Chapter 97 - Fall of the Architect

  The realization hit me like a thunderbolt. The Architect had screwed up. We had a way to win this after all!

  "Alex!" I screamed over the chaos below. "Has your mana recovered yet?"

  I saw him look up, squinting through the haze of spores and smoke. He raised one hand, fingers trembling from exhaustion. "Barely! Maybe one Bolt! Why?"

  "Look at the Architect!" I gestured wildly at the massive column. "All the pods are empty! It sent everything at us! There's nothing left to block our shots!"

  Even from a distance, I could see the moment understanding dawned on his face. His exhausted expression transformed into something fierce and determined. He glanced at Marion, said something I couldn't hear, then his body lifted off the ground as he activated his Flight spell.

  Alex rose unsteadily into the air, wobbling slightly as he climbed. Flying while exhausted clearly wasn't easy for him, but he pushed through, ascending until he was level with me, just a few feet apart. Below us, our party was being pressed back, step by bloody step. Marion's healing light flashed constantly, but even she had to be running on fumes.

  "Together?" Alex called across the distance.

  "Together," I confirmed, raising my hand toward the Architect.

  The column still pulsed with that angry crimson light, but it had no defenders left. Every single pod had been emptied in its desperate gambit to overwhelm us. It had bet everything on drowning us in bodies, and now it was going to pay the price.

  Alex and I locked eyes for just a moment. No words were needed. We'd fought side by side through hell itself over the past few hours. This was it, I felt sure of it. We’d hammer it with twin Lightning Bolts, and that would be the killing blow.

  We cast simultaneously.

  Two lances of brilliant purple Lightning erupted from our outstretched hands, streaking across the cavern in perfect parallel lines. The air cracked and sizzled as the bolts raced toward their target. I held my breath, praying this would be enough. It had to be enough!

  The Lightning Bolts struck the Architect's column at almost the exact same instant.

  The impact was cataclysmic.

  The column exploded with light, the deep crimson glow within it flaring so bright I had to shield my eyes. Cracks spider-webbed across its entire surface, each one leaking that dark, viscous fluid that hissed and steamed where it touched the floor. The deep bass thrum that had been its voice turned into a shriek that made my teeth ache.

  More cracks formed, spreading like wildfire up and down the massive structure. Chunks of fungal flesh sloughed off, crashing to the ground in wet, meaty slaps. The crimson glow flickered wildly, pulsing faster and faster as if the thing's heart was going into cardiac arrest.

  "We did it!" Alex shouted triumphantly. But even as the words left his mouth, something changed.

  The Architect's shriek shifted in pitch, sounding more like rage. The cracks along its base widened dramatically, and with a sound like tearing meat, the entire column ripped itself free from the stone floor.

  "Oh, you have got to be kidding me," I muttered.

  The massive pillar of fungal matter tilted forward, and as it did, its base split and reformed. Two massive legs, each thick as tree trunks, formed from the damaged tissue. They were malformed things, uneven and grotesque, but they held the Architect's weight as it lurched forward with shocking speed.

  The column-turned-monster staggered toward our party below, each footfall shaking the entire cavern. It was dying. That much was clear from the way fluid poured from its wounds. But it wasn't dead yet, and a tier ten creature, even a dying one, could slaughter everyone down there before it finally gave up.

  "Alex!" I started to say, but when I looked over at him, I saw his Flight was failing. His body dipped, then dropped several feet before he managed to stabilize himself. His face was pale, slicked with sweat.

  "I'm out," he gasped. "Nothing left."

  His Flight spell guttered out completely, and he began to fall.

  I dove, streaking through the air at top speed. I caught Alex just ten feet above the cavern floor, his momentum nearly dragging us both down before I managed to adjust. I carried him quickly to where Marion stood in the center of our defensive formation and set him down as gently as I could manage.

  "Cam—" Alex started, grabbing my arm.

  "I know," I said, looking up at the approaching Architect. The thing was moving faster now, finding its rhythm with those horrible legs. Twenty more seconds and it would reach our party. "I'm the only one who can stop it."

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  "Cameron, wait—"

  But I was already gone, launching myself back into the air.

  The Architect's many wounds bled freely as it lumbered forward. Its top section, still resembling that brain coral Alex had mentioned, swiveled toward me as I approached. Even dying, the thing was aware, intelligent, and seriously pissed off!

  I didn't give it time to react. Instead, I poured every ounce of speed I had into my Flight, becoming a missile of flesh and fury aimed directly at the monster's center of mass. At the last second, I curled my body and led with my left shoulder.

  The impact when I hit was like crashing into a concrete wall.

  Pain exploded through my shoulder and chest, but I felt the Architect's body give way beneath me. I punched through its outer layer, driving deep into the fungal flesh. The sensation was indescribable—like diving into a pool of rotten meat that fought back.

  The Architect screamed. The sound was so loud, so visceral, that I felt it in my bones. Its entire body convulsed, trying to throw me off, but I was already inside its defenses. I reached out with both hands and began to tear.

  My fingers sank into fibrous tissue that felt wrong in every possible way. Too soft in some places, unnaturally hard in others, all of it slick with that dark ichor that burned my skin where it touched me. I ripped and pulled, tearing away chunks of the Architect's insides. Each piece I removed made the creature shudder and shriek.

  It wasn't going down easy.

  It formed an arm and reached into the hole I’d made to grab hold of me. The massive limb caught me around the ribs, grabbing tight, yanking me out, and sending me flying. I hit the cavern floor hard enough to crack stone, rolled, and immediately pushed myself back up.

  The Architect had turned to face me, its brain-like top section pulsing with that crimson light. For a moment, we stared at each other, man and monster. I had a sense it knew this was the end, one way or another. One of us was going down.

  I charged, activating Flight again. I used it not so much to gain altitude as to accelerate just above the ground. I shot forward like a bullet, closing the distance in a heartbeat, and drove my fist into one of its legs with every ounce of strength I possessed.

  The leg shattered. Fungal matter exploded outward, and the Architect toppled sideways with a thunderous crash. It tried to right itself, but I was already on it, climbing up its bulk, tearing away chunks of its body as I went. Behind me, I heard the sounds of battle as my party fought off the remaining swarm. I hoped they’d be able to keep each other safe while I dealt with the main threat, because I couldn’t spare attention for them, not right now.

  I reached the top of its bulk and plunged both hands into the brain-like surface. The tissue was dense there, tightly packed, and I realized this had to be something vital. Maybe it was the closest thing to a brain this creature had.

  The Architect bucked and thrashed beneath me like a mechanical bull made of nightmares. It rolled, trying to crush me against the floor, but I held on, fingers locked into its flesh. Dark fluid poured over my hands, burning like acid, but I simply refused to let go.

  "Die already!" I roared, and use the last of my mana to fire another Lightning Bolt out through my hands, directly into it. The spell was different at this range, cast directly into the creature's core. Instead of a crackling blast of purple light energy, the electricity blasted straight into it, burning and tearing the thing’s body.

  The Architect's movements became sluggish. Its crimson glow flickered, dimmed. The screaming stopped, replaced by a wet, gurgling sound.

  But it still wasn't dead.

  With the last of its strength, the creature tried one final attack. Tendrils burst from its surface, dozens of them, whipping toward me from every direction. I couldn't dodge them all. They wrapped around my arms, my legs, my torso, trying to pull me away from its core.

  I did the only thing I could think of. I let go with one hand and made a fist, then punched straight down into the brain-like tissue with every last bit of Strength I had left. My arm plunged through the Architect's core like it was made of wet paper. I felt something solid in there, buried deep. Whatever it was, it felt hard, like a fist-sized rock. I grabbed it and pulled.

  The Architect's entire body convulsed once, violently. Then it simply collapsed. The tendrils holding me went slack and fell away. The crimson light died completely. The massive column of fungal matter began to dissolve, breaking down into foul-smelling liquid that spread across the cavern floor in a rapidly expanding pool.

  I stood there, chest heaving, covered head to toe in gore. The hand I still had touching the creature was suddenly holding a massive tier ten crystal that pulsed with power. We’d done it. The boss was finally, at last, defeated. Dizzy, I stepped back from the dissolving corpse, trying to catch my breath. My clothes were in ruins, my skin scored by acid burns, and I was exhausted, totally tapped out on mana. But we’d done it.

  I turned back toward the group, prepared to help as best I could, but there was no need. The entire swarm of fungus cats and crawlers simply fell over, their bodies going limp like puppets with cut strings. One moment they'd been pressing the attack, and the next they were just dead. All of them. Piles of tier three monsters, gone in an instant.

  The silence that followed was deafening.

  "Cameron?" Alex's voice echoed across the cavern. "Did you…? Is it over?"

  I looked down at the crystal in my hand, then at the rapidly dissolving remains of what had been the Architect. "Yeah, it's over."

  I started walking back toward the group, my legs trembling from exhaustion. Each step felt like I was wearing lead boots. About halfway there, something caught my eye.

  Where the Architect had stood, where its base had been anchored to the floor, there was now a swirling portal. It looked exactly like the one we'd used to enter this nightmare dungeon, a vertical disk of rippling energy, maybe eight feet tall, that cast dancing shadows across the cavern walls.

  "The exit," Dara breathed. She'd walked up beside me without my noticing, her face streaked with grime and blood. "That's the way out."

  I nodded, too tired to speak.

  One by one, the rest of the party gathered. We stood there in a loose semicircle, staring at the portal. Nobody moved to approach it. Not yet. We needed to collect the stones from the dead minion monsters, but beyond that…? We were all too exhausted, too shell-shocked by what we'd just survived.

  Alex limped over and clapped a hand on my shoulder. He looked like he'd been through a war. Which, I supposed, he had. "You did good, Cam. Really good."

  "We all did," I replied. “It’s a tier ten Heal crystal. This is going to save a lot of lives, when we get it back home.”

  “Definitely will,” Alex replied, picking up the crystal from my hand. “We’ve done what we came here to do, people. Let’s collect the stones from there rest of these monsters and get ourselves back home, eh?”