“There is one a couple days’ travel from Akila,” Crommen said. The Battle Bard’s normally cheerful mood was gone. “The Malleum Mallum, the Hammer of Doom in the old Imperial Tongue. People pay handsomely for the chance to enter and brave their luck. Many never return. It is dangerous to even venture on its upper levels, and the deeper you go, the harder its challenges become. The Malleum Mallum craves the blood of heroes, and lures them in until they cannot get out.”
“Well, we wouldn’t be going any deeper than we have to,” Hawke said. “According to Saturnyx, there is an entrance to the Archanoid tunnels not too far from the doorway we found. We only have to push our way through three, maybe four chambers.”
“What is the name of this Labyrinth?” Egg asked.
Hawke repeated Saturnyx’s words. “Ostium Tartarus. The Gates of Tartarus, translated from Old Imperial.”
“That’s the Greek word for hell,” Nadia said. “That’s just a fancy way of saying it’s the gosh-darn Hellmouth.”
“Okay, but we’re not going through the Hellmouth,” Hawke countered. “We’re sort of skirting around the edges. Hellmouth-adjacent, you might say.”
“Such a place will have much to offer,” Daggon said. The Warrior seemed to be the only Dwarf who wasn’t discouraged by the discovery.
“Yes, fool. It will offer us a horrible death, preceded by unspeakable suffering,” Egg said. “I fear many of us will leave our bones there, should we be foolish enough to enter. I will only go into such a place if all my other brethren choose to go.”
“What say you, Hawke Lightseeker?” Korgam asked.
“We could spend another day looking for an entrance, but every day we waste here gives the Necromancer a chance to try something else. I am going. Alone if I have to.”
“You will not go alone, for as long as I live,” Tava said.
“And if I let my sister go into Gates of Tartarus with only her boyfriend for company, Father would have my hide,” Gosto added. “I will go as well.”
Marko spoke next. “I made an oath. I will follow Hawke into Tartarus itself, should he so require.”
“I would be serving drinks at the Kettle at around this time,” Alba said, looking amused. “And would be bored to tears. Tartarus it is.”
Nadia shrugged. “Freaking Hellmouth. I’m in, but I want it on the record that this is a bad idea.”
“Then we are agreed,” Korgam concluded. “Lest one of you wishes to gainsay me.”
None of the other Dwarves spoke. Egg tossed up his hands in exasperation and nodded.
“Very well, Hawke,” the Priest said. “Lead us near Tartarus if you must, but I beseech you not to take us straight into it.”
Thirty-Two
A long, mournful howl echoed in the distance.
Hawke was on watch along with Crommen and a couple of guards. They all tensed up when they heard the eerie sound. He looked around, leaning over the earth rampart surrounding the camp. A single howl didn’t seem like a big enough reason to wake everyone up, but he checked with Saturnyx first, just in case.
After a few moments of silence, the howl resumed – and was answered by several more.
“What is that, sir?” one of the Volunteers asked, peering over the sights of his crossbow.
“Not sure, but I’m going to find out,” Hawke said, activating his Farsight Amulet and placing the device’s ‘point of view’ a hundred feet up in the air, looking in the direction of the sounds. Clouds obscured much of the light from the moon and the galaxy overhead, but his Dark Vision easily spotted several large figures moving in loping strides from one of the passes leading further into the mountain chain. They were too far away to make out any details, but they had long arms like a gorilla and were using them and their hind legs to run faster than any human could. One of them paused and let out another howl. They were headed their way. Hawke figured they would reach the camp in five to ten minutes.
“Wake everyone up,” he told the other watchmen and proceeded to alert the Adventurers. “We’ve got trouble.”
Hawke summoned his Nature’s Guardian and an Animated Shadow to help bolster their defenses, then prepped all his buffs. The howls continued to echo throughout the mountains, moving steadily closer; everyone would have been up soon enough, but the whispered warnings got everyone geared up and ready long before the first running creature came into view. It looked like a cross between a wolf and a great ape, with a canine head featuring oversize fangs that protruded from its lips, glowing red eyes, and a long snout. Its body was much like a gorilla’s, except that gorillas didn’t have long claws at the end of their fingers, or howl like werewolves.
Wolf-Man (Fae Mutation)
Level 8 Hybrid
Health 220 Mana 90 Endurance 220
To make matters worse, the first thing the wolf-ape did was pick a grapefruit-sized rock to hurl at the camp. Hawke and Nadia were faster on the draw and nailed the creature with their prepped spells. The double impact staggered the monster as he threw the improvised missile, making it miss; the rock slammed into the earth berm. A moment later, one of Tava’s arrows went thwack between the Wolf-Man’s eyes. The lifeless body collapsed just as half a dozen others arrived and leaped over it. More rocks came flying from the night. A Volunteer fired off his crossbow before crumpling to the ground, his skull crushed by a critical hit that did over a hundred points of damage.
“Take cover!” Hawke shouted. He stunned the closest attackers with Dazzling Light, then followed with several single spells at the monsters who were trying to push past them. Tava riddled the entire group with her Imbued Arrowstorm of Slaying combo as a few crossbowmen followed Hawke’s advice and loosed their bolts from a prone position. Nadia’s Fireball finished off the first bunch. A moment later, Hawke used the same spell and Burning Light to catch the next wave of attackers. None of the werewolf monkeys dropped from the spells, but Gosto’s Thorn-brush created dozens of stabbing vines to explode out from the ground. The Druid spell trapped and shredded the already wounded monsters, wiping them out.
Unfortunately, there were more of them. Rocks kept soaring through the camp, mostly hitting empty air but occasionally crashing into metal or flesh. Spells and missiles thinned out the charging were-creatures’ numbers but several monsters finally reached the entrenched camp and leaped over or pushed their way past the sharpened stakes. Hawke and the other front-line fighters met them there, while Marko hastily arranged a line of naginata-wielding Volunteers to catch any beast-man that broke through. Hawke fired off another Burning Light, killing a couple of the Wolf-Men on the rampart and injuring many others. His swords cut down the nearest two monsters a second later. Off to his left, Rabbit bear-hugged another one and bit off its head; the rest of the furries kept their distance from Tava’s pet after that.
Hawke sliced and diced his way through half a dozen Wolf-Men, taking a few hits but nothing major, at least not until three rock-throwers managed to hit his head, two of them critically. His Bulwark of Light vanished and the second critical made his helmet ring like a bell. Down by 92 Health and stunned, Hawke staggered forward, tripped, and fell in the middle of the attackers. A pair of big dog-apes grabbed him by the arms and tried to rip them off. He felt his arms getting pulled off their sockets; the pain was enormous, but he managed to unleash a Fireball from his left hand. The damage the fiery explosion did to him was negligible, but the wolfers staggered back with their fur ablaze, whimpering like so many kicked puppies. An insta-cast Lesser Healing restored his damaged joints, at the price of a brief burst of pain that almost made him throw up.
He saw a bunch more headed towards him, but another Arrowstorm from Tava riddled the Wolf-Men and Hawke finished them off with a dual-cast Burning Light, usin
g the wave of energy like a flamethrower that washed over the twitching Wolf-Men to the tune of 32 to 288 damage. Most of the furries dropped; loot bags appeared over their still forms. His Mana pool was below one-fifth capacity, but he didn’t care. He wanted to kill every last mad dog in the valley.
The sight of the crazy glowing guy in full armor, spitting out spells and chopping off heads while he screamed in a language they didn’t understand, proved to be too much for the Wolf-Men. A dozen survivors ran away, leaving behind twice as many corpses. Hawke killed one of the runners with a couple of dual-cast Hammer spells, dropping his Mana to the low teens, before walking back to the camp and finding out the cost of the brief but brutal battle. One of the Volunteers, the man who got hit with a rock, was dead. Several others had gotten cracked skulls and broken bones, but Egg and Gosto had healed them back to full.
For slaying your foes, you have earned: 1,120 Experience (140 diverted towards Leadership; 140 diverted towards Node Mastery).
Current XP/Next Level: 7,427/16,000. Leadership XP: 5,713/6,000
Current Node Mastery XP/Next Level: 1,149/3,000
“Who was it?” Hawke asked Marko. The First Sergeant was covering the body with a blanket.
“Kicero. He came from Briar’s Lake, a small village to the south.”
Hawke didn’t remember the name and probably wouldn’t have recognized the man’s face even before the thrown rock had left nothing but an unrecognizable horror behind. That filled him with shame. He had selected those people to follow him into possible death. At the very least he should know their names.
“He was a good lad,” Marko added. “Didn’t speak much, but always did his job.”
“We will see him buried with honor. And make sure his family gets what was owed to him.”
“They will appreciate it, sir. As will I.”
“Congratulations, by the way. I see you have reached fifth level.”
“Fighting big murderous monsters has a way of doing that, sir. And I am not the only one. Five of the lads have entered the Path. Three Warriors, one Ranger, and a Paladin of Lumina. They all would like to have a word with you when you have a chance.”
Hawke was stunned. That sort of high-pressure situation was just the sort of thing that could unleash someone’s hidden potential, but having one fourth of the twenty normies become Adventurers was extraordinary. And now there was another Paladin of Lumina Gloriana. Sure, he wasn’t exactly one anymore, but his oath to the Triune Goddesses still bound him to them, and her in particular. He hoped he could help all of them alive through the next few days.
Deep in thought, he turned away and looked over the berm. Lots of loot bags, but they could wait until the morning. This expedition was turning out to be full of surprises. Korgam walked up to him, cleaning blood off the blade of his axe. “Never seen those beasties before, but heard stories about them. Some Fae experiment that went wild, or so it is said.”
“They like doing stuff like that,” Hawke said.
Elves were the results of another experiment, one mixing Fae and human DNA, and apparently their very souls as well. There was something really wrong with the Sidhe; they seemed to delight in twisting things and people with a psychopathic lack of remorse or compassion. And he had some of their blood and genes running through his body. Joy.
“Do you think those creatures serve the Necromancer?” the Dwarf leader asked.
“Could be. Maybe he has a deal with them like he has with the Arachnoids. I’m glad I didn’t run into any of them when I came here.”
“You were right about not tarrying here,” Korgam told him. “If we spend another day looking for a different entrance, fewer of us will be alive to see the next dawn. Best to put a quick end to it.”
“I hope so.”
Korgam smacked him on the shoulder. “Tomorrow, we go to the Gates of Tartarus. And what a tale that will be!”
“You got it,” Hawke said. The Dwarf headed back towards his sleeping bag. Someone else took his place. It was Alba; he noticed she had made level eight. “Congratulations on your advancement on the Path.”
“Many thanks, your holy eminence,” she said, a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “Or is it your eminent holiness?”
“Don’t you start with that.”
Her expression became serious. “When we return to Orom, I am going to look for Desmond.”
“What for? He’s made it clear he doesn’t want to be part of us.”
“To speak to him. And if he is our enemy, to deal with him once and for all.”
“Why? I know he insulted you, but shouldn’t we just move on?”
“I wouldn’t do that for my sake. Plenty of men have offered me insult, and if I killed them all, there would be a trail of bodies from here to Alpinia. I would kill him for you.”
“Again, why? He may have been trying to kill me at the Sidhe Vault, but we don’t know that for sure.”
“He hates you, Hawke.”
Hawke shrugged. “He seemed friendly enough until his Doppelganger set him off.”
“Whenever he spoke about you, I could see rage and resentment burning behind his eyes. He was afraid of you, and that made him hate you more. I’ve seen enough men to know how they act when they feel diminished by another. I had hoped to turn his mind away from his envy and anger. For a while, I succeeded.”
“That mirror thing really messed him up.”
“It did so by telling him the truth. About us.”
“Nobody likes the ex-boyfriend, I suppose.”
“Boyfriend,” she said; her laugh had a bitter undertone. “That would have been nicer, I think, than a quick roll between the sheets at the Kettle.”
Hawke looked her in the eye. “You were kind to a stranger who had no friends. I won’t forget that.”
“You have many friends now,” she said.
“And you are one of them.”
“I am. And I will search for Desmond and make sure he is no enemy of ours.”
Thirty-Three
You Have Found: Ostium Tartarus: The Gates of Tartarus
Level Fifteenth Labyrinth
Five Quests Available!
Warning! Entering this Labyrinth will place your Reincarnation site on the entrance. You will lose 3 Identity points every time you die while inside the Labyrinth.
“That doesn’t mean everything we encounter will be level fifteen, does it?” Hawke asked Saturnyx.
“Which we don’t have to do. I mean, this is not the worst thing to happen. And, thinking long-term, this place could be a grinding gold mine,” Hawke said after sharing the news.
“Freaking Hellmouth,” Nadia replied. “Can’t spend gold after you’re perma-dead.”
“We really need a more positive attitude.”
“I’m positive this is going to suck,” the Elf Sorceress concluded. She was surrounded in a shimmering blue aura. “Got my Ice Shield on. Will stop a whole hundred and sixty points of damage before it’s gone and all I have left is this glorified bathrobe I’m wearing.”
“We’ve got lots of tanking power. You will be all right.”
While they were having their conversation, Hawke had checked the handful of Quests he was qualified to accept from the high-level Labyrinth. He discarded most of them after seeing they would require him to go deeper into the place. No, thanks. Only two looked promising:
QUEST: Cull the Hordes of Evil
The Gates of Tartarus remain closed, but cracks along its seams have allowed many evil entities to escape. They remain trapped in the Labyrinth, but their existence on this plane is an offense to mortal and god alike. Slay any creature you encounter!
Objective: Destroy at least 25 Minions of Tartarus.
Rewards: 1,200 XP, 30 gold, one random level 10-15 item (Enchanted or Masterwork Quality).
Penalties for
Failure: None.
Accept? Y/N
Quest: Restore the Seals
For many centuries, the Legions of Tartarus were kept at bay by a holy order of priests and paladins. The Hierarchs of Order were dedicated to keeping demons out of the Common Realm. The Hierarchy no longer exists, but the Seals they left behind still remain. Every chamber in the Labyrinth holds one or more Seals. Activate four of them and you will have done your part to keep the Gates closed.
Objective: Activate four Seals of Order.
Optional Objective: Learn Seal Inscription: Commune with one of the Seals and learn its secrets. This is a Mana Channeler Secret Quest.
Rewards: 1,200 XP, 40 gold, one random level 10-15 Masterwork item.
Optional Quest Reward: Learn Seal Inscription, a way to infuse objects with Mana for a variety of effects.
Penalties for Failure: None.
Accept? Y/N
“Done and done,” Hawke said, accepting both Quests. Might as well pick up more XP and gold along the way. He still was nowhere near reaching level thirteen after his double death, and every bit helped.
The group was gathered around the entrance, with several Adventurers on the outer edge, keeping watch. Hawke did a quick review of its ranks, trying to figure out what to do. First, he had his core group. Tava was about to make tenth level; one or two Labyrinth encounters would probably do the trick. Gosto had made ninth level the previous night, which was great, even if the kid was beginning to get a little too cocky for his own good. They should be okay.
The rest of his friends were taking a big risk going in there. Nadia and Alba were at eight level, along with all the Dwarves, of whom Korgam was a couple hundred XP from level nine. Elite monsters at level ten and eleven would be dangerous for most of them; twelfth and thirteenth level opponents would be deadly. His Generalship boost increased their chances some, but he wasn’t sure it would be enough.
The Volunteers were his biggest concern, however. Marko and Calvo had just made fifth level, and then there were the five newbies, all at level one. Kaseo, Octavo and Sopon were Warriors. Deonos had become a Ranger and crossbow specialist, and Maxom was the Paladin. They had just enough power to be seen as a threat and not enough to survive anything they met at the Labyrinth. His Leadership ability made them level two, although the raise only affected Characteristics like Health or things like spell damage and effects. Hawke couldn’t increase the Dwarves’ levels unless he left some of the Volunteers out. He figured Korgam’s Adventurers could take care of themselves better than the ordinary humans in his force.
Lord of the Dead: A LitRPG Saga (The Eternal Journey Book 2) Page 19
