I had known light my whole life. It allowed me to see. It kept us warm and, at times, gave us a sense of security. It played tricks on the blacktop and in the deserts and even more wild, if focused, it could destroy things.
Inside my mind’s eye, a small ball of dull gray light pulsed with my heartbeat. The more examples of light I saw, experienced, and reasoned with, the brighter and stronger the light became until it was uncomfortably bright.
At last. Warmth flooded me, and the light dulled until a single mote of it floated in the darkness of my mind. The light whispering voice sounded equally surprised and frustrated.
“I’m sorry I didn’t know that I needed to reach out.” I felt a little more bashful than sarcastic. This touch against my being felt familiar. The times I seemed to just miraculously know danger was imminent, this sensation was it. It had been the Light’s touch.
You are so used to the Elemental Primordials coming to you with their issues, or you to them, now, that you neglected to properly connect with me. Her voice paused. I am not angry, I am relieved. You are close. I am not at full strength down here, but you are closer to the place you seek than you know. I know your task, and I know that you must be careful. Do not fade, new light.
Her presence was gone instantly, and I opened my eyes as a burning itch took over my chest where my tattoo was with all the elemental blessings, then it spread to the rest of my body. I turned my face down, then to my arms as the flecks of white all over my fur changed hue from straight white to a more golden hue.
“Well, damn.” I unbuttoned my shirt and saw that the formerly white ink that had made up the mostly finished pentagram on my pec was now golden-white as well.
“That is different.” Maebe knelt down next to me and ran her hand over my fur. “You feel warmer than usual as well…as if you’ve been in the sunlight.”
That seemed to make sense, though such a huge outward change had not been expected.
“Is it bad?” I raised my eyebrows and glanced at her nervously.
“No. Now, as you had been before and continue to be, you are almost my opposite. I am the Dark and Cold, you are the Light and Warmth.” Her eyes lit up mischievously. “Something like this would not change my feelings toward you, my love.”
“Thank you.” She leaned back as the words left my lips. “For loving me.”
“Thank you for being the only person I felt I could for the longest time.” Her nose crinkled as she kissed me, I took my human form to make it a little more convenient, and she observed my skin some more. “You really are hot, Zeke.”
George Takei, take us out, buddy.
“Oh my.”
Chapter Twenty
Pebble scouted ahead for the second time that day. It had taken him the better part of four hours searching after we had left Balmur’s Happy Home spell. He had named it that because it was supposed to keep us happy while inside.
When he came back, he pointed us south of our current position, so on we moved from there, carefully moving through the darkness without light. It was annoying, but it had to be done because who knew what could be hunting naive creatures that needed light down here.
“Fainnir, I wanted to let you know that you’re the only one with earth magic right now unless I shapeshift into an earth elemental. Okay?” he looked stricken, so I waved off his concern. “Don’t worry, I’m not in trouble or anything, but I had to uphold my bargain. I’ll still be able to lead you through making spells. Okay?”
“Alright.” He scratched his head in thought. “How come ye look so different?”
“I partnered with another Primordial Elemental, and she gave me a makeover.” A wry grin spread on my face at my own humor. I was getting used to it.
“I see.” He held his own hand up and admired the metals that banded and flowed around his own flesh. “I like it.”
I ruffled his hair, noting that he seemed to be looking a little scruffier in the beard department with a few more hairs sprouting on his chin.
We walked in relative silence to avoid detection, but the entire time we moved, I had Fainnir pushing his awareness into the ground around us. We were trying to see what he could sense and using Pebble to verify if he was doing it or not. He was right on what was around us about a fourth of the time now and that he was able to keep his awareness in the earth on the move was impressive.
I found myself reaching into the void around us with my own awareness. The shadows here felt so much denser than I’d ever felt anywhere other than when training with Maebe. I focused myself and pulled everything in the area toward us, spinning it around above us, the miasma of shadows giving us cover from anything that could be watching from above. Even with so much room above us, I began to sweat with the knowledge that the flesh of the planet was so far above us. All that weight ready to crash down at any time.
I closed my eyes for a moment and decided to soldier on regardless. My friends needed me here with them, not worried about something that might not happen. It was hard work, the mana drain steady enough that I could only manage it for ten minutes before I had to stop.
“That is a good idea, but maybe you limit it to a single location and a thick surface that you keep fixed to a point?” Maebe suggested helpfully.
I waited until my mana was good while Balmur and Yohsuke took turns doing the same with the shadows. Their control varied, but it was good to see how each of them managed the strain. Yohsuke dealt with a lot of power, and his control needed to be fine-tuned to handle the demonic nature of some of his powers, otherwise, they could consume him.
Balmur just had a love of magic that made his control something fun and compelling, and his ability to work on things like that was nothing short of inspiring.
Once it was my turn again, I focused on doing the work without the use of my hands. It was harder, sure, but it was an interesting way of trying to manage my magic’s impact on the world around me.
Muu worked with Fainnir on refining his body positioning when we rested for the evening inside the Happy Home. They worked through motions like chopping, deflecting, parrying, and slicing foes down. Fainnir had been so excited to be doing well, that he had accidentally walloped the helpful fighter in the head with the side of his axe at a kind word.
“That was no axe-ident,” Muu grumbled as he walked away, rubbing the side of his head.
“He should’ve whacked you harder for that attempt at a pun.” Jaken grinned at Muu and cast a healing spell on him.
“No one axed you.” the fighter grinned, the rest of us groaning at his sense of humor.
“Fainnir, two hundred chops, then two hundred slices—horizontal and diagonal—while you cast your Earth Shard with the other hand.” Fainnir looked both excited and a little afraid at the same time when I issued my orders. “You run out of mana, you swing harder, understand?”
“For his crimes against our brains, Muu can join him and correct his form.” Yohsuke grinned at the cursing dragon-kin. “Hey, someone’s head had to be on the chopping block.”
Balmur and James both guffawed at the joke while I rolled my eyes. We had another day or two at a good clip before we would reach what Pebble assured us was civilized space. How civilized, we would see, but for now, we had a heading, and that was better than nothing.
The tunnels we worked our way through currently had been burrowed wide, at least as wide as a four-lane highway. Enough so that the chimera we’d fought would fit comfortably standing.
We hadn’t found any life forms in our time here, strangely. I had expected the Great Below to be teeming with monsters and things that preyed on the sightless in the heavy shadows and rocky caverns.
Is anyone else slightly alarmed that we haven’t found any creatures that go bump in the dark? Bokaj whispered through our minds, as though something out there might hear him.
I glanced at the others, well, in the direction I knew them to be thanks to my almost constant casting of Life Sense. The more familiar I was with the spell, the more I could
glean from my surroundings. It was still really hard to see, but Pebble gave us directions as we went to keep us out of danger as best as he could.
Yeah, a little, but that’s to be expected. After the shit we went through to get here, relaxing can be a little hard, James responded though he sounded a little more wary about the situation than he seemed to want to let on.
“There is something up ahead,” Pebble stated softly. “I can feel the change in the earth and stone. I am unfamiliar with this.”
That’s no good, I thought to myself, but whispered, “We go cautious and slow. Heads on a swivel.”
Our path went on for another mile or so, then around a bend in the stoney cavern wall came a dull light off in the distance.
“Think tha’ be it?” Fainnir’s harsh whisper almost made me jump out of my skin.
“Not so loud!” Yohsuke said in a soft hiss, authority dripping from his tone. “I’m not sure. Drow don’t need light to see in the darkness. They see in a sort of infrared vision that lets them view heat signatures if what James had learned about them is true.”
That tracked with what I knew at home, though things had been different in small ways here before, so it wouldn’t surprise me if our intel was wrong.
From there on, we relied solely on hand and arm signals to communicate with Fainnir thanks to his dwarven heritage lending him almost perfect sight in our current locale, and our earrings with each other. We approached the light cautiously, but as we did, heat began to build in the area with the growing dim glow.
Lava flows carved through the earthen ground in lazy, molten rivers flowing over the side of a cliff face that could have gone to the center of Brindolla for all I knew. The heat was ridiculous in the room, almost rivaling the hells, and being this close made all of us a little uncomfortable except for Balmur.
We could clearly see the other side of the room. Our destination looked to be a large opening in the far wall leading into a dimly lit space, but there appeared to be multiple exits and entrances to the room.
“Straight ahead but be cautious.” It was difficult to tell what sort of emotion—if any—the little creature felt with his almost-blank face, but Pebble’s warning seemed to be deeply ingrained in him. “What could be solid stone one moment, can be magma the next. I do not know much else, other than earth elementals should stay clear of lava and volcanoes, so I will be leaving you to navigate this place at your risk.”
Fainnir nodded, understanding and Pebble tapped him on the shoulder. “Be safe.” Then sank into the ground.
“How do we wanna do this?” Muu voice nervously quavered, his eyes sliding along the different lava paths while the rest of us thought.
“I can turn into a flame elemental and just cross.” I shrugged. “Not to mention, I still have the blessings from when I still had Coal. Fire isn’t all that bad to me anymore. If you want to follow me with the Mobile Spring Rod and let us try to stay close together, that’s fine.”
“Why don’t we just have Maebe freeze the lava? Or zip us across with her shadow magic?” Bokaj seemed confused.
“Because she just got over being bodily invaded by a parasite that put her damned near out of commission and the last time we met with another Elven Queen, she had to fight them.” Yohsuke explained in a biting tone. “We need to try and figure shit out without relying on her too much. I love having her here, and all, as annoying as her and Zeke can be together, but she’s not gonna fix shit for us. We can do this.”
The others nodded, Jaken stepped over and frowned. “Give me the rod.”
I smacked Muu as his head lifted quickly. “Cool it, you fifth-grade class clown.”
He grumbled angrily and threw his hands up.
I passed Jaken the rod, and the heat died down to a much more manageable level. “Let’s go. All of you stay near me, and we will see if we can make it across in one piece. Zeke, save your elemental form for now.”
I gave him a thumbs up, and we cautiously made our way forward. The first quarter of the way into the room was alright. The ground beneath us was more solid than not, and we only had to dodge a building bubble of liquid magma a couple times.
When we reached the center of the room, it was as if the heat was magnified twenty-fold. Sweat poured from each of us, even with the rod, and every step taxed us more and more.
In the center, something in me cracked, and I whipped my head to Jaken. “Throw the rod away, now!”
Jaken didn’t hesitate and tossed it away from him. Unfortunately, he had thrown it straight ahead so he could pull his shield up in time to take the damage. Boom! The rod itself exploded, the gem at the top of it had been overpowered by the heat in here and had turned it into a bomb.
“We got company!” Bokaj almost shouted.
I turned to our left and rear, finding more than a dozen large, bat-like creatures flapping into the room and looking in our direction.
We gotta go! James’s panicked voice flooded our heads.
The way forward is straight fucking lava, man! Yohsuke shot back. We need to go around.
No, we don’t. Thinking quickly, I offered a suggestion. We gotta move fast. All three of us are going to pull the shadows to us and form a walkway above the lava to make a break for it.
They didn’t have time to argue, a ringing in our ears almost made my knees buckle, Muu’s arm flashed, and the ringing stopped. “Now!”
Balmur, Yoh, and I held out our arms and tore the shadows from everywhere around us, my reach farther than theirs only because I was so used to doing this. We pressed and compounded the void energy into a bridge and planted it over the lava before anchoring it to the stone on the other side. It had cost me 603 MP to do so, but it looked sturdy, and we were out of time.
“Go!” I snatched up Fainnir together with Muu, and we hauled him to safety, sprinting over the naked river of bubbling, angry-looking lava below us. A sizzling globule of the magma splattered against my metallic arm where it met my flesh, and even with the fire resistance I naturally had, thanks to Heart Flame, it still burnt like a motherfucker.
“They’re closing in!” Bokaj warned, the whistling of arrows piercing the air behind me punctuation to his warning.
“Keep running!” Yoh shouted, tossing a ball of black and gray energy into the air behind us, another explosion five seconds after that blew our hearing a bit, but another screech of pain brought a grim smile to my face.
Fifty feet closer to safety. More arrows flew from Bokaj’s bow.
Forty feet, the heat still hadn’t abated, and spots grew in my vision from the heat and exertion acting against me.
Thirty feet, the same ringing that had almost felled us earlier tore into my ears, making me stumble, so I let go of Fainnir as I fell. I felt fingers on my clothes, then heard a curse, tearing and another screech. I tried to force myself forward over the lava as far out as I could and shifted into my fire elemental form just as my body should have struck the lava.
The lava pressed against the flames that my body consisted of like water might against my real body. Focusing, I forced myself above the lava, mana trickling from my MP bar as I glided across it. One of the creatures strayed too close to me, so I reached out and grasped its wing, dragging it into the lava.
Vampire Bat level 35
Its health shot down as it struggled, my strength clearly higher than its, the screeching noise not affecting me as much since I didn’t really have eardrums for the sound to reverberate off of. It struggled mightily, but I forced it under the lava, killing it and moving toward my friends. They’d made it to the other side of the room and fought the four remaining creatures.
One of them had arrows sprouting from its chest from Bokaj, and Balmur had his holy daggers out and had somehow managed to climb onto one’s back. He drove a dagger into the throat, the gurgling growl sending flecks of blood everywhere, then dug a trench of gore down another's back and wing, before another of the creatures swooped down, grabbed him by the throat and lifted him off.
The injured bat flew headfirst into Jaken’s shield, Righteous Brand flashing in the glow of the lava and beheading the creature. Another managed to flank Yohsuke and pulled him into the air as he swiped and snarled at the bastard. I saw the creature’s head dip the same time Yoh’s flesh turned an angry red color, his Infernal Body spell activating in a flash of light.
The vampire bat’s head shook, and Yohsuke roared in anger before Kayda touched the creature and froze it solid, before enlarging enough to take him to safety.
I caught the ledge of an embankment next to the lava river they battled over and watched in horror as more motion came into the cave we had been heading toward.
Arrows crossed the distance, eaten by shadows, and clattering against Jaken and Muu’s armor.
Drow elves had arrived in all-black attire, silken-looking threads covering their bodies, no doubt made of spider silk.
“We have come to speak with your Queen,” Maebe called to them, their forward motion unceasing.
Two of the bats were left, one of them struggling to try and make off with Fainnir, but the dwarf had summoned Grav, who had him in his massive arms as the vampire bats flapped toward the lava.
Fainnir’s axe sliced out and slid through a wing, then he cast Earth Shard and pierced its eye with a gout of black ichor that splattered the ground and Fainnir’s clothes.
The other bat went toward the fallen Yohsuke, his health just under 70%, lifting him away from his weapon and digging its claws into his body. It made to fly off with a triumphant hiss, an arrow striking it but doing little. Then, Yoh’s fist slammed into its mouth, and both hands clamped it shut.
Thwumph! Its head exploded in a shower of gray matter with enough concussive force that Yohsuke plummeted toward the lava, nuking more than a quarter of his health in the process.
Kayda! I howled at myself, uncertain if my elemental mind would be able to get my desire for her to catch him across to her.
Into the Darkness: A Fantasy LitRPG Adventure (Axe Druid Book 4) Page 48