Legacy of the Fallen
Page 41
With one last wail of agony, the bodies of the two spirits then vanished in a final puff of emerald light, the energy sustaining them no longer enough to keep them intact. Their cry, however, continued to echo through the chamber long after they disappeared, gradually diminishing until the only sound remaining was our panting breaths.
No one said anything as we glanced around the chamber, our victory taking a moment to sink in, which was expressed by rushed exhalations of relief as people began to lower their weapons.
“Well!” Constantine exclaimed, the first to break the silence that had fallen over us. “I sure as hell didn’t expect that!”
Chapter 32
“So, what do you think about what the Specters said?” Lazarus asked me as the others around us explored the room. “Something to worry about?”
“I don’t know,” I replied with a sigh sharing Lazarus’s concern, having mentally replayed the two spirit’s last words several times over in my head. “The city that used to be here has long since been destroyed, and everything down here looks to have been abandoned for centuries. It’s possible that we’re seeing a ghostly memory of what happened before.”
“Hmm, maybe,” Lazarus allowed with a thoughtful nod and scratched his face. “They did call us Irovians before the fight began.”
“Yeah, they did…” I replied hesitantly, having made a note of that particular fact too. “But, if they weren’t living through a memory and were just reacting to us, then they would have had a good reason to think that we actually were Irovian attackers.”
“Huh?” Lazarus looked at me in confusion. “Why?”
“Our armor,” I said, motioning to the chainmail that I was wearing. “I crafted this armor from scraps of armor that we found in the Irovian Tower, and the majority of us are wearing it. From the two Specters’ point of view, we would have looked like Irovian Soldiers.”
Lazarus’s eyes glanced down to my armor then back up to my face. “Ah, shit.”
“Yeah,” I said in complete agreement. “I noticed that some of the Revenants had similar armor to us too, no doubt being the Irovians that originally tried to invade the place.”
“So, it’s probably best that we assume that they do have a way of destroying the place,” Lazarus stated.
“Given what we know about the Ley Line, that’s probably a safe assumption,” I acknowledged while glancing around the room. I spotted Halcyon, Caius and Constantine walking towards us with several items in their hands. I couldn’t help but notice that whatever Constantine had in his hands, seemed to be emitting out a dull azure glow.
“Just finished sorting through the loot,” Caius said, drawing my attention away from Constantine as he waved a piece of armor in one hand and a broken sword in the other. “Not much to help us out right now, unfortunately, though. Just a bunch of armor scraps and a handful of weapons that need to be re-forged.”
Caius extended his arms to show me the items that he was holding, their descriptions appearing in my vision.
Blackened Chainmail Scrap
Quantity: 40
Item Class: Relic
Item Quality: Fine (+10%)
Durability: 0/0
Weight: 0.3 kg
Broken Irovian Longsword
Item Class: Relic
Item Quality: Fine (+10%)
Durability: 0/0
Weight: 0.5 kg
“I’m sure one of us can fix it up,” I said after looking at the items. “Doesn’t look like the sword was enchanted though.”
“I don’t think any of the weapons we’ve found were,” Halcyon added, indicating a broken axe and shortsword he was holding. “We’ve found nearly a dozen different weapons, both of Irovian and Nafarrian make. I’m thinking we can offer them to the new recruits if they end up being any good when repaired.”
“Not a bad idea,” I agreed, knowing that many of them were still using the weapons that they had arrived at Aldford with. “We haven’t really had the metal to create new weapons for them from scratch, but repairing these should be easy enough now that we have the Æthertouched Iron to work with.”
“Plus, we can sell any extra for money,” Constantine added, motioning towards me with what I now saw was a faintly glowing azure ball.
“We’ll see,” I commented, my attention having focused back on whatever was in Constantine’s hand. “And what did you find?”
“Don’t know,” Constantine answered with a shrug as he moved to show me the emerald ball of light that he held, the item’s description appearing in my vision. “Was hoping you’d be able to figure it out.”
Essence of Suffering
Item Class: Magical
Item Quality: Good (+15%)
Weight: N/A
“Huh,” I grunted, disappointed at how vague the description was. “I have absolutely no idea.”
“Weird right?” Constantine replied with a shrug. “But check this out, when I squeeze it…”
“Oh, please don’t do that again!” Caius managed to say as both he and Halcyon preemptively winced.
Ignoring the warlock, Constantine squeezed his hand around the ball of light, which let out a faint, all too familiar wail, causing both Lazarus and I to flinch.
“What the hell?” Lazarus snapped, his hand having moved halfway to his sword before he caught himself.
“Kinda neat, isn’t?” Constantine said with a grin, before squeezing it even harder and eliciting a louder response. “Like a spooky version of a whoopee cushion, but instead of gas, you get an unearthly wail of terror.”
Lazarus and I were speechless as we stared at Constantine, who slowly released his hold on the Essence of Suffering and let the wailing cry fade away.
“I literally can’t believe that these words are about to leave my mouth,” I began, not breaking my eye contact with Constantine as I spoke. “But please stop tormenting that soul of the damned you’re holding and give it to me.”
“Oh, come on, Lyr!” Constantine exclaimed, pulling the Essence close to his chest. “Let me at least get Stanton with it!”
“Oh, I’d pay to see that,” Lazarus said, suddenly sounding enthusiastic as he looked over towards me with a raised eyebrow. “Or Veronia?”
“Tempting, but no,” I stated extending my hand towards Constantine. “Give.”
“Oh, fine,” he grumbled, handing over the essence to me, which felt oddly spongey in my grasp.
“And the other one,” I said, extending my other hand, still not breaking eye contact with the rogue.
Constantine stared back at me for a moment, completely unblinking as he froze in place. After a few seconds, he let out a sigh of defeat and pulled out a second Essence from his inventory and placed it in my hand. “Man, how’d you know there was a second one?”
“I didn’t,” I replied, smiling back at him as I accepted the second Essence.
“You mean…” Constantine started to say, then scowled. “Ugh, I walked right into that one!”
“That you did,” Lazarus said as we all shared a laugh. “Oldest trick in the book too.”
“Who walked into what?” Sierra’s voice asked as she, Freya and Amaranth approached us having just walked out of the one open doorway in the chamber.
“Constantine,” Caius answered without missing a beat. “Lyr didn’t want him playing with the souls of the damned he found.”
“Oh,” Freya replied completely unfazed, glancing at what I was holding then back towards Constantine. “Is that all?”
“You guys never let me have any fun,” he grumbled. “It was going to be for a good cause.”
“We let you have fun once,” Sierra said, her face completely dea
dpan. “Then you fed a bunch of mushrooms to our new guild members and got them all violently sick.”
“Heh,” Constantine let out a chuckle. “Yeah, that was pretty great.”
“Moving on,” Sierra said in a dismissive voice while jerking her thumb towards the doorway that the three of them had just exited from. “There’s a short hallway through that door over there, and another door that looks similar to this one. From what we can tell, there’s a crystal set in the side of the wall that might open it.”
“Might?” I asked. “You didn’t try it?”
“Well,” Freya said, looking at me with a smile. “Sierra said that you’re the resident expert at touching magical switches and things, so we figured we’d leave it to you to try.”
“Just in case,” Sierra stated, her grin matching Freya’s.
“Just in case something goes wrong, so you can blame me for it you mean.” I grunted as Amaranth padded over to me, his curiosity focused on the two Essences that I was holding.
“Isn’t that what I just said?” Sierra asked, her smile not fading as she looked towards my familiar.
“Hey!” I shouted, pulling the orbs I was holding away from his sweeping paw. “You can’t play with these either!”
“No buts!” I said firmly, turning away from the cat while simultaneously putting the two items away into my inventory.
“Let’s go, Lyrian,” Sierra said in mock impatience as Amaranth growled at me in frustration. “That switch isn’t going to touch itself and as nice as this place is, I don’t want to spend my entire day down here.”
“Hrm,” I grunted, not bothering to answer the woman as I stepped around my familiar and stepped out of the group, moving towards the open doorway. I could hear both Sierra and Freya laugh faintly behind me as I walked, followed moments after by everyone’s footsteps.
Judging by the damage, the death toll must have been staggering, I thought briefly, before dismissing the thought with a mental shrug. But then again, everyone down here died anyway when the entranceway collapsed.
Reaching the end of the passage, I came to a door that appeared identical to the one that I had seen in the main chamber, save that this one had a small panel set in the wall beside it, with two crystals fixed directly inside it. The panel reminded me of the one that I had seen back at the Translocation Hub, and there was no doubt in my mind that they had been crafted by the same people.
Pausing for a moment to activate True Sight, I saw one of the crystals brighten with a faint glow of azure energy, the second one beside it appearing completely inert.
“See anything, Lyr?” Sierra asked, having caught sight of my glowing eyes.
“One of these looks to be active,” I replied, motioning to the one that I saw glowing. “Best guess is that one opens the door, the other closes it.”
“Makes sense,” she agreed. “Want to try it and see what happens? I don’t see a horde of time-locked spiders around this time for you to unfreeze.”
“So, if I push this button and something horrible happens, I’m off the hook?” I pressed for a second time as I reached out towards the crystal.
“Oh, hell no,” Sierra replied. “Where’s the fun in that?”
“This sounds like a bad deal, Lyrian,” Lazarus said from down the hall, despite the humor in his voice. “You’re screwed either way.”
“Tell me about it,” I grumbled just as my hand came in contact with the crystal, instantly feeling something warm shoot through my hand and up my arm.
Nothing happened for a few seconds as I maintained contact with the crystal, then without warning a loud grinding sound filled the air. At first, I had thought that the door beside me had begun to move, but a loud shout from Constantine caused me to turn my attention back towards the doorway that we had just come from.
“Hey, hey! The door’s closing over there!” He called out in surprise as he urgently stepped out of the doorway that he had been standing in. In the short time that I had been touching the crystal, a heavy stone slab had slid partially out from the side of the doorframe as if to close us into the hall.
Flinching at the unexpected event, I took my hand off the crystal, and the door stopped moving, having closed nearly half of the entranceway.
“Well, that didn’t do quite what we expected,” I said, feeling relieved that I hadn’t managed to trap us.
“Not at all,” Freya stated, just as several surprised voices rang out from the main chamber.
“What did you guys do?” Thorne’s head poked through the partially closed doorway. “The other door started opening but stopped halfway.”
“It did?” Sierra asked, casting a look back at me, then started moving to walk back towards the main chamber, all of us following behind eagerly.
Seconds later we all stood in front of the second doorway and found ourselves peering into a nearly identical hallway, the only difference being a different pattern of battle damage, and the fact that neither crystal in the far panel was active.
“So, any guesses on how to move forward?” Constantine asked after we had taken the time to explore the second hallway and confirm that neither of the two crystals there responded to touch. “Only the one crystal in the first hallway seems to still be active, and all that it seems to do is open the doors, the other crystals seem to be dead.”
“Well, right now they do,” Halcyon said, waving his hand at the two partially opened doorways. “The doors are only opened partially; the other crystals could activate when the first door is fully closed.”
“Maybe, but that means we’re going to have to risk locking someone in there to try that,” Freya pointed out. “And we have no idea if we can get them out afterward.”
“Getting out doesn’t worry me as much as what’s behind the two doors,” I said, watching everyone’s eyes focus on me. “Worse come to worse, and we get trapped, then we can...uh, force ourselves to respawn back at Aldford, then make our way back down here.”
“Yeah, that’s a morbid way of thinking,” Constantine noted with a grumble. “But Lyr has a point. If we do manage to open the doors and there’s something behind it…a single person is going to get overwhelmed.”
“And eighteen people aren’t going to fit into a hallway like that,” Sierra finished with a sigh, casting a look around the group. “Are you guys thinking what I’m thinking for this place?”
“That it’s a split dungeon?” Alistair offered.
“That’s the feeling that I’m getting,” Sierra replied with a nod. “Assuming we’re right in thinking that the other crystals are going to activate once the door is closed, we’re going to have to send a group into each one. One group to close the door behind them and see if the crystal activates, which if my guess is right will open the door for the trapped group…”
“Then the trapped group will have a way to open the door for the other group,” I finished, considering the option before us. “I’ve seen similar things in other games before; it makes sense.”
Everyone paused for a moment to think over the logic for a few seconds, and after a while, it was clear that no other ideas were going to be forthcoming.
“Well, it looks like we’re going to be splitting up then,�
�� Freya said glancing over at Alistair then towards Lazarus and his group. “Stick with our usual parties and divide you four between us?”
“I think that’s probably the best move,” Lazarus replied with a nod. “Sawyer and Ransom can go with you. Alistair and I can tag along with Lyrian’s group.”
“That’ll keep our melee ranksss balanced,” Helix noted. “And grant us more magical support.”
“Works for us,” Sawyer added.
“Alright then,” I replied, happy that we had managed to iron out who was going where without any issues. There was just one last thing I wanted to do before we put our theory to the test. “But before we get moving, let’s take a quick look around with the Ætherscopes and see if we can figure out what’s ahead of us.”
“Good idea,” Halcyon said, not wasting a second in pulling out a bone wand from his inventory.
Seeing Caius and the other spellcasters following suit, I drew my Ætherscope and stepped out of the loose circle that we had formed while talking to one another and turned my attention towards the wall, watching my vision gradually shift as distant sources of magic gradually became more visible. Gazing through the first hallway, the first thing that I noticed was the faint magical essence of the crystal that I had seen before, followed by several weaker and distant sources of magic. I vaguely recalled the shapes from the last time that I had looked through the Ætherscope and little had changed about them since. Unfortunately, though, despite the progress we had made, they were still simply too far and too weak for me to make out.
With a mental shrug, I shifted my gaze and slowly continued to scan the area before me, focusing my attention on the door at the end of the hallway. At first, there was nothing behind the door, but as I panned my vision downwards, three bright sources of magic bloomed in my vision, each of them set a fair distance apart, yet in a relatively straight line in relation to one another.
I wonder what they are, I thought idly as I continued to shift my vision towards the other hallway, spotting three more identical sources of energy that were also lined up the same way that the first three had been.