--Catacombs of Bhashera, LVL 4--
Yelena
Profession: Guardian HP: 30/30 GLANCE: 20/20 LVL: 3 EXP: 420/500
Silence dominated their pathway into darkness, broken only by the clangorous sounds of something thudding against the ceiling on this section of the catacombs, dislodging sand from the surface of the First Layer.
“The hell is that?” Marius eventually asked after the fifth or sixth clang from above.
Yelena didn’t dare imagine the cause. The Red-Woman, however, had a theory, and she regaled them with it as she stroked the giant Edna gently, watching Yelena out of the corner of her eye.
“The creature of night that is attacking us above,” she said. “Is trying to penetrate this place.”
“Oh, is that all?” Marius replied, his words dripping with sarcasm. “Here I thought it was something to worry about.”
When she said nothing he cast a sidelong glance at Yelena and ran up to meet their cryptic guide face-to-face.
“Listen Red, there’s something fishy about all this,” he began, and grew increasingly irritated when she did not acknowledge his statement. “For one thing – I thought you said our friendly shadow couldn’t come down here?”
She answered him with haste: “It cannot. Unless it is being invited.”
“OH!” Marius yelled, spooking the hulking Edna. “GREAT! Well, why didn’t you say so? Let’s throw it a fucking party and get it to bring the booze, why don’t we?”
When she said nothing, he sighed and fell out of step with her at the front of their group.
“What else are you keeping from us?” he asked.
And as though she were about to answer, she turned back, grimaced, and placed a firm hand on the wall that had appeared in front of them.
“More good news,” Marius remarked. “A dead end, after all this time.”
But the Red-Woman was cool. Calm as a leaf in a midday autumn breeze she closed her eyes and hummed a little tune that shook the loose sandstone blocks and collapsed what Marius and Yelena had both assumed was the end of the tunnel.
“You know what?” Marius said to Yelena. “At this point, I consider magic to be cheating.”
They entered into a spacious chamber about fifty meters wide, dominated by an oval groove set into the center of the floor. Ceramic urns were scattered around the room, but Yelena was particularly drawn to the room’s walls. She gripped the handle of her broadsword as she traced the line of sarcophagi on either side of the room stamped with an insignia she did not recognize – a stylized image of a scorpion with its pincer raised as though to strike.
The Red-Woman patted Edna, who had started shaking uncontrollably.
“Nice place,” Marius whistled, his eyes drawn to the various urns like a bird looking for gems to decorate its nest. “What’s up with the big gal?”
The Red-Woman sighed, and pointed to the center of the room – where the largest image of the scorpion symbol was inscribed.
“It is being a Wave trial,” she said.
Her words were punctuated by the increasingly menacing pounds from above, and Yelena and Marius noted the fear that had come over her.
“A Wave Trial?” Yelena asked.
“A test of endurance,” the Red-Woman explained. “We are making defense in this room against creatures of the Catacombs if we wish to enter the Forgotten City of Bhashera.”
Marius double blinked.
“And…do we want to enter the Forgotten City of Bhashera?”
She glared at him, and the glare became a gimlet.
“It is being the Lightbringer’s path. We are close.”
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Marius sighed. “Between the two of you, I feel like I might as well be as blind as that old blackbird Don.”
Yelena shuddered with the memory of the frayed Jilae, and set instead to the task at hand.
She tried opening one of the sarcophagi and found it closed shut.
“Marius, can you get this opened?”
Unbeknownst to her, he had already started pilfering some of the urns nearby, and looked up with a dust caked face and at least two new rings on his fingers.
“Hm? Lemme see.”
He inspected each coffin and stroked his straggly beard.
“Nope,” he said. “Closed up tighter than Amarata’s asshole.”
Yelena drew her sword to hack at the nearest coffin. She knew there was something inside. Perhaps a way to solve this trial before it began-
“I wouldn’t bother if I were you, gal,” he said. “Take a look at this.”
He grabbed her arm and pressed down, hard, once again sharing what his advanced Appraisal granted him:
Appraisal: Success
Object: Ash Shambler Sarcophagus
IMM: BLDG, PRC, PYRO, WIND, ERTH
“You want my input?” Marius said. “These things probably only open up as part of this trial thing.”
They both looked back at the nonchalant Red-Woman, standing beside their great beetle ally.
She nodded. And that was all Yelena had to see.
“You said we must defend this point, yes?” she asked.
The Red-Woman regarded her with suspicion but nodded.
“Ok,” she said, stepping between all of them and meeting their gazes with steely determination.
Neither of them really trust you, she thought as she tried to gulp away her own insecurities. But this is something you can do…
“We need to secure the potential entry points for the enemy,” she said, her cold, commanding tone striking at her two listeners. The sarcophagi seem to be linked to the trial – and we’ve got six of them on either side of the room. The East and Western walls are those we need to watch. We need to set up a kill zone.”
She watched them look at eachother and then instantly turn away. For a moment, she thought they may not have listened to her at all, but then Marius’ characteristic smirk smeared itself across its face.
“I got just what you’re looking for.”
He knelt down at one end of the room and began throwing pieces of metal and scrap together as the two women looked on him with total confusion, until Yelena realized what it was he was fiddling with down there: one of the repeating bolt thrower trap he had just dismantled.
“Hey!” she yelled, stepping forward to grab his arm and noting how quickly he had managed to set the little mechanical device up.
“It’s all good!” he smiled back. “This Tumblersmithy thing lets me disarm and set up some sneaky little traps for our soon-to-be-met new friends.”
She looked at the crossbow as it whirred into life and began to stutter, and her eyes were drawn to the copper wiring he held in his free hand.
He was waiting.
For what – her approval?
“I won’t bother asking you if you’re sure it will work,” she said. “But this time I want to know: what’s the chance of success?”
He looked at her for a few seconds.
“You won’t like it,” he said.
“Try me.”
Their eyes never wavered, and eventually he heaved his heavy, world-weary sigh.
“55%.”
He snapped back to his work.
“I guess now you’re gonna tell me I should bench the whole idea? I get it. You don’t like risk. But – end of the day? I ain’t the one with the muscles or the big sword or the badass attack skills. I gotta use what I get. I survived on my own long enough to know what I’m good at, so you gotta – hey!”
He felt the golden threads of her Guardian’s Ward touch him, filling him with their restorative energies.
“What are you-?”
“I’m fulfilling my role.”
Her voice shook him. The anger he’d seen in her as she ravaged the palace guards was gone. At least, that’s what she hoped he was seeing.
“I won’t stop you, Marius. Like you said above – we’re a team, now. Lean on me a little, now. Especially when your chances suck.”
She smiled through her healing aura and watched him shake his head at the floor.
“Alright.”
He got back to his tinkering, attaching the thin piece of copper to a crevice in the floor.
“There’s power here,” he said. “Maybe Glance, maybe something else – but something in these catacombs feeds some kinda energy to these traps.”
And he hooked the copper wire to a crevice that satisfied him.
Then: a spark
FAILURE: STATIC DISCHARGE
“Shit!”
Marius recoiled as the trap sent a shock running up his system. He flew back, clutching at his arm and the vibrations of pain running up his flesh. But, the pain dissipated into nothing just as soon as Yelena’s golden threads touched his wound.
“It’s alright,” she said. “We’ll try again. We’ll keep trying till we get it.”
He looked up at her with a strange mix of fear and gratitude.
“You know, somehow you’re even scarier when you’re playing nice.”
And for the next twenty minutes they assembled their traps, laid their plans, and made ready for the battle that was ahead. Yelena kept Marius healed through all his failures, and when they finally had two repeating bolt throwers set up, they set to arranging themselves in a defensive formation Yelena was no stranger to.
“Edna can take the back wall,” she said. “I will stay in the middle. Marius can skirt the perimeter of the circle, attacking from the shadows where possible. Our priestess can take the far exit. If there are any issues, I can use Battlecry to draw them to me and away from you. Just signal me if you can.”
They all nodded – even Edna.
“Here,” Marius said, tossing her a small vial of clear blue liquid. It couldn’t have been an rare item – for she recognized it instantly:
Appraisal: Success
Arcanist’s Elixyr (LVL 2)
GLANCE restoration: 20
“Found it in one of them dust-chests,” he said, nodding at the ransacked urns. “I’m a good scrounger, remember? And after all that healing you’re running on empty.”
She downed the vial’s contents with a nod of thanks, and he waved her away.
“No biggie,” he said. “Not like I can use it.”
As she readied herself for the Wave, she turned back to the Red-Woman and saw she had barely moved from her position since they’d entered the room.
“You’re afraid,” she said.
The eyes of the Everloftian told her nothing.
“Do you know what’s coming?” Yelena pressed.
Slowly, she sighed, and took up her position at the room’s far wall, arming herself with her silvered shivs.
“Commanded by an Argent,” she remarked. “One who is being versed in the art of war. It is not surprising.”
Yelena tensed, but she let the comment go. She had to. Anger wouldn’t serve her.
“I won’t justify anything our order has done to you,” she said. “But should we make it out of this battle alive, I want you to tell me it. Everything.”
The Red-Woman did not look back at her. She simply shifted on the balls of her feet. Tested her weapons, and positioned one foot on the center of the scorpion’s etched stinger.
“We hold for 10 minutes,” she told them all. Then, she barked her last words with the death throe of some dying animal: “Be ready.”