Story:Kings of Strife/Part 19

Part Nineteen
The inside of the Tower was nothing like Vikcent had ever seen before.

Breathlessly, he whispered to himself as he stumbled over the wreckage of the tower's gate. "I definitely did not expect this..." He looked up to the ceiling of the tower, which was tall enough to be mistaken as a sky as soon as the walls of the building enclosed him. The ground below him was still sand, but the atmosphere was nothing like what he expected. Instead of being surrounded by the plain gray stone bricks that took the Tower's appearance on the outside, Vik found himself standing in what appeared to be the desert itself at night. The tower itself was quite wide, but the horizon appeared to be miles off in every distance, and amazingly, two large moons were visible in opposite directions. Their light illuminated the otherwise dark plains, and a vague wind blew through the area, slowly and lazily brushing sand grains across the ground.

Vik stood in awed silence. "How in the eight heavens...?" An idea gripped him and he backed out where he came from, walking out of the destroyed gates with a stumble. Back outside the Tower, the heat slammed back into him like a wave, and the sun was high in the sky once again. Gone was the wind, the darkness, and the moons. The ragged soldier was stunned once again, but shook off his astonishment in remembrance of his goal. "I have to beat whoever got here first...!"

Returning to the Tower's ethereal atmosphere, he was surprised to notice a tall spiral staircase that ascended into the sky, mere feet in front of him. He hadn't noticed it before. With constant, fearful glances around him, Vik walked up to the staircase and began to rise on its steps.

The wind accelerated the higher Vik rose on the stairs, eventually getting to a point that it began to buffet his face and whirl his hair around. He grunted in frustration as he continued to climb the ever-higher spiral staircase. "I knew I should have gotten that haircut. Damn." They continued to rise in intensity, eventually reaching a point where they smashed into him and almost entirely impeded his progress. What seemed like a tornado of sand began to whirl around the staircase, getting into his clothes and forcing him to close his eyes. "N-no... No hesitation...!" He spoke not only in frustration but to encourage himself not to stop.

Suddenly the wind and the sand buffets stopped. Vik at this point had been crawling on the ground and pulling himself up from the stairs, but finally he noticed that he was on solid ground. Looking up and reluctantly opening his eyes, Vik found himself in an entirely different locale.

By now he was convinced that the Tower held some sort of mystical quality that he would not be able to figure out. Gone were the far-off horizons, the twin moons, and the dastardly winds, instead replaced by a decidedly mechanical scheme. No horizon was visible except for a close wall that consisted solely of a drab bronze-tinted menagerie of wires and pipes. An entirely solid level of complex wiring and almost impossibly futuristic mechanisms snaked on the walls and interlocked into a common pattern. The floor beneath him was metallic silver and felt like solid ground upon being knocked on by his knuckles.

Vik stood with curiosity and ran his hand on the walls around him. Before, he couldn't be bothered to search out the end of the horizon, but now he could confirm that the walls were real and in front of him. Instead of being as wide as the sands had been below him, the mechanical area Vik now found himself in was a small and cramped corridor with walls on three sides. In front of him was a long passageway that appeared to curve sharply, obscuring his vision of what was ahead.

He shook his head and pushed his hair back from his forehead as he began to walk down the corridor. "Looks like forward is the only way to go for now," he muttered to himself. Unlike the constant shifting of sands and wind in the floor below (Vik classified the different biomes as "floors" of the tower, just to keep himself sane), this mechanical floor sounded like a giant clock that was in effect all around him. At first, the noise from the area was small and off in the distance, but the further Vik went down the curves of the area, the more prominent they became and the more Vik noticed them. What began as a simple ticking began to slowly and slowly become more and more loud and eventually came from every direction instead of just forward.

It wasn't long after he heard the ticking that Vik saw the carvings on the floor.

The marks were, once he saw them for the first time, very noticeable. Among the technological environment, there were noticeably no sharp corners or pointy edges, so he knew something was up when the floor had a long-running crack in it. What he initially thought was a dent turned out to really be a thin chasm of sorts, one that cut into the smooth surface of the wiring and continued to drive down its field. The carving went forward in a line, curving along the solitary path left by the floor and going ever forward.

The appearance of the marks filled Vik with both a sense of confusion and enlightenment, but most importantly fear. He didn't know what could have caused such deep, heavy marks, nor what could have dragged it for such a distance, but he was sure that it was whoever had entered the Tower ahead of him, and he knew it was probably someone with an allegiance with Ouroboros. That was the realization that had filled him with fear, although he did not take it as cowardice or a reason to turn back. It was much too late for that.

He flexed his left hand and started going forward, following the marks, and quietly spoke to himself. "I don't have a Crystal to heal me up anymore, so I have to be careful with this one." The metallic corridor was oddly lit when he had entered it, but gradually grew darker and darker as he followed its winding path. The walk was very long and he figured it snaked around the outskirts of the Tower before it probably met the staircase and ascended even further. After what felt like half an hour going along this path and following the chasm on the floor, it dawned on Vik that the marks looked like someone was dragging something. The chasm, while not very deep, was about as wide as his foot, which called into attention some concerning questions. "What the hell could be so big as to make a mark like this on a metal floor? And what kind of beast could be dragging it all this way?"

He shook his head and absentmindedly rubbed on the scar above his eyebrow. "Yeah, I'm going to have to be careful with this one."

As he spoke, Hyusei rounded yet another corner and found himself facing a dead end, a small space that was unremarkable save for the spiral staircase it held in the middle of its floor, leading up into the sky as the last pair had before. A feeling of unmistakable dread filled Hyusei as he stepped up the first steps, notably realizing that the skid marks from the dragging continued up the large rise. The soldier gulped and let out a deep breath. "Remember, soldier, no hesitation."

Unlike the last rise of stairs, Vik found himself relatively safe as he climbed the huge ascent. After a while, the walls around him ceased from expunging their futuristic glare onto the environment, only to be replaced gradually by deeper and deeper darkness. More wind began to whip up this time, but it was nowhere near as powerful or even harmful as last time. Because of this, Vikcent was able to climb the stairs with his head forward and looking slightly upwards, glancing and assessing the scratches that reached ever forward into the abyss. Just when it became hard for him to find his footing on the stairs in the impenetrable darkness that the chamber had induced, Vikcent found himself shocked by a ground of white and his foot made a noise other than its normal clapping on the metal stairs.

The soldier took another step onto the moist ground and took a look around at his new environment. Just like the last floor and the one before it, the shock was more than enough to whisk Vik's breath away. The wind from the stair chamber continued here and now carried with it a chill that induced a shiver from Vik almost instantaneously, for now he stood among a great white plain of snow. Near the edges of the plain, off in the great distance, Vik could see outcrops and slight rises of deep brown rock, and even farther into the horizon was an amazingly dark and vibrant night sky. This air seemed to completely invalidate the atmosphere and lead off into a telescope-induced view of space with how clearly and vividly it showed stars and colorful rises of nebulae. So vibrant was the night that the area around Vik, although void of a real light source, was not dark at all, especially not with the snow beneath him. Most strikingly, above all, was the reappearance of the two moons that graced the first floor. Unlike the opposite yet even patterns of the first floor, however, now the two moons grappled with a limited space directly in front of his vision, one of them looming in front and much larger than the other. Both of them let off a luminescent glow that was amazingly light blue, so translucent that it appeared to be a relapse of the snow on the ground. The land combined to drive Vik into a curious and grinning spin to soak in the unique features of the floor he now found himself on. This plain was no Mount Gulg, for not only did it eschew the latter's frigid temperature and cloudy air, the plain was fantastically and illogically gigantic.

It took Vik a moment to realize that the dragging marks continued right in front of him in the snow, much more visible due to the footprints that went right along with them. Following them with his eyes, Vik looked ever forward and saw what appeared to be a hulking and armored figure walking in the snow, carrying behind them a gigantic object of undiscernable origin. He knew this was the person from Ouroboros that he was in competition with for the Crystal's ownership.

Without hesitation he started to move in the same direction and pulled his rifle from the strap that left it on his back. Its bayonet was attached to its barrel and a fresh clip was loaded into the magazine. Only about ten steps into his confident swagger did Hyusei realize that he had no idea what he was going to do next.

"With armor like that, I won't be able to kill them with just one shot. But not shooting isn't an option either... Not with a huge weapon like that. I could go my entire life without having that swung at me. So do I tail them, see where they lead me?" The soldier shook his head to himself. "No, there's no way for me to safely tail them in this weather, and if anything I'll scavenge their supplies to allow me to wander around here for a bit longer. Right... So my conclusion is that a fight is going to happen, one way or the other." It was then that an idea went off in his head, and the soldier gleefully began to dig in the pouch at his waist, the one that used to hold his Crystal. His Crystal.

"Might as well start it on my own terms, then..." With eager hands, Hyusei pulled out a modified ranged scope and began to attach it on top of his standard rifle. "I can't believe I never bothered to use this earlier," he muttered to himself. Assembling the scope on the rifle was no problem; the soldier knew his way around a gun more than he knew his way around his own house sometimes. It was with light hands that he stopped walking and lifted the scope to his eye. "Just got one shot at this before the game changes..."

The soldier held his breath slowly and let his scope fall over the armored person's helmet. They walked rather slow and went completely straight, which meant that the only way for him to miss his shot would be wind interference. With it blowing towards him and to the east, he slightly modified his aim to compensate for gravity and the cold hands of the wind. He was in luck - with that direction, the shot's noise would rang out much later than the bullet would find its mark, especially with the distance between him and his target.

"No hesitation..." He took another deep breath and pulled the trigger.

Right in response, the armored figure stopped walking and suddenly turned towards him, even as Vik's finger summoned the wrathful force of gunpowder. He was too shocked to look away from the scope, and thus Hyusei was a direct witness as the armored figure raised their gigantic weapon, which he realized was a humongous metal lance, and pointed it directly at the barrel of his gun. The bullet from his shot was right on course, as expected, and arrived at its destination right at the tip of lance. It split into pieces and fell harmlessly on the snow. The horned helmet of the armored warrior seemed to scowl in disappointment at Vik.

"Oh fuck."

Hyusei stepped back and felt his body writhe in a shiver. “What kind of person is that? How in the hell…” Not only was his surprise completely logical, it soon morphed into full-out fear as the warrior some 200 feet in front of him began to move. After shafting their lance to the side, the warrior began to dash towards Vik at an incredible speed, flashing both their cape and snow behind them. Suddenly the beauty of his environment meant nothing in the face of such a bull of lethality in front of him.

“Not this time!” Vik shook off his hanging feelings and took aim with his rifle once again. With a grit of his teeth, he shot and the discarded bullet casing flew out of the side of the firearm. Even more astoundingly, the warrior slashed their lance to the side whilst running, once again splitting the bullet out of oblivion. Hyusei sighed in frustration as he shot again, and again, and again. The single shot rifle could only shoot so frequently, but its speed was still impressive, and even more impressive was the fact that the armored berserker deflected each and every single shot. What should have been impossible looked to be child’s play for the behemoth in front of him.

By the time Vik ran out of bullets in the rifle’s magazine, the armored one had gotten within lance’s reach of him and raised it into the air as if it were another Tower of Mirages. Not a sound came from the warrior, who was now, up close, obviously almost as tall as Hyusei was, save for the rustling of their armor and the snow beneath their greaves. Time moved almost in slow motion as the soldier looked up and saw the lance, immensely tall and wider around than he was with a very sharp point, begin to fall right on top of him. He couldn’t speak.

Vik’s movements felt sluggish as he moved and sidestepped to the side. The lance-adorned knight seemed to know every move he was moving and shifted their arm to accommodate for his dodge, and the lance began to rush sideways at his head. With even a glancing blow, the soldier knew that he would be incontestably and unequivocally dead from the gigantic lance.

He ducked and rolled around in the snow for a moment as he frantically backed away from the warrior. Unlike him, the caped one needed no time to come up with a strategy, and continued to silently rush him. While the only sound really audible in the area were the shifts of armor and lance plates along with Vik’s rushed breathing, in the soldier’s mind, his frantic heartbelt was deafeningly loud and all-encompassing. He couldn’t think or even correctly get himself into a defensive position, so intense was his struggle.

Finally an attack came that broke the camel’s back. Barely a minute into the fight, the Knight caught Vik on his back in the snow and raised their lance once again for a crushing strike. Hyusei panicked and couldn’t roll or move in time, both due to how entrenched he was and his own freaked movements. By pure survival instinct alone, Hyusei raised his rifle in both of his hands and began to kick the snow backwards in an attempt to propel himself backwards. The lance fell ever quicker and smashed right through the gun as if it were paper and destroyed any defensive chances he had. At the same time, Hyusei finally managed to push himself out of the way, and the snow from his assault encompassed the Knight, inconveniencing them for a moment and further rolling him backwards into the snow.

A moment later, he sat his head up, now completely covered with snow particles and scratched from the encounter with the rocky ground. He looked in his hands, still clenching the broken remains of the gun, and looked once more at the Knight, still fumbling with the snow in their hands and face. For the first time since he had seen them, now overcome with rage and frustration, the Knight let out a husky and loud yell that seemed to bounce as energetically off the virgin snow as the starlight above did. In that moment, Vik was completely assured with his next course of action.

“I’ve got to get the hell out of here.” He turned and ran into the direction the Knight originally took, as fast as he could go without falling into the snowy rocks beneath him.

In less than fifty paces, Vikcent Hyusei realized that he was in intense pain. His feet were suddenly burning with a divine pain as if the strain of constant travel for more than eight days had finally caught up to him and stabbed right in the gap in his armor. The splintering of his rifle had embedded shrapnel not only into his hands but painfully into his torso, as well, and now his shirt was almost nonexistent. With a frustrated grin and a cringing face, Hyusei ripped its remnants off his chest and gave off another shiver. The air wasn’t that frigid and the wind wasn’t fast at all, but rolling around in the snow had still left the soldier with a chill in his bones.

Looking back, he saw that the Knight was still relentlessly following him, albeit with more of a reckless stance and still moving slower than he was. That is to say, the Knight wouldn’t be overtaking him for quite some time at the speed both of them were taking, but the soldier knew that he would eventually slow down and his enemy would be increasing their speed, in spite of their gigantic armor’s restraints.

“No… I won’t let you stop me here!” He turned forward and ran now with his eyes closed, opening occasionally to look forward and see where he was going – ever into the snowy horizon and towards the upcoming cliff of rocks – and continued to yell his chant to himself in his mind. It was a bit too late for him not to show hesitation, but he could still tell himself not to give up and die. With the frenzied steps of his run and the quick up-picking of the wind, soon snow began to whirl about the savage soldier and his pursuer. He continued to run restlessly through the soon-revealed storm until he finally reached the dead end and hurriedly came to a stop. Hyusei could still hear the clanking of the enemy, growing ever closer and louder, and felt true despair and horror in his heart. In front of him beckoned the endless and beautiful space, occupied by the glowing twin celestial bodies that looked to be moons. He knew not where, but Hyusei was sure that he had erred somewhere, played his fatal card in the wrong situation and would be punished for it. He looked frantically about the area for some salvation, some missing link that would bring him out of the hole that he had dug himself into, but all the shirtless soldier managed to do was reassure himself that his pursuer was indeed inching ever closer. At this point he became enraged and grabbed at his hair at his hopelessness. So heavy was his horror and his fury that the soldier was absolutely speechless in the face of his death. So heavy was the weight of the approaching underworld upon his shoulders that the soldier swore that he began to hear bells, ringing and chiming ever louder, heralding his entrance to the final frontier, the passing of his soul, dashed on the brutal rocks of fate.

For sure, he said to himself, that he would never let another member of Ouroboros kill him. No, that would never happen as long as his body still drew breath. When the gigantically-armed Knight was mere footsteps away and raised their lance in preparation for an attack, Hyusei jumped backwards and twisted his body forward again in order to see the two gigantic moons and the beautiful space that warped around them.

The Knight appeared shocked and was frozen in place as Vik looked back one final time. He turned and reached forward, grasping for the skies above him, as the buffeting wind blowing past him confirmed that he was falling down what must have been the height of the Tower so far; surely enough to kill him instantly. This wasn’t anything near how he wanted to die, but he was never truly in control of that, he reasoned.

Instead of grasping death, however, Vikcent Hyusei soon found that his hands were grasping what felt like an iron railway, and he was no longer falling.

Hyusei was amazed to realize that his feet now rested on plain metal stairs. All around him was darkness, no longer the peaceful and breathtaking aurora of the previous floor. He was instantly overcome with relief and had to sit on the stairs and wipe sweat from his forehead.

“What could have happened to me? Why didn’t I see this staircase before? Why…” He found himself struck dumb once again from the circumstances, but now he stood up with a determined face and began to climb the tall and purely white spiral staircase. Once again the traveling was silent, although he could still hear the beating of his heart and the gasping of his breath from the affair he had escaped from. The pain he had experienced, both in his feet and in the soreness of his body, continued to ache and creak at him, but with a bulls’ stubbornness, he pushed them off. Faintly, off in the distance after a particularly extended climb of the stairs, he began to hear what sounded like waves crashing over a shoreline, along with a cracking of a fireplace. Joining them not long after was a return to the bells, creaking and moaning off in the interminable darkness. For once, no wind picked up, no matter how high Hyusei ran up the tall steps.

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