Chapter 130: 130 – Re:Trench

Three crunches in a row. One when it penetrated the boxer from the back, one when it came out the front, and one when it punched through the winged one’s front. Her wings began buzzing like a motor as she struggled to lift off, but Strolvath raised his leg to point the stake downward, making it act as a barb. It wouldn’t hold them long, with both of them twisting about and his own balance slipping, but it would last for long enough.

When he took a breath and resumed throat-singing, they only began convulsing even more violently, struggling against the death they both knew was imminent. So violent were the vibrations of his stake, that he needn’t even pull it out. The weight of their bodies made the stake carve right through them as they slowly slid to the ground.

A stomp on the boxer’s head to force the stake back in, and one more on the winged one’s. It looked like she was just about to deliver a death-rattle prophecy, but Strolvath obliterated her head well before that could happen.

Making his way towards the other door, Strolvath shifted to strumming a more energetic melody, only to notice the squelching of hemolymph in his right boot. Convenient and concealable as it was, the pilebunker in his leg had one gigantic flaw - it punched a hole in any boots he wore. All he could do about it right now was hope that the dungeon’s Fog Gates would clean him up, but it still upset him. 

Trying to distract himself from the annoying noise, he started belting out vocals as loud as he could, shaking the very floor he walked on. 

“Aging warrior, looking back at the life that you've led, can you say with confidence that you would do it again?” he howled to the uncaring walls, venting the question he feared to ask himself. He was far from old, barely in his fifties, but how much longer would his body hold out? Even with the power of elixirs, Strolvath could feel the wounds of his many exploits taking their toll.

He walked through the intermediary chamber, counting out that the next chamber absolutely had to be the last one in this Trial of Solitude. To his relief, it was not an arena with a single powerful foe, or a trap chamber, but a sprawling hall barricaded by one huge hive, from whose doorways were already pouring drones and warriors alike. The ideal field of battle for him.

“For one day you'll be gone, and all that lives on, is the honour of thy name and the deeds that you've done!” he continued, fully aware that he had no reason to be ashamed. He’d done more in a decade than many would do in a lifetime, and he still had the strength to compare himself with many of the heroes that had died in the war. But it didn’t matter, here and now. 

All that mattered was his emotions, that he kept stirring them up. Right now, as he traversed the dungeon, Strolvath knowingly stirred himself to the weeping, seething fury of a dying man, that he might better slaughter those who would dare threaten his beloved homeland. And indeed, he did - his mustache smoldered, his eyes blazed with the unfettered conviction of a dead man walking, and he marched into the fray with the song of desolation thundering from his mouth, his fingers dancing across the strings of his instruments like the fingers of death itself on the bowstring of fate. 

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The grizzly work of total extermination became no easier as Zefaris plunged further into the dungeon. Emerging into chamber number two had her faced with a labyrinth of narrow corridors with small side chambers. It was confusing and disorienting at first, but the realization of what it was meant to replicate quickly dawned on her. These were the trenches. The very trenches that became the graveyard for so many warriors, both soldiers and Fog-breathers alike. 

In the trenches long-distance mobility lost meaning, as did highly destructive arcane techniques and elaborate displays of martial prowess. It was butchery, down there. Butchery and slaughter, a barbarous scramble for survival that many of the enemy’s higher-ranking warriors just didn’t know how to deal with it. They kept trying to fight in the trench as if their big stupid sword wouldn’t just get stuck in the mud of the walls, as if there weren’t a dozen Ikesians with sparklocks waiting behind every corner.

Ambush tactics, traps, everything other than honorable combat had been the mainstay of her life for the short time she spent in the trenches, before she lost her eye. Stepping into something akin to those very trenches was a mixed sensation. She knew this place, knew how to traverse it, knew how to map it out, how to exploit its design to the absolute limit, even if the walls were indestructible black stone rather than rotted wood that barely held back a flood of silty muck.

These trenches, however, were not filled with allies. Instead of sparklocks, there waited gnashing jaws and slashing claws of drones, ones that heard her coming the first time around. There were just two of them this time, and she quickly snuffed out both of them with swift stabs to the head, but she knew it wouldn’t be this easy. Zefaris felt a tangible, oppressive silence press down on her as she snuck her way through the faux-trench, doing the best she could to muffle her footsteps against the black stone. 

When she peeked past a corner and saw the huge back of a warrior blocking her path, her right hand kept subconsciously hovering over Pentacle, over that instrument of absolute power, but she couldn’t. Not here. Not yet. Who knew how many more chambers there were left until she would be able to meet Zel and replenish her ammunition. That’s not to mention the absolute guarantee of being overrun, if she were to make the mistake of calling attention to herself like this. 

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