Rocky Mountain

-Gray-

A golem as big as a mountain… would be an over-exaggeration. Bigger than the city at least.

It was definitely the biggest thing I’ve seen before. A mass of rocks like a living rockslide.

“Oh yeah. Now we’re talking.” Fulgora grinned, pulling me back up to my feet. “You always bring me to the best places!” Lightning sparked from her body as she gazed up at the golem.

My illusionary guitar faded from my hands, leaving me painfully aware of how low I was on magic. And with no food around, I had a bad feeling about my ability to help here.

I glanced back at the palace, with no sign of Aurelia yet. With the holes Fulgora punched, there’s no way they didn’t hear the mountain collapsing in there.

But what if Aurelia was too busy with the prince?

We needed our heavy hitters for this. I doubted Fulgora would be able to solo it.

It’d be best if we could get the prince to come to his senses too… Hmm…

I pushed past Fulgora, running to Vermil, who was clearly unused to this chaos. “Hey, I need to get to a speaker stone.”

“Are you kidding?!” He gasped out. “The stone up there is gone! And if it isn't, it's buried under all that rubble!”

“I don’t need that one, I just need a stone. Where’s the nearest one?”

Vermil was silent, unmoving, almost making me think that he was just ignoring me, but then his hand pointed to the left. “That way, in the city center.”

“Got it! Fulgora, I need a lift!”

She snapped her head back at me, maniac eyes and smile flashing with electricity while her halos form. A second later, she picked me up, bridal-style. “Where too?”

I grit my teeth to ignore the tingly feeling of being zapped. “Central square!”

Whatever Fulgora was going to say was muffled by the crack of thunder as I briefly experienced light(ning) speed.

When she put me back down, I stumbled a little, healing my ears. Fulgora was already busy, moving to shatter any debris that came down. “Whatever you’re planning, get on it! I’m raring to fight!”

The speaker stone was covered in a few rocks, but had a massive crack on it. I had no idea if it would still work, so I placed my hand on it, and the musical sigils appeared around my hands again.

This time, they flew into the stone, repairing the cracks with temporary musical notes.

I guess the goddess of sound is blessing me today. That’ll work well.

My mouth opened, ready to send a message to the dueling royalty in the palace, when the two beat me to it. A burst of golden light flew out of the palace towards the golem that was smashing up the mountain, while the prince was approaching me while riding on top of a stone moving through the earth like a surfboard.

“Are you the one that played that song?” The man asked as he stopped in front of me, unconcerned about the stones falling from the sky. Fulgora moved closer behind me, clearly cautious.

I didn’t need to answer. I had the sound goddess’ sigils around me. He took one look at that, and pointed his hammer at me. “And your songs caused this… abomination to appear on my mother’s land?”

“No!” I shouted before Fulgora could tackle him. “This was the Trifecta, you idiot! What do you think happens if you try to build golems in an area that has frequent cave-ins! They used you, forced you to break your goddess’ hospitality by enslaving the other inhabitants of the caves, and when they had enough golems, they just let the cave collapse, taking care of all the evidence by letting a golem kill you, Aurelia, and Fulgora!”

Maybe I’m mixing in some lies, but I don’t think it matters right now. We needed his help. His father too, but the guy was already evacuating people from the buildings.

“What?!”

“Yeah! They were stealing food shipments from Aureaton, and selling them back to you too, weren’t they?” I was just building a narrative based off of whatever I heard from the rebels. “They didn’t have the forces to challenge the gods, so they used you! Made you ruin your prayers just to prevent clear communication with your goddess!”

“They wouldn’t-”

“If they were your allies, wouldn’t they be here, helping you? But they fled! No more thieves! No more Shadows! But here we are, helping your people instead of fleeing!”

“I-”

“For the love of lightning, shut up, and start fighting!” Fulgora screamed, as she channeled her lightning to destroy a large rock about to smush us.

“She’s right. Look, Prince. Aurelia and Fulgora don’t need your help to fight this, but I do! Since we’re the slow ones, I’m counting on you to defend me while we attack!”

He was silent, before nodding. “The people come first. What’s the plan?”

“I’ll use the speaker stones to destabilize the golem. You toss them into the golem’s body, and smash the golem when you can.”

“Right! I’ll use my power to cancel the golem’s re-construction!”

“Yeah, that! Okay, let’s start. Fulgora, give us a show!”

“Aye aye!” She shot up in a bolt of lightning, her strike cleaving a chunk of the golem’s face off. She couldn’t fly, but she zipped around like a flea with lightning.

“Come, with me!” The prince shouted over the thunder, grabbing me with one hand and the speaker stone with his other. He tossed the stone first, then jumped on it with me, blasting forward towards a tall building, which we began to scale up.

It was only thanks to his grip that I didn’t fall off.

As soon as we reached the top, he jumped off, leaving me clinging to the stone flying through the air at the golem, while he grabbed a speaker stone off the top of the building, and used his hammer to send it flying at the golem’s knee, where it got lodged in the many rocks composing it.

Without letting go of the stone, I pumped this new divine magic into it, feeling the goddess of sound moving through me.

A moment later, a loud whine could be heard from the golem’s knee, shaking loose rocks, but it was the prince jumping up to strike with his chisel and hammer that caused the whole right leg to collapse.

When the golem lost its balance, it tried to catch itself with its arms, but Aurelia flew into it from behind with a mighty smash.

And as the golem fell, Fulgora was waiting, electricity writhing around her, pulling from the world around her. Storm clouds began to move towards her as she delivered a resounding uppercut that resulted in a tree of lightning forming on top of the mountain.

The whole mountain shook with the force of the lightning, followed by an ear-rupturing strike of thunder, and the golem’s head crumbled. Aurelia and the prince were quick to try and finish it, but like a tornado, the golem began to reform, with more golem cores, and small golems being pulled out of the wrecked mountain. Both demigods were caught in the storm, struck by countless stones of varying sizes moving.

Worse, I caught a glimpse of metals and gemstones being added to the mass as well, reinforcing the body.

But the golem was still rebuilding itself. We still had a chance, even if Fulgora was recharging by letting the storms above strike her, and Aurelia was pinned down by a mountain’s worth of rubble.

“We’ll just destroy more than it can recover!” Purple energy began gathering in my right hand as I slid down the mountain to get closer to the golem. I could feel my already low magic draining into my hand, my head felt light, my feet heavy, and my body cold.

And all my magic left amounted to nothing more than a beach ball-sized sphere of pure magic. “It’ll have to do.” Without being able to pour in Sound’s energy, I had to rely on what I could get.

I slid to a stop right on the outside of the golem’s ‘tornado,’ and carefully took aim. I had one shot at this, and a whole bunch of obstacles in my way.

“Guide my hand… please…” I focused my vision, catching every stone and metal flying by, calculations forming in my mind as I waited for the perfect opportunity to…

“Now!” The sphere in my hand turned into a beam, flashing through the tornado to strike the golem right in the hip.

A creaking groan resonated, the tornado faltering as my energy began to dissolve the golem’s side. Stones tried to fill the gap, but they were being dissolved too.

“Good job Gray!” Aurelia shouted from somewhere, but I was already collapsing to my knees, struggling to breathe.

Fulgora moved to stop the stones from arriving, while Aurelia flew around delivering powerful strikes, and the prince was… checking up on me.

“This is no place to collapse.” He stated, hoisting me onto his shoulder.

I let out a wheeze, and looked at him with bloodshot eyes.

“Fair enough. You’ve done your part, now let me finish this. This is my kingdom, I should be the one leading this defense.” He placed me further away from the battlefield, before standing in front of me, raising both his weapons.

“Mother, forgive my foolish deed,” He began banging his weapons together in a resonating beat.

“Mother, lend me strength to fulfill my creed!”

“The kindness of strangers has helped us so far,”

“But now I’ll finish this, so says your little Rock Star!”

He banged his weapons one more time, and the halos around him moved to float in front of him in descending order, like a reverse telescope. Then, as if this was baseball, he tossed his chisel up in the air, and struck it right in the middle of the sigils, launching it right at the golem’s chest.

Earth’s sigil appeared around the chisel, and with an incredible wave of divine energy, the golem began shaking, rocks falling loose.

One final strike from both princesses turned the golem into a cloud of crumbling rocks, with light and lightning raining down on the remains.

“Rock star?” I wheezed out, looking up from my collapsed position at the prince.

He was blushing. “It was a name my mother gave me… said I was ‘a diamond hidden within a rock.’”

I snorted. “My mom called me ‘Moonlight’”

“Yes. I can see why, with your hair, and… were your eyes always so-”

My spasming lungs cut him off, fluid spilling onto my hands as I tried to hold it back. I could barely breathe. I felt so weak. My vision was fading.

The last thing I saw before I passed out was a glob of black fluid flying out of my mouth onto my hands…