Chương 30: Servant of the Lead Star

"I saw her fall, yes. The Second Hero. Don't—Don't write that I'm lying, father, because I'm not. I swear I'm not. She'd been fighting for nearly an hour by then, maybe longer. And there was no weapon I saw her with that she didn't know like kin. Sabre, spear, axe, butcher-hook, broken knife…even wagon nails pulled screaming from a board. Every bit of metal on that road danced in her hands.

"Then that antlered demon hit her. Saints help me, its spear… it opened her from shoulder to hip before driving her stomach into the ground. Her mask cracked, and her guts came out steaming into the snow. There was blood in the snow, so much blood, and she wasn't moving. I thought to myself, that's it. It's over. Even a Hero's just meat and bone when a blade goes deep enough, isn't she?

"But then I… I heard the metal.

"Every sword, every horseshoe, every buckle, every arrowhead buried in the dead—all of them tore loose at once. Some came through bodies just to reach her. She crushed the demon's skull with her bare hand as it tried to smash down at her impaled body, and then she sewed her own wound shut immediately with all the loose bits and pieces of metal she pulled towards her.

"She kept fighting for three more hours after that. I don't know how. I don't think anyone knows how. I've feared the gods since girlhood, but that day, when I saw that little girl walking through demon blood with iron holding her belly closed…

"I think I was more scared of her." —Testimony of Former-Lieutenant Anya S. Solynov from the Kremlov Guard after the Battle of Saint Mikhailana As Arkhov of the Four-Horns slid back across the chamber, the giant sunmane lion roared and began its rampage. Several elkkin demons near the rift lifted their horns and axes at once. Brave children of the Lead Star.

Faithful children, beautiful in their deformities, blessed in their hunger—they surged forward to protect the chamber, but the sunmane lion barely acknowledged them before its paws cleaved through their ranks, smashing three demons into the far wall hard enough to crack songiron ore veins. Arkhov's lips peeled back from his teeth. The beast was unbothered by the chamber's weakened gravity.

Loose stones floated where the rift's pressure distorted them, and splinters of wood drifted too slowly, but the lion stood firm. Its paws hit the ground with full weight, its golden pelt turned astral lead horns aside, and its three crimson eyes burned with the fury of a beast that'd never bent knee to any god. A Rare-Grade beast. Of course it was.

The rift had widened to Rare-Grade just an hour or two ago, but Arkhov hadn't summoned any of his Rare-Grade brethren into the chamber yet, because why would he have done such a thing? The mineshaft had been sealed by collapse. Nobody on the surface should've been able to reach the chamber for at least another two to three days. Who had made a mockery of their road of salvation? Who had turned their king's rift against them? A rumble answered beneath his hooves.

His eyes snapped down, and instinct drove him back before thought could catch up. The ground burst open where he'd stood as the hound-sized moledrake erupted with a spray of stone and black soils, jaws snapping shut where his legs had been. And above him, something heavy tore through the air. He couldn't look up quickly enough, so he threw himself sideways between two wooden support pillars.

The Princess of Kamengrad's warhammer smashed down a second later, striking the ground with a red flash of rippling molescales. The impact burst more stone outwards and made the nearest suspended pebbles scatter. He landed in a crouch, both severed horns clenched in his hands as blades, and glared at the Princess and her drake.

"... What are you doing here?" he growled, disbelief and fury mixed in equal parts.

"You were not written here. You were not called here. Your path was south, deep-princess. South. Away from this chamber. Why do you defy the fate that was given to you?" The Princess lifted her hammer from the ground and set it across her shoulders, huffing in pride.

"The fate given to me by demonkind is unworthy of me. I am Miriyela Doch Kamenrody Kamengradskaya, Dwarven Daughter of Stone-Crown Blood, and if your king failed to notice my arrival, then maybe he should have looked lower, where true stone remembers true royalty." Arkhov hissed through his teeth. Prideful. Crownless, now, but still so prideful. With both horns, he slashed the wooden pillars beside him, carving the outer layers into shrapnel and sending splinters spinning towards the Princess.

The chamber's strange gravity caught the shards for half a breath, then flung them forward in a wide, vicious scatter. The moledrake lowered her head and turned her back into the storm of wood. Shrapnel struck her molescales and shattered. The Princess charged straight through the shrapnel instead, blocking with her bracers and pauldrons. Each impact made the molescales of her armor flash blue, dulling the force and spreading it across her whole body. Kamengrad relics.

When she reached him, she swung her hammer in a brutal side arc. The molescales on the hammerhead flared red again, charged with stored impact, and he recognized the danger immediately. If he dodged back, she'd control his distance, but if he blocked, his body would break under the stored force—so he stepped in instead. The hammer roared past his back as he slipped inside the swing, then drove both horns up and aiming beneath her unprotected chin.

The Princess snapped her head down and bit his horns, shattering them both. Arkhov scowled. She's a strong one. As he scowled, she pivoted with the momentum of her missed swing and kicked him square in the chest. He flew back and slammed into a minecart hard enough to bend its iron frame. Lunging to rise was the right move, but he felt the vibrations underfoot and hesitated. He shouldn't have.

Moments later, the moledrake erupted from the ground behind the cart and screamed, clamping both claws into his arms from behind and wrenching them back. Now the beast had him pinned against the cart. Arkhov snarled and pulled, trying to get away, but the beast held firm. In front of him, the Princess raised her hammer once more.

"Good, Sharsana!" she shouted, rearing her hammer back.

"Hold the lohsa bastard steady!" Clever creature. But no matter. Flesh was only flesh, and arms were only arms. As the Princess charged in heavily and prepared to smash him into the ground, he roared and jerked his head down, slicing through his own shoulders with his horns. Pain ripped through him as both his arms fell away. The moledrake snarled in surprise, claws still locked around his severed limbs, and that allowed him to roll under the path of the Princess' swing. They both missed each other by a hair.

He escaped just barely as the blow smashed the minecart into pieces, and he came up on his hooves several paces away, staggering. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. And for a moment, his body refused him. Blood ran down his sides where his arms had been. His heart convulsed. The astral lead corruption inside him surged, eager, freezing, whispering louder than before—and it was hungry, lighting a fire inside his chest he couldn't control. E̵at̵, ̷ de̵mo̶n̷!

̵ F̷igh̵t, d̸e̷mo̶n̷! Gr̴o̶w! ̸Br̶ea̶k! ̶ ̷Ea̴t̸ m̵o̶re! ̸ Arkhov ground his teeth and bent forward, trembling.

"Great King of Salvation," he rasped, "Lord of the Lead Star, witness your servant. If mind must weaken, let my faith remain. If flesh must blacken, then let… my purpose… be clear!" He screamed as astral lead poured from his shoulders, regenerating not as normal arms, but as shimmering, pulsing lead masses that hardened into giant warhammers, each one a mockery of the Princess' own weapon. His spine cracked. His muscles hardened.

His thoughts blurred at the edges as more and more corruption rooted through his insides. While the Princess and her moledrake took a step back and readied themselves for a tougher fight, he roared at them and charged. In his newly blessed, newly ruined form, he charged the Princess with both lead warhammers raised high. The weight of them would've dragged his old shoulders down, but instead, the astral lead reduced their weight and carried them for him.

He swung from the left, and the Princess braced her boots, lifted her hammer, and blocked with a blue flash rippling across her molescales. The force still drove her back. He swung again from the right before she could breathe. Again, she blocked, but her arms trembled under the impact. Both his warhammers shattered on impact as well, but he regrew his limbs as lead axes this time. He chopped down. The axe struck her pauldron and sprayed blue light across the molescales.

Then he regenerated his arm into a spear, thrusting forward. Then he grew a blade. A hooked halberd. Another hammer. A greatsword. A mace. A saber. Any weapon he could name and visualize, he grew out of his arms as he pressed on with his flurry of attacks. E̵at̵, ̷ de̵mo̶n̷! ̵ F̷igh̵t, d̸e̷mo̶n̷! The Princess and the moledrake grimaced, both struggling to defend against his relentless onslaught.

He himself could no longer tell whether the whispers in his ear were the corruption, the rift, or the King of Salvation speaking directly into the faithful hollow of his skull. His old thoughts were narrowing, and proper doctrine was slipping from him, but what he must do remained untouched. The Hero must die.

"It's all your fault!" he snarled, driving a halberd down at her head. The Princess caught the halberd under her hammer's head and shoved it aside, though the strain bent her elbows and made her chestplate groan.

"You shouldn't be here! You should've done as fate bent you to do! South, Princess! South! If you'd all gone south and left this mine to its holy labor, we would've built another road for our King of Salvation! It would've been another great through which the blessed hunger could pour!" He saw the opening a heartbeat later. Her left foot landed unevenly on a piece of floating rubble as the weakened gravity shifted under her.

It was a small opening—too small for a lesser warrior to use—but Arkhov's mind, though drowning in lead, still belonged to a commander of the King's forward faithful. He surged in, abandoned his blade-arms, and rammed all four horns into her chestplate. The Princess cried out in pain as a few of them pierced the gaps in her armor, finally drawing blood. Her hands came up at once, trying to grab the horns and snap them off, but he drove harder and widened the wounds in her armor.

Then he threw his whole body aside and hurled her away. While the Princess struck the ground on her back and slid, her hammer scraping beside her with a shower of sparks, her moledrake erupted behind him in the same breath. This time, he heard the whisper before he heard the moledrake. Beh̸in̵d y̷ou! The corruption snarled through his skull, and Arkhov snapped one arm back, reshaping it mid-motion into a normal lead hand. He grabbed the moledrake's neck just as it lunged for his spine.

The moledrake choked, claws tearing against his forearm, molescales grinding against astral lead, but he began to squeeze. Di̴e, ̵monst̷e̵r! screamed the lead in his head. Break̵ its nec̴k— But then the moledrake bit his hand, and the lead threatened to shatter. Before he could drop it, he roared, swung her by the neck, and flung her into the fallen Princess as well. The moledrake slammed into her side, making both of them tumble back across the chamber one more time.

Arkhov staggered once, then replanted his hooves. Both of his hands shattered and reshaped into giant warhammers again as he panted through clenched teeth, lead crawling across even his throat now.

"You… are still no match for me," he growled, glaring at the Princess as she pushed herself up on one knee, hammer in her hand.

"You should have continued south. You should have left Zimnerudik to the chosen work. Little princess, little drake, little companion of a false savior—you have bought nothing here but a smaller grave." The Princess lifted her head. She was breathing hard enough that her shoulders shook, and blood was dripping down the front of her armor in thin dark lines. Even so, Arkhov saw her veil shifting. Not from fear. And not from pain.

"... Oh, horned lohsa. You mistake my objective," she whispered.

"I am not here to defeat you. I was simply buying him time." Akhov stared at her for a moment—her words not making sense, her actions utterly incongruent—but then he whirled and looked around the chamber. Apart from the giant lion rampaging near the rift, still murdering swathes upon swathes of demons, there was something else missing. Where? He turned his head rapidly, scanning through the chaos. Where, where, where?

Then he saw him, in the far corner of the chamber—acting with complete unbecoming of his sacred and terrible station—the Hero kneeling with his back turned to all the battles across the chamber.

"Great Ninazu," the boy whispered.

"Please accept my main offering and… and what? Say that again?" He paused for a moment, head tilted slightly as though he was listening to someone in his ear, then dipped his head at the Altar before him again.

"Please bless my demon-slaying gauntlet with the power to rend lead from flesh." Arkhov's whole body went cold beneath the burning hunger as he saw the materials being offered on the Altar before the Hero: a gauntlet, and then a half-broken crown. No! That Bratstvo Morosov left it here when they ran! Arkhov abandoned the Princess and her moledrake at once. They were unimportant.

His warhammer-hands shattered and regenerated into long, forward-curving blades as he charged at the Hero, hooves cracking stone with every step he took.

"This is where the Fated Hero dies!" he roared, bearing down on the kneeling boy.

"Here, in this mine-womb, before your gods can arm you again! Turn and receive judgment, thief of destiny!" But the Hero stood slowly, turned around, and beneath that golden mask of his was the brightest, most merciless smile. He wasn't wearing his Star-Element Gauntlet.

"... Unfortunately, the Hero's already dead," he whispered.

"I'm all you've got." Then his voice sharpened into a shout, and he reared his right hand behind him in a fist, getting into a punching stance.

"Throw it up, Great Ninazu!" he shouted.

"It'll fit just right! I swear!" And behind him, the Altar spat out a relic that snapped onto the Hero's right hand with a hard metallic crack. The amethyst gem in the palm of his Star-Element Gauntlet blazed to life, and the five-pointed star engraving on the gem lit up even stronger than before. Arkhov saw the bronze node light up first—the node that commanded earth—and then he saw the second node on the five-pointed star lit up as well.. Bright, terrible silver.

As Arkhov leapt forward to rend the Hero to shreds, the boy roared and punched his gauntlet forward—and three giant minecarts tore free from the broken rails behind him, lumps of ore scattering as they flew over the Hero's head. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as Arkhov watched the minecarts fly at him. It was the absolute worst case scenario. The Fated Hero had unlocked the element of metal.