Hello Friendos, Last chapter has been rewritten because I rushed it and it was stupid sorry. For those who did read that monstrosity, know that Cal will arrive soon, just not that soon lol. Thank you for your patience
Armour: Brimflame (Vanity- Rags)
Weapon: Lashes of Chaos, Undine's Retribution, Stormfront Razor
Acc(11/11): The Bee, Celestial cuffs, Mana Flower, Sorcerer Emblem, Cryo Wings, Ankh Shield, Deific Amulet, TerraSpark Boots, Grand Gelatin, Permafrost's Concotion, Evasion Scarf. (Unlimited Buffs)
Health: (500/500)
Armour: Molten Armour (Vanity - Standard)
Weapon: Uzi (High-Velocity Bullet); Molten Bow (Ichor Arrows); Arkhalis
Acc(12/12): Charm of Myths, Ankh Shield, Terraspark Boots, Luxor's Gift, Deific Amulet, Counter Scarf, Crown Jewel, MOAB, Harpy Ring, Aero Stone, Skyline Wings, Warrior Emblem, Sniper Scope
Health: (5/400)
He hated crying.
It was so strange. So unnatural. Why cry? Such a thing served no benefit. To leak salty tears from his eyes did nothing but cause his airways to become stuffed and his voice to grow nasally. It did nothing but seize control of him and cause him to sit still and wail his distress to the empty air. Was it a call for help? Yet he knew none would heed his call - for indeed, there wasn't a single person on this earth that he would dare call his friend. There was none to comfort him. No... if he cried, if he made his distress known, he only attracted mockers and murderers; men and women eager to cut him to pieces. To mash him to paste for no discernable reason other than baseless hate...
(Crash... boom...)
So then... why cry when his heart ached? Why cry when they stoked the fires of his rage? There was no reasoning with his bodily functions. Tears trailed from his remaining eye, pooling beneath his cheek as he lay crumbled against the rusted cobblestones. One of his arms was long gone. One of his ankles was shattered, he suspected the other was that red stain upon The Golem's fist. His ribcage had been smashed open and all the bones were jutting out to point accusingly at their attacker. Underneath, his organs had become a ruptured mess of flesh and sizzling bile.
And although everything hurt... but The Terrarian was no stranger to pain. It was all dull to him... nothing but a numb, sordid ache that filled him up where his strength drained away. Pain was normal. Pain was natural. To fight and to strike; to wield his blade and his bow and his firearms... to ravage his enemies, and for his enemies to ravage him. It was all so very right, crisp and clear.
(Crackle)
But not betrayal.
It was the ultimate deception. Where his friends became his enemies at the drop of a dime. Where those he loved lashed out to injure with a sparkle of triumph in their eyes. It'd happened once before and that traitorous pain nearly killed him. He'd tried anything to escape, to hide from that terrible truth. He'd retreated into fantasy. He'd engaged in distraction. He did all he could do to fill the hole- to cover the hurt...
Only to be injured once more.
And the new wound revived the old.
Then, that small, persistent flame... the lingering affection that, despite everything, The Terrarian still harbored towards his late parent...
It finally snuffed out.
(Boom!)
Heat rippled through the air as The Golem spewed its flames. Great fists pounded against the rust-coloured stones, shaking the chamber where they hit, shaking him to his very core. The stone creature which had been so single-mindedly trying to crush him just moments ago seemed to turn its attention elsewhere, providing him a brief, yet useless respite.
Because he was already dead.
He'd been crushed. Pressed flat, paralyzed and dismantled. The flow of air was strange upon his innermost parts. The heat burned most terribly upon his exposed muscles and his stripped nerves. It hurt, but a dark hate dulled the pain. A festering hate that filled his head at he gazed upon the face of his most despised enemy. The Traitor. The Manipulator. The one whose tongue spoke lies, and whose careful face hid a devil. The one who'd embraced him, only to gleefully watch him writhe and suffer. Why? Why would The Guide do such a thing?!
It doesn't matter.
He wouldn't make any more excuses.
He would accept The Guide for who he was.
The Guide's dead eyes flashed dully as they reflected the blazing firelight. His slack mouth was frozen in an expression of shock. Was he offended his scheme hadn't succeeded? Was he distressed because his evil hadn't borne fruit? The Terrarian clenched his teeth as he stared at that careful, soot covered face. The familiar head of sandy hair; the bleeding stump of his neck. The Guide's silver tongue, which had so often spewed sweet honey and deadly thorns, finally lay silent, mangled and bloody in his armoured palm. He should have torn it from The Guide's deceitful throat ages ago.
(Crash... fwoosh)
The earthshattering steps were approaching once more. The Terrarian could feel The Golem's baleful gaze turn and fix upon him. That thing would crush him. Crush him to avenge the deaths of its creators.
And, as strange as it was, in those last moments he felt a kinship with that vengeful stone creature. As he watched The Golem's fist rear back, preparing to launch a lethal strike upon his fallen form - he realized he didn't despise The Golem for it. No, it was merely seizing it's vengeance, just as he yearned to. If he could move, he wouldn't flee The Golem. No, he'd tear The Guide's corpse asunder. If he could scream, he'd hurl every obscenity he knew. With his dying breath, he'd curse him, for like The Golem, he too burned for vengeance.
...
But... but what was there to do? His abusers were both laying cold in the grave, yet although they were slain by his own hand, he felt no respite. There was no relief. The painful anger that'd blossomed in his chest had not dampened in the least when he separated The Guide's head from his body and splattered his organs to the floor. What must he do to douse the flames? What must he do to satisfy his anger?
What must he do to regain his peace?
...
The stones burned his skin. Their iron glowing red hot as flames poured over him, charring his wings to nothing, boiling his blood to ash. The Guide's face was beginning to warp with the heat. The skin melting off. The hair catching aflame. The Terrarian glared at it the head, willing himself to remember every line on that wicked face.
He would not forget The Guide.
He would harbor him close to his heart.
And he'd carry him to the grave... as many times as it took.
(CRUNCH)
For although he was advanced in years, The Old Wizard never tired of his craft. The wonder of spellsmithing never left him, even when he'd spent many lifetimes devoutly studying it. The Nameless King's hidden vault - rather, the 'lock' with which it was hidden away - was a spectacular article of wizardry. Locking spells interchanged with locking spells. Checks upon checks, failsafes upon failsafes... indeed, it was statistically impossible for any normal wizard to navigate the intricacies of the The Nameless King's Vault.
Which is why The Old Wizard - after locking himself safely within, reasonably assumed he would not be interrupted. He, despite what one might assume of him, was not a man bound by tradition. Whereas his collogues (some long dead, The Archmage included) considered certain disciplines to be anathama - namely blood magic, sacrificial rites and the invocation of the Old Gods - The Old Wizard simply didn't. Oh, of course he was socially forbidden from studying such things. In his youth, he'd been given many stern talking-tos about the books he'd checked out from the University libraries. But in the silence. In his solitude, The Old Wizard was indeed fascinated by the deep, wicked secrets of wizardry.
"He turned out quite splendidly indeed... ah, and to imagine he inherited such a close affinity for magic! Did The Cultist teach him? Heheh... He must have been a horrendous teacher. That man hadn't a scrap of patience in him..."
The Old Wizard talked to himself as he adjusted his robes on the vault's single, rather uncomfortable chair, and continued flipping through forbidden texts. He grinned ear to ear as he scoured the dusty pages. He really was awfully pleased with how The Terrarian had turned out, and felt a great deal of pride on his account. How could he not? The Terrarian was a superb creation. The paramount creature. And almost exactly how he and The Cultist had theorized all those years ago. It was no overstatement to say that - at least construction wise - The Old Wizard knew The Terrarian inside and out...
I do wonder what happened to the hair pigment though... well, he doesn't seem to be missing anything else. I wonder what sort of things he will do in the future? I-
*Crack*
The Old Wizard blinked and sat up, raising his old eyes to scan around the room. That was... odd. Nothing should be able to come in here. Perhaps a book had fallen from a shelf, or an inkwell-
*thud... thud*
...
There... there was a cold sinking feeling that seized upon The Old Man's chest. Something was happening, but he did not know what. There was a vibration through the intricate magical bindings which wove the unbreakable lock. A presence. A tremor. A ghost. Something slipped past that masterful spellsmithing. Powerful wards simply did not raise an alarm. And as The Wizard pondered these things in shock, great clunking footsteps rang out against the marble floor, approaching slowly and deliberately, filling him with such terror, The Wizard wanted to hide. Yet there was no where to hide within The Vault.
From one such as this, there was no means of escape.
*thud*
The footsteps stopped.
*Creeaaak*
The vault door slowly slid open, and-
And The Old Man daren't speak.
He merely fell, trembling, to his knees, at the feet of The Tyrant.
*Crash...clang!*
Haze.
A battle song.
It speaks to my soul in a language I do not know. Yet when I hear it, feel such kinship - such love - I feel myself falling. Falling. Falling. Falling into some sort of comfortable depravity. Somehow out of my mind, yet so completely lucid - I feel alive. A blood soaked dance of risk and reward, of adrenaline and addiction. My head is full of galloping electricity. My movements driven by frenzied excitement. Each clamourous noise that echoes through the stones is like music to my ears. Like honey on my tongue. When I taste it, I only seek more. The sound of steel screeching against rock. The sound of rock crushing through armour. The sounds of bones splintering. The sound of flesh bursting. The noise is so visceral that I can feel it in my members; I can feel it eating into my bones and crawling beneath my skin. It makes me grit my teeth until my gums bleed, and my eyes to go wide in something akin to rabid excitement. I'd heard this noise a thousand times before, sometimes accompanied with the exultation of victory; sometimes followed with the deep darkness of defeat. I'm hearing it now, and am inexplicitly drawn to it.
Am I afraid? or am I excited.
...
Ah, the fear only makes it more alluring...
For the ground upon which I run is covered in glimmering blades. Some are lodged at odd angles in the stone, others shattered as if they'd been thrown like spears. Upon closer inspection, I realize these are enchanted swords, identical to the one I'd stolen many weeks ago from that soldier outside The Dungeon Entrance. Was something deep in this place slaughtering Yharim's troops? It doesn't really matter. I'm drawn to it like a moth to a flame, eager to relish in bloodshed even if it's secondhand. I round the corner into the very last hallway - just ahead, I see flames roaring and bursting in the sacrificial chamber, and without a hint of hesitation - I sprint to jump in.
(Crash... Crunch)
(Clang!)
The noise is incredible! Roaring flames, scraping stones. I take in the scene beneath me as I spread my icy wings and soar over the flames. There it is! My enemy - thirty feet tall and forged of stone. The face is odd, rudimentary - having the features of a man, but so odd and exaggerated it is entirely unlike any person I've ever seen. Its construction is as intimidating as it is rudimentary - harsh stone drenched in blood an carved to shape with rough tools and jagged chisels. Light glows in its jeweled eyes, it's appearance is almost sunlight, but of course there is no sunlight in the depths of The Temple. I wonder-
*Crash*
The thoughts are knocked from my head as I twist to dodge. A fist slams into the wall several inches from my ear. Had I failed to flinch away, my brains would be splattered against that wall. Yet, this realization does not so much invoke fear as it does excitement. Somehow. Somehow, I know this is a foe I can defeat. With a flick of my wrist, I summon my newly crafted tome and quickly activate it. I feel my magic stores begin to drain then - at my fingertips - a horrendous crimson orb cackles to life.
*clatter clatter*
The sight is as familiar as it is sobering. A silent cackling skull gnashes its teeth at me as it floats ominously over my palm. I had dodged a thousand of these whilst battling The Fair-Faced Clone, and the sight of one - at my own fingertips no less - sends a shiver down my spine. Quickly, I launch the thing, and it smashes into The Golem. The searing abyssal flames burst and shimmer along it's stone frame - melting into the stone and dropping molten globules into the ground.
*Roaaaarrr*
It screams. Not the shout of an animal, nor the shout of a man - but instead, something completely artificial. Yet although it is entirely of rust and stone, the rage that burns in its eyes is genuine. How can a hunk of rock harbor wrath? On whose account does it seek vengeance? I cannot know, and I get the sense I cannot ask. But even so, despite that we are so different, I feel a strange sense of kinship here.
A weapon... yet I am no longer a living weapon.
Kinship, perhaps, but in the moment kinship is a fleeting thought - a feeling which is rapidly whisked away by blood-drunkeness. The damp air is warm on my cheeks and eyelashes as I leap from wall to wall. Despite the great heat of the chamber, my wings do no melt. My clothes do not burn. Invincible, I whirl through the air, up and over, weaving under, below. I tuck my wings and thread the needle as I dance through the air over The Golem's lumbering frame. There is a joy in movement. There is a joy in strength. And - without another thought paid to The Fair-Faced Clone, I hurl skull after cackling skull at my enemy, watching the rudimentary stone sag and slough away. Some of the flames seep into The Golem's innermost workings and pool there. I grin as I sense it.
*Crash-Crunch*
*boom-boom-boom*
I drain my mana heartily, fireball after fireball after fireball launching from my fingertips, into The Golem. The thing itself - made of stone - is rather resistant to burning, yet my goal is not to melt it into goop. Instead, the seeping flames begin to build pressure as I add to them. I see steam and licks of flame flashing up from the seams in The Golem's machinery. Some of its runes begin to glow crimson. One of its topaz eyes shudders and bursts off - like the lid off a teakettle. I'm barreling towards it now - dodging the impacts of increasingly frenzied fists. Flames are bursting from The Golem's mouth. Not it's flames - but mine. The thing shudders and creaks, and when I cloak my fist in abyssal flames and plow it into The Golem's stone belly-
*Ka-boom*
Concussive explosions. They ring against my eardrums and cause the air to striate in sonic impacts. I watch in glee as it quite literally rips my enemy to pieces. Its limbs burst off and crumble against the walls. Its armour likewise, scattered all over the floor. Its internal mechanisms are revealed, if only briefly in the explosion. Pillars covered in ancient runes, awash in the blood of its makers. Glowering jewels which, upon breaking, drain of their light. The scarlet flames smoulder and burn on the stones, slowly wicking out, one by one until the chamber is plunged into darkness.
...
And the sadistic smile that stretches across my face... I notice it. With no little embarrassment, I clear my throat and quickly return to myself. I refuse to be a weapon of war, but despite my efforts (and much to my chagrin), my nature is still that of a warmonger. I brush myself off and light a torch to search for anything of use from The Golem's remains. There are a variety of articles. Thick-tough beetle shells which I somehow doubt were part of The Golem's construction. An odd rounded trinket which shines with incredible lustre; a necklace with a trinket in the shape of the sun... and-
A book?
A book laying amongst the intestines of some of the fallen knights. I strange thing, a strange aura. I summon a torch to my hand as I approach, opting for firelight over the night-vision my empowering insignia grants me.
Odd.
A strange book. Bound over and over again in leather and in twine. Its a well worn thing, its covers singed, but its pages untouched. It has a sinister smell, like that of burning flesh and sulfur - and when I touch it, I feel a thrill run through me. Carefully, I pick it up, for it looks as if it'd fall to pieces if jostled too enthusiastically in one way or another.
A magic tome, maybe?
I flip it open and find... codes. Cipher. Oh, how mysterious! What sort of secrets will the book divulge once decoded? I bind it back together and stash it in my inventory, convinced it will make an adequate pastime should I ever find myself in need of activities.
(clattering, shouting)
But now is neither the time nor place for such pleasantries. I have overstayed my welcome in The Capitol City. I have fled in fear; I have fought in desperation and I have crouched in squalor. I have wreaked havoc in my enemy's house long enough, and- for my own safety- I think... it's about time I head home.
MK: You can't leave?! What would I do without you?
Guide: What do you normally do when I leave?
MK:Wait for you to come back!
Guide: *being lifted into the air by his throat* Do I even weigh anything to you?
MK: No. But if you ate my cookies, maybe you would.
G: Those were *not* chocolate chips! That was deer poop!
MK: You should have eaten my cookies!
LC: You remind me of the Ocean.
Faze: Why, because I am beautiful and mysterious?
LC: No, because you're salty and you scare people.
Thanks love you all. give kudos to co author