by S. R. Witt
SUCCESS! You navigate the ice with ease, and the rest of your party may follow you without danger.]
Before I turned around, I took a moment to unleash a sigh of relief. I waved the rest of them on. “Just follow in my footsteps, and you’ll be fine.”
I don’t know how the game knew who was in my party, but the rest of them joined me on the other side of the dangerous stretch without incident. It took them a while, more than a couple of minutes, which was the problem I’d been worrying about.
The bottom half of the sloping path curled away from the Temple and put us even further away from the guards than we’d been at the top. The problem was, its location put us more than two minutes away from the nearest rock in the guard patrol.
The icy stone, even on the crater’s floor, would slow most of the party down too much. They’d be spotted by a guard before they could reach cover.
We needed more time to get them all down the last part of the ramp and into hiding. And there was only one way we were going to get that time.
I raised a hand to stop the rest of them. “Change of plans. Mercy and I are going on ahead to make our two-minute gap a little wider. We’ll let you know when it’s safe to come down.”
Mercy raised an eyebrow but didn’t argue. Neither did the rest of the party, who took advantage of the break to lean against the crater’s wall and gnaw on their iron rations.
The Crumbling Temple looked a lot worse for wear when Mercy and I reached the crater’s floor than it had from the edge of the sinkhole.
It wasn’t just a name, the whole place looked like it was on the verge of collapse. At some point, who knew how long ago, it had rested firmly on the surface. Then something had happened, and the whole place sank into this crater. The result was a big hole in the ground with the temple at its center, surrounded by mountains of rock and dark crevices in the earth. The crater’s floor was stone, but it wasn’t solid. The whole place was a maze of cracks and up thrust stone, making it difficult to traverse and even more difficult to patrol.
For once, things were going our way.
Mercy and I hugged the side of a pile of stone rubble, weapons drawn. She nocked an arrow, ready to draw and fire the instant one of the guards got close. I had a stiletto in my right fist, poised to strike. I really missed the other dagger and hoped some asshole goblin hadn’t taken it for his own.
“How long?” she whispered.
“A minute, maybe less. Time to hide.”
STEALTH SKILL CHECK
SUCCESS! You have become one with the shadows.]
Well, that was something, anyway.
Right on time, I heard one of the wargrai guard’s clawed feet scraping over the snow-dusted stone. I held my breath and waited as the guard drew near. When I saw his shadow fall around the corner of my hiding place, I struck.
My attack carved a groove along the back of the wargrai’s neck, but it was the second attack from my bracers that did the trick.
The stiletto punctured the back of the guard’s armor and punched through his trachea. The wargrai’s mouth opened, and blood trickled from the corners of its fanged jaws. Its eyes burned with rabid hatred for a moment, and then the tall beast collapsed against me.
A wave of relief washed over me, but I had no spare time to enjoy it. If we wanted to widen the gap we had to get the drop on at least one more guard. We’d never do that if I left a dead body lying around.
I scooped the wargrai over my shoulder, grunting under its bulk, and hustled away from our rock shelter. Going back to the ramp was out of the question, I had to move up to the next rock in the pattern. It took me a few seconds to get the corpse situated so it wouldn’t be spotted, then I hustled back to Mercy.
The guard’s pattern was locked in my brain. My life depended on it, and I’d spent long minutes at the top of the crater memorizing their path and timing their movements. The clock on Dragon Web Online’s GUI told me it had taken 45 seconds to drag the dead guard into hiding, and another 30 seconds to get back to Mercy.
Well, that’s how long it would have taken me to return to our hiding spot, but one of the guards broke the pattern.
She appeared out of the blowing snow, one hand up to shield her face from the wind spiraling down from the crater’s rim. The droning, almost insectile, chant emanating from the Temple’s depths masked her footsteps. No excuses, I just plain didn’t see her until she was right up in my face.
The guard was not a wargrai. She was a human and wore a ratty cloak, a pair of soft fur boots, and not much else. Her skin had an unhealthy yellow hue to it, and bulging blisters lined the sides of her jaw like clusters of rotting grapes. Her breasts were swollen and misshapen, the nipples a red so vibrant I thought they were bleeding. Her eyes were sunken pits, barely visible in the shadows of her skull-like face.
For a moment, the guard and I did nothing but stare at one another. Then she raised one filthy hand, pointed at me, and opened her mouth to sound the alarm.
This was it. Everything I’d done, all the work I’d put into getting a party together and leading them here, was about to come undone because of some mangy degenerate’s big mouth.
We were too far apart for me to stab her. By the time I reached her, she’d have already sounded the alarm.
I stood, like a big dummy, and watched her end my time in Invernoth.
But all she could manage was a liquid croaking that even I could barely hear. That effort ruptured the blisters on her jawline, and a thick, sticky serum oozed from the open sores and ran down the side of her filthy neck.
She turned to run, then, feet slipping and sliding on the icy stone. I lunged after her, but missed grabbing her cloak and skidded on the ice. My boots couldn’t find purchase, and my arms flailed wildly, as I struggled to regain my balance without stabbing myself in the face with the stiletto clutched in my right hand.
We were a few hundred yards away from the Temple itself, but if she managed to attract the attention of another guard, we were dead. I had to stop her, even if the attempt ended with me slipping on the ice and breaking my neck.
I ducked my head and ran, or tried to run, after the fleeing guard.
Something whistled past my head, and the guard staggered, then fell. An arrow jutted from between her shoulder blades, its black fletching stark against the snow.
“You want to drag her out of sight?” Mercy asked as she emerged from the shadows with a faint smirk twitching at the corners of her lips.
“I guess I’ll do all the heavy lifting.” I snarked back, but scurried out and dragged the guard across the snowy stone to where I’d left her buddy. I stacked her diseased corpse on top of the dead wargrai and kicked a little snow over her boots for effect. It wasn’t much, but the guards didn’t seem to be terribly bright. I wondered how big a stack we’d have by the time the rest of the party joined us down here.
Mercy and I slipped back to the first rock. I hoped the pattern wasn’t completely shattered, that the guard had been an aberration. Maybe she’d spotted me moving from rock to rock and decided to break her patrol pattern to investigate. The truth was, I didn’t know how long we had. There was no point in waiting any longer.
I pulled Mercy in close and whispered, “Get the others. I’ll hold down the fort.”
She grinned and her breath, warm and smelling faintly of cloves, tickled my nostrils. “You sure you can handle it?”
“Get the fuck outta here.”
She punched me in the arm and headed off to get the others.
I had three more bodies stacked up by the time they arrived. No other guards had broken the pattern, which was good. But that many missing guards would attract attention sooner rather than later, which was not so great. There was no time to exchange high fives. We needed to move.
I led the party to the next hiding spot and waited. The gap I’d created wouldn’t last much longer. At best, we had four minutes before another guard made the rounds and found the stack of dead ones.
We leapfrogged f
rom spot to spot, slipping along in the shadows. With every step, I expected an alarm to sound. Minutes had passed, which meant the guards could find their missing friends any second.
And then we arrived at the temple. Up close, the place was in even worse shape than I thought. It was surrounded by broken pillars that rose like cracked teeth from its perimeter. The side door we’d arrived at was split in half, and the bottom of it had torn free of its hinges to lay on the stone, collecting snow. “Someone’s not paying their HOA dues. This place needs more than a coat of paint.”
I stood guard as the others slipped inside, squeezing against the wall to keep a low profile.
We didn’t have long before a guard came along and found us all standing around looking as guilty and conspicuous teenagers at a kegger. “Move,” I whispered.
And they did, but not fast enough.
Before I could get inside the Temple with my companions, a wargrai appeared from the opposite direction the patrols had been taking. It raised its head and sniffed the air, suspicious and paranoid. It knew something was up, but it didn’t know what.
I froze, holding my breath and flattening myself against the wall in an effort to become invisible. Did it see me?
The wind blew toward us from the direction of the stack of dead guards, and the wargrai whipped its head in that direction.
Maybe it smelled the blood of its fallen companions, or maybe the wind annoyed it. I didn’t stick around to see what had gotten its attention, but slipped out of hiding and darted through the open doorway into the church.
I crossed my fingers and hoped the wargrai hadn’t seen me.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
The Crumbling Temple’s interior was even more spectacularly wrecked than its exterior. The high ceilings and wide hallways were covered with elaborate relief carvings and paintings, but these were distorted by jagged cracks running through the stone. The floor was uneven, some sections tilted as much as a foot higher or lower than their neighbors, a reminder of the violent collapse that had dropped this place into the bowels of the earth.
Piles of refuse and assorted junk choked the passageway, forcing us to squeeze around piles of garbage and tumbled down architecture as we wormed our way deeper into the temple.
At the first intersection, we found a massive banquet table so loaded with overflowing platters it bowed in the center. My stomach growled with hunger as we approached. The table held mounds of sliced ham and turkey piled high on carving boards next to huge tureens of stew. Bowls overflowing with exotic fruit stood at each end of the table, surrounded by small baskets brimming with rolls and hunks of cheese.
But, as we drew closer, the stench of rot rose from the table to claw at my nostrils and transformed my hunger pangs into the queasy ache of nausea.
Havelock poked his nose up over the edge of the table and took a sniff. He backed away from the mess with his eyes watering, and gasped, “What is wrong with these people?”
I shuddered at the memory of the diseased guard who’d stumbled into me. “The usual crazy cultist stuff. You know how it goes when you live underground and practice vile magic. Keep your eyes peeled. There’s no telling what kind of sick shit we’ll run into down here.”
Flickering candles and sputtering torches provided the only light. The air was damp and sticky as if the temple itself oozed decay from its very foundations. Something was wrong here.
Indira crossed her arms over her chest and asked me, “What now, oh fearless leader?”
No matter what Indira thought, the Burning Codex wasn’t a guidebook. The hours I’d spent studying its densely-lettered pages had taught me quite a bit about using the Throne once it was under my control, but not so much about what I needed to do before that happened. I knew we needed to find the key and perform a binding ritual to use it, but it was very vague on the particulars of how that was all going to happen.
What do I know about the binding ritual?
Not very fucking much.
The chanting echoed through the temple, twisting the screws on the tension headache that’d been sneaking up to ambush me.
Why won’t they shut up?
“Oh,” I said, putting the pieces together. I closed the book and tucked it away. “We need to find whoever’s making that godawful racket.”
Mercy tugged her hood down tighter around her head. “You know that’s where all the bad guys are going to be, right?”
Bastion saved me from having to make another rallying speech. “Makes sense. They’re all down there getting ready for the big show.”
Havelock rubbed his snotty nose with the back of one hand and scrubbed the green smear off on his leather breeches. He hacked up a lungful of mucous and spat it onto the grimy floor between his boots. I pitied the gnome; the devs were sadists for including the common cold in their fantasy world. “On the bright side, they’ll all be in the same place.”
Even Indira grinned at that. “Show me the way. I’ll drop a firestorm they’ll never forget on their pointy little heads.”
Cringer cleared his throat. “I don’t know if the rest of you can feel that, but whatever they’re doing is producing a lot of magic. It has a pull, like a magnet.”
He shook his head. “That’s not quite right, but it’s there. I can feel it.”
Before the dwarf could get too far up in his own bullshit, I clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Then you’re our fantasy GPS, Cringer. Lead the way.”
Cringer grumbled but didn’t shirk his responsibility. He was the only one who had any idea where the power was gathering. Without hesitation, he pointed down the right branch of the intersection and led us toward the bad guys.
Every step inside the temple was nerve-wracking. We didn’t see any guards inside, but the place was so huge and twisted in on itself there could have been a hundred wargrai around the corner, and we’d have no idea they were there until it was too late.
But after half an hour, I realized we’d been worried for nothing. There were a lot of cultists here, but they were all focused on their own plans. I probably could have dropped a wrecking ball on the place, and no one would notice.
The hallways grew wider and more ornate as we went deeper into the temple. The art on the walls and ceiling changed around us, gaining a sinister edge. The bas-reliefs showed the sun wrapped in a writhing ball of black serpents. Men and women cavorted beneath the eclipsed sun, arms and hands raised, mouths open to receive oversized drops of rain. In the next panel, the figures changed. They shed their clothes, and bulging blisters erupted from their flesh.
What would drive people to such extremes? Why had the Sisters given up their sacred calling in exchange for whatever the hell this was?
Cringer whispered, “It’s not far now.”
The chanting was so loud it was more pressure than sound. There were words, but I couldn’t understand them and hoped I never would. The syllables were crazed, ecstatic, and utterly terrifying.
The hallway ahead of us ended in a massive copper door emblazoned with the familiar snake-covered sun. I guessed it lead to the Temple’s sanctuary, and charging straight into the teeth of whatever was going on in there didn’t give me the good feels.
A quick search of the area revealed a small hallway running perpendicular to the broad hall. It ended in a spiral staircase, and I motioned for the others to follow me up the steps.
The staircase opened onto a balcony that ran around the perimeter of a massive, vaulted chamber. There were no crazies up top, but chanting voices bounced off the ceiling and crashed down onto us with deafening force. I took a quick peek over the edge of the balcony, and my fears were confirmed. The auditorium was enormous. And it was filled with chanting lunatics.
Indira took a seat in one of the pews lining the balcony. She cradled her head in her hands and stifled a moan. “It’s too much,” she whispered. “Too much power. Too much everything.”
Cringer sat next to her and rubbed one calloused hand across her shoulders. “Whatever they’re
doing, it’s almost over.”
I watched the cultists throw their heads back, spew their venomous words into the air, then rock forward to slam their heads into the stone floor they kneeled on. They’d been at this for a while; the floor was stained red, and their faces were crimson masks.
“This is bad,” I whispered. “Crazy bad.”
“You think?” Bastion asked. He’d taken up position next to me, crouched down so he could just barely see over the railing. “I think we got here just in time for this to blow up in our faces.”
The chanting increased in frequency and fervor as a woman trundled onto the dais in front of the sanctuary’s altar.
She was naked and massive. Not just fat, though she was definitely that, but oversized in general. She stood eight feet tall if she was an inch, and every undulating roll of fat glistened with oil. Her legs jutted from beneath an apron of flesh, and open sores and weeping blisters covered her slimy skin.
She lifted a wide-mouthed bowl from the altar and raised it over her head. The chanting of her followers became a wild, chaotic ululation bordering on a scream.
The priestess tilted her head back and emptied the bowl onto her upturned face. An opalescent fluid poured over her, and she wailed with an unholy mixture of ecstasy and agony. Blisters erupted from her cheeks and forehead. The boils bubbled up through the sticky fluid pouring over her like angry red warning signs. Streaks of the liquid flowed down her chest, peeling her skin back in curling red stripes. Her cry took form, transforming into words I could understand whether I wanted to or not.
“After all these generations, after all this time hiding here, our time has come!” She stalked the dais like a caged animal. Her feet slapped against the stone, and her tortured flesh wobbled with every step. “The nightspawn have brought to us the wisdom the dragons long forbade, and our vengeance will be complete at last.”
Havelock stood on tiptoes next to me, his eyes wide as he peered down at the religious service below us. “These fuckers are insane, right?”
