Savage Awakening 504. The Lost Ruins (VII)

He chose one of the tunnels out of the arena, and without further ado, started smashing his way toward it.

Soon he’d smashed his way into the guts of the arena, deep beneath the stands. He started making steady progress again—steamrolling right on through. Waves of droids went flying with each blow.

He was back in the thick of the chase, crashing into the heart of it, clearing whole corridors in a bound. But it wasn't long before he came across an issue.

This labyrinth was moving.

Not when he paid attention—things stayed still when he looked. But every time he started getting close to that Boss, the tunnels would start winding, making twists and circles. And when he broke out into a straight section again, he’d feel a bit farther away than before. Always just a little out of reach.

And all the while, the labyrinth kept throwing traps in his face. It kept dropping construct hordes on his head too. He pounded down a path and found himself facing yet another loop.

He’d been thrown into a puzzle where the end kept moving. The whole thing was rigged against him, and he was done with it. 

It was time to start playing by his own rules.

He stopped charging, just considered the labyrinth—felt his target, bright in the distance.

He’d give the mecha-dwarf this: it did create quite complex worlds. Worlds it was easy to get lost in.

But it just so happened his specialty was making the complex simple, and in brutal fashion. If the mecha-dwarf built worlds, Zane broke them.

Then the answer felt simple.

The closest path between two points was a straight line.

Zane took out his hammers—and laid into the walls right beside him.

The walls were surprisingly durable; they were made of some high-grade steel. But these were Zane’s hammers you were talking about, and at point-blank range.

His first blow sent cracks shuddering down the length of it.

His second hammer blew a hole straight through.

Then he was peering into a yawning void. Wild air howled through the gap, but through a brief expanse of nothing, he could see the other side. He was looking at a wall. Another section of the maze.

He happily cranked back and smashed again, blowing a hole right through that wall too—and saw torchlight on the other side.

He grinned. That worked nicely. 

With that, he stepped into an Overlord Annihilation Charge. Stepped again, gaining fiery momentum. He burst through that gap—landed on the third step—burst through the next wall, and by then he was rocketing through the void.

Gaining burst power with every step, powering through faster and faster—

He just kept bursting through walls; each fell easier than the last. He took quite a few facefuls of brick, granted. But he knew he could take it.

He felt the labyrinth shifting more desperately now—it wasn't even hiding it anymore. It kept changing its paths, widening the distances, trying to get in his way.

Zane just roared and stomped harder.

He'd already built up a head of steam. There was just no stopping him now. It tried putting more walls between him and his target, and it was like throwing saran wrap in front of a freight train.

He kept on smashing.

In seconds, he felt it coming up on the horizon. A vast reserve of essence, and Law, and Creation—he knew he was getting close to the source of all this. The thing powering this whole damned world. The mecha-dwarf was there—and behind it, this huge network of churning machinery…

It had to be the lair of the Final Boss.

Then this world threw up its last-ditch effort.

The very next wall thickened five times, all reinforced infinisteel, rife with Creation. And he knew he’d struck fear into the beast.

But Zane was already eight steps into his Annihilation Charge. At that point, it almost didn’t matter what you put in front of him.

That wall hardly even staggered him.

It was a huge impact force, to be sure. He felt the impact down the whole front side of his body—saw stars as he charged. It didn’t knock him out, but it came the closest out of anything the dwarf had thrown at him.

The trouble was his heart was going so strong—his body burning so hot—it almost didn’t even matter if he was conscious anymore.

His body knew what it had to do.

There was one final gate. He rammed through it like it was cardboard.

And he finally saw just what he was aiming at.

There stood the mecha-dwarf. And behind it—a monstrosity of brilliant gold tubes, each tube shining with the light of ten suns. Hooked up to these shiny, intricate engines, each as big as a building block, whirring and cranking with the black of Creation—stuffed with millions upon millions of intricate gears, all arrayed in a vast, fearsome machinery…

The beating heart of this whole inner universe.

The mecha-dwarf let out a steam hiss. He saw indecision in its movements—saw it pause.

Then it took another look at the charging Zane.

It made a wise business decision. Rockets flared at its back. It blasted hard out of the way.

Zane bellowed and rammed the engine head-on.

The whole thing blew.

That sun-gold torched the world first; then white, then the black of Creation—Creation bursting out of the tubes, bursting wild into the world, wantonly creating. He saw whole continents randomly generated—saw beasts, and forests, and clouds—the half-formed stuff of worlds—it all surged and vanished in a blink; bursting to flame. Swallowed up in the furious colors of Zane’s Red Giant.

Then—distantly—a chain of explosions. There was a glut of energy fueling this world. Tankards upon tankards of immensely dense oils and even stronger fuels, and it was all blowing at once—

All that energy had to go somewhere.

Zane was caught right in the heart of it. He only had time to brace and roar.

Then he was slammed face-first into the ground.

The blast thundered.

Warning!

Health under 50%

When the light faded, and the heat didn’t feel like he was getting smashed by the surface of a star anymore, Zane groaned and built himself back up.

He shook his head, trying to right himself. Wiped some ash out of his eyes.

Everywhere he looked, there was ash.

Most of the world had been reduced to ash. Just one big wasteland. Lost laws of Steel, Density, and Gravity floating aimlessly around, attached to nothing. The sky was rife with chaotic rifts.

And he knew, with some satisfaction, he’d wrecked the labyrinth. He’d rammed this universe so hard, he broke it.

He’d paid a price, though. He felt like he’d been put through a meat grinder. He still felt a little woozy. His body felt pretty beat up.

Then he saw the mecha-dwarf picking its way out of the muck too.

Man and machine regarded each other—both sooty and wounded. Zane, bleeding and bruised; the mecha-dwarf, crushed in places. More intact than he was, but he didn’t mind that.

Zane spat blood and grinned.

He stepped up to it.

At the same time, the dwarf hissed and thrust out its fists.

Then he realized it wasn’t done just yet.

The engine of its inner universe might be wrecked. But that thing in its chest—the mech-core—the thing that powered its suit, the thing Zane wanted to seize for himself. That was still there, still fearsome.

That core went wild.

Gravity welled like a tidal wave. Reality caved in.

Zane staggered, groaning. His heart suddenly had to work hard just to pump blood to the rest of him. Working against gravity cranked up several thousand times in a blink.

It felt like the sky had fallen right on his back.

He saw that mech-core working—burning massive sums of essence to put that stellar weight on him. He clenched his teeth.

The very thing the real Dormu had used to destroy those seven half-step Empyrean bandits.

It’d frozen them still. But it couldn’t keep him down like that—his muscles could still fight through it.

He roared and hauled up a hammer-throw.

He couldn't get any distance on it. His hammers just got grounded too fast in this gravity. He gritted his teeth.

This thing wasn’t just going to roll over. 

He tried throwing his gravity against its own; he didn’t have enough of the Concept. He could only hold it off a little.

The rest of the pressure went straight into his body.

It might’ve burst the heart of a less robust body—it only slowed him down. But that was all it needed to do.

Cannons popped out of Dormu’s fists.

Two quicksilver cannonballs screeched out, dense with Creation and essence, vibrating extremely quickly.

It took effort to throw himself out of the way of them. The aftershocks sent cracks rippling through the broken realm.

It just so happened he knew a weapon that worked just as well no matter the gravity. Something that’d let him force the issue for good.

Chains filled his fists. Zane charged for the last time.

The mecha-dwarf fired more of those fuzzy quicksilver spheres at him, but he was wise to them. He rolled out of the way last minute, letting them sail by, eating up the distance.

The mecha-dwarf must’ve had an inkling of what he was trying to do. It pushed its mech-core to its very limit, cranked up its gravity until it couldn’t go higher.

Zane clenched his teeth.

Veins stood out hard against his arms, his legs, his neck, his heart working like a mad racehorse’s—he staggered. For just a second, it seemed he might not have it in him.

Then chains shattered over his physique.

That was all the burst he needed.

Two more steps, and he was all over the monster. It made for a big target, and blocky too.

His chains had a field day.

He lashed the arms in an instant; lashed its chest, bound its legs until he had it trussed up like a hog.

He tackled it. Man and machine went crashing through the world, beating the shit out of each other, fist crushing steel, steel slamming bone. But when they came crashing to a halt, it was Zane who’d wrestled his way on top, chains clenched firm in his fists.

And at last, he had it right where he wanted it.

Prometheus Noose!