Chapter 20

Chloe stood on the mountaintop, staring across the dark expanse toward the central peak. Storm clouds churned above its jagged summit, cracks of lightning lighting the sky, echoes of thunder booming through the valleys, rattling the rocks around her feet from miles away. She watched with her jaw clenched, fists tight at her sides.

He wasn’t supposed to be fighting Thrymm yet. He said he was going to slay the third and final hand. So what in the world was happening?

“Caleb…” she whispered to the wind as it tore at her dark hair. “You had damn better not get yourself killed.”

***

The tall pines obstructed his view. But it didn’t matter. It was impossible not to notice the storm surging overhead.

At first, Lucas had thought it best to hunker down and let the worst of it pass, but it was growing clearer by the second that it was going to get a lot worse before it got better. He’d already seen one bolt crack into the mountainside and send boulders tumbling down.

Lucas stood at the entrance to his snowy hovel – a narrow burrow carved into the drift, packed with hard snow like a fox’s den. It was practically invisible unless you were right on top of it. Perfect to avoid being spotted by enemies of all kinds – both human and monstrous. His fire burned invitingly inside, the wolf carcass roasting atop it. He slept during the day and only lit the campfire at night so that the smoke wouldn’t be seen from afar. So far, that strategy had been working well for him as he slowly amassed aether levels.

His stomach growled as bits of lean fat dripped from the meat and hissed on the flames. But now wasn’t the time to eat. Something was happening on Thrymm’s mountain – and you didn’t need to be a genius to figure out what.

That bastard was going after the boss.

And Lucas would be damned if someone else took what was his.

Aether surged into his legs, and he took off toward the mountain.

***

The massive, red-skinned titan lifted his mighty hammer and sent it crashing back down onto the stone. It shone with powerful light, a crackle of electricity bursting forth from it and shooting in a zagging line toward Caleb. The very air screamed.

He tried to leap out of the way, but the lightning veered to the side like he was made of metal and surged into his flesh. A scream was torn from his lips, body turning molten as billions of joules of energy overwhelmed his body. He hit the ground hard, rolling across the stone until he came to a stop. Smoke rose dark off his body. He felt like a piece of burnt toast.

With a groan, Caleb lifted his head. A cavity had been blasted in the ground right where he’d been standing. Steam hissed from molten cracks spiderwebbing out from the impact. If he hadn’t moved… he’d be dead.

The burns across his body from the lasers stung. A trail of blood leaked from his ribs as every movement aggravated the cauterized hole in his side. Caleb glanced around at the chaos surrounding him as he pushed himself to his feet. The fight wasn’t anywhere close to over. Monsters spilled out from the tunnel he’d created, more running around the sides, red eyed husks charged lasers above him on all sides. And across the craterous peak of the mountain, Thrymm was wasting no time readying another attack.

Time to get moving.

He burst across the field, racing toward the steep wall that surrounded the perilous arena. Lasers tried to cut off his path but he erected walls of stone as he ran that shielded him from their blows. He needed a strategy, some time to think. One versus one, he likely stood very little chance against Thrymm – partially due to the fact that it would never be just a one versus one unless Caleb found a way to rip off Thrymm’s arm.

But he also had a sneaking suspicion that killing the husks wouldn’t do much to help him either. Each of the two he’d slain so far had sent some strange light or energy to Jarnfingr and looked to just power it up. That meant he had to somehow deal with the luminary husks without killing them.

All of the other monsters were not much of a concern. They were easy enough to deal with so long as they didn’t swarm and overwhelm him.

A plan started to form within Caleb’s mind. It was a stupid plan, but now wasn’t the time to be picky. Stupid is usually better than nothing.

He rounded the side of a pillar of stone he’d just created. A massive crack nearly split it in half from the kinetic force of yet another laser firing into the side of it. Chips of rock rained down around him. His eyes scanned the horizon and locked onto the husk that had just shot at him.

Caleb narrowed his eyes and ran toward the husk. The ground steepened as he drew closer and pretty soon, he was climbing more than running, his fingers punching holes into the stone, arms throwing himself upward.

The husk tried to back away, but Caleb was much too fast. He was upon it in seconds. A shimmering forcefield appeared in the air in front of the husk as a last ditch effort. Caleb ignored it entirely. He wasn’t trying to kill the thing, he just needed to get close enough to it so he could affect the stone around it.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

The ground beneath its feet shifted. The husk lost its footing and slipped to the side, started to fall down the side of the crater toward the arena below. But it didn’t get very far. More stone grew from the ground, wrapping around the husk’s strange head, locking up its limbs, forcing it to be unable to do anything but shove its head straight into the side of the mountain.

Have fun shooting the ground. Sorry you won’t be able to watch the rest of the fight.

A hail of lasers smashed into the cliffside where Caleb was, but he was already moving again, already onto the next one.

One husk got locked between three thin pillars of rock, forcing it to crane its neck up to the sky and fire harmlessly into the clouds. Another had the mountain open up beneath its spindly legs and, after it fell inside, close over top of it like a tomb. His Ferocity skill pushed him faster and faster, burning hotter and hotter as he tore across the mountain.