Monarch of the Calamity Beast

Chapter 6: Shadow at the Foot of the Black Glass

The sole of Kaelen's left boot caught on a jagged lip of volcanic glass. He stumbled, catching his balance with a heavy footfall that sent a spray of black dust over the edge of the ridge. He stopped for a moment, staring blankly at the dust as it settled onto the dead earth below. His calves burned from the climb. The air up here didn't feel like air. It tasted like old pennies and sulfur, heavy in his lungs.

He dragged the back of his wrist across his mouth. It came away smeared with a mix of sweat and the dark, dried blood of the Aegis hounds he had killed hours ago. The stain on his skin bothered him, but he didn't have the water to spare to clean it. He just wiped his wrist against his leather trousers and kept moving.

The Obsidian Mountains stretched upward, a desolate expanse of pitch-black stone and jagged spires. Above, the sky was the color of a day-old bruise, a sickly violet choked with slow-moving currents of ash. It was pure Aether radiation leaking from the upper peaks. A normal man would be bleeding from the gums within an hour of breathing it.

Kaelen felt a dull ache behind his eyes as his body processed the toxic air. Then the Void affinity kicked in. A cold, numbing sensation started in his chest and spread outward to his limbs, dulling the headache. The black veins on his wrists throbbed once, absorbing the poison and converting it into a slow, steady drip of stamina.

"The priests in their white towers would suffocate here," Malakor said. The voice didn't come from the wind. It scraped against the inside of Kaelen's skull, sounding like a shovel dragging over gravel. "They preach about the holy light, but the light dies the moment it touches this mountain. Out here, you aren't the prey anymore."

Kaelen didn't answer right away. He was busy picking a tiny, razor-sharp splinter of glass out of the base of his thumb. He pinched it between his nails, pulled it free, and flicked it away. A single drop of dark red blood welled up from the cut.

"I'm not looking to hide from them," Kaelen muttered. His voice was hoarse. He cleared his throat and spat a glob of acidic saliva onto the ground. It hissed against the glass. "I just need the power to break their walls."

He blinked, calling up the system overlay. The text manifested in his periphery, a series of lightless blue runes.

Level 7. Absolute Void Affinity.

He glanced at the minor increases to his strength and endurance. The numbers were entirely inadequate. General Lyraenza possessed enough raw solar energy to vaporize a city block. If Kaelen went down the mountain right now, she would burn him to ash before he even got within striking distance. He dismissed the runes. They faded out, leaving him with a slight twinge of nausea.

He adjusted the strap of his shoulder guard, which was rubbing uncomfortably against his collarbone, and continued walking. The terrain leveled out into a plateau of smooth, dark glass, littered with massive boulders.

Then he felt the tremor.

It wasn't a sound at first, just a heavy, rhythmic vibration traveling up through the thin soles of his boots. Thud. Thud. Thud.

Kaelen dropped his center of gravity instinctively. He stepped quietly behind one of the larger boulders, pressing his back against the cold stone. He controlled his breathing, waiting. The wind shifted, bringing with it the overpowering stench of wet, rotting meat and stagnant water.

A shape materialized through the gray ash. It walked on four massive, heavily muscled limbs. The beast was an ugly fusion of overgrown feline and reptile, standing taller than a transport carriage. Thick, blood-red bone plates ran down its spine, pulsing with a dull light. Drool the color of dirty pond water dripped from jaws lined with jutting, crooked tusks.

It was a Blood-Armored Dreadfang. Kaelen had read about them in the lower-city archives. A mid-tier Calamity Beast.

He didn't draw a weapon. He pressed his hands against the black glass beneath him and channeled his essence. The shadows around his boots deepened, turning into something resembling thick, dark oil.

He initiated Shadow Step.

The physical world vanished into a gray smear. Disorientation hit him for a fraction of a second, leaving his stomach behind, before he materialized in the air just above the beast's armored skull.

Gravity pulled him down. Kaelen focused the Void into his right arm. Dense, black matter coiled around his forearm, hardening instantly into a jagged, light-consuming blade. He aimed for the soft tissue right behind the beast's compound eyes.

He miscalculated the beast's reaction time.

The Dreadfang felt the shift in air pressure. It jerked its massive head upward just as Kaelen descended.

The Void blade slammed into the thick red bone plate on the creature's forehead. The impact jarred Kaelen's entire right side. The shockwave traveled up his arm, popping his shoulder socket with a sickening jolt. His dark blade sparked and deflected, leaving nothing but a charred scorch mark on the armor.

Kaelen grunted, losing his balance in mid-air. Before he could recover, the beast twisted its heavy torso. A thick tail, lined with jagged bone spurs, whipped around faster than something that size had any right to move.

It slammed into his ribs.

Kaelen felt the bones give way before he heard the crack. All the air left his lungs in a violent rush. He was thrown sideways, tumbling through the air until he crashed hard against the glassy ground. He rolled three times, tearing the leather on his shoulder, before coming to a stop.

He lay there for a second, staring at the purple sky, trying to remember how to breathe. When he finally managed to inhale, a sharp, white-hot pain stabbed through his left side. He rolled onto his stomach and coughed, spitting up a mouthful of frothy blood onto the black stone.

"You are light on your feet, boy, but you weigh nothing," Malakor chuckled darkly. "Turn the pain into a weapon."

Kaelen ignored the voice. He shoved himself up, his left arm wrapping tightly around his broken ribs. Beneath his skin, the Void Regeneration was already working. It wasn't a relief. It felt like a hundred hot needles stitching his muscles and bone fragments together, forcing them back into alignment. He ground his teeth, sweat breaking out on his forehead.

The Dreadfang roared, a sound that rattled Kaelen's teeth. The beast lowered its head and charged. Its jaws opened wide, revealing a cavern of jagged teeth and that foul, rotting stench.

Kaelen couldn't move fast enough to dodge, not with his ribs knitting back together. He planted his boots on the slippery glass. He didn't summon the shadow blade again. Instead, he waited until the beast was right on top of him, its massive jaws snapping shut.

He threw his left arm up, shoving it directly into the creature's mouth.

The jaws clamped down.

A tusk tore straight through Kaelen's leather bracer, piercing the meat of his forearm and punching out the other side. Another tooth sank into his bicep, grating against the bone. The pain was blinding. Kaelen let out a short, guttural yell, his knees buckling slightly under the weight of the beast. Hot, foul-smelling saliva soaked his sleeve.

His blood began to pour into the Dreadfang's mouth.

Kaelen forced his Void essence into his own veins, triggering the Corrosive Blood mutation. His blood, usually a dark, unremarkable red, turned into a highly volatile cosmic acid the second it left his body.

The beast's triumphant snarl turned into a wet, gurgling shriek.

It jerked its head back violently, ripping its tusks out of Kaelen's arm. Kaelen stumbled backward, clutching his ruined limb. Blood and torn muscle hung from his forearm. He watched, breathing heavily, as the Dreadfang thrashed on the ground.

Thick, noxious smoke poured from the creature's mouth. The acid was eating through the soft tissue of its throat and tongue. It clawed at its own face, shattering chunks of obsidian beneath its heavy paws. Black, liquefied flesh dripped from its jaws, hissing as it melted into the stone.

Kaelen stood there, letting his arm hang limp. The pain was a steady, throbbing heat. Black tendrils of energy were already crawling over the open wounds, knitting the shredded meat back together. It itched terribly.

He walked toward the thrashing beast. His boots crunched on the broken glass. He gathered the remaining Void essence into his uninjured right hand. The shadows coiled around his fingers, compressing into a spinning, high-density drill of dark matter.

The Dreadfang was on its side, its chest heaving, its throat completely hollowed out by the acid. Its eyes rolled toward Kaelen, panicked and wet.

Kaelen stepped over the beast's foreleg. He didn't look at its eyes. He focused on the soft, unarmored underbelly just beneath the ribs. He plunged his right arm into the flesh.

It was hot inside. Uncomfortably hot. Muscle and fat gave way with a wet tearing sound. Kaelen pushed his arm in up to the elbow, digging through the scalding chest cavity until his fingers brushed against something hard and vibrating. He grabbed it, gripping the jagged edges, and yanked it out.

The beast gave one final, violent shudder and went entirely limp.

Kaelen pulled his arm free, coated in thick black blood. In his hand, he held the Aether Core. It was the size of a large apple, glowing with a deep, angry red light. Veins of black energy shifted sluggishly inside the crystal.

He was exhausted. His clothes stuck to his skin with sweat. Without waiting, he crushed the core in his hand.

Essence Absorption triggered.

A spiral of absolute darkness flared from his palm, drilling into the red crystal. The core shattered into glowing dust that immediately absorbed into Kaelen's skin.

The reaction was brutal. It felt like swallowing boiling water. Kaelen dropped to his knees, his jaw tight. The veins in his neck bulged, turning dark black against his pale skin. He squeezed his eyes shut, listening to the rushing sound of his own pulse in his ears as his body fought to assimilate the foreign energy.

He stayed there on his knees for several minutes. Eventually, the searing heat faded, replaced by a cold, sharp clarity that settled into his bones.

Level 8 reached.

The text flickered in his vision. Kaelen sighed, his shoulders slumping. He looked down at his right hand. The blood from the beast was flaking off, but underneath, his fingers looked different. His nails had thickened and grown out, turning into matte, metallic black talons. They curved slightly at the ends.

He tapped the thumb talon against his index finger. It made a faint clicking sound, like dull steel.

He looked up. The toxic fog rolling over the plateau hadn't changed, but his eyes interpreted it differently now. Faint, pulsing ribbons of energy hung in the air, glowing with dull, sickly colors. They were tracks. Residual paths of Aether left behind by other Calamity Beasts wandering the mountain.

"Predator's senses," Malakor murmured, sounding pleased for once. "You are shedding the weak flesh, Kaelen. Keep climbing. There are things up there that will give you the strength to make the golden priests choke on their own light."

Kaelen flexed his left arm. The wounds from the tusks were mostly closed now, covered in a layer of thin, raw, pink scar tissue. It was tender to the touch. He picked a piece of his shredded leather sleeve away from the wound so it wouldn't stick.

He stood up slowly. His ribs still ached with a dull pressure, but they held firm when he breathed. He looked at the massive, dead beast, then turned his back to it.

He found a glowing Aether path that looked fresh. It led higher up the obsidian incline, disappearing into a thick bank of violet fog. Kaelen didn't say anything to Malakor. He just tightened the straps on his gear, ignored the dry scratchiness in his throat, and started walking.