~~~ Chapter 6: A Rock and a Hard Place ~~~
Raisu Palace Ruins, Kaineng City, Cantha
Date Unknown
Kasumi Mizushima dove to the broken flagstones, feeling a rush of air as the oversized golem's stone fist blew past her like a ballista bolt. She had to admit that she was impressed. Any one of Oola's golems would have crumpled long before under the punishment she'd delivered - for that matter, under the damage it had taken when the column had fallen upon it. And Oola was the greatest golemancer of her time - according to Oola, of course, but what Kasumi had seen of her lab tended to back up the diminutive asura's boasts. They'd certainly weathered the destroyer assault well enough, back- when? A dull boom sounded as the golem's momentum carried it into the chamber's far wall. Right. Not exactly the time for woolgathering.
At least this golem wasn't any smarter than the original models. She stumbled back to her feet, ignoring the fresh trickle of blood from her knees. The golem could keep this up all day. If she didn't come up with a better plan soon, she'd be in real trouble. She watched closely as the golem rose to its feet again. She'd finally cracked the thing's stone shell, enough to see the glow of its inner cognitive capacitance engine glimmer from the damaged torso, and had hoped one last barrage might shut the thing down. She wasn't that lucky, of course. As the golem turned back her way, she saw chips and breaks from her spirit arrows all across the construct's flank, but none close enough to widen the crack, let alone punch through.
For a moment, she wished her talents had been in elementalism. Kisai would have reduced this oversized wind-up toy to powder by now. A ritualist like her wasn't really made for throwing raw power around. If she had a staff or spear, now, she could empower it, or with a pinch of ash she could invoke the strength of a great ancestor or fallen hero, but alone, with no tools and no preparation? She was fighting with a bigger handicap than the half-broken golem.
Fallen heroes. For a moment Kasumi wondered if anyone had tried invoking her.
The golem had managed to extricate itself, now, from the wreck of the wall it had crashed into, and began lumbering back her way. She had the construct's pattern, now. Three swings, a feint backward, and then a charge like a one-golem avalanche. The charge was her opportunity, assuming she could figure out what to do with it. She couldn't keep chipping away at it with her bolts; she'd run out of luck before the golem ran out of armor. That cracked casing was her best shot, but the only way she'd be able to blast through with enough precision would be at point blank range.
That close, she'd only get one shot. Miss, and the golem wouldn't.
The golem lurched forward, now, throwing its remaining arm into a crude swing, and Kasumi jumped backward, hoping not to trip on a broken flagstone. She'd have time to get up again before the construct hit, probably, but she didn't particularly want to test that theory. Yes, the cracked casing was definitely the key, but how-
Her heel caught a fragment of broken stone, and she went down, hard. A jolt of agony shot up her arm to join the chorus of pains already clamoring for her attention. Yes, she didn't have much longer at all. The golem's fist fell like a meteor, and she rolled hastily to the side and into a crouch, shielding her face against a hail of stone fragments as the construct crushed yet another hole in the flagstones. She smiled grimly. If nothing else, there'd be nowhere left to stand.
Her hand closed around a palm-sized fragment of stone, and she grasped it tightly as she scrambled to her feet. Useless, of course, against the golem's stone armor, but she might be able to distract it long enough to make a run for the sloped rubble leading out of the ruins. Maybe. On the other hand, golems tended to be rather single minded.
Useless after all, then, unless- It was technically a weapon. And a ritualist had magic to empower weapons, even ones as crude as this. She hoped. It wouldn't have enough accuracy to do any real damage, of course, but she could give it enough force to stagger the construct, maybe even knock it down at the right moment.
It was a desperate gambit, if admittedly clever, and decidedly undignified to boot. Kasumi privately resolved that, assuming the plan worked, she would leave out the bit where the great hero had resorted to throwing rocks at her enemies.
The golem swung again and she stepped hastily to the side. One more swing, the feint, and then the charge- Of course. If she used that force not to slow the charge, but to amplify it after the construct had passed, it might buy her a few seconds. Not enough time to get out of the ruined gallery, not in her condition. But then, she had no intention of running.
Kasumi dropped to the ground again as the third swing came, narrowly missing her trailing braid. She'd forgotten how much of a liability those could be, hand to hand, but then she hadn't needed to get that close to her foes in ages. That was what warriors were for. She smiled darkly. Warriors, and other things.
She stayed low as the golem made its feint backward, and dipped her fingers into the slow stream of blood down her thigh. Now she just needed- there, a flagstone, mostly intact, easily within reach and large enough for the sigil she needed. Three quick swipes for the circle, a few narrower lines for shaping the magical energies, another, smaller rune inside to define the effect, and done.
With no time to spare, as the golem was already lumbering into its charge. "Spirits of the ancestors, empower my blade," she hissed, daubing more of her blood onto the grasped stone, and half-stood, half-lunged into a crouching roll, skinning her knees again as the construct roared past, giving her a perfect shot at its broad stone back. She shouted to focus her ki, and with an instant of heartfelt mental prayer hurled her improvised missile, now glowing with a brilliant azure aura. She felt rather than heard the impact, and saw the already off-balance construct careen forward into one of the gallery's carved altars, dislodging the great stone statue above into a slow fall and a ponderous crash atop the hapless golem.
Kasumi whispered another quick prayer, this one of apology, and wondered for a moment whether her plan had worked better than she had hoped- No, that grinding of stone meant the golem was merely pinned, and would no doubt free itself in moments. But then, those were moments the construct no longer had. Kasumi knelt again at her blood sigil, undisturbed by the golem's passage save for a fine dusting of powdered stone, and focused her will.
This wasn't ritual magic, of course. In a way, it was ironic that the asura, one of whom had no doubt built the towering guardian construct, had also taught her the key to its destruction. This spell had no incantation; asura magic was mathematical in essence, not spiritual, for all it drew on the same currents and eddies of the spirit world. The asura believed in their eternal alchemy, not in the gods of the human nations. Of course, that meant that they limited themselves to summoning creatures of the natural world, great beasts and elementals. Kasumi had no such qualms.
The grinding and shifting of stone from the golem's rocky snare rumbled to a crescendo as a faint shimmer appeared in the air above Kasumi's blood sigil, sickly green in color and becoming as rapidly more substantial as it was growing in size. She stood and stepped backward, hastily. Not even the asura knew what happened to a summoner caught in her own portal. Within the spirit gate a great and dark form was taking shape, and chill mist began to pour from the opening between worlds, covering the flagstones with a dense graveyard fog. With a final splintering crash the golem freed itself from the wreck of the shrine, and with a static-filled roar of "IN-TRU-DER DIE" launched itself at Kasumi-
And with a bellowing roar that echoed off the ruins, Kasumi's monster stepped forth to meet the golem's charge. It had the shape of a bull but walked on two legs like a man, jet black, with great spurs of glistening obsidian jutting from its skull, its spine, and its wickedly edged forelimbs. It was a minotaur as envisioned through a mad priest's nightmare: a bladed aatxe, one of the most feared denizens of the underworld. Hers to command.
The two titans clashed with a blow that shook the stones under her feet. Unexpectedly, Kasumi's knees buckled, and she struggled to maintain her focus. Lose the summoning spell, and the golem would pulp her; lose the binding controlling the aatxe demon, and it would be a race. She grimaced. Well rested, without injuries, she could maintain these spells indefinitely, but between the fatigue, the blood loss, and the mental strain of the magic she had already expended-
Well. She had better finish this, fast, or it was going to finish her. She stood once more and ducked behind a broken length of pillar to watch the battle. The two were closely matched, although the aatxe seemed to have the upper hand, for now. Its gleaming obsidian blades splintered deep gashes out of the golem's stone casing, but she felt the demon's pain and rage rising with each sledgehammer blow the construct delivered it. Sooner rather than later it was going to break her control, and the golem was still going strong.
The crack in the golem's casing was widened, at least, though not enough to deliver a barrage through, not at this distance. For a moment she wished for tighter control over her pet demon - Enough to target the construct's newfound weak point, or to guard her long enough to approach within killing distance. A stronger binding took time and magic, though, and she didn't particularly care to free the demon while she re-cast. In addition to their terrifying strength and natural weaponry, aatxe were frighteningly intelligent, known to wait in ambush for hours or spend entire days stalking uninvited visitors to the underworld. And she'd ripped this one from its home and overpowered its will with brute magical force. Somehow she suspected it would hold a grudge. For a moment, Kasumi wondered if she had cleverly managed to replace one life-threatening crisis with two.
She was reasonably safe from both as long as the bindings held, at least. The aatxe could not attack her, and she could give it a few rudimentary commands. "Hold" might extend the bindings a few precious seconds, but the golem would have free rein, and "attack" was proving more or less futile-
Or she could command it to charge. The golem was top-heavy and unstable, and she'd seen a minotaur calf bowl over a warrior in full plate, twice its height and easily triple its weight. And aatxe were bigger, stronger, and meaner. All it needed was a good head start. Mentally, she ordered the demon to stand still, and grabbing another broken stone by her feet she lobbed it at the golem with a shout.
Yes, she was definitely leaving the rocks out of her memoirs.
The construct took one last desultory swipe at the now-passive aatxe then turned to face her, its battered arcane circuitry recognizing a chance to finally crush this persistent intruder into a bloody pulp. It started forward unsteadily, damaged left side visibly dragging, and Kasumi counted its lumbering footsteps, feeling a faint echo of dark glee rebounding from the mental link to her bound demon. A few steps more, and- she felt the demon's resistance redouble as it saw her doom approaching, but with a burst of will overpowered it once more. Cheated of its revenge, the demon loosed an unearthly howl, and as the golem turned once more the aatxe launched into a charge, tossing its great obsidian horns and sending the construct sprawling to the ground with an earth-shaking crash-
And as the flagstones rumbled beneath her feet Kasumi leapt into motion, dismissing both the binding and summoning spells and marshalling the last of her magical reserves into a single burst of power. "Spirits of the ancestors, let your arrows strike my foes!" she shouted, and as the demon faded back into emptiness she jumped high onto the fallen construct's broken body, her hand outstretched over, onto, into the great gash in its stone armor, and loosed a volley of spirit bolts directly into its unprotected cognitive capacitors.
For an instant every crack and joint in the battered golem glowed with a brilliant azure light. A heartbeat later, the blast hit her like a blow from a great hand and launched her high into the air. She felt rather than heard the concussion. She was dimly aware of a feeling of falling, a nauseating spin, a floating amid razor shards of stone armor and fragments of crystal circuitry.
And then the ground rushed up to meet her and there was blackness.