Arc 2, Chapter 28: The Weight of Storms

  *Another village. Another monster.*

  Gudea rose through the air.

  "How many times have I done this?" He muttered the words to himself. "How many battlefields? How many monsters?"

  He looked down at the creature below. A mountain of stolen bodies. Tentacles reaching in every direction. Black flowers blooming across flesh that used to belong to people.

  "Too many." He shook his head. "Always too many."

  He fell - CRACK - and the ground split beneath his landing, stone shattering under his boots as dust exploded upward.

  The first tentacle came from the left.

  Gudea tilted his spear. The tentacle glanced off the shaft, sliding past him before slamming into the ground behind.

  "Aimless." He shifted his weight.

  Two more came from the right. He stepped forward, letting one pass over his shoulder as he deflected the second with the flat of his blade. The impact shuddered up his arms.

  "That all you have?"

  The creature screamed as tentacles whipped the air. Five became ten, descending upon him in a storm of flesh.

  Lightning tore from the clouds above. Bolts caught each tentacle mid-descent, wrapping around them in crackling chains. The storm mana bit into corrupted flesh. The tentacles severed, heat searing through where the chains constricted.

  Charred pieces fell around Gudea, smoking as they hit the ground.

  The stumps pulled back into the creature's mass, already regrowing.

  "Endless." Gudea watched new tentacles sprouting from the wounds.

  The flowers pulsed in one rhythmic beat. Footsteps followed from every side, shuffling through the rubble.

  Gudea's head snapped around to a tide of bodies flowing steadily toward him, the ruins spilling over with infected villagers.

  A woman crested the rubble first, flowers covering half her face. She stumbled toward him from behind.

  He caught her with the shaft of his spear, his eyes falling on her hands.

  "Baker? Seamstress?" He pushed her back gently.

  She stumbled and fell.

  More came.

  A man approached from the left, hands calloused, dirt under his fingernails.

  "Farmer's son?" Gudea sidestepped, letting the man stumble past. "You've got the hands for it."

  A child came from the right. A little girl. Torn dress. A wooden doll clutched in her fingers

  Gudea stepped around her carefully.

  "Easy, little one. Easy."

  An old man crawled over a collapsed wall. White hair. Bent back.

  "Grandfather." Gudea guided him aside with the flat of his blade. "Rest now. Rest."

  They kept coming. Surrounding him. Their hands grabbed at his armor, pulling, clutching.

  "Hold on. Just a little longer. All of you."

  A shift in the air made him look up.

  The tentacles coiled and merged into a single form, becoming one gargantuan limb towering above the battlefield.

  "A distraction."

  Gudea twisted free. The villagers stumbled back as he broke their grip with a sharp turn of his shoulders.

  He ran.

  One stride - CRACK - mana spread outward from his feet in jagged lines. Another - CRUNCH - lighting the ground behind him. His pace quickened, the distance closing with every step.

  He leaped toward the descending mass, rising to meet the merged tentacle as it crashed down like a falling tree.

  Gudea snapped his arm straight to bridge the final gap, and the moment the tip met the spiraled mass, a blast shredded the limb from the point of contact to the core, sending a shockwave rippling into the creature's frame. The impact rattled the nearby houses.

  The shockwave sent the infected villagers staggering, but they pressed forward with reaching hands and open mouths.

  Gudea closed his eyes for a moment.

  "Enough."

  Gudea pointed his spear skyward. The clouds churned into a dark vortex, and the air grew heavy. He breathed in sharp ozone as static crackled across his armor. Power gathered in his chest, then rose through his arms to flood the spear.

  "Thunder Gate." His voice rolled across the battlefield.

  "Warden's Cage"

  Light fell from the sky.

  Columns of lightning descended, hammering the earth with enough force to shake the ground beneath. Five of them slammed down in rapid succession around the shrine platform, forming a protective barrier of crackling energy that enclosed Ash and Mira within its perimeter.

  Throughout the village, more columns descended. They slammed into the ground around each infected villager, forming rings of lightning that held steady between strikes. The energy solidified into walls, caging them without harming them.

  Gudea guided each placement with precision, ensuring the barriers held strong enough to contain but gentle enough to let them breathe.

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  The creature's wounds knit themselves closed, corrupted mana flooding the torn flesh. Its bulk heaved upward as it dragged itself to standing, and a scream tore from within the merged bodies.

  Gudea watched the towering form steady itself.

  "Buried deep. But we're coming to dig you out." His voice came out soft.

  He shifted his grip on the spear.

  "Your sister hasn't given up on you! Don't let go!" He raised it slowly.

  The creature rose upward, lifting itself high into the air until it towered over the battlefield.

  "Stay with me, boy." He stepped forward. "Don't fade yet."

  The monster struck the ground in a relentless rhythm, pounding its weight into the ruins until the earth pulsed like a heartbeat. Dust exploded from the stone with every impact.

  Gudea's spear swept forward, and a searing lance of energy erupted from the tip, bridging the distance in an instant to pierce the creature's core.

  The ground trembled. A massive wound ripped through the creature's center, exposing the corrupted core for one brief moment. Then the flesh surged inward, fusing back together.

  "It refuses to let you rest."

  The monster's body began to shift. Corruption poured from every surface, a continuous exhalation flooding the air. Miasma spread outward like fog rolling from a poisoned sea, thick enough to obscure vision.

  Gudea launched his spear upward. The weapon disappeared into the storm above.

  "Thunder Gate."

  He extended his hand. The spear reformed in his grasp.

  Points of light ignited above the creature.

  "Scattered Wrath."

  Eight columns of lightning tore downward, hitting its shoulders and the base where flesh met earth. Thunder merged into one endless roar. The creature convulsed, wounds weeping streams of corrupted mana that rose like black smoke.

  But the breathing never stopped. Fresh corruption poured from its surface, replenishing what had been purged, thickening the miasma into choking fog.

  Eight more strikes fell. More corrupted mana bled skyward.

  It breathed harder. The corruption kept flowing, spreading faster than lightning could burn it away.

  A final wave descended, eight columns hammering into the creature's body.

  "Fine. We do it the hard way."

  He spun the spear once, then slammed it into the ground. The weapon trembled, and a low hum spread outward through the stone.

  "Thunder Gate: Storm Dominion."

  The clouds churned as lightning crackled through their depths, spreading until the entire sky pulsed with a constant, electrical hum.

  Then the storm broke.

  Violence erupted outward, filling the sky with continuous thunder and arcing lightning. The air above Willowden became a ceiling of crackling destruction.

  The creature kept breathing, corruption rising in continuous streams toward the sky. Each stream met the ceiling of lightning and burned on contact

  Bulges formed across the creature's hide while it continued breathing corruption into the sky. Shapes strained against skin that stretched to contain them, dozens of protrusions, each roughly the size of a human body.

  They burst.

  Projectiles launched in every direction. Clumps of corrupted flesh wrapped around absorbed villagers, ejected as weapons. They flew toward Gudea, toward the shrine where Ash and Mira waited, scattering across the battlefield.

  Gudea planted his spear into broken stone.

  "Thunder Gate: Warden of Storms."

  A roar of light crashed beside him and held, pouring from the clouds as dust erupted, swallowing his vision.

  The dust settled.

  A monolithic figure stood where the lightning had fallen, towering three times the height of a man. Its frame shed sparks, blurring where energy met air. Heavy plates of light covered its chest, carved with glowing lines, while the lamp it carried shone with brilliance that stung to perceive.

  The Warden raised its lamp.

  Light erupted outward. The projectiles came apart in midair, corrupted flesh dissolving as the corruption binding them burned away. Villagers fell free from the disintegrating masses.

  The Warden blurred into motion, its massive hands of light sweeping through the air to intercept the falling bodies and slowing their descent until they touched the rubble without a sound.

  The construct faded once the last villager touched ground, dissolving back into lightning

  Gudea glanced back toward the shrine. The boy knelt in darkness, pulling corruption into himself.

  *Same stubbornness. Every generation.*

  Gudea crouched, then launched himself upward. He landed on the remains of a collapsed tower, stone cracking beneath his boots. The height gave him a clear view of the battlefield below.

  He turned to face the creature. It still breathed corruption into the sky, the miasma rising in thick streams toward the ceiling of lightning above. The storm continued its work, burning each stream on contact, thunder rolling without pause.

  *Hurry up, sapling.*

  Pain flooded every part of Ash. Bones, nerves, skin, thought.

  It started where corrupted mana first entered his body. His hands pressed against the shrine floor. Then it spread. Up his arms in rivers of agony. Across his shoulders in waves of freezing pain. Into his chest where the Seed of Life pulsed with desperate activity.

  He extended his awareness outward. Found the threads connecting infected villagers to the monster. Lines of corruption binding them, thin as spider silk but strong enough to control.

  The corruption reversed its flow. Streams of mana tore free from the caged villagers frozen within prisons of lightning. From the unconscious bodies the Warden had freed. All of it rushing toward him.

  Black veins spread beneath his skin. He looked down at his forearms, watching the darkness climb toward his elbows. Corruption that had been dispersed through an entire village now concentrated in his body alone. His flesh darkened with each passing moment.

  Thunder rolled across the sky.

  Through the agony consuming his body, he heard it rumbling continuously above. The old man's storm, relentless in its assault on the corruption spreading through the air. Lightning flickered at the edges of his vision, bright enough to penetrate the haze of suffering.

  More corrupted mana flowed into him. The black veins reached his elbows and crept toward his shoulders. Each new inch sent fresh waves of pain through nerves already screaming.

  He felt warmth against his back. Mira's hands, her healing mana pouring into him as fast as the corruption entered.

  Her breathing changed.

  He heard it even through his own suffering. The rhythm that had been steady when they started, now ragged and shallow, gasping instead of breathing. Her lungs were struggling to find air that seemed to have abandoned her.

  Her hands trembled against his spine.

  The trembling turned to searching movement across his back, patting his shoulders until she found her grip again.

  She couldn't breathe.

  Her breathing came in shorter and shorter gasps, each exhale a shallow rasp, the sound of lungs fighting for air.

  Fingers dug into his shoulders, grip tightening until he thought she might break before letting go.

  Corrupted mana flooded into him, overwhelming his body. Black veins raced across his chest, converging on the Seed that pulsed at his center.

  Pain exploded through every nerve.

  His eyes flared with heat before going cold. He tried to blink the world back into focus, but nothing changed; the darkness remained.

  The pressure in his chest built until it reached a breaking point. Corrupted mana erupted from his skin. A shockwave of darkness burst outward in every direction, tearing through the air and slamming into the ground beneath him.

  Mira's voice cut through the darkness.

  "Ash!"

  The scream broke into coughing. Wet, violent spasms that sounded like she was choking on her own breath. Her hands slipped from his back.

  Warmth dripped onto his shoulder. Heavier than the healing mana she'd been pouring into him. It ran down his skin in slow trails.

  Blood.

  The coughing didn't stop. Each breath came with a rattling gasp, like air forcing itself through liquid.

  The wet rattling in her chest stopped. The warmth on his shoulder faded.

  Silence swallowed everything around him. Mira's voice vanished. The thunder cut out. Even the pain disappeared.

  Corruption filled every space, drowning him in absolute nothing.

  —

  Gudea pulled back his spear.

  Lightning converged inward from the sky, every bolt arcing toward a single point above him. The air thickened until it pressed against his lungs.

  He felt the weight gathering in his grip.

  Storm mana flooded down from the converging sky, pouring into the spear like a river finding the sea. The weapon trembled in his hands. Heat built along its length, then pressure, until a violent energy fought to burst from the wood.

  He felt his own strength rise in an instinctive wave. It pushed out from his core, dense and unrelenting, winding through his muscles until it lashed onto the incoming mana. The energies slammed together along the spear's length. The sound deepened into a physical weight that pressed against his ribs and made his teeth ache.

  The weapon blazed in his grip.

  Light erupted from the metal, so bright it hurt to look at. Thunder built to a crescendo that shook the earth beneath him. Lightning froze in the sky, a web of destruction waiting for release.

  He settled into his stance, aligning every muscle for the throw as he gauged the distance and locked onto his target.

  Only sound remained.

  Only pressure.

  Only power.

  "Thunder Gate—"