The Shattered Construct (Essence Wielder Book 3), page 11
“The duration will need to be a little longer than the last time. As you negotiated twenty percent, I believe twenty minutes would be reasonable.”
That wasn’t all that bad of a deal, Dax thought. When they had been here before, they had needed to be here for fifteen minutes, and that was for five percent. So by quadrupling the take, he had partly expected that she would’ve wanted to try to quadruple the time that he was in the arena, but that would’ve been an insane amount of time. He hadn’t been sure if he would be able to withstand that.
“Of course, the number of constructs will increase. I asked that they not go overboard, but as you likely imagined, those who heard your name and saw your talent were intrigued. I do think that many of them believed that it was your brother who was here.” She glanced at Dax and snorted. “Fools, all of them.”
“Well, I’m sure that my brother would’ve been useful challenger,” he said.
“Useful, but not here, is he?” She didn’t sound disappointed.
“I understand you and my sister know each other.”
“She told you that, did she? Did she make it seem like we were on good terms?”
Dax frowned at the question. “She didn’t comment on that.”
The announcer chuckled. “How wonderful. While I do not have any ill will toward her, I would rather not see her, and she would much rather not see me. Perhaps one day she will tell you the story. Perhaps not. It doesn’t matter to me.”
He was curious about what happened between the two of them, especially as Megan had not mentioned anything. Before he could ask, Gia spoke up.
“What special tricks do you have tonight?”
“What makes you think I have any special tricks?” Alaria asked.
She looked over to Dax before answering. “I figured you’d do something so that you didn’t have to pay us.”
“Why, Ms. Stonewall, I’m insulted.”
Dax snorted. “I’m sure you are,” he said.
She laughed. “But perhaps I do have a few tricks ready. You’ll have to wait and see what they are.” She laughed again, and then whistled as she walked away.
When she did, there was a burst of wind, and he suspected that what she did was release some energy out from her, and then it washed into the crowd.
The crowd went into a frenzy.
“This might be more than we bargained for,” he said. “You’re probably right about tricks. I’m sure she’s going to do anything to keep from paying us. She is a businesswoman, after all.”
“Well, it’s a good thing we have a few tricks up our sleeves, as well.”
Then the door opened.
The first creature that emerged was enormous. It was probably fifteen to twenty feet tall, and lumbered toward them, picking up speed as it did. It looked like a stoneborn, but no stoneborn that Dax had ever seen before. Those that crossed the unclaimed lands were all massive, hairless, and all brute force.
His father had always warned him about ogres, saying that they were the last thing a man wanted to see, as they were often the last thing a man would see. The stoneborn began to move steadily toward them, far more fluidly than what he had ever heard a stoneborn’s movement described as. Of course, there was an essence to the stoneborn that was unusual, as well. Wind, if Dax wasn’t mistaken.
He braced for the attack.
It came from behind.
He still couldn’t shield the way that Professor Jamesh taught them. Gia didn’t seem to be able to, either, though she did have earth essence and could use that in something similar.
Dax spun, trying to transfer essence, but found that it didn’t work quite as well as he had anticipated.
Strange.
He needed to draw the essence off, but it wasn’t working. “Transference isn’t working,” he said. “Not the way that it should.”
Which meant that he had to try a more traditional approach.
He unsheathed his blade, and he lunged toward the stoneborn.
He left the other creature behind him to go for Gia. He wasn’t worried about her. Gia was quick, skilled, and he doubted that she was in any real danger.
The stoneborn swiped a massive hand at him. Dax was forced to twist, dropping to the ground, and rolling to the side. He jabbed with his blade, and as soon as he caught the stoneborn on its leg, he immediately began to focus on transference, trying to drain some power out of the stoneborn as he did. As he focused on the power inside the stoneborn, he felt less resistance than he had before.
Did somebody know what he was able to do?
Alaria used wind, so maybe she had Whispers set, and had shared with her construct makers.
Dax barely avoided another swipe from the stoneborn, popping up on his feet and driving his blade into the creature’s back, then drawing on its essence. Thankfully, it worked this time.
He pulled more and more, and as he did, he felt the essence fill him. It was earth and life, a surprising combination, and not nearly as much wind as he had anticipated having watched the ogres moving toward him. Then the stoneborn simply vanished.
He spun to see Gia panting, having shattered two of the creatures into little more than dust.
“What was that?” Dax asked.
“Don’t know,” she said. “Never seen anything like it before, but it’s powerful. Managed to cut through one, and then had to drive my blade into the other.”
“They have resistance to my essence,” he said. “At least, until I drive my blade into them like you did.”
“Resistance to my essence,” he said again.
He had to be careful. He didn’t know that somebody had been listening to them while they were here before, but it was possible that someone had learned about his ability.
“Any suggestions?” Dax asked.
“I think we wait and see what they’re going to throw at us. That has to be the worst, right?”
“Well…”
Another door opened.
Three creatures emerged. They were tall, and had four long arms, with bladelike claws on them. They were terribly massive, not like the stoneborn, but they still towered over the two students. Dax had never seen a creature like this before, so he didn’t even have a name for it like so many others. This had to be a true construct, and not some repurposed creation like some other creature.
He glanced over to Gia. “Ever seen something like this?”
“No. You?”
He shook his head. “Take them down all at once or one at a time?”
“I would suggest we do whatever’s easiest.”
Dax focused on them and felt the same sort of resistance that he had felt from the stoneborn. Either he and his ability had been discovered, or there was just some natural resistance here. They had made their own preparations, so at least there was something he could try.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a rune-marked circle, and tossed it toward the creatures. Cedrick had been kind enough to fill the rune-marked item with some of his destructive life essence. Dax did not know what kind of essence these creatures had, but he had to hope that they weren’t life—and not destructive life.
There was an eruption of power.
The creatures reacted, going into a strange frenzy as Cedrick’s pink bubbles burst out of the containment rune Dax had placed.
He and Gia darted forward.
When they reached the nearest creature, she struck in one direction, while he took the other, carving through the leg of the creature, using transference.
Resistance worked against him.
At least he could drain it through his sword. As soon as he pulled through it, the creature collapsed, and he spun toward the next.
Gia cried out.
She was backing away from one of the other creatures.
Dax hurriedly reached into his pocket and grabbed another of the containment runes that he had made and whipped it toward the creature. Gia wrapped a ball of earth essence around herself. The rune exploded at the same moment. The creature let out a strange shrill shriek, almost as if it were truly alive.
Dax shook the thought away, slamming his blade into the creature’s back and draining its essence.
That left one creature.
Gia nodded at him. “A close thing. Just one left.”
“And then three more after that.”
“What do you think the final trick is going to be?”
“Holding out for twenty minutes. How long do you think it’s been?”
“Not twenty minutes,” she said.
The two of them danced around the final of the strange, gangly-limbed monsters, until he felt like they had taken too long, and were making it look a bit ridiculous. So when he drove his blade into the creature’s belly—or he thought what the creature’s belly would be—he immediately used transference, causing the creature to disappear.
He spun, holding up his blade in a triumphant gesture.
The crowd around them roared. He glanced over to Gia, grinning for a moment. Three creatures. And then they would get paid.
When the door opened, and the creatures emerged, Dax’s heart sunk.
Silk shatters.
Worse, Dax did not think that they were constructs.
Chapter Fifteen
The silk shatter moved toward him.
Something about it didn’t seem quite right. For one, the essence from it seemed far too real, and far too familiar, compared to what he had experienced from the silk shatters in the forest outside of the city. And it seemed like an odd construct, as well.
“What’s wrong?” Gia asked.
“Do you see them?”
“Well, some sort of a spidery-type creature. I’ve never have seen anything quite like that before, but I gather from the way you’re looking, you aren’t terribly excited about it.”
“That’s a silk shatter. And I don’t think that is a construct.”
It darted toward them, and Gia used a faint tracing of earth that created a rippling wave of energy that erupted up and around, trapping the silk shatter inside. Dax knew that it wouldn’t hold very long. They were simply too potent for that.
“It’s probably not going to hold,” he said.
He wasn’t sure that he wanted to fight the silk shatter, but how could he chase it away?
They fanned out, spreading around them.
Gia had placed earth around them in her own barricade, keeping the silk shatter from them. The crowd was shouting, though it had turned into more of a sound of irritation than a cheer.
Maybe they were taking too long. That might be a problem.
He hadn’t considered the possibility that the crowd might be upset about how they dealt with these creatures. The crowd wagered on how long they lasted, after all, and if they did not last as long as they were supposed to, or if they simply delayed and made themselves last longer than they should have, then he could easily understand the crowd getting upset with them, and…
“We have to do something quickly,” Dax said, looking over to her. “To be honest, I don’t know what it’s going to involve, and I don’t know if I am even interested in trying to do anything here, I just…”
“I can track them. They aren’t doing anything.”
“Yet. They have multiple types of essence and are incredibly powerful.”
“Just draw off what you need, then,” she said.
She was right. He could draw that from these creatures.
A rippling wave of earth washed away. Only something about it wasn’t quite right. He hadn’t seen her use that level of control before.
And this wave of earth was coming toward them, not fanning out from them.
Which meant it wasn’t Gia.
Dax lunged, sweeping his essence blade outward, and then he immediately began to use transference, drawing upon as much as he could and drawing it into the blade, then funneling it back out. When he was still a first-tier acolyte, he wouldn’t have been able to draw it out that quickly, but now that he was at least a third-tier, or maybe higher, it was much easier for him to do that.
Gia was holding onto earth essence, sweeping that out, but it crashed into another barricade.
“They just have so much essence,” she muttered.
“And we can’t harm them. We can scare them, but we can’t hurt them.”
Gia held his gaze for a moment, and then nodded.
He was thankful for that.
“What worked when you faced them before?”
“Well, partly it was Cedrick…”
And Cedrick was here.
Dax focused on Cedrick’s essence, thinking about where his friend was seated. If anybody in the crowd could help him, it would be him. More importantly, Cedrick would understand what it was that Dax was doing, and probably would not be angry. He felt for Cedrick’s presence, and then he began to call upon it. There was a bit of resistance, as if Cedrick was trying to fight Dax off, until it seemed as if Cedrick recognized what Dax was trying to do. Then the destructive life essence flowed into him and he then poured into his essence blade.
A streamer of pale red flowed from him, as if the transference process had changed Cedrick’s essence. When he streaked it toward the nearest of the silk shatters, it jumped.
The creatures had earth, and life, and a bit of wind, from what he could tell. He drew upon all of them. He then called it through his hand and punched. Dax had no idea what to expect, but as he did it, he pushed out with the essence that he had transferred into himself, and he poured it away. There was a bulging—and for a brief moment, he thought that maybe Professor Jamesh would be pleased with him and what he was able to do here—and then he slammed his fist—or rather his essence—into the silk shatter. The creature went flying away from him.
The crowd roared again.
Would they roar if they knew that these were actual creatures?
Of course they would. How many of the people that were here knew that they were constructs from the beginning?
Another question came to him. Who had brought the silk shatters?
Two of them remained. Gia was fighting with one, using earth to keep it away from her, but the creature had its own level of control over earth. She was keeping it at bay, but how much longer would she be able to do so?
He focused on the other silk shatter. This one was a little larger than the others. For a moment, he thought that maybe it was little more than a construct, but as he focused on it, he began to feel something coming off of it.
An awareness. The back of his neck began to tingle.
A warning.
Dax spun, barely in time. The other silk shatter he had punched away had come leaping toward him. Dax used transference, drawing the essence out of the creature, and then punched again, sending the creature up into the air, flying to the far side of the arena. It came crashing down in a heap, and then it burrowed down into the ground where it disappeared.
No time to worry about that any longer, though he was going to have to look for it. The lead silk shatter seemed to recognize something. Maybe it recognized Dax.
And if so, maybe he could communicate with the creature.
He held his hands out, not wanting to threaten the creature.
“I do not want to hurt you,” he said, pushing outward with a bit of transference, and trying to connect to the silk shatter as he did.
“We don’t have time for this,” Gia said. “I know that you don’t hurt them, but you need to do something because I’m having a hard time with this one.”
Dax used more transference, drawing from the creature, and then he whipped his blade. A strange wave of mixed essences went coursing out from the blade and struck the creature. It went tumbling off to the side. Gia used a bit of her own essence and pushed downward. Earth began to heap around the creature, burying it once again.
Dax focused on the other silk shatter. “We don’t want to hurt you.”
The silk shatter skittered from side to side, dancing back on four legs. He knew that if it reared up on two legs, then…
“Please,” Dax said. “I’ve met with your queen.”
There was a pause.
Everything within the silk shatter seemed to freeze, and for a moment, Dax could see an essence trailing away from it, only he couldn’t tell what kind of essence it was, nor could he tell what it was of the essence was doing, only that it seemed as if it were flowing outward and away and…
“I helped her.”
He tried again, knowing that he needed to somehow get through to this silk shatter. The other two had burrowed and he could feel the essence coming toward them, the rumbling of earth.
Around him, the crowd began to jeer, boos raining down on them.
“I promised her that I would not harm her kind,” Dax said.
For a moment, the silk shatter watched him. Then it reared up on two legs.
“Crap,” Dax muttered.
“Not good?”
“Well, they do that when they are ready to attack.”
Then the Silk shatter thundered downward, landing on all of its legs. It burrowed into the earth, disappearing. After that, everything went still.
Dax let out a shaky breath. “I think… I think that’s it.”
“But we didn’t even defeat them.”
“In a sense we did. They’re gone.”
“That’s not going to make Alaria very happy.”
She was right. She would want more of a battle. But Dax suspected that they had already lasted twenty minutes, and had withstood the nine creatures, including only six constructs, that had come at them.
A blur of essence formed in front of him.
For a moment, Dax thought that it was going to be more of the silk shatter returning, and he braced himself, but that wasn’t it.
Instead, there was a rippling, and three more ogres suddenly appeared.
“Wait,” Gia said. “I thought that we were done with the last?”
“I thought so too.”
The crowd around them went wild.
One of the ogres struck, sweeping toward Gia with a massive hand, and it caught her on her shoulder. She cried out.
Dax darted toward her, just as the stoneborn brought its other hand around, swinging toward her. He spun his blade, driving up into the stoneborn’s shoulder, and immediately transferred essence. The contact with the creature allowed him to draw more and more power out of it, and it allowed him to drain the creature as that essence poured into his blade. The stoneborn vanished.
