Victor of Tucson

Book 8: Chapter 27: Foothold

At Lord Roil’s words, Victor nodded and channeled a little Energy into his armor, instantly armoring himself in crimson and black scales, thick, red leather hide, and dense, deep-red, gleaming metal. Victor found the helmet strangely comfortable, and something about the enchantment allowed him an unobstructed view from within the “lava king’s” fanged maw. Arona lifted an appreciative eyebrow, and Arcus nodded, a slow smile spreading on his face. The expression surprised Victor, but not as much as the Pyromancer’s words.

“Impressive. I begin to wonder if I should have made some wagers on your success.” Genuine levity tinged the man’s voice.

Victor smirked. His voice reverberated, slightly amplified by the nature of the helm, as he asked, “I hope you didn’t bet against me. You’ve lost enough thanks to me, don’t you think?”

Arcus shrugged and again surprised him: “Nothing I hadn’t signed up for. Best hurry over; I see Lord Roil’s vapors quickening—an expression of impatience I’m all too familiar with.”

“Right. See you soon.” Victor nodded to Arona.

She smiled, exposing her sharp canines, and shrugged. “Not soon enough. An hour for you, seven for us out here. I’ll be ready.”

With nothing to add, Victor turned and stomped toward the group of older, far more powerful men and women standing near the brightly glowing portal. His boots thudded on the marble, and he flexed his gauntleted left hand, eager to put his new lava lash to work. The thought brought a question to his mind, and as he approached, he asked, “If they’ve set up an Energy void, will it not drain my Core? If not, why can’t I use abilities that stay within my body? Or this?” He channeled some Energy into the gauntlet, and the molten lash handle filled his hand, the coil sizzling and popping, dripping hissing magma onto the marble as it extended to hang from his hand.

Dar opened his mouth to reply, but another consul, one Victor hadn’t met, stepped forward. She was a tall, slender woman wearing silken blue robes. As she spoke, she pulled her cowl back, revealing a beautiful, elven face with odd, white-furred fox ears jutting up through her pale blonde hair. Her voice rang out, melodic and chime-like. “Only an Energy trap properly attuned to your affinities can pull the Energy from your Core. However, a general void trap will drain any Energy that so much as touches one of the pathways outside your Core. You must resist the temptation to activate any abilities or spells, lest you diminish yourself for naught.”

“Thank you, Lady Rexa,” Dar rumbled. Then he turned his gaze on Victor and, more loudly, said, “Understand? Capture the foothold as we discussed, Victor.” Victor nodded and turned to the portal, but then he realized several consuls had stepped forward with packages. Again, Dar spoke, “We’ll equip you with a few minor treasures to help ensure your victory. I’ll start.” He held out a small, brightly glowing golden pill-like capsule in his hand. “If, for some reason, your Core becomes drained, swallow this. It will partially replenish you.”

Victor smiled, recognizing a waft of glory coming off the little treasure. He took it in his palm and then tucked it into one of the many, near-invisible pockets on his new armored pants. To his surprise, Yon, the avian consul, and master of Strista, stepped forward with a brace of five vials, each filled to the cork stopper with thick red liquid. “Regenerative healing draughts. Some of my best work. I give you these with the understanding that this undertaking will benefit all of Sojourn and is far beyond the scope of the three tasks you owe this council.”

Victor was sure he heard Lord Roil hiss at those words, but when he glanced at the man, all he saw was impassive smoke inside his heavy cowl. Victor slung the brace of vials crosswise over his shoulder so the five potions were on his chest and easily accessible. Yon spoke again, “The crystal containers are exceedingly sturdy.”

“Awesome,” Victor grunted, taking a moment to pull Lifedrinker from her harness while he was at it. He started to step toward the portal but realized one more consul was holding a package out to him. It was the grandmotherly woman from the inquest, the one with solid black eyes. He’d almost overlooked her, for, unlike most of the other consuls, she wasn’t nearing giant-sized proportions. Rather, she was probably around five feet tall with a stooped back. She shakily stretched up her arm, and Victor accepted the heavy, billiard-ball-sized orb she proffered. It was cold and metallic and inscribed with hundreds of tiny, neat runes. He could feel the Energy pulsing at its dense core.

“A bomb!” she cackled. “Were I you, I’d throw it at the first fool I saw once I emerged from the portal!”

Victor grinned, hefting the ball in his gauntleted hand. “Hell yeah! Thanks . . .”

“Kreshta Griss.” She mock-curtseyed, and it looked like she might fall as she grinned lopsidedly and cackled.

Victor arched an eyebrow, then looked around at the old masters and, with the helmet adding extra resonance to his voice, boomed, “Anything else?”

Dar clapped him on the shoulder. “Only one more thing, Victor.” He held out a small mani-colored marble. “This recall token will bring you and one other out of that place. Attune it to yourself so another cannot use it in your stead.” Victor did as he asked, sending a trickle of Energy into the tiny glass ball. Then he tucked it away in his “good” dimensional ring, along with his cultivation treasures. “Excellent. Don’t rely on that recall token in an emergency. Due to the nature of this prison dungeon, you’ll need to channel Energy into it for several minutes before it will activate.”

Victor nodded, then clapped his mentor on the shoulder. “See you soon.” Hefting Lifedrinker in his hands, he stepped toward the portal. When he stood before the blue, swirling rip in reality, he turned and ran his gaze over the room one more time. Arona and Arcus stood to the side, both looking pensive. Dar didn’t flinch from his gaze, and the steady blaze of his eyes gave Victor confidence. Roil’s smoky cowl was useless when it came to reading his intentions or thoughts, so Victor shifted his gaze over the rest of the consuls. Some smiled and nodded. Some looked disturbed—guilt, perhaps? More than half refused to meet his gaze.

Victor couldn’t stomach the idea that so many of them wouldn’t even look him in the eyes or acknowledge him before he stepped through. He hefted Lifedrinker overhead, staring hard at each of the Consuls. They might be more powerful than he, they might be able to squash him if they wanted to, but he was damned if he’d go into this death trap without them even looking at him. He released his aura, letting it fall around him like a lead blanket. Of course, none of the old masters flinched, but he got a couple more to look his way.

Victor grinned and lifted his head to the sky. Shouting as loudly as he could, with the magical amplification of his helm, he screamed, “Ancestors! I go to bring you glory!” The final word was deafening, echoing strangely in the domed chamber. Seeing that his cry had gotten everyone’s attention, Victor smiled savagely, turned, and leaped into the portal. Cold washed over him, but the passage was brief, and when he emerged, he was struck by the sudden change of his environs.

He'd jumped into the portal, so he came out mid-leap, and, as he descended toward a bone-strewn, stone platform, he took in the scenery. He wasn’t in a cave or a network of tunnels as he’d always pictured “dungeons” in his mind. A night sky hung overhead, devoid of stars but illuminated by a gibbous, gray moon. A landscape of broken ruins lay around him, low walls and small crumbling buildings in the foreground and taller, more whole structures further away.

The portal was bright and blue, and before it snapped closed, Victor saw that the platform he was falling toward was surrounded by a dozen stone totems carved with brightly flaring runes. He’d just noticed the skulking, shadowy outlines of watching individuals, more than a handful, when the portal snapped shut with an ear-popping collapse of air, and the world was thrown into momentary darkness.

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It was only momentary because a bright white globe of Energy flared to life, and a man in ragged gray robes stepped forward, just on the far side of the stone platform. The light was above his hood, casting his face in deep shadow, but his voice rang out stridently, “What’s this, then? Another lackey of the council come to feed the grinder?”

Victor didn’t respond, ignoring the pendejo as he turned in a slow circle, allowing his eyes to adjust. He could feel the emptiness around him and knew that Dar’s theory had been correct; there was no Energy in the space contained by the totems. He could feel their tug, and it brought to mind Hector’s trap in the volcano’s caldera, only weaker and less tailored to Victor’s affinities. He could see the other figures moving closer to the circle, watching him. Most wore tattered clothing, but a few had armor on—mismatched chainmail, leather, and a few pieces of plate. One giant man with the head of a bull held a shield and a spiked mace.

Nodding as he counted the seven different foes, Victor finally turned back to the speaker. “What’s the deal? You guys just camping here hoping for easy kills?” Victor stepped toward the man and the platform's edge, wondering when they’d attack, but the fellow just shifted to his left, keeping Victor in view as he approached the totem. Lifedrinker was vibrating hungrily in his right hand, but he kept her low, her smoldering edge hanging below his knee. He still held the “bomb” in his left gauntlet, unsure of its best target. Should he toss it at the man? Should he try to blow up the totem?

“Look at the gear on this one,” the man said, chuckling. “Ronkerz will appreciate the armor, no doubt.”

Victor smirked, then lifted Lifedrinker toward the edge of the circle. She pressed against something invisible—a barrier created by the totems, no doubt. If he tried to throw the bomb, he didn’t think it would go well for him. “Who’s that? Your master?” Just then, a sizzling zwap echoed behind him, and a bolt of hot lightning slammed into his back. It hurt—well, stung was probably a better word for it—and Victor took a step forward, bumping into the barrier. He grunted in annoyance, then turned around to see one of the others, a tall, thin man lowering a smoking iron rod. He wore a crooked, mad grin as he began to cackle.

“We have no master here, fool. In this realm, every man is free!”

Victor chuckled at the irony of that statement. “Free? You’re in a prison, dipshit.” A twang sounded, and Victor shifted, lifting his left arm so the incoming projectile bounced off his heavy bracer. “Speaking of dipshits, are any of you guys Rasso Hine?” As he’d figured they would, his words brought forth a torrent of attacks. The mage with the smoking rod fired another lightning bolt, which Victor ate, knowing he couldn’t dodge it. He ducked his shoulder into another arrow, and then a huge fireball streaked through the air, cast by a woman standing on a pile of broken gray stones. Victor smiled as the orb of screaming flames came, ignoring it to deflect a hurled boulder with his bracer.

As the fireball exploded at his feet, great orange flames burst out, black smoke billowed upward, and Victor’s mad smile spread in the almost pleasant heat. The attack obscured him, and he took that moment to turn and try Lifedrinker against the nearby totem. He grunted as he swung her, putting his muscle and bulk behind it, and she struck home, carving a thin groove in the rock in a shower of sparks. Victor grinned. It wouldn’t be easy, but he could do it; he could break their formation.

When the flames and black smoke cleared, and the attackers saw he was still standing, largely unscathed, he could feel them gathering Energy for another, perhaps more intense, round of attacks. “Don’t you think you should maybe try talking? You guys so sure killing me is the right move?”

This time, one of the people behind him spoke, responding in a deep, hoarse voice that had Victor imagining him living a life in a smoky factory, shouting constantly at his coworkers. “Unless you’ve come to take us out of this fucking hell, then you can die like the rest!”

Victor sighed, lifted Lifedrinker, and, with a grunt, hacked her into the totem again. He aimed for the same spot, and she bit into her previous groove, chiseling it out just a little deeper than before. He figured, if they left him alone, he’d cut through enough of the totem to break it in half within thirty or forty chops. He felt the attacks coming before he saw them, and then he was bombarded by fire, electricity, arrows, stones, knives, crossbow bolts, and even something that felt like a splash of acid.

He tried to dodge around, rolling, jumping, and waving his gauntlet at any projectiles he saw in time. He kept his chin tucked, allowing his helmet to receive the attacks that might have hit his face through the open maw of the lava king’s snarling countenance. When the wave of attacks let up, he wasn’t hurt all that badly. A few bolts and arrows protruded from his arms, and one very large, nearly spear-sized arrow had pierced the tough hide of his greaves and stood proudly from his left thigh. His armor smoked and ticked as it rapidly repaired itself, but overall, he felt okay.

Holding the bomb in one hand and Lifedrinker in the other, he couldn’t very easily pull the bolts and arrows out of his flesh. As more arrows and other projectiles flew toward him, Victor looked in frustration at the totem he’d been attacking. During his dodging, he’d ended up near the center of the platform, and the totem was a good ten yards from him. Shrugging, he tossed the bomb at it. A crossbow bolt, fired by a skilled or very lucky marksman, hit him in the armpit as he launched the bomb, burying itself a good eight inches into his flesh.

“Fucker!” Victor roared, and then the bomb went off. If his wits hadn’t been blown from his mind, he might have reflected that he should have considered the word “bomb” more literally. The billiard-ball-sized orb didn’t explode like a grenade but more like a pile of dynamite. A white flash blinded Victor, a roar like a collapsing mountain deafened him, and a shockwave like a tsunami slapped him back to crash into the stone totem opposite the one he’d thrown the bomb at.

He smashed into the column of solid rock, carried by the wave of fire and pressure from the bomb. The forces ground him against the stone until the formation burst, and he was blown through. Blinded, deafened, stunned, and flopping brokenly, Victor tumbled head over heels into one of his attackers, knocking him aside like a bowling pin. If he hadn’t been knocked senseless, he would have cried out at his broken, twisted limbs. He would have gasped in pain, struggling for air as his ribs collapsed.

All he knew, though, was silence, darkness, and a vague sense of movement as he bounced and slid over the stone. Later, he’d reflect on whether he was unconscious or simply deprived of senses by the blast. Had the damage to his body been so severe that it overwhelmed his nerves? Whatever the cause of his initial numbness, it soon faded. His nerves began to wake up, and agony washed over him like a hot blanket. He still couldn’t see or hear, but he could feel the strange, grating pain of his bones slowly, inexorably shifting, straightening, and knitting back together. His Behemoth’s Regeneration wouldn’t let him lie broken for long.

Victor couldn’t see it, but the effects of the bomb and his body shattering the formation were farther reaching than he knew. When the orb exploded, it sent a tremendous wave of fiery Energy out that gathered against the invisible barrier of the formation. It took nearly a full second for the first totem to fracture and for Victor to smash through the other. In that second, enormous forces gathered against the barrier, and when it failed, they washed outward in a tidal wave of fire.

His ears began to heal, and the silence gave way to ringing. Then the ringing faded, and he heard the moans, woeful screams, and angry shouts of the others. Despite his own agony, Victor felt a smile tugging at his lips. He was lying in a crumpled ball, a pile of stone blocks covering much of his body—a broken stone wall he’d crashed through. He still couldn’t see, but he heard more and more as each second ticked by.

“The fool killed himself,” the deep, hoarse voice said.

“Himself? Look at Forkan! He nearly killed us all,” panted a woman, her voice strained with pain.

“Check him!” the man who’d first spoken, the one with the orb of light, shouted. He sounded distant; had he been knocked further in the other direction from the blast? Victor almost laughed but managed to keep his thoughts inside his head—Pendejo!That crazy old bruja gave you a bomb, and you set it off inside the trap! The thought was quickly followed by another: had she tried to kill him? Didn’t she say to throw it right away?

He felt a new pang of agony as a huge stone was shifted off his leg. They were uncovering him, and his body had yet to heal. He could feel his bones knitting with agonizing slowness, and Victor decided he’d had enough. He turned his gaze inward to his pulsing, Energy-filled Core and tugged out a rope of thick Energy, channeling it into the pattern for Iron Berserk. His body exploded with increased mass, his bones straightening with audible pops and cracks as they grew. Victor choked out a sound that was half-roar, half-scream as his muscles expanded, and he lurched to his feet, shrugging off the tons of stone.

“He lives!” the hoarse voice cried.

Victor felt the fiery warmth of rage in his eyes, and his vision rapidly returned to him as they healed. Darkness was replaced by smoke and the crimson haze of his fury. He began to hear more clearly—the crackling of flames, the clink of tumbling stones, muttered curses, sobs, and angry shouts. He laughed as he flexed his mended muscles, his torn flesh rapidly smoothing over. He’d come up from the broken pile of stone hunched, leaning over, still in pain, but when he straightened, stiffly at first, then more smoothly, he realized he still clutched Lifedrinker—it would take a lot more than a bomb and some shattered bones to knock her from his grasp.

The giant, bull-headed man with the shield didn’t waste time. He immediately charged Victor, but he wasn’t a giant any longer. To Victor, he might as well have been a child. He grabbed the minotaur’s—he figured that was as good a name as any—shield, jerked it aside, and hacked Lifedrinker down, cutting halfway through his muscle-bound, fur-covered neck. Victor’s laughter intensified as hot blood sprayed his face.

He threw the dying man aside and scanned the blasted landscape through crimson-tinted eyes. He saw one charred corpse and another half-burned woman rolling and moaning in agony. He saw two men lying stunned and another loading a massive bow with an equally enormous arrow. He saw the cocky speaker, the one who’d called him a boot licker, and Victor zeroed in on him.

He held out his left hand and sent Energy into it. An angry, orange-and-red coil of magma unwound from his gauntlet, and Victor snapped it back and forward with a terrible crack, wrapping it around the archer’s neck. At the same time, he cast Energy Charge, targeting the first man—the speaker. As he streaked forward in a cloud of howling, shrieking, purple-black shadows, his whip pulled on the poor archer’s neck ferociously, burning deep through his flesh to his spine and then ripping his head clean off. Meanwhile, he slammed into the criminals’ spokesperson, with Lifedrinker leading the charge.

The man wasn’t weak; Victor would give him that much. He wasn’t weak, but he wasn’t a match for an enraged titan. Victor’s Energy exploded out of his Core, tore through his pathways, and surged around him, protecting him from the impact. The man, too, managed to raise a shield of shimmering purple Energy that matched him . . . for a moment. Victor’s Energy kept coming, but the shield cracked and shattered, and the prisoner flew back to crumple wetly against a broken stone wall.

Victor whirled, a mad grin on his face, his teeth white but washed in blood, his eyes ablaze with fiery rage. “Well? Who’s next?”