Chapter 40

  The silence shattered the moment Raime’s breath returned to him.

  The chains’ command still echoed in his skull—seek me in the capital—but there was no time to linger, no time to question. He was free, and he would not waste that freedom. Not now. Not after nearly surrendering his will to a false god.

  His eyes darted across the chamber. The guards were still statues, locked in place by the same voice that had seemed to have halted time itself. Harmless. The chained eye loomed in the center, restrained, an impossible foe to defeat, but unable to pursue him outside. There was only one real threat that was preventing him from escaping this mountain.

  The guardian.

  The being still hovered at his side, its placid face turned fractionally toward him. A calm that had broken his resistance once. A serenity that had drowned his will. The memory of that helpless suspension seared through Raime’s chest like fire, the humiliation twisting into something sharp. He would not feel that again. He would never feel that again.

  Already his decision was made. The plan was simple, brutally so: the guardian had to die.

  He turned sharply, muscles screaming into motion, and hurled himself at the creature. His boots slammed against crystal as he surged forward, each step fuelled by a pulse of cold rage.

  How does it feel now? he thought, his teeth bared as he sent a probing lash of thought at the being’s mind. The probe skidded uselessly against defences thicker than steel. Of course. No breach, no weakness to pry open. The guardian’s psyche was a fortress he couldn’t storm.

  But flesh was not thought. Bone was not will.

  Raime’s fist drew back. Every thread of psionic force coiled through him, feeding his momentum, his fury. The few meters vanished in an instant, and his right arm came down like a hammer.

  The blow crashed into the guardian’s chest. He felt the ribs give, bones splintering beneath his knuckles, the sound sharp as breaking crystal. Flesh tore. Ichor burst across his forearm, warm and slick, spattering across violet shards of stone. The guardian’s body was hurled backward, crashing into the chamber wall with a sickening crunch. Crystals snapped, broke, and some drove deep into its torso, pinning it in jagged spears.

  Still alive.

  Raime bounded forward, his cloak flaring like smoke behind him. His rage had teeth now, gnawing at his restraint. He seized the guardian’s head, hands clamping down with a strength born not just of muscle but of raw fury.

  The creature’s single eye stared back, wide and unblinking. That violet calm was still there, maddening in its serenity, as though even now the being felt no fear, no pain.

  Raime’s fingers dug deeper, thumbs pressing into the slick edges of the orb. He expected it to give like flesh, to burst like a soft organ. It didn’t. The eye resisted him with a crystalline hardness, gleaming even under pressure.

  Snarling, Raime drove harder. His thumbs slipped into the socket, not through the eye, but around it, pushing into the fragile bone at its sides. He felt cracks spiderweb beneath his grip, the skull giving way where the eye did not.

  Then the resistance came. Not physical, it didn’t come from the bones.

  A wall of psychic force, humming like a shield, thrummed against his fingers. His whole body shook with the clash. He could feel it—this barrier wasn’t a simple defense. It was the creature’s will, a fortress raised around its very mind, daring him to try.

  Raime screamed, voice raw, primal. Rage boiled in his chest, pouring into his psionic thread. His rage fed it, and the thread swelled in response, surging like a flood through his veins. Strength spilled from mind into muscle, from will into flesh.

  His hands trembled with power. His arms locked like iron. He felt the energy descend from his head into his shoulders, down through his biceps, forearms, into his very fingertips, coiling around bone and tendon. He became the conduit, his emotions fueling the force, the force amplifying his rage in turn. A cycle that burned brighter and hotter with every heartbeat.

  The guardian’s psychic barrier wavered.

  Just for a second, just long enough.

  Raime roared and slammed his palms inward. The skull caved under the pressure. The barrier shattered like glass under the weight of his fury.

  With a final snap, the guardian’s head exploded in his grip. Bone, ichor, and brain matter burst outward in a grotesque spray, painting the wall and Raime’s chest alike. He used his telekinesis at the last moment to redirect the brain fluid away from his face, he didn’t want to see if a potential buff was going to put him through an attribute threshold again.

  The body twitched once, pinned to the crystalline wall by broken shards, then sagged limply.

  Raime staggered back, chest heaving, hands dripping with ichor and slimy cerebral fluid. His breath came heavy, each inhale tasting of iron and dust. His eyes burned, his knuckles throbbed, but the rush of power still sang in his veins, hot and relentless.

  The guardian was dead. Truly dead. And he had to move.

  Raime didn’t give himself time to hesitate. There was only the raw, hot insistence to be farther from that chamber with every heartbeat, so he ran.

  The cave’s exit yawned ahead, a ragged mouth of crystals. For a brief second he let his eyes take in the ruin he’d left: the guards, the dark wet stains on the crystals, the guardian pinned with its head caved in. He ought to have felt relief. Instead his stomach clenched with something colder, darker. Or maybe it was just the fatigue of having used a part of himself he never had before.

  Another detail stood out to him, he saw the guardian eye rolling on the crystal covered floor. Perfectly spherical and clean, it didn’t look like a real eye at all, more like a bauble, a jewel. His fingers twitched. He sent the telekinetic tug to the violet eye rolling on the floor — a reflex, ridiculous and petty after everything — and it obediently lifted, hovered in the air like some tiny planet. It stopped a breath from his open palm. For a moment the world hiccupped: he saw himself taking it, holding it up like proof he’d survived, proving he hadn’t been broken. He saw the eye catch the light and shine like a gem.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  He felt his own thought recoil. He’d never taken trophies. He didn’t want souvenirs of killing. This wasn’t him, he just wanted to escape, this was a trap, another manipulation. He let the telekinetic pull slack and the eye drift past him, rolling toward the chamber doorway. He spared one last glance at the chained god in the middle of the chamber.

  I will not fall for your tricks again. He thought while pushed through the door, closing it behind him. He tried to wedge something—anything—into the seam, but the stone was unforgiving. No doorframe in this place took kindly to being barricaded.

  Then he ran for the exit.

  Levitation lightened him the way a whisper lightens a shout; muscles still had to do the work. He ran on walls and vaulted over vanes of shattered crystal, taking corners low and hard to exploit momentum. The corridors blurred into a wash of violet and grey. Around the bends, the corpses of the creatures he’d killed earlier lay like a broken trail—bodies he’d left behind in panic, things he had not paused to name. Each one was a stain at his conscience as he passed.

  He checked inwardly for his weapons with a practiced pulse. He felt the comforting, eager tug of Thunk answering his call from the entrance chamber where it had fallen. The Tetra Unum was there too. Small mercies, at least I didn’t lose them. Raime continued forward until he reached the entrance, Thunk flew eagerly into his hands, the familiar weight reassuring, while the Tetra Unum slid back into place at his side with a familiar hum, assembling itself into fighting formation as if it had been waiting for him to need it again.

  Good. Not enough—but better.

  When he scanned the corridor behind him he found movement: small at first, then swelling. The guards were no longer statues. They were coming alive like a wound reopening. Distant shapes moved in the violet glow—too few for comfort but too many to ignore. He had no idea how much time he had, minutes, or seconds; the chains’ voice had given him no clock. He only had the certainty that the mountain would not let him leave quietly.

  The exit itself was a lie. The main corridor had been collapsed—he’d seen that—and now a wall of stone blocked the path. He had to cut another way out. Higher. To the left, where the rock felt thinner, seven meters or so up, and at least three deep. He judged the span and willed the Tetra Unum into action.

  He fed every ounce of remaining psionic power into the weapon. The blades began to spin like a drill — not a lazy rotation but a tearing howl, the Tetra Unum screaming as it bit into the stone. Raime anchored himself to the weapon with a telekinetic brace, set his legs, and pushed the drill upward. This technique allowed him to use his powerful body to push against distant objects, in this case he would use his psychic strength for the rotation, and his body for shoving the weapon turned drill forward. The spear-tip kissed the rock and then sank, metal whining against mineral, crystals shivering like chimes struck by a storm.

  The first contact sang through his bones. Dust exploded. The mountain answered with a howl of grinding stone that ripped at his ears and sent a fine powder into the air. If any nearby creature hadn’t known he was here before, they knew now. He tasted fear at the back of his tongue — not his own, but something spooling in the mountain’s throat.

  Chunks of crystal and rock danced away in arcs. The three blades widened, carving a channel upward. He had to think in breaths: push—stabilize—twist—press. Every motion pulled more from his Thread, his muscles, the last of the adrenaline in his veins. The drill chewed through seams and veins of violet crystal that rang like bells as they shattered. His lungs burned for air; sweat stung his eyes. In the corridor behind him he could hear the soft clatter of footfalls, then the low keening of minds beginning to rail against him. He felt their approach as prickling pressure at the edges of his perception.

  Halfway through the cut he felt it—an answering effort. The eye, or whatever part of the mountain still listened to it, was aligning force to oppose his work. He felt a slow push against the blade, as if something vast had pressed a palm to the shaft and was trying to stop him by will alone. Dust obscured his vision; the drill slowed.

  Don’t stop.

  He hurled a raw wedge of psionic force into the weapon, letting rage and survival flood down his Thread. The Tetra Unum obeyed like a beast unleashed. The drill screamed, speed climbing until the rock buckled and seams gave. Stone cracked in a long, screaming line. The channel widened fast, ragged and hot, and a gust of fresh air hit him—he opened the path.

  He shoved the weapon hard. The blades tore out of the wall with a final shudder and a roar, and in that same instant the opening gave—a ragged mouth in the rock big enough for a man to throw himself through. The edge of the left flank was rough and sharp; shards of purple crystal still clung to the frame like teeth.

  Behind him the mountain answered with a scream—low and coordinated, as if every stone, every guardian, every creature in the bowels of the mountain had been given the signal. Running feet hammered closer. Voices—muted and terrible—bloomed into the tunnels. The first of the guards rounded the bend, spear up, eyes like chips of midnight.

  No time to linger.

  He jumped and flung himself through the new hole. He could barely fit through it. The stone rasped against his cloak; crystals broke on his armour. He rolled as he hit the outside slope, the open air sharp and cold. For a brief instant the world spun—a dizzy—and then he was pushing himself upright, gasping as the sky beyond the mountain stared down at him, indifferent, beautiful.

  The mountain’s flank fell away into steep scree; below, the Rift’s forest spread like a dark, twitching quilt. The path down was jagged and treacherous but it was an exit, and it was movement away from that eye and those chains.

  Behind him, the hole he’d torn gaped and the mountain’s voice rose in a terrible, layered cry. Figures began spilling out after him—guards, then more guards from the plateau at the cave entrance—nudged by the slow, inexorable pressure of the eye’s will. He saw them rise at the lip, dozens of spearheads pointed at him. They advanced with alacrity, like predators surrounding prey.

  Raime didn’t wait to see their numbers mount. His energy reserves were nearly depleted after the ordeal, he needed to run. He gripped Thunk, felt the Tetra Unum hum obediently at his side, still hot from the digging, and launched himself down the mountain. He slid, feet finding holds where none seemed to exist, levitation compensating for the fall. His lungs burned; his muscles screamed in protest. He could feel behind him the creatures follow, certain footfalls of things that could not accept defeat.

  The mountain flung itself at him: a flurry of spears, of mental pressure, of crystalline shards that twinkled like malice. Raime twisted, rolled, blocked with the Tetra Unum when needed, and kept moving. His mind worked in a series of sharp, economical calculations: where to step, when to jump, which branch might hold, how long until the forest’s edge separated the mountain from the rest of the Rift, and the servants of the false god would have to fight the riftborn beasts.

  He didn’t look back until he was breathing shallow, lungs full of cold air and the small rasp of victory. The entrance he had made glimmered behind him, a dark mouth stitched badly in stone. The violet light within was a smear, not a beacon. The chained eye stood, stuck in the mountain, swallowed by shadows and the chains that had been his trap.

  He kept running.

  The capital was the only thing in his mind at the moment, a thin thread from the chains’ voice that now also felt like a promise. He had no plan beyond that one word, no clear way to know who the ancient voice might be or if they would keep their call. But he felt that was the direction he needed to follow, the System with its quest was pointing there too, or at least in the same direction given that the capital rested at the other side of the sea of grass.

  Behind him, the mountain’s silhouette cut the sky. Ahead of him lay the familiar forest and the temple, his home. He will have to accelerate his plans, he will have to move to the capital.

  Tomorrow he would conclude his business in this part of the Rift, and see what the future has in store for him.