64. Hell Rises Up


    Serac and Zacko pulled and pulled, as a skeleton horde streamed into the Ossuary.


    The Ossuary did its utmost to pull back the other way, but at some point, the combined force of the rushing soldiers won out, helping to keep the door ajar. Somewhere off to the side, Ash continued to brraahhmm into the side of the building, as if trying to cheer on the army in its own way.


    The last of the soldiers squeezed through, and the Wayfarers let go at the same time. The door slammed shut with an almost petulant thud, no doubt fuming at the violation of its agency. But all it achieved was to trap a whole skeleton army on the right side of Serac’s ability to command them.


    Except… she didn’t know how. The door closing shut also appeared to have turned off whatever ‘magic’ had rallied the soldiers in the first place. Now, they milled about the Ossuary’s foyer with weapons raised and nothing for them to sink into—a rebellious horde without a cause.


    Some of the soldiers turned to Serac with their darkly burning eyes. And for all her bluster about leading an army, she reacted to this simple interaction with disproportionate fragility.


    [Wayfarer Status Effect: FEAR]


    [TRIBULATION active (x4): current buff at 20%]


    There was something different about this group of undead fighters. Something that set them apart from ghosts, Huskbound statues, or even the Bone Lord himself. A deep-rooted grudge—and the undying need to punish those responsible.


    It was enough to inspire [Fear] in anyone who wasn’t prepared to meet them halfway. And why would any army follow a commander who was afraid of them?


    The presence of [Fear] within Serac’s soul acted as another trigger. The skeleton soldiers once again moved as a connected unit, as their weapons found something fleshy and cinnabar-skinned to sink into.


    “This isn’t good, Wayfarer,” Trippy stated the obvious as the soldiers clicked and clacked their way towards Serac. “You must find your voice again—the same one you used to quell this lot earlier.”


    “It’s really not that simple!” Serac whined, even as she readied her instruments for defense. What had seemed like a fun, wacky idea a moment ago had just as quickly devolved into disaster. “That ‘voice’ has a mind of its own. It’s not something I can just call on at will.”


    “Then you’ll have to work at it, just like you would with any other aspect of your skillset. Here… I believe I know how I can be of assistance.”


    “Ow, ow, ow!”


    Serac winced, both physically and verbally, as an electric shock shot through her skull. The impulse then settled as a raging fire, one that scorched a band-form area around her right temple.


    The pain had gone beyond eerily familiar into something entirely novel and terrifying in its own right. Yet, ironically enough, it was this nosedive into unfamiliar territory that woke in Serac a long-dormant memory. The pain—its location, its intensity, its necessity and the pride it engendered—grounded Serac in her otherwise transcendent reality.


    ‘Heavy is the head that wears the crown’? Pfft. Hurts like a mother is more like it!


    “Ludicrous!”


    Serac/Not suddenly bellowed. The word came out as a non sequitur, as if it’d been in response to a conversation that had taken place at a different place and in another time. But all present in the foyer stopped what they were doing and listened, all the same.


    “Childish, churlish, and downright buffoonish!” she continued her tirade, spinning about the place to glare at the totality of her audience. “Do you not tire of this farce? Are you not ashamed by your obsession with the petty and the inconsequential? When there are bigger fish to fry and famous heads to scalp?”


    Yeah, you tell ’em, King! Shame is always the best motivator.


    If the soldiers hadn’t been motivated yet, they were at the very least captivated, with their eyes now burning with anticipation. Serac/Not took this opportunity to raise her REVOLVER, pointing it up into the mezzanine.


    “Beyond that door awaits an all-too-familiar foe,” she continued, her voice boiling over, along with her own battle-fever. “A pretender who sits upon a throne of false relics. Even now, he makes a mockery of our war and our sacrifice. And I for one will not let such insolence stand! Join me, my friends, and let us together plunge this fool into the darkest pits of hell where he belongs!”


    “Yeeaaahhhh!”


    That roar of approval had issued from the intact vocal cords of someone who was very much not-undead—and so unexpected that it nearly threw Serac out of her transcendent state. It’d of course been uttered by Zacko, who pumped his own fist into the air for emphasis.


    The Manusya was far from the only one to be inspired by the impromptu speech. The foyer filled with an eerily passionate clamor—the symphonic clickety-clack of skeletons raising their weapons towards and against a common enemy.This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    Zacko led the way this time, skipping up the stairs, three steps at a time. The soldiers followed, somehow knowing to organize themselves into two groups to maintain the flow of traffic. Serac brought up the rear, shaking her head at the absolute lunacy that unfolded before her.


    [TRIBULATION active (x3): current buff at 15%]


    As her [Fear] faded, Serac could also feel the presence of her ‘third entity’ recede. In its place, however, the one-sided headache throbbed anew, as if to remind Serac that she wasn’t out of the woods—as if to say: I’m keeping an eye on you until this thing is over.


    The pain and the voice. The voice and Serac’s ability to speak to souls on a deeper level, evoking memories that should’ve been long lost to the passing of Kalpas. As much as the ‘otherness’ within herself disturbed Serac, she also couldn’t deny its value—nor its timeliness.


    One thing no one could take away from her was her pain tolerance, forged from years of ceaseless torture. She’d gladly lean into that hard-earned ‘perk’ now, as she gritted her teeth and pushed through her throng of skeleton soldiers, desperate to get out in front.


    For she recalled what the Bone Lord had said earlier. What kind of a king would I be if I didn’t lead my battles from the front? If she were to dethrone a pretender, she had to at least match him in principles of leadership.


    Thus, after much pushing and shoving, Serac managed to barge into the throne room at the front of her army. She did so shoulder-to-shoulder with her Manusya general, and the two of them ran on ahead to give their soldiers the space to assemble.


    By then, the Bone Lord had slunk his way back inside Dashi’s body. The boy was conscious again, leaning forward from his throne to inspect an invading army.


    Dashi no longer wore his welcoming, excitable smile. Neither could the emotion that now darkened his youthful face be described as worry, confusion, nor anything else Serac might’ve expected. Instead, she was rather surprised to see anger.


    “What is the meaning of this?” the boy’s protest echoed throughout the spire. “How is this possible?”


    Serac shrugged, more to mask a painful wince than as a show of nonchalance.


    “We’re Wayfarers,” she said by way of non-answer. “When we get stuck, we find a way to push forward. That’s what we do.”


    “No!”


    The ‘pretender’ shouted in a child’s high-pitched whine. The boy’s otherwise sweet face contorted into an ugly grimace, the sight of which only fueled Serac’s own anger. Oh, I’m going to drag you out of Dashi if it’s the last thing I do.


    “I care naught about your pathetic excuse for an army!” the pretender continued, then he pointed an accusatory finger at Serac. “I asked about you and your trickery! How is it that you—he…! That presence I felt at the gate earlier… Do you mean to tell me it was real? And that, somehow, you were its source?”


    Serac stared back blankly. Then she looked to Zacko, who only shrugged with an equally blank expression.


    Through it all, Trippy too remained silent. Nothing to offer—or keeping the answers close to his chest? It was becoming harder and harder to tell.


    Above them, the pretender let out a mirthless laugh, one of disgust rather than good humor.


    “Your lowly soul cannot even comprehend the greatness with which you’ve been graced,” he muttered, almost to himself. Then he shouted to be heard, “No matter! Use your tricks, raise your armies, ‘unstick’ yourselves as often as you’d like. I will crush you like the insects you are, each and every time—until nothing of your worthless selves remain!”


    “Now, that’s more like it!” Zacko shouted back, his sardonic grin in full bloom. “None of this ‘prove this’ ‘pledge that’ crap. Let’s just go for each other’s jugulars like we were always meant to!”


    Serac’s headache was too severe for her to come up with a quippy taunt—not that she particularly cared to. Instead, she focused on the enemy, trying to gather clues she might have missed on the first go-around.


    Dashi’s body went limp, in a clear sign that the Bone Lord’s ‘essence’ had transferred onto RELIQUARY. This was the first clue, which seemed to suggest that the Bone Lord was incapable of imposing his presence or activating his magic without a vessel for him to occupy. Now, whether this clue could help the Wayfarers at all still remained to be seen.


    [Wayfarer Status Effect: OSSIFY]


    [TRIBULATION active (x4): current buff at 20%]


    Next came the awakening of the Pishacha army. Like last time, the skeletal colossus that was the Bone Lord’s ‘RELIQUARY form’ threw out dust pellets that shot towards the statues lining the circular wall.


    But this time, Serac kept her eyes on the enemy. The enemy—and not all the other bullshit he’d conjured around him. And with that renewed focus, she finally noticed a detail that should’ve been obvious the first time.


    The Bone Lord, like all good bosses, had himself an HP bar. A massive one at that to fit his size and stature, but interestingly enough, it wasn’t full.


    The fight had barely started, and neither Serac nor Zacko had landed a hit on the skeleton in the sky. Yet, the HP bar was already missing a small chunk. And it continued to oscillate, draining and refilling in turn as his legion of minions ksshhh’d and thudded to life.


    Serac Edin, being something of a self-damager herself, immediately understood what was happening. What had Trippy Version 1 said—so long ago now that it felt like another lifetime?


    Every Instrument is tied to a unique resource type, and REVOLVER’s happens to be Cartridge.


    Well, it appeared that RELIQUARY’s proprietary resource was none other than the Bone Lord’s own HP pool. He certainly had a lot of it to suit his needs, but as long as a resource needed to be spent, it was also susceptible to depletion.


    So, it turns out Zacko actually wasn’t far off with his first idea. Survive at all costs. Dodge all of the boss’s mechanics and wait him out until he spent himself to death. That might have been a viable strategy, if it weren’t for the pesky [Ossify] cloud that acted as a time limit for the Wayfarers.


    In a way, the two ‘bars’ that demanded Serac’s attention—her [Ossify] gauge and the Bone Lord’s HP—were like hourglasses on opposing sides. Except Serac’s ‘drained’ in reverse, and the Bone Lord’s could apparently move in both directions.


    Well then, this is looking to be another race. A race to see which one of us can drain the other’s hourglass faster.


    Serac’s conscious reframing of the whole fight gave rise to another surge of confidence. But whether this one was earned or not still remained to be seen. In either case, it gave Serac the push she needed to find her voice anew.


    “After me, warriors!” She raised REVOLVER into the air but stopped short of firing it. No sense in wasting Chamber One, even if it was for a quippy rallying cry. “And set ablaze your flames of vengeance! Let us lay these haunted souls to rest… with a final cremation.”