Chapter 135: The seal- 3
They spent the night in a tense, watchful silence. Rhys sat in a meditative state, his senses expanded, listening to the mournful whistle of the wind outside.
He was not just resting; he was analysing. He replayed the fight with the Harriers in his mind. He had won, but it had been a close call. His enemy was adapting.
It had sent aerial units to counter their ground-based travel. What would it send next?
He thought about the entity behind the Seal. It was intelligent. It had resources. It was playing a long, patient game. He felt like a single chess piece on a vast, cosmic board, and his opponent could see his every move.
His only advantage was that his opponent did not know his true strength. It still saw him as a simple, lucky cultivator. He had to maintain that illusion for as long as possible.
Emma spent the night with her mother’s book open in her lap, her face illuminated by the soft light of Rhys’s Voidheart Flame.
She was not just reading. She was studying, memorising, her mind absorbing every detail of the ancient maps and forgotten lore.
She was their only guide in this dead land.
When the first, pale light of dawn filtered through the cracks in the giant skeleton, they were ready. They ate a small, hurried meal of dried rations and set off, leaving the bone-filled cavern behind them.
They found a smaller, less obvious exit at the back of the skeletal labyrinth, a crack in a massive vertebra that led back out into the open desert.
The world outside was silent. There was no sign of the Harriers. The sky was a clear, empty blue. But the silence was not comforting.
It was menacing. It felt like the entire desert was holding its breath, waiting.
They walked for hours, the white-hot sun climbing higher in the sky. The landscape was a monotonous, shimmering expanse of white sand and giant bones.
They were two small, insignificant figures in a world that was not meant for the living.
It was around midday when they felt it.
It started as a low, deep vibration in the ground, a tremor that was felt more in the bones than it was heard. The vibration grew stronger, becoming a steady, rhythmic thumping, like the beat of a colossal heart.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Rhys stopped, his hand on his sword. He looked towards the west, the direction they had come from. On the horizon, a cloud of white dust was rising into the pale blue sky.
In the center of that dust cloud, a massive, dark shape was moving.
It was not a swarm. It was a single creature.
As it got closer, its true form became clear. It was a golem of bone, but it was unlike the fast, slender Stalkers or the winged Harriers.
This was a juggernaut.
It was at least a hundred feet tall, a walking mountain of mismatched, fused skeletons. It had two massive, thick legs that ended in club-like feet that crushed the sand with every step.
Its torso was a solid, armored block of fused ribcages, and its two long arms ended in giant, spiked fists made from the skulls of some unknown, horned beasts.
It had no head, only a single, massive, glowing red eye in the center of its chest.
This was a Bone Behemoth. It was a living siege engine, a creature of pure, brute force, designed for one purpose: to smash, to crush, to obliterate everything in its path.
"It found us," Emma whispered, her voice a mixture of awe and terror.
The Behemoth was slow, but its steps were so large that it was covering the distance between them with a terrifying speed. It was not running. It was walking, a relentless, unstoppable advance.
"We can’t fight that thing out here," Rhys said, his voice grim. In this open desert, they were completely exposed. Its sheer size and strength would be overwhelming. "We need to use the terrain."
He looked around. The landscape was a flat, open plain of sand. But in the distance, he saw a cluster of massive, fossilized bones, the remains of several different colossal creatures that had died together in a tangled heap. It was a natural fortress of bone.
"That way!" he shouted. "Run!"
He grabbed Emma’s hand, and they sprinted across the sand. The thumping of the Behemoth’s footsteps grew louder behind them, each impact a small earthquake that shook the ground.
They reached the boneyard just as the Behemoth closed in. They scrambled into a narrow crevice between two massive leg bones, the space just wide enough for them to squeeze through.
The Behemoth reached the edge of the boneyard and stopped. Its single red eye swiveled, scanning the chaotic jumble of bones. It knew they were in here somewhere.
It raised one of its massive, spiked fists. With a deafening roar of grinding bone, it smashed its fist into one of the giant skeletons. The ancient, fossilized bone, which had withstood the ravages of time for thousands of years, shattered like glass, sending a shower of sharp, white fragments into the air.
The Behemoth was not going to hunt for them. It was simply going to demolish their hiding place, piece by piece, until they had nowhere left to run.
"We have to move," Rhys said, pulling Emma deeper into the boneyard. They ran through a maze of bone tunnels and arches, the sound of the Behemoth’s destructive rampage echoing all around them. The entire boneyard was shaking, and massive chunks of bone were falling from above.
"The book!" Rhys shouted over the noise. "Is there a map of this place?"
Emma was already looking, her hands trembling as she flipped through the pages. "Yes!" she cried. "There is a central cavern, a hollowed-out skull. It should be more stable than the rest of this."
She guided him through the collapsing maze. They dodged falling bone fragments and squeezed through narrow gaps. The Behemoth was right behind them, its massive fists smashing through the bone walls as if they were made of paper.
Finally, they saw it. A massive, hollowed-out skull, its empty eye sockets like two dark caves. They scrambled inside just as the Behemoth’s fist smashed through the archway they had just come through.
They were in a large, dark cavern. The skull was thick and strong. They were safe, for a moment. But they were also trapped. The Behemoth began to pound on the outside of the skull, the sound a deafening, rhythmic booming that shook the entire cavern. The thick bone of the skull began to crack.
Rhys knew they had only a few minutes before the creature broke through. He looked around the cavern. It was not empty. It was filled with the smaller, shattered bones of a hundred different creatures, the remains of the Behemoth’s past meals.
A plan began to form in his mind. It was a desperate, dangerous gamble.
"I need a distraction," he said to Emma. "A big one."
He explained his plan quickly. Her face went pale, but she nodded. She trusted him.
Rhys focused his will. He reached for his Earthshaker ability. He poured his Qi into the sandy floor of the cavern.
He was not trying to create an earthquake. He was trying to do something more precise. He was trying to make the ground itself unstable, to turn the solid sand into a liquid trap.
Emma took a deep breath. She drew her own small dagger and ran to the one solid wall of the cavern, the back of the skull. She began to scrape her dagger against the bone, creating a high-pitched, grating sound.
The Behemoth, hearing the sound, focused its rage. It stopped pounding on the top of the skull and began to smash its way through the back wall, right where Emma was standing.
Massive cracks appeared in the bone. The wall began to crumble.
"Now!" Rhys shouted.
The moment the Behemoth’s massive, horned fist broke through the wall, Emma used her Soul Inquiry trait.
She did not have the power to control a creature of this size, but she could distract it. She sent a single, sharp pulse of her mental energy directly at its single, glowing red eye.
The Behemoth let out a silent, psychic roar of rage and confusion. Its attack faltered for a single, crucial second.
In that second, Rhys acted. He unleashed the full power of his Earthshaker ability.
The sandy floor of the cavern beneath the Behemoth’s massive feet suddenly turned to liquid. It became a deep, swirling pit of quicksand. The Behemoth, its balance already compromised, stumbled. Its massive, heavy body began to sink into the trap.
It thrashed and struggled, its powerful arms flailing, but the more it struggled, the deeper it sank.
Rhys was not finished. He looked up at the ceiling of the cavern, at the thick, cracked bone of the giant skull. He poured more of his Qi into the ground, but this time, he sent the vibrations upwards, focusing them on the cracks in the ceiling.
With a final, deafening groan, the entire roof of the cavern collapsed. Tons of ancient, fossilized bone came crashing down, burying the sinking Behemoth in a man-made avalanche.
The cavern was silent once more. Rhys stood there, breathing heavily, his body aching from the strain.
He looked at the massive pile of sand and bone where the Behemoth was now buried. He could feel its red eye, its life force, slowly fading away under the immense weight.
They had won.
He walked over to Emma. She was leaning against the wall, her face pale, a trickle of blood coming from her nose. She had used a massive amount of her mental energy.
"We did it," she whispered, a look of disbelief on her face.
"Yes," he said. He looked towards the east, towards the distant promise of the Whispering Mire. "But the desert is not finished with us yet."