The Quizard Mountains: A Dungeon Core Epic (Station Cores Book 2)

by Jonathan Brooks

  Strangely, nothing accosted them as they approached the entrance to the next room. She was expecting some sort of opposition after successfully navigating through the previous room; when none appeared, it only put them both on edge even more.

  After two left turns, the passageway they were following eventually ended in a wall of dry, brittle, and five-foot-tall dead grass blocking their way into another large room. She wasn’t tall enough to easily see the other side, but Moxwell told her that he could see an exit to the next area directly across from the entrance. He had to stand on his tippy-toes to see that far, as the grass was slightly taller in various places around the room.

  Standing on the edge of the new room, Rosewyn could only wonder why and how all that grass was able to grow down there – even if it was dead now. Did it somehow get planted and grown here? Was it transported from the surface? Why does it cover the entire room, and why was it only here and not in the previous room?

  All these questions and more flitted through her mind as she took in the scene and extended her senses until it covered the entire room. There was so much foliage in the way that it was hard for her Air affinity to pick anything up, her Earth affinity was still negatively affected by the presence of the mystery stone, her Water affinity located traces of water throughout the room that were hard to pinpoint, and there were no sources of body heat that she could detect with her Fire affinity.

  Which meant that – at least to Rosewyn – they hopefully wouldn’t have to worry about being attacked by anything. That didn’t mean there wasn’t anything at all because there were a number of things that didn’t emit body heat – the undead for example – but she didn’t detect any of their presence with a small flicker of searching throughout the room with her Dark affinity.

  Moxwell cautiously parted the grass along the edge and trampled his way through, trailblazing a pathway for Rosewyn to follow in his footsteps. She could hear the brittle grass crack and crunch beneath his feet as he made his way towards the exit on the far side of the room.

  Even with her extra-sensory perceptions through her affinities’ detection fields, Rosewyn felt blind as she trudged after her husband. The fact that they weren’t able to tell her much made it felt as though she had one of her eyes poked out – she could still see, but it didn’t have any depth to it.

  Since she couldn’t look ahead, as the grass was just a bit too tall, she looked up at the ceiling. Pyramid-shaped, the top of the room sloped upwards until it ended in the middle with a stone grate five feet across covering a large hole. Unfortunately, she wasn’t at a good angle from where she was walking to see inside the opening.

  However, now that she was fully inside the room, she could “feel” as the air in the room was sucked up through the grate with quite a lot of force. It was hard to hear over the cracking and destruction Moxwell was causing, but she thought she could hear a faint whirring sound coming from above them. It was definitely strange, and Rosewyn couldn’t think why anyone would need that kind of airflow inside the room – especially one that was full of dry, dead grass.

  “Do you smell that?” Moxwell whispered at her without turning around, his momentum through the grass stopped with his foot raised in the air.

  She didn’t smell anything, but that wasn’t surprising because her husband had an acute sense of smell from his ability enhancements. “What do you smell?” she whispered back, even though she didn’t know why they were trying to be quiet. They were making so much noise walking through the grass that it shouldn’t matter.

  “It smells a little like spilt lamp oil or something like it. Not sure which direction its coming from – it’s almost as if it is all around us. I didn’t notice it until now because I had shut my nose off to concentrate on my other senses.”

  Why would it smell like oil in here? Some plants secrete an oil-like substance, but I don’t see any of them in here – although it’s not like I can see much anyway. Perhaps they are hidden beneath the grass. She acknowledged the assessment of his nose and told him to push on, as she had no idea what to do with the knowledge.

  Nodding his head, Moxwell took two more steps when suddenly everything clicked into place, “My love, we need to hurry. I think I know why—”.

  And that was when all hell literally broke loose.

  In multiple places around the room, the sounds of very small explosions rocked the room as the grass started to catch fire. The dry nature of the fuel, coupled with the oil-based accelerant, allowed the conflagration to spread rapidly. In front of them, the fire was burning so hot and dispersed so fast that there was soon an inferno blocking their way to the exit.

  The smoke fortunately wasn’t that much of problem, as it was immediately sucked up into the ceiling – the shape of it acting as a kind of chimney. The flow of air also increased the size of the blaze as it stoked the flames until they were surrounded in seconds.

  Fortunately, Rosewyn could easily manipulate and snuff out the nearby burning grass, but before she could, she was attacked by a snake the size of her arm and a head the same size as hers. It blended into the nearby undisturbed grass because it was nearly the same color, and when the serpent launched itself upwards its large fangs focused on her neck. Mox was there in moments, the snake that attacked him at the same time now headless and still twitching in separate halves along the ground.

  A sword slice intercepted the disproportionally-large-headed snake in its jaws and cut it in half due to its momentum. The two halves of the snake parted around her, like she was an island in a stream. She didn’t get a chance to thank him as three more attacked from multiple sides, his speed working overtime to get to them all.

  Knowing that she was as protected as possible, she instead concentrated on the rising heat from the burning grass all around. She extinguished those nearest her with barely a thought and told Moxwell to head for the exit while it was still clear.

  He led the way, armored boots kicking pieces of snake out of his path as it crunched down on first the dry and then the dark ashes of burnt grass on the way to the exit. As they got closer, they were attacked another time by four more snakes, which were easily dispatched with the quick, precise movements of her husband.

  As they got closer to the tunnel exit, something nagged at the back of her mind. It was only when they were near it that she figured out what was wrong – there was no air flowing through the portal they could see in front of them. As they got close enough, they could finally see why – the exit was expertly painted on the stone, making it appear as if it was the way out.

  Cursing under his breath, Moxwell turned around and looked over the rest of the room, two-thirds of which was on fire. Nevertheless, he was able to see another exit in the opposite corner of the room. Before he rushed off towards it, she stopped him.

  “Hold on, let me try something,” she told him, as she extended her Air affinity. Despite the air rushing through the ceiling, she could still feel a slight breeze coming from somewhere. As she concentrated on the exit in the far corner, she couldn’t feel anything coming from it either. In fact, it felt exactly like the false wall they had just run up against.

  Concentrating further, she felt for the incoming breeze that was even more heavily-infused with power. She finally found it in the opposite corner of the entrance – however, when her husband looked that way he couldn’t see anything.

  Trusting her senses, however, he led the way and charged ahead, trampling grass along their path. Two, three, and then four more times they were attacked, with larger and larger quantities of snakes attacking at the same time. Even though their strikes were insanely fast – Mox was faster. Snake heads went flying, only to burn up in the encroaching blaze.

  Theoretically, she could have spent a significant portion of her power eliminating the entire inferno; putting out fires not already under her control was inherently more difficult than starting them. She didn’t do that because she wasn’t sure what else was in store for them in that place, so she decided to cons
erve what she did have. She also only had a few Power Potions that Cordpower supplied them at the start of their journey; saving those for when they were really needed was the smart move.

  Besides, as she put out the fires in their path, the going went much easier as the way was clear of tall grass. Additionally, the more that burnt away, the less places the snakes had to hide and ambush them from. Not that they were that much of a threat – they were more annoying than anything.

  They eventually came to the corner where she felt the breeze and they discovered why the exit seemed not to be there. Five feet from the tunnel leading out was another wall that led up to the ceiling, covering and camouflaging the passageway unless you were looking at it from the right direction. It was there in plain sight when you were close enough, but if you looked at it from nearly any other direction it would be practically invisible.

  The exit was guarded by a dozen of the big-headed snakes – they surrounded the two Proctans as they approached. Rosewyn and Moxwell stood back-to-back as they watched the incoming serpents. She figured they probably would’ve tried to sneak up on them, but there was very little unburnt grass left; as a result, they quickly assembled in a circular formation and sprang forward together. And not just at a similar time – the exact same time.

  Rosewyn filed that interesting fact away as she took down half of the incoming circle with a well-controlled and economical slash of sharpened air. Pieces of snake flew everywhere as her attack impacted them with deadly force; a few even continued their momentum and bounced harmlessly off her air shield.

  She didn’t have to turn around to know that Moxwell had finished his half without difficulty – she could feel his steady presence behind her and his attention was focused on any additional threats. When they were sure everything was dead and there were no more to accost them, she followed her husband out of the exit, leaving the rest of the grass inside the room to burn behind them.

  Chapter 32 – The third room

  The tunnel connecting the second room with the third wasn’t as innocuous as the first – this time Moxwell almost got a face-full of exceedingly powerful acid. Fortunately, they were experienced enough with ambushes in the wild that their guard was up even though the first hallway was trap-free. They didn’t let their attention lapse; as a result, even though he sprung the trap, his quick actions led to his avoid being melted in an acid bath.

  The first she knew of it was when he quickly jumped far backwards, falling almost into her arms as his foot depressed a very small, well-hidden section of the floor. Less than a second later, a rain of liquid fell from the ceiling, practically pressure-washing the floor in a spray designed to coat everything within a 10-foot radius.

  At first, she thought it was water, but upon closer inspection – when the sprung trap was finished spraying – she noticed that the floor was bubbling. The same heavy, black and white-spotted stone that had resisted cracking even when it fell hard from the ceiling on top of Moxwell was being eaten away by the acidic liquid. It was only leaving some pock-marks here and there; however, the fact that it was able to affect it at all was a cause for concern.

  They gave the still-bubbling pool of acid a wide berth as they inched their way around it, careful to avoid any stray spots that may have escaped from the initial dousing area. Once they were clear of danger from that trap, Moxwell led the way even more carefully from then on. Now knowing what to look for, he was able to avoid tripping two more of the deadly traps as they made their way to the next room. Which looked entirely different from the previous ones.

  No columns of stone, no dried grass; in fact, when they peered in from the entranceway, all they saw was another wall a dozen feet in front of them. She saw Moxwell peer inside and look around in confusion. She joined him and saw that although the ceiling was about half the size from the tunnel (about 10 feet tall), it appeared to be just another hallway.

  Walking very carefully, Moxwell ensured that every step he took wasn’t going to trigger another trap as he progressed down the hallway. At the end of the current passage, Rosewyn could see that it turned to the right about twenty feet further down. Halfway to the corner, a blur of stone emerged vertically from the wall, slashing across the hallway and narrowly missing Mox as he jumped forwards out of the way. It disappeared into the opposite wall, but another blade soon appeared from the first wall, only to disappear like the first. This “rotation” of the stone blades (which she could see were thin, sharpened lengths of the same stone that surrounded them) was constant, with another filling the hallway four or five per second or so.

  She could see a thin slice taken out of the walls and ceiling where the stone blade was able to pass through without hindrance. Sudden basic understanding hit her as she realized that the blade or blades was rotating along a central axis somehow. There had to be a way to take advantage of this knowledge.

  Moxwell didn’t seem like he was in any danger on the other side of the blade, other than being uncomfortable from being separated from her. “Hold on, let me try something,” she told him before he could do anything foolish. Although he could get through the gap between blades easily by himself, she didn’t want him to try to do it yet while carrying her at the same time. There was no way she’d be able to get through by herself and the risk was greater when he was carrying her.

  She didn’t think she could arrest its forward momentum – she remembered how heavy even a thin slab of the stone was. That didn’t mean she couldn’t help it along.

  Fortunately, Air was her favorite and most versatile affinity. She did two things to speed up the blade: she thinned out the air in front and pushed along the slightly wider backside of one of them with small, strategically-placed nodules of hardened air.

  She didn’t see any result at first, but she kept at it because the strain on her power was almost negligible despite the rapidly changing targets. Eventually – after about ten seconds – she could see a rapid increase in its speed. Now, instead of four or five instances of the blade flashing across, it was so fast that she couldn’t even see each one individually.

  “What the hell are you doing? I don’t think even I can get through that now!” Moxwell yelled, trying to be heard over the sound of the quickly-spinning stone propeller. She didn’t answer, instead concentrating on maintaining the pressure she was exerting on one of the blades. It grew increasingly hard to do as the nearby air disturbance tried to rip away the nodules of air she had placed on it. After another thirty seconds of it going faster and faster, she couldn’t maintain the pressure anymore because as soon as anything she created was formed it was destroyed just as quickly. She let off all the pressure and restored the air in front of the blade to normal levels.

  As soon as she did that, a horrible grinding noise sounded from above them, resulting in the most terrifying incident she had ever experienced. She could hear an explosion inside the ceiling, and the stone blade currently in the middle of the hallway broke off the central axis and flew towards her with such speed that even if Moxwell was right by her side it wouldn’t have made any difference.

  As it rotated in the air, she seemed to experience it in slow-motion as the hunk of sharpened stone flipped end-over-end multiple times as it sliced through the distance between them. She couldn’t move as she watched her death approach – her air shield wouldn’t do squat against the deadly projectile.

  Her eyes were barely able to follow the blade as it flew upwards, apparently aiming for a decapitation. She didn’t even feel it as one edge kissed her chin as the rest rotated around her face, slicing off the top of her ear and leaving a fine line of blood across her cheek. As it completed its rotation, she felt the end slice into her back, chopping off eight inches of her hair as well as cutting cleanly through her robe.

  Shock set in as the noise came to a stop above them and Moxwell rushed to her, heedless of any danger that might still be present. He grabbed her in his arms (sort of, since her air shield was still active) and quickly pushed her away as he looke
d for any serious wounds. She let him do what he wanted as she was still trying to process what just happened and how close she came to death. All because she wanted to try an experiment.

  It was over a minute before she realized she was being shaken and her brain caught up to her ears, “Are you alright? Talk to me! Are you hurt? What’s wrong? Fucking SPEAK damn you!”

  “Hey, I told you, watch your language,” her throat felt dry as she spoke, so her words came out in a croak instead of how she was intending.

  Moxwell didn’t care as tears welled up in his eyes, relief washing over his large frame as he realized she was ok. “Oh my Goddess, I thought something was really wrong with you when you didn’t respond to me. From what I can see, you only have some cuts along your face and your back. And, sorry to say, you’re missing part of your left ear. Nothing life-threatening at least. Drink some of your Healing Potion – it won’t grow your ear back, but it will stop the bleeding and heal those cuts. When we get out of here, we’ll see about regrowing it.”

  She nodded dumbly at his words, reflexively taking out the potion from her robes and drinking half of it without even tasting a thing. She was slowly coming back to the present, as she recovered from the closest call she had ever experienced.

  “And if you ever do anything like that again, I’ll kill you myself – that was stupid, idiotic, moronic, selfish, and foolish,” he said harshly, before his tone softened, “I almost lost you, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I don’t know what I would do if you died and I couldn’t prevent it.”

  She was taken aback by his words, but after a moment she realized it was coming from a place of love. She would’ve probably done the same thing if he did something stupid like that, but she’d probably never let him live it down either. She knew her Moxwell, though – he wouldn’t bring this up again, as long as she knew how foolish it was.