“Yeah, I was going to send him a message when we’re done here and let him know,” I replied, looking around at all the faces at the table for questions. “Does anyone have anything else to bring up before we all split up?”
Everyone shook their heads in negation and glanced around the table for anyone else to speak up. After a few seconds pause, it became clear that no one had anything else to add for the moment.
“Alright,” I said, standing up from my chair while mentally composing a private message to Lazarus and asking if he was available to meet with me. “In that case, let’s start getting ready.
“Because tomorrow, we’re going dungeon crawling.”
Chapter 31
Friday, March 22th, 2047 - 7:01 am
The Lakeside Ruins
“I really hope that the whole ruin isn’t this cramped,” Alistair muttered aloud as the seventeen of us milled about in various groups, scattered throughout the main chamber of the Lakeside Ruins while we waited for Drace to excavate the last bits of the passage. “Otherwise, the only thing most of us are going to see is the back of the person in front of us.”
“I hear you there,” Constantine chimed in. “I’m not quite claustrophobic. But depending on how today works out…I just might be once we’re done.”
“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” I called to the rogue from my position leaning against the wall closest to the switchbacks. “But if you start feeling antsy, let us know, and we can let you take point once we get down there. Maybe then you can be useful and spring any traps before we can step onto them.”
“I’m going to take a hard pass on that one, Lyr,” Constantine replied without missing a beat. “I like my limbs firmly attached, and my flesh un-melted. Besides, Caius did a great job the last time with the trap springing; I don’t see a reason to change things up now.”
“How considerate,” Caius grunted sarcastically. “You’re a real team player.”
“No problem, bud!” Constantine said with a grin. “I got your back.”
“To push it forward into danger you mean.”
“I take it that you’ve all known one another for quite a long time,” Lazarus asked me as the banter between Constantine and Caius continued, the pair clearly burning off nervous energy while they waited.
“Decades,” I acknowledged, turning my head to see both Sawyer and Ransom standing beside the half-giant. “How about you guys?”
“Just a few weeks for me,” Ransom replied. “Ever since…well, you know.”
“I see,” I said with a nod, before turning my head towards Sawyer.
“Almost since release day,” Sawyer stated, giving Lazarus a grin as he spoke. “Though we didn’t start off on the best terms.”
“Oh?” I asked, raising an eyebrow as I looked towards Lazarus, who was shaking his head but shared the same smile that Sawyer did.
“Sawyer liked to make my life difficult in the beginning—” The half-giant started to say just before Sawyer interrupted.
“And I still do too!”
“—which hasn’t changed.” Lazarus paused to glare at the red-armored man. “But after beating the shit out of one another…five times, we decided that it was better to work together.”
“That and because Eberia was literally on fire at the time,” Sawyer added.
“That too,” Lazarus agreed, his expression faltering slightly as he spoke. “As for the others—”
“Hey, we’re through.” Drace’s low voice filtered out from the tunnel leading to the switchbacks a heartbeat before he appeared in the entranceway, causing my attention to shift towards him. “I had to make a bit of noise clearing the entrance, so we should get moving, in case something down there decides to investigate.”
“Good idea,” I replied, glancing back towards Lazarus and seeing that the emotion I had seen on his face had vanished, the moment having passed. “Let’s get everyone moving then.”
Turning around to face the rest of the guild, I cleared my throat loudly, the noise more than enough to cause all the conversations to stop as heads turned to look in my direction.
“It’s showtime,” I announced, seeing grins break out on several faces in the crowd as my words filled the air. “Everyone fall into their assigned formation and move as quietly as you can. The plan is to move carefully until we get a better picture of what’s ahead of us. Keep your ears open and be sure to speak up if you see something interesting.”
“Or if something interesting sees you,” Constantine added dryly.
Murmurs of assent intermixed with laughter reached my ears as everyone moved into position, the sounds of weapons being drawn faintly echoing through the chambers. We had plenty of time to come up with a basic plan for exploring the ruin last night, and everyone was well aware of their roles and responsibilities.
The only thing left now was to dive on in and see what we found.
Nodding at Drace to take the lead, I followed him as he turned around back down the tunnel, waving at a somewhat sleepy Amaranth to follow close behind me.
The rest of the journey down the tunnel proceeded in silence, only the crunch of our feet on the broken stone sounding as we slowly stalked down the passage that Drace had spent the last week excavating. Taking care not to slip as I walked down the incline, I kept a firm eye on Drace’s back as he led the way into the lower ruin, several motes of lights floating ahead of him and illuminating the way.
“Here we go,” Drace whispered softly as we reached the bottom of the incline, which almost immediately opened up into a large, partially collapsed chamber, a maze of fallen stone preventing us from seeing deeper into the room.
I heard Drace take a deep breath before he stepped forward into the dark room before us, the large stone fragments protruding from the ceiling above us causing our lights to cast disturbing and eerie shadows as we moved. It only took me a handful of strides before my nose caught a whiff of the tangy, stench that Drace had mentioned earlier, which now that I smelled it, reminded me of moldy bread mixed with something extra that I couldn’t quite identify.
Holding Splinter tightly in my hand as Drace and I picked our way through the fallen rubble, I couldn’t help but notice that some of the larger fragments that we passed bore the same sort of architecture as the chamber above us.
It looks like a lot of whatever used to be here was affected or damaged by the explosion, I thought, my gaze landing on a massive piece of stone that had thrust itself through what I assumed was once a doorway, leading somewhere away from the chamber that we were in. Just how big was this place when the Nafarr were still alive, and how much is still buried underground here?
Questions about the ancient civilization continued to circulate through my mind as Drace, and I continued to navigate a path around the fallen chunks of stone, on one occasion needing to climb straight over a rather large shard when we couldn’t find a way past. But eventually, after several minutes of slow progress, we finally worked our way past the worst of the collapse, entering into a relatively clear portion of the chamber where we decided to wait for the rest of the guild, and the motes of light, to catch up to us.
Looking into the gloom ahead of us, I decided to activate True Sight, my enhanced vision easily piercing through the darkness and illuminating the rest of the chamber. Blinking twice to get used to the sudden brightness, I was surprised that the first thing that I noticed were countless magical burns scarring nearly every portion of the chamber ahead of us.
Damn, it looks like a small war was fought down here, I observed, my eyes pick
ing out large chunks of stone that had been blasted out from the floor and several splattered pockmarks that could have only been caused by acid. It was as if the damage that I’d seen in the chamber we’d come from above had repeated itself down here, except on a much larger scale. My gaze gradually continued to work its way further into the room as I followed the damage inward, eventually ending up at the far wall, roughly thirty feet away from us.
Cut into the wall, I saw two doorways roughly twenty feet apart from one another, both of them similar to the blocked one that Drace and I had passed earlier. One of the doors was wide open, the passage beyond it angling out of sight, while the other was sealed with what appeared to be a carved stone slab. There appeared to be some sort of design on the door, but I couldn’t make out the detail from this distance.
An open doorway is a good sign, I told myself, happy to see that our dungeon crawl hadn’t been stalled by the need to dig once more, or that a collapse had ended it before it had a chance to begin. My eyes dropped downwards from the two doorways to look at the rather large pile of rubble that littered the ground between the two entranceways. It only took me a second after focusing on the rubble to realize that it wasn’t actually rubble at all. Are those…
I took a tentative step forward as I stared at the sight before me, my heart doing a flip once I figured out what I was looking at.
“Bodies,” I whispered to myself. “They’re all bodies.”
“Lyr?” Drace whispered in concern as he stepped up to my side and regarded the darkness warily, unable to see through it like I could. “What do you see?”
“The remains of the people who were trapped in here, I think,” I replied in a low voice as my eyes tried to make sense of what they were seeing.
Scattered everywhere on the ground between the two doorways ahead of us was what appeared to be well over a dozen withered and skeletal bodies. Many I could see were clad in armor of some sort, the finer details of which was obscured by the thick layer of dust that coated it. In several instances, I saw weapons protruding from the fallen bodies, which I couldn’t help but notice were still clutched firmly in the hands of the other fallen. Whatever scene had once played out here long ago must have been one of complete chaos for the bodies to have ended up this way.
“It looks like there were two forces in here that fought one another,” I said with a guess, taking my eyes off the fallen bodies ahead of me and turning around to face Drace and the others who had managed to navigate their way through the maze of fallen rubble. “The room is covered with battle damage further in, and the bodies are piled two or three deep in some places.”
“The Irovians must have made it this far then,” Drace commented, referring to the old dark elf empire that predated The Ascendancy. “It would make sense for them to try and secure the Ley Line from the Nafarr if they were attacking the city here. Assuming that all of this leads to the Ley Line in the first place.”
“Maybe,” I agreed. “But it doesn’t look like it worked out that well for them.”
“No, no it doesn’t,” Drace said wistfully before the two of us glanced over at the rest of the guild and saw that everyone had managed to catch up.
“Want to send a few lights forward so those of us without Darkvision can see?” Drace asked, motioning towards what I figured to be a near impenetrable darkness for his eyes.
“Sure,” I replied, waving a hand to motion our casters over and repeating the request.
Seconds later, four motes of lights gently sailed through the air and illuminated the far end of the chamber, revealing the fallen bodies and twin doorways for everyone to see. There was a brief pause as the others took in the sight, the lights shifting ever so slightly to maximize their coverage of the area.
“Great, a bunch of bodies, lying suspiciously on the ground, weapons within reach,” Constantine muttered softly as he moved to stand close to Drace and me. “Does the game think that we’re stupid? Of course, the moment we get close to them, they’re going to leap up at us.”
“Probably,” Drace agreed. “To the ‘leaping up and attacking us’ part at least, but do you really want the game making things harder for us? Compared to the last few days, I for one am happy with an underhanded toss once in a while.”
“Eh, I guess,” Constantine replied with a shrug. “I don’t know; I was just expecting something with a little bit more…flair, to be honest. Maybe something like a—”
“Constantine, if you finish that sentence, I am going to hit you,” Sierra said softly as she joined the conversation, drawing looks of concern from the rest of the guild members around us. “I don’t need you jinxing us, or giving the game any ideas.”
“Fine,” the rogue groused, holding his hands up as he turned to look at the red-haired elf. “I just have our bottom line in mind, that’s all. The more interesting our fights are, the better our feed ranks.”
“That is the furthest thing from my mind right now,” I growled, turning my head towards Sierra. “Can you peg one of the bodies with an arrow and see if it gets us a reaction? If it does, we’ll light them up at range. If it doesn’t, we can send Constantine forward for a more personal touch.”
“You sure we can’t start with that second option, Lyr?” Sierra asked hopefully, despite pulling an arrow from her quiver and nocking it on her bow.
“You guys are mean,” Constantine muttered.
“Quiet,” I said to the rogue, then pitched my voice just high enough for everyone to hear. “Heads up! We’re going to try and pull. Everyone line up!”
Within seconds of hearing my words, the sound of shuffling feet filled the room as everyone fell into their assigned ranks, their weapons held high as they focused their attention forward. Glancing over the line to make sure that everyone was ready, I nodded towards Sierra and signaled for her to proceed, taking up my assigned place at Drace’s side.
Striding forward confidently a few steps ahead of us, I saw Sierra raise her bow to her shoulder and take aim at one of the skeletal bodies ahead of us. She paused for the briefest of moments as she steadied her aim, then let the arrow loose, the bolt leaving her bow with blinding speed and slamming into the side of a fallen body’s head, piercing straight through it.
We watched the pile of bodies carefully, waiting for a reaction.
A handful of seconds passed with no visible reaction, then ten seconds, then twenty. When we reached the half minute mark with no sign of movement from the pile, I called out to Sierra in the softest voice I could manage.
“Try one more time.”
With a nod, Sierra pulled another arrow free of her quiver and placed it on the string of her bow, taking careful aim at another target. The second arrow landed true to its mark, piercing through another skull with a loud crack, leaving us all waiting in suspense for a reaction.
Another half minute passed with not so much as a twitch from the pile of bodies, Sierra’s head eventually turning back to look at me with a raised eyebrow.
“Alright, guess you’re up, Con—” I began to say before two impossibly bright figures appeared from the wall before us, forcing me to shield my eyes out of reflex as they momentarily overwhelmed my True Sight with their presence.
“Oh shit!” I heard Constantine gasp, followed by similar exclamations from the rest of the guild around me.
Pulling my hand away from my face, I blinked the afterimages away from my vision and looked back towards the twin sources of magic that had blinded me, the images rapidly resolving from two bright blurs of magic into two ghostly women of a race I didn’t recognize. The pair hovered at the far end of the room, their expressions twisted into one of rage as they regarded us, emerald strands of hair billowing out all around them. Two tags appeared in my vision as I stared dumbfounded at the sight before me, my focus shifting ever so slightly to read them.
[Ætherbound Specter] – Boss – Level 16
“Are you happy now, Constantine?” I heard Drace bark from beside me, a heartbeat before a screeching f
eminine voice assaulted my mind.
No sooner did the words fade from my mind than a bright flash of magic filled the room as the two Specters thrust their ghostly hands towards the pile of bodies before them, an emerald wave of energy suffusing all of them and causing them to stir.
“Casters! Destroy the bodies!” I shouted while conjuring a Flame Dagger in my hand, instantly understanding what the Specters were doing. “Don’t let them raise them all!”
My words were barely out of my mouth before I threw the burning knife that I had conjured, taking a step forward to impart extra momentum on the toss. But instead of targeting the bodies on the ground like I had ordered everyone else to, I had decided to try attacking one of the Specters, in the hope of distracting it from its efforts.
The dagger arced through the air, any hope of precision impossible at the distance between us and the Specters, but still accurate enough to pass through one of them, who let out a brief moan of pain, but otherwise did not react.
A wave of magic followed on the heels of my opening attack, several bolts of purple energy and a large fireball slamming into the skeletal bodies that littered the floor. The impacts sent fragments of bone and shards of metal armor flying through the air, causing the two Specters to screech in response, their already rage-filled faces intensifying at the offense.
Immediately the pair shot forward, moving as one to put their ethereal forms before the fallen bodies that their magic was gradually animating. Glaring at us with incalculable hate, their mouths opened impossibly wide before letting out a primal scream that caused all of us to flinch in pain and drop down to our knees.
My head pounded in complete agony under the Specters’ cry, my hands reflexively reaching up to my ears in an attempt to block the sound, but to no avail. It was all I could do to clench my eyes as tight as I could and wait for it to pass, the pain so intense I was barely able to focus on the two alerts that had appeared in my combat log.
Legacy of the Fallen (Ascend Online Book 2) Page 39
