Victor of Tucson
Book 10: Chapter 47: A Titanic Clash

47 – A Titanic Clash

As Victor watched the dragon approach, an enormous black sword resting on his bare shoulder, his mind was split—half paying attention to his foe, and half contemplating the momentous milestone he’d just reached. It wasn’t just the attribute points he’d gained from earning four levels in his Doomforged Tyrant class, but the fact that he no longer seemed to have a class. He’d taken a quick peek at his status sheet and seen the “class” line had been replaced to read:

Mantle:

Unforged

Was a mantle a different word for class? Was that what the System called the custom class he had to design and perfect in order to ascend to the status of veil walker? If so, why had no one ever mentioned that word to him? Dar had specifically used the word “class,” Victor was almost positive. Tes had never mentioned the word “mantle,” but then, she didn’t operate within the System at all. As much as he might like to say he’d stepped away from the System by refusing its aid, the status sheet and terminology on it were all part of it.

Could the System use different terms for different people? Different species? Was the fact that he’d awakened his primordial titan bloodline responsible for the fact that he was building a “mantle” and not a “class?” Was it better or worse? More likely, he decided, it was just another word for the same thing.

Beyond the strange terminology, Victor was fascinated by the idea that all of the extra Energy he’d received was being stored in an Energy-well in his “spirit space.” How was he meant to access that place? Should he cast Spirit Walk? What about steel seekers who couldn’t spirit walk? Surely they had access to their spirit spaces. He supposed he might have had some guidance on the matter from the System if he hadn’t chosen to go his own way. At least the System hadn’t condemned or threatened him…

Combating for space in his already crowded mind were thoughts about the war, and the effect his slaughter of the Khalidaysian champions would have. Obviously, the dragon—Dro Vah, he thought his name was—still intended to do battle. What then? Would the rebelling veil walkers concede if he slew this preeminent champion of the empire? Would they come and try to kill him?

Dro Vah wasn’t far now—only twenty or so paces for a titan. As he approached, he’d steadily grown larger, confirming for Victor that he was more than he seemed. When he stopped, ten easy strides away, he stood nearly eye to eye with Victor, and, as he watched, the man’s flesh morphed from smooth, tan flesh into gleaming black scales. His face changed too, becoming decidedly draconic—angular yellow eyes, a long, tooth-filled snout, and a bristling crown of ivory horns.

Victor grinned, shifting Lifedrinker off his shoulder, holding her crossways before himself. She wasn’t huge in his titanic hands, but she wasn’t small either—a perfect battle axe he could swing with one or two hands. After they stared at each other for several seconds, Victor spoke first. “I hear you slew Bomar Lund and his champion.”

“The king, yes. The champion was saved—some great being wasn’t ready to let him die. I think, perhaps, he would have rather had the quick death.” As he replied, Dro Vah stepped sideways with his long, well-muscled, scaled legs, elegantly moving toward Victor’s flank.

Victor matched his movement, sidestepping in the other direction. “He made a bargain for power, perhaps.”

The dragon shrugged. “Perhaps. I care not, though I would have enjoyed his Energy.”

As they continued to circle one another, Victor formed the pattern for Velocity Mantle in his pathways. “I’ve never fought a true dragon. You are one, yes? Or are you simply some dragonling with an advanced bloodline?” Victor expected the words to get a rise out of the other champion; if he were a dragon, he’d hate to be called something lesser, and if he were some sort of dragonkin like Lesh, the implied insult would infuriate him. If he angered the man, though, he hid it well.

Dro Vah snorted and shrugged. “We’ll see. Just as we’ll see how much of a titan you truly are.” He snarled, and a puff of greenish-black vapor escaped his nostrils as he lifted his sword and took a step closer, closing the distance between them. “Now, enough chatter—Soulreaper hungers.” Victor saw the muscles in his legs tense just in time to cast Velocity Mantle. As his mind and body surged with Energy and the resultant speed, he barely managed to bring Lifedrinker up in time to block that malevolent blade from piercing his throat.

Lifedrinker screamed in fury as she clanged against the sword, knocking the blade aside. Victor didn’t let her momentum carry her far. He stepped forward and returned the attack, choking up his grip and chopping her down toward the dragon’s shoulder. Dro Vah pivoted smoothly, avoiding the blow, and hacking his black greatsword at Victor’s exposed hip. Victor let go of Lifedrinker with one hand and slapped the sword away with his Gauntlet of the Mountain’s Might.

The impact stung—some hot, destructive Energy pulsed out of the sword, bypassing his armor and entering his flesh. It was short-lived, though, and he had a split second to wonder how badly it would have hurt a lesser being—one without the resilient, dense flesh and bones of a titan. From there, the fight grew more and more intense, as the two gigantic combatants hacked, parried, dodged, stabbed, kicked, punched, and otherwise tried to slaughter one another.

Their furious battle carried them down from the smooth, grassy field onto the blasted wasteland outside the palace gates. The ground was treacherous—fissures, boulders, even pools of cooling magma—but Victor moved around it like he’d been born to it. Dro Vah, too, was unusually graceful. They fought over boulders, down into massive fissures, and out, straddling craters, sharpened spears of stone, and pits that seemed bottomless. All the while, the music of Lifedrinker’s clash with Soulreaper rang out, each impact carrying the resounding, concussive force of a massive bell being struck.

Victor was aware of his Energy use—Velocity Mantle wasn’t a cheap spell. Still, he’d changed much since he’d last used it. With nearly 220,000 Energy in his pool, even a hungry spell could only drain it so fast. Moreover, with his will now topping 1000, his passive regeneration was incredible. He could keep fighting using just that spell for a very long time. Apparently, Dro Vah enjoyed a similar abundance—that, or whatever magic made him so fast, didn’t cost him much Energy.

As their violent dance continued, Victor began to fall into a rhythm. He noticed Dro Vah’s favored reactions to his attacks and began to recognize the other man’s patterns. As his mind slipped into the trance of battle, and he started capitalizing on the dragon’s limitations, he realized he was the better fighter. Dro Vah might also have an epic-tier melee skill, but it wasn’t as advanced as Victor’s. How that could be—how he could have more skill than a dragon who’d ostensibly lived for hundreds of years—he couldn’t understand. It didn’t matter, though, as the Paragon of the Axe showed its ghostly edge, and his foe began to bleed.

Before that point, Victor had scored hits with Lifedrinker, but every one had been grazing—the dragon was too fast, too smooth, to let her edge bite. Instead, she slid off his scales as he shifted, his movements perfect in their economy. The same could be said of Dro Vah’s dark blade; it hit Victor’s armor a dozen times, but barely managed to scratch the dense metal of his aegis or slide along the scales of his greaves. The sword, again and again, tried to impart its hot, wracking Energy through Victor’s armor, but he shrugged it off, unfazed.

Now that he’d coaxed out the paragon, though, Lifedrinker’s edge took on a ghostly gleam that extended her reach by a third. When she clashed with Soulreaper, the sword recoiled, and Victor saw chips in that dark blade. When she touched Dro Vah’s scales, the ghostly extension of the paragon bit deep, and dark blood sprayed forth. The dragon growled and roared, his fury apparent, but he was too engrossed in his efforts for words.

Victor carved a deep cut in his opponent’s shoulder, another on the dragon’s ribs, and then, when he nearly cut through Dro Vah’s left leg, the man screamed his fury and belched a cloud of green, noxious gas that stung Victor’s eyes and forced him to retreat. When he exited the cloud, his armor ticked and hissed, clearly taxed by the caustic nature of Dro Vah’s breath weapon. His flesh itched and stung, but he was otherwise unbothered. Again, he wondered if Dro Vah was used to a greater effect.

The thought was fleeting; Victor’s attention was instantly taken by the tremendous roar that erupted from the gas cloud, and then Dro Vah leaped at him, much changed. He was still bipedal, but he’d nearly doubled in mass. The dragon’s shoulders were like enormous boulders topped with razor-sharp black spines. His head was much larger, and so was his maw and the massive yard-long fangs that protruded from his gums. His arms were long, and the black sword looked small in his enormous fist. Moreover, his scales had grown thick and glassy, like thousands of plate-sized, perfectly interwoven shields of dark crystal.

When he laid into Victor, his movements had slowed considerably, but the force behind those blows had its own way of multiplying the velocity. Victor parried the first blow of the sword, only to be battered by a tremendous clawed swipe. The blow knocked him reeling, and then Dro Vah whirled, and a short, thick, spike-covered tail blasted into Victor’s chest, lifting him off his feet and sending him soaring straight into the amber ore gates of his palace.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

His impact was reminiscent of a train crash. Metal ground against metal. Bolts the size of small trees shrieked as they bent and scraped against the magically reinforced marble of the walls. Even so, the gates held—bowed in the middle, but whole. Victor was briefly stunned, long enough for Dro Vah to approach and belch another cloud of caustic gas at him. As his exposed flesh began to sting and his eyes burned and grew bloody, he felt his ire awaken. The rage in his Core seeped into his pathways as he pushed himself away from the damaged gates, and he decided to use it. He cast Iron Berserk.

It was the first time he’d gone berserk since he’d emerged from his vault, a primordial titan. As the power of his rage flowed through him, he felt his muscles expand, his tendons, ligaments, and bones swelling to accommodate his much increased strength, and, as his vision tinted toward red, he found the caustic gas nothing but a minor irritation; his already prodigious regeneration had accelerated to the point where the acid couldn’t gain purchase.

As he stepped through the cloud, scanning for his foe, the ground shook with the density of his mass. He hadn’t grown much vertically—a few feet or so—but he’d grown in power, massively. The synergy of his Sovereign Will, Titanic Rage, and Berserk meant that his strength, enhanced by his crown, had gone from 1196 to more than 5100. As he strode out of the gas cloud, Dro Vah was waiting, and again, he whirled, swinging his massive tail at him.

This time, Victor braced himself and caught his tail against his ribs, pinching it under his arm as the massive, titanium-hard spikes ground and bent against his aegis. Dro Vah looked startled, but not as much as when Victor took his gauntlet-covered hand and gripped that stubby, scaly appendage. He squeezed with all his might and felt the scales crack and grind into the flesh beneath.

Dro Vah screamed, but Victor wasn’t done. He took a step back and to the side and whipped his arm out and back, flinging the dragon against the palace walls. The impact shattered the air like thunder. The great enchantments that made the palace walls nearly impervious to assault strained under the force of the crash. Stone cracked, but so did scales and bones. Victor faced his stunned, bleeding foe, and with fury heating his blood, unleashed a torrent of Abyssal Magma on him.

He roared as he breathed the black-streaked red lava, his eyes crimson in their glee for the destruction he wrought. The lava covered the dragon, splashing against the walls, cracking the stone further, and Dro Vah convulsed in a paroxysm of pain and panic. Victor took two strides toward his thrashing foe, lifting Lifedrinker high, intent on hacking the dragon’s thick, spine-covered neck until his head came off. Then, in an eruption of green-tinted Energy, Dro Vah expanded, revealing his true form.

A roar that shook the ground like a rocket launch echoed over the battlefield, and then a dragon, easily eighty feet from tail to snout, launched itself at Victor. He managed to get one armored elbow up, catching it in Dro Vah’s enormous maw, stopping him from snapping those jaws shut around his head. Despite the monstrous beast’s size, Victor maintained his feet. He was close to forty feet tall, and his weight was sufficient to hold his ground. Still, as Dro Vah snapped down on his arm, grinding those adamant teeth into his armor, worrying it apart as it thrashed its great neck left and right, he felt his flesh and bone begin to part.

Victor roared and hacked Lifedrinker at the dragon’s neck, only to have his other arm caught up in a massive, taloned claw. He fought, jerking his arm left and right, but the dragon’s strength was a close match for his own. Worse, Dro Vah used the leverage of his grip to pull Victor against the straining, gnashing work of his jaws, further splitting his flesh. Finally, with a horrific ripping, snapping sound, he bit Victor’s arm off and, with nothing resisting the pull of his claw, flung him to the side, sending him sliding over the charred battlefield to fall into a chasm.

Victor’s mind was a haze of fury and pain. The pain was minor, though—it began to fade immediately as his regeneration took effect, mending the torn tendons, bones, vessels, and flesh, building upon their torn ends, and replacing his lost limb in seconds. His regeneration couldn’t replace his lost gauntlet, but his aegis regenerated inch by inch, coating his arm in its impossibly dense carapace.

He could hear the dragon approaching. He could feel it. The ground shook with its approach. His initial rage had cooled, and he smiled as he lay there, cradling Lifedrinker. “Well, chica, at least we know he’s a real dragon. I wonder if he’s shown us all his cards now?” She didn’t answer with words—her fury and hunger for his enemy’s blood were too intense. He felt that, though, and his smile grew broader.

He’d just begun to stand, gripping the edge of the fissure, when a wash of green, boiling liquid poured over him, accompanied by another dragon roar. The burning of the acid was intense, worse than the gas by a hundredfold. Victor held Lifedrinker clear, but his armor suffered greatly. Still, the artifacts held up to their claims of being “nearly indestructible.” He bent his legs, alight with the pain of having his flesh dissolved, and used Titanic Leap to get clear.

Soaring through the air, his flesh reformed near instantly, and he watched as the dragon snapped enormous black wings and launched after him. Victor grinned and channeled Energy into his magma wings. When they sprouted from his back, he poured Energy into them, streaking away from the palace toward the stretch of grassland beyond the blasted battlefield. He could feel Dro Vah gaining on him, and something about being chased brought a laugh out of him as he tore through the air, leaving a cloud of black smoke in his wake.

He could feel his pursuer and knew Dro Vah would be on him in seconds, so he angled toward the ground and landed, sliding through the grassy soil, digging a great trench with his boots. He turned and saw the dragon pump its wings and bring its massive rear talons to bear, aiming to impale him. Victor’s grin was feral as he ended his Iron Berserk and cast two other spells: Glacial Wrath and Roots of the Angry Mountain.

As the colors bled from the world, and things turned cold and dismal, Victor stretched his enormous hand toward the incoming talon. He carried out his plan, but most of his mind was distant, preoccupied with the many itching, nagging slights and insults he’d borne. He thought of the empress and her kin, and how they dared to assault his home and his people. He thought of the undead fiends his ancestor, Chantico, had told him about. How could the fool, Xelhuan, turn his back on his kin? How could he torment and defile the people of his world?

Distantly, he felt the talons impact his hand, and he closed his mighty fist, crushing the dragon’s dense, scaled bones in his grip. How fast the dragon had been flying, he didn’t know, but when Dro Vah struck Victor, he was halted instantly, and the earth under the dragon exploded in a jet of magma that would put many volcanoes to shame. The angry earth had spoken, and the sudden, unyielding impact snapped the bones in the dragon’s leg, and its momentum carried it forward to impact Victor with tremendous force. Victor was a pillar of unmoving metal and titan flesh, though, and the dragon’s scales and flesh bent and stretched against him, and its bones broke as lava bathed it.

With the inexorable strength of a glacier, Victor thrust Lifedrinker forward against Dro Vah’s girth, pressing the top edge of her crescent blade into his scaled flesh until she slid between two great scales and punched through his thick hide. As Dro Vah screamed, his bones breaking, his scales burning, his belly punctured and invaded by Lifedrinker’s edge, Victor smiled the cold smile of death’s messenger.

The collision was over, and Victor threw the dragon to the side, pulling his blood-soaked fist out of the hole he’d made—Lifedrinker was still inside Dro Vah’s belly. He watched, detached, as the dragon writhed. It was a mighty being. Its flesh and bones were strong—perhaps if the creature had improved its bloodline, it might have been as sturdy as he. It wasn’t, though. Victor was unbroken, and he could see the creature couldn’t heal as rapidly as he could.

Its rear leg was still twisted—a sack of shattered bones. Its scales, where they’d been bathed in lava, were cracked and dark, their glossy sheen ruined. Dro Vah’s chest was distended where broken ribs tried to pierce their way out. The great hole in his guts, where Victor had stuffed Lifedrinker, smoked and smoldered as the dragon’s caustic blood gurgled forth, steaming as it sizzled the grass.

Victor contemplated his foe. Had he not threatened his people? Had he not tried to kill Victor? Here was a being who deserved his ire. With cold, patient anger, he strode toward the dragon, noting a significant surge of Energy coalescing at Dro Vah’s Core, only to be drained away as Lifedrinker drank her fill. His fury cold but unyielding, Victor inhaled deeply and bathed the dragon in a cone of nullfrost.

The near-liquid ice was so pale as to hurt the eyes of those who gazed upon it. As it coated his foe, Victor could see the strange, shifting things beneath its surface and, once again, Dro Vah convulsed with panicked death throes. This time, however, he had no greater form to assume. He couldn’t expand his way out of Victor’s breath weapon. Worse, what Energy he might call on to resist the horrible icy embrace was being consumed by Lifedrinker as she wormed her way deeper and deeper into his chest.

Victor, standing more than forty feet high, massive of shoulder, steaming with the glacier’s cold, glowering with the fury of an eon, stepped forward and, once again, exhaled a stream of nullfrost, this time directing it into the gasping dragon’s face, into its eyes and mouth. With great satisfaction, he watched the creature convulse again. As Dro Vah writhed, jerking his head away from Victor’s breath attack, the frozen flesh and muscles of his neck cracked and broke, and it fell with a massive, ground-shaking thud. Victor stepped forward and stomped on his skull, shattering the frozen bones.

His foe vanquished, Victor turned his cold, furious gaze upon the Khalidaysian encampment and roared. He drove his fist through the frozen scales and flesh of Dro Vah’s broken carcass and gripped Lifedrinker’s haft. Ripping her free in a shower of glistening, crystalized gobbets of flesh and blood, he stalked toward the enemy camp, intent on delivering the full weight of his wrath.

He'd only taken two steps, though, before a shaft of brilliant light burst from the sky, and then a woman stood before him. She was tiny in comparison, standing a mere ten feet tall, typical of the people on Rhun, but she stared haughtily at Victor as she focused her aura on him. He felt it gather around him, probing, working to pierce his pathways and sever the connection to his Glacial Wrath spell. He resisted, pushing back with his own aura. The effort and the invasion focused his cold, inexorable wrath on the woman, and, as he glowered at her, her face shifted from angry to surprised to concerned.

“Stand down!” she shrieked, and, again, that aura pressed against him. Victor’s scowl deepened, his cold, calculating rage glancing inward, assessing the strength of his Core. His Energy was more than half-depleted, but his well was deep. He wouldn’t bend to this woman.

“No,” he rumbled, taking another lumbering step toward her, despite the pressure of her aura.

The air flickered around her, and then she stood another twenty paces further from him. “Then you will die,” she screamed, and in her outspread hands, a ball of silvery Energy began to form, its brightness rivaling that of a star.