I sat back down. “So, what’s the move?”
“There’s a tunnel beneath the latrine,” she said. “Something’s down there.”
My brow lifted. “You really got a lot from that spell,” I noted.
She smiled at me. “Divination is my Affinity,” she said. “One of them, anyway.”
“What’s the other one?” I asked. I had only ever heard her refer to divination as her Affinity before. She mentioned it when we first met; I remembered it very clearly.
Before she could answer, a pair of naked blood-covered beauties walked through the doorway, still breathing heavy and reeling from whatever ecstasy they’d just shared. Their figures were incredible but they were so painted red that I couldn’t make out too many details—their lewd figures alone were enough to make me groan and shift in my seat, though.
I laughed at the pair of them. “I’m relieved you two worked out your differences so quickly.” They exchanged a look, and I was sure they were blushing, but it wasn’t possible to discern beneath all the blood.
Dahlia stood up, though, and cast the same cleansing spell that the ladies had used to remove the dust, mold, and dirt inside the house a short while earlier. The blood lifted itself off their bodies in droplets and then turned to a mist, dispersing altogether into the thinnest of vapors. Suddenly before me were two perfectly immaculate nude women with impossibly sexy bodies, their now-dry clothes bunched up in their hands or under their arms.
Carmilla scowled as the blood lifted off of her, and by the look on her face she was considering heading outside again just to get herself covered in the stuff once more.
“Don’t you fucking dare, Carmilla Tepes!” Dahlia exclaimed, clearly picking up the same vibe. The vampire gave an exaggerated pout as she hesitantly threw her dress back on over her lithe body.
“What happened to the panties?” I deigned to ask. “Or do I even want to know?”
“Oh you most definitely do,” Memento said. “But too bad for you, you weren’t there.” She stuck a tongue out at me, clearly very satisfied with herself, and, I could tell, quite relieved that the tension she’d felt with Carmilla was obviously no longer valid.
Now it was my turn to pout. Carmilla rolled her eyes. “She ripped them off, so its more of a lacy strap than a pair of panties now,” she explained. “I just left them outside.”
“What did you find out?” Memento said, pointing at the still-glowing crystal ball that floated in front of Dahlia as she pulled her own panties, skirt, and top back on hastily. I was disappointed to see those perfect pierced boobies disappearing from sight, but at least it helped me focus back up on the task at hand.
“We need to jump down the toilet,” Dahlia said matter-of-factly.
Everyone frowned. “Fucking figures,” Carmilla said, crossing her arms. “I say Memento goes first.”
“We literally just made love,” Memento complained, gawking at Carmilla’s resilient coldness toward her.
“We fucked,” Carmilla corrected her, but to my relief, she elbowed Memento playfully. “And it won’t be the last time.”
“Hey guys, I helped Dahlia use the crystal ball,” I said, trying to change the subject.
Dahlia laughed, “No, you didn’t,” she said. “I just wanted to hold your hands.” She fluttered eyelashes innocently at me and flashed a cute smile.
“Oh.” I felt heat rush to my cheeks as I tried to ignore my embarrassment. Before long, the rain had died down, and we headed back outside, this time toward the back entrance, where the latrine was waiting for us. It sat there, still red and dripping with blood, mocking us.
“I really don’t want to do this,” I said.
“I think it’s not going to be as bad as you think,” Dahlia said. To my surprise, she stepped forward and pushed open the door. From the inside of the latrine there was indeed a foul stench making its way over to us, but it wasn’t the smell of shit—it was the smell of death.
Chapter 29
Into the Muck
After conjuring a magical rope, it was Memento who led the way as we repelled down into the bowels of the latrine. Thankfully we didn’t have to go through the toilet. I don’t think that would have worked in terms of size. Instead, I used my ol’ faithful, Exploding Skull, to create a large hole in the wooden floor of the structure, which gave way to a surprisingly steep drop into not a shithole, but a dark and dismal cavern.
“I’m more than a little relieved that the latrine appears to have been a cover for whatever this really is,” Carmilla said as we climbed downward into the abyss.
I stifled a laugh. “Save your relief for when we hit the bottom,” I said darkly, suspecting that at least a few aimless fools probably used the latrine for its most apparent purpose at least a few times, assuming this place had any visitors at all.
Before long, the depths became so dark that Memento had to conjure a light spell which she focused through the tip of her wand, which was between her teeth. At one point, when she looked up at me to see how far behind we were, she reminded me of those pirates in old cartoons that climbed that topsails with a dagger or sword in their teeth. I chuckled at the thought, and she flashed me a look to denote her disapproval at my amusement, sensing it to be at her expense.
And at last, I heard the sound of Memento’s boots making purchase against the ground. Or something.
“Eww,” she said. “It’s squishy.” But then she looked down, and I watched as she realized she was standing on top of a mostly decayed, bloated corpse. “No, not eww! Oooo!”
“You should be less excited about standing on a dead body,” I remarked.
“Dibs on this one!” she said, beginning the familiar conjurations of a basic skeletal minion spell.
“You could wait until we reach the bottom,” Dahlia said, groaning in irritation, as flecks of rot shot upwards at us as the skeleton of the corpse ripped itself out of its body. Most of the gunk collided with me, being the most directly behind Memento.
I dropped to the floor. “That one’s mine,” I said, pointing at another body over in the corner, and I cast the same spell.
“We should name our skeletons,” Memento said. “You know, so we don’t get them confused.”
“Mine is Barry,” I said, thinking fast.
“Mine is Berry,’ she said, almost immediately. “But with an ‘e’, not an ‘a’, because he’s so sweet!”
I glared at her, dumbfounded. “That is so ridiculously unhelpful that I can’t even.” She flashed a wicked smile that I was getting quite familiar with. I found it hard to stay irritated with her.
Carmilla sighed and traded eye rolls with Dahlia. “Necromancers,” they complained in unison.
There was only one way to go—forward. There were no twists or turns. Of all the corridors and tunnels I’d been through in the last couple of weeks on my adventures at Esoterica, this was the straightest, most direct passage I’d seen, but it was far from elegant. It was clearly dug out, almost as if by a huge shovel, and I found myself having to bend my neck and crouch slightly at certain points as we traversed onward toward the tunnel’s inevitable yet mysterious end.
After about ten minutes of walking straight, I suspected that we were walking through some sort of illusion, but to my relief, Memento finally noticed something up ahead.
“Look!” she whispered hoarsely. “A light!”
Sure enough, maybe one hundred yards from our position a pale light flickered in the dark. If it wasn’t the end of the tunnel, it was a change, at least. It was a sign of progress.
As we continued our approach, the light seemed to glow brighter—so bright, in fact, that we couldn’t see the passage beyond it. Just a couple dozen yards from it now, Memento quickened her pace, but Dahlia pushed past me to grab her by the wrist. When the gorgeous goth looked back to see what was the matter, Dahlia only shook her head, pointing delicately at the light.
We all stopped. The light was still flickering ahead of us, now only feet away. It was too bright
to understand its source, though. It was as though it was an orb floating in the air, and indeed, on closer inspection, it seemed to bob slightly every now and then.
I tried to look past it, but the next room was somehow still dark, apparently receiving little to none of the luminance of the glowing orb. Something felt very off about the entire situation.
“This isn’t right,” I said.
“Agreed.” That was Dahlia.
We paused, not knowing if we should go back, keep going forward, or if it was even safe to stop and have a conversation, but something had to give sooner or later.
“Berry,” Memento said. “Try to walk into the next room.” The skeleton complied, and we watched as it trudged forward, its bony feet tapping against the tunnel floor. When it disappeared into the dark room behind the light, there was only silence for a moment until at last we heard the sound of something huge and slithering crushing bone against teeth. And with that sound, the light retreated into the room, and we were left with only Memento’s light spell to guide us once again.
“Poor Berry,” I said. “He never had a chance.”
“What the hell happened?” Carmilla rasped from the back of our single-file line.
“Something ate Berry,” Memento whispered back. “That light was a trap.”
“An angler worm,” Dahlia huffed excitedly. “A kind of Void Thing.”
I was at a loss. “Well, we can’t go in, but I’ll be damned if we’re going back empty-handed. Now what?”
Dahlia was unperturbed, however. “We can handle it. The three of you run in and distract it, and I’ll try something from the back.”
Carmilla glared at her. “What are we, bait?! What do you mean ‘try something?’ Are you insane?”
“Trust me,” she said. “Have I ever been wrong?” She gestured back at Memento, and even in the dark, I could recognize that Carmilla blushed in response.
“Okay. Shit.”
“I’ll send Barry in first,” I laid out my master plan. “Let the thing take him and get distracted, then we’ll charge in. I’ll start blasting with Exploding Skull—”
“And I’ll use Bone Wall to make it hard for the thing to reach us,” Memento added.
“I’ll just turn into fucking bats, I guess,” Carmilla shrugged, crossing her arms and pouting her impeccably red lips.
“And then I’ll try something,” Dahlia said.
Carmilla pivoted her aggravated posture to face the white-haired beauty. “You have some explaining to do,” she said.
“Later,” Dahlia replied, waving her hand dismissively. “Time is not on our side. Do it.” She waited, and we all hesitated. “Now!” she said, shouting, piercing the cavern walls and echoing.
We charged toward the door, Barry the Skeleton taking up the lead courageously. We watched as he predictably was swept up in the jaws of some creature obscured by uncanny darkness. The orb of light was gone now. We could only roughly ascertain where the creature was from the twisting shapes of perfect blackness in the already dark cavern interior.
Memento flared her light spell, making the contrast of the dark shape of the monster—notably serpentine—easier to decipher, but still difficult to follow with our eyes.
“Exploding Skull!” I shouted, and a flaming skull emitted from my wand at the dark shape, exploding and apparently making contact, though it was hard to tell what damage it had done if any. At the very least, the illumination of the explosion highlighted its eel-like shape for us much more clearly, if only for brief moments.
Memento uttered her own series of magic words, and a wall of bone twisted out from the cavern floor. I was doubtful if the bones could hold the thing, but they may at least serve to slow it down, and that’s all we needed to do—hopefully.
Just then, hundreds of glowing red bats flew through the walls, harassing the creature, irritating it, and stopping its approach toward us. Carmilla was doing her part, buying even more time, but I worried as I saw the darkness consuming several bats.
“Uther,” I said. “Please standby.”
Suddenly, by my side, the enormous monstrous fox appeared, poised to strike. He growled eagerly, but his threatening noises were cut short all of a sudden.
From behind us, dozens of black tendrils and tentacles emerged, crawling across the floor, stretching out, squeezing past the bone wall, and wrapping themselves around the darkness that was battling Carmilla. Carmilla, in her form of many bats, retreated and changed back into her vampire form. I was horrified to see bits and pieces of her flesh missing—a chunk from her arm here, a pinch of meat from her leg there— but she didn’t bleed, and she was slowly regenerating.
The tentacles did battle with the monstrous eel-like angler thing, and I saw its orb of light reappear, throbbing desperately like a strobe. I looked behind me to see Dahlia and was at once surprised and relieved to find that she was the apparent source of these tentacles. She hovered above the ground, her eyes jet black, and a multitude of these Void Things extended from beneath her, apparently under her complete control.
Turning back to the combat, I realized what was happening. The tentacles were smothering the monstrosity, but they weren’t choking it out—they were dominating it. A green light emanated eerily from the inky black tentacles and began flowing into the monster. Within moments, it was over. The tentacles and tendrils receded, and Dahlia sank back to the ground, kneeling, regaining her strength.
I rushed over to her, but Carmilla and Memento kept their eyes on the eel monster, which began to fade away.
“Are you alright?!” I asked. My heart was beating hard and desperately at the sight of her crumbled to her knees, even after a display of power like that. I almost scolded myself for worrying about her. Clearly, the girl could handle herself.
She accepted my help, pulling herself back to her feet. “Yes, I’m fine.” She smiled at me. “Better than ever.”
Memento jumped one hundred eighty degrees to instantly go from facing the vanished monster to facing Dahlia. “What did you do?!”
“I absorbed it,” she said.
“And how did you do that?” Carmilla asked, staring at Dahlia suspiciously.
Dahlia sighed. “I’m the daughter of a void star,” she said. “My father wasn’t a star from your universe or any universe like it.”
Memento’s eyes went wide. “You’re from the void!”
Dahlia nodded. “Kind of. My mother was human, from one of the many dimensions humans come from. But my dad was a star in the one true void, meaning I have inherited void magic.”
“Your second Affinity,” I said, understanding now. “That explains what happened when I got killed by the Nightgaunt.”
“You got what by the what?!” Memento shrieked.
Carmilla stretched her arms, folding them behind her head, eyes rolling back in thought. “Almost killed. In retrospect, man, you get cockblocked a lot,” she said.
“Dahlia, was that it? Are we done here?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I hope not. I think we have one more thing to do.” She held up a hand, and her eyes returned to their original celestial form. Her open palm scanned the room until it suddenly stopped. “There,” she said, her open palm curling into a single extended index finger, pointing in front of her.
I looked at where she was pointing. I couldn’t see shit. Luckily, Carmilla and Memento walked over to the wall she was indicating, lighting up an eerie star-shaped marking with an eye carved at its center.
“Something is hidden beneath that wall,” she said. “I can feel it.”
I cracked my knuckles. “Girls, please step aside.” They looked at me curiously and took a few steps in opposite directions from one another, clearing a lane for whatever spell I was about to do.
I heard Uther’s voice suddenly nagging in my head, Please don’t tell me you’re going to—
“Exploding SKUUULL!” I shouted with sound and fury, and a gigantic flaming demonic skull shot from my open palms as I p
ushed them forward with incredible force and intention. The explosion was devastating, but I had aimed so expertly that no debris harmed any of my companions. Now, beneath the base of the wall, there was a hole, and I could make out the top of something like a treasure chest buried in the hole. Uther rushed over and began digging it up without so much as a word from me. Within moments the chest was tossed at my feet.
I crouched down, with each of the girls pressed up against either my back or one of my shoulders as they watched carefully as I opened the chest to reveal a bunch of gold—mostly useless to us—and six strange amulets of unusual energy. At a glance, they appeared to be simple black inverted crosses hanging from a simple cord, but I picked them up, and handed one of them to each of the girls for them to investigate. When I did so, they lit up with a purple light before going dark again, but they felt heavier and dense with power.
“Any idea what these do?” I asked, marveling at the effect.
Carmilla shrugged, “Nope.”
“These are why we’re here,” Dahlia said excitedly. “The Headmistress assigned me this mission to do with all of you for a reason.”
“What reason?” I asked.
“These hide us from Void Things. Due to your situation, Liam, she wanted to make sure we got to them before any other students who didn’t need them nearly as much as we do.”
Carmilla’s eyes widened. “Does this also mean that we can go back to our own worlds without attracting void things?”
“It does,” Dahlia confirmed.
Memento squinted, trying to understand us, but it was an uphill battle. “This is all pretty new to me so I don’t have a huge idea what we’re talking about or fully what Liam’s ‘situation’ is, but I gather that this is good treasure.”
“It is,” Dahlia and I said in unison. Our eyes locked with a sudden purpose. “Jinx. Double jinx. Triple jinx—”
“—Okay stop.” Carmilla said. “Is it time to waypoint back to Esoterica?”
I shrugged. “Are we in a hurry?”
Memento pressed her breasts against my shoulder and spoke directly in my ear. “I mean, that bed in the cabin was pretty big, and we’re all alone out here,” she said.
Esoterica 1: Liam's Awakening: A Lovecraftian Fantasy Harem Adventure (Esoterica Chronicles) Page 23