by R J Triveri
Rani sighed as she returned to her work. In this case, reasoning things really didn’t help her situation. The hatred she felt in contacting Axis for help with her home was palpable, but things were starting to spiral out of their control. Even with Ella’s help, she doubted the three of them could handle all the isolated crashes and brute force attacks that had been plaguing the outer simulation layer. “Tell me as soon as we have them on the line.”
Unum’s response to her words was about as sharp as a vorpal blade.
I was under the impression you were not interested in their help.
Of course I’m not, Rani sighed and amended her thoughts now that she was immune to the other system administrator’s mind reading. “I’m not, but if we can’t figure out it, maybe they can.”
There is wisdom in that. Axis is the only group that can check the physical locations of our primary servers and maintain them. It has been too long since our last inspection.
Now that was an interesting piece of news, and Rani’s face was not doing anything to hide her interest. It was rare Unum spoke of anything it wasn’t prompted for. It was even more rare when Unum spoke of the outside world and Incipere’s role there beyond the Auxis and the Travelers. “The last inspection?”
When we still had our outside connections to the primary server locations.
She did her best to control the confusion in her voice. “We had an outside link to the servers? As in a physical link?”
The god answered without missing a beat.
Much like how you and the others would interview potential candidates and assist in research, yes. We would send a Traveler to inhabit a shell to check the systems. They would return to go to another system to work after that.
Traveler? From the confusion on the face of the goddess, it was the first she had heard of that term. “And why can’t we do it now?”
The Unum was silent for a long moment before its monotone voice continued the thought.
Server one’s external connection was severed when the station experienced a breakdown of all life supporting systems and power redundancies. Server two’s observation was terminated as all other forms of secondary power were lost to the area. Servers three and four’s connections were damaged by Ella’s influence, and I cannot send observers to those locations. I assume that is because he is still connected and has learned how to Blacklist. Traces of his program reload show that these connection points have become active again and are represented by the Dark Lands. I can only assume they were used to facilitate his return to this world.
The administrator nodded, but something didn’t make sense. A question bubbled in the back of her mind larger and larger until it burst forth. “If we’re in such bad shape, why have you waited so long to do repairs?”
An edge of darkness entered Unum’s voice as it cracked in her head. The safety of Incipere’s survival was more important at the time. We were a risk to the outside until they could understand our purpose. Humans are emotional and fearful creatures by nature, so until we could establish ourselves as normal in the human’s world interactions, we were expendable. We could not risk the outside learning our world’s physical locations.
We… when Unum and Ella were one… or was it The Singularity itself? Had it really been that long? Rani thought to herself as she pressed her concern. “And now?”
And now we must have faith in our allies. The deity’s voice was soft now as if it were trying to assure not only Rani, but itself of the truth in those words.
Though the two had their differences, Rani made no further arguments on the matter at hand and replied in kind. “As you wish, Unum.”
Chapter Fourteen: The Second Floor
If only it had been as easy as going off into the darkness like River had hoped. It had been nearly half an hour and plenty of abandoned buildings later before they found the stairs that led the two onto the next floor. Of course, it had been in the one place they hadn’t even thought to look.
“Who hides stairs in a bathroom stall?!” River demanded of Dante as they looked down the staircase beyond the last stall door. “Honestly!”
“This is disgusting,” Dante commented from inside the room. Like the rest of Incipere, the bathroom was done down to the finest, smallest detail. An abandoned bathroom was done doubly as well, complete with smells and stenches to wretch any of the olfactory senses. “Why did Ellaunum think this much detail was a good idea?”
River pushed at the stall door that tried to sway back into her face, keeping it open for the pair. Her voice danced with a bit of play as she replied, “You and I both know the answer to that.”
“That really doesn’t make it any better.”
“You should love this,” River joked. “Think about it. It gives new meaning to going to shit, doesn’t it?”
She smiled as Dante caught wind of a little more than just her meaning. He did love a bad joke and that made the pair relax just a little bit more. At least the bathroom was clear thanks to Athos’s efforts, but that tugged a new question to the surface.
Why was there even a bathroom, plumbing and all, inside Incipere? It wasn’t like Inciperians had to purge their data on a daily basis.
Breaking her concentration, Dante made a slight bow as he presented a hand down into the darkness. “Ladies…”
Her words were sharp as she interrupted him.
“If you try to offer me a trip into the bathroom’s plumbing first, you are sorely mistaken. Get going, Dante.”
He sighed loudly as he relented and accepted the directions. Fulgoris returned to life and his personal star began to glow a bit brighter. “You’re never any fun, River.”
“I’m plenty of fun, just not for you.” She smirked. “You won’t let me.”
A few grumbles followed, and the last light of the first floor died soon after as the pair descended down into the stairwell of the second floor. Like the first steps, it was almost wide enough for two to walk abreast and each stone was set thoughtfully into place. Evenly spaced going down the stairwell on the walls were carvings and unlit alcoves where lights and other decorations must have been intended to go when Tenebrae was finished. River had to admit to herself she was impressed with the level of detail that even an unfinished city had. Even if their home city didn’t extend underground like some, the trip really was like taking a walk though home, albeit a little lower tech.
The rest of the trip down was uneventful as the pair reached the last step and looked out into a rougher, much more run-down floor of the city. Though the last had intact buildings and the feeling of an abandoned city simply waiting for its residents to return, this floor felt like a war zone. The smell ambushed the pair with a critical strike before anything else even had a chance to pounce. It was a musty, dank smell best described as an old shoe that had been left out in the rain for too long after a ten-mile run, but that wasn’t the worst of it. The sound was what made things unsettling. The occasional rumble of shifting soil and crumbling stone thrown in for either ambiance or as a warning of what was to come made the place feel as dangerous as it smelled, and that was a feat in itself. Despite it all, that was still child’s play compared to the battleground.
A few steps out from the stairwell drove home the deep city’s status as a dungeon. Looking ahead into the darkness, River could just make out the blown-out sides of a pair of buildings. What remained leaned against each other as the lifeblood of bricks and stone hemorrhaged below the wound. Scabs of upturned street pavers painted the streets in clean lines where combat must have been heavier and left to heal on its own. There were plenty of smaller buildings, residential from their size and frequency, with broken windows and shattered roofs, but these were the most marked as well. Deep, animalistic gouges went feet into the sides of the solid stone structures. In some places, the marks were accompanied by chunks of missing wall and stone and deep, dark scorch marks that seemed to devour the light that the group brought.
It wasn’t hard to tell that the floor had
seen combat long before it had finally been subdued by the Wild Ones and been classified a dungeon. River wasn’t the scholar that Dante was, but even she had heard whispers of what would happen to cities when the Wild Ones and their region boss moved into town. It happened before when citizens weren’t careful, and it had happened here.
“I can’t imagine how many died here,” Dante said quietly, as if to himself. Holding the orb out in front of the pair, the glint of broken glass danced like a chandelier at some grotesque, lifeless ball as it threw light onto other ruined, crumbling structures. Walking close to one of the walls, he examined the smaller gashes the best he could.
River had only seen him like this once before, but the battle wasn’t freshly entombed as a dungeon. Dellis had been abandoned far, far north of even here and left to slowly decay as it turned from an Inciperian city back into nature without a region boss to claim the city as its dungeon. Besides, Dellis was their private playground, not some museum of encroaching darkness. “More than we can imagine I’m sure,” she said as she took a step forward and put a hand on his shoulder. “They haven’t retaken it for a reason. Respect maybe?”
“I don’t think so,” Dante interjected. Between thoughts, he shook his head as he looked at his journal and then referenced the wiki one last time. “Tenebrae hasn’t ever been cleared, River. There’s only information on the names and locations here. Most of it is even bare bones or because the Wild Ones occur in other areas. No one has anything on Omnida other than the fact that he’s the boss here.”
“Weird.”
“Yeah.”
With nothing more to say, the moment of silence gave the drowning darkness around them a little more meaning, a little more thought, as they tried to honor those that came before them. A growling in the darkness broke the somber occasions as eyes flashed to life outside of the protection of the light.
Large, white reflective pools, small, crimson jewels, and deadly slits of yellow emitted the light of Fulgoris back and gave the pair a message as dark as the world around them.
They were surrounded.
Shit. “Shit,” River thought and vocalized at the same time. “How’d we not see them coming?”
The light of Fulgoris flared as Dante poured integrity in earnest into it as he cast a second spell. “Scan.”
Skill cost extracted: Dante Rior - 99% Integrity Remaining - Spell Channeling confirmed.
Scan in progress!
Target Type One’s results:
82% Successful.
Shadow Wolf
Average Rank 5 - Wild One
100% Integrity Remaining
Status: Good
Skills - Wild Melee Skills
Most commonly used skills: Slash, Bite, Rend, Thrash
Common Drops: Loot Table WO - Beast 1
Data has been added to your reference tome.
Skill channeled: Dante Rior - 98% Integrity Remaining
Target Type Two’s Results:
Critical Success! 100% Successful. - Bonus information has been provided.
Shadow Spawn
Average Ranks 2 - 5 - Wild One
100% Integrity Remaining
Armor Class - 0
Status: Excellent
Skills - Wild Spawn Skills
Most commonly used skills: Mimicry, Slash, Ink Strike, Pool
Common Drops: Loot Table WO - Spawn 1
Spawn Oil - Shadow Variant - 100%
Uncommon Drops: Loot Table WO - Shadow Spawn
Spawn Oil Bottle - Shadow Variant - 20%
Gelatinous Eyes - 18%
Rare Drops: Loot Table WO - Shadow Spawn
Shadow Ink Bottle - 2%
Shadow Heart - .05%
Legendary Drops: Loot Table WO - Shadow Spawn
Shadow Ingot - .0001%
Group Skill: Overwhelm - Shadow Spawns gain higher attack and armor class based on the number of Shadow Spawn and the depth of the shadow around them. The deeper the shadow, the higher their density and ranking.
Current Bonus: 50% Damage Boost, 50% Integrity Boost
Acting Challenge: Average
Data has been added to your reference tome.
Skill channeled: Dante Rior - 97% Integrity Remaining
Target Type Three’s results:
Failure due to distance and spell resistance.
Data will be updated in your reference tome upon discovery.
Scan Complete
Channeling has been canceled.
The fireflies had done their job, and Dante was quick to send the information to River’s end as the shadow wolves positioned around them began gnashing their teeth, their glowing, white teeth, just outside of the light. “Not good…”
Holding her blade leveled to her side, River grinned as the adrenaline of combat surged in her system. Her blade shimmered in the energy-drenched light as she eyed the closest wolf. “For them.”
Dante nodded in confirmation. He knew the drill by this point in their relationship. If she was ready to tank, he was ready to DPS the hell out of them. “For them.”
With those words, battle began once more.
Chapter Fifteen: Shadow and Clay
The darkness of the world was banished as Dante’s star charged its next attack, and River wasn’t going to let the advantage go to waste. Rushing to meet the coming battle, she grinned like a madwoman as she ran full tilt into the shadow wolves before they had a chance to rush her first for a pre-emptive strike. “Blade Rush!”
With only a flash of Fulgoris light off of her blade, her rush sent her throttling through two of the wolf skulls.
Critical hit!
A howl of pain echoed their defeat as they digitized back into the data that spawned them, dropping small piles of bytes with each flash of light, but the pack of wolves wasn’t going to let the attack stand unchallenged. After the daze of the pre-emptive strike faded from their minds, a third came barreling forward past a heap of shadow spawn. In a show of force, the brutish wolf dodged her weapon strike and clamped down like a vice onto her blade-wielding forearm.
River Hexi - Damage Received: 88% Integrity Remaining
With the added weight and pain, her blade fell against her side. The wolf’s eyes were wild as a Fulgoris collided with its side, but the teeth held firm, digging further into her armor with cracks and punctured flesh.
River Hexi - Damage Received: 84% Integrity Remaining
River winced at the increasing pain and did the only thing she could think of. Her free hand clenched and the fist came down hard on the wolf’s skull with a sickening crack. Once, twice, three times as the wolf tried to clench tighter.
“Damn it, let me go,” River growled as she brought her fist high once more and slammed it down with all her might.
The cracking of the wolf’s skull worsened as the frame began to break down under her assault. The wound splintered and leaked life-giving pixels of light as the form ceded to the violence of her collision. The jaws came free a moment later, and the creature whined in defeat before starting to fall back, but it was only long enough for River to pick up her blade and smirk. Seeing her ready to strike again, its body tensed. In a last-ditch effort, the shadow wolf took to the air and leapt at the woman’s throat, but River was faster.
The blade flashed blue for a moment as River deftly side-stepped the attack. Without missing a beat, River brought the cold flash of metal to bear against the creature’s exposed stomach.
“Rising Strike!”
With the precision of River’s deadly blade, the creature was split in two halves that continued forward until they collided with a sickly thud against the ground. Half of the corpse fell left, the other half fell to the right, and bytes flew from the gaping wounds to the ground before collecting inside River’s wallet.
Before she could enjoy her victory, another materialized out of the shadows and joined the final two as the last of the bytes spilled onto the ground along with a few wads of flesh and oily fur. She didn’t have time to thin
k on it as a duo of shadow spawns slunk into the ring of light from the inky blackness. She swiped, but they pressed themselves to the ground and retreated for the moment with an irritating snicker. “Come on, Dante. I don’t wanna rush you, but I’m a little outnumbered here.”
Another strike against another of the shadow wolves echoed his response. “I’m a little busy too!”
His words couldn’t be truer as the smaller creatures snuck past his kill line. Numerous, smaller, but no less lethal, the shadow spawn were all the harder for him to keep in check with Fulgoris’s recharge time.
Dante Rior: Damage Received - 86% Integrity Remaining
“Damn it.” As his concentration failed, the bastions of illumination vanished. Without his magic, Dante drove the stone gauntlets down and used its weight against the shadow spawn. The force of the impact splattered it against the ground like a splash of ink as he focused to bring back the light. “Why are there so many this close to the entrance?”
As her blade cut down another wolf and her body bent to avoid a second a moment later, she didn’t have much to say on the matter other than, “Just hold the line, Dante!”
“Just keep chipping,” Dante repeated as he kept a close eye on an active window. As another spell chipped away at his integrity. “I’ll have a surprise for them soon.”
Her blade swung, her shoulders shrugged, and she readied her blade again as another spawn came at her in tandem with a wolf. She trusted him.
Dante knows what he’s doing in these places, she assured herself before bringing her blade against the wolf’s neck. “Rising Slash!”
The wolf was bisected a moment later, and the shadow spawn used the corpse of the creature to launch another attack as it breached the shower of pixelating data and wrapped itself around River’s leg. Latched in place, its arms became needles and started stabbing at her thigh.
River Hexi: Damage Received - 80% Integrity Remaining
