The spearman strode forward first as the group approached, sweeping its spear low. The massive weapon cut across the floor in a brutal, horizontal sweep, the tip chewing through stone. Anything standing in its path would have been reduced to a smear.
They all jumped.
Gold led the front and Fritt used the upward momentum to add flair, planting one foot on the spear mid-sweep and springing off it in a tight flip, flames puffing from his heels.
From behind the spearman, the swordsman lifted the broken sword, twisted, and hurled it straight ahead.
The chunk of stone spun like a thrown cleaver, whistling through the air straight towards Ferra.
She threw herself sideways. The spinning blade crashed into the ground between her and the others, biting deep into the floor and kicking up a wall of broken tiles and dust. It lodged there like an improvised barrier - too tall to climb quickly, too wide to go around without giving up ground.
The swordsman stepped over to her side of the hall, abandoning the others. Its fists clenched. The light under its helmet flared.
Ferra tightened her grip on her zweihander. "Fine," she muttered.
On the other side of the broken wall, Fritt's eyes tracked the spearman's position, then the nearest intact column.
"Alright, stupid rock," he said under his breath, a grin tugging at his lips. "Let's play."
He broke into a sprint. "Follow me!" he yelled, making sure his voice carried.
The spearman obliged with swift eagerness.
Spear strikes stabbed and swept in quick succession, the weapon's reach relentless. Fritt twisted around them, sometimes ducking, sometimes skipping sideways. Small bursts of fire popped at his heels every few movements, tiny explosions giving him micro-adjustments with an extra burst of speed. He made himself erratic, difficult to track.
He reached the base of a column, its carvings worn but still deep. "Perfect," he breathed.
He pivoted, swinging his flaming fist into the pillar's lowest ridge, the stone cracked. A chunk the size of his torso broke free. He didn't wait for it to fall. His feet danced, spinning around to the other side of the pillar, then planting them against the column itself.
He leaned into it, letting his weight and position build tension in his legs and back. Then he detonated.
Fire roared from under his feet. The blast launched him up and sideways, plastering him briefly to the nearby wall. Another flare. He pushed off, repeating the process, bouncing between wall and pillar, climbing at an angle with each impact.
Below, the spearman slowed, spear tip tracking him.
Fritt reached as high as he dared. He pressed himself flat against the wall for a split second, every muscle coiling, gathering all the remaining strain in his body.
"Now," he whispered to himself, kicking off.
For a moment, he was akin to a fireball. Flames wrapped around him as he rocketed straight into the column.
The ancient pillar split from bottom to near the top, then began to fall. It tilted slowly at first, then picked up speed, Fritt riding it down.
"Timber!" he hollered, cackling as the column crashed.
The spearman understood the danger. It swung its spear in a last-second attempt to shatter the falling mass. The blade struck the pillar near its centre, cracking it further and splitting it into several huge sections, but the pieces still had too much mass falling on it.
The lower half of the column smashed into the spearman's shoulder and chest, staggering it. The rest of the stone poured over its frame like a landslide, burying it in rubble.
Dust flooded the area, choking and thick.
From within the cloud, a low chuckle travelled out. Fritt stepped onto the golem's partially exposed head, cloak singed, grinning like he'd just pulled a successful prank.
"Great fun," he said cheerfully, raising the pylon Eyviria had given him.
He slammed the stone down into a crack in the helm, forcing it deep until it lodged against whatever core pulsed beneath.
He hopped back in wide, exaggerated steps, shouting, "Gift delivered!" and threw a hand up in Eyviria's direction.
The stone in Fritt's golem shuddered, the grooves along its surface lighting up in an instant. A blossom of force exploded inside the helm, the sound dull but heavy, like a bomb going off underwater.
The top half of the spearman's head blew apart. Shards of stone flew outward, the light in its eye socket snuffed out mid-flicker. The rest of the body sagged under the rubble, motionless.
…
Gold didn't see the blast, but he heard the muted thump and felt the brief, focused tremor in the floor.
He had no attention to spare. The knight had shifted fully into a defensive stance now, shield anchored to the ground, sword ready. Every angle Gold tested was met with stone.
"Stubborn," he thought. "And I'm swinging at a fortress with a small blade."
A familiar shout cut across the hall.
"Catapult!" Fritt's voice.
Nostalgia woke up in Gold's muscles before his brain finished remembering them.
He stepped back from the knight, opening his stance, dropping his sword for a moment. He raised his palm, fingers spread, bracing his arm overhead.
Fritt burst through the dusty air, using the momentum from his sprint to fling himself toward Gold.
Fritt's feet planted onto Gold's palm. Gold's legs bent, his influence tightening through his back and shoulders. He heaved upward. Fritt, like a stone from a sling, launched, sending him soaring over the broken wall thee lodged blade and rubble, to the swordsman guarding Ferra.
"Incoming!" he yelled.
He struck the swordsman square in the head.
The collision cracked the helmet further. Fritt wrapped his arms around whatever he could grab as the golem staggered.
Ferra blinked once in surprise, then recognised the opening.
She'd been circling, looking for a way to get close enough to plant her own pylon, but the head had been too far. But now… now it had a Cinikin-shaped projectile glued to its face.
"Fritt!" she shouted. "I'm throwing it!"
She reached for her pylon, fingers wrapping around the carved stone. She aimed for Fritt's outstretched hand.
Fritt tried to lift his arm. However, the golem's torso suddenly rotated in a sharp, unnatural twist, trying to fling him off. His grip slipped; he slid down the helmet, fingers clawing for a grip on the stone seams.
His head spun. Double, triple images of Ferra flashed in front of his eyes.
"Shit-" he managed, teeth gritted.
Ferra didn't wait for him to stabilise. She lowered her shoulder, drew in a breath, then charged.
Her boots pounded the tiles. She rammed into the golem's leg with all the force she could muster. The impact rang up her spine. The golem stumbled, its ankle shunted sideways.
It almost fell.
Its torso was still twisted backwards when it instinctively bent its elbow backwards, planting a hand on the floor to catch itself from crashing down. The awkward posture locked it briefly into place.
"Fritt!" Ferra yelled again.
His vision was still a blur, but he saw the pylon in the air. Through sheer stubbornness and some luck, his fingers snapped shut around it.
He jammed it into the gap between neck and helm, wedging it deep with a frantic shove. "Holy shit," he groaned. "I'm so dizzy."
He kicked off the golem's shoulder, flinging himself clear. "Eyviria!" he and Ferra shouted together.
The stone in the golem's neck blazed from within, streaks of flame clawing out. The explosion forced the entire head up before tearing it free, sending it spinning into the air. Lading with a shattering crash several meters away.
Ferra and Fritt stood there for a moment, chests heaving. They turned just in time to see Gold rising into the air.
…
A few seconds earlier.
The knight's shield reduced his strikes to mere vibrations. The sword deflected his attempts to slip past. He'd fought golems before so he knew how bad a straight contest of force could go.
His usual approach of enhancing his body was a blunt solution. Against flesh, it worked. Against stone layered in old magic, it felt like punching a mountain.
A flicker brushed past the edge of his vision.
Hands. Pale, calloused fingers moving with grace along the blade. Not his.
"Amara…" The name brushed his lips without sound.
He remembered the way she'd wield her sword, guiding his grip, teaching him how to feel the balance of the steel instead of just its weight.
Silence filled his senses.
Gold let his shoulders drop, the aggressive tension leaving his posture. He stood quietly, simply facing the knight's raised shield.
He drew in a breath.
This time, he focused on his influence. He gathered it in his hands.
Heat gathered in his palms. It was denser, heavier, like molten metal held just shy of solidifying.
Something bled out of him.
It wasn't light, not exactly. It was a substance that sat on the edge between physical and not - viscous, gleaming, a ghostly liquid the same colour as his eyes. The golden energy slid from his skin, dripping over the leather of the grip, flowing along the guard like molten gold.
It ran down the blade like water over a leaf.
Every groove, every polish mark, every scratch along the metal filled with that light. The steel took it in, not rejecting it but accepting it.
The air shifted.
His sword shone, not with reflected light, but light from within. It looked gilded, like pure gold had been drawn into a line and forged into a blade. It felt heavier in his hand.
Across from him, the knight twitched, something urging him to attack.
The golem moved first, perhaps out of fear. It stepped in, bringing its sword down in a ruthless chop meant to crush him before whatever he was doing finished forming.
Gold stepped to meet it. Steel and stone collided.
THUMP!
The knight's sword did not slide off this time. It didn't grind or skitter. The golden blade sliced.
For a short moment there was resistance, a strain that ran up Gold's arms. Then the stone gave way. The knight's sword split cleanly in two, the cut so smooth it looked polished, both halves clattering away on different trajectories.
The upper blade fell beside him.
He didn't waste the moment.
He stepped onto the broken stone blade as it dropped, using it like a makeshift ramp to jump onto the blade the golem still gripped. His boots stepped on the rough edge and he ran along it, closing the distance in an instant.
The knight refused to let him approach.
With its weapon ruined, it adapted. It redirected the force of its swing into an upward flick, using the fractured blade as a lever. The motion jolted Gold's footing, sending him upward, higher than he intended, into the air above the golem.
The knight re-gripped its sword hilt with both hands, turned the broken stub into a crude spike, and thrusted it up towards him like a spear.
Gold inhaled, feeling the sword in his arms respond. He brought his own sword down to meet the rising spike, angling the edge just so.
The two swords collided whilst Gold slid along the edge.
Metal screamed with effort. Gold let his sword follow the line of the knight's weapon, his wrists turning, guiding the edge along the stone as if he were carving wood. The friction threw sparks.
His body twisted in the air, every muscle straining to maintain the correct angle.
At the last moment, he rotated his grip, letting his blade slip free by the side of the blade.
He felt victory, staring down at the golem.
"Sundering Gale," he hissed between his teeth as he breathed in.
His sword cut through the space at the knight's neck. The swing was not just physical, he felt the golden influence flare at the moment of contact, turning the slash into a scything pressure that extended beyond the blade's edge.
A line of flame ignited along the arc, tracing the path his weapon carved.
He hit the ground hard, knees bending to absorb the impact. Stone cracked under his boots. He forced himself not to collapse, forcing his breathing to stay steady.
Behind him, the knight's helmet shifted.
The head slid off its shoulders, the cut surface smooth and faintly scorched. The helm tumbled, hitting the floor with a resounding crash. The body stood upright for a second longer, as if refusing to accept what had happened.
Then it fell.
Gold pulled his influence back, letting the pressure recede from his limbs.
The golden sheen on his sword did not rush back into him. It lingered, then began to drip, drops of liquid light falling from the edge. Before they hit the stones, they vanished, eroding into the air without a trace.
Silence settled over the hall.
…
They regrouped near the centre of the room, the three shattered golems forming a rough perimeter of broken limbs. Dust still hung in the air, drifting in slow clouds.
Fritt flopped onto a chunk of fallen pillar, letting out a tired laugh, "That was intense."
Ferra slid her zweihander back into its harness, sweat beading at her temples. "I miss the outside."
Ajit and Kavi were already moving from corpse to corpse, eyes bright despite their fatigue, taking quick visual stock of the damage. Eyviria, however, walked straight toward Gold.
"Give me that," she said calmly, holding out a hand.
Gold blinked, then realised she was indicating the pylon in his palm, the one he hadn't used. He dropped it into her gloved hand.
She pocketed it without looking away from his sword. "Now. Explain."
He glanced down at the weapon. The steel looked… normal again. Some new scratches from today's work, but nothing else.
"I pushed my influence into the blade," he said. "Instead of my body"
Pausing for a moment, "That could not have been influence," she said slowly. "Not entirely."
She circled him once, eyes raking over his arms, his chest, the air around him. "Influence doesn't manifest that way. We extend our presence, shape the behaviour of mana. It doesn't just… become a physical substance through existing."
Kavi joined them, curiosity overriding exhaustion. "Eyviria… are you saying what he did isn't magic?"
"It's not any magic I've studied," she replied. "What he did is… adjacent to it. similar." She frowned beneath her collar. "Whatever he's using may not be mana at all."
She folded her arms. "I'll need you to run so many tests when I set up my lab…" she told Gold.
He gave a small nod. "If we make it out, we can try to figure out whatever this is."
The immediate tension calmed. The air in the hall was still heavy, but no longer with impending violence. They took what rest they could in the wake of the fight - sips of water, quick checking of bruises and cuts, small adjustments to gear.
The crown waited.
…
When Gold began to walk.
Each footfall on the tiles sounded clearer than anything else in the hall.
He moved down the central avenue, the broken golems lying to either side.
Physically, nothing changed. But on a deeper level, all of them felt it.
Fritt's usual chatter died entirely. His flame, so loud and expressive inside him, drew inwards, quiet in a way that made him uneasy.
Ferra, who had stared down monsters, suddenly felt like something was glaring at her. Something vast pushed just beyond the edge of her perception, not pressing down, but watching.
Ajit's heartbeat stumbled once. His rational mind tried to frame it - frequency, resonance, some pylon effect, but his soul shivered like a man standing at the lip of an endless depth.
Kavi felt his thoughts quiet, every idle worry or thought silenced like chatter in a temple.
Eyviria's imaginative mind dimmed. The silver flame she'd always felt there flickered, as if confronted by a much larger fire on a distant horizon.
It was as if each of their souls heard something.
Gold reached the steps before the platform.
Up close, the throne seemed larger, but less menacing. Just a seat. A stone place where someone sat once and made decisions that shaped a city.
The crown laid on its seat.
He ascended the last few steps.
As if it was natural, he reached out. His fingers closed around the metal.
He lifted the crown from the throne.
The world felt smaller with the crown in his grip.
The golden threads in his chest, which had tugged and twisted ever since, suddenly went still.
They settled. As if they had finally reached the point they'd been straining towards since the first time he saw them in the rain.
Behind him, the others watched. None of them spoke. Their souls vibrated, each in their own way, as if something vast stood exactly where Gold was.
Gold's lips parted.
"My name…" he began.
A presence wrapped around his tongue. As if whatever spoke next was beyond him.
"The Sovereign," he said.
His voice didn't rise. He didn't shout. The sound was calm, level, but it carried. It filled the hall and seemed to linger in the stone, in the air, in the faint pylon veins overhead.
It was silent.
But something in the buried capital shifted, unmapped and immense, as if the city itself had just exhaled for the first time in a very, very long time.