Still covering the communication stud, Joe stared at the founder. “What’s the deal, Margen?”
“You were telling me during the healing how the town just had a huge festival around us founders. How they have performances about me.”
“And?”
“Sounds like Fort Coral has tossed me and the others up on a pretty high pedestal. That kind of reverence can lead to poor tactical decisions. A good leader doesn’t ignore the emotions of others, but he doesn’t use his own to form strategies. If you go and tell them you found me, they are going to stop focusing on the task at hand and switch to a rescue mission. I don’t need to be rescued. We need to bring down the Erlking, break the loom, and fix the wards you said were busted.”
“Ok. I can see where you’re going now. But what happens if they jump in here during a fight? They won’t be expecting a hulking semi-rotting stranger. If you get offed by friendly-fire, that’s it. All those centuries of toughing through the rot would have been for nothing.”
“That is a good argument,” the commander complimented. “Alright. Let’s meet in the middle. If my existence would alter their plans, we keep a lid on it. If what they come up with won't be impacted by me, we speak up.”
“Ok. As long as we tell them about you before we reconnect either way.”
“Done. Now, one more thing. I want the same commitment from you. You don’t try and save me from dying by undead. I can do another stint in Dooms. I’ll be back in a few months. If it comes down to completing one of our objectives and saving me, you let me go. Swear,” the founder demanded, bearing a stern look which brooked no objections.
“I get it. Ok. I swear.”
“Us too,” the voice in Joe’s head chimed in.
“Now. You make sure you grab Dooms if you need to before you retreat, but it really doesn’t matter if I’m in her again.”
“You have my word there too, Margen,” Joe answered earnestly.
“Us too!”
“How the heck are you guys going to fight and carry that big-ass sword?”
“We’ll figure it out. That’s friggin’ DoomHerald. Who wouldn’t want to carry it?”
Joe couldn’t help but smile at the ragamuffin's excitement. Before he could reply, Myllo’s voice spoke through the earring.
“So here’s what we have come up with, Joe. The Hellions were close to the top. They figured they were a floor below the top level when they ran into a whole pack of them mind-bending bear mummies.”
“Mournful Thralls,” Joe supplied.
“Yeah, those. Level-wise, it wasn’t much of a match. The team tore apart a big chunk of the thralls, but then the bastards got into Nara's mind and made her turn on the team. Morty scrubbed it, but by then, they had Reven, too. They were close to getting into the cleric’s head as well, so the Hellions had to bail. They just didn’t have high enough mental resistance for that many dominator-types.”
Joe thought the sinister-seeming team had tons of determination. He had learned personal grit helped mental defenses, but he conceded it was not the same true resistances.
“Turns out you do,” the guild strategist conferred. “Kenda says you have major resistance to three of the four mind categories and at least a minor in the last one.”
Standing in the hallway while Margen, and presumably Yuk, stared at him, Joe quickly dissected that statement. The three mental categories he was best against were fear, domination, and confusion effects. He guessed the fourth mental attack category had to be stun. His [Stun Block] was level 14. It made sense to equate that rank to minor resistance.
“So here is Plan 1,” Myllo continued. “Do you think you can get to the third floor? We can talk you through it. If so, we have you make a waypoint for Vex, and we jump in a select team of mind-shielded guilders, overwhelm the thralls on hand, and assess the assault on the loom room. The stuff we have for mental protection on hand is mostly short duration, but if we hit hard and fast with you taunting them, we should be able to kill the rest of the mummies before they can snag someone’s mind.”
“I have Wild Order’s scent trail. I can follow it back to where we split with the Hellions and then switch and follow Naragash’s team.”
“Even better. So, is this doable. Great, cause Plan 2 was not optimal. You sure there are not too many undead for you two to handle?”
“Actually, we are doing surprisingly well in that category,” Joe replied, looking at the warrior next to him. “It was the getting unlost that has been the real challenge until now. I think we can make it there. But how do I make a waypoint? I don’t know anything about gate magic. The only teleportation I’m familiar with is from an item I have.”
“Vex says you two just have to draw the same symbol. It can’t just be a dot or a plain square. It has to have some ‘significance’ as he puts it. Oh, and he is saying it has to be almost exactly the same. You have a little wiggle room with size, but even that has to be close. He is asking if there is any symbol you know perfectly.”
“Err. None that he would know.”
“Vexor is very versed with symbology, Joe. What have you got?”
“The only symbols I know by heart are from my old world, Myllo. I’m ninety percent certain that Vex isn’t going to know the band logos for Twisted Sister or Van Halen. And I don’t know any from Illuminaria. Let me ask Yuk.” Joe whispered that last part, hoping Margen wouldn’t catch it. Bug familiars probably shouldn’t know much about iconography.
“We need a common symbol that Vexor would know that we can draw by heart. Can you think of one?” Joe asked Margen out loud, knowing that Yuk would be able to reply silently as well.
“My symbol,” the big warrior answered immediately. “I have made my mark on countless orders over the years. I could do it in my sleep.”
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Joe recalled seeing the sign all over the place during Founder’s Day. It was an old-English-looking M inside a double rectangle.
“So could we. We’ve doodled Margen’s sign a thousand times.”
“Ok, we have a winner, Myllo. Will Margen’s symbol work?”
“Perfect,” the artificer replied. “Vex says make it three inches tall.”
“Alright. Hang tight. I’ll let you know when I reach the Hellion’s trail.”
“Stay safe, son,” the disembodied voice commanded. “Watch over Yuk as well.”
“Will do.”
Joe tipped his head to his teammates and began a quick stride back the way they had come.
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The three of them had to fight six more times before they reached the flight of stairs that would take them to the third floor. Yuk leveled without much fanfare, as they had already determined fifteen was a pretty dull level-up. The raggedy collective gained a little bit of health and mana, as well as a good chunk of stamina, but nothing else.
Joe was just a little behind him. He needed a few thousand more experience before gaining 18, which would give him another attribute point, but unfortunately, no new skill options.
For five of the six fights, they stuck with their practiced battle-tactic. Joe surrounded Margen in dual [Heart Fires] and stood just before the man. The ghouls locked onto Joe, both being outside the undead-consuming flames and robust with life-energy. Margen employed only his surgical strikes while Yuk and Joe whittled away at the wights. These battles were savage, painful, and tiring, but thanks to Yuk's physical durability, Margen’s expertise, and Joe’s support skills, they were fights they could easily recover from. They weren’t fast or flashy, but the strategy was one they could keep up pretty much indefinitely.
The sixth fight was an outlier. Instead of jackalesque archers in the mix with the wolves, this pack had vulture-like undead humanoids. The carrion bird creatures were casters.
Mournful Canter: Level 21: Undead(Ghast): Controller: Spirit: 898/898
Fields of damaging spell effects landed on Joe and Margen: acidic black tentacles, sickening auras which burned the lungs, spectral bony hands that clawed and grasped. Joe battered one undead spellcaster with a [Glorious Gantlet], but the damage from the others was starting to dig through his health. Margen had a much bigger health pool and a high spell resistance, but he was also much harder to repair. Joe did not want to have to spend an hour fixing the results of the damaging area attacks.
If it was just the casters, it might have been alright, but of course, there were also plenty of lupine wights to be dealt with as well.
Yuk went after the vultures, but the ghasts were surrounded by some sort of field that severely weakened the swarming guilder. As soon as they closed with the mages, they grew slower and weaker. They also took damage from the field. Using melee attacks against the vultures seemed like it would harm the attacker more than the targets.
Joe was not sure what to do. There were too many marauders for him to fire off [Grit Razors] easily, and he didn’t want to get too far from Margen either.
Just as Joe was beginning to worry, the answer came from the giant at his back. Margen plucked one of Joe’s heavy hatchets from his belt and sent it hurling perfectly toward a vulturine warlock. There was so much power behind that brutal throw; the axe cut straight through the heavy beak, through the avian skull, and disappeared down the hallway behind it. As the ghastly mage toppled over, Joe’s second hatchet hammered into the head of the caster to its left. This more restrained throw kept the weapon from flying out of sight, allowing Joe to quickly grab it with a glowing fist and bring it back to the living catapult behind him.
They suffered more overall damage in that one fight than any of the other five combined. Considering how few ranged attacks they had, Joe made sure to recover the lost hatchet and use his mending ring to remove the chip it had developed. He willed Margen’s hairy hauberk to grow a pair of weapon loops at the waist and handed both axes to the burly warrior. They were far deadlier in his meaty mitts than they were in Joe’s.
Not long after the vulture skirmish, they spotted the stairway up to the third level. The Hellions related through Myllo that the level was not a maze but four large rooms divided by a central corridor. Each chamber was dedicated to a season, though the elite team had not made it into the fourth room. The first two rooms, summer and autumn, had been severely defiled. All the carvings had been destroyed, and black, putrid substances were smeared everywhere, they said.
One of the following two rooms was dedicated to winter. A dark statue of a ravenesque-looking woman stood in the middle of the floor. Tons of offerings and treasures were laid in careful reverence around the base of the sculpture: idols and coffers of coins, weapons and helms.
The ever-impulsive Reven grabbed a brutal-looking battleaxe, which Myllo has since identified as The Ruthless Ruination, an epic-tiered weapon. The problem was that as soon as he touched the axe shaft, dozens of thralls came roaring from the last room in a berserker fury, eventually driving the expert guild team away.
They assume the last room has to be assigned to the season of spring, and given what the Wild Order had guessed from the seasonal chamber they had found, it would belong to the Lark King. The way to the top level would likely lie within that last room.
With his gauntlet giving just enough light for his [Night Eyes] to function, Joe stopped his team of three and gestured them back a little way.
“Ok. The way up is just ahead,” he whispered. “Do we want to make the symbol here?”
“Nothing against this Myllo fella,” the old warrior said questioningly, “he seems a very competent leader, but I have been thinking. Sounds like they only have a bit of extra mental defense now. Whereas the three of us are inherently better equipped. I think we should see how much damage we can do first. If those Hellions you mentioned weeded down the number of mentalists already, and we take out another chunk of them, then the guild team should be able to help us mop up without fear of enthrallment.”
“I don’t know. You really want to take on the worst of the Erlking’s minions we’ve seen so far without backup?”
“Backup is only good if they don’t get turned against us. Son, trust me, I’ll die for real before I let another of those deaders into my head. You sound like you’re brain-warded to the hilt, and your familiar doesn’t register to them. Better to bring in the cavalry while the enemy is engaged than when it’s waiting for you.”
“Um. Joe. We agree with Margen. It’s a sound tactic, but we also came up with an awesome plan—really awesome.”
Joe was silent for a moment, pretending to contemplate Margen’s strategy as he listened to the scheme his friend had concocted. It truly was pretty great.
“You should get credit for this, Bud.”
“We can tell him about us later, and you can rave about our brilliance then. For now, it’s your plan.”
“Alright. Let’s do it. How fast can you etch your mark?” Joe asked, pulling a small dirk from his spatial ring and handing it to the swordsman.
“Couple a seconds. No more.”
“Ok. We go in the same order. I’m going to hold off on the [Heart Fires] until the last second. I have a plan using Yuk that should tip the odds in our favor, but not if the mummies rush us too quickly. The [Heart Fires] might give us away.”
“Good for you, kid. Great initiative.”
“Stop glowering, Joe. We really don’t care if he is patting you on the back for this. If it works, it will be an epic drinking story.”
“If not, this is going to suck.”
“True.”