Beastborne- Mark of the Founder

by James T Callum

  Potions, they had yet to use.

  Elora agreed with him, the irony was thick indeed. Giel had chugged a small fortune’s worth of potions to buy them enough time to flee the Shoggoth.

  While Ashera – a skilled healer - and Hal were sitting on a small trove of unused potions. All the while, Mira and Elora were redlining under 7% HP each.

  Their HP bars flashed the customary red warning. A bright stretching line of ruddy light indicating the sliver of HP they had remaining, thus the name.

  Ashera, in typical fashion, kept up a stream of dialogue to keep Elora’s mind off the reality in front of her. She couldn’t believe how much had happened so fast.

  She didn’t know Giel very well - though she wished she did, now - but she still found herself muttering a prayer to the Wild Gods for the safety of his soul and to ease his passing.

  I hope your mother looks on you with pride, Giel.

  He deserved more than that and she swore that when she returned to Murkmire, she would do something befitting the lamora’s memory.

  At the very least, she would go in and clear out that back room. The last thing that she wanted was to besmirch his good standing in Murkmire by having the authorities find a secret room filled with contraband and subversive documents.

  They missed their rendezvous with the Rangers. Angram and Yesel weren’t known for their patience. She had given the two explicit instructions to dig in and make a more permanent encampment should they be gone more than a day.

  It had definitely been longer than that, though Elora was fuzzy on just how long considering her recent injuries.

  The Ranger bandaged and tended to their wounds as best she could. Poultices and salves were made, tea was brewed but for all her skill in Herbalism, Mira still remained unconscious.

  A younger Elora would have left the Dragoon.

  She was hiding something. Elora was sure of it. And now that she could no longer bring her considerable skill to bear, the woman was a hindrance. She should have left her. But she could not.

  Not with Ashera’s voice in her ear. And not when she looked at her father’s ancestry so clear on Mira’s elegantly beautiful elvish features. High cheekbones, plump lips, long legs, and wide hips all wrapped around a bubbling personality that had the typically dour Ranger on the edge of laughter.

  Being with the Rangers was nothing like being around Hal, Ashera, and Mira. The Rangers were self-sufficient. They assigned tasks to appropriate members, and then went about to achieve them separately or in small groups.

  The Rangers, for as much as she enjoyed their company, were fiercely independent people. She hadn’t realized how much she longed for honest companionship until Hal crashed into her life.

  For all his bumbling ways, he opened her eyes to the friends around her. Even the Rangers changed their icy demeanor after a few days around the man. She doubted he was even aware of his effect on others. On her.

  Despite her best efforts to keep that emotional wall up, she cared for the wild elf. And she knew she would not leave her behind, no matter the gain. For once in her relatively lonely life, Elora did not consider what Mira would do if the situation was reversed.

  Hal’s softness is rubbing off on me.

  When she saw her Leadership go up a Level, she snorted in derision.

  At least she stopped the bleeding. For a wonder, neither of them seemed to have any broken bones.

  But Elora knew they were vulnerable where they were. Even if the Shoggoth didn’t come after them – and she was all but certain it would – many other creatures lurked in the dark.

  And in their present state, Elora doubted they could put up much of a fight.

  That is, she thought, if Mira ever wakes up.

  64

  Hal and Ashera looked at each other. Reflected in the Sin Keeper’s eyes was the same worry, fear, and sense of loss that Hal felt. They were so worried about themselves that they never stopped to think something worse would befall their friends.

  That something would take one of them.

  “We have to get to them,” Hal said, sounding more resolute than he felt. “Do you know where they are?”

  Being in a party conferred certain benefits. Provided the members were within range, any member had a vague sense of where the others were. But as with many other things, Hal was beginning to learn that some skills went beyond stats.

  While Hal could tell Elora was, oddly enough, below them, he could not tell which direction.

  Ashera shut her eyes and focused. The swirling eddies of fog around their ankles danced gracefully as Hal looked from one silver-etched obelisk to the next. Finally, his eyes settled on the large black spike set into the center of the crossroads they were at.

  Eight paths split off from this central point. Hal’s uncanny ability to tell direction told him, at a glance, that each path was a specific compass heading.

  He trusted that Ashera would set them on the right course.

  They were in a maze, or so it felt. Somehow they had to get down below to Elora. With the only entry being sealed by some sort of Founder magic, he doubted Elora could get in. If she had the strength left to find the door.

  Assuming there was one.

  A feat neither of them was sure the driven Ranger was currently capable of. With no allies besides the unconscious Mira – the only member of their party in a worse state than Elora – the Ranger’s chances didn’t look good.

  They had to get to her.

  “Southwest,” Ashera said into the gloom. “She fell a great distance.” Her pale green eyes reflected her distress. Hal nodded and they took the southward path to their left, weaving around the large spike of an obelisk.

  What unnerved him most of all was Noth’s inability to pass through them. She could phase through anything, except Hal, but the obelisks were as solid to her as either of them.

  He didn’t like the implications.

  Vorax hopped along in their wake, occasionally sending mental images of dark things in the shadows to Hal. It took him a few moments to sort through the imagery. To understand that the mimic wasn’t showing him something real. Vorax was expressing his unease and worry.

  The remaining eight Wortlings stumbled about every now and then. Hal needed to give strict commands regarding how and where they should move.

  It was tedious and Hal almost wished he had left them back in the forest. Even if their erstwhile master reclaimed them, it wouldn’t be able to see them in these halls of stone.

  But they functioned well enough as a rearguard. Hal wanted no surprises and constantly looking over his back would get tiring. Instead, he placed the weakest Wortlings at the back.

  If one of them suddenly vanished, that would be all the warning he needed.

  The obelisks created a snaking, foggy path that seemed to double back more than not. A few times Hal caught sight through gaps in the obelisks of shadows moving on the path they had just walked.

  And he wondered if he was seeing the things Vorax was imparting to him, or if he was letting his own imagination run away with him. The problem with a sympathetic connection to a monster was it went both ways.

  While Hal could block out the mimic, it took effort. And he was already expending a great deal of mental effort just to keep the Wortlings moving.

  Every so often the party frames winked out as they skirted out of range. But as the maze straightened out and they headed due south, they breathed a sigh of relief to see Elora and Mira’s status return.

  A sense of unease fell upon all of them until the path became a series of steps and they ascended out of the fog. They needed to go down, not up. But there was no other way out.

  The stairs lifted into a narrow channel cut into the wall. It was just wide enough for the Wortlings. Before the rearguard entered the narrow hall, Hal turned around to get a look at the layout of the maze of obelisks.

  The only light came from their Guild badges, but they had doubled back so often that they had not gone very far from the c
rossroad spike. He spotted it easily.

  He wanted to understand what this place was used for. It felt important and yet he couldn’t figure it out. What purpose did a maze serve a Founder? Through the churning currents of fog below, several dark shapes followed in the party’s footsteps.

  At first, Hal thought they were creatures coming after them but he later realized the truth. They were shadowy echoes of themselves. Even from such a distance, he could pick out the darkened silhouette of Ashera and himself with their train of Wortlings behind.

  “What would have happened if they caught up to us?” Hal wondered aloud.

  Ashera, one step below him and watching the same scene shook her head. “I would prefer not to find out.”

  For some reason, Hal felt certain the shadows couldn’t leave the maze. And it was truly a maze, he saw.

  As the fog leaked between the obelisks, it snaked and winded its way through the maze in a hundred different directions. Eventually losing itself to the darkness that made the maze appear infinite.

  Perhaps sensing their fleeing targets, the shadow-selves hurried along the path the group walked. Ashera let out a gasp at the same time as Hal turned and hurried up the steps into the claustrophobic hall.

  One, then another Wortling vanished from his awareness. They served their function as a rearguard, alerting him to the danger even on the stairs.

  He said a silent prayer for Stumpy. Or he would have if a quick look over his shoulder didn’t show him the weird Wortling was still alive and well. Either subconsciously or through Vorax’s shuffling, Stumpy had gotten ahead of some of the other Wortlings.

  Stumpy, somehow, lived.

  There was no noise. No howls or gnashing teeth. Only disturbing silence.

  It seems I was right to place the weakest Wortlings at the rear.

  “Let’s not linger too close to the evil shadow-things,” Hal said, hurrying everybody – Wortlings included – deeper into the hallway with him.

  The shadows, it seemed, were content with the two Wortlings they had taken. Even still, Hal tensed when he saw something wriggling through the many legs of the remaining Wortlings. He only relaxed once he made out the treasure chest shape of his companion.

  Vorax shuffled through the several pairs of feet and came to Hal’s side, shaking slightly. Hal crouched down and pet the treasure chest’s lid, it seemed to soothe the poor mimic.

  “It’s okay, I think we’re safe now,” Hal said, more to himself than to the mimic. “Why were you all the way back there?”

  The mimic imparted his own curiosity at seeing something in the fog. When he went to look, he found it was all too real and fled.

  Hal ordered one of the Wortlings to lift up Vorax and carry him. “Protect him with your life,” he instructed. In an ironic twist, Hal was fairly sure it was the same Wortling that had carried Vorax before.

  That seemed to calm the concerned mimic.

  Family. Safe. Vorax imparted to him.

  It touched Hal’s heart.

  The hallway had no ceiling, not that Hal could see at least. It felt like a massive slot, with impossibly high and narrow walls squeezing them in single-file.

  No further pursuit came from their shadow-selves. But Hal knew that if they had to return to that maze – and he was fairly sure they would – the shadows would be waiting.

  Now with two Wortlings at their command. Somehow, he doubted their purpose was to kill intruders. That would be too easy.

  Faint outlines in the smooth, worked stone around them began to glitter. It caught the light from the badges and glimmered in the dark up ahead. Up close, the lines glowed with a facsimile of moonlight.

  The lines chased themselves in intricate geometric patterns until they were swallowed by the abyss above.

  Eventually, the silvered grooves formed outlines of doors with no handle. At the first one, Hal stopped and inspected it.

  If there was a gap or a crack in the stone to indicate a door would swing open, he couldn’t find it. But he kept searching regardless and eventually, resorted to pushing on the thing.

  The outline flashed with bright golden light at the same time as his mark pulsed. Without a whisper of sound, the door swung open onto a well-lit room.

  Your Investigation has risen to Level 9.

  +1% Investigation speed (+9%).

  +2% Investigation success (+18%).

  It was a bedroom. Everything was made from the same gray-blue stone that was polished until it gleamed. A chandelier of gold hung from the ceiling, its many dangling crystals gave off a warm glow.

  Apart from the workmanship of the small boxy room, there was nothing out of the ordinary. Hal let Vorax down to see if the mimic could sniff out any treasure while he and Ashera searched the sparse room.

  Aside from a bed stuffed into the corner and a small nightstand built into the wall, there was nothing of note.

  That didn’t stop Vorax from gobbling up the soft mattress, sheets and all. The mimic burped and out flew a flurry of feathers from its velvet-lined mouth.

  They searched room after room but aside from a buffet of mattresses for Vorax, they found nothing of worth. Halfway through, even the mimic’s monumental hunger was sated.

  For mattresses at least.

  Hal made a mental note to return with Mira and Elora. They could use a proper place to rest.

  And while he didn’t want to linger any longer than was strictly necessary, having a backup plan was never without value. Nothing ever went as planned.

  The cramped corridor, the marching monotony of carbon copy rooms, it all felt disturbingly like a hotel.

  When they came to a crossroads containing more of the same layout in each direction, Hal began to wonder if they were still in a maze.

  Hal hated hotels. There was something severely offputting about them. Their layout and even the smell bothered him. While the halls were cool and dry, they lacked that signature reek.

  “Where to now?” Hal asked, prompting Ashera to shut her eyes again.

  A moment later she opened them, looked at Hal, and shrugged. “Directly below us is my best guess but….”

  “But we can’t dig through stone,” he finished for her.

  From whatever silvery etchings were placed upon the stone, Noth found herself once more incapable of passing through. She floated on the faint golden tether like a kite twenty feet up and behind the group.

  She didn’t try to talk to anybody, nor did she try the stone again.

  Without a direction, Hal went straight. More doors greeted them but they didn’t bother to check them. They were wasting too much time already and Hal reasoned that if there was a door that was not a bedroom, it would look different.

  A hundred or more doors later, Hal lost count around the 30th, they finally came to a T-junction.

  In typical hotel fashion, a bank of wide double-doors of gleaming brassy metal greeted them. Ashera, having no context, looked at them curiously.

  Hal, however, was more than a little disturbed.

  As far as he understood, this world had no concept of elevators. And yet, here they were. Hal almost expected elevator buttons beside each pair of metal doors.

  He found nothing. The doors were separated by a half-foot of polished stone. No markings, no buttons.

  But as Hal stood there examining the area, the door ahead of him opened. The twin metal sheets slid into recesses in the walls to reveal a large circular room inside. Several times larger than should be possible with the other doors so close.

  “Expanded Space,” Ashera breathed, stepping back to get a view.

  Experimentally, Hal walked in front of the other doors. After a moment of standing, they opened one by one as well. The scene was similar. A large stone room at least thirty feet in diameter with a hole punched into the center.

  Choosing a door at random, Hal entered the large cylindrical room and took it in. The imagery of what he assumed was a pantheon of unknown gods lined the curved walls.

  The floor wa
s filled with perfectly fitted stones that made ever-tightening circles. Each stone was engraved with a silvery glyph. At the center of the room was a ten-foot-wide hole. Looking up, Hal noticed another hole twenty feet above him and directly over the hole in the floor.

  Everybody piled into the room and Noth, who had been fairly despondent and bored so far, attempted to dive through the hole in the center. Seeing the silver glyphs, she didn’t bother to go through the stone.

  The faint golden tether slipped between and through the engraved stones, a fact Hal observed with more than a little curiosity. Before he could think about it any longer, the Reaper came back and floated before them.

  “This is a means of conveyance,” she said, though her voice did not seem glad.

  Hal looked to Ashera. He didn’t need to ask for the Sin Keeper to understand his intent.

  After shutting her eyes again she nodded. “She’s still down there, westward now.”

  Anxious, Hal stepped up to the hole and placed a hand over it, hoping he could feel something other than empty air. He wasn’t sure he had enough rope. And a quick survey of the room showed him that he had nowhere to tie it off anyway.

  A faint rush of energy tingled his palm and he felt it supported. Hal let his arm go limp but it still hung in the air.

  Just to be sure, Hal summoned thick shadow-aberration-limbs to brace himself around the hole in case whatever supported his arm couldn’t support his full weight.

  His precaution was unnecessary.

  As soon as he stepped into the empty air his entire body became weightless. He hung there, unsure of what to do. Only when he looked at his feet, to another hole awaiting him in the next room down, did he start to descend.

  Each room appeared the same as the last, except the paintings around the edge of the room changed. Hal didn’t understand the significance and didn’t recognize the godly figures or their bloody battles.

  They descended several “floors” until Ashera no longer sensed Elora below them.

  “Stop,” she said. “She’s here.”