COLOSSUS

We fought our way into the depths of the tower. Even though that Siege had cleared some of the path for us, there were still several golem sentries inside. Undines and efreets guarded the place as well, forcing our ranks to splinter to teams to guard paths to prevent being ambushed from behind.

We were thin in numbers by the time we made it to the forbidden tower.

Count Victor stayed behind to command the remainder of the soldiers. Going into the tower were me, Sybille, Leona, as well as Lieutenant Alistair.

Two mages and two fighters. It was not that bad a composition, at least.

We slammed open the doors to the forbidden chamber of the tower.

“Croghan!” I shouted.

There we saw it. A behemoth of stone, rune, crystals, and metal. It was heaps and bounds beyond anything that this could have offered. Steel rods sprouted from its back, and through them hurled electricity towards the tower’s dome.

“So… this is what is was, all this time,” said Sybille.

“It is huge!” added Leona.

“Certainly, a master craft beyond my wildest dreams,” added Lieutenant Alistair.

The Stone Colossus’s head looked down towards us as we entered.

“YOU CAME, AFTER ALL,” said the Colossus.

I knew that voice. It was Master Croghan’s. Only, it was corrupted by the intonation of a machine’s voice.

“Surrender, Croghan,” I shouted. “We can solve this without violence, if you come out of that cranium chamber. In the end, it is futile. Titan or not, you are still bound by the rebound effect, just like every other person in this world. This effort of yours is for nothing!”

There was a silence. Then, a laugh. A cackle. One that sent shivers down into my spine.

“FOOL,” said Croghan. “DO YOU THINK I WOULD ASSUME THIS FORM IF I WERE BOUND BY THE RULES? WRONG! HOW DO YOU THINK I WAS ABLE TO EXTRACT YOUR SOUL? HOW DO YOU THINK I WAS ABLE TO TEAR IT OUT FROM YOU? IT IS BECAUSE I AM LIKE YOU. I AM NOT FROM THIS WORLD. I AM FREE. I AM IMMORTAL. I AM BOUNDLESS. I AM INVINCIBLE!”

He was an otherworlder.

How had I not realized? His body was always rotting away not because of some disease or curse… it was because he was from Earth.

“Is this true, Sybille?” I said.

“The Master is an otherworlder, yes,” said Sybille. “I’m sorry… I thought I had already told you.”

“If it was early on, I had a lot of things to learn, and not everything stayed. No matter. Nothing changes. We will stop this lunatic here, and now.”

“STOP ME!” said Croghan. “I HAVE ASCENDED. I AM NOW A GOD AMONG MEN… AND YOU, MY FIRST SACRIFICE!”

He swiped his arm across the ring-like balcony ground, destroying the handrails, and sending lab equipment and debris flying into the air. The mages flew away from the attack, while Leona and I jumped away from the attack.

I landed right atop his arm and then leapt towards the Master’s head.

“Bastion!” said Leona.

Just as I was about to land a blow, my fist was stopped by a crystalline barrier. Runes glowed from the Colossus’s stone head. It was evident that the Colossus had some kind of automatic barrier protection.

“IT IS USELESS!” said the Master. “AS SOON AS I GAIN COMPLETE CONTROL OF MY BODY, YOU WILL ALL BE CRUSHED… AND SO WILL THAT ARMY BEHIND YOU!”

I propelled myself back to the balcony.

Sybille and Alistair together combined their magics to fling spells at the Master’s swings, knocking them back, encasing them with ice, or otherwise stopping the attacks with barriers.

“Yeah…” said Leona. “I saw those runes and figured that would happen. I have seen them in dungeons all the time.”

“How do you get past them?”

“You break the power source,” said Leona. “Although, that thing’s power source must be already protected by those things…”

I eyed the steel rods sprouting from the Colossus’s back. They were expelling energy.

“What are those?” I said.

“Dunno,” said Leona. “Hey, Sybie! Does your big brain know what those rods are?!”

“They’re expelling rods!” replied Sybille, fighting off the attacks from the Colossus.

“They’re what?!”

“They expel excess energy!”

That was it.

“We can’t break the barriers from the outside,” I said. “But we can take them out from the inside. I will focus on keeping the Colossus busy with me and Sybille. You and Alistair see if you can bust out those rods.”

Leona smiled.

“Right on!” she said. “Hey, floating man! Cover me!”

She rushed across the balcony, going after back of the Colossus.

“I am not yours to command!” retorted the Lieutenant.

Nonetheless, he cooperated, guarding her from the banging attacks.

Sybille descended, coming right to my side.

“Do you have a plan?” she said.

“We buy them time,” I replied.

Master Croghan hurled a punch at me. I let him hit. I took the brunt of the strike, grabbed unto his hand with all my strength, then propelled myself back with the runes at my soles. I was not letting him pull back.

“Freeze it!” I said.

“I’ll do you one better!” said Sybille.

She slammed her staff into the ground, and let the stonework become subject to her very whims. She sculpted the ground and the wall around the arm of the Colossus. The Colossus tried pulling back, break itself free from the growing encasement, but it was no use. Before long, the entire arm was completely devoured by the tower’s stonework. With that, I let go.

“Will it hold?” I said.

The Colossus tried pulling back but was stuck. It brought its other arm to rescue the first, desperately peeling away chunks of stonework to try and liberate it.

“Not long,” Sybille confessed.

On the other side of the field, Leona was clipping down one rod after another, slicing through metal with her enchanted halberd. Whenever she fell, Lieutenant Alistair levitated a boulder for her to land on, and then leap to the next.

They were not making a bad team.

“And off with this!” roared Leona.

She sliced off the last of the rods.

Energy glowed through the gaps in the Colossus’s joints.

“NO, NO…” said Croghan. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”

In desperation, Croghan let his Colossus open a blast of energy break out from his entrapped palm, casting a wave of destruction that destroyed his arm entirely. Only his left was left.

“YOU WILL RUIN EVERYTHING!” said Croghan. “YOU IMPUDENT FOOLS!”

Croghan let his remaining hand accumulate the excess energy coursing through his body.

“It is too much!” said Sybille. “I won’t be able to…”

“Stand back!” said Alistair.

As Croghan hurled that mana cannon at us, Alistair placed himself between us and raised a mighty barrier that encased us away from harm. Croghan pressed his hand closer towards Alistair, leaning in with the full weight of his mana, and focusing the wide storm of magic into a singular, focused strike.

“BEGONE!” said Croghan.

“This will not… be enough!” said Lieutenant Alistair.

The laser pierced through the barrier, blasting Lieutenant Alistair out from the tower, and sending him slamming directly into the main one. The devastation was fierce. The laser even pierced through the main tower as well, with that singular attack.

“Lieutenant Alistair!” I shouted.

There was no doubt in my mind that the Lieutenant was killed by that attack. The Empire was not going to be happy.

But at least, the rest of us were relatively unharmed.

“And off with this!” shouted Leona.

With that, she cleaved down at the arm of the Colossus, hammering down with righteous fury and bursting out its joints. The Colossus was now without hands.

Now the titan of stone was glowing with blinding fury.

“VERY WELL,” said Croghan. “IF I DIE, I WILL TAKE YOU ALL WITH ME!”

He let the energy flow unrestrained. Lightning coursed through his body, emanating with lashes of ferocity not unlike those of a solar flare.

“Bastion!” said Sybille.

I leapt high towards the head of the Colossus, with Sybille flying beside me.

Beams of energy burst out from the titan’s eyes, homing with blood-thirst at us. Sybille formed a barrier around us, protecting the both of us against the rays, until I slammed down at the construct’s head.

With the energy source made unstable, the barrier it was supposed to project was now unstable as well, just enough for me to break through it.

I rammed my fingers into the skull’s crevice, and using all my might, I burst open the chamber.

Energy came out bursting from the cranium, as though it had come from a broken dam. With Sybille splitting the energy in half, dissipating it around the air, I walked down into the center, surrounded by runes seething with power.

In the center was a coffin.

I burst it open, and was immediately attacked by a skeleton leaping out to grab my face.

“I am a god!” shouted the skeleton. “Do you know what you are doing to this world by killing me?!”

He had a crystal eye.

This was all that remained of the Master.

“I am saving it!” I said, grabbing his skull.

I was about to crush it.

“I am this world’s savior!” said the Master. “How long before the monsters rise and overtake humanity?! How long before the Demon Lords revive again?! How long before the demons sleeping in the sea wake up, and invade us?! This world needs a God! One who is awake, and with the power to save everyone! I will be that God! I am the only thing standing between this world and obliteration!”

The ground shook.

This place was not going to hold up for long. The brightness of the overflowing energy was becoming too much to bear.

“This world,” I said, “will have to take care of its own problems by itself.”

With a final energy blast from my palm, I crushed Master Croghan’s skeleton.

I reduced him to nothing.

The dust of his bones fell down, swept away by the gales of roaring energy.

As soon as his body was reduced to dust, the Colossus leaned down. It fell against the side of the tower, but the energy overflow did not stop.

The body was dead. However...

“Why isn’t it stopping?” I said.

“Shit, shit, shit!” said Leona. “We gotta go!”

She ran out towards the bridge, dropping her weapon, and running on all her fours towards the exit.

“He’s dead,” said Sybille. “But whatever is going to make the Colossus explode is not.”

“And we’re out!” I said.

I ran out from the tower, following Leona, with Sybille flying alongside me.

“Wait!” she said. “What about your body? We have to save it!”

That was right.

My body was in the main tower. It was my last one chance of being human again.

“You fly out of here!”

“But…”

“Go!”

Just as Sybille was about to leave, however, someone else came flying… towards us. He landed right at the far side of the bridge, some distance away from us, but nonetheless blocking the path.

“Siege!” I said.

“That amount of energy is massive,” said Siege. “Bastion, what did you do?”

“The Colossus is about to explode!”

Siege paused.

“It will destroy everything here,” he said. “But there are people still in the main tower...”

I stopped on my tracks.

“Oh no,” I said. “I have to get them out. There has to be a way...!”

“No,” said Siege. “I will handle this.”

He charged his wings to full force, and flew towards the forbidden tower where the Colossus is.

“What is he doing!?” said Sybille.

Siege slammed into the body of the Colossus, ramming it against the wall behind it, and crashed down through it. With that, Siege took down the Colossus down the mountain range, sending it sliding and crashing down on its path.

“That man…” I muttered. “Let us go. He has made some time for us.”

The Colossus exploded in the mountains.

The energy unleashed was massive and shook the ground with a ferocity that almost knocked me down my feet. The heat and the gales struck through the mountain range, reverberating through the bodies of all those witness to the fall of the titan.

The main tower began to crumble.

At one window, I caught a glance of the vats where my body had been stored.

“Go, Sybille,” I said. “I will go for my body.”