BleedingTears
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Arcanist - Chapter 56
🕑 Added 2025-03-25 16:07:58 +0000 UTCA tough chapter to write... But it has some important bits sprinkled between its lines. We are a few chapters from this Arc's climax. Thanks for reading on!
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Valens froze. Drops of cold sweat trickled down his neck. He tried to move, to blink, to do something that would tear away his gaze from this abomination, but there was nowhere to move.
The eye was everywhere.
It was pitch-black with no visible spots around it, covered in an ethereal fog. On its giant surface Valens saw his reflection. He looked so little, so brittle, as if the mere attention of this eye, the sheer size of it was enough to swallow him whole.
In the darkness, he was no more.
His body refused to hear the pleas of his mind.
[You have gazed into the eye of a Terror.]
A single line, then he felt a pull at his core, an icy grip around his skin that was invisible to the naked eye. It slithered slowly across his arms, searching, hungry like a beast out for fresh blood. Down through his pores, carefully trailing his veins, leaving its sickly touch all over his being.
It stopped by his chest for a second. Valens tried to breathe as his heart skipped a beat, but there was no air to breathe here. Nothing to alleviate the pressure upon his lungs. And the passage was—
No more.
The Templars were gone, the basalt walls of the crypt vanished, and the Shrieker’s shadowy frequencies had long since given way to this alien being’s unique Resonance.
Its presence was everywhere.
From within the eye spread its existence as if the sky was coming down, as if the earth was failing to bear its weight.
The cold touch resumed its search, now moving deviously around his heart and toward his chest cavity, a curious snake licking at each part of his body as if to feel him, as if to taste him.
Then it would devour him.
Valens was sure of it.
He couldn’t move.
This was nothing like what he had experienced before.
Through his sound vision he managed to see the moment that icy touch reached his chest cavity. Continued deep into the dark nothingness that awaited further ahead, sending shivers down his neck. Nothing could stand in its way. Nothing could—
A pause.
Something stabbed at the Resonance.
The frequencies cried, and shrieked, and the world came back to Valens in pieces of a shattered mirror upon which reflected the broken sights around him. The Templars and the claw of a giant creature ripping into their line, a balmy dark liquid dripping from the basalt walls, from the ceiling, the Shriekers screaming, a golden light shimmering defiantly in the narrow passage.
Everywhere at once the frequencies shifted, and shifted with them the sights as though wavering lines of a distant dream. The figures of the Templars shimmered, then blinked out, then came back to him as he tried to squeeze precious air down his throat.
His throat didn’t move. Nothing moved in this stretch.
Then there was a claw coming at him, coming at him fast like a giant axe intending to cleave him apart. He couldn’t even close his eyes as it reached him. It tore him easily through the waist, sending a shower of blood—
No.
There was no blood. The claw… wasn’t real. His body was whole. He was still standing, still alive against that giant eye that held him in its depths. The earlier sights… were mere reflections. The frequencies were silent here.
It was an illusion.
He was a young man wallowing in the dark, one hand stretched out from between the bars, eyes nailed on the back of an older man being escorted out by a number of guards. Mana was mute around him. Almost silent except for the faint whispers of the gemstones stitched into his thigh.
They were resonating with the sphere the young man clutched tight in his hand. Then he rose and turned his back. He began the ritual that promised him escape. A tear opened in the cell when all the gemstones created a scattered Resonance under the sphere’s guidance.
He was sucked inside the tear, and then he was gone. Vanished.
A growl shattered the vision. The giant eye blinked as Valens came to himself. It moved, but it was hard to understand the motion. Valens could feel it wasn’t staring at him now, not into his eyes. No, it was gazing deep somewhere in his chest where its touch still lingered in that deep nothingness.
Disoriented in the darkness, fleeting away into the unknown, feet completely weightless, body stiff as a piece of lifeless block. His ears popped. Breath stuck tight to his throat, refusing to move. He was being consumed by a creature that defied everything he ever knew.
It poked at him furiously just then, before hesitation mixed into its Resonance as it paused. Almost sheepishly, it tried once again, as though it was afraid.
Ice poured into Valens’s veins. Pressure built behind his eyes. A terrible ache stabbed into his mind, filling his head with blinding pain.
“You lied…” hissed a set of sinister frequencies into his mind, followed by a guttural thump of something heavy being struck upon the ground. Valens’s skin prickled as it continued, “Evercrest… Evercrest… Evercrest… YOU LIED–”
The frequencies got scattered, the voice cut short.
[Your Resonance echoes in the Void Between the Worlds.]
[An Ancient’s Throne stirs in the Spiritum.]
[Terrors have no Authority upon its faithful owner.]
Valens felt a force pulling at his innards as the world spun madly around him, mind reeling with an insidious fear that remained lingering across his thoughts. He was still in the dark, but the eye was no more.
Slowly, light cleaved into the nothingness.
He found himself staring at the Shrieker’s disheveled body, dried out like a weed set out under the sun. Pieces of its nails lay scattered about, filthy with black blood with smoke wafting off from them.
Voices filled into his ears.
Dozens of them coming from all around.
Broken tiles crunching, the walls dripping, golden swords hacking at a giant claw jutting out from a hole over his back.
Captain Edric was there with his visor closed shut, body agleam with holy lights, swinging madly at the claw, pressing toward the creature with Garran and Dain by his sides. Corpses belonging to Shriekers lay crushed under their feet, innumerable of them having been dealt with masterfully.
His chest heaved when Valens sucked in a deep breath. Air poured into his lungs like cold water through his parched throat. He quested for the Apathy, felt the spell’s steely net settle over his mind. That brought his sense back. Allowed him to take another breath and—
Apathy held him.
There was a pull. Coming from the other side of the passage, away from the Templars and from somewhere he couldn’t see with his eyes. He focused on his sound vision as he reached for the Resonance. Felt the whispers in the air like soft wind by his ears, and picked out the frequencies.
‘Mistress!’
‘Mistress—’
Valens was about to reach out to it when the ground broke. He turned to his back, heart thumping in his chest, breath rasping out through his lips. The owner of the claw poking out of the tiles was now pulling itself over to the passage, a giant mass of muscles, and contorted flesh too strange for Valens to recognize.
Black blood poured down from the deep cuts around its claws as it raised its horned head, and bellowed out a terrible roar. The whole passage shook under its fury, but the Templars seemed hardly affected. On the contrary, they seemed relieved now that they had a bigger target to deal with.
Captain Edric leaped up, golden sword clasped tight in the palm of his right hand. He hooked his free arm around the creature’s left leg and swung himself up, armor screaming as the tip of the creature’s claws tried to hack him straight by the legs.
They dented the gleaming leggings and left a deep impression upon their surfaces, but Captain Edric never wavered as he hauled the sword high over the creature’s back. Garran and Dain moved in, pressing into the towering beast, coming at it from two sides.
[Eldhollow - Level ???]
Valens blinked to gather himself before staring at the creature’s form. It had two horns jutting out from the side of its head, leathery skin stretched too tight in some places, and wrinkled layer upon layer. It could hardly fit into the passage with its giant body, stooping whenever it tried to claw at the Templars.
Wait, this… seems familiar.
Valens shook his head. He was all prickly, and sensitive around his arms as he could still feel the touch of that Terror. He tried a Lifeward to see if there was anything wrong and flushed his body with Lifesurges to make sure he cleaned every inch of his being, but the sensation just wouldn’t pass.
I have to do something. That claw will come for me, won’t it?
He gazed in the direction where he lost the trail of those whispers, then back at Captain Edric’s group. They certainly didn’t need his help, but if what awaited him further beyond this passage was an abomination whose single eye had nearly sucked his core dry, then perhaps it wouldn’t be very wise of him to follow that trail without some company by his side.
He reached out to his mana pool and scowled when he saw how little was left of that gurgling river. The waves of it dried out and left behind them a small trickle that seemed like a tiny drop in the fleshy cage.
What happened to my mana? Did that creature do something?
“Watch out, Healer!” came Garran’s voice.
Valens pulled his mind off from the questions and focused on the sight ahead. The Eldhollow was lumbering back unsteadily toward him as Captain Edric stabbed his golden sword over and over into its back, spattering black blood all over his golden plates while Garran and Dain had shifted to the side, staring at him.
And yet the creature bounded stubbornly toward him. Its red eyes were focused on him, bulging veins around its large forehead pulsing like little hearts. Then there was a claw coming at him, coming at him fast… just like in that illusion.
How is this possible?
A Light Feet carried him away from the creature’s path. Valens stuck close to the dripping walls of the passage and made himself as small as possible as the Eldhollow’s claw missed him by a hair’s breadth. Frustration leaked from his Resonance as it stopped, and turned back to gaze at him.
Captain Edric’s golden sword squelched into its back once again.
The Eldhollow growled. It clawed at its head, trying to jerk the annoying Templar off its back, failing miserably as Captain Edric ducked and moved around the attacks as though he expected every one of them.
A little help can go both ways.
Gravitating Earth answered his call as Valens watched the creature stumble back, Dain and Garran pressuring it from the sides. He reached for the tiles under its feet, felt them in his mind, and focused on the Resonance as he established the frequencies that would fit for the job.
The Fiend was giant and strong enough to break past an earthly wall. Its Endurance and Vitality were not meager as well since some of the cuts around its skin had already healed back to smooth. Only a few were left near its neck where Captain Edric aimed his sword.
It can't be easy to balance such an amount of muscle and flesh. Not easy at all when the ground starts slipping from underneath your feet.
Valens waited for the moment the creature stumbled another step back to carve a deep hole right under where it tried to plant its foot.
The beast staggered.
Its balance gave way with a sickening lurch, and it began to fall. Backward, toward where Dain and Garran waited. They leapt away just in time as the towering monstrosity crashed into the ground, while Captain Edric launched himself from the beast’s spine, golden sword spinning with a humming Resonance that split the very air.
The tip of the weapon pierced down through the soft spot near the creature’s neck, its thick arms too out of balance to reach in time to stop it before it squelched deep enough to hurt. A scream tore through its throat as its body buckled in pain, and started thrashing about.
It tried to pull its leg free, but already its movements had grown sluggish. The Templars used that split second to riddle the creature’s skin with bloody holes and holy lights.
Then… stillness.
‘Ding’ You have managed to defeat [Eldhollow - lvl 235]!
Your 1st Trial hasn’t been completed yet. The gained experience would be stored.
Your 1st Trial hasn’t been completed yet. The gained experience would be stored.
“Nasty bastard,” Garran huffed out a breath as he kicked the creature’s body.
“Uh,” Dain grunted.
“Made us work for it, that’s for sure,” Captain Edric nodded as he wiped his sword clean over the creature’s skin, then stepped back and raised the weapon to take a gaze into the jewel cocked into its pommel. It was still alive with darkish lights, which made him scowl. “Seems like it isn't alone.”
“Are you sure?” Garran opened his visor and squinted his eyes at the jewel. “Blessed Father. Another Fiend in this forgotten crypt? What is happening here?”
“Just another monster,” Captain Edric shrugged. “That’s what we do, eh? No point in making a deal out of it. We move on.”
“True that,” Garran nodded in the manner of a soldier slightly inconvenienced by the gravel stuck in his boots, hardly bothered by the dead bodies laying about him and the giant of a corpse resting just a few steps ahead.
You… You don’t know, do you?
“Captain,” Valens muttered as he stepped slowly around the creature’s giant carcass. There was a tightness in his throat as he spoke, “Can I ask a question?”
Captain Edric wedged one boot up on the corpse of the Eldhollow, leaning over his knee, looking up at him with eyes squinted. “Speak,” he muttered.
A single word.
Valens swallowed, but Apathy held him as he faced the captain’s sharp frown. “What is a Terror?”
“Terror?” It was Garran who echoed him, with Dain shifting uncomfortably by his side.
“Yes, a Terror,” Valens nodded, but he wasn’t done. “And I have one more… Have you ever heard the name Evercrest?”
Captain Edric’s eyes widened as he turned sharply. “You—where did you hear that name?” he demanded, voice low and taut with uncertainty.
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Comments
Simon
"The gained experience would be stored." Is the experience stored or not? "would be" makes it sound like it's not because some condition isn't met.
Sanetless
Looking forward to tomorrow I suppose
Stephen Pearson
Thanks for the chapter! :-)
Jakob Büscherhoff
Same, I think especially the beginning of the terror encounter was a bit rough and I couldn’t really understand or picture what exactly is happening.
BubblyGhost
A little out there for me, bit hard to follow along what was happening
Mitchell Calhoun
Goddamnit how is this the chapter I catch up on. This is getting wild. I'm gonna die if I don't get answers soon!
