Updates may be more sporadic in the future, for a reason that is, like the Communist-built giant robots that live in the forest behind my house, ludicrously immense in size:

Reason: College. I don't think I have to explain how this cuts in to my writing time. For convenience's sake, I'll refer to it as "hellish". This choice of verbiage is logical, because I live in California. And California is hell.

Rest assured, though: I will soldier on and make sure to bring plenty of Dark Matter chapters to you, the reader.

-Mr. Sanchez

Chapter 4 - Wherein Varrant and Friends Fight a Golem and Very Nearly Get Killed in the Process

Varrant, his sword at the ready, had a very convincing resemblance to someone who had a plan, but this resemblance was merely a resemblance and nothing more. The buzzsaw sword was a very destructive weapon, true, but it would bear mentioning that he had quite a moral objection against taking said sword to a small girl. He could not in all good conscience fight her, so he concluded that if he subdued that monolithic Guardian Beast to Cass' side, he might have some chance of making the girl concede. This was another problem, though: Sundance the Golem was quite large and Varrant was unsure that he would be able to damage it and avoid being flattened to a substance not unlike paste. The predicament was made worse by the fact that Lorelei was lost in dreamland and thus incapable of healing her master's wounds.

It was barely even past noon, and already Varrant was having a crappy day.

Cerize took a step in front of him and fumbled around in the folds of her dark cloak for something. "Varrant, step back. I may not have a lot of training yet, but I think I can summon something powerful enough to take this golem down."

A gasp from their opposition. "You're a Summoner?" Cass looked genuinely intimidated by Cerize, and Varrant saw her shrink behind her Guardian Beast a little. She began to murmur something to herself, like, "Oh man, what am I supposed to do now?"

"Cerize, are you sure about this?" asked Varrant, raising an eyebrow in a classic display of skepticism. "I mean, the whole reason I'm with you is to take you somewhere where you learn not to screw up. I'm kinda worried you haven't learned that yet."

Cerize flicked out a small, rectangular piece of paper covered with illegible symbols, which Varrant briefly thought was some sort of napkin. "Don't worry. Just sit back and watch." With that, she held the small piece of paper into the air and intoned in a loud, clear voice:

"Personification of filth and disgust,

Awaken from your damned cesspool and traverse to the world of men.

Come forth! The summoner Cerize commands it!"

Upon these words, a very large sphere of bluish-white light materialized in front of her, with several smaller balls of light encircling around it like moons around a planet.

Varrant was a fellow with absolutely no knowledge or experience concerning Summoners, apart from the one who had called forth Lorelei for him. And he barely even comprehended it then. Nonetheless, he assumed that whatever Cerize was calling out, it was likely to be something powerful. After all, it had words like "damned" and "cesspool" in its incantation.

The apparition of light faded away, leaving behind Cerize's monster.

Looking down at it, Varrant realized that he had spoke - or rather, thought - too soon.

It was some kind of pulsing blob of lime-green ooze, with large, beady eyes and a mouth that was remeniscent of a jack-o-lantern. This creature she had summoned was so completely unremarkable that it is impossible to describe it in any further detail, other than the fact that it was the very antithesis of what Varrant was expecting.

"What the heck is this thing?" he asked. Because it seemed like a good idea at the time, he poked it with his boot. This produced a mildly gross sucking noise. "I honestly think I've accidentally stepped in things that were more threatening than this."

Cerize blushed a little. "All... all I really know how to summon is Slimes," she confessed.

"Then... why were you so confident before?"

"It's a really sticky Slime?"

Varrant instantly felt how Lorelei must have felt every time she argued with him. Thinking of her, he cast a glance over at his partner, to discover that she still had no intentions of waking up at any point in the near future.

A crappy day, and getting crappier by the minute. Cass and Sundance simply watched the scene in what Varrant guessed was a kind of bewildered pity, like the look of a prison guard who watches an inmate break free of his shackles and then run straight into the bars of his own cell.

Cerize, not to be deterred by her own failure to produce anything threatening, decided to make the best of her new companion - which was, incidentally, no stickier than any other Slime. "Go!" she shouted at it, pointing (rather over-dramatically, Varrant thought) at Sundance the Golem. "Wreak havoc!"

The Slime pathetically inched its way towards Cass' towering abomination, which happened to have an eight-and-a-half-foot height advantage and outweighed it by a rough estimate of over four hundred pounds. With these factors in mind, it was not at all surprising to see Sundance crush it in one hand and then toss the splattering remains into a tree.

There was a moment's pause.

"Well, I tried," said Cerize.

Cass said, "Okay, I admit that was funny. But it's not gonna stop me from siccing Sundance on you if you don't give up the dark matter."

"Any more bright ideas?" Varrant asked.

"One, actually," said Cerize. "I was thinking it would be in our best interest if I ran and hid behind that tree over there and let you fight the golem."

"Oh, well that sounds--wait a minute!" The Craftknight's words came a tad too late, for Cerize had already darted behind a nearby tree. She poked her head out from behind the trunk, and gave him a thumbs-up.

"Go get 'em, Varrant!" she called. "I believe in you!"

If this day got any crappier, Varrant thought the sky would turn brown.

"I don't need to go after your friends," said Cass, stepping out from her safe spot behind Sundance. "You're the one carrying the dark matter, right? I just need to beat you and take it."

"How do you know I have any in the first place?"

Cass produced her own piece of dark matter from a small leather pouch she wore on her belt. It was, much like Varrant's, glowing a bright shade of blue. "Because dark matter glows when pieces are close together," she said. "That's how I was able to track you down."

"Well, then you just made a huge mistake," bluffed Varrant. "'Cause if I beat you, then that means I get a second piece. Then I'm halfway there."

Cass looked miffed. She turned to the giant by her side, pointed at Varrant, and demanded, "Sundance, he's not gonna hand it over! Sic 'em!"

The huge monster raised its arms in reply. Varrant switched on the teeth of his buzzsaw sword and tightened his grip on the handle. The golem immeidately grabbed him and threw him straight up into the air, something that took Varrant about 3.2 seconds to realize.

Realizing that he was quite a ways overhead, Varrant reversed his momentum and came flying down at Sundance, slashing its stony hand when it tried to grasp him again. The buzzsaw teeth scraped noisily against the golem's skin

- It was at this point that Lorelei was heard to mutter something that sounded like "Varrant, turn that off. I'm trying to juggle." -

and Varrant swiftly executed a three-slash combo across the monster's body, forcing it to stagger back a bit.

Cerize cheered from her sanctuary behind the tree. "Nice one, Varrant! Hit him again! I believe in you! I believe!"

"Would you shut u--" said Varrant before Sundance slammed an open palm right into his ribs. In the back of his mind, he managed to register that the golem had followed this up with three punches to his face, but he felt none of them. Sundance finished this combo up with a body blow that sent Varrant flying across the path. He landed on his head and then fell flat on his face, his buzzsaw sword sticking into the ground just inches from his head.

Now, Varrant had landed relatively close to Lorelei, which was fortunate for him. This was because the buzzsaw sword was an extremely loud weapon and Lorelei, sound sleeper though she was, could not last through the roar of a motorized chainsaw blade so close to her ears. She muttered something incoherent and announced that she was up, slowly floating until she was a few inches off the ground.

At this point in the battle, Varrant lost consciousness and thus was unable to experience what happened next. Lorelei would later retell the events to him, and according to her, this is what transpired. It is important to note that Cerize, when asked for confirmation, pointed out that a few elements of the story were either embellishments or outright lies. Regardless, this is Lorelei's account.

Upon waking up to the sounds of battle, Lorelei looked around to see a beaten Varrant lying face-down in the dirt, and on the other side stood an immense golem that seemed to have something red dripping from its knuckles. A young girl in a white dress was cheering the monstrosity on and completely unaware of Lorelei's awakening. The valkyrie also spotted Cerize, watching quietly from behind a tree.

Lorelei immediately put two and two together and surmised that the girl and her golem had attacked Varrant out of nowhere. Further, with him out of commision, it was up to her to drive the attackers back.

Having reached this conclusion, Lorelei immediately did a series of backflips through the air and "rapid-kicked" Sundance "ten times in like half a second". Sundance, after taking this bit of punishment, immediately toppled over on its back and flailed to get up like an overturned tortoise.

This was the first logistical improbability - Lorelei was not any stronger than your average teenaged girl, valkyrie or no. This, coupled with Sundance's tremendous weight advantage, made it highly unlikely that Lorelei could have knocked her opponent down. Varrant, however, had not realized this until long after when the story was told to him, and thus could not find an opportune spot to bring it up without illiciting strange looks from everyone else present.

Regardless of whether or not Sundance whethered the blows, it quickly went into what Lorelei swore up and down was the "Stance of the Five Gods" in "some old martial art or something, I dunno", although when pressed for details she admitted that Sundance may have just been cracking its knuckles.

Sundance then threw a "slow-mo karate punch", which Lorelei immediately responded to by bending over backwards and allowing the attack to fly right over her by what could not have been more than an inch. This punch struck a nearby tree and caused it to "totally freakin' explode", although this may have been an embellishment as Cerize claimed that there were no trees in the range of the punch. In fact, according to Cerize, Lorelei did not dodge the punch at all.

Whatever the case, the golem continued its assault by unleashing a series of what Lorelei referred to as "machine-gun punches", "a few" of which managed to strike her. While she conceded that the punches were extremely painful, she insisted that she was in fact "so tough that all I got was a paper cut". Varrant suspected she had just taken the blows and then cast a healing spell on herself, but did not feel like saying this to her.

Lorelei smacked against another tree and gripped to the trunk with the backs of her fingers. Sundance charged and attempted to flatten her against the trunk, but she responded by pressing her feet against the palms of her enemy's hands, thus holding it off.

Now, the valkyrie admitted that she was fighting a losing battle at this point. Sundance had a huge height and weight advantage on her and would probably wind up flattening her into paste.

It was right around here that she proceeded to "have a tear-jerking emotional flashback".

It was this tear-jerking emotional flashback that allowed her to remember what she was fighting for that day, and so Lorelei got "really super-pissed" and struck Sundance with a kick so hard that it allegedly launched the golem into the sun. Varrant knew for a fact that this was a lie, as he had recovered from his injuries by now and bore witness Lorelei merely manage to shove Sundance a few feet away from her.

"Come on, Sundance, you can take her!" shouted Cass. Her Guardian Beast responded by gripping Lorelei around the throat and pinning her to the ground. It raised its other fist, the implication clear that it was prepared to ruin the valkyrie's pretty little face.

Varrant seized his buzzsaw sword and sprung into action.

A split second later, Sundance no longer had a right hand.

The golem's raised fist went flying off its rocky arm and crashed into the ground somewhere Varrant did not care to see. He ran up the front of Sundance's body, backflipped off of it, and sliced the golem right down its face. As he expected, the chain got stuck in its rocky skin, so Varrant flipped back on to Sundance's body and yanked it out, backflipping one last time onto the ground. It must have looked extremely cool, but all the acrobatic maneuvers had caused Varrant's head to start spinning.

He wondered distantly if pulling off such an assuredly cool move was worth the aching head and the inevitable point where he would pass out again. He decided that it was.

"About time you woke up," said Lorelei, who looked as though she had taken much more punishment than her account claimed. The amor plating on her right shoulder had cracked and broken off, and her red bodysuit was torn in places. She was bleeding from a small wound on the side of her head.

"That's my line," panted Varrant, falling to one knee.

Sundance wobbled in place, and then, accompanied by a shriek from Cass, collapsed onto its back with enough force to cause the ground to quake. Its body morphed into a sphere of blue energy not unlike the one Cerize had used to summon her Slime, and then completely faded away. A small piece of paper on Cass' belt began to gently glow.

Cass stared in shocked silence at Varrant and Lorelei, and then immediately burst into tears. "Look what you did!" she screamed, pointing an accusatory finger at Varrant. "You broke Sundance! Meanie! MEANIE! I'm gonna tell my dad about this!"

Then she turned and disappeared into the trees, her screaming fading away into the distance.

Varrant asked, "You got any more healing spells?"

"Nope," replied Lorelei, with a kind of grim smile.

Then they both passed out.

Cerize decided that now would be a good time to step out from behind the tree. She hoped to herself that when her companions woke up again they would not remember the event, thus giving her the chance to take all the credit.