Even with the fine coating of dust covering every surface and all of the artwork lost to the ravages of time, the place was still impressive. The sentinel stood from the throne but made no move to advance.
“Huh,” Alexander said, striding toward the raised dais on the far end of the room, “I’d forgotten all about you.” As he got closer, he saw that the sentinel was marred and stained with black splotches, places where his stone body was just slightly eaten away by powerful acid. Alexander climbed the steps and stopped a few feet from the magical guardian, appraising it thoughtfully.
“These people are my friends. You will not harm them or hinder them in any way. Do you understand?”
The sentinel’s eyes pulsed white and it nodded.
“Do you know the way to the Sovereign’s library?”
It nodded again.
“Excellent,” he said, sending his sight forward, passing through the antechamber just off the throne room, down the hall and into the large circular room that had once been a bedchamber.
Curled into a ball in the center of the room, its tentacles wrapped around itself, was the demon. It began to stir when Alexander’s awareness entered the room. He returned to his body and drew the Thinblade.
“It’s close,” he said.
Jataan was suddenly holding a sword. Abigail nocked an arrow with white feathers. Jack vanished, eliciting a frown from Cassandra. She, Lita, and Magda began casting spells while Anja drew her sword.
“I’ll go first,” Alexander said. “Abigail, you’re right behind me. Everyone else, wait until I use my light. If that doesn’t work, hit it with everything you’ve got.”
His pulse quickened and he felt a flutter of nerves in his stomach as he headed for the antechamber. Just a few steps past the broken door and into the narrow hallway leading to the bedchamber, he heard a roar that sent a chill racing over every inch of his body.
The far end of the dark, narrow passage filled with an open maw as the beast began to pull itself toward Alexander with alarming speed. Wisps of noxious-looking smoke rose where the club-like ends of its acidic tentacles touched stone. It roared again, freezing Alexander in place with momentary fear, but he broke through to a place of cold awareness and clear thinking a second later.
He raised Luminessence and focused his will, calling forth its brightest light. The world exploded in scintillating brilliance, flooding the passage with light so bright that it should have blinded everyone present. The tentacle demon howled in pain and fear, its dark, coarse flesh burning away in thick clouds of black smoke as it scrambled to retreat from the light. It reached the bedchamber quickly and fled from the threshold of the hall, escaping back into shadow.
Alexander let his light dim to a level that required no effort but still illuminated the area brightly. He took a deep breath and deliberately calmed himself. Chloe buzzed into a ball of light, then vanished again.
“That was unsettling,” Jack said.
“You seem to have a penchant for understatement, Master Colton,” Magda said.
“Indeed,” Cassandra said.
“I remember you telling me about that thing,” Abigail said. “It seems a lot worse now.”
“I don’t think it’s dead,” Anja said. “Shouldn’t we go after it?”
“Let’s wait until that smoke clears,” Alexander said, pointing to the heavy cloud of blackness hanging in the air toward the far end of the hall.
“I can help with that,” Magda said, stepping forward and whispering the words of a spell. A few moments later the air began to flow past them toward the smoke, pushing it into the bedchamber and dissipating it.
They approached cautiously, Alexander sending his sight into the room before they reached the doorway. It was empty, save for several dark splotches of blood on the floor leading down the stairs into the lower levels of the Keep.
“Looks like you hurt it,” Jack said, dubiously eyeing a puddle of demon blood from a safe distance.
“I wouldn’t touch that,” Alexander said.
“The thought hadn’t crossed my mind,” Jack said.
“Looks like it went downstairs,” Anja said.
“Well, we had to go that way anyway,” Alexander said without making a move to follow. Luminessence hadn’t killed it, but it had wounded it, perhaps seriously. Certainly enough to make the demon angry. He suspected that he would have to hold his light at its brightest for longer than he was able to in order to kill it. Not the outcome he was hoping for, yet not a failure either. With practice, he might learn how to maintain his light for longer periods of time. Azugorath would almost certainly be harder to kill than this demon.
He sent his sight down the spiral stairs, following the trail of blood down one level, then another and another until he came to a landing with an open archway leading into a room with three passages leading out. The floor was pockmarked with acid erosion. The blood trail led through the open archway across from the stairway entrance.
“Looks like it’s running,” Alexander said. “Wait here, I’ll be right back.”
He returned to the throne room.
“Sentinel, follow me.”
Once back in the bedchamber, Alexander stopped and faced the stone guardian.
“How many levels below is the library?”
“Seven,” the sentinel said, its voice distant and hollow.
“The demon is on the fourth level below,” Alexander said. “We should probably finish it off before we go to the library.”
“Yeah, I’d rather not have that thing behind us either,” Jack said.
Alexander led the way, taking care to avoid stepping in the sporadic puddles of blood marring the stairs. They spiraled through bedrock, opening to each successive level a hundred feet below the last at a landing with an open archway leading to a large chamber. He couldn’t help wondering what lay in the darkness of the ancient Keep. One day he intended to thoroughly explore the place … but not today.
He stepped cautiously into the room that served as an entry hall for the fourth level and stopped, listening for any hint of the demon.
“Sentinel, stand guard here. Allow none to pass through this chamber except for us.”
The guardian nodded, its white eyes glowing softly.
A few steps into the passage marked with the demon’s blood, Alexander stopped, frowning at the floor. It had been traveled recently, though not by anything that wore boots. Odd-looking footprints marked the stone at irregular intervals. Alexander tried to imagine what kind of creature might have made the markings but found himself at a loss. As he proceeded, he wondered if he would soon find out.
“Looks like the demon isn’t the only thing down here,” he said softly.
“Of course it isn’t,” Jack mumbled.
The hallway ran straight for nearly a hundred paces before opening into a large room, too dark to see anything save for the wall that they’d entered through. The ceiling was forty feet high, supported by stone pillars spaced every forty feet. Alexander raised his light, sending shadows cast by the pillars out into the enormous room.
Rusted and broken remnants of iron cages were spaced at even intervals between the pillars, all of similar size and laid out in orderly fashion. The odd tracks led off in several different directions.
“What was this place?” Anja asked.
“If I had to guess, I would say it was a laboratory used for breeding enchanted creatures,” Magda said.
“Do you think any of them are still alive?” Anja asked.
“Judging from the tracks we’ve seen, almost certainly,” Cassandra said.
“Looks like the demon went straight through the room,” Alexander said, pointing to several irregularly spaced acid scorch marks. He sent his sight forward, searching for any hint of color or movement, but found only an empty room that measured five hundred feet on a side. At one time it could have held nearly a hundred creatures in its many cages.
He set out cautiously, keeping his light bright enough to illumin
ate several dozen feet in every direction. As they proceeded, the cages became larger, some enclosed in magic circles, though none were occupied by anything more than bones. He was starting to relax when the tomblike silence was shattered with a high-pitched screech that echoed throughout the room.
“What was that?” Abigail said, nocking an arrow.
“It didn’t sound like the demon,” Jack said.
Alexander sent his sight forward toward the sound when another shriek hit them like a wave. The noise was so shrill and intense that it made his ears hurt. He caught the colors of something in the darkness, then another … and another.
“Looks like there are several of them,” he said.
Magda, Cassandra, and Lita began casting spells, Jack tossed up his hood and vanished, Anja drew her broadsword.
“Correction,” Alexander said, “there are a lot of them.”
Somewhere in the distance, beyond passages that they had yet to walk, the demon roared. Out of the warrens on the far wall came creatures that Alexander had never seen before. In the darkness, their colors looked twisted and malformed, like made beings. They reminded him of the colors of the gorledon.
He raised his light brighter still, enough to fill the room without drawing on the power of the realm of light. It took effort but nothing that he couldn’t maintain for several minutes. The creatures came out of irregular passages in the walls that looked like they’d been dug rather than cut.
They were about five feet tall, and stood on four insect-like legs that ended in a single sharp spike each. Their torso rose up above the trunk, armored in segmented black chitin with three rows of hooked spikes along the back and sides. Two multisegmented arms ended in oversized pincers. A wide mouth lined with sharp ridges of chitin where its lips should have been and bordered by mandibles on either side occupied the majority of its face, which swept back into a single horn that curved over the top of its head and nearly touched the back of its neck. Five openings lined each side of its head where its ears should have been.
The hideous creatures looked like ants fleeing a mound that had been flooded, first a dozen, then scores pouring out into the room. Alexander expected them to shy away from his light, but they seemed oblivious to it.
“Back away slowly,” Alexander said.
When he spoke, all of the creatures’ heads snapped toward him as if they’d just noticed intruders in their lair. As one, they shrieked, filling the room with sound so intense that Alexander feared his ears would burst. When it stopped, he could barely hear. His friends were all reeling from the onslaught of deafening noise … and the creatures were coming.
They moved quickly, skittering across the stones on their four legs, converging on them from the front and sides.
Abigail drove an arrow into the mouth of the nearest one, killing it. The rest ignored their fallen, moving with single-minded determination.
Magda sent a pea-sized blue sphere into their midst. It exploded in a burst of force, sending creatures sprawling to the stone floor, but more took their place.
“Run!” Alexander shouted, drawing the Thinblade. Everyone fled toward the entrance with Alexander bringing up the rear and Jataan holding back just enough to be a step ahead of him. The first creature overtook Alexander scarcely twenty steps from the relative safety of the corridor. He spun as the creature lunged, cutting it off across the torso, following through full circle, nearly losing his balance but catching himself before he fell. He stumbled the last few feet into the corridor, passing between Jataan and Anja who stood in the entrance, weapons drawn, awaiting the onslaught.
Jataan drove a pike through the next nearest creature, then transformed his Weaponere’s stone into a short spear. Anja hacked another at the neck, killing it with a stroke, but it fell into her, cutting the outside of her leg with the hooked spikes lining its back and side. Her injury only served to make her angry. With a shout of rage, she lunged forward, stabbing another through the face and kicking it off her blade before another grabbed her by the leg with a pincer. She hacked it off with a shout of pain and fury, bringing her blade back up and cleaving the creature across the torso.
Jataan stabbed one, then a second and a third in quick jabbing thrusts, driving the point of his spear into their mouths and out the back of their heads, dropping them where they stood almost instantly.
Anja hacked another, taking a step out into the room, the pincer still clamped on her leg. Alexander turned, dropping Luminessence so he could grab Anja by the back of her tunic and yank her behind him while driving the Thinblade forward into the next creature in one fluid motion. Darkness momentarily engulfed them until Cassandra brought a dozen orbs of glowing light into existence with a few words.
An arrow whizzed past him, through a creature’s head and into the one behind it. Anja shouted a curse from behind him. Alexander brought his blade across and through two more that had clambered over the rapidly growing pile of carnage in front of them.
Magda’s arm came over his shoulder and the entire pile of living and dead creatures exploded away from them, blown back into the room by the force of her magic.
“Fall back,” Alexander said, snatching up Luminessence and retreating into the corridor with Jataan at his side. Piercing sound nearly brought him to his knees a moment later, leaving only a shrill ringing in his ears. The creatures renewed their attack, skittering three abreast into the corridor toward them.
Alexander set himself, an arrow zipping past him, killing the creature in the center, only to have another take its place as the corridor began to fill with them. Jataan’s spear transformed into a pike, killing another, then reverted back into a spear. Alexander swept the Thinblade into the nearest two, cleaving them in half, taking a step back, only to kill another three as they scurried over their dead. Jataan killed two more with blindingly fast thrusts of his spear.
“Run to the Sentinel,” Alexander shouted without looking back as he and Jataan gave ground. Three more came, pushed from behind by a flood of the horrible creatures. He killed one, narrowly avoiding another’s pincers, his future sight guiding his movements and his sword. He let go of thought and gave himself over to the battle, allowing magic, experience, and instinct to guide his hand.
“Cover my flank,” he said to Jataan as he pushed forward into the torrent of monsters. The Thinblade moved in a blur, slashing, cutting, and killing with each movement. He held his ground, a spear point darting past him every few seconds, stabbing those that attacked from his left side, allowing him to concentrate on slaughtering the seemingly endless flood of creatures pouring toward him.
The broken and dying began to build up at his feet, their black blood flowing out onto the stone floor, making it slick. Alexander gave ground, checking behind him to see that his friends had fallen back to the room with the Sentinel.
“Run!” he shouted again. Jataan ignored him, a trickle of blood running from his ear. Alexander tapped his shoulder with Luminessence and motioned for him to flee.
They reached the room and Abigail loosed an arrow into the corridor. Alexander thought he saw red feathers as the enchanted shaft shot past him in a blur. A second later Magda stepped into the threshold with Cassandra and Lita standing behind her, each placing a hand on her shoulder. The corridor erupted in an explosion of orange-red fire the color of a sunset, filling the entire passage with flame hot enough to melt steel. The fire washed up against Magda’s shield and rebounded into the corridor, blasting the charred remains of countless creatures back into the large room at the other end.
Alexander watched the power flow from Cassandra and Lita into Magda as she began casting another spell, this one taking more time and drawing greater power before she placed her hand on one wall of the corridor and released her magic. The stone itself rippled like water, then began to flow into the corridor, filling the passage for twenty feet with stone that looked like hardened lava, sealing it from floor to ceiling.
Chapter 27
Alexander sent his sight thr
ough to the other side and saw that the large room lined with pillars was filled with hundreds of the creatures and they were in a frenzy. When they reached the stone barrier, they began chipping away at it with the points of their pincers. He was alarmed by just how quickly they were able to dig through the solid stone. In less than a minute, they’d eaten through nearly a foot.
Behind them, the demon roared. Alexander sent his sight deeper into the darkness and found the tentacle demon emerging from the warrens that had presumably been these creatures’ lair. It was nearly healed from the injuries that Luminessence had inflicted. Some of the creatures attacked it, shrieking with such intensity that their sonic attack could be heard through the stone and through Alexander’s temporary deafness.
He snapped back to himself and assessed his friends. Everyone looked a bit dazed, some had blood coming out of their ears. Anja was bleeding from several wounds on her legs.
“Sentinel, hold this room,” he shouted, his voice sounding muffled even to himself, as he strode into the staircase and headed down, Luminessence lighting the way. His friends needed rest and healing, but he dared not stop here. There was no telling how many of the creatures lived beneath the Reishi Keep and he couldn’t risk becoming trapped.
He moved as quickly as he dared, the world sounding muffled and gauzy, each footstep felt more than heard. His leg started to feel stiff and sore, still not quite fully healed. Under normal exertion, he hardly noticed the pain anymore, but racing down so many stairs reminded him once again.
At the next level, he stopped and sent his sight back to the barrier that Magda had created. The creatures had already eaten away a few feet of the stone. He was suddenly yanked aside, his sight snapping back to his body as Jataan drove his spear into the face of another of the creatures coming from the entrance to the fifth level.
Cassandra stepped up and filled the room with a jet of flame, the stench of burning chitin filling Alexander’s nostrils. He pressed on, racing downward but choosing each step carefully lest he stumble.
Sovereign of the Seven Isles 7: Reishi Adept Page 31