Chapter 37: Things Unknown
Another red flash bled through the gaps in the door, and the claws ripped away another considerable chunk of the ancient wood. The opening was large enough now that Victor could see the scaled, horn-bedecked head that housed the livid, bulging orange eyes. “The hell is that thing?”
“I don’t know!” Thayla said, her voice shrill with stress. The monster howled again, a deep, reverberating siren sound that hurt Victor’s ears, and then it smashed into the mangled door, and it burst open in a shower of broken planks and splinters. Victor was ready, having prepared a Project Spirit spell, and he sent out a sickly wave of black-tinged yellow Energy that gave the hulking monstrosity pause.
While the hulking beast, hunched, struggling against the urges Victor’s spell put into its mind, Thayla dove forward and put her spearhead deep into its thick, scaly neck. Victor, shaking off his bewilderment at the sight of the monster—a hunched, broad-shouldered, hound-shaped lizard complete with thick scales—chopped down with Lifedrinker. The monster’s scales parted for the axe’s shiny edge, and she bit deeply into its flesh, carving a gouge between its neck and shoulder, and spilling hot, steaming blood onto the dusty stone floor.
The two wounds seemed to break the stalemate between the creature’s will and Victor's spell, and it shook its head, roaring and exposing a double row of pointy triangular teeth. It lunged at Victor, and he held up Lifedrinker almost like a shield, trying to press her edge into the monster as it crashed into him, but he couldn’t measure his success—he’d been driven back into the wall, and the gaping snapping maw of the monster grunted heavily next to his ear, centimeters from his flesh. Victor screamed and used Channel Spirit to fill his limbs with rage Energy, still trying to push the monster back.
He couldn’t see Thayla because of the monster’s bulk, but he knew she must be going to work with her spear because the beast seemed distracted, shifting left and right as it struggled against Victor. It drove him further toward the corner as he strained to keep his neck and head out of its snapping maw. He finally remembered to cast Sovereign Will as his shoulder jammed into the corner, and his muscles surged with the additional twenty-five strength. His sudden burst of vigor, combined with whatever Thayla was doing, allowed Victor to slip around the creature’s side and use its momentum to drive it into the corner where he’d been pinned.
Victor chopped and chopped with Lifedrinker, cutting huge gaping wounds in the side and haunches of the monster before it could get turned. One of his chops opened the soft side of its belly, and glistening entrails slipped free of the gash like a mass of giant, shiny worms. Thayla was on the other side, pointy teeth bared in a fierce grimace as she, too, drove her weapon into the monster, over and over. The beast thrashed and moaned, smashing itself into the wall in desperation, but its death throes were short-lived—they’d done too much damage to it.
When the bear-sized lizard-hound was finally still, Thayla and Victor stood leaning on their weapons, panting and sweating, and then the purple-tinged golden motes of Energy that rose from the dead monster surged into them.
***Congratulations! You’ve learned the spell: Sovereign Will - Improved.***
***Sovereign Will - Improved: As an act of concentration, you can apply up to 33% of your total Will to any physical attribute.***
“Nice!” he said, reading the description.
“Level, already?”
“No, but one of my skills improved.”
“Ahh, good…” Thayla’s further words were cut off by a howl that echoed through the dark chamber beyond the outside hall. It sounded distant but far too familiar for Victor’s taste.
“Another one of these things? Let’s get moving; what if this thing had a big family?” He turned and started walking, and Thayla was right behind him. “Which way, Gorz?”
“Take the tunnel straight ahead, and then the first left, which will put you in a tunnel you’ll follow for quite a long distance.”
Victor followed Gorz’s instructions, and soon they were hustling down a long, winding tunnel with a slight downward slope. The howl was repeated a few times in the distance but didn’t seem to be growing nearer.
“I think that monster was tier-three,” Thayla said suddenly.
“Why?”
“First, its strength and vitality; I put enough holes in it to kill five bull roladii by the time you threw it off. Second, the Energy we got from it had some purple in it. I’ve never seen that killing tier one or two monsters.”
“The slug monster under the ground that almost dissolved you gave a lot of purple Energy.”
“No wonder it healed me so well,” Thayla said, a shudder in her voice.
“Well, good thing we can handle a tier-three monster.” Victor looked at Thayla and grinned.
“Why?”
“Well, the dungeon we’re going to is full of tier-two and three monsters. Or that’s what I heard when I learned about it, anyway.”
“What? That’s pushing our luck, Victor! Do you know anything else?”
“Um, yeah, let me see,” Victor thought back to Gorz’s words, trying to remember what he’d said about the dungeon before the little amulet spirit piped up and reminded him. “I think the monsters in the dungeon are undead.”
“That’s right, Victor!” Gorz said.
“Tier-three undead? Oh, Ancestors!”
“Not good?”
“Not good! I’m lowering our odds at success; we’re going to be worm food, I’m sure.”
“Awe, come on! What do we have to worry about from some zombies?”
“Zombies? I thought you said tier-three?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“So, more like crypt horrors and blood ghouls.”
“That sounds familiar,” Gorz added.
“Ahh, I get it. Well, try to stay positive—probably some good treasure in there, and we’re tougher than we look, right?” He gave her shoulder a nudge with his elbow, grinning.
“Speak for yourself! I look tough!” She growled at him, displaying her sharp canines, and he laughed.
“Una mujer peligrosa,” Victor said, with a low whistle.
“I am a dangerous woman! Remember it!” She chuckled, too, and they kept walking, both of them occasionally looking over their shoulders to ensure no giant lizard-hounds were stalking their tracks. Victor followed Gorz’s directions until they came to a tunnel that opened onto a ledge overlooking a wide, perfectly round tunnel that crossed their path. Hung from brass-colored chains, hexagonal glow lamps were regularly spaced in the long tunnel, shedding an eerie, pale green light. Victor looked left and right and saw no end to the enormous, lighted passage.
“What the hell? How long have these lights been burning down here?”
“No idea.” Thayla shrugged.
“Reevus-dak, too, remarked about those lights; he called them ‘strange, deathless lamposts from an ancient era.’” Gorz’s tinny voice was hushed as though he were being reverent. “You and your companion need to cross to the far ledge and continue along this narrower passage.”
“We need to get across—over to that far ledge.” Victor pointed to the ledge that matched the one they stood upon, perhaps twenty normal strides away, should there have been a bridge over the gap.
“Too bad we can’t fly.” Thayla began looking around over the ledge. “We’ll need to drop down and climb up to the other one—it’s only about ten feet to the ground.” She sat, hanging her legs over, and moved to drop, but Victor grabbed her shoulder.
“Wait!” He’d seen a shadow lurch in the distance to the right, and as he watched, it did it again. He laid flat on his belly, using the ledge to hide from anything moving below, and Thayla quickly pulled her feet up and lay next to him. Soon a sucking susurration came to their ears, and a slithering nightmare came into view.
A pale, round body the length of a passenger bus, but lower and narrower, with stalks along its lengthy bulbous body, each housing an eye that blinked around at the surrounding tunnel, came slithering toward them. The front end of the eyestalk-covered slug was dominated by a large, round mouth that perpetually opened and closed like a puckering sphincter lined with horn-like teeth.
Victor and Thayla inched back from the edge of their ledge, and they both held their breath without any consultation. Thayla’s black irised eyes were wide with fear or disgust, and Victor couldn’t blame her—that monstrosity wasn’t something he wanted to tangle with. They lay there in silence, utterly still, while the slithering horror inched its way past. Thayla slowly let out her breath at one point and drew in another, but Victor managed to hold his breath for what must have been a world record back on Earth. He supposed it had to do with his improved racial level, much like his reduced reliance on food and sleep.
Finally, the thing was far enough down the tunnel that they couldn’t see the shadows its eyestalks cast on the walls. After studying the other direction for several moments to ensure another wasn’t coming, they hopped down and hurried across to the other ledge. They both leaped up, caught the shelf, and pulled themselves up. Then, after one last glance at the creepy slug highway, they continued down the narrow, stone passage.
“How much farther, Gorz?”
“Victor, you’re getting very close; just a few more turns and short passages, and you’ll be in the room where Reevus exited the dungeon!”
“We’re getting close, Thayla.”
“Pretty great trick you have, memorizing maps and whatnot,” she glanced at him sideways, and Victor felt a surge of guilt for having lied to her for so long.
“Listen, I haven’t been totally honest with you.”
“Oh really?” She stopped walking and turned to face him, amusement on her face. “Do you think I’ve told you all my secrets?”
“No, but have you been lying to me?”
“Oh, so you’re a liar? You want to clear some guilty conscious? What’s your big secret, then?”
“I’m not a liar,” Victor said through clenched teeth, her reaction starting to piss him off.
“Well?”
“Fine, I didn’t memorize a map. I have an artifact that told me about the dungeon. I found it while I was with Lam, and I didn’t tell you about it because I didn’t want her to take it or kill me for keeping it. I mean, at first. I should have told you after we both were on the run.”
“Really? What kind of artifact?” She suddenly sounded more intrigued than angry or judgemental, and Victor didn’t know if that was a good sign or a signal to watch out.
“It’s a necklace that kind of remembers everything you tell it and can keep track of every place it's been.”
“You reduce me to those simple words?” Gorz sounded hurt.
“No, Gorz, sorry. It also has a nice personality and is good at listening to my problems.” Victor grinned at Thayla, trying to make light of things.
“It’s called Gorz? It’s listening to us all the time?” Thayla looked down at Victor’s chest. “Let me see it.”
“Alright,” Victor pulled Gorz out from under his armor, twirling the silvery medallion on the chain. Thayla peered at it for a while, then shrugged.
“That’s a lucky find. I’m guessing its previous owner came through this dungeon, and that’s how it knows about it?”
“Right.”
“Well, any other big secrets?”
“Well, sure, but they have more to do with dance moves and kissing.” His attempt at humor struck home, and Thayla snorted, unable to fight off her smile. “Alright, what about you? I told you my big secret; what are you hiding?” Thayla’s face got solemn suddenly, and then she shrugged and turned away from him, starting to walk again. “Hey, I was just joking, kind of, but now I’m really curious—you do have a secret, don’t you?”
“You really want to know?” She whirled to face him, and Victor was dismayed to see tears welling in her eyes.
“I do, but not if it’s going to upset you like that. Look, I’m sorry, I was just messing around.” He was a little surprised at how much her troubled face bothered him.
“No, I’m alright, these tears,” she wiped at her eyes, “they’re more because I have some hope now. My big secret is that I have a daughter. I’d resigned myself to missing her childhood while I was in the mine, but now I’m ever-so-slightly hopeful we might make it through that dungeon, and if I do, I’m going to find her.”
“Oh damn! Seriously? How old is she?”
“She’s six years old now. I last saw her when she was two.”
“Fuck. I’m sorry, Thayla. That’s rough as hell. Is she with your family? With her father?”
“She’s with a friend, a friend the Greatbone Mining Consortium doesn’t know about, and that’s enough said on the matter, alright?” She sniffed and wiped her eyes again, and Victor nodded.
“Hell yeah. ‘Nuff said. Let’s get through that dungeon, right?”
“Right,” she said, favoring Victor with a normal, non-murderous smile.
Following Groz’s instructions, they made their way through several more tunnels, up a short set of crumbling stone stairs, and then into a new sort of passage: a square, stone-block tunnel constructed of perfectly cut and fitted granite blocks. “This is the final tunnel, Victor. The entrance to the dungeon is just over seventy meters ahead, though it’s in a large cavern, and Reevus met with combat when he stepped out of the portal.”
“Gorz says the dungeon is seventy meters ahead, but there might be monsters around the entrance. His old owner had to fight when he came out.”
“Alright, let’s proceed slowly and quietly,” Thayla whispered, gripping her spear and raising an eyebrow for confirmation.
“Yeah, no going back now.” Victor hefted Lifedrinker, and the two of them began slowly to stalk up the square, stone corridor. The stone floor wasn’t very dusty at the center, but Victor saw clear scuff marks along the walls where the dirt and accumulated grime were thicker. As they advanced, the far end of the tunnel came into focus, and Victor saw a large space beyond backlit by an oscillating pale green and blue light. He crouched lower and closer to the wall, creeping forward with Thayla hugging tight in his shadow.
Coming closer to the corridor’s end, he started to notice shadows moving about in the open space beyond, and so he continued as cautiously and slowly as he could until his next step would put him out of the shadow and into the light, bleeding into the corridor’s open mouth. Peering from eight or so feet back from the opening, he had plenty to observe.
A stone dais rose in the center of an enormous, natural cavern, and pulsing at its center was a large oval disc of smokey green and white-blue light that seemed to hang in the air. He could only assume it was the portal. Hooded figures milled about in the cavern, some kneeling and rhythmically bowing their heads to the ground as they faced the portal, while others walked around the room performing some unknowable task, moving as if in a fugue state. Victor counted eleven of the black-robed individuals. He felt Thayla squeeze even closer to him and heard her barely uttered whisper, “Do we fight or make a run for the portal?”
“You sure we have to fight? What if they’re just, I don’t know, a weird cult that worships this thing?” He glanced back at Thayla and saw her arched eyebrow, but he didn’t take it back.
“Seriously? Black-robed weirdos deep underground, bowing to a dungeon portal and walking around like they’re mind-controlled?”
“I know, I know. Let me walk in; if they attack me, you can surprise them. If we’re getting our asses kicked, we run for the portal. Agreed?” He stared into Thayla’s dark eyes until she nodded. Victor nodded and stood up, lifting Lifedrinker to his shoulder and letting her rest there, one hand on her handle. Then, he strode out of the corridor into the stone cavern, walking right for the portal but watching closely for a reaction from the strange, hooded people. He pushed inspiration Energy into his pathways, getting ready to cast Inspiring Presence or Project Energy.
He’d only made it about seven paces into the cavern when one of the figures milling about to his right jerked its head his way and let loose a long ululating cry. As soon as it started its high-pitched wail, lifting its head to project the sound, Victor caught a glimpse of its too-wide jaw and tightly packed jagged teeth. Worse, he saw its eyes and that they were pale white orbs, devoid of irises. As the creature pulled its hands out of its robe and extended a finger to point at Victor, he saw the long, black claws and gray-tinted skin and knew he wouldn’t be negotiating access to the portal.
He immediately cast Inspire Presence, and the room brightened in his eyes, revealing the frayed, tattered state of the figures’ robes, how they moved in a jerky, uncoordinated fashion and seemed more afraid of him than threatening. This wouldn’t be so bad! He hefted his axe and screamed, “Come on, then!” Suddenly a weight was pressing on his mind, and he had an urge to drop Lifedrinker and prostrate himself, supplicating for mercy. Victor lowered Lifedrinker, but then a thought sparked in his mind, “Supplicate? What the fuck?” He shook his head and glowered at the cluster of figures in front of the portal. “I don’t think so!” With an effort of will, he pushed back the notion and strode forward, Lifedrinker once again held high.
He was aware of the figures flanking him, but he kept moving forward, increasing his pace to a long-strided jog. He kept them in mind but trusted in his speed and Thayla’s upcoming surprise attack. Soon he was bearing down on the four cultists or ghouls or whatever they were near the portal, and he was sure they were the source of the mental attack he’d shrugged off. It was like their projected will was a palpable thickness in the air, and he was slicing through it—an icebreaker through a thin, frosty expanse of water. When he was just a few strides away, he cast Sovereign Will, boosting his agility, Channel Spirit, filling Lifedrinker with rage-attuned Energy, and dashed into their midst, rapidly cleaving left and then right.
Whether the cultists were too busy concentrating on their attempt at a mental attack or were too slow to combat his sudden violent burst, he’d never know, but Lifedrinker felt no mercy or pity as she split shoulders, cleaved necks, and separated limbs. Victor saw and felt a couple of the creatures attempt to claw at him or bite at him, but he was so fast, and their attacks so obviously projected that he simply stepped around them and continued his constant flow of hacking attacks. Dark blood sprayed out on his backswings and spattered as he buried Lifedrinker in their robed bodies, and Victor felt her pull herself deeper, draining Energy with each solid hit.
When the four original targets were down, along with two others that had come to their aid, Victor whirled around. He scanned the room, looking for more targets and Thayla. He saw her back by the tunnel mouth, backing up slowly, her spear in front of her, warding off the remaining five robed figures. “Dammit, you were supposed to surprise them,” Victor said, starting to charge toward her.
He felt something then, tickling his mind, and he shook his head, unable to discern what was happening. It felt different from when they’d tried to make him drop Lifedrinker; there was no command, just an unpleasant presence. Suddenly he realized his distraction; he’d stopped running, and now he heard Thayla screaming. He shook his head and looked to the cavern entrance. He couldn’t see Thayla, only the robed figures standing in a circle, clawing with their hands at something in their midst and throwing gore and blood into the air. “No!” Victor screamed and started running again.
As he charged toward the melee, something wavered in the air, and he felt that tingling presence in his mind again. Something wasn’t right, and he didn’t like that feeling in his head. He stopped again and screamed, “Get the fuck out!” He flooded his pathways with rage-attuned Energy and pushed at the presence. Suddenly the light shifted, and the scene at the tunnel mouth was very different: three unmoving cultist corpses lay on the stone floor, and two others were pressing Thayla, trying to flank her as she backed slowly toward Victor. “What the hell? On your left!” he yelled, running past her and burying Lifedrinker’s gleaming, silvery edge into the cultist's chest. She bucked and pulled, and Victor saw dark, black Energy flow in little streams to the axehead.
“Thanks!” Thayla said, standing over the last cultist, pulling her spear out of its round, bulging white eye.
“Sure,” Victor said, about to describe how they’d messed with his mind, but then he saw something strange happen to Thayla’s face. Her expression changed from grim pleasure to panic, and she whirled her spear around and started breathing rapidly, eyes wide and unfocused. “Thayla! Something’s fucking with your head.” Victor backed away and scanned the cavern. Something was still out there, and it had a grip on Thayla’s mind.
Victor cast Orb of Inspiration, and the globe appeared in his hand, brightening his immediate surroundings and pushing back the strange, sickly light of the portal. “We need more of this,” he grunted and pumped every ounce of inspiration-attuned Energy he had into the orb, swelling its size to that of a cantaloupe and then a basketball. It pulsed and glowed with brighter and brighter light as his Energy flooded it. It became hard to see any of the green light through the white-gold radiance of his orb, and when Victor pushed the huge, swollen globe into the air, all the shadows in the cavern were banished. Then Victor saw what had been hidden—another black-robed figure lurked behind the portal, this one wearing a twisted silvery crown.
As his orb had grown and bathed her in its light, Thayla’s face had lost its panicked expression, but she still stood, listless, her spear hanging limply in her grasp. Victor didn’t waste any time, turning from where he’d thrown his orb to charge at the hunched figure. The cultist or monster was scuttling away from the portal toward the far wall of the cavern as if to get away from Victor’s orb. “Where are you going, asshole? Think you can fuck with my mind?” Victor felt violated, outraged, even, not just for himself but for Thayla; it was one thing to have someone come at you openly, trying to open you up with their creepy claws, but having someone hide in the shadows and slip into your mind—that wasn’t alright with Victor.
At the last minute, when Victor was bearing down on its back, Lifedrinker raised, the cloaked figure whirled, opened its oversized mouth in a croaking hiss, and pushed dark wispy tendrils of Energy out of its outstretched hands. The waves of dark Energy coursed at Victor while he charged, but he nimbly dropped into a slide. He skidded over the dusty stone ground, right past the cultist, under its attack, and, as he passed, he chopped Lifedrinker through the cultist’s robed leg, and she parted the cloth, the flesh, and the bone, as easily as woodsman cuts a sapling.
The creature fell back, screaming, and its metal crown clattered along the stone floor. Dark blood gushed from the severed leg, and Victor stood up, watching as it writhed. “Can you talk?”
“Fool,” it hissed, then Victor saw it reach a hand toward a pouch tied to the robe’s belt, and he stepped forward and put Lifedrinker through its neck. The cultist’s head rolled away, a wide-mouthed gasp of surprise forever written on its face. A clatter made him jerk his gaze from the gory sight, and Victor saw Thayla’s spear rolling on the ground while she held her hands to her head. He walked over to her and squeezed her shoulder just as a surge of golden motes flooded into them both.
***Congratulations! You’ve achieved level 23 Herald of Carnage. You have gained 10 will, 8 strength, and have 10 attribute points to allocate.***
***Congratulations! You’ve learned the spell: Globe of Insight - Improved.***
***Globe of Insight - Improved: You create an orb of inspiration-attuned Energy that will help those within its radiance see the potential in their surroundings. Overcharge the spell with extra inspiration-attuned Energy to drive back confusion and mind-altering influences. Energy cost: Variable, Cooldown: minimal.***
When the effects faded, Victor saw that Thayla’s eyes were clearer, and she was standing up more easily. He waved away his notifications and said, “You alright? Their boss had a way to mess with our minds.”
“I’m alright, but I didn’t like that feeling; it was like someone was in my head with me.”
“I know exactly what you mean.”
“Nice job fighting it off. I felt your inspiration orb cut through the madness, but I still felt trapped until you killed that thing.”
“Any idea what they are? That one called me a fool.” Victor pointed to the dead cultist leader and started walking toward it.
“No, I don’t. They weren’t very tough, other than, you know, taking over my mind.”
“Yeah,” Victor said, nudging the corpse with his toe. “I think it had something in that pouch; it was reaching for it when I removed its head.”
“Also, the crown,” Thayla said, walking over to it.
“Careful. That thing gives me the creeps.” Victor didn’t like the sickly silvery-green metal of the crown, and the twists and whorls in the metal gave him a decidedly uneasy feeling in his gut.
“Really?” Thayla frowned briefly, then said, “Come stand closer and put your hand over it. Don’t touch it.” Victor shrugged and did as she asked. When he held his hand close to the metal, he felt a burning, crackling sensation in his skin, but it seemed fine when he pulled his hand away.
“It feels like it's drying my skin out or something. Definitely unpleasant.”
“I think your higher affinity is picking something up; maybe it’s a dangerous attunement or a curse. Maybe it has an evil spirit within. Let’s be careful with it until we can get an expert to check it out, hmm?”
“Yeah, sounds good. Any ideas?”
“Sure,” Thayla produced an old burlap sack and held it open next to the crown. “Flip it in here with a stick or something.” Victor fished out an empty wine bottle and used it to scoot the crown into Thayla’s sack which she closed up and put into her storage ring. “Alright, you check out the pouch.” Victor untied the leather pouch, and when he lifted it away from the corpse, he saw that it was covered in dark runes.
“Dimensional container?”
“I think so,” Thayla nodded.
“Here goes,” Victor trickled some Energy into the pouch, and suddenly he was aware of the enormous space within. He could see a large pile of meat in various states of decay, some smooth and pale, some dark and furry, but all of it quite disgusting looking. He saw a stack of smooth stones with various runes carved into them. Next to the runes was a little pile of green-tinged vials, and next to those was a single, dirty, torn black robe. “He didn’t have a very diverse set of interests. I see potions, rotten meat, dirty clothes, and some runestones.”
“Maybe throw out the meat and dirty clothes, and we can have the runestones and potions checked out sometime?”
“Yeah.” While Victor dealt with the more unpleasant items in the cultist’s bag, Thayla inspected the other corpses, coming away with nothing but unpleasant memories. After they came back together, Victor said, “So this is a portal, huh?”
“Yes. I’m not sure how it will work—I’ve only heard of dungeons having one entrance. Will this take us to the dungeon entrance, or does it have more than one starting point? Maybe it will put us near the end, and we’ll be killed instantly by some powerful dungeon boss.”
“I love the positivity.”
“Do me a favor, will you?” She glanced at him, and Victor nodded. “Make your inspiration orb and keep it up in there. Higher-level undead can mess with our minds, kind of like this guy did.” She pointed at the leader’s corpse.
“Sounds good. We got this, Thayla. Just a little dungeon between us and freedom, now.” Thayla gave him a weary smile. “One sec.” Victor called up his attributes, not wanting to walk into his first dungeon with unspent points:
Strength:
74
Vitality:
90
Dexterity:
38
Agility:
43
Intelligence:
29
Will:
113
Points Available:
10
He decided to leave it to his class levels to keep bumping up his strength and will, and he put five points into agility, three into intelligence and two into dexterity. “Alright, I’m ready.”
“Your orb.” Thayla smiled.
“Right,” Victor used his improved spell to summon a substantial, softball-sized globe of inspiration Energy that glowed and pulsed with a pure, warming white-gold light that pushed back the sickly green of the portal. He found it a lot easier to control now, simply willing it to float above and behind them.
“Perfect,” Thayla sighed. Victor nodded, and together they stepped into the portal, letting the cold, shifting Energy wrap around them, and pull them to an unknown destination.
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