The Land: Predators

by Aleron Kong

  Instead of worrying about what couldn’t be, Richter ran, Sion held in one arm and Alma cradled in the other. Her neck bounced limply as he ran and the sprite continued to hobble and fall at his side. Above them, the globe continued to contract and draw together the opposing energies. Richter pulled Sion and sprinted as fast as he could, but it was nothing better than a shamble. At some point in the slow dash, the sprite’s injuries proved to be too much for him. Sion became just dead weight on Richter’s arm, slowing them down even more. His shoulder felt like it was slowly being torn from its socket. Gritting his teeth, he kept moving.

  Richter cursed himself for not casting Weak Haste on himself, but maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway. After all this, after everything he had been through, they couldn’t die now! He couldn’t let Singh’s curse be the end of him. They had won. Against all odds, they had won. It couldn’t end like this.

  That determination made him press on, even though he was sure they would not reach the portal in time. Even though he was sure the explosion would be cataclysmic. Even though there was nowhere for them to hide. That was when he saw it.

  Richter’s eyes had fallen on the sarcophagus. The same one that had killed Caulder. He couldn’t stop himself from looking at the skeleton that lay sprawled beside the stone coffin. Caulder’s remains lay still now though. The eldritch light was gone and the remains no longer registered to his Analyze Talent. He hoped the sergeant’s soul had found peace, but another rumble in the ground reminded him that there was no time for sentimentality.

  His gaze snapped back to the crypt. Something was different about it, and it wasn’t just the lack of eldritch light. He kept staring as he pulled Sion and Alma ever-closer to the portal, until his identify Talent triggered. For the second time in a day, he saw the platinum-colored prompt of an artifact!

  You have found:

  Sarcophagus of Saginald

  Durability: 41,572/41,572

  Item Class: Artifact

  Quality: Masterwork

  Weight: 245 kg

  Traits: This powerful artifact once held the body of the Undead God Saginald. Any undead that dwells within this coffin will have their powers increased. How this will manifest can only be known in time.

  Richter didn’t give a wet crap about the traits of the sarcophagus or who Saginald was. The high durability of the artifact was the sweetest thing he’d ever read though! There was a chance. They had a chance. He just had to move faster!

  The sphere of magical energy continued to shrink in on itself and began to vibrate. The Exile’s vengeance was almost complete. Richter reached the coffin and carefully placed Alma inside. A strange keening filled the massive cavern and he couldn’t help but look up. The sphere was only four feet across now. The noise was being created by the disturbance of magics playing across its surface. Richter didn’t know if he had one minute or one second left, but he knew there wasn’t much time.

  He lay Sion inside the coffin as well. Richter prayed he wasn’t willingly sealing the people he loved most inside of their own tomb. All that remained was the lid. It lay next to the artifact, where Caulder had pushed it to the side. The lid had grooves that lined up with the top of the sarcophagus to hold it in place It took every ounce of his Strength, but he managed to lift it and slide it on before climbing inside as well.

  Once he was in, he pushed against the top, struggling to move the heavy lid into position. With a final heave, it blocked out all the light of the outside world. Richter grabbed Alma’s still-limp form and cradled her to his chest. Trapped in darkness with his familiar and first Companion, Richter listened to the ragged sounds of his own breathing. His heart thudded in his chest and he wondered if he’d been wrong about the sphere. Maybe it was just disappearing. Maybe it wouldn’t actually explo-

  The world broke in half.

  To Richter it sounded like the nine hordes of hell had come screaming for his blood. To every other creature in the cavern, it was the end of everything. In the blink of an eye, their world devolved into jagged ice, scorching fire, burning light and cursing dark. Debuffs of every type afflicted each undead and voidling a bare moment before they were wiped from existence. The mauler was partially protected by the negation magic of the void, but even that was overcome and it was sent howling into the abyss. Magic continued to play over its body, the power etching itself into the reptile’s soul. The devastator skeleton, voidlings and remnants of the undead army lacked the Labyrinth boss’s high level and resistances. They were utterly consumed.

  The blast flowed unhindered into the portal. At another angle, the gateway might have been destroyed, but instead it was perfectly positioned to channel the explosion. Raw destruction flooded the first floor of the Dungeon and obliterated every creature that it touched. The explosive power turned the marbled quartz walls of the Barbican into rubble and blew the doors of the inner room inward. A fine powder filled the air, making it hard to breathe and see. Every single invader was destroyed as well as two sprites that were killed by the collapse of the Barbican’s defense. The Dungeon absorbed them all. It rose in levels once more and learned to create new monsters.

  For Richter there was only heat, furious sound and then, the sensation of falling. The magical detonation stove the Mausoleum inward. In the space of a second, the three-hundred-foot building was crumpled like a beer can. The sarcophagus survived the blast but tumbled through the air, spinning on three axes. It landed with a solid thud and both Companions were rendered senseless yet again.

  Richter came to only a minute later. He opened his eyes, completely confused. The absolute blackness was disorienting, but then his mind cleared enough to remember. The agony he was suffering was extremely helpful in that regard. It felt like… well, it felt like he’d been dropped from a great height while hiding in a stone crypt. An image flashed through his mind of being buried alive under rubble. Pure animal panic bloomed in him as he suffered a terrible wave of claustrophobia. He reached up to the top of the coffin. His hands scrabbled to open it, but it wouldn’t budge an inch. Visceral panic threatened to strangle him before he forced himself to calm down. He was the Lord of the Mist, and he had more to do.

  The chaos seed took a deep, shuddering breath. Thinking was hard due to a Concussion debuff, but after three tries, he managed to cast Weak Slow Heal on himself. Breathing and thinking became slightly easier after that. The flash of light that came with the magic also gave him an orientation and he realized why he hadn’t been able to open the coffin. It was lying on its side. When he had been pushing “up,” he’d really been pressing on the artifact’s side. Taking a deep breath, he positioned his hand on the actual lid, praying this would work. His fear surged again when he tried to slide it up and nothing happened. A second later though, he was able to breathe a sigh of relief when it slid downward.

  The lid only moved enough to reveal half the opening, but it was more than enough. Richter climbed out and was greeted by darkness and silence. After having to tune out the sounds of battle for so long, the quiet was deafening. He put that out of his mind along with the fading panic about being buried alive. He was still breathing, he could still move and there was still work to be done.

  A moment later, he had accessed both Alma and Sion’s status pages. Alma remained unconscious, but her stats were full. He contented himself with that. Sion was another matter. The sprite had lost another one hundred and twenty-eight health. More concerning was the fact that the sprite’s Bleeding status had worsened to seven HP lost per second.

  Now that his head wasn’t as cloudy, he tried healing Sion. After several more attempts he was able to cast Minor Slow Heal and Weak Stabilize again. This time he also cast his two Life summonings, Summon Weak Life Wisp and Summon Weak Gold Fox. Both creatures phased into existence over the sarcophagus. Their glows lit up the area immediately outside of the coffin and they began pouring healing energy into the Companions. The wisp was only able to heal once, but it still increased Sion’s health by one hundred
points. The gold fox fired beams of healing magic several times before it dissipated.

  In less than a minute, they were almost back to full health. Sion was still weak, but the Life magic had roused him. Part of the sprite’s health bar was greyed out, showing that there were internal injuries that still needed to be fixed, but he would need a better healer than Richter to do it. The chaos seed’s weak and minor spells just weren’t up to the task. Despite that, both of them were more hale than they’d been since the beginning of the battle.

  Seeing that Sion was stabilized, at least for the moment, Richter shook his head in wonder. Goddamn it was good to have Life magic again! For a second, he just stood in the blackness of the cavern and delighted in the fact that he was almost pain-free again. The ground they were standing on rumbled audibly as if to remind him that they still weren’t safe. Richter took the reminder in appreciation. They needed to get home. He just hoped the portal was still there. He’d already tried communicating with both Yoshi and Hisako, but there had been no response.

  He looked around him and found the portal in seconds. The fact that it was still open was the only good news. Richter cursed and began to cast Far Light as quickly as he could. Luminescent spheres shot from his hands in all directions. Some struck surfaces a few dozen yards away, but every single globe he shot above him disappeared. That could only mean one thing. The spell had a one-hundred-yard range. If the lights connected with something inside that radius, they would adhere. If they didn’t though, they winked out of existence. It meant there was nothing above him. The explosion had completely destroyed the Mausoleum.

  The lights that hit the ground revealed another desolate fact. The ground they were standing on was only a small island of stone. The blast hadn’t just destroyed the Core building, it had destroyed the very bedrock upon which the Mausoleum had stood. His balls of light stuck to a few surfaces past the edge of the pillar they stood on, so theirs wasn’t the only pillar, but for all intents and purposes he was standing on an island in a sea of empty air. The four pillars he was able to see were sticking up out of the abyss like skyscrapers in an apocalyptic city.

  From what he could see so far, there was no path to safety. To make matters worse, the ground was shaking beneath their feet. It was only luck that had made the sarcophagus land on a pillar and kept it from falling all the way to the bottom of the chasm. The quakes beneath his feet proved their luck would run out soon though. The only possible escape was the portal, but it had remained in the exact same spot in space where it had originally opened. A spot that was now several hundred feet above their heads.

  Sion stood up beside him, holding his ribs in pain. He followed his friend’s gaze and cursed in spritespeak, “Tell me that’s not the portal.” The look in Richter’s eyes was answer enough.

  Another, much stronger quake shook the ground beneath their feet. Both men almost fell. Sion looked him in the eyes and Richter could read the resignation in his friend’s face. There was no way for them to reach the gateway. Even though they could see it, it might as well have been on another planet. They could both also track that it was growing smaller. Soon they would be trapped in this place of darkness until the pillar collapsed and plunged them to their deaths.

  The shaking grew more violent. Looking at his friend, at the man who had stood by him in war and peace, Richter knew what he had to do. In that moment, every ounce of fear and uncertainty drained away. All that was left in its place was calm acceptance. The chaos seed discovered that there was a freedom in accepting one’s fate. He had just two preparations to make first.

  Richter forced a smile onto his face, “Don’t worry, man. I’ve got a plan. I’ll Cloud Run us up to the portal.”

  “What are you talking about?” Sion responded, still looking up at the gateway. “It’s almost two hundred yards away! I watched you practicing back at the village. Every air jump you make takes more stamina and I know for a fact that you never got more than forty feet off the ground. You also nearly broke your neck when you fell. And that was without carrying armor or me.” Sion shook his head, “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I know we’ve gone as far as we can.”

  “Now who’s being the gyoti?” Richter asked with a short laugh. “You might have a valid point, but when you saw me jumping before, I didn’t have this!” The chaos seed held up the last preparation he’d made before coming through the portal, a gold band with a single red gem.

  You have found:

  Bracelet of Home’s Heart

  Durability: 43/43

  Item Class: Scarce

  Quality: Superb

  Weight: 0.2 kg

  Traits: The gems on this bracelet are actually two halves of a whole. Expertly cut, the jewel is a rare drop from a silver wyvern. The last drop of its blood crystallized to embody the speed and grace of this aerial predator. That magic has been preserved. The wearer of this bracelet may leave one of the gems in any location they choose. When the magic of the bracelet is activated, the wearer will gain the ability of flight and be pulled at the maximum flying speed of a silver wyvern to the location of the other jewel. This is a one-use item which will be destroyed afterwards.

  “Before we left, I put one of the gems in the Dungeon. If you wear the bracelet, it will pull you up and I’ll hold on. With it pulling us upward, I’ll be able to make up the difference with Cloud Running. We can do this! I can’t have anything on me though; I need to focus on my jumps. You have to hold Alma, and you should take my Bag of Holding as well. I can’t be encumbered.”

  Sion looked at him, confused, “Why would I have to-”

  “We don’t have time for this, man! The portal is closing.”

  “What if the magic in the bracelet doesn’t know the portal is the shortest way home?” Sion shouted at him. “What if it tries to fly us the long way round and we get slammed into a wall?”

  “Then we’re totally fucked. Stop bringing shit up!” Richter shouted back. The two friends glared at each other, tense and stressed, until they both started chuckling. With a soft grin, he put his hand on his friend’s shoulder, “This has to happen, man.”

  Sion nodded his head and let out a long breath. Though he still looked uncertain, but he took the bracelet. While he slipped it on his wrist, Richter reached back into the sarcophagus to get Alma.

  As the chaos seed looked at the artifact, his identification Talent triggered again and he realized just how close they had come to dying in the blast. Of the forty thousand points of durability the sarcophagus had originally, only five hundred remained. In all honesty, the outside of the sarcophagus looked beat to hell. He glanced around quickly, hoping that Caulder’s bones might have survived the blast as well, but they were nowhere to be found.

  As he reached inside of the sarcophagus, he saw something else. For the first time, he was able to really see the interior with light shining on it. He immediately noticed that a circular patch of stone on the bottom was a slightly different color than the rest. As he continued to look at it, his Pierce the Veil skill activated and it began to glow a soft, welcoming blue. Richter touched the spot and something wondrous occurred. That portion of stone grew transparent and a clockwork sphere leaking red and white light floated out of the hidden cubby.

  Know This! You have destroyed the Mausoleum of Saginald and may now claim its Core and Item

  You have found:

  Magic Core

  Durability: 15,000/15,000

  Item Class: Mythic

  Quality: Masterwork

  Weight: 12.7 kg.

  Traits: Magical Cores can be used to power any number of devices.

  Even knowing what was about to happen, a smile creased Richter’s face. Every Core building seemed to require three components. A basic version of the building, a powerful item and a Magic Core. He realized now that the sarcophagus hadn’t been just an artifact Singh had used, it had been one of the three components of the Mausoleum. Looking at the mythic item in his hands, he sighed. The sound was f
illed with both happiness and sadness. Whatever came next, his village would grow stronger.

  The Core went into his Bag of Holding and he gently picked up Alma. As he walked back to Sion, he looked at his beautiful familiar. He sent a prayer to any being that might be listening that she would wake soon. The ground continued to shake and off in the darkness he heard another pillar collapse and fall away. The quakes under his own feet did not dissipate this time. Looking high above, he saw that the portal was now less than ten feet across. There was no more time to waste.

  He hurried over to Sion and handed Alma to him. The sprite carefully cradled the dragonling as Richter slipped his Bag of Holding over his friend’s head.

  “Are you ready?” Richter asked, putting his arms around his friend.

  “Yes, but I still don’t know why you’re not wearing the bracelet and I’m not holding on to you.”

  Richter looked back at him with an unreadable expression before softly saying, “Let’s do this, man. It’s time to go home.”

  Still confused, Sion did what his friend asked. He activated the Bracelet of Home’s Heart, but a red prompt appeared.

  The Bracelet of Home’s Heart cannot be used with two people relying on its flight magic. Remove the second person and the magic will activate.

  The sprite’s eyes widened in panic. What were they going to do? Sion started to speak, but looking at his friend’s calm but sad expression, he finally read the truth in Richter’s eyes. The chaos seed already knew.