Jael
-Layer 9-
Limp, Gorax’s lifeless body hung from the edge of the gaping chasm, suspended by a force unknown to his comrades who remained below.
Jael watched him sway there in the dead air of the cavern. No words past between the members of his party. For them, the time for mourning the dead was long gone.
Gorax’s blood trickled down his bulging, muscular arms and dribbled onto Karla’s glasses. She shuddered at the sight, her frail body heaving with real, deep sobs. The kind of cries that tear through your mind.
Jael grabbed her arm and turned her to face him.
"We need to keep moving."
She wiped the residue of plumb-purple Yok’ra blood from her cheeks, revealing the spattering of freckles that framed her pale face. Then she clutched her stave tightly to her bosom and gave a single, shaking nod. She intoned another spell.
"Agaric Lux."
Instantly a small ball of shimmering light shot up from her staff toward the ceiling. Jael grimaced as it confirmed his suspicions: this labyrinth section had expanded since they’d passed through it before. The light illuminated cavern ledges and stalactites filled with scintillating shadows that twisted away, seeking the corners of their domain where they’d hidden to scratch at the party along every step they took. Jael remembered how they’d weathered each dark tendril that struck at them from the dark.
Hours had passed. Days, maybe weeks. Who knows how long it had been since they had seen natural light? Finally, Gorax had had enough. He’d bellowed that he would end these beasts that hounded their every step. Till the end, he had run towards his own demise.
But he had been speaking for all of them.
The light faded, and as it died, the remaining members of Jael’s party heard the choir of a thousand voices approaching from above. Crimson diamonds set within forms that seethed with the living dark of this place prospected them as prey from up there - watching and waiting for the last residue of light to recede.
Then, as one, they surged forwards.
Jael looked at Karla and then back at Miron, whose breathing was a vicious rasp of stuttered air. He still bore the coffin on his back.
"Go!" he roared.
They needed no further instruction. Karla muttered a spell of Fleetfoot as her mana drained - a Fifth level incantation.
Too much.
Jael then felt his legs move of their own accord, carried by the strength of the wind that rose beneath Karla’s staff. As one, he and his remaining companions flew past Gorax’s body as the eyes in his head rolled back, and he flashed them a toothy smile, completely devoid of joy. Jael spared a shudder at his comrade’s fate. He’d survived since the start of the Dive.
One small ball of shadow detached itself from the writhing mass of darkness weaving around Miron’s protective chants. It cascaded towards Jael, growing taloned feet and teeth that narrowed into black knives aimed at his throat. He drew his blade on impulse and visualized its strike:
Warrior (Arcane Blademaster) Incantation: Searing Strike
GLANCE Channel: LIGHT
DMG: 250pts (Masterwork handicraft weapon + Mark of Amarata)
His blade sliced through the air and cut across the beast’s gnashing fangs, a searing arc of electrical energy leaping from its tip to tear through the blackened skein that coated the creature. It instantly dissipated before him, returning to the living shadow of the Everloft’s deep dark abyss.
But he felt the creature’s poison seep into his sword and dull its edge, then watched in horror as the runes along the gilded hilt of the weapon began to dim. His automatic Appraisal told him what he needed to know:
Mana-rot (LVL 8)
Corruption progress: 35%
Truthfully, he didn’t know why he’d even bothered appraising the vile poison. None of that mattered now.
Floating towards the ceiling, bound towards the entrance the team had marked when they’d past through who knows how many days before, Jael finally came to realize the inevitable: even if they made it back to the checkpoint on the Eighth Layer, they’d be weaponless, three men down and possibly without equipment. Already he could sense the futility inherent in his dwindling strength. The cavern seemed to bare down on top of them, and with every slash he made through the body of another vile Voidspawn, he became aware that the darkness only followed them up through the gullet of this raging, living deathtrap.
"Karla!" he heard Miron yell.
He knew what had happened before the ear-piercing cry from the elven girl’s slashed throat reached him. The flying group started losing momentum as the magewind carrying them began to stutter and die with its mistress. Jael did nothing but grab her hand and throw them both into the closest tunnel, feeling the sickening squeal of the organic mass that writhed beneath them as it licked at their worn armor, looking for exposed skin. Jael ignored it and helped Miron enter the tunnel mouth as the pursuing wisps of unnatural night stabbed towards his back – thousands of little needles piercing through his cloak and pumping their vicious payload into his torso. He weathered the blows, spreading his arms wide, palms up, and Jael watched the remainder of Miron’s mana drain from him with Karla in his arms.
"Akash Ku’mari!"
Instantly the tunnel was bathed in light, so much so that Jael shielded his eyes with his busted gauntlet, feeling searing rays of holy sunlight spear through his armored fingers, even as their main energies were focused on repelling the creatures at the mouth of the tunnel. Their alien cries of anguish filled the entire cavern as Miron closed this section completely with a veil of pure, shimmering sunlight.
As Miron fell forward, Jael began to feel his breath return to him again. He touched his arm and focused on the benevolent energies swirling there. He had to know how much of his remaining strength Miron was using.
Appraisal: Success
Incantation: Guardian’s Ward (LVL 10, Chanter LVL 15)
Injury Repair: 100%
HP Regeneration: 65pts/3 sec
Too much. As usual.
"Karla?" Miron barked from his crouched position.
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Jael looked down at her face and saw that, indeed, the spell had knit the tear in her neck, and she gasped with the knowledge of one who had just been dragged back from the jaws of death itself.
She smiled sadly. "Bloody Guardians," she spat.
Jael tried a wry smile at the quip before realizing that Miron had only just brought her back from the brink. She wouldn’t make it back topside. He knew it.
Looking into the tired, flickering light in her eyes, Jael saw she knew it, too.
"Pfft," Miron scoffed in his throaty voice. "Always so grateful."
Jael did nothing but sit back with them, knowing the dark denizens were even now finding other ways to burrow their way into this place and knowing that it was all a matter of time.
"Didn’t I tell you before?" he said to Miron. "You’ve got eight floors before you’re back topside, my friend. Save the good stuff for later."
"I’m not going to let anyone else roll over and die, Jael," the towering lizardman croaked.
Jael looked at him long and hard. Despite it all, he had to laugh. Jael knew that within that towering bulk of scales and high-level gear Miron was afraid. Not for himself, of course. The way he’d thrown himself in front of them without hesitation proved that. He was never scared for himself. He wouldn’t be a Guardian if he was.
"The Everloft chose well for you," Jael chuckled dryly. "And that’s probably its most fiendish trick."
"You give it too much credit," Miron replied.
"And you never gave it enough."
Karla rose steadily, leaning heavily on her staff. This time she refused Jael’s help.
"Well, ladies," she said, flashing that same sad smile that had plagued her since the ascension had begun. "Do we bicker in this spume-filled tunnel, or do we head back to the tavern on the Seventh for a drink?"
Jael shuddered at the memory, but Miron returned to his feet. He and Karla then both looked at their leader, eager and willing.
He looked back at them with a smile that people said could convince anyone to throw their lives away for him. If that were true, Jael thought, then it was no blessing at all.
Could it be you both never realized we were dead from the very start? Jael pondered.
They relied on Karla’s globe of light to guide them through the tunnel network, for they all remembered the results of Selina proudly lighting a torch to stave off the dark as they descended. Jael recalled her limbs, twisted and torn, and the black fingers that raked the light from her hands and penetrated her eye sockets, making her a twisted flesh puppet for the Voidspawn.
The tunnels grew only longer. And the beating heart of the living organism – the intelligence that prospected them with eyes that lined the entire Layer – kept pounding in Jael’s ears till it reached a fever pitch. The walls themselves began to beat, dripping with ooze and the blood of the dead.
Without even realizing it, they started running.
Miron kept watch at their backs as the wail of the Voidspawn howled through the ever-pulsing tunnels. Jael quickly appraised the coffin on his back – it was still completely intact. That was the single light in the dark now.
"Miron," he said. "Steady."
"I’m fine," he shouted back over the increasing shrieks that they knew were, at this point, being funneled in through the other tunnel sections. They’d tried so many strategies but never matched the speed of the Everloft’s deepest denizens.
So distracted was Jael by his attempts to calculate the party’s next move that he didn’t feel the floor give way below him. He was set to plummet into the gnashing teeth of the abyss that stretched beneath his feet were it not for Karla’s swift levitation spell.
She dragged Jael through the air back to the end of the tunnel, and he scanned the chasm that had once more opened up before them.
Four meters high – there it was: the exit portal. A swirling sphere of auburn light burning against an onyx-clad sky.
"Don’t suppose you’re packing any more Magewind, Karla?" Jael asked.
She gave a wry scoff. "That would make it too easy."
The scrabbling sound of a thousand pincer-like feet on the tunnel floor grew closer till, finally, they saw the first Voidspawn’s piercing crimson eyes and snarling maw appear at the head of the horde.
Miron readied his next protective chant, but Karla warded him away with a wave.
"Mind yourself, Guardian," she murmured. "Like the Bossman said, you’ve got eight more floors to go."
The two men stared at her with incredulous eyes as the seething creatures massed together as one and shot towards them – a gale of darkness glowing with a thousand crimson eyes.
Jael watched Karla as the blazing neon pyromancy runes burned into life around her hands and grew till they bathed them all in the light of a barely contained inferno. The smell of burning flesh filled the air, and Jael appraised the spell:
GLANCE Channel (PYRO): Narathzul’s Wrath.
DMG: 583 pts in 50ft on Target (LVL 15)
Enchanter’s mark augmentation effect activated - Explosive Discharge: Repulsion 100ft
"Karla…" Jael began.
"You know what?" she said, facing the howling dark. "You’re a bastard and a scoundrel, Jael."
As Miron made to protest, Jael placed a firm arm on his shoulder and smiled dryly.
"And you’re a spoiled brat and a second-rate sorceress."
He nodded to Miron, who begrudgingly began chanting Steel Flesh while he downed a poultice of Fire Resistance. The two men braced themselves.
"May Amarata guide your spirit, Karla," Miron croaked.
She spared a final look at her companions as she traced the red rune of her incantation in the air, lighting up the whole tunnel seething with the mass of oozing black.
"I sure hope not," she said.
The explosion that shot from her hands wrapped the entire tunnel in threads of burning crimson that tore away at the horde. In a lambent kaleidoscope of blurred red-orange, Jael and Miron were then catapulted from the tunnel mouth towards the exit, watching the flames consume Karla instantly, eating away at her flesh. Where her smiling face had been only moments ago, now only ash remained.
This is what we deserve, Jael realized as he and Miron flew towards the exit portal, one step closer to the surface. All of us.
He reached out his hand to make contact with the shimmering portal’s surface. Just a finger was all that had to touch that barrier. Just a nail…
His grasping fingers went right through the portal. It disappeared entirely from existence, letting himself and Miron plummet to the bottom of the chasm again, the giggling of the Voidspawn Cackler above filling his ears.
None of their Appraisals had revealed that they could mimic the exit portals.
They smashed into the cavern's floor, tanking the damage but knowing now that the exit was nothing more than a fanciful dream. All around them, the mocking aura of the denizens of the deep grew in amplitude. They had only moments before they descended to feast on the last of the party. Jael could see them, feel them creeping down the walls towards him and the last surviving members of the Dive, slowly descending on the scraps of flesh that had wandered so willingly into their little trap.
The sound of the Everloft’s beating heart grew in amplitude. It was exciting.
Jael slumped against the pulsing wall, weathering Miron’s yells.
"Jael!" he screamed. "Get up!"
Jael let his head fall.
"I’m tired, Miron," he said, thinking of Karla’s dying face moments before she probably screamed out in pain.
Maybe I just became used to blocking their screams out.
"Then there were two," he murmured as he cast his gaze up to the legions of Voidspawn crawling down the cavern's walls towards him, slowly making their way towards the prey they’d toyed with for months on end. Now, the final act had come.
"I told you," Jael heard Miron scream from somewhere distant as reality faded for him. "I’m not going to let you lay down and die!"
Jael looked at his sword and saw the poison had drained its shining blade down to the hilt. He was done. But his eyes lingered on the coffin Miron still bore proudly on his back. Still intact. Not a scratch on it.
"Miron," he said, unstrapping the potion from his belt that he knew was their last chance. "Take it to the surface. Take it back…where it belongs."
The hulking lizardman looked at his Captain with exasperated eyes. He saw what he was holding.
"Jael," he whispered, his voice becoming lost in the raging din of the bounding beasts descending towards them. "I won’t leave you."
And as Miron reached out to touch his face, Jael uncorked the potion of Recall and forced it down his friend’s throat.
"Miron," he murmured. "I’m sorry."
Miron sputtered as he withdrew and bellowed something at Jael before his form shimmered out of existence, garbed in the lambent purple sparks that would carry him directly back to the Eighth and the camp waiting there. One potion – the rarest of all artifacts Jael had ever found in the darkest regions of the accursed spume-filled tunnels.
It was me or you, he thought as the beasts closed in on all sides. I chose you, Miron.
The virulent saliva seeping from the fangs of the Voidspawn that crawled above dribbled onto his head and burned away the greying hairs that had long ago stopped growing there.
All around him, Jael saw the mass of growing evil morph into their quadruped wolf forms with their stabbing pincers and lambent red eyes that he’d come to expect of the amorphous Voidspawn - those that had hounded his party’s every step.
He stared right back at them.
I defy you.
They stalked forwards, snarling maws anxiously awaiting the meal before them.
I deny you.
A howl of either triumph or rage echoed from the black throat of the largest amongst them – the one that held Gorak’s smiling face in its gnashing jaws.
This is not your victory.
Jael saw then that they’d stolen the faces of all of those who had fallen – there was Karla, her mouth twisted in a scream that was never heard. Samael’s cheeky grin was replaced with a crestfallen gaze, and Merril’s bright eyes beamed with tears of bubbling tar.
"You did not decide their fate," he spat at the façade, trembling all the while. "I did. I led them to their doom. But what we took from you, you will never reclaim."
Jael smiled as he felt the fury of the labyrinth itself rebound off the walls and tear apart the tunnels.
"Think you can catch him? Go ahead and try. You’re wasting your time here on an old bastard like me."
Finally, Jael felt the command to the Voidspawn boom in his skull. The impulse that drove them to seek out the light. To eradicate the life that drew breath in their breathless realm. They crept forward like a chorus of mad hounds, a legion of rage coming for the intruder in their lair.
Jael closed his eyes. Before the jaws of darkness closed around his skull, he allowed himself a fleeting, puerile wish:
Amarata, he pleaded. Let not our deaths be in vain.