Beastborne- Mark of the Founder

by James T Callum

  Hal held his breath, waiting for Elora’s answer.

  “A great many,” Elora hedged. “But eventually it’ll come down to fighting another Founder. All paths converge to that point. What use is it to make him weak when that means he will inevitably fall to another Founder?”

  “And,” Ashera interjected, “It is amoral and wrong to rob him of his agency. Just as it is wrong of the Founders to rob us of ours.”

  “He is different,” Elora intoned. Hal was surprised by the conviction in her voice. “I have seen it firsthand. Don’t turn him in. Please.”

  Hal opened his eyes to see Elora’s sincerity firsthand, her blue-gray eyes shining with unshed tears. He was touched.

  “I do believe he’s coming around,” Giel said, towering over Hal.

  32

  “C’mon, up you get friend!” Giel hoisted Hal up into a sitting position. In the same smooth motion, Giel pressed the [Unknown Codex] into Hal’s hands. His voice dropped to a rasping whisper, “Try to keep a better hold of this, eh?”

  A deep pervasive weakness still lingered in his muscles. Everything felt loose and rubbery. The weirdest sensation was the taste. His whole mouth tasted like blue raspberries.

  That’s oddly specific. I wonder if I’m having a stroke.

  “Hal?” Elora asked, coming to crouch by his side. She looked over her shoulder. “Ashera, is he okay?”

  Ashera crouched down beside him, reaching a hand out. She pressed her fingertips to Hal’s temple. A shiver ran through him, pebbling his skin. “As far as I can tell, he is fine. Perhaps a bit shaken up but otherwise healthy.”

  “I’m okay,” Hal managed to say. With Giel’s help, he got his feet under him and stood, though he hardly seemed steady. Giel kept a steadying hand on his shoulder.

  “Do you know what happened to you, what you did?” Ashera asked. Elora and Mira investigated the archway, tentatively peeking into the darkness beyond.

  “I-” Hal looked up at Giel, over to Mira, then finally to Ashera. “I found a way to break down the Founder’s barrier. Though I don’t think I could explain how. We should be able to go in now.” He looked over at the dark portal into the long-dead district.

  “I wonder what we’ll find,” Mira said. When she looked back at Hal and their eyes met, she flinched momentarily. She shook herself, however, and forced her gaze to meet his eyes. “If you’re feeling up to going, we should get a move on.”

  He was surprised she hadn’t run off. Hal took stock of how he was feeling, deemed himself ready, and struck off toward the Coffin District’s narrow archway.

  Mira and Elora stepped aside, letting him enter first. As soon as he pressed into the darkness they were at his back.

  Hal could feel all four of them in the back of his mind like tiny motes of awareness. He took a quick peek at the party menu, noticing each of their levels, something he’d forgotten to take note of earlier.

  Ashera had once told him, when they first met, that she was a Keeper. Her Class was specifically called a Sin Keeper, Level 11. Which sounded a lot darker than something the sweet, soft-spoken girl with sad eyes would be expected to have.

  All of them were quite a bit higher than him, considering they all had proper Classes and were over Level 10. Giel was a Level 12 Warrior, Mira a Level 13 Dragoon, and of course Elora was now a Level 13 Ranger.

  That left Hal as the undisputed dead weight considering that they would all have Level 10 Novice as well, putting each of them a minimum of 10 Levels above his own.

  Aside from Elora and himself, each of the others had an extra resource bar.

  Giel’s bar looked the strangest to Hal. The left half was filled with fiery-orange flames. The right was filled with shimmering red motes. The two colors met at the center, mingling into an indistinct line.

  Instead of a fluid resource like Giel’s, Mira had a series of scales and a small number beside the gauge. It currently had two scales and the number 2 to the left of the gauge.

  Though, unlike Giel’s, Hal guessed it was some sort of spendable resource for unique attacks. The Warrior’s bar made little sense to Hal by comparison.

  Hal was keen on seeing their Classes in action. It was one thing to learn about what the Class did but an entirely different experience altogether to witness it.

  The gauge Ashera had was a collection of diamonds with glowing red centers, they staggered from left to right, with only three currently lit up.

  As much as Hal wanted to pester his party about their Classes, he decided it would be better to observe them in action. Hal pressed on into the darkness.

  The first thing he noticed was how stale and dusty the air was. The chamber opened up into a wide boulevard. Hal’s Darkvision could barely keep him from tripping over the stonework flooring covered with chipped rocks and various debris. Some of which came up to his ankle.

  Probably leftover construction from building that roof. I doubt anybody would want to risk trying to retrieve it. If they even could. Would be really nice to have some light though. My Darkvision sucks.

  At the thought, the Adventurer’s Guild badge fastened to his quilted coat sparked and emitted a wide beam of soft pale light, not too dissimilar from an LED lantern back home.

  “Okay,” Hal said. “That’s pretty useful.” He turned to look at the rest of his Party. “Hey did you-” There was a chorus of groans and cries as Hal’s light spoiled their Darkvision, a few of them raised their arms defensively to shield their eyes. “Oh,” he said, realizing that each of them likely had far higher Darkvision and were probably fine without any light whatsoever. He turned back around. “My bad.”

  Mira sidled up alongside Hal rubbing at her eyes. “Mind giving a gal some warning next time?”

  “Sorry,” Hal rubbed the back of his neck. “This is my first time and to be honest, I had no idea the badge did that.”

  “Oh, silly me,” Mira said, “I keep forgetting you’re all new to the Guild. Okay so, real quick before we get mauled by something in the shadows: The badge does a lot of things.

  “It functions as a light source that you can dial back and control based on your thoughts so you’re not blinding everybody around you. It lets you into the Guild after hours in any of its locations. And it will identify your body if you’re horribly, gruesomely maimed!”

  “Lovely,” Hal said, trying to peer into every shadow and crevice in the dark place at once.

  They walked for a short while, finding nothing of note beyond tomb-like buildings that vanished into a murky gloom above them. Everything about the place felt oppressive and wrong. But nothing about it felt dead like Hal expected.

  They were being watched. The hairs on the back of his neck had perked up and hadn’t relaxed since he first set foot inside.

  “Everything is so… still.” Mira wondered aloud.

  That’s an understatement.

  Despite his reservations they seemed to be the only living things around. A thought that he knew should have given him some measure of comfort.

  Every alley seemed to hide a monster lying in wait. Some horrible creature that had slumbered for years waiting for just this moment. But considering how dead everything was, his mind went to the worst place he could think of.

  Zombies.

  An involuntary shudder dripped down his spine.

  He couldn’t stand zombies.

  They were practically a phobia back in Seattle where he was pretty sure they weren’t real. But on Aldim? They probably had undead issues all the time.

  He could only hope that he’d never run into one.

  The debris continued to litter the old roadway. Something felt off about it to Hal but he couldn’t put his finger on it. While the others fanned out to cover more ground, Hal crouched to a small pile of rubble.

  It looks… stacked.

  They were broken bits of stone but had been piled up in a rough pyramid shape. Hal could only guess at the purpose.

  “Body,” called Mira. She had her spear out, facing the
slumped form. Hal stood and joined the others surrounding the corpse. It was nearly unrecognizable.

  “It’s practically charcoal,” Elora said. “But look.” Hal followed her gaze to the surrounding stonework building the body was laid up against. It looked like it had been standing at the mouth of a narrow alley, only to get tired and sit down to take a nap.

  “I don’t get it, there’s nothing,” Hal said.

  Your Investigation has risen to Level 5.

  +1% Investigation speed (+5%).

  +2% Investigation success (+10%).

  +5% Point of interest highlight chance (+5%).

  “Exactly. There are no scorch marks. No burning… there’s no sign of a struggle.”

  Looking around, Hal wondered how that could be possible. The person – he wasn’t sure if it was a man or a woman – was black and cracked with only the vague mannequin-like shape of a human.

  “There should be black marks all over from the raging inferno that did this,” said Elora.

  “Got another one,” boomed Giel’s deep voice farther down an adjacent alleyway.

  As they walked along the wide boulevard, they found bodies with increasing frequency. Each of them burned beyond recognition without any sign of the blaze that had killed them.

  “Most of them are away from the main street,” Hal realized. “And look at these.” He stooped down near the latest body. It was disturbing how quickly he got used to their silent presence.

  Hal picked up one of the rough bits of debris stacked into a pile, a little quicker than he would have normally. Just in case the body decided to make his worst dreams a reality by reaching out to stop him from pilfering its precious stones.

  “I saw a few of those,” Elora pointed out. “Figured it was from the masons building the roof.”

  “That’s what I thought too at first.” Hal turned the stone about in his hand, examining it, noticing it wasn’t quite as rough as he had thought. “But it’s too uniform. It’s almost like they were made.”

  Mira prodded the corpse and Hal jumped back, dropping the stone with a clatter and a brilliant flash of light that produced a sound like the ringing of some massive iron bell. The tolling reverberated and seemed to redouble with the distance, spreading the sound into the dark beyond.

  Oh, flork me. I’m Pippin!

  As their vision returned from the blinding flash, the body was no more than a pile of ash and charcoal. Nobody was hurt. All it took was a simple glance at their HP, and those of their fellows, to determine that everything was fine.

  What are they used for then? Some sort of stunning pellet? A medieval flashbang?

  Whatever it was had been decidedly non-lethal. An ethos their opposition seemed staunchly opposed to judging by the state of the bodies.

  Mira looked over at Hal. “My bad. Figured it might have some loot. You sure are jumpy, though.” She shrugged half-heartedly.

  The distant ringing finally faded, making the silence that followed much more pronounced. Hal’s heart thudded in his chest, awaiting drums in the deep or something equally horrible resounding from the dark. But nothing more came. After an interminable period, Hal allowed himself to breathe.

  They had barely passed two blocks, and already they’d seen more bodies than they should have by Hal’s reckoning. It was a gradual increase at first, mostly sticking to the alleys and places of shelter. But as they pressed on, the boulevard became choked with blackened corpses.

  “It’s almost as if they were all fleeing from something,” Hal said.

  Four pairs of curious eyes turned his way.

  “Look.” Hal turned around and pointed down the curving street they’d come across. “Up until this point they stuck to alleys and places with cover. They had those strange pebbles. They were holding something back but whatever it was tore through them. These people, look at their bodies.”

  The corpses were sprawled out, most of them looked like they’d been running when whatever they were fighting killed them. At the same time. And then it hit Hal like a thunderbolt. But he had to be sure.

  Hal found the tallest nearby building and made a beeline for its door. It opened without any resistance. Another confirmation for his theory. Inside there were more bodies, most of them in or around the doorframes like they had been caught by surprise.

  “Hal! Where are you going?” Elora called after him, following him as he sped up the stairs and eventually up the five flights of stairs to the roof. More bodies cluttered the edges of the roofline.

  Five stories up, so wrapped up in this mystery that he forgot to be afraid, Hal leaned out over the edge. He got a bird’s eye view of what must have been a frightful scene once upon a time. “Come here,” he said over his shoulder. Elora stood beside him, though she leaned out much farther more than he did.

  “By the Gods,” she whispered.

  Up here, they could see the complete picture. And Hal remembered suddenly why it had that hint of frightful familiarity. It looked like a protest that had been suddenly and violently quelled. He’d seen enough pictures and videos of those in recent years.

  Your Investigation has risen to Level 6.

  +1% Investigation speed (+6%).

  +2% Investigation success (+12%).

  Your Perception has risen to Level 8.

  +2% Perception highlight chance (+16%).

  +5% Awareness of magical items (+40%).

  A few brave – or foolish - souls stayed behind, hidden by storefronts or alleyways, to slow whatever force had come for them. As things turned violent, they were killed where they stood, probably trying to buy time for the others.

  Judging by the size of the magical stones they had stockpiled, Hal didn’t think they had the chance to use them before they were killed. Many of them were clearly surprised by their own end, suggesting that there might be something more to the story.

  Something Hal was missing.

  From his vantage point, it was clear there had been no survivors. To his right, as the street curved away from him, the street turned black with charred bodies. He was struck by a realization as his mind caught up to his instincts.

  He shouldn’t have been able to see that far out.

  It had been pitch black inside. Even with the Guild’s badge, Hal could only see about fifty feet around him. Up on the roof, he could see much farther than that. Looking up, Hal noticed grooved lines carved within the ceiling that emitted a steady blue-white light.

  Curling, elegant lines were carved into the ceiling. The glow from the light cast the entire district into twilight.

  Except for one area.

  Most of the district’s rooftops and buildings were clearly visible. As well as a square some distance ahead on the path they had been treading. And just beyond that, pressed back against a curving floor-to-ceiling wall that made up the barrier to the next ring, was the lightless region.

  It was the sole patch of darkness in the magical twilight emanating from the ceiling.

  Up so high, even with many tall buildings blocking his sight, Hal could see a way through the charnel house that was the Coffin District. They’d have to find their way through a few buildings and down some tight alleyways but Hal was certain he could lead them toward that darkness.

  It was as good a goal as any. And as likely as any other location in the dead district to provide some answers.

  33

  “Hal.” Elora unslung her bow and nocked an arrow in one smooth motion.

  Pulled from his thoughts, Hal followed the tip of her arrow to where she had it aimed. They weren’t alone. Worse, he could just make out the faint murk that covered the streets below.

  Including their fellow party members.

  What is that?

  Like Elora, he was able to see the threat that his friends down below could not. It only hit him then that the darkness below must have been some method of crowd control that had never been deactivated.

  While they were above the barely perceptible dark layer of murk, Hal could see dow
n alleys and into windows that he remembered being black as night below.

  Dozens of shadowy creatures were crawling out from the alleyways, adjacent streets, and pouring out of the dark windows of empty broken buildings. They were surrounding Hal’s party below with the steady, sure coordination common in pack predators.

  The Coffin District was anything but dead. A realization that made his blood run cold. Shadows across the entire district were coming alive, drawn to the living down below.

  Elora let loose, the arrow flew true until it reached the layer of murk. The arrow shifted off course and missed the creature. “Ugh.” Elora nocked and drew back again.

  “Hey!” Hal yelled down below. “Watch out, you’re being surrounded!”

  None of them seemed to notice the shouting.

  <“Giel, there’s something coming from the alley on your left!”>

  Still nothing. Was the murk blocking their communications as well as their voices? Was that even possible?

  “We have to get down there and warn them,” Hal said, taking off toward the rooftop doorway.

  A shadowy creature crawled up the side of the building, launching itself at Hal before he was halfway across the roof. He tumbled to the side with a jolt of pain in his hip. Rather than fight it, he rolled with the motion as Angram had shown him and managed to throw the creature off.

  “Elora!” Hal was up on his feet, drawing the [Goblinbane] in a halting, awkward motion that took him two full tugs to clear it from the scabbard.

  I hate my low-level skill!

  An arrow streaked by Hal. It sunk into the creature just as it leaped for Hal again. The shadowy thing recoiled as the arrow sunk into its gelatinous umbral skin.

  In the light of the ceiling, Hal could see the thing clearly. It was a gut-wrenching cross between a beast and a human. Its form was made of twisting shadow, its bones stood out as black against the dark gray translucent skin.