Book 2: Chapter 4: Moving Up
Victor stood over the hewn corpses of the hags, panting and dripping blood. When he felt the encroaching darkness at the edges of his vision, he worried at first that there was a third hag or something worse, but then he realized it was simply his vision darkening from blood loss.
“C’mon,” he said, staring at the still, pale flesh. He put Lifedrinker’s axehead against the stone floor and leaned heavily on her handle, willing himself to slow his breathing. As he’d hoped, golden motes began to gather on the dead bodies, and then a stream of Energy surged into him, spreading through his pathways, into his Core, and then out again to speed the knitting of his flesh and partially renew his depleted blood supply.
Victor straightened and looked around; he still stood at the end of the hallway he’d discovered, but now the heavy iron door was partially open, and the stones at his feet were smeared and painted with dark red and black stains. He took a few deep breaths, stretching his back and flexing his legs, happy to see that most of the deep slashes the hags had delivered were closed up. Some were still stiff and sore, with thick scabs, but he was out of danger when it came to bleeding to death.
“Nasty bitches,” he muttered, looking at the broken corpses. He didn’t let his eyes linger long, but he took a moment to pick up the long, razor-sharp knives the two hags had used against him. The weapons had a single edge and no point, designed with slashing in mind. They reminded Victor of miniature cleavers; he wondered if there was a proper name for that kind of knife.
Both knives had polished wooden handles made of dozens of different colored woods pressed together, and Victor marveled at the craftsmanship. He saw a few runes along their blades and figured they might have some enchantments. Happy to take something away from the harrowing encounter, he put the two blades into his ring and then summoned forth his Globe of Inspiration, willing it to resume following closely behind him. As the ball of warm white-gold light took shape, the shaft of courage-attuned light that had initially saved him faded away.
Victor moved to the door and pulled it open, Lifedrinker held ready. The open door revealed a continuation of the corridor, and, looking down into the shadows, Victor didn’t see any other doors. “Gorz, you keep track of our movements?”
“Of course, Victor, I couldn’t stop mapping if I wanted to.”
“That’s kinda shitty. What if you wanted to do something else?”
“No, Victor, you misunderstand; I don’t actively map where I’ve been. It just happens as a function of my enchantments. I don’t think about it, really, until there’s a reason to review the data.”
“Huh, alright. Please let me know if you see any sort of pattern or some hint as to where we are in relation to where Thayla, er, that fucking skull, dumped us.”
“I know, spatially, exactly where we are in relation to that location, but I think you mean if I see a passage or stair that might lead that way, correct?”This chapter made its debut appearance via N0v3lB1n.
“Yeah, I can’t burrow through stone, so we’ll need to find our way through the passages.” Victor chuckled at the idea while slowly advancing into the hallway. He noticed that the temperature, while still chilly, was nothing like it had been at the bottom of the pitfall. He wondered if some of those runes that didn’t activate the secret door were responsible for dropping the temperature. Was it to preserve fallen, dead adventurers’ bodies? Was it meant as some sort of torture? Did the fungus in there require a cold temperature to thrive? “Too many questions.”
“Pardon, Victor?”
“Nothing, Gorz, just thinking out loud.”
As he walked along the stone corridor, Victor’s mind kept returning to the two hags and how they’d manifested that palpable darkness. It had seemed to disperse when he’d cast his new spell, but his spell description didn’t say anything about banishing darkness spells. It said it made him immune to fear effects, though, making Victor wonder if the darkness hadn’t been tangible but some sort of mental trick or manipulation. He wondered how screwed he’d have been if his will wasn’t so high. What if he’d been unable to shake off the panic enough to cast any spells? “No question about it—I’d be hag food.” After a moment, he said, “Just talking to myself, Gorz.”
“Thank you, Victor.”
After another minute of quiet stalking, he came to a left turn in the corridor, and when Victor peered around the corner, he saw a wooden door. When he approached it, he could tell it was in good repair; no light or shadows stood between the slats, and the hinges and latch seemed to be in good working order. Victor reached forward, pushed down on the crude iron latch, lifting it free of the bracket, and pulled it slowly open. It creaked, but just a little. When it was an inch or two ajar, he peered through the opening.
Another stone block room lay beyond the door, illuminated by half a dozen flickering candles on little tables that reminded Victor of old-fashioned school desks. His globe cast a beam of light through the open door, though, laying a shaft of bright light through the center of the room, over a few of the desks, and alerting the creepy, hooded creatures sitting at them. They lifted their cowled heads, peering toward the light source and hissing. “Shit,” Victor grunted, then backed up a step, readying Lifedrinker.
A cold wind whistled through the cracks around the door, and when Victor saw palpable darkness writhing through the opening, pushing against his light, he didn’t waste any time and cast Heroic Heart. As the heat spread out from his chest, the wispy darkness seemed to fade away, and the cold wind felt more like a simple breeze. He didn’t know how long his new spell would last and decided to go on the offensive, no longer worried about what might be waiting on the other side of the door. He strode forward, pulled it open, and stared into the cloaked figures' hooded, flickering red eyes.
They didn’t utter any words or screams, just continued to hiss sibilantly as they swarmed toward him, knives in their hands. Two of the creatures near the back stood stock still, lifting their hands and seeming to manifest blue, swirling Energy between the pale, clawed appendages. Victor surged forward, a choked-up grip on Lifedrinker, unable to make a wide swing in the corridor.
As he chopped at the closest creature, he cast Channel Spirit, filling Lifedrinker with a blazing, red surge of rage-attuned Energy. She ripped forward, her bright blade slicing through the creature’s robe and biting into something dense and soft beneath it. She pulled and sank deeply into its flesh, and Victor could almost feel her exult in the Energy she drew from it.
As Victor pulled her back to block an arcing knife swipe, the creatures in the back unleashed their balls of blue fire, sending them swirling through the air, over the heads of their comrades, and right at Victor’s face. He crouched and hopped to the side, planting his back against the corridor’s stone wall, and the balls of blue flame howled past, smashing into the stone ceiling of the hall a few feet past him. They expanded into a blazing blue inferno, the heat of which singed Victor’s eyebrows and caused him to close his eyes in reflex. Deep pain in his thigh and a sharp pain in his abdomen had him blindly cleaving in an arc, trying to knock away the swarming creatures.
When the heat faded, he opened his eyes, and while he continued to hack at the creatures, he saw a knife with a pale hand and arm still attached jutting out of his thigh. Victor screamed, kicking out with his good leg to give himself a bit of space, then he released Lifedrinker with one hand and yanked the knife out. He threw it, arm still grimly hanging on, at the creature in front of him. Its smoldering eyes blinked, and Victor gripped Lifedrinker and made a quick chop at its neck. She sliced through its robe, and Victor felt the blade bite through a stiffly resisting neck, and then the creature fell, flopping, to the ground.
For the first time, Victor could freely examine the larger room where he’d fought the skeleton. There weren’t any doors, but, in one corner, a spiral, iron stairway disappeared through the ceiling into darkness. Sitting at the foot of the stairway was a matching black iron chest. “Gorz, did you notice if that chest and stairway were there the whole time? I feel like I would have noticed it.”
“Victor, my initial map of this space did not include a stairway. Perhaps killing the bone colossus was key to revealing the path forward.”
“Bone colossus?”
“A name Reevus-dak gave a similar creature that he slew.”
“Huh, I guess it fits.” Victor approached the stairway and chest. The stairway wasn’t very large; perhaps two people could mount it at once, but it would be uncomfortable. The chest was about the size of a big shoebox like you might get with a pair of hiking boots. He knelt before it, running his eyes over it in the light of his globe. He didn’t see anything strange or suspicious about the black wrought iron. No runes were etched or painted onto the metal, and the clasp was a simple loop hung over an iron peg. He could see where a lock might be placed, but there wasn't one.
Victor stood and walked over to the unmoving bone colossus. He’d noticed that the bones had sagged, their unnatural vigor leaving them when the creature died its true death. Victor grabbed hold of one long femur and yanked on it, bracing his foot on the lower leg. The bone yanked free, and he took the four-foot bone back over to the chest.
He wanted to use the bone to lift the lid open, but the knobby end was too clumsy to lift the latch, so he held it down with his foot and used Lifedrinker to shave a point onto one end. That done, he extended the bone from an outstretched hand and flipped the little catch up. Nothing happened, so he used the bone to flip the lid of the chest open. Again, after the lid flapped and clattered open, nothing else happened.
“Better safe than sorry, I guess,” Victor shrugged and stowed the long, sharp bone into his ring. When he looked into the chest, he saw what looked like a folded black metal mesh cloth that winked with a soft luster in the light of his globe. He reached in a hand and felt the black rings of metal, noting their smooth polish—these weren’t wrought iron.
He lifted the garment, startled by its dense heaviness. It unfurled as he pulled it from the chest, and he saw that it was a shirt of black, glimmering rings, sewn to a soft, fur-lined leather vest, also stained black. “Nice,” Victor said in a hushed voice.
“What did you find, Victor? It seems to be a garment?”
“Yeah, it’s some armor. Seems way too big for me, though.”
“Bond with it, Victor.”
“Ahh, good idea, Gorz.” Victor pulled off his torn, stained shirt, laughing at the shredded state of the back, then he shrugged into the heavy, ring-covered leather shirt. It felt like the weighted vest the dentist puts on you when they take x-rays, but the leather lining was soft and comfortable.
Victor looked at the oversized, hanging piece of armor and then at the skeleton, a thought crossing his mind. “Nah, couldn’t be; even this big shirt wouldn’t fit that thing.” He touched a hand to the softly gleaming metal links and channeled some Energy into the shirt. It rustled and clinked as it softly shuddered, shrinking to fit his torso perfectly.
***Ringed Shirt of the Gloom Warden: Artificed armor. Enchantments: 1. Hardened black lacquer - greatly enhances the durability of natural steel. 2. Form-fitting, self-repairing, self-cleaning.***
“Hell yes. Some nice armor, Gorz, and best of all, it’s self-cleaning.”
“Congratulations, Victor!”
“Thanks,” Victor stood and flexed his torso and arms about. The sleeves of the chain shirt only fell to his elbows, and his arms moved easily within them. Overall, he was very comfortable and felt much more protected than he ever had in the cheap leather armor he’d bought from the mine’s Contribution Store.
Victor looked at the iron stairway and said, “Gorz, this stairway is going up, and we had to kill a big tough guy to reveal it. Do you think we, like, fell to the bottom of the dungeon and need to work our way back up to get to Thayla and maybe the exit?”
“I’m afraid it's all speculation at this point, Victor. We have no idea what that door, where Thayla betrayed you, led to.”
“Okay, but she didn’t betray me. That fucking skull tricked her.”
“Noted, Victor.”
Victor hefted Lifedrinker and stepped onto the stairway, slowly making his way upward, accompanied by the creaking joints of the narrow, wrought-iron stairway.
