“Deal” I said, and the contract was sealed.
I heard harsh laughter echo in the darkness and a malevolent intent wash over me. Rocks shifted below and the cavern shook, a slight tremor felt by both my stone-sense and feet alike.
I saw Francis’s eyes go wide, and he took a half-step back. That did bring a smile to my face, the pained grimace from before giving way to a genuine expression of happiness. The smug prick had finally lost his sense of superiority. It was almost enough to make me feel good about the bargain I’d just struck.
Alvorak the Broken - She of the Cursed Tongue, Whispers in the Dark, and a thousand thousand names – as she’d introduced herself to me earlier – rose from the depths behind me. I stared directly at Francis as the titanic Magma-Snake appeared, willing every muscle in my body to lock up. I saw the horror plain on his face as something huge beyond our shared comprehension blotted out the light from above.
I wasn’t trying to intimidate him, or prove a point, or any such thing. I simply didn’t want to witness what I’d called from the depths below. Looking at Francis gave me an out, something to focus on other than the monstrosity that warped the very world around it.
It had appeared almost immediately after I had spoken. A gusting wind buffeted my back, and the sound of scales sliding against rock hissed around me. I fought the urge to turn around, the almost instinctual need to see the thing looming behind my back. I didn’t need to see details to know though, this was a presence beyond anything I’d previously seen.
The giant on the steppes was inscrutable and massive, but Jorge had stood before it. The aura I could feel roiling off the creature behind me, expanding to fill the entire cavern, was not one that could be stood against. There was no bargaining with a calamity.
The thought stood out to me as slightly odd, and I tried to slow the racing, raging swirl of thoughts in my head to examine that one in more detail. My instincts were screaming at me that this creature couldn’t be bargained with. But hadn’t I done just that mere moments before?
I reached for Heart of the Hills, keen to gain clarity and distance from the fear that gripped me, and I found it difficult. My mana felt sluggish, refusing to move to my commands as swiftly as normal. I pushed harder, willing more mana into the pathways I’d reinforced within my soul, building pressure until I felt something move.
The connection between my core and my skill finally engaged, but it was slower and weaker than before, the constellation turning at a fraction of its usual pace. I felt better for a moment, as my perspective began to shift back to normal, before the connection was interrupted once more.
My mana froze completely, unable to flow along pathways it had slipped through with ease for months now. I felt panic at the feeling of losing control, and that feeling was only compounded as the temporary distance granted by my mental skill was broken, and the world came rushing back into sharp focus.
I felt once more the looming shadow behind me, now unable to see in the darkness cast by Alvorak’s bulk. I could feel wind on the back of my neck though, fluttering my hair in its poorly woven braids such was the force of its breathing.
Francis’s axe had begun to wobble in the air, and now clattered to the ground from its place at my neck. He seemed equally frozen, staring up into the face of the great snake where it wove back and forwards above him.
“Is thisss the one you mentioned? He doesss not look wealthy to me. Where are his ringsss? Hisss gold and jewelss and sshiny thingsss?”
I heard the voice of the snake, its guttural speech washing over me in a cloud of fetid air. Francis seemed not to understand, which made sense, and simply trembled in place. I kept my gaze fixed on his face and hissed back my reply in its ancient tongue, my mouth stretching and contorting strangely to parse the syllables.
“Yes. He will wear a storage device of some sort, as I said earlier. Leave him in one piece, I will search him and find your reward.”
As I spoke, Francis finally wrenched his gaze away from the monster and back at me, staring slack jawed as I spoke to the colossal creature. He frowned as the creature leant down towards him. I still hadn’t moved my gaze, but could feel the presence of it leaning over my shoulder, saw a flash of pale yellow/white in my peripheral and saw Francis track its movements with his eyes.
He spoke aloud once more, no longer talking to me but instead addressing the creature above me. “What is this? Wait, no! I can-“ He was talking fast, words tumbling over one another as he tried to backpedal, unwilling to break eye-contact with the creature and look behind him, such that he nearly fell off the ledge.
He caught himself at the last moment, arms windmilling as he regained his balance and stood. He straightened and glared at me, and I knew he had suddenly found his resolve. Perhaps he would die, but he would take me with him. He raised his arm, reaching toward the axe and attempting to do…something.
There was no response though, the weapon remaining inert on the floor by my feet, and I smiled to see the hopelessness on his face. I knew what he was feeling; the total loss of control over his mana, the sudden understanding that he was in the domain of someone – something – else and that he had no power here at all.
Rather than give up, he drew a hatchet from somewhere I had not yet seen. Perhaps a belt around his thigh, or a fold in his cloak. Not his storage device, for that required mana to access. Nevertheless, he drew it from somewhere, and hurled it at the snake above me. There was no impact for a few moments and the creature did not move even an inch, and then I heard the sound of metal striking stone on the other side of the cavern.
I saw that same resolve crumple once more, as fleeting as my own defiance upon meeting the inhabitant of this cavern had been. Even still, he was at the peak of the 2nd tier, and possessed a powerful support class built for combat. He was of noble lineage, and therefore presumably had time and connections enough to earn himself a moderately powerful first class to begin with, and so he was not someone to be dismissed. His highest attribute likely ranked in the triple figures, and while his mana and therefore active skills may be out of reach, his passive ones were not.
Combined with his attributes, his body alone would be all but impervious to damage from the world around him, being tougher than most substances not reinforced with magic of some sort. He could not just be dismissed as a threat, no matter how powerful his opponent.
And yet.
A root from the wall behind him detached, silent and lighting quick, and darted out at him. It punched straight through the back of his head, making a mockery of his face as it crumpled his skull in one blow. It withdrew and returned to the wall, pausing momentarily to flick the viscera from its surface before returning to the tunnel from whence it came.
I watched in terrified silence as his body crumpled to the floor, dangling out over the empty cavern, only his torso slumped on the rocky outcropping. No system notification sounded in my head for the kill, though I did receive an upgrade to Guerrilla Warfare, likely for successfully leading an enemy into a trap.
The high level of both my foe and my trap must be making up for the lack of control I had over the situation, considering we would both have ended up here regardless of my interference. All I did was follow marks on a wall and head towards the open air.
Skill upgraded in level. Skill: Guerrilla Warfare – Level 9.
“He isss sslipping away mortal. You bessst hurry.”
The voice shook me from my thoughts, and I dived towards the corpse with not a moment to spare. Catching his arm before he could fall from the ledge, I hauled Francis’s corpse back onto the outcrop and began to frantically search his body.
Feeling the looming presence behind me, knowing immense fangs as tall as my body were poised directly above, I searched faster, ripping away clothes and digging into pockets, scrabbling around like a rat in a cheese-store. What a weird analogy.
I felt a moment of dissonance again, unable to square the flippant thought with the inescapable death hanging over my head. I knew it was out of character. I could play the role of the fool to play for time in a crisis, but I’d always been focused. I wouldn’t be thinking silly thoughts when I was truly in danger of death – my instincts simply wouldn’t let me.
Scrabbling around on the floor, rooting through a dead man’s pockets while my enemy watched from above, ready to execute me as soon as I found their trophy? That wasn’t something I would normally countenance. Better to die on my feet than live on my knees. The bound skill within me roared its approval of that thought, and I resolved myself to look up.
The instant my eyes took in the horrifying visage of the snake, I knew something was wrong. Every instinct screamed at me to look away, to avert my gaze and cower before it. Streams of steaming lava boiled from its mouth, slipping past its fangs and dropping to the floor of the outcrop, hissing as they cooled.
Its scale was beyond anything I’d seen before, filling the cavern and coiling upon itself in order to look directly at me with a head several times larger than the massive bear I’d seen back in the Endless Valley.
But hadn’t it danced above me for long enough to converse? And not a single drop of lava had hit me. It wasn’t until I took it in that I had noticed the liquid rock to begin with, and yet now that I knew it was there, I heard the hissing of it cooling on rock, saw the light bubbling from between its jaws flickering on the cavern walls.
Perhaps it had a strange new aura I hadn’t encountered, but each powerful creature/anomaly I’d encountered had found me lost in their gaze, disconnected from the world. Not left cowed and shivering on the ground. Something was strange here.
Either way though, it had killed Francis, so it would have no problem with disposing of me if I didn’t grant it what it wanted. I returned to the body, flinching as the sibilant voice spoke once more.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“My patience wainsss mortal. Did we not sstrike a bargain?”
I tried to pry a gold ring from one of his fingers but my own were shaking too much, shivering with fear and adrenaline. A confusing concoction of emotions; the terror of certain death, the fear of the unknown, and the creeping sense of dread heralding the end of everything….and a subtle feeling of dissonance, that something was not as it seemed, drifting about at the edges of my mind.
“Sshall I drive my fangsss through your head, asss I did to your friend, hmmm?”
I tried to pry a necklace from around his ruined head and offer it to the snake. I did not want it to make the same mess of my face that it had made of Francis’s….but then how did it kill him again? I searched for the memory, unsure how a giant snake could have so easily crushed his skull with fangs as thick around as my torso, and yet leave such a clean kill.
I remembered the moment of his death, the root bursting from his face and withdrawing in a flash. Had I witnessed wrong? Was it maybe the tip of a tail? Or a fang moving so fast I couldn’t properly see it? But I’d been focused for so long on nothing but his face, terrified of looking at the creature above and behind me.
The root! I looked up once more, flinching back as the snake danced around on its massive neck to look me in the eyes, and managed to focus instead on the cavern behind it. The cavern…lined with roots. Gnarled, twisting, writhing roots that squirmed across the cavern, covering the walls and entering a hundred tunnels pockmarking the cavernous walls within view.
My fingers stilled their shaking. I looked back up at the snake, took a breath, and spoke once more; “You’re not real.”
Its eyes blazed down at me from a monstrous head, its pale body almost glowing in the gloomy twilight. Flaming molten rock dripped from its open mouth and it reared back as it boomed out in its sinister voice.
“Arrogance! Hand me my promisssed reward or find yourssself-“
I dropped my gaze from the towering creature and turned to look out over the cavern, leaning down to look upon the dark abyss below before cutting off its tirade mid-sentence.
“I wish to know with whom I have bargained. Does Alvorak the Broken truly exist? Or do I speak with a ghost?” My words dropped into the vast emptiness below and were swallowed. No longer did I converse in the ancient tongue of the world-serpents – although I did not know its name as such – but a still older tongue, one not spoken in millennia.
Time seemed to hang in the void, just as the outcropping upon which I stood did, and passed not at all as I waited for reply. No fangs pierced my chest, no lava burned me to a cinder, and that by itself confirmed my theory. I waited for what felt like days, staring into darkness with bated breath.
Eventually I turned away, and saw nothing but empty air where once had stood the titanic snake. I wondered briefly if I was to be free to leave – I had seen through an illusion and the world deemed me worthy of survival. Just as the cheery thought occurred to me, a voice echoed up from the earth once more.
Unlike that of the snake though, guttural and harsh, this was soft and flowing. Almost musical in its lilt.
“Impressive child. It takes a strong will to break through one of my illusions. Very well; Alvorak the Broken does exist, but she resides here no longer. Much like her moniker suggests, she fled to a rent in the earth in the early epochs of this world to recuperate. She has long since left, and her presence has not been felt on Tsanderos for many centuries.”
“What was she? What are you?”
“A Magmatic Serpent I believe, although few have classified ones such as her. Truly powerful beasts are not well known by the enlightened races as I understand, and so I imagine there is little discussion or consensus on such unique creatures.”
“Did she really talk like that? The hissing and everything? Seems a little cliché.” I mumbled, somewhat thrown by the pleasant voice I was speaking with.
A musical laugh, beautiful in its timelessness, echoed around the cavern and my face relaxed a fraction at the noise alone. Nothing so beautiful could foster dire intent.
“Ah child, alas that was my hubris. I am not familiar with your culture, and so thought to add something familiar. If I had known that would raise your alarm, I would have abstained from such silliness. Regardless, you saw through my ruse anyway.”
“I notice you didn’t answer my second question…” I said, raising my voice as a question towards the end.
“and nor shall I.” The voice responded, though I felt no rebuke in the statement, simply an answer.
“Understood. Then thank you for saving me. Will you honour our bargain? I am sure he has many things of value.”
“Yes, I imagine he does. I am not interested in materials however, simply toss me his storage device and I shall consider your duty fulfilled.”
I nodded, unsure if the voice could see my action before remembering how swiftly it killed the peak 2nd tier warrior and chuckling to myself. My mana was still thoroughly locked down, but the voice had calmed me enough to no longer need the help of Heart of the Hills to keep me sane.
A brief search of the corpse later, and I had activated his storage device – a heavy silver broach wrapped around his upper arm. I spread out the contents on the floor before me, marvelling at the fortune in spices, gold and fine sheets of silk. There were also the usual supplies one would expect from a commander in the field.
Say what you like about Francis D’Sware – and I certainly would, what a prick! – but he was at least competent. Interestingly though, alongside a bundle of documents I would definitely be keen to peruse later, was a collection of flowers.
Bright blue and brimming with mana, they exuded a sense of steadiness to my senses. They even felt significant to my stone-sense, as if a vital piece of the world rested atop the stone they sat upon. The air around them seemed to shimmer, and while my foraging skill was focused upon edible plants, not magical ones, even I could tell these flowers were special.
“Beautiful.” The disembodied voice breathed, genuine awe detectible. Not the awe that I felt when confronted by overwhelming power or the majesty of the mountains, but a gentle, almost motherly awe at the beauty of a young baby’s smile. Hearing the fondness, I didn’t hesitate in the offering.
“They are yours. Shall I just throw them over the edge or….?” I asked, suddenly uncertain now that I had offered. It seemed silly to just chuck something into the void, hoping it would be caught. I felt like I should be kneeling to represent them like a bouquet of flowers.
Another musical laugh greeted my question, followed by gentle acceptance. “My thanks child, for the beautiful gift. Yes, just drop them from the edge, and enjoy the spoils of victory, young wolf.”
I did as the voice asked, watching the bundle of flowers drift into the dark abyss below the outcrop, alongside the storage device.
Beauty fading to blackness.
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*Vera*
Vera sprinted along the tunnel behind Jorge, the smaller man moving far easier on account of not having to duck in the tight passageway. They had followed the scent of Lamb and Francis deep into the earth, and all was well until a few moments earlier.
They’d both felt a presence blanket the area, pushing up the tunnel and warning them back. Such power did not belong to any beast below the 3rd tier, and Vera doubted a simple wild animal could be responsible. The malevolence of this aura required a lifetime of bloodshed and careful action to accumulate.
Vera had nearly despaired at that point, knowing they would not reach Lamb in time. Jorge had simply grunted and pushed faster, at which point she had needed to activate her movement skill to keep up. The aura cut off as suddenly as it appeared however, and Vera was left perplexed. She knew for certain that Francis, let alone Lamb, could not be responsible for killing such a beast, and expecting it to simply leave was the height of folly, based on the aura alone.
Jorge though had gone still. She’d nearly run into the back of him, so sudden was his halt. She pushed him aside, striding past and turning over her shoulder to examine him as she did so. The shock she saw on his face was an expression she had never before seen on her old companion.
“Jorge! What’s happening!? What the fuck is this?” She asked, urgency in her voice once more.
Something strange had occurred, and Lamb was at the heart of it again, no doubt. Either way though, there was a chance he still lived when unexplained things were happening, and she wouldn’t waste time now messing about if she could instead save a friend.
Jorge just looked past her, an expression of…awe? On his face. It was strange. Tears filled his eyes, and she suddenly saw past the façade of a crochety old man he liked to wear above the guise of the just-as-fake genial old man beneath. Instead, for the second time in her life, she saw the true face of The Shepard; the face of a zealot witnessing the divine.
She turned and sprinted down the tunnel, blowing past strange depressions in the walls, growing in thickness as she ran. They gave off a faint feel of dampness, deep earth and creeping roots to her spirit-enhanced vision. Her heart pounded inside her armour as she rushed through near a mile of slowly widening tunnel in what felt like moments, and she emerged at the entrance to a vast cavern to see a corpse sprawled on the floor before her, its head crushed and its face ruined.
She felt sick. Another friend dead, another potential comrade back to the mud. Then she took in the figure kneeling further out on the outcropping, surrounded by the contents of a storage device, and sorting things into piles with meticulous care, blood painting one side of his ruined clothes.
She went towards him but stopped at the last moment as she heard him speak. Words of unknown construction tumbled from his mouth, a musical flowing dialect sounding alien to her ears. She unstrapped her helmet, tugging the heavy helm off in order to hear better, but still couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
She had no trouble making out the voice that responded though. Its words were equally nonsensical, but the power behind them was undeniable. The hair on her arms raised, her neck prickling and mouth dry. Fucking idiot! Playing with things beyond his comprehension as a 1st tier. What did she expect though? Everything was beyond the runt’s comprehension according to him.
She needed to extract him from the grasp of an empowered beast – possibly one of the Deep-Worms judging by its power. Had it enthralled him somehow? Trapped him in a web of illusions? The previous aura she had felt was almost dripping in hatred, yet this new one felt comforting in a way that made her hair stand on end.
She glanced behind her, hoping for advice from Jorge, but he simply walked straight past her once more, brazenly and almost trance-like in his calmness as he strode to the edge of the outcrop.
Lamb looked up at him as Jorge strode past him and turned to look at Vera from where he knelt. He looked relieved to see her at least, which she doubted he would if he was the thrall of some ancient eldritch entity.
That relief abruptly vanished as Jorge spoke.
Incomprehensible words flowed from his throat in a strange warbling call, sounding ritualistic to her ears, and then the older man dropped to his knees beside Lamb. Where the young man knelt out of convenience, Jorge looked reverent, as if in the presence of a god.
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“Venerable spirit of old, I greet you in the name of the Al-Sazine.”
My happiness at seeing Vera and Jorge was replaced with confusion as Jorge knelt beside me. I wasn’t surprised that the old bastard could speak this seemingly ancient language, I’d yet to understand truly how powerful he was after all, and at this point I’d believe he could do anything until proven otherwise.
What shocked me though was the emotion with which he spoke. I looked to my side and saw tears drip from his cheeks, mixing with the blood I had left to mark the rock below. The reply was equally shocking.
“Greetings in turn, my child. It has been an age since I have met one of the Many-Rooted, let alone one as old as you.” Jorge shook at the words, though whether he was pleased by them I couldn’t tell. The unearthly voice continued on though.
“I sense your designs upon this young pup. Tell me old one, do you suspect his blessing imminently?”
I watched as Jorge raised his head. I looked back once more to see Vera stepping over cautiously, as if ready for something to strike at any moment.
“It is not my place to say. The world is changing though, and a great shift is coming. I worry that Autumn is upon us once more.” His cryptic words were unfamiliar, but again they had the sense of ritualism to them, as if they had been repeated throughout history by countless tongues prior.
“It is rare to hear one such as you talk of Autumn as something to be feared. Do you not yearn for it?”
Jorge hesitated, then shook his head. “There are…differences of opinion in the order currently. I do not agree with my fellows on many things, and I do not think we are ready for another upheaval yet. It is not my place to question the way of the world, but nevertheless, I do not welcome the coming chaos.”
The voice hummed in thought, seemingly puzzling out a problem before replying. “Many new things have I experienced this day: One of the Many-Rooted dreading the dance of the leaves, and a little wolf in the guise of a lamb. Amusing and ironic in equal parts.”
I puzzled over the words for a moment as Jorge bowed his head in thanks, before the voice dismissed us both; “Thank you for the gift young one, and go with my blessing both of you. Keep to your faith and fear not the turning the seasons.”
And with that, the comforting aura vanished from the cavern, leaving us alone with the sound of dripping water and the smell of damp rock.