Victor of Tucson

24 – A Royal Court

“Well,” Victor said, peering through the gateway into the final chamber of the dungeon, “it’s not exactly original, but I’m not going to complain.” The cavernous space was much like the one from his previous assault on the dungeon—a vast, high, stalactite-covered stone ceiling stretching over a lake of bubbling lava.

Rocky islands dotted the lake, and on the most distant one, two lava kings frolicked, taking turns diving into the lava and swimming up with some sort of dark-fleshed, dog-sized grub clenched in their jaws. They lay on the stone, lazily eating the things, licking their reptilian fangs as they yawned and stretched, basking in the glow of the fiery lake.

Arona leaned forward, squinting her eyes into the heat wafting out of the chamber. “They’re huge!”

“Yeah, and they’re savage as hell. When I fought one the last time I was here, the thing bit my foot off.”

Arona looked at him sideways, narrowing her eyes. “You can regenerate entire limbs?”

Victor shrugged. “You’ve seen how my regeneration is staving off this void curse.”

Arona sniffed, looking back into the fiery chamber. The two of them had made easy work of the last few gates, and neither of them had gained another level. Victor had opened the chests, hoping for an award tailored for him like Arona’s scepter, but all he’d done was add to his wealth—beads, gems, precious metals, and more Energy hearts. Victor felt the rising crescendo of Energy in his body, sure that this next encounter, should they win, would push him to the next level. Arona wasn’t so sure.

Aside from levels and treasure, Victor practically salivated at the idea of two more lava king hearts. He’d gained his ability to fly from the last one. What would two more grant him? If nothing else, he was confident they’d help to improve one or both of his Cores. “I’m getting ahead of myself,” he muttered.

“Something like that. Can you cope with this heat? The fumes? What’s going to happen to you if you fall into the lava?”

“I have an ability that will create a solar shell around me. I can’t act from within it, but should I fall, I believe it will protect me from the lava.” She pointed to a nearby rocky island. “I can teleport between the islands. If those great beasts cannot similarly teleport, I should be able to keep my distance and use ranged attacks.”

“Okay. I’ll keep one busy, at least, but if one of them comes for you, I can count on you to keep yourself safe?”

“Yes. My teleport has a relatively quick cooldown.”

“And if you run low on Energy?”

She reached into her robe and pulled out a finger-sized vial of blazing sunlight. “I can recharge.”

“Holy shit!” Victor laughed. “You know how many times I’ve thought about how I needed to carry something like that around? It’s just that they aren’t allowed in the duels, so I’ve put it off. Sure would be nice to have here, though.”

Arona smiled. “I can teach you how to make something similar. Something attuned to you.”

“Now?”

She laughed—a raspy sound of genuine amusement. “No! It will take you some practice, and we don’t have the proper…setting for it.”

“Right.” Victor offered a chagrined smile. “So? You ready for this?”

Arona gripped her scepter and nodded. “I am.”

“Okay.” Victor hefted Lifedrinker, and she vibrated with excitement. “Let’s go, chica. You’re going to have a feast today.” When he stepped through the gateway, Arona was right beside him.

***You have reached the final conflict in the Crucible of Fire! Defeat the Lords of the Crucible to claim your prize!***

The two lava kings looked up from their stone island. One spread his wings and launched into the cavern heights, but the other paced, roaring, its voice deep and powerful, echoing over the lava lake. Victor stepped forward and summoned his fiery wings. “I’ll hunt the one that flies.”

Arona looked at him, stepping away from the heat of his wings. She nodded once, then turned toward the nearby stone island, and, in a flash of light that hurt Victor’s eyes, she disappeared. As he launched into the air, he saw her striding across the island, scepter outstretched. She was about to volley her first spells at the distant lava king. Victor turned his gaze upward, surging toward the heights, trailing black smoke as his flaming wings snapped and sizzled through the air.

His opponent was up there, clinging to an enormous stalactite. It flicked its black tongue, licking its fangs while one of his bulbous orange eyes watched Victor. In his natural state, Victor was probably a third of the monster’s mass, so he cast iron berserk as he approached, swelling in size and a furious desire for battle. Of course, his Volcanic Fury would serve him better in that flame-filled chamber, but he had Arona to think of; if he started causing earthquakes and throwing mad temper tantrums, he could potentially harm her.

So, with the heat of his rage tempered by his iron-clad will, Victor surged toward the stalactite Lifedrinker held ready. The lava king watched him, waiting for him to close the distance, and when he was just seconds away from swinging Lifedrinker at its exposed flank, it shrieked, and the ceiling came apart above him. Stone dust and bits of rock showered down on him, and Victor banked to the left, thinking he’d walked into a trap. In a way, he had, but it was different than he’d first suspected.

The ceiling wasn’t collapsing; small tunnels or burrows had opened, and a dozen or more juvenile lava kings—princes?—were pouring out of them, sweeping toward him on fiery wings. Meanwhile, the mature one joined in the assault, screeching again as it belted out a beam of fiery Energy. “Chingado!” Victor hissed, diving for the lava lake. “She’s a lava queen!” The beam of fire narrowly missed him, and Victor arched upward again, hacking Lifedrinker left and right at the swarming, pony-sized lava princes. Despite the rage in his pathways, he almost chuckled at his invented name for the smaller reptiles.

Lifedrinker was not amused; she screamed her fury and hunger, her razor-sharp obsidian blade ripping through the scales and flesh of the juveniles as Victor pushed his wings to their limit, eyes focused on the adult. Fire engulfed him as the smaller creatures poured out their breath; he couldn’t evade them all. However, Victor’s flesh was sturdy against fire, and his armor protected a large portion of his body.

When he broke through the swarm of smaller reptiles, he was relatively unscathed, and his eyes were mad with battle lust as he slammed into the lava queen. As he hacked Lifedrinker into the tremendous reptile’s shoulder, the queen savagely clawed and bit at him. Her hind legs raked his aegis, sliding off harmlessly, but then her great, hooked claws ripped his thighs, shredding his leggings and flesh alike. Victor screamed his fury and pain, but only briefly as the queen’s enormous jaws closed on his shoulder, grinding against his armor and shaking him.

Meanwhile, the juveniles piled onto him, clinging to his back, his legs, his arms, and even his head. They tumbled from the heights toward the lake below in a ball of screaming, roaring, fiery flesh. Victor was resistant to fire in his natural state, and he knew his rage would protect him further, but he’d been immersed in lava before. He’d felt the steady agony of the burn and didn’t relish the idea. As the scaly monsters clawed, bit, and burned him, he closed his eyes and focused the Energy of his two Cores, summoning the elder magic pattern for Glacial Wrath.

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Unlike Volcanic Fury, Victor knew he’d be able to control his impulses with the icy fury of the glacier coursing through his pathways. Moreover, he was immune to ice and fire alike when under the spell’s influence. How that worked, he wasn’t sure. How the ability would react to his being immersed in lava, he had no idea. He was eager to find out, though.

Even though he’d already been berserk, Victor felt himself swell with the power of the glacier. He expanded in size, gaining another twenty or thirty percent of his former mass. He’d never gone from Iron Berserk into Glacial Wrath before, so it was the first time he realized just how big the spell made him. As he fell toward the lava, his skin thickened and grew more dense. His body began to radiate frigid cold, and many of the little lava princes screamed and released their hold on him.

Lifedrinker, still in his grasp, bucked and dug, pulling herself deeper into the lava queen, and Victor allowed it, releasing his grasp on her. Instead, he wrapped his powerful, gauntleted hands around the lava queen’s throat, digging his metal-clad fingers into her flesh, crushing her scales so he could grip her thick hide, squeezing his fingers into inexorable fists. She screamed, and Victor glowered into the face of her toothy maw, unimpressed.

Then they hit the lava, and the world exploded. At least, that was Victor’s perception as his glacial aspect struck the surface. The collision was cataclysmic; his frigid aura, radiating intense cold, clashed with the molten rock in a violent eruption of steam, shattered stone, and sudden, jagged ice. A thunderous crack reverberated through the cavern as the lava instantly flash-cooled, solidifying into fractured basalt around his enormous figure, encasing him and the lava queen in a chaotic shell of half-formed rock and ice-crusted stone.

Plumes of superheated steam burst upward, hissing like tortured dragons, obscuring the air with dense white fog. Shards of volcanic glass, torn from the cooling surface, shot outward in all directions, lethally spearing most of the smaller lava princes and ripping hunks of flesh from the lava queen’s enormous, tortured body.

Beneath Victor, the lava’s surface continued to harden into a rough, uneven crust that cracked and shifted as his immense weight bore down. The relentless cold of his glacial aura spread outward, forcing the molten lake to retreat in jagged ripples of freezing magma. For a moment, silence hung in the air, broken only by the continual hiss of cooling rock and the labored furious breaths of the lava queen as her pierced, shredded, half-frozen body thrashed in Victor’s iron grip.

Then, Victor jerked his arms, ripping great hunks of flesh and half-frozen meat from the lava queen’s throat. Hot orange-red blood pumped from the awful wounds, and the light in her eyes faded. His violent movement shattered the frozen stone that clung to his armor and flesh, and it showered to the ground almost musically as it rang against the hollow, bubble-filled stone at his feet.

A tortured roar rang out, and Victor turned his wrathful eyes to the distant edge of the lake where Arona stood, her scepter outstretched, firing a thousand streaming bolts of fiery solar Energy at the lava king. The brilliant little missiles tore through the enormous reptile’s flesh; apparently, the sun’s heat was enough to burn even the fire-proof creatures. Victor turned his icy gaze, scanning the cavern for surviving lava princes. He saw one swimming toward the stone island closest to the entry gate.

He tossed the corpse of the lava queen to the fresh-made basalt at his feet and effortlessly pulled Lifedrinker from the corpse. With the calculated fury of a glacier, he took a step toward the remaining prince. He might have simply walked through the lava, unconcerned about the destruction his frigid aura mixing with the lava would wreak, but his icy rage was too calculating; he knew his time was limited by his supply of Energy, which was dwindling quickly. Instead, he stood near the edge of his titan-made island, watching the prince and timing his next move.

When the smaller reptile was near the island's edge, Victor squatted and then, using Titanic Leap, launched himself toward the poor creature. When he landed, the reptile had just clambered onto the stone, and Victor came down with one foot on either side of it, planting Lifedrinker in its skull, killing it instantly.

He knew no such thing as satisfaction in his Glacial Wrath. He knew only anger, resentment, and the need to visit his dissatisfaction upon the world. When his last enemy was gone, he tilted his head back and roared. His bellow was a vast, mournful sound, the kind of sound a creature might make when it learns it’s the last of its kind. He channeled all the fear and rage in his Core, his frustrations and sorrows made incarnate. It was a sound that would break a man’s mind with grief and deep, hopeless frustration, wringing tears from even the cold, hateful eyes of a sworn enemy.

To Victor’s immense relief, his Breath Core ran dry of Energy, and his transformation faded. He shrank into himself and, still gripping Lifedrinker’s haft, he fell to his knees and fought back the urge to weep. He could feel Lifedrinker’s despair. He could feel her sadness, her hopelessness, and, worst of all, her sense of betrayal. He almost let go of her, afraid their gloomy thoughts would resonate and feed off each other. The idea of leaving her so upset broke his heart, though, and he grasped her more tightly.

“Hush, chica. I’m sorry I shared that with you. I’m sorry you felt that.”

“Blood-mate, why do you howl with such despair? You aren’t alone. We aren’t alone. I will never abandon you! Will you leave me to rust at the bottom of an icy lake?”

“What? No! I would never!”

“When you howled, such an image filled my mind! I felt alone and lost and betrayed!”

“It’s just my…fear and rage, I guess. The Glacial Wrath fills me with those emotions, chica. When I howled, you felt it. It’s gone now. I’m sorry.”

“I rejoiced when you grew so mighty, and we annihilated our foes, but if such might comes with such despair, then please, Heart-mate, don’t use it.”

“I’ll try not to. I really will. I might need it, though, and if that’s the case, you need to remember my love for you. Here—” Victor built the pattern for Imbue Spirit in his pathway, weaving courage-attuned Energy to fill it. Then he cast it on Lifedrinker, smiling as warm, red-gold light infused her blade's mirror-smooth, depthless black. “Does that feel better?”

“Yes, love! Yes, Battle-mate! I weep with the joy of it! Your spirit entwines with mine, and we dream of blood-soaked battlefields!”

Victor smiled and stood, lifting Lifedrinker to his shoulder, unwilling to send her into a storage container. He looked to the far side of the lake and saw the corpse of the lava king and Arona’s hunched figure beside it. She was sitting on a chest, her chin in her hands. Victor couldn’t make out the details of her face, even with his titan eyes, but her posture didn’t look happy.

He waved away a System message about completing the dungeon and focused on the edge of the island where Arona sat. With a bit of concentration, he cast Tactical Reposition. In an instant, he was standing there, looking at her tear-streaked face. “Shit,” he said, realizing his howl had impacted her as severely as Lifedrinker.

“If this is how you always feel, then I thank the ancient dead gods that I’m not a Spirit Caster.” She looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes, and he sighed, lowering Lifedrinker so he could lean on her haft.

“It’s not always like that. The Glacial Wrath spell takes a toll.” He nodded toward the bubbles of misty, ghostlike Energy orbs gathering around the corpse of the lava king. “This Energy will help banish the bad feelings.”

Arona sighed shakily and nodded. “That was an interesting strategy you employed—I’ve never seen a lake of lava explode.”

Victor chuckled. “It was only a part of the lake.”

Before they could banter further, the Energy from Arona’s kill and, more distantly, Victor’s began to flow into a stream, and he braced himself. Arona’s hit her first, and he watched as her eyes rolled back in ecstasy and she was lifted from the chest by the powerful flow. Then Victor’s infusion was upon him, and he lost himself to more wild, chaotic visions of things he could barely begin to understand.

For a change, he didn’t really try. He just let his mind drift, enjoying the weird trip through space or history or simple fantasy, and when it was over, he found himself sitting on the warm stone with a single System message to read:

***Congratulations! You have achieved level 86 Warlord and gained 24 intelligence and 17 vitality.***

“Well, it isn’t much, but it’s what I needed. More than halfway through this tier.”

He hadn’t expected a response, but Arona spoke from off to his left. “I hope I don’t spoil your luck, but that’s the fastest I’ve ever heard of someone going through tier eight.”

Victor looked at her. She was still sitting on the chest, watching him. Her face was relaxed, though, and the evidence of her tears was long gone. “Did you gain a level?”

“I did not. However, I feel I’m very close.”

Victor nodded, less than thrilled to see first-hand how slow levels in the ninth tier were. “Well? Should I open it?” He nodded to the chest she was using as a chair.

“Yes!” She leaped up. “Hopefully, Du saved his influence for your final award.”

Victor chuckled, stepping close and grasping the lid of the chest, flinging it up with an explosion of golden steam and sparkling Energy. “Let’s see.” He waved the steam away, impatient, and when it cleared, his smile widened. Du had come through for him. On the bottom of the chest was a stack of golden tokens—the ones Du had promised him that would allow the dungeon to recognize Victor’s “favored” guests—and a neatly folded pair of pants crafted from some sort of glittering black scales.

He sent his gauntlets into storage to properly feel the material as he took them out. He looked at Arona, smiling at how supple the leather beneath the fingernail-sized scales was. “Du knew I needed pants.”