by Aleron Kong
“No. No!” the lich cried up to the cruel face. “Do not abandon me, my master!” The response was not what Singh had wanted.
Rakshasha looked down at Singh and for the first time, but not the last, Richter saw the implacability of a godlike being’s displeasure. The Exile gave a simple command before disappearing, ||DIE!||
The sphere expanded once more, spinning furiously, and bolts of magic began to fly out in every direction. One, as thick as Richter was tall, barreled directly at the roof that the Companions stood upon.
“Hit the deck!” Richter cried out, pulling Sion down with him.
The beam of Spirit and Dark magic shot over their heads and struck the wall of faces. The metal barrier burst apart with a deafening CLANG. The force of the magic beam’s impact rippled the floor of the walkway like a wave. Both Companions were thrown five feet into the air to fall down with a heavy thud a moment later. The lich was further from the impact and was still behind his shield, but the reverberations in the floor reached him nonetheless and threw him off his feet.
Richter looked at his fallen enemy with a fierce grin on his face. The wall was down. They might actually survive this. They might actually survive this! The chaos seed’s heart filled with hope. Of course, that was when a deep rumble shook the walkway. Richter’s smile turned into a wide-eyed “oh shit” face as the end of the platform began to tilt downward into the abyss.
*You have to move, master!* Alma screamed into his mind.
*You think?* he shot back, scrambling to his feet.
“We have to move,” he shouted to Sion.
“You think?” the sprite spat. The two friends got to their feet, even ready to brave the traps if the alternative was falling into the abyss, but a voice stopped them.
“You will never reach the wall alive.” Singh’s snakeskin voice was thick with fury and hate as the Companions turned back to regard him. “I will survive this, but you will not. Before you die, know that when I have regained my strength and rebuilt my Mausoleum, I will see the Hearth Tree burned down to cinders. As for your village, I will rip the life from the children and raise them again as undead. The last sight your people will have is of their cherished young feasting upon their own flesh.”
Richter turned towards the lich, “Well, that’s strikes two and three right there!”
Black Ice found its way into the chaos seed’s hand and the sprite nocked an arrow. Singh stared back, his emerald staff in hand. Mage, melee and archer squared off as the ground continued to shake beneath their feet. The walkway had stopped shifting, but there was now a definite incline.
“You two are no match for me,” Singh shouted in anger.
As Alma flew into view behind the lich, Richter just told him, “You don’t count so good.”
With bolts of energy flying above their heads in all directions, Alma unleashed one of her own. Her most-focused Psi Blast bathed the lich from behind. Even his shield could not block all of the Deeper Magic attack. Singh staggered back with a startled cry. His high Mental resistance saved him from some of the effects, but not all.
BEGIN COMBAT LOG
Alma attacks Singh with Level 3 Psi Blast for 4 points.
Singh resists Stun!
Singh is Disoriented!
Singh resists Confusion!
END COMBAT LOG
The damage done was negligible, but the Disorient debuff made the lich stumble once more. So much so in fact that he broke the primary rule of magical shields and kids in church. Do… not… touch… it.
The lich’s hand only grazed the boundary of his magical barrier, but that was enough. The previously invisible shield popped like a soap bubble. That was all the opening Sion needed. He couldn’t risk an imbued shot with Alma still flying over the lich’s head, but he had already chosen the arrow he would shoot if given the chance. There were not many left in Richter’s quiver, but the chaos seed had been saving this one for a special occasion.
The truesilver arrowhead glowed golden with a Life Attack enchantment. The tip glistened with Sun Lotus Poison. To Sion, time seemed to slow as he entered a perfect moment that contained only him, his weapon and his target. The arrow string thrummed as his arrow sailed through the air, catching the lich high in the chest!
Once more, the Mausoleum saved Singh’s unlife. Even as the poison coursed through the lich’s undead body, much of the damage was transferred to his minions. More skeletons and zombies dropped lifeless, and the pain helped him shake off the Disorient debuff. With a snarl, Singh pointed his staff at the Companions, prepared to destroy both them and the small dragonling. Richter had not hesitated either though. As soon as Alma had struck, he had sprinted forward. His stat-enhanced body had raced to close the distance to the Mage, but even he would not have been fast enough to bring Black Ice into range. That was why it was wonderful that it had never been his intention.
As Singh brought his staff down to fire a magical bolt that would vaporize the Companions, Richter locked eyes with his familiar. Time ceased to exist for the two of them. Not even the hint of a moment passed for everyone else, but for himself and his familiar, they lived out a lifetime. Her body turned to pure psychic energy and poured into him. Scales grew, fangs formed and talons extended from his hands. They both became more, but also became one.
To Singh and Sion, Richter transitioned in an instant. The lich’s eyes began to widen in realization. From the chaos seed’s memories, he knew Richter could trigger a powerful breath attack in his dragon form, but the lich had not survived centuries without being formidable. In an act that was as much reflex as choice, Singh summoned a magical barrier.
It was not nearly as powerful as his previous defenses, and it only protected him on one side like a forged shield, but it was nearly an instant cast, something that was only possible thanks to an expensive Mage Talent. It had saved his unlife before and should let him weather at least the worst of Richter’s attack. Singh turned sideways and bent down to ensure his entire body was hidden behind his barrier of eldritch magic and to present the smallest profile possible. Once more, his staff remained upright and to the side. The moment the chaos seed’s flames were spent, he would summon the artifact to his hand and then he would render his enemies unto dust! Singh’s plan would have worked if not for one small problem. The lich was not Richter’s target.
Richter’s Messeji form exhaled a powerful gout of near-invisible flame. The attack normally dealt fifty to one hundred points of damage per second, but that was increased by a factor of five when items were targeted. Even that might not have been enough, but Alma knew this attack was all or nothing. She used the last points from her absorbed Psi Crystals to increase the damage of Richter’s fire to more than a thousand points per second. All their wrath and fury poured onto the emerald head of the lich’s staff and the artifact began to burn.
In the first second, the entire staff began to blacken in the invisible flame. In the next, the emerald centerpiece developed the faintest of cracks. The lich saw his mistake and summoned it to hand. Even then, he could not hide it completely behind his small shield. Instead, he began a counterattack.
He leveled the staff at Richter’s dragon form and triggered a deadly beam of eldritch light, but the damage was already done. Another arrow fired by Sion broke apart on the lich’s magic shield. Singh did not even notice. His attention was focused on a crack in the giant emerald, a flaw that had already widened to the length of a palm in the third second of Richter’s flame attack. The eldritch magic Singh was trying to command leaked out of the breach in the powerful item. Singh howled in anger yet again!
To Richter’s profound surprise, the lich then threw the priceless staff over the side of the walkway. Though he was an Enchanter, there were still many things he did not know about his Profession. One of those truths was that there were few things more dangerous than channeling massive amounts of power through a flawed item. He soon learned the danger though when the staff exploded before it had even cleared the side of the w
alkway.
As soon as the artifact had left his undead fingers, Singh had summoned another near-instant shield, but he was still too close to the epicenter of the detonation. The blast expanded outward in a sphere, crumpling his magic barrier like tissue paper. Singh did not even have time to scream as the energy blasted him to the other side of the walkway. Richter was laid low as well. Though not as close, the destruction of the artifact-level item, coupled with the energy Singh had been channeling through it, was enough to blacken his scales and blind him in one eye. Even Sion was thrown backward, his unprotected head striking the metal ground of the Mausoleum’s roof and rendering him senseless. The Core building continued to shake as more bolts of destructive power struck it, and the fate of kingdoms balanced on a knife’s edge.
CHAPTER 105 – Day 150 – Kuborn 39, 0 AoC
Above them, the ball of magical energy continued to expand and indiscriminately fire magic in every direction. The Exile’s power had struck the Mausoleum more than one hundred times and each attack had destroyed more of the Core building. Only a quarter of its durability remained. The magical beams had struck the undead and voidlings as well. The undead’s army had been hit three times and thousands had been slain. One narrow bolt of Earth magic had also cut through the devastator skeleton’s knee. Both it and the mauler had suffered during their fight, but that strike drove the undead to the ground. The void creature was now atop the colossal undead and was pulling it apart piece by piece. It slavered and howled in triumph, though its own body had also suffered grievous wounds.
Unknown to Richter, the battle had continued to rage in the Dungeon. Undead had poured in through the portal in waves. Each was repelled by the allied forces of the Mist Village and Hearth Tree, but at a high cost in lives and resources. The arrows, mana and potions of the allied forces were not unlimited, and the red stone pillars of the Dungeon provided perfect bulwarks for the undead to hide behind.
It was during the fourth wave that several Rogue ghasts climbed the stone walls of the Barbican and began to lay waste to the sprite archers. Ten meidon and wood sprites died before the last Rogue suffered the final death. The undead that had crested the battlements were defeated, but the damage was done. Without the defenders’ imbued arrows attacking the invaders, the undead Mages had been able to complete a powerful spell that destroyed the portcullis.
The surviving allies atop the parapet continued to fire down at the melee undead that now stormed the outer courtyard, but they could not withstand the return fire of dozens of undead archers and casters that attacked without fear for their own unnatural lives. The sprites atop the walls fought to the very last, but the twenty men and women could not hold. As the last wounded sprites were dragged down the stairs into the inner room of the Barbican, the undead army began hacking at the wooden door that protected its last line of defense.
Only two things saved the allied forces from being overwhelmed in that moment. One, Roswan triggered one of the Barbican’s hidden defenses. An eleven-inch-thick slab of marbled quartz dropped down to protect the door to the inner room with a resounding thud. The falling stone crushed three skeletal Warriors beneath it. Even that defense would not last forever though.
The larger undead beasts Richter had seen in Nien’s memory had come through the portal as well. It was not long before a four-ton scaled creature that stood ten feet at the shoulder ran at the stone slab and rammed it with its horns. While it bounced back from its first attack, it was not dazed in the slightest and just backed up to attack again. The third time it slammed into the stone, cracks appeared in the marbled quartz. The fifth blow made dinner plate-sized flakes of stone fall to the ground. The people of the tree and mist began to organize a retreat through the shimmering portal that led to the Entrance Chamber. They all knew the Barbican’s defenses would not last more than minutes, and thought it better to continue the fight behind the village walls and moat than to be slaughtered in the Dungeon.
Through it all, Roswan stood silently in the corner, letting the fighters work, ready to do his part. If the inner room was breached, he would drop the second stone slab, protecting the portal to the Entrance Chamber. No one else, not even Richter, knew that the Barbican’s last defense could only be triggered from inside the Room. The elf planned to rush to a Node and hopefully teleport to safety once it was done, but he knew he might not make it. That did not deter him. He was Roswan. He would see the job done.
The defenses of the Barbican saved lives, but there was a second factor that helped the allied forces survive. The undead did not come through the portal alone. Several hundred voidlings had been created by the void mauler’s chains of dominance. Most remained with their new master to fight the devastator and the thousands of undead still with it, but dozens had poured into the Dungeon. They fought the undead, motivated not by any desire to preserve the living, but because they reviled everything that was not themselves so perfectly that there was no room for shades of hate. Both the living and dead were their enemies, and the voidlings would destroy or be destroyed. There were no other options. The implacable undead fought back, sometimes literally with tooth and nail, but also with magic and weaponry. The voidlings would fall occasionally, but always took several undead with them.
The Dungeon had become a symphony of pain and death, and through it all the throbbing heart of the barrow rejoiced. The energy flowing into it was so much more varied than anything it had ever tasted before. The Bloodstone Dungeon was barely sentient, and had a much harder time processing sensation with its Harbinger gone, but a memory of a dark-skinned man present at its transformation rose to its mind. If it had known what gratitude was, it would have felt it for this man. It would have thanked him for the cornucopia of rare pleasures and energies that it was now able to feast upon.
The black creatures filled with rage were especially interesting. The Dungeon had to struggle with a concept until it came up with the word “taste,” but it felt the term to be right. They did not taste as good as the red blood bags, but the purity of their magic was helping it advance one of its Motivations. It wondered briefly at the significance of the Void magic that was beginning to be awakened in it, but such considerations were currently beyond its comprehension. Instead, it contented itself with the gifts it was being given.
Not only was life energy being released by the deaths of so many creatures, but items as well. The Dungeon had a much lower chance of learning and reproducing items gained in this way, as opposed to anything dropped in the Well of Offering, where it had a 100% retention rate. Still, it gained many interesting imprints of items, weapons and armor.
Even more fascinating to it were the bodies of the undead. By degrading those quickly, it learned the intricacies of their forms and natures in a way that only a Dungeon could. Far back in the evolution of the Labyrinth, it had developed the ability to understand the true essence of the lifeforms it consumed. The level of understanding put Richter’s Analyze skill to shame. Just as parents passed on traits to their children, Dungeons gained traits from the Labyrinth. Some were stronger and some weaker in various traits; the Barrow of the Chaos Serpent was innately strong in its ability to understand its victims.
Ghasts, vampires, zombies, skeletons and other types of undead were absorbed and processed. The Dungeon learned about not only the structural composition of the undeads’ bodies, but their strengths and weaknesses as well. The barrow also learned what the creatures had been like in life. Singh’s army was comprised of dwarves, humans, orcs, ogres, naiads, centaurs, beastkin and many other sapient races. The Dungeon learned them all.
The beastkin were especially interesting as their forms were so very similar to the creatures the Dungeon could already spawn. It immediately tried to do so, but found that they were not “beast” enough to fit within the spectrum of monsters the barrow could make. If the Dungeon could have felt disappointed, it would not have done so for long.
In addition to the sapient beings that had been turned into undead slaves, there
were animals and beasts in the lich’s army. Mixed in with the Professional Warriors, Mages and Rogues were stone spiders, cave wargs, and hand-sized scorpions that injected acid strong enough to melt rock. After absorbing one, the Dungeon learned they were called albinid pincers. It learned to make these beasts and many more as they died inside of it.
One form in particular confused it. The bones of the skeleton were much harder and the minute structures that formed them seemed to have been replaced by rock. The creature had components that reminded the Dungeon of both beastkin and beast. It walked on two feet and held weapons like most of the small creatures releasing their energy, but the Dungeon was fairly sure it could make this creature… in time.
The battle continued and the Dungeon shot up in levels. Four, five, six and seven came and went as more undead and voidlings were destroyed. It glutted on the energy being released and it began to feel something strange. The Dungeon’s awareness was too rudimentary to even consider the implications of what it was about to do, and even Scholars could not have said why the barrow did what came next. Perhaps it was merely fulfilling the dictates of Richter’s Call of the Dungeon. Perhaps it was self-motivated to protect its Master. It was even possible that vestiges of the Bloodstone’s consciousness felt… gratitude at the feast it was being offered, but whatever the reason, the Dungeon performed two actions to preserve the people of the mist and tree.
The Barrow of the Chaos Serpent had used its Blood nature many times. The Deeper magic manifested when the Dungeon grew monsters, absorbed spilled blood and performed several other instinctual actions. Until now, however, it had ignored and neglected an even greater reservoir of Power, the Higher Energy of Chaos. It did not understand the Power. It had felt that the infinite possibilities of the roiling grey energy seemed as likely to hurt as help.