Shadows of Elysium: The Laughing King

Chapter 26: The Trench

Another beast takes to the throne, and then a second.

The Great White Wolf set its paw atop the back of the throne. Its chest high and proud, gazing at Temnota with its steel blue eyes. A snarl twisted its majestic face into something equally ferocious.

Another hound materialized from the night sky, born from the shade's own will.

It shattered the throne in a single stomp and hovered over the smaller beast, but the smaller white wolf moved with some strange Elysium power. Spirits of all colors that protect it and propel it around the battlefield. What dust remainder of the dead was scattered away, revealing a clean beach full of fresh life.

Both teleported around the beach for a while, the Night Wolf chasing Buddy. Streaks of black and circling the world. At last they found their way back to the throne and the tables turned as Buddy gripped the Night Wolf's neck between his teeth. He yanked him from the throne onto the next platform with a slam that shook the stars.

The black dome wilted around the town. The pile of stacked sticks that made the village was awash with water. Five whole acres of wooden beams were awash with fish and stone without a stray beam affixed.

They chased each other around once again, arriving back on the throne where they engaged in flashes of light and streams of shadow as each tried to teleport around the other. Buddy flashed in from the side and brought both claws down on the other beast, before teleporting behind the Night Wolf. Buddy clamped his teeth around the shade's back leg and dragged it howling from the throne.

The rubble settled around Jasper as Temnota struggled to keep his focus between both fights. His mind split to keep part of himself as the Night Wolf.

Jasper stood and walked out of the tower's remnants relatively unscathed, but Memento-Mori was lost somewhere in the rubble. There was no time to fetch it. Jasper ran to the trenches before he could be eviscerated by another blade-storm and dodged the pit fall traps expertly; snaking a trail that would drop Temnota into one. Hoping against all odds that it would at least be slowed down by the obstacles. For a moment, Temnota's legs seemed to give way over top one of the traps, but alas, they faded completely into smoke. The shade's torso floated along, ignoring the clusters of spiked fence. It seemed his form was incapable of taking damage in the pure night.

Jasper leapt over the three feet of caltrops in front of the trench and slammed into the far wall. The smoldering shade of Temnota lingered on the edge of the excavation. Temnota's prey slumped over, broken, battered, and trapped in its own snare. The moons had only made it halfway across the night sky, and the Wandering King tossed his last dragon slug into the air. A single rifle shot blasted it into a flash of light and splashed the contents of Temnota's skull into the air. The night-demon's recovering torso lay stuck to the caltrops above as Jasper ran the trench.

Soon, a door of freshly cut wood, already coated thickly in mud, came into view. Jasper slammed it shut and dropped a tree branch into place as a lock rail. Despite the one flickering torch on the wall, the darkness was still pervasive in this underground hidey-hole. The torch flickered again, and his last night spent in a trench came flooding to mind.

The smell of men and women sweating and relieving themselves in the same dirt hallway. Gunpowder and cooking food made it bearable at times, but usually, the smells overlapped and were forgotten by those who'd spent time underground.

However, there was nothing quite like the smell of Wurms. Wurms that had attempted to burrow strait into the side of the trench only to become impaled on spikes jammed into the wall and floor. Those trenches were dug to fill the gap in the frontline wall. Most assumed Wurms or a Brain Welder with a clever host had broken through, but he had been there to see the man-made weapon. A massive beam of red light that plagued his memories. It came from the sky and tore apart a full ten miles worth of metal, stone, and wood.