Chapter 27: The Golem Returns

Laurence slammed his fist into the increasingly dense body of the stone soldier. As the rock cracked under the force of his fist a thick marble palm came crashing down towards his head. The soldier treated him like it would a fly, simply trying to squash it and move on. Laurence automatically countered the blow by pushing off from the side of the golem’s heavy arm. As he slid out of the way he watched as the ground he was standing on mere moments before was atomised, forming a cloud of dust that puffed out of the impact crater with a bang. He rolled away to the left, skimming the back of his shirt against the barrier. He heard a sizzle and curled back away from the light, ducking just as the golem’s hand swung past where his head was. The wind whipped up Laurence’s hair with just the force of the fist flying by him.

Launching away from the Golem for a moment, Laurence took his bearings. He ran his fingers over the back of his shirt and felt something like ash come off the back of his collar. Pulling his hand back round he looked at the fingers and wiped the thin grey layer of residue on his fingers off before replacing the hand on the shaft of his hammer. His knuckles cracked as he gripped the shaft tightly. He was excited, he had not had a chance to let loose in a long time. It was the problem with infamy in Spirit, and in general. People had long become terrified of the Masked Man of Spring Street. They knew that his ‘incarnation’, as they called it, changed every so often, but the most recent cycle gave birth to a violent, beastly tyrant who crushed anyone who showed harm to the the people who lived in Spring Street or the Pen and the Cut in general. He was unruly, and violent, but he looked after the little people of the poor and downtrodden, because that was where he lived and Laurence protected what was his. Unfortunately the side effect of him being egregiously powerful was that no one would face him without acting like it was the last moment of their life, unless it was a spar within his school, and even that was with restraint.

Dipping to the left, Laurence brought a backhanded swing up towards the side of the golem, lifting it off its feet for a moment before knocking it slightly towards the wall of light behind him. The golem rumbled, but landed steadily on its feet as if nothing had happened. It bent its head and stared at Laurence, seemingly assessing him. Laurence did not let this chance, this opening, go to waste. Arcing his hammer up round and behind him, he slammed the hammer into the golem’s right shoulder, knocking it face first into the ground.

The beast rumbled, the marble skin on its body becoming clearer and clearer with the purity that the mana of the realm was producing. It shoved its thick hands into the dirt as its skin became clearer and clearer, pushing itself up. A thin line appeared about half way up its head, before splitting open like a mouth. The jagged edges of the creature’s mouth made it look like the hole was filled with teeth, all sharp and pointed. It coiled back, fingers sinking into the ground before letting out a rumbling screech that sounded akin to glass shattering. The creature coiled and pushed off its hands, shooting towards Laurence like a bullet.

Without even stopping after his first strike, Laurence followed through with his hammer, twisted it round behind his head and flicked the beast in the face as it sped forwards. The beast left the ground once more, but did not fly far. It landed, regaining its balance easily and dashed towards the boy, punching out like a spear with both hands. Laurence smirked and shot to his left once more, away from the almost completely closed sphere of light. In the few seconds he had been fighting the beast there had been no more entrants into the area and Laurence did not know why. The answer was given to him immediately when he saw the two foot wide gap fly past at high speed. Behind the light, there was a horde of golems desperately trying to get inside, but they were simply too thick to get in. There were limbs and heads of various golems littered around the perimeter of the mountain, but none were complete and their arrays were all shattered, broken beyond repair.

He looked back at the living golem in front of him. He could not help but smile, stage one was complete, and as soon as the light closed stage two would begin. He let Inklight slide down out of the tattoo on his hand before whipping it round the leg of the golem. The light began quickly dimming but before it could wink out, he pulled upon the rope and with one hand he sent the heavy head of Jormungand into the face of the golem once more. Before the beast can react, he calls back Inklight and begins pounding away at the head of the golem, forcing it further and further into the ground. A crack formed on the egglike head of the soldier out of repeated banging, but it still struggled against the weight of Laurence treating the golem like a nail needing to be bashed into a wooden plank.

After twelve or thirteen strikes Laurence felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end before he was knocked over by another golem’s body. The golem was mostly intact, but rather than standing on feet like the other golem it was on a pair of stumps. Laurence rolled away, clutching his side and pushing the golem off him. He scrambled back before springing back up onto his feet, wincing slightly at the pain lancing into his side. He looked over at the golem

he had been fighting but it was no longer stuck in the ground like he was expecting, instead it was standing next to the other golem, lifting it up from the ground, setting it on its stumps so they could deal with Laurence together. He grinned, dominating a single golem was not as difficult as he thought it would be so he could not help but smile at the sight of two golems working together to take him down. This might be more of a challenge, he thought to himself.

With a leap, he swung his hammer towards the slightly less steady golem, straight down over his head. He knocked the golem down onto the ground, but the moment his strike landed the first golem punched him in the arm. There was a crack and Laurence shot away at great speed. He slid to a stop a few meters away and tried to push himself up, before yelling out because of the pain shooting up his left arm. He growled, looking at his left arm he could see that the bone was bent in the middle of his bicep. There was no breaking of the skin, but a large bruise was already forming on it. Gritting his teeth, he summoned back inklight and began binding his arm tight against his body. His hammer shaft shrank, until it fit snugly in one hand, looking more like a cudgel or a smith’s hammer than a warhammer. He bent slightly and sprung back into action, dashing round towards the right of the golems he feinted as if he was simply going to sprint past them, but the moment he came in line with both of them he changed direction and pushed off towards both of his enemies. He reached the golem with the mouth and span on a pinhead as the golem turned towards him. He pulled the hammer round and smashed the golem in it’s cracked skull, staggering it, but not knocking it down. He kept going round, before striking again, even harder this time. As he went for his third spiral, however, the golem on stumps thrust to’s fist out in an attempt to grab Laurence and stop his spinning. It leapt over it’s falling companion before smashing into Laurence as he completed his third rotation. Laurence’s hammer struck the golem as it hit him in the jaw and they both flew apart. Laurence tumbled down, rolling near the now completely solid wall of light, Laurence lay on the ground panting in pain, he sat up and looked at the two golems with groggy eyes. He was dizzy and could feel the blood pumping at his temples and behind his eyes. He had to complete his job. He could not think about anything else, and attempted to stand, slipping over in the process.

The golems both stood up, and began trudging over to Laurence. Both parties were damaged, but Laurence simply could not repair as quickly as his enemies. They stepped closer, and closer but as they reached Laurence there was a flash of a golden light and a rumbling sound that passed through the entire region. There was a crack and the bowl that had covered the mountain shattered into shards of light, revealing the rough edges of the major realm as it began to grow. Thick streams of mana could be seen coming off the earth as it grew by feet every second. Both golems stopped looking at Laurence as they felt the palpitations of the rich mana that was calling at them. Laurence smiled as the last part of his plan came into action, his last saving grace, the rich mana of the world being built. The golems ignored Laurence and began to sprint at high speed towards the edge of the realm, desperately trying to catch up to the lip of the world in an attempt to devour the richest mana either golem had ever encountered. Without the rest of the golems for them to contact they could not process anything and without a care in the world both soldiers jumped off the world, trying desperately to reach the richest sustenance they had encountered. They fell deep into the void before the earth above closed over them, sealing them away from reality for all eternity.

Laurence sighed and fell back onto the ground, wincing at the pain in his arm, his jaw and his ribs. He lay there and waited for Yun to find him, finally relaxing as all the planning he and his brother had made over the year had finally paid off.


No comments:

Post a Comment