“Hey, Hal,” I called, twisting to look at the mage behind me. “Amaranth wants you to know that spiders taste pretty great and that you shouldn’t worry about them.”
“Oh god, I hate you all,” the mage grumbled, causing a chorus of laughter to erupt from the group.
With all of us eager to see what the new area held in store for us, we descended the ancient lava flow and headed towards the cavern floor, the azure-tinted jungle in the distance vanishing from sight as we descended below it. Chancing a quick glance with True Sight before the brightness of the cavern overwhelmed me, I managed to see that we would have to descend downwards into a small valley that separated the cavern wall and the ridge that the alien forest was set on, then find a way to climb upwards and get back up to the higher elevation.
“This place is a hell of a lot rockier and jagged up close,” Halcyon commented while conjuring several orbs of light, allowing us a chance to glance around the valley that we had found ourselves and finding it free of any vegetation, glowing or otherwise. “Hey, speaking about that, shouldn’t we name this area? Since we’re the first people here, we can do that, right?”
“Yeah, we can actually!” I replied enthusiastically, remembering how I had named the Webwood a few weeks earlier. “Anyone have any suggestions?”
“The Glowing Abyss?” Lazarus suggested before shrugging his large shoulders. “I’m terrible at naming things, so don’t expect anything better than that from me.”
“The Mushroom Forest?” Halcyon chimed in, his face turning into a scowl. “No, on second thought, not that. That’s awful.”
“How about the Æther Gardens?” I said, looking around the group for reactions.
“Not bad,” Freya commented thoughtfully. “But I think it’s missing something.”
“What about Fungal Grove or maybe Twilight Cavern?” Sierra paused for a moment, clearly not happy with her choices, before suddenly snapping her fingers. “The Twilight Grove!”
“Oh, I like that one!” I said right away, looking up towards the azure-hued ceiling and testing the word. “The Twilight Grove.”
“It has my vote!” Freya exclaimed. “I think it fits perfectly!”
“Works for me!” Halcyon agreed, the rest of the group chiming in a second behind. “Do we need to do anything specific now?”
“I don’t think so,” I answered, recalling that all it had taken was me coming up with a name and writing it down on my map for the area to be named. “I’ll make sure to include it on the map that I’m making, but the game should take care of it automatically.”
“Oh, I remember you scratching away at that thing,” Drace commented. “How’s that coming along anyway?”
“Glacially slow,” I grunted, not able to remember the last time that I had taken it out to sketch out any updates. “I honestly haven’t had the time to get to it, Maybe when things calm down…one day.”
“Well, Lyrian’s crazy schedule aside,” Halcyon began. “We should see if the name stuck if we can find a creature here somewhere, right?”
“That’s how it’s worked out so far,” I replied, nodding at the mage.
“Well, then, let’s go find a creature and see!” he exclaimed, motioning for us to continue onwards, his orbs of light leading the way.
“And then kill it for experience, right?” Alistair queried as we all turned to start moving again, prompting another laugh from the group.
Resuming our journey through the newly named Twilight Grove, we gradually made our way through the valley in search of a route up the ridge, the sound of the crunching rock underneath our feet filling the air. Despite the presence of the strange forest in the distance, it seemed that this particular valley was still in the middle of establishing its own ecosystem, appearing completely barren of any plant life or creatures.
Was this place growing here all this time? Or did this all sprout into existence soon after the Ley Line started leaking again? Questions filtered through my mind as I glanced between the walls high above us, staring at the strange mold that I had seen earlier. It had only taken a few weeks for the Ætherwarped Oak in Aldford to grow to massive proportions. With the energy from the nearby Ley Line, I didn’t consider it a far stretch that everything here could have sprouted and grown to size in just a handful of days. I guess it’s impossible to know for sure.
“Looks like we can probably climb up the ridge over there,” Drace said, pulling me out of my reverie as he pointed at a section of stone that had broken away from the ridge, creating a rough path that we could use to climb upwards. “We just need to pull ourselves up onto that rock there; then we should be able to scramble up the rest of the way.”
“Ugh, more climbing,” Halcyon grunted. “You know, the best thing about Ascend Online has to be that even if I’m a mage, I still have better upper body strength in the game than I do in Reality.”
“That’s because coffee and junk food aren’t real food groups, Hal,” Sierra said as we all grouped around the rock that Drace had indicated seconds earlier, the large warrior having already pulled himself up.
“What is this?” the mage replied defensively. “Pick on Halcyon day?”
“Well, Constantine isn’t here right now…” I said, flashing the man a grin as I moved to follow Lazarus, who had climbed up behind Drace.
Putting Halcyon’s grumbling behind me, I easily pulled myself upwards onto the boulder and then carefully made my way up the rough path of stones. Reaching the ridgetop without any difficultly, I quickly spotted both Drace and Lazarus, The pair had moved away from the edge and were gazing in the direction of the dimly lit jungle, which had come back into view.
“Well, this place is going to be interesting to navigate,” Drace said, glancing over his shoulder as I approached, waving his arm out towards the jungle before us. “Looks like we’re going to have to blaze a path through all of that before we can get to the Ley Line.”
“Yeah,” I replied with a sigh, my eyes scanning through the countless strangely shaped plants that made up the forest. “I guess it would be too much for us to ask to be able to just have a clear straight shot at it.”
“Of course not,” Lazarus agreed, matching my tone. “We’ll have to suffer first, and earn our way towards it. Like everything else in this game.”
“Hopefully we’ll have enough time to do that,” Drace said, his eyes remaining fixated on the forest. “I still don’t see any creatures ahead of us, but if you listen closely, you can hear a sort of…chittering sound in the distance.”
“I hear it too,” I replied, the sound suddenly intensifying as Amaranth finished his climb and came into range of our now augmented bond. “Seems like there is a hell of a lot of whatever it is making that noise.”
“Good,” Lazarus commented. “And hopefully it’s easy to catch too. I have a hell of a lot of catching up to do with you guys.”
Giving the half-giant an understanding nod, I turned to glance back at the rest of the party who had finally made the climb up the ramp, their eyes focused on the jungle ahead. “Last chance, everyone. Ready to see what this place has in store for us?”
“Just about,” Theia said, amid a chorus of affirmative replies. “I have a spell I want to try out on us before we go. I picked up a buff with my level fifteen skill point!”
“Oh, awesome!” Freya exclaimed as all of us huddled close to the lizardwoman at her prompting. “What does it do?”
“It gives a slight boost to hit points, armor and health regeneration,” Theia said as she began to emit an aura of violet energy from her body that reached out to encircle us. “It’s not much, but every bit helps in the long run!”
A surge of energy coursed through me as Theia completed her spell, the aura surrounding us gradually flowing into our bodies. When the last traces of it finally vanished, I could feel myself become slightly healthier as the magic took hold, seeing a pair of notifications appear in my vision.
Theia casts [Inner Fire] on you!
You
gain +50 hit points, +30 to armor, and +2 to Health Regeneration for 3 hours!
“Hey, this is pretty great!” Thorne announced. “Though I hope we’re not in a situation where fifty hit points are all that keeps me from dying…”
“I am for any situation that we live through,” Abaddon grunted in response. “Thank you, Theia.”
“Happy to help,” she replied graciously and then turned her attention back towards me. “Alright. Now I’m ready to go.”
“Great!” I replied, giving her a thankful nod and turning back towards the jungle. “Let’s see what this place has in store for us.”
With the chatter amongst the group dying down, we set off, our eyes cautiously scanning our surroundings. None of us had the vaguest idea of what to expect going forward into this place and we were all seasoned enough to know that pointless noise was a sure way to attract attention that you didn’t necessarily want to have at that moment.
Once we get a better feel for this place we can think about relaxing, I thought as I stepped past the tree line and entered into near darkness, the chittering noise that we had heard earlier intensifying until it seemingly came from everywhere at once.
“Hmm,” I grunted thoughtfully while motioning towards the vine for the others to see, pointing out the several large bites missing from it.
I told the cat, scanning the area around the plant and not seeing anything of note on the soft, grey-tinted dirt below.
“I was starting to think the same thing,” Sierra replied, staring up at where the savaged vine had attached itself to the tree. “I could swear I keep seeing shadows or something moving up above us, but it keeps moving too fast to get a good look at it.”
“You think we’re moving in too large a group?” Thorne asked. “I mean anything with half a brain isn’t going to stick around with a dozen of us tromping through the area.”
“That’s a good point,” Drace pointed out. “Some of us might be half blind in here, but the creatures probably aren’t.”
“I think you’re right,” I replied, staring at the half-eaten vine before me and silently reconsidered my approach. With us entering into an unknown area with poor lighting, potentially filled with creatures of an unknown level, I had wanted to keep us all close together until we could get a better idea of what we were up against. My reasoning being that if we came across something drastically higher leveled than us, we could simply swarm it with raw numbers and then regroup from there.
Unfortunately, it seemed that tactic wasn’t about to work.
“Looks like it’s up to our scouts,” I whispered to Sierra, seeing her turn her head to look at me and give me a nod.
“About time,” Sierra replied, flashing me a grin as she signaled for Lazarus to follow her into the surrounding brush. “The two of us will take a quick look around and see if we can find something interesting to bring back. You guys just sit tight here for a bit and keep an eye out for any creatures.”
“But if you hear any loud noises or screaming while we’re gone, please assume it’s something trying to eat us,” Lazarus said softly as he moved to follow the red-haired elf. “And come running.”
“Can do,” Drace replied with a soft chuckle. All of us watched the two stealthy members of our group fade away into the forest.
“Wish Caius would have made it,” Halcyon commented sadly. “His ‘Bloodsense’ ability would have helped here. He could tell us if there was anything close by.”
“Yeah,” I agreed as I pulled Splinter from its sheath, getting myself ready for when one of the scouts hopefully brought back a group of creatures for us. “Though something tells me close by isn’t a problem.”
Waiting patiently, I felt the minutes pass by slowly as I waited for the scouts to return, passing the time tracking them via Party Sense. At first, they moved quickly away from us as they spread out away from one another, then slowed as they gradually fanned outward. During this time, those of us left waiting kept a careful eye on our surroundings, making sure that nothing tried to sneak up on us while the others were away.
the cat replied dryly, fixing me with a glare.
Grunting, I accepted Amaranth’s rebuke and resumed patiently waiting, paying careful attention to Sierra and Lazarus’s presence as they continued to move through the jungle.
If the creatures here don’t want to have anything to do with us, then maybe we’ll actually have a clear shot at the Ley Line, I thought while trying to temper my expectations. In all our experiences so far, between the Webwood and the Greenwood that we had taken the new guild recruits to the other week, forests had always been packed full of hostile creatures, often to the point where it was difficult to take a step without disturbing something lying in wait. To make it this far into a virtually untouched area to be actively ignored by the creatures seemed extremely unusual.
“Hmm,” Drace let out a sudden moue of interest as he turned his head in the direction of Sierra and Lazarus, his expression shifting to one of curiosity and a heartbeat later I realized why.
Lazarus is coming back towards us! I thought excitedly, sensing him rapidly getting closer. And Sierra stopped moving.
Waiting on pins and needles, we all eagerly waited for Lazarus’s return to the group, gripping our weapons tightly in case he arrived with a horde of creatures in tow. Emerging from the foliage at a quick pace, Lazarus’s hands immediately shot up in front of him as he spotted us, and shook his head side to side.
“Nothing following me,” the half-giant stated, watching all our faces fall at the news. “But Sierra and I found something else interesting that you all need to see. Follow me.”
Intrigued by the man’s cryptic statement, we fell into line behind him and retracted the path that Lazarus had just blazed, trampling over the already damaged foliage with ease. Moving at a demanding pace, it didn’t take long before we finally arrived at where Sierra was waiting, spotting the woman standing directly in front of a large jagged piece of stone that protruded from a barren patch of ground, her attention fixed intently upon it.
“Hey—” My greeting barely had the chance to leave my throat, before the rock Sierra was staring at suddenly flared with countless emerald colored runes, each of them appearing to crawl across the stone’s face before fading into nothingness.
Speechless, we all ground to a halt as we stared at the stone before us, watching the strange symbols continue to play across it before everything gradually faded away, leaving the face blank once more. Taking her gaze away from the stone, Sierra turned around to face us, her eyes wide with wonder.
“Hey,” she greeted, her voice sounding slightly stunned. “So, I know it
wasn’t a creature, but we found something else interesting.”
“I’ll say!” I replied, shaking off my astonishment and approaching the stone, everyone else following closely behind me.
“It flares up every few minutes or so,” Sierra told me, stepping to the side as I placed my hand on the stone’s surface, feeling it perfectly smooth to the touch. “Then lasts roughly about as long as you saw before fading away again.”
“We didn’t see anything like this in our half of the ruin,” Freya commented, taking up position beside me and looking up at the stone. “Did you guys?”
“Nothing even remotely close,” I replied. “Just the Æther Crystals.”
“Damn,” Halcyon breathed in a low voice as he too approached the stone. “I figured that everything from the ruin here would have been destroyed.”
“I think we all did,” I said to the mage, my eyes following the edges of the stone then down towards its base. “Look at the edges to this though. It almost seems like it broke away from something even larger…and landed here.”
“But what is it?” Freya asked.
“I don’t even have the faintest idea,” I answered with a shrug. “Though the runes that appeared earlier almost seemed like spell notations, similar to how a scribed spell would look like in a Spellbook.”
“I noticed that too,” Halcyon commented before suddenly shielding his eyes. “Ugh! Damn, that’s bright! Don’t look at it with Arcane Sight, Lyr. It’s definitely magical, even if it’s not showing anything right now. More so than anything I’ve ever seen before too.”
“Interesting,” I replied, wondering just how much longer it would be before the runes appeared again.
“So, you think that whatever’s on the rune might be a spell?” Sierra asked, taking a step away from the rock and rejoining the bulk of the group.
“I don’t know,” I said, turning around to look at everyone. “Scribed spells don’t normally move around like that one did, but maybe we’ll be able to…”
Legacy of the Fallen Page 55