Chapter 151: Chapter 147: An Artificer investigates a Quarry and encounters trouble.

 

On the road out to the quarry she passed several wagons coming from the quarry bringing loads of clay back to the city, and just as many heading back out to the quarry to pick up another load. Even though the road had been paved with stones, ruts were beginning to develop along it. She had to be sure to keep out of the way of the wagons by walking on the side of the road. When the road went around a hill, she decided to climb it and when she did so she got her first proper look at the quarry.

It was basically a massive hole carved into the ground, with an orangish brown tint to the sides. Scaffolding was placed all around it with workers busy mining out portions of clay. Everything seemed to be covered in clay dust, even the few quarry guards that were walking around a wooden fence around the quarry. Off to the eastern side of the quarry was a massive rubble heap where they were throwing rocks and the dirt that wasn't useful from the quarry. From where she was she noted where the forest surrounding the quarry came the closest, and she silently made her way into the woods.

As she moved she would pause when she heard the approach of one of the guards. Like she suspected most of the guards looked bored and not really attentive with the job. They were most likely there to mainly keep out kids who might fall into the quarry. So she was easily able to sneak past them. When she reached the far back of the quarry, she found an opening in the fence and slipped through. Carefully keeping hidden as best she could she went to the edge and looked down. Among the wooden scaffoldings placed along the walls, she counted at least thirty workers currently mining away at the walls. Dozens of others were hauling the mined clay out of the pit.

Rocks and the like were thrown into a wagon which then would be likely to be taken later to that growing pile of rubble she could see off to the side. The quarry was fairly open from above, and from her vantage point didn't see anything that looked to be a tunnel entrance. In fact as far as she could tell everything in the quarry looked normal. She looked up and noticed that a series of tents had been set up near the dumping pile. Taking a look at them, she found that she was getting a weird feeling from them. Deciding that it would be a good idea to get a closer look at them she snuck towards that dumping pile.

As she got closer, she could see that the tents were set up in a way to hide an entrance into the dumping piles. It appeared that someone was using the dumping piles to hide something going on in the middle of it. She had to carefully consider her next move. She couldn't very well climb on top of these piles, as she would be quite obvious to spot even if she went camouflaged. As far as she could tell at the moment, no one was in the tents, so she might be able to slip inside them.

As she debated on what to do, a wagon began to make its way towards the dumping pile. She initially assumed that it was coming to dump rubble from the quarry. Then she realized that the wagon had not come from inside the quarry, rather it had come from the direction of the city. Hiding behind some boulders she took a closer look at the wagon as it passed. Rubble was covering the top, but through cracks in the wood she spotted something wrapped in linen was inside the wagon. A faint smell of death came from the wagon making her suspect dead things were wrapped up in that linen. Soon the wagon passed by the tents into the rubbish pile.

She waited nearly twenty minutes before the wagon came back out with an empty load. However strangely the man pulling the wagon was a completely different person than the man from before. This new one looked incredibly emancipated, with his muscles down to the bone creating a very skeletal figure. He stopped and grabbed something from the cart and went into one of the tents, and then came back out and began to pull the cart away. Due to his apparent weakness, he had to take breaks every so often as he went.

Something odd was occurring here indeed. Looking at the dumping pile she guessed it could be hiding a tunnel, but she wasn't sure of that. For one the guards had more interest in protecting the quarry then worrying about this area. Though she did note that the guards kept as far from this place as they could. Rather then walk by it, they would double back the way they came. Carefully she snuck across to the tents and slipped inside after making sure no one was inside.

It was dark inside of it, the tent lining was barely letting any sunlight through. However, what it did illuminate were a few piles of what at first to be trash. A mixture of clothes and shoes, some odd trinkets here and there. She even spotted a few childrens toys. She couldn't explain it, but all of it put a sickening feeling into her stomach. She glanced through the other tents and found the same in all. Deciding that to get answers she needed to go into the debris field she activated the camouflage function of her outfit.

Her clothes wrapped around her turning a brownish orange of the surroundings, allowing her to blend somewhat into the surroundings. She and JP had worked hard on the feature, but they had yet to figure out a way to fully make her invisible. JP had some ideas on that, but lacked the materials to make it. So this was the best they could come up with so far. It kept her hidden if no one directly looked at her for too long, and dampened all of her sounds as well.

She crossed through the entrance of the debris pile and felt a tingle as she entered some sort of magical field. The sky turned darker and looking up, she saw it had changed from the brilliant blue of midday to a dark gray filled sky. It didn't even look like clouds had come over, it was a nasty looking gray mist. The temperature had changed as well making it feel unpleasantly chilled. There was now an overwhelming stench of death and decay filling her nostrils.

Someone or something had set up this strange realm around them. Glancing back, she found the entrance was still visible allowing her to leave this area if she needed to. She continued pressing forward down this passageway through the piles of debris. Coming to a crossroads, she realized this must be some sort of maze within this area. As she was thinking that an unsettling keening sound that caused the hairs on her neck to raise washed over her. Disturbed she pulled out a coin marker she had made for situations like this and hid it under a rock. With it she would be able to keep track of where she was in the maze.

From the three way's available to her, she decided to take the right path. Soon the path began narrowing, making it clear that this was not the path the wagon took. It had numerous bends and twists within it, and it soon became clear that this place was bigger on the inside than the outside. The chill she was feeling only deepened and she had to take breaks to warm herself up with her wand. Soon she found herself at an entrance to a small open area where dark shadowy figures were walking about occasionally letting out a silent scream grasping their head.

Coming off them, she could get a sense of corruption energy. Though the greatest amount seemed to be coming from a strange looking staff that had been placed in the center of the area. A black mana crystal was embedded in the top of it, from which dark ropes of sinister energy came out and were attached to the shadowy figures. If they wandered too far from the staff, they were dragged back and energy coursed through them causing the things great pain. She felt danger coming from them, so she took care to hide and examine them to see exactly what they are.

 

 

Something about them really disturbed her, and having never encountered something quite like them she decided to pull up what information the System had on this race.

 

 

It was hard to tell with the massing of the shadows, but she managed to count at least twenty of the things in the small clearing. Before making her next move she decided it would be best to examine that odd looking staff in the center.

 

 

Seeing that made her upset, at least thirty people had died for this staff not including the tortured spirits. With the evidence of corruption clearly the corruption cult was working here. Though she hadn't found any evidence that the tunnel had been placed here so far. As such she decided to send Jack a message telling him of what she had found and asking for advice on what she should do. A minute later he responded by saying "Be careful, but I want you to continue checking that place out. Those spirits are dangerous, but out of all my Users I think you have the most advantage against them. Still be careful when dealing with them."

After closing that message, she looked at the dark shadows and got an idea of what she could do. She rummaged through her inventory and pulled out one of the spheres that she had made with input from JP. Originally based on a flashbang that he had introduced her too, she had managed to make a sphere filled with her energy. After pulling the activation switch she tossed it into the middle of the spirits. As it rolled amongst them, a few of them went over to investigate it. With a loud pop it erupted in a bright blaze of blue energy that slammed into the surrounding spirits.

The spirits burned away in a strangely silent fashion and when the glow had died down, she saw that most of the tortured spirits had been killed by the soul grenade. The ones that weren't, were grievously injured, barely able to move. Taking out her wand she dashed into the area and quickly dispatched the remaining ones with sharp blasts from her wand. They attempted to attack her, but none of them managed to get within five feet of her before she caused them to disappear.

Jack had been right, due to their weaknesses against soul energy they all went down incredibly easily. When she had finally cleared out the area from the spirits, she took a deep breath. At that moment an immense rush of energy slammed through her. She let out a silent scream as the pure soul energy ripped through her body and soul as she gained levels at an insane pace. Her entire being was being destroyed and created multiple times forcing her onto a peak of pleasure that did not seem to crest.

It overwhelmed her ability to stand, and she collapsed onto the packed dirt screaming that silent scream of orgasming pleasure that brought stars into her vision and drool from her mouth. Then it finally sent a final surge over her that made her entire body quake and she collapsed senselessly into a puddle of liquids. Her body felt like gelatin, and her mind felt like mush from the overload of pleasure. It took her several minutes just to compose herself, and she was glad no one had been around to see it.

After she had regained her senses, she found that she had increased her level by twenty-two. Her body still tingled from the massive energy that had flowed through her body. Even her clothes brushing against her skin almost felt too much for her at the moment. She knew that from her previously leveling up it would stimulate her, but this was something else. Had the experience been any more intense and she would have passed out on the ground making a stupid face. Shakingly standing on legs that still felt weak she took a look around. Thankfully nothing had come checking on the dispersed spirits.

Still feeling a bit giddy from the intense experience, she thought it would be a good idea for her to cool her head by taking a few moments to look at her status. The most obvious change was the effect on her mental state. She found she was able to concentrate a little bit better, perhaps this was because she had just gained a massive boost in wisdom. Even now she could feel the wheels of her brain examining the things she had made with JP and the flaws the both of them had missed. The next was that she had gained a massive amount of health; this made her feel more solid than before. It also might explain why her body felt incredibly sensitive still, hopefully it would wear off soon because this was uncomfortable.

She had also gained over forty attribute points from the level up. First she decided to boost her MP pool by dumping twenty of the points into Intelligence. When she did so she could feel the mana pool within her grow to accommodate the new flood of energy within her. While she was not a physical fighter, it was hard to keep up with stronger enemies so she added ten points to both strength and dexterity. That left her with four points, which after a bit of considering she decided to put them into Charisma. With all these new boosts to her attributes she found that the world around her felt completely different.

As for the Skill points and other choices she had unlocked, she wisely decided it would be a good idea to deal with those later. Taking one last look at her status she nodded satisfied for the moment with it.

 

 

Feeling a bit more calm after doing that she turned her attention back to the staff in the middle of the area. It was incredibly foul looking, a mixture of a black wood and copper that had an aura of evil about it. This thing was oozing corruption and malevant energy into the surroundings. Leaving this was not a good idea she felt, but she had no desire to touch it. As she looked it over her new wisdom pointed out several flaws within the staff that she could exploit and cause it to shatter. Taking her wand she aimed at those spots and fired a small pulse of energy into them. The staff cracked loudly and then shattered into pieces across the area.

Satisfied that she had eliminated the threat from the staff, she continued on through the maze. Every so often she put down another marker to make sure she didn't get lost. Reaching another intersection, she decided to take the path that looked big enough for a wagon to have come through. Soon enough she came to another open square in the maze, and again it was not empty. There was a foul looking woman currently working on washing what she thought at first were some clothes, but upon closer inspection realized that it was in fact skin. Skin that looked to have been harvested from some nearby corpse that had been flayed and hung on some wooden stocks.

Returning her attention to the women, she watched as the women stood and hung a set of skin to dry on a rack that already held dozens of stretches of skin. The woman hobbled over to another body and took out a nasty looking knife. The breasts on this old hag were far too long and to keep them from dragging along on the ground, it had swung them onto its shoulders. A disgusting thick greenish mucus leaked out of them leaving a trail of slime sliding down the hags wrinkled back.

With her newfound insight from the wisdom increase she could tell that this hag was just slightly stronger than the spirits from before. Wanting to see what exactly she was dealing with, she began to examine it when all of a sudden it disappeared from her sight. Alarmed she looked around only for a cold feeling to suddenly come from behind her. Sensing danger, she threw herself forward into the open area just barely dodging out of the way of the hags knife. Rolling forward she came to her knees and shot a blast at the hag with her wand.

It tried dodging but was grazed with the soul energy causing it to grunt in pain. Then it grinned at her with misshapen teeth letting out a cackle and then it disappeared again. Keeping her eyes and ears open she scanned the area looking for any sign of where the hag would appear. All of a sudden there was a puh sound and then she felt a sharp pain in her left leg, seconds later it went completely numb. Losing all ability to control her leg she nearly collapsed onto the ground. Looking down she spotted a nasty looking bone dart coated in a green substance sticking out of her thigh. As she couldn't feel her leg, it didn't hurt when she pulled it out but it did leave an ugly wound.

As she pulled it out, she noticed movement coming from off to her right side. Throwing herself forward near the small pool she avoided being struck by another of those darts. Cackling in a mad filled way the hag once again disappeared. She managed to push herself up into a half crouched-kneeling position when she heard the hag start to sing. It was a song that she didn't recognize but tell it was meant to be a mourning song. However the way this hag was singing it made it sound like it was joyful. The sounds were echoing off the surrounding piles of rubble making it impossible for her to pinpoint where the hag was.

Unable to move fast, she reached into her inventory to pull out three small metallic balls. The second she spotted movement again. She tossed them into that direction and a bright flash occurred as the balls exploded. The Hag screeched as it was blinded from the blast, as it tried to move away Falaen used her soul rope to grab onto its leg yanking it off its feet. Before it had time to push itself up, she had moved closer to it and proceeded to pour blast after blast into it, until it lay twitching dead. She took several breaths in and then just to be certain it was dead she examined it.

 

 

After she had finished examining it, the body began disappearing, slowly turning to motes of light before fading away completely. It appeared to have been a type of spirit. Which now that she thought about, this place seemed to have been created using spirit magic to create this space. But she would think on that later for now she had to figure out what was wrong with her leg. It was still paralyzed, and she could not feel it which was creating sparks of alarm in her. First she found the dart that had penetrated her and took a closer look at it.

 

 

Not having fresh milk, she would have to wait out the paralysis. She did have some medicinal ointment which she slathered onto the wound to prevent getting an infection. Then she attached a bandage onto it to keep it protected as best she could. After that she took a few moments to observe the environment around her. Now that she knew that she was dealing with a spiritual space, she could spot the points of power keeping this place open. The main point seemed to be in the middle of this maze. When ten minutes had passed, feeling began to return to her leg, to be exact pain came back.

It felt like her leg was filled with pins and needles and she winced as she forced herself to stand up. Hobbling over to the dead bodies, she took a closer look around them. On the ground she found evidence that indicated that a wagon had been here recently. Under the bodies she found several piles of linen making her suspect that the haul the wagon was bringing in the maze had been dead bodies. She looked at the drying skin and disturbingly wondered what they were using the skin for. Whatever it was couldn't be good. With the skin flayed off them, it was hard to tell exactly how each one had died, but it appeared that all of them had their throats slit. Given the relative lack of blood in this area, it was likely they had been drained of blood in a separate area.

Not seeing anything else in this area, she began to head out towards where she felt the middle of the maze around being more careful now. Despite her increase in strength that battle had shown her even a lower level monster could prove immensely dangerous to her. As she went, she thought about how that thing had sensed her in the first place. By looking over herself she came to the conclusion that it had been in fact her spiritual energy that leaked into the surroundings. A spiritual monster would surely be able to sense her, especially after her massive increase in levels. Focusing on it as best she could, she forced it to remain inside her making her stand out less in regards to spiritual energy.

After several minutes of wandering through the maze, she finally got close to the center. Peeking around a corner she spotted the entrance to the center of the maze. It was a set of old rotting wood doors that were currently closed. Two beings were standing guard on either side of this door. One being a large muscled man who had a massive hammer that had a strange glowing rune on it. He stood bare chested with great scars running across his body, rather what she thought at first where scars. But upon closer inspection she realized that pieces of skin had been grafted onto this man's hulking form. His face showed no emotion and very little thought taking place within his skull, even so from his size alone she felt he was a threat.

On the other side of the door, was a tall woman leaning against the wall looking bored. She was an incredibly beautiful woman wearing a short green dress that hugged tightly to her body. Her legs, however, looked to be the legs of a deer, and when the woman opened her mouth in a big yawn, sharp teeth lined the inside. She wasn't holding a weapon, but near her was an old bronze looking sword. Both felt moderately dangerous to her and would likely prove to be a tough fight. However, she needed to get into the center of the maze. While she was certain that this place wasn't the site for the tunnel, it was the sight of something awful and she couldn't stand by and let it continue.

Examining could be risky, she knew that the stronger the enemy was the more likely they would be able to sense when something examined them. All the same fighting these things blind would be even more dangerous. Out of the two of them, she figured that the big man would be the least likely to sense her examining him so she looked at him first.

 

 

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Like she had assumed, after examining him, he didn't display any signs of noticing it. Unfortunately, she could not use Holy Energy, so she could not take advantage of his weakness. Based on his intelligence, it likely was operating on very simple commands, so she didn't have to worry about it coming up with tactics. He was slower compared to her, but with his strength so high he could likely strike far faster. He didn't seem to have any ranged attacks besides maybe throwing that hammer or picking up rocks and throwing them. She could have whittled his life down from range if it was not for the other guard which she looked at next.

 

 

Unlike the Wight, this thing frowned in confusion when she examined it. It stood up and began looking around. Hugging the rubble Falaen was very careful to keep out of sight. The woman walked around the gate looking around but after a while of not finding anything she went back to her position though she looked to be on guard and was constantly keeping a lookout on the surroundings. She carefully moved back down the path so as to not further alert them with her getting ready to fight them. Now that she knew what she was up against she began to formulate a plan of how to fight them.

The main danger was getting bogged down by this Baobhan Sith creature, should that happen the Wight would quickly make short work of her with that hammer of his. To deal with her, Falaen began looking through her inventory pulling out all the pieces of Iron she had with her. Taking them and some other materials from her inventory she began to make several makeshift devices that would help keep the Baobhan off her back. After she had finished, she found that she was ready for the upcoming battle.

Taking a deep breath she dashed out into the corridor towards the gate. As the Baobhan Sith was already on heightened alert, it was the first to react moving towards her. To slow it's dash towards her she tossed out several iron caltrops towards it. Letting out a scream of terror, it jumped backwards. It was at this time the Wight realized an intruder was coming and began a slow charge towards her. Taking off her tiara she used it to create a rope and used it to wrap up the Wight. Tangled in the mess of the soul energy it fell with a loud grunt.

Recovering from the appearance of the caltrops the Baobhan Sith leapt onto one of the walls and its eyes began to glow an odd green at Falaen. For a brief second she felt as if she should let go of everything and enter into this beautiful woman's embrace, but then her mind broke free of the things apparent spell. Snarling at its failure to overcome her will, it sliced it's wrist and began to cast some sort of blood magic. To counter it, she pulled out a short javelin she had stuck an iron head on and chucked it with force at the casting monster.

The hooved woman barely managed to dodge out of the way of the Javelin that stuck into the rubble behind it. She let out a sneer towards Falaen before continuing it's dark spell however the Javelin exploded behind the Baobhan Sith causing iron shrapnel to pelt the undefended backside of the monster. It shrieked in pain and agony and began to roll around as smoke began to pour out of the wounds which contained iron pieces. However, before Falaen could take advantage of the defenseless monster, The Wight broke free from the bindings holding it and launched itself at her.

Using it's hammer it managed to close the distance rapidly by using the momentum generated by swinging it. She quickly had to back up and began to pelt the charging Wight. Piercing through the grafted on skin, the soul blasts began tearing off chunks of rotting skin. This did little to slow the approaching monster. Making a quick decision she pulled out a flash orb and chucked it right at the wights face. As it was charging it didn't bother to avoid it, which meant it went off right in the face of the monster blinding it. She dodged out of its way as it slammed head first into the pile of rubble behind her.

Turning around she brought up her wand to strike the Wight in the back when the hooved woman launched herself at Falaen. Dodging the slashing attack by the Baobhan sith, she pulled out another iron javelin only for the monster to quickly dash in and grab onto her arm forcing her to drop the weapon. Then with a hard twist it forced her to spin around and then as she struggled against its grip it took a deep bite onto her should just missing her neck. While it was biting, it began to make a disgusting slurping sound, and she began to feel her blood start to be pulled out by this creature. She thought of a trick she learned from JP and opened her inventory and pushed out the last of the Iron javelins right into the Baobhan Siths stomach.

Immediately the monster let go of her while letting out a scream of absolute pain. As it leapt away from her, it desperately tried removing the smoking javelin from her stomach but before it could the javelin exploded. A huge chunk of the Baobhans stomach blasted off, leaving it's legs barely connected with its torso. It collapsed mewling in pain while the Iron pieces within it started burning it. Hearing a roar of challenge coming from behind her she looked back and found the Wight had recovered it's vision and was holding up the hammer. The runic hammer began glowing a dark evil red and then it began growing in size. Soon the Wight was holding onto a hammer that was twice the size of it, and then it swung towards her.

She leapt out of the hammers way, only to be bowled over by the wind coming off the hammer as it passed her by. Hitting the ground hard, she rolled to her knees and saw the wight was raising the hammer over its head. Having dropped her wand, she had to resort to the last weapon she had and quickly poured soul energy into the brooch in the middle of her uniform on her chest. It glowed a fierce blue then a beam that pushed her back shot out and slammed into the Wight. In an instant its arms were seared off, and it dropped the hammer which came down upon it. With a sickening crunch the massive hammer crushed the monster under its weight.

Standing she felt drained of energy, looking to her side she found that the Baobhan Sith, despite the mass of smoke coming off it, was crawling towards her with a snarl. She glanced through her inventory and pulled out that last Iron weapon she had, a dagger. When she stepped towards it, she felt it attempt to use its vision once more. Shaking the mental influence of she plunged the dagger over and over into the things skull until it lay dead. Taking a deep breath she glanced over at the remains of the wight and frowned when she saw it was still moving.

While most of its body had been crushed under the massive hammer, it's head and the remains of one of its arms free and it was making an almost inaudible roar at her as it struggled to get free. She stood and found her wand, then she went up to the Wight's head and proceeded to dump several bolts of soul energy into the Wights Skull until it split apart and began leaking foul black goo into the ground. With the two dead she felt a sense of relief and exhaustion sweep over her, though strangely she still felt like she was in danger. Frowning she looked around as she pulled out a mana potion and took a swig.

The fight had almost completely exhausted her MP, while she was drinking the potion she glanced at the wooden gate. It hadn't opened so that wasn't where this dreaded feeling was coming from, but something did seem amiss about the area around it. Reviewing her memories, she came to the realization that the old sword that had been near the Baobhan sith was missing. Alarmed she started to take a closer look around when all of a sudden a glowing suddenly appeared right in front of her. It stabbed towards her with a swift strike towards her heart. Taken almost completely by surprise she wasn't able to dodge completely out of the way of the blade. As such the sword slashed deep into her upper shoulder as she twisted out of it's way.

The blade cut burned as a found dark energy leaked from the blade into the wound. Crying out in agony both from the cut and the painful burning sensation she was barely able to block the next swing of the flying sword with her wand. Like it was being wielded by a dancer it floated around wildly striking at her faster and faster. When she wasn't able to block the attack, she would get a knick or cut on her body. Soon she was bleeding from multiple wounds and the burning sensation was making her feel really weak. When she was able to block an attack her arms felt like they were on the verge of breaking.

Soon it became apparent that this thing had too much skill compared to her, and it was obviously just playing around with her. Frustrated she did not have much mana to use fighting this thing and it was not giving her enough space to drink more potions. Her increased health pool while managing to keep her alive so far was starting to whittle down under its barrage. With it's speed she wasn't sure she would be able to use a soul blast on it. Not having much choice and under great pressure, she came up with an incredibly dangerous plan. If it failed, she would likely die, but she had no choice. Readying herself as best she could she opened up an obvious gap in her defenses.

The sword did not waver and took the offered opening and slashed into her side. The moment it made its move she dropped her wand and grabbed onto the blade and handle with both hands as it cut deep into her. Nearly crying from the agonizing pain, she held onto the now infuriated blade which went crazy trying to break free from her grasp. Through the pain she managed to keep a hard grip on it knowing the hat if she were to let it go, she would die. It let off more of that dark energy which burned her hands, struggling with it she reached deep within herself gathering all the Mana that she had left and activated her skill Soulforge and began to pour the energy into the blade.

If a blade could scream out, this one did so in a painful metallic screech that made her wince as she focused on its destruction. It increased its fight against her grip, tossing her back and forth by it's bucking. Sometimes it even lifted her clear off the ground. Still she did not let go, continuing pushing her energy into it willing for it to be torn apart. The burning energy tore through her trying to make her lose consciousness. Gritting her teeth she focused onto one thing, its complete destruction.

With her vision darkening and her body feeling battered and exhausted she let out a scream of pure rage as she finally broke through the sword's resistance. With a mighty thundering clap, the flying sword shattered into pieces blasting her into a neighboring pile of rubble. A ghostly wail tore from the remains forming into a ghostly visage of a skeleton which glowered at her before dispersing into particles of light. Exhausted and filled with pain she pulled out a healing potion and downed it, and a few more after that. They closed up some of the more nastier wounds, but she was still covered with cuts here and there. However that burning sensation hadn't gone away, in fact it only seemed to have gotten worse.

Concerned she examined herself to see what was causing it.

 

 

Frowning she achingly pushed herself to her feet fighting through the pain of the curse. Glancing at the door of the gate, she was glad to see it hadn't opened despite the battle having been incredibly loud. Which could mean several things, some of which could be good and others not so good. The question she faced was whether she should head through that gate. Currently, at the moment she felt like shit and did not have much fight left in her. If she had another fight like that right now she would likely perish. What her mind was telling her the wise thing to do would be to go back to get help from the others.

However, that was not what her heart and spirit were telling her to do. No dammit she was going to stand as an empress one day and she couldn't let herself stand down now wasn't her way. This was something she needed to see through herself. Pulling out the remaining potions, she had she drank them to make sure she was as ready as she could be. Despite the pain she was experiencing she estimated that she was at least currently at seventy percent of her strength. So she pushed open the wooden gate ready for a fight as she could be. Beyond the gate lay a large open field surrounded by mountains of rubble.

All of this was backlit by a glowing red massive sigil. A sigil that seemed to be creating this maze around here. In the center of the sigil trapped by a field of energy was an angry looking hag that continuously struck at the field around her and screamed at the cage it was in. It apparently was trapped within the sigil, and at one of the sigil control points was a man sitting down. She recognized him from earlier as the man who had been driving the wagon who had not come back out of the maze.

He was in a meditative pose and looked to be completely oblivious of the world around him. These two beings were the only persons within the space. She quickly glanced around and didn't spot another lone weapon that might rise up and attack. Of the two only the hag in the middle of the sigil noticed her and was screaming obscenities at her. Besides the sigil nothing else was obvious in this place. Though as she looked at the man, she noted that he looked weaker then when he had entered the maze.

Wanting to figure out what the hell was going on in this place she examined each of the things in here in turn.

 

 

Whatever the sigil was, it was keeping this Banshee in a greatly weakened state. She turned her attention to the only other person in the area.

 

 

Clearly this man was not the one behind all of this. He looked to be just another stooge in this corruption cult. The last thing she examined was the sigil itself to see what she could learn.

 

 

Now that she knew what she was looking at, the question became what should she do about it? As she was considering what to do, she suddenly got a message. A message from a goddess.

 

 

Included with the message were a series of diagrams showing how to change the sigil in several key ways. JP had mentioned to her that a few goddesses were currently sharing the private space Jack had with him. He said that they were okay to trust, so she decided to follow what the goddess had laid out for her. But first she needed to deal with the man. Pulling out a dagger, she went behind him and slit his throat with ease. He collapsed onto the control point causing the sigil to begin to slowly dim. Not having a great deal of time before the sigil ran out of energy she began to change the important lines within the sigil.

Although it was mostly minor changes, she still had to pour a great deal of energy to get the lines to change to the new positions. When she was finished, she stood back and took a look over her work. The sigil that had been glowing a deep ugly red was now letting off a soft blue light. Ready for the next stage in the instructions she went to the activation spot and kicked aside the man's body. Then she put down a mana crystal and sent its power into the sigil. The whole place began to rumble around her, and a brilliant blue beam of light came down from the sky and struck the screaming banshee in the middle of the sigil.

As the Banshee began to go up in an azure flame, the space around them began to collapse. It was terrifying feeling the very maze around her begin to tear itself apart, but she remained where she was according to the instructions. The corrupted banshee let out one final scream then blasted apart along with the maze. When the light faded, she found herself in the middle of a bunch of rubble mounds. The corrupted aura that had permanated the area was gone, and the sky had returned to its normal blue coloring.

After a few seconds a new message popped up from the goddess Kara.

 

 

When she closed that message Falaen began to feel something coming over her connection with Jack. She realized that it was holy energy and it poured into her and began to gather the curse through her body. The burning pain slowly subsided as the dark energy was pushed out of her body into a ball. With a rush the holy energy pushed out the rest of the curse out, and then slammed into this ball. The energy began to somehow shape the energy and a bright flash occurred wincing she looked away only to find when she turned back an odd looking floating creature was in front of her.

It was by all accounts a crab. A crab with an odd looking hat with a skull and crossbones on top of it. In one of its claws, it held a miniature sword and quite frankly it was not looking at her with the happiest of eyes. Still it didn't seem hostile to her and was floating around. While she looked at it, she realized that she could sense what it was thinking "Arr you landlubber wretch. I am Captain Rahab and I'm here to help whip you into proper shape." It waved its sword for emphasis.

"So your what remains of the curse?"

"Aye. I was a poor old curse just going about its business when the great goddess came along and I thought I was about to feed the fishes! But now she takes me apart and rebuilds me as the Crab I am now. I'm to provide assistance and moral support to you." It floated towards her and landed unceremoniously on her head. "Time to weigh anchor and hoist the mizzen lass we have some foul corrupt folks to run through!"

Not sure what to make of her new shellfish acquaintance, Falaen began to make her way out of the rubble pit back to the quarry area.

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