by N H Paxton
The shoes were part of the Keeper set, which was exciting enough. But the blueprint sent me over the edge with amazement.
<<<>>>
Blueprint: FoxFen Essence-Run
This blueprint allows an engineer to create a FoxFen Essence-Run, which multiplies the potency of FoxFen Essence over time.
After combining a series of alchemic glass tubes, manipulating them with the four basic elements, and then sealing FoxFen Essence inside, the Essence-Run will provide a suitable location for FoxFen Essence to multiply in power over a period of time while maintaining happiness and improving stability. The longer the Essence-Run remains sealed, the more potent the Essence becomes. The recommended minimum time sealed is one year.
This blueprint may be augmented by an Alchemic Weaponeer or Alchemic Engineer.
Requirements: Engineering, Blacksmithing, Alchemy, Enchanting, Hydromancy, Pyromancy, Techtonomancy, Cryomancy
Ingredients: Glass (Alchemic), FoxFen Essence (Live/Happy)
<<<>>>
So, my suspicion about FoxFen Essence being capable of happiness was correct. The bigger issue there was how I could tell if the FoxFen Essence was actually happy. I would save that puzzle for a later time.
“Let’s kick this place’s ass, guys. That was record time for a boss run, I think.” Garret leaned against the door jamb for the passageway that led to the catacombs, his arms crossed over his chest.
I checked the time left to complete the guild quest. I had twelve hours and eighteen minutes left. Time was getting tight.
Undead, Redead, Redemption
THE PATH DOWNWARDS curved more than previously, the stairs taking an unusual turn before arriving at the landing we had been attacked at. This time, there were no gripping hands shooting from the ground and no insane Drakes huffing and puffing at us. Instead, we were staring at a flat wall in a small square room.
“Maybe we missed something?” Ken poked the wall with his fingers, then slid them along the outside where it met the other walls, floor and ceiling.
“No, that stupid bastard changed the dungeon on us.” Garret sat down on the floor in the middle of the room.
“At least I didn’t get hit by a magical poison trap this time.” Eberand sighed as he leaned against the far wall of the room.
“Just keep looking around, see if there’s anything unusual or out of place,” Ken said as he continued to pace the walls.
“I’m going to let you handle that,” Eberand said as he shifted a bit.
The sound of grinding stone and shifting metal caught my attention as Eberand’s body turned slightly. Panic shot across his face as the wall behind him rotated, a stone panel opening.
Eberand crashed through the opening and landed on floor of the corridor inside with a heavy metallic clang.
“He Rogues better than I do sometimes.” Ken gave a nod of appreciation, then stepped over to inspect the hidden door.
“Damn, I can’t believe I missed the drag marks on the floor.” Ken shook his head.
“It’s cool, let’s get rolling.” Garret started to stand from the floor.
Another creaking sound filled the room, followed by the sound of a hinge, then Garret disappeared, dropping from sight.
“Shit,” he said as he fell into a hole, his voice echoing away as he continued to yell.
“Damn, and we lost Garret. What is with floors falling out from under people in this dungeon?” Zeno sighed, then stepped through the open wall.
“Guess we go down and find him.” Anya shrugged as she followed Zeno through the wall.
I looked down the hole, looking for the light orb Zeno had cast on Garret, but it was nowhere to be found. I suspected it was not a straight drop, but instead a slide of some kind. I put my thoughts aside and stuck to my better judgment by following the rest of the party through the wall. I knew we would find Garret, eventually.
“More of the same down here,” Ken said, his voice a whisper from the front of the group.
“These tunnels and their obnoxious endlessness.” Eberand scraped his glove along the wall, the rough metallic sound grating on my nerves.
“It’s my first time down here, mind giving me more details?” Anya rubbed her eyes as she walked, a yawn overtaking her face.
“It sucks basically. Everything is already dead or redead, whatever the hell that means.” Ken appeared from Stealth and walked with the rest of us.
“It means they’ve been necromantically reanimated,” Zeno said.
I could hear the scorn in Zeno’s voice, like we were all supposed to know this information already.
“Anyway, everything down here is trying to kill us, hardcore. Like that last boss? The first time we fought it, it was a giant, scythe-wielding demon-mage thing with crazy wings and an immunity to Vlad’s bullets.” Ken waved his hands in the air in random patterns. I assume he was trying to simulate chaotic fighting.
“Well, that sounds miserable. Thanks for the information.” Anya looked disinterested.
“And then I got my foot stuck in this nasty dragon thing, and it was all sorts of slimy and gross. Oh, and Eberand got shot with a poison dart we couldn’t cure with antidotes,” Ken continued.
“Uh-huh,” Anya replied.
“And then the tunnels just kept going forever, and we got kidnapped by the Dark Collector, and he put us in this crazy cage with insane runes all over the walls, and they were green and pulsed,” Ken said, louder now.
“That’s super interesting,” Anya said, her voice completely deadpan.
“Enough.” I waved my hand in the air, cutting Ken off from his spouting.
“Aww, alright.” Ken looked dejected, but his smile came back almost immediately.
“Go scout, watch for traps, do Rogue things.” I shooed Ken away, and Anya gave me a gentle smile.
“Thanks,” she whispered as we continued to walk.
“We’ve got movement.” Ken’s voice was already well ahead of us, seconds after I had sent him away.
“Oh good, I would hate for this place to be a disappointment.” Zeno tapped his staff on the ground and closed his eyes.
A second later, he opened them and smirked. He popped his neck to either side, then pointed his staff down the hallway.
“A couple living monsters, large, angry. One is a boar, the other is a...” He furrowed his brow as he trailed off. “A serpent? Hard to tell, blood is cold.”
“Oh, damn.” Ken popped back into view, his momentum causing him to skid across the dust and dirt of the floor.
He spun quickly and drew his daggers, then vanished again. I pulled Gamma to the ready and heard metal unsheathe as Anya readied her weapons as well.
Eberand clenched his fists hard, popping the knuckles in his hands, then yanked his greatsword off of his back, the blade carving a furrow in the stone above us.
“Oh, bad news.” Zeno sounded legitimately concerned.
“Now?” Anya turned her head back to Zeno, who frowned hard, spinning around quickly.
“Spiders.” The burbling sound of water rushing through a tunnel filled the small space as a bubble of red magic surrounded the whole party.
It cut into the ceiling and floor; it was a complete sphere. Zeno stumbled for a moment, then regained his footing, shaking his head hard. This wasn’t a barrier I had ever seen before.
The pair of large monsters, who had nearly killed me when I was traveling with the shade before, barreled down the hallway toward us. Apparently Valstrine had shortened the dungeon considerably.
A pair of tags popped up, but the names weren’t the same as last time. They read [Boaris The Fervent] and [Snakes the Irritable]. The names definitely needed work.
“Wow, bad puns all around, huh?” Eberand held his greatsword sideways, waiting to parry Boaris’ pair of greatswords.
The hulking pig man swung his swords, the blades of wind generated from them tearing through the space in an instant. The wind struck the red barrier and reflected, cutting Boaris instead.
Snakes carri
ed the same sickle he had previously, except this one dripped a green liquid. Always with the poison.
“Watch poison,” I called out as I fired off a triplicate volley of Impaling Chaos, hoping to deal considerable damage.
The bolts found purchase in Boaris’ chest, digging deep and following their usual path of implode/explode.
The hit was severe enough to bring Boaris to his knees, but not enough to knock more than twenty percent off of his Health bar. Anya smacked her shield with her sword and rushed out of the red sphere, her blade held above her shield, parallel to the floor.
The image of Anya flickered for a moment, then she was on Boaris, her blade piercing his chest in the same general area my bolts had landed.
Ken appeared from behind the pig beast and stabbed him with his daggers then turned with a flourish and launched a handful of knives at his face. They slammed into Boaris’ snout with a sickening sound.
I turned my head quickly to check on Zeno and caught a terrifying glimpse of a wall of spiders washing up against the barrier Zeno had put in place. The spiders rolled over each other, bouncing off of the red sphere, filling the space quickly.
There was a grunt and a curse as Zeno stabbed a Nightmare Spider in the belly with the blade of his staff. Eberand had taken his attention off the large monstrosities and was helping Zeno fight off a wave of nasty spiders.
Anya and Ken seemed to have Boaris well in hand, and I didn’t see Snakes, so I spun around quickly, fishing a pair of fragmentation grenades from my bag. I ripped the fuse out of them both, one after the other with my teeth, then chucked them into the roiling sea of spiders, which was growing by the minute.
There was a few seconds of delay, followed by unbearable pressure, then an eruption of fire and shards of metal.
Spider pieces flew in every direction, chunks of flesh and metal fragments pelting the barrier like a heavy rain. The spider corpses pushed against the red sphere, forcing Zeno to his knees.
“Damn.” Zeno wiped sweat from his brow as he knelt on the ground. “Barrier won’t hold much longer.”
“Lord Vlad, covering fire.” Eberand gave me a sideways glance as he swung his greatsword like a cricket bat, picking up several spiders and launching them backwards down the tunnel.
I triggered Magical Augmentation, using my memory of the Firestorm spell I had triggered in our fight with the Dark Collector as a guide. I released Gamma to hang by the sling and both of my hands went to work, flying through the motions.
The seconds ticked by, and I could see Zeno’s exhaustion. The grimace on his face intensified with every poke and pick the enemies attempted against the barrier.
Time slowed to a crawl as I saw Snakes fall from the ceiling and coil around Anya, whose arm was up at the side of her head to keep him from strangling her outright.
Ken appeared next to her in a puff of smoke, his attacks like a dance as his daggers sliced into Snakes’ scaled hide, small amounts of blood spraying the air as he whirled about.
My mind flew through a thousand possible permutations of the outcome of this scenario, but I was not going to lose my friends again. At the last second, I pulled my hands apart, stood sideways in the hallway, and held one hand out in either direction. The result, though less flashy, was just as impressive as it was previously.
Twin spheres of flame, each the size of my head, bloomed into life at my palms. They erupted, spraying the entire hallway in both directions with an endless rain of molten stone.
The sizzling of flesh and the smell of burning hair filled the small passageway as the spiders died by the droves.
Boaris and Snakes writhed under the intense wall of flame, which seemed to completely ignore Anya and Ken.
The spell cut off, my cast expended. I fell to my knees, unable to keep my feet as an intense and painful throbbing struck the back of my head.
It reminded me of the time I had been mugged in an alleyway in Moscow after I took a wrong turn. I had been struck in the back of the head with a baseball bat, and the pain was excruciating.
The spider wave had been defeated, and all that remained on that side were burning husks. Zeno and I knelt on the ground, while Eberand rushed out of the barrier to help Anya.
He drove his greatsword through Boaris’ head, ending his life. A quick turn of his body and a slight shift in his arms, and Eberand split Snakes nearly in two, the coils that were wrapped around Anya falling to the ground in a heap of dead snake monster.
Ken appeared inside the barrier, his arm bleeding in a couple places.
Zeno waved a hand in the air, and the barrier faded. I noticed his nose and eyes were bleeding, but everything was blurry, and I was having a hard time focusing on anything.
“Here, drink this.” Anya shoved a Spirit regen potion into my hand.
I uncorked it with unsteady hands and chugged the liquid. There was no flavor to it at all, which I found odd. It was like drinking water. Everything else in Eldgard had been so heavily flavored, it was strange to find something simple.
Immediately, the blurred vision began to subside and my headache started to clear. Spirit dump was a very serious concern. The potion didn’t completely refill my Spirit, but I was much better off than I was before. At least I hadn’t been inflicted with Magical Sickness lately.
“Great trick,” Zeno said. He chugged a Health regen potion and tossed the empty vial behind him into the pile of spider char.
“Need to find Garret.” Eberand reached a hand down for me, which I gladly took.
With his help, I was able to get to my feet. Zeno tapped his staff on the ground and closed his eyes, turning his head this way and that.
Ken uncorked a potion and drained its contents, leaning against the tunnel wall like he hadn’t just gone toe-to-toe with a giant boar-and-snake combo.
“He’s nearby, not injured. Looks like he’s... waiting for something?” Zeno opened his eyes and stared off into space.
“How do you do that?” Anya asked the question absentmindedly while she looted the bigger mobs.
“Turns out I’m not cut out for Divine Cleric material.” Zeno said the words with some hesitation. “I’m a Blood Cleric.”
He narrowed his eyes at the floor, then sighed.
“Sounds like there’s a story. But for later, over drinks, when we finish this quest.” Eberand clapped a hand on Zeno’s shoulder, then stepped over the corpses of Boaris and Snakes.
“Nothing good, just some coin and a small medallion.” Anya flicked the medallion through the air toward Zeno, and he deftly caught it.
He looked at it briefly before tucking it away in his pocket.
“Let’s find us a Garret,” Ken said as he looked down the tunnel that lay ahead of us.
“Faster is better.” I trudged along, the pain still lingering in my head.
The potion had done marvelous work to relieve the majority of it, but it was still prevalent, aching like a bad reminder of a night spent drinking too much.
“Hey, get your asses in here.” Garret’s voice echoed from around a corner as Ken turned a blind corner and disappeared.
“Garret!?” Eberand started after Ken, then disappeared behind a wall as well.
“Well, isn’t this just peachy.” Zeno sighed as he took a few steps toward the place where they had both disappeared.
Zeno turned his staff a couple times in the air, just standing there patiently. Suddenly he disappeared as well, but from the distance I was now at, it looked like he had been pulled.
“We should go after them.” Anya started off toward the wall as well, and I had no choice but to follow.
Anya and I reached the location everyone else had disappeared from, and we turned our heads to see Garret standing inside an open wooden door, his eyes angry, his hand rapidly waving us into the room.
“Well, come on, for shit’s sake.” He practically shouted at us, which got us moving.
“What the hell is this, and how did you find it?” Eberand sat in a small wooden chair be
side a broken table.
Anya and I finally entered the room, and Garret slammed the door behind us.
“Took you guys long enough. I ducked in here after I saw Dumb and Dumber wander down the hallway.”
“Oh, the two muscle-bound morons we slaughtered?” Ken struck a pose and flexed his forearms.
“Yeah, those two. Anyway, look, we can chill here for a bit, get ourselves worked out.” Garret took a chunk of jerky from his bag and ripped a piece off of it with his teeth.
“Where did you end up?” Eberand leaned on a chunk of broken table that was still standing. His weight made it shift and collapse, nearly taking him with it.
He sat upright and looked around the room, then leaned back in the chair.
“I got dumped in a room with a bunch of crazy carvings and stuff on the walls. A few of the carvings looked like a key being held in front of a wall, then the wall broke.” Garret took another bite.
I took the chance to eat something as well, retrieving a sizable piece of my own jerky.
“All this stuff about keys and Keepers and whatnot.” Zeno rolled his hand in the air between bites of some kind of meat pie.
We provided information to Zeno regarding our first delve into The Dearth and the myriad things we had learned about the Vault, the Dark Collector, and the dungeon as a whole.
“Like, you think he has a shitty reason for wanting to get into the Vault, or you think that the reason he’s trying to do it is evil?” Zeno had stood up from the place on the ground where he sat.
“Second reason.” I nodded, shoving the remainder of my jerky into my mouth, chewing it quickly.
“I figure we’re not far from Valstrine’s hall now.” Garret spoke up, his jerky finished.
“How can you tell?” Anya looked at Garret.
I stared at the floor, trying to come up with a reason Garret would know why we were close to the boss room.
“The runes, man.” Garret pointed to the ceiling, where an enormous pulsing rune had been carved into the stone.
“Oh, right. I forgot about those.” Ken scratched at the side of his nose.
“You died in here like twelve hours ago at most, and you forgot about the damn runes?” Garret raised an eyebrow, which Ken returned with a smile.
