Kaelen had a solemn mood
The air in his body was thin now and even though it was not a significant detriment to his body - the last 3 days without it was exhausting. After leaving the scorched cathedral he stayed at climbing became increasingly annoying
Something he was glad about was that the nightmare creatures were not in hoards anymore they were singles at best and trios at worst
There was a dormant demon - the 'little' bastard used its disgusting brain and went airborne the moment it saw him to get an advantage. He had managed to grab its tail and slam it to the ground and using a little scene he saw in a game he stomped its back to the ground and ripped its wings off
He did that for all of those species
The dormant monsters were not that difficult to kill though
In total he had amassed roughly 413 shards
Kaelen couldn't help but smile - it was a warranted smile after all, he would be halfway to forming a soul core or shadow core
Who knew?
After reaching a certain height the debris was no longer, rather it was a large, very very large black obsidian lighthouse like structure that had many jagged edges that Kaelen had grown to despise over the past day and a half of climbing it
But he was at the top now with the only things above him was literally nothing
With a final, guttural heave, Kaelen hauled his body over the lip of the plateau.
He rolled onto the cold stone, his Swift Sea armor clattering against the rock. He lay there for a moment, staring at the stars that looked close enough to touch, his heart drumming a steady, heavy rhythm against his ribs.
He was at the apex.
Standing up, Kaelen wiped the frost from his brow. The plateau was not that large but it could hold roughly a 100 people standing munched together. But in the center, shielded by a ring of jagged obsidian pillars that looked like upward-pointing teeth, sat a structure that defied the desolation.
It was a nest.
But it wasn't made of twigs or grass. It was woven from the bleached, ivory ribs of nightmare creatures—hundreds of them, interlocking in a macabre lattice. Interspersed with the bone were shimmering strands of metallic silk and tufts of fur that still smelled of ozone and ancient rot.
Kaelen approached warily, the Claws of Flame sitting in his hand ready to be thrown at a moment's notice. He stepped over the rim of the bone-nest, his boots crunching on fragments of skulls.
It was empty.
Or so it seemed at first.
As he reached the center, he saw them. Nestled in a bed of soft, grey down were five eggs. They were small, each the size of a full from hen, with shells that looked like polished jade shot through with veins of pulsing, red light. They felt warm—terrifyingly warm—as if there was a miniature sun beating inside each one.
Kaelen's eyes narrowed.
These eggs were alive, they would give him shards but not for now
"Finders keepers," he rasped, his voice cracked from the cold.
He reached for the Seafarers Satchel. One by one, he lifted the heavy, pulsing jade eggs. They were dense, the weight nearly staggering even for his enhanced strength. He carefully slid them into the spatial fold of the satchel.
One. Two. Three. Four.
As his fingers closed around the fifth and final egg, the wind—the constant, howling companion of his climb—suddenly died.
The silence was absolute. It was the kind of silence that precedes an avalanche.
Kaelen shoved the fifth egg into the satchel and pulled the drawstring tight, but he didn't stand up. He froze, his hand still gripping the leather of the bag. A shadow was spreading across the obsidian floor. It wasn't the shadow of a cloud or a drifting island.
He knew there was none of that left to climb
The air above him didn't just move, it curdled.
A sound erupted from the void—a screech so piercing it shattered the nearby obsidian pillars, sending shards of volcanic glass flying like shrapnel. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated grief and fury.
Kaelen spun around, his daggers erupting into his hands in a burst of red-hot light, but he nearly lost his footing from the sheer pressure of the downdraft.
Descending from above was a nightmare clad in feathers.
It was a giant, a deformed devil of the sky the size of two grown buff men.
Its body was a patchwork of mangled, soot-colored feathers and raw, exposed muscle that twitched with every beat of its massive, ragged wings.
It looked like a vulture that had been put back together by a blind god—or a corrupted one at least
Its neck was too long, snaking back and forth with a nauseating fluidity, ending in a hooked, serrated beak that dripped with a glowing, acidic bile.
Its eyes weren't milky like the Reapers. They were burning pits of hateful, intelligent amber, fixed directly on the satchel at Kaelen's waist.
The Devil had returned to an empty nest.
And Kaelen was the only thing left to kill.
The devil tilted its massive, ragged head. It saw the jade eggs tucked into the satchel at Kaelen's waist, and its amber eyes flared with a rage.
With a sudden, violent snap of its wings, the Devil didn't move—the air did.
Schwing—!
Two crescent-shaped blades of compressed wind tore through the atmosphere. Kaelen threw himself to the left, the wind blades whistling past his ear with a sound like a guillotine. They struck a chunk of the bones besides him, shearing through two feet of solid bone as if it were parchment.
'Well at least i was right... its a devil'
A devil that could shoot wind blades!
The bird dived.
It was a falling mountain of soot-colored feathers and raw muscle. Kaelen braced himself, his legs sinking deep into a crouch. As the serrated beak lunged forward to crush his skull, Kaelen lunged inward, sliding beneath the creature's massive chest.
He struck upward with both daggers.
The heated blades hissed as they met the devils underbelly, but the resistance was immense. It was like trying to stab through layers of vulcanized rubber. The slight flames on his daggers flickered against the beast's skin, singeing the downy feathers, but the devil didn't even shriek. It simply shifted its weight.
A massive, taloned foot—the size of Kaelen's entire torso—slammed into his ribs.
Smash
The Swift Sea armor absorbed the brunt of the impact, but the kinetic force sent Kaelen tumbling across the plateau like a ragdoll. He rolled, his stone-like skin grinding against the obsidian, leaving a trail of grey dust.
The Devil didn't give him a second to breathe. It flapped its wings again, this time releasing a barrage of wind blades in a wide, horizontal fan.
Kaelen didn't have the space to dodge. He crossed the Claws of Flame in front of his face.
Clang!
The wind blades struck the daggers, sending sparks flying and forcing Kaelen back until his heels were hanging over the abyss. The heat from the blades blowed onto his face, but the pressure was the real enemy.
The Devil's power was relentless, pushing him toward the edge where his weight would be his death sentence.
"You oversized wind fan" Kaelen growled
He was going to use the same strategy he used for the past week
As the devil lunged for a second pass, its long, serpentine neck extended like a strike from a snake, Kaelen swung his hand again and a thick black liquid flew out filling the space just as the devils wind-blades tore through it.
The wind didn't dissipate the blood, it carried it.
Kaelen lunged forward, the Claws of Flame leading the way. He just needed one spark. The red-hot tip of his right dagger brushed against a floating droplet of the black liquid.
Fwoom!
A flash-fire ignited in the air between them, a sudden wall of orange flame that scorched the devils sensitive, unfeathered neck. The bird shrieked, a high-pitched sound of surprise and pain, as it banked hard to avoid the sudden inferno.
Kaelen didn't stop. He leaped through the dying embers, his blackened stone skin glowing from the reflected fire. He wasn't trying to kill it yet—he couldn't. He was just trying to find a way to ground the beast.
He latched onto the devils left wing-joint, his stone fingers digging into the tough, leathery hide. The bird surged upward, its massive wings beating frantically, hauling Kaelen into the black void of the nightmare sky.
Below them, the obsidian plateau shrank into a tiny black speck.
"I've got you now, you overgrown vulture," Kaelen hissed, burying one of the glowing daggers into the creature's wing-membrane.
The Devil roared in fury, spinning in mid-air as they began a chaotic, lethal dance thousands of feet above the broken world. The real fight had only just begun.
Kaelen was thrown off
It took him so long to climb up onto the platform and now he was already falling besides it.
Seeing the spike he used to sit on and grab a bite coming up his eyes widened, and instantly he shifted his body and tried to turn away to not hit and even though he succeeded in not slamming full body onto it his hand hit it and his body forcibly turned and his eyes got to see that damn thing
the devil folded its tattered wings and tucked its head, transforming into a soot-colored missile of pure hatred.
"Come on then!" Kaelen roared, the sound whipped away by the gale.
He twisted his body in mid-air, using his increased weight to stabilize his rotation. He was like a falling mountain but he had a bit of control over his bulk
The devil made its move
With a screech that vibrated through Kaelen's very marrow, the Devil snapped its wings open at the last second to slow its descent. It didn't use its beak—it used the air. A horizontal fan of five wind blades erupted from its leading wing-edge, slicing through the atmosphere with a high-pitched thrum.
Kaelen didn't have a platform to jump from. He threw his left arm out, catching a passing piece of floating masonry—a shattered marble pillar no bigger than a coffin—and used the momentum to swing his body beneath it.
SHREEE—!
The wind blades sheared through the marble as if it were soft cheese, sending white dust and stone splinters into Kaelen's eyes. He grunted, the impact was lessened but he was not severely harmed - instantly dismissing the armor Kaelen felt a decent amount of weight move of and he moved up a little higher upwards
He was a blur of blackened stone and flickering orange light.
As he drifted into the devils blind spot beneath its belly, Kaelen struck.
He lashed out with the Claws of Flame, the red-hot daggers carving twin lines of cauterized flesh across the creature's thigh. The heat was a needle-prick to a beast of this size, but the sting was enough.
The devil spiraled, its long, serpentine neck snapping downward to find him. It began to beat its wings in a frantic, irregular rhythm, creating a localized vortex that tried to pull Kaelen into the path of its serrated beak.
"Too slow!" Kaelen hissed
He wasn't just falling anymore, he was maneuvering. He reached into the Seafarers Satchel and pulled out a handful of the heavy rib bones he had harvested.
Just as its talons reached at him a rib bone stabbed into its leg and then in the next second another into its thigh - Kaelen had practice with this particular battle strategy with the Fractured Flame - the climb and stab
He reached the devils back, his stone fingers digging into the base of its soot-colored wings.
The Devil went into a frenzy. It moved into a violent surge of stomach-churning barrel rolls, trying to use the centrifugal force to peel Kaelen off. Every time they inverted, the abyss of the nightmare world spun above them, and the jagged islands loomed below.
Clang!
A wind blade, fired point-blank from the Monarch's own wing-joint, grazed Kaelen's shoulder.
A piece of the flesh was instantly cut of causing him to grit his teeth and instantly the armor was summoned back on him - The pain may have been less due to his altered anatomy but if he was going to be riding the big bastard maybe it would be better to have the armor
He buried his right Claw of Flame into the creature's shoulder blade as a return payment. The blade glowed a fierce, angry crimson, the slight flames licking at the soot-covered feathers.
The Devil responded by diving vertically, accelerating at a speed that made Kaelen's vision blur. The wind pressure was trying to crush his chest, trying to tear his grip from the leathery hide.
"You want to go down?" Kaelen's voice was a growl of stone and steam. "We'll go down together!"
He began to climb the creature's back, hand over hand, his stone fingernails leaving deep furrows in the Devil's muscle. He was moving toward the base of that long, snaking neck, the daggers in his hands leaving a trail of sparks against the beast's toughened skin.
The devil shrieked again and Kaelen was starting to get a little annoyed with that voice
It banked hard to the right, heading straight for a floating mountain fragment the size of a city block. It wasn't trying to fly away anymore—it was trying to scrape Kaelen off against the rock at terminal velocity.
The jagged obsidian edge of the floating mountain loomed, growing larger with every heartbeat.
Kaelen gripped the daggers tighter, the heat of the blades beginning to singe his own stone palms.
The air was a scream in his ears
They reached a particular stone hill he remembered climbing over, the devil didn't flinch, it banked at a steep angle, intending to grind Kaelen into the rock face at terminal velocity.
"Shit—!" Kaelen dismissed the armor instantly knowing it would be destroyed
CRASH.
The impact was a different pain than what he had felt so far
They didn't just hit the rubble, they pulverized it. Kaelen was ripped from the beast's back as the island fragment disintegrated under their combined momentum. He became a ragdoll of blue armor, bouncing off jagged boulders and slamming through the skeletal remains of a ruined watchtower.
He finally slammed into a boulder skidding thirty meters before his boots found purchase.
Trying to push himself up with his left hand Kaelen suddenly felt the lack there off
From his elbow going down there was no hand
He watched as the flames started to mold the stone like clay and seal the stump - before it healed fully he let out a sick smile
One of the claws of flame was brought and the handle was shoved into the - now what was a stump
The dagger was not as long as his hand was, in fact it was exactly half the size of his hand from his elbow the tip of his middle finger but now - but it was going to do
He was just glad that the pain was almost non existent and the heat had melded the stump that was once his hand into well... a stump preventing any loss of water
"Not... dead... yet," he wheezed, his voice a grating rasp
Across the debris, the devil was struggling to rise. One of its massive wings was bent at an impossible angle, and its amber eyes were clouded with pain and disorientation.
Kaelen didn't give it a second. He sprinted, his heavy footfalls cracking the marble beneath him. He leaped over a pile of shattered stone and rammed his shoulder into the creature - the armor was on his body again as it molded around his now dagger arm
"Die!"
Kaelen brought the right Claw of Flame on his stump down. Again. And again. And again.
The red-hot blade sank into the soft tissue beneath the bird's jaw, the slight flames licking at the open wounds.
The Devil's shriek turned into a wet, gurgling rattle.
Kaelen lifted his dagger hand and bent down closer and stabbed it into the creatures neck
With a roar he pulled the dagger to a side and waited for the devil to go limp
[You have slain an awakened devil: Annihilated Air]
[You have received a memory ...]
Kaelen slumped against the warm, blood-soaked feathers, his chest heaving - or he had expected it to after that endeavor
A white mist flowed from the corpse into his body - the veins in his body had all turned into swirling torrents of air that were now carrying the pressurized steam and propelling it through his body with even greater power
It was just a shame that his missing arm was not healed
It made sense though - his leg wound in the water trial was only healed because the injury was not that bad - but he did not care that much
His body felt better than it did at the start of this trial
He let out a smile after seeing the door appear right besides him.
So he moved - using his dagger hand to carve the shards out of its body and to take all of the edible meat sending it into his bag,
and then
He opened the door and stepped into the next trial and the only thing he saw...
was a blinding city that radiated a glowing yellow light