Chapter 25: Delve

Chapter 24

Delve 

The Priest and the Warrior, Umago and Marrak, led the charge through the entrance tunnel. The walls were covered in moss and jagged rocks, smelling of mildew. As the pair of party leaders crept around a corner, they found what they thought was as an empty chamber. As June and the rest of the quintet slinked around the bend, the full chamber came into view. A mass of green, mossy rocks sat in the middle of the rugged, carved room. Around them, glittering rocks broke through the darkness. They appeared to bioluminesce, adding a soft blue glow to the area.

A gentle whisper overtook June’s awareness as she entered, like a ghost trying to call to her in an unknowable voice. She shook off the interruption and continued forward.

“Great, more weird nonsense,“ she muttered.

June’s Mana Vision even came in clutch at first, helping her spot some strange mutated plants slowly sliding across the cave floor. These hidden plant mutants were trying to sneak up on them. The living ferns slithered along the walls, leaving trails of ooze behind them. What she didn’t see was that those bioluminescent rocks were also a special type of mob. When one of her companions got too close to one, they snapped open with a resounding popping sound. The sound of crunching bone followed next as Mutated Swamp Clams wrapped maws filled with rows of blunt teeth around a leg of one of her allies. The fern’s attack came next, snapping its roots and vines out like whips. Umago rushed in, swinging wildly at the fern, advancing on Marrak. Their strike sent the top parts of the fern sailing across the room. Another plant mutant paused for a moment, trying to flee. June didn’t let it get too far before cooking it with a fireball. A scent like burning paper wafted through the rough-hewn chamber.

Marrak was still trying to wiggle the living rock off of their leg bones, waggling back and forth as they danced around the other living rocks in the chamber. “Hold still!” she called after them, trying to line up a shot with a spell. Her first attempt flew wide as a Shadow Spear dissipated harmlessly against the rocky floor.

Focused, the Mage, Allaran, belted water spells into the other living rocks now rolling around the area. It must have looked like a joke, as a group of undead adventurers chased some rocks around a room. Kotor was even leaping around, trying to blast rocks to bits with fire spells. The dancing shadows cast by the cobalt light made the scene look more like an underwater ballet gone wrong.

Cold and calculating, the Priest used an Enthrall spell on the rolling rocks. They slowed and stopped their routine of rolling around like a mad dervish, awaiting some command. With them locked in place, they were much easier to beat into submission with blunt weapons and fire. As each rock monster fell, their light dimmed.

June took the reprieve to check around for any kind of loot, using her Mana Vision to scan the room. Shadows continued to dance on the walls in a slow waltz, passing from one jagged edge to the next. The other members of her party stood stone still, staring at something invisible to anyone but them.

Kotor amused himself by poking at the warrior as they stood still.

The scraping of stone interrupted her search. A small passage had opened opposite the entrance. In unison, five heads turned towards the new doorway. Nervousness flowed through the room like a heavy fog. June’s mind swam, wondering what the darkness beyond the fading blue light held.

Another whisper echoed from within the darkness, calling to June, rattling inside her head like a jingle you couldn’t quite forget.

Kotor crawled up towards the open passage, his softly burning form glowing in the growing shade. He slithered along the stones like a serpent, eager to strike.

“What do you see?” June asked through their psychic link.

A pause hung in the air, before the imp responded, “I don’t see a darn thing, boney,” communicated the fire imp.

But June had a bit of an ace up her sleeve, Mana Vision. By flaring her magical ability, June could trace mana in green and black wisps moving along both the floor and walls of the cavernous space. She traced its path, noting natural curves and concentrations in the energy formations.

As the party ventured deeper, the character of the tunnels changed. Rather than appearing to be being natural formations, they twisted in increasingly uniform ways. It looked like a large worm had chewed its way into the rock. As June walked, she noted more and more bite marks upon the walls, and small bits of broken stone lay across the floor, crunching beneath their feet. Each step cracked and snapped as thin pieces of stone broke under their combined weight. The scene was eerily silent, save from the crunching of footsteps, as the party moved. The quartet of undead wandered through the lower chambers of the dungeon, avoiding traps as June’s Mana Vision spotted them. A stone fall trap fell harmlessly before them. They easily skirted two different pit traps. After descending a long, narrow passage, the pathway opened into another wider chamber.

A trio of strange kobolds came charging into the tunnel at them before they reached its entrance. Instead of the green flesh and wild yellow eyes June knew from her previous encounter, these were much more freakish, clearly dead. They moved oddly, shuffling instead of running. The flesh and eyes were sunken and taut, colored the hue of grey stone. A simple glance with her Mana Vision told June they were various kinds of undead kobolds.

The warrior charged in first, bashing one aside with a shield charge. With a delayed crunch, its dusty bones scattered across the stones. A dual spell attack from June and the zombie mage roasted the second. Ash fell from the tiny undead in great heaps, ballooning into a spreading tide of grey fog.

Well, that’s what happened to those kobolds.

The third was smarter, it seemed, falling back further into the chamber.

Reckless and unthinking, June and the Warrior rushed through, with Kotor and the rest following behind a beat later. The quintet braced for more, but nothing came, although June noted and called out a huge concentration of green earth mana in the chamber beyond. The Summoner triggered Called Spirits for the first time, bringing about the image of one of the kobolds she’d just slain. A whispering echo of its form came together from her mana. Like building blocks, bits of mana twisted and solidified before dropping onto the stone floor and bubbling away. After several seconds, the image took shape, block by block. An incorporeal form of the mangled kobold came together, featuring much more sinister crimson eyes, rather than the uncharacteristic snow white of its undead inspiration.

June silently commanded it to move ahead into the chamber. The ghostly image floated towards the door and passed through without issue. That was, until an arrow slammed into it and passed through, breaking the illusion. The arrow clattered uselessly to the stones inside the chamber. A smattering of surprised shouts and shuffling feet echoed out towards the party. June casually, mercilessly fired a pair of fireballs into the chamber, eliciting a chorus of screeches and a wafting smell of burning flesh from within. What she hadn’t expected was the torrent of green skin and yellowed teeth to come charging out of the chamber, slamming into the party.

Kotor was the first to see them come charging out of the fire, blasting gouts of flame back into the advancing horde. June and Allaran both added bolts to the growing flurry of magic, flying back at the now panicking enemies.

Swinging crude stone weapons, most of their strikes did little but bounce off of the shield held by the warrior, who had advanced promptly into a blocking position. The Priest, Umago, also flanked them, casting buffing magic on the both of them. Several Kobolds fell in quick succession in the opening melee, being burned, frozen or hacked to pieces by the party. Green kobold skin and bones, as well as purple blood, flowed across the stone floor like a thick slurry.

Their yellow eyes were crazed, darting all around, seemingly searching for a way past the undead now slaughtering them. June triggered her Tongues perk with a jolt of mana, trying to understand their panicked screeching.

“Run!” was the only word she could parse amid the orgy of magic and breaking of tiny bones.

The tide of the battle turned even worse for the kobolds as their largest warrior attempted to bowl over the two undead blocking their path, only to be met with one of his own class abilities. Resolute Technique, an ability June knew well from her short stints in PvE, effortlessly bashed his oversized skull in. Bits of kobold brain slathered against the stonework as the top of his head rolled off with a stroke of Marrak’s sword. The fleshy bits left behind smoked, filling the chamber with yet another foul odor.

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But, there were still more coming, and without area-of-effect magic to thin the herd of greenskins advancing on them, June had to make a snap decision. “Fall Back!” she screamed as the ordered the party backwards. Over several minutes, the party pulled back further up the chamber, using the slight incline to their advantage to slow the horde while they struck down at them.

They doled heals out as fast as the Mage could unfurl and burn the scrolls June had given them. Even June had to join in the frontline to allow for the Priest and Mage to recharge a bit of mana as they fled, pushed backward even further. The complicated dance of positioning looked like a waltz of death, set to the music of screams and bloodshed. Her Vampiric Edge dagger helped her remain upright, as Kotor rode her shoulder. He would blast kobolds in the face when they got too close, allowing June the chance at a quick stab to leech health and mana.

They had already slaughtered more than a dozen of these creatures, but more were still charging up the hall. A quickly loosed fireball roasted a couple of smaller kobolds as they came hopping up the tunnel toward the slaughter. This created enough separation between the party and the green mass that they simply turned tail and started running. Kotor kept their foes at bay, firing bolts of flame backwards toward the advancing kobolds. June couldn’t help but feel a twinge of regret at slaughtering a foe that was simply running at them in a panic, but her survival came first.

As the party rounded the bend, back in the rock chamber, they filed out back into the wider area, prepping for the coming attack. Fire danced in their eyes as the group steeled their resolve.

Seconds ticked by as the chittering and screeching group of kobolds arrived at the entrance to the chamber. Charging in two at a time, spells ripped through the air, tearing into their flesh, shredding skin and bone in chunks. Eager frontline fighters cleaved the next pair of greenskins down, splattering another pile of gore across the stones. Their gurgling death rattles didn’t last long, as their corpses fell away to ash, eaten away. The rest of the party didn’t seem to notice, purely focused on the slaughter they were unleashing.

A whisper broke through the din of battle, amid the screams, June’s sense was pulled in a new direction. A resounding boom echoed through the chamber, but as June glanced around, no one else seemed to hear it. The abjectly familiar pressure inside her head and a blinding migraine returned in that instant. It felt like her skull wanted to rip itself off of her body and flee. An incoherent scream escaped her mouth, prompting Kotor to rush to her side.

“What’s up, boney?” he said, a genuine look of worry stretching across his flaming features.

June tried to focus through her blurred vision, as the image of the concerned imp swirled in her vision, like she was looking at him through a foggy window.

“I’m fine...” came the grunted reply.

As the hellish slaughter spread out like a black tide across the room, June felt frozen in place. Everything looked like it was moving in slow motion. Each strike against bone or flesh, and the screams that followed, crawled around. June stumbled towards the far side of the room, slumping against the carved walls.

A booming voice reached inside her mind, tearing further at her focus. “Consume,” came a sinister call in a tone holding both threat and promise.

By the time June regained her full awareness, the battle was done. The other adventurers and Kotor had fought their way through the last few kobolds, hacking and blasting them to bloody bits. Purple stained the walls and dripped onto the floor. Kotor came hopping over to June’s wobbling form.

“It’s nothing, I’m fine, let’s just get this over with...” she hurriedly said, near shouting, the look of genuine concern on Kotor’s face stood in stark contrast to the blank, far-off stares of the other undead.

Once again, a new portal opened in the rock, with the tantalizing and dangerous mix of the unknown darkness calling to the party—and on they went. June charged past the concerned Kotor, irritation plain in her tone as she spoke.

 

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The group silently moved through these new tunnels, with June noting a more ordered composition to the walls and floors. Gone were the chewed tunnels. These areas looked almost refined by comparison. Someone had carved the stone in a considered and planned way, making this area look more regal. There were no fancy engravings, but the dull grey stone still had a certain character to it. June’s senses were on edge as they scanned the path ahead, noting no major flows or concentrations of mana in the hall. It wasn’t until several minutes further down a straight passage that this changed.

Ahead, June witnessed a thick haze of earth and death mana swirling.

Deeper into the path, a wider chamber revealed itself. The room was cavernous and adorned with small braziers around a crude stone platform. The stone glinted in the firelight, with softly glowing runes intricately carved into its entire surface. On top of the raised platform sat an enormous emerald, uncut and filled with blemishes.

An intense desire boiled in the back of her mind. She had to have it. Just one little touch. Despite her screaming sense of danger in the back of her mind, her feet carried her forward toward the gem, without input from the rest of her body.

Darkness danced around the rough plinth, flying around on wings of pale green light. Like dragons dancing in the night, the shadows dashed and dived, as if hunting unseen prey. As June crept closer, the gigantic mass glinted, pulling her closer, like a pile of ancient treasure calling to a greedy beast.

A shadow with a sword swirled into position behind her, the darkness roiling off its form. Like a tree, it stood tall and gaunt, its dark form swallowing light, bending it into submission.

Shit, too slow...

A scream broke through the haze as June turned to face the threat, but it wasn’t her own. Kotor leapt at the threat, a shrill scream burning out of his throat. Fire bathed the shade from his infernal claws as he screamed his war cry. Orange-tipped crimson claws sunk into the nightly figure, ripping at it with abandon. June scanned the boss, finding out its pretty terrifying stats.

 

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