Mercyll sucked in his breath in shock. “How—?”
“No…time. Let’s go kill…this blasted dungeon,” she panted out, obviously injured but determined to destroy the thing that hurt her.
For once, Wyrlin agreed. Now that there didn’t seem to be any other threats, he and the others made their way through the traps, with only a few of the less agile Orcs getting scorched in a few places when they overestimated their abilities. Wyrlin was glad that he hadn’t touched any of them because he could certainly feel the heat from the fire lines; looking at the severe burns on those unlucky Orcs, he was almost positive that it could’ve taken off a limb if he had touched one.
They all caught up to Fyola, who looked even worse when seen up close. For a half-second, he felt a little bad about what had happened to her, but that was quickly squashed by the disappointment that she hadn’t died. He overheard her mention to Mercyll as they walked down the tunnel that she was almost entirely out of Fire energy now, after she had created a quick shield of Fire that had undoubtedly saved her life.
When they came to the next room, it also looked basically empty – which he didn’t take as a good sign. He wasn’t necessarily experienced in dungeons, but he was beginning to realize that threats could be around every corner – and he didn’t like not being able to shoot what he couldn’t see.
This is going to be a long night.
Chapter 39
Wyrlin looked down at his leg and he thanked the Creator that the blood had finally stopped flowing out of the jagged wound in his thigh. It wasn’t terribly deep, but it hurt tremendously whenever he put any weight on it – but he could at least still walk inside of the nightmare that they called a dungeon. He was one of the lucky ones – if he could consider himself lucky, he supposed – that was still alive, especially when 95% of those that had walked through the entrance weren’t still walking around. He wasn’t the only one that had been hurt, but they were entirely out of any way to heal themselves; they still had Mercyll and one other Orc Warrior that could heal, but both of them were entirely out of the Holy energy they used to fix people up.
In fact, the only one that wasn’t hurt was Rothgar Bloodskull; Wyrlin suspected that the Orc was just so frighteningly strong that nothing wanted to call attention to themselves by trying to hurt the Warlord. The last six rooms had taken a toll on the rest of his Warband, however, and it all started when there was an ambush in the third room that halfway convinced the Ranger that he was in a nightmarish vision of the underworld.
“There’s a trap in here, but I don’t think we can negate it,” Fyola had said as soon as they got close to the third room.
“Why? I thought your kind were masters of manipulating elemental energy.”
Mercyll had snorted and responded for the Elite leader, because she seemed to be ignoring the Warlord. Or it could be because her hearing had been damaged in the explosion, which was entirely possible. “While that is undoubtedly true, there are two elements associated with the trap, Holy and Nether, and we don’t have any of us that can access Nether to negate the Holy part of it. Negation requires being able to cancel out both, so we’re out of options on that front.”
That had been news to Wyrlin, who didn’t understand how they negated the traps in the first place. It wasn’t something that he had ever learned – mainly because he hadn’t ever had a need of it before this.
They had finally decided to move in cautiously, letting a small group of 20 Orc Warriors pass through the room first. Everything had been fine until they passed the halfway mark, where they obviously triggered the trap. The room started to alternatingly become intensely bright and frighteningly dark, in seemingly random intervals; despite their vision being so completely messed up from the extreme light and lack of light, it didn’t seem all that bad.
Until some pained screams started to erupt from the room, followed by more explosions. However, unlike the explosions from before, these had sounded…wetter, somehow. Not only that, but those around him had seemed to be hit with something, eliciting some shouts of pain and the sound of metal *tings* along the stone. It was only when he stepped back out of the extreme range of the light changes that he was able to see what was happening. Suffice it to say, it was disturbing.
From some sort of platform filled with holes in the ceiling, more Goblins were falling from above, leading with a metal spear of some kind, falling onto the unsuspecting and partially blinded Orcs. Their stabs with the spear as they landed point-down were what caused the first cries of pain that they had heard, though even that wasn’t that deadly. It was what happened next that shocked and appalled him. The Goblins started to swell as soon as they hit the ground, most with broken bones from the fall, and then exploded once they expanded enough. Along with blood, bone, and internal organs, spiked thin metal armor that the Goblins were wearing also exploded out everywhere, impaling the Orcs inside the room – and some of those outside – with shards of sharp metal fragments.
“Why?! What kind of sick—” Wyrlin had started to ask before he was forced to duck as another exploding Goblin caused a metal shard to fly over his head.
Those outside the room had backed up to a safe distance, while another dozen or so Goblins fell down and exploded. It was only when they stopped and investigated the room, which had stopped with its light show, that they discovered that all 20 of the Orcs inside had been practically shredded and were nearly unrecognizable. Fortunately, that initial barrage seemed to be the last of the exploding Goblins and they left the remains of the Warriors behind as they continued on, though some of Wyrlin’s Rangers had a little bit lighter stomachs.
The next room hadn’t been as frightening, though it was just as deadly. Large pillars of dark voids dotted the room, which Mercyll was able to negate nearly half of them with his Holy energy, but the rest aided the monsters inside – which, strangely enough, he was glad weren’t Goblins. Instead, they were 8-foot-long beasts that seemed to blend into the shadowy void pillars, making them practically invisible and silent as they crept up to the first small group of Orc Warriors that ventured inside. It was hard to tell at first how many of them there were, but when Mercyll went along with the next, larger group – after the first group had been viciously slaughtered – his negation of the nearby void pillars revealed over 20 of them stalking their prey.
The Warriors showed their prowess then, as they fought with a savagery that was almost scary. While he and his fellow Rangers supported them from further away, the Orcs tore into the black-colored beasts with vicious-looking claws, losing only 2 more of their number in the counterattack. The exit led off to the right, which hopefully meant they were getting closer to their destination.
The fifth room inside of the dungeon was a bit different, however. First, it appeared much taller than the others; second, it had an elemental trap that even Wyrlin could identify. “There’s an Earth trap in this room, though it doesn’t seem concentrated in any particular place,” the arrogant Elite spell-caster had said, and Wyrlin realized he had never learned his name. Not that he cared, because he hoped he died, too. “I can try to negate a portion of it, but the room is so large I’m not sure it’ll do any good.”
They decided to trigger the trap and see exactly what it was, and it was unlike anything they had expected. Flat columns of stone seemed to erupt from the floor at various elevations, reaching up 50 to 75 feet up into the room. It looked like some sort of mini mountain inside of the dungeon, with a relatively flat peak towards the top that he thought would then descend to the exit on the other side. Still, he didn’t see any monsters, so he didn’t think it would be too bad.
Of course, that was until they entered, with the arrogant Elite ready to negate the trap if something started to happen; as soon as they walked inside, a herd of shining winged horses that he thought were called Pegasi emerged from above, where they were hiding out of view. They immediately flew to the opposite side of the “mountain”, where they dropped down out of view before any of them
could fire on them.
There wasn’t really any reason to wait at that point, and they had easily climbed up the mountain with a few groups of Orc Warriors leading the way. As soon as they reached the top, out came flying the Pegasi from the other side and they swept down and started to pummel the Orcs with their hooves, knocking a half dozen from the mountains before the Rangers could counter attack. While there were a score of the flying horses, only half of them were killed by his Rangers’ arrows; the rest were jumped upon by the Warriors on the mountain, where they literally killed the Pegasi by chopping into their necks – while they were essentially riding them.
Almost a dozen Orcs were killed as a result, but that was still better than the few rooms before. After that, it was easy enough to climb over and get to the other side of the mountain and from there to the tunnel leading on further into the dungeon. That tunnel, unfortunately, was where a serious disaster struck. Wyrlin was already told that all traps were always inside the rooms of a dungeon, as if there was some sort of unknown rule that prevented them from being placed in tunnels that connected rooms. Which was primarily why none of the Elites had been looking for any sort of trap as they jogged down the tunnel, trying to gain some sort of time back from all of their delays.
They were halfway down when there had suddenly been a series of *clicks* that came from the stone floor being depressed by at least a dozen of the Orcs ahead of them – which, honestly wasn’t that big of a deal to Wyrlin – but there were also some that came from around the group of Elites and his own Rangers. Everyone stopped at the noise, which probably wasn’t the best idea, because those near where the floor depressed started to grow older – as in so old that they turned to nothing but skin and bones in a matter of seconds. It happened so fast that there was no time to help those caught inside whatever was making them age, though one of the Elite archers managed to push the arrogant spell-caster out of whatever was causing it.
Instead of turning to barely visible skin on desiccated bones, the arrogant Elite just became…ancient. Wyrlin had never seen an Elf that old before, nor heard of any reaching that age, but he had wrinkled skin like a raisin, white hair that was falling out, and what appeared to be crippled joints. He didn’t really get a chance to check if they were indeed crippled, though, because as soon as the Elite was pushed out he collapsed on the ground, dead from what appeared to be dehydration and starvation.
Over 100 Orc Warriors were caught in some sort of larger area that did the same thing though on a slightly slower scale; they all still died, but instead of being ancient (as in thousands of years older), they were more like just over 100 years old. Wyrlin lost 15 of his Rangers to the traps as well, and they lost 2 Elites: one archer and the arrogant caster.
“What type of place is this? This is a nightmare; I blame you for bringing us here,” Fyola had turned on Wyrlin, obviously devastated by the loss of her fellow Elites.
“Hey, this isn’t my fault – you’re the one who wanted to take charge and drag us here when we weren’t ready!” he shouted back, knowing that was the truth. While he had been contemplating assaulting the dungeon with who he had at that time, he wasn’t entirely sure he had enough. Now he knew that he didn’t have enough, especially given what they had seen so far.
“Enough! I’ve lost far more to this dungeon than either of you, and you don’t hear me whining, do you?” Wyrlin and Fyola were both pushed out of the way as Rothgar pushed forward, the Orc Elites being a little more cautious in where they walked, pushing the floor with their Swords to see if the stone moved.
I’m nearly willing to forget destroying this dungeon if I can just kill her violently in front of everyone. His finger twitched over his quiver as he imagined stabbing her in the eye with one of his arrows enhanced by his own energy. The only thing that stopped him was the knowledge that not even a massive explosion had managed to kill her, so he wanted to make sure he had a distinct advantage before he killed her.
The next room was odd again, though it was because of the nature of the monster. A being of pure light guarded the next room, sending arrows of focused light out at them, accompanied by a constant barrage of focused light beams that burned almost as much as fire from a trap that shot out in a stream of them at waist height. They had no way to negate the trap, unfortunately, so after losing a few more Orc Warriors in the process, they managed to fill the being of light full of arrows, and then had to crawl under the barrage of light beams to get to the exit.
The seventh room was fortunately semi-negated by one of the Elite archers that had access to Water energy, because they would have all cooked alive. While they couldn’t see any flames, the massive room – which led off to the right again, which hopefully led straight to the dungeon heart – was heated like an enormous oven, and only by sticking near the archer negating the trap were they able to keep from cooking alive. Then, of course, they had to fight against a dozen birds that appeared to be made of fire, which Fyola called a Phoenix, that swooped down and tried to burn them alive. They lost another few dozen Orc Warriors to them before his group fought back.
The remaining Elite archers and Rangers easily took care of them in midflight, but as they were leaving the room, they noticed that their corpses didn’t disappear. Instead, the first one they killed suddenly flared back to life out of the ashes of its corpse, though it was smaller than it was initially. “You idiots didn’t kill their resurrected spawn?” Fyola asked derisively.
“No we didn’t, because someone didn’t tell us we had to!” Wyrlin shouted back before filling the firebird with another enhanced arrow to put it down before it could lift off. The other Rangers did the same with the other corpse piles, and after they were filled with more arrows they finally disappeared.
“Stop arguing; I can sense that we’re nearly there,” the Warlord had said to them as he walked by, as if he was their father and they were unruly children. For some reason, Wyrlin felt a little ashamed…but he still wanted to kill the Elite, and he was sure she felt the same way.
The room after that – how many was that again? – was where he received his wound. As soon as they all walked inside, it felt like they were outside again. Dirt covered the entire floor of the room and there were oak trees lined up on either side of the main passageway through the room.
“I’ve got this; there’s a Natural energy trap in here, so I should be able to negate most of it. Keep moving, however, and protect me,” Fyola said before she started to walk slowly forward with her hands out in front of her, as dramatic as seemed usual even at a time like that.
Around the bubble of her negation that reached at least 40 feet around her, roots erupted from the ground and tried to reach for them as they moved through the room at a good pace, but her energy dispelled them before they ever got more than a foot past her bubble. They passed halfway through the room before they were finally attacked by something that wasn’t a root erupting from the ground.
A dozen naked Echos.
He was so shocked at the sight of Echo holding a strange-looking bow emerging from behind one of the trees to his right that he couldn’t even react. The next thing he knew, an arrow was shot from the bow at incredible speed, tearing through his thigh and leaving a jagged gash, causing him to fall down. That was probably the only thing that saved his life, because a second arrow – metal bolt, he later saw when he looked at one – went over his head, impacting one of his rangers and exploded. It wasn’t a massive explosion like the ones he had seen earlier, but it was enough to kill the Ranger and one of the Orcs standing close behind him.
A couple other explosions erupted throughout the clustered Orcs and Elves, and there was an immediate counterattack of their own, including some suicidal Orcs that charged out of their protective negation bubble and ended up getting caught by the waving roots and ripped apart. A single volley was all the naked Echos managed to get off before they were filled with arrows, most of them from the three remaining Elite archers who fired incredibly fast. When the Echos c
ollapsed on the ground and died, they transformed into a multicolored sludge first before dissipating. As horrible as it was to see Echo being…copied?...by the monsters, it made her wonder if the one that came to their village was a copy.
Maybe she really is dead? Was the Elite team that “miraculously” survived their trek through this dungeon copies as well? He had no answers and no way to tell at that point, but after he got out of there he would find out.
In all, they had lost another 50-plus Orc Warriors in the attack, as well as most of his Rangers – including Ferio – in the sudden attack, mainly because they were all clustered up when the explosions hit. As he looked down in sorrow at the corpse of the old Ranger, he vowed again that he would make the dungeon pay for what it had taken from him. He thought that it had already taken everything from him, but Ferio was his friend, despite only knowing him a few weeks. He didn’t have time to mourn right then, however, because they had to keep moving before Fyola ran out of the energy that was keeping the roots from getting the rest of them.
The nightmarish journey through the dungeon led them to the room that they had just barely made it through alive. They had walked inside, exhausted from their ordeal and Fyola immediately said that they had just triggered a trap, but they didn’t see anything. However, what he did see – how did I miss that before? – was a large shining gem floating in the air near the exit. Suddenly, as if sensing that he had seen it, the large gem moved downwards and shot down the tunnel behind it.
“There it is! There’s the dungeon heart!” he exclaimed, nocking an arrow to shoot, but the gem was already too far away to hit. He wasn’t the only one to see it, however, as the majority of the Orc Warriors shot forward, waving their swords in the air, and yelling guttural roars at the retreating dungeon heart.
“Wait! That’s just an illusion!” Fyola shouted after them, followed by Rothgar – which got them to stop immediately. It was too late for most of them, however, as the floor seemed to come alive underneath them all and snap closed, smashing over a hundred of them in little more than a second. The horrible scene caused Wyrlin to stop his own race into the room from shock, mainly because he hadn’t felt any Earth energy anywhere in the room. It turned out that there was a reason for that, as there were 6 monsters in the shape of large stone slabs that were now walking around on their points looking to finish off the rest of his group.
The Crafter's Darkness: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 4) Page 43