POV: Leif Gormsson, the Clan Heir.
Date: Þórri 14th, 598 AD. (Alt: 26th January, 599 AD.) Location: Götaland (Ancient Sweden.)
"-WHY DID YOU TWO MINE THAT GOLD?!" Faustino scrambled Ari onto his back too quickly, dropping his satchel before he began running to catch up to Agostino.
"*URGH*" Ari gave a pained grunt from being punched in the face by Faustino himself, having known that gold was a sacred material yet had never warned anyone in thinking it was obvious. Yufren stayed quiet in shame upon Ezio, now understanding he had committed a great mistake.
The merchant and blacksmith had worked together to chip the pure block of gold, the dimensions of which were even larger than Leif at the centre of the monument to test its purity. The tingling of the metal had alerted the horde of Piglin crossbowmen and soldiers to their location and sacrilege, with their permanent opinion now being that they deserved death. The 3rd salvo of obsidian-tipped bolts are launched towards their location, their sharp yet brittle exterior made frangible to create maximum damage by fragmenting within a body.
The sound of dull whistling and their accelerated shattering upon the rack behind them was heard through the thickened air of the Nether. There were too many enemies on high ground, easily overwhelming their hilts-turned-shields and crashing against their armour.
They split into different groups, communicated in sync through their armour's mechanisms a potential meeting area for them to convene as indicated in their maps. A few across the Soul soil valleys where the ruinous fossils lay, others across the near wastes and the twin-deer Ardito and Aleke, who ran through a grove of luminous mushrooms whose monarchic colours are purple and white, unknown dangers found within that the piglins behind them dared not enter and fired blindly through the ruffage instead for measure. [1]
"All will fight back." Leif subscribes to that notion with grim determination, riding Sophia with 3 others beside while shooting behind themselves with a shotgun's spread of 'portal bullets.' Those pot shots caused countless piglins to fall, giving enough surety for their escape.
Faustino had noted that they were lucky not to find any fungus throwers among their ranks while stuck within the addled lava room, seeming to be one of the piglin clans that did not employ poisons for their weaponry. Heath had noted when asked that their usage of certain blue-tinted fungi had a rather potent neurotoxin for paralysis. Egill, as part of their retreating squad, gives a clear admission to Faustino's greater knowledge than his, and with many hearing of them, all hope to not meet such a potential enemy once finding the next militia.[2]
"They will spread their messengers of their treasures' treatment by YOU." Leif looked with no expression towards Ari's view, who instigated this movement. The stare caused sweat of one inexperienced in a battle to the death a feeling of dread greatly before it is refocused.
They now stay silent, watching the last chasers being the hoglin riders who scale the terrain with a rage and hunger for their flesh. Always covered behind the natural myceliarium while using previous hunting traps they had set for game to deal with either mennskr or deer's legs. While they may be non-hidden, when being bumrushed by an enemy of unknown strength, it makes it too quick for one to dodge. One of the hooves were snagged, their legs unharmed thanks to their greaves, but locked to the ground below them.
"PROTECT THEM!" Was shouted through the comms by one of the warriors, and under the collective shielding of 13 individuals, it allowed for some time to develop a battle strategy. As they were reaching a closure to their plan- *BᴼOᴼOᴼOᴼOᴼM*
It reverberates through the shield like a drum, taking their collective batteries' charge to dangerous levels. The terrain around them turned to a doughnut-shaped crater surrounding them as a shallow cliff. All large fungi growth surrounding them were incinerated from the blast, others toppled over and leaving a greater clearing. There were 5 visible hoglin riders, protected behind an arcanic opaque shield of greenish hue, the silent tapping of a stave upon the scorched rack now getting closer, until coming to a stop with ultimatums of destruction amok.
". . . Is that Malgosha?" Egill asks Faustino, who is frozen in fear yet still responds. "Nⁿo, it would have killed us easily if she were." The deer keeps his head behind his hilt to avoid a direct line of sight, he stakes another opponent. "Her-, her sister. The Seer." He tics.[3]
"Magic?" Leif orders out, which leads to a wordly stumbling before forcing out the point. "Like EᵉEgill's. But inscribes letters of power with waving instead!" Faustino keeps his hand out in incredible extension, creating for himself a placebo effect, not wanting his mind to potentially collapse. Leif disengages his shield to instead refocus as a rifled weapon, scoped with arms up and focused in his line of sight. The Seer recognises the threat his weapon possesses against her staff made of bone and warped fungus, so she does what she knows best.
She slashes the air upwards before arcing it down to slam into an extended saprophytic network below! The purple mist forces its structure to rise upwards into a wall of magic-resistant gold and mould, next splintering into fast-generating spheres that are thrown forward.
Each ball lands into an octagonal pattern around the shield, quickly activating the pseudo-synaptic systems and hardening into spikes that entrap through a caging movement, now lashing into root whips that HACK into them as an axe does to wood, the constant bangs rippling with a weakening glow and batteries dying through in droves. The last flickering lights of power from their own reaching a possible end as two of the mennskr kept on swiping below them with sharpened blades into the regenerating stalks.
Egill had cast multiple runic glyphs into the underlying structure of the rack through the bark he had collected. Even with the weakened absorbable magic in the atmosphere, there was still enough for a trap to be sprung through and against their forsooth enemy.
"KASTA!" Egill processes the final parts of the pictographic growth, encircling them as would a tornado for the tendrils' destruction, lastly leading itself to targeting what is most important: The branched crook in that cold hoofed paw. She is swarmed in how he remembered the obsidian slicing through the dragon in Heath's final battle, the rack eliminating the barriers she had cast and made into a deadly rain that could not be blocked against. Yet even through the thousands of shards piercing her, The Seer persisted with an undying tenacity.
"*SQU E E E ^(A H!)*" She gave a battle squeal in the best way a piglin could. Through the incredible pain of the rack piercing into her very soul, The Seer casts a powerful ward that cursed the ground beneath them to crumble, for what was the Nether best known for?
Being a grand cavern. All, from those of Leif and Agostino's party to the Hoglin riders and the now-critical Seer, fall to their doom, the height of which is hundreds of Model meters above. Many had tried to jump through the falling mass to reach the safer cliff a small distance away. No, it was ever so far away from their grasp, and even if it was virtual reality, it felt too real for many of them. Life flashed before their eyes, of their moments of triumph and to their most hurtful losses. But one mann felt it was not lost.
Faustino has heard how Heath had learned to use the power of the pearls, how the dragon's touch within its essence seeped at his thoughts as to corrupt his mind. And how once one he had overcome her claws, one had to understand both the timing of the throw and the knowledge of a location's spatial point.
'COME ON!' He sees the closest intact ledge from his position, and from his own instincts of how a deer could navigate a forest from an environment's first look, he lobs it with all of his remaining strength before using his body weight to shift his position and keep touch with 6 others, 4 mennskr and 2 deer whose faces were hard to distinguish at this speed. The fear had covered half of those contacted, who flailed in a reaction much like drowning before even reaching the molten rock, yet the touch was held with whitening knuckles and stiffened joints.
Others of the same height or above tried to throw their own pearls and to utilise that magic, but most were unsuccessful in reaching any safe terrain and went straight into another part of this environment.
"Provide hover suits. . ." Gorm's muses from the safe room outside of this simulation caused others in nearby seats to stare with restrained obviousness, seeing his son in 'mortal' danger had pulled his heartstrings originally impossible to stir. He understood it was a simulation and he would not be in danger. But just looking at it made Heath appear the opposite of a caring guardian. Some upon their seats plea for their ancestors' mercy to give these warriors the strength to fend off against the incoming psychic backlash.
The screen folds into itself. All who were successful in teleporting to safe passings come into a lightless void of perceivably endless size, details grounded by their physiology now unshackled and brought to them, appearing as a space that mimics where Heath had been.
The building they were in shook to represent the dragon's power, every screen showed the being that had dwarfed Heath, eyes locked onto the intruders of her domain below. The very sight of her eyes seared their minds' demesnes with a ruthlessness reserved for a realm's overlord. The iridescent violet hues turned the eyes of those unsuccessful in their willpower into more puppets to be controlled, just as the Endermen they had come to see as unwitting victims. The dragon's cockiness shone through, focusing her power to change the forms of the lost.
That slight diminishment was enough for the standing warriors to refocus away, and following the glimpses of thought in the only commands available in that airless void, they learn the power of the warp, teleporting away from the dragon's reach in a blip.
But she did not care, for she had an eternity to wait, even glimpsing into the screen as a way to inspire a 4th wall break aftershock for the viewers back home before turning off entirely and returning to a normal perspective. The bodies of those unable to teleport had since crashed and splat across the surface of the magma, a streak of armour plate and gore that is mercilessly absorbed into the mass, unable to be retrieved. The other bodies that teleported into the ocean were completely obscured, following a faster fate.
All of this occurred in less than a few Model seconds, scarring the survivors with a stiffening response in expectation of another sudden ambush or attack. The leftover 3 mennskr and 4 deer looking in all possible directions. And they spot the still-alive Seer from a barren shore.
She was facing away and waved her staff in a habitual behaviour before any possible recourse could be taken, an orb of superintended igneous rock now rolling away at speeds greater than even their fastest horses, opposite to their direction. They shot at her multiple times, even piercing the shell twice, but had not stopped her rolling into the fungal forest, only leaving a small puddle of trailing green blood where she had once stood. Many in the tower gave an outcry. *"HOW COULD SHE HAVE SURVIVED?!"* All in united rage.
"-Do we. . . *HUFF* Chase after her? *HRGH*" Agostino prepared his hilt while breathing in ragged snorts, bloodshot if he was in a human form. "No. Too much potential danger. We regroup with others when we had split." Leif's eyes sharpened, betraying his emotions.
"She will be by her sister, rerouting her supplies and army." Even when in fury, the Völsung Clan's Heir planned ahead, he uses his map to plan for an en route where she may gather her troops by the ringed valley, a buildup of basalt columns that had split near the middle in a circular formation, yet are held up by the roof over the cliff, there were many outcrops and hidden caves marked in the map that would not be known fully by the piglins: That is where they will strike from, to create a death funnel if they pass there.
But to pass there, they need a diversion to guide the enemy. And who better but the deer? Their fast legs over the relatively flat terrain will be perfect for the job. But before all of this, they need to recharge their hilts, all batteries being dead or dying.
Egill, with his satchel ready, takes it up with Ernesto. His stamina being given a partial magical enhancement during his rebirth back to the land of the living. They march through the craggy terrain with determination and revenge in their hearts for the death of their family in this false world, leaving behind the last survivors trying to extricate themselves through their damaged communications array in their armour. Giving away enough information to then meet by the 'Royal Groves' as they dubbed it.
Ardito sounded sluggish, many guessing he had eaten contaminated food or had tried one of the mushrooms for a possible 'culinary enlightenment.' Aleke was nearby, vomiting her brains out for doing the same dumb stunt as her brother. All with blue dotted mushrooms.
"How much did you eat?" Faustino asks, recognising its type and thinking that if it were 1 or 2, they should be fine with momentary paralysis due to them being much larger than a piglin. "*Retching*4 each. . ." The hair, gaining a more glossy look from their extreme sweating, led to a worst-case scenario popping up in their heads that caused an immediate scampering towards their general vicinity, Agostino in the lead, creating a pronged diamond move with those behind being ridden.
They arrive and drop their tools in a meetup with the still reactive Ardito and Aleke in wait, Leif drops by the side-bags for storing small survival tools when needed, picking out a dissolvable salve of alcoholic syrup and salt, a primitive gag-reflex tool for poisonings.
They put both of them onto their bellies and are kept splayed, their necks are craned downwards and Leif takes the long tongue depressor that had been dunked into the salve to force them into vomiting. Leif's hand kept still as not to cause any blockage of breathing from sudden movement, making his gauntlet covered in a thick mucous of phlegm and stomach acid. To remove any possible leftovers in their mouth, he instructs them to gurgle with the insulated water in a thermos they had kept for being in this hot environment.
They spit out all contents in their mouth, now gently guided back home while keeping cover from any ghastly fires or hoglin tusks. Partway through, they also met up with those who had run through the Soul soil valley, carrying the surprise of a little cryptobiotic ghastling.
They felt sorry for the little creature, and knowing of its tamability from Heath's stories, they took it to the Overworld. It was given shelter with a pool of water and food from a pond of an overgrown park system behind Heath's central jewel of a skyscraper, but during its slow feeding, the sound of steel creaking could be heard from a collapsed structure nearby, randomised in groaning, they assumed it may have been more raiders, so all readied their weapons and entered what appeared to be a factory of sorts from the sign?
"That symbol. . !" Faustino scarpers through, getting closer and past the conveyor belts of emptied ingots to then reach the Golem chamber. From within the case, there it was. A damaged steel golem, legs and an arm missing, yet still functioning.
Its eyes scanned the deer with a fastened red glint, yet knowing of Heath's robust programming of these creatures, he was unafraid. It stops scanning and its eyes turn to a dull yellow, waving its arm as if to ask for help. "Wait here. I will get you some iron." Faustino's comment made the golem look upon itself with all of its damage, soon nodding in appreciation before laying there patiently under the rubble. While scouring for material, he passed by a few unpowered golem bodies, damaged and pieced beyond recognition.
'The-There must have been a battle here.' Faustino's eyes creased. Using the strength provided by a deer's body, he collects as many of the steel golem parts as possible to feed them into the chamber manually. Those behind him soon arrive where he is.
"DᵈDo not worry." The deer's comment allowed the golem some time, nodding in acceptance that he did not need to scan them for a threat assessment. They see the hulking behemoth of a creation and immediately help repair it too. They pull off the rubble, close off the chamber and feed in the extra limbs through to then use their multiple hilts to absorb ambient magic as a jury-rigged battery to power the machine. It whirrs to life, soon stopping by the overcasting orange glow being blocked behind the clouds.
The door snaps open with a loud *THUD* that shook the floor, the excess materials from the additional limbs inserted increasing the density of this golem's hull further. It lumbers out in measured steps upon its human-like biomimetic terrain-adaptable feet.
It clenches and releases its 6-fingered hands in unison. Lastly giving a perfectly made OK handsign as to show it was functioning as intended. After that, however. It pointed towards a hole in the wall that showed a gap to a portion of the dead farms, soon making a motion that appeared it was ready to throw a javelin before pointing towards Agostino with a questioning raise of its monobrow. "Yes, it was the sister of my mate who did that." That got the tapyr-inspired nose of the golem to rise up and down with its full-body heaving, eyes closed.
It stopped just as quickly, scanning the surroundings after hearing the cracking of a nearby tree. It quickly ambles off to check it, but is stopped by the hand of Ernesto, keeping an expression of understanding but caution. The golem pauses, instead following behind the group in guarding.
It was a large squirrel, very fat. Possibly pregnant, but entirely normal. They release their tension slightly before catching the sight of a glint from the shadow, it pulls itself out and is launched with the appearance of a potion of weakness to be shattered upon Leif. The golem's large, mechanical body intercepts this, and with it being made of steel and concrete, is made unaffected. It charges with the screeching of metal from its joints, soon smashing down its reinforced 4340-steel fists upon the skull of the magic-caster.
A gruesome perspective to be sure. And one that each of those it protects shows their appreciation for by firing upon the nearby Pillagers who targeted their crossbows upon the joints of the golem.
Another battle won and tallied, and with the addition of a valuable ally, let us see where it takes them after a small break with their return home in this pause.
[1] Based on Cinderscapes' Luminous Grove.
[2] Based on the Minecraft Dungeons' fungus throwers.
[3] Combining both Minecraft Legends lore and The Minecraft Movie Lore, The Seer < The Great Hog < Malgosha.