The next two crossing corridors didn’t have any sign of Hollow Ones, but Gabriel set up thin Ice Walls after each of them anyway. With luck, any Hollow Ones that came down the hall would turn and head the other direction instead of trying to break through the wall. Hollow Ones weren’t known for their brains, after all.
That led them to a choice of possible routes. Serenity stopped and wished he were better at multitasking; he couldn’t remember which direction was likely to have fewer people. They both usually had people; he remembered that much. If he remembered correctly, the corridor split into a pair of large rooms, an eating area and a barracks. Neither was a great option, especially without more information.
He wanted to check with his body on the surface, but if he did that he’d lose his ability to pay attention underground while his attention was elsewhere. The next best thing was to check with Rissa. She wasn’t good at linking with the ritual, but she could still do it. :Can you check the ritual, see which way forward has less Hollow Ones?:
:I can try.: She sounded doubtful but he knew she’d give it her best, and that probably meant success. Rissa was reliable.
“There were a lot of people to the left when we came through there,” Daryl informed Serenity. “I think it’s a dining hall; most of them had food and they didn’t pay much attention to us.”
:Serenity? There are no people in either direction. I’m pretty sure I’m not able to see Hollow Ones at all, I don’t find any anywhere but there aren’t anywhere near enough people. Sorry.: Rissa must have been standing next to the ritual to have a response so quickly.
Serenity frowned. He was going to have to make a decision with less information than he’d like; that was the point of the ritual, to have the information necessary. He was sure he could see Hollow Ones with it, but he might have to change how he looked if they didn’t show up as people. That would take time he didn’t have, whether he did it himself or simply explained it to Rissa.
If the dining hall was to the left, then the large room to the right was the barracks. “We started this well after dawn, so that everyone on the surface would be able to see as they moved through the forest. There shouldn’t be that many people in the barracks.” It was the best guess he could make with the information he had.
“There isn’t any way around? That sounds like a terrible setup.” Gabriel sounded about as happy with it as Serenity was.
Serenity shook his head. “It’d add a mile or so to the trip; not only that, we’d have to go back past where we fought the Viper. That’s why we came this way.”
The layout made some things obvious, and one of them was that the reason the tunnels were originally created for wasn’t what the attackers were using them for. All of the large “rooms” were basically wide spots in the tunnels; some were very wide. On top of that, very few things were convenient to each other; there were a lot of tunnels compared to the number of rooms and they tended to connect with corridors that had only recently separated rather than connecting places that were physically close but topologically far away.
“The base is an intrusion into Asihanya. It is not comfortable here; of course it is poorly laid out.” Zanzital’s comment sounded like he was trying to sound wise, but to Serenity it sounded at least as pompous as it did smart. Wasn’t he just saying that they hadn’t yet had time to adapt the base to what they wanted and were living with what they had?
“To the right, then? Please lead, Serenity.” Zanzital waved towards the tunnel in question. “Daryl, Gabriel, and I will attempt to hold the Hollow Ones off while you push through them.”
Serenity smiled a little at Zanzital’s attempt to establish dominance. Serenity didn’t really care about that; he was fine following someone else’s lead if their plan made sense. Since Zanzital’s plan was the same as Serenity’s, it certainly made sense to him. This was probably just Zanzital trying to assert his position over the Silver Blades so that he could return to being their Guildmaster after everything was said and done.
It wasn’t far to the doorway that led into the barracks. Unlike most other rooms, including the dining hall, there were no doors on the entrances to the barracks, which meant Serenity could see inside from the hallway. From a distance, all he could really see was that the room itself seemed to have a hallway cleared between the furniture; anything more than that was lost in dimness. It seemed like the hallways near the barracks and the barracks itself were not lit and it was too far for his Eyeless Sight.
A lack of light wouldn’t stop Serenity; it would impede him a bit since Eyeless Sight didn’t have the same range, but it would probably be significantly more of a problem to the Hollow Ones. They might not entirely depend on light either, but it seemed likely that they used it.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Serenity turned towards the Silver Blades and whispered. “Can we get by without light?”
“I don’t want to,” Gabriel whispered back. “I can’t place walls accurately without light; even if I can figure out where the monsters are, I won’t know where the beds are.”
Serenity didn’t object to Gabriel’s assumption that Hollow Ones were monsters. Technically, they weren’t, but it was a distinction that he knew Gabriel wouldn’t care about. While they were probably closest to golems or maybe enchanted items, they were close enough to being monsters; they even had a core of sorts that was required to keep them functional.
“Then … do you have a way to make light?” Serenity didn’t, unless he counted the flashlights. They were impressively bright, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to get one out. He would if it was necessary, but he ought to check with the others first.
“I do.” Daryl pulled a handful of glowing rods out of his pack. They were each only a couple of inches long; the cylinders each had a leather strap that ran from the top. “Take two and tie them to your belt, one on each side. They’re not very bright, but with four of us that should be enough light. Spreading it around a bit helps with shadows.”
Serenity hadn’t seen anything quite like the lights Daryl handed out in years. In fact, he wasn’t sure he’d seen anything exactly like them ever. They were dim enough that he could look at them without feeling blinded, not even as bright as glowsticks, so he wasn’t sure how useful they would actually be. Still, it was worth trying; Daryl seemed confident and Gabriel did as well.
The glowing cylinders were obviously enchanted; Serenity could see where each one had a tiny monster core embedded in the bottom. He couldn’t see any way to get at it to replace it; that was odd, especially for such a small item. “How do you replace the monster core if it runs out?”
Daryl shook his head. “You don’t; it takes an enchanter, like my sister. She came up with them, but she hasn’t been able to come up with a way to use a bigger core or make it easy to replace yet. They last months on that core, so I just carry a bunch and have her replace the cores when they go dark.”
That actually made more sense than Serenity had expected.
“Let’s move forward,” Zanzital prodded. “Something will find us if we don’t. Gabriel, wall off the way we’re not heading.”
Serenity made sure he was facing away from Zanzital before he rolled his eyes at the unnecessary orders. Gabriel knew what to do; he’d done it at every branch.
The barracks wasn’t a rectangular room. Instead, it was almost like another really wide, winding corridor crossed the one they were in, but it didn’t actually go anywhere. They only needed to cross about a hundred feet of open space, but there was a lot more than that on both sides, especially to the right.
Even then, calling it “open space” was a misnomer. As Serenity discovered when he entered the room, the “open corridor” inside the barracks was only actually open for the first twenty feet. After that, there were beds. It looked like they’d once been bunk beds, but they’d been taken down and sat separately on the floor, taking over the supposedly open hallway.
When Serenity glanced around the room, movement caught his eye. They weren’t alone and they had been noticed. Gabriel’s walls would do some good, but he could already see that the Hollow Ones weren’t restricting themselves to open spaces; two of them were on beds, crawling towards the four intruders.
Serenity set forward quickly; he wanted to get through this dangerous room as quickly as possible, before they were caught. They would have to fight, but if they were close enough to the exit, they could run instead. Killing these things wasn’t the goal, getting past them was.
Serenity hopped onto the first bed in his way. It was faster than going around and gave him a slightly better vantage point to see what was happening. The Hollow Ones were scattered around the room. That was good news, but Serenity saw seventeen of them from his vantage point. He definitely didn’t want to fight seventeen Hollow Ones.
Most of them were a decent distance away; only two were close, and they were both behind the group at this point. They weren’t the problem; instead, it was the four that were more or less between them and the exit that were a problem. If they could get through that group quickly, they’d be fine. If they didn’t, the two that were behind them could catch up and there were another three that could come in from the sides if they were delayed only a bit longer.
Gabriel scrambled up onto the bed behind Serenity while the other two scooted carefully around it to the right. They had an obstacle course to cross and limited time.
Gabriel started casting his Ice Wall to delay the two Hollow Ones behind the group. Serenity frowned; Gabriel had a bad habit of not moving while he cast.
Serenity could solve that. It would make fighting more difficult, but that was just the way it was. He picked up Gabriel, hopped off the bed, and triggered his Footwraps. They let him skid forward as he fell, putting him back in the front of the group.
Daryl was already shooting the Hollow Ones that weren’t in front of them, trying to trip them up and slow them down. There was no way he could manage Gabriel and a bow at the same time, so Serenity turned to Zanzital. “Can you cast and carry at the same time?”
Zanzital shook his head. “I need both hands free. Gabriel can handle himself.”
That was a nice vote of confidence in the healer that Serenity wasn’t sure he shared.
“If you can carry me, please do,” Gabriel whispered. “I’ll be fine, even if they hit me.” It was interesting to know that Gabriel also didn’t share his Guildmaster’s confidence.