Chapter 40: Chapter 40

Riven sneered down at the prompt. Not going to make it out alive? What a fucking joke. As if he wasn’t walking a knife’s edge already. He’d been forced into scenario after scenario with little say in the matter, and he was goddamned tired of it. Anger and disgust surged through him, and his soul resonated with his will.

Fuck this phantom, fuck this hellscape, fuck Chalgathi, and fuck Elysium’s administrator. He’d do what he fucking wanted to do.

A ripple ran out from where Riven stood in the middle of the room, ever so faint…but the phantom in front of him immediately lost her confidence.

“What are you doing?” Kajit asked warily, stiffly even, while moving slowly away to the other side of the room.

He focused on the shard of original sin in his soul complex, forcing it to wake up.

Another pulse radiated out from his body, and he gritted his teeth while clenching his fists in frustration. People or entities pushing him around would end now, right now, and after what Kajit had just said concerning not being able to devour his soul, it was only a matter of understanding. The pieces had clicked together, at least somewhat, because if the “great maw” was enough to deter a high-level phantom even while it wasn’t finished constructing its core…

He searched for her. His magic might not damage the ghost because she was likely recognized as a part of him by the mana he controlled, but that didn’t mean his Gluttony core wouldn’t work. He searched inside himself, trying to scout out just where the phantom had lodged its own piece of being inside him, and it didn’t take long to find it. There, on the outskirts of his complex, a faint teal bubble pulsed with unnatural light.

He flexed his will, and Gluttony came to life, howling inside his mind like an uncaged beast that tore through his spiritual grounds and rushed the phantom in a fury.

Kajit screamed, her body lighting up across the room with black and crimson flames as gash marks were torn through her ethereal form like invisible teeth biting off pieces of her body. She writhed about in the air, wailing and causing the room to reverberate with unrestrained power.

But she was unable to focus that power, and Riven’s eyes pulsed a bright crimson before he forcefully restrained Kajit’s presence with carnivorous jaws that clamped down threateningly.

Neither Jalel nor Athela knew what was going on, and both of them just gawked awkwardly while Riven slowly came to stand in front of the panting, badly wounded spirit in front of him on the floor. Part of her ethereal body was now phasing in between mist and solid form, and he placed his boot on her neck while she spluttered black ichor and neon-teal ghost fluids.

“How?!” she managed to sputter, denying what her eyes were telling her while scrambling to try and get his foot off her neck. It was a question that Athela and Jalel were also asking themselves.

He merely shook his head, beckoning at her with one open hand. “You were pretty ballsy to do what you did, but it was your own words that gave me the clue to finish you off if I so choose. Where does that leave us now?”

The jaws in his soulscape tightened on Kajit’s soul, and she screamed again.

“However…” he muttered, letting up on the pressure he was putting on the phantom’s neck. He took a step back, still frowning at her. “If you give the dagger back to me, we can discuss things on a more professional level. I’m not necessarily opposed to helping you, but I’m going to do it if I fucking want to and not because I was blackmailed or stolen from. Do you understand?”

“But…” the ghost spluttered an incoherent string of curses, then snarled from her position on the floor, “I cannot give you dagger. You must take dagger for yourself from Tower of Fates!”

“Wrong answer.”

The jaws clenched, and Kajit started screaming again, invisible teeth ripping pieces of the phantom inside his soul bit by bit while startled onlookers watched. “I DO NOT HAVE DAGGER! DAGGER IN TOWER OF FATES! PLEASE!”

After a few seconds more, he let up. Crossing his arms and fuming angrily underneath his hood, Riven beckoned the phantom to continue. “Explain yourself, Kajit.”

She took a moment to catch her breath, eyeing the warlock fearfully. “Sister and I have soul link, but I cannot travel without ensnaring myself in trap. I send dagger there through link to make sure you free her!”

The ghost spat, her body becoming more translucent again now that he’d let up on his shard of Gluttony. “I may steal dagger, yes. But if was Riven’s sister, would you not do so, too?”

Riven mulled over the words slowly, keeping eyes locked on her own with a steady gaze. Eventually his clenched hands unfurled, and he let out a long, controlled sigh. His eyes softened, and he nodded. “Yes, I would. This is not over, Kajit—when Athela and I are done with our current quest to find the axe-wielding statue, you and I are going to have a long chat about what’s happened.”

He stared a little bit longer, battling internally about his feelings on the matter. But eventually he just shook his head and turned heel while glancing over to Athela and Jalel. Beckoning to them, he walked toward the spiral staircase leading down to the lower levels. “Let’s go.”

The statue the quest log spoke of was actually very close to the canal where Jalel’s previous group had hidden their canoe, or so he claimed. He led Riven and Athela a little ways across the city using a skinny back street hidden by overgrown, wilting weeds as tall as they were, and they successfully managed to make it all the way to the statue’s courtyard without any further incidents.

The trek took a little over an hour. The ground level of the city was far more intimidating than it’d been from above. Athela kept watch from up high—she was able to crawl up the sides of walls or over rooftops for better vantage points while they made their way to their destination. Flocks of crows flew overhead, and the sounds of distant battle echoed across stone monoliths, while bodies placed on spikes were left along the roadways for onlookers to silently evaluate. Ancient doorways promised hidden enemies at every turn, and movements in the mists foretold death as they swept across the ruined city.

They kept walking, keeping pace with Jalel and letting him lead by only ten feet until he came to a stop at the end of the corridor. The young hunter gripped his dagger more tightly, looking to his right and then his left, before pointing ahead into the thickening fog.

Riven gave Athela a signal to come down from her perch on a nearby tiled rooftop, not seeing anything but shrouds, but he inched forward and squinted for a better look. “This is it?”

Jalel nodded slowly, sweat beading on his forehead to intermix with the dewdrops accumulating there. “This is definitely it… The weather has been terrible lately—but it’s here. This is a courtyard extending for many dozens of yards, and in the middle you’ll see the statue.”

Athela’s light chittering alerted them to the spider’s descent, as the dead-silent advance of her long spider legs was completely missed before she parked herself at Riven’s side. There was nothing ahead of them that she could see except for ancient cobblestones, with weeds growing out from crevices or cracks in the ground. Immediately beside them, on either side, were tall stone buildings that faded away the farther up she looked—and behind them the long corridor loomed ominously as if to discourage them from turning back.

Athela moved ahead into the open space before them by about ten yards and gave Riven a backward glance. “I was able to make out part of the statue from atop that building, but I don’t feel good about this. Let me go ahead. Now that I have been bound to you, I won’t be able to die a permanent death any longer. It is better that I be the bait if there is any danger, rather than you.”

Riven didn’t feel good about it, either. It was way too open and exposed in terms of obstacles to hide himself behind, yet there was far less visibility than he’d like given the shrouds of black clouds and red mists drifting through the courtyard. Setting down his two remaining and half-completed totems, he activated them—each giving off minor flares of red light as he did on either side of the pathway—in preparation for anything that might be out there in the mists.

“Also, make sure Jalel doesn’t stab you in the back. It is strange that he doesn’t want to come into the courtyard with us and no doubt thinks this is a dangerous area,” Athela stated a little less loudly, so that only Riven could hear. She gave the other man a hiss of discontent and then looked back to Riven. “I still think you should let me eat him. And that bitch of a ghost, too! I can’t believe she took your pretty dagger and just flung it somewhere into the abyss like that! Especially because we have to play fetch now!”

Riven rolled his eyes and let out a low chuckle as Jalel continued to glance around nervously. “Just go on and scout the area. I’ll stay within the range of my totems. Hey, Jalel, got any further information on why you’re decided on staying back?”

It was obvious that Jalel didn’t want to enter the courtyard. The way his breathing had picked up and the ever-firm grip on his dagger were testament to it. “I am sorry… I don’t know why your quest took you here, but I have passed by here before. This is not a safe area of the city. Not that anywhere here is safe, but this statue is known to attract…certain creatures to it. Ones that fly, though I am not sure what they are, as I have never gotten close enough to find out.”

He then turned around fully, gripping Riven firmly by the shoulder. “Are you sure you don’t want to abandon this quest? Surely the gods will understand. Quests are not mandatory, and your lives are worth more than a simple reward.”

Riven glanced at Athela, and he fidgeted thoughtfully with the demonic bauble in his pocket while he pulled up the quest he’d been given from his status page. It was an option he’d noticed first in Chalgathi’s trials, and now was coming in rather handy to review information.

[New Quest (Updated): Find Your Spider Princess—You’ve rescued and bonded back to your minion, Athela, but you still need to bring her to the center of the city and touch the statue of the bearded, axe-wielding man without dying to receive a reward. Dying would be less than ideal, for obvious and permanent reasons. But let’s be real, you’re probably going to die here, little warlock—so pucker up!]

Putting his quest log away, he returned to scanning the area. He thoughtfully tapped his fingers on his thigh a couple times, scowling hard at the ground as he went over the options. He could back out, run, and get to the canoe that Jalel had claimed was nearby. But then what? They’d just leave after coming so far already? Were these prizes important? How would he know if he was missing out when it could potentially be a boon to help him survive in this fucked-up new world of his?

He thought back to the choice of selflessness versus selfishness. Had other participants in Chalgathi’s trials, the others of the fifty survivors, taken the one of selfishness? Had they been granted a similar option and been awarded with some legendary-tier outfits that he now didn’t have? If so, he needed to make up for that here. Sure, he’d been awarded the piece of gluttony. Sure, he’d found a new spell here and a demonic bauble. Even the dagger had been nice. However, he no longer had the dagger and wasn’t sure he was going to be able to get it back—and the bauble didn’t respond to him. Whatever B-class demon was inside that thing hadn’t responded to his summons yet. And if he had to guess, based on Chalgathi still interfering in his life and the Chalgathi cultist amulet hanging around his neck, those others of the fifty survivors would probably be involved with him again. In the past he’d been forced to fight one of them to the death—would he have to do so a second time? Just how overpowered had his peers become if his guess was correct? Whatever the case, Chalgathi obviously wasn’t done with him and therefore wasn’t likely done with the others. He could only anticipate the worst.

Back on Earth he’d been a nobody, a guy who barely got by. Jose, his best friend, had always been there for him. Allie, Riven’s little sister, had always looked up to him for guidance that forced him to put on a strong front, but otherwise Riven had been utterly alone. And now he’d met Athela. He barely knew the sometimes annoying, yet rather cute arachnid, but he’d already connected to her on a level that he’d failed to reach with so many others of his own species.

Now that he was here on the cusp of a new life with Athela at his side, was he going to let things slide by him just because they were hard? He wanted to introduce her to his sister, and he knew Jose would like Athela—he was fascinated by spiders, and a talking, demonic version of one as a pseudo-pet would cause Jose to go green with envy. Riven had his entire life ahead of him, a new chance to become something and someone great. Would he balk now, just because the danger was unknown to him? It might not even be there at all.

He turned to Athela, bent down and lightly stroked her thorax with a smile of self-assurance. “If you don’t want to do it, we can back out now.”

Athela watched him for some time, unblinking and staring up at her warlock master while her eyes seemed to twinkle with delight. She slowly nodded, then opened her mandibles…a sly expression that Riven had come to know as an arachnid smile playing at the corners of her fangs. Carefully, she pushed one leg into his right pocket. “You’re talking brave for being such a wuss! I think we should do it like we’d planned. But now that you’re asking me, we have to proceed on one condition!”

Riven raised an eyebrow before sitting on the ground in front of her, a soft chuckle escaping his lips at the mischievousness of his minion. “What’s that condition?”

She cocked her head and lightly tapped him on the nose with what could only be described as a giggle. Then she put two of her arachnid legs into his right pocket and pulled out the miracle stone they’d stolen from the Jabob demons. “You will address me as Princess from now on! And I get to wear this as a crown jewel until it accepts you!”n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

The spider did a silly dance with the glowing red orb placed on her head, held there by two of her twelve legs. She strutted around as well as a spider could, going back and forth while humming to herself and bobbing her thorax up and down to emphasize her importance.

Riven could only snort and laugh, covering his mouth as he tried to remain quiet despite her ridiculous behavior. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am serious!” Athela protested with a gnashing of her fangs. “I am a princess, and I deserve a crown. Humph!”

Riven almost failed to see the abrupt change in Jalel a second later.

Almost.