Chapter Nineteen: The Champion and the Chittering Thing

I stood above the still-warm corpse of the Steelclaw Mother, her blood cooling on stone, her cavern heavy with silence, as her body began to dissolve into light and loot. The last corpse-embers of what my fire wisps had wrought faded into ash-light.

Varashan still stood beside me, his spear lowered, though not quite relaxed. His gaze swept the cavern. He looked over the piles of lesser loot orbs littering the stone, shimmering faintly beneath red-hued crystal light.

He finally spoke again, after he'd complimented me. “How much of the spoils of this battle do you plan to share with the city?”

I blinked. “What do you mean?”

“We have only briefly discussed specifics,” he said, glancing toward the collapsed tunnels. “There is... much here.”

I looked around again. He wasn’t wrong. The glowing loot spheres were everywhere. One for each Steelclaw killed. And there had been a lot.

“I’m probably going to keep most of the soul shards,” I admitted, “and anything unique that I might need. But the rest? I mean… it’s fair game.”

Varashan nodded slowly. “Would you need the meat?”

I hesitated. “Is it good?”

He smiled. “It is delicious when grilled. Far more appetizing than the mushrooms and cultivated moss most of us survive on.”

“Well… I might want some,” I said, grinning a little. “But yeah, I don’t mind sharing.”

“In days past,” Varashan said, voice thoughtful, “after such a victory, a feast would be held in honor of the champion’s success. There is certainly enough here for such a celebration.”

I stared at him. “You want to throw me a party?”

His eyes met mine, unflinching. “The people will need to know of your existence eventually. It would lift their spirits. As would the food.”

“I mean… I’m not sure I want a feast,” I said. “I’m still getting used to being around your people.”

“Think it over,” he urged. “There has been nothing to look forward to in the city for a long time.”

I nodded. “Yeah. I will. Okay?”

His shoulders lowered, just a little. “That is all I ask.”

“You mentioned wanting their claws before?” I said, shifting topics. “I might want a knife. Maybe bracers. But other than that, I don’t think I need them.”

“Thank you,” Varashan said. “Nearly nothing we possess could match the steel I believe these claws might forge.”

“Yeah, no problem.” I stepped toward the glowing loot orb from the Mother’s death. It shimmered gold and red, brighter than any other in the chamber.

I touched it. The loot list unspooled before me. Mostly standard stuff I'd expected: a Greater Earth Shard, the Steelclaw Mother's claws. But one entry caught my attention immediately:

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Gauntlets of the Underground

Light-weight, bone-studded gauntlets constructed from the thick hide of the Steelclaw Mother. Imbued with her essence. Grants tremor sense out to 20 feet around you. May be used with Unarmed Skills.

Rarity: Rare

Weapon-Class: Unarmed-Class +5

Armor-Class: +1

Item Level: 3

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Tremor sense.

It sounded like blindsight. Or a ground-based awareness. A literal sixth sense in either case.

I claimed them immediately and equipped them from inventory.

They shimmered onto my hands, overlapping my sleeves and tightening around my forearms. Black-and-red hide molded snugly against my skin, knuckles capped in gleaming ivory bone.

A pulse spread from my feet. A ripple. It radiated out from where I touched the ground, passed through the stone and then returned into my heels and bones.

And with the constant pulse came clarity.

I could feel Varashan behind me. Feel Gwyn, circling from the right. Their exact positions. As if my body was attuned to every subtle vibration, every whisper of movement in the stone.

I grinned.

Holy shit.

This was awesome.

***SCENE BREAK***

Frost clung to every surface. Pale ivy strangled columns long since collapsed. The once-pristine jade courtyard, now webbed and ruined, gleamed with a sheen of creeping ice. All of its ornate fountains and water-fixtures had frozen over. The trees that lined its walkways, though dead, somehow still bore fruit: crystal berries encased in ice that pulsed faintly with unnatural mana hung from their limbs.

Spiders the size of hounds skittered across stone and branches alike. But they scattered at the presence of the figure who stepped into the courtyard.

He was massive, seven feet tall easily. Regal. Horrific.

A white-horned being in ornate armor that shimmered with a lost Calibani style. His skin was deep midnight, etched through with flickering veins of glowing mana. No sword sat at his side--only a whip, coiled and waiting. His feet were hooves. His eyes burned constantly with wisping magical power and detached purpose.

What once might’ve been Calibani had become something... else.

He ascended the far stairs of the courtyard. Behind him, his tail swayed--a graceful, but proportionately thick, curling blade of flesh and force.

At the top of the stairs before him, massive but weathered palace doors loomed. He raised a hand.

The doors groaned open with the sweep of the creature's will.

He entered the palace and proceeded within its depths.

Torches along the inner columns sputtered and ignited as he passed, casting gold-bluet light over decaying architecture. Faces peered out from between the stone cylinders as he went, they were even more disturbing mockeries of the Caliban than the midnight-skinned man--their features twisted, their expressions locked in hate and agony as they gazed upon him. All recoiled from the light of the mana-torches.

He ignored them. Kept progressing into the once regal structure. Until he stopped before a throne.

It was empty.

But above it, something moved. Something that did not breathe into its upper lungs, but that lived nonetheless.

The horned man bowed his head--not so much out of respect, it seemed, but mere bored courtesy.

“I come with news from your master,” he said.

A flick of his hand conjured an image in the air. One of flame, motion, and violence. A girl with dark hair dueled a panther of moon-white fur with blazing fire and sword.

The image shifted: became Clarissa, speaking with Sorayelle.

“The System has brought a new champion,” he said, tone unreadable. “She wields magic and blade. She has slain the Ruler of the West. And she has happened upon a nest of survivors.”

Above the throne, the thing in the shadows chittered--its sharp, dry legs scraping against ancient stone and webbing.

The horned man was unmoved. “Find her. We do not yet know if she can be bent to the Worldheart’s will. Your master doesn’t care. Slay her. Take the others. They can be made useful in the usual way. Cowagen grows tired of this world's resistance."

He waved away the image. And turned to leave, not waiting for a reply.

The thing above hissed.

The horned man smirked and stopped walking away for a moment.

“Oh? Are you jealous or hateful of her?” he mused. “Or merely enthralled by the beauty you no longer posses?"

He walked away from the throne room, his cloak trailing across the cracked tile, black as shadow. "Then prove your worth despite that. Rid the world of her. And then kill your own weakness. There's no place for it in this world either.”

Behind him, the air grew colder still. And long, pointed limbs crashed against blameless stone in a self-hating rage.