Aetherios System: Whirlwind

Book 3: Chapter 81: Monster

Chapter 81: Monster

The Original Primal Queen’s body pulsed like a living storm of power. Alex could see the aether inside her boiling and rippling like fire coaxed under a bellows. The fact of her daughters’ deaths had reached her surely reached her. He didn’t know how, and he didn’t care. He only knew her fury had doubled, pushing her into a monstrous being.

Her version of [Vita-Surge Cloak] grew somehow brighter than even his own, becoming a white-blue inferno laced with streaks of emerald.

Their fists met again, and Alex’s whole arm screamed from the contact. His bones rattled, and joints popped. He felt as his muscles tore under the impact. The force of it hurled shockwaves through the dirt beneath their feet and formed cracks that spidered outward.

Every time he siphoned her aura with his martial skill, he could feel as her anger came with it. It shot through him like poison, the rabid emotion both burning and intoxicating. It wanted him to stop fighting, to give in and become nothing but hunger and rage.

His vision darkened at the edges, the Queen’s wrath looming in his mind, whispering to him: tear, kill, break, eat, consume.

Karsali burst in at his flank with her golden fire wreathing her armor, the halo of her augmentor spell glowed as bright as miniature sun. Her blade descended from multiple angles, the dance of steel forcing the Queen to split her attention between her and Alex.

With their augmentor spells, Martial Styles and various item enchantments, the two human mages managed to close on the gap that was the Chimera Beast’s sheer physical stat advantage. But it wouldn't be forever. They were pressing her, but not dominating her, and it would only be a matter of time before they ran out of aether, Alex probably being first.

Malric’s glyphs suddenly shimmered into being above their heads. They looked like sweeping glyphs etched into the very air, each line showing power and grace. Then lightning cracked down from them in erratic rhythm. The Queen twisted and roared each time they hit her body, the electricity crawling across her carapace.

Symon’s fire came in at the same time, his dense bolts of molten flame splashing with drops of near liquid heat that warped the ground around them into glowing glass. Each spellbolt drove the Queen back a half-step, forcing her to account for the two ranged casters even as Alex and Karsali pressed her front.

Alex threw himself into the space the subsequent lightning bolt opened for him, his aura billowing brightly into a storm of violet-blue. The Queen met him and they exchanged a volley of blurringly fast strikes.

Every attack felt like it could be the last—hers or his.

The tide shifted, and Alex felt it the instant it happened. The Queen’s fury focused suddenly, her [Vita-Surge Cloak] condensing like it was a star about to collapse in on itself and it boosted her monstrous stats even further.

Karsali went down first. A single misstep was all it took. The Queen’s tail whipped out like a spear, punching through her shoulder and tearing down across her torso in a fountain of blood. The Knight screamed, her golden fire dying out as the Queen’s followup kick smashed into her torn ribs and launched her across the battlefield. She skidded into the dirt with bent armor plates, her own blood painting her once-brilliant flame.

“Karsali!” Alex shouted as he watched her body come to a rest, but there was no time to reach her.

Symon cackled a hysterical laugh as he hurled even more firebolts into her chest. Malric layered even more lightning glyphs overhead, his own bolts raining down endlessly.

But the Queen only smirked. She stomped once and the earth cracked beneath her. A forest of stone spikes ripped upward from the ground and then were flung outward like javelins. They punched into Symon before he could dodge, piercing his arm, leg, side, and shoulder. The stone javelins sent him flying before they pinned him to the ground like some gruesome science-class dissection specimen. His flames flickered out as he writhed against the sharp stone rods, skewered alive.

“Stay with me, Sym—!” Malric started, but never finished.

The Queen’s wing snapped out in a concussive gust, staggering him. That gave her enough time to close the distance, and her backhand followed. The strike caved his chestplate, blood erupting from his mouth as his body cartwheeled across the dirt. He landed limp, twitching once, then still.

And then it was just Alex.

The Queen turned and faced him fully, her mandibles clicking. Her eyes locked onto him with predatory hatred.

Alex braced against her incoming assault. His instincts said he was a goner. That innate animal-like fear rising up and having his every nerve screaming danger, telling him to run.

She began to rain blows down on him before he ever had a chance to see her arrival.

He switched to defense, trying to turn aside the attacks, trying to steal what vitality he could with [Wrath Siphon]. Aether bled into him from the skill, burning his veins and filling his lungs with a fire that wasn’t his. But it wasn’t nearly enough to keep him going.

Alone, the Queen overwhelmed him. Her fists cracked across his guard. He only had one good arm, but even that one was battered, her strikes breaking bones with sheer force. A kick slammed into his ribs next, sending him spinning. Her claws raked his flesh, blood streaming hot down his left side.

He couldn’t keep up.

The last exchange ended with her fist buried in his gut. The world inverted—air, blood, and bile erupting from his throat as his body folded around the blow. He flew, weightless for a second before the ground rose up to meet him.

His body bounced and rolled in the dirt, before coming to rest in a broken heap. Blood leaked from a dozen wounds, pooling beneath him. His lungs wheezed for air that wouldn’t come. Through the ringing in his skull, he saw her shadow fall over him. The Original Queen. Her stolen spell cloak blazing. She was wrath incarnate.

And Alex, broken and bleeding, had nothing left but the stubborn refusal to die.

His body should have stayed down. Every instinct screamed for unconsciousness, for the mercy of oblivion. But instead, his muscles spasmed, bulging and twisting with unnatural vigor. Flesh knitted where it had no right to, bones groaning as if reforged in fire. His [Asura Wrath] passive coursed through him, each wound stoking its hunger. The deeper his injuries, the hotter it burned, fueling strength where there should have been none. His vitality rose enough to keep his fading mind going, dragging him back from the brink.

Then he felt it. A second heartbeat, deep inside his being. Feral and ancient. But not his own.

Thump-thump.

The sound reverberated through his entire being, deep in the caverns of his Soulspace. Suspended above his fractured Mage Core, the Wyrm-Heart stirred. It twitched once. Then it beat again.

Thump-thump.

Power exploded outward, his blood boiling as strength cascaded into broken muscle and splintered bone. He staggered to his feet on legs that barely obeyed him, trembling under the strain of too much power packed into flesh on the verge of collapse. But somehow still, he rose. Dust swirled around him in lazy currents, pulled into the aura that rolled off his body.

The Queen paused, mandibles clicking. Her rage was tempered for the first time with... disappointment.

“This,” she said, crackling with distorted amusement. “I’ve seen this before, human. It won’t save you.” Her gaze walked across him, as if studying a puzzle piece that didn’t quite fit. It was if she was waiting for him to show her more.

Alex met her stare. He could feel the Wyrm-Heart’s beat syncing with his own, a dual rhythm hammering in his ears. His wrath was no longer his alone as he took in the pride of the Dragon that let him barrow its strength.

His [AsuraWrath] raged alongside it, feeding on torn ligaments and cracked ribs, demanding more violence for every injury he had suffered. His [Vita-Surge Cloak] also swelled as if refusing to be the weakest link in the chain. The cloak’s glow flared from silver-white into a storm of color, streaks of dark violet coiling like aetheric smoke, twisted with a rich royal purple that gleamed of amethyst.

The Queen’s eyes widened slightly a moment before his fist slammed into her chest. The impact boomed, her body lurching sideways. He followed with a savage hook to her jaw, then a rising knee that snapped her head back with a crack of colliding exoskeleton and bone.

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She swung back at him, her claws slicing through the air like a guillotine. Alex ducked, then erupted upward with an uppercut that sent shards of carapace spraying into the dirt.

The Queen retaliated by having her wings snap wide in a gale-force burst. Dust and stone ripped into the air, cutting the surrounding visibility to nothing. But Alex charged through the storm, cutting a burning trail through the sharp debris.

His fists blurred, a flurry of blows hammering her torso and shoulders, each strike denting her exoskeleton and pulping the flesh beneath.

She met his fury with her own. Her claws moving just as fast as his fists, and her tail shot forward like a spear.

Alex caught one claw with a bare hand and the steel-hard chitin carved through his palm. He shoved it aside, pivoted away from her tail, and drove his elbow into her ribcage. Her other claw shot toward his side, but he twisted away from the attack and closer in her guard, and headbutted her with enough force to send cracks running through the base of her horns.

Their aether cloaks clashed—her white-gold brilliance against his violet storm. Sparks of aether ignited in the air, scorching with every collision.

Alex felt her push faltering. Her rhythm breaking. His cloak, his wrath, his Wyrm-Heart’s draconic pulses stacked upon each other and were grinding her down, every strike forcing her backward. Alex snarled through gritted teeth, “I’m not…the one... dying here.”

She rose her wings in defense, but Alex sent a forward kick into them. The bones inside the appendages cracked like splintering timber; the membrane tore as her left wing folded in on itself with a wet crunch. Her screech of pain was cut short as shimmering [Wind Lance]s shot into her from multiple angles. They speared into her torso, bursting through chitin and flesh alike, her body jerking with every puncture.

Before she could recover, Alex mentally reached inside himself to the humming gemstone bound over his meridian. He tapped into it, pulling on the aether inside. Power flooded through him as he emptied the gem.

He cast [Aether Burst].

The battlefield detonated. A column of violet-azure energy erupted from his palm, slamming into the Queen’s chest with cataclysmic force. She was hurled down into a small crater, her body smashing into the rock.

The light of his spell faded and the shockwave passed. Dust and smoke drifted upward in a choking cloud, settling slowly across the shattered battlefield.

And when it cleared Alex stood at the rim of the crater. His body trembled, half from pain, half from the draconic energy still coursing through his channels. His eyes locked on the figure at the bottom, the Queen.

She lay crumpled in the pit, her body broken and smoldering, carapace cracked, holes punched clean through her chest where the [Wind Lances] had struck. One wing hung useless, maimed by his kick. Her tail dragged against the ground as if even it couldn’t obey her anymore.

Their roles were finally reversed. Alex stood triumphantly above, while the Queen writhed below, wounded and beaten.

Alex stared down into the crater as another prepared [Aether Burst] humming in his fist. But his Vita-cloak suddenly flickered, unstable, and his veins convulsed with wyrm-fire. He knew his body was wanting give out on him. Still, he kept going, gathering more energy and shaping it into the killing strike.

He had to do it now. If he let his buffs fall, the backlash would break him apart. There would be no second chance.

“Aether pool at 14%, you don’t have any more time.” Obby remarked.

The Queen staggered upright. Hate and fury gazed back at him, but beneath it, he saw something else as well. He saw her resolve. The same stubborn resolve he felt boiling inside himself.

She raised her arms, settling into a martial stance, his stance. She bent her knees and angled her shoulders as she set an open hand hovering above her other fist.

Alex froze for a fraction of a second.

It hit him all at once: how alike they were. How far he’d already gone. A boy from Earth who should have been dead a hundred times over now draped in rage, a wyrm-heart beating in his soul, energy cloak burning like a god of war’s mantle.

Was this really him anymore? Or just a monster who wore his face?

Perhaps the Queen wasn’t an arcane beast imitating humanity. She was a mirror, a beast reflecting his own descent downward into… something else. Hewas the ship rebuilt plank by plank until nothing of the original remained. And now, standing across from him, was a copy of that ship built from near exact pieces.

The Queen’s aura flickered a moment before condensing and focusing, reshaping. Alex had never got to see what it looked like from the outside until now. An ethereal arm, massive and translucent, unfurled from her back and reached down over her shoulder, layering across her real limb like a gauntlet of shadow.

His stomach dropped.

“Fuck… it’s too late…” Alex whispered.

“Run, meatboy, run,” Obby barked in his head, panic cutting through the rock’s usual dry tone. “She’s—she’s got the [Descending Demon Fist]! You hesitate again, you die. She’s still stronger. Stronger, and you’re running on fumes.”

The words pierced into him and he frantically tried to think of a solution. Would his own [Descending Demon Fist] be enough? Could he last long enough for Karsali, Malric, Symon—someone—to come back in to finish what he started? He didn’t know. He’d never know.

But he did know that he couldn’t run.

The Queen adjusted her stance and her demonic arm shimmered brighter, ready to fall with enough force to pulverize stone into dust.

Alex exhaled. His own aura spiraled tighter, condensing until his back ignited with fire and shadow as well. An ethereal arm sprouted, clawed and colossal, down his shoulder before wrapping over his flesh-and-blood in his facsimile of an Asura. He bared his teeth, a snarl ripping from his throat.

“Then let’s fucking end this.”

Two monsters stood across from one another, both cloaked in violence, both with demon arms layered over flesh and poised to strike. The air shimmered around them, heat and pressure twisting together.

Alex’s [Aether Sight] bled with overexposure, his vision haloed in fractured color as the Queen’s power shone like an inferno. Obby’s voice ran in the back of his mind.

“It’s not enough, Alex. You’ll lose. Run!”

He didn’t need the rock to tell him. He could feel it. The Queen’s power was a notch higher than his own. If they clashed now, she would break him. Her fist would land, his bones would scatter, his life would end.

But maybe, just maybe, he could wound her to the point that the others could finish her once he was gone. That would have to be his dying contribution.

Alex’s eyes flicked from the queen to the wider battlefield. Through the blur of heat-haze and smoking craters, he saw what had been lost and what had been won in each of the other fights.

The Wind Queen lay shattered, her sleek wings broken and still. The Magma Queen was nothing but a smoking husk, lightning-charred and blackened. The Light Queen crumpled under the combined fury of Cole, Ghrukk, and Zach. Cole knelt now in blood, frantic hands pressed to Lance’s stomach, fighting against death itself. Alex’s chest tightened until he could hardly breathe.

I dragged them into this. I put them here. I failed.

In the distance, Holly and Selka leaned against each other for support, both leaking blood from more wounds than he could bear to count. He still remembered the image of Holly losing her leg, and Henry losing his hand. He could see the man now, his halberd cleaving through the Shadow-queen’s neck even as dark blood painted his chest. The stoic warrior stood firm despite everything, a mountain that refused to fall.

And then he heard Garret’s desperate pleading tearing through all the other noise. “Eric! Stay with me!”

Alex’s gaze found them. Myrae’s was casting her healing spell with glowing hands. Then came the subtle shake of her head. Eric's hand dropped to the dirt at his side. Garret hunched over Eric’s body, shoulders heaving in gasps.

Eric was gone.

The words slipped from Alex’s lips without thought, “... Eric… no.”

His conviction faltered and the ethereal demon arm unravelled behind him, its light thinning to smoke.

And the Queen laughed.

It was a victorious chuckle, malice and mockery wrapped in one. She could nearly taste his despair. She knew she had won.

The Queen stepped forward, [Descending Demon Fist] coming down with the weight of a falling star. The air cracked apart, a shockwave blooming before her strike even landed. Her demonic arm gleamed, monstrous and vast, ready to obliterate what was left of Alex’s body. The ground buckled beneath her step and the world narrowed into her attack—

And Alex accept it.

He felt the weight of everything pressing down over him. His mistakes, the people he hadn’t been able to save, the exhaustion that gnawed at every tendon and bone in his body. He wanted to move, to fight, to do something. His body felt heavy and leaden, his thoughts drowned in that sick certainty of grief. He saw no path to victory. Just the promise of his friends’ death following his own.

“Alex!”

Holly’s voice pierced into him like lightning. Desperation filled her cry. His head turned toward her on reflex. Her eyes were wide, glassy with tears already spilling over the rims. She was staring at him like this was the last time she’d see him.

No. Not the last time.

Something inside him broke, or maybe it ignited. Aether roared through his veins like a tidal wave in a violent burst of purple-blue flame. It wasn’t just his arms that rose this time. From his back, two massive shapes clawed their way into existence. Demonic arms of pure aether, spectral and monstrous. They spread like wings, arcs of energy rippling from their outstretched fingers.

The Queen’s strike came down. Alex stepped forward and swung both of his fists to meet hers. The two monstrous arms overlaid his own, amplifying the strike with impossible weight.

The collision came.

Neither side yielded. An instant stretched until it felt like forever. The Queen’s clawed fist dug against his own, and he felt the bones inside his arm further shatter under the strain, with the muscles tearing apart strand by strand. His vision went white, and came back in dizzy pulses. He screamed but didn’t stop.

Then something gave way.

The Queen's carapace split under the pressure. His fist drove straight through her chest, collapsing it inward with a sickening crunch. The spectral arm punched through, leaving behind a cavernous hole the size of a melon. The force launched her backward, slamming her into the ruined ground.

When the dust at last thinned, Alex was still standing. If barely.

He was hunched forward, his chest heaving, the last dregs of energy shaking violently through his body. His arms—what remained of them—hung at his side in twisted, blood-soaked ruins. Every inch of him trembled with the effort of simply not collapsing.

At his feet, the Queen writhed weakly. Her torso was caved in, her blood flowing in dark rivers across the ground. Her antennae twitched once, twice. Her eyes, sharp even on the horizon of death, rose to meet his.

“Monster…” Her words were a rasping whisper. “Don’t forget your promise… to me.” She coughed, blood bubbling past cracked lips, and then stilled.

A ding sounded at the edge of Alex’s awareness, a System notification sliding into his vision to confirm the kill. Then another. And another. The cascade blurred together, line after line of confirmations, the System tallying what had just been done.

He didn’t care. He swiped them all away with a shaking hand.

The world tilted under him. His knees nearly gave out, but Holly was there. She caught him before he fell, her arms firm around him. Her embrace was soft, her forehead pressing briefly against his shoulder.

“You scared me,” she whispered, her words trembling but with relief.

So much raced through his mind. He felt so many different emotions, and he had so many things he wanted to say, but the only words he managed were, “I’m sorry.”