The Search for Knowledge - Chapter 14

The sounds of fighting grew louder as they approached the sealing site. Taking advantage of the trees and fog, they traversed the terrain in caution, being careful not to draw attention of the combatants ahead. As they neared the location, they were gradually able to make out shapes in the fog. One was quite tall, nearly ten meters, with a skinny frame. The other was much smaller, on four legs, it had a long tail but that was all they could make out. Until they got closer, that is. When they were within sight, Rox peeked around one of the large tree trunks.

The entire area was a wreck, only bits and pieces of trees remained, it was as if powerful explosive magic had been unleashed. It was hardly surprising though, considering Rox could identify the combatants now. A male giant and a wyvern.. More specifically, a storm wyvern, possibly the strongest of its species. Every time the two clashed, there was a loud sound as the very air around them was displaced and the ground beneath them was torn asunder.

The giant had white skin, the color of a cloud, as well as exaggerated facial features. The nose was longer than a human, drooping ears, thin lips, high cheekbones, and straw-like, very long, hair. His muscles were highly toned, each arm as thick as a grown man and each leg as thick as a cow. He wielded a club the size of his torso, showing his immense strength that was disproportionate even for his size, which he used to bash against the sharp talons of the storm wyvern.

The giant's opponent had midnight-blue scales that gleamed like gems and talons as sharp as swords. Being a wyvern, it only had two legs, its arms were attached to its wings and were more like those of a bat. It seemed to be grounded, due to an injury to one of its wings, which put it at a large disadvantage. Its arms were virtually useless, it could only bring them forward to block attacks, but they were very poorly shaped for actually attacking. For this reason, it was forced to balance itself on one leg while attacking with the other leg's incredibly sharp talons.

(Chapter image: https://i.imgur.com/MDEiKuc.png )

As inefficient as it was, and despite it being at a disadvantage, the wyvern seemed to be winning the fight since the talons were tearing the club apart piece by piece. Once the club was gone, the giant would no longer be able to defend itself from the powerful legs of the dragon-like creature. It would easily rip through any part that of the body, which the giant tried to use to defend. The giant was also not nimble enough, and too large of a target to try evading every attack.

However, just as Rox was beginning to think the wyvern had won the battle, the giant did something that surprised him. It threw the club, with all its strength, in a last ditch effort to gain the upper hand. The club flew forward with force and smashed the wyvern on the nose, dazing it. The giant responded by charging forward and tackling it to the ground, revealing two rows of sharp teeth, before biting into the neck of the pinned wyvern. The now-bleeding creature roared in agony and tried to struggle, however the giant had it pinned tightly. The struggling wyvern gradually stopped moving. Once it had, the giant began to devour it quickly. Kara could only stare on in horror and Rox simply shook his head.

There was no time to mourn the fallen creature though, they needed to get past the giant. On the other side of the clearing, a small structure that looked like an open grave could be seen. It was their destination, the entrance to the sealing site. Inside that grave-like structure would be a set of stairs that led underground. Rox did his best to signal to Kara the location using his hands and eyes. She seemed to understand, pointing it out to him to clarify she knew where the location was, then nodded to him.

Rox leaned down to her level and whispered as quietly as possible into her ear, "I'll keep it distracted while you run there. Then I'll follow you. Do. Not. Look. Back. A split second could mean death." To which, Kara nodded once again.

After the exchange, Rox mentally prepared himself and stepped from the cover of the tree. The giant almost immediately noticed, stopped eating the carcass, then turned to face him while crouched on the ground. Its eyes gleamed with greed and gluttony as it saw him, then dropped the meat of the wyvern it had been holding. It stomped its foot onto the leg of the wyvern, grasped its ankle, then pulled hard. This easily tore the leg off of the beast with a sickening snap and flesh ripping sound. It then held the leg with deadly-sharp talons as if it were a weapon, a replacement for its damaged club.

Rox readied the steel sword he had out since they entered the forest and squared off against the creature for a few moments as they sized each other up. The giant was several times larger than he was, but he stood with confidence to stall the beast as Kara did her best to make her way from tree to tree along the outer-ring of the destroyed area to get closer to the sealing site.

Suddenly, the giant dashed at Rox, showing far more speed than it had against the wyvern. He swung the leg down at Rox, who only barely managed to parry the blow by diverting the force into the ground. A loud screeching sound could be heard from the talons scraping against the metal of the blade as it changed course and made a loud thud as it landed on the ground. Rox immediately followed up the parry with a swift kick to the giant's wrist, which caused it to let go of the leg-club and reel back while grasping the injury.

The giant flexed its fingers a few times to make sure it was alright before its face reddened with anger. Rox glanced in the direction of Kara, who was now dashing across the open area to make way for her destination. However, the giant seemed to sense her, turning towards her, then felt the magic emanating from her. It looked once at Rox, then made a mad dash for the young girl. Rox cursed, then ran as hard as he could to intercept.

"Kara! It's seen you! Keep running, I'll do something about it!" He called to her, hoping it would quicken her pace a bit. Unfortunately, the speed the giant had gained from devouring most of the wyvern was making it incredibly difficult to catch. Rox was definitely faster, however the giant had a head start and he was not sure if he would catch up in time. In desperation, he decided to throw his sword as hard as he could while he pursued the creature.

However, his idea had come a moment too late. The giant had reached Kara and lunged toward her, slamming the wyvern leg down to crush her. A loud crashing sound was heard as the ground beneath the strike gave way from the force, creating a small crater and throwing dust up into the air. Rox did not stop, instead he kept dashing towards where he had seen Kara, he believed there was no way she would let herself get killed in one simple attack As the dust began to clear, Rox dashed in, and he saw the silhouette of the giant stumble a bit. He then saw Kara running away from the figure after putting down a small water barrier. The giant must have stumbled from the force of its own attack rebounding after failing to destroy the temporary barrier.

When it tried to give chase, Rox managed to put himself between the monster and Kara, like he had with the manticore, then raised his sword to the giant. The creature seemed to understand from this that Rox would not let it pass. It narrowed its eyes and prepared a big swing to end him. Rox, seeing this, decided to take advantage of the wide swing to strike a vital point with his sword, but his foot was caught in one of the cracks in the ground caused by the swing against Kara's barrier. He cursed his lack of awareness as he saw the monster's swing coming at him full force, no more time to move out of the way. Bracing himself the best he could, he received the blow with his blade, and felt a searing pain in his arm. When the wyvern club made contact with his blade, he had not had the strength to fully block it so it slammed hard into his arm. One of the wyvern claws pierced through his cloak, into his arm, but not quite knocking him off his feet. He cursed at the pain and did his best to deflect the rest of the force into the air. This succeeded and threw the giant off balance. With his injury, Rox did not want to take any more risks now that he had a handicap, so he used the opening to stab his sword deep into the knee of the giant and ran for the stairs that Kara had just escaped into after it had reached her earlier.

It let out a blood curdling scream as he shoved the blade into the joint and fell to the ground. Once again, it let out a roar of pain and angrily pulled the sword from its leg and threw it away as hard as it could into the forest. Rox looked in the direction of the sword as he kept running and felt a twinge of regret, he had forged that sword himself after all. He made a mental note to try and find it if they survived.

By the time the giant had managed to get to its feet and start running after him, he had already made it to the odd structure. Rox kept running as hard as he could down those steps, even as he could hear the giant starting to beat on the entrance since it could not fit inside. While he travelled down those steps, he quickly tore a few strips of fabric from the bottom of his cloak and wrapped his wound the best that he could, while also putting his cloak back on in such a way to hide the wound. It would not do well for a giant, if he had to fight one again, to see he was injured and easy prey.

- - - -

As he reached the bottom of the stairs he could still hear the giant's rage at the top, even though he had come several hundred meters below ground. He also was grateful that whoever had built this sealing site had thought to use permanent light enchantment magic to keep the stairs, and underground, well lit. Now that he could breathe easy he released a deep sigh, all of his tension going with it, then looked around the room to find Kara already at work trying to decipher the runic writings. The room was quite spacious, being almost as large as the Coliseum he had fought in against Jeerae. All along the walls, floor and ceiling were runic writings seemingly randomly sprawling out in different directions. It was clear that multiple elements had gone into forging this seal. Looking at the center of the room he saw that there was a circle that looked similar to the one over his heart, marking that as the central location of the seal as well. Inside the circle were five sets of adamantium shackles, one for each limb as well as the neck, which had another seal circle on the cuff meant for the neck of the victim. Each of the shackle chains could also be seen to have runic writing along them, in the same element combination as the rest of the room, from what it looked like.

"This is incredible." Kara said with wonder in her voice, as if the life-or-death race with the giant had not happened only minutes ago. "Whoever made the seals in this place must have been an incredible genius. They found a loophole in the sealing magic that denies someone from placing seals that do different things on one object or person." She then turned to face him, excitement clear on her face as she continued, "I won't know for certain until I decipher it, but it seems like the ritual mages made the room to seal whatever was here and the shackles to place a secondary seal that did something entirely different! They sealed the things that held the being rather than sealing the creature itself!"

He could not help but smile at her innocent glee while examining ruins that, more than likely, had not been examined like this in over a thousand years. Rox thought that the Kara right now, the girl that genuinely enjoyed learning, was probably her true self. Not the arrogant rich girl that she usually acted like.

Approaching her, Rox replied with a casual tone, "Well then, you'd better get deciphering the runic writings, huh? You came here to find out things like that, right? I would hope so, anyway. Otherwise, I risked my life fighting against a giant that managed to kill and eat a wyvern for nothing. By the way, we're going to have issues leaving this place."

Kara stiffened, "You didn't kill it?" She asked incredulously. Then flinched as she heard the loud sound of the giant still banging on the entryway at the top of the stairs.

"No. No, I did not." He said flatly. "Distracting a giant, I can do. Killing a giant is a bit much, I even lost my sword!" The latter half of his sentence sounding like a young boy who lost his favorite toy.

She rolled her eyes at him, her tension gone from those few lines, then got back to trying to decipher the writings as he had suggested. "I'll get you a new one, hush now child." Kara said with a playful smirk.

Rox smiled once again, then turned to the stairway noticing that the booming of the giant had suddenly stopped. While looking at the stairs he could not help muttering under his breath, "Yeah, we're definitely going to have issues getting out."

Kara was too immersed in her research, however, to hear him.