Inertia: Beneath the starlit veil [Progression Fantasy]

Cyrus Solaris

“Return my brother’s body now or die,” the echo of lord lugat said, his fangs bared, cosmic energy surging, shifting the white sand around us.

I had a few options; all of them would result in pain, but none of them included giving up this body.

It was the ticket to defeating this rift and making it out alive from this horrible place.

“I'll take my chances with death,” I said, letting cosmic energy erupt from my body.

Lugat sneered.

The bats took off toward me at blinding speeds, but I didn’t move. I increased my moon’s orbital speed, keeping my eyes locked on Lugat. The bats weren’t the real threat.

He was.

I could feel it in my bones: he was trying to bait me into making the first move.

The bats split apart as they closed in. One came straight at me; my moon intercepted it and knocked its head clean off its shoulders. Another lunged from behind. I answered with a back kick, sending it tumbling backward.

There was one left above me; I weighed the options and just launched my moon at the back of its head, cracking its skull, killing it.

My gaze returned to Lugat, but he vanished. The hairs on my arms prickled; I didn’t even sense a distortion from his movements.

Then hard, blunt objects crashed into the side of my head; my body flew across the cemetery, only to be stopped by the hard surface of an obsidian tombstone.

“Very few would dare trespass upon my domain and lay claim to that which belongs to me, belongs to my family. And yet, here you stand. Tell me, child, what reason could justify such audacity?” Lugat’s echo asked as I crawled to my feet.

I spat out the blood pooling in my mouth.

“I’m only here to fulfill my task so I can become a member of the Atë. Nothing more, nothing less. My task is to retrieve that body, and that is what I intend to do,” I said to Lugat as I called my moon back into orbit.

His expression shifted. The furious, demon-possessed look faded, replaced by something far more curious.

“You become an Atë?”

Then Lugat tilted his head, and his eyes narrowed, as if he was observing something invisible.

“There hasn’t been an eligible candidate for centuries, no, in a millennium. How did you slip through the cracks?” Lugat said, walking slowly towards me.

The sound of this man’s voice annoyed me; he acted as if he knew me, but he knew nothing about me. It was time he shut up.

I threw my moon at his head and took an explosive step, hurtling myself at Lugat.

Lugat swatted my moon away, but I landed a knee into his gut. My knee cracked, feeling like I ran into a wall.

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That wasn’t going to stop me, and I activated gravity well. Lugat dropped to a knee as I continued my assault, throwing kicks, elbows, chops, everything I could muster.

He didn’t even attempt to block. He just smiled with a wide grin, his fangs bared.

That enraged me even more, and I got lost in my fury, trying to end this despite my lower core stage.

Just as I threw another strike, he struck both my ears. My world spun, and everything became muffled.

I stumbled back, nearly falling over my own feet.

Then my body folded as a fist drove into my abdomen; my cosmic layer of protection broke instantly, and I spat out bile.

Thanks to the hydra, the damage done to my ears healed, and I regained enough balance to retreat and put some space between us.

Things were not looking good; my astral relic was working over time, draining my cosmic energy at an alarming rate.

I needed to replenish my reserves, and the only way to do that was to retrieve the cores from the bats. But that was easier said than done.

Lugat was fast. Deathly fast. I was lucky that echoes in the Stage Two rifts couldn’t fully access their node abilities. Judging by the potency of Lugat’s cosmic energy, he was comparable to a fully realized Adept Stage Starbound or even a Void-born behemoth.

I couldn’t beat him one-on-one.

I looked up at the sky and realized I had only one chance of surviving this altercation: hold out for as long as I could.

“ You don’t know what you are, what’s suppressed deep down in you. Let's see if we can awaken it.”

Lugat stepped forward and vanished again, leaving a billow of sand in his wake.

I dashed toward the closest bat on the ground. But as I took my second step, something yanked me backward by the collar.

I barely had time to react before a kick slammed into my gut, cracking a rib or two and sending me flying through the air.

The impact nearly knocked me unconscious. If I hadn’t wrapped myself in a new layer of cosmic energy at the last second, I would have been impaled.

Damn it! He’s just too fast!

He appeared above me, his fist cocked and a wide smile.

“So young and so much to learn,” Lugat said as he threw his fist at my stomach.

But I deflected the attack, commanding my moon to slam into his wrist. His body twisted from the impact, turning his back toward me.

I wrapped my arms around his throat and tried to choke him out as we spiraled headfirst toward the ground.

He struggled, clawing at my forearms, ripping the skin to the bone. I wailed in pain, but I didn’t relinquish my grasp until we were a foot away from the sand. I pushed off of him at the last second, tumbled to my feet, and dashed over to the husk of a bat.

I plunged my hands into the body and dug out the core.

I had to be quick. That maneuver wouldn't keep him down for long.

With the core in my hands, I began absorbing its cosmic energy, replenishing some of my reserves.

“Poor child, what happened to your arms?” A sinister voice said from behind me.

I looked down. The core was missing, and so were my hands, severed and scattered across the white desert floor.

Red liquid sprayed at my feet.

Both my arms were missing at the shoulder.

The delayed pain came crashing down all at once. Agony ripped through my body, drawing out every thought as I collapsed onto the ground and screamed, my body writhing uncontrollably against the sand.

“Gula sent you, didn’t he? He never could best me on his own, and it seems he has yet to outgrow that weakness, sending the likes of you to do his bidding. Surely you know the Atë's reputation begins with him. Our members are all mad, insane– whatever name you wish to give it.

But Gula is the pinnacle of that madness. They do not call him the Cannibal without reason. He alone has consumed his own kin in exchange for the power their flesh granted him. His own father was the first.” Lugat said, kneeling beside me and lifting me by my hair.

“Now, before you die, show me how deep is your well of madness."