Dolfy Horner stalked past statues of what he presumed were Nugget People, heading deeper down the circular tunnel in front of him. There were ancient texts scrawled into the base of each statue, either spelling out the tales of ancient heroes, or warnings for those who would dare tread this place. He didn’t have his scribes here with him right now, so he had no idea what any of these actually said, but it didn’t matter. Ahead of him were a set of double stone doors, filled with markings and images of beings with floating entities behind them.
“At last… The earliest Stand users recorded…” Dolfy raised his arms at his sides. “The Nugget People, in mountain halls entombed. At last, we have found you. You, who would lead our new world order into reality. Only those worthy of survival shall live on into the new world!”
He ran two fingers down the door’s surface. Its carvings were thousands of years old and they would’ve had primitive tools working on the rocks here. It must’ve taken years to finish just one side of the door, much less the whole tunnel here. Whatever this place had been to the ancients, it must’ve been extremely important.
“Time to crack it open and see what we have inside.” Dolfy cracked his knuckles. “Dragonforce!”
Dolfy Horner’s Stand materialized behind him, rising off the floor, folding its arms above its master’s head. It was covered in blue spiked armor, with a rather thin waist and a thick neck, with horns that curled to the back of its head. Its teeth grinded against each other, opening in a bellow that shook the caverns.
Behind Dolfy lay the remains of nosy miners, hoping to score some loot within this sacred place, but Dolfy’s discovery was not to be sullied by those of weak bloodlines, lured out by the booming Nugget Run by promise of better lives once they acquired enough gold. No, he wasn’t about to let the weakest of mankind revel in the beginning of his new world.
Dragonforce smashed its knuckles together, then thrusting both arms back, it shot both arms forward as fast as it could, brandishing both palms up. In front of them, giant orange hands glowed into existence and crashed against the doors, pushing with all their might as Dragonforce leaned in, moving its arms in the same fashion.
Dust and debris rained from the ceiling, but slowly, bit by bit, the doors began to slide open, dragging along the rocky ground and tearing up more debris on the way. It wasn’t long before the doors were open wide enough for Dolfy to walk through comfortably and he went on with a smug grin on his face, sliding one hand down his hair to slick it back in place.
Past the doors was a staircase leading down into a vast round cavern, with four pillars around the ring supporting the ceiling up above them. A single slab sat in the middle of the room, likely for human sacrifices of old and past it was a large piece of wall, jagged and rough without any adornments, standing out from the rest of the room, which had carvings alongside the enter ring, depicting humans and their Stands, building structures that reminded him of those of the Egyptians and Greeks.
“So, the Nugget People taught humans how to build using their Stands…” Dolfy surmised, pulling at the ends of his gloves to tighten them over his hands. “Of course. The Nugget People predated all known humankind. There was no way they could’ve built the pyramids if they hadn’t learned from the Nugget People. How they came to be, that is still a mystery to me. They must be the remnants of some kind of advanced race before humans came about.”
Dolfy walked down the steps of the circular ritual chamber, his boots echoing off the walls all around him. He found it ironic that the room that had once been used to sacrifice for the Nugget People had become the final struggle against them, ending with the entombment of their ancient masters.
But their imprisonment would soon end as Dolfy arrived at the sacrificial slab. All he had to do now was to push through this final bland wall and his dreams would finally be realized.
It had been thirty-eight years since he started his journey into creating a world with only the purest bloodlines. Weather Alternate had been started as a radical website from his parents’ home all the way back at the beginning of 2006. He had eventually found other like-minded individuals, some of them with money and influence and only three years later, Weather Alternate had become a full-fledged secret organization, slowly influencing aspects of the world, weeding out the strong from the weak.
Now here he was, seasoned and skilled, his goal closer than it had ever been before.
“Dragonforce, destroy that wall.” He twisted his body to one side, then slid his feet together.
His Stand swung both arms down, then punched one up before readying an attack. Before he could see the wall crumble before him, its surface shifted and rolled, like it was made of water and to his astonishment, a jagged shape pushed out from it, resembling a face with a covering over its eyes. Its mouth opened in a growl and air poured from its opening.
“The way… shall never be opened. This is the dying wish of the Almighty, those that stood against the last of the Herrakries.” The face seemed to speak. “They will never be freed from their entombment. Not while the Blind Guardian stands guard.”
“A Stand from days gone?” Dolfy cracked his neck to one side. “A final test, then.”
Dragonforce thrust its arms forward, forming its giant hand constructs again, punching against the rocky surface. From both sides, statues melted out from the rocky ground, sliding between Dragonforce and Blind Guardian. The hands hit them, but they didn’t even crack from the blow.
From the statues, rocky arms shot out in arcs on Dolfy’s left and right, intertwining together to form a wall around the man and his Stand before climbing higher.
“Nein, not if I have anything to say about it!”
Dragonforce turned its hand constructs up, bashing against the forming hands, but they were still unable to shatter even one. Whatever these stone constructs were, they seemed to be unbreakable. Instead, Dolfy got onto one of Dragonforce’s hands, using it to leap up through the opening just before it could close around him. He slid down the surface of the newly-formed dome and rolled to a stop away from Blind Guardian, looking back at the eyeless face looking back at him.
For a while, nothing moved, but as Dolfy attempted to maneuver around the statues, more of them emerged from the ground, pushing him up into the air before flinging down against one of his feet, spinning him around in the air before he collided with the ritual slab, knocking it over.
The Weather Alternate leader wiped at his nose, bloodied and broken from the impact, but he still got up and spat a wad of blood on the floor. “The battle has only begun.”
He was about to call forth Dragonforce again when a slab fell from above, forming into a spike before impaling the spot he had spat at.
Is that how it attacks? Dolfy thought to himself. I think I just found out how to defeat this thing.
Summoning his Stand, Dolfy got Dragonforce to conjure a hand construct to the left, smashing it against the wall. Immediately, Blind Guardian’s head turned and a statue rotated out from the wall, opening its arms. It slammed itself against the spot Dragonforce’s ethereal hand had been at, melting across the surface, which would’ve likely absorbed Dolfy if he had been there.
It hunts by sound. He surmised. Dragonforce is able to create ethereal constructs of its body, sending it to locations away from me and itself. I can use this to my advantage against the enemy. Blind Guardian cannot actually see me and if I play with its senses, I think I can find a way to get past it and free the Nugget People from their age-long entombment.
Using his Stand once again, Dolfy slammed Dragonforce’s ethereal fists into various parts of the cavern, knocking against the ceiling, other statues, and even Blind Guardian’s face. The masterless Stand shook around its post, bringing forth statues to guard its face and raining debris from above before sending more statues to attack the various places Dragonforce’s hands had hit.
Dragonforce kept this play up, sending Blind Guardian’s attacks in all directions while Dolfy moved during the sound of crumbling rock, which masked his footsteps.
Blind Guardian’s structures might be unbreakable, even to Dragonforce’s ethereal constructs, but it protected its face from my attacks. You only protect something when it can be destroyed. You just revealed your greatest weakness to me, and now, you’ll pay the price.
Dragonforce continued sending the masterless Stand’s structures all over the room, getting them as far as it could from Blind Guardian’s face. It created ethereal feet that ran along the left side of the cavern, making it seem as though Dolfy was attempting to leave. Blind Guardian took the bait and the statues around its face slid forward, going right past Dolfy and Dragonforce before sealing the door, while one of them crashed into the spot the footsteps had arrived at, sinking into the wall, taking its imaginary target with it.
Now or never. Dolfy pointed at the enemy Stand as Dragonforce floated into the air, bringing both arms together and curling its head down towards its hands. A fiery aura spread from its hands, going up its arms, then its neck. Its eyes glowing orange, Dragonforce flicked its arms out and raised its head and behind it, a giant ethereal head of a dragon appeared, mimicking its movement.
Leveling its head back towards Blind Guardian’s position, Dragonforce opened its mouth, with the ethereal head copying its action. Blind Guardian must’ve heard it, because it tried to call its statues back, but it was too late now. The statues were further away from its face than Dolfy and Dragonforce was. The leader of Weather Alternate knew this situation well. He had only ever resorted to using his ultimate move when he was sure the battle would be over. In his whole life, he had only ever used it thrice and each time, the enemy would disappear from this world completely, maybe except for a sprinkle of ashes.
“And now the same will happen to you. Through the fire and flames, we carry on.” Dolfy grinned as Dragonforce’s fire left its ethereal head.
The cavern was instantly lit up with orange and Dolfy’s clothes rippled as the flame tore through the entire room, melting the stone all the way to Blind Guardian, with only its statues unaffected. For a few moments, the whole room was full of burning stone and scorching hot air. Dolfy closed his eyes so they wouldn’t dry out and waited out the surge of flames from his Stand’s fury. He could hear Blind Guardian roaring either in anger or pain on the other side of the fire. He hoped it was the latter, because if this didn’t defeat it, he wasn’t sure he had anything else in the tank.
Dolfy only opened his eyes again when the blazing heat had died down and the glow of flames vanished from his eyelids. The entire middle section of the floor had melted away, forming a deep groove in the rock all the way to where Blind Guardian once was. The masterless Stand was gone and the wall now had a hole through it, still dripping molten rock.
He had done it. He had finally reached the peak of his quest. The final seal on the Nugget People had broken and now all he had to do was enter and awaken them.
“At last, the time has come,” he breathed. “The new world order comes…”
Clenching his fists, Dolfy walked through the cavern, stepping down into the groove, heading through the wall to halls deeper still. Past the wall, he found a simple room with a stone door at the end, cracked and askew. He walked up to it and pushed, finding it wasn’t even anchored to anything anymore. Shoving with his sizeable muscles, Dolfy knocked it back, where it landed on a carved ground, its fall echoing across the entire cave system.
The room through the doors was smaller than the cavern earlier, but this one had two thrones at the end of the room atop a raised platform taller than Dolfy, with a short flight of steps leading up to them.
But what really caught Dolfy’s eyes were four statues on their knees before the thrones, facing the door he had just come from. Three of them looked to be female, and one, the biggest one, was male. At least, he thought so, seeing as three of them had boobs.
“Is this it? Where are they?” Dolfy walked to the statues. They resembled all the statues outside on the way in, even the ones Blind Guardian had been using.
Dolfy ran a hand along the nearest statue, then recoiled. The statue didn’t feel exactly like rock. Something about it felt… organic. He put his hand back again to confirm the feeling, tracing them across the statue’s shoulder to a single horn protruding from the top of its head. When his index finger touched the horn, it was as though there was a blinding flash in his head and he couldn’t move for a second.
And just then, the statue’s head lifted and Dolfy almost fell back in surprise. Not shock. Surprise. He was sure it was surprise.
The statue’s stone flesh began to fade and what lay underneath was instead a dark shiny skin and its mouth opened. It was dressed in colorful cloth, covering only the bare minimum of its body and this one had long flowing green hair. “It has been millenia since this feeling has returned to me once again after humans used the power of the sun against us.”
“Y-You speak our language?” Dolfy stood amazed. These beings had been inactive for thousands of years and yet, this one knew what he was saying.
“I have seen part of your memories when you touched my horn with the warmth of the blood flowing through you and I have learned your language.” The being, a female, stood up, rising higher than Dolfy, her joints cracking. Her horn was now red, a stark difference through her green hair. “It is a simple language. It does not convey your thoughts as easily as our language did. Primitive for something from the future. And you have been in search of us to bring about your… new world order?”
Dolfy clapped his hands together excitedly. “Ja! That is correct! I have been searching so very long for your kind. With your power, you can show us, show us how to conquer all of the world and weed out the weakest bloodlines!”
The Nugget Person stared down at Dolfy, towering over the man. A haughty look lingered on her face. “You had a much larger following before. Tell me, why are they not here to welcome us back into the world with you?”
“Ach,” Dolfy grumbled. “They were killed by a group of children who are here to stop your awakening. But they are too late, for here you are!”
“So your followers were killed by children,” The Nugget Person said, the look of displeasure growing on her face. “In my age, only the most mighty and powerful warriors were able to stop us. Your so called ‘new world order’ was doomed from the start.”
Without any warning, the Nugget Person’s body glowed with a fiery aura and Dolfy was thrown aside into the wall, where he lay unconscious.
“I would have killed you, but you did set us free from our imprisonment. For that, I will spare your life this once, but if you come before me again, I will slay you like stepping on an insect.” She spun around and lifted her hands before the other three Nugget People. “Jein Herrakries, Gerun Drei Berol Voos. Awaken now, my comrades of old, Eortsuh, Souyul, Lowodda. The time has come to march on the world and take it back from the pitiful humans that betrayed us.”
Her body began to glow and a red haired figure materialized behind her, raising its arms as well. At once, the other three statues pulsed orange, then their stone shells faded, giving rise to three more Nugget People.
Through her horn, the Nugget Person transferred the images of Dolfy’s memories to the others, catching them up for all the years they had been slumbering.
“Mhag… Mhagmea…” The male Nugget Person took a step forward, dust falling from his knees. “It has been so long… my queen.”
The green haired one ran to him and embraced him tightly, running a hand through his purple hair. “Eortsuh, my love, it has been so long.”
“The humans, they must pay… Pay for their betrayal. For sealing us in here…” He wrapped his arms around her. Being male, he was simply decked out in a loincloth, with piercings and strings decorating his face and arms. His twin horns were of shades of blue, poking out above his brows. “They turned the very power we taught them against us. This is the thanks we received for helping their species advance?”
“Yes. And now they will know our fury. Our… rage.” She combed a hand through his hair. “And your time to release it will come. Eons have passed since we first came to this pathetic world and in our absence, it has descended further into madness. It is time to right it all. But first, the world will have to be cleansed.”
The other two Nugget People got on their feet, one dressed in maroon cloth and the other in grey cloth. They were both females, but the first one had red hair with a stubby blue horn, and the second one had brown hair and three short orange horns.
The four of them stood close together, raising their arms to flex, while at the same time, moving their feet closer together, with Mhagmea rising up on her toes. Finally, they were free, and their wrath was going to be felt soon enough.