Chapter Three Hundred And Fifty Three - 353
Darkness parted, and Felix fell much further than he expected. He hit the ground with a muted grunt, unhurt but surprised. Orienting himself, he looked behind him only to find his team huddled together in a dark chamber...but no Shadowgate.
Look up, Pit sent to him. The tenku was pawing at a nearby wall, green and black with strange plants.
Puzzled, Felix saw the glimmering face of a Shadowgate mounted to the ceiling of all places. More important than its stupid placement though, it flashed and sparked, clearly not in the best repair. The inky darkness at its center bubbled and popped like boiling tar or burning smoke. And from its depths, Felix could still feel a discordant cry of excruciating Need and Fury.
The Whalemaw was drawing closer.
"We need to shut that gate off!" he shouted.
Zara stood rapidly, looking from him to the gate. "Did you see it?"
"No, but I heard it. Can hear it, still," Felix said with a dry swallow. "It's getting closer. Karys? Karys can you hear me?"
The hooked blade at his waist was inert for an upsetting moment before it flickered with green-gold life Mana. "I do. Wonderful! I was."
"Karys how do we shut down the gate?" Felix interrupted.
"Shut it down? But then you would have to reinstate the connection, wasting more"
"We need to shut it down! Your side too! Now!" Felix felt that Need tear at him from above, an almost physical force.
"II, of course, my Lord! Find the joining glyph, reminiscent of a loosened knot."
"Found it!" Atar said, clearly picking up on the tension. He pointed at something directly above himself, at least fifty feet away. His hands charged with orange Mana regardless. "What do I do? Split it?"
"What? No! That'll misalignno! Felixmy Lord!pull out the power from the gate. Devour it!"
Felix didn't question his friend, but reached out his Intent and latched onto where Atar pointed. A glyph, shimmering with a deep blue light, woven around itself like Celtic knotwork. He seized it with his Will.
Chthonic Tribute!
The joining glyph spat fire, enough that Atar howled and leaped aside, and Felix tore it free, into his channels.
The Shadowgate flickered once, and cut out. The dark of the Void turned instantly into mere shadows, while the roar of furious Need vanished like a popping bubble.
"Karys! Did you shut down the gate on your side as well?" Felix asked his sword. There was a faint buzzing and an upsettingly long pause...before it blazed to life once more. Ribbons of green-gold Mana spun about the blade's hilt.
"It is done, my Lord."
Felix trembled, feeling muscles unclench that he'd never known he'd had. He eased himself down, against the wet, mossy stone of...wherever they had landed.
"Avet's black teeth, what was that?" Alister asked.
"Your Whalemaw," Zara said. "It sensed you, after the array slipped through."
"Yeah."
"That was not a great deal of time," Vess pointed out. She leaned on her partisan and peered upward at the ceiling-mounted Shadowgate. "How did it sense you and reach you in mere fractions of a glass?"
"Time does not flow correctly in the Void," Zara said. "It is...an unmoored Realm."
"Karys," Felix said to his blade. "How long since we left?"
"It has barely been a glass," he said.
Murmurs swept through the group, and Felix did a quick head count. Faces and names flashed through his Mind, and all of them accounted forthat was a relief. No one had been left behind by accident, and the voidbeasts had been denied entirely.
With that worry off his mind, Felix focused on the tilted room around them. As always, Mana streamed off of every surface, coiling to physical structures like a wireframe of shimmering, colored light. It was confusing and chaotic, but his long practice had made it far easier to usethat, and his exceedingly high Perception.
The room was roughly a hundred feet long and half that across, though it was not boxy by any means. Alcoves and columns, most broken, put divots in the chamber's facade while the floor was a spacious lattice of cut stone, similar to many Nymean architectural features. Beneath it's porous surface, Felix could see more water, brackish but not terribly deep. The water deepened the further out one travelled, until it dropped off into a dark pool at the far end of the chamber. Green and black plantsmoss mostlycovered the walls and ceiling, and the smell of ages old must and mold filled Felix's nose.
Exploration is level 62!
"I see a door," Ari rumbled, his head halfway to the ceiling. He pointed a heavily muscled arm, blue as ice. "There."
While the Inscriptionists and Zara were focused on the door, Felix decided he'd try his hand at reinforcing the bridge. He knew from past experience that he couldn't Stone Shape the stone of a Nymean Temple, but he had other tools to hand now.
Rime Shaping!
Mana surged from his channels and out of the bottom of his feet, hitting and spreading across the already formed bridge before snaking down into the water itself. Pillars of ice formed, thick as Ari's torso, and plunged into the sediment far below. As each one formed Felix expanded the bridge until it would certainly hold everyone's weight without question. It was for him and Pit as much as everyone else, though the giants weren't exactly lightweights. By the end of it, the water level below them had dropped substantially, and more then a few silver fish flopped on outcroppings and statuary as the murky water sank. Pit cooed in delight and with the help of the Dawnguard was able to capture a good amount of them; they'd make for a good meal later on.
Or now, he thought as Pit ate almost half of them.
"Ooh, well that's interestin'," Evie commented. Felix followed her gaze, to where something yellow-white poked up from the repurposed water. "Skeletons. A lot of em."
Dozens of bones littered the slimed statuary, some fish, some definitely not. A few were even quite large, as if a beast the size of a giant had been devoured. Felix could even see jagged scrape-marks on the massive ribs and vertebrae. The water was so low that it only covered a tiny portion of the bottom of the chasm, and there it was dark as night and thick with mud. Whatever had made its home there was clearly not present any longer.
"I do not think I want to meet whatever did that," Vess said. She looked to the Hand once before stiffening her spine. "But we should prepare ourselves. If something that big was in here, there is no telling what the rest of this Temple will hold."
The company checked their weapons and armor, ensuring they were ready for battle, and Darius nodded at his ward. Felix almost rolled his eyes. Vess knows how to lead, man.
"Aha!" Atar cried out at the same time a flare of blue-white energy zipped along the large door. "We did it!"
A deluge of water sprayed through the crevices of the door, and quickly became a startling flood as they shuddered open.
Ages-old hinges protested against the liquid weight, and everyone scrambled backward. The mages shouted in alarm and the bridge quaked from the impact of the flood, but Zara threw her hand up and into the out-pour. Blue-green light flared, and the water split around them, arcing neatly past the edges of the ice bridge and directly into the now-empty chasm below.
"T-thanks," Atar said.
"My pleasure, Atar," Zara said before rubbing the palm of her hand as if it ached. The water had finally leveled out with their own chamber as the chasm below filled up over the level of the ice bridge. She lifted her sandaled feet, immune to the chill of the water but not the rotting stink of it. "This is not freshwater."
"Great," Atar muttered. Alister helped him to his feet, but his black robes were waterlogged. They draped from his spindly form, sloshing with every movement. "Gonna have to waste Mana to dry this out."
"I wouldn't bother," Evie said, slipping to the front and peering into the darkness beyond the heavy doors. "I got a feeling we're all gonna get soaked before this is over."
Felix peered into the gloom, attempting to ignore the fetid fumes of mold and rotting...things. The room was big enough to make the Shadowgate chamber feel like a coat closet, with huge vaulted ceilings and massive statuary of robed figures within alcoves big enough to park a Manaship inside. More statues lifted from the water, which had gone still after it had leveled off, and Felix could even make out the green line along the walls where the water once rested.
"This seems...pleasant," Vess offered.
Felix grinned at her. "Better than a Domain full of Primordial-Spawn, at least?"
"Most things are," she replied dryly. Vess hefted her spear. "Who shall be vanguard?"
Before Felix could answer, a voice slipped across the still watersa harsh sibilant echo.
"Who daresss to walk in my demesne? What mortal filth tries their hand at the secretsssss of the godssss?"
The dark waters bulged and roiled, splitting for a wedge-shaped head the size of a minivan. Rivers cascaded down a face, pebbled with scales, its flesh was pale as snow and its eyes burned a vicious, brilliant red.
Name: Jadorak, the Horror of Haestus
Type: Nagafolk
Level: 241
HP: 10495/10495
SP: 14223/15843
MP: 3984/3984
Lore: Nagafolk are extremely agile swimmers and have the Endurance of a creature an entire Tier above them, no matter their level. Aggressive, territorial, and cruel, these monstrosities kill by crushing their foes or by injecting them with a deadly venom. Albino Nagafolk are rare and all the more deadly for it.
Strength: More Data Required
Weakness: More Data Required
"Who are you, to challenge me in my place of worssship?"
Fuck.
