The reason they were still inside the dungeon when they doubtless should’ve been done by that point was a point of contention between them all and had led to some heated arguments; they were made all the more stressful because precise communication was still an issue because of the language barrier between them all, so it had devolved into a lot of finger pointing and gesturing to get their points across.
The issue was that the dungeon didn’t seem to have a straightforward path to where the Dungeon Heart/Core was located. The first indication of this had been in the seventh room, where similar-looking tunnels led out from it to the left, right, and straight ahead. After a few minutes in which they had all pointed off to different tunnels, they had finally settled on straight ahead, which made the most sense to Echo and obviously Felbar at the time; she figured that the others were just distractions and if they wanted to get to the end as quickly as possible, then straight would get them there.
She was horribly wrong.
They took the straight route, which slowly began to angle off to the right as they went, though it wasn’t completely noticeable at once. Still, Echo was marginally sure they all thought that was the way it was supposed to be and didn’t turn back. After fighting through more zombies, skeletons, a large contingent of ghouls that emerged from a cleverly hidden pocket beneath the floor in a room, more Specters that filled a pit on either side of a narrow walkway, and scores of the black-armored undead that were lined up in ranks, they finally emerged into a large room after 3 or 4 hours – to find it was the exact same one they had needed to choose their pathway from earlier. The straight path had led around in a circle, ending up in the right-hand tunnel…with nothing but the loss of some of their monsters to show for it – not to mention their mounting exhaustion.
Echo remembered Sandra saying that she could “see” the outside of the dungeon from underground, so the Dungeon Core probably could’ve told them that going down the left tunnel was the correct way to go without wasting time – but how were they supposed to know? After a few minutes of silence followed by accusatory finger-pointing and arguing in different languages that the others couldn’t understand, they eventually went down the left tunnel, hoping that their destination was close at hand.
More skeletons, zombies, and other undead met them along the way – including some of the hated Liches. She knew that rationally they weren’t actually undead Elves that had chosen to embrace their Nether element and practice Necromancy, but from the glimpses she had of their hands and the barest hints of their faces she couldn’t picture them as anything else. She had sent countless Lightstrikes in their direction (which were then copied by her Shapeshifter forces), interspersed by an arrow or two, which kept them so off-balance that they were unable to respond and were destroyed before they did any damage. Of course, she ended up almost completely draining herself of Holy energy at the time, but it was worth it even though it regenerated slowly over the next hour or two.
As for traps, which were still the deadliest foes they faced in the dungeon, there were some variations of what they had seen before, but many of them were brand new. There was a trap that had walls of Nether set up to act like a maze, where if you touched the walls it would essentially burn with an intense cold; that one was actually a little frightening, because undead could emerge from the walls and attack out of nowhere, which was difficult to defend against. Another trap had super-thin diamond-shaped slices of pure darkness randomly descending from the ceiling like raindrops, and whatever they touched would get sliced up; after they had attempted to traverse the room while avoiding the “raindrops” and Starlight had her head severed from her body, they found that the dark slices couldn’t penetrate through metal – only flesh – so the Apes acted like shields for her and her Shapeshifters as they crossed through the room.
The deadliest trap so far had been one that was activated as soon as one of the Apes stepped into the room, but it didn’t manifest for nearly 15 seconds, when dozens of their monsters were already inside the room, fighting some puny skeletons. “Whoa, stop – call them back, Felbar!” Gerold had said (or she assumed that’s what he said, since she didn’t have a translator handy), just as he was about to enter the room ahead of the other Dwarves. It was too late for most of them, however, as little black motes were scattered all around the room, and where they touched the Angels and Apes already inside the room it somehow ate away at them. Luckily, Felbar was able to save some of them, which immediately got fixed up by the healing Drones, but the damage was already done.
The one thing that had prevented all of them from dying, strangely enough, was Gerold’s strange Nether-sensing ability, which highlighted many of the trap triggers – but certainly not all. Over half of the traps that could’ve taken an even larger toll on them – and possibly kill some of the living elements of their group – were never even activated, as they were bypassed after they were found. The use of that ability, though, took a higher toll on him than normal; he was looking the worst out of all of them; a few times his Deep Delver had even stumbled and fallen, and it took a few moments for his exhausted body to respond and pick himself up.
The dungeon seemed never-ending, and Echo was starting to despair that they wouldn’t ever escape from there with their lives, let alone actually destroy the vile undead Core. Just as she was starting to think that, they entered a room that was at least 5 times bigger than anything they had seen so far; her first glimpse around the room had her questioning her sanity.
If this nightmare isn’t the final room, I don’t even want to know what’s next.
Chapter 33
There were only three visible undead in the room, but they were monstrous. Two of them were massive piles of various corpses all smashed together in a horrific abomination that brought the bile in her relatively empty belly up to her throat, threatening to make her gag and throw up whatever was actually still in there. She had heard mention of one of them outside of Sandra’s dungeon when they were basically under siege but hadn’t seen it in person – and wished that she hadn’t even now. If nothing else was proof enough of why we destroy undead dungeons immediately when we find them, those things should convince even the most hesitant.
The one that was outside of Sandra’s dungeon had been destroyed along with everything else when she used that disturbingly destructive construct, so she wasn’t even sure how powerful it was. She was told that it had some sort of “healing” aura – if fixing undead that were damaged could be called healing – that had manifested itself before it was destroyed, but that was all she knew about whatever they were. It’s a good thing there isn’t a horde of smaller undead in here, otherwise this could be even more difficult.
Those were the least of her concerns, however, because it was the third undead in the room that worried her the most. The ceiling of the room was almost impossible to see over her head because of the same dim interior that the rest of the dungeon had, but she suspected it had to be over 200 feet tall; of course, she was basing that on the horrifically tall giant zombie she was looking at, which towered in between the two abominations. It appeared to be an actual Giant that had been turned into an undead, with open wounds all over its body, rotting flesh falling off of it in chunks that didn’t seem to make a difference in its size, and open eye sockets that looked like the eyes had been forcibly removed from.
It was wearing a loincloth that was hard to tell what color it started as – because it was drenched in dried blood – and nothing else, though it held a wooden club in its hand that looked suspiciously like a tree that had been ripped out of the ground.
None of the undead so much as twitched as they entered the room, though once everyone was inside there was finally some movement – though not from the monstrosities. Behind the towering giant was a very large tunnel that she presumed was that big to let that particular monster through; emerging from that tunnel was a horde of undead that made the rest of the dungeon seem tame. There were more skeletons, zombies, ghouls, armored
undead, Specters, Liches, and even a few smaller ones that she had never seen before anywhere.
As soon as they passed within range of the two abominations, the “healing” aura that she had heard about surrounded them, indicating that they were now even harder to destroy. Hundreds of undead streamed into the room and took places in front of the three monstrous undead, lined up and ready to attack. When the flow finally stopped, she looked over at Felbar and Gerold, seeing the same hopelessness in their gazes that she was sure was in her own.
In preparation, Echo wearily looked over at their supplies and saw that she and each of her copies had exactly 5 more exploding arrows to shoot – and that was even combining everything they had left from the other Shapeshifters. They all had a small amount of Holy energy with which to cast spells, but it wouldn’t be much; she briefly tried to get the unshifted ones to change into her form, but she belatedly realized they were all still on a cooldown – with the next batch nearly 30 minutes away from shifting.
Nothing in the room moved as both groups just looked at each other, waiting for some sort of signal to start the attack. With a big sigh, Echo raised her bow and figured she might as well get it started, watching as the 4 other shifted Echos did the same. I think the explosions should be powerful enough to negate any healing they might receive, so I might as well try to destroy as many as possible right away.
Just before she was about to release, she saw Felbar waving his arms back and forth in a gesture she had learned to translate as “stop”. Echo lowered her bow, confused, and shot him a questioning look. He didn’t say anything, but he looked at the others and then at the monsters they had left; she had noticed that whatever commands he would give them he could practically whisper and they would hear it, and he was obviously doing so now as she barely saw his lips moving in the construct he was controlling. No sound reached her even though she was only about 10 feet away, though it was obvious that Sandra’s monsters could as they quickly started to move.
Their movement must’ve alerted the undead that something was up, or the Core had somehow heard him, because they immediately ran, shambled, or flew forward. Echo froze at the scene in front of her, with hundreds of undead rushing towards her with killing intent. The floor rumbled under the first step of the massive zombie Giant, which amazingly had the effect of snapping her out of her fear-driven paralysis.
Out of the corner of her eye, she watched the three Angels rushing forward as fast as they could; without a thought, she used her Air elemental energy to cast a spell that reduced the air friction in front of them and pushed them forward like she could do to herself. She started to get an inkling of what was planned, so even though it rapidly drained that particular element, she was essentially full of it since she hadn’t used it all during their experience so far. Right after she did that, she shouted, “Spread!”, which was an order she had designed that would spread out the attacks of her Echo copies – or in this case, spread their Air spells in between the three Celestial Authorities.
They shot forward and closed the distance between them and the approaching undead horde within seconds, spreading out so that there was one in the middle, one on the right, and one on the left – exactly where the massive giants were behind the ranks of the smaller undead. Instead of attacking, though, they used the extra boost to their speed to leap high into the air and over the heads of the undead horde – which didn’t stop and kept rushing forward.
Meanwhile, 8 white cylindrical objects flew through the air towards the approaching horde, as the Apes dropped their warhammers, grabbed one of the healing Drones, and then threw them with their enormous strength over the heads of the leading wave of undead as well. “Echo!” Felbar shouted, and she instantly knew what he wanted.
Letting go of the Air-based speed spell on the Angels while they were in mid-leap, she nocked one of her arrows and released with just a modicum of aiming, before doing so again just under a second later. Her copies followed suit, launching their own barrage, and 10 arrows flew through the air towards the 8 thrown Repair Drones.
The Angels seemed to explode in a bright light a fraction of a second before the arrows hit the Drones. She had been briefed on the abilities of the Authorities by Sandra just as much as the others were, though Echo thought Felbar had apparently forgotten about any of them, as the Angels were primarily used in melee instead of tossing out their Arrows. That meant that they were still almost completely full of Holy elemental energy; the resulting Divine Light Explosions were so bright that the Elf had to look away, but she could sense that they were large enough to encompass the majority of the abominations behind the horde and the lower half of the zombie Giant.
The explosions from the Drones being hit from her and her copies’ exploding arrows were smaller, though no less destructive. Massive swathes of the undead were destroyed in seconds leaving behind their Loot sometimes in piles as the monsters were packed so closely together. Hundreds were killed as a result of the attack…but there were still dozens of undead outside of the blast radius heading their way.
Looking behind them when the light disappeared from the detonations, she saw that the two abominations were starting to dissolve into the ground after being destroyed by the intensely bright destructive light of the Angels exploding, though the Giant was still alive – and falling forward, its bottom half essentially obliterated. On a person or even another living beast, that kind of damage probably would’ve been enough to kill or incapacitate them; since it was a zombie the rules were a little different. It didn’t feel pain and wouldn’t bleed to death – losing its legs was more of an inconvenience than anything.
It slammed down, luckily squishing the middle portion of the undead still racing towards her group. The others all fell down as a result of the massive impact, and Starlight 2 danced around for a second before flapping her wings to bring her off the ground. Echo made ready to launch her remaining arrows towards the 50 or so random undead heading their way (with no Liches she could see, fortunately), but was stopped again as Felbar picked himself up and saw the situation.
“Echo, berchke!”
Obviously, she had no idea what “berchke” meant, but as he pointed off to the tunnel with his weapon she figured it out fairly quickly.
“No, I’m not going to leave you—”
“Berchke!” he repeated, so loudly that it was almost as painful as listening to an arrow exploding in a confined space.
Rather than argue anymore, and since Sandra had obviously put him in charge for a reason, she directed Starlight 2 to head towards the tunnel; before she got a few more feet upwards, though, she noticed that the other Echos were trying to follow her. “Follow Felbar’s orders now!” she shouted at them, before urging her Pegasus onward with speed. She looked back to see them returning back down to just over the Dwarves’ heads, and they shot their arrows into the undead that were just on the edge of being too close to do so safely.
Whipping her head around at something out of the corner of her eye, she barely ordered her flying mount to dive as a wooden club wider than the wingspan of her Pegasus whipped over their heads. The disturbance in the air was so great that she felt them both spiraling out of control, so she used the little Air elemental energy she had left to stabilize them. Finally looking around after the recovery, she saw that the zombie Giant had lifted itself up and was balancing itself on its left arm as it started swinging its tree club with its right.
Luckily, the Giant moved relatively slowly and it was easy to see where the club was going to swing, so she was able to avoid one, and then another before she was able to fly past its range; she figured that it would have to find some way to turn itself around before it could hit her again, and that she was in the clear.
Of course, looking back, she saw at least a dozen Specters that had survived the explosion earlier closing in on her. As she directed Starlight 2 to keep flying, she turned and launched Lightstrike spells in their direction, which rapidly expended her Holy elemental energy. The
y didn’t even try to avoid her casts, so she ended up destroying 8 of them – but she counted 5 of them still there…and they were closing in fast.
Urging her flying mount to move faster, she contemplated her options. She was out of essentially all of her energy, though it was regenerating – but it wouldn’t be in time to save her. Her arrows, if she shot them, would just pass right through the insubstantial undead, so that was also out. The only thing she had left was her Pegasus and its Nether-negating Protection Aura special ability, which she had used sparingly and even when she did, it wasn’t as effective as she would’ve liked. The original Starlight had the aura on while negotiating its way through the trapped area that had ultimately killed her, though she was sure it had some effect on the trap. With no other choices she had Starlight 2 activate it and prayed that would be enough.
The first Specter hit the aura and made it approximately two feet before it dissipated, dropping a small black stone as Loot. The second and third hit the same spot moments later, carving out a large portion of the 15-foot aura radius before disappearing. The fourth was there less than a second later and it managed to progress through the quickly fading Aura until it reached to within inches of Starlight 2’s tail.
The fifth one was right behind the fourth, however, and as the previous Specter was destroyed, it pressed through the Aura to hit the Pegasus in the rear end. Starlight 2 neighed loudly – the first time she had ever heard it make a noise and it shuddered underneath her; in a matter of seconds they were falling out of the air, rushing towards the ground at dangerous speeds. Just as they entered the dark tunnel, a last-second wing-flap prevented them from both being smashed flat, though she could feel that Starlight 2 was almost out of the energy that was being sucked out of her. The Aura disappeared as they crashed, and Echo tumbled over her mount’s head; she heard and felt a pop in her left wrist as she fell, and by the time she stopped rolling an enormous pain bloomed from the spot.
The Crafter's Dilemma: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 3) Page 39
