When next he opened his eyes, the world had completely changed. No longer did they stand beneath pleasant prairie skies, no longer did they hear the lovely chirp of birdsong floating through the air. Now there was naught but toil, the sky bubbling over itself in a fit of turning gray clouds, lightning crackling ominously above. From the clouds, a dim blue light washed over the shattered battlefield, a mess of arching crags and cliffs strewn with bloodied corpses, all mysteriously fresh, blood oozing from their deep gashes and into cracks within the earth.

  “Nope, didn’t like that one bit,” Garrote heaved, doubling over the moment he appeared, clutching his stomach.

  “Oh get up you baby,” Kiva said, nudging Garrote with her foot, very clearly a little queasy herself.

  “...I do not understand. Garrote is not a baby,” Avardis said, eyes darting back and forth between Kiva and Garrote.

  “It’s just a-agh, you know what? Nevermind. You’re right, Avardis. He’s not a baby. How could I be so foolish?” Kiva rolled her eyes.

  “You must think longer before you speak,” Arvardis nodded, absolutely sure of himself.

  “If I had to do any more of that,” Garrote winced, rising to his feet, “then I’d never say anything at all.”

  “God willing…” Karfice said, Garrote pouncing at him and tackling him to the rugged earth the moment he could fully stand.

  “W-” Leo stumbled forward, nearly tumbling off the edge of the cliff they stood upon, “W-what the h-hell is that?” he breathed, voice trembling.

  At the far end of the field, shrouded in shadow from the dim lightning, a truly imposing figure sat, clad in well woven, bloodied garbs, his back pressed against the neverending stone spire which stretched far past the clouds. His enormous head was tilted towards the ground, bright blue eyes filled with little strands of flowing lighting. They fluttered as each of them entered the memory, almost as if he’d been sleeping. Slowly, he rose to his feet, taking the golithian steel club and using it as a staff to right himself.

  At his fullest, he stood easily several hundred feet tall, one of his eyes larger than Trenton’s entire body. The very heavens seemed to bow before this monstrosity, bolts of lightning striking him from above, the energy crackling around his body with a puissant hum. Even miles away as they were, the giant’s gaze instantly locked onto them, his body unmoving. Was he waiting for something? Trenton couldn’t say for certain, but the size of his figure alone sent shivers down Trenton’s spine. A single strike from him would mean instantaneous death, their bodies splattered like mushrooms under heel.

  Just like that, in the blink of an eye, all confidence blew away in the wispy winds. Even Karfice, who usually seemed rather lax in tense circumstances, seemed taken aback at the great figure, his single icy eye stretched wide as his scarred flesh would allow. Garrote stopped dead, fist raised in the air to strike the boy, similarly stricken. He lowered his agress, slinking off of Karfice to let the boy stand.

  “Holy sh…is this even real?” Leo mumbled, arms falling limp at his side. “We can’t fight that thing…we can’t…”

  “W-wow…certainly one hell of a…a…giant,” Kiva trailed off, sidling closer to Trenton for comfort.

  Karfice shook his head, “That’s no giant. They don’t get nearly that big. That’s a goliath.”

  “Goliath? No, can’t be. Goliaths went extinct eons ago. They were all hunted down by whatshisface,” Garrote butted in.

  Just then, from his waist, Trenton heard something that sounded similar to a mix between an infant choking and a waterfall. He’d forgotten with how long it’s been, but Raligoth had never actually woken up after casting that long range teleportation back in Ruvalth. But now, his face twisted and contorted as a vile black, undulating substance churned from behind his lips.

  “Never ag-” another wave wracked Rligoth, cutting his words short before they even really began.

  “Are you-oh gods!” Kiva reached out, suddenly drawing her hand back the moment she touched Raligoth’s skin. “It’s wriggling!” She pointed at the head.

  Sure enough, upon closer inspection, the skin coating Raligoth’s face seemed to be rippling and bulging in spots, almost like something, or many somethings, was burrowing beneath his flesh.

  “Geflix, I’ll be fine, just don’t touch…me,” Raligoth managed, parts of his skin peeling away from the muscle, tearing in others, revealing trickling globules of black sludge which ran down his face, searing the skin into one contiguous boil as it did.

  “You are unwell with a disease I do not know,” Avardis stated.

  “Penance…borrowed…stolen-” Raligoth suddenly started screaming, the sound cut short by tendrils of black sludge bursting from his throat, digging into his gums and snapping his teeth in half.

  “That looks…agonizing. I really hope you were confident in being unkillable. We, I, need your help,” Trenton said, unlatching the rope bundle from his waist and holding it up to his face.

  “Quick…”

  “We entered a vault in the Spirit Dwelling. There’s a goliath here blocking us from the spire. Who is he?”

  “You entered…vault!?” Raligoth grunted, scrunching his face even tighter. “Protected…Galdri…he-” Raligoth’s words were suddenly cut short by another bout of screams, a red seam forming down the middle of his face.

  Without a moment to spare, Trenton stowed Raligoth in his deep pocket, thinking better of keeping the clearly very cursed severed head near them just as they were about to challenge the man conjoining Earth and Heaven together. The name Galdri…it sounded familiar, but why…?

  Galdri the First Goliath. I’ve heard the name before. It’s not the real one, merely an echo. But it bears bad tidings in either regard. Be careful.

  “Ye of thy farther plains, dost thou think me timeless? I grow weary waiting! Approach as thee will, and grant me the luxury of gracing thee with swift death! I am Galdri, the very first, THE EVER ENDURING!” The goliath’s voice boomed across the field in an explosion of pure force, drowning out every other sound

  “We can’t do this! This is insane!” Leo repeated, shaking his head and taking a step back.

  “We have no other choice,” Trenton said, taking a step forward. “I should’ve known the guardian wouldn’t be weak. We need to get to the top of the spire, but we won’t be able to if he’s in full form. We don’t need to kill him, just immobilize him, buy enough time for us all to get to the top and slip inside the inner door. Karfice, do you think your ice will hold him?”

  “Not permanently, but I can slow him. I’ll try to create barriers and block his movements, but it also means I won’t be able to step in if anything goes wrong, too much focus diverted to interrupt him,” Karfice said, shoulders set with steel.

  “That’ll do. Everyone else, then, follow me and prepare yourself. I’ll take his direct ire, focus on artillery,” Trenton said, already feeling the vile beat of his heart picking up several tempos.

  Looking across the plain, Now or never…now or never…now or…never.

  Trenton leapt from the cliff, landing hard on the ground and breaking into a full sprint, everyone behind him scattering in different directions as the giant stooped low to the ground, picking up a handful of stone shards and hurling them in a wide spray. They ducked behind adjacent cliffs, weaving in between the spiked geometry as wave after wave of shards plowed through the countryside, blasting the tops of mountains from their bases, blowing apart entire bluffs as if they were made of dough.

  From their separate corners, still making a mad break forward and quickly closing the gap, each of them retaliated in their own way, finding within themselves new wells of strength. From far back, approximately where they started, Trenton caught a glimpse of a massive, growing ball of ice so dense that even the shards couldn’t break past more than an inch. Massive plinths of ice shot out from this sphere, a wave of ice like a tsunami rolling over the stony hills below. They struck the ground at odd points, seeding deep wells filled full with thousands of tons of ice, the wave slamming into Galdri’s ankles, freezing him in place.

  From behind him, Trenton felt the ground rumble as a small cliff was severed from the earth, slowly rising into the air, aided by both Garrote’s graviturgy and Avardis’s aeromancy. Trenton watched the great structure with awe, the shadow it cast over the battlefield like the great hand of the gods.

  Together, Garrote and Avardis launched the cliff high into the air, splitting half it off and turning into a spray of stone chunks like Galdri had used, raining them down upon the goliath with a fury and vitriol Trenton felt only in the deepest wells of his core. The other half, meanwhile, remained whole, sent high to be used as a great battering ram from above. It arched over the battlefield, denting a small part of the goliath’s head as it sundered upon his skull.

  To his right, enormous thick tendrils of wooden roots weaved together as one, shooting past him on the side and burrowing their way through the stone cliff sides. They wormed their way under and through the dense Earth, a dolphin bounding through the open ocean.

  The root struck against the goliath’s right knee, bowing it completely straight. It dug past his outer flesh, writhing beneath the surface, severing tendons, blood vessels, muscles, and whatever else it possibly could as it grew within his body, a tree undemanding of light, his blood its water. Trenton watched in, some parts horror, some parts amazement as the goliath’s skin wound upon itself, the sprout leaping in and out of his flesh, binding his entire right leg as well as half his torso in a great redwood bloom.

  But Kiva wasn’t quite finished, not yet, anyway. Just as Galdri rended himself from the ice, from beneath the barks surface, hundreds of blossoms the size of Trenton’s body burst forth, spewing into the air a wash of sickly looking spores. He paused in his vain attempts to free himself from the branches, suddenly noticing the true nature of the attack. He pulled great swaths of air into himself, his chest heaving forward, some of the spores already seeping into his body, but not nearly quick enough.

  Off to the left, running in tandem with the wooden beams, Leo summoned 5 swirling motes of fire which hovered high in the air, gleaming with an ominous red with twinges of gold, a light so bright as to nearly outshine Galdri’s lightning. They expanded, doubling, tripling, quadrupling in size until each was larger than a small building in their own right. Then, when Leo could physically grow them no longer, he hurled his arm forward, forcing each to plow through the air, singing the edges of cliffs as they passed.

  The moment the fireballs made contact with the spore blanket, they erupted into a colossal torrent of flames. They swallowed the spores whole, chasing them as would a dog to a cat, winding their way through the little gaps of air between the spores to leap to the next. Before Galdri could expel the spores within his body, the fires pounced, infesting him and digging their way through his body's hollows. Fire exploded from his every seam, leaking from his mouth, ears, eyes, even slipping between individual pores within his face.

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  Galdri stumbled back, pulling the entirety of Kiva’s tree from the ground by its roots, tearing the earth below him into an angered ocean of spikes. He regrounded himself, slamming his feet into the earth, sending out a mighty tremble through the earth as he surged forward, just in time for Trenton’s own magic to take effect.

  The entire time that they’d been running, while everyone else ducked and dodged, conjuring the quickest and strongest spells they could muster with the resources at their fingertips, Trenton had been waiting–preparing. With every step, he seeded as much energy into the ground as he could, spreading it in a complicated network of faux tunnels beneath the surface. Some of these tunnels remained where they were, lying dormant beneath the fight. Others, meanwhile, rambled together towards the same point much further along the field, a monumental crag jutting up above the others at a skewed angle.

  Just as Galdri stepped forward, the thread connecting Trenton’s magic to himself snapped. The entire crag, a section composing thousands of tons of shifting earth, melted like copper before reforming into one perfect steeple, sharpened to a point finer than diamonds. The steeple surged forward hundreds of times faster than Galdri could move, the energy from his stomp caught within Trenton’s weave of magic and redirected into Trenton’s attack, increasing its potency many fold. Such a maneuver would typically be beyond a normal geomancer, stealing another’s energy to embolden his own, but not Trenton. His was a control over the Earth so absolute as to be godly.

  The steeple connected with Galdri’s abdomen, easily thicker and larger than one of Galdri’s mammoth arms. His chest caved inward, and in an instant, he was lifted off of his feet, the sheer force from the impact lifting him like a baby in a hurricane. His entire body collided with the spire behind himself, held aloft dozens of feet in the air by Trenton’s skewer.

  Most any other creature, mortal in nature, would perish from such a wound, half their body torn asunder. But as Galdri’s blood stained the earth, swaths of crimson drowning the minor corpses below, his life did not quell, his life not yet bereft from him. He lifted his right arm, cocked his head to the heavens and cried.

  “LUSILUS!”

  For a moment, it seemed as if the world had simply vanished, dazzling white light piercing the heart of every shadow. Within no valley could they dwell, behind no mountain could they hide, for Lusilus’s brilliance was unavoidable and all consuming.

  The heavens split, clouds parting in reverence. A single bolt of lighting, a beam of purest vigor, shone down upon Galdri, washing away his pain, his sins, his ire. Trenton, instinctually, dimly recognizing the name the goliath evoked, pressed his fingers into his ears with all his might, closing his eyes tight. But even with these precautions, Trenton was struck full frontal with the might of Lusilus’s grace. His eyes seared, completely blind even for a couple moments after opening his lids again. His eardrums ruptured, little trickles of blood welling against his fingertips.

  All around him, the others suffered the same and worse, some tripping over themselves and sliding along the ground, groping for something solid to hang on to as their eyes faltered. Other’s kept themselves aloft, using whatever dim vestiges of sight left within their body to continue their mad sprint forward. Leo was one such soul.

  He leapt madly over the cliffs towards the giant, his body glowing with a strange new light. He swept his hands to the side as he tumbled ever forward, washing the battlefield for thousands of feet in his fires. With every wave of fire, the next came even quicker, Leo’s arms blurring as they tore at the air in front of him. He’d gone mad.

  Galdri, meanwhile, looked calmer than ever before, almost placid. He stood in the deepest bow of an enormous crater, body skin bursting with blue and white light, the lighting around his body dragging along the ground in powerful strips. The tree which had infested him, and Trenton’s spire, were gone, completely eviscerated in the initial blast. Slowly, he raised his hand into the air, snapping his fingers with a reverberating boom…

  -Zenith Cast: Lusilus’s Blessing-

  …and the heavens answered. Where once there were dark grey, churning storm clouds, each fighting for dominance, there was now naught but pure light. It was as if the sun itself was descending on them, a wash of pure light so absolute as to be completely unfathomable, and it glowed only brighter with each passing second.

  Trenton’s arms fell to the wayside, his momentum coming to a rolling stop. He gazed listlessly up at the gleaming heavens. It was beautiful in a way, demoralizing in another. They’d toiled, certainly, fought with heart and vigor most men could only dream of, struggled their way to tentative victory’s one at a time. But this…why bother? Why even bother? This was strength beyond imagination, beyond the very gods.

  The light descended, obliterating all in its path as tens of thousands of thunderbolts fell to the earth.

  .

  .

  .

  “I DO NOT YIELD!” A single voice cried, barely audible above the cataclysm…powerful, yet…lethargic…almost soothing in its might.

  -Zenith Cast: Winter-

  A piercing chill infested the air, a breath of winter washing over the battelied. In the air, little flakes of snow materialized, dropping all at once onto the ground below. Instantly, from the little droplets of snow, ice spread out like wildfire, each patch locking with another to create a perfect spread of ice, hundreds of miles of stone coated within the blink of an eye–an instant permafrost–and as the heavens descended, the earth ascended in rebuke.

  For each and every bolt of lighting carrying the promise, the absolution that was death, immediate and painless, a pillar of ice burst forth from the weave, carrying the inverse promise of life eternal. It was unlike anything Trenton had ever seen, as if the world was caught between itself.

  For every spire of ice evaporated to nothing, another pierced the heavens, blotting the sky and pressing back against the infinite oppressive force, thousands upon thousands of them clashing with each other at the cosmic scale, all while Trenton and the other’s stood helpless, watching on in awe.

  “GOOOOOOO!” Karfice screamed from miles back, entire body twisted up towards the sky in desperate resistance.

  One by one, Trenton, Leo, Kiva, Garrote, and Avardis, each with sight enough to see the goal ahead of them, scrambled forward, barely able to stand with the war waging around them. But while Karfice was driven to his end, Galdri seemed barely even perturbed. He walked forward, knocking entire pillars of ice aside to clear the way for him, something Karfice did not take lightly. The remaining pillars, and each new one as it was formed, formed thick support beams connecting them to the ground and each other, creating a wild maze of spires that Trenton and the others took full advantage of.

  They leapt from beam to beam, swinging through the air with acrobat’s grace, finding incredibly sturdy footing atop Karfice’s ice. Galdri held aloft his hand, new streams of weaker lighting arcing through the air towards the encroaching march of children. They wended whither way, colliding with beams and pillars at random points, melting through some whilst dissolving to nothing against others.

  The strikes were unbelievably fast, almost too fast to react. So instead, he didn’t, trusting his intuition and strength, a perfect warrior's calm overcoming him–a focus like none other. As Garrote was struck down from the sky, landing amidst a pool of ice which quickly swarmed over him, his blood evaporating on contact, and Avardis was nearly blown in half, the force from the strike blasting him through 2 individual pillars which crashed down atop him, Trenton threaded effortlessly through the strikes.

  His mind was blank, not a thought left to distract, not a single emotion misplaced. His eyes, half lidded, didn’t even shudder as a bolt of lighting struck clean through his shoulder, tearing his left arm in one clean blow. He simply kept going, up and down and left and right, whichever direction he needed to go the exact path he took.

  But while Trenton found no difficulty in this endeavor, his remaining two allies were not of the same ilk. Leo dove head first through his own fires, tanking one strike, then two, then three, then four, his legs barely even solid beneath him, his chest and legs charred like the days following Zerital’s revolt. But no matter what, he simply did not stop. With every successive strike landed, he only pressed forward harder, that mad gleam in his eye glowing brighter and brighter…too bright.

  Trenton realized too late the mistake he’d made, screaming out in desperation to Leo, “WAIT! DON’T DO IT!”

  But it was far too late.

  Leo cleared the final pillar, body shining like the sun, a mote of fire centered on his core so dense that Trenton could feel its heat hundreds of feet away. Leo was attempting a full frontal strike, straight towards the goliath, and Galdri was more than ready to receive it. He lifted his club into the air, placing it down atop Leo in one swift strike.

  Leo’s body, blazing with brilliant fire, crumpled under the weight of the club, completely outmatched at close range. He slammed into the earth, cracking the ice floor and sending a massive pillar of dust wafting into the air. Trenton tried to shift the earth below Leo, use the stored energy remaining to evacuate him. But no matter how he pressed, Trenton couldn’t break past the ice, its strength suddenly their undoing, and Leo wasn’t moving.

  A small bubble of ice started to form around Leo’s motionless body, small tendrils of ice creeping over his broken form in a vain attempt to save him. But it was clear, Karfice was running out of energy. He couldn’t keep this up forever, and certainly nowhere near as long as Galdri, who looked down upon Leo with a strange expression, almost loving in a way.

  Galdri raised his foot above Leo, holding it still for a moment, “I pity you, boy. But my duty is absolute. None shall enter.”

  In that moment, that single moment before the goliath crushed Leo’s pitiful form, Trenton trying desperately to get close enough to intervene, another player, one whom Galdri had nearly forgotten about, made a choice. Kiva broke free from the pillars, landing next to Leo and using every last drop of strength left in her body to hurl him back towards Trenton. She summoned an untamed explosion of grasses and vines, burning through whatever stock she had in one sacred instant, flinging Leo into Trenton so quickly that the collision nearly knocked Trenton off balance, his arm barely managing to grasp around the boy's squishy midsection.

  The last thing Trenton saw before the goliath thought better of his hesitation was Kiva’s smile, somber, solemn, a single tear trickling delicately down her soft cheek, and her last words dying on her lips, “I’m sorry…”

  Galdri bore his foot into the earth, crushing Kiva’s body to nothing but a smear of red paste in an instant.

  “It sounded like the beat of a drum…their champion had come to save them…this oppression was no longer…the ever enduring beat of Gasal’s heart, a rhythm heard around the world…the promise to the weak that the heavens will shine again, that this darkness would not last forever…

  that they were safe”

  Trenton’s heart beat with a redoubtable RUM-pum-pum-PUM, an unnatural rhythm so vile to an oppressors ears that they’d think them fit to burst. He did not move, not a single muscle. In fact, it seemed as if everything had held still for him, time itself waiting on his command. And the ever enduring beat reigned on.

  The earth began to quake, golithian plates of stone shearing against one another beneath them, hearing Trenton’s plea once again, the earth ne’er wavering to obey him…just like it had always done. Galdri tried to keep his footing, but it was pointless. He fell to his knees, lightning suddenly ceasing as if cut off by a switch. His body no longer glowed with Lusilus’s grace, the heavens above receding back to their original position and further yet. None would dare cross him, friend or foe.

  Little tendrils of green and brown tattoos slithered across Trenton’s skin, bursting from his core to his fingertips, head to toe, his eyes glowing pure gold. The voice seeped into his mind once again, wringing around it and squeezing, demanding itself supreme, demanding itself the puppeteer. But this time, Trenton would not yield this force, no matter how oppressive. No matter how his blood boiled, his head pounded, no matter how the vile voice whispered it knew better, it could solve everything, Trenton Would. Not. Yield. And as the tattoos solidified, the power perfected for the first time in eons, Trenton saw in Galdri’s eyes true fear.

  Galdri bowed his head, no longer fighting to stand, “So it is you…then I shall have my fate, lord.”

  -Zenith Cast: The True King-

  Four mountains of earth rose and slithered around Galdri’s 4 limbs, ripping them off one by one, a clear display of strength and power. Then, another spire shot up from just beneath him, nearly splitting him clean in half as it rose from groin to scalp. And finally, all of the ground beneath Galdri rose, a spire not dissimilar to the one lining the edge of the field lifting Galdri into the air, a pillar so massive as to make one think it could move mountains…and maybe it very well could.

  But this was not a simple spire. This was a punishment, and a demonstration for all watching to witness. Galdri sat calmly in the palm of the earthen hand as it bore him into the sky, stretching up one thousand feet, then two, then three, lifting him such that all of heaven and hell could bear witness. And when Trenton was satisfied, the hand stalled…and the fingers closed.

  Galdri’s blood rained across the battlefield, drenching it in a tsunami of vital essence. And while Trenton relished in the blood bath, the stinging sensation of Galdri’s boiling blood against his skin, the thoughts began to grow louder, the weight of the world crashing in. This was no victory. Hollow and godless, that’s all this was.

  There was no mercy, no greater power, no divine will, no fate. Nothing bound them except the promise that more sorrow awaited them in the future. Spring was no longer, this winter would last forever. He had failed. The gleam in his eye slowly faded; the tattoos receded back within his core, the voice now just a whisper; his heart, it quelled, slowing to a regular rhythm. And Trenton? He wept.