Chapter 111: The Soul in the Stone
Langston charged the crystal. His gauntlet spit sparks, golden wires already snaking ahead like they couldn't wait to bury themselves in it. The cavern around him was chaos, full of busted machines and shattered glass tanks leaking green fluid that hissed where it touched stone. The stench hit like a punch in the stomach, rotting chemicals, scorched mana, and the leftover stench of the Nuckelavee. Magic flickered across the domed ceiling, warping shadows that jerked and spasmed like broken limbs. A cracked console still blinked with the Enclave logo. It sat there, smug and glowing, a final insult after everything they'd done.
At the center of it all stood the crystal. Diamond-shaped, crimson, alive. It radiated terrible power like a nuclear reactor throwing off evil, instead of heat. Inside, the lich's skeletal face twisted, orange eyes locked on Langston. They didn't flicker or blink. Just hatred, burning constant, daring him to come closer.
The wires struck like vipers, golden coils whipping out and wrapping the crystal with brutal speed. They locked in place with metallic snaps that echoed through the cavern. Langston lunged with the full weight of his body, slamming his gauntlet forward like a weapon. Lightning surged from the core of the device, not in a clean stream but in wild, arcing bursts that crawled across the multifaceted surface of the gem. The light strobed wildly. White, blue, red. Flashes of mana lit the cavern in violent pulses against every corner of the room. Each arc left a glowing scar of mana across the crystal's surface.
Then the core screamed.
It wasn't just noise. It was a ripping, grinding howl, like steel shredding itself through a tunnel made of broken glass. The scream bounced off every wall, rattled the ceiling, clawed through the stone underfoot. Langston stood at the center of it all, unflinching. His face was carved in fury. This wasn't a tactical strike. It wasn't restraint. He wanted it to hurt. Every arc of lightning he sent into that crystal was vengeance, raw and personal.
The lich's face warped inside the crystal, mouth stretched wide, eyes burning brighter as Langston's lightning scorched across its spectral features. The next second, pain slammed into Langston's skull like a fist—blunt, sudden, like someone had punched him in the brain. His wisdom was as strong as Robert's now, near-peak resistance to mental attacks. But the gauntlet's neural tether gave the lich a direct line in. He wasn't just connecting to the artifact, he was merging thoughtstreams, inviting contamination. Sweat beaded along his brow and rolled down his neck. The gauntlet's rudimentary magical intelligence worked overtime, sifting data and draining mana from the core, but every second of contact left him more exposed. The lich didn't just whisper its pyschic poison, it carved its message into the back of his skull. Cold, cruel, absolute. You are nothing!
The lich ranted vile threats against them all, raging psychotically in fury. "I'll peel your souls one layer at a time! Your screams will echo for centuries!" it shrieked, voice cracking with hate.
Scotty went in fast. His focus intensified his saber, now a blazing arc of molten light, so hot the air around it shimmered. He moved with deadly purpose, aiming not to wound, but to sever. Each swing targeted joints and weak spots, intending to leave cauterized, unhealable gaps where limbs had been.
The lich vanished. Not slowly, and not with impressive flair.. One second it was there, and the next, only smoke remained, like it had been burned out of existence. It reappeared ten feet away in a silent flash, popping into reality with a flicker of shadow. A frost bolt launched from its clawed hand, hurtling toward Scotty. He sidestepped and batted it away with his flaming saber, sending the shard veering up into the stalactites above, which cracked and rained down dust.
Scotty smirked, eyes narrowing. He flicked his wrist, firing three rapid plasma bursts. He fused wind and darkness together into bullets of spinning black energy. The first exploded against the lich's ribs, cracking them inward like crumpling iron. The second sheared off a chunk of its shoulder in a sizzling burst. The third missed wide, blasting a divot into the far wall. "Run all you want, bonehead! I'm taking your skull home with me!" he shouted, blood trailing down his scorched forearm.
Euphrates ran forward, her boots splashing through puddles as she raised both arms. A jet of water surged from her palms, coiling around the lich's legs in a tight spiral. It spun fast, waist-high, roaring loud enough to drown out the lich's incantations. The creature staggered, its movements slowed, unable to slip away or teleport. "You're not going anywhere!" Euphrates shouted, planting her feet and tightening the spiral with a sharp twist of her fingers.
Sasha moved closer to Langston, her staff glowing with steady green light. A soft healing aura spread outward from her, bathing the area in a dim halo that stung the lich like salt on a wound. Her priority was clear. Shield Langston from whatever was attacking his mind while patching up the worst of Scotty's cuts. The blackened claw marks resisted her healing magic, but she kept at it, weaving light into his wounds with short, controlled bursts. Her eyes flicked constantly between them both, tension in her shoulders and jaw. "I've got you," she muttered, more to herself than anyone else, grounding her presence as near to Langston as she could get, to keep in range of her aura, and be able to heal the others. "Come on Professor, stay on your feet...you got this!!" She was very concerned about the way Langston twitched from the overload happening between the Lich's soul and himself.
Langston's gauntlet whined, wires biting deeper into the crystal. He blasted it again with lightning, his jaw tight, thinking about every Enclave lie. The crystal howled, but it hit back, hard. Langston's head throbbed like it was gonna burst, and the cavern started fading from his vision. Scotty's saber, Euphrates' water, Sasha's light, frostbolts and enchantment laced threats...all turned to static. His knees buckled, slamming to the ground as the last of his control vanished. Sparks burst from the gauntlet like fireworks, wires whipping with uncontrolled violence as feedback surged through the system. His hands slipped against the stone floor, barely catching his fall. For a split second, his eyes flickered, trying to refocus, but the world around him fractured—sounds stretched, lights smeared, shapes lost their meaning. Then it all washed away in a blinding surge of psychic interference, like someone had yanked the cord from reality itself.
Then, without warning, his thoughts were yanked away. The lich's soul gripped him like a hook behind the eyes and dragged him inward. Not gently. Not subtly. It slammed him headfirst into a memory, one so vivid and raw it crushed the air out of his chest and stole his breath.
He was twelve, hunched at a scratched kitchen table, the sour smell of burnt toast curling around his nose. From the next room, his father's voice erupted, brutal and loud. "Another TV ruined! Langston's useless, tearing everything apart! Why can't he be more like his sister?"
His sister sat across from him, younger but already hardened, her expression unreadable. She did the chores. She got straight A's. She stood up to bullies that made his life hell. Langston didn't fight back. He took things apart. Radios. Screens. Motors. But every ruined part added up, and money was tight. Too tight for trial and error.
His mom snapped back, voice trembling but firm. "Don't talk like that about our son!"
His dad roared louder, slurring the words with contempt. "Why not?! It's true! He's a drain! He breaks everything he touches and calls it learning! A disgrace. Always has been. Always will be!"
Langston's ears rang. The kitchen shrank around him. His eyes burned as he stared at his trembling hands. Across the table, his sister reached for him—her face guarded but softening. He jerked away, flipping the table in one violent motion. Plates shattered, food scattered, silverware clattered to the floor.
He bolted for the back door. His sister scrambled up to follow, but he was already gone, tearing across the yard in socks and tears.
He never saw his mother again after that night. She vanished from his life without a goodbye. His father drowned himself in a bottle over the next few years, until one day, he didn't wake up. His sister ran away before she turned sixteen. From that night forward, Langston had always been alone.
Grown-up Langston was stuck in that kitchen, kneeling, shaking, crying like a kid. He felt worthless, bitter, alone, like he'd never been enough. The lich's voice hissed, "You're nothing, just like he said." It's whispering poisonous voice instilled into him. It had trapped him in a dark mire, and he was sinking in the mud.
Sasha saw Langston collapse, his gauntlet lashing out with uncontrolled sparks. Her stomach twisted, but she didn't hesitate. The lich had just blinked out of Scotty's reach, and she seized the moment. Dropping her protective aura, she redirected all of its power into a hard-light construct, her staff glowing as she shaped the energy with both hands. A blinding wall of searing light slammed down between the lich and the rest of the team, then bent inward, forming a sealed prism around the creature.
The cost was steep. Her ambient protection vanished, but the box held. The lich shrieked in outrage, claws raking the inside with furious scrapes that only served to blacken and burn its skeletal limbs. The light didn't just contain it. It punished every movement, every strike, with focused, radiant torment. The physical form of this lich could not die. Not while its soul lived. So while it was temporarily trapped, the others sprung into action.
Scotty, now free from the fight, sprinted to Langston with his saber powered down. Euphrates followed close behind, still winded from the vortex spell. Sasha reached him first, dropping to her knees and pressing her glowing hands to his chest. Light poured into him in slow pulses, stabilizing his vitals and anchoring his soul. Scotty knelt beside her and extended both hands, channeling fire and dark mana. The two opposing forces didn't clash; instead, they merged into a strange, radiant silver that pulsed with power. Light reinforced Langston's sense of self, shoring up his fractured mind. The darkness turned feral, aggressive, pushing back against the invading soul that clawed at Langston's thoughts.
Euphrates lifted her arms and summoned a dense globe of water, launching it around the crystal. It splashed down and sealed it like a submerged capsule. The crystal shuddered as erratic lightning still poured out of Langston's gauntlet. The combination of surging electricity and full encasement triggered an uncontrolled feedback loop—short-circuiting the flow of mana and pushing the crystal past its limits. The system panicked. Langston's gauntlet, acting on automatic protocols, began pulling from his reserves far faster than he could safely give. His body tensed, caught between total shutdown and absolute overload.
The energy slammed into Langston, his body jerking hard against the stone floor. The memory twisted darker—the lich's soul hijacking it completely. His father's yelling turned into something worse, his voice venomous, dripping with contempt. His sister, once his shield, now helpless in the nightmare, cried silently while abuse echoed from another room. Langston's heart pounded in panic. To him, his mother was already dead—murdered in a drunken rage after that night. His father had descended into cruelty and alcohol, his voice forever burned into Langston's memory. His sister vanished less than a year later, running from horrors he couldn't bring himself to name. He had been alone since then. Alone, abandoned, and unwanted. The torture wasn't physical, but it was absolute. The lich's soul invaded deeper, magnifying every wound and regret, grinding guilt, shame, and helplessness into the core of his being.
He screamed, a child's voice rising out of a grown man's throat. He was on the edge of insanity. "Someone please help me! Don't leave me here!"
Rage overtook him. Langston's body arched, his teeth clenched tight, and he poured every last scrap of stored M-Power into the gauntlet. The device flared like a live transformer, lightning crackling in all directions. It blasted the crystal full-force, amplified by Sasha's light, Scotty's forged fire and darkness, Euphrates' pressurized water. The assault hit like a missile barrage. The crystal's surface split open with jagged cracks, its glow pulsing in erratic waves. The lich's soul screamed in a pitch beyond human, a shriek of unraveling essence. Langston's gauntlet wires dove deeper, latching onto the raw inner core of the crystal. They siphoned memories and locked enchantments, ripping out secrets like code from a corrupted drive. Inside the gem, the lich's face convulsed, warped, and then disintegrated. Its burning eyes flickered once. Then vanished.
The crystal shook violently, red light blinking in a frantic, stuttering rhythm. Langston's gauntlet buzzed and spoke with a flat, mechanical voice. "Self-Destruct Protocol: Active." His head lolled back, eyes rolled shut, breath faint. He didn't move.
Sasha caught him before he slumped completely, her palms still glowing as she stabilized what she could. Scotty and Euphrates each grabbed an arm, hoisting him up with urgency. As they turned to flee, Euphrates cast a glance at the prism of light.
Inside, the lich's physical body had collapsed. The bones were no longer held together. They were just a harmless pile of blackened remains, scorched and hollow, claw marks still etched into the radiant walls of its cage.
"Go!" Sasha snapped, voice cracking. The tremor beneath their feet intensified, a low rumble swelling toward a crescendo. They dragged Langston's limp form across the debris-littered floor, his boots scraping stone, wires trailing like broken cords behind them.
Inside the prism of hard light, the lich's body disintegrated into ash, bones breaking apart with a hiss as radiant magic devoured what was left. Claw marks still glowed, etched into the walls of its final prison.
The entire cavern buckled. Enclave consoles sparked and wailed as emergency klaxons overlapped in chaotic chorus. The self-destruct countdown had no voice, but the growing pulse of mana said enough. Euphrates slipped, caught herself on Scotty's shoulder, and pushed herself harder.
Then the whine hit. A pressure wave built behind them, shrieking like a banshee. It snapped off suddenly, replaced by three seconds of unnatural silence.
The blast hit like a thunderclap. A hurricane-force explosion of raw magic launched them off their feet. They flew, Langston sandwiched between them, weightless for half a second as the portal loomed ahead. Its edges flickered like torn paper in a storm.
They didn't know if they'd make it through before it collapsed...
They didn't look back.