Soulstone: Oblivion (World of Ruul Book 3)

by J. A. Cipriano

  But I had to assume every platform would sink into the lava after it was landed on.

  “Okay, here’s what we have to do,” I said, praying that Terra and Nova would be able to figure it out too, if their half of the maze was even the same as ours. “We’re gonna have to jump these things together.”

  Crash gave me a look. “Are you kidding me? How are we supposed to time all those jumps so we land at the same time?”

  I grinned and held a hand out.

  His gaze slid from my outstretched hand to my face, and he slumped in place. “If you ever tell anybody about this, I swear to God I’ll kill you,” he said as he took the hand.

  “I love you too, Crash,” I said, trying to judge the distance we’d need for a good running start. “Remember, you have to believe you can jump that far. Like your life depends on it.”

  “Yeah, because it actually does,” Crash sighed. “I still wish we had some pixie dust, dude.”

  “Don’t worry,” I told him. “We’ve got this.”

  With about ten feet of floor between us and the lava, I tugged Crash’s arm and started running. He got the hint and moved along with me. The jump brought us to the closest side of the platform, and as the stone tipped back slightly, I tugged on Crash again. “Keep moving! I know there’s not much running distance on these, but we have to keep up momentum.”

  Crash was striding across the platform almost before I spoke, and we jumped from the far edge at the same time. Once again, we nailed the right spot on the next platform and managed a few more running steps toward the next one.

  Before long we’d made it across the whole expanse. As we landed on the lovely, solid floor after the last stepping stone, I felt a sharp tug on my arm. I glanced back to see that Crash only had one foot on the floor and was teetering on the edge.

  I dragged forward one huge step, turned fast and grabbed him with my other hand, hauling him upright before he could fall back into the lava.

  “Ugh, that sucked!” Crash said as he stumbled forward and fell to his knees, letting go of my hand. “But it worked. Thanks for saving my ass.”

  “No problem,” I said, watching the last of the stepping stones bubble beneath the lava with thick, gloopy sounds. “Damn it, I keep looking around to make sure George is okay. He’d better be.”

  Crash laughed a little as he pushed to his feet. “I’m sure he is. That is one tough bunny, even if he’s a pain in my ass,” he said with an affectionate smirk. “So, I guess we go forward now.”

  “Yeah, looks like,” I said as I glanced around. There was a wide area in the corridor not far ahead, with corrugated sewer pipes sticking out of the side walls near the bottom. Past the room-like space, the hallway continued to another wall, where I guessed there was another T-junction.

  As Crash walked toward me, the sound of grinding stone filled the air. I looked back to see a stone panel slam shut between us and the lava pit.

  For some reason, it made me laugh. “Well, I guess we can’t walk across the lava anymore. Damn. I was really looking forward to fiery death,” I said with a grin. “Come on, let’s keep moving.”

  We didn’t make it far before we encountered another problem in the form of squeaks and pattering feet coming from the sewer pipes. Crash froze and glared at one of the pipes. “Please tell me that isn’t—”

  A bunch of foot-long rats with long, yellow teeth and flaming eyes ran out of the pipes and swarmed toward us.

  “Rats!” Crash screamed as he drew his sword. “I hate rats!”

  I grabbed my own sword and backed up a step. “Remember, we need to get mana. Try to drain them before you kill them,” I said, and then cast Mana Drain toward the mini-horde. The spell hit one of the rats, but my mana only went up by one percent. “They don’t have much.”

  “I don’t want any goddamned rat mana!” Crash shouted, rushing forward to swing his sword like a golf club at the closest fire-eyed rat. The weapon caught the creature beneath and flung it into the air, sending it into a screaming series of flips and twists.

  Crashed jumped over a few more charging rats and sliced the airborne one in half, spraying blood and guts everywhere.

  “Suit yourself!” I called as I hacked a rat that was jumping at me. I used Mana Drain on another one, sidestepping a third as I spun on a heel and drove my sword down into the thing. The skewered rat released shrieking agony as I flicked my sword up and sent it flying into a wall.

  “Fucking die, you nasty little shits!” Crash was a blur, slicing rats apart left and right. I guess he really did hate rats.

  I caught one climbing up my leg, grabbed it and threw it as hard as I could. As I twisted to swing my sword at another one, I felt tiny claws scrabbling up my back. I reached around with one hand, trying to bat it away, but two more were jumping at my front.

  As I used my sword to deal with them, the rat clinging to my back ran around sideways and settled on my chest. Where it burst into flames.

  “Holy hell, what the fuck!” I cried, dropping my sword as I instinctively batted at the burning rat with both hands. It fell away, twisting and shrieking, and when it hit the ground, I stomped on it. Gobs of flaming rat meat exploded from beneath my boot.

  “Hey, Crash, watch out! They catch fire!” I called as I crouched to grab my sword again. No sooner had I grabbed the handle than a rat jumped on my arm and flamed on.

  This time I whacked it off with the sword, and then ducked as a rat jumped apparently out of nowhere, straight for my head.

  There was a guttural cry, and I whirled around to see Crash slicing another rat in mid-air while three of them scrambled up him. He grabbed one from his leg and spiked it to the floor like a quarterback scoring a touchdown, then jumped and landed with both feet on another rat.

  That was when the small, sleek shape clinging to the hood of his cloak burst into flames.

  “There’s one on your back!” I shouted, dodging a few more rats as I rushed toward him.

  He glanced at me, his eyes wide and crazy, then looked over his shoulder and ran backwards full-speed, throwing himself against the wall and splattering the burning rat.

  I killed the two on the ground, just as the third rat that had climbed on Crash made it to his stomach and fired itself up. With a cry of disgust, Crash snatched the burning rat with his bare hand and lobbed it like a softball. It burst against the far wall.

  “I fucking hate rats,” Crash panted, bending almost double as he tried to catch his breath. “Are they gone? Did we get them all?”

  “Yeah, dude. We got them,” I said, grinning in spite of myself. “You really stomped the hell out of those things.”

  He huffed and straightened slowly. “Who the hell puts rats in a fire level? I mean, seriously,” he said as he casually brushed rat guts from his scorched shirt.

  “At least they weren’t spiders,” I said with a shudder. “So, keep moving?”

  Crash nodded, and we kept moving.

  The next T-junction presented another easy choice, if you called choosing to walk into things that could kill you easy. One way was quiet and empty, and the other had port holes mounted on the walls and in the floor that occasionally sprayed random jets of fire.

  “Out of the frying pan, into the bullshit,” Crash said under his breath. “Whoever designed this level should die.”

  “Come on, this one’s easy,” I said as I started forward. “Just don’t go near those port holes.”

  He sighed. “Yeah. Easy.”

  It was easy, but it was time-consuming as we moved slowly down the corridor, pressing against the walls and crawling beneath port holes to avoid the randomly spouting flames. It took us probably around fifteen minutes to move twenty feet, but finally we were through without being reduced to ashes. And as we moved away from the last of the fire jets, another stone wall slammed down and cut off the corridor.

  The next wide area down the hallway was slightly bigger than the place where we fought the rats. At least there were no apparent sewer pipes. I
stopped and looked around, wondering if it was a trick — it was common enough for dungeon runs to have consecutive areas that seemed the same, but required you to take completely different actions. Maybe we were supposed to just walk right through this one.

  “Uh, Kahn?” Crash said in a tight voice behind me. “Sorry to disappoint you, but …”

  I turned and immediately saw what he meant. There was a fiery filament dropping from the ceiling, and at the end of it was a spider the size a small dog, with flaming eyes like the rats. More threads of fire started to drop all around us, with more goddamned spiders on them.

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I ground out as somewhere deep inside me, my primal spiders-must-die switch flipped on. Dimly, I heard Crash casting Mana Drain, like I should’ve been doing, but there was only room for one thought in my brain: Kill.

  I drew my sword with a guttural shout and went after the creepy fucking things.

  Like the rats, the spiders were squishy and died easily with one good sword thrust, but there were a lot of them. I wanted to cast Chaotic River, because I knew my skeletons would murder a bunch of them, but I had to preserve as much mana as possible. Every time I sliced one of the spiders open, it oozed thick, bubbling orange fluid. As I cleaved one in mid-air, the glowing orange stuff sprayed my face and neck, burning where it landed.

  Lava. The spiders had lava for blood.

  “Look out!” Crash shouted.

  Somewhere in my sluggish kill-all-the-spiders mind, I recognized the warning. But I was too late to react, as a spider dropped down rapidly and spat a glowing red glob at me. It hit my chest and spun out rapidly, becoming a fiery web that wrapped around me and pinned both arms to my side. The burning filaments tightened, cutting through my shirt in places.

  I glanced over and saw Crash on the ground, struggling to free himself from a similar fire web as a spider skittered across the floor straight toward him.

  “Not a chance, you eight-legged freak!” I shouted. At least my legs weren’t wrapped in this stuff. I ran toward Crash, twisting and jerking my torso as I tried to break the burning web strands, and kicked the spider that had clambered onto his chest, smashing it into a wall.

  With a roar of concentration, I broke free of the web and brushed the loose filaments off. Crash had managed to pop loose from his and was getting back up, so I turned my attention back to the spiders.

  Just as I stomped one of them into spider paste, another one of those red spider spitballs smacked me in the chest, driving me against the wall. The burning web spread quickly and tacked me in place — and a spider started scrambling up my leg.

  Crash was there, sword in hand. At that point I didn’t even care if he stabbed me with it, as long as he got the spider too. But he balled a fist and punched the thing in its spider face, sending it flying, and then sliced through the fiery filaments.

  I tore away from the wall and shoved Crash back. “Sorry!” I shouted in response to his startled look as I slashed the spider that had been descending from the ceiling, about to land on his head. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks,” he said, grabbing my wrist as I drew my sword back again and prepared to rush. “That was the last one, man. They’re gone.”

  I blinked at him. “No more spiders?”

  “No more spiders,” he said, smiling just a tiny bit. “I guess I know what I looked like fighting the rats now.”

  “If you mean like a crazed lunatic, then yeah,” I said, finally managing to relax as the spider-fueled adrenaline drained out. “Spiders are the worst.”

  We didn’t have to consult about moving forward this time. Without speaking, we walked on until another T-junction stopped us. Again, the choice of direction was clear.

  But this time there was no way through the more dangerous path. At all.

  “What the hell are we supposed to do with that?” Crash said as he gestured at the left-hand corridor. While the path to the right was clear, the other way was a blazing inferno, completely filled with fire. There was no passage through, no way to go around or over the flames.

  I stood between the two corridors, considering the possibilities. I could try Water Wall to see if it would put the fire out. Spending mana to stay alive was totally fine, but if it didn’t work, I’d have wasted mana. I’d seen George use Wind Blast enough times to copy the move, but again — it might not work, and I’d waste mana. Few things in this dungeon seemed to respond to conventional wisdom, anyway. Maybe I should look for a hidden switch or lever first.

  As I thought about the options, I realized there was something wrong.

  “Crash,” I said slowly, turning to look down the fiery hallway. “Do you feel any heat from that fire?”

  “Uh, yeah? I mean, look at that thing!” he said, and then frowned. “Wait a minute. No, I actually don’t feel any heat.”

  “Exactly. With a fire that big, it should be baking us right now. We’d feel it even if we were further away,” I said, taking a cautious step toward the crackling inferno. There was still no heat. “I think it’s an illusion.”

  Crash made a sound of disbelief. “Why would it be an illusion?”

  “Because all of the other burning hallways were real.” I took another step forward. No change in temperature. “Look, I’ve played a lot of dungeons, okay? There’s always a fake hazard somewhere, and it’s usually after a bunch of real hazards.”

  I was only a few steps from the fire now. I stretched an arm out cautiously, took a deep breath, and thrust my hand into the dancing flames.

  Nothing at all happened. I pulled my hand back, and it wasn’t horribly burned or even slightly singed. It was normal.

  “See? It’s just an illusion,” I said as I walked a few steps into the burning corridor, and then back out. “Nothing to it.”

  Crash shook his head and walked toward me slowly. “I still don’t like this.”

  “Neither do I, but we can’t stay here forever,” I pointed out.

  He let out a long breath. “I guess not,” he said, and finally stepped into the flames. “Okay, this is really weird.”

  We walked down the corridor together as the non-burning, insubstantial fire blazed all around us. Actually seeing the flames but not feeling them at all was unsettling, and I couldn’t help thinking that maybe I was wrong. Maybe the fire was actually super-heated, actually too hot to feel, and it was burning our nerves and flash-frying us right now. Any minute we’d crisp up into piles of ash and be gone without a trace.

  But we finally came through the other side, completely unscathed.

  “Guh. How is walking through fake fire almost as bad as real fire?” Crash said as he impulsively brushed himself off. “At least there weren’t any rats or spiders, right?”

  “Right. Honestly, I’d rather be on fire,” I said, looking around the area as another stone panel slid shut, sealing off the way we’d come in. This was more of a room than another corridor, with an open doorway directly across the way and a closed door on the wall to the right.

  The one across from us was filled with fire. And I thought I heard voices coming through.

  “You hear that?” I said as I nudged Crash and pointed at the flaming corridor.

  He looked over with a frown of concentration. “I hear fire. And … yelling?”

  “Yeah, me too,” I said as I approached the doorway. Like the one we’d gone through, there was absolutely no heat coming from this fire. And though I couldn’t make out the words, I caught two distinct female voices shouting back and forth.

  A grin of relief spread across my face. “I think it’s them,” I said. “The voices aren’t getting closer, so they’re probably arguing about how to get through the fire hall. I’ll just go help them.”

  Crash smirked and gestured at me. “You do that. I’ll wait here, because I really don’t want to walk through solid fire again. Even if it’s fake.”

  I waved and plunged into the flames.

  The voices started to clarify as I got
closer, and I caught the tail end of an argument. “—can’t waste any mana!” That was Nova, more irritated than I’d ever heard her so far. “Besides, that fire is way too big to put out with wind!”

  “Fine, I’ll just do that Water Wall thing that Kahn has,” Terra’s voice shot back.

  “It’s a spell! You can’t just decide you’re going to do a spell, you have to learn it!”

  “Ladies.” That was George’s voice. “Stand back, I’ve got this.”

  Damn, he was going to do Cone of Frost and waste a whole bunch of mana.

  “Stop! Don’t cast anything!” I shouted as I ran the rest of the way. “You don’t need to—”

  As I burst from the flames, still talking, a bright flash of steel arched toward me, headed straight for my face.

  I dropped to the ground and rolled, cursing loudly. “Don’t, that’s Kahn!” I heard Nova cry as I straightened to my knees.

  “Boss, you’re alive!” A ball of black and white fur with a leather vest bounded at me, and I caught George with both arms. “How did you do that? Are you fireproof now or something?” he said.

  I laughed and scratched his head fondly. “Not even close. But that fire isn’t real,” I said as I set George down and stood, turning to the sisters. “Thanks for almost taking my head off, by the way.”

  “Hey, how was I supposed to know it was you? People can’t walk through fire,” Terra said, grinning as she put her sword away. “And what do you mean, it’s not real?”

  “It’s an illusion. There’s no heat coming off it,” I said as I returned Nova’s beaming smile. “Glad to see you guys aren’t dead.”

  “We’re not, but everything sucked,” George said as he hopped toward me. “There was lava, and rats, and big-ass spiders. Plus, everything’s on fire around here. It’s the worst, and I’m sweating my balls off. This is not a good place for a frost rabbit.”

  “Yeah, it sounds like we all had the same things,” I said with an involuntary shudder as I remembered the spiders. “But I think we’re almost through. Come on, Crash is waiting for us — and I promise this fire won’t hurt you.”