The Earth Mage King, however, was no more.
On the ground where he had been floating, only his green crown and tattered golden robes remained. The Devourer had paid a high price in both the blood of his soldiers and magic to kill the King and wipe out the specter army, but at the rate his morb was growing, I guessed the Devourer would be able to muster enough darkness to kill another one of the Kings in an hour or maybe less.
I considered trying to loot the King's items for myself, but it was impossible; they were beside the Mage Kings and I didn't think I could survive even a few seconds that close to the battle, even if they didn't take offense and target me specifically.
Looking around, I saw four other survivors, all of them Horsemen. Not headless horsemen, but true Horsemen, with a capital H. They had a powerful aura that distorted the air around them, and wore imposing black armor with horned helmets and long black capes.
The mounts of three of them were magnificent; incredibly muscular, and their ectoplasm was so substantial I had to look closely to be sure they were specters. There were three colors: white, red, and black.
The fourth horse, well it was a horse of a different color. It was a sickly pale, emaciated, and unlike the others it was plainly spectral. Stranger still, I could actually see a ghostly skeleton through its gaunt 'flesh.' For something that was already undead, it seemed to be on death's doorstep.
Death's... That's when it hit me: they were Valia's Four Horsemen. Conquest, War, Famine, and Death were charging toward the Dark Temple at full speed.
It gave me chills. The specters had marched for the Conquest of the drow and brought War to the Underworld. Now that the battle had destroyed the farms, Famine would surely follow. Lastly Death on a grand scale was all around us.
Seeing the aspects of the horsemen so heavily represented, and the heralds themselves bearing down on the Dark Temple, I didn't think the survivors were going to last long. The specters hadn't come to play, they were prepared from the start for genocide. Every drow who hadn't fallen in line was going to die. Even Laureth, the leading Blackguard traitor, had paid for her ambition with her life.
Or maybe not, a female drow was standing up from where she had lain hidden until now in a furrow. She was completely nude other than her underwear, which had only been spared because the game's systems would not allow anything to remove them without the wearer's consent. But it was hardly an erotic sight, her hair, eyebrows and large swaths of her skin had been corroded away by the liquid darkness. It looked like she had only saved her eyes by covering them with her right hand, I was sure she hadn't used the left one as it was missing.
Even as badly as she had been disfigured, for her to have survived something like that... She wasn't just some fanatic, she was a very powerful one. Seeing this, I realized she may have actually had a chance to rearrange the power structure in the Dark Temple after all.
The only reason I was sure it was her, was her speaking into my mind.
I looked at her pensively, weighing my options. Killing her would be easy but ultimately useless. Having a powerful Blackguard ally, on the other hand, could prove beneficial in the future.
Unfortunately for her, she was conniving, power hungry and self absorbed, which didn't attract my interest. And my future enemies would certainly offer her more to betray me than I could offer to keep her in line.
I took my quiver out of my ring and hung it from my waist. Then, I withdrew the bow while I amassed fire morbs.
Her eyes widened.
Sam shadowed, moving to intercept Laureth. The Drow Corps' leader stopped and stood still for about three seconds before turning and running away. She had probably tried to reason with Sam using mind chat, but failed.
I shot an arrow and a fireball.
Laureth died a pitiful death. She was fast, but my firebombs continually blew her legs out from under her, and she couldn't even try to defend, lest Sam catch up. I even scored lucky hits with a few arrows!
The last time I knocked her down, she didn't even try to get up. Sam was practically on top of her by this point, and Laureth made the mistake of turning back to see her pursuer. She was nearly transfixed, as she awkwardly scrambled backwards a few more feet before Sam tackled her, slit her throat and finished the coup de gras by planting both of the daggers Laureth had given her just days ago, into her eyes.
Quest series failed: Drow Corps
This may lead to undesirable consequences.
I didn't care at all about the failed quest; I was much more interested in what I was seeing near the Dark Temple. A wave of drow had come out of it, like a swarm of ants leaving an anthill, and were fighting the Four Horsemen.
The Horsemen didn't fight. A transparent bubble of energy, about twenty meters in diameter surrounded each of them. Their bubbles reflected the color of their horses: white, red, black, and a nearly colorless, pale yellow. When the drow entered the auras around the Horsemen, they didn't last long.
Those who entered Conquest's white aura seemed to feel a kind of overbearing pressure that drove them to their knees. I could see them straining to rise again, but before long they would fall prone, dead.
In War's red aura, his enemies died literal deaths of a thousand cuts from invisible weapons.
Inside Famine's black aura, the drow withered, their skin and their clothes sagging. Then, they collapsed, little more than skin covered skeletons.
Death's yellowish aura was the most powerful. As soon as the drow crossed into it, they dropped dead, instantly.
Spells, arrows, and bolts flew at the Horsemen, but the projectiles and magic disintegrated the moment they entered the auras.
I paid attention to what was happening, and came up with a theory.
We steered well clear of the battle, going clockwise around the Temple until we were well out of sight. There, I produced a lightsteel sword from my ring and handed it to Sam.
She took the sword, activated her No Defense Before Me skill, and her eyes widened as the blade sunk into the Temple wall.
She took it and tried to stab it into the wall… The tip snapped off as the blade bounced off harmlessly.
I nodded, took the sword back, and explained.
she said as she stabbed another sword into the wall.
It annoyed me a little that after my exposition, her answer was only 'I see' but I let it slide, so as not to sound like a child.
She had to rest twice before she could place all the handles we required to climb the wall. Surprisingly, after twenty minutes we still heard the sounds of people dying and magic exploding from the front of the temple. Powerful people in Valia were incredibly sturdy.
When Sam finally placed the last sword near the top of the Temple's first-layer, she went invisible and peaked over the edge.
The top of the Dark Temple's first level was monotonous darksteel just like every other part of it I'd seen up to this point. We walked up to the nondescript wall of the middle ring.
No one replied.
"Open the door!" She insisted and started plummeting the wall. "I survived but I'm hurt! I need a healer! Help!"
This time, I heard a faint sound of metal grating on metal. Before I could do anything about it, Sam Shadow Walked. Through the wall.
It took me a second before I realized I was seeing an illusion covering the entrance, then I followed Sam through it.
On the inside, everything was made of darksteel, just like the exterior of the temple. I was standing in a corridor around ten meters long, at the far end of which was a small room with a door set in the far wall, eerily illuminated by a purple glowing crystal the size of my head. In it I saw two shadows battling each other so I rushed to aid Sam.
Sam's Shadow Walk ran out while her opponent still had a few more seconds. She retreated, assuming a defensive stance in front of the door out of the room while I guarded the corridor.
The shadow came at me, I tossed out a firebomb and detonated it nearly immediately to prevent the Blackguard from destroying it, then hunkered behind my shield to mitigate as much damage as possible from the explosion which was far too close for comfort.
Unfortunately this was a tough bastard. His shadow mode must have ended right as I blew him up, but his momentum carried him through the flames towards me. As he sailed through the air I noted that he had his hood down. That was all I had time to think before he demonstrated that superhuman agility I expected from the Blackguard, landed briefly on the rim of my shield then jumped off to continue down the corridor, knocking me down in the process.I turned and frantically threw firebombs at him, but he would still have escaped if not for Sam. She flung me back out of the corridor, then punched the floating purple crystal.
The same sound of metal on metal I had heard before sounded, then the ceiling of the corridor slammed down. The Blackguard barely had time to cry out before I heard a nauseating crunch.
The fit was so perfect that even looking directly at it, I couldn't tell there had ever been a passage on that wall.
I took a deep breath.
Five minutes later, Sam opened the door, then motioned for me to follow her.
On the other side, there was a big room made all of darksteel, just like everything else here. There was however, a novelty: light crystals.
They were six-sided trapezohedrons, around half my size. Shining with a brilliant white light, ten of them floated about half a meter from the ground, along the walls, and were responsible for illuminating the place.
I supposed that the crystals were here to help the few drow players who still didn't have darkvision.
Idiots, every one of them, for not getting it first thing.
We passed through one corridor after the other, the path forking over and over as Sam led the way. It didn't take long for me to realize the inside of the Temple was a maze. What was with the Underworld and mazes anyway?
Just to be safe, I walked a bit behind her, so anyone we stumbled into wouldn't immediately see me. I could also use the Dark Immersion skill for a little bit of stealth but the 50 MP per second that it cost was too much to keep it running.
Thankfully, we didn't encounter any drow until we arrived at another illuminated room. Unfortunately, the corridor had widened as we approached, leaving me nowhere to hide.
Four drow saw me, they all wore the white robes of the Searchers — the lowest ranking of the Faithful —, with the Devourer symbol on it. The last drow was a male Blackguard with short hair, who had his back to us.
The four Searchers eyes widened when they saw us and the Blackguard spun to see what they were looking at.
Sam shadowed and her two daggers went for the man's throat. His eyes widened and he also Shadow Walked away.
They fought each other, nothing but a blur of motion for almost ten seconds, before one of them stumbled back, the shadows dissipated and the man became visible, framed by a spectacular arc of crimson blood from his slit throat.
Sam's brutal slash spun her half way around, leaving her cloak billowing out wildly behind her. She had lost less than two hundred HP in the exchange.
The drow's corpse fell back against the wall and slid down, ending up in a seated position, slumped forward like he was just taking a nap. It was all over so fast that the Searchers barely had time to scream before Sam ran one of them down and sent a flurry of throwing knives at the rest.
Two of them were dead just like that, multiple blades protruding from vital locations The third managed to avoid death by blocking the knife headed for his eye with his forearm, but the damage disrupted his spell casting, further damaging him.
As Sam moved to finish off the 'lucky' drow, I lazily threw a few morbs at the last Searcher. A few flashes of fire later, all that was left was a crispy corpse.
In less than twenty seconds, they were all dead with barely any resistance.
Gotta l
ove surprise attacks.
Sam looked elated as she walked to the bodies to recover her throwing knives. Between her graceful movement and her expression, she reminded me of a cat that had just slaughtered a group of mice, simply because they'd been unlucky enough to cross her path.
I almost thanked my lucky stars that she was on my side, but decided I didn't want to jinx myself.
We kept moving without further incident, and I knew this was only because of the path Sam had taken. After a while, we came to a long corridor with an open doorway at the end.
I replied.
Faced with the prospect of being alone in the maze that was the Dark Temple, with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse at the door and an unknown number of drow protecting it, I concluded it was best to follow her.
She slowed down a bit, allowing me to come alongside her. As we drew nearer, I saw nothing on the other side of the door.
Just shy of the door I could finally tell we were headed for an enormous stairwell, with spiral stairs coiled around the outside, and doors leading out of it everywhere. It was large enough that even at double my top speed I would have had no chance of making the jump to the other side.
I said and tried to slow, but Sam was having none of it. If I tried I was sure I could stop, but what if it got me killed? Sam knew the inner workings of the Dark Temple much better than me, and maybe you really had to run through here to avoid a horrible and painful death.
Unbound Deathlord: Obliteration (The Unbound Deathlord Series Book 2) Page 48