And there was something else. A moment of comprehension between spikes of anguish. There one moment and gone the next, but understood. Some primal part of his mind being unlocked when everything else was stripped away, ignoring silly things like doubt and skill. Ignoring everything but the need to act, interfacing with magic so smoothly holding six matrices seemed trivial.
Then pain burned the understanding away, and Marcus tried his best not to scream. To hold their illusions in place, the Calamity's own injuries at least distracting it enough the thing hadn't seen where they went.
But moment after moment his two healers sealed up the wound, his left arm ending in a stump some five inches down. The pain slowly ebbed, Marcus drinking down one of their weakest painkiller potions when nothing but smooth skin remained.
It made the pain bearable, and unlike their stronger variant, wouldn't dull his mind.
Marcus shook his head, trying to force himself to focus as Elly shot him a glance. She was talking with Mitzi, both of whom kept shooting him glances, and he ignored it by turning to the Calamity.
It was enraged. That was all he could really call whatever it was doing. Stomping and thrashing, mouth still leaking some trails of smoke, while intermittently bellowing towards the sky. Looking for them, clearly, but unable to narrow down their location.
Its face was clearly important, despite how little slicing off whole chunks had actually done, and it was something to be exploited. It was already reacting to stimuli instead of acting—being 'stupid' if he was feeling insulting, which he kind of was—so making it angry should only make it more predictable.
Unfortunately, a predictable monster big enough to step over the walls of the Eastfort was still massively dangerous.
Elly returned to him, raising an eyebrow and nodding towards everyone else. Marcus shrugged, casting a second layer of illusions to allow them some privacy. She cleared her throat. "Mitzi is convinced you're a deity in the process of ascendance."
"I just lost my arm," he complained, wiggling the stump for good measure. Wow, the shock of that had not caught up yet. Still. "You have to be nice to the invalid. It's in the rules."
She looked somewhat uncomfortable at the gesture, which was a plus. "I was kidding. Mostly. Seeing you lose an arm and basically shrug it off left an impression."
"Do you have any idea how many limbs I've lost? It hurts like a bitch and always will, but I'm not exactly a stranger to the concept. Not like I need it to weave magic, anyway. I've also been shot, burned, decapitated, drowned, strangled and-"
Elly sighed. "I get it. It's probably unhealthy how attractive your cavalier attitude to both death and extreme injury is. Good for morale, though. So, you noticed the same thing I did?"
"How much it hated having a grenade deposited in its mouth?" he replied, ignoring the first part and glad she hadn't called him on his slight exaggeration. "I did. Should let us bait it into doing something stupid."
"Exactly. Oh, I should probably mention I had a brief but startlingly clear moment of connection to Life. It's a good sign."
Marcus hummed, letting a half grin form. "Samesies. It almost felt like magic just was, and directing it came as natural as breathing. No six matrices yet, but I grasped it once. Doing so again should be easier."
"Don't let Mitzi hear you talk like that," Elly replied dryly, rolling her eyes. "Silent Gods, I'm never going to catch up, am I? Unfair, I say. Cheating."
"Elf."
"Deity."
"Barbarian."
"Mage."
He snorted. "Wow, your prejudice is showing. Must be hard, putting so much vitriol in a word. Be careful not to lose your head."
Marcus wiggled his stump again, and she giggled. Actually giggled, breaking down into general laughter after a moment. He didn't resist the urge to join her, his own coming out slightly more hysterical, and for a while they were just laughing. Laughing as the Calamity grew increasingly enraged, laughing as it killed more Hounds, and they were still laughing when it pulsed its magical disruption wave again.
Their illusions vanished, and Marcus cracked his neck as the creature whirled towards them. "I'm actually having fun."
"Well, the Empire keeps insisting it's the end of the world." Elly drew her sword, briefly inspecting its edge before leveling it somewhat dramatically at the charging Calamity. "You can either descend into madness or learn to enjoy the fight."
He didn't dignify something that depressing with a response, though that was partly because the Calamity was rapidly gaining ground. Fast for short bursts, but it wasn't an endurance runner. It was almost a shame each Calamity was unique. He was learning a lot.
The rest of the hunting party scattered, moving the healers away and letting the two of them fight. What few Hounds that remained weren't interested in them anymore, not with the sheer destructive wrath the Calamity was displaying, but that was only a small victory.
Despite the plan, despite all they'd learned, nothing of what they possess could actually kill it. Nothing but the idea that there was something important in its boulder-face, that and the fact none of its wounds had healed yet.
Not a regenerator, meaning they could theoretically wear it down. Slice off limb after limb until it could do nothing more than scream. But that was assuming they didn't die trying, and it would take a long while to get through even a single pillar of stone.
Marcus moved to the right, Elly going left and leaving it momentarily indecisive. Very momentarily, since apparently the Calamity held a grudge after Marcus had teleported the grenade into its mouth. Speaking off…
The creature's scream turned into a coughing sound, the second of their four grenades exploding after a long moment. It again didn't seem to do any actual damage, but that was alright. They needed it to focus on him, and focus it did.
He himself focused on moving as it charged after him, pillar after pillar of stone descending into the earth. But teleporting only himself was so very efficient, and its trick of predicting his movement seemed to have been a fluke.
Elly, meanwhile, was slicing at its damaged limbs. The three that had been hurt during his initial opening move, trying to widen the gaps as the Calamity focused on him above all else. It was definitely proceeding in some manner, but he couldn't exactly take a few moments to check.
It was an interesting dance, despite the danger. Move too far away and the thing might turn to Elly, who was fast but couldn't exactly teleport, yet staying too close was begging to be crushed. So he moved just out of range, buying five, ten seconds at the time until he had to move again.
Exhilaration. That was a good word for it. Ever since the invasion and his subsequent awakening as an Archmage, only his spars with Elly had truly pushed him. Even the war against the Dungeon hadn't been dangerous in the usual sense, failure meaning the death of others.
Which was bad and horrible and marked him as a failure, but it wasn't this. It wasn't constant pressure, his focus sharpening to a razor's edge. It wasn't this feeling of growth, of progress. It wasn't the world coming to crush him down, throwing all the weight of destiny behind the blow, and failing all the same.
Marcus teleported again, the split-second after arrival taken to orient himself. But there was an energy in the ground, a feeling of danger, and he whisked himself away before the earth could fully part.
Spikes of stone erupted from his previous location, and he grinned widely as the Calamity screamed. His second-to-last grenade was deposited into its open mouth, the thing seemingly not quite learning to keep it shut, and his grin turned almost wild as it choked on nothing.
Then a second, different scream split through the air, and his blood turned to ice. His perception swung around wildly in a frantic search to find Elly, the sheer speed of the battle meaning she was still sagging to the ground when he did. Her body was crumpled against a rock, already forcing itself to rise, but the Calamity was faster.
Marcus took her away a moment before the limb could crush her into paste, joining her some distance away. Her eyes were open, wide and frantic, but she climbed to her feet a second later. Life was all but blazing through her body, bright enough it hurt his senses, and he knew she couldn't keep that up for long.
Neither could he, in truth. His reserves were almost two thirds empty, their small breaks not nearly enough to recuperate fully, and the pain-numbing potion wouldn't last forever.
Yet Elly smiled, teeth stained with blood and one of her eyes turning cloudy. "I found it."
"Hold still," he replied, gripping her shoulder. Awareness unfolded, and it looked bad. Damaged spine, hairline fractures throughout most of her bones, was her right foot broken? "I can't fix all of this. Not here and not quickly."
Elly grunted, coughing up some blood and pointing to the east. "Don't have time anyway."
He looked, cursing as the horde came into view. Tens of thousands of Hounds, at least, which meant thousands of Champions. Drawn by the fighting, no doubt, and it rankled more than he wanted to admit that they had to abort.
"I found it," she repeated, tone hardening. "The limbs aren't all rock, which means its face has to have some form of life too. Distract it, get me up there, I'll kill the thing."
Flee or push? Live to fight another day or take care of this thing before it could surround itself with an army? Risk it all, or play it safe?
That thing had taken his arm. Had smashed Elly against a rock like a fisherman killed trout.
"Fuck it."