by David Burke
“Okay, but be careful. If you open yourself up to energy coming in too much, that will make you vulnerable to the attacks of others,” Lash warned and Hilde nodded.
Skrug broke up their conversation when he shouted, “Skrug smell food.”
The half-troll then proceeded to break down the door of the dungeon’s third floor. Before anyone could stop him, he had forced his bulk though the stone doorway and had chased off after something.
Kyle couldn’t tell if the grunting and squealing they could hear was coming from Skrug or whatever he was chasing. “Dammit, we better go after him. Stay together,” Kyle ordered.
They rushed into the floor behind the half-troll and found a large, open area. It looked like an abandoned underground farm. How crops could be grown down here was beyond Kyle, but it didn’t seem to matter as the fields appeared to be overgrown with weeds. The few structures that looked like farmhouses were all in a horrible state of disrepair.
What must have been livestock pens and fencing were all broken down and it became obvious what had caught Skrug’s attention. He was chasing after a pig the size of a large bull. Despite its size the creature was clearly terrified of Skrug and who wouldn’t be, as he was brandishing his massive axe and shouting, “Here piggy, piggy. Skrug wants bacon.”
The other five of them scanned the area for any possible threats. Kierra was sniffing the air. Since the ceiling was much higher here, Hilde had taken to the air. Gilthan followed her up on currents of air while Lash stayed near Kyle as though she had to protect him. It was fascinating how each of them viewed the situation.
Kyle’s senses didn’t detect anything alive on this floor besides their team and a couple dozen, massive pigs. Skrug was still unsuccessfully chasing one of the beasts. It was comical to watch his bandy, bowed legs chase after something he wanted to eat so badly.
“How do you want to handle this?” Lash asked.
“I could try ordering him to let this go, but I’d rather let him get what he wants. We just need to speed the process up,” Kyle said.
Then he called out to their lycan, “Kierra, can you show the troll how to hunt?”
In a flash she had whipped past the slow-moving troll and pounced on the giant pig. Actually, not onto; rather, she smashed into its back legs. Her claws extended nearly six vicious inches and ripped through its hamstring. The impact sent the creature to the ground, squealing. The severed hamstring kept it from immediately regaining its feet.
That was all it took for Skrug to catch up and bring his axe down, removing the creature’s head. Blood and viscera came leaking out, but there was no gushing flow of blood like Kyle would have expected.
During this time, he had continued trying to work on containing his aura. So much so, that he lost situational awareness on his surroundings. Had it not been for Hilde calling out a warning. he would have never seen the Mor’dverg hunting party.
These dark dwarves were not in the heavy plate armor of the warriors they had confronted before. These Mor’dverg were in light leathers, and while most of the dozen dark dwarves who appeared were carrying twelve-foot-long spears, likely intended to kill the boars with, there were four who carried heavy crossbows.
Without even trying to discuss anything, the desire for death swelled up within the Mor’dverg so powerfully, that Kyle could feel it from almost two hundred feet away. He watched as the archers took aim. Before they could fire, though, he reached out with Earth Essence to try and sink them into the ground.
His technique worked, and with his growing powers, he was able to mire all four of the archers up to their armpits. That didn’t stop them from taking some poorly aimed shots at his team, but Gilthan showed that he was prepared make use of his newly acquired Earth Essence, too.
The sorcerer jutted both his hands out. His fingers were spread and his palms faced upwards; then, like some maniacal conductor, he raised his hands. As he did so, the ground rumbled, swelled and then an earthen wall erupted up between the party and the dark dwarves. The heavy crossbow bolts impacted into the wall without so much as the sound of a dull thud.
Overhead, Hilde dove at the group of hunters. A blaze of fire trailed her, almost as if she was dropping napalm on the pitiful creatures. Even when they erupted into flames so persistent that rolling on the ground wouldn’t put them out, Kyle was unable to feel sorry for them.
These were foul creatures who had allowed themselves to be corrupted. Inside himself, he had no sympathy for the weak, and these had lost one of the most important battles. They had surrendered their very identities and allowed something, or someone else, to control them.
He shook his head at that rather morbid thought, but a part of him couldn’t stop believing it. He surged across the ground and once he was within a few feet of them sent out a thin line of Rage Burst. It severed their heads from their burning bodies, which unfortunately didn’t have the decency to fall down and die. It was macabre how, even as they burned, they didn’t make a sound—other than the crackling of their sizzling flesh.
The four who had been sunk into the ground were too low to be beheaded by his cleaving attack, but Lash and Kierra made short work of them, ripping their heads from each of their bodies. Kierra realized they had killed all twelve and looked at the others with a shrug. “I didn’t think we would be able to get much information out of them, given the condition they were in.”
Lash only nodded before looking at Kyle and saying, “She is probably right. I know we are supposed to be trying to get a prisoner to question but it looks like we keep killing them.”
Kyle shrugged as he said, “Tactical information would be useful, but we might as well just keep going.” Then he started to turn back towards the door while saying over his shoulder, “Skrug, there isn’t time to eat. We need to get down to the bottom floor.”
He was already too late though, as the half-troll was already stuffing his mouth with uncooked chunks of the massive pig. Kyle chuckled to himself when he remembered that he had considered trying to give a divine splinter to Skrug. Probably would have been a complete waste, unless it would have significantly elevated the man’s intelligence.
“Skrug, that is just plain disgusting. You need to let us cook your food before you eat it,” Kyle drawled.
The half-troll had the good grace to at least look embarrassed. “Skrug, hungry.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. I don’t like the dried meat and trail rations either, but we have a mission to finish. Can I count on you, big man?”
Skrug stood and started wiping his bloody fingers off onto his thighs. “Skrug not let boss man down.”
All Kyle could do was shake his head. He seemed to be doing that quite often lately. Hopefully, Hilde’s disdain for mortals wasn’t rubbing off on him. “Okay everyone. I expected this to be more of a challenge after the first few that we fought. But with Gilthan’s and my upgrades, these guys are push-overs. Let’s try to get down to the bottom floor without any more distractions, okay?”
“Just think how easy it would be, if you had given Kierra a full splinter, or if you restored mine,” Lash said. Though she had a grin on her face, he could hear the bitter undertone in her words.
“All in due time, Marie. We are still getting to know each other,” Kyle said.
Hilde jumped in, “I don’t think this is a complete waste of time. It is giving you an opportunity to work on controlling your aura. You can clearly use far more essence than you used to be able to, and it seems to come naturally to you. But you are still practically glowing, to my senses.”
“I’m working on it. You know me. I have to do everything the hard way.”
“Oh, I’m not going to complain about your ‘hard’ way,” Hilde said with a chuckle.
Surprisingly, Kierra joined in with her, giggling.
He didn’t even bother to answer that, but simply headed back to the stairwell. “I’m taking the lead this time. Kierra, stay right behind me, in case I need a scout.
Skrug, you’ll protect our back. The rest of you, form up between us—just don’t blast me if you feel the need to burn or electrocute something.”
Everyone fell in line behind him, and soon they were working their way down to the 4th floor. Something was off though, and Kyle felt it before he saw it. During the time they had been distracted on the 3rd floor, something had been set up on the stairs.
The Mor’dverg had set up a barricade and there were now several warrior types standing behind the impromptu barrier they had made with a pile of broken furniture. There was one figure who struck him as different than all the others. Rather than wearing plate armor and wielding an axe or similar weapon, he wore a blacksmith’s apron and no helm, though he did have goggles on his face. In his hand he held a large hammer, but it was a tool, not a weapon.
The blacksmith looked just as drained of color as the others, but he was looking around more intently. In fact, as Kyle looked at the dwarven smith, he seemed nervous and almost feverish. He hadn’t seen Kyle yet, for some reason, or at least he hadn’t reacted to seeing him. When they did make eye contact, there was a deep red glow in those manic eyes.
“You can’t have it,” the man shouted wildly. Then he urged the warriors to get ready to repel the invaders.
Kyle reached out with his senses and saw what he expected to see. If the other Mor’dverg were full of Death Essence, then this man was virtually saturated. It actually seemed a miracle that he was alive at all, with that much of Dod’s force within him.
The closer Kyle looked at him, the more he realized that maybe what he was living wasn’t actually life at all.
He looked at the barricade and realized it was going to make a frontal assault more difficult. With his great strength, he could rush through the pile of furniture, turning it into so much kindling, but that would leave him open to attack by those very sharp weapons the Mor’dverg wielded.
Fortunately for Kyle’s sake, he realized what a bad idea it had been for the dark dwarves to build up a barricade of broken wooden furniture when faced by a fire celestial.
“Hilde, burn it down. Scorch them all to cinders, so we can keep going,” Kyle commanded.
“Oh, I love it when you talk like that,” Hilde purred.
He didn’t look back at her, as he didn’t want to feed into her playful banter, but she continued speaking.
“This might actually be a good time for a bit of combo power.”
That piqued Kyle’s interest, so he turned to the flaming beauty and asked, “Thinking that Gilthan’s tornadoes might go well with your flames?”
“Yes, it’s always a good idea to feed the flame,” the celestial said, making a motion with her hand like she was fanning herself.
“Okay. Lash and Kierra, step back with me and we’ll let them do their thing.”
A moment later, you would have assumed that Hilde and Gilthan had been working together for years, rather than just a few hours. The elf began by using Sky Essence to shift the concentration of oxygen in the air around the barricade. Kyle hadn’t even thought about that, but it was ingenious.
He smiled as he realized how nice it was good to have talented help.
Once the concentration of oxygen had built up, Gilthan set a gentle cycle of swirling air around the barricade and the warriors behind it. It likely felt pretty subtle to those standing behind the barricade, but with Kyle’s expanded senses, he saw exactly what was going on. A part of him wanted to jump in and start helping, but he realized that if he did everything for them, then his team would never learn their own strengths.
This especially applied to Gilthan and Kierra.
The elf was sweating, but seemed to be enjoying the difficulty of simultaneously working both the air current and the gas composition. Kyle estimated that he had increased the oxygen concentration to just above 50%, or more than double what it normally was.
Gilthan smiled and said, “Okay, it’s ready.”
Hilde grinned and stepped forward. She conjured fire between her hands and began to stoke the ball of flame by feeding her essence into it. It shifted from an inviting, orange flame to a deep red, and kept transitioning as she condensed it in her hands. Once it had reached a whitish blue, the waves of heat rolling off of her were intense, but she kept pushing more essence into the ball.
Kyle could see what she was doing as she compressed it further, eventually creating a violet-colored flame that looked ready to consume anything.
“Kyle, you might want to put up a barrier,” she said.
He obliged her by forcing the stone of the wall to flow out across the corridor, forming a wall that cut them off from the Mor’dverg. Except he left a foot wide circle in the center of the stone. He gathered more Earth Essence and prepared to close this gap the second she launched her fire orb through the hole.
When Hilde stretched out her hand, a blast of flame rocketed from it, shooting the violet orb through the hole in the wall. As much as Kyle wanted to see the explosion, he wasn’t enough of a pyromaniac to risk burning them all in the backblast. He ended up being awfully glad that he’d made the wall.
Even with the stone barrier in place, the air in the stairwell seemed to ignite. The cyclone of air that Gilthan had created contained the worst of it, but the shockwave of the explosion rocked them. The sudden rush of air being sucked into the void the blast created knocked both Lash and Kierra to the ground, so Kyle followed them down, shielding them with his large body.
It didn’t hurt that he enjoyed the feeling of them pressed up tight against him. For some reason, he couldn’t stop being overprotective of them. When the earth stopped shaking, and the debris had finished falling, he finally stood and gave a small pinch to each of their backsides.
Lash jumped with a yelp, but Kierra simply gave him a throaty growl of desire.
He forced the stone barrier back into the wall, noting the cracks in it from the force of the explosion a floor down. Then he summoned his soul bound weapon and took point, walking downward. The stairs were still hot, but the heat was quickly fading.
He only made it halfway down to the next floor though, because a thirty-foot section of the stairs had been completely obliterated, as if a massive hand had slammed down and knocked everything out of its way.
There was nothing left of either the barricade or the Mor’dverg who had been manning it. He smiled at the brutal efficiency and overkill his team had utilized.
Gilthan let out a jubilant shout, and then turned and scooped the protesting Hilde into a hug.
Kyle knew that feeling. It was a great thing to let loose sometimes. “Good job, you two. Skrug, can you make that jump? It’s down a bit, so I think if you jump from the edge, you can land down near the fifth floor.”
“Skrug try, if boss man say so,” was the only answer that Kyle got.
“Okay, I’m gonna go first, then you follow after me. I will use Sky Essence to help guide you, but it's a stairwell so there’s not really anywhere for you to go, other than up or down. Just make sure to land on your feet.”
Kyle jumped down and used a bit of Sky Essence to create a small current of air under himself to slow his descent. It wasn’t really necessary, as he could easily manage the thirty-foot drop on his own, but it never hurt to practice new powers. Sky Essence was new to him, so he needed to get a feel for it.
Skrug followed after him, and even with Kyle’s help, he still managed to slam his head into the wall. Of course, the half-troll’s head was so hard, that Kyle felt sorry for the stone wall. After that, Lash and Kierra both made the leap. He used his power to cushion their falls too, despite how graceful they made the jump look. Hilde and Gilthan didn’t need any help, as they were able to make the jump without his assistance.
Now, they were only feet away from the entrance to the fifth and final floor of the dungeon. The concentration of essence in general, and Death Essence specifically, had jumped once again. Kyle purposefully let loose and sucked in essence. The power r
ushed into him but most of the death energy had nowhere to go, as he had already reached his limit of twelve. It wasn’t a very impressive amount, but at least the essence down here was so concentrated that he didn’t have to go through the process of condensing it himself.
He looked back at the rest party and asked, “Ready everyone?”
They all nodded, and he opened the door.
Chapter 21 - Death at the Heart
Kyle opened the door and rushed in. This room looked more like a massive workshop than anything else. There were a handful of warriors who began to charge at him as soon as he entered the room. As War Essence surged through him, time almost felt like it slowed down.
He realized this was a trick of perception, but it was still interesting. Even while springing forward to meet the oncoming warriors, another part of his mind was evaluating the room. In the center was a large forge. Standing at it was a twin to the blacksmith who had been incinerated in the stairwell. He was hammering away at something, but it was hard to see what it might be from here.