Arc 7: Chapter 17: Fetter
The entire time Melmoth had been monologuing, I’d quietly shaped an Art. However, the beast-thing charged so fast and bellowed with such volume that I almost lost my concentration and died right there.
It came on like a siege boulder of burnt flesh and flailing chains, its curling horns lowered to gore me. Each step made stone break and the walls shudder, and I knew instinctively that wasn’t just the result of the creature’s natural mass. Its power blazed from it, a supernatural pressure, like the very stone and earth around us recoiled from it in revulsion.
I thrust my left hand out and a shield of amber fire erupted in front of me. I expected the aureshield to take the shape of an abstract leaf, tall and elegant like reflective glass under a warm sun.
Instead, the phantasm manifested as an almost shapeless thing with a gaping maw in the front, briefly taking on the image of a wailing skull just before the devil struck it. The barrier exploded with a shrieking noise, sending me flying back in a cascade of white-gold flames.
I struck a table, breaking it, then rolled into a rack against the back wall of the forge. Chains and pieces of a half-finished set of armor rained down on me, but my own armor protected me from injury. Disoriented, I got to my feet mostly on instinct.
That instinct saved my life for the second time in mere moments. The explosion had caused the monster to recoil briefly, but hadn’t knocked it back like it had to me. It stomped forward, pale golden fire licking across its shoulders. It snorted out a plume of hot steam and raised one hulking arm. Cinderous fire flashed in its four-fingered hand, and a flanged mace of rusted, reddish-black iron appeared in it.
The fucking thing can use sorcery, I thought even as I brought my axe up to parry its blow. The mace came down like a thunderbolt, the infernal sigils cut into the monster’s arm glowing red hot from an inner fire. It struck, and the impact went through my bones like an earthquake. My axe nearly went flying out of my hands. I held onto my weapon, my lifeline, with a death grip even as I stumbled to one side from the force of impact.
“Alken!” Delphine cried out. I tried to tell her to stay back, but the effort to simply stay alive another second stole the breath from my lungs. The hellspawn had no no grace, just a monstrous strength and bestial ferocity as it swung again and again.
I couldn’t parry those blows. They would break my weapon or my bones. I dodged where I could, but the monster was backing me into the corner where I couldn’t maneuver. It stank of stale sweat and burnt flesh and rot, and its one good eye seemed to hold a sadistic glee as it grunted with effort.
Strong as Karog. Not as skilled, but nearly as fast. No time to shape another Art.
What had just happened? My own magic had come out deformed, backfired on me.