The sanitarium was a hulking building that loomed above the surrounding houses. It was made from once-beautiful marble, the surface of which was now cracked and marred with age. Everywhere Garrett looked, he saw pieces of the building that appeared to be crumbling away. A faint stench permeated the fog that drifted in and out of the broken windows. A wide set of stairs led up to the front door, where the wood had rotted away, leaving the portal half-open, like a giant's mouth frozen mid-yawn.
Cynen, Gero, and Garrett all paused at the bottom of the steps, observing the building before them. Cynen showed no fear, but Gero was clearly nervous. Garrett, on the other hand, was simply waiting for Isabelle to arrive. When she did, flying down out of the sky to take up position behind him, he quickly held up his hand to stop Gero from attacking. From the white-knuckled grip Gero had on her swords, it was clear that she felt an extreme sense of danger from the Dire Spirit, and Isabelle's wide smile probably wasn't helping.
"This is one of our allies," Garrett said.
Peeking at Cynen, who was still looking at the building, Gero forced herself to relax, remembering the conversation she had had with Garrett in Dreamer's Inn earlier that day.
"We don't have time to waste," Garrett said, turning his attention back to the building in front of them. "Our goal is simple. We'll enter and eliminate the Great Ruler. We don't know much about our opponent, so we'll have to just play it by ear."
As unnerved as she was, Gero found herself nodding along. After all, there were four Shapers in their group, and she couldn't imagine much that they wouldn't be able to defeat. At Garrett's gesture, Cynen took the lead, with Gero following a few steps behind on her right, and Garrett directly behind her. Isabelle floated along behind Garrett, her hair spreading out as if she was floating in the sea.
At the top of the stairs, Cynen smashed apart the remains of the door, and the four of them entered. Immediately, Garrett saw the rapid slew of windows popping up in front of him that he had been expecting.
[You have entered the territory of Vengel, Rotting Tongue of Wen. To enter another great ruler's private territory is a declaration of war.]
[Vengel, Rotting Tongue of Wen, is happy you have come to see him, and promises to grind your bones to dust to decorate his casket.]
[You have begun a Ruler’s War. Should you lose, both your life and your territory will be forfeit. Should you win, you shall gain control of your opponent's territory and their life will end, granting you a portion of their power. Until the end of the war, other great rulers are forbidden from entering your territory. Kill or be killed.]
[During a Ruler’s War you cannot gain experience. All experience gained will be granted at the end, should you survive the war.]
An intense mental pressure rose from the basement of the building, slamming into the group, causing Cynen and Gero to both gasp. Garrett responded with his own mental pressure, expanding it just enough to encapsulate the group and keep them from being crushed. That only served to infuriate Vengel even further, but Garrett didn't care one bit as he directed everyone to advance.
"Come on, we're going down."
With Cynen leading the way, they made their way across the wide entrance hall to the stairs. The building was three stories high, but they ignored the top floors, as the wave of mental pressure had come from beneath their feet. Garrett didn't know how deep they would have to go, and so they began their careful descent into the bowels of the building.
Everything was eerily quiet, but the stench, which had originally been faint, began to grow stronger and stronger, causing Gero to narrow her eyes. Normally, Garrett would have used Observe the Dream to try and see what was ahead, but the mental pressure coming off of Vengel was so strong that he found himself unable, for fear of exposing the others to the overwhelming pressure.
More than once, Garrett sent out threads of mental energy, hoping to pull Vengel into a mental space to communicate. But every single time, he ran up against a solid wall, and found himself unable to connect to the furious Great Ruler. There was something odd about Vengel, something that Garrett couldn't quite place his finger on.
Soon, they encountered their first enemy, lumbering out of one of the rooms as they came down the stairs into the first basement floor. It looked like one of the drudge goblins, with massive arms and a second head growing out of its chest. There was an odd fleshiness to its body, however, and as soon as it saw them, it let out a terrible screech and charged.
With every step it took, its body swelled as its pores opened up and sucked in wisps of fog. The head on its chest split open, transforming into a giant mouth that ran the length of its torso, and a rotting tongue shot out, aiming to impale Cynen, who stood at the front of the team.
With a disdainful snort, she slapped the tongue aside, the burning flame that covered her hands scorching it, and her other fist smashed into the monster's neck, burning a hole straight through. Despite nearly being decapitated, the malformed goblin tried to grab Cynen with its hands and stuff her into the many-toothed cavity in its chest. Before it could, two of its arms fell to the ground, blackish blood dribbling out of the stumps as Gero appeared behind its back.
She spun, her blades flashing as she cut its legs out from under it. Cynen coordinated, unleashing two powerful blows that crushed its spine. Seeing that parts of the body were still wiggling, she waved her hand, unleashing drops of fire that landed on the monster's body parts and began to burn, rapidly transforming it into ash.
Garrett hadn't moved, and neither had Isabelle, both of them just watching the fight.
"What do you think?" he asked, when the goblin monster's charred corpse finally stopped twitching.
"I think if there are a lot of these things, we're gonna be in trouble," Gero said, kicking the creature's head and watching as it scattered into the air.
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"I think you're right," Garrett said, "which means the faster we can find Vengel, the better."
"Who's Vengel?" Gero asked, looking back and forth between Garrett and Cynen.
Seeing Cynen shrug, she looked at Garrett, who had already walked to the next set of stairs that led further down to the floors below.
"Vengel, Rotting Tongue of Wen, he is the great ruler we're here to kill."
"Oh, good to know," Gero said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm in her voice. "It's always nice to know who it is you're going to eliminate."
The second floor of the basement was much like the first, with a hall leading into the distance and half a dozen rooms that came off of it. The stairs to the third floor were at the other end of the hall, and so Cynen led the way forward. Just as they got to the first door, though, Garrett called for them to stop.
"It's highly likely that each of these rooms has some sort of corrupted patient," he said, "and if we pass by them, we'll end up getting ambushed from behind. I think it's a better idea to just kick the doors down one at a time and deal with their occupants."
"If there are more of these floors, though, that's going to take forever," Gero said. "How about I take the left and Cynen takes the right?"
"That's fine with me," Cynen said, cracking her knuckles. "Let's do this."
As Gero moved to the door on the left, Cynen stepped forward, her foot slamming into the door and blasting it to pieces. A shriek echoed from inside the room as another monstrous goblinoid launched itself forward. It was met with a rapid jab that set it reeling, giving it no time to recover before Cynen's flame-covered hand strike tore it in half. With a fearsome brutality, she rained punches down on the monster, even as its wriggling flesh tried to grow back.
On the other side, Gero was cutting her opponent to pieces, leaving chunks of flesh scattered about the room. Because of how hardy the creatures were, it took almost a minute for each of them to defeat their opponents. By then, the doors in the hall had all popped open and more monsters were beginning to emerge.
Garrett, who was standing at the end of the hall, simply waved his hand and a sea of hair shot out above his head, like a black wave that drowned the mutated goblins. By that time, Gero and Cynen had both emerged from the rooms they had entered, and a fierce fight broke out in the hall. There wasn't much space, given the size of the mutated goblins, and Isabelle's hair made it even tighter.
With the passage effectively blocked up, Isabelle began pulling one goblin at a time, throwing them to Cynen and Gero, who obliterated them. As they came, within twenty minutes, the passage was clear of living enemies. A long trail of burnt and dismembered bodies stretched in their wake. More than once, Garrett caught Gero glancing at Isabelle, as if afraid the dire spirit would turn on them next. Ignoring her concerns, Garrett ordered Cynen to head down to the third level of the basement while he checked on the situation outside.
Wave after wave of goblins had been rushing the awakened dreamers’ position. As things began to get dicey, Pax had called for them to push to the east along the route Garrett had pointed out. As they rotated around the sanitarium, they soon came upon a strange street. There was no fog in sight. Rather, the street was well lit, dyed in rainbow colors by the flowers that poked up out of the cobblestones.
As soon as they saw the flowers, a great sense of relief washed over the awakened dreamers. They sped up until they had entered the range of the lights. As soon as they did, a faint trickle of rejuvenating energy entered their bodies, and much of their exhaustion faded. The goblins continued to charge towards them, the redcaps shrieking in fury as the lumbering goblins and trolls behind them stomped in their direction.
With their renewed vigor, the awakened dreamers reset their battle line and began to fight again, steel meeting bone as their weapons clashed. Pax, who was fighting at the front, let out a groan as she blocked a troll's heavy fist before stepping forward and crushing the monster's knee with a blow from her mace. She knew that the troll would just regenerate, but at this point, she wasn't sure that they had any other options.
Kinsley had run himself ragged, burning a couple of trolls to the ground, and he was currently half unconscious in the back, trying to recover his mental energy. Slamming her shield forward to knock the troll off balance, she ducked under a flailing arm and lifted her mace to try and stun the creature. Then, there was a flicker from one of the nearby flowers, and a faint wisp of flame shot towards her weapon.
It happened behind her, so she hadn't yet noticed it when her mace fell on the troll's head, causing a blast of fire to explode on the side of its face. Letting out a terrifying shriek, the troll rolled its body away, crushing a dozen redcaps in the process. Its big hand slapped at its head, trying to extinguish the flame, but all that did was spread the flame further, jumping from its skull to its hands.
The flame burned with an eerie green, and as Pax watched, the troll's head began to wither, as if it was aging rapidly. All across the battle line, more and more bits of flame were flung out, some targeting the monsters and burning them with a corrupting energy that rapidly absorbed their life force, and some landing on the awakened dreamers, renewing their energy and filling them with a sense of strength.
Asher, who was standing behind Pax, directing his nightmares, saw the flames and shivered, an almost fanatical expression appearing in his eyes, before he quickly withdrew deeper into his hood, as if frightened. At the same time, almost a mile away, another massive group of goblins was engaged in what looked like a civil war. Redcap fought redcap, and drudge fought drudge, while a set of three trolls desperately tried to keep a fourth troll down.
The fight was pure carnage, directed by seven robed figures, who stood on the roof of nearby buildings, sending waves of necromantic energy into the fight. Anytime their zombies succeeded in killing one of the goblins, Delrisa would absorb the creature's soul, and in the next moment its corpse would rise, joining the fight against its brethren.
Still elsewhere, shadowy figures lurked through the narrow, fog-filled alleyways, moving on silent feet, as they hunted the goblins streaming towards both of the battlefields. In the basement under the sanatorium, Garrett smiled grimly. Everything was going well, or at least as well as it could be expected. All that was left was to close out the fight.
They were already on the fourth basement floor, and Garrett could tell that they were getting close. The deeper they went, the stranger Vengel's mental energy seemed to be. And when they finally arrived on the fifth and final floor of the basement, Garrett understood exactly why.
Ahead of them was a large room, empty save for a dozen thick tubes of glass. Each tube was filled with a disgusting, pus-like substance, the source of the stench that filled and surrounded the building. The tubes pulsed with power, each one amplifying Vengel's mental power. At the other end of the room, squatting on a table, was what looked to Garrett like a giant toad-human hybrid.
A massive belly bulged over Vengel's legs, and his human-looking arms ended in hands with webs between their fingers. His head was like that of a frog's, with bulging eyes and a long tongue. Where his nose should have been were two large holes, and his bald head had no visible ears. His skin was sticky with the same sort of slime that filled the six tubes. And when he saw Garrett and the others, he let out a croaking laugh.
"So, you are the ones who were foolish enough to challenge me in my own lair."