Victor of Tucson

Book 8: Chapter 45: Blood and Thorn

Loyle didn’t stand still for Victor’s first lightning-fast cleave. As Lifedrinker ripped the air, black smoke trailing in her wake, the spellcaster sank into the ground, leaving behind a pool of shimmering blood. Victor whirled, only to see Loyle reappear on the far side of the circle, springing from an identical pool. “Blood magic,” Victor growled. Arcus had told him about the spell, and he’d also told Victor that Loyle couldn’t perform the spell rapidly, back-to-back. Victor focused on his adversary and cast Energy Charge, fueling the spell with fear-attuned Energy.

As he streaked over the ground in a cloud of purple-black shadows, Victor heard Arcus’s words in his mind, “Keep pressure on him, Victor. Anyone who ever came close to beating him never gave him a moment to rest. Be certain, though, that no matter how beaten he seems, he has another trick up his sleeve. Never let your guard down.” As though the words were prophecy, just as Lifedrinker was about to split the much smaller man in half, he surged into the air, hoisted off the ground by a thorny green vine that burst out of the grassy soil, surging upward like a mythical beanstalk.

Victor collided with the thorny stalk, Lifedrinker leading the way. His armor flattened the spines that tried to pierce his flesh, and his axe gleefully ripped through the yard-thick strand of fibrous plant matter in an explosion of splinters and green juice. As he regained his senses, Victor looked up at the wildly shaking stalk, only to see it was bereft of its passenger. He whirled, looking for any sign of the mage’s bright red robes. Sure enough, Loyle was on the other side of the circle again, this time dancing in a strange ritual—stomping his feet, shaking his hands, throwing his head back to cough and howl in a strange language.

Energy Charge had a short cooldown, but it wasn’t yet ready, so Victor bunched his legs and used Titanic Leap to launch himself toward the wizard. As he reached the apex of his jump and started down, he saw Loyle seem to explode—blood boiled out of him like a water balloon popping in slow motion, but it didn’t splash to the ground. Instead, it hung in the air like a great crimson bubble, and just as Victor began to fall toward it, the blood seemed to solidify and sprout millions of hairs. Only when Victor was about to impact the strange mass did it ripple and form into Loyle’s intent—a great crimson bear.

He hacked Lifedrinker toward its enormous, glowering brow, but the monstrous creature swiped madly at him with a tree-like arm tipped with crimson scythe-like claws. Victor just had time to tuck his chin and pull his limbs in close as the massive paw smashed him out of the air. The claws cut like razors as they sliced his shoulder and side, slipping through his armor like it wasn’t there, shredding his flesh and biting deep into his bones. Victor roared in pain and fury as his rage-attuned Energy exploded out of his Core. It flooded his pathways and turned his vision so deeply red that he almost lost sight of the monstrous bear as he rolled on the grass.

When he stood, Victor had more than doubled in mass; he’d been so enraged that Iron Berserk had nearly cast itself. His flesh knitted together almost instantly, and a low, angry chuckle escaped his lips as he turned toward his foe. As the bear charged him, Victor flicked out his left hand, Energy already surging into the gauntlet on his fist. A coil of sizzling, dripping magma—enlarged to match his titanic form—whipped out with a crack, splashing hot, liquid fire over the bear’s red fur and tearing a huge chunk of bloody, sizzling flesh from its shoulder. The creature roared in agony but kept coming, its furious eyes a match for Victor’s. Victor welcomed it, spreading his arms wide.

Just as Loyle, in his blood-bear form, leaped to try to latch his massive jaws around Victor’s throat, Lifedrinker came down like a falling star, blazing and rippling with Energy as she crunched into the side of the monster’s head, just above the ear. The bear slumped, but its momentum carried it into Victor, smashing against his chest. Victor, surging with pride for Lifedrinker’s tremendous blow, turned and threw the bear to the side. Thousands of pounds of fur, blood, and bone shook the earth as the monstrous animal impacted the grassy sod, tearing a furrow twenty yards long.

Victor, remembering Arcus’s words, didn’t let up the pressure. He lashed out with his magma whip, hooking it around one of the bear’s rear legs. As liquid fire splashed and fur and flesh sizzled, he pulled himself as he lunged, closing the distance in a mere second. Then, he began to lay into the downed bear with Lifedrinker, hacking great, gaping wounds with each downward blow. As blood sprayed and drenched him in its hot, liquid embrace, Victor began to roar with wild, maniacal laughter. Lifedrinker crunched through bones along with the fleshy parts of the enormous bear, and soon the beast’s thrashing, clawing attempts to right itself or lash out faded, and then…it was gone. Victor stood, heaving for breath over a mound of mushy, coagulated blood—nothing more.

He straightened, perplexed. Had he won? A tickle at the nape of his neck, some instinctual sixth sense spurred him to dive to the side just as a hail of needle-sharp thorns ripped through the air where he’d been standing. Victor bounded to his feet, whirling to scan the circle, only to see Loyle waving his hand, hurling another torrent of magically generated thorny missiles. Victor ran diagonally, dodging the attack. As soon as he was clear, he cast Energy Charge and hurtled on waves of sparkling, Glory-attuned Energy toward his enemy. Again, Loyle used his blood-pool teleportation and escaped, forcing Victor to abandon his spell as he streaked through the space where the wizard had earlier stood.

In his mind, Victor tried to calculate the timing of Loyle’s teleportation cooldown. It wasn’t instant, but it wasn’t as long as he’d hoped. He turned, frustration mounting, rage building, and scanned for his adversary. Once again, he saw the man’s portly, robed figure dancing, and this time, with each awkward stomp of his feet, saplings sprang from the soil and wove together, forming an archway with the mage at its center. Victor didn’t know what he was doing but meant to interrupt it.

He leaped into action, his long legs powering him across the fighting circle in just a few broad strides, and then he lashed out with his magma whip, aiming to yank Fak Loyle toward him. The wizard threw out his arm at the last second, and a tangle of saplings sprang from the ground, intercepting Victor’s whip. Loyle turned and bounded away, leaving his strange archway behind. Victor stalked toward it, Lifedrinker raised high, intent on chopping it to kindling before Loyle’s purpose could come to light.

Unfortunately, he’d just closed the distance when the air inside the archway shimmered with sparkling green Energy, and then a great bundle of claws and black fur exploded out of it and slammed into Victor, knocking him to the side, despite his titanic size. The creature roared, a sound that woke something primal in Victor, an instinctual desire to fight or flee. When he regained his balance and whipped Lifedrinker around, fending off the raking claws, he got his first good look at what had to be Loyle’s “bog lion” companion.

The creature was close to the size of his cave bear spirit companion, but it reeked of power. Its fur was black, but its mane was tawnier, brown at the base, and much paler on the fringes. The creature had deep green eyes the color of moss, and they glinted with intelligence as the lion regarded Victor. As its massive claws dug into the turf, it growled and paced, calculated violence in those eyes.

The lion’s aura was heavy and full of primal cunning and murderous intent. Victor suddenly realized he wasn’t just battling with one steel seeker; this “companion” was likely as formidable as Loyle. Wasting no time, he channeled Energy into the pattern for his Wild Totem spell, summoning his coyotes with fear-attuned Energy. When he’d spoken to Arcus, his initial plan had been to summon his bear and use that powerful companion to battle with the lion. Having seen and felt the lion’s power, though, he knew that would be a waste; his bear would put up a brave fight, but the lion would kill it, and it wouldn’t take long.

No, this was a foe that Victor would have to deal with himself. His coyotes wouldn’t be able to kill Loyle, but hopefully, they could keep the mage on the defensive, at least long enough for him to slay the mighty bog creature. His five mastiff-sized coyotes sprang from pools of shadow, their glowering purple eyes gleaming out of dark, shadowy countenances, their yips and cries haunting and strange. Victor mentally urged them to harry the mage, and they immediately spread out, crossing the circle and rapidly closing with Loyle.

Meanwhile, the lion dove at him, swiping its powerful arms. Victor knocked its grasping claws aside with Lifedrinker’s smoldering edge. The beast was strong and fast, and as they began to spar in earnest, Victor enjoyed the rhythm of his battle with it. The lion was a master in the use of its natural weapons, and it had a dozen combinations of swipes and bites that kept Victor guessing. Often, it would land hits on his armor, scoring long, shining dents in his wyrm-scale and rending his lava king hide. Even so, it rarely drew any blood; his armor was sufficient, and Victor was adept at minimizing damage by moving with the impacts.

He felt one of his coyotes depart the Material Plane, and he knew he couldn’t drag out his fight, though a part of him wanted to. However much he was learning from the skilled melee combat of the lion, he couldn’t allow Loyle and the beast to work together. Frowning, almost feeling guilty, he employed his magma lash. The creature could block his axe with its diamond-strong, foot-long claws, but the whip was another matter. The very first time he snapped it out, the lion, roaring and growling, swiped at it with its claws, only to have the length of molten, smoldering stone coil around its paw and foreleg. It sizzled and popped, melting through the lion’s fur and flesh. The beast recoiled, yowling madly as it thrashed and bucked, trying to pull its limb free.

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Victor yanked on the lash, pulling the enormous lion off balance, and Lifedrinker was ready and waiting for the opening. He hacked her down, and her orange-hot edge bit halfway through the lion’s left shoulder, severing muscle and tendon and digging deep into the bone. The lion went mad with pain and panic, roaring and screeching as it exploded in a frenzy of movement that only a feline could pull off. It ripped its right foreleg free of Victor’s whip and flung itself backward, scrambling to flee. One of its forelimbs wouldn’t move right, and the other was degloved, nothing but bloody bone as it tried to scamper away.

If Victor hadn’t been in a fight for his life, if he hadn’t been hot with rage long before the fight even started, if he hadn’t been stoking his pathways with rage-attuned Energy, he might have turned his back on the creature and let it skulk away. He might have risked it recovering somehow and coming for him. As it was, Victor was seeing red, and he was aware that only two of his coyotes were still “alive.” He couldn’t risk that Loyle might somehow heal the beast and that it might catch him unawares while he dealt with the mage. No, Victor reasoned grimly—he had to finish it.

So, as the great, once-proud lion limped away, hobbled and broken, Victor swallowed his sympathy and cast Energy Charge. As usual, he led his charge with Lifedrinker’s gleaming, hungry edge. He smashed into the monstrous beast’s haunches, and his deadly axe split the great cat’s spine like a master woodsman’s axe felling a young oak. The crack rang out, and Victor’s impact sent the broken, listless body of the beast flopping like a terrier’s stuffed animal toward the edge of the circle.

He just had time to register the onlookers scrambling to escape being flattened by the dead or paralyzed beast before Loyle’s howl of dismay caught his attention. Victor whirled in time to see the mage roiling with red, bubbling Energy, surging in size as his body swelled and engorged, blowing up like an obscene doll, his white, sun-starved arms and legs sprouting from his robes, which, apparently, weren’t enchanted to grow to match the size of their wearer. He wasn’t just growing; he was stretching, and Victor could see the blood roiling and pulsing under his stretched-thin skin.

One of his coyotes yet remained, and it lunged in, grabbing hold of Loyle’s Achilles tendon. It viciously shook its head as it tried to rip it out. Loyle reached down one of his massive, swollen hands and grasped the coyote by the neck. Victor saw that weird, pulsating limb contract, and then the crunch of bones signaled his totem’s demise. Loyle, now something like fifteen feet tall and twice as bulky as Victor, held aloft his bulbous right hand, and blood streamed out, solidifying in the air into the shape of a scythe. Then the steel seeker stomped toward him, the ground lurching with each impact of his overlarge feet.

Victor stared, amazed by the spectacle. The man’s robes were stretched tight, and the lower hem failed to cover his engorged, bouncing family jewels. It was so distracting that Victor nearly failed to react as that enormous, blood-red scythe whistled through the air toward his right knee. He parried the blow just in time, his epic-level axe skills too well-honed to allow such a well-broadcast attack to hit home. As the scythe bounced away, Victor took a step back and grunted, “Arcus didn’t mention this bullshit!”

Loyle’s face was disfigured by the blood that had swelled his form; his flesh was drawn taut, his eyes bulged like pasty puffer fish, and his teeth looked tiny behind his sausage-like lips. Still, his tongue waggled in that oversized mouth, and garbled words flowed forth, “Yawl pay for thaaah!”

Having had enough of the freakshow, Victor scowled and launched a vicious attack, hacking Lifedrinker low and high, dancing inside the arc of that stupidly massive scythe. Her burning blade sizzled as she split Loyle’s pasty flesh and released torrents of blood not once or twice but five times as Victor smoothly glided around the swollen monstrosity. Loyle teetered and wobbled with each blow, and as Victor danced away, spinning to watch his handiwork, a great pool of blood formed around the mage as he veritably deflated, gouts of blood pouring from the gashes Victor had made.

Victor wanted to put an end to the disgusting sight of Loyle’s sagging, overlarge skin hanging from his emaciated form. He gathered himself for another Energy Charge, but then the blood pool bubbled and boiled, rising from the ground as though animated. The blood took on the form of a liquid serpent, and its crimson head lunged toward Victor, quick as lightning. The thing must have sprouted fangs because he felt them pierce his thigh as it latched on. He jerked back and hacked down with Lifedrinker, but her razor-sharp, smoldering edge slid along the blood serpent’s flesh like he was trying to cut a rubber hose with a butter knife.

Suddenly, he felt a pulse, and something hot and vile entered his leg. It wasn’t like venom; it was more like his earlier comparison of a hose—a great quantity of something was being pumped into his body through the blood serpent’s bite. With each pulse, a hot, burning, dirty wave pushed into his flesh and spread further and further. He lost control of his leg, stumbled, and fell backward.

Victor scrabbled back on his hands, kicking with his good leg, but the blood serpent stretched from the pool with his movement, and another pulse of that stuff entered his body. Victor’s vision began to tunnel, and a weird, high-pitched ringing echoed through his ears. His legs, his chest, even his shoulders were numb, and they felt wrong, like they weren’t even his. He found it difficult to concentrate or remember what he was doing. His muscles relaxed, and he slumped back onto his elbows as the thing pulsed again, and more of the sickening sensation of having someone else inside his skin threatened to drive him mad.

Victor's thoughts drifted to odd places as his vision darkened further and his mind grew numb. He thought of Valla and felt relief that he’d sent her a letter. He imagined Deyni running through fields, chasing her raptor as it hunted for prey. He remembered Old Mother as she’d hugged him and said she’d see him in another life. As his limbs turned cold, and his heart’s steady thump slowed, pausing for a dozen seconds between each sluggish beat, he remembered Tes and felt his first regret—he’d wanted to meet her again. The thought tickled something in Victor, woke some part of him that remembered who he was.

With a tremendous effort of will, he forced his wandering mind back to the present and, with his vision dark, he turned his gaze inward and regarded his Core. It was besieged, surrounded by cold, red Energy. Victor turned to his breath Core and, using the pathway he’d long ago opened when he’d learned to use his magma-attuned Energy, pulled some of that hot, burning power out, watching with glee as it burned up the cold, bloody, invading Energy. As his magma-attuned Energy burned its way to his spirit Core, Victor felt parts of himself waking up. His heart’s slow thump became a thump-thump, and the magma rushed into the chamber of his Spirit Core and seared a pathway for his rage to spill forth.

As feeling returned to his chest, spreading outward from his pounding heart, Victor inhaled deeply and let magma and rage-attuned Energy mingle in his pathways. His vision came back to him, and he saw the stars in all their splendor hanging bright in the dark sky over his head. He felt the grass under his fingers, Lifedrinker’s haft in his palm. He felt the blood serpent digging into his thigh, pushing its vile concoction into him, but his body was resisting now; he could feel the sickening stuff burning up in his chest, in his Core.

Unwilling to lose ground again, remembering the enormous size of Loyle’s blood pool, he gathered his magma and rage and pushed them together, casting Volcanic Fury. As fire ignited in his blood, as flames flickered to life in his dim vision, Victor let his head roll back, opened his mouth, and roared his primal rage. His madness was tinged with cruel amusement as he felt Loyle’s blood burn to ash in his veins.

Victor inhaled deeply and turned his gaze on the serpent, smoking and steaming as it continued to try to pump its vile concoction into his leg. He gathered his breath and exhaled a plume of magma. The liquid fire eradicated the serpent, popping and melting away its form like blood spilled into an inferno. Victor continued to blow, lifting his face toward Loyle where he stood, his sagging flesh still hanging from his much-reduced body, and doused him with the remainder of the fire in his lungs.

Loyle screamed and writhed. Perhaps instinctually, he cast his blood pool teleportation, but when he reappeared on the far side of the circle, he was still aflame and still thrashing and screaming in agony. Victor sprang to his feet, leaving a blackened, body-shaped scorch mark on the grass. His vision was tinted yellow, and it pulsed red with each beat of his heart as he approached his tortured foe. Lifedrinker no longer smoldered—she blazed. Her edge was white-hot, and she burned the very air as Victor stalked forward, trailing black smoke and leaving behind fiery footsteps that burned the damp, green grass to ash.

Despite his agony, Loyle managed to get off a spell; green tendrils of vines erupted from the soil and wrapped around him, smothering the flames and, perhaps, healing him with their pulsing green sap. Victor didn’t care. All he knew was his need for destruction and that this was a fool who’d tempted his rage. He blew out another stream of doubly effective magma, enhanced by his Volcanic Fury, and it splashed over those coiled green shoots, instantly bursting them as the sap within boiled to steam. Loyle screamed, and Lifedrinker answered him as she ripped through the air to cleave him in twain.

His foe undeniably vanquished, Victor arched his back, lifted his face to the stars, and roared. When he was certain all around knew of his victory, of his rage, of his hunger for destruction, he straightened and turned his gaze on those lurking outside the circle of stones. He wasn’t discriminating; all were welcome to feel his fury. Victor stalked toward the first group of onlookers, unlucky enough to catch his eye. He only took two burning steps, though, before a warm, malleable, but unyielding force caught him in its grasp.

A voice, familiar but unexpected, spoke into his ear, “That was well-fought, lad, but now you must cool that rage.” As that weird, warm Energy pushed against him, then into him, driving the rage and magma Energy out of his pathways, Victor realized it was Ranish Dar. He fell to his knees as the fury left him, and he felt the draining after-effects of his battle lust. He looked around, trying to catch sight of his mentor, but he wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Could a veil walker so effortlessly subdue even a titan? He’d taken his rage away and never even revealed himself.

His titanic form had left him, along with his rage, and Victor could feel the dampness in the grass under his knees. As he grunted, pushing himself to his feet, he saw Efanie jogging toward him. “Are you well?” she asked breathlessly, her face flushed with excitement. “Gods! How—”

“Where’s Bohn?” Victor asked, cutting her off.

“He’s there, sulking on his throne. There are far too many people present for him to skulk off. Everyone’s in shock, me included.” Victor followed her pointing finger and saw that, indeed, Bohn and his retinue were sitting still, subdued and quiet. Not everyone was calm, though—a hubbub had arisen around the circle, and Victor could see that people were still wrapping their heads around what they’d witnessed.

“An iron-ranker! You realize…I think the last iron-ranker to kill a steel-seeker in Sojourn was Ronkerz. He was—”

“I know who he was.” Victor looked at her and then at the finely dressed nobility and their families. Did they realize how close they’d come to feeling the brunt of his fury? He hadn’t wanted to use Volcanic Fury for that very reason, but had Loyle given him a choice? He’d almost overwhelmed him with that blood invasion. “Thank you, Dar,” he said to the air, hoping his mentor could hear him. He took a single step toward Bohn Volpuré, but Efanie gripped his wrist.

“Your award! Gods! Look! The Energy—it’s so bright!” Victor looked where she pointed, and sure enough, great balls of Energy were gathering around Loyle’s corpse. They weren’t golden or purple or rainbow-hued. They were like moonlight—white, ethereal, and so bright they lit up the hilltop like floodlights. Victor squinted as he watched them bubble together.

“Yeah. My awards.” He grinned as he stalked toward the corpse. Not only would he take his Energy award from the System, but he had a heart and perhaps some dimensional containers to claim.