by Kyle Johnson
Which green light? The one down here, or the one up there that I specifically told you to avoid?
Both, she replied with a wolfish grin, her tongue lolling from the side of her mouth. What, you expected me to obey you? You were being foolish, and it needed to be tested. If I’d died, you would have brought me back. I didn’t die, though, and now we know that I don’t have to hide underneath your little shell. Before he could protest, the wolf darted out into the darkness, slipping past his necrotic barrier with ease. He quickly glanced at her status and saw that she was right; the necrotic barrier hadn’t drained her Endurance the way it was supposed to. His eyes zoomed across her status until they fell on one of her Perks: Burning Essence. This Perk rendered her immune to life-draining attacks; apparently, that also made her immune to necrotic damage.
“Where’s she going?” Phil asked curiously as the wolf vanished in the darkness.
“I was wrong; she can scout ahead safely,” Aranos said sourly. “Turns out she’s been crossing the boundary into the necrotic zone the whole time, even though I told her not to. She’s immune to it.”
Geltheriel grinned at the grumpy Sorcerer. “What in her nature gave you the impression she would follow your orders, Oathbinder?” the woman softly laughed. “When has she done so previously?”
Aranos grumbled but let the matter drop as the party slipped into the tunnel. Once past the doorway, the tunnel widened significantly, and they could move easily in formation without feeling cramped. As they traveled, Aranos’ Tracking Skill pointed out the passage of the undead that laid siege to the tower with no difficulty, including signs of the insubstantial bainshes and nurhuins. He hadn’t been certain if he could detect creatures that were barely corporeal, but his gaze caught tiny swirls in the dust on the floors and walls that were the only signs of the creatures’ passing.
A mental image flashed back from Silma; there was a space ahead where the escape tunnel branched out. The space looked like it had meant to be some sort of meeting or gathering area, with a dried-up fountain in the center, benches lining the periphery of the walls, and cracked glass or crystal globes hanging from the ceiling that probably once radiated light. The room was also suffused with the green glow of necrotic energy; this would be the first true test of Aranos’ Spell.
“We’re about to enter the necrotic zone,” he told the others quietly. Despite his attempt, his voice seemed abnormally loud in the still, lifeless silence of the tunnel. “If you get any weird notifications or seem to be taking damage, let me know right away.” The others nodded, and they kept moving until the wall of sickly, moss-colored light stood before them.
Aranos reached out with his senses and sighed in relief; the necrotic barrier that existed aboveground wasn’t present, here. His ward would have reduced the effect of that barrier, but it would still probably have hit the party hard. He’d been reasonably certain that the barrier wasn’t there – after all, Hector’s group had passed through it and hadn’t died – he hadn’t been completely sure. It was possible that Lily had her own shield against necrotic mana, after all, and had protected her party that way. Even had that been the case, though, Aranos guessed that the barrier would still have severely damaged the humans, and Hector probably would have said something about it.
As the party stepped through the barrier, Aranos saw the notification that they’d entered a necrotic zone. To his relief, though, his Stats didn’t budge, and none of the others indicated that they’d taken any damage, either. Aranos figured they had about four hours before they lost their first Stat points, from his Spell’s description. Hopefully, that would be enough for them to get into the city, rescue Martina and Hector, deal with Lily, and get back out again. Even so, he realized that this room would make a decent staging space, if he could somehow make his ward permanent. It wasn’t something he wanted to consider now, but if they were going to be in the city for more than a day or two, it would be nice to have a relatively secure location where they could rest and resupply. He made a mental note to consider how he could do that later on, after they’d freed the two players.
Deciding which tunnel to follow was simple; Aranos could Track the humans’ passage without difficulty. They’d exited the room through the largest passage, the one that Aranos guessed probably led to someplace aboveground. The other passages, he hoped, might lead to the subterranean passages that his studies told him wove throughout the city. He wasn’t certain, but he had a feeling that traveling those might actually be safer than moving about aboveground, where the undead would be able to sense them at a much greater distance. If nothing else, the narrower passages would make it harder for an undead swarm to surround them and overwhelm the party with sheer numbers.
The humans’ trail led aboveground, and for the first time, Aranos stepped into the city of Antas proper. His first impression was that the place was a battered, decayed ruin, utterly uninhabitable, but as he looked around more closely, he corrected himself. While the lower, more mundane structures about them were indeed tumbled and destroyed, the largest buildings still stood in fair condition. Everything was made of gray stone, streets and buildings, and the place was almost unrelentingly dreary. The buildings that still stood were cracked and pitted by time and, probably, the battles that had been fought to reclaim the city. The moon hadn’t yet emerged from behind the clouds overhead, so they couldn’t see much beyond the dim radiance of Aranos’ Spell, but the Sorcerer’s Mana Sight showed him that towers of stone dotted the skyline in every direction, and that the dome of necrotic energy glowed evilly overhead.
“Just so you know, my Life Sense isn’t going to be much use up here,” Meridian muttered to him softly. “Between your Spell and the necrotic zone, it’s down to a radius of about forty feet. I’ll be able to sweep the buildings we pass, but that’s about it.”
Aranos nodded; he hadn’t considered that the necrotic zone might limit Meridian’s Ability, but it made sense. He didn’t know what she was sensing, specifically, but necrotic mana would shield both life and soul energy from her. He hadn’t received any notifications about his Lifesense Skill, but that was probably because the Death’s Ward essentially stopped his Skill at its boundaries, anyway. He’d just have to pay better attention to his Tracking Skill and hope it would help him spot an ambush.
That same Skill made it perfectly plain to Aranos to when the party reached the spot where Lily had turned on the others. Reading the signs of the battle a simple enough matter; the aswang had attacked Martina from Stealth, and the Ranger’s movements after that had grown steadily weaker and less sure until eventually, she collapsed and was dragged off by what looked like a giant, arachnoid creature that his Beast Lore identified as an anisi. The anisi had been fighting with Hector before, along with what he recognized as a magically resistant, reptilian munjuin and an oversized ape that his Beast Lore recognized as a saskitch. At some point, the Warrior had been overcome, although it looked like he had badly wounded the anisi and done some damage to the saskitch. Then, the munjuin had carried Hector away while the wounded anisi dragged Martina.
They followed the trail for another half-hour through the city, moving as silently as possible, constantly alert for any signs of the undead. This part of the city seemed almost empty, though; neither his Tracking Skill nor Meridian’s senses detected any signs of nearby undead. Aranos’ best guess was that the undead that attacked their tower had all been pulled from this area, and other creatures either hadn’t been allowed to drift back in or hadn’t had the chance to, yet. He didn’t know what the undead did in the city; since they didn’t need to eat, drink, or sleep and they never got bored or restless, it was possible they were all stuffed into buildings or piled underground, waiting until their masters needed them or something living passed by. He hoped the former wasn’t true; his ward would muffle the presence of the party from the undead, but it wouldn’t completely hide them, and he doubted the necrotic zone limited their senses the way it did Meridian’s. The last thing they needed was
to find out that one of the nearby towers was packed with undead by being swarmed by the creatures.
They passed without incident, though, until Aranos sensed that they were getting closer to Silma. He could see her tracks clearly, and his Skill told him that she was close by up ahead. He assumed that meant she had found the Temple of Virnal but was either waiting outside or – more likely, knowing the fenrin – she’d gone in ahead of them to see if she could scout out where the captured players were being held, and what sort of opposition they’d be facing.
The temple appeared unremarkable from the outside. It was the same gray stone as all the other buildings, the exterior cracked and broken, with a dozen or so steps leading to a doorway that gaped open. The green aura of the necrotic zone pulsed clearly within – whatever Lily had done to keep Martina and Hector from dying, she hadn’t done it to the whole building – and the only tracks Aranos could make out led into the building, not out. That meant that Lily was still inside, which Aranos supposed made sense; whatever deal the woman had made with the masters of the city probably didn’t give her free rein to wander about.
Before they entered, Aranos had the party make a full circuit of the building so that he and Meridian could examine not just it, but all the nearby structures, as well. As far as the pair could tell, the buildings were empty, but that didn’t reassure the Sorcerer. If the necrotic zone limited Meridian’s senses, then a stronger barrier could probably hold them out completely, and while he was sure that no undead had entered or left the nearby buildings in the past few days, he couldn’t be any more certain than that. In Haerobel, where there had been no rain to wash away traces, he’d been able to spot tracks that were a century or more old. Antas, though, seemed to endure normal weather, and sometime in the week before the party had arrived, a heavy rainstorm must have swept through and washed any tracks away. His Scent Ability still told him that there had been undead around in the past few weeks, but it wasn’t accurate enough to tell him when exactly they’d been there.
“I don’t like this,” he muttered to Geltheriel as he studied what little traces he could find. “If someone planned far enough ahead, they could have packed each of these buildings with undead just for this moment and warded the place against Meridian’s senses. They could be filled with the things and we’d never know.”
“As well, you have told us that the city is honeycombed with underground tunnels,” the Shadedancer reminded him. “Any of these buildings could connect to those. Would your Tracking Skill tell you of their passage below ground? Does the Shaman’s Ability function through several feet of earth?”
“The answer is probably no to both,” he sighed. “I think we have to assume that this is part of the trap. Once we’re inside, undead are going to pour from these buildings and swarm us.” He pulled up his map and glanced at it, realizing that the path they’d taken hadn’t been the shortest route from the tunnel to here but wandered quite a bit, as if Lily hadn’t known where she was going – or, more likely, specifically planned the route she wanted to take.
Aranos nodded in understanding; he’d expected this to be a trap, and he wasn’t disappointed. Seeing the trap didn’t automatically disarm it, of course. He’d need to make some preparations if they were going to have a chance of getting out of this. Fortunately, his experiences with the siege of the tower had taught him a bit about how to reverse an ambush, and he was reasonably certain that nothing was going to happen until they entered the temple, probably until they faced Lily. She wanted him to come face her, and he was sure that his presence was a necessary part of the ritual she was weaving. Either that, or she really wanted to fight him once the ritual was complete and she’d become fully Corrupted. Aranos could honestly see it going either way.
He was tempted to ignore the bait offered them and return to the tunnel using the straightest route, but that would doubtlessly trigger the trap laid for them. If they started moving away from the temple, whoever was in charge would know the game was up and would spring their ambush early. That didn’t mean they had to rush right in, though. The party could loiter outside the temple for some time, and Lily and her new allies would be unsure what the party was doing. They knew Phil was in contact with Hector, meaning the party would be aware if anything within became urgent; maybe they were waiting for the dawn, when the undead would be weaker. There would be uncertainty, and in a situation like this, uncertainty benefited Aranos more than Lily. He gave his party some brief instructions without explaining, since he wasn’t sure if they could be seen and heard outside of his ward, before he began his preparations.
Aranos settled on the street outside the temple, at the bottom of the steps, and closed his eyes. He sent a quick message to Silma to alert him if he was needed, then sank into his mindscape. He opened his eyes and sat quickly down in his chair, taking only a few minutes to race through his mana spirals, checking them for instabilities. He noticed immediately that his Enhanced mana types were completely mixed and roiled chaotically in a shape that was only the roughest approximation of an hourglass. He hesitated, torn between fixing his mana or crafting the Spell, but he realized his spirals had to come first. He hated losing the time it would take to do it, but if he didn’t, the Spell would take exponentially more power, maybe too much for him to realistically cast it.
Sighing, he began separating out his newer mana types, nesting them within the outer cone of his soul mana. It took him a while to make it work; his spirit mana simply wouldn’t go where he wanted it, no matter how he tried, and it kept mixing with his soul mana, which didn’t seem to have any resistance at all to other mana types. His vital mana was very easy to manipulate, though, and he finally hit on the idea of weaving his spirit mana through an intricate web of vital mana, then nestling that in a cone inside his soul mana. The hardest part of that was creating a pattern of vital mana that would guide his spirit mana from one hourglass to the next without letting it spill out and ravage the rest of his spirals.
Once his newest mana types were finally flowing freely, he began to envision a Spell that was at once extremely simple and vastly complicated. The actual spell-form that guided the mana was about as simple as something could be, but the way he wanted to feed mana into it was far more complicated. It utilized both vital and soul mana, fed into a pattern of life mana, and it took him several tries to correctly envision the mechanism that would allow the Spell to be cast. Once he had it, though, the actual Spell was easy enough to fashion, and he didn’t even have to drop down to 50% of his max SP before the construct shivered into reality in his mind. Once it was done, he rose from his mindscape and cast the Spell, charging it and leaving it hanging in the air beyond the doorway. It was something of a gamble, but as far as he could tell, it was also the only real chance they had to be sure they made it out of the temple.
He took a deep breath and signaled the others, and Saphielle took the lead as they entered the dark temple. The doorway opened into a wide but narrow room with three corridors leading out of it, one straight ahead and one to each side. Silma’s tracks to the sides went both into and out of the corridors, which Aranos took to mean the fenrin hadn’t found anything interesting in either direction. Her path down the central corridor didn’t return, though, so Aranos guided the party down that passage.
The group stopped as Aranos sensed a hanging ward a few feet within the corridor, one that seemed to be designed purely as an alarm system, which made Aranos immediately suspicious. Rather than disjoining the Spell, he shifted it so that it would still be active, but the party would pass under it. As he did, he kept his senses alert, and sure enough, a second, far less noticeable Spell hung ten feet beyond the first. As Aranos diverted it, as well, he probed more carefully with his senses…
Yep, she slipped a third one under the floor. Probably figured that after finding the second one, I would stop looking. Although, really, after the second one, wouldn’t it make sense that I’d look even more carefully? He frowned, and rather than touching the third Sp
ell, he forged a sheet of earth mana as a bridge, taking them over the Spell and not even touching it.
Silent and empty doorways pierced the walls at regular intervals to either side, but the party kept moving forward. Aranos’ Tracking Skill assured him that Silma had gone into and returned from these side paths, but he’d also belatedly realized that the fenrin could just mentally tell him which direction he needed to go. The celestial wolf assured him that straight forward was the correct path; apparently, the side passages led to empty, abandoned rooms.
Aranos finally picked up Lily’s tracks coming out of one of these. He’d seen the trail the woman left going into the temple – at some point, she’d lost the anisi, and the saskitch had taken up the burden of carrying Martina – but her trail after that had gone straight forward and hadn’t veered to either side. He stopped and examined these new tracks; she’d come out of the side passage less than fifteen minutes earlier, not moving in any particular hurry, and headed down the central corridor the same direction the party was traveling.
They moved even more cautiously now, and Aranos found three more wards that he either diverted or avoided. As they passed, he felt Silma moving back toward them, and an instant later, the fenrin appeared from Stealth in front of the party.
The largest room is just ahead, pack leader, she sent to him silently along with a mental snapshot of the space. Our prey knows I am here, but she doesn’t know exactly where, and I don’t think she knows that I know.
Aranos grimaced as he realized that Silma would have tripped all the wards he’d diverted or bypassed; of course, Lily knew that the fenrin was in the temple. However, not only wouldn’t Lily be able to find the wolf unless she had a summons with amazing senses, she probably wouldn’t even know that the intruder was a wolf. As far as Aranos knew, being a Summoner didn’t grant a Wizard the power to mentally communicate with summoned creatures, the way he could with Silma. Lily’s summons would understand her, but the communication probably went all one-way.
