Victor of Tucson

Book 9: Chapter 30: Barrier

With his banner blazing, Victor led the way deeper into the vast, steeply descending tunnel. Loose boulders here and there, dust, and rubble marked their progress, but other than that, the tunnel was empty. Such a sizeable subterranean space in a wild System-controlled world seemed like it ought to be home to many creatures, but neither Victor nor his companions spotted so much as a mouse or even cobwebs. The air was dry, and though it started out cool, it became progressively warmer as they descended.

After walking for more than ten minutes, Victor stopped and turned to his companions, “The area where I lost track of my coyotes isn’t far, perhaps a hundred or two yards around that bend.” He gestured to where the steeply descending tunnel rounded a wide corner to the right.

“Shall I scout?” Bryn asked, stepping forward.

Victor chuckled and shook his head. “No. I’ll go ahead and, if you hear the sounds of battle, you can come and see what it is and whether you’d like to get involved. Keep yourselves safe, though—I’m sturdier than I might seem.”

“Oh, I don’t know, milord,” Florent whispered, his voice carrying a note of droll humor, “you seem quite sturdy to me.”

Victor chuckled, gave his companions a solemn nod, then turned and loped down the hallway. With his banner blazing behind him, it wasn't easy to note, but when he began to round the corner, he thought the shadows ahead were lighter. A dozen more steps revealed why. The great tunnel opened into an even greater subterranean hall. It was a space that could hold a thousand titans Victor’s size. The space had a ceiling that had to be five hundred feet high with a glowering ball of orange-red fire hanging from black chains mounted to its stony surface.

Stepping into the space, Victor saw that the distant, opposite wall looked to be made of dense-looking, yellow-gray metal that shone softly in the light of the globe of fire. Something massive shifted in the shadows to his right, and he whirled to see a humanoid figure, though one that made him feel small. He might have said it was an iron automaton if he didn’t know about magical alloys and rare, Energy-dense elements. It was about fifty yards from him, and even at that distance, he could see it was much larger than any giant he’d faced—certainly taller than he was in his berserk, titan form.

The figure’s round, metallic head shifted toward him, its baleful red eyes staring his way as it slowly, with surprisingly limber joints, lifted a titanic black greatsword. Victor had the distinct impression that it was giving him a fair warning and that violence would ensue if he moved further into the chamber. Was that what happened to his coyotes? How could something so enormous and seemingly cumbersome kill five of his quick, clever companions so suddenly?

Rather than be caught by surprise, Victor channeled Energy into his armor, cladding himself in his wyrm-scales and Lava King hide. His Sojourn set enchantments gave his armor a fiery orange glow that seemed to intensify when Victor readied for a fight, and readying himself, he was. He reached into his storage compartment and summoned Lifedrinker into his hands, grinning fiercely when he realized his latest size boost meant he could handle her almost comfortably, even without casting one of his berserking abilities.

“Maybe, chica. God, it feels good to hold you, though. Stay ready!”

Always!

Lifedrinker’s gleaming black axe-head began to glow with a fiery inner light, and Victor could see the air around her shimmering with heat waves. He took a step, and the great, black-metal golem or automaton or whatever he was supposed to call it took a single step and swung its sword in a flat arc. At first, Victor thought it was malfunctioning and trying to cut him even though he was still nearly half a football field distant, but then the air that the tip of the sword cleaved crackled with red, lightning-filled Energy and a wall of destructive force rolled toward him like a deadly tidal wave.

Victor had about two seconds to react and, without thinking, activated his Flight of the Lava King armor enchantment. Enormous fiery wings sprouted from his back, and when he looked into the air above that wall of deadly Energy, he exploded upward, leaving billowing clouds of black smoke in his wake. He soared over the metallic man’s attack, and as he streaked toward his enemy, Victor cast Iron Berserk.

His body surged in power and size, and Lifedrinker became comfortable in his hands. He lifted her high and directed his flight downward, streaking like a fiery comet toward the metal giant. The golem—Victor had mentally settled on that label—moved far more fluidly than anything that size made of metal had any right to do. It stepped to the side and raised its thirty-foot sword, aiming to swat Victor out of the air. Victor didn’t shrink away from the blow, even as that black blade exploded with crackling red-lightning Energy.

As he came down, Lifedrinker’s brilliant, gleaming, incredibly dense edge met the sword in a cataclysmic crash. Focusing on his movement, unable to stare at her impact, Victor knew she won the contest because she didn’t stop. She didn’t even jerk in his hands much. She continued to fall toward the golem’s chest, and her enormous, wedge-shaped axe-head punched through a foot of dense metal to sink into the cavity beyond. As Victor leaped back, leaving Lifedrinker to do her work, he saw the top half of the golem’s enormous sword still sliding over the stony ground.

“Yeah! Drink!” he roared, laughing madly as the golem thrashed its truncated sword, stomping toward Victor. For his part, Victor kept backpedaling, enjoying the show as red currents of Energy coursed into the dense, mirror-like black surface of his axe. The golem tried to cleave the air with its shortened weapon, and Victor could see red lightning sparking in the air, but it wasn’t enough to ignite another wave of deadly destruction. He laughed, taunting the golem as it stumbled toward him, its movements slowing by the second as Lifedrinker tore torrents of its vital power away.

When the golem’s steps looked almost like a slow-motion movie, he darted forward and flanked the thing, slamming a shoulder into its side. He grunted with the impact, driving with his powerful legs until the enormous construct began to teeter. It tried to swing its broken sword at him again, but Victor slipped behind it, and while it rocked unsteadily, he gave it another shove. This time, as it rocked forward, he squatted down, hooked his hands around its tree-sized ankle, and, with all his might, heaved.

The golem toppled, futilely trying to break its fall with too-slow arms, and when it impacted the cavern floor, it split the stone and shook the ground like a building falling. Victor looked up to see dust and small hunks of stone falling from the ceiling. He almost sprinted for the tunnel, sure the whole place would come down, but the tremor of the impact was short-lived. Whatever had created the tremendous stony hall had built it sturdily.

The golem wasn’t yet dead, but its movements were slow and weak, and it seemed stuck, its arms pinned beneath it. Steam and smoke poured from the seams of its joints, and every so often, an arc of red electric Energy would lash out with a crackling zap. Victor moved around the side of it, grasped the rough, black metal of its shoulder, and heaved, trying to turn it onto its side; he didn’t want to leave Lifedrinker pinned beneath it. The thing was heavy, but since it wasn’t quite dead, it actually helped Victor in his efforts, pushing with its damaged, grinding arms, trying to right itself.

By the time Victor managed to complete his deadlift, screaming and red-faced from the effort, the automaton was nearly still, and white steam veritably billowed out of the enormous rupture in its chest where Lifedrinker had buried herself to the haft. He grabbed her and yanked, pulling her forth with a massive arc of red-tinged lightning. Before the mechanical giant could find a way to repair itself, Victor lifted Lifedrinker and walked around its twitching arms to smash her into its passenger-car-sized head, over and over.

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With each upswing of Lifedrinker’s flaming, obsidian blade, gears, crystals, and electricity-charged motes of Energy flew through the air. Heaving from the workout, sweating through the red heat of his rage, Victor dismantled the automaton, and Lifedrinker continued to drink the bright red Energy that leaked from its shell. He wasn’t sure how long he toiled, but it had to have been five or ten minutes before he looked up from the wreckage to see his companions standing nearby, watching in various states of disbelief.

“I think it’s dead, Your Grace!” Feist called.

Victor regarded him through his red haze of fury, and as the squire’s words slowly registered, he began to laugh. It was a deep belly laugh, and the mirth chased the rage from his pathways, ending his Iron Berserk. As he returned to his normal size, leaning against one of the titanic construct’s mangled legs, he realized he was standing in a sea of pulsating orbs of shimmering Energy. They were hazy but bright, filled with the potent Energy of a high-level conquest.

Considering the ease with which he’d dispatched the construct, Victor was a little surprised by the volume of Energy that surged toward him, but the thought was dashed from his mind as he was overwhelmed. The influx lifted him from his feet and sent his mind reeling down rainbow-hued passages of kaleidoscopic confusion. He caught glimpses of things that only served to confuse him further—waterfalls, flaming comets, erupting peaks, slender reeds blown by pink-hued winds, and a tree with branches that scraped the firmament.

When he came back to himself, he sat on the cavern floor, back to the ruined golem, and he could hear the sound of movement and soft conversation nearby. “…think the innards are largely intact, at least in the torso.” It took his disoriented mind a moment to recognize Florent’s voice, but Bryn’s reply was easier to place.

“Don’t touch anything until Victor awakens.”

“Naturally! I’ll keep my fingers intact, thank you very much.”

Before he spoke or moved, Victor focused on the System message floating before his eyes:

***Congratulations! You have achieved level 74 Berserker of Unstoppable Momentum and gained 9 strength, 14 vitality, 9 agility, and 9 dexterity.***

“Really?” he grunted. It seemed to him the golem had been far too easy to slay to grant him an entire level, but he supposed it wasn’t something he’d complain about.

“Your Grace?” Bryn called from somewhere above and behind him. He grunted, pushing himself to his feet, and looked to see Bryn and Feist standing atop the golem’s chest. Florent was inside, peering out through one of the rips Lifedrinker had made. Thinking of his axe, Victor whirled around but relaxed when he saw her resting where he’d left her, blade half-buried in the stone of the cavern’s floor.

“How long was I out?”

“Just about ten minutes or so, milord. This monstrosity certainly spilled a great amount of Energy for you.”

“Yeah.” Victor frowned, moving to look past the golem at the rest of the cavern. The enormous metal wall drew his eye. More pointedly, the gigantic vault-style door at its center seemed to call his name; whatever was in the mountain, whatever had been reaching out to him through his instincts or his blood or his spirit—it was beyond that wall.

“Your Grace,” Florent’s voice came to him, echoing oddly from inside the golem’s chest, “there are quite a few, likely valuable components inside this automaton.”

“We’ll talk about that in a minute. Did any of you examine that door?”

Victor pulled Lifedrinker from the stone with a grunt, hefting her over his shoulder, wincing as her enormous weight pressed down on his scale armor. As he strode toward the door—easily five hundred yards distant, he heard his companions scurrying down from the golem’s corpse. Bryn called out, “No! We didn’t want to leave you, and it didn’t seem like anything was urgent about it.”

Victor heard her, but he didn’t respond. He was too focused on a shiny square of silver-colored metal beside the enormous vault door. His eyes were good, not quite good enough to read them, but good enough to see letters etched into the metal. Bryn jogged to catch up to him, and when she was beside him, she asked, “I saw you fight in the garden and against Thorn, but Victor, I didn’t realize you were that big. Did your bloodline advancement increase your, um, giant size?”

“Titan,” Victor grunted absently, but her words cut through his focus, and he paused, turning to look back toward the ruined metal golem. “How big do you figure that thing is?”

Feist and Florent were jogging toward them, and the Spatial Magus answered, “Approximately forty feet tall and hundreds of tons in weight, milord.”

Victor looked down at Bryn. “How tall was I compared to that thing?”

“Maybe three-fourths.” She glanced to Florent and Feist for confirmation.

“That’s right, milord,” Feist said, nodding. “I’d say your fearsome helmet was about midway between the thing's head and its waist.”

Victor nodded, scratching his chin. “Yeah, Bryn, I guess so. It’s weird, ‘cause I thought when I took that form, I was already at my, uh, bloodline’s potential. I guess I was wrong.”

“I can’t claim to have ever seen a titan, Your Grace,” Florent said, slowing to a stop as he reached Victor’s position, “but there are many myths likening them to mountains, so…” He trailed off, allowing his words to build their own implications in everyone’s mind. Victor only nodded. Was it a coincidence that Florent was the second person in as many days to talk to him about mountains in relation to titans?

“Let’s see what that plaque says.” Victor turned and started walking again, his long strides forcing the others to hurry.

“Plaque?” They’d already covered half the distance, but still, Bryn had to squint at the vault door for several seconds before she said, “Oh! I see it.”

When they stood before the door, it dwarfed even Victor. It was easily twenty feet in diameter, though the keyhole in the spinning locking lever was sized for a normal—giant-sized—key. Victor looked at the plaque and read aloud, “By decree of His Majesty, Longar Fray, Sovereign of Iron Mountain, this passage is sealed for all eternity. Let none dare trespass beyond this point. To linger here is death, for the full measure of our king’s wrath shall fall upon any who violate this sacred order."Nôv(el)B\\jnn

Victor turned back to the enormous, broken form of the metal golem. “You figure that thing was the guardian?”

“I see nothing else that it could be, milord,” Florent agreed.

“Um, who was Longar Fray?” Bryn asked.

“Sounds like he was calling himself a king, doesn’t it?” Feist asked.

Victor ignored them as they continued to speculate, leaning close to peer into the keyhole. It looked very complex—grooves arranged in a half-moon for multiple key tines seemed to go very deep. Compulsively, he reached up and tried to turn the wheel, but it didn’t budge. “I need to get past this door.”

Florent cleared his throat. “Milord, if the man who made this door was the lord of Iron Mountain, perhaps the key is in the palace.”

Victor backed up several paces, looking up and down the metal wall. “It must have cost a fortune to build a wall like this. That metal feels dense. Can you guys feel that Energy in it?”

Florent nodded. “I certainly can, milord, and you’re not wrong—that metal is amber-ore.”

“Holy Shit!” Victor smacked his head, remembering the treasure he and Thayla had stumbled upon when they were thralls in the Greatbone Mine. They’d found crates of ore like this—maybe a ten-thousandth of what was represented by the wall before them—and it had made a fortune for Lam. “So, if I need to smash my way through, I’ll probably have to break the stone and tunnel under it.”

“I wouldn’t advise such measures, milord.” Florent moved past him to point at the runes etched into the metallic barrier. “This wall is fortified with dense enchantments. I believe it likely has deep footings. Even if it doesn’t, I can’t imagine the crafters of such a formidable barrier wouldn’t think of the possibility you suggested. If I were intent on keeping people out, I’d enchant the wall to collapse the surrounding stone rather than allow a breach.”

Victor turned and scanned the cavern again, ensuring he hadn’t missed anything. After a long, fruitless perusal, he looked at Florent. “Can you make a portal here? I mean to and from?”

“Yes, milord. I can create an anchor here.”

“All right. Bryn, Feist, you two will wait here. I’m going back to the palace to see if we can find a key. If not, I’ll bring some Elementalists, and we’ll try crafting a tunnel under this wall. We can start further back and go deep, hopefully avoiding any traps.”

Bryn nodded. “A clever plan, Your Grace.” He thought it was funny how she reverted to formal language when Fest and Florent were close, but he supposed it was for the best; she was trying to set an example for her squire.

“Your Grace, that may work, but it’s a rather remote possibility, and such a tunnel would take some time to construct—”

Victor waved a hand, cutting Florent off. “I don’t care what it takes, my friend; I’m going through that wall. If I have to bring the fucking mountain down around it, I will.” Victor didn’t mean to speak so vehemently, but the call was getting very strong, the urgency eating at him like a constantly overfull bladder. He nodded to Florent. “Go ahead. Make your portal.”

“Milord,” Bryn said as Florent gathered his strange, potent Energy, “might I suggest you bring that craftsman working for you? In our small conversations, he mentioned that he specializes in crafting constructs. It seems to me he might be very intrigued by yonder automaton.”

Victor grinned and held out a massive fist. “That’s a damn good idea.”

Bryn smiled, her brown eyes glinting brightly in the fiery light of the cavern as she wound up and gave Victor’s much larger fist a solid punch. Victor’s middle knuckle popped, making the impact even louder, and he laughed. “Hell yeah, Bryn!” He nodded to her and then Feist. “Keep in touch. If all goes well, we’ll be back really soon.” The portal flared to life behind him as he spoke, sizzling and popping with Florent’s black-tinted Energy.

“It’s ready, Your Grace!”

Victor nodded, then stepped into the void.