Chapter ??? – Dragoneye Mortis 1.4

When day finally rose, Vita still hadn’t managed to do the same.

Elaine yawned and stretched, her sleepy eyes going to instantly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as she applied [Sunrise] to herself.

“Gooooooood morning! How did you sleep? Did the hut help? I hope it helped. It took me and the dinosaurs aaaaaaages to do. Well. You would know. You were watching! Whoof! I need to go burn off some energy. Then let’s get to that ziggurat, and figure out what those fairies want! Let’s gooooooooooo!”

Vita blinked the tiredness out of her eyes, mentally cursing Elaine several different ways.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if a perception event happens now if it spares me her early-morning energy. I want a soul. I miss souls. I wish I could eat one to keep me awake, but this stupid place doesn’t have any!

Vita was still trying to muster the strength to get up when Elaine popped back into the hut, brimming with energy.

“Oh! I almost forgot! Here’s a snake skewer. One of the zombies got it last night. And a pick me up!” Elaine tapped Vita, pulsing [Sunrise] through her.

A jolt of energy shot through Vita, waking her up faster and more thoroughly than anything she’d ever experienced before.

“Woah, what the fuck?” Vita said suddenly, jumping to her feet. The child-like girl’s potty mouth never failed to seem a little out of place. “What was that? I feel way better!”

“[Sunrise]!” Elaine happily told Vita. “My energy pick-me-up-go-forever skill! Never leave home without it!”

She laughed like she made the best joke ever. Vita didn’t see how it was that funny… but she couldn’t deny it was useful.

Either way, between the food, the stream, and the zombie-raptor transportation, Vita and Elaine were off towards the ziggurat in no time.

The horde grew fatter than Vita’s and Elaine’s waistlines, the most impressive part of which was that said waistlines actually managed to grow a little after their legendary barbecue. Each of them seemed remarkably incapable of putting on pounds. They spent the time luxuriously being carted around, feasting on the bounty of the jungle delivered practically to their mouths.

Then, like a particularly small, fast, brightly colored and tasty bird, they were delivered to the foot of the ziggurat. It looked old, an ancient relic from before time began. Given the relatively young age of Pallos, that was entirely possible. The temple was overgrown with vines, the stone cracking. Each step was bigger than Elaine was tall, and the ziggurat seemed to soar endlessly towards the heavens – which wasn’t at all what it looked like from a distance.

“Now what?” Vita asked, more annoyed and impressed by the structure.

Elaine shrugged.

“If it was easy, the fairies wouldn’t send us to do it, would they?”

“From what you told me about the tiny assholes, yes they would. Because it’d be funny.”

Elaine tilted her head, conceding the point.

“This has all seemed too easy so far, but… zombies first?” Elaine asked.

“Yeah, sure, they’re all replaceable.” Vita agreed. “But where’s the entrance?”

Vita and Elaine looked around, not seeing anything. They circled the ziggurat, only seeing the giant steps repeated all around.

Elaine looked at the overly large stairs, big enough that only Vita standing on Elaine’s shoulders would be able to crawl up.

One step.

There had to be hundreds.

“What’s the bet that the entrance is on the top of the ziggurat?” Elaine asked rhetorically.

She knew the answer.

It was on the top.

It was always on the top.

Vita sighed, silently agreeing. What a pain. Still, painful problems were what zombies were for. With a few quick, snappy directions, three zombies—two raptors standing on each other and a third in front of them—formed a climbable step that Vita and Elaine ascended up the first stair, enough of the horde following to make a second step and then a third and so on. The Dregs were not kind to their fellows, and the crushing, shambling footfalls of a zombie horde crawling on top of one another required the steps to be frequently replaced as they got periodically pounded into meat mush. Still, eventually the majority of the horde managed to reach the top. When only the zombies forming the stairs remained, Vita simply used [Soul Reclamation] to kill them all from a distance, leaving the unfortunate dinosaurs left behind to collapse back into restful death. Again.

Turning back towards the entrance, the pair saw that the top of the ziggurat was filled with statues, pillars, and more. A giant golden bell, somehow whole despite the tests of time and the elements, stood proudly in the middle, over the largest statue. Cracked stone with hardy vines that had somehow grown through the literal mountain worth of stone were interspersed with little yellow flowers that gently blew in the breeze. Pillars in various states of ruin and decay were scattered in neat columns along the top, clearly having performed some ceremonial purpose once upon a time.

Statues of suchia, each statue large enough for Vita and Elaine to comfortably rest in their enormous crocodilian mouths, lined the edges of the ziggurat. They were all facing the centerpiece of the ziggurat – a gigantic monstrous statue, depicting some part-suchia, part-fish, part frog with toothy mouths on its shoulders, knees, elbows, and a few other random spots.

“Wow.” Elaine breathed, gazing around the sights. “This is quite something.”

She walked forward, looking at each statue for a moment before moving onto the next one.

“Yeah, that thing almost has as many mouths as the Mistwatcher’s soul.” Vita agreed, eyeing the statue in the middle. “It’s also sucking my mana. I can see it with [Eye of the Maw].”

Elaine paled.

“That’s not made out of Arcanite.” she realized.

“So?” Vita asked, glancing around the ancient temple with disinterest.

“So only living things and Arcanite get mana!” she yelled.

Vita blinked.

“…So it’s edible?”

“That’s not the right question!” Elaine snapped, running back to the stairs.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author’s preferred platform and support their work!

A deafening roar from a dozen different types of mouths burst out behind them, as the Cipactli ‘statue’ started to chase after the latest offerings brought to its altar.

“Attack while we climb!” Vita ordered the remains of her horde, suddenly changing direction. Without hesitation Elaine switched from running back to the too-large stairs to climbing one of the large pillars with Vita.

They scrambled up while the zombies died in droves, seemingly incapable of even scratching the monstrous Cipactli. Elaine’s ascent was boosted by her stats, Dexterity making sure she never put a foot wrong, Speed helping her hands quickly move from place to place, Strength letting her haul herself up sooner, and Vitality tying it all together.

Vita had stats, but also something beyond them as well. It almost looked like Vita was a puppet, her limbs getting pulled around by some force that couldn’t possibly be her muscles. Elaine figured there were more pressing things at the moment than worrying about it, though, even as Vita handily beat Elaine to the top.

The monster roared, and crashed into the stone column, trying to shake Elaine and Vita loose. The two clung onto each other and the top of the pillar, holding on.

“Think you can handle it?” Vita asked Elaine, deathly calm as she stared down from her perch.

Instead of responding, Elaine fired a [Nova] down at the monster, following it up with a beam of Radiance, trying to burn through its eye.

“Nifty.” Vita commented, as Elaine unleashed a burning inferno directly at the furious beast for 10 seconds non-stop.

Then, abruptly, she stopped.

“Fuck,” she swore.

“What?”

“I’m out of mana.”

Vita shrugged, as if this could not be any less of a problem.

“Take some of mine?”

A terrible grin broke on Elaine’s face, as she remembered that Vita seemed to have a skill to transfer mana… and somehow had a mana pool measured in fucking tredecillions.

It was like a second sun erupted on top of the ziggurat, as Elaine, finally unconstrained by pesky little things like “running out of mana,” was able to unleash her full, unlimited arsenal. [Nova]’s were dropped and exploded, looking like an entire galaxy worth of stars was exploding at once. Beams of Radiance mixed with cones and balls, wide-spread auras and surgical lasers. The air itself started to become uncomfortably hot with the sheer amount of heat and energy that bled off from the attacks. The stones blackened and cracked under the heat, and both Elaine and Vita started doing the “the floor is lava and my feet are cooking” dance.

Didn’t stop Elaine in the slightest.

The Cipactli roared, angered that the sacrifices brought to it were resisting, trying to tear down the sturdy pillar.

In its boredom, it had knocked down and smashed most of the pillars on top of the ziggurat that it could. The architects, so long ago, had built the temple well, and what remained wasn’t so easily brought down.