“You heard her,” Achmed said to his team. “Formation Two. Let’s roll out.”

The two other remaining Legionnaires scarfed their food and the two teams merged into a two-by-two arrangement they’d clearly arranged while I was too busy being a ferret. I was impressed by the discipline displayed, especially by Team Spice. Tiff was a natural leader.

“What do you want us to do?” I said.

“Take the rear with Annabelle. They’re our quests so we’ll take point, but we’re trusting you to make sure nobody gets the jump on us from behind.”

Annabelle saluted her with a grin. “You can count on us.”

Formation Two began moving down the tunnel at a cautious but steady pace. The arrangement was a smart one, with the tankiest Players in the front rank, followed by strong melee with ranged and support staggered behind. Annabelle and I brought up the rear. I resummoned the ferret and had it follow us a discreet distance behind. It would warn me if anything was coming to surprise us.

Tiff guided us along the most direct route to the wooden door, bypassing all the side branches and other doors along the way. If her team wondered how she knew where to go, they kept their questions to themselves. I could see why Team Spice ranked so high. I liked Achmed, he was a great guy and led his team well, but Tiff was what I pictured a proper leader would be like, making firm decisions quickly and demanding respect with her mere presence.

We progressed quickly and without incident, and as we got closer to the end the tunnels started to slope downwards. By the time we reached the corner before the tunnel leading to the door, we were fairly deep underground. We’d known for a while we were getting close; the ominous, muffled chanting had been a dead giveaway. With my enhanced senses I was the first to hear it, but soon everyone knew there was a nest of cultists up ahead.

Tiff had started out in the second rank, just behind the tanks in the front, but as we waited around the corner she moved back to join me and Annabelle. As she passed Achmed, he followed her to the rear. We conferred together in whispers.

“The door’s around this corner, right?” Tiff said. I nodded. “And there are two guards, you say?” I nodded again.

Achmed shook his head. “I’m not even gonna ask.”

“Any idea what we’ll find on the other side?” Tiff said.

“I have an idea, but I can’t be completely sure. Ever come to the Cathedral for healing?” I said.

“More than a few times,” she said. “We don’t have any healing powers on our team.”

“Did you check out any of the NPCs statuses?”

“Of course,” Tiff said.

“You’re talking about that Thaumaturgy skill they all had,” Achmed said. “I figured this had something to do with that. Ritual magic, right?”

“I thought the same thing,” Tiff said. “And since they are demon cultists...”

“That chanting must be them using it to summon a demon,” Achmed said.

“Sounds about right,” I said.

At that moment, both of them jolted and stared ahead.

“What’s wrong?”

“My quest just updated,” Tiff said.

“Mine too. Take a look,” Achmed said, and shared his quest screen with us.

Team Quest: Stop the Cult of the Scarlet Hand from unleashing the Demon Calamity

Reward: Reward Tokens, Random Platinum Reward Box, Random Power Scroll, Random Gold Item

“Nice rewards,” I said.

“I should hope so,” Achmed said. “After what we’ve been through to get here.”

Tiff gave a decisive nod. “Right. Who’s got the most destructive ability? I’m talking one that’ll blow that door right off its hinges.”

“You wanna blast through and go in guns a-blazing?” Achmed said. “I can get behind that.”

“Every second we wait brings them one second closer to summoning that calamity. It would be nice to know what we’ll find inside, but we don’t, so I’m hoping that they’ll be more surprised by us than we will be by whatever's on the other side.”

“Let’s start with taking out the guards as quietly as possible,” I said. I had several ways I could’ve done it, but this wasn’t my quest. I’d already done enough getting us here. I’d also evaluated all the Players on both teams, and I could see a couple of possibilities in their abilities.

“Anika on my team is our best bet,” Tiff said. “She’d be quietest.”

“I agree,” Achmed said. “If you’re sure it’ll work.”

Tiff bit her lip. “Sure? No. But these cultists are pretty weak and there’s only two of them. It should work.”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“How about we have Grace ready behind her,” Achmed said. “Just in case.”

“That’s smart. Okay. I’ll have Grace standing by with a couple of arrows ready.”

Tiff made her way back to where her teammates Anika and Grace were and whispered some instructions. They nodded and went to the front. Grace nocked two arrows on her bowstring at the same time. Anika took a few deep breaths, then poked her head around the corner and used her power. It was a good one. I'd stalked Team Spice for a day on one of their quests so I could see them use their powers, and this was one I definitely wanted to have handy.

Powers:

Now I Lay You Down To Sleep - Adept: Put target to sleep

I heard the sound of the cultists’ bodies slumping to the floor. Grace jumped around the corner, bow aimed at the door, then she lowered it and released the tension in the string.

“Good job, Anika,” she said.

Anika exhaled deeply. “I’m so glad that worked,” she said.

Tiff patted her on the back. “Knew you could do it.”

Achmed’s guys snuck forward and dragged the unconscious cultists back. Apart from their darkslingers, they had nothing notable on their bodies except for red hand-shaped pins and a kind of long, wavy-bladed daggers my inner nerd knew were called flambards. A few of the Players seemed interested in the slingers, but then Tiff explained that they used the wielder’s own life energy as ammunition and they lost interest.

“Mind if I take them?” I said. I was curious if I could Artifice the darkslingers to use a different power source.

“No objections here,” Achmed said.

“Go nuts,” Tiff said, and I made the weapons disappear into my inventory.

“Do we still want to blast the door in, or do you want to disguise ourselves in these guys’ robes and try to infiltrate?” Achmed said.

“Before you decide, can I try something?” I said.

Both team leaders agreed so I went alone up to the door and placed my hand against it. The radar ability had been effective sensing the underground rooms, and I wondered if it could work through the door. I knew that back on Earth, the police had radar devices that could let them detect people inside houses, maybe I could do the same.

I sent some trial pulses through the door and was pleasantly surprised to find that if I did it a certain way I could get a sense of what was on the other side. It was hazy, but at least it was something. I came back to the others and drew a diagram of the room using chalk from my inventory.

“Is there anything you don’t have stored in there?” Achmed said.

“Strangely enough, there’s no kitchen sink,” I said.

I walked them through my sketch. “It seems to be a huge square chamber with a high ceiling. There’s a raised area in the middle here with a bunch of objects around it.”

“People?” Tiff said.

“That’d be my guess, yeah. There are five or six more here and here,” I said, pointing to spots in the middle of both side walls. “Five more are positioned along the wall on either side of the door, and a bunch more along the wall opposite.”

Tiff chewed her lip some more as she studied the crude drawing. “If those objects are more cultists, that’s a lot of bad guys. But I’m still leaning towards the guns a-blazing approach. If we disguise a couple of us as cultists and the real ones see through it, the two who went in would be sitting ducks and the rest of us would have to charge in anyway.”

“Guns a-blazing it is, then. So who’s got the best power to take down that door?” Achmed said.

Again, I had a few ways I could’ve done it, but this was their quest. One of the Team Spice women had the power to create a strong gust of wind, and a Legionnaire had a powerful punch ability, but both used a lot of mana and even after the snacks nobody had that much.

Annabelle surprised us all by raising her hand. “Can I try?”

“I don't know what your abilities are,” Tiff said. “Do you think you can do it?”

Annabelle hefted her staff and twirled the six foot rod of metal in one hand like a cheerleader's baton. “I may be a bit rusty, but I’m sure I’ve still got it.”

“Then by all means,” Tiff said.

“We are in your hands, Miss Annabelle,” Achmed said.

After some brief discussion, we came up with a plan. We would split up and take positions against the walls on either side of the door. Annabelle would blast it away, then we’d rush in and deal with what was on the other side, hopefully taking them all by surprise. It was a simple plan, but the best ones usually are.

We pressed ourselves against the walls as Annabelle took up position behind us, standing in the middle of the tunnel with her staff aimed at the door.

A large magic circle appeared in the air in front of her. Its purple glow began to brighten as the energy built up, then a beam shot from it and struck the door, splintering it into pieces that went hurtling into the room with a boom.

The summoning chamber was pretty much like I’d mapped out with radar. The circular plateau in the center of the square floor was raised on three stepped tiers and there were lots of cultists in there. But there was a lot I hadn't been able to see with the radar, and it was pretty cool-looking.

Three huge, glowing magic circles, all identical and much larger and more intricate than anything I’d seen Annabelle create, rotated rapidly around a single point above the central pedestal, the mystic engravings scribed onto circle each leaving trails of light that formed a sphere of intertwining lines which shone with a dark eldritch energy that almost seemed to suck light into it rather than radiate it. At least twenty cultists in dark hooded robes knelt around the perimeter of the lowest step, swaying to a rythm only they could hear, with their heads rolling back in pious ecstasy as they chanted incantations in what was no doubt an ancient, forgotten tongue.

The door lay in pieces strewn on the floor in front of us. Annabelle had blasted it with enough force that the door bits should have flown across the room, but they were all loosely scattered just in front of the cultists in the center ring.

Directly opposite us on the far wall, a cultist with a long, scraggly beard and crazy eyes stood on a dias behind a sort of lectern with an open book resting atop it. Five cultists flanked him on either side holding flamberts against their chests in some kind of vigilant salute, or perhaps they were just ready to sacrifice any of the twenty in the middle who might suddenly decide that being this close to something called a Demon Calamity when it first appeared wasn’t such a great idea after all and this was probably not the right career choice for them, and try to run away. I couldn’t see them from where I stood, but I knew that five more stood along the wall on either side of our doorway.

Centered in both of the walls on either side there were what looked like tall tesla coils, thick metal poles rising twenty feet into the air, each topped with a large metal ellipsoid. Each pole had five more cultists standing around them, arms raised high over their heads with hands clasped, as a dark mist flowed from their bodies into the pole as though their energy was being sucked out to feed the coils. Crackling bolts of dark energy arced from the ellipsoids, meeting in the middle of the room directly into the center of the sphere of whizzing dark energy formed by the spinning magic circles.

Inside this sphere, curled up like a baby in a womb, something grotesque pulsed and quivered.