The Golden Calf

The demon's body was crackling, on the verge of turning into a large pile of ash, much like his subordinates.

I jumped back to Mella, who appeared to be recovering from her plight of poison.

“Are you okay, Mella?” I asked, beginning the incantation to cast a healing spell. “Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man! I’ll heal you up as fast as I can!”

Healing energy radiated across her body and fixed some of the burn wounds she’d received from the toxic flames. It still looked like she was tired out from the poison effects, so she still needed treatment.

“I’m fine. Don’t worry, Little One.”

Typically, if you had a specific elemental magic type, you’d be resistant or immune. But she took on pretty nasty damage.

“I thought you could use poison magic. Why was this so harsh on you?”

“It is complicated. Merely understand that I’m only half the strength I once was,” she said.

Factors like that were a must know if I wanted to effectively create a strategy. If I was missing one piece of info about either my allies or enemies, I’d really get a nasty surprise sprung on me.

Speaking of enemies, it looked like The Actor was taking pity on the demon he’d summoned.

“I fear I may have flopped the script, you poor creature. If only my directing skills had been higher, you may have risen stronger.”

The Tarasque looked like it was on its last leg of six, about to vanish due to the effects of stardust energy. But The Actor seemed to carry a remedy in his pocket.

He pulled out a small golden teardrop looking thing. The shiny skin shimmered, even though very little light hit it.

“Eat, beast of the damned. Take this ripe seed and let it give you the wisdom to rise again! The show must go on!"

The Tarasque looked enthused to bite at the gold seed.

Once it had eaten the whole thing, its eyes turned from red to the same colour gold as the seed.

Lead around the roof turned extremely hot orange and melt completely. The molten paste slithered its way to the demon's body, collecting over its skin.

The demon beast started looking like something that had risen out of a volcano, losing its previous shape under all that melted metal and appearing more blobby. Over the course of a few seconds, the metal cooled slightly, and bits of gold shine revealed in spots where its skin was damaged.

What counted as arms were now inflated in the front. It leaped up and slammed both its knuckles down on the last two wasps.

Crazed eyes of the golden beast turned on me next. It screamed and charged in, leaving a trail of molten gold and lead in its wake.

Yellow thunder crackled above, shooting across the sky along with the monster. The clouds shimmered for seconds after.

Its power increased dramatically. Even the metal floors were stressing as it galloped at us.

Bursting through the mana stream, it paid no mind to the intense spirit energy that just disintegrated a chunk of its skin.

“What do we do!?”

“Move!” Mella called out as we both dove out of its path.

His fist slammed down to stop it from falling off the edge, putting more stress on the metal floor and shaking the entire structure.

The more time we gave this thing, the more it started to look much less like its previous form. It was beginning to look like a bull with the arms and posture of a gorilla. The only characteristic it kept was the hard shell on its back, but that was coated in hot lead and gold.

I expected demon stuff from these Family of Sai members, but this was a formidable upgrade! A new type of monster created by transmuting lead to gold? And applying this to a demon, no less.

My scanners were going haywire. Due to some crazy interference, I couldn't analyze a weakness. Through all the strangeness, readings of all sorts of energy were registering in, mostly darkness. 

 But there was something else. Light was mixed in with the signals. It had both light and dark energy inside. The swirling combination made me worry there weren’t many things to counter this guy.

Once it realized we were behind it, the creature turned around and its little mouth moved.

“Petite et dabitur vobis!” it shouted in an indiscernible language layered with voices and cries. “Scientiae boni et mali!”

In the midst of its speaking in tongues, it made so many noises my ears couldn’t even register as actually real. It just came in as very strong treble static.

Mella had to cover her ears. Those noises were hurting her eardrums.

“That voice!” Mella shouted. “By the gods!”

The creature came charging in again. But I blinked and he was right behind me!?

My spear thrust backward, but it phased through his body.

Wait, was it an after image? He wasn’t actually there anymore, he was next to me!

“Hah!” I jabbed my spear at him, but it phased through another after image.

A frog-like tongue spit out of one of the after image’s mouths, wrapping around my spear and stealing it away!

“Give that back!” I shouted.

He ate my spear! What the heck was that!

There were a lot of after images all over now. But, what was the point of this? Horns appeared on their heads like igneous rock. But when he used them to attack me, it would just phase through my body. And when he tried to attack some other way, the same result happened. Seeing those not working, he just ran around like this was a cattle drive.

If his goal was to sow confusion, I sure as heck couldn’t figure this strategy out. Just a bunch of fakes, pointless copies of him, swarming around us.

This was really weird.

I slipped out of the circle of creatures, only to have them re-organize around me.

Mella wasn’t doing so well in the confusion. She looked frozen with fear, crouched down and using her big hat to cover up her body.

How could we attack this thing that practically wasn’t even on our plan of existence? He was some sort of ghost cattle or something, constantly blipping around like reality was broken.

“Mella! Come on, try and do something!” Maybe one of her mana attacks might be able to do some damage.

My words caught her ears, and she managed to slightly snap out of her fear long enough to shoot out a mana energy ball.

The energy ball burned right through him, he completely ignored it. Drat!

Maybe since he came from a demon, stardust could hurt him?

I fired off a blast of stardust light at one of his after images that was galloping around.

It’s copies collected all together to form him into something solid again. The creature turned up to where the stardust had struck, then he chased after it and started inhaling the glittery blast remnants.

I get it! He wanted stardust!

That light and dark I was sensing in him; that must have been what he wanted to balance out. Since he spawned from a demon's body, all he had to draw from was darkness and scraps of light coming down from the lightning.

With stardust he might have been able to complete himself and become something very powerful. Which meant using my spear or anything stardust related was out of the question.

There was one option I had. And Uncle did say I could use it if it was an emergency. I think this counts.

“Mella, distract him while I charge up the mana cannon!” I announced.

Mana was the only thing at this point that had shown it could harm him. We had to give it a try.

“R…right!” She nodded, rallying her mental strength and spawning a big gorilla to challenge the golden creature. “I can only give you so much time, so hurry!”

My combat efficiency was dead in the water at this point, but I could use what little power I had left to force the mana cannon to start up.

“MANA CANNON, COMING ONLINE!”

Energy crackled around my heart. I felt a tingle shoot down my spine and leave a painful feeling in its wake.

All the mana energy my heart could muster began to pool around my chest, swirling like a galaxy of blue and accreting into a bright center.

The golden bull turned to me, possibly detecting my threat. It's body suddenly glowing as if activating some kind of power. Bubbles of molten energy appeared all over its shell.

BOOM!

The bubbles burst, launching devastating volcanic like eruptions out. Hot gold spread across the structure and into the water.

Part of the eruption headed toward Mella and I, but we managed to get out of the way. I had to pause the charging sequence for my cannon, which made me feel sick.

The molten gold quickly solidified, then swished around as if alive. With a cry from the golden bull, arms reached out from the gold to attack us.

Mella spawned a spider like creature that quickly challenged those many arms, giving me time to continue my cannons charge.

My spirit wasn’t keeping up with the mana demand, since I was exhausted. So the cannon couldn’t power up to full strength. It was made worse by me interrupting the sequence to jump out of the way.

“Crud…this isn’t good!”

Mella noticing this, stretched out one of her hands toward the mana beam of the tower and routed a fraction of the energy into my heart. The drawback was that she was losing focus on the spirit ape, so it was weaker.

With this mana she’d given me, the shot was going to be super powerful, more than compensating for my lack of energy. My head was calculating how to fire it without causing mass destruction to the planet's atmosphere.

Massive targeting reticles materialized in front of me, lining up on the creature. I only had one shot. If I missed, we’d be doomed.

The battle between spirit ape and the golden monster continued. But as it drew on, the monster seemed to become more solid. Wherever it stopped, molten gold pooled and spread like water.

Mella continued to concentrate on both her spirit ape, who was trying to hold the golden bull down, and the mana flowing into me. The strain was creating too much stress on her spirit!

“Hang in there!” I shouted to her over the cry of the mana cannon charge.

As much as the ape tried to hold the gold monster in place, it was overwhelmed, getting rammed around by bull-like horns.

I had to think of something to keep the golden bull steady long enough to take a shot from the cannon.

"Little One! Use stardust!"

Knowing what she was getting at, I spawned a shard of stardust out of my hand.

"Sam…Samael…" I struggled out my words, getting my snake's attention, "take this over there, and get out of the way of the cannon…"

"Ss…" he hissed, doing as I told him.

The gold bull quickly chased Samael holding the shard. Once Samael spit it out of his mouth, the golden bull settled down and chomped on the crystal. Samael quickly slithered over to Mella, who kept him safe under her witch hat.

Nothing could tear away the focus that the golden beast had on eating that crystal, which meant it didn't even see its own death coming.

The targeting reticles locked in place. No matter where the gold bull went now, I'd track him. The firing sequence initiated, and the energy over my heart fully formed into a ball of light.

“MANA CANNON FULLY CHARGED!”

The light quickly enveloped my tiny body. I was just pure energy at this point. More energy than any civilization would ever need in a lifetime.

When this thing fires, it won’t burn me out, will it? I guess that’s a risk I had to take.

“FIRING IN…”

“3”

“2”

“1”

“FIRING CANNON!”

BWOOOOV!!

Blue light blasted out of my heart, warping the air with a lensing effect. It wasn’t just a cannon anymore, it was an astrophysical jet! That power easily swallowed up the golden bull, taking a chunk of the tower roof with it.

The energy blast shot across the sky, vaporizing the clouds completely, vanishing off into the great blue horizon. It was such a powerful beam, that even the mana stream of the tower was disrupted by it.

All of the world could have seen it thunder across the sky. At least, anyone on this part of it.

The beam had to shoot off the planet, or it would have devastated any number of ecosystems. I just let it keep going until I ran out of power to feed this monstrous laser.

After a few moments, the cannon finally started to slow until all the energy was expended. My body went into emergency cooldown mode. Hexagon plates in my skin lifted up and vented the heat from my body.

My eye's faded, my circuits would fry out if I didn't cut power to them. Everything was going dark. This cooldown mode was very uncomfortable, but that discomfort quickly faded as I shut down completely.

How long till I wake up again? I hope it won't be too long.

Hours? Days…? We…e…ks?

-Hibernation mode activating. All cognitive functions temporarily shutting down-