Witnessing how the black arrow had pierced a hole through the palm tree, Kiur and the others were immediately alert.
“Quick, we should hurry and hide further inside the oasis.”
Silently they arose from their position, scattering their palm leaves and erasing any evidence of their presence before retreating inside a cave of the oasis, hiding. Footsteps drew closer, and they heard more cries and yelling in the western tongue.
“Reiszer,” they thought, and more sounds of fighting filled the air from a second party.
“Did they find us?” whispered Cylia, hiding with the other two behind a cluster of rocks and observing how someone entered the oasis from the main entrance.
Xander turned to Kiur. "They might have found our tracks, but that's not what worries me the most." He pointed at the pond. “You forgot to turn down the temperature of the water. Now they will know someone was here or still is.”
Kiur gave Xander a blank stare. “What are you talking about? Is this your attempt at loosening the tension? If so, you are doing a miserable job.”
“Ehm, the water temperature?” Xander gestured at the steaming pond. “You increased it so it was warm when we washed ourselves in the pond. Did you forget?”
Kiur paused, still confused. Even more about the suddenly bubbling pond. “No? How would I even do that? I can barely warm my hands, let alone heat up a large pool of water.”
“You didn’t? Then why is the pond-”
“Shh, stop bubbling. Something is happening!” Cylia hushed them, peering out further from their hiding spot to observe several Scorpion People entering the hidden oasis. Each carried something, or rather someone, in their sizeable claws. “Great, those guys. Can’t believe I wished we ran into Reiszer.”
Being as worn out as they were, they didn’t want to fight anyone anymore. Especially Scorpion People, who excelled in hunting down prey and intruders. Seeing how bloody their claws were with the corpses of Reiszer soldiers, the trio felt sick to their stomachs. These magical beasts were fresh out from a recent hunt.
“Please… don’t kill me-” The Reiszer’s pleas gurgled to a pitiful as one particularly tall Scorpion Man put his claw at their throat and shredded it in half.
Kiur, Xander and Cylia watched in horror how the Reiszer suffocated from the wounds and the blood gushed out. The Scorpion People deliberately kept them alive, inflicting only the necessary amount of wounds to drag out their death and draw out anyone hiding in the oasis.
“I think I’m gonna throw up,” Xander put a hand to his mouth and looked upwards. “The ceiling. We need to leave from the ceiling-”
Everyone flinched back from the sudden hissing and rising of steam emanating from the pond. Startled, the Scorpion People circled around the pond, prodding the waters with their scimitars and bows, but backed away as it boiled even stronger.
The water evaporated at an abnormal rate, filling the oasis with hot steam and burning away the vegetation. Were it not for the hole in the ceiling acting like the open lid of a pot, they would all have burned away from the heat. The surface below the oasis burst. The remaining water exploded in waves of roiling steam.
“What was that!?” They exclaimed loudly and watched how a mountain of a monster emerged from underneath the former pond. A body covered with rough granite plates with purplish flesh underneath and four large red eyes on its hard head. It had a large maul of a mouth and sharp tusks growing out of it.
Kiur instantly recognised it from the images in the temple and the many warnings of his brother. An ancient monster that could boil away entire rivers from its mere presence. It was an Asag, a mountain demon.
“A demon! RUN!” Kiur screamed, followed closely by Xander and Cylia.
They trembled in their hiding spot when the Asag awoke from its slumber, roaring like a rumbustious old man whose bellows could shake through the entire oasis. The Scorpion People raised their weapons but retreated slowly as they didn’t expect to fight an Asag.
With all the water evaporated, the Asag sucked back in the vapour and inflated his stomach like a bullfrog. It bore its raging eyes on the Scorpion People and shot a scorching white beam of steam at them, glazing the sand below and creating a new, wider exit in place of the former.
Hard rock crumbled from the force. Chunks broke away. The Scorpion People contemplated their next move. They were afraid of it, backing away.
When the Asag advanced toward them with its three-clawed tree trunks for arms, they couldn’t react in time for its attacks before their leader intercepted them. The Scorpion Man wielded two obsidian sickle swords and sounded a shrill war cry as he began his standoff against the Asag.
The group had found themselves in a battle of monsters.
“Mother of God, this is an actual demon!” Xander and Cylia let out another loud gasp and withdrew further inside the underground oasis.
With trembling hands, Kiur tried to calm them. Sadly, his faked confidence didn’t fool them. “Don’t panic. Stay calm and hide. If it sees us, then-”
Then, the Asag smashed the defying Scorpion Man against the wall. The ceiling shook and cracked. Unfaced by the sand falling on top of its body, the Asag turned around to where Kiur and the rest were, its jaw split, fuming with steam. It sluggishly advanced towards him with its massive forearms in front.
Then it dashed.
“It’s coming! IT’S COMING!” Cylia and Xander shrieked. “RUN!” the trio dodged out of the way when the Asag crashed headfirst into the wall. It turned towards them, and a black arrow embedded itself into the Asag’s head.
“𒋾!𒉈!𒉈𒋾!” The Scorpion Man bled from its head and shouted commands at his comrades to resume fighting, firing piercing arrows at the Asag.
The Asag bellowed in frustration from the attack and held up his arms to protect the eyes they aimed at. It gave the leader a much-needed opportunity to leap at the Asag and slash at its hard face.
“We need to head further inside. There’s no way past it,” exclaimed Kiur, pressing himself with Cylia and Xander inside a narrow crack in a wall.
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The cavern it led to was their only way to go. They squeezed themselves further and further inside as the Asag and Scorpion People broke inside, bringing their fight with them. The Asag was slow but had a ferocious dash to shake up the entire cavern while fighting the Scorpion People and chasing after the group.
“I can’t see anything!” Cylia cried against the dark.
“Keep running.” Kiur took her by the hand, and she took Xander’s. No one could see their own feet or the floor except for Kiur, the Asag and the Scorpion People, who were engaged in fierce combat.
It was strange, but Kiur felt like he developed a dark vision and ran under the bright night sky covered in various shades of red. As if someone pulled a lens over his eyes. The less Kiur tried to understand it, the more familiar the sensation became, guiding his eyes from the darkness. Red, burgundy and maroon. All those shades of red covered his way like a red nebula and directed him further inside the cavern.
“I hear water. Bring us there.” Looking in the direction where Xander pointed at, Kiur changed the path. They barely avoided another wild dash of the Asag and shaking up the cavern.
The further they descended into the cave system, the more intricate it became. The paths split up more and more, but they could still hear the loud brawling of an underground river.
The path lit up as rays of blue light entered their view, drawing out the red stars Kiur used as orientation. A raging river moving like a serpent’s body was right below their feet as they reached a dead end.
—✶—
“Guess it’s time to panic,” Cylia laughed awkwardly. Kiur’s eyes darted between his two companions. Their eyes glazed with terror, and their breath turned to ice. Behind them, the Asag was breathing down at their necks. The Scorpion People who kept the demon at bay were nowhere in sight.
“Go behind me!” Xander cried out, pushing them as close to the edge as possible. His eyes and the veins of his arms glowed in a sea of blue and white as he willed his mana through them. “Auger Deluge!”
“RAWWWWWR!” With a roaring clamour the Asag threw its body and arm forward, meeting Xander’s resistance head-on. Using the wild current of the river, Xander diverted part of it into three intertwining and rotating tendrils to use them like a drill against the Asag. A shrilling sound formed from its cries and the breaking of its granite-plated armour–shell.
“Aim for the eyes and freeze him!” suggested Cylia, but held her ears on the Asag’s increasingly louder cry and Xander’s water drill echoing through the narrow space. Their ears were about to burst. Xander’s ears bled, and he was losing focus. Too late did they notice how Xander’s spell exploded from the burst of steam coming from the Asag.
Thrown down to the river, they didn’t expect Kiur to be grabbed by the Asag. Desperately, they held onto his arms so he wouldn’t get pulled away while the river raged below them.
“Let go of me before it gets you!” Kiur struggled to free his arms, but Xander and Cylia persisted.
“Definitely not! We can’t just hand you over to it, can we?” Cylia faked a smile as sweat rolled down her face, her feet dangled in the air.
“I can’t swim, don’t let me fall!” Xander held on to Kiur’s hand with all his strength. “Don’t let me drown!”
“Let go before it’s too late- ngh,” Kiur gasped from the tightening grasp of the Asag. Fixating Kiur, it brought its gaping maw upon him and unhinged its jaw.
“Give me a second to think,” tried Xander, contemplating on another desperate idea. “We can make it work. We just need to– argh!”
“What are you doing- ahhh!”
They both let go of Kiur as his hands started to burn. In a spur of a moment, Kiur’s emotion went haywire again. He didn’t want to be responsible for dragging them down with him. He watched them drop into the river.
Burned hands were a small price to pay.
“Dead- … Child-”
The Asag’s slurred old speech alarmed Kiur. Its split jaw moved in strange patterns in an attempt to communicate properly for Kiur to understand.
“Child..- of the Dead…,” Its deep and rugged voice breathed out a cluster of cold steam at Kiur.
“Let go of me!” Hysteria gripped Kiur. Like a defence mechanism, his emotions let the magic into his arms. Uncontrollably, the flames spread out on the Asag’s arm and smashed the outer layer of its stone-like shell. Kiur broke free.
“Stay close..-” The Asag’s voice echoed as Kiur fell into the rushing river. “The red earth is your domain..- Beware of the birds of old...- Let the surviving outcast guide you..- Do not rest… reach the End of the River before the Solstice.”
The Asag’s rumble shook up the earth and stirred the wild river until the bursting waters engulfed Kiur. He quickly caught up to Cylia and Xander as they tumbled between the rocks.
With water filling their lungs, the group flailed with their arms against the strong current of the underground river, dragging them deeper and deeper into a tunnel. Blue gems lined the walls, guiding their dreading path in a soothing baby-blue light.
Were it not for its dangers and water filling their lungs, they would have certainly enjoyed the view.
“Got you!” Crowed Cylia, holding Kiur’s hand while Xander held hers as he clung with his body to a rock.
Seeing they got the last one of their group, Xander hit his chest with his fist and drew out an extensive but wild amount of his mana to instantly divert the river’s flow. They panted in their small, dry spot of ground as the river flanked them from either side, trapping them. “This river is worse than back home. I HATE THIS DESERT!”
“I feel sick,” Cylia and Kiur regurgitated all the water they swallowed.
“Oh, what a sight for sore eyes,” Xander grinned with half his face and left arm glowing brightly from his overburdened mana channels. “What’s next? I can’t possibly hold this entire river back.” Xander gestured to his arm stuck in the water and then to the flow going back together barely a metre before them.
There was barely a way out as they sat in their cramped bubble, stuck between walls of hard earth and crushing water.
“Do you have any suggestion?” asked Kiur.
“Well, can you punch a hole through the wall?” wondered Xander, his arm was getting numb. “We might be able to find a hollow structure or something. Anything would do.”
Inspecting the wall’s surface, Kiur shook his head. “It’s too dense. I’d need a crack and time to do it.”
“Time we don’t have,” said Cylia before squinting her eyes at the blue gems. “Say, what are those crystals?”
“How’s that important? My arm is dying!” Xander cried overdramatically and momentarily lost concentration. They all got squished tightly together like sardines, leaving no room without breathing into each other’s necks. “Since we’re going to die, I’ll let you know that these are natural illumination stones. Are you happy now!?”
“So they’re made of mana?” Xander and Kiur blinked at her conclusion. Cylia had realised something two magic users didn’t.
The blue gemstones lining their entire view were magic stones, brimming with natural mana. Their soothing blue light was their way out. Immediately, Kiur placed his hand on the stones. His magic channels connect with the immanent mana, forming a path with the other stones on the wall.
“Please tell me you know what you are doing.” Xander worried, knowing how fickle Kiur’s magic was.
“Sorta,” answered Kiur, not putting their fears to rest.
“That’s not funny!” Xander threw up his arm. “Those are magic stones you’re connecting yourself with. One mistake and we’ll be caught in the middle of a-”
Blast.
Using his extraordinary communication skills with mana, Kiur used the gems as an anchor to rupture the stone wall. Sadly, it was beyond his ability to guide it correctly before they turned red and went haywire.
Coincidentally, Xander couldn’t hold the river back anymore. The underground river swallowed them, protecting them from the explosion.
The river’s pressure ejected them through the wall, catapulting them into a hollow cavern structure, landing in a pool of water to cushion their unlucky fall.
“This was worse than flying through the desert,” they complained, bodies aching. “Can’t we have a single calm moment?-”
“Welcome, guests.”
The three of them immediately shot up from their position and put up their hands in a ready-to-fight pose. Being tossed from one tense moment to the other, they expected to be attacked, not greeted.
“Welcome, guests,” the dwarven stranger repeated, followed by his entourage of dozens of onlookers, who greeted those who had landed in their city fountain. “Welcome, young visitors to Kuara. Also known as the City of the Dead.”