NBB2 - The chaos rifts - chapter 34

Silence reigned in the room as the three undead looked at each other in shock. Then Drys turned to the door.

"Let him up."

The undead went back down, the footsteps disappearing as fast as they had come. Solus focused his attention on the lowest floor of the building, and as he did, he could feel his emotions buck and heave. Gritting his teeth, he stared at the door. Instinctively he gripped his hammer, his fingers curling tightly around the green handle. A hand placed on his arm made him look up sharply, and he saw Tirela stare at him.

"Calm yourself. We need to listen to what he has to say, not tear him apart," she said sternly, holding his gaze.

Solus felt some of his anger drain away, and he nodded. Taking deep breaths, he looked at Drys. "You talk. I'm not sure I can."

When something began moving up the stairs, Solus noticed the minute tremors, and his eyes snapped to the door. Beside him, Tirela slid forward on the couch. Drys got up and walked towards the middle of the room before silently standing at the ready.

"You might frighten whoever it is that is coming up the stairs if you all continue to behave like this," Sam said.

Nobody got time to respond because without knocking, the door swung open, and an average-sized zombie walked into the room. He had pasty white skin with a few green patches and half-long matted green hair—a truly unremarkable individual until you looked at his eyes.

Solus gazed into a pair of piercing grey eyes. The pupil wasn't round but like a drop of wyrm puss lingering on the lower eyelid. A thin part of the pupil disappeared behind the upper eyelid.

Solus jerked up, taking one step before something clamped around his wrist and held him in place. Gazing down, he saw Tirela stare at him, slowly shaking her head. He growled and sat back down.

The odd-eyed undead had watched the happenings without any apparent emotions. Only when Solus stepped forward had he taken two steps back to the door.

"Don't mind him," Drys said.

Solus wrestled with his anger that told him to grab the undead and destroy it before it could get away.

Drys took a look at Solus for a moment before continuing. "Who are you?"

The undead scrutinized Solus as if trying to figure out if the big undead would rush him. When it seemed that Solus would stay seated, it turned its gaze on Drys.

"The other undead here call me Grav," he said.

Even his voice is average, Solus thought to himself. Somehow the fact angered him, though he had no idea why.

"You are the Shade," Drys said softly. He wasn't asking but stating a fact.

Grav looked at Drys, taking another step back. He was now partially back in the small room that housed the stair down, seeming ready to bolt.

"You won't be able to get away. Just explain why you came here," Drys said quietly.

Grav took a look behind, and Solus could almost see the plans swirl in the other's head. He was sure the undead was about to turn and flee, but then the moment passed, and Grav turned to Drys.

"Those rifts will grow until the Kaot Lords come through. If we don't stop their growth, this world is doomed."

Nobody said anything, and Grav's eyes narrowed.

"I know of a way to stop the rifts from growing," he said.

"How?" Solus growled, not able to keep himself quiet. The longer he was in the room with Grav, the more aggravated he became.

Grav stared at him, but this time he kept his eyes from meeting those of Solus.

"Only if you stop hunting me. Also, I need something from you."

Listening to the other demands, Solus' grip on the handle increased so much his knuckles cracked.

Drys took a few steps to the side, moving between Grav and Solus.

"What do you need."

Grav looked at Solus. "The large mana-orb he is keeping in his tower," he said.

For a moment, nobody spoke, then Solus got up. His anger was such that he was shaking. All thought and reason were threatening to leave him. The only thing holding him back was Tirela's hand.

"Why do I feel the need to destroy you? What are you?" he said, losing his careful control over his voice. The rooms' walls shook from the soundwaves, and the books and other things lying on the shelves began to bob up and down as if there was an earthquake.

Grav's eyes widened, and then he turned and bolted away.

"Don't destroy my tower!" Drys shouted as Solus jumped past him, pulling Tirela from the couch.

Solus didn't care anymore. He had held back long enough, and all he could do now was follow his instinct. He would grab this abomination and destroy it!

The tower shivered as he charged across the room after the zombie. He could hear it almost fall down the stairs in its haste to flee.

He didn't care.

"Don't destroy him. We need answers!" Tirela shouted, and then he heard something crash through the wall. The tower shook again, worse this time.

He ignored it all and rushed down. The steps cracked and splintered as he lost control of his strength, putting almost his full weight on each. Halfway down, Grav was still ahead of him, and through the haze of his anger, he felt confused. He should have overtaken the zombie by now.

As he rushed through the book-filled room and down the other stairs, he saw the undead guard lay a bit to the side. It groaned softly as it tried to get up, a deep indent in its chest. At the other side of the large open room, Solus saw Grav dash away. Its limbs were moving much faster than they should.

Jumping forward, Solus shattered the part of the floor he had been standing at, leaving a hole through which bone debris plummeted down.

He flew through the room but miscalculated and ended up falling down the next staircase. Windmilling with his arms, trying to catch his balance, Solus looked down. Grav was already at the bottom, and this time he saw him turn into a blurry haze that moved a dozen meters before solidifying again.

That's how he does it.

The thought barely made it through the anger that clouded his mind. Crashing into the ground, the bone floor cracked and crumbled beneath him, and he broke through to the next floor and the next.

Two floors further down, he lay in a small indent in the building's ground floor, a load of bone debris falling atop him.

With a shrug, he shoved it away and looked up. He had destroyed the spot where the staircase met the floor. That should have stopped Grav. Looking up, he saw no sign of the one he hunted, only scared-looking undead that peered down at him from the broken edges.

A cry came from the front of the building, and he looked through the door. Tirella stood in the door opening, holding Grav by the neck. The Shade was hitting her arm with little effect as he tried to get free.

Tirella looked across the struggling Grav's head at Solus. With a grin, she shook the undead a bit. "Perhaps you should go and fetch that mana-core while Drys and I have a little chat with our friend here?"

Still angry and desiring to rip Grav apart, Solus nodded. He motioned for her to get out of the way and walked out of the building. Drys stood beside the entrance, glaring at him.

"You just had to go and destroy my building, didn't you? Don't we have enough problems?"

Solus looked at the ruins behind him. The walls were cracked, the tower wobbling precariously, and a dozen fleshy undead sat on the windows sills staring down with frightened faces. The whole thing might collapse at any moment. Taking a deep breath, he tried to calm down, focusing on the stone below the city.

A soft shudder spread throughout the area as stone pillars rose up beside the building. The pillars stretched and widened, the stone wrapping around the cracked bone walls like a wyrm-hide robe. As he drew more stone up, Solus closed his eyes, sensing instead of seeing the inside of the building as he rebuilt the floors, wiping the debris in a corner with hands of stone. His concentration fully on the task at hand, his anger diminished rapidly. When he got to the tower, the stone circled up and around the thin bone construct like tendrils until it stood silent. Sensing the different crystalline compounds in the stone, he drew a greenish one to the surface in circular patterns. When he felt the tower was stabilized and the hole in the wall through which Tirela had likely jumped down fixed, he opened his eyes.

The previously ruined bone-building was wrapped in a grey stone lattice that wound up around a tower that shone and gleamed with a green surface. Bright green lines ran across it all the way to the top that was patched with stone.

"Show off…" Tirela said as she gazed up at the tower with a bright smile.

Solus laughed, about to say something when he saw Grav. The calm he had just gained all but shattered at the sight of the undead. Taking a step back, he closed his eyes and drew a ball of stone to his hand. Without a wait, he began shaping it into a wide array of forms, ranging from buildings and trees to undead he knew. His anger subsided again, but he kept his eyes closed. Turning to where he knew Tirella stood, he gasped. With his eyes closed, just relying on his stone senses, she was like a beacon of orange light in the gloomy green world of his senses.

Beautiful, he thought. It took a moment to regain clarity of thought, and then he took a deep breath.

"I'm going to my tower. After you get all the information you need, meet me there," he said.

"We will," Tirella replied.

He heard her walk into the building. When he was sure she and Drys had left, taking Grav with them, Solus opened his eyes.

Staring at the thoroughly changed building, he found a dozen or more undead staring at him from the windows. Snippets of conversation drifted down, but he ignored it.

Hoping Drys and Tirela could get the others to get the information Grav had from him, he turned and headed towards his tower. It was time to end the sphere that had housed Domain and get that damned mana-core.

--

A skeleton with a glowing blue ribcage ran across the wasteland, the enormous white bone forest far behind it.  It muttered softly to itself.

"Not yet, not yet. I can stay sane a little longer…."

"Must find it before this weak shell breaks down and the connection is terminated!"

The voice, Domain's voice, shot up, screaming in delight as another rift appeared in the distance.

"Fifteen's the charm, yes it is! One last time? No, this will be it!"

Speeding up, Domain reached the person-sized rift and jumped in without even stopping. The skeleton appeared on the side of the trench and barely stopped itself from plummeting down. Looking around the enormous mountainous area, Domain saw thousands of specs scrambling about. Two shapes as tall as buildings were lashing out at each other, roaring in rage. They barely resembled undead. The left one had thousands of black and red tentacles that battered the other, the rest of its body barely visible between them. The second was a hairy, pasty ball with a massive maw and small limbs. It attacked with a tongue that moved like a blur, slashing at the center of the tentacles with deathly precision.  Far in the distance, a flying undead with a multitude of tails and a bird-like body flew towards them.

Even from this distance, their pressure was palpable.

"Kaot-lords! Finally!" Domain raised its boney limbs in the air.

"Now, to find one the right size!" it screeched before turning in a circle.

The rift was situated halfway up another mountain beside a trench that seemed as if something had cut the mountain in two. On either side, the mountainous landscape continued, and shapes in different sizes were rushing around, some fighting others fleeing.

"Navigation! Need to be able to come back!" Domain hissed as he looked up. The sky was a reddish-purple with vast swaths of deep blue star clusters and not a single cloud.

"Barely an atmosphere left. Snapshot taken, location locked."  As it spoke, Domain's voice became less crazed, the emotions dissipating, but when it turned, a sudden mad cackle came from him.

"Find a shell, a mighty shell, a shell to bring them all to hell!"

Laughing maniacally, it sprinted along the side of the mountain towards a path that led to the two fighting Kaot lords.

--

Hiding inside a small crack in the mountain, Domain watched as the furry ball dragged its badly wounded body towards the other monstrous undead.

Besides a few, the other tentacles were ripped apart, and those that remained barely resisted as the furball climbed atop the tangled middle section. Its tongue shot out, stretching out twice its own length, and slammed into the main body.

A grinding, cutting noise continued for a while, and then the tongue shot further inside. It returned within moments, and a weak but triumphant roar came from the victorious ball. The tip of its tongue was wrapped around an angular mana-core.

The surrounding area bathed in light as a manafield whooshed in view—a vast mana-field-dirty reddish-white, with blood-red patterns across it. Black ugly blots of light were spread unevenly across it.

As soon as the mana-field appeared, the mana-core began glowing, and Domain rushed forward inside the mana-field. Hiding behind the bulk of the slain undead, he reached the side without being detected.

"Strong, but stupid…" he hissed before an intense blue beam of light shot from his eyes. It lit up the mana-field, and as soon as it did, the undead-ball howled in anger. It looked around, trying to find the location of its assailant. The blue beam began etching out an incredibly dense inscription on the massive mana-field. It worked fast and began increasing in speed.

The tongue of the undead-ball lashed around and finally thought of searching around its dead adversary. The nimble appendage slithered around, finding Domain.

"Too late," a crazed laugh was cut short as the skeletal body toppled over. An intense blue aura appeared on the mana-field where a new blue pattern now existed. For a moment, it spread out like wildfire until it reached the halfway point. Then it slowed down until it stopped completely. The dirty red lines began pulsating where the two colors met, and the undead ball roared in anger and fury.

"Stop resisting," Domain's voice jumped a few octaves.

The pulsating increased in frequency, going faster and faster, and as it continued, the blue was forced back.

"No… too strong..." a single blue line moved from the mana-field back to the unmoving skeletal body, and it scrambled up. The blue on the mana-field faded as the red quickly took hold again.

Domain, back in his stolen skeletal body, rushed away while the undead hairy ball roared. Its tongue shot forward but couldn't reach the fleeing skeleton. The Kaot Lord moved slow and unsteady, its wounds and the attack on its mana-field combined enough to weaken it.

When the fleeing skeleton reached a section of the mountain covered in large stones and rubble, it disappeared between.

A last angry roar followed it.

--

Domain contained fleeing for a while until he found refuge in a small gully. Loud stomping came from far away, moving off in another direction. The small dark red stones and the brown sand stopped shaking after a few moments.

"The connection is too weak for such a potent adversary… I need to find something smaller, more vulnerable," Domain muttered, sounding aggravated and tired. He struggled back to his feet and moved out of the dark gully, back into the oddly lit landscape.

Hours later, he hid behind a boulder, staring at a group of four beings battling each other. All of them were at least ten meters tall and roughly humanoid. Massive, but many times smaller than the previous two Kaot lords.

Three of them had rudimentary wings, short, muscular legs and fought in a coordinated manner. They used their disproportionately long arms to slash at the other one. Every time they did, green lines flashed through the air, projected from the nails, striking the fourth.

The one being attacked had two arms with an extra set of joints, two similar legs, and a torso covered in thick red shells. It moved fast, dodging most of the attacks and shrugging off the few that hit. Its shimmering grey eyes began shining until they were so bright it was impossible to look at them.

The other three covered their eyes, and immediately a grey beam shot from the grey-eyed Kaot Lord and ripped the head from one of the others.

The two that remained screamed as if they themselves were hurt and turned away.

The grey-eyed Kaot Lord ignored them, turning to the dead one. As it ripped its head off, Domain snuck closer until he was hiding closeby.

When the grey-eyed undead removed an angular mana-orb from the body, it summoned a bright grey mana-field covered in blood-red lines. Like with the other Kaot lord's mana-field, blots of black marred some areas. They seemed to almost drain away the light.

A blue beam shot from Domain, striking the mana-field. The grey-eyed Kaot Lord's beaklike mouth snapped open and closed, making loud clacking sounds as it wobbled. Domain's blue lines created a pattern, and this time within moments, it covered a single section.

"This time, I will win!" Domain cried.

Like with the first undead, the red lines began pulsating, and the blue lines' encroachment slowed down. However, this time, the lines didn't stop, and slowly they covered a second of the five sections. As soon as the entire section was blue, it and the first flashed, and the blue lines began growing into two more sections with increased speed. The grey-eyed undead fell on the ground, mewling softly while green lines flashed from its fingers that weakly snapped in the air.

When a single red section remained, the pulses became erratic. From four sides, blue lines jumped into the last red-lined section of the mana-field, and suddenly the red winked out, the lines dissipating. The Kaot Lords last sounds stopped, and then the entire mana-field blazed in blue for a moment.

A dispassionate voice came from the body.

"Finally, those horrid emotions were going to be the end of me. Now, let's clean away these ridiculous patterns."

The original lines that made up the undead's evolutions burned bright, and then three out of the four sections began dimming. After a short while, the entire sections were empty.

Two sections, however, stayed burning for a long time before an annoyed tssk sounded. "So, I can't remove the racial evolution anymore? A shame…"

A loud roar came from the mountains to the side, and the Kaot Lord that was now Domain staggered in an upright position. It looked at the sound source, seeing four tentacled monsters that gazed back at it with gleaming red eyes.

"Bad timing!"

Domain turned and ran towards the opposite mountain, its movements uncoordinated at first. But within a hundred meters, it became more fluid.

Loud thudding came from behind as the four tentacled Kaot lords chased him. As Domain rushed up the mountain, it became apparent the grey-eyed Kaot lord's body was much faster than the others. Within moments the distance between them had doubled, and the tentacled Kaot Lords stopped chasing.

Standing at the top of the mountain, Domain turned around. As it gazed into the distance, seeing another enormous building-sized thing crawl up a far mountain, its dispassionate voice sighed.

"I can't stay here. It's too dangerous if I can't get the strongest body."

He turned around, his gleaming grey eyes on where it knew the portal back to be. Then it stopped, its eyes becoming unfocused for a moment.

"Dammit! He's back? No! I'm not ready yet!" Anger and fear were evident in Domain's voice as he turned around. Spotting a narrow crack not too far off, he rushed towards it.

Scanning it and finding no Kaots, Domain moved inside. The pass had a single exit, making it dangerous to hide. His eyes unfocused again as his mana-field flashed into existence. An immensely complex pattern began appearing in one of the enormous sections.

"Need to work fast... faster..." Domain muttered.

--

The walk through Skulltown got Solus thinking, and he kept looking below his feet, remembering the underground city in Tendraal. If he created more layers down, it would be much easier to defend from the Kaots. He would have a safe place for the undead of Skulltown to flee if things got dire.

Besides, there were so many caverns under the city already. Perhaps he could connect them to the burgeoning underground town that was slowly growing there. Stomping across the plain towards his tower, he stopped, all thoughts of building an underground city disappearing from his mind. There were scratch marks across the stone door and deep indents on it.

Increasing his pace, he was relieved to see that the stone had held. Shoving it out of the way, he saw that nothing had changed inside the tower's base level. He moved up the stairs and began to get more and more troubled. Somehow the closer he got to both Domain's sphere and the mana-core, the more possible problems popped up in his mind.

There was no moment coming from above and no light, blue or otherwise.

Solus stepped through the entrance and into his own personal quarters and immediately saw the sphere, still lying dormant on his bed.

Inspecting it for a moment, he didn't see any moment and quickly scanned the room. The ones gaping wide maw had been crushed closed by some powerful force, the teeth and many other things snapped. Some tables filled with old-world things had toppled over, the items on it now scattered throughout the room. The mana-core, angular and as large as his head, had rolled against the wall.

Seeing it removed a weight off his shoulders that he hadn't noticed was there, and he quickly rushed towards it. A sudden flash of blue light made him swirl around. Domain's previously inert shape was now glowing bright as a sun, blue beams flashing through the air in intrinsic patterns.

"No, you don't!" Solus growled, jumping forward and rushing across the room.

The beams multiplied, the speed with which they moved growing faster and faster. It seemed almost as if they were drawing a pattern, but he didn't see it anywhere. Afraid of what might happen if he waited again, he grabbed his hammer and slammed it down on the sphere.

A loud boom reverberated throughout the room, and dust blasted away from him and the sphere. Solus was shocked to see that only a small crack appeared on the previously unmarred and shiny exterior. The beams continued, and Solus rammed the sphere again and again. The second and third hit only caused more cracks, but the fourth dented the sphere's entire top inward. Sharp metallic edges protruded out, and blue and red lights shone from the center.

The blue lines sputtered on and off, and Solus growled as he struck in the center of the dent. With a final crack, the entire sphere split apart. Metal and old-world mechanics flung across the room as the lights died with a single last whisk.

Breathing heavily, more out of fear than exertion, Solus stared at what had been Domain. Somehow he had expected the other to tell him to stop, scream for help...anything. But nothing had happened. Gazing at the sphere's remains, he finally noticed a thick cable that ran from it, and he groaned.

"Should have just pulled the plug…"

Grabbing it, he pulled it out, tossing the cable far from the sphere. Then he scattered the parts through his room. Staring at the remains of the last piece he placed on a table on the far wall, he frowned. For some reason, he still had a bad feeling, but he just couldn't explain why.

Then he turned back to the mana-core. It had rolled to the far side of the room, and he grabbed it before taking a last look at the largest piece of Domain.

"I'll scatter it in the caverns below later," he grumbled before turning to the exit and walking out of the room.

--

A loud howl echoed across the Kaot filled mountains as Domain struck the stone ground he sat on. The blue mana-field was still surrounding him, and two of the sections were filled with intricate symbols and lines. The third was unfinished, lines ending and their ends flickering oddly.

"I'll end you for that, you bothersome thing," Domain growled before rushing out of the small crevice.

--

At the side of the mountain, beside the decapitated body of a tentacled Kaot Lord, something moved. A skeletal arm stuck up from some stone rubble and dust that had covered it, and a blue glow appeared through the debris.