If it were only Iceheart’s interference that he had to worry about, this whole situation might not have been so bad. He was a threat, of course, but a controllable one. The Gargoyle, however, was proving exceedingly obnoxious. As ever.
Her ability to melt into the environment and--quite literally--turn the world against him was something that had never become easier to deal with. Even after all these years, she was still one of the most irksome opponents he’d ever face. And at this point, he may well have fought more battles against her than anyone else in his life. Rarely ever had she managed to wound him, but she always managed to find ways to make things more difficult. Battles of attrition were perhaps her specialty now, and this one certainly qualified as that.
One might have thought that all these rolling seas and howling winds would be causing no end of trouble for her here, but if they were, it wasn’t obvious. Perhaps they were even helping her by masking her movements. Whenever a surge of water lashed against him or a gust threatened to knock him off course, it could have been her doing. Or it could’ve just been the chaos of this fight.
He remembered hearing from Ito that she’d recently begun harnessing lightning, too, and indeed, it seemed to be so. The dark skies cracked and flashed constantly, and while it was thankfully not as controlled as Dozer might’ve expected, it was still quite the hassle, especially for his men. Ito himself was here somewhere, but Dozer kept losing track of him.
Had to stay focused on Kallmakk. The feldeath was still the most pressing concern, of course.
After two days of combat, Dozer still didn’t really know how much of the creature’s power he could withstand, but he was keen to find out, now that it was finally his turn to be its punching bag.
He met its charge head on. Kallmakk plowed into his becalmed sphere of influence like a thrashing bull, covered in seawater and enormous bulbs of dark energy. Lightning sparked across its hulking form as he drew close, and then there was suddenly a massive claw flying toward him from the right.
Dozer swatted it away, just like he did with the beam, but rather than flying away, the claw exploded apart and disintegrated.
That didn’t stop the rest of its body from slamming into him, though.
A dark serial novel. Set in a modern fantasy world called Eleg. Mature language. Updates every night at midnight PST by ~400 words.
Wednesday, February 5, 2025
Tuesday, February 4, 2025
Page 3780
In the early days, some half-millennia ago, the very concept of inertia hadn’t even been discovered yet. It had therefore been quite difficult and laborious to arrive at any kind of understanding of its nature. In fact, it wasn’t until a couple centuries of undeath that he really began to feel as though he’d truly wrapped his head around it. And even now, he occasionally still found himself questioning what he thought he knew.
His younger years had been quite turbulent, as a result. For a while, he’d thought that his power was simply to “adjust the weight” of things. That he could only make things lighter or heavier. Then he went through a period where he thought that, no, perhaps his power was instead to control some otherworldly force and flame, granted to him by the Void itself. There was ancient precedent for that, after all. Some called it the Inferno. Then, still later, he learned about a discovery called friction, and so he thought it might be that, too.
Even after he’d learned about inertia, that hadn’t been the end of his uncertainty. While he did indeed settle on it as the most likely candidate over which his power held sway, there eventually came the discovery of subatomic particles, which again threw him for a loop, making him reevaluate everything.
Ultimately, though, he returned to inertia, as it was the most fitting. He decided that even though it seemed like he could manipulate subatomic particles quite freely, everything of which he was capable could still be explained by the manipulation of inertia upon those same particles. The localized generation of heat, for example, might have looked like the result of excitement in particle vibrations, but it also could have been the subatomic application of inertia upon particles within an open system.
The sudden, dramatic change in inertia for certain particles but not others could theoretically create a need for energy transference among said particles in order to reestablish equilibrium. And the more dramatic the change, the more rapid the need would become.
The more heated, in other words.
So Iceheart’s ability to remove the heat out of any system, while indeed deadly, was by itself not nearly enough to give Dozer trouble. As long as he could still think, he could create as much heat as he needed. And in this fight, with his soul power added on top of things, he was constantly keeping his entire body heated nearly to the point of bursting into flames.
His younger years had been quite turbulent, as a result. For a while, he’d thought that his power was simply to “adjust the weight” of things. That he could only make things lighter or heavier. Then he went through a period where he thought that, no, perhaps his power was instead to control some otherworldly force and flame, granted to him by the Void itself. There was ancient precedent for that, after all. Some called it the Inferno. Then, still later, he learned about a discovery called friction, and so he thought it might be that, too.
Even after he’d learned about inertia, that hadn’t been the end of his uncertainty. While he did indeed settle on it as the most likely candidate over which his power held sway, there eventually came the discovery of subatomic particles, which again threw him for a loop, making him reevaluate everything.
Ultimately, though, he returned to inertia, as it was the most fitting. He decided that even though it seemed like he could manipulate subatomic particles quite freely, everything of which he was capable could still be explained by the manipulation of inertia upon those same particles. The localized generation of heat, for example, might have looked like the result of excitement in particle vibrations, but it also could have been the subatomic application of inertia upon particles within an open system.
The sudden, dramatic change in inertia for certain particles but not others could theoretically create a need for energy transference among said particles in order to reestablish equilibrium. And the more dramatic the change, the more rapid the need would become.
The more heated, in other words.
So Iceheart’s ability to remove the heat out of any system, while indeed deadly, was by itself not nearly enough to give Dozer trouble. As long as he could still think, he could create as much heat as he needed. And in this fight, with his soul power added on top of things, he was constantly keeping his entire body heated nearly to the point of bursting into flames.
Saturday, February 1, 2025
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