In the white void, a human-like shadow stood over him.
The dark, faceless blur became the snout of Agro.
Wander slowly came to, taking note of the horse lying beside him, keeping watch. He patted the loyal animal with appreciation.
One colossus had been felled by his blade. Nine creatures yet remained.
Nine. He nearly lost his life a dozen times over to the equine colossus alone: one slip of his grasp while astride its earthen back would have spelt his doom.
Its cries and lifeless gaze still haunted him; though it appeared to be made of stone, its presence felt alive, full of pain and sorrow.
In Wander's estimation, it did not seem overly cruel or evil; no more so than Agro, and certainly less so than the Warrior that attacked Mono.
No matter; he could ill-afford pity when the stakes were this high, and when he was tasked with the defeat of stone monsters more than ten times his size.
How would he contend with nine more such fiends?
And where in this accursed land would he find them all?
The ancient sword. It would show him where next he would be bound.
He drew the sword and lifted it to the light: it shimmered and sent forth a beam that raced outward to a distant lake.
Dormin's voice spake again, seemingly emanating from within himself: "A colossal shadow soars through the sky across a ruin, hidden in the misty lake... a ripple of thunder lurks underwater... the anger of the mounted giant shatters the earth…"
What are these colossi, asked Wander in the form of thought. And why do you desire their destruction? What kind of game are you playing, Dormin?
There was no response, from within or otherwise. He sighed, painfully getting to his feet.
"...I suppose it does not matter. When my task is done, if you do as you promised, I care not. I do not want to know. It would be too great a burden, to know the price of a soul.
Wander urges Agro up as well. "Come Agro. We have more to do."'
XXXXXXXXX
Lord Emon reigned in his grey horse, staring at the Green Hills burial mounds aghast.
The chief-shaman dismounted, as did his men, and he made his way into the midst of the ruin.
A terrible battle had been fought here; the evidence was spewn all about.
Debris. Rubble. Scarred earth. The tunnels that once led into the earthen tombs were caved in, and inaccessible to the living.
A desecration.
Lord Emon shivered. His forebearers were laid to rest in those tombs: kings and chiefs, shamans and heroes. Their souls were formidable, and he could feel their anger quaking in his aged bones.
A pillar of light stretched from the battlefield to the heavens above, its source obscured by what remains of the mounds.
Apprehensive, Lord Emon went 'round, and saw the prostrate body of the colossus Phaedra, sprawled out motionless upon the grass.
The pillar of light sprang forth from it, the base rooted in its form where its living heart would be.
Phaedra's eyes were without glow.
"He has made the first sacrifice," rasped Lord Emon, winded from the sheer audacity of the deed.
"Where will he go next?" asked one of his acolyte companions.
"I do not know. Wherever Dormin sends him. He is a puppet... and now he harbors a piece of Dormin's malignant soul."
Wander, he thought, his inner voice howling the name with grief; for how could the boy he loved as dearly as kin commit such heinous sacrilege?
How could the boy, to whom he taught the Ways, make such a vile pact with a demon-god?
He knew he loved the girl; and indeed she had been a good soul, as lovely as a dove.
But this… this was madness.
No one mortal soul was worth this.
Wander was too young to understand that he would love again; there were other girls in the world, other reasons to continue living.
Surely the boy did not understand how cheaply he had sold his soul; how little benefit he would enjoy from the bargain he had made, nor of how dire the cost would be to others.
Wander, his heart cried out again; Wander, what have you done?
XXXXXXXXX
Wander rode toward rocky cliffs, encircling a fog-shrouded lake.
Stone masonry, marred by the ravages of time, pierced the tranquil lake surface with jagged peaks; once the towers of a fortress, if not a city, submerged over the ages and given a burial of water.
At the cliff-edge Wander dismounted; Agro could go no further.
He made his descent by way of shimmying down stone pillars, and climbing down rusted gates, until at last he dropped into the lake itself.
The water was cold and slick with brine; it was greenish-grey, murky, its cloudy depths an enigma difficult to fathom.
A strange sense tickled the back of Wander's skull, prompting him to turn his gaze upward.
Perched atop one of the ruined towers was the ominous silhouette of a giant bird-like colossus, whose name in ancient days was Avion.
Its unblinking gaze of blue was fixed upon Wander, its body unnervingly still.
Wander knew not how to proceed: he had neither the element of surprise as an ally, nor was he in good position to assail the great stone bird while submerged in the water of the lake.
Fixated by Avion, he did not immediately notice a twisting shadow in the water's murky depths beneath him.
Sensing an ominous presence from below, Wander looked down in time to see glowing eyes and glowing spikes rising up to meet him.
He flailed aside to avoid the head of Hydrus as it broke the water's surface.
Wander swam to a stone platform, and pulled himself upon it to attain refuge.
The eel-like sea-serpent colossus arced back in the water, letting the spikes that protruded from its spine slice the air and crackle with captured lightning.
The serpent disappeared into the depths, but the great carrion-bird still watched and waited with an eerie patience.
Why do you watch, you vulture? thought Wander, anger rising within him. You think you can let the serpent do the work? Do you think yourself safe up there on your perch?
Impetuously he drew his bow, nocked an arrow, and let it fly into the breast of Avion.
The bird colossus looked down upon the arrow, and then again at Wander with eyes of flaming red-gold.
It screeched and spread its stone and moss wings wide, and glided down at Wander who stood on the platform below.
Having acted out of thoughtless anger, unprepared was Wander for the creature to counter his attack.
The shoulder of the great bird struck him full, knocking the bow from his hands, and freeing his grip to take hold of the bird's earthen wing.
The bow sunk into the dark water, and Wander clung to the edge of Avion's wing as it soared.
Wind buffeted him with great force; only with great difficulty did he climb from the shoulder of Avion, finding purchase for his fingers in the brown turf hide.
Once upon the creature's back, Wander drew the ancient sword so that its light could reveal to him the sigil he thought existed on the head or at the base of the neck; yet none there appeared.
Instead, the refracted light converged in the opposite direction, leading to a sigil glowing at the end of Avion's long, flat brush tail.
Wander inwardly groaned, wondering how he would reach that far-flung destination from his current point, with the beating of the mighty wings threatening to unbalance him, giving him up to the howling wind.
Wander crouched low, and crawled toward the tail, picking his way along by gripping the brown grass fur.
Allow this Avion would not: it tossed itself about in mid-air.
Wander sunk his fingers into the turf, and staked his life upon the strength of the entwisted roots.
When after the sickening tumble Avion once again righted, Wander released his hold and made a desperate run for the tail.
The tail swerved to and fro, forging a moving path.
Wander's balance nearly failed him; he resorted to crouching every few paces, waiting, moving only when the tail was sufficiently level; slow was his progress.
As he reached the long-sought sigil, Avion foresaw the danger and flew sharply upwards… but not before Wander drove his sword-point into the sigil, with a resultant spurt of black blood.
Avion sounded a piercing, screeching cry.
The tail was now a rod aligned perfectly between heaven and earth; Wander clung to the ancient sword lodged deep in that tail, as something which hangs from an iron nail hammered into a wall.
His feet dangled over the clouds below; what little he could see of the lake made it seem as a salivating mouth ringed with tower-teeth of sharp and jagged grey stone.
Avion's form froze into a posture of pain, then fell into a headlong dive.
Whereas before the tail hung below the great body of the bird colossus, now were their positions reversed; tail rode at high angle toward the sky, while beak flew as an arrow aimed toward the waiting lake.
Wander, pinioned to the tail by way of the sword, flew along with Avion, his sandaled feet streaming directly behind him.
A moment before making contact with the water Avion recovered, flapping his wings.
Wander was aghast; sure was he that the creature was felled, and had been destined for a watery grave or to be dashed upon the stone masonry. Why did the colossus yet live?
The answer to his mental query presented itself, as two new twin sigils appeared in unison at the tips of the birds' wings.
Wander's mind was boggled by the prospect of traversing along Avion's moving, beating wings, yet he knew full well he had no choice in the matter.
Back whence he came along the tail he ran, though now the tail was petrified, immovable and straight; thankful was he for having accomplished that much, with the wounding of the first sigil.
As Wander crawled along a flexing wing, his body was stretched, lifted, turned and plunged with every flap.
The motion set his brain and stomach at odds, making him nauseous; he wretched and heaved, expelling only the burning, vivid-yellow bile from his gut.
The angles and extremity worsened as he neared the wing-tip where the sigil lay. He readied his sword, but the blow was not to come: for Avion renewed its strategem of rolling about in the air.
Wander's sense of up and down, and where he himself existed in the directional plane, was shaken all to ruin.
He stabbed at the sigil, but his aim proved false; the sword uselessly pricked the turf outside the sigil.
Desperate, he tried once more; this time the sword pierced well enough within the bounds of the sigil that it spurt black blood and disappeared.
The wing turned stiff, at once rendered immobile by the destruction of the sigil that erstwhile served as its source of power.
The body of Avion listed; the injured wing dipped into the water, while the other tilted upward.
Wander climbed up the steep incline of the moving wing, to reach what he hoped would be the last sigil.
Waiting for the tip to curl toward him, he stabbed with his sword, and missed utterly his mark; on the second attempt he made a shallow wound, but it was enough to break the sigil.
The newly-paralyzed second wing came toward him; Avion's body turned over mid-air as it died, taking Wander with it.
Wander was plunged into the water, underneath the shadow of its lifeless form.
He removed his sword from Avion's hide and swam through the darkness, to get out from underneath the colossal body before it took him to the bottom of the lake and pinned him there to drown.
Once free of it, he watched the winged colossus fall into the depths, the light in its eyes flickering and going out.
But past the curtain of bubbles, none other than the serpent Hydrus waited, eyes still glowing with living blue light and fixed upon Wander.
Wander swam toward the light of the surface; Hydrus pursued.
Wander broke through the surface, gasping, and not a moment later the head of Hydrus emerged with him.
The serpentine stone head dove at him like a striking viper; Wander swam aside, letting Hydrus dive into the water at the spot where he once was.
Before the colossus could submerge, Wander lifted the sword and revealed the sigil on the creature's back, located between two lightning infused spikes; fortuitously, his bow was hooked around one of these spikes as well.
Wander sprang forth and seized upon the serpent's tail, pulled along with it under the water.
Hydrus knew he carried a passenger, one that could not exist for long without air; it dove down deep to drown Wander, or else force him to make for the surface.
It was not for lack of air that Wander lost his hold upon the tail, but rather that his overtaxed sinews gave way when faced with the pull of the water, and the relentlessly twisting motions of Hydrus.
Wander lost both his grip upon Hydrus' tail, and sight of Hydrus itself, in nearly the same moment.
He was left alone and lost, suspended in the dark water.
Wander cast his gaze about frantically; he knew not how deep he was, nor how far from the surface and its life-giving air.
And where was that serpentine monster? All was too murky and indistinct in that underwater world.
Something struck him from behind, and filled his body with burning pain; it was the spike of the creature.
Beyond the blinding pain, there was something else he felt upon his back: the bow. He grabbed hold of its wooden shaft, using as one would a handle, to prevent the serpent from diving away without him.
The tendrils of darkness from fallen Avion reached out with force toward Wander; they ran straight through the lightning-imbued spike around which the bow was hooked, to enter Wander's body.
Hydrus arched violently, reacting to the loss of its spike, thus halting its dive.
Wander hooked the bow around the spike remaining, and so anchored he pushed the ancient sword into the glowing sigil along the spine of Hydrus.
Hydrus' dull bellow reverberated through the lake.
Black blood clouded the water, and enveloped Wander in darkness.