Chapter 17: DD2 Chapter 011 – Burns

Arilla hit the ground hard. The knee-deep snow proved to be a poor cushion after falling almost sixty feet from the back of the Umbral Hulk. The runes etched into her armour did their best to try and soften the impact of her uncontrolled descent, but the enchantments were running on fumes. The long night of fighting had depleted her deep reserves of both mana and stamina, leaving her with none of the former and only a little of the latter to work with. When she crashed into the ground, it was only her defensive passive [Dragon’s Mettle] and the snow itself that took the edge off, as she bounced and rolled across the frozen earth amidst a flurry of white. 

When Arilla first tried to stand, she failed to get up past her elbows as she was overwhelmed by vertigo. Her entire field of view spun while she lay there in the snow breathing through her sudden onset of nausea. When the worst of it had passed, she cautiously raised a gauntleted hand to her head, and felt where her helmet had bent inwards. The deformed steel dug into the flesh of her scalp, where it released a warm trickle of blood that ran down her face and pooled inside of her armour. She grimaced in anticipation of the pain before she ripped her ruined helmet off of her head, and threw it to her side where it was immediately lost in the deep snow. However, before she could regret its loss, she ended up spewing partially digested pottage out onto the frozen ground. 

“Gross…” Arilla whispered to herself, as she felt her fatigue from the night and the ones before abruptly catch up with her.

Stifling a yawn the mid-pewter warrior slowly clambered up onto unsteady feet where she was surprised to realise that she could see perfectly fine. A second miniature sun hovered high above the gatehouse where it revealed the state of the battle in its entirety. The few attacking creatures left standing were breaking, turning and running as Kalle had said they wouldn’t, only to be struck down from behind by arrows or spell fire. Corpses—as far as she could tell, entirely non-human—were piled up high along the base of the wall, providing a macabre ramp often leading all the way up to the very battlements they leaned against. Frozen blood and gore was everywhere; crimson icicles extending from massive pools of slippery red ice hung down from the sides of the wall in a grim reminder of the foul weather.

The Umbral Hulk itself laid sprawled out on its front, its body collapsed over the walls it had tried so hard to destroy while it was alive. Judging by the shattered stone that was scattered around its corpse, it appeared that it may have been successful in its death. The beast looked different now, smaller even. Without the shadowy-aura that had clung to its skin, Arilla could see countless battle scars decorating its hide interspersed between large sheets of thick carapace-like cast-iron that were seemingly fused to its flesh. Arilla was no blacksmith, but as a warrior who habitually entrusted her life to the quality of steel that covered her body she’d picked up a little knowledge about various metals. While she knew that some creatures would naturally refine steel or other exotic alloys to augment their bodies, this wasn’t the case here; this had been bolted on.

The whole scene was disgusting, and when she recalled how someone had targeted Typh’s first spell to force back the darkness of the night, Arilla was struck by the waste of it all. A person had chosen to commit all of this bloodshed, although for what malevolent purpose, she couldn’t begin to guess.

She took a hesitant step forwards, the high snow oddly enough taking some of her weight and helping to support her. Her second step was far more secure than the first as she began to march back from where the hulk had tossed her and towards the gatehouse where Typh no doubt waited.

“Arilla!” A voice cried out. Machero’s voice, the youth somehow still alive and conscious despite his own long fall. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes, and thankfully she did, for without her helmet to conceal her face, a show of derision would have been extremely rude as the youth’s cry was soon taken up by the defenders still standing on the walls. Her name was chanted on dozens of lips as weapons and fists were pumped into the air, their owners' eyes all fixed on her. 

She was puzzled at first, unsure as to why she had been singled out, but then when she looked at the Umbral Hulk lying on what was her part of the wall, she realised how much larger it was compared to any of the other corpses that decorated Cawic’s walls. As her name was repeated by the myriad of voices that belonged to the village’s defenders, for a brief moment she almost felt physically lifted up by the show of support. Her fatigue felt diminished, her steps surer, and for a wondrous handful of seconds she felt more powerful than she had ever before.

Unsure as to what was going on she checked her notifications, and was momentarily taken aback. The list of slain creatures that the system had attributed to her actions was far longer than she had anticipated. The long night of fighting had all sort of blurred together and with the notable exception of one or two kills, she had lost track of the violence she had committed. Even just skimming the list, she was shocked to see the quantity of her kills so plainly displayed in front of her. The last time she had received anywhere near as many, she had dismissed them all without looking at the classes or levels. The thought of knowing anything more about the people she had killed had been sickening to her at the time, but this time was different. 

She felt proud.

*Congratulations on defeating a level 24 Night Gaunt. Experience is awarded.*

*Congratulations on defeating a level 28 Frost Worm. Experience is awarded.*

*Congratulations on defeating a level 25 Twilight Hound. Experience is awarded.*

*Congratulations on defeating a level 22 Twilight Hound. Experience is awarded.*

…

*Congratulations on defeating a level 39 Etter Wight. Experience is awarded.*

…

*Congratulations on defeating a level 32 Cryo Leopard. Experience is awarded.*

…

*Congratulations on defeating a level 40 Moon Raptor. Experience is awarded.*

...

*Congratulations, Dragon Guard is now level 38.*

…

*Congratulations on defeating a level 49 Umbral Hulk. Experience is awarded.*

*Congratulations, Dragon Guard is now level 39.*

The two levels were unexpected, although they really shouldn’t have been when she considered how many creatures she had just fought and killed. She was still one level away from the next interval, where she could expect to raise her stats again, and eleven from ranking up her class to bronze, but it was still remarkable progress, far beyond what she could normally hope for. 

Although whenever she spent time with Typh, violence and levels never seemed to be too far away.

Her eyes scanned the length of the walls as she surveyed the faces of the celebratory villagers. They were battered and bruised, but for the most part uninjured. The collection of hunters, miners, labourers and craftsmen who had taken up arms, and joined the handful of old adventurers in Cawic’s defence had survived as much through their own determination and skill than Typh’s timely spells.

Arilla could tell that they wanted it to be over—needed it to be—and so they cheered. They cheered because it was the first night that they had successfully pushed the creatures back, and they chanted her name because she had made the most obvious dent in their enemies’ forces, although she was sure that Typh would raise a questioning eyebrow at that.

Arilla couldn’t get past how good the cheering felt to her. It was her first level in a long while that had come from actually helping people, and damn it if she didn’t like the feeling. The knowledge that the people of Cawic would remember her and her deeds for years to come fulfilled some previously unknown desire for recognition deep inside of her. She wanted to be calm, to be respectful for the hardship and losses that the village had endured, but as her class rejoiced in her chest at the thrill of all that blood and mana that had filled the air, she couldn’t quite manage it. 

She breathed out a long sigh of relief. The allure of a warm bed back at the inn and perhaps even a small drink lulled her into complacency as she raised her sword aloft and basked in the crowd's cheers. Her showboating only faltered when the crowd's voices suddenly went silent.

She followed their eyes that now looked past her, and in the false daylight of Typh’s spell, Arilla watched with growing horror as she was no longer the only one in the snow standing on their own two feet. Before her very eyes every dead thing piled high around the base of the walls stood back up, while the villagers of Cawic seemed frozen in fright. 

Worst of all, agonisingly slowly, she watched the gigantic mass of flesh in front of her shift, first to its knees and then back to its full towering height.

[Zombie Umbral Hulk level 49]

“Shit,” she swore, readying her Zzweihäander as she tried and failed to push mana into the depleted runic enchantments that her gear relied upon. She had nothing left.

The zombie hulk turned ponderously to face her. Its own face lolled forwards, the large chunk missing from the back of its neck preventing it from keeping its oversized head upright. The massive beast looked straight down at her. Its eye sockets burning with a sickly green flame, a quiet intensity as Arilla felt something other watching her through the puppeted creature.  

“I really shouldn’t have taken my helmet off,” Arilla groaned, before she darted to the side as the hulk stamped down on the spot that she had just been standing on. 

The zombie hulk was slower than it had been in life, and it wasn’t too much trouble to dodge. But as she hacked into it with her blade, she felt a resistance to its flesh that was either new or just a result of the inactive enchantment in her Zzweihäander. Either way, she could barely cut her way through it and had to quickly jump away when the zombie bent down low to grasp at her with its massive hands.

Arilla was bone-tired. The euphoric rush she had felt from the crowd had vanished, and only her own meagre stamina reserves kept her going, a resource she knew she would have to spend liberally if she wanted to kill the hulk for a second time. Her strength score simply wasn’t high enough to harm the beast without her resource-intensive [Dragon’s Blade] skill or the enchantment in her sword.

It reached for her and she swung her sword at it in response. Skill-forged steel powered by her straining muscles carved deep into the massive fingertips of the zombie. The edge of her Zzweihäander scored a shower of sparks and torn flesh as the sharpened edge ground against the creature's bones. Still, the hand didn’t slow. It descended swiftly to slap down on the ground around her regardless of the damage she had just inflicted on it. The spray of snow that was kicked up into the air momentarily blinded Arilla as she jumped away, burning more of her precious stamina to keep moving out of its considerable reach.

She had enough stamina left for two seconds of [Dragon’s Blade] at its maximum power, which she would certainly need if the strength of its finger bones were anything to go by. If she was faster that would probably translate into multiple strikes, but as she was, she could reliably hit the zombie twice. Given the relative differences in its sixty foot height to her not even six, she would have to spend one of those seconds jumping, but where could she even hit a zombie to kill it in one blow? 

It swept a hand across the ground, creating a moving wall of frozen dirt and snow that raced to meet her, ice and dirt rumbling loudly as it ripped through the air.

There was no time to think. She jumped. 

Arilla pushed hard on [Dragon’s Blade], and 37 of her precious stamina points were consumed in an instant by her skill; her strength score increased to 252 as she left the ground. She left a crater of snow behind in her wake that was quickly displaced by the moving wave of earth. Arilla had aimed herself at the zombie's throat, in the hope that a cut at the front of its neck to match the one at the back would result in a decapitation and end the creature. 

Leaping through the air like she was, wasn’t often attempted for a number of very good reasons. First, her sword tutor Hoarst had threatened to cane her if he ever caught her doing it, calling the move a ‘suicidal overcommitment’, and he was right. Once she left the ground behind she was wholly committed to her direction, unable to dodge, or pivot, she was forced to follow through with the strike regardless of what awaited her. The zombie's giant hands tried to swat her from the air mid-leap, and she was barely able to contort her body to pass between its fingers. Her relief at avoiding a quick end was swiftly ruined by how whoever controlled the zombie had decided to simply lower its body. The massive mouth on its oversized flopping head now wide open to receive her. 

Glistening fangs, each one as large as her thigh, bared in anticipation of her arrival.

“Gods, this is going to sting,” she uttered.

It did. Arilla crashed into its mouth like a missile made of steel. The hulk’s teeth shattered and her depleted rune plate ripped open from the impact. Her flesh was pierced more times than she could count. Her skills [Dragon’s Mettle] and [Dragon’s Resilience] came into play immediately as they both strived to take the edge off her wounds which were both grievous and numerous. The first reduced the scope of damage with her flat mitigation, and since her most recent rankup, her body was also laced with steel and other trace metals that gave her an additional layer of resilience. The second reduced the visceral impact of the trauma and shock, as she was effectively impaled on the hulk's teeth, which broken as they were from her forceful arrival, bit down. 

Pain blossomed and darkness clawed at the edges of her vision. Her consciousness waned with the torrent of agony that stemmed from her multiple serious wounds. 

Arilla tried to fight it, but she succumbed and closed her eyes.

“Wake up. We’re not done yet.” 

She felt Rolf’s hand carefully stroke her hair as his disembodied voice whispered softly into her ear. She smiled in thanks at the show of affection, tilted her head to the side as if to beg for more, for a longer respite from the pain, before she remembered that he was dead. That she had killed him. Hating herself, she let the ghost of her torturer bring her back to reality. 

Arilla’s gauntlets clenched around the hilt of her Zzweihäander, a bitter laugh in her throat which was interrupted when she coughed up a lungful of blood—not necessarily an exaggeration. The beast’s teeth ground against her bones; it was agony, but it was nothing compared to the torture she had already survived. 

Again, 37 points of stamina flooded her skill. Her class roared with vicious approval as the muscle fibres in her arms enhanced with metals mundane and magical were empowered with the strength of over three hundred women. Her tendons tore and her bones cracked as she swung her weapon inside the creature's mouth heedless of the obstacles in her path. 

Enchanted steel met flesh and won. Sort of. The back of the zombie's head exploded outwards amidst a torrent of gore, bone and broken metal.

For the second time in the night Arilla was irked by system notifications informing her of her kill, and a new level as the monster toppled forwards, this time carrying her with it.

 

Three levels in a night. She hadn’t levelled like that since the attack on the Traylan estate where she had practically bathed her sword in human blood. Since then her growth had slowed to a crawl as she passively inched her way towards 38, but it had only taken a little over a week in Typh’s company to race ahead to 40. The odd dragon was attracted to danger like a moth to a flame.

“You know, one of these days you’re going to have to get over these masochistic tendencies of yours,” Typh commented dryly, the mage having moved to sit next to her cross legged in the snow.

“If any one here is a masochist it’s you,” Arilla said, her heart almost skipping a beat when Typh blushed, his brown skin subtly flushing with colour.

“You broke your sword,” the dragon said, as he turned his feminine head to the side and swiftly changed the subject.

“And quite possibly everything else,” she admitted, taking a moment to groan loudly in pain.

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“You’re incorrigible,” Typh said, squatting down to place a small hand on her chest. “Your HP has grown a lot since the old days. So I’m not going to be able to do this all at once. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, I get it. Just fix me up enough so that I can stand, I can deal with the rest naturally.”

“Are you sure?” Typh asked, his voice full of concern if tinged with a little bit of mirth.

“I’m sure. I’ve got a skill that helps with the pain, remember.”

“I hope that skill didn’t have anything to do with your decision to jump face first into that creature's mouth.”

“That was an accident, I was aiming for its neck.”

“Sure you were,” he said with a pronounced eye roll, before he started to channel mana through his spell as the flesh in Arilla’s legs pulled itself back together, the bones unbreaking as Typh’s ruptured in turn. The dragon mage remained upright when his limbs failed him, as instead of collapsing to the floor, he floated in the air just an inch or two above the ground. 

“New rankup,” Typh said by way of explanation, as if sustained flight was something normal to be dismissed like it was nothing.

“We really need a better long term healing solution than this,” Arilla groaned as she stood up, her everything crying out in pain.

“You could always just stop maiming yourself.” 

“I feel like we’ve had this conversation before.”

“We have,” Typh said, before producing a heavy-looking sword, which he held hilt first towards Arilla. “Here, you’ll need this.”

The weapon was a piece of art. Another Zzweihäander like the one she was used to wielding, but so much more. Gold filigree decorated the broad crossguard, where clear diamonds larger than her thumbnail were interspersed with runes in the braided metal. The hilt was wrapped in an exotic blue leather that she couldn’t identify, the stitching so fine that she could barely even see it, the whole thing ending in a solid gold pommel in the shape of an eagle’s head. It was beautiful, but all of that paled in comparison to the long silvery-white blade, covered entirely in intricate runes that flowed along its length like a snaking river.

“It’s beautiful…” she whispered in awe of the weapon. “There is adamantium in this, right?”

“Yes. About one in twenty parts, and it’s also very heavy,” Typh replied, his arm obviously straining to hold onto the sword, which was oddly warm to the touch and, if Arilla wasn’t mistaken, wet.

Ignoring that little detail, she focused on the sword itself, which was a marvel. Just trying to hold it told her all that she needed to know about the quality of the blade and the enchantments running through it. It was uncomfortably heavy, but for a warrior with over 100 effective strength that wouldn’t be an issue for long. Using [Dragon’s Blade] even seemed smoother somehow just by holding the sword in her hand. In her injured state, she couldn’t swing the sword, but when she burnt a few points of stamina and felt that energising rush of skill-enhanced strength spread throughout her body, she noticed that her skill’s influence extended to the weapon as well. Arilla had no clue what that would do, but from what she knew of system-granted skills, it couldn’t be a bad thing. 

“Do you know what this is? Where did you get it?” Arilla asked excitedly, recognising the blade from half a dozen different songs, each one about the same man whose legend, whilst old, wasn’t dead. 

“From a man who tried to kill me, where else?” Typh answered flatly, the admission that he had killed yet another one of her heroes souring the gesture.

“And you kept his sword all this time?”

“Of course, I am a dragon and this sword is a work of art. It is a worthy part of my hoard,” he nodded.

“Are you giving it to me?” Arilla asked.

“No,” he said all too quickly. “I mean, I can’t give it to you, but I can loan it to you indefinitely so long as you promise not to hurt it and to give it back someday.”

“Not to hurt it?” she asked mockingly.

“Please.”

“Fine, I promise,” Arilla said flippantly.

“I need to hear you say the words.” Typh said seriously.

“Are you trying to exploit my difficulty breaking promises to you in order to protect this sword?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you believed that taking advantage of that sort of thing was morally wrong.”

“It is. Now swear an oath or you can find another sword to replace the one you just broke!”

“Fine. I, Arilla Foundling, do so swear to keep this offered sword safe from harm and eventually return it undamaged to Typh’s hoard some day.”

“Thank you.”

“Are you okay? It’s not like you to be so uptight about this sort of thing.”

“This is different. This is from my hoard. That’s a big deal. It isn’t meant to be used, it’s to be savoured.”

“Savoured?” she asked quizzically.

“Yes, like a painting or piece of fine sculpture. It is to be slept upon, guarded and admired. To give it to a warrior to actually use is...absolutely unheard of. If you were anyone else or if I were in my other body, then this simply wouldn’t be happening,” he explained.

“I’m not sure I understand,” she admitted.

“You don’t have to. Hoarding treasures is a dragon thing, and while I am less beholden to my instincts in this form, the thought of actually relinquishing this blade still makes me nauseous.” 

“Well, I appreciate you powering through.” Arilla said, with a weak smile as she tried to discreetly admire the Zzweihäander’s craftsmanship without dislodging Typh’s firm hand from the hilt. Her steel encased hand next to his, touching as the dragon refused to let go of the weapon. “Uhm, Typh, are you planning on actually letting go of the sword any time soon?”

“Give me a minute, this is a big step for me,” he snapped. Eventually doing such a thing, the weight of the blade suddenly fell on Arilla’s arm as it plunged point first into the snow, where it then hit the frozen ground and kept on going until it was stopped by its outwardly curving parrying hooks.

“Fuck, it’s heavy,” she complained, struggling to lift it out of the dirt.

“Well, what did you expect? It’s a high-iron rank sword. There is a lot of adamantine in it, and I’m pretty sure that half the skills used in its construction are to increase its density.”

“I just thought that I’d be able to handle it better with my strength,” Arilla said. “What does it do?” 

“Nothing overly fancy. I recut the runes to make them better, but I left the enchantment as is. The blade should stay sharp and empower any skills used through it, provided it stays topped off with mana. It’s one of the few Zzweihaänders I have that isn’t carved with dragon-slaying runes, so naturally it’s one of my favorites.”

“One of?”

“Don’t be getting any ideas, human,” Typh said with narrowed eyes. “You should collect what pieces of your armour are salvageable, and then you can head back inside Cawic. I’m pretty sure they have a healer who can help fix you up if they have any mana left.”

“What do you mean, ‘you’? Are you not coming?”

“No,” he stated plainly. “Someone has to go after them,”

“But you just broke your legs. You can’t go after whoever is responsible for all this,” Arilla said, feeling a surprising amount of concern at the prospect of Typh running or floating off into danger without her.

“I’m a mage, I don’t need my legs to cast spells.”

“But—”

“Arilla, you’re in no condition to fight, and you know it. If you can raise that sword above your head then maybe I’ll consider taking you with me, but as they’ll likely be putting distance between themselves and Cawic I need to get moving.”

“I can lift the sword,” she said defiantly.

“Prove it,” Typh commanded, and when Arilla couldn’t, Typh didn’t even gloat, instead he rotated in the air and rocketed away in silence.

As Arilla watched him fly away across the surface of the snow, she bit her lip with frustration and prayed that he would come back. Her eyes tracked his rapid flight until the golden sun that still hovered high above the gatehouse winked out, and the night was once again plunged back into darkness.

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