Savage Awakening 514. Founder Fight (I)

The Sage charged Draegmir, which left Zane to take down the Founders of the Nine Great Factions.

These were giants in the history of Dragonspire. They’d made a legacy that stretched the ages.

These were legends he was pitting himself against.

Zane had battled Thalgrim before, in a way. Back at the Festival of Might, Thalgrim had been the one Minor God he couldn’t beat on his first go-around. In Zane’s second Festival, he’d bested the fellow.

But that still meant that for aeons, Thalgrim had been the strongest Minor God the Steelheart Conclave had ever produced. He had set the all-time standard for physical strength.

This skeleton-Thalgrim stood at half-step Empyrean. Its flesh was gone, but something told Zane that Corrupted Bone through its chest made up for it. He took one look at the giant spiked hammer over its shoulder and the Destruction crackling down its ends.

He'd still bet on himself to take it, if he had to. But he decided he’d rather not eat one of those.

Each Founder wielded its own Pseudo-Universe.

One Founder floated in a sphere of water that seemed to be a portal to the deep oceans. Skeleton flood dragons swam in the distance. It had to be the Founder of the Thousand Seas Tribe.

The Eternal Ice Founder ruled a blizzard world. One flick summoned dozens of giant ice comets that shattered on impact, blasting thousands of icicles.

The Thundercrest Founder wielded a trident of lightning, three electro-balls sizzling at the tips.

The very first Patriarch, Azure Flame, was the dragonkin, and meteors roared at its back, each raging with Destruction.

The Founder of the Deep Earth Hall dredged whole continents out of its pseudo-Universe to chuck at him, and the first Mistress of the World Tree sent gnarled, thorned vines crawling out, poking hissing holes in reality...

A barrage of vicious elements was building on that dais.

Thalgrim hefted its hammer. The Mistress raised a fist.

He fought to get to them first, before they could unleash. Exploded forward as fast as he could.

He only got halfway there before they laid it on him.

The tip of a continent came flying at him. That Thundercrest Trident jabbed, and three electro-balls shot free, spinning madly. Ice meteors crashed at him. Fire meteors crashed. The sea condensed into a whirlpool of frothing, incredibly pressurized water, and a white geyser screamed out too.

It felt like he was running through the barrel of a cannon. And he was facing down a cannonball coming straight at his head.

Zane was forced to slam to a halt, throw up his chains, and block for all he was worth.

He caught the bulk of it on heavy steel, roaring. Blunted the force of it, shattered the continents against it, took a few ice meteors, and stayed standing.

Then that oceanic water cannon hit. The Azure Flame meteors too, and tree trunks ramming him out of nowhere, and that was enough to take him off his feet.

He spun mid-air, took the bulk of the force to his back, and found himself rammed a dozen feet into the marble.

CRUNCH.

Warning!

Health under 75%

He groaned.

He tried moving his legs, but he could barely budge them. His arms felt heavy too. He’d taken Bone Marrow, but he still saw stars from how hard he’d been struck at the back of the head…

He blinked.

He’d taken such an impact that his spine had shattered.

They’d run him over and broken his back in the very first exchange.

It would’ve been serious trouble if he was still the Zane who’d stepped into these ruins.

But all he had to do was grit his teeth through the pain. First, the pain of the wounds, then the pain as his bones aligned themselves again, welded themselves back together like good steel—Crack-crack-CRACK!

He stumbled up, wiping the blood from his mouth.

He’d blocked most of that, and they’d still wiped out a good 40% of his Health there.

They weren’t legends for nothing, it seemed.

He felt a spasm of Corruption behind him and twisted his body on sheer instinct. He whirled around. He felt pain flare up his thigh, growled, and swiped at the cloaked figure as it drew away, daggers shining with his blood. But the Cult of Endless Shadows Founder smoked into shadow and landed in a crouch beside its fellows.

It had just tried to cut through all his ligaments in a single stroke. Leave him on his knees—and Zane healed fast now, but even for him, it would take a few seconds to get his legs right again.

He couldn’t afford that.

Already he saw the Founders reloading, ready to flatten him again. If he’d been just a half-second slower there…

He couldn’t let them get another clean shot off. If he wanted to seize back the momentum, he had to act—now.

So he took in his foes. Took in the hall they fought in and moved.

He stomped straight into an Apocalypse Charge.

But not straight at them, like before. This time he wouldn’t make it that easy.

His first step sent him racing up the left wall. His second step left cracks down its face, throwing him forward. He dropped gravity on every step, welding him to the wall—running sideways at speed, coming at them from an angle.

The Founders adjusted fast. A few had already locked onto him. Essence started flying again. Meteors of ice hurtled at him. Flame meteors chased him down.

Zane’s third step, he slammed straight down.

That chunk of wall disintegrated beneath his feet and he blasted right across the hall, dropped gravity on the other side, rolled onto that right wall, felt six straight meteors blast the crater where he’d been. Then he was on his fourth step, and he’d closed nearly all the distance between them.

But the rest of the Founders were quick to whirl around. They locked onto him.

And he was just too close now. At first, it felt like dodging a fire hose from a hundred feet away. He just had to move well. Use all the resources at his disposal.

But when you were a foot from the mouth, there was only so much you could do.

So Zane wrapped his arms in chains, making armor. He saw six fields of essence surging for his head and chose the one he felt he could tank the best. He knew he had to take damage. So he’d take it on his own terms.

He charged into the electro-balls.

The first exploded into nothing against his chains, locking out his muscles a bit and making his jaw spasm, but that was all.

The second blew his chains away.

The third took him to the chest. It stopped his heart, made him black out—

For all of a split second.

Then he crashed straight into the Thundercrest Founder and crumpled the Monster with the full force of his charge.

His hammers crashed in too.

That still wasn’t enough to finish it off. Those million-year Bones were really something.

His fist got the job done.

Then he whirled around and found himself standing right in the middle of them.

One down, eight to go.

They lunged. And it was on.

***

‘Flurry of the Mad God’ was the Barbarian Sage’s old favorite. A trusty tool to be used for most occasions, against most foes—you’d be hard-pressed to find an Empyrean who could take more than three of his blows.

In the Sage’s prime, you could count on one hand the powerhouses that could survive all thirteen. He prided himself on that fact.

His eyes gleamed. This bag of bones gave off a hell of an aura. Couldn’t argue with that.

The Sage just wanted to see if the bastard could back it up.

He cranked that spear back, feeling the tip of it grow heavy with that sphere of absolute black…

Draegmir lifted a flimsy hand.

The reality burst open, and bones poured through.

It was as though every mountain on some undead bone-world was avalanching at once, and all those avalanches had been drawn together into one great super-avalanche—right in the Sage’s face.

The Sage had just a moment’s surprise.

Then he roared and struck.

A flurry of thirteen strikes shattered against the wave, one after another, blotting out everything that avalanche had to offer.

The trouble was, it just kept avalanching.

The Sage blinked. “…Huh.”

He had to admit—he hadn’t seen that one coming.

Then it swamped him.

A few seconds later, the rumbling stopped, and he hauled himself to his feet, spitting out a mouthful of bone.

Then he grunted.

Bone spikes stabbed out of the ground, skewering his leg. He rolled out of the way, dodging a dozen more lancing blows.

He could see how this thing wiped out whole civilizations. Finnicky bastard. The lich raised a fist, and the bones before him assembled into a replica fist fifty feet high. He just managed to leap out of the way. The blow punched a crater in the dais.

That first exchange was not his best work, he had to admit. He scrutinized the tip of his spear.

“Bit rusty,” he decided. It felt like his Law wasn’t all the way there yet. Not the biggest surprise, with how long he’d been out. There was still some dust to brush off.

He shrugged and grinned. He’d work his way into it. He wasn’t too worked up about it.

He took a moment to check on how the lad was doing.

Zane had been flattened by a tide of essence, the last the Sage saw of him. He was pleasantly surprised to find the lad in the thick of it, giving as well as he got. Two Founders were down, by his count—the lightning fellow and the weird water guy.

Granted, the lad was taking a lot too.

Zane’s leg looked pretty badly broken. Nose too, which was normal, but his jaw was broken in a few places, as was his cheekbone. But the lad had a good head on him. He could take that.

The Sage scratched his chin. Prime Blood was patching the lad up pretty well. It was just that he was taking damage faster than it could heal. Still—all in all, pretty solid work, the Sage felt. Zane was currently cranking some chains around the skeleton of the Dawn Archmage.

“Keep it up!” he said cheerfully.

His own Prime Blood was working on his leg. Not quite as fast as Zane’s, it had to be said. Most of his Prime Blood worked on his Destruction scars, healing them constantly, as they had for hundreds of thousands of years. Still, it meant he had some aches and pains here and there.

Then he turned back to the lich and cracked his neck.

As much as he wanted to cheer the lad on, he had a rat to take care of.

This is… no contest… Draegmir shook his head. You are… at the end… ruined… old for your kind…

The lich seemed to think it was a shame. There is no hope for you… why waste such… precious… energy? Kneel… I will grant you this… ‘clean death’… that you so cherish…

The Sage had to laugh at that. His grin grew fiercer.

His Universe rumbled out of him, a black that kept on darkening.

In the same way the noon sun breaking through clouds heats up land, the Sage’s gravity started to make its presence known.

“Might be you don’t know me as well as you think.”

Then he leaped out into the shattered windows into the courtyard. Draegmir shambled toward him. The lich seemed to think it was just bluster.

It was time to see just how much he could remember.

The Sage didn’t think himself a very prideful man. He didn’t mind the wind that came out of folks’ mouths these days.

But there was a time, ages ago, when he had a good time with it.

When folks’ words scratched up against his strength, and he took pleasure in making fuel of it.

He was pleased to find himself feeling that spark again.

He just didn’t want the lad to get caught in the blast radius.

He gave Zane one last look. The lad had just about managed to finish off the Dawn Archmage, but the six Founders left seemed to be trying some kind of trick—teaming up, standing in formation, linking their strengths. A prismatic force field had sprung up that would challenge an Empyrean to break. It welded six pure elements together.

Zane was throwing himself against it furiously, with no success.

…Nah.

The lad had this.

The Sage kept the faith and went to war.