“Oh. Huh,” Daniel replied, stunned by the simple answer. After a moment he murmured, “I didn’t think dungeons could talk.”
Eileen spoke before anyone could reply, seeming hopeful. “Actually, is there any way you could give us some hints about the dungeon, Sina? Anything at all?”
“Nope. Back when it was decided that Ilmas was going to start running this little room, we had a meeting to discuss what was allowed,” Sina replied directly, her voice level as she continued. “The big one is that we can’t do anything to endanger the dungeon. If I tell you something, chances are that somehow Kelvanis will catch wind of it. If they want to try breaking in, they’re going to have to learn the hard way. And believe me, Sistina was not amused at their last attempt.”
“What happened? I heard that a handful of soldiers got out, but nothing more than that,” Eric asked, examining the core of his apple speculatively.
“Sistina took about a dozen soldiers captive when they invaded. They were pretty well treated, then they murdered the healer who was tending to them. The person who did it killed himself, but Sistina and everyone else were pissed,” Sina explained, her eyes darkening. “I wasn’t there for the decision, but I don’t blame them. One of the soldiers decided to serve the dungeon, and the rest were released. But I’m betting that Sistina won’t take prisoners again. She took the death quite personally.”
“Ick. That just… I mean, I heard rumors about them getting outside, but that was just before I resigned,” Daniel spoke up, looking at her in horror. “I can’t imagine that they would’ve done that. I know that they were taken into custody and recently sent to Westgate, though, so there might be something to it.”
“There was definitely something to it, Daniel. Just don’t piss Sistina off, hmm? She doesn’t bluff,” Sina admonished, and grimaced after a moment. “I’d hate to come out and hear that you somehow got turned into plant food.”
“Wouldn’t we all?” Sayla murmured, straightening as she nodded. “But I’m going back out to train.”
“Actually, we all should go do that. Only you and Eileen have summoned spirits, Danny,” Eric agreed with a sigh. “We’ve got work to do if we want to actually have a good chance at the dungeon.”
“Fair enough.” Daniel sighed, looking at Sina for a moment before asking, “You’re sure you want to stay in here?”
“Pfft. Maybe once Kelvanis doesn’t control the surrounding area,” Sina retorted, then gave him a gentle kiss. They held it for a long moment before she broke it off and warned him once more. “Be safe, Daniel.”
“Of course. Just wait and see,” Daniel replied with a smile. Then he turned to leave with his friends, his spirits buoyed by the knowledge that he and Sina had a future ahead of them. It might take him time, but he’d find a way to make it real.
Chapter 38
“I have to say, you kind of make my skin crawl, Farris,” Earl told her, keeping a wary eye on the statue… or was she a golem? He really didn’t know, and it made him nervous. Besides, he’d seen her body lying on the ground!
“I’m well aware. I think of myself as a pointed reminder at the moment,” Farris replied, smiling as she watched him stir the tub full of hot, soapy water and laundry.
“That isn’t very nice of you. I didn’t have anything to do with your death, and didn’t even know about what was coming,” Earl protested, feeling a little more anxious. Farris’ stone face was oddly expressive for something that shouldn’t be moving, and he shivered slightly. It just was creepy.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Farris replied, smirking. “Maybe I just want to be near the only man who isn’t claimed in the dungeon.”
Earl flushed bright red, shaking his head and quickly changing the subject. “What’s Sistina up to, anyway? I saw her taking the golem toward one of the tunnels earlier.”
“No idea. I have to assume she wants to break something,” Farris replied, shrugging.
Touching the stone wall, Sistina extended threads of mana into it and frowned. Half the wall was within the wards of the old mage academy, so she couldn’t sense it when examining the entire dungeon, but it was a different story when she was here in person.
The stone wall she’d used to block the tunnel had been a total of about twenty feet of granite, enough to stop anything short of an earth mage or the like, but if there had been a necromancer earth mage they wouldn’t have been stuck down here for six thousand years. It was the fact that nearly an inch of stone had been perforated by what seemed like claw marks that concerned her. To leave such marks in stone wasn’t easy, and it indicated that either there was a nasty living monster somehow within, or that there were stronger undead than she’d anticipated.
Most likely it was the latter, which would be unpleasant but should be within her ability to deal with. Sistina glanced at her golem and smiled confidently, then murmured a spell to reinforce her flesh. She’d rather not lose a body here.
Drawing her dagger, Sistina concentrated, and slowly a tunnel opened through the barrier. Letting the golem go through first, Sistina followed after it and closed the passage behind her. It wouldn’t do to have any undead go upstairs to attack others.
The dim glow of the golem was enough for her to see by, and Sistina shivered inside on seeing and feeling the academy once more. Something dark and foul was here, something that she felt a deep-seated urge to cleanse. It was strange, because it was an impulse not much different from when she’d once felt the impulse to cleanse the pond near her tree. The thought made Sistina snort internally.
The chamber really hadn’t changed much. The huge central tower still extended upward, barely avoiding being crushed by the cavern walls, while the wings of the structure looked like they were about to be smashed from above. The ground was littered with debris, and Sistina could see footprints in the dusty dirt and sand that covered the ground. She leaned over, frowning at them. The prints seemed to be barefoot, with extended claws, but otherwise looked about the size of a human or elf’s foot. She was no tracker, so she wasn’t certain how many of them there were, but at a guess, there must have been at least three of the creatures.
She glanced at the doors to the building, and her frown deepened as she saw that the doors were slightly ajar. They hadn’t been open the previous time.
Gesturing the golem forward, she stood and followed slowly, the incantation and gestures of a fire spell held in mind. Undead were usually vulnerable to fire, or at least not resistant, so it should be her best bet against them.
The golem pushed open the doors with the grating sound of stone against stone, which echoed through the ancient halls. It was then that a single, tittering giggle echoed from somewhere in the depths of the academy.
Bracing herself, Sistina followed the golem into the front hall of the once-grand academy, and then stopped as she beheld the devastation within.
The broad circular hall beneath the tower had once ascended two floors with grand staircases, the walls lined with artwork, artifacts, and breathtaking sculptures. At the center had been a massive metal framework which had tracked the stars and the flow of mana as influenced by them. Where the memory of what the chamber had once looked like came from, Sistina was uncertain, but what she could see was a sharp contrast to that.
The staircases still stood, but the elegant wooden railing was little more than splinters, and the one to her left was sagging ominously. The metal astrolabe had been reduced to shattered, twisted metal, its enchantments long-since corrupted and ruined by the twisted necromancy flowing through the academy. All of the art, the wall hangings, and the sculptures were ruined. Worse than even that, she could see hundreds of gnawed, cracked bones that had been discarded all across the ground, leaving nothing to the imagination about the carnage that must have happened here with the shredded fragments of what had once been clothing.
Wrinkling her nose at the musty stench, Sistina looked around the room. Her choice was to take the stairwell, or go into one of the three attached wings. Looking betw
een them, Sistina sighed. She didn’t trust the stairs to actually stand up to the weight of the golem, so she finally chose to go left on a whim. It wasn’t like she knew a better way to decide.
The doors lay off their hinges, twisted and clawed as well, and Sistina shivered again. The energy in the ground was getting to her body, and she was silently thankful she’d left the others behind.
A few clicks and clacks of debris knocking against debris came from down the dark hallway, along with the sight of a pair of crimson eyes. The ghoul was only barely visible in the darkness, a gray-skinned figure of bones and gaunt flesh. Once an elf, it looked like little more than a skeleton with its horrific skin stretched across it, with fingers ending in huge claws and a mouth full of protruding, jagged teeth that were designed to rip flesh and crack bones.
The creature hissed, and Sistina wrinkled her nose. It was staring at her, and a long, horrific purple tongue ran over its lips and teeth for a moment before it hissed again… and the creature lunged forward, even as a half-dozen more poured from the doorway behind it.
The ghouls moved quickly, like a pack of starving wolves. With a thought, Sistina commanded the golem, which lurched into action, flames erupting from its arms. As the first ghoul tried to lunge past it, the golem struck hard, and the sizzle of flames was drowned out by an unearthly howl of pain as the ghoul was thrown into a nearby wall. The ghoul bounced off the wall, still barely mobile as it shook itself.
Sistina wasn’t idle, words pouring from her mouth as she precisely arrayed her spell. The white-hot bolt of energy that launched from her hands a few moments later was a thing of beauty as it lanced through the air mercilessly and hit the ghoul head-on and exploded. The flickering explosion rocked the golem slightly, but left nothing of the ghoul’s head behind.
The other ghouls flinched at the explosion, but that was all it managed, with six more of them fixed entirely on Sistina. She stepped back, frowning as she realized that the golem would have a difficult time blocking all of them from reaching her. The golem didn’t care what she thought, and as the monsters lunged forward in an attempt to get past it, the stone figure crushed one into the floor like a bug, batting another backward.
Seeing the other four advancing on her, Sistina quickly cast another spell, this one launching a spray of debris from the floor at the creatures as she fell back, trying to gain distance. She was just beginning her next spell to create a wall of fire when she heard the debris clack and a hiss from behind her.
An impact against her shoulder knocked Sistina off-balance, and only her earlier defensive spell kept the sharp claws from breaking her skin. It also disrupted her spell as she was partially spun around, and Sistina’s eyes went wide as she saw another three ghouls behind her, one practically on top of her. She was faster than it, though, and she stepped backward quickly, stabbing her dagger into its throat. The creature began to fall to the ground as she wrenched the dagger free—
The ghoul’s flying tackle caught her off guard, sending her crashing to the ground as the golem thundered into another group of ghouls. How damned many of them were there? Sistina only had a moment to think about it before a second ghoul was on her and found a weak point, claws blinding her.
She fought as best she could, but as she felt the pain of their fangs rip into her flesh, Sistina withdrew from her body in a rush.
Mentally gathering herself, Sistina replayed the scene in her mind, horrified by what had happened. She had thought she was fully prepared for the situation down in the academy, but the sheer speed of the ghouls had caught her off guard. She couldn’t keep track of all of them at once, and couldn’t react in time.
Was this what it was like for adventurers? If so, Sistina felt very bad for what the strangling vines had done to them. That had been extremely unpleasant.
Phynis paused, her eyes going wide as she looked at Sistina’s tree and the dryad stepped out of it. Sistina’s skin was glistening with moisture, and the dryad looked faintly annoyed. It was that Phynis had seen the dryad leave earlier that day that was truly confusing her, though.
“Sistina? Didn’t you go down to the Academy earlier, with the golem?” Phynis asked, setting down the book on basic magical theory.
Nodding, the dryad hesitated a moment before speaking, “Situation difficult. Ghouls fast.”
“Ghouls? Sistina… did you lose a body?” Phynis demanded, standing up and putting her hands on her hips.
Sistina visibly hesitated for a moment, then the dryad sighed and nodded. “Yes. Was slow. Now appreciate difficulties. Pity adventurers.”
“Sistina!” Phynis exclaimed, rushing over and embracing the dryad. It was strange, as Sistina’s skin was smoother than normal, with what almost felt like a liquid over the surface, likely from how she’d just been… born, for lack of a better term. “I thought I told you to be careful!”
“Tried. Was overconfident.” Sistina seemed more than a little chagrined, and hugged back. After a moment, she broke off and glanced toward the exit. “New idea. Safer.”
“And what idea is this one?” Phynis asked suspiciously. “The last idea didn’t seem to go well.”
Sistina leaned down and moved a rock, then drew a line in the dirt. Pointing at the rock she explained. “Academy. Tunnel to. Closed now.”
“Ghouls starving. Want meat,” the dryad continued, and put a finger on the other end of the tunnel, smiling. “Deer. Draw out. Squish.”
“Let me see if I understand this right. You’re going to use a deer to draw the ghouls out into the hallway so you can crush them?” Phynis asked, her eyebrows rising. Sistina nodded, and Phynis sighed, then asked, “Why don’t you just crush the entire place? You could, couldn’t you?”
“Yes. Wasteful,” Sistina confirmed, hesitating before explaining. “Sending stones. Need magic tomes. Library is insufficient. Not mage library. Crush academy, crush library.”
“Ick. That does explain it. Are you sure you can get all the ghouls this way?” Phynis asked, not terribly hopeful about the idea.
Sistina shrugged slightly. “Try it. Many times. When ghouls stop, try again.”
“I suppose that’s a decent idea. Just don’t go getting yourself hurt again!” Phynis scolded.
Nodding firmly, Sistina spoke quickly. “Once enough.”
The deer seemed very confused at being down the tunnel, without any grass or other vegetation to eat. If it weren’t for Sistina’s influence, it wouldn’t be down under the mountain to begin with. Sistina started by opening a tiny hole in the wall to blow some of the scent of the nervous deer into the academy, and then waited.
It took hours before she heard the first scraping at the wall, and the deer, hearing the sound, tried to bolt. Sistina let it go, and the sound of it fleeing seemed to drive the creatures into a frenzy as they ripped at the wall. Waiting for the sounds to reach a fever pitch, Sistina finally opened the wall, and the sight was enough to take even her aback.
At least two dozen starving ghouls poured into the gap, frenzied as they charged after the scent of the deer. They snapped and snarled, and nearly half of them had burns that she had to assume were from her golem. She waited a moment as the monsters began scrambling up the hallway, letting them get at least a hundred feet before she decided that was all of them for the time being.
Crushing them was somewhat therapeutic, she found, even if it was anticlimactic as the stone hit them. Bones broke, and the undead returned to death once more. But there was a strange sense of satisfaction about the entire thing.
Now she just had to wait a day or two and try again. And again. Sistina thought it was best to try luring any ghouls out at least a half dozen times… she did not want to get her throat ripped out again.
Chapter 39
“Hello, Elissa! It was a lovely service. May I introduce—ow!” The Archon’s smile vanished as the high priestess sharply kicked him in the shin, and he fell back, yelping as he asked, “What was that for?”
“That was for coming to a servi
ce just to gloat over these poor ladies,” Elissa replied sharply, her hands on her hips. “And it was also to show them that I’m not one of your servants, since I can hurt you.”
The high priestess of Tyria was not what Diane had expected. At least, not quite. Elissa’s words were clearly enunciated and crisp, and carried in the temple clearly as she had addressed those who’d come to listen. The service had been surprisingly short, as afterward Elissa had focused on helping some slaves who needed injuries treated or a word of advice.
Now they were meeting in the private chambers of the priestess, which were as nice as Diane’s own rooms. Elissa was shorter than Diane, unusual for a human, and her white dress covered her from her neck down, save for a patch of thin fabric that showed a violet brand that was distinctly different than those other slaves in Kelvanis bore. Her only other jewelry was her holy symbol, a stylized flame inside a circle made of a chain, with a tiny lock at the bottom.
“Well, it isn’t very nice of you,” Ulvian told her, rubbing his leg as he glowered at the priestess. “I was just going to introduce Diane and Jaine.”
“And now you have. So get out, Ulvian. I want to talk to them without you staring over their shoulders like a malevolent crow,” Elissa retorted, smiling at Diane, her eyes twinkling. In spite of herself, Diane found herself liking the woman.
“Fine. I’ll be back in an hour to pick them up,” the man conceded with a glower, and his expression cleared as he smiled pleasantly at the two elves. “I’ll see the two of you then. I hope you get along with Elissa.”
“Goodbye.” Jaine’s voice was subdued, and Diane said nothing, simply watching him go as the man turned and left the room. When the door latched, Elissa smiled more warmly.
“There. Now that the old bastard’s gone, we can relax,” the priestess said, and gestured toward a table. “Would you like some tea? My name is Elissa, as I’m certain you know.”
Spells of Old (Ancient Dreams Book 2) Page 27
