Mark of the Fool

Chapter 859: Maddening Shrieks

The power trickled in, helping…immensely.

Deep within the Ravener’s cavern, Uldar’s construct drank deeply of the energy that Lord Aenflynn had provided. Its flagging stores of strength began rising again, allowing it to make adjustments within itself.

“Thank you,” the Ravener said. “Thank you for a taste of the creator’s power. Your aid will always be remembered.”

‘My pleasure,’ Lord Aenflynn answered. ‘Just hurry, this conflict I am involved in is not easy-Gah! I must concentrate! I must leave you to your fight.’

The Ravener felt the connection between itself and Uldar’s old friend abruptly end.

For a moment, the construct felt a…sensation…growing inside. A loneliness. Like a longing for something. Companionship. It understood that. It had felt it over the eons when it had not heard Uldar’s voice for some time.

Perhaps the creator’s old ally would make the passing of ages far easier to bear.

But to face those ages, the Ravener must win this battle.

It would not waste the gifts Uldar’s old ally was bestowing upon it. Drawing upon its reserves and the new channel of power, it adjusted its internal processes. Since the empowering fear had been hindered, it would no longer be able to produce an infinite supply of dungeon cores.

So, it must do with making less, and only focus on crafting cores that would make its most devastating monsters. Skystriders. Skyfire Swarms. Gale Makers. Spawn Knights.

And of course, the formidable creatures it had yet to unleash.

Living Cores.

All of these Spawn would be its most elite forces. They would crush resistance and put the fear back into the mortals.

These elite monsters would also form its guards.

Soon, the Heroes would come.

Already, it could feel a Usurper nearing.

The final confrontation was inevitable.

“The trial moves to the next stage,” the Ravener’s surface rippled.

Spawn Knights exploded from the construct’s form, quick, vicious and powerful servants: the perfect guards for its labyrinthine tunnels.

“Creator…if you are in the after-world…” it paused. “Then guide me. Spawn!”

Its words echoed through its vast chamber.

Its legions watched it eagerly.

“Go. Go into the tunnels and prepare. Soon, battle will come.”

With cries and bloodthirsty screams, its elite Ravener-spawn charged into the tunnels, making their way to their posts and ambush-points.

When the battle came, they would be ready.

And in the meantime…

The Ravener opened pathways of power to certain dungeon cores around the fae realm.

###

“It’s real quiet,” Alex whispered.

“What was that, archwizard?” the engeli asked.

“Nothing.” He said, watching the forest below them intently.

Trees swayed, wind rustled their leaves, and the sounds of animals calling to each other reached them from below the canopy. The atmosphere no longer felt unnaturally quiet, to indicate a trap or illusion…but still, something was odd.

He looked around the wilderness, seeing nothing obvious.

Not yet.

And that had been bothering him.

‘We've been following the path for a while now,’ he thought. ‘We should be getting closer to the Ravener, but where are its guards? Dungeons serving as outposts? Patrols? Why is it so damned quiet?’ He looked around. ‘There should be something guarding the area. Anything. I don’t like this…’

He called an army of summons, just in case. ‘I don’t like this at all.’

###

‘I…like this…’ Claygon thought.

His lower arms stabbed his war-spear through a behemoth’s bone armour, impaling the creature from front to back. The monster howled, trying to pull the weapon free, but the enchanted tip was already doing its grim work, draining its life from it.

In heartbeats, the monster’s struggles slowed and its movements weakened. Bone armour loosened, as flesh withered within it.

A final dusty cough, and the monster was still.

Ravener-spawn surrounded the golem, looking to bring him down.

Bone chargers attacked his iron form, damaging only themselves. Venom walkers lashed the golem with their spiny, poisonous arms to no effect. Spear-flies tried piercing his metal form, only to break their own proboscises.

Claygon mostly ignored them, occasionally using his fists to knock some out of his way or trample them beneath his iron feet. Monsters swarmed from above, and he raised his upper arms and unleashed the full wrath of his fire-gems.

The air above him exploded as the fire-beams struck his attackers, blowing them apart in chaos-laced explosions.

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And he did not pause, except to say. “I…like this…”

He glanced at his companions as they made their way to the fae gate up ahead, fighting through hordes of Ravener-spawn, using spells and their might to thin the monster’s numbers. Everyone pushed ahead, bent on reaching the closest fae gate to destroy it.

“Almost there!” Prince Khalik shouted, flying close behind the golem with Najyah circling him. Her master’s spells shot from her, rampaging through nearby Ravener-spawn.

“I like this…!” Claygon cut a gibbering legion in two with a single swing of his war-spear.

“You like what?” the prince called. He and Najyah turned to a pair of blood-draks flying toward them, shredding them with cones of crystalline shards.

“We are…winning!” Claygon cried. “They…can’t stand against us…we used to have…to run…and plan and sneak…!” he shouted. “Now…they can’t…stop us! We’ve closed…a lot of fae gates!”

“Indeed, but there are more, and they can still travel to the material world if fae bring them there,” Khalik said.

“I know…this…is not over…and things will get harder…but right now?” Claygon said, lancing a fire-beam through the air, striking a group of hives-as-one as they flew toward them. The explosion annihilated the creatures. “Now…this is good!”

Stopping just ahead of the fae-gate, the iron golem fired his fire-beams again, blasting the mushroom circle, destroying a cluster of hive-queens guarding it.

“Now is good!” Khalik laughed, flying beside Claygon. With a few twitches, he conjured a great wave of earth, having it rise then swoop down on the remains of the circle. The prince dusted his hands off as it was buried, and Najyah let out a shriek of victory. “But we must still be cautious, there is no telling when—”

The earth exploded under Claygon’s feet.

The prince and Najyah reacted, he teleported them away before a jet of earth and rock could mangle them.

Stone pelted Claygon, battering the golem as a massive, Ravener-spawn rose before him, a creature with many holes in its carapace.

Atop its back rode a knight-like armoured Ravener-spawn, with eight bladed legs twitching, but the object it clutched in its clawed hand was what caught Claygon’s attention.

A dungeon core, one somewhat larger than the many the golem had seen before.

No…no there was also something else different about it.

It was pulsating, like a beating heart.

It started growing.

Claygon swung his war-spear at the knight-like Ravener-spawn, but the creature leapt clear of his reach at the same moment the hulkling beast below it blasted him with a torrent of air.

The air-blast slowed Claygon, allowing the giant Ravener-spawn to scuttle backwards.

The knight-like spawn emitted a chittering sound, “Something from our master!”

It tossed the dungeon core.

As the orb of darkness flew, it rapidly expanded. First, reaching the size of a goblin. Then becoming a similar width across as a grown man’s height. Then, Claygon’s height, and finally, eclipsing even that.

As it grew, the black, hardened substance covering it, began shifting.

Becoming softer. Flesh-like. Pulsating. Wet.

Rippling growths sprang up on its surface, rupturing, revealing masses of bulging eyes and hosts of gaping, fanged maws, suspended on the ends of long, fleshy tendrils.

In the end, it became a jet black creature of flexible flesh, measuring at least forty feet across and covered in bulging eyes and snapping maws. Four wings—each jetting flame behind them—burst from its form. They flapped once, sending it skyward.

“What in all the hells is that?” Thundar cried from nearby. The minotaur was flying above a group of silence spiders, blasting them with force. His form was surrounded by illusionary duplicates.

The creature screamed, as if in response.

A maddening gibbering echoed from every mouth, striking the world in a wave of invisible power. It passed over the golem harmlessly, but…

…for the others…

“Arrrgh!” Thundar screamed.

The minotaur stopped in mid-air, grasping the sides of his horned head. “It’s burrowing into my mind!”

All around, Claygon’s companions screamed, holding their skulls. Their eyes were squeezed tight and fingers dug long trenches into their flesh.

“No…!” the golem’s voice thundered. “Leave…them…alone!”

He struck out, launching a deadly beam of fire from his forehead gem, straight into the screeching orb.

The explosion broke the creature’s magic, and for a moment, Claygon’s companions recovered.

But, the Ravener-spawn emerged from the explosion, scorched but still alive.

“Everyone…move away!” Claygon shouted.

“No!” cried Isolde from another part of the battlefield. “My will is not so weak as to shatter from this thing!”

She unleashed a spear of lightning at the creature—encased in liquid—arching it through the air, finding one of the creature’s wings. The monster shrieked again—flames sputtering to life within the wing’s membrane—yet it kept flying.

Flesh shuddered.

Spikes of stone flew from its hide like javelins, raining down at horrendous speed.

Cursing, the wizards teleported away—reaching for their warrior companions. The spikes fell, striking the earth, digging deep. Many crashed into Claygon’s iron form and detonated.

Explosions of fire and clouds of noxious gas burst from the spikes.

Claygon remained unharmed.

The creature’s bulging eyes rolled, many focused on the wizards as they reappeared several hundred feet away, scattered in all directions. But most of the Ravener-spawn’s gazes focused on the golem, clearly acknowledging him as a threat.

Its flesh rippled once again, partly-transparent petrifiers sprang up along its form, dropping to the earth. The True Seeing spell Alex had placed on Claygon revealed the creatures, making stopping them as simple as catching fish in a barrel, and the golem stopped them before they could even orient themselves.

The petrifiers’ turned their many eyes on him, but could only die when the fire-beams struck them, blasting them out of existence, exploding their detonating organs.

He flew at the giant Ravener-spawn, noticing its burnt body was beginning to heal.

‘Need to stop it…from…recovering…’ he thought.

Again, the golem unleashed a fire-beam from his central gem, striking the flying creature dead centre. The explosion drew another shriek from the beast. Claygon flew through the flames, levelling his spear at the burning creature as it shot more stone spikes at him, they exploded against the golem’s metal form, slowing him, but not stopping him.

With another cry, the enormous Ravener-spawn beat its four flaming wings, pulling away from the golem, gaining altitude.

Claygon simply cocked his upper left arm back, transferring the war-spear to that hand and throwing the weapon with all his might.

It hissed, cutting through the air, embedding itself in one of the Ravener-spawn’s many eyes.

The eye split, foul black liquid poured out, the war-spear was so deeply embedded in the creature’s body, that it vanished within its bulk.

The monster wailed, shuddering, beginning to wither.

Its burnt flesh could not heal, Zonin-In’s weapon saw to that, absorbing the creature’s life force. Powerful wing-beats slowed, Claygon caught up to it.

His iron hands snapped into fists like battering rams, delivering heavy blows, pounding its flesh, stopping it cold.

Its mouths—-at the end of their stalks—turned uselessly toward his iron surface. Claygon reached for them, pulling them off like he was plucking rotten fruit from a tree.

The creature shrieked, trying to fight again, to unleash its maddening cries, but it might as well have been screaming at the wind for all the good that did.

It continued to wither. Its strength continued to wane. Soon its flesh had desiccated to the point where Claygon could see the end of his weapon’s haft protruding.

He reached for it, twisting the war-spear in the Ravener-spawn, opening the wound wider, allowing him to reach inside.

Power gathered in his palm, the sound warning the monster of what was to come.

Its bulging eyes grew wider.

And Claygon released the fire-gem, directly into its body.

The beam of fire could not possibly miss its target, and the monstrous creature seemed to double in size, light, heat and flame roaring just beneath its skin’s surface. Flesh rippled, mouth-stalks flailed weakly, its screeching sounding like the whine of steam escaping a kettle.

Then, it ruptured. The fire-beam exploded within the monster, tearing it asunder.

Flames wrapped the golem, licking at his iron form.

“I don’t know what you were…but that is the end for you…” he said, before flying out of the burning explosion.

He froze as he emerged, looking around.

“Oh…no…”

More of the same Ravener-spawn were rising from the earth, transforming, turning into living dungeon cores.

Most turned their attention to his companions.

But some?

Some vanished, carried elsewhere by fae.

Carried to Thameland by fae.