Chapter 11: Chapter Eleven: The Really Bad, Horrible, No Good Catacombs, Part I

           “Well, do you have this, Hugh?” Leo asked.

            Hugh also shook. “I’m… I’m not sure, Leo. The last time we encountered demons, it didn’t go that well.”

            He fought the goblins just fine and stood against the wolves, even if he didn’t want to. What’s going on?

            Leo reached out and ran his hand across Hugh’s scaled back. “You’re the guardian, buddy. You’ve got thick scales and sharp teeth. You’ve got this.”

            “I don’t think I do ‘have’ this, whatever that means,” Hugh said. “I’m pretty sure that I don’t have this, in fact.”

            My dragon is broken, Leo thought to himself. I wonder if the warranty is expired or if I can turn it in for another one?

            Leo heaved a sigh. “Fine, I’ll go first. Hugh, please follow, and for the love of all that is holy, charge in and save me when something inevitably tries to eat my face, okay?”

            “Yeah, I’ll do that, Leo. Thanks.”

            “Sure, no problem. Again, please remember—charge in and save me.”

            “Yes. I will. Promise.” Hugh’s face firmed, the muscles around his eyes tightening slightly.

Leo was pretty sure Hugh would fight, so long as Leo started the combat. “Okay, then.”

            Leo pulled Lily’s knife out, held it in his right hand, and started down the stairs slowly, his every nerve feeling like it was on fire.

            The cold intensified as he descended. Leo stepped out into a stone room with frost on the walls and floor, most of it concentrated at the far end, where a stone hall led from the room. Behind him, another passageway led away. The room itself had numerous barrels around it, most broken open, many outright smashed on the floor. The room felt like the cold storage from a horror movie where the axe murderer hanged his victims to eat them later.

            He heard a scratching of claw on stone or ice, but as he looked around the dimly lit, freezing room, he couldn’t see any animals.

            Leo stepped to the side, teeth chattering, as Hugh came down behind him. Lily followed, her own shivering violent.

            “W-we need t-to get p-past this p-part fast,” Lily said, almost every word punctuated by her teeth clicking together. “I d-don’t h-handle c-c-cold well.”

            “Something’s down here w-with us,” Leo responded.

            Lily sounded like she was suffering from the cold more than Leo. He wondered if it was because he had raised his Toughness score when he leveled.

            Leo turned slowly in an arc, dagger held out, trying to make sure that nothing could jump him.

            He heard skittering again, near the exit hall at the far end, and turned in that direction. Then he whirled to the side as skittering came from closer, to his left beside the near wall.

            There was a blur as multiple creatures rushed from behind or within the broken barrels, small, brown-furred, and red-eyed.

            Just before they hit, Hugh let out a roar, shockingly loud within the confines of the dark and frozen cellar, and the creatures all stopped or dodged to the side. One of the ones charging lost purchase on the frost-covered floor and skidded, scrabbling, to Leo’s foot.

            He stabbed down with all his might. His dagger entered into the side of the chihuahua-sized creature, and blood spurted, a disgusting red glove over his hand and arm. The creature looked like a hairless rat that had died of some terrible disease while freezing to death in the snow, then gotten up as a zombie to seek vengeance on all life.

            A second rat leapt at Leo and sank his teeth into his leg, biting him through his almost non-existent pants.

            Leo gave a grunt of pain and dismissed the notification boxes before he stabbed the creature in the neck, nearly severing its small head.

            A third rat leapt and bit the back of his thigh, and Leo screamed this time as his own blood splattered across the frost-covered floor. He whirled to get the rat, but it stayed on him, biting at his leg.

            Leo dropped to the ground, sitting on the rat and praying the last three were being handled by his team. The rat managed to let go and squirm away before he hit, rushing Leo again. Leo desperately turned where he was sitting and managed to catch the rat, throwing the gross zombie rodent against the wall as hard as he could.

            Despite his weak elven arms, the rat hit with the disgusting squelch of dropped meat and fell to the ground, blackish-red blood oozing from its mouth as it dazedly tried to get to its feet.

            Leo lunged over and grabbed the rat, smashing it against the floor with a shudder. The rat went still, and Leo dismissed the experience notification as well.

            Blood was still pouring from the bite on his thigh. Did that rat get the femoral artery or something?

            Leo looked back at his notifications and saw that the damned rats had a freezing-based slow effect he had resisted, and, like the wolves, had imparted ‘Thel’s Rot,’ which he hadn’t resisted. His bleed effects were accelerated again.

            A hand fell on Leo’s shoulder and he screamed, briefly thinking it was another rat. The healing warmth that spread through him calmed him, however, and the leg wound closed—and the Thel’s Rot debuff disappeared.

            “Thank god,” Leo said, carefully climbing to his feet on the frost-and blood-covered floor.

            “Which one?” Hugh asked, trying to use the wall to wipe smushed rat off his claws.

            “I s-spent f-f-four e-essence, L-Leo,” Lily said, then, by sheer willpower, she briefly stopped chattering. “I am going to start taking cold damage soon if we can’t find clothes, and I’ve only got twelve essence right now. We need to move fast.”

            Leo nodded as Lily went back to chattering, briefly examining the two passages.

            “Hugh, poke your head into the passage near the stairs. Lily, follow me into the next room. Call if you see anything interesting, Hugh, and if you don’t, follow me please as soon as you’re done.”

            Hugh rushed into the room behind as Leo moved forward into the stone passageway, and ten seconds later, Leo heard another rat squeal behind him.

            The hall Leo entered was even colder than the room he had just exited. It had two small doors, one on each side, and each with a hole gnawed in the bottom. At the far end, there was a larger, open doorway. There were no torches or lanterns down here, and the light went from dim to dark as Leo moved from the first room into the hall.

            We are the least-prepared adventurers ever, Leo thought to himself with a grimace. I’ve no shirt, for crying out loud! In fact, Lily and I are both woefully underdressed, under-armored, and underequipped, and we didn’t even bring a light source!

            I’ll check the two side rooms, and if we don’t find anything, we need to retreat and find another option. Rooting around in the dark while freezing is a surefire way to die fast.

            Leo opened the door to his side and entered. In the tiny rays of light that made it from the outside, he could barely make out a desk.

            Leo cupped his ear with his free hand. No skittering. He entered the room slowly, dagger in front, and looked around. The rank blood-and-incense smell was just as strong here, and his fingers and ears were starting to go numb from the cold. He had to be fast.

            There were multiple scroll shelves, with a lattice of space to put scrolls on each shelf, but he ignored those. He found a shattered lantern behind the desk, and a quick search of the desk revealed a lot of rotted paper, a small letter opener, ink and a feather-pen, and a sack of coins larger than his hand. The sack of coins was all silver, and Leo passed it to Lily, who was again violently shivering.

            Leo moved as fast as his numbing legs would allow him and opened the door across from him with a yank.

            His heart rose as he gazed inside.

            The room was a shambles, and had a few broken boxes strewn about. There were also remains of charred box pieces, surrounded by burn marks and smoke smears, on the marble ground visible beneath the ice in the dim light.

            And around those burn marks, there were piles of equipment lying on the ground—armor and weapons, most rotting or rusted. But a few intact items were visible in the dim light filtering into the room.

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            “G-Get everything you can c-carry in f-five m-minutes,” Leo said, his own teeth chattering nearly as badly as Lily’s had been. “W-We c-can’t stay h-here l-longer. G-grab the und-damaged gear.”

            Leo rushed around. He searched through the remains all over the floor, finding an intact suit of leather armor. He gathered the pieces, added an intact-appearing long sword with intricate silver etchings on the blade and a half-inch topaz in the hilt, and picked up the pile.

            Just before he left, he saw a small ring with a ruby in it and awkwardly picked that up as well.

            “R-Retreat,” Leo said, too cold to do more.

            The group headed out of the freezing basement and back into the keep that had been Chao’s lair, up the stairs from the dark, freezing hell of the basement and into the welcome light and comparative warmth of the morning sun.

            Leo dumped his loot, except the ring, onto the floor about fifty feet from the entrance to the stairs.

            Lily came up beside him and gently placed a lantern on the ground, as well a cloak with a star pattern on the back that was in pristine condition.

            Hugh dropped off a massive great sword with five small, red crystals in the hilt and an intricate fire-themed etching all up and down the blade.

            Lily sat, then lay, in a patch of sunlight, shivering still.

            “How did we do?” Hugh asked, gently poking her with his head.   

            “If these really are magically infused,” she said, her voice tired, “then we did extremely well. I think, based on the size of the magical crystals, that these are technically all least magical items, but one of them, that great sword, is at the advanced end of the spectrum, using multiple least magic crystals for a larger effect. I think we have a good twenty-two gold worth of magical items here.”

            “Nice!” Hugh said. “That’ll be a good start to my hoard!”

            Leo couldn’t see Lily’s face from the angle she lay at, but he would bet she was glaring at Hugh.

            “I have no reference for that,” Leo said. “Is that good?”

            Lily spoke from her position on the marble floor. “A peasant farm family, doing basic farming with no magic or advanced tools, would make about half a gold each year. Not as profit, mind you. Gross. They would need forty silver from that—or about eighty percent—just for food and basic replacements for tools. The local baron would usually take ten silver. I want to be clear that most places, the average family makes more. This is just the basic, subsistence farmers that make up the poorest of the peasantry in most kingdoms.”

            “So, what we have here is the entire output of a poor peasant family for almost fifty years, or the tax revenue for five peasant families for their whole life, basically?” Leo asked, his voice filled with respect. That would be about five million dollars at home, in proportional terms—just sitting in a ruin. I mean, certain shipwrecks recovered were worth way more than that, but that’s still crazy.

            Lily lethargically nodded from where she lay, still facing away from Leo, on the marble ground.

            “Yes. Any place with a good magical aura, either from its node or powerful magic wielders—and many places have a better baseline from tools, irrigation, and other improvements to the land—would make more per family. But what I said is still the upshot.”

            “It’s small in dragon hoard terms,” Hugh said, “but it would be a decent start.”

            “So what do the items do?” Leo asked, picking up the long sword and staring at it. It was twenty-four inches long, and it glinted, as if sun were reflecting from the blade, despite being out of direct sunlight. The etchings were beautiful and stylized, with wavy and curvy lines down the length of the blade resembling a wolf. The sword felt right in Leo’s hands.

            “That’s the sword of an officer in the Ghost Rangers,” Lily said, her voice livening slightly as she talked about the history and culture of Averia. “Elves with martial talent, a decently high magic score, and Wyld magic would frequently take Animal Companion as their first ability when they made Second Level.”

Trust Lily to know the minutiae of this.

Lily continued. “That bond opened up a few new abilities, and the Ghost Wolves were deadly steeds and companions, especially once empowered by the bond. Officers, who had to be at least Level Four, were given those swords. The sword does additional damage from light energy gathered on the edge of the blade, making it sharper and hotter both. The weapon is a touch more dangerous than a normal sword.”

            “You know a lot,” Leo said, genuinely impressed. “What about the rest of the magical gear?”

            Lily coughed. “I’m really sorry, especially coming after your praise, to say that I don’t recognize any of the other items offhand.”

            Hugh chuckled, then burped so hard that a tiny piece of monster-chicken flew out of his mouth. He looked at everyone guiltily and then licked it back up.

            Lily shoulders tensed, and she must have glared at him, because Hugh continued. “Hey, c’mon. We all know you’re way smarter than I am, but you still have to admit that was funny timing.”

            “I was more concerned with your horribly uncouth eating habits,” Lily said, but her shoulders relaxed again.

            “So, do whatever you need to do to figure out whatever the rest of this stuff does,” Hugh said, giving the marble ground a thump with his tail for emphasis.

            “Without the analyze ability, or, more expensively, the identify ritual, I have no ability to determine that,” Lily said. “You could risk trying them on and might learn their properties that way.”

            Leo put the ring with the ruby in it on his finger. Immediately, he felt warm.

            “So, I have some amazing news about the ring,” Leo said. “It seems to provide warmth.”

            “What are you doing?!” Lily said, sitting and turning to Leo. “You don’t put strange magic items on! They could be cursed! That’s, like, the first lesson of almost all magic classes.”

            “You just said I could risk putting—”
            “I was obviously being sarcastic,” Lily said, flicking her hair back.

            “Magicless world, remember?” Leo asked.

            “Oh, right,” Lily said in a small voice. “Sorry. That was my bad. Please don’t use any more items until you know what they do.”

            “Well, the ring that stops cold is useful at least,” Hugh said. “I mean, for weak elves, it’s useful. I’m not cold.”

            Leo raised a single eyebrow at Hugh, a really, buddy? gesture.

            “Hey, don’t blame,” Hugh said. “I’m not the one who made dragons wonderful and you guys kinda… not wonderful.”

            “How many magical items can a person use, by the way?” Leo asked. “I mean, if I got fifty rings, could I have all the magic abilities?”

            “No,” Lily said, rolling back to lay on the ground. “One item per person, plus one for every magic they have access to.”

            “So, if a person had five magics, they could have six items?”

            “Exactly.” Lily gave a laugh. “And if you find that paragon, let me know. Five magics indeed. I doubt there’s anyone on this continent with five magics.”

            Hugh started to open his mouth, but Leo shook his head from behind Lily, and Hugh closed his mouth. I don’t want to upset her at the moment, and playing ‘I’m better than you’ games cannot go over well. Best just to let it lie.

            “By the way, I’m only about fifty experience from the next level,” Leo said. “How about we go kill some more of those birds and wolves? We can hopefully make a level. It should be easier than the frozen demon cellar. Once we have the level and some practice, we can brave the hellish undercity again and make another attempt to reach the vault.”

            “We never even made it to the undercity,” Lily said, her voice tired.

            Hugh said, “Don’t be a downer, Lily. This sounds like an excellent plan. And I could go for some more chicken, frankly.”

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