Sword, Scorch, Scintillation

  The cast cost me my spell, though the sword and lights and fire still did appear. I should have been recording, but I didn’t want to spend any time near the titan’s corpse, and the apes were starting to look hungry.

  I sent my sword ahead past the singing tree to tear down the door before we entered the room. Neither of us trusted the singing tree’s song, and we figured we’d pass through as quickly as possible. I could have cut down the tree, but that seemed a sure fire way to get the worst fairy tale ending.

  The door swung open rather then tore, which I viewed as doubly suspicious. Something was off about this room. A more thorough scan off both ceiling and floor revealed a chute descending down from above, but no clue as to its purpose. Perhaps it was the other end of that crack I’d found.

  “I think you should go first,” I said to Attar.

  He looked at me with surprise, “I won’t protest, but you are better suited for traps.”

  “I’m most worried about mind control right now. I could restrain you, but I don’t think you’d even realize I was attacking before it was too late.”

  I wasn’t bragging or diminishing Attar and he knew it. He’d just brought me back from death and denied a titan after all. But my particular skills were more suited for defeating a necromancer, than a necromancer was for defeating me. Especially if I called upon dark magic.

  The tree did nothing when Attar walked past it, and continued to do nothing as he walked out the easily swinging door to the room on the other side. I’d already sent the light and fireball ahead so he could see.

  “There is nothing here,” he said, “at least from what I can make out by this sputtering torch of yours.”

  You’d think the necromancer would be the one better at seeing in the dark.

  Alas it was up to me to walk past the singing tree and its fountain and the treasures my ring noticed buried beneath and take a look.

  As it turned out, even my eyes couldn’t fully pierce the gloom. The room was enormous, another quarter pyramid like the vampire room if I had to guess. The room was distressingly empty. A burnt shield discarded at the door, and a ladder leaning uselessly against the far wall. This was no grand tomb, or if it had been one, it had been plundered long ago.

  I assumed the door directly to my left would lead to another corner of the room, and also that the staircases, which always were found in halls, would not be found that way. So instead I lead the way to the right, to the far door in the corner of the room’s L there.

  That room (after a quick door smashing) was also empty, though much smaller. Only one exit presented itself on my right, a flimsy wooden portcullis, which I smashed so easily it hardly made a sound.

  For the first time in weeks (months?... days?) my careful creeping paid off. Beyond the portcullis was a long winding hallway, and, about 75 feet down the hallway, was a near invisible cord stretched taut across it. A careful investigation with my ring revealed a strange series of mechanical arms in the wall whose function I couldn’t determine. It appeared as though they would reach straight and cross one another, possibly wrapping the invisible cord around the victim. It reminded me of a mole trap. A snare, maybe? But it was set strangely low.

  I ducked back around a corner and let my sword handle it.

  Something snapped twice, and my sword was floating between two loose ends of nearly invisible rope which had failed to wrap around it.

  The corridor continued for another seventy or so feet, and then ended abruptly in a bookshelf with no doors along its entire length. It was so obvious I almost felt bad about looking it over for the switch or pulley which would let me past.

  The lever was a book, which I found with my ring almost as quickly as I thought to look for it. I pulled the lever and the bookshelf spun around, leaving me in the room with the three hungry looking apes and their strange idol.

  The apes had an idol. An evil looking thing given the crude shape of a human made from rude red clay.

  My sword punched through the bookshelf behind me to intercept the charging apes. It had to to circle wide to avoid punching through me as well, so I missed the first strike against the apes by a wide margin.

  That was fine. My ring showed me Attar on the other side of the bookshelf a moment later. I stepped forward as he pulled the lever and

  *BRRRRRRAAAAAA*

  A low, growling explosion rocked the room. Books and timber flew in all directions, and a noise like an erupting volcano (I had first hand experience of what that sounded like) deafened me and sent the apes into a frenzy.

  The warlocks were trapping their secret doors now? That was not playing fair.

  The first ape took advantage of my confusion and bit me in the leg. The second threw a punch at my chest. A dodged the second but was struck by the first. Both did about the same amount of damage.

  I stabbed my lance down and scored a deep scratch along the back of its arm as it pulled back. My sword swept at the legs of the ape who had yet to engage and bisected him instead.

  Several more blows landed from the wily apes while I failed to deal damage in return, but none did more than stagger me.

  Attar wasn’t coming to reinforce me which was worrying, but I couldn’t spare the attention. An easy fight could become a deadly one if I turned my back.

  Several more seconds of struggle led to my spear through one of the ape’s hearts, and a useless attempt on my wood infused leg leading nowhere.

  I had to give it to the final ape. He was brave. Rather than run when the odds were against him he stood his ground. My first strike wounded his right leg, which slowed him. My next took him in the head.

  I didn’t have time to celebrate victory. Attar wasn’t behind me for some reason.

  I tore down the bookshelf with my sword and ran into the hallway. Attar was standing unharmed, facing back down the hall. Three charred corpses lay piled in the hall.

  “What happened?” asked Attar.

  I walked past him to study the corpses, “I was going to ask you that. What did you do?”

  He gestured to the knight, small group of near naked mercenaries and his ogress.

  “That trap lured another troop of apes over to flank us from behind. I summoned my ghosts to deal with them, but instead of a second knight manifesting on the flagstone I chose, an immense rush of fire like your inferno spell issued forth instead.”

  “Could you do it again?”

  “I could. I can feel it. Like I invented a new binding for a ghost.”

  “Have you heard any whispers? Made any bargains with demons or elementals? Spoke with any gods?”

  “Besides yourself?” there was a slight tease in his voice, “none.”

  “It was dark magic,” he continued, “reality warped around me, I felt it, I was felt by it. If I hadn’t been so disoriented I would have called out, but I could barely stand steady enough to make sure the apes were dead.”

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  He frowned, “Would using the inferno pull me along the darkened path?”

  “I think the rules of nature themselves have been rewritten,” I said, “Sometimes the time for a thing is past. You can water a fallen log, but the water is better spent on a sapling. All I know is that the warlocks are seductive, but not all changes are evil.”

  “So you don’t know.”

  “Not a clue,” I confirmed.

  “Why not say that?”

  “I’m one of the Magi. We’re not allowed to.”

  I stepped gingerly over his charred apes, “Come, we’re going back to the pyramid, this was clearly the wrong path.”

  The far end of the quadrant held a heavy stone door which poured acid once my sword managed to force it open.

  Once the fumes cleared we were greeted with the sight of a pentagonal room with a mosaic of a towering figure on the floor. The creature appeared to be standing in the ocean, but it only rose up to his ankles, and heads of a hundred animals sprouted all over his body. A progenitor of monsters, or maybe even life itself.

  Of more interest were the two doors. One on the left, one on the right.

  I smashed both, since I had more sword ready anyway.

  Both sets of doors led to a hallway. We scouted the left hand hallway, which, after fifteen minutes there and back, was revealed to loop nearly completely back on itself before ending with a solid stone wall.

  The second doorway entered a hallway in the middle, giving us a path to the left and the right, however the right hand path ended immediately a mere ten to fifteen feet from the door. The left hand turned right, then widened out into a room about fifty feet down the path.

  The room was the standard thirty by thirty square I’d grown used to. A thin straight channel made its way around the room in a square, allowing a small water course to flow through. Off in one corner lay a pair of silver slippers.

  “More fairy tales?” Attar murmured.

  It wasn’t one I recognized. The shoes were far too small for me, so I deferred to Attar’s expertise, “One you know?”

  “No. It has the feeling of one, that’s all.”

  The shoes fit him near perfectly, and matched his red robes rather nicely.

  “There is magic in these, I can tell,” Attar said. He then took a step forward, and vanished, leaving me alone in the depths.

  ***

  Ten minutes passed without Attar’s return. I was beginning to think he was right about the shoes being magical.

  I didn’t know if he’d vanished from my senses, the room, or the dungeon. In theory he still had my soul with him, but I needed to be able to sense him to cast a spell to link us. I could return back up the dungeon to look for him, or continue with the exploration as if nothing had happened.

  It was counter intuitive, but continuing to explore the dungeon was the best choice. Attar could handle himself. Not as well as I could, but better than most. If he’d returned to a previous floor, he could find his own way back to Brace and the others and he’d be safe there.

  If he’d turned invisible, theoretically he had a good reason for not becoming visible again, and there was little I could to to find him. Even my necromancer sense provided by the ring did nothing, nor did my spider-sense.

  If he’d been moved to a place we hadn’t been, then my best bet for finding him was expanding my search outward or waiting for him in this exact room until he arrived. As my search was destructive, the further I delved into the dungeon, the more threats I’d eliminate and the more doors I’d open. An ordinary man might be served better waiting in place, but on the other hand, an ordinary man would have never made it this far.

  The only hiccup in my reasoning was the problem of the fifth floor. We’d yet to connect the stairway to the rest of the path, meaning if Attar was above the fifth floor, he’d be unable to join with me under his own power unless he cleared the path himself.

  On the other hand, he could defeat the foes of the fifth floor, but the closer in proximity we descended towards the chasm, the more dangerous our foes became. If he was above the fifth floor I’d have to trust him to find the path on his own, while I continued downward.

  It was as the old myth went, “Trust and they will follow, if you look back even for an instant they will be lost forever.”

  Always easier to say than do.

  As always, I was better served by safety, and caution would be faster than haste. It was time to record another spell before the sun found itself devoured once more. Even after a decade of practice, my instincts still rebelled against the slower approach, but I’d had the lesson hammered into me over a lifetime of experiences and I merely allowed myself to feel the rebelling without acting in accordance with it.

  ?Clothes’ Hanger? Safe Teleport II

  Quick Teleport: The caster and his gear moves 150 ft over the course of four seconds, but does not exist in the intervening space.

  I’d been running dangerously low on teleportation spells. I now had my durability to rely on, but some traps couldn’t be overcome by brute force alone.

  Soldier’s Swords

  “Tear down the door on the other side of the room.”

  The swords moved. The door held.

  I was down to using my less useful spells now. I needed to find shelter soon, especially without Attar to watch my back.

  Tunnel

  I aimed at the lock, which soon fell to the steady chipping of the spell. I should have started with Tunnel it was even somewhat quieter than tearing down the door wholesale, but it was less likely to set off any traps waiting for me.

  Quieter wasn’t enough.

  The door I was breaking through swung open and a man and a woman stepped out, both dressed in rags.

  “At last!” cried the woman, “are we finally free?”

  The man threw out his arm and nodded his head towards me, “’Ware. Our saviour is no mortal being,” he changed his address to me,“Who and what are you?”

  I lowered my spear, but not all the way. I’d already been tricked by the huldra before, “Oswic, Magi of the Sacred Order, Wise Man of Blackbridge, The Starcaller of Dawn, Master of Twilight, Voice of the Storm, Speaker on the Wind, and Five Time Hoopstone Champion of Ravenhold, Darkswallower of Bleakfort, and Mother of Light.”

  A feral grin lit the man’s face, he’d been in the darkness too long, “Wise Man and Mother? You are a god then.”

  For the first time since I’d been confused as one, those who thought me divinity didn’t look afraid. They looked... eager if anything. Relief, maybe?

  “I am a man. A mortal trapped by the warlocks just as yourselves. Who am I addressing?”

  “A mortal who wields the same dark magic as the warlocks,” the woman said with a hint of rebuke, “we can see it on you, plain as the stones beneath our feet.”

  “Hidimbi, please, the man just freed us,” again he turned to me, “I am Jatasura, and this is my cousin Hidimbi, no relation. Thank you for freeing us sir.”

  No relation to what? Was there another famous Hidimbi? Was the man not related to his cousin? They were clearly foreign, with dark skin and hair—darker even than Attar’s—and spoke with a slight accent. Perhaps it was a turn of phrase I’d not heard before. I didn’t even recognize the style of their names.

  “I’m glad to see you free.”

  I strode past the two to investigate their cell. If they’d survived in there this long, it might be a secure place to pass the night.

  The room only had the one entrance which was promising. Scorch marks marred two of the walls, but there was no source of fire. A giant statue of a baby took up the nearest side of the room, one with a hungry expression, and large, grasping hands. The fingers and limbs were even slightly articulated, as per the vision of my ring.

  The room was strangely clean for a place where two prisoners had been held for weeks on end. There was no food, water, nor latrine evident.

  Jatasura had followed me in, “The warlocks told us the statue would always provide. We were too scared to touch it, yet still, we survived.”

  “The statue appears rigged to move when touched,” I said, studying it, “Perhaps to grasp or capture its victim. I’ve seen a similar statue on a higher floor, though not as strange. There is something maternal about the statue, yet... where is the mother?”

  I was muttering by the end, more to myself than Jatasura. The statue was clearly magical, and that worried me, even if Jatasura had said the statue provided for him.

  Jatasura’s eyes widened, “Then it is well we didn’t touch it. I should like to die in a stone embrace. Are you able to guide us from this terrible place?”

  I didn’t want to reveal weakness to those who I had just met, not when their story still left me with questions. There was some association with care-taking to the statue, but only food and comfort, if Myrra’s senses worked for me. Other aspects of their captivity should have been more evident.

  “All things in their time,” I said, “When the new day comes we will set forth, though I must warn you, a terrible rift keeps the prison separated from time and space, and will do so until I have overcome this dungeon.”

  The woman, Hidimbi, frowned, “Yourself and no other?”

  “Any with the skill to travel the caverns deep below the dungeon, and with the will towards freedom.”

  Jatasura bowed toward me, “Then, as the divine denying divinity, we will aid your mortal endeavours.”

  His cousin glared at him but also bowed, “I will not go against Jatasura’s word.”

  Again, that uneasy feeling. I smiled at both of them all the same, “Let us sleep for the night. If the statue provides as you say, we will not even need to use my rations.”

  I scattered my bones to bar the door before choosing a section of floor, “Please, though it sounds strange, do not sleep near me, I am under a curse. Any that wound me will die. I’d hate for a simple scratch to end in tragedy.”