Chapter 37: Things Unknown

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.The origin of this chapter's debut can be traced to N0v3l--B1n.

“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.

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.