by Ivan Kal
Then, before anyone could speak, the sky flashed red. Lines spread all over the sky like a spider web that covered everything. Morgan blinked, and then noticed something coming down from the sky: a streak of fire resembling that of a shooting star. And in a blink of an eye it disappeared behind the horizon. A few moments later the red lines across the sky disappeared and everyone looked up in silence.
Uncomfortable with the silence, Morgan finally spoke. “So, everyone saw that right? I didn’t just, like, turn my eyes into something crazy that can like see some demonic shit?”
INTERLUDE II
Kerek, Grand Warlock of the Armies of Chaos, stepped off the platform of their vessel and onto the sand of the adversary’s world. His people had been born in the swamps, and he did not enjoy the scorching heat, but to serve Chaos was the greatest honor, and he would endure. He was in a place of honor, serving one of Chaos’s personal servants, a Herald—a being infused with the direct connection to the realm of Chaos and Order.
And their mission was of utmost importance: to find the base world that the adversary used in this universe, and to find the location of its great beast, Moirai the Cursed. They had searched far and wide, across multiple universes where the adversary’s presence had been felt. They had done so as separated from Chaos as possible, for they knew that the adversary and its allies could detect them. But their Herald always had the ability to reach out and call Chaos, to let it know where they were. Not so now—the spell that separated this world from the adversary’s sight while not triggering any of the adversary’s defenses was vast and complicated, and a side effect was that they were as cut off from Chaos as this world was from its own master.
They had to be certain that they had found the right place, that they had found the cursed beast before they called Chaos and revealed their location. They knew that a response would be quick and brutal, and so their mission was one of stealth and patience.
Kerek heard footsteps behind him and turned to see the rest of the small ship’s crew, the twenty of his most trusted Warlocks walk out onto the sand. All were Rzan, as was only proper, and their scales shimmered in the scorching sun. Behind them came another being, one of a shape similar to that of the Rzan: the same arched back and long head with a snout, except that his skin was covered in fur instead of scales. Kerek didn’t know anything about the Herald’s race; only that they served Chaos and Order, and that was enough.
“My Lord Herald.” Kerek bowed. “The signal came from underground. There is a tether there that leads to the base world, I am certain of it.”
“We shall see, Grand Warlock,” Antaris Truthspeaker, Herald of Chaos, spoke.
“If you allow, our scans detected several groups of lifeforms nearby. I would like to send my Warlocks to harvest them for their spells.”
“Of course,” Herald said. “And what of the way underground?”
“The scans also indicated that there is a large cave system nearby. I will move there personally to secure it and establish if it leads deeper underground.”
The Herald looked to the sky and nodded. “I shall remain here until you secure a route. I must recover my strength after using the phasing spell.”
“I will not fail you, Lord Herald.” Kerek bowed as the man turned and returned to the vessel.
As soon as he was out of sight, he turned to his people and started giving orders.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Morgan stared at the entrance to the tunnel, the rest of the raid group standing all around him.
“So, just go down, explore a bit and come back?” Morgan asked. “We don’t need to finish the quest all on our own?”
“Yes,” Ragnor Raam said, ignoring the last part. “We don’t know if this even leads to the city we need to find.”
As usual, Morgan was the scout. His team was a lot different this time. Ves and her bear weren’t the best option for a relatively narrow tunnel, and Ta’elara was better at laying waste to enemies in open space. Clara was a good support, but they didn’t know what to expect down there.
So, instead of them, he was going in with Sumion, the Nel, who had an evolved class called Discipline Monk that allowed him to put shields on people and heal as he dealt damage. He was also a hand-to-hand specialist, so a good choice for close quarters. The second member of his team was Evermou himself—as an illusion and DPS specialist, he was a good choice in case they need a distraction in order to retreat. Finally, there was Vallsorim.
A team of four, with Morgan coming because he was the only one that had any kind of sensory skill that could help them detect things down there—and now his new eye.
Morgan and the others jumped down into the mostly cleared hole.
“Return as soon as you find if this leads to any kind of city,” Ragnor called after them.
“Will do!” Morgan said and they moved into the darkness. Vallsorim had a torch and he stood at the back of their formation, with Sumion in front of him and Evermou and Morgan at the front.
Morgan had his arm in his sword form, and his eye in the Night Eye Form. He could see that the tunnel ahead of them stretched a long way, but at least he didn’t see any monsters. They walked for a long while, at least an hour, before they reached a fork in the road.
Morgan frowned as he looked from one side to the other. He could see pretty far, but so far the only thing that he could see was more tunnels.
“Can you see anything?” Vallsorim asked.
“Nope,” Morgan said.
“And I guess you have no idea where we should go, then?” Vall added blithely.
“Nope again,” Morgan said.
Sumion cleared his throat and smiled. “I don’t think that it matters, Morgan. We can always double back.”
Morgan shrugged and took Sumion’s advice. He looked around and then picked a direction at random.
“Why do I feel like you are about to lead us toward trouble?” Vall asked.
“Because we are on an alien planet that doubles as a floor for a Tower that isn’t really a Tower but a series of worlds that are basically a testing ground of a being that calls itself a god, with a small g of course, and everything everywhere is literally designed to be trouble for us?”
Three set of eyes looked at Morgan with incredulous expressions.
“What?” Morgan frowned. “You asked.”
Vall sighed. “Just because I asked, doesn’t meant that I want a real answer.”
“Uh...” Morgan blinked at him. “That’s literally what a question is Vall buddy. Stop asking questions if you don’t want answers.”
Sumion bowed his head in defeat, Evermou’s glamour didn’t let anything of his true feelings pass through, and Vall just shook his head and murmured something too low for Morgan to catch.
They continued walking, now in silence, with Morgan using his new eye to look forward, even as he focused on his two skills, pinging them intermittently. His Life Sense didn’t show anything, and his Nature Seismic Sense only gave him a vague sense from the plants that they were somewhere beyond the walls of the tunnels.
But then, as he flashed his Life Sense again, he saw something. Out in the distance, there was a glow of life. He paused and the others stiffened behind him.
“What is it?” Vall asked.
“Something up ahead. A monster, I think,” he said, lowering himself to one knee and focusing on his eye to try and see what it was. Whatever it was, it was heading straight at them, and it couldn’t be giving off much heat, since to his eye’s infrared vision it looked the same as the environment.
And then he started hearing a sound of multiple legs hitting the stone. Please, just no more spiders, Morgan thought to himself.
“Fuck,” he said as he finally saw what it was. “As if a giant bug is better than a spider. Monster incoming!”
He changed his hand form to bow, and took a step back as Vallsorim stepped forward with his guandao. The tunnel was wide enough that all four of them could stand shoulder to shoulder, but just barely
. Morgan moved to the side as he nocked an arrow and started filling it with mass and phasing it. He knew that he couldn’t use an arrow that was too powerful, as otherwise he could collapse the tunnel, so after just a short while he let the arrow fly.
It hit what looked to be a giant beetle in the head and staggered it, cracking its carapace, but not killing it. Sumion raised shields around all of them and his fist started to glow with pale yellow light.
And then Evermou stepped forward.
“I’ll handle this,” the elf said and raised his hand. A lance of green light flew out of it. This time, Morgan was paying attention, and so he saw when the man’s glamour rippled. He saw his real hand, a metallic prosthesis, just like what Vall had—only his could shoot lasers. The beam of the green light that Morgan recognized as nature aspect hit the beetle, and then the beam reversed direction and started pulling back. He saw the monster falter and then drop to the ground.
Morgan blinked as he got a notification that he had earned exp, and glanced at Evermou, who looked impeccable and composed, but that was just the glamour. Morgan shook his head and they started walking over. They reached the dead beetle and Morgan saw that the flesh that wasn’t covered with carapace was withered and dried up. Evermou had drained it.
It wasn’t the first time he had seen a nature aspect used in that manner. He himself had experimented with it, but ultimately decided that it wasn’t for him. Morgan knelt down and started harvesting the body. There was no point in letting it go to waste, and they never knew when that chitin might come in handy. The others waited, on guard, and then once he put everything useful inside his storage, they continued.
Soon, Morgan started hearing a sound of running water, and the others detected it as well. They walked forward and entered a chamber. Water had broken through the wall to the side and was falling down, filling the room with water, which then drained out through another opening on the other side of the room.
“The water probably goes deeper underground, so this might be a good bet,” Morgan said.
The others agreed and they walked in, going down the steps and into the room. The water wasn’t deep; it came to just up above their ankles. The walls of the room around them were covered in imagery that at a glance looked religious to Morgan. It was similar to what he had seen on Earth from the inside of pyramids and other old-world temples. There were images of a people resembling upright cats, if cats had eyes almost half the size of their head. One wall was of the people venerating some figure on a throne of the same race, offering gifts. The other showed what appeared to be a mining spot, with the people unearthing riches as others dressed in elaborate robes with glowing hands watched over them. The next part was broken, and the water falling down eroded the rest. Still, they appeared to be in some kind of a temple as far as he could tell.
“So anyone get a weird cult-kind of a vibe from those?” Morgan asked.
The others looked from the artwork to him then back. “What is that?” Sumion asked.
“You guys don’t know what a cult is?” Morgan asked, surprised.
Three blank stares were his answer.
“Well it is kind of like a group of people tricked into thinking something by someone, usually a dude that convinces them that he is a god or something along those lines. Sometimes he manages to make a religion out of it, and get people to do stuff for him. Or convinces them that drinking poison and suiciding is a good idea.”
Three sets of eyes blinked at him in stunned confusion.
“What? You guys asked,” Morgan said. “Didn’t we just have a conversation about asking questions when you don’t want answers to them?”
Sumion sighed. “I don’t think that anyone can anticipate just what kind of an insanity will come out of your mouth next.”
“Why would anyone ever agree to kill themselves?” Vall asked.
“I don’t know, I was never a part of a cult,” Morgan shrugged.
“But you know about them,” Sumion added.
“Well, yeah, you hear all sort of things,” Morgan said.
“So, it could be that you’ve heard wrong?” Sumion asked.
Morgan shook his head. “Doubt that, I got the info from several verified sources.”
Sumion blinked with his secondary eyelids. “You had sources in these cults?”
“What?” Morgan blinked. “No, it was the internet.”
“The what?” Sumion asked.
“It’s kind of like an information broker, but it is free and everyone can access it from a device that fits in their pocket.”
“Why would anyone make information free?” Sumion frowned.
“Oh buddy, if you could see the shit that people on my world think should be free you would faint,” Morgan answered.
Vall opened his mouth, probably to ask something else, but thankfully Evermou interrupted. “We should focus on the task at hand.”
Morgan gave him a sheepish look and then started walking again. He should’ve known better than to bring something like in this kind of a situation. Still, he was interested to know a bit more about the story of these people.
As they walked through the water, Morgan couldn’t help but glance down, waiting for something to jump out and attack them. When they walked out of the room and into what looked to be a balcony, he was almost disappointed.
But then he saw what spread before them.
The balcony was near the ceiling of what appeared to be a massive cavern. Crystals grew out of the ceiling, shining with light that nearly blinded his sensitive eye. He closed it and opened his other one as he changed his left one’s form.
His vision adjusting, he saw that the crystals gave off a faint blue light, just enough that he could see. Morgan and the rest walked over to the edge of the balcony and looked out at the cavern. It was ridiculous for him to even call it that—this was on the level of hollow-Earth movies he’d watched as a kid. There were clouds inside the cavern, things flying around, and below them was a drop of several kilometers. Massive towers reached to the ceiling, like the one that they were in, apparently, or rather half of it.
As Morgan looked over the railing he saw that half of the tower beneath them was missing, collapsed into the city below while the top part attached to the ceiling still remained. He saw that there were bridges between the towers, and the one attached to the closest one was still intact.
But down on the ground was the true marvel: an entire city stretching as far as the eye could see. It reminded him of ancient Egyptian architecture, but the size of the buildings was anything but. Everything was giant, and if it looked that way from so high up, it must be truly impressive. There were pyramids, and massive squares that were empty. Half of the city was in ruins, but the other seemed somehow preserved.
“Well,” Vallsorim spoke. “I guess we found the underground city.”
“We should head back and let the others know,” Evermou said.
Morgan nodded his head and started turning around when his Life Sense noticed something out of the corner of his eye. He barely had a chance to react when a group of massive flying creatures that looked like a cross between a bat and a demon swooped in on them. Evermou dove to the side and Vallsorim turned to fire and flashed to the side. Morgan managed to use Phase Dash to the side, and came out of it close to the wall. His momentum carried him into it and he hit his head, disorienting him slightly.
The monsters screeched and attacked, the claws of their legs snapping out at them. Sumion raised a wall of light, and one of the monsters smashed into it. Vall stabbed another with his guandao and Evermou created a flight of white-eagle illusions that attacked the monsters and disoriented them further. Morgan changed his hand to his bow form and started firing arrows as they moved back toward the entrance to the temple—but he had to have hit his head harder than he thought, because he missed half his shots.
Vallsorim blazed with fire and the monsters avoided him as he tried to buy the rest of them time to escape.
Then Sumio
n screamed, “Morgan! Watch out!”
Morgan barely had enough time to turn before a monster slammed into him, its claws biting into his shoulder and picking him off the balcony. In a single beat of its wings, it nearly carried him off, but Morgan changed his hand to his sword form and cut upward, slicing through its legs and forcing it to drop him. He fell, but the momentum carried him close to the edge and he realized that he was going to fall over. He reached out with his other hand toward the railing even as Sumion ran toward him. The Nel extended his hand and Morgan reached for it. Their fingers brushed against each other, and then Morgan was falling.
Sumion brought his hands up before smashing his fists together, and energy surged around him. A moment later he punched down toward the quickly falling Morgan and the white light surged down and surrounded him. But he was still falling. Morgan saw his form glowing and realized that Sumion had used his most powerful barrier on him.
Oh, fuck, I’m going to hit the ground. He looked down, turning mid air and looking for anything that could help him slow down. Then, as the city below started coming at his face faster and faster, he triggered his Mind Space. Time slowed down, and he started to think. The ground was no longer getting closer, but it was still plenty close. He figured that he would be falling for at least another twenty seconds, if he was correct about the size of the cavern.
He could phase, but that would probably not be as good of an option as it might seem. He would fall through the floor, and if there were more chambers belowground he would just unphase there with the same momentum. If he was lucky, he would hit something that had mass and get expelled out of it in the opposite direction, but that could send him flying in all sort of directions depending on the place where he unphased and the relative mass of himself compared to the wall or the ground. So, phasing was not a safe option, but he needed something to soften his fall. Sumion’s barrier would most certainly take care of most of the damage, perhaps even all of it, but he couldn’t risk it.
