Marcus…
As they were traversing the mountain he started having more trouble with the terrain than everyone else was to the point that he was slowing everyone else down. Even with the leg weights it was becoming difficult.
When he was fighting Artemis he used the weight of the armor to keep himself stable but he knew that he couldn't use it to solve this problem forever because even if he added more weight onto his body the effects of low gravity would eventually atrophy his muscles and bones if he wasn't applying that extra weight at all times. He needed a permanent constant method to increase the gravity on his body.
Then he suddenly had an idea.
"Hey! Gaiyen! I have an idea I want to run by you," he said and Gaiyen looked at him groggily as he was still sobering up from the alcohol he had before he followed them up the mountain.
"Huh? What is it?"
"Before we came here I removed a curse mark and I noticed that it was structured similarly to sealing formulas. I want to try cursing myself with your magic so that the gravity affecting me is always increased to what I'm used to and so that my body doesn't weaken as a result," he said and Gaiyen looked at him with a confused look that slowly turned to astonishment.
"Wait a minute...You want to...curse yourself? How? Curses are usually meant to enforce negative effects on the body...but I guess if its a pseudo-curse placed on yourself with specific conditions then I guess you could allow it to have passive positive effects as it pulls energy from nature...oh god. That's actually genius. How did you come up with that?" Gaiyen said in genuine amazement.
"You're telling me that no one else had considered this idea?" Marcus asked.
"Not really. Putting curses on others is against the law nearly everywhere in the world so no one has really done any research into the positive effects of curses but there's no law saying you can't place a curse on yourself. Give it a shot," he said.
Marcus then told the others to go ahead of them while he and Gaiyen stayed behind.
Marcus then started writing a curse formula on his forearm and then drew a line leading up to a circle where the mark itself would be placed on his bicep. Gaiyen then focused his gravity magic and focused it into the formula. The runes on Marcus's arm began to glow before they started to snake up his arm and surround the marking itself which was shaped like a pendulum.
"Alright, I think that's all I need," Marcus said as the pseudo-curse mark began to take effect and he felt the leg weights become heavier.
"So what kind of other effects did you add to the pseudo-curse?"
"I made it so that it can increase or decrease the gravity effecting my body depending on what situation would be favorable for me. I also made it so it can alter the direction that gravity is affecting me. For example...," Marcus then walked over to a nearby tree and then placed his right foot up against it. As he leaned backwards the direction of gravity began to change until he was standing straight on its trunk.
"I didn't...I didn't even know I could do that...," Gaiyen said as he sifted his fingers through his hair in amazement.
Marcus then jumped down from the tree and tried to right himself but ended up falling to the ground. He would need to train himself to get used to the shifts in gravitational direction.
He then stood up and looked at the tree before saying, "There's something I want to test out."
He then covered his hand his Dragon Glass to form a gauntlet of sorts before he punched the trunk of the tree. With the gravity affecting his body as if he was back on Terra, it felt as if he was giving a normal punch. With the way the trees grow under this planet's weaker gravity he was able to do more damage but it wasn't too impressive.
"Okay, one more time...," he said as he pulled back his fist once again and at the last moment before his fist came into contact with the tree, the curse mark increased the gravity affecting him and the direction it was affecting him so that when his fist hit the tree it blasted the entire top half of it off and the stump that was left behind had a large hole where he had struck.
"Interesting...," he said as he flexed his fingers.
He could feel the gravity increase well over ten times at the moment of impact before returning to normal almost instantly.
"Alright, I think we're good to go. Let's catch up with the rest of them," he said as he took off running with Gaiyen following after him.
"Wait, what did you just do? To that tree? You punched it the second time and it exploded-," he started to say but Marcus answered for him.
"The effects of gravity can increase the weight of an object's mass. The higher the gravity the heavier something becomes. If you throw a pebble at a tree as hard as you can its not going to do anything because it weighs so little and doesn't have as much kinetic energy behind it. But if you through that pebble and right before it hits the tree it suddenly weighs as much as a boulder, its going to tear right through it. Same concept applies to what I did but I also changed the direction of the effect of gravity on my hand so that it didn't weigh me down and instead pulled me forward. You can probably do it too if you give it a shot."
It didn't take them too long to catch up with everyone else and when they did Selene looked at him and asked, "Did you figure things out?"
"Yeah, I shouldn't be having any problems with the low gravity anymore."
She nodded as if she was glad to hear that and said, "Come here. I want to see this."
"What's going on?" he asked as he walked next to her.
She then pointed towards the thick forest in front of them.
"Our guide says we'll have to get through that forest if we want to reach Jiroh's fortress but there's another problem. Apparently he told us that there's also a small army waiting to keep us back so they can buy more time. From the information he gave us we don't know exactly how many there are or what kind of weapons or abilities they might have. This might be a problem because he wasn't exactly specific on how limited we are with using our magic."
"Well while Gaiyen and I stayed behind I used his magic to apply a curse on myself to increase the gravity on my body at all times. If I was able to do that much then I think using the first and second forms of flow control will be fine. Lets not risk it and push for the third one though."
"Okay that's good to know...wait a minute. You cursed yourself?" she asked with a look of confusion.
Not even a moment later the sound of an arrow whizzing through the air flew towards Selene's head and she barely caught it in her armored hand as it was less than an inch away from hitting her.
Her eyes widened in a look of surprise.
"Ah...! That was a close one...!" she said shakily.
"Artemis!" Marcus shouted in a commanding voice and she nodded as she drew an arrow of her own and fired back. She only needed the one arrow as he heard the sound of someone's body falling to the ground.
Inside the fortress…
He wasn't sure how much longer it would take before the 'Bath' was ready since the collections of souls and materials that they had infused were taking their time merging but nonetheless things were going very smoothly.
"Jiroh! We have company!" a guard came into the room as he alerted him.
"What is it this time?! We are just about to get things started!" he shouted back at him.
"Sir! Our scouts were watching over the path leading up and spotted a group of six making their way up to the fortress. They have one of our guards leading them to us that they took hostage...and they ripped off one of his arms."
Jiroh was taken aback when he heard that. If they had resorted to means as brutal as that to force one of their guards to lead them here then they were clearly hardened people.
"Also another thing. Two of the warriors that are approaching us...one of them is that women that was killed in front of the townspeople while the other is the man who supposedly killed her. He faked her death and is now bringing her to us," the guard finished.
This was...this was unexpected. The ones coming to stop them were the same people he had paid a small fortune to eliminate one of the biggest hurdle in their plans and that dark haired man had played him for a fool.
"Very well...come with me," he said and the guard followed after him.
They made their way through the fortress until they came to a room with preserved corpses fitted with armor and weapons. In the center of the room was a table with a fresh corpse that had been prepared before hand. This one was especially strong as it could serve as a vessel for holding especially powerful amounts of spiritual energy. The corpse was covered in salt and it had a large diamond embedded in its chest that was pulsing with energy to prevent Death Root from infesting it and turning it into a Draugr. The doctor in the room that was currently examining the corpse looked up and greeted Jiroh.
"How is everything going sir? Should I start preparing things now?"
"We need to buy more time. Get started on injecting the blood into the corpse," he said and the doctor nodded.
What they were about to do was inject this powerful corpse with dragon's blood from Malthael body.
It was an interesting discovery to find out that the dragon's body wasn't dead but actually still alive. Rather he was stuck in a state of brain death. His body was still alive to some degree but his mind was unresponsive. Since his body was still alive it meant that they could harvest fresh blood and other materials without any risk of Death Root infesting his body and causing a plague of Dragon Rot.
The doctor took a syringe with dragon's blood and inserted it into the vein of the corpse's forearm.
"Whenever you are ready sir," The doctor said and Jiroh placed his hand on the rune formula placed on the forehead of the corpse and begun putting his spiritual energy inside of it. The runes reacted to it and it collected the energy until a curse mark formed.
"With this you will be able to command this corpse and in doing so it will command the other corpses," the doctor said reviewing the details of the process, one that Jiroh was already familiar with.
"Am I correct to assume that awakening this corpse will do the same for the others buried in the forest below?"
"Yes sir. They are all connected via the rune formula that absorbs spiritual energy through this crystal directly while filtering out the death root preventing them from reanimating until we want them too. The moment this one reanimates, the ones buried in the forest will as well."
"Good, then let us begin."
Marcus...
He walked over to the body that had fallen from its perch after Artemis had shot it down. Selene and Artemis followed behind him as he knelt in front of the dead archer.
He turned its body over and recoiled as he realized that the archer that Artemis had killed had already decomposed.
"What the fuck...?" he cursed in confusion.
As he continued to stare at the dead body in confusion, its mandible suddenly twitched before it lunged towards him with its arms outstretched. He quickly punched it in the chest which sent it flying fifteen feet away.
"Marcus move!" Selene shouted as she pushed him out of the way just as the corpse got back on its feet and started charging at them again. She thrusted out her hand and released a torrent of flames that engulfed the corpse. About ten seconds later and all that was left of it was a pile of ashes.
"What the hell was that? You have zombies in this world now?" Marcus asked flustered.
Selene looked at him like he was an idiot for a moment before changing her expression.
"Zombie..? Oh right...no, that wasn't a zombie. That was a Draugr," she said and Marcus looked even more stunned.
"Wait, Draugr?! But that's an Old Norse term for the undead. The Greek and the Norse gods exist?! Just how many of them are there?"
"The Egyptian gods exist as well Marcus. There are a good number of gods from Terra that are alive here on Erebus but that's not important right now. We can talk about it later. First, we go kill Jiroh," Artemis said to him and he decided to put that information at the back of his to focus on the goal at hand.
"Selene, how do we kill Draugr?" he asked.
"The only thing that can put them down for good is fire or any source of heat hot enough to burn the Death Root that's infesting their corpses."
Just as she had finished saying that, dozens of Draugr suddenly rose out of the ground equipped in full armor and drew their weapons.
"Dammit! We don't have time for this now!" She shouted as she dug into one of the pouches on her armor and pulled out a red glowing crystal.
"Alta! Gaiyen! I'm giving you an order to tear these Draugr to pieces. Don't you dare let a single one of them escape to reach Lunaas.."
"You're leaving us to take care of this alone?!" Gaiyen protested.
"Yes, you two should be more than enough to get rid of them. We can't waste time here while Jiroh is trying to bring Malthael back to life. Will you follow my orders or not?!"
Alta nodded and said, "We'll get it done."
Selene seemed a little surprised to see him respond to her like that with a tone of respect so she nodded her thanks.
Marcus then said to the guard, "Here, you can have your arm back. Now get out of here."
He then tossed the guard back his arm, which he clumsily fumbled as it fell to the ground before he picked it back up and struggled to reattach it. The guard sighed in relief before running away from them as fast as he possibly could.
"Marcus! Artemis! With me!" Selene shouted as she lead the charge on Jiroh's fortress.