Zalia quickly checked the undead’s rank and was shocked to see it was Silver. It was Silver yet it was not awake like the guards in the keep had been. She paused in thought, inspecting the glove as well
Ethereal Vault Gauntlet (Heirloom) - Unbonded Bronze rank.
“Oh damn,” Zalia thought.
A Bronze rank heirloom item and it looked like it might be a storage item of some sort as well. The only issue being that a Silver undead lay between her and it, its face on the table mere centimetres from the glove. She could probably take out the undead before it made enough noise to attract others but she was not certain of that fact. She was also uncertain whether Silver was the highest rank she would find in this bunker either.
Her curiosity almost got the better of her, the temptation to try and take the glove right there and now strong but not quite stronger than her survival instincts. Taking it now with no path of retreat was a risk with a strong chance for death.
So, she left it there. She marked it in her mind as being on the fifth floor and left the room, managing to carve a tiny scratch into the floor in front of the door as a marker for later. She walked a circle around the floor she was on, trying once more to discern any visible difference in the doors yet finding none at all. Questioning if she would have to use the floor jumping method to climb the rest of the way anyways, she decided to try opening one more door.
Picking somewhat randomly, she tried to see if there were vibrations of movement coming from under the door and this time she saw some. She wasn’t an expert at deciphering the meaning of the vibrations by any means but it looked like something was either walking around in a circle or continuously walking into the wall.
Deciding to move on from that door rather than risk it, she moved to the next on her right. Once more, she was met with slight vibrations acting in a repetitive manner. She found another two doors with similar patterns and skipped those too, the third after those finally bringing change. Much as the first door she had opened it held no vibrations and so she lightly pushed it open, peering inside.
Within was a room that had the appearance of a weapons testing range. The walls, floor and ceiling were very easily distinguishable as fortified with magic having a light sheen that could be described as a glow to them. Further down the hallway-like room, a solid block of stone stood from the ground. As she had hoped there were no undead in here but it was not the exit she was looking for so she left the door open and went to the next.
She stood before three more doors before finally finding something different. She was about to leave the current one when she noticed that the vibrations were fading, their centre moving upwards on the wall rather than remaining on the ground. She waited for it to fade entirely before opening the door, revealing a stairway that led up, rotating leftwards as it did.
Relieved that they did actually have stairs in the building, Zalia thought for a moment before coming up with a plan. Leaving the door open, she went back into the corridor and down to the door that held the weapons testing room. She peeked around the door, looking towards the staircase and waited. Just as she hoped, the undead came shambling out of the stairway door and began walking towards her.
Quickly pulling her head back behind the door and slowly closing it, she waited. She heard and saw through the vibrations as the Bathar moved past the door she was hiding behind, beginning the first of many loops around the circular corridor that was the fifth floor. Once it was far enough past, she left the room and went to the stairway, closing the door behind her and ascending to the next level.
The moment she was at the door of the fourth floor, she tried contacting Boreal again.
“Boreal?” she projected.
“Zalia!” The reply came shortly.
She breathed a sigh of relief at finally making contact.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Okay. Zalia where?” Boreal asked.
The tone her mental communication relayed was tinged with concern. Zalia chewed on her lower lip a little.
“I might have fallen all the way to the bottom,” Zalia explained.
There was a moment of silence.
“Zalia fly?” Boreal asked.
“No, no, there is some type of magic that stops abilities from working. Don’t try to come down here,” Zalia replied.
Once more, a moment of silence.
“Zalia okay?” Boreal asked.
“Zalia is doing just fine, I’m almost all the way up now,” Zalia said comfortingly.
She began explaining what she had seen so far, sending images along with her explanations. Boreal didn’t ask her to but it was as much to distract Boreal from Zalia’s current situation than anything else. Once she caught up to where she was, Zalia began explaining what she was doing.
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“I’m about to open the door to the fourth floor. It looks like there are some vibrations coming under the door so I’ll have to time this right,” Zalia said.
“Zalia careful,” Boreal insisted.
Giving a mental affirmative, Zalia waited until all the vibrations had faded and opened the door. Seeing that there were undead all over this level, she quickly slid to the left and entered the door there, hoping it was the stairwell. Luckily, it was. Unluckily, she slammed face first into an undead that was standing unconscious right in front of the door.
With a reaction speed born of training and bonded physical and mental stats, her sword was summoned and slammed point first through its face before it could react. Its skull began disintegrating from the blue light applied by the blade and she closed the door behind her with one hand as she still held the undead upright by its skull. She caught the dead Bathar just before its head completely disintegrated and slowly lowered it to the floor.
“Zalia careful?” Boreal asked.
In the moment of panic, Zalia had stopped transmitting.
“Just a little Iron rank undead, nothing to be worried about,” Zalia replied, sending an image of her blade through its head.
“Zalia bad sneaking,” Boreal said, sending a tsking sound.
“What? I’m great at sneaking. When did you learn to tsk?,” Zalia refuted.
“Cook would catch already,” Boreal insisted.
“What does that mean?” Zalia asked.
“Camp cooks would catch,” Boreal explained.
“No they wouldn’t, they would give it to me. You would only be at risk of getting caught because you’re bad at asking,” Zalia retorted.
Boreal was silent for a moment.
“Cook never catch Boreal,” she explained.
“How many times did you steal from them?” Zalia asked incredulously.
“Just… few,” Boreal lied.
“Klepto-cat,” Zalia said.
“I like name,” Boreal replied proudly.
Zalia sighed, quietly, and focused back on what she was doing. The stairway before her was empty and she couldn’t see any vibrations coming from it so she ascended.
She made it all the way to the top floor with no more trouble, though each level had more undead than the last. The issue she ran into was that while the top floor was relatively clear of undead, the one part that wasn’t was the corridor leading to the front door. Some lay unconscious against the walls while others stood still like statues. It looked like they had all died where they stood, clumped up against the door.
She had assumed the death of many of the Bathar in the city had been instant by where she had found the undead in the keep but the sight before her told a different story. It was like they had died as they tried to escape the building in a panic, pushing towards the door as they tried to open it.
The reality of the horror that had befallen the city here finally settled in as she looked at the clump of undead pushed into the hallway. She had seen the Bathar here as undead more than people that had once been alive yet they had been, hadn’t they?
She shook her head, thinking about the massacre and enslavement of an entire city via undeath could wait until she was safe. Her issue now was getting past the undead to unlock the front door, something easier said than done.
Now that she was near to the entrance, she could possibly begin releasing the undead from their eternal slavery. She decided it was a good idea to do just that as she realised she did actually have a route of escape if absolutely necessary. Being on the top floor, she would be able to jump through the window onto the roof above if it came to it.
Mind made up, she started summoning various traps and placing them around. The tripwires wouldn’t work as she couldn’t plant them into the walls but bear traps and the extending caltrops both would work just fine.
Satisfied with her preparation, she decided to start the fight off with a giant ritual seeing as they wouldn’t respond until she did so. Knowledge she had courtesy of the Bronze guards back in the keep.
Using the Bronze ability of Herbal magic, she combined Bitterbalm and Snow-leaf to make it create the lava element rather than the ice it originally did. She did the same with Bitterbalm and Dodge-vine making the base element vulnerability. She began laying down a ritual using the altered Snow-leaf and Dodge-vine as minor elements to a major Bitterbalm base. The entire thing put together would apply a lava and vulnerability based curse to the whole clump of undead. Simultaneously, she used an ice creation ritual to begin summoning a wall in front of her.
She summoned her bow as both rituals activated at once. The undead were woken immediately as their bodies were riddled with deep red glowing lines that began smoking. A wall of ice with holes for her to shoot through appeared in the start of the hallway, entirely blocking it off. Traps went off left, right and centre as the horde charged towards her and the wall. Used to the terrifying sight, Zalia let off arrow after arrow into the approaching mass, trusting the various stacking abilities of her bow proficiency and heirloom weapon to do most of the work. Blue lines joined the red as the bodies of the undead were burnt up from the inside and out.
Trying something a little different, she cast the spreading ice curse on the wall in front of her so as the undead began impacting it and trying to break through, the wall started growing over their bodies, encasing them. The undead behind them began pushing and ripping at the ones stuck in front, some even starting to tear each other apart in their rush to reach Zalia.
The fight was quick and brutal, the mixture of Zalia’s ability to prepare and the confined area taking away the advantage of numbers causing a swift end to the Bathar. Once more, they died in droves, none of them releasing the dark shade Juniper had when killed.
Once the work was done, most of the bodies completely burned away from the curse she had inflicted upon them, Zalia let go of the rituals and walked through the mess. She had gained not a single level on any ability from the fight, the numbers too small and the fight too easy to grant any.
Stepping over the last body, she pulled the bar built into the door back and clicked the small lock on the handle. The amount of effort she had needed to put in to reach the lock just for such a small lock annoyed her but it was what it was. She pulled the door open and was greeted by a flying Boreal landing right in her arms.
“I missed you too little one,” Zalia comforted.