...
[Betrayer Skeleton defeated! Reward: 5 EP]
[Betrayer Skeleton defeated! Reward: 5 EP]
[Betrayer Skeleton defeated! Reward: 5 EP]
[The Regicide, Lord Commander of the Avalanche defeated! 150 Ep, 10 Shards]
[New Title! The Betrayer in chains. You faced the commander of the damned bastion of last light, erased a grudge of your people, and claimed the souls of the 7th Cohort of the Ravenguard.
It's acts like these the aeons, heavens, and hells recognize and reward!
New Skills unlocked:
[Soul Rend]
[Ghost Strike]
New Gift unlocked:
[Unchained Ancestors]
Additional rewards: 100 Ep and 25 shards]
Immediately after I had sifted through the messages, of which there were a lot of the basic skeleton ones, which I just skipped, I got one of Lily:
[Hannibal, you just did something significant. I don't know if good or bad. The one you just defeated was indeed bound to a divine power. And with his death, this divine spark just vanished. Nothing else happened. It's quite possible that these few undead and their oath was the last thing keeping a trace of this god behind. And if he left his last spark down here, that means that a now dead and forgotten god kept these undead alive even to the cost of his own existence. the scary question is: why?“]
"I know.“ I said. And I did. The Regicide had said as much. They had been doing something they deemed worthy enough that it would have annulled their sins. But these sins were not theirs to forgive. They were mine. Whatever good deed they think they had been doing here, it would not matter to me.
One more notice appeared in front of me:
[Do you claim Zero as your own? You have defeated the previous owner of Zero, [Bound Chain Golem] Level 3, and can claim ownership! Cost 150 EP]
I did not think long about that one. I selected yes and felt Essence leaving me, streaming forth from my hand and into the chain I still held in my hands. After it was done the essence did not seem lost, just....displaced.
I felt a tingle coming from the metal as if it reacted to my touch somehow. I watched a few moments, but the chain did nothing else. So I shrugged and went back to my little storeroom out in the labyrinth, but not after grabbing and fastening the sword of the Betrayer to my back. I was still wounded and tired. I bunkered down, secured the door, ate enough rations to feed a family, and went to sleep. And sleeping like the dead I did.
----------------------------------------
I awoke to a rumble in the distance. A hollow sound vibrating through the stone I slept on. Slowly, ever so slowly a dampened beat. As if a beating heart of the deeps itself arose from an age-old slumber. And that may have been as near to the truth as I dared to imagine. It hit me hard, primal fear in the very core of my soul, so pure that I almost started running right then and there.
Boom.
Another pulse shook the earth and I stumbled through the room. Something was definitely happening and soon. I had planned to stay here for a while, scour the halls for riches of the past, hunting for enemies I knew I could handle. But now...what now? I knew the drum, the heartbeat, came from the depths of the Abyss. It must be. So up! Up is where I had to go. As it always has been. The builders must have had paths and ways to the surface, I just had to find them.
I packed a large backpack with as much of the stuff lying around as possible, as quickly as I could. I stumbled under the slow barrage of the beating heart, the vibrations that is, but I took what I could get. I hesitated once when I saw that some of the food was rotten. Whatever had kept it fresh and pristine was gone and the food was once more victim to the inevitability of time.
All the essentials of travel and adventuring went into my backpack, and I left my little fortress a mess in the process. I would not return and the dead would neither. I was significantly stronger than I had ever been in my life, and though I planned on traveling light, I must have looked like a mule on harvest day. And I gave in to my desire to run and I ran as fast as my legs would take me.
My steps echoed through the giant hall of dusty stone, where I had fought the Betrayer, but every minute or so, the heartbeat roared through dust and shadows, making them dance in fear.
I knew the first door to my right to lead into a dead-end, the barracks, and I had scouted around the entrance a bit, but not more. I just hoped that a way out would be on the other side of the city, opposite the gate to the deeps I had come in from originally. I was not as fast as I had hoped to be. I still had countless little wounds and stumbled more than I ran.
Then I saw the knights and stopped dead in my tracks. Fifty of them, give or take. Rusty armor, proudly wearing the sigils of their treason. The flames flickering cold in the slits of their helmets. They had shields, every one of them, and weapons of all varieties. The Knights of the Avalanche, the damned cohort of the Ravenguard, and not just the soldiers and lay brothers I had seen before. Here they stood in line. As if awaiting battle. They were impressive, certainly looked that way, but they seemed small in the space of the room. And they just stood there, waiting. I had stopped my run but they did not even take notice of me. They stood in front of a different gate, guarding it. A small one at the end of some stairs leading down.
In the awkward silence, something on the back of my pack shifted and clattered to the floor noisily. The chain? Zero?
It laid there in a mess for a second and then suddenly shifted and moved. It rose like a coiled snake, its head, or where a snake would have a head, bobbing around and up and down as if in confusion.
Then it slithered away, exactly like a snake, with a clinking, clanking, and grinding, away from the entrance, away from the damned knights. I was stunned, but before I could do anything, the chain stopped. It turned its front bit to me as if looking at me without eyes or face. Did a chain just signal with one end where it wanted me to follow?
I approached it again, still somewhat in fight or flight mode from the dread of the deeps and the cursed knights behind me, so I sharply sucked in air, when the chain calmly came to me, wrapping around legs and torso, wandering up my body.
But it had a delicate touch, cool, careful, and slow. It wrapped around my torso, like a bandolier of chains. A quite substantial one, considering the chain was 25 feet long. One end rose above my breast, a foot of the end of the chain extending in front of me as if pointing. What the everlasting hells...
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
This was my life now. And because I had no better idea, I followed where Zero led. First unsure, but once I saw a battered gate, and a staircase behind, I ran again. When I stood on the first steps, I turned around one last time, activating [Eyes to Pierce the Darkness].
A thick mist rolled through the hall, deep and oily, eating away the distance I had made from the entrance, creeping forward. This was not natural.
Then again the drum!
The sound raced through the mist, shaking it, animating it. It rolled around, towered up, and fell down again. And in it, swimming like a beast of the deepest sea, something large. A shape, no more no less, of the blackest black, only visible for a breath. And my mind almost shattered to pieces. There was no way of grasping it, of accepting it as reality. I did not remember what I saw.
Around it were smaller shapes of darkness in a myriad of varieties, shuffling through the fog.
Then the mist reached the last line of the knights and without a sound from either side, a battle commenced. Silent, but with grim and mechanical determination.
This was where the last knights of the Avalanche, the last knights of the Ravenguard, would perish. Their last stand.
A gentle tucking on my shirt woke me up from my fascinated vigil. The chain, no Zero, had folded itself over and gripped the front of my chain shirt, pulling on it, urging me onwards.
I snapped out of it and turned my back on the silent battle, running up the stairs, taking three steps at a time. The round staircase led me upwards for a good long time. There were exits on the way, but I ignored them. Half an hour of running up the stairs later, I rested, my hands on my knees, trying to keep my heart from jumping out of my throat.
Zero jumped down from me while I took the break and moved to a nearby doorway. The chain got around now by pushing and pulling himself forward exactly as a caterpillar would. It was kind of endearing if you ignored the cold steel and vicious spikes.
He went to the opening and then into the hallway, looking around. Then he turned to me, making a motion with his head. Beckoning me to follow again.
The staircase was not at its highest point, it would lead me straight upwards still, but Zero had led me true so far. I still felt the heartbeat of the deeps, still had the shape of the mists in my mind, and it took some time to convince myself. But I followed the chain golem. I no longer had the energy nor the inclination to run, the endless stairs had made sure of that.
We went along small hallways for a while but had to stop a moment once my Mana for [Eyes to Pierce the Darkness] ran out and I had to light my lantern, my fingers trembling and fumbling with flint and steel.
And on we went, ignoring all intersections and doors. The space opened up again and stores and remnants of statues and public places, banks, tables, fountains, and the sort were tugged into the walls and plateaus of a big cavern, expertly carved from the stone, but ruined by time and erosion.
Into one of these doors, I was led. Any sign or wooden furniture was turned into dust by the centuries, but metal tools and rods, coal, and an anvil still were here, where someone had left them behind. A smithy. I took a deep breath. We had no time!
"Zero!“ I whispered urgently. "We have to go!“ But nothing answered me but a rustling and the occasional tool falling over inside were my chain had crawled into.
I followed inside, blinking as I saw a chain, my chain, searching carved countertops and piles of tools. Just rummaging through it, throwing inspected things behind it to the ground. It was just hard to conceptualize, even under the circumstances.
"What are you looking for?“ I asked, getting nothing in return. "Is this...your home?“ That had just been stupid, asking that. Zero swiveled his head to me as if shooting me a look, indicating a similar opinion. Well, first of all, I had just called a chain 'he' and second of all, I seemed to read emotions and expressions into a moving end of linked steel rings. I was losing it.
He went on to a second room, which was more a heavy-duty workshop than the one in the front. I saw a few...puppets? Golems? ... made of different materials in all possible states of progress, but none finished. A few hung with missing limbs in a crane or kind of scaffolding above cauldrons, which had encrusted iron sludge in it. Or so I thought.
Most of them had four arms or the indications that there should be four arms. I looked around in no small amount of wonder. There had been no such trade in Ravenrock, or the Empire of the Sun for that matter, and golems were part of children's stories and talk around a mug of ale, but nothing more. I was not surprised that they existed, I had met Zero after all, but to see them in their workshop was something else.
A scraping sound in yet another room led me to find Zero wrapped around the handles of a huge chest, easily four times as large as a human-sized coffin. The chain pulled or tried to, the chest out of a mountain of rubble. One inch at a time. I watched that longer than I should have, but then went over the rubble and touched the chest with the intention to open it.
[Careful! The owner of the Dimensional-Flexible-Chest is dead and you can claim it for yourself, but don't try to open it without the help of a professional! Do you want to claim the dimensional flexible chest?]
I selected yes and with an audible pop, the chest disappeared, leaving behind a tiny replica of the original. Not larger than my hand.
"Huh!“ I elaborated eloquently and picked it up. "Magic.“ I added to the advantage of absolutely no one. I stuffed it in my satchel I wore around my hip and motioned Zero to come. But he did not.
While I was distracted by the wonders of the chest, its disappearance had opened up a space behind it, where a skeleton could be seen. Under the rocks, with a smashed skull. It was smaller than a human man, but not as small as a child and it indeed had four arms. And only one eye socket, as far as I could tell.
Zero's head drooped down in front of the body, seemingly sad and confused.
"Is that your creator?“ I stood beside him, studying the mess. Zero bobbed his head. Yes.
"I am sorry.“ I hesitated. I was just consoling a 25 feet piece of linked metal rings. But it felt right.
"He...that...it...“ I stammered, then stopped and started again. "He was a master without equal. I think You can be proud to carry his legacy.“ Zeros head still moved up and down. It were just words I had no right of speaking, for I knew nothing, but I had to say something, didn't I?
"He will rest in peace, he already does for many years. Come leave him to it."
Zero took one more moment, then came back to me, dejected and slow somehow. And wrapped himself over my shoulder again. He still raised his head, leading me away by indicating a direction.
We were slower now because my lantern had not enough light to even reach the walls of that cavern and I had to set my foot carefully through rubble and ruins.
The hallways had been easier to navigate, they had been clean and straight. We crossed this hall and the next before we found a broad....well gigantic really ... stair again. It led straight up and was so big, there were doors between the steps which were itself a couple of feet wide.
It was silent again, the dread of the deeps more a whisper in the back of my mind than anything else. My angst was replaced with an unease and a melancholy, while I walked these abandoned halls. A deserted society. Dead maybe.
I willed myself into the state of [Iron Mind Behind an Iron Mask] again. Though it was no Essence fueled Skill, I had practiced and became good at detaching myself. I could invoke the state of mind by just saying the words in my head. The darkness swallowed me, my chain and my little light, and even the sounds of my careful steps as I went on, ever upwards.