Chapter Text
“ OH FUCK!” Azar yelled as he reeled in his arms, then quickly spread them out again to create a barrier against the dead spirits, trolls, and other types of undead.
‘Well that’s not good.’
Max was sitting inside an ancient tomb, tinkering with the little schemes and pawns ancient people designed specifically to keep people like Maxi and her little gang out.
“ MAXI, HURRY THE HELL UP!” Miriam screeched as she burned down the monsters that dared come across her path, but her eyebrows were furrowed and sweat dripped from her forehead. The monsters weren’t the only thing getting hot in there.
The air was thick yet dry, it smelt of rotting corpses.
‘ If we don’t leave soon, we’re as good as dead.’
Max brushed a dirtied arm across her sweat riddled forehead. She couldn’t exactly tell where the foul odor was derived from, but she had a suspicion.
In her hands, Max was holding a cylinder shaped rock that had several compartments that would twist and turn, inside was predictably, another key to another puzzle for Maxi to solve.
‘ Of course.’ Maxi thought to herself. On top of the individual squares, were little depictions of animals, people, gods, anything that could hint to a bigger picture.
Max twisted and turned the rolls, trying to connect the dots to see what it meant, but just as she thought she might’ve been close, a rippling, earth quaking, smash at their defenses broke down a huge stone wall, revealing an ancient golem. A wave of dust, rubble, and debris clouded around her, making the loose hair around her fly into the air.
‘ Oh come on!’ Max thought as she coughed into her elbow.
Maxi’s nerves instantly went into muscle memory, she quickly shoved the object that was in her grasp into her leather pouch and put her hands out before her, readying her mana.
“ Ah, b-bit of a problem!” Max belted nervously, though her nervousness wasn’t directed at the golem, it was at her teammates.
“ You think we didn’t hear that stupid screech !?!” Miriam yelled, maybe she was scarier than the golem thumping throughout the halls towards Maxi.
“ Oh God! What the fuck happened now?!?” Zephyr cried, attempting and failing to shoo away the wind with his own.
“ A g-golem . . .”
“ THUMP,” the golem made its way to Maxi.
‘ I have to be careful. If I strike it down wrong, I might end up getting an illusion spell placed on me . . .’
The golem had chips and pieces of itself falling all over the place, yet it still followed its long gone commanders orders, its undying loyalty being its own downfall. It walked as if it had a limp, one of its feet missing. ‘ There!’ A perfect shot, right in its stomach. Their gut was unprotected, but inside of it consisted of its mana stones and magic so it was the best shot Maxi would be able to take.
Max raised her hands to her right side, drawing the runes design in her head, taking a firm stance. As her hands rose, so did a lump of Earth from in front of her. She steadily moved her left foot up and firmly planted it into the ground, taking her move with precision and grace. As soon as her foot hit the floor, the lump of Earth became a controlled furious wave that rushed right into Maxi’s target.
The sound of mana stones crushing under the impact and metal pieces being destroyed were exasperatingly loud, yet satisfying as she knew that her hit struck the golem right where it needed to.
She had done this a million times by now, golems were just poor clumps of metal being controlled by an order and fate set in motion, yet as time went one, these orders were seen as. . . less than ideal, so handling them was a nightmare for normal people, yet for Max, this was now just an inconvenience . . . or a pain in the ass.
There were honestly hundreds of ways Maximilian had killed golems, some more efficient than this too, but she just had to work with this at the moment.
The golem’s head twisted and contorted as the magic started to wear off, turning it back into the big pile of rocks, and no longer the mighty and fear-inducing beast it used to be. Eventually, it just fell to the ground in defeat. Behind the wall it arrived from, was an entrance to a tomb lair.
“ Max! You good?” Azar shouted as he started to walk into the room Maxi was in. All of her other crew members followed after him, looking skeptically at their surroundings.
“ Yeah . . . thanks for checking in. C’mon, let’s go deeper,” Maxi gestured her hand forward, they were all careful to not step on the remains of the golem. As they trekked through the old hallway, they realized that there were still monsters following them.
“ Maxi, we’ll hold them off, go investigate further!” Zephyr waved and started striding off.
Azar turned back to her momentarily, “ Be safe, and don’t forget to look for the runes!” He turned but froze again, “ Oh! And the mana stones! Don’t do anything too reckless without us!” And with that, he was off again.