Beastborne- Mark of the Founder

by James T Callum

  Hal tried to mumble some counter-argument but couldn’t think of anything that didn’t sound lame and half-hearted. He knew she was right but the very thought of his skin turning into the dough consistency of that Gibberer grossed him out.

  Out of danger and with the relative calm of walking down empty halls, broken only by the sound of their footsteps and Vorax’s scuffling, Hal was almost lulled into a false sense of security.

  Hal kept Splicing shadow and aberration essence anyway. It appeared to cause no discernible strain on him and the benefits were manifold. Though for the most part, he stuck to walking on his own two feet.

  The shadow-limbs were useful but they weren’t as fast, strong, or responsive as Hal’s physical body. So far he hadn’t seen anything that would increase that.

  It was tempting to spend more EXP to see what more Beastborne had to offer. Already he felt many times stronger than he figured possible.

  While he undoubtedly owed his surreal growth to his party and the Rangers for constantly protecting him, it felt good to be out from under the protective aegis of those so much more powerful than him.

  He had no illusions that he’d walk back to Elora, Giel, and Mira on equal footing. But he wanted to be able to pitch in alongside them. He wanted to be useful.

  He said as much to Ashera.

  Her pale green eyes bored into his with a look of profound sadness. She bit her lip and looked away. “Oh, but Hal… you are useful. You have no idea how useful you truly are. Founders are rare. And those that we know of are corrupt and immoral, twisting their powers for selfish gain.” She raised a hand to her throat, still covered by her armor.

  “You give people hope, and you will provide people with a safe place. A Sanctum from the Manastorms. A place of inclusion and community for all the people who have suffered all their lives under the oppressive regime of one Founder or another. A home.”

  Hal took what she said and weathered it stoically. He did not refute her claims, though he had no idea whether they were true. It seemed Ashera didn’t understand.

  They lapsed back into silence as they cautiously walked through the halls. At Hal’s insistence, they took any turn and pathway, no matter how tight the squeeze, so long as it followed the roots.

  Eventually, after belly crawling beneath a pair of roots that had lifted up an ancient stone door, Hal found the words to express his frustration.

  “Nobody goes into a world of magic and mayhem with the hopes of being a manager,” Hal said, dusting himself off and looking around the room. “They all want to be the sword-wielding hero. They want to come in and protect people with their own ingenuity and skill. Not be the person with a degree in civil engineering and their only desire or skill is to create the most efficient city.

  “And yes,” Hal added, forestalling what he assumed was going to be a rebuttal. “I’m immensely grateful for all the help you’ve all given me. Without you, I would be dead. And without Elora, I would have been dead much sooner. I’m not ungrateful but you have to realize that I don’t want a sheltered existence. Even if it’s for my own good. What happens if you die because I’m not strong enough to help?”

  It was Ashera’s turn to be quiet.

  In the silent emptiness that flowed in, Vorax made a beeline toward the far end of the room.

  The entire room smelled of faint vegetable rot. It was warmer than the others as well, with roots snaking back and forth all over the floor like a network engineer’s worst cabling nightmare.

  Two of the three doors were broken or otherwise impassable with torso-thick roots choking the entryway and cracking the stone wall around it. Leaving the far door that the mimic was shuffling to with all speed as the only other possible exit.

  “Nobody wants to see you hurt,” Ashera said. She reached out and gripped Hal’s wrist, tugging him to a halt in the middle of the room. “When you nearly died….” She swallowed hard past the lump in her throat and shook her head to deny the emotion that strangled her voice.

  “I would have done anything to save you, Hal. Losing the Manaseed was worth it if you came back. I don’t care that Elora was angry about it. And it isn’t because you’re a Founder and are special. You’re a good person. You have no idea how rare that is.

  “We can find another Manaseed. What Elora failed to understand is that we cannot find another Hal. She has never been very good with people. And after her father died….” Ashera shook her head. “Do not hold it against her. We have to stick together.”

  Her hand dropped from his wrist. “I’ll do my best not to smother you with protection, though. It comes from a good place, Hal. I mean no disrespect. Already you are growing so much stronger and what you have told me about Beastborne… it nearly defies everything I was taught about the Classes.”

  “How so?” Hal asked, continuing on through the gloom. “Wait, that’s weird. The Guild badges usually light up at least thirty feet….”

  Ashera snapped out of whatever reply she had and looked around on alert. The area ahead of them was shrouded in darkness. Odd only because it wasn’t there a few moments ago.

  Hal drew the [Goblinbane] and approached alongside Ashera. He sent his shadow-limbs probing the dark before him. The closer they moved to the far side of the room where Vorax had gone, the smaller their bubble of light became.

  From out of the inky darkness they both saw purple glowing lines resolving into a complex, maze-like geometric pattern. At first, Hal thought it was an attack and nearly dived to the side but Ashera put a hand on his arm to still him.

  “It is not dangerous,” she said in quiet tones. “I have seen this before.”

  A few more steps brought them to the threshold of a door, every inch of the smooth black stone was carved with those glowing geometric lines. It was faintly reminiscent of the sigils in the codex.

  Ashera put her hand onto the door, feeling the symbols. “The Founder had a door like this. Nobody was allowed inside. I do not think most people even got to see it.”

  Vorax shuffled back and forth in front of the door, sensing something tasty on the other side. To him, the door was all that stood between the mimic and a mighty feast of delectable treasures.

  Pointing at the mimic, Hal said, “He seems to think there’s a lot of treasure on the other side of the door.”

  “Which probably means there is something guarding said treasure,” Ashera reasoned. She looked around. “Why is it dark around here? Founder Rinbast’s door did that too but I can’t fathom the reason.”

  “Did you ever see him open it?” Hal asked, reaching his hand tentatively toward the glowing marks on the door. He thought to use the Rend sigil but something told him it wouldn’t do much good here.

  “No, but sometimes I would see him walk into the gloom and not return. So he must have been able to open it somehow.”

  Hal’s next thought was for the [Acid-Eaten Key] he had found on the Gibberer but with no discernible keyhole, he doubted it belonged.

  Finally, and more out of frustration than anything, Hal banged on the door with his fist. He fully expected nothing to happen. Locked doors didn’t simply open on their own.

  The geometric patterns began to move, twisting and dancing in a maddeningly complex rhythm that pulled Hal’s gaze ever inward until he thought he would go cross-eyed. His fist adhered to the door as if it were glued there.

  The mark on his left arm pulsed with red-hot fire. Even though he wore his leather [Duelist’s Bracers], his golden mark shown through the leather. Just like when he used a Founder sigil. But this was different. Instead of glowing through the armor, the mark floated above it. Like a hologram.

  Glowing purple lines on the door arranged themselves around his hand in a swirling arc. They stopped moving and the purple lines flashed green then winked out. His hand was released and the door simply… vanished.

  48

  Warily, Hal stepped into the room. The caustic fumes in the air burned his nostrils and made his eyes water. Through bleary, watery e
yes, Hal tried to make sense of the strangeness before him.

  Tall broken glass tubes lined the walls on either side of the stone room, looking far more modern than anything he’d seen on Aldim thus far. Half-formed, perfectly preserved bodies slumped in what remained of the congealing liquid inside the man-sized tubes.

  Snaking over the smoothly polished stone floor were more roots. Each of the roots fed into the base of a glass tube. They didn’t run amok or grow where they weren’t wanted like the rest of the rooms.

  Goosebumps pebbled Hal’s skin and he felt a keen desire to turn and run settle into his gut. The instinctual self he had awoken upon unlocking Beastborne came out of its previously sated rest and urged him to heed the advice.

  This place is wrong.

  The sensation of unnatural perversion settled upon him like a damp film of scum. It made him feel unclean to stay in the room and he quickly found three exits that led deeper within.

  Ashera crouched over one of the bodies, looking at its barely recognizable face. It looked as if somebody had vaguely described humans to whoever created it.

  The brow was too narrow, the chin too wide, and its eyes were so far apart that they were practically at the temples.

  “This is… amazing,” Ashera said, her voice tinged with awe. If she felt any of the twisted perversion of all things natural that Hal felt, she didn’t show it.

  Hal, concerned that it would come alive like so many horror movies, cautiously edged closer but something else caught his attention halfway there.

  The room, for the most part, was open and rectangular with the walls littered with those disturbing tubes. He had thought the piles of black dust were the result of decades of settling and disuse, like much of the other tunnels. Only when Vorax saw the gleam of gold in one pile and began making a beeline for it did Hal realize he was wrong.

  Taking a detour to the nearest pile, his long legs easily outpacing the mimic, Hal put away the [Goblinbane] and fell into a crouch to sort through it. His mark continued to glow, projecting a floating image of itself above his bracer.

  That’s not good.

  Vorax yielded to Hal’s claim on the gold and shuffled off to find something else of interest.

  As soon as Hal had a good look at the strangely shaped gold, he understood what the piles were. The ashen remains of people. A faint tremor of disgust rippling through him, he dropped the gold tooth onto the floor.

  He tried to wipe his hands on his acid-eaten clothes, but only managed to tear a new hole in his pants.

  “Some kind of battle happened here,” Hal said, looking around and noticing where the piles of ash were in relation to the smashed tubes.

  “How is that possible?” Ashera asked, straightening up and joining Hal. “Only a-” Her eyes locked on the golden Founder mark. “Your mark….”

  No amount of covering his forearm stopped the projected image. His forearm felt hot beneath the bracer too, uncomfortably like he held his arm next to the glowing coals of a fire.

  Ashera rolled her fingers through the mark, trying to grasp it, but it was immaterial. It didn’t shimmer or react at all. “That’s going to be quite a problem,” she pointed out.

  “You think?” Hal asked with more bite than he intended. “Sorry. It’s just… this room has me on edge. I can deal with my mark later. Let’s try another room.”

  “How will you be able to hide it?”

  Hal pressed his forearm to his stomach, like when he had his arm in a sling after falling off his bike in 10th grade. The mark, forced against his torso vanished.

  He assumed it was still projecting but since that space was occupied by his organs it didn’t show.

  I hope this thing doesn’t let off radiation inside me, he thought with grim humor.

  “The lie will be obvious if you ever need to defend yourself.”

  They walked to the leftmost door, stepping over a few preserved bodies along the way. Hal dropped his arm, letting the symbol shine. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  Unlike the door they had entered through, this door had no geometric markings. It was made of the same smooth, black polished stone as the rest of the room. It faintly threw back their blurred images and the light from their Guild badges.

  But it was Hal’s mark that shone clear and true, reflected like the stone was a polished mirror. Okay, that’s odd. The door had a simple handle and when Hal tried it, the door pushed open smoothly and without issue.

  The next room brought sweet relief to the caustic reek of the previous chamber. It was a complete opposite. Plantlife filled the room like a nature reserve.

  If there was a ceiling, Hal couldn’t see it. Trees and various climbing plants stretched up into the gloom and vanished from sight. The walls were littered with crawling ivy of virulent purples and blues. Instead of a stone floor, they walked on soft earth.

  Despite the change, Hal still felt that pervading sense of wrongness. The room only served to dampen it.

  Hal turned and called Vorax back to him. The mimic was using his mimic-borne powers of vacuuming up valuables off in the corner. Hal was glad Vorax’s back was to him so he couldn’t see what Vorax was eating.

  Alerted to Hal’s request, the mimic perked up and scuttled with all speed back to Hal’s side.

  They walked along the path ahead. It snaked and twisted deeper into the room. “It’s not every day you find an indoor forest,” Hal said, twisting his gaze around to take in everything around him.

  “To think that all of this was below Murkmire. And all the strange things we saw along the way!” Ashera shook her head in disbelief. “What could be the purpose of this place?”

  The trails were punctuated every so often with a tall metal rod stuck into the earth with a glowing crystal affixed to its ten-foot-tall top. Not unlike a streetlamp, Hal noticed.

  “My guess would be a private garden with rare ingredients,” Hal mused aloud. His voice was cut off by a distant growl from deeper within the woods. “Or a place to house some nasty pets,” he added, drawing free his [Goblinbane].

  An act he soon regretted.

  In the same instant that Hal pulled free the blade, a vine whipped out and snared his wrist. He had a half-second to realize his mistake before the vine yanked him into the darkness above the path.

  Ashera’s shouting voice receded into the dark.

  Hal flew through the trees, bumping into a few tall spindly trunks but for the most part, he zipped through the darkness. His shadow-limbs flew out in a vain attempt to slow him down but the vine was too strong.

  Any grip they managed was soon torn away. The shadow-limbs simply were not strong enough.

  Hal fought hard against the fear that welled up inside him. He hated heights and he could hardly think straight as the vine whipped him through the dark air. Higher and higher, deeper and deeper.

  The vines had wrapped tightly around his right wrist, the one holding the [Goblinbane], making any attack against the vine too weak. He couldn’t get any force behind it.

  But he had another trick up his sleeve. One that didn’t require a sword, or run the risk of blowing himself up with Bomb Toss.

  Triggering Mana Investiture, Hal fed his mana into the vine. Since it was a living thing it instinctively fought against his intrusion.

  Careful of the tree limbs that whipped and cut into his face, Hal poured his focus into the act of severing the vine. The moment he cut the vine, it snapped from the strain and he began to plummet.

  His stomach dropped out and the scream he had tried so hard to hold back flew out as he hung in the air a heartbeat, still propelled forward by his previous momentum.

  Hal swapped the [Goblinbane] to his left hand and tried in vain to reach out for the vague shadows of tree branches that whipped by him.

  Another vine shot out, this one aimed at his left hand. An inch before it made contact, the vine bent at an awkward angle as if it hit an invisible field that just happened to be near his mark.

  He w
as freefalling. With the darkness all around him, he could hardly tell which way was up. His worst nightmare made manifest.

  All conscious thought and rational behavior flew from his mind.

  With nothing to hold onto, Hal lashed out with all his shadow-limbs at once. He was pulled up into the air at least 50 feet and throughout it all, he hadn’t seen a ceiling or another wall.

  Fearing the ground was fast-approaching, he awkwardly rammed the [Goblinbane] home into its sheath and groped out with his hands to the nearest trunk. Trying, desperately, to grab onto something. Anything.

  Every branch snapped off in his hands. Tree limbs smacked his palms and numbed them with their bruising impact.

  He crashed into the soft earth below, the air blasted out of his lungs but he managed to stay conscious. A solid 20% of his HP had fallen off from the bone-rattling impact.

  Hal laid there a while, heedless of his vulnerability, feeling the comforting solid earth beneath him. He had survived. That height should have been fatal.

  He doubted he could have survived the fall without his sharp increase to VIT. Looking back on it, he should be seriously wounded from the fall. It hurt, but he didn’t think anything was broken.

  Rising to his feet, he was shaken and disoriented but whole. Hal gave a quick test of all his limbs, pleased to find that while sore they still worked. A growl echoed through the dark, closer this time.

  <“Ashera, can you hear me?”> Hal asked, hoping against hope that the vine hadn’t pulled him too far.

  <“Your… mimic is looking for you. I am following it, he seems to know where you went somehow. Stay put, okay?”> she replied.

  <“There’s something nearby, watch yourselves.”> Hal warned.

  < “The mimic can’t hear this, Hal.”>

  <“Well… in case he can! Oh, and don’t pull out a weapon. I made that mistake.”>

  <“Yes, we all saw.”>

  <“‘We’?”>

  <“Yes, Hal. Your mimic might not be able to hear our party link but he can - I assume - see you. He was following behind us. He saw it all. Looked absolutely embarrassed for you.”>