Nightmare Realm Summoner

“Dude,” Alex said. “You’re kidding me, right?”

Maybe that wasn’t quite the best thing to say when faced with a twelve-foot-tall amalgamation of melted man and metal holding a sword easily twice as wide as a grown adult. It certainly wasn’t going to win him any favor. But he couldn’t help himself.

The idea that Vaxon had just been sitting around in Valley Ford ever since the Disruptor had fallen, wandering around aimlessly like a lost puppy, just in the vague hopes that Alex would happen to come back to the city, was just a bit too much.

Vaxon looked slightly taken aback at that response. The huge man didn’t attack, which was something of a surprise in itself. He just stood there. Purple liquid dripped from the piping running all along his body, splattering to the ground with faint hisses that broke the silence.

“Are… you friends?” Aaron asked carefully. He was doing his absolute best to not look absolutely horrified by Vaxon’s wretched appearance in the vague hope that this might not have been an enemy. It was a futile one, but the effort was a commendable one. It was the kind of mask that could be only be worn by someone who had worked a customer service job at the late hours of the night.

“No,” Alex said. “Not as far as I’m aware, at least. He tried to murder me the last time we met. But, admittedly, we were ransacking his house.”

“This was the guardian of the Disruptor we destroyed,” Claire said, pulling her whip free and cracking it in the air at her side as she lowered into a fighting stance. Her eyes never left Vaxon.

Admittedly, their last fight against the massive man hadn’t gone too well.

But circumstances had changed since then. They’d gotten a hell of a lot stronger. Both of them had a Partial Soul Manifestation on top of the Body Tempering and other improvements to their abilities, and that wasn’t even counting the very influential abilities that Aaron brought to the table.

The three had just taken out an Adept 9. Sure, they’d had a bit of help from gravity and a storm of Riftwarped Qi, but the Baveroth had been more powerful than Vaxon. The huge man had once been an insurmountable threat. It had just been a while since then.

Alex wasn’t quite so concerned anymore.

“So this is an enemy?” Aaron asked, his grip on the Cracked Coin tightening.

“That would be a safe bet,” Alex said. “Especially given the ominous line he dropped right when we stepped out of the portal. Not something you’d generally be going around telling an old buddy.”

Despite that, Alex couldn’t help but notice that Vaxon had still yet to actually make a move. The massive man was just… staring at them. Well, that and dripping. He was doing a lot of that. The pool of purple liquid at his feet had started to eat a sizable hole in the ground. It had already taken a few inches off his relative height. It was a minor miracle that there was still any liquid left to drip at this point.

Alex kept his magic at the ready. He hadn’t forgotten how fast Vaxon could be. If he made any sudden moves, there was a good chance that the sword embedded in the ground would suddenly find itself lodged in one of them. He didn’t have time to activate his Soul Manifestation immediately, even with Princess guarding for them. They’d need to make space.

“You did not finish,” Vaxon ground out.

There was a long second of silence.

Aaron let out something that sounded very suspiciously like a strained cover-up cough.

“Really?” Alex asked.

“Sorry,” Aaron said. “I’m ready to fight. It’s fine.”

“You don’t sound very convinced,” Claire said. Her eyes narrowed. Vaxon had still yet to make a move. For some reason, they were caught in an odd standoff. “And I’m starting to feel similarly.”

“Why are you here?” Alex asked. “Have you actually just been sitting around this whole time in wait for us to come back?”

“Yes,” Vaxon said.

Aaron coughed again. He was definitely trying to cover up a laugh.

At least it seemed seemed like winning a fight had done a fair amount of good for his confidence. The Aaron that had joined Alex and Claire on the way over to the Cracked Steps never would have even considered letting himself laugh in the face of an Adept 5. Well, it was that or he’d just gotten a bit more comfortable with them. Perhaps it was a mix of the two.

“That’s… really sad,” Alex said.

A wave of anger passed over Vaxon’s features. He shifted, and Alex nearly cast Funhouse, but Vaxon didn’t lift his blade form the ground. Instead, he just adjusted his grip on the weapon again. It struck Alex that the blade wasn’t planted in the earth for show.

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It was bearing Vaxon’s weight. He was using it like a crutch.

“Not the whole time,” Vaxon said. He jerked his chin in the direction of the portal over their shoulders. “Just… since you entered. I sensed your return to Valley Ford.”

That gave Alex a moment of pause. It didn’t exactly sound like Vaxon was trying to kill them. His head tilted to the side. “Why are you here? I’m starting to get the feeling it’s not because you want to finish what we started back at the Disruptor for the sake of Great Tide’s honor… or something like that.”

A sharp, barking sound erupted from Vaxon’s lips. It sounded like someone had done some horrible things to a seal. There was no universe in which it could been properly considered a laugh, but that may have very well been what it was meant to be.

“Honor? The Great Tide? They have no such thing,” Vaxon rasped. “My servitude to them ended when Invictus was crushed beneath the fist of the Void Goliath summoned by the collapse of the Disruptor. A collapse that you caused.”

Alex blinked. Then his brow furrowed.

“You’re… welcome? It’s really feeling like we did you a bit of a favor with that. Doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you track someone down to attack them for.”

Vaxon’s lips curled. He opened his mouth to speak, but doubled over instead. A hacking, rattling cough shook his entire body. Purple liquid splattered across the ground in front of him. He raised a hand, wheezing for a second longer before he righted himself once more with a long, rattling breath.

“Attack? I am not here to attack you. I owe you my thanks,” Vaxon said. “The Disruptor had warped my mind. Enslaved me. For years, I existed only… only as a cog. A gear. The living heart of the Disruptor. Placed there by my own family. Atonement, they said. But you freed me. It was only days after Valley Ford fell that my mind returned to me.”

Holy shit. He was a member of Great Tide? They did that to one of their own people? Not an enemy?

As wretched as that was, it also somehow didn’t surprise Alex. The Great Families were horrid. He was pretty sure that there wasn’t a single atrocity they weren’t capable of if it meant a small increase in their chances of getting rare resources.

“Glad to have been of help,” Alex said slowly. Vaxon’s greeting really hadn’t made it sound like he was just here to give them a friendly nod and a word of thanks for pulling him out of his torture chamber. “Disruptors are unnatural. That much is pretty evident, even to someone who knows shit all about the System.”

“You do not...” Vaxon coughed, then shook his head. “Do not have the faintest idea. But it is moot. The Great Tide will not forgive you for that. They will know who was at fault. If they have not yet discovered it, they will.”

Given that my pseudonym Ash is still on the Leaderboards for a few things… yeah, I think they’ve connected the dots. But that really doesn’t change much. It’s not like most of the other Great Families like me much better. I’m not trying to buddy up with them anyway.

“Appreciate the warning,” Alex said. “But is that really why you came here? You literally opened with a threat. So are you going to jump to the point where you reveal that despite everything, you’re still going to try to kill us for some contrived reason?”

“No,” Vaxon rasped. “I did not come here to kill you. I came here for you to kill me.”

It was Alex’s turn to stare mutely for a second.

“What?”

“Actually, no. I think I’m with him,” Aaron said in a low voice. “I mean… just look. This guy is suffering.”

“Then why does he need us? There are other monsters. Other ways to die.” Claire asked cautiously.

Vaxon froze. A shudder ran through his form. His back straightened, eyes hardened. Then his jaw clenched.

“Because this body is still not my own,” Vaxon said. His hand clenched around the hilt of his sword. “A prison still holds me. I am selfish. I seek death… but the moment you move to end me, I will fight back. I will have no choice.”

“And something tells me you’re not willing to take no for an answer?” Aaron guessed.

“I am sorry.” Vaxon’s lips curled in a sad smile.

“You don’t want us to try and… I don’t know. Cure you or something?” Alex asked.

Vaxon sent him a flat look. “What is there to cure? What is left of me? I only want to rest. I… must apologize. I need more from you. This time, you will not escape. Returning here was a mistake. But I cannot pass on it. I must hope that you… are more powerful. Far more powerful. Kill me. Kill me — or die trying.”

Alex paused for a moment. But he couldn’t exactly argue with Vaxon. The man was right. He was melted into a torturous prison of metal, and it wasn’t like they had a magical healer back in their camp. Even if they did… Vaxon was far too powerful to try and play around with.

He might have been weaker than the Baveroth, but Stage didn’t take everything into account. Vaxon could still easily kill any one of them if they were even a bit too slow or careless. They had to take this seriously.

Goddamn the Great Families for doing this to the poor bastard. Damn them all to hell.

He couldn’t even blame Vaxon for forcing them to fight him. If he’d been trapped in an eternal loop of suffering where he couldn’t even control his own body, and the only chance of escape was someone defeating him… well, letting that chance just walk away wouldn’t have been easy.

Alex clenched his fists. “If you want to die, can you tell us where the most painless spot is to finish you?”

“The only spot of me that still remains,” Vaxon replied with a bitter smile. His sword rose from the ground, rivulets of purple liquid running down the sides of the blade as he raised it into a ready position. “My head.”

Alex nodded grimly. “Then that’s what we’ll do. I’m sorry, Vaxon.”

“It is the Great Tide… who must apologize,” the armored man wheezed. His stance lowered. “Make the first move.”

“That too. But that wasn’t what I was referring to,” Alex said.

A flicker of confusion passed through Vaxon’s features. “What—”

Princess whipped her arm forward, swinging the Baveroth’s corpse through the air toward Vaxon in a blur.

Vaxon’s sword shot up to intercept the huge bear’s body, turned to shear clean through it in a practiced motion that had completely and utterly failed to take into account the fact that this was, in fact, a Baveroth.

Princess bludgeoned Vaxon’s blade out of the way with the limp, now definitely desecrated corpse, slamming it into the huge man’s side with enough force to send him reeling several thunderous steps backward.

“It was for that,” Alex said, pressing his palms together. He rotated them, and the gate within his soul slammed open. “Partial Soul Manifestation. Edict of the Shattered King.”