The Crater of Hubris

(An extract from Revenge of the Wraith Paladin #1)

Nazaar sat hunched over the crystalline distillation array, watching deep blue vapors spiral through intricate geometries of glass and light as the machine softly hummed and thrummed.

Suddenly the heavy doors of his chambers exploded inward with a deafening crash. Through the billowing smoke strode a furious figure. Vizier Adashir.

“What did you do to Mazaif? And Rashiiq?” His booming voice sent tremors through the glass jars, making them dance against each other on their perches.

Nazaar looked up from the contraption, his piercing gaze cold and impassive.

“Mazaif? What of him? And Rashiiq is in no peril. He just needs…”

“Stop lying, you degenerate…” Snarling with rage, Adashir slammed into the Grandmaster with an inhuman ferocity. “Your treachery ends now.”

The impact obliterated the table between them. The thunderous blow drove the Grandmaster deep into the stone wall.

“They said you cannot be killed.” The Vizier bellowed. “Today I prove them wrong. I knew leaving you alive was a mistake. Today, I demonstrate to the world that you are no true immortal.”

Without waiting for the maelstrom of stone and dust to settle, with a vicious force he rammed his iron-hard fist into the denture.

A lethal strike.

Which never landed.

A clawed hand intercepted it, arresting its momentum completely. Unprepared, the Vizier staggered back. He attempted to pull his fist back and failed. Nazaar’s charred fingers clamped around his fist like a steel vise.

The Grandmaster had survived ten major galactic wars, fifteen genocides, and countless assassination attempts.

Yes, his prowess with technology, his ruthlessness, and his deep grasp over strategic warfare had played pivotal roles in his rise through the ranks of the Sultenate. But today would be neither the first instance nor the last when he would have to rely on raw strength.

Smeared in dust, he emerged from the rubble, unharmed. Still clutching the Vizier’s fist with adamantine strength.

Where the Grandmaster’s palm connected, the Vizier’s skin numbed and then blackened, dark veins climbing up his arm, draining his life force.

“What the bloody hell…”

Spreading his wings, Adashir rose higher into the air, furious but still unable to pull his hand free despite vehemently applying his full strength.

Finally, raising his foot, he slammed downwards with a vicious force that ruptured the stone floor. The hand came loose. But the grandmaster had vanished.

Roaring in frustration, he turned back just in time to notice a dark fist rushing towards him, lightning fast. He moved, but not fast enough. Deep gashes erupted on his right cheek, the skin around them turning ashen grey.

“You degenerate outsider…you think you can best one of us using our own blood sorcery?”

Summoning his affinity for blood, the Vizier pulled up droplets of blood streaming out from his fresh new wounds.

The swirling beads of blood rose through the air. Guided by the Vizier’s will, they coalesced into a single drop that spun and sizzled with malicious intent.

Like a liquid meteor, the smear of crimson streaked towards the Grandmaster.

“Do you need a lesson in history, Vizier?” Nazaar responded, his voice bitter and glacial, halting the advance of the fuming glob of liquid mere inches away from his vacant eye sockets.

“Every single aspect of techno-sorcery your race flaunts as its own has been scavenged from others, and that includes your cursed blood sorcery.”

The battle of authority continued, as the Vizier forced the rippling bead of liquid forward, attempting to drive it into Nazaar’s skull. Nazaar fought back with his own will, standing in place. Silent. Unmoving.

It would have been easier for him to physically evade the drop, but Nazaar stood frozen like a marble edifice. He had a statement of his own to make. The Vizier’s authority over his own blood should have been absolute. Yet, the drop failed to budge.

Even as the Vizier applied all his strength, rivulets of sweat flowing down his face, Nazaar’s dominance prevailed. Seconds passed, and soon the sizzling bead burned away.

“That should not be possible.” Adashir was astonished. Rightfully so.

For the first time, Nazaar outstretched his wings.

“My dear Vizier, dealing with the impossible is my domain of expertise.”

In the span of a blink, he transformed from a granite sculpture to an avatar of chaos. A flurry of vicious strikes followed, his claws blurring, as an avalanche of strikes descended on the Vizier. The barely settled dust around the room exploded into action once more, as Adashir was cast about like driftwood in the tempest of blows.

The shockwave from their collisions sent ripples of destruction outward. All furniture around them crumbled like autumn leaves, stone pillars toppled like the Vizier’s confidence, and glass windows shattered as if facing the wrath of a hurricane.

Yet, the Vizier prevailed.

To thrive in the Sultenate, the most fundamental prerequisite was endurance, and Adashir had not risen to the position of the highest designation one could attain outside the royal family without cultivating superlative strength and regenerative skills.

He tackled the onslaught head-on, using his raw strength to fend off the Grandmaster’s attacks and his blood sorcery to rapidly reknit the gashes and ruptures that followed his attacks.

But it still was a battle of attrition, and Adashir, like all Kaiyaathian warriors, equated defense with weakness.

With a furious howl that reverberated through the entire castle, he lifted up a fallen stone pillar. Using it as a shield against the attacks, he drove the Grandmaster backward into the solid wall, demonstrating his overwhelming strength.

A spiderweb of cracks erupted from the point of impact, spreading out to all the adjacent walls. Moments later the entire wall collapsed, crumbling into rubble as a ghostly shroud of dust billowed forth.

Debris rained down upon the Vizier, but he stood unconcerned, the stone and mortar just bouncing off his hardened skin.

His eyes widened as the dust around him finally settled. The Grandmaster was nowhere to be seen.

“Have you run away, you coward?” the Vizier roared.

“No, would never do that,” came the reply, frost crystallizing around every syllable.

Instinctively concealing his confusion under a mask of disdain, Adashir looked around. The eastern side of the wall was completely obliterated, the vast courtyard beyond fully visible. The roof, too, was partly collapsed, and the late evening sun illuminated the few pillars that remained standing along the western wall towards the mountainside.

No, not there. Only one possibility remained. Realization dawning, the Vizier unfurled his wings and soared up.

Right before the floor under him shattered into a thousand shards.

A dark blur exploded out of the ruptured floor like a volcanic eruption and collided with the Vizier with a force that sent waves of destruction booming outwards throughout the compound. Windows of nearby towers rattled and cracked. A distant siren began to wail. Stone walls across the quilla trembled like frightened spirits.

“What. The fuck. Are you?” The Vizier forced the words out through gritted teeth as an avalanche of claws and bites pushed him up towards the sky. “Not a Kaiyaathian. Not a human.”

“No.” Came the reply from within the hurricane of strikes. “Something else. Something greater.”

The Vizier hardly had a moment to spare between defending himself from the maelstrom of assaults and focusing on regenerating the thousands of cuts and gashes. So when the ball of fire materialized under him, he was caught completely unprepared.

A circle of runes fanned out to encircle him, and the ascending ball of fire transformed within seconds into a blazing maw eager to swallow him whole.

“You dare use this accursed sorcery against me? Do you have no honor, Grandmaster?”

“No. I do not.” Came the reply. From above him.

The Vizier, startled, looked up, just in time for a steel tipped boot to slam onto his face.

The kick drove him down.

Into the ring of fire.

And further down.

The blazing inferno engulfed him, burning through his skin and bone faster than his ability to regenerate.

“In your pride of your blood sorcery, Vizier, you fail to comprehend its limits. Its shortcomings. You look down upon superior arts, failing in your ignorance to realize that all the crafts that you have mastered ultimately race to serve one singular purpose. Assimilation. By me.”

The fuming body of the Vizier slammed onto the floor, the force of impact tearing through brick and mortar as if it were made of parchment. He was driven through. Down to the floor below. And the one after that.

By the time what remained of the Vizier’s body struck the ground of the nethermost floor, the scythe of devastation had cleaved through the building, bisecting the wing into two halves. The scarred skeleton shattered upon impact.

“That is what you people had reduced me to. And I still survived. Good luck doing the same,” Nazaar said, condescendingly, to the smear of blood and gore on the ground.

Dust and dirt continued to rain down into the crater long after he had departed.

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