Chapter 92 Stopping For Lunch
In front of the four mages and paladin stood a portal to a realm that was solid yet not real. It was reality but not ‘real’ reality. A false and inferior recreation of true existence, one that served as a glorified basement where Shamsha had kept all of his toys that he hadn’t felt like maintaining.
With the portal to the demidimension now stabilized and open, skeletons decided that it was time for them to once again enter the real world. “Alexander, beachhead.” Isaac directed.
It took the court mage a moment to remember his proper military terms before he nodded once in acknowledgement of his orders. A beachhead was not something that Alexander had thought about since his time in training as a court mage. It was military terminology that someone who lived underground didn’t expect to ever use. “I do not have much mana left but I can open an area for you all to follow.” Alexander replied and started walking towards the portal. “Stars of doom head my call.” He chanted and held out his hand palm up. A trio of small marbles of reality formed in the air above his outstretched palm. A moment later they flung themselves through the skeletons’ open eye sockets and blasted apart the enchantments animating the enemies
Alexander took out a few more skeletons before he stepped through the portal. The perfectly created stone blocks that served as his backdrop made him look like he was a person painted by one artist in a room painted by another. The uncanny perfection of the wall made his presence there seem wrong in a way that made Isaac uneasy. “Karthen, can you get back if we get stuck in there?” Isaac asked the Grand Magus.
“Yes, though not until tomorrow.” Karthen explained. “Opening a portal through the Veil, or the ‘barrier separating the gods from mortals’ as some call it, requires a rather large amount of my mana.” Karthen explained but pointedly did not look directly at Isaac. The man’s fear of the mage was making it hard to read him accurately. Isaac wasn’t sure if Karthen was lying to him or just terrified.
Isaac nodded. “Karthen, you go in next and Lenna and I will follow.” Isaac ordered the Grand Magus. ‘Shamesh, stay out here and make sure the portal is undisturbed.’ He silently ordered his retainer.
‘As you say.’ Shamesh replied mentally with a bow that only Isaac could see. The bone golem took up his position a dozen feet from the portal where he would wait until Isaac and Lenna returned.
Karthen looked hesitant but eventually his curiosity and fear won out. He stepped in behind Alexander and Lenna stepped in behind him. Isaac slipped in behind Lenna almost as if he were her shadow and all of a sudden they were all inside.
The sight that met them was awe inspiring, terrifying, and underwhelming at the same time. They arrived inside a massive warehouse made of the perfectly created stone that they had seen from the outside. The portal was set into the wall of an alcove so it would be visible from the rest of the room but could not be seen through. The massive expanse of the warehouse went on for a truly ridiculous amount of space that was hard to even properly comprehend. The perfectly identical stone blocks caused one’s vision to blur as they tried to figure out how deep the room went.
The fact that it was only one room was what underwhelmed Isaac. He had expected an entire compound that had been handcrafted to Shamsha’s needs but it was simply an empty space with a few thousand ritual circles burned into the ground. “Wait… what are those?” Isaac asked and gestured at the elaborate sigils, made of solid gold with nine quartz crystals set into each of them that seemed to be trying to take in light instead of refract it. The sigils went on and on for as far as they could see into the room.
“Some kind of control spell.” Karthen explained. “It looks to be restricted to- oh my!” He exclaimed and jumped back from a skeleton that had taken notice of him and attempted to add him to its number. There were still a few thousand skeletons scattered about but the noise that Karthen had just made seemed to draw the attention of a large number of them. His exclamation echoed off the perfectly smooth stone again and again down through the massive room.
“If I didn’t know any better, I would say that you were trying to get us killed.” Lenna said as she cut down the skeleton in one casual swipe of her blade that cut the top half of the skeleton’s head clean off.
“What is it restricted to?” Isaac asked Karthen and started cleansing skeletons with casual lethality.
“Undead… I believe… I would have to get closer to know for sure.” Karthen explained though he looked like he was heavily contemplating going back through the portal.
“If you stay where you are, you will be safe. It is safer for you here than it is for you out there.” Isaac told the ancient wizard.
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Karthen swallowed hard. “I, uh, yes.” He replied.
“Do you know any combat spells at all?” Isaac questioned.
“I know almost every spell in existence.” Karthen declared proudly. “How else is one to reach the maximum level of wizardry?”
“By discovering new things.” Alexander replied. “Or figuring things out for yourself.”
“There is plenty of time to learn new things and reveal the secrets of a school of magic once you have reached level twenty.” Karthen replied. “It only took me until I was two hundred and ninety nine years old.”
“Maybe I should have been a wizard.” Lenna commented.
“I was about to say that.” Isaac joked. “You would have reached level twenty some time this year.”
Lenna snorted a laugh. “No way, I could have done it by now. A little risk taking goes a long way when you spend three centuries with your nose in a tome.” She replied.
“Karthen, if you really know every spell, then stand there and be ready to cast a reality shield if something comes flying at you. That’s all you have to do until this is over.” Isaac explained. Usually he would have put the wizard to work but he was positive that the wizard hadn’t been lying when he talked about the mana intensiveness of opening portals. He had felt the wizard’s massive outpouring of mana that he had done for both rituals.
“I, yes, I will do that.” Karthen said with a sigh of relief. It was clear that the wizard had expected to be put to work in a combat role.
“I am afraid that my usefulness to you is mostly at its limits.” Alexander told him. “I had planned on setting up a series of defensive runes around the portal to allow for our safe retreat, but with the Grand Magus’s ability to close the portal by simply breaking the ritual, I had thought it unnecessary. I see now that I was, once again, incorrect.”
Isaac shook his head. “No. You were correct that it isn’t needed.” Isaac explained while he and Lenna continued to casually remove the incoming skeletons. “Lenna and I can keep going indefinitely. A portal that small can be held by both of us for as long as is necessary. Actually, Lenna, can you keep our wizards in one piece? I’ll start thinning them out.”
Lenna nodded. “Yes. Just make sure to come back every minute.” She reminded him. Isaac nodded and started boosting himself as he teleported into the midst of the incoming skeletons.
Eventually all of the skeletons were either destroyed or broken to a point where Isaac didn’t feel like teleporting to them just to finish them off. It had taken quite a while but with all of the skeletal threat neutralized they had nothing holding them back from what had been drawing Isaac’s attention from the beginning.
The far end of the demidimension was glowing with a sparkling golden light from the illusory illumination reflecting off of countless gilded objects. At the incredible distance between the portal and the pile of riches it was impossible to tell exactly what was over there or how much of it there was, but it was a lot. The illusory light seemed to only exist to cause the gold to sparkle which further cemented the idea that Shamsha was an incredibly vain individual.
“I don’t see any traps.” Isaac commented. “I have no idea if that is a good or a bad thing though.”
“We should proceed with caution.” Alexander warned. “Shamsha was a wizard older than any city that I have ever been to. Who knows what he did with all of that time on his hands.”
“A platinum coin on that being an animated pile of gold.” Isaac said and flashed Alexander a grin.
Alexander shook his head. “I do not know enough about your abilities to know if you already know if that is an animated pile of gold. I would be a fool to take a bet against you without a perfect understanding of the circumstances.”
“So you won’t make a bet with me unless you already know the outcome.” Isaac surmised.
“Even then, if you had brought up the bet, I would begin to second guess myself.” Alexander replied.
“Only one way to find out.” Lenna cut in. “Let’s go, but be careful.”
Isaac and Alexander shared a nod and began following Lenna towards the far away pile of glowing gold. Karthen followed behind them at what he felt like was a safe distance. They traveled for an incredibly far distance that seemed to stretch on indefinitely when they were looking at the destination but was a reasonable distance when they were not.
“There is definitely some magic at work.” Alexander commented.
“Some kind of perception warping effect that makes the room seem infinitely large but only when it is gazed at directly.” Karthen agreed from a dozen paces behind him. “That has been the only magical effect that I have noticed, Alexander?”
“Likewise.” Alexander replied. “Lord Darkness, Lady Hellfire, have you noticed anything else?”
“Not exactly.” Isaac said while he walked with his eyes closed. “The mana in this space feels wrong. I feel like I used up a good chunk of the dark mana that existed in here and now the mana feels thin like the air at the top of a mountain.”
“I imagine that this place was filled directly with Shamsha’s mana and it most likely is not bringing in new mana from the rest of existence.” Alexander postulated.
“Not even through the portal?” Lenna asked.
“Some is no doubt entering through the portal but it is more like two streams with differing sediments running alongside each other. Both are maintaining their composition despite common sense suggesting that they would mix and equalize.” Karthen explained. “A space like this was most likely entirely created and filled with this ‘Shamsha’s’ magic and mana. In a way, it has been tainted with the being’s mana signature.”
After over a dozen hours of walking they finally reached the pile of gold. It was actually a massive mound of gold ritual grade sand. The tiny pieces of gold only needed to be mixed with a binding agent and painted into the lines of a ritual circle or set on the component locations for a ritual to be burned as fuel for it. “That is a ridiculous amount of gold but where are the magic items?” Isaac wondered.
“There.” Lenna said and pointed towards a rod that was only partially sticking out of the pile of gold dust.
“I think this is too much gold for us to move.” Isaac commented. “Like a lot too much gold.”
“I think you might be right.” Lenna agreed.
“Give me everything you have in the bag and fill it up with gold. We know that it can hold five hundred pounds.” Isaac told his mate.
“There is a lot of stuff still in the bag.” Lenna reminded him.
“What is the heaviest?” Isaac wondered.
“Food and water by far.” Lenna replied.
Isaac smiled and glanced between the rest of the party. “I guess we are stopping for lunch before we head out.”