Chapter 20: Chapter 20: The Great Divide

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The landscape didn't so much rise up as it dived down, lower and lower, but the way in which it seemed to gradually grow more shattered created the illusion of entering towering and rising canyons.

If I didn't remember traveling down in elevation along the many rivers that fanned out of the Webspinner's swamps and fed into The Eastern Basins then it would've been easy to think I'd gone higher and not lower.

Said sum total of water glistened and crashed, flowing and slamming against huge rocks, in the massive and interlocking natural cut outs resting far below the orange hued ridgeline that me and Gwen now traveled upon in particular.

I had to admit that the change of scenery was a nice contrast to the dark swamps we'd spent the last some days in.

Going further back, and thinking to my time following arriving in the Dungeon, the wide open canyons were also definitely less claustrophobic than the overgrown forests of the west had been.

There was little in the way of lush overgrowth to block the light from above, though the occasional winding, alien looking tree did grow out from a rock face here or there and served to break up the monotony of the dried out and bright-hued stone below our feet.

Still, things weren't all sunshine and rainbows, even if I could finally feel the warmth of daylight touching my face properly and without interruption.

Namely, what bothered me was the many questions I still had following my confrontation with the Webspinner.

After doubling back into the ruins the boss monster had infested, following dealing with the Skulkers stalking us, Gwen and I had done our best to search for the entrance to the tunnels I'd seen Galadhel and her priestesses use to access the Worldheart.

Needless to say, quest or not, I figured that if Cowagin had used the strange manifestation of the planet's mana to corrupt Caliban then maybe finding it could be the first step to help us to reverse the process somehow.

We'd completely failed in finding the Worldheart of course.

The vision Galadhel had given me had been very quick and disjointed on account of her not having much time remaining before she'd faded away into my soulcore completely.

Maybe I was missing too much information, on account of this fact, and didn't at all know what I needed to do to find the Worldheart.

Maybe it was just too well-hidden.

Though I found myself frustrated by the fact that I didn't seem to get any inclination as to where it might be after merging with Galadhel's mana.

I'd gotten flashes of instinct about things the Western Ruler had known after absorbing it, but this hadn't really held as true with the high priestess.

The most I had gotten out of her mana was the knowledge needed to defeat the Southern Ruler's mana manifestation--and it had saved my life, but still I had figured I'd get more than a single piece of, albeit very important, information out of merging with an entire other thinking being.

Maybe it was the fact that the Southern Ruler had been working on eating Galadhel's soul for years. It was possible that there just wasn't enough left of her for me to tap into her memories or powers too greatly.

Still, it felt off somehow, like maybe I was missing something.

Or, perhaps, where the Webspinner had chosen to nest just wasn't near where the vision had shown me it had invaded.

That probablt seemed the most likely of the options, honestly.

Something about how the System was pushing me towards defeating the various cardinal rulers before facing the final boss just led me to believe that the real answers would be found where I suspected Cowagin no doubt waited for me.

The almost storybook feeling to the Worldheart being located at the center of the world also seemed almost too on the nose for it to not at least have a shot at being the case.

But I wasn't quite ready to just walk into the boss' throne room, or what he had to pass for an evil lair.

I had my doubts about just how trustworthy the System's true goals and origins were, but so far its guidance had both given me the power to survive and led me to answers.

For those reasons, and because of just how little I still truly knew about it and everything, I'd decided to keep following the System's lead, but not without a healthy dose of realistic suspicion sitting in the back of my mind as I did so.

And my next quest was pushing me towards defeating the Eastern Ruler.

Unfortunately, the minimap that I had looted from the Webspinner's corpse was quickly reaching the boundaries of its recorded edge.

Soon we'd be moving into enemy territory blind, unless we picked up on another trail.

Me and Gwen were about to fall off the edge of the world so to speak, venturing into the unknown as did so.

But that hadn't happened quite yet, there was still a bit of a ways more to go.

The map was leading us rapidly to its end and we would have to face it when it came, but--more and more and with each hard-won battle--I was coming to trust myself and my partner to handle whatever this new world threw at us.

"Almost there, Gwen," I said aloud, glancing down from the minimap, "maybe another hour."

"Then we'll need to be careful," the cat growled in response. "We don't know what's waiting for us."

I smiled a bit. "Yeah, we never do, huh? Shit sucks."

A rumble rose in Gwen's chest. "If it's bad then we'll kill it."

I laughed at the panther's matter of fact way of speaking. "Simple."

---

"Well, damn," I said as the minimap closed itself the moment we took a single step outside its boundaries. "It had no chill."

It'd certainly led us to a site to be seen though.

Galadhel had resided within a piece of the ruins of her people's entire civilization.

The cathedral that had housed the Webspinner had been broken down, waterlogged, and decaying.

I hadn't seen a single sign of anything that appeared to indicate a surviving civilization since arriving in the dungeon world of Caliban.

Not until now.

As we looked down to the path spread out below and before us, the many rivers running between the sprawling canyon walls all met an abrupt end only to plunge down into a bottomless seeming, deep and rocky trench.

It was as if nature itself had carved out a massive line in the earth to separate the southern swamps from the eastern basins.

And, whereas the side of the gorge that Gwen and I now looked down upon from our perched canyon wall was almost entirely bare and untouched, that wasn't the case for the other side or the space sprawling across the chasm itself.

A massive wall, hewn of grey and inhumanly heavy looking stone slabs, still clean and proper in their appearance and sense of orderliness, stretched as far as the eye could see along the entirety of the great and natural divide.

Towers interjected themselves, stretching for miles and miles, at a consistent though large interval.

But, most impressive of all, was the huge arching bridge of perfectly cut material that connected one side of the spanning canyon to the other. To support it all in its drab grandeur, massive and wide supports lifted the construction up into the air and stretched into the rumbling waters and dark shadows below where I couldn't imagine any mortal building team being able to work.

In contrast to the militaristic, utilitarian design of the ridiculously long and tall wall, said bridge was dotted with at least a dozen metallic sculptures. Each of the things appeared as if being something between a brass knight and a collection of hardly exposed gaps of shadows.

My eyes squinted down to sweep over the unexpected bridge. They lingered in particular on the statues.

A moment of contemplative silence passed between me and my companion as we stared down at the sculptures.

"Gwen..." I trailed my voice apprehensively, "the second we step on that bridge, they're going to come to life, aren't they?"

The panther growled. "The wall isn't decorated."

"Nope," I said with a tone of annoyed realism. "So why would the bridge be? The whole thing looks like it's all about function over form. So those things are breaking the mold."

"Unless they're not decorations," Gwen completed my thought.

I reached behind my head and shifted the back of my hair. "So, I'm not crazy, right? Their function is probably to murder us?"

My familiar glanced from me, not turning her head towards myself completely, and back to the out of place sculptures.

"Unfortunately," the panther paused, possibly for dramatic effect, "I don't think it's you."

I dropped my hand from behind my head. "It just can't be that easy. A wall means they want to keep something out. And it looks maintained. Which is weird because the boss was called the Lord of Nothing."

I pointed at the wall incredulously, to further emphasize my point. "That looks like about the biggest example of something we've seen since getting here."

"Things can't ever be simple either," Gwen mused back in a half-goodhearted tone.

I scoffed. "You're like a few weeks old and you're already a nihilist."

Gwen didn't flinch at my playful insult and merely responded with a single world to correct me: "realist".

I brought my hand up to my chin as if thinking and then met the cat's eyes in defeat. "To be fair and in your defense, I guess everything does try to kill us."

Gwen’s large maw opened slightly in what passed for her laugh. "Like the statues down there are going to."

I dropped my hand to my side and sighed deeply. "Yep, exactly like the fucking statues down there are going to."

---

I reared my hand back and threw the stone with all the force that I had.

"Clarissa," Gwen trailed her voice disapprovingly from behind.

"No, Gwen," I chided back at her, "they're going to come to life and kill us!"

As I turned to argue with the panther, my rock sailed through the air, and clanked against the head of one of the bronze knight sculptures with a dull clang.

The rock, like the other three I had thrown up until this point, merely bounced off the skin of the statue, which seemed to have some sort of massive spear affixed to it, and skipped into the chasm off to the side of the wide bridge.

"That's the fourth rock," Gwen said dryly.

"Alright. And the second we step on the bridge they're going to go all T-1000 on us," I shot back, "do I look like Sarah Connor to you? I don't have the plot armor to take a harpoon through the back."

Gwen purred in acknowledgement of my movie reference. I'd already told her a lot about the terminator movies. I'd loved them as a kid, but mostly just because me and my dad had watched them a lot together before he'd died.

The panther paused in thought, before coming back with a more cooperative answer. "Throw a fireball."

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"A fireball?" I asked back.

"A fireball," the panther repeated her request. "Wake them up."

"Heavy damn sleepers," I remarked a little sarcastically, "but, yeah. That might work."

I’d honestly had the thought myself.

I held my hand out and took a deep breath, allowing the mana to swirl and flow into my palm. The magical essence wisped and swirled as it sparked into a small, rotating globe of flickering blue flame.

"But, like, what if they actually wake up?" I asked Gwen.

"We kill them," Gwen replied again like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"And if that doesn't work out?" I asked. "Listen, I doubt they're friendly, but at the same time we have zero information on them."

"The wall stretches for miles," Gwen replied. "This is the only crossing that was on the map, correct?"

"Fair points," I acquiesced. "But we broke away from walking into fights blind last time. I don't like the feeling of going back to that."

"That's why we're throwing the fireball, to not walk into a fight by surprise," Gwen replied.

"Technically, yes," I said back a little reservedly, trying to mull over the different options in my mind. "I guess if we can't kill them then we'll just have to work it out until we do, but that armor looks awfully thick. The bridge is also too wide to funnel them into fighting us one-by-one and those spears on their arms... if they couldn't use them like that then wouldn't they be in their hands?"

"You think they can throw or deploy them?" Gwen asked.

"I'm ninety percent sure they can," I answered. "So we have big, heavy enemies with thick armor and possibly ranged weaponry at the minimum."

"Do you see another option though?" Gwen asked me.

"Well, I already laid down the flame and frostfire runes at the end of the bridge earlier," I replied; I'd done what I was referring to before even throwing the first pebble. "Nah, I guess we have to cross."

"Exactly," Gwen agreed with me. "If there were another way we'd take it."

I sighed. "I need a flying spell, but I can't get the damn system to make me one at my skill level."

"Fuck it," I continued aloud. "I'll throw the fireball at the damn mecha."

Gwen purred. "They look like a fun fight."

I raised an eyebrow at her. "You just want to kill them don't you? They're robots, Gwen, they've already been not alive’d by default.”

The cat swished her tails. "Please don't ruin this for me, my lady."

I shook my head and smiled. "God. Fine."

And with that I reared my arm back and threw.

---

The [Fireball] slammed against the closest brass knight with an explosive blast.

I was already summoning my [Raging Blade] into my free hand the moment that my attack had made contact.

Gwen was lowering herself into a pensive growl.

But then, as the flames cleared and the smoke died down, nothing happened.

"Huh," I said and slightly raised myself up from my assumed fighting stance. "Maybe I killed it?"

Gwen narrowed her eyes at the statue and, just as she did so, I heard the snap of what sounded like a crossbow bolt.

"Dodge, Gwen!"

"Move, Clarissa!"

Both me and the panther yelled out in unison, the moment the sound entered our ears.

The panther's body cracked into a bolt of lightning.

My own blinked into a swirl of a million mana particles.

The sound of cracking stone filled the air as we teleported.

Our ethereal trails of energy crossed one another and we both reformed far out of the way of where each of us had been standing.

Two massive ballista bolts were lodged in the canyon rock where each of us had once stood.

"Where did that come from?" I sent the mental message to Gwen, falling back into our habit of not communicating aloud during battle.

"I don't know," Gwen said back, her voice taking on the careful tone that she did when we entered combat.

"If you see it--" I started the telepathic message.

"I'll tell you," Gwen finished my request. “Return the favor?”

“Yep,” I replied.

The sound of grinding and creaking metal entered my ears.

My eyes shot immediately to the brass knight I'd thrown the [Fireball] at.

It appeared completely unmovingly still at first.

And then the metallic statue twitched.

"I fucking knew it!" I communicated to Gwen.

"I agreed with you," the panther reminded me.

The sound of more and more gears clicking began to ring out from all of the many statues lining the pedestals on the edges of the bridge.

"It's time to do that whole killing them thing you were so confident in," I said to the panther.

"Keep in mind though--" my voice trailed as I looked at the brass knight, which only had a single soot covered patch of metal where I'd hit its cymbal like head, "my fireball didn't do a thing."

"It's the armor," Gwen said. "Can you melt the metal?"

Could I?

I honestly wasn’t sure, but that would take a lot of mana if I wanted to make it work.

I gripped my sword. "Can you?"

Gwen growled back at me, a chilling tone of hidden excitement sitting just under the surface of her words. "We'll see."

A final series of clicking noises sounded as each of the brass knights reached their full height and then, as one, stepped off of their raised platforms.

And then, with their various weapons and designs, the constructs turned to face us.

I laughed again.

Well, providing we didn't die, Gwen was right about one thing. "This is gonna be fun."

Gwen purred at my words. "Yes, my lady. It will."

The ballista sound rang out a final time and, just as before, Gwen and I swapped sides with our magic and dodged the large bolts that pierced into the ground where we'd been only a breath before.

But this time I'd been looking for the sound and projectile's source.

"The tower," both me and Gwen said in unison.

I commented on that as my eyes looked up to where the bolt had flown from. "We're doing that more often you know?"

The top of the towers that struck up to either side of the gate at the end of the long bridge had looked empty before, but now I saw what appeared to be a large murderhole at their apexes. A murderhole that had launched the ballista bolts.

"Okay," I continued, changing the subject to the task at hand, "archers usually need to go down first, but somehow the archer in this situation is the damn tower. So let's figure all this other stuff out before trying to punch some bricks or whatever.”

Gwen began to prowl towards the bridge itself, just as the metallic warriors were beginning to move towards us now.

One of the golems raised their harpoon wielding arm towards me.

"So, we assess the enemy?" Gwen asked.

"Yep," I replied. "Stay evasive until we know what we're dealing with."

Gwen roared and broke into an excited seeming run. "Deal!"

I laughed and began to charge forward myself, as my spellbook floated out of its holster and opened behind my head. "Sadist!"

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