A/N: Thoughts are like this - ** I am thinking. **
Note that I am not that good at English. So, I used AI to help me refine it. All actions, dialogues, etc, are made by me.
If you don't like me using AI to assist me in refining it (not adding stuff, of course), then it is your cue to leave now.
-----------
Beneath the kingdom of Averon sprawled a vast maze, its corridors twisting endlessly like veins through the earth. It stretched beneath the entire kingdom, reaching so far it was said to shape over sixty percent of the known world. Thousands of halls branched from each artery, layered with traps—mechanical, magical, and cruelly ingenious. A lifetime would not be enough to reach its end.
Footfalls boomed through the stonework corridors—someone was running. Quick, aimed, and unrelenting. The figure took a sudden turn about a corner, barely pausing to clear the traps that clashed out in shattering clicks and blinding bursts of light. It was the prince. Kai Averon. Seventeen years old. Last of the Averon blood, and with that blood came the weight of a kingdom and the burden of secrets only he held.
From the shadows came monsters. Hulking, twisted, as if stitched together from nightmares. Their slick black hides glistened in the torchlight, swollen glands pulsing with shifting colors, leaking fluids that hissed against stone. Their skulls stretched long and thin, eyes glittering with predatory hunger, mandibles unfolding to reveal rows of needle-teeth. Beneath their skin, muscles rippled unnaturally, and each step shook the corridor like the tread of executioners.
Kai did not stagger. He moved like water, slipping between their claws, his motion a blur. In an instant, the creatures were gone—shattered into parts of themselves, dissolving into nothing. The hall was silent once more, as if it had never been disturbed at all.
The prince halted, chest steady with controlled breaths. At the corridor's end loomed the vault doors—vast, white, runes faintly glowing across their face. Shadows clung to the edges, scars of centuries of seeping darkness. Kai remembered standing here as a child beside his father. Then, the vault had seemed a sanctuary. Now, it was a threshold into something far worse.
Kai tightened his grip on his sword, ready for what was to come.
Kai sprang into action, dashing straight at the hooded figure by the side of the cube. His sword glowed with light as he swung it down—
—but something caught him. A blur. A blast of a blow. He barely had time to raise his blade. The power rocked his arms, his hand shaking at the force behind it.
He skidded back over the stone floor, boots scuffing sparks.
When his eyes cleared, he saw them.
Three colossal figures stepped out from the edge of the chamber, their enormous bodies shattered, black tendrils of corruption seeping through pure white stone once.
Kai's eyes widened. "The Guardian Golems of the Vault…?!"
They were once revered guardians, the last defense of Averon's most prized treasure. Now—corruption had crept into every corner of them, distorting their shape.
The first was red-skinned, its form developing four arms, each of them clutching a sharp stone knife. Its stance was hauntingly proper, a warrior shaped from endless practice. The second was taller, golden markings displaying faintly on its chest. Three eyes glowed with tainted fire, each of them rotating independently, tracking Kai with unnatural purpose. The third. Kai barely caught sight of it. No eyes. No voice. Its presence was so faint, so faint, that even being in front of him, it was almost as if a mirage. But his stomach was shouting otherwise—it was death packaged in silence.
Kai's grip on his sword tightened. His heart pounded.
** So they're infected. That explains things. Their fighting abilities… enhanced past what they ought to be. **
For a moment, uncertainty gnawed at his mind. Uninfected previously, he might have had any hope whatsoever of winning. Now filled with the darkness of Zor'Khul? He can still win, but only the question is to what degree they are different because of the infection.
He gritted his jaw.
** So what. I will not allow Averon to fall. I am the last of the royal bloodline. I am Kai Averon. **
His sword sang back at him. It was not a sword—it was an artifact, a relic of Genesis, one of the two prime sources of life itself. In his hand, it pulsed with raw power, hungry to cut through corruption.
Kai's body glowed with a gentle light as he accessed his trump card: True Chi. The power his people had terrorized, a force so raw and volatile that mortal men who touched it burned up. But he had endured it, lived through it, molded it enough to employ.
His aura burst. His energy rocked the room.
The red golem roared first, advancing with four blades cutting in deadly concert. Sparks shrieked as Kai parried the first, dodged the second, rolled under the third—striking the fourth squarely. His Genesis sword clashed against defiled stone, and where they touched, the golem's arm broke, shards disintegrating to powder.
But the respite did not endure.
The three-eyed golem raised its arms. The room glows with power. Scythes of golden energy sprouted everywhere, slashing in at him from impossible angles.
Kai moved into action. His body flashed through the vault in bursts of light, avoiding, blocking, slicing what he could. Each scythe exploded on impact, shaking the vault.
Then—a window. He grasped the golden caster.
A shadow moved. Too late.
The eyeless exploded up from the ground beneath him, its fist striking into his side. The impact boomed, bones crunching from the blow. Kai was knocked wide, sliding across stone, blood jetting from his lips.
He gasped, half-crawling to his feet, sweat streaming into his eyes.
** Their synergy… flawless. Melee pins me. Caster showers death. Assassin punishes openings. If I meet them head-on, I lose. **
The red one came again, blades spinning in a whirlwind. Kai met it blow for blow, blade singing. He used its weight, using the momentum of its own, parrying sword after sword—but the three-eyed golem's next spell rained down.
Balls of searing energy fell like falling stars this time, and Kai was compelled to abandon his counterattack. He ran, the explosions behind him tearing the floor apart.
The murderer shifted once more, leaping from the shadows, claws rising to his throat.
But Kai was ready. His sword shone, parrying the attack by a hair's breadth. The strength tore through his arm, close to tearing it from its socket, but he managed to shove the silent golem back.
Kai jerked back, clutching his side where the murderer had struck. Blood trickled from his lip, his breath harsh, strained.
But his mind was going a thousand miles an hour.
** Think. The vault's guards. I have heard of them. Their jobs, their coordination, their abilities. The warrior—invincible. The assassin—deceptive. The shaman—fragile. but the most lethal among them all. All because of that one spell. The immobilization spell. If used on me, I'm defeated. But if I can turn it back on them.
His grip on the hilt tightened.
** That is my only path to triumph.**
He shoved his protesting body ahead, sword raised once more.
The battle thundered, shuddering the vault to its foundations. Kai's sword met four serrated swords simultaneously, fire flashing in shimmering arcs. The crimson warrior persisted, each blow increasing in force, pushing him back.
Golden balls rained down above, exploding in shock waves that cracked the floor beneath his boots. Each time he deflected one, the assassin was there, bursting from darkness, claws ripping for his throat.
Unrelenting.
Suffocating.
And in spite of Kai dodging every attack, his body indicated the toll. Gouges scored his arms and legs. Blood streaked his side. His breathing grew unstable, his vision narrowed.
The three bore down, unyielding.
Kai staggered, his knees buckling, his chest heaving as if he'd lost all strength. His sword trembled in his grip. He was shattered. Slowing down.
The shaman's three eyes blazed. It had been waiting for this instant. Power filled the air as filaments of gold light braided above its hands. The immobilization spell.
His eyes wore a look of terror.
He charged straight at the shaman to break its casting. The red warrior and the assassin, witnessing him do so, came up, blades and claws locked, holding him in place.
Finally, the shaman let go of the spell.
The vault erupted with golden light.
When the light dissipated, the warrior and the assassin stood rigid, bodies transformed into radiant statues of gold.
The shaman's three eyes widened in horror. It looked around wildly. Two statues. Where was the other one?
"Got you now."
The whisper came from behind. The shaman barely turned before Kai's blade cut through him, clean and final. Fissures erupted like flames across its stone body before it burst into light and dust.
There was silence again in the vault.
Previously, when the spell was about to collapse, the eyes of Kai suddenly opened. The tiny dots he had seeded previously on the two guards during his desperate effort to pretend his fight came to life, radiating like stars under their stony skin. Fibers emanated from each dot, constricting around their arms and trunks, pinning them down.
At the same time, Kai imprinted his will on the ground sigil that he had hidden in the course of the battle. His body flickered—vanished.
The petrification of the shaman lashed out, filling the room with golden light. But not Kai, the explosion hit the bound warrior and assassin. Their bodies stiffened, sparkled, and instantly stood frozen—turned into statues of golden brilliance.
With it, the three guardians of the vault—stone titans who had endured for centuries—fell in less than a minute. By all rights, such a battle should have thundered on, shaking Averon's foundations for hours. But that was the pace of ordinary warriors. This had been a clash between forces beyond mortal measure. To any who might have witnessed it, there would have been no battle at all—only the sudden, terrible silence afterward, and the drifting haze of dust where old legends had just perished.