The Storm-Swept Crag - Part 3
Ryley watched, his sword ready, guarding the approach to their ledge against any Cursed that broke off from Jax. He saw Jax take a lightning bolt to the chest, saw his health bar lurch dangerously into the red. He saw Liana, a tiny figure against the massive Fissure, planting something—their remaining Razorjack caltrops, the Whetstone of Preservation, anything metallic and conductive—at its base.
The air around Liam grew deathly still, then began to vibrate with a terrifying, sub-aural hum. The very storm seemed to pause, holding its breath.
"NOW, LIAM!" Ryley screamed.
Liam's eyes snapped open, blazing with captured lightning. With a final, shattered cry, he didn't cast a spell. He released the knot.
A column of concentrated, hyper-compressed storm fury, a spear of wind and lightning ten times more violent than the natural gale, lanced down from the ledge. It didn't hit the Sentinels. It hit the ground in front of the Stormheart Fissure, right where Jax stood surrounded by the enemy.
The world dissolved into pure, white sound and fury.
The detonation was not an explosion of fire, but of absolute atmospheric violence. The compressed storm-unleashed ripped through the arena. The lesser Storm-Cursed were simply annihilated, ripped apart into motes of grey dust. The three Tempest Sentinels, caught at the epicenter, were hurled backward like dolls. One was flung screaming into the abyss. A second slammed into the cliff wall with bone-shattering force and did not rise.
The third, the largest, was blasted directly into the Stormheart Fissure.
The effect was catastrophic. The Sentinel's own lightning-wreathed body acted as a conductor and a destabilizing mass. The Fissure flared with agonized blue-white light, then imploded with a sound like the sky tearing. A shockwave of silence radiated out, followed by a backblast of wild, discordant energy that whipped the remaining rain into steam.
In the sudden, ringing quiet, the howling gale was gone. Only a gentle, mournful wind remained.
Jax lay in the center of the devastation, his armor blackened and smoking, but he was alive, groaning. The gamble had worked; he'd been at the edge of the blast, not the center.
On the ledge, Liam collapsed, unconscious, his mana and stamina bars utterly empty. Maya slumped beside him, drained white, her hands trembling.
Liana was already moving. As the Fissure collapsed, she lunged forward, daggers flashing, not at a monster, but at the crumbling, crystalline core that had been revealed at the heart of the fissure. She pried it loose—a pulsating Stormheart Shard, the size of her fist, crackling with captive lightning. A boss component. The key to part of their Tribute.
Ryley scrambled down into the arena. The fourth floor was defeated. Not by killing every monster, but by destroying its heart. The remaining scattered Storm-Cursed, bereft of their energy source, let out confused wails and crumbled into inert stone.
He helped Jax to his feet. The Barbarian was a wreck, but his eyes were fierce. "That," he coughed, "was a good plan."
Together, they retrieved Liam and Maya. The Silver Chest materialized not far from the dead Fissure. Inside, they found their rewards: two new Potions of Vigor (restoring stamina and minor health), a Cloak of the Gale's Whisper (which Liana took, its enchantment muffling sound and stabilizing the wearer in high winds), and a Tome of Static Charge (which Liam, upon awakening, would be able to study to augment his lightning magic).
They were a broken party. Their resources were spent. They were wounded in body and spirit. But they had done it. They had used the floor's own power to destroy it, turning the storm against itself. They had a boss component for the Tribute. And they had survived.
As they limped toward the glowing exit archway that had appeared on the far side of the now-quiet arena, the scale of the challenge truly dawned on them. The fourth floor had taken three chapters of their lives, had pushed them to the brink of annihilation, and had required a complex, high-risk strategy just to survive.
And there were ninety-six floors to go.
The Spire wasn't just hard. It was an epic. And they were only on the fourth page. The weight of that truth settled on them as heavily as their exhaustion. But they had won. They had paid the blood price for another month's rent on their kingdom. And for now, that had to be enough.