Chapter 84: DD3 Chapter 030 – Blame

On seven-and-a-half legs, the spider quietly skittered through the dungeon’s dusty halls. It moved quickly as it raced down the corridor, skirting around the edges of the tall shadows cast from wall-mounted sconces up above. It knew better than to risk crossing those menacingly patches of umbral gloom. It was already down half a leg and had no desire to drop all the way down to seven. The spider's path was treacherous, and the shadows grew noticeably longer by the second, as if they were reaching out to pull the entire dungeon into darkness. The azure magelights flickered intermittently as they failed, and in that deepening black, chaos rapidly spread throughout the dungeon’s halls. In every way that counted, the dungeon was dying, and the lights were just the first thing to go. 

The echoing crash of distant roars and trills tickled the bristles on the spider’s legs as it raced ever forwards. The movement of those tiny hairs conveyed an uncomfortable sense of pressure that barely sufficed as a replacement for sound. Not for the first time, Tamlin wished that spiders had ears, although if he was going to start listing his complaints about his current vessel then he certainly wouldn’t stop there. 

This particular spider was of a breed fairly common to the dungeon, and was found on a floor not too far from the core chamber where their queen birthed thousands of the little arachnids, seemingly without pause. While this one was large enough to comfortably wrestle a cat to the ground, it was physically unremarkable from its countless siblings with the exception of one fairly significant detail. The spider was very, very dead. 

Since it had died, the spider had undergone a series of remarkable changes. Its strength score had risen by a static 51 points, more than doubling the pewter-rank creature’s original attributes. It had then been forcefully raised past the cusp of bronze, increasing its attributes further even as the death-aspected mana degraded its very body. Amongst all the improvements associated with its posthumous rank-up, the spider had gained flat damage mitigation and nearly fifty pounds of additional mass. These pronounced augmentations had taken the form of dense bone plating and a pair of curving scythes which had replaced its original mandibles. The spider might have taken issue with that last change had it still needed to eat, but while that desire remained, it was no longer necessary. 

Despite the extensive improvements he’d made, Tamlin still found the spider to be a deeply unpleasant vessel. The corpse's lingering instincts didn’t mesh well with its stump leg, and the limb’s partial loss caused him to frequently stumble at the most inopportune of moments. Its segmented eyes made seeing anything further than a few feet away impossible, and the objective gain of ‘all-around vision’ was significantly less desirable when everything remained murky and simply turning the spider's head was enough to threaten a crippling migraine. Given that the arachnid’s eyes had physically been burned away by the fires animating them, Tamlin felt cheated that he was restricted to multi-faceted lenses that couldn’t focus.

He’d asked his party for rats and had received only spiders… he would complain, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

The spider continued to sprint down the abandoned hallway as fast as he could make it. Tamlin wasn’t foolish enough to assume that just because the spider couldn’t see anything that it was truly alone, so he opted for speed, pushing the creature to its necromantically-enhanced limits. If it still lived, the necromancer would have worried about exhausting the small creature, but if there was one advantage to puppeteering the dead, it was that they never grew tired of sprinting. 

He’d long since abandoned any attempts at stealth. The spider’s skills were simply not up to the task, and he’d already lost three others along with half a limb trying to be clever. Now, Tamlin just hurried around the lengthening shadows and hoped that his last scout would make it through. 

The spider quickly skittered through a patch of unavoidable gloom which had grown to completely cover the floor. As soon as it was halfway across, the ‘stone’ beneath Tamlin’s seven paws violently erupted around him—the spider—without warning. The undead arachnid cartwheeled through the air until a pair of gnashing jaws clamped down around it. The sharp fangs scraping against his carapace were attached to a flat and stoney face that, even detached from the ground, strongly resembled the dungeon floor. 

Tamlin grunted in surprise and was pulled away from the spider when he felt a very real hand squeeze his actual shoulder. He couldn’t tell if the gesture was meant to be reassuring or not—but it wasn’t helpful.

His real body’s situation was far from ideal and his allies' attempts to ‘help him’ kept breaking the focus he needed to complete his task. Tamlin ignored the hand touching him and forced his attention back down the connection to the spider. He felt his mind grow cold as it raced down that narrow tunnel of death-aspected mana. His emotions were winnowed down, stripping away all of his fears and doubts, leaving him with just his confidence to wrestle with what little remained of the original spider. 

Suddenly, he was in its body again, staring up into the flat-faced predator that was trying to eat him. The beast’s rocky hide was resistant to Tamlin’s bone scythes, and if he continued to fight it for much longer then he was running the very real risk that the bone plating protecting his spider would fail. It was his last puppet and he couldn’t let it be consumed. Rather than struggling against the inevitable, Tamlin did what no living creature would ever do. Instead of trying to escape the creature’s thrashing jaws, the necromancer picked his moment and darted forwards.

The spider lost another two legs, but he made it in. Pressure descended on his borrowed body as the ambush predator tried to swallow, but with his scythes bared, Tamlin drove his minion through the back wall of the monster's throat. For a moment the spider’s world was enveloped in red while its sycthing mandibles tore through the soft flesh inside the predator’s mouth. Those soft-tissues gave way to tough muscles, and then he was finally ripping his way through its hard, stone-like hide. It was tough going, but it was significantly easier to cut his way out than it was in. It took him minutes of cutting while the larger predator thrashed around his enveloped spider. And then he was through. The undead arachnid burst through the back of the predator's head in a fountain of gore.

Then, on five-and-a-half legs, the undead spider limped onwards while a rush of experience flooded through the arachnid and into the necromancer. Tamlin felt his skin momentarily tingle with euphoria and his myriad of pains briefly lessened, and then he was back to normal—trapped in a failing body with only a spider’s corpse for an escape—he clenched his eyes shut and refocused his efforts.

Not far left.

The rest of the journey passed quickly, and while there were more fights in more hallways, the spider didn’t lose any other legs. Whether it was the stench of death it carried with it, or its increasingly obvious state of decay, the other creatures roaming the dungeon gave it a wide berth. 

The door to the core chamber was still open from when they’d last fled through it. Tamlin sent the spider through, and was surprised to see that everything looked the same. It had been days since he’d stood in the cavernous room, but judging from how little seemed to have changed it could have been seconds ago. 

The spider’s vision was poor, so the mushy stain where Almira and Arbor had died should have been easy for Tamlin to ignore. But it wasn’t. Against his better judgement, the necromancer slowly moved the undead arachnid past their remains, and with his all-around vision, there was no looking away. He saw bits of flesh intermingled with fragments of wood and shattered stone. A branch here, a ruptured eye there… It was all so… messy. Tamlin had seen a lot of death in his short life, but he’d never seen a pair of corpses so thoroughly destroyed. It felt wrong to leave them both like that, and for someone who habitually desecrated corpses to have that thought, he knew something was profoundly unsettling about the scene. It nagged at him to guide his minion past it, but he had a considerably bigger problem than his lost party members.

The tainted spawn hadn’t moved from the spot. The only change Tamlin could observe was that it had curled in on itself to better protect the dungeon core which it held inside of its mouth. The necromancer had to get uncomfortably close to the monstrous creature for his spider to make out any real detail, and every real detail he saw filled his stomach with dread.

It was huge. As wide as two, maybe three wagons and just about as tall. The centipede-squid monster was a mess of long, fanged tentacles on one end and all hard carapace on the other. It didn’t seem to notice Tamlin’s spider, which was a blessed relief, for there was little he could do to avoid its strikes if he wanted his minion to be close enough to actually see it. The necromancer took his time, moving up and down along its considerable length as he studied the intricacies of its form. Where it was covered in armour plating, it was considerably thicker than Tamlin’s hand—from fingertip to palm. Each one of its insectoid limbs more accurately resembled a triangular wedge of chitin taller than a man which narrowed down to a fine, razor’s edge.  

He searched for weak points and found nothing. Then blindspots, then places where it might be overly sensitive to noise or light, and again there was nothing. The more time the necromancer devoted to its study, the more he was left in awe of this simple, brutish creature that he simply couldn’t figure out how to kill. Tamlin had spent countless hours piecing together the remains of magical beasts so that his undead minions were more than the sum of their parts and looking at the tainted spawn, he couldn’t think of anything to add. 

It was perfect. 

And he needed to kill it.

Since the tainted spawn had arrived, life in the dungeon had gone from the unpleasant to the profoundly challenging. While a large part of that was down to Tamlin losing his painstakingly crafted minions, a larger part was due to the change in the air. The thick mana that had once suffused the dungeon was gone, and in its place violence rushed to fill the void. Every resident of the underground warren of tunnels that Tamlin and his team had missed—intentionally or otherwise—had awoken in a fury. Now, they roamed the corridors of the dungeon, relentlessly searching for prey and a place to rest where they could once again enjoy the intoxicating power of dungeon mana. 

If he had his full team—or his minions—Tamlin would be rejoicing at the opportunity to level. But without them, he was dangerously exposed and entirely reliant on his two remaining party members for his safety. Unable to cast proper spells, he couldn’t even fend off a weak spider like the one he now puppeteered.

The smart thing to do was to run away, but Tamlin knew the tainted spawn’s presence was a sign that things on the surface were very much not okay. The necromancer had been involved in preventing Rhelea’s fall from the get-go, and he knew exactly how fast things could go from bad to worse. He’d wasted enough time recovering from his latest episode, when he should have been preparing to kill it. Helion couldn’t afford for him to delay any longer, and it would simply take too long for him to return to the surface and fetch reinforcements.

“I see it,” Tamlin eventually said. Only deciding to inform his peers after he’d already decided on his course of action.

“What’s it doing?” Ilvane asked.

“It’s feeding. There’s no doubt about it. I don’t know how exactly, but it’s using the dungeon core to drink from the leyline that sustains this place,” the necromancer explained.

“Then why isn’t it exploding? That much manaburn should have ripped it apart inside of an hour,” the ranger stated.

“It’s Monster stuff. They play by different rules when it comes to manaburn,” Tamlin said.

There was a brief pause while the ranger contemplated something.

“Can you see any obvious weaknesses?” Ilvane asked.

“No. No there’s nothing we can use—it’s a pretty perfect predator,” Tamlin answered with only a hint of jealousy.

“Okay. Leave the spider there and pull back.”

Tamlin disliked following orders, but he did so regardless. An instant later, he found himself sitting uncomfortably on the floor in a walled room of the dungeon. His entire body ached from his trials and from sitting upright without a chair for so long.

“We need to move soon,” Ilvane said, and Tamlin couldn’t disagree. He wanted to rest and sleep away his pains, but they were down two of their party members, and Tamlin was crippled without corpses to reanimate.

Drue and Ilvane weren’t capable of much by themselves, and their group’s lack of a healer was painfully apparent from how the ranger was favouring his left arm after losing a considerable chunk of his right. Drue was physically fine, albeit sullen to the extreme. One of his class skills provided him with a fairly impressive regeneration rate—at least when there was no actual healer to compare it to—although Tamlin wasn’t exactly happy about that. 

Everything the diabolist killed ended up being heavily damaged in the process. The corpses left behind were consistently beyond Tamlin’s ability to repair, and Tamlin was very good at fixing corpses. Ordinarily, he would have called Drue out on his suspicions, but without his minions the necromancer was disconcertingly vulnerable in a time when tempers were hot and danger was around every corner. Despite the lack of quality corpses, he had managed to stash away a few good bones with promising applications, but his little collection was nowhere near what he needed to put together a full skeleton. His one remaining minion—Tallow—was next to useless in a fair fight, and Tamlin only really kept it around for the sense of comfort the abomination provided.

The necromancer carefully eyed the two classers and wondered what to say. Eventually, he decided to just go for it.

“Once we’ve moved to somewhere more secure, we need to sit down and hash out a plan on how to kill that thing,” Tamlin declared and the silence was immediately deafening.

“Tamlin, we can’t kill it! It was iron rank at least, and you saw the size of it. I wouldn’t fuck with that if it was pewter!” Ilvane replied.

“I’m pretty sure it was steel,” Tamlin said. He really didn’t want to tell them that, but he knew it would become obvious eventually, and he couldn’t afford for them to lose their nerve later on.

“Steel…” Ilvane trailed off.

“Fucker wants to get us killed,” Drue snarled.

“That’s not—” 

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“Shut up, Tamlin! We’re not going after that thing. We’re going to do what we should have done a week ago and go home,” the diabolist said.

“You don’t understand. There might not be a home if we don’t deal with that,” Tamlin protested.

“Don’t understand?! Can you believe this guy, Ilvane? It was one thing when he was pushing us to chase levels, but Almira’s dead, and he wants us to not just carry on like nothing happened—but to commit suicide against a steel rank titan!” Drue spat.

“Drue, calm down,” Ilvane urged.

“Don’t you fucking dare tell me to calm down! He killed her!” 

“What?” Tamlin asked, which in hindsight might not have been the best response.

In a flash he was lifted off the dusty ground and hurled into a wall. Tamlin had neither a high strength score to mitigate the damage, the vitality to tolerate it, or any kind of defensive skill to make what happened to him anything other than agonising. His health plummeted and stars swam in his vision. He was dimly aware of being dragged to his feet again, as rough stone rubbed against his bruising back and Drue’s muscular hand wrapped tight around his throat.

“I said: you. Killed. Her. Almira just wanted to go back to the surface and rest for a bit—we all did—except for you! You just had to keep pushing us, and now that things here, and she’s dead! We should never have listened to a necromancer, and I’m not going to make that mistake again. I’m going home, the dragon and her fucking army can figure out how to kill that monster, but I’m done,” Drue yelled, while his grip grew tighter around Tamlin’s neck.

The necromancer tried to speak, but he could barely breathe. His lungs didn’t work that well at the best of times and this struggle was beyond him. He sent a rushed command to Tallow, and the necromantic amalgamation of rendered fats leapt towards Drue and was promptly swatted from the air by an offhand swipe of the diabolist’s claws. Tamlin hadn’t even noticed the other youth change, but there he was: orange, scaled, and angry. Tamlin was forced then to acknowledge that Drue’s demonic-goat form was a lot less comical when he was using it to choke the life out of you.

“Drue, put him down,” Ilvane urged, but Tamlin couldn’t help but notice the distinct lack of action to force the diabolist into doing so. 

The necromancer’s head swam and Creation dimmed around the edges. His fingers clawed against Drue’s hand around his neck, and he watched with growing dismay as the diabolist smiled.

“Maybe I won’t,” Drue said.

In so many ways Tamlin was stronger than Drue, but in the one that mattered, the gulf in power was not in the necromancer’s favour. His mind raced as suffocated. He saw Ilvane look away in shame. He thought about never seeing Typh again. Almira’s mess on the floor, and how no-one cared that Arbor had died as well. He thought about the one thing he could say that would save his life.

He mouthed the words.

Drue’s grip relaxed just a little, and Tamlin took in a desperate, shuddering breath.

“What did you just say?” Drue asked, his eyes feverish and his tone rapid.

“I said: I can bring her back,” Tamlin croaked.

There was a very significant pause.

“Speak carefully, Tamlin. What exactly are you suggesting?” Drue asked.

“If you can get me to her remains before her spirit moves on, I can bring her back,” the necromancer lied. An image of his mothers corpse in her casket reaching for him flashed before his eyes. His father’s resulting horror. The priests who were paid to look the other way. Tamlin swallowed and spoke again. “If you do as I say, I can bring Almira back.”

“How? You ain’t a God, Tamlin,” the diabolist said, and somehow it sounded like an accusation.

“I know. I'm a fucking necromancer, and I’m offering you your girlfriend back.”

“Even if you could do it, she wouldn’t want to be one of your things. She was a person. Walking around all hollow inside… it isn’t right.”

“I didn’t say I’d bring her back as a shade. I said I could bring her back—all the way,” Tamlin said, doubling down on the lie. “Almira wasn’t fully human anyway. We all know the System was twisting her into something different. I couldn’t do it for just anyone, but vampires aren’t really alive to begin with. She’d be different—but no different than she’d have been in a couple of ranks.”

“Would she be under your control?” Drue asked.

“I—”

“Don't lie to me,” the diabolist threatened.

“Technically, yes. She would—but do you want her back or not?” the necromancer asked.

There was another long pause while Drue debated murdering him.

“If you bring her back we’re square. If you’re lying to me now, or if you try to wriggle out of it later, then I’ll make you wish I choked you to death,” Drue threatened.

“I can agree with that,” Tamlin lied.

“Good, then it’s a [Pact],” the diabolist said with a smile, and Tamlin felt a set of ethereal chains wrap tight around his soul.

Oh fuck.

“Be careful making deals with diabolist’s, Tamlin,” Drue warned, and Tamlin knew he’d fucked up. He tried not to let his panic show. While a necromancer could bring Almira back, Tamlin wasn’t nearly ready for that kind of magic. He was going to fail, and then Drue would murder him.

“Well, while I’m glad you two haven’t killed each other, no one’s come up with how we're actually going to do this. It’s steel, and Tamlin’s our only bronze,” Ilvane said. 

“Relax, elfboy. Tamlin’s a necromancer. He can do this, he’s just going to need a lot of bodies,” Drue said. 

“Intact bodies,” Tamlin added. “And however many you think I’m going to need. I’m going to need more.”

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