by Sarah Lin
That didn't mean that they would ignore the resources they'd left lying in the corridors, but instead of stripping the corpses, they just shoved them all into Meara's inventory. Gharavi couldn't help but experiment with the crystals from the horse as they went back, but it was obvious that they were done with the Testing Dungeon and ready to move on.
"Are we finally done?" As they got back to the circle, Danniah looked at it eagerly. "That's everything, right?"
"There's actually one more thing." Bloodwraith brought up the Fast Travel box and began searching through the symbols. Three for the three floors... he touched the fourth and a different map was displayed, just a single circular room. "The boxes suggest there is a place in this dungeon we have never been. I would like to visit once before we go."
"That makes sense, but if it has more of those plate keys or looks like it's gonna summon another big thing... well, I sure hope it doesn't."
Bloodwraith selected the strange location and saw the circle light up, again not forming a portal. When they stepped into it, for a moment he was disoriented... then he stood in the strangest room they had yet seen.
The five of them stood on a circular piece of what appeared to be white marble, completely unmarked except for the circle beneath their feet. Around them floated fragments of... everything. Blocks from the dungeon, wolves and crabs, that tree they had seen stuck in a wall, metal plates... all of them floated in a circle around their central position. Beyond them, there was only blankness, softly shifting between colors.
"Wow!" Izzy moved to the edge of the marble block and stared downward, where everything became lost in the blankness. "This place is weird! What is it?"
"I don't think we were meant to be here." Meara winced and held her head. "This place... I think it might be at the heart of the dungeon. But it has broken down, if it was ever finished."
Gharavi spoke up with her own opinion, yet Bloodwraith failed to hear it. His blood was rushing in his ears and he could feel power within him responding. Yes, this place held something valuable. The same power that fueled him, but in raw form... Bloodwraith stepped to the edge of the platform and reached out. Not only did a strange sphere form in front of him, its box appeared immediately.
[Testing Dungeon: Builder Core
See the training manual for proper use of this item. Do not under any circumstances ever take this item into Alliandelle proper, much less give it to an active vector.
Rarity: Administrator]
His eyes widened and he stretched his hand to grasp the sphere, wondering if it could make him the equal of their opponents...
Then without warning, the horizon of shifting colors vanished along with the sphere. In its place was a distorted image of what appeared to be a narrow mountain pass, stretched out as if over a dome above them. That alone would have been troubling enough, but there was a cloaked figure standing in the pass.
It was Alan. The Earthian had just turned toward them, his face obscured by his gray cloak but the shock visible in his body. He leaned closer, his head distorting to become so large it filled half the sky. "What the hell? How the heck did you get to a builder core?"
Realizing that the Earthian would attempt to strike against them, Bloodwraith reached out to try to grasp the power he could feel around him. Yet when he tried, something moved into his way, effectively blocking him. Bloodwraith strained to push past it, yet the force felt stronger than him.
"Nice try, but I put safeguards in place. You're never getting that." Alan stared as if he could see them, shaking his head. "I just can't believe..."
As he stared at the Earthian's giant projection, Bloodwraith reached back toward the circle behind them and prepared to open a portal. He had a feeling that if Alan tried to attack them now, it might go very poorly. There was no way they could fight him in this place, but they had learned one very valuable fact. When Bloodwraith caught Meara's eye, he saw that she understood as well.
They knew the mountain pass where Alan was standing: it led directly into the Forest of Beginnings.
"Okay," Alan was saying, "we obviously need to talk more. But this is a bad time, so I'll need to find a new prison... maybe they left some kind of box for banning players? You'd break through that, but perhaps..."
Before he could finish his sentence, a long, mocking laugh sounded. For the first time the hooded figure pulled back, looking in a different direction. Bloodwraith strained his eyes to look further and saw something in the sky. As it grew closer, the laughter became louder and he understood:
It was Belkarin. The Aesidh was riding on a dragon with silver eyes.
Power began to twist around them violently as both Outsiders' magic clashed. All the floating objects in the chamber twitched, some of them falling into oblivion below and others simply dissolving. Bloodwraith tried to reach for the power again, but it was even more difficult this time with two forms of magic raging around him. Not only could he not take the power, they risked being torn apart by the clash.
Instead he moved back to the portal, gesturing for the others to follow him. "We have to get out! If we stay here, we die!"
None of them hesitated even a moment, as the floor underneath them was beginning to tremble. Bloodwraith desperately pulled up the Fast Travel system: they needed to get to somewhere in the real world that wouldn't be torn apart by these forces.
He tried to select the Forest of Beginnings again and once more it failed. Cracks were forming on the marble around them, getting closer to the portal. When he tried to select the area near the Forest, again it didn't work. Bloodwraith desperately threw his will against the boxes, trying to shove his allies through first. All at once the portal snapped open, swallowing them.
Bloodwraith plummeted from the sky, smashing into a farmer's field beside a dirt path. He was stunned but uninjured and slowly pushed himself to his feet. In the sky overhead he could see the circular portal... which dissolved a moment later. As he looked around, Bloodwraith realized that he knew where he was.
These were the fields outside Cresthaven. And he was alone.
Chapter 25
Fighting against overwhelming opponents was one thing, but the moment where the world had seemed to tear itself apart... Danniah had been too stunned to even feel anything. As she lay in the dirt, staring at the sky overhead, she couldn't move. Her body was fine, but her mind was still catching up.
She had been a bit nauseous from the first moment they entered the strange room, as if it was a place that wasn't meant to exist. When the Earthian Outsider had began doing something to them, she had felt as powerless as the first time they fought. But it was when the Aesidh appeared and forces started tearing the world in every direction that she had been truly horrified, as if the ground itself had disappeared underneath her.
Yet now she was back on real ground. Danniah clenched her fingers in the dirt, glad to feel the solid earth beneath her, and pushed her way up. Terrible as that experience had been, she wouldn't let it defeat her.
But even so... where was she?
When she sat up, nothing looked familiar. It definitely wasn't anywhere near Manascas, because the ground was covered in lush grass and she saw quite a few trees. But it all looked more dark and wild than the area around Cresthaven, which she knew quite well. Had she just been thrown off into some random wilderness?
But when Danniah turned around, she got her answer to that. She was not far from a city, a vast huddle of dark houses over a range of hills. Even from her current position, she could see that a river ran through the city and that many parts of it had water trickling down from higher hills.
It matched all the stories she had heard: she'd ended up outside Edsdam.
The "why" of it didn't really matter - what she needed to do was find her allies. Danniah checked that she had her equipment, but she'd become quite good at keeping her grip on it even under difficult circumstances. When she climbed up a small hill nearby and looked around, she didn't spot any disturbances, but the trees and hil
ls created many places where someone else might have landed.
If the others were in her same position, then they'd probably follow the obvious logic: meet up in the city itself. Danniah headed there, wishing she had a cloak to hide herself. She'd become far too dependent on Meara and Bloodwraith to carry literally anything they might need. Still, she did have backup supplies and one of her old helms, so Danniah switched from the awful Vicious Helm to an ordinary steel one. Hopefully that wouldn't attract too much attention.
There were no guards at all as she entered Edsdam, which surprised her. When she looked up, she did spot a couple of suspicious-looking people on rooftops with crossbows. Her instinct was to jump for cover, but they only watched below with bored expressions. Were they the only guards here?
As Danniah moved further into the grimy city, she quickly realized that Edsdam was not a good place for her. Everywhere around her she saw dark armor, suspicious cloaks, and dirty glances. If they had a Thieves Guild here, it wasn't to organize all the thieves, it was to support the best of them. It would be impossible to trust anyone here, so she could easily be taken in. Having Bloodwraith or Meara to be cynical for her would have been wonderful, or at least Gharavi or Izzy to watch her back.
Still, she needed to start somewhere. Maybe best to start among her own kind. Danniah spotted a man who didn't look particularly unfriendly standing on a street corner and approached him with a smile. "Excuse me, sir! Is there an Adventurers Guild in-"
He silenced her with a glare as if she had slapped him in the face, then turned and walked away. Danniah stood there, a bit dismayed and unsure what to try next.
But no, she wasn't that helpless. She'd gotten smarter while traveling with Bloodwraith, and while she'd never be as negative as he was, she had still learned some from him. Most likely, Edsdam operated entirely by profit. If she wanted information, she would need someone who was indebted to her. Just handing coins to people wouldn't work, but perhaps...
Danniah walked up to a rickety wagon on the street that was advertising meat rolls of some kind. They looked rather dodgy, but the smell was actually good. She stepped up and smiled at the surly woman running the wagon.
"How much for one?"
"Ten coppers."
That sounded like too much to Danniah, but she wasn't good at bargaining. So she settled for giving the woman a skeptical glare, then slapped the coins down on the wagon. "I expect your best. Now tell me, where's the Adventurers Guild?"
For a while the woman didn't answer her, building a new roll of meat. But when she handed it over, she pointed a heavily stained hand up a nearby hill. "Head that way, then left at the big tavern. You'll see it from there."
"Thanks!"
Danniah happily took the meat roll and shuffled away a bit to put her back to a stone wall before beginning to eat it. Though she decided it was better not to know what kind of meat it was, it was hot and the meaty juices actually tasted good. Besides, she knew someone who had much messier eating habits, so something like this couldn't disgust her.
More importantly, she had successfully navigated an encounter even in a city like this. It wasn't much, but it was a start. Unfortunately, the warmth began to fade as Danniah started to think about her friends. Hopefully they hadn't been sent anywhere terrible, or dropped from a fatal height...
"That thing is probably half rat." Meara appeared beside her out of nowhere, wrinkling her nose at the meat roll. "You're going to make yourself sick."
"Meara!" Danniah cheerfully hugged her with the hand that wasn't holding the meat roll. She held on for a long time, glad to have the other woman with her, but then pulled back and took another bite. "I'm not worried. I have a whole lot of Vitality numbers, you know? I think my stomach can handle it."
"Heh, maybe it can." Meara's smile soon faded, however, as they both thought about their situation.
"Umm, do you understand what happened? It was pretty rough for me, but I imagine it was worse for you."
For a while Meara didn't answer, and when she did, she spoke rather softly. "As near as I can tell, we came very close to a source of great power. Unfortunately, the Outsider had defenses set up to prevent us from taking it. When we got close he tried to imprison us, but at that moment the Aesidh attacked and things got messy. Bloodwraith hurriedly pushed everyone through the portal to save us."
"Oh... but we can't be too far apart. You found me right away, after all."
"Because I can track you. There are connections between all of us and I can feel them." Meara closed her eyes and took a deep breath, as if breathing in the city itself. "I'm fairly sure Gharavi is also near the city, just further away, so I came to you first. But I can't pinpoint Izzy and Bloodwraith is nowhere to be found."
Danniah swallowed and stared at her. "He's... he's alright, isn't he?"
"I'm sure he is. If he was seriously injured or worse, I'm sure I would feel it." Meara put a hand on Danniah's shoulder, but she was obviously still preoccupied. "Most likely he put us through first before going through at the end, so we may have gotten split up."
"That makes sense. But assuming we can find each other... what are we trying to do now?"
"I'm not completely sure. I think that if either side of the battle wins, that's bad for us, so we need to stop both sides. But it seems like the battle might be taking place in the Forest of Beginnings, which doesn't obey the normal rules. There's likely a barrier preventing us from just walking in."
"But that's why we were helping Gharavi gather all that energy, right? So that we could break through anything Outsiders try to put up?"
"Hopefully it will work that way. We need to talk to her again now that we know more, and we need to talk to Bloodwraith. But I'm not sure where to start."
Finishing the roll and licking off her fingers, Danniah set off down the street. "I'd already decided that I was going to start at the local Adventurers Guild and I think that's still a good place to start. We can find out if anything strange has been going on here like the nice woman from the Savages Guild said. It might not be just random that we got sent here, right?"
"Possibly not. We'll need to investigate more." With that, Meara followed her down the street. They could have chatted, but Edsdam had such an oppressive atmosphere that it didn't seem right.
For a while Danniah got a bit turned around and began to worry that she had been given false directions. But eventually she figured out where she went wrong and turned left at the correct tavern. Part of the problem was that the Adventurers Guild was far smaller than the previous ones she had known. It was just one average-sized building - clearly functioning, but just as clearly not a major power in Edsdam.
They wandered in and Danniah was relieved to find that it wasn't entirely filled with suspicious cloaked types like the streets outside. Maybe adventurers weren't the most reputable people in the world, but the people she saw inside looked like they were just interested in doing jobs for fair wages, not murdering people for a few coppers.
"You from another Guild?" An armored man behind a nearby table called out to stop them. Danniah hastily grabbed for her chain marking her as a Bronze Ranker, though it had been a very long time since that had been relevant to her.
"Absolutely! I'm from Cresthaven and I just got here."
"If you're looking for work, we could use it." The man shook his head and spat onto the floor. "The rough jobs get taken by other people, but they leave all the ones that require them to sacrifice much. Plus there are a lot of requests from people who can't pay much and get ignored. If you're willing to do a good deed, the Guild can improve the compensation a bit."
"Oh..." All at once Danniah wished that she could stay here and do her best to help the people of Edsdam, but she recognized that they had higher priorities. "I would like to, but we're mainly here on personal business. Has anything strange been going on in the city?"
The man raised a hand. "I don't do rumors or information services. Take a look at the requests board - that's the best we can
do for you."
Nodding in acceptance, Danniah went where he directed to find the board of listed requests. Just looking over it made her feel more comfortable, even if things weren't really the same as the old days when she'd sought out quests to help Bloodwraith. Beside her, Meara scanned the papers as well, hopefully using her abilities to find good ones.
But meanwhile, Danniah could keep her eyes open and do her best. There wasn't anything too crazy, but she hadn't been expecting a "Stop the evil Aesidh from completing the following plan" request. Instead she noted requests about strange creatures, some that might even be Fellsilvered. There were a few strange requests overall, but nothing that suggested to her that Edsdam was falling apart.
"Heh." Meara suddenly chuckled, prompting Danniah to look over at her.
"Uh, I don't see any of these that are too funny..."
"Not like that. Bloodwraith has an old, outdated quest in his boxes - the box gods were trying to convince him to go to Edsdam instead of fighting Daek the Knife."
Danniah nodded. "I remember that a bit. Obviously we couldn't do that because Daek was killing people."
"Right. Anyway, the thing is, that quest was an elaborate one with a whole bunch of different objectives. Even though that was some time ago, I'm seeing references to them here... something about drakeskin armor, a reference to something called the Governor's Ordeal... those things must have been set up for Raigar to do while he was here."
"Hmm... does that mean we should do them?"
"It's probably a waste of time at this stage." Meara turned away from the wall to look at Danniah. "I think we've gotten our bearings now. Shall we find Gharavi and then figure out what to do next?"
"That works for me!"
They headed back out into the streets, and though their surroundings were as dour as before, Danniah felt much more confident. She thought it was justified, too. Meara was very good at picking up on threats and didn't need to be defended at all. And if it really came to a fight... her carapace armor might look a bit rough, but she knew from experience how tough it could be.
