Chapter 24: 2.5 – Secrets of Wyndham Wood

Every step blazed agony up Robin’s legs. Those frelling rabbits had bit deep into his calves. He and Eli leaned against one another as they staggered through the forest. Every rustle of a leaf or snap of a twig was a new threat, though Robin was running so dry on adrenaline his body barely reacted.

‘Almost there,’ Eli promised for the third time in less than a minute.

Robin just grunted in response. Most of his focus was on moving forward and leaving Cherry as far behind him as he could. Not that the other plant life in this frak-hole was much better. He spit, thinking of the ghilded ghourds and the demonic vine that had spawned them. Well, he’d wanted magic! And magic he had gotten.

He’d recovered enough to tear Eli free of the stunned vine, ripping as much of it up by the roots as he could manage in the process. There were seeds scattered all across the clearing, however. Robin was sure it would regrow even stronger than before. Unfortunately.

‘Almost there,’ Eli said again. It wasn’t clear if he was trying to motivate Robin or himself at this point.

Robin winced as his wounds burned. Between himself and Eli there wasn’t even enough rags to tear apart for decent bandages, but the cleric had scavenged enough moss to pack the worst of them. So at least he wasn’t leaving a trail of blood for Cherry or her minions to follow. Or to use in dark magical rituals. Oh god. Gods. He really needed to learn more about how this world worked.

‘There it is!’ Eli’s voice perked up, a trickle of energy running through the words.

Robin looked up, blinking through the cascades of sunlight that fell into the new clearing. Another clearing? Already? Please no.

But this one was different. Massive menhirs rose around the perimeter of the clearing. Robin couldn’t tell if it was a perfect circle, or a very regular polygon of some sort from where he stood, but the clearing was definitely not natural. Though it had clearly been here for a long time. The boundary stones each grew a healthy crop of moss.

In the centre of the clearing the stump of a tower squatted. Robin winced as he saw the vines that wound irregularly around it. Too soon, world. Too soon.

‘Come on,’ Eli said, ‘we’ll be safe inside. Neither Cherry nor those that serve her will come here.’

‘What stops them?’ Robin really wanted a bit of clarity on that right now. He was in no shape to run away again.

You are reading story Trickster’s Song [A LitRPG Portal Fantasy] at novel35.com

‘Wards. The important ones are still intact.’ Eli started forward, all but dragging Robin along with him. ‘So far as I can tell, anyway.’

After a moment’s consideration, Robin decided he was too tired not to roll the dice. Wincing, he took more of his own weight back from Eli. If they were this close to safety, he could manage a bit of a brave face. He hissed as the added weight set more of his wounds to throbbing. For now. He could manage for now.

Hobbling closer, it became apparent that the vines weren’t completely random. There were spaces on the tower they seemed to avoid. Eli led him to the largest of these, at ground level. It was roughly the size of a door.

Eli laid a hand on the stone and simply asked it to open. The stone vanished and Eli pulled Robin into the shadows within.

It was certainly the least terrifying thing he’d seen all day, so Robin allowed himself to be pulled along with a minimum of trepidation. The door sealed itself behind them, but as it did so, runes flickered to light in long chains along either wall of the corridor, providing a soft blue-white luminescence to everything.

[Tongue of the Fallen Tower] allowed him to see that the runes he focused on almost all read as The Light of Tel’Perion Evenstar with a few that were structured as conditionals for passage and renewal. He couldn’t quite see the magical links between everything, but his gut told him that making the magic was a bit more involved than scrawling the symbols themselves on a surface.

Not something to worry about right now.

As soon as the door had sealed itself behind them, Robin had received a quest update notification. He’d scanned it quickly before dismissing it to focus on the lights, but it went a long way to reassuring him that this was truly a safe place.

---