Knights Apocalyptica

Chapter 255: Touch

“Foolish wannabe deity, how dare you impose yourself upon my domain, and how dare you harass these knights so gallant? For that, you will pay the ultimate price.” Colin's voice boomed out like a thunderclap as he followed his attack with another bolt of golden lightning. It eviscerated the Goddess as she stood up from the last bolt; her body convulsed, and the edge of those copper flames blurred. It took more than Erec thought to resist the magical power of Colin's attack.

Just the feel of it—Colin, no, Kay's might back on the battlefield was a glory to behold.

And with it, Erec’s connection once more returned in full force. He felt himself on the other side, pulling him into a fiery embrace.

A voice that was both his own, yet not, whispered in his mind. "You must finish the job that you have started here. There is no other way about it. This is your obligation, your duty as a knight."

His mind steeled, the pain in his body flared, and he turned it into fuel as his Silver Fire once more caught, burning his skin in a way that soothed. Inside and outside. His veins purified as it ran through them; his breath came out a burnt smoke as the impurities left in his soul vanished away. The wounds this false Goddess had left were still present, scratches on his soul. But they would surely heal with time, especially with it fully cleansed.

His mantle solidified. The connection was stronger than ever as he accepted his duties as a Knight. This couldn’t stand—this woman could not be allowed to win when contesting three of the Round Table.

Erec stood up, the axe heavier in his hand than ever before, a condensed might of his silver fire. He used a new technique, layering the flames and molding the axe to a higher density of height and fire. The cost was the Armor around him, which ran up his arm and condensed in the head of his weapon. It left his body unprotected, but against a foe like this, Armor would make little difference anyway.

All that he needed was in his hand. His axe.

He was Sir Erec. And the best defense was an overwhelming offense.

The coppery False Goddess took another bolt to the chest again. This time, she rebounded in a second, drawing more of herself out into this world, fighting back against the magic that had surged in sudden and rapid succession against her. She could survive this; she was adapting to it.Colin had left scars on her soul, but it wouldn’t be enough to defeat her, especially since now she had time to prepare and tailor herself against it.

His eyes hardened as he stared at her, knowing she would keep going in this fight until she caused his death. Snuffed out his silver flames. In truth, the wiser part of him didn’t know the true Goddess he was being compared to, but in her eyes, they were too similar to allow existence. The unhinged nature of her mind and reality flooded the air around her like a commandment, spilling into the world and his brain as her motivations were broadcast through a psychic scream.

Let us see who gets what they wish.

Erec embraced her hate and returned his own, launching himself at her. His axe extended into the air, bright as the sun. She turned to face him, sensing the assault, only to be blasted by another rampant bolt of electricity, which made her hesitate. Giving Erec the opening he needed to make a clean slice through her, bisecting her in a single blow.

He felt the cavern shake. His mind reeled as she screamed from the pain.

The most direct and strongest hit yet, and his blow carried through after the attack, a wave of silver crashing forward and splitting the building behind her. It kept going until it crashed into the side of the cavern itself, shaking the entire place.

She knitted back in front of him, screaming with pain. More of her coming out to reinforce her power, she would not run away. Even though at any point she could close her connection to this earthly vessel and preserve herself. Her pride and hate wouldn’t allow such a move. Which was good if she wanted to toss herself at him for his axe to chop her into nothingness, then let her. A pulse of copper fire pushed him back.

Erec fought through it, got right back in there, and slashed into her again. “Please, keep going.” He mocked as she screamed as he took a deep chop into her soul. The best way to visualize him was as if her soul were a massive tree. Every chop now was a deep cut into the trunk. She’d invested far too much of herself and made herself vulnerable in the process.

She responded by launching herself at him like a rabid beast. Her nails tore into his body as he’d sacrificed his fiery Armor to focus on the attack. As a consequence, it sliced into his flesh like putty, and the blood came in a torrent, along with the pain. Both on his soul and on his physical body, they suffered in equal measure, but it was worth it due to one thing: he got to hit her back.

Erec sliced her head off, only for it to reform.

Her searing pain and screaming filled his mind in response, and her output once more increased intent to shred him to nothing here and now. She didn’t get the chance to finish him as Colin rocketed to her side in a bolt of electricity, slamming into her and slicing her back with his sword, composed of golden electricity. Paralyzing her for the briefest of seconds as his magic disrupted the connection between her true soul and this host.

It was as if she had started this fight by sticking her hand into this physical form like a puppet. And now she had shoved her whole arm and half of her body in there, in a greedy bid to extract her vengeance. Erec grinned, shoving her back as blood, his blood, ran down from everywhere on his body. The pain in his flesh separating didn’t matter as long as his heart kept beating, pulsing with silver fire throughout his body, funneling it all to his axe after patching what it absolutely needed to and nothing else.

He slashed down again, her voice quivering through his head in an angry scream as his axe met her copper fire, and it gave way. Nothing before his condensed silver flames. “How far are you willing to go?” Erec asked. “Are you willing to die here”

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"Let her," Colin laughed. "The only one who deserves to have such pride is we. Everyone else who has faced us and embraced their unearned pride has crashed. So, let her be one amongst that number."

Colin stepped back, and his eyes glowed with an intensity Erec hadn’t seen for a long time. A spiral of golden glyphs came from the tip of his sword, signing their way into the world as written by a god himself. They encircled him, twisting in a line as his energy increased. And then, they began to funnel to the sword itself, encircling it as the density of glyphs increased. Erec felt his brother’s arm’s mantle begin to wane. His time was short, and he’d done all he could for now. Too fresh, and his soul not yet adjusted to the might it could wield.

The body of the False Goddess convulsed in front of them, recovering from her wounds, trying to convert her anger into a force to kill them with.

“Ah, but this has been too short. I must depart. So let this be my gift to you. We have all done much—Bedwyr, you, and I. But you, Sir Erec, shall be the one to finish this fight.” Colin—no, Kay—gave him a rueful smile as the magic in the air rushed in like a torrent down into the blade.

He might have to lose grasp of his mantle, but Kay was about to do it in a way that would leave one hell of a goodbye present; the woman below them was gathering her strength, pulling more into this world. Stuffing herself and gorging on the energy of her dismay and anger.

The glyphs condensed, overlaying each other. Colin finished his spell and jammed it right into the back of the fake Goddess, and it vanished. Then there was a shaking as if the earth itself were protesting; then a SMASH.

The cavern's ceiling blew open, and a thin shaft of light barreling down from the sky came down, in the form of a sword. Its point carved right into the Goddess, where Colin had struck her. It was followed by a boom as a bolt of thunder shuddered down the shaft from above, caving in the ground beneath them as the might of the heavens itself crashed into their enemy. Ash, dust, and chaos erupted, blinding the scene from the aftermath of the attack.

Colin reeled back, his mantle fading away quickly, having spent all of it and more in that last strike.

The blow hit him with its aftereffects: lightning ran through Erec’s body, arcs lancing off and hitting his Armor. He steeled through it, his mind gone, and instead turned to that of the Round Table. He saw it now, two fellow Knights sitting there. They grinned at him. Kay, Bedwyr—Colin and his brother. Telling him to finish this battle. To honor them and the way they’d set him up, he had to do whatever it took to bring this fight to a close.

Then, his mind went to Enide. She was somewhere up above, blissfully unaware of the danger he'd waded into. The other half of his soul—he was aware of that fact now. And he wished she would forgive him, should he pass before she knew that fact.

He steeled his resolve as he stared into the screeching face of the Goddess suffering before him in that bright godly flash of light.

Whatever I must do.

His mantle finished melding. He would never be the same; his two versions had become one. Erec of now ruled over his memories, able to examine the previous experiences, even if they were tucked away for now, so as not to overwhelm him. In his current life, who he was was the dominant among all. His ancestors, his life before, were just one in many. But life right now, the life that they lived in the world that they were in, was the one that had precedence and had to uphold the mantle. That was his sacred duty as a knight of the Round Table. His honor and charge were to obey and bring glory to his name.

"I am Erec, son of Lac,” he screamed, as the last shocks of the massive lightning sword that had crashed into the false Goddess faded. He kicked her, sending her soaring into the air with a pulse of his muscle that sent rocks flying and crashing into nearby buildings, wrecking them. Then, he leaped after her, following her as her limp body crashed into the ceiling of the Seventh Cavern.

He came in a silver comet that sliced his axe into her with an upward angled cleave.

Her body split.

It wasn’t enough; the copper fire began to reform immediately. Erec burned more of himself away and slashed again, then once more—axe twisting in his hands, moving too fast and with too much strength to counter. Each of his blows carried through to the stone behind her, tearing chunks out of the ceiling and sending them crashing to the ground below as he focused his entire existence on one objective: dicing this woman apart. Splitting her again and again.

Each cut was a lash against her soul, chopping the base of the tree that was this false Goddess, punishing her for daring to step too far into his domain.

He delighted in her pain, the only refuge for his body falling apart; this was his duty, and he would see it through. Anything it took to finish the job. His limbs protested. His soul screamed. But his mind was clear, focused, as sharp as the edge of his axe, as he cut again until the fiery coppery and whatever remained of the charred flesh beneath stopped stitching together.

She began to run, the pain too great, shearing off mountains of her power.

No, you do not.

Erec’s hand was wrapped with silver as he tried to grab her soul, but it slid through his fingers, and she claimed possession of this living corpse in a blink.

The remainder of what was left of the flesh of the Cardinal spilled past him in a pile of charred ash and bone; she was gone. Her presence in the world vanished as she fled from him. A coward in her last second, giving up her dreams for vengeance for a pathetic survival, and now vastly damaged from him and his brothers, likely to take many years to recover. He swore at her.

His mantle began to fade.

Erec began to fall; his eyes turned upward. A tunnel of light penetrated his Cavern, wider than a man, connecting them to the sky above as it had been carved into the place by Colin’s blast; a little bit of heaven, leaking down and entering his home. By the second, the silver fire faded, unable to heal the injuries he’d sustained. His body began to fall faster. That heavenly light so far above was getting further away as it sped down on its inevitable crash with the ground.

A smile came to his lips. He’d completed his duty.

“So this is it," he said, still feeling the cuts in him, still feeling all of the wounds that had accumulated. He did not have enough silver fire left to heal it. The Round Table wasn't an endless tap. Not when you were limited by the reality in which you dwelt. And even outside of it, it was not. Still, using his brothers, he defeated the false Goddess. He could only hope that they would finish the job in the future, track her down, and make her suffer.

Arms caught him in the middle of the air, stopping him before he died in a collision with the hard ground far below.

Sir Able, his feet hovering with a gust of wind, as the old man grunted with his weight. This content belongs to novel•fire.net

“Damn, you're heavy. And that's your blood all over my Armor… Damn. There's no helping it.” They began to rise again, the mage bringing them to the ray of light shining from above. “Just tuck your head tight, I’m not sure how narrow this thing is. But you and that other one need healing, fast.”

Erec lost his sense of what was happening, his grasp on life failing him. One second he was in the Cavern, another he was on the surface. Then he saw a healer, then several.

His wounds were patched, but his soul was still split.

His friend’s faces came and went, until finally he saw Enide’s worried face. Her hand grasped his, fingers running over his own, and his sense of being stabilized. Though not sure where he was, she was here. His one and only, he’d return to her from his war. With her hand holding him, he knew one thing. He was still alive.