He swore.
With a quiet sigh, the healer sat up, leaning back against the cold wall. He was just about to begin the unwieldy process of placing a pillow between him and the hard stone with tied-up hands when a voice echoed in from the leftmost path.
“I told you it would work! Adventurers can’t resist the promise of exp and loot. All it took was a few dead packs of hellhounds and they came to us.”
“That remains to be seen,” a snide voice replied, “but if you have indeed snared our prize, Garaxia Herself may soon walk this earth.”
The words sent a chill down Preston’s spine. Whoever else walked with the man, however, was a bit more enthused.
A chorus of excited chattering broke out before falling dead silent as a dozen robed figures stepped into the chamber. They were all men, as Preston reckoned, though their deep hoods did a bang-up job of obscuring their features. Indeed, between said hoods and the completely nondescript black hue of their garments, Preston could only wonder how they could tell each other apart. Perhaps through their voices?
The snide one—presumably the leader—was the first to speak. “This is our virgin Priestess? You can’t just take a random adventurer and dress him in white robes.”
Preston’s jaw dropped. “Excuse me?”
A noticeably shorter man at the leader’s side spoke up in answer, “Of course not! If your holiness would deign to Appraise him…”
Eleven sets of eyes flashed blue as they all used the basic skill. Two gasps and a muttered “by the hells” rang out.
“Now, now,” the lead cultist said, “it would appear you’ve done Her Greatness a great service. We can begin the sacrifice at midnight.”
“Begin the what?” Preston interrupted.
‘His holiness’ smirked at the healer. “The summoning ritual requires the sacrifice of a virgin Priestess. Alvin here has been kind enough to provide us with you.”
Preston had to stop himself from breaking out laughing at the idea of a dark cultist named Alvin in order to protest another part of the statement. “Yeah—um—I don’t think that’s going to work out for you. I’m not a virgin.”
Alvin grinned. “That’s the beauty of it! The scripture calls for a Priestess ‘untainted by a man’s touch.’ It doesn’t matter if you’ve been with a woman!”
The healer reddened. “Okay, I can’t believe I have to say this, but I have actua—”
The cult leader cut him off. “Excellent work, Alvin. Her Terribleness will be sure to reward you greatly for your efforts.” His voice raised as he addressed the crowd. “Prepare the ritual!” One by one he barked orders to the assembled acolytes before wrapping up with a final, “And Alvin, look after our Priestess. You’ve done well.”
Alvin glowed under the praise as his fellows disappeared from the side chamber, followed eventually by the leader himself.
Seconds passed in silence as the Priestess and the Cultist—an identifier Preston confirmed with a quick Appraise—stared each other down. The healer considered explaining to the short man that he very much did not fit his demoness’s definition of ‘virgin,’ but the growing smile across Alvin’s face gave him pause. He just… looked so happy.
Just as Preston weighed telling him now versus waiting a bit to make the demon-worshipers waste their time setting up an incomplete ritual versus desperately hoping they wouldn’t kill him anyway if he told the truth, Alvin let out a little cheer.
“I know!” He practically bounced with giddiness. “I’ll bake something! What’s better than sweets to celebrate such a victory?”
Preston opened his mouth to speak but promptly shut it again as Alvin addressed him, “Wait right here, okay? I’ll be back in a bit!” He turned on his heel and scurried from the room, leaving Preston alone once more.
Well that was certainly something, the healer mused. I guess it takes a certain kind of person to worship a demon. He wondered why only men had appeared among the cultists. Maybe the women were elsewhere? He shrugged.
Deciding eventually that he may as well get comfy while he waited for the others to rescue him, Preston turned his entire torso to reach for a pillow with his tied-up hands, craning his neck over his shoulder as he clumsily maneuvered. As he finally lifted the velvet cushion, it left behind a pile of feathers and torn fabric, amongst which sat a particular baby drake.
“Reginald! Don’t eat the pillows!” he chided the hatchling. “Those aren’t…” Preston trailed off, running a finger along the cord which bound his wrists. It was leather. An idea struck. “You must be hungry, huh?” He leaned back, wrapping a hand around the creature. “Why don’t you chew on this instead?”
It took more than a little finagling to direct Reginald’s head towards the leather strap, but once the rows of teeth in that tiny little maw got to work, there was no stopping them. Preston let out an audible sigh of relief as his hands broke free.
After spending a sufficient amount of time cooing over Reginald for doing such a good job, Preston stashed the hatchling in the sleeve of his robe. He stood, massaging his sore wrists. “Okay, hands untied,” he thought aloud, “I guess that only leaves one question.” He turned to face the bars of his cell.
“How the hells do I get out of here?”
* * *
Eve was rather less than surprised to find yet more tunnel behind the enchanted wooden door. Sure, she might’ve hoped for a treasure room or a thrilling combat encounter or to find their missing friend, but she knew well enough such things didn’t come so easy. They had just traversed a secret tunnel that jutted off from a larger tunnel—of course they had more tunnel ahead of them.
The predictability of it all did little to calm a certain fire mage.
Wes grew more impatient with every passing second, urging the party forward with increasing urgency. Thrice as they progressed down the narrow passage did he accidentally step on Alex’s heels, eliciting a sharp glare from the cautious Survivor. Eve got the distinct impression that were the cave wide enough to allow it, he would’ve charged past her in his haste to save Preston.
The Striker couldn’t help but wonder what Alex thought about his near panic. Wes wasn’t exactly doing a good job of hiding his feelings for Preston from her, but Alex seemed not the least bit interested in his behavior. Hells, for all Eve knew, the healer had completely made up his claim that Alex had ‘a thing’ for the burly fire mage. She certainly hadn’t seen any evidence of it.
Either Alex didn’t care, was particularly good at hiding it, or was simply too concerned with surviving the dungeon to bring it up now. Eve had no idea which. At least the potential conflict wasn’t getting in the way of their survival. She could worry about any disputes—should they occur—once they were all safe.
Preston’s bag weighed heavily on Eve's shoulder as she followed her inordinately tall companions down the cold tunnel, lighting the way with her conveniently glowing skin. She hoped whatever the demons had taken him for hadn’t happened yet.
“These tunnels are too gods-damned long,” Wes complained through gritted teeth. “We could be halfway to Lynthia by now.”
Eve snorted. “We’re still in the Teeth. We haven’t gone down enough to be under the plains.”
“Actually,” Alex said under her breath, “I don’t think we’ve traveled that far at all. We’ve taken way more left turns than right ones. We’re going in a sort of spiral.”
Eve and Wes both gaped.
Alex shook her head and let out a sigh. “You know, for all your levels, you’re still insanely green. If you count the turns and the steps between them, you can get a general idea of the layout of a dungeon. We’re going a lot to the left, and the number of steps between each turn is getting bigger. It’s a spiral. Kind of. There’s right turns and other weirdness, but it’s like a spiral. Wherever we’re going, this is the long way.”
“Then hurry up,” Wes groaned.
Alex ignored him.
Eve furrowed her brow. “What about the other tunnels? If we’re
spiraling out, shouldn’t we intersect with them?”
The warrior shrugged. “Maybe they’re spiraling too? Or maybe those doors just lead to rooms instead of passageways? Not that it really matters; this is the only path ahead.”
“Still,” Eve wondered aloud, “it’s a weird layout for a cave. It doesn’t seem natural, but why would someone build a spiral tunnel like this?”
“It’s a temple, remember? Probably has some symbolism to whatever demon they—” Alex stopped in her tracks. “Listen.”
A series of quiet scratches and high-pitched whimpers echoed down the path ahead. Eve wrapped a hand around her mace. Alex leveled her spear.
Wes didn’t question the careful pace Alex set towards the mysterious noises. He simply readied a spell and followed in silence. His crackling firelight was the first to reach the cavern.
“Shit,” Alex cursed as she stepped into the fifty-foot chamber. “They aren’t just summoning demons. They’re breeding them.”
Eve stepped around Wes’s oversized form to cast her own silver light upon the room. Other than a clear path towards the exit across from them, every inch of the cavern floor housed either a mewling baby hellhound or the bones and viscera from a former meal. She retched.
The corpse of what could’ve only been the mother rotted in the room’s center, long torn apart by the hungry teeth of its young.
Steel filled Wes’s voice. “Wait by the exit. I’ll take care of this.”
Alex and Eve shared a solemn look before slowly nodding and picking their way across the cavern. Despite their minuscule size and apparent weakness, Eve made a point of keeping her distance from the demonic puppies. Even young as they were, blood already stained their icy teeth.
The fires had already begun by the time Eve reached the exit.
They spread in a circle around their source, devouring stone and bone and flesh alike. Demonspawn cried and whimpered and fled as they could, but the cavern was crowded and the flames quick. The inferno raged, and so too did its master.
The fire mage poured magic into the blaze, urging it to burn higher and hotter and faster just as it in turn converted its fuel into the very energy that powered it. As long as the flames continued to feed, Wes’s Mana would never run dry.
As the firestorm reached the cavern’s edge and the last of the piteous cries fell silent, Wes turned to rejoin the others at the exit.
Eve watched him approach with awe in her eyes. As he strode through the inferno, untouched by the flames that licked at his ankles, she couldn’t help but wonder if they’d simply replaced a frozen hell for a fiery one.
And then he clenched his fist and the flames disappeared and the Wes she knew was there once more. “Come on,” he said against a backdrop of char and ash, “we have a friend to save.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Cultist of the Month
EVE SWALLOWED FOR the hundredth time that day, futilely hoping the act would somehow aid her sore throat. It never did. “Maybe,” she wheezed, “we should stop starting fires inside caves.”
Apparently the tunnel through which they walked sloped slightly upward, just enough for the smoke from Wes’s stunt with the baby demons to follow them through the depths. Eve was less than enthused.
“Did you have a better idea?” the mage asked. “We couldn’t let them grow up to start killing people, and we didn’t have time for you to go through and stab them one by one.”
Eve exhaled, fighting off a fit of coughs. “I suppose that’s the downside of all this Manaheart stuff—I can’t explode anymore.”
“Right.” Wes snorted. “Because exploding is always a good option. Didn’t you collapse an ancient ruin and nearly kill us all the last time you exploded underground?”
“Hey, that was my sword that exploded, not me. Actually, no. It was your shitty sword.”
“Hold on.” Wes held up his hands. “To be fair, it was Mr. Potts’ shitty sword. Except it wasn’t even his because it was gods-damned stolen.”
“To be fair,” Eve repeated his words back to him, “I didn’t see you complaining when I exploded to kill the giant spider.”
Wes countered, “You mean the one I could’ve killed safely completely on my own if you hadn’t run in?”
“Look, the point is, I need a new skill. A thousand Strength doesn’t do shit when I can only hit one thing at a time.”
Alex stepped in, “That’s the whole point of a Striker, though: high, single target damage. Daggers and maces are never going to be great against a crowd, just like giant firestorms won’t do much damage versus a massive drake.”
Eve snapped her fingers. “That’s right, Wes was pretty useless against the drake.”
Alex sighed. “That’s not my point. Nobody can be good at everything. We actually have a really balanced team—Wes deals multi-target damage, you do insane things against a single target, I soak up damage, and Preston keeps us all alive.”
Wes’s shoulders sank. “Except right now. ‘Cause we’ve done a shit job of keeping Preston alive.”
Eve placed a gentle hand on his arm, all humor draining from her voice. “We’ll find him. I promise.”
She knew she shouldn’t make promises like that, that the words were meaningless comfort from the mouth of one who knew just as little as Wes did. Eve had no idea if they’d find Preston, but Wes needed every bit of hope he could get. She still remembered the words of that guard at Foot’s Garrison: “Two things adventurers are good at: drinking and dying.”
Eve shuddered. Even as the lingering smoke scraped against her throat, she couldn’t truly fault Wes for burning the demons. She understood the need to destroy things right now.
To be entirely honest, she could use a little violence herself.
Fortunately enough, or perhaps unfortunately by any sane person’s reasoning, the dungeon was happy to provide.
The labyrinthine tunnel finally came to an end in a grand open hall. As far as Eve could tell from her cursory glance in both directions, theirs was but one of a dozen side doors that met here. She wondered how long it might’ve taken them to arrive had they not found the secret passage.
As she scanned the chamber, it wasn’t the vaulted ceilings or ornate icy columns or even the massive carved-stone door which dominated the right wall that drew Eve’s attention. It was the nine-foot humanoid that leaned unmoving against a pillar.
The beast had horns. It had far too many horns. Ayla’s tits, it had a lot of horns. While its flesh was the same dark ice as the party’s previous foes, the horns themselves were white as bone. The first were a set of thick, curled ram’s horns upon the thing’s forehead, followed by a stiletto-sharp, more traditionally demonic pair pointing straight from the top of its head.
Eve wondered if the matching sets on the creature’s shoulders, elbows, and knees could even be considered horns or if by their position they were simply spikes, but she failed to produce a worthwhile answer. She was too busy staring at how many damned horns this thing had.
Wes couldn’t help himself. “That has got to be the hor—”
“Wes,” Eve cut him off, “if you say what I think you’re about to say, I’ll feed you to the demon myself.”
He shut his mouth before the pun could escape.
Eve shrugged both hers and Preston’s bags from her shoulders. She drew her mace. “Alright. That looks like a single target to me.”
“Assuming you can get past the spikes,” Alex said, gesturing with her spear, “and the claws.”
“It’ll be easy if you keep them busy for me.”
The warrior sighed. “That is my job. Just be careful; you don’t have a healer backing you up.”
Eve cocked a smile. “Don’t you worry; I’m well past my falling-on-my-face phase.”
Wes rolled his eyes.
With a quick nod of confirmation, Alex leveled her shield and stepped into the hall proper.
Eve skirted behind the pillars, trying to position herself behind the beast as Alex slammed her
spear into the cobblestone floor to attract its attention.
It roared. Its flat, featureless face split open to reveal two rows of needle-sharp teeth, each dripping with black ichor. The terrible cry echoed throughout the cavern, vibrating the very air as if the sound alone could paralyze its prey.
It’s a good thing Eve was no prey.
The moment the demon turned to approach the tall Survivor, Eve Charged!
She arced her path around it, keeping out of sight as it lowered its head and raced to ram Alex.
Alex held fast. She planted her feet and braced herself and activated her shield’s enchantment to reinforce it with the floor beneath them. The stone offered little in the way of support, resistant as it was to the earth magic, but it was enough.
Whatever abilities the Survivor had used in tandem proved enough, as a monstrous thud filled the air. Demon and warrior alike fell back, both dazed by the impact.
Eve had her opening.
Charge! drove her forward as Mana Rushed through her blood, empowering her muscles with arcane energy for the coming exchange. Her heart pounded with every step, keeping time with the breakneck pace she set. As the beast drew near, Eve pulled back her mace for the Fate-al Blow.
No amount of horns could stop it.
The crisp sound of shattering ice filled the hall as the mace struck true, passing clean through the abomination’s torso—she could reach its head—without issue. It collapsed to the floor in two halves and a heap of melting shards.
You have defeated Level 81 Frosthorn Demon: +5080 exp!
Eve didn’t pause to ask around about levels gained or abilities upgraded. She didn’t stop to consider the weird similarities between killing first Frostborn Imps and now a Frosthorn Demon. She didn’t even wait for her Charge! to run out.
This Quest is Broken! (This Trilogy is Broken (A Comedy Litrpg Adventure) Book 1) Page 31