After a long twenty-minute descent, the curving route finally ended. For once, the space ahead was not a perfectly squared formation. An attempt had been made to widen and smooth a large fissure in the wall into something more door-like. The sides were initially straight, but after a foot or so, the crack opened up into a massive pitch-black grotto.
Joe extinguished the glow from his [Glorious Gauntlet] before its light gave away their position, but in the few seconds of light, even his enhanced vision could not spot the other end of the cavern or the ceiling above their heads. He was only able to discern a mostly level floor with occasional boulders scattered across it.
While putting out the light was tactically sound, unfortunately, this left half of the party blinded. Kendell, thanks to her [Deeprealm Goggles], could still see perfectly well, and Yuk and Tezeno had senses that allowed them to perceive either movement or deviations. Hah’roo, RC, and Joe's enhanced night-vision, on the other hand, lacked the needed glimmer of light in order to function.
The only saving grace was that far across the huge open space was a cluster of minuscule pinpricks of light. These did nothing to help the trio see even the ground under their feet, but at least they were something to focus on. Having even those tiny visual cues was far better than the ominously oppressive nature of complete darkness.
“Anyone have any ideas?” Joe thought to the team. “If I make light, then we’ll give ourselves away, but without it, we’re pretty helpless. What do you see, Kenda?”
“The cavern is huge. At least seventy-five feet across and hundreds of feet long. The ceiling is almost a hundred feet up too. I can see several more openings cut into the walls. Many of them are on the floor level, but some are up on the walls with ramps leading from the floor up to them. It's hard to tell for sure, but I think there are some that head downward from this floor too.”
Her voice through Yuk’s mental connection sounded cautious but thankfully not overly worried. Joe could not see her face in the smothering dark, but he pictured it with her brow furrowed and her pretty lively eyes intent on the problem.
“That lit-up area seems to have something built there, but there are a bunch of boulders blocking my line of sight. I can only see glimpses of it from here. It feels important to be built here in this huge cavern. I could lead you guys closer if you want.”
“We could go look,” Yuk offered. “There are thousands of centipedes and troglobites here. Doubt anyone would notice a few more. We’ll leave a portion of ourselves on Joe so we can recall our consciousness if we have to leave the scouting part of us behind.”
“That works,” Hah’roo responded through the link. “What will that do to our communications?”
“You’d lose the group link, but we could hold a sporadic connection to Joe or somebody else instead.”
“Let’s do that,” Earcellwen suggested. “With Kendell’s lead, the rest of us can find a spot to wait in while Yuk scouts.”
“Gonna take a while. We’re not fast,” the collective guilder admitted.
“No worries, Yuk. We are not on a timetable,” Kendell communicated via the link. “I can see a good spot for us. I think with a tarp from Puqmup we could cover a cluster of boulders and make a little hideyhole where we could have some light.”
Joe felt his connection to the others dissolve, even though he still maintained his link to Yuk. The swarm guilder checked in with him once before Joe heard the whirling of wings and felt a large chunk of his riders scurry down his body and move away.
“Ok,” Kenda whispered in the dark. “I’ll take you over two at a time. Tez first since he can spot creatures, even in the dark. RC, do you want to go with him?”
“Sure,” was the only quiet reply.
A second later, echoing howls began to reverberate around the cavern. The far-off glows began to grow brighter as if fire were being stoked or more torches lit.
“What just happened?” Joe hissed.
“Damn it!” Kendell’s swear growled from the blackness. “I’m sorry, guys. I missed an alarm sigil in front of our doorway. Yuk must have been too small or spread out to trigger it.”
“Done is done, Kenda. What do you see?”
“Lots of wights. Something else too. Behind them. Bigger. Darker. But slower. They are hard to make out from here.”
Earcellwen’s whispered voice issued from the darkness beside Joe. “What do we want to do?”
“Joe, call Yuk back.” Hah’roo asserted. “The rest of us should move back into the hallway.”
Joe sent his thoughts through the connection and received an oddly fragmented reply back. It was as if Yuk was too spread out to form complete sentences. Joe felt a sense of affirmation and a single flash of information.
Mournful Thrall: Level 26: Undead (Mummy): Controller: Spirit: 1108/1108
The abomination looked like someone had bound a putrid rotting werebear in oily broken wrappings. It swayed and shambled behind the faster wights, slowing but inexorably drawing closer. Its manner held a purposeful malevolence that surpassed the rabid madness of the ghouls.
“It looks like the wights are outpacing those big things,” Kendell remarked. “The dirge wights are mostly low twenties, and Joe’s [Heart Fire] will weaken them. I think if we can hold this spot,” she stated, indicating the hallway they had stepped back into. “We should try and clear the wights before those big guys get here. Then we can figure out how bad the big guys are. It’s either that or we run back up the way we came down and look for another path.”
Joe relayed what had been shared with him as the connection to the group reestablished itself. Enough of Yuk was back.
“The corridor is too wide for me to hold it alone,” Tezeno pronounced.
“I’ll stay up front with you,” the axewoman agreed as she drew out more vials of the sacred oil she had brought. “Put one of these on your shield.” She handed a bottle to the archon and began to rub the contents of the other one onto her breastplate, shoulders, and helm. “Hah’roo and Joe behind us. RC in the back. Yuk what you got that helps us?”
“[Biting Vortex],” the disembodied voice replied. “We’ll keep it churning right in front of you two. Nothing’ll get to you without getting chewed up some first.”
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“Perfect. If anyone has any objections or suggestions, now's the time.”
“I’ll place a [Tracking Mark] on the closest mummy,” Hah’roo offered. “If it looks like it will reach us before we clear the ghouls, I can place a [Gale Wall] between us. They will be able to push through it, but the spell should give us a few seconds to disengage and retreat.”
Joe placed a pair of [Heart Fires] in the hallway. One he put pretty much at his feet to heal and warm the whole team. It was just far enough forward that it would hit those directly engaged with the two front-liners. The other he placed further in the opening to the cavern, just overlapping where Tez and Kenda would be standing. This meant the attacking undead would have to stand in two times the damaging field, while his friends would heal twice as fast.
As a bonus, the fires gave off plenty of light. Long before the first wight came anywhere near the line, it was dropped by Earcellwen’s arrows and a hurled hatchet.
As the mass of ghouls reached them, Yuk’s spell engaged. A ten-foot cloud of tiny vicious creatures filled the air just in front of Tezeno’s feet. It was impossible to distinguish the individual bugs, but their effect was undeniable. Joe watched as the attackers’ ghastly flesh was being stripped away, in place down to the very bone itself.
Weakened by the dual [Heart Fire] and ravaged by Yuk’s swarming insects, the wights were falling to the paired strikes from Hah’roo and Earcellwen. The two were in perfect harmony, instinctively targeting the same creatures time and again. With Kendell and Tez focusing entirely on defense, any of the fell creatures that managed to survive the devastating approach, perished from Joe’s [Glorious Gauntlet].
Other than an occasional fist strike, Joe kept his focus on the team’s health, mana, and stamina. Yuk’s [Biting Vortex] burned stamina, so he kept [Efferous Endurance] burning on his collective companion. Tez and Kenda also needed stamina, as well as healing once the press of ghouls finally reached the point where hits started reaching his friends. Hah’roo and RC were burning mana to enhance their attacks, and, of course, Joe was using mana for almost everything.
“Hah’roo,” the archon barked. “How far out are the Mournful Thralls?”
“Hundred yards,” the galing answered as she sent her rope dart drilling into the head of the ghoul trying to reach Kendell. “At their pace, maybe two minutes”
“We need to clear these,” the axewoman called. “If anyone has a one-use AoE, now’s the time.”
“Your world has grenades?” Joe couldn’t help but exclaim.
“Yeah,” RC retorted. “Her name is Taylyn.”
“Focus, people,” the skill-savant urged. “Does anyone have a big hit stashed away?”
“We do,” uttered the voice in their heads, “but if we use it, we’ll be out of commission for a quite while. At least a half an hour.”
“Don’t! We need your front-end damage,” the trainer commanded. When no one else spoke up, Kenda sighed. “Ok, we found a weakness in our group. We lack area attacks. Nothing to do about it now but …”
“Save the buts Kenda,” Tez interrupted. “You and I should go on offense for a minute and a quarter. Let’s clear the throng. Joe, keep us healthy.”
With those words, Tezneo shifted his stance and began battering the undead in front of him. Using both his shield and a truncheon in his other hand, he pounded the attacking ghouls. The party could hear bones shattering under the sentinel’s hammering blows. The archon took a few hits he normally would have blocked, but they made only a slight dent in the man’s massive health pool, which Joe refilled a second later.
Kendell’s style focused more on riposting the attacks she shunted aside. Her long-handled axes hooked arms and necks. After yanking the enemy off balance, she followed through with vicious cuts of her own.
The all-out assault chewed through the pack. In far less time than Tezeno had allotted, the team was in the process of destroying the last few wights in reach. There were more of the fleet-footed dead racing across the grotto from further away. Not to mention the more ponderous Mourners. Still, it looked like they had a moment to heal and cleanse before any more of the enemy would be able to close with them.
Or they would have, until Earcellwen barked a warning. “We have a problem, guys! There are more coming down the passage behind us. A lot more! Maybe a minute away.”
They turned to see the elf standing with her head cocked, listening to something only her supernatural perception was able to perceive. Hah'roo exhaled a deep breath and stopped to listen as well. A second later, she gave the group a grave-looking nod, confirming Earcellwen's warning.
They did not have enough team members to hold on two fronts. Even moving to the cluster of boulders Kendell had noted would be a death sentence. They’d be surrounded and overwhelmed in no time.
“Looks like we are going to have to get pulled out,” Kendall groaned. “I have a sigil beacon for Vexor, but this far down under the ground, it will take a while for him to get the signal. Too long. How many do you hear, RC? Can we push through them?”
“Doubtful,” Earcellwen replied in a rushed voice. “There sounds like a lot of them.”
“Then we run for one of those,” Tezeno dictated, pointing at the passages across the cavern, visible now thanks to the [Heart Fires]. “We have no odds here. Better a gamble than a sure end. Once there, we find a spot to hold long enough for Vex to open a door for us.”
Hah’roo nodded to the archon as Joe’s gauntlet dropped the last ghoul. “Stay on my heels,” she ordered, adding, “Speed boosts!” before she slipped past the frontliners.
Joe flared [Spirit of the Pack] as Earcellwen activated her [Wilds Runner] aura. The five of them dashed across the rocky floor while Yuk rode along, spread out pretty much across everyone.
“We are outrunning my [Questing Breath],” Hah’roo thought to the sprinting group. “I can’t tell what’s in front of us. Does anyone have a reason to pick one of those openings over another one? Otherwise, I’m just going to pick one without any wights in the way.”
“The ramp. A little to the left of where we are headed,” Yuk thought. “It feels quiet.”
The galeling adjusted her course. The new route took them slightly closer to the shambling dark mummies, but the bigger danger was the ghouls that were closing on the party, even with the pair of acceleration buffs. Hah’roo bound up the ramp. RC and Joe, as well as Yuk by default, were right on her tail. Kenda was not quite as fast, but she was still considerably quicker than the sentinel. Tezeno’s build was not designed for speed.
As the others were nearing the opening at the top of the inclined slope, Joe hung back.
“Go, you idiot,” the archon shouted, oblivious to the pack of ghouls that were almost on top of him.
“Hand!” Joe shouted, reaching behind him like a relay racer.
As soon as he had a grip on his friend, Joe jumped them both as far up the ramp as the medallion would carry them. Tezeno, having more momentum than Joe at that moment, ran ahead, but [Hunter’s Pursuit] put Joe right on his heels a second later.
“Ok, that was a good plan,” the guardian admitted.
“Thanks,” Joe huffed out loud before thinking to all. “Hope you’re right, Yuks. If there are ghouls in here, we are in trouble.”
“We’re sure. The bugs know there are a lot of cracks and crevasses the dead might be able to crawl through, but we’re positive there are no dead in there now.”
“Good enough for me,” Joe replied, as he and the archon crossed through the opening, into the tunnel beyond.
Yuk had not been wrong about the layout. Unlike the smooth solid hallways they had been traveling so far, this was a natural fissure. It twisted back and forth, with openings in both walls. There were large cracks in both the ceiling and floor. Thankfully the lower ones had been filled in with small rocks and gravel, making a path they could follow without having to jump over the ditches.
“The way ahead has many more pathways, Hah’roo.” Yuk thought to them all.
“I was sensing the same thing with my [Questing Breath], Yuk. We’d get hit from all sides if we tried to hold there. This might be the best we are going to get. How long will you need, Kendell?”
“A few minutes at least. Set up defenses while I start the beacon.”
After dropping dual [Heart Fires] at the opening of the tunnel and watching Tez check his shield, Joe decided to follow the sentinel’s prep. He summoned his own shield and coated it with the werewolf pelt. The pair exchanged worried glances before moving to cover the opening, side by side.