As the heart hammered above us, Grotto’s eyes glowed and his tentacles wrapped tightly around Xim’s arm. The cleric’s forehead split and the obsidian horn that marked the transformation to her beast form appeared, but the rest of her remained normal. Tentacles sprouted from the heart, c’thonic feathers replaced by crimson fire that swayed hypnotically. The heart drummed, and the Littans around us cowered, eyes wide and glistening.
Xim glared at them, and they ran.
She continued to channel the spell as we marched through the camp, and I cast Life Warden on Etja to keep her safe from any errant attacks while she channeled Nullify. More than half of the Littans were on the opposite side of the camp, dealing with the fallout of our distractions or rushing into the woods to hunt down Shog. The Littan duchess was also busy casting wide-area cleanses, purging the berserk and other status effects from the soldiers. She activated an aura that seemed to draw the attention of anyone nearby, and she began issuing commands. It wouldn’t be long before the camp recovered from our initial assault with her help, but I was glad that we didn’t have to deal with her ourselves.
Other Littans were fixated on the fight overhead as impacts thundered above from The Operator’s battle. Pressure waves that were powerful enough to kick up dirt and debris issued from the blows. I was tempted to glance up as well, but we didn’t have the luxury of time to appreciate the high-level fight. There were still enemy Delvers to oppose us, and we needed to make quick work of them.
As we rushed through the camp, most of the Delvers below level 10 fled as the pulse from Xim’s icon washed over them. A handful managed to resist, and a group ranging from level 7 to 11 moved to stop our advance. Varrin stepped forward to meet them, hand along the hilt of his blade, but he never drew Kazandak.
As I watched, an ethereal hand formed from Varrin’s soul and drew a spectral copy of Kazandak. The motion was quickly mirrored by Varrin himself, and the big guy was left wielding a version of his blade formed from spiritual energy. It lengthened out to ten feet, and he swept it across two of the advancing Delvers.
One raised a shield to block it, but the attack went straight through. The blade didn’t cut flesh or bone, but it did cleave straight through their souls. The silver energy shrouding their forms was separated, and the base layer of their beings was sent into turmoil. The two that had been hit screamed as their bodies locked up, and then they were on the ground. Varrin was already bringing the spiritual blade down on the next foe.
The level 11 resisted the attack with a barrier, but the woman looked more like a support fighter. She wove spells that disrupted the blade and protected herself, but Varrin’s assault was ceaseless. He was also much faster than the Littan. After five exchanges she was also on the ground. None of them were dead, just disabled as their souls struggled to recompose themselves. It was a devastating ability, one that I suspected came from Varrin’s morning routine of meditating over Kazandak. Whatever it was that the Patriarch had meant for his great-grandson to learn from the practice, Varrin sure was learning it.
Another pair of Littans had approached during the melee, but Nuralie put them down with a flurry of thrown needles that knocked them unconscious. Our party barely slowed as we fought, the few Littans that resisted the fear effect thrown into a blender of physically and spiritually disabling attacks. As we got close to the command tent, a single Littan stepped forward that I thought might give us some trouble.
Gharifon appeared in a puff of shadow, hands bathed in sickly energy. He raised them as if to cast, and Varrin dashed forward to strike, but something was wrong.
“Wait!” I shouted before Varrin could close the distance. The big guy stopped without hesitation, and the Gharifon before us sneered. While it looked like the level 17 gold was a second from bathing our group in the same cone of death he’d fired off earlier in the forest, the figure was invisible to my Soul-Sight. A copy. I quickly shared the realization with the group using Reveal, and a beam of necrotic mana came from our left as the copy exploded in a burst of corrupted mana.
I willed Gracorvus around to intercept the attack as it came for Etja, who was entirely focused on keeping the ward from dampening our skills. The beam crashed against the shield, and I said a silent thanks to my past self for choosing the Spell Breaker evolution. Some of the attack still pierced the defense, but it was diffused into a cloud, rather than focused into a line. It didn’t make it to our mage. I followed the attack to catch sight of Gharifon, but he disappeared into another cloak of darkness.
The ground around us began to twist and rise, rapidly forming massive walls that threatened to swallow us up. The dirt closed overhead in under a second and the light of the sun disappeared. It happened much too fast and, even though I’d seen that Gharifon was a capable caster, he hadn’t used any typical Physical magic like this yet.
It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility for Gharifon to have earth-shaping skills, but a Delver only had 10 skill slots, and there were only very limited ways to swap them out. Suddenly having earth-shaping abilities would be off-brand for Gharifon. The skills I’d seen from him so far focused on three things. Teleportation of himself and allies, afflictions like those that rotted the swamp while he fought The Operator, and the class of spells that allowed him to make clones and which kept my party from interfering when Tavio was kicking my ass: illusions.
I focused my will on the earthen barriers and used my Sight to break the mirage. The walls disappeared as though they’d never existed–which they hadn’t–and this truth was Revealed to the party. Gharifon once again stood in front of us, barring our path to the command tent, but this time it was truly Gharifon standing there, looking shocked as Varrin charged him.
He raised his hand to cast another shadow escape, but I was ready for it and countered with Dispel. The spectral hands growing from Varrin swung down toward Gharifon, and the action was mirrored by Varrin himself, cleaving through Gharifon’s soul with the spiritual edition of Kazandak. The caster grimaced and gnashed his teeth, but he didn’t falter. As soon as the blade cut through his soul, it was already knitting itself back together, though the threads of energy that repaired the damage were dark and emitted a sense of endless hunger.
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Before Gharifon could fully recover, an arrow flew through the air and exploded into a toxic cloud an inch from his chest. Gharifon coughed and staggered as Varrin cut his soul through again. Gharifon stumbled to the side, and I cast an unchannelled Explosion! beside him to send him ragdolling away. I was betting that he had the Fortitude to take at least one good hit.
We hurried forward, aiming to enter the Delve before the level 17 convalesced. Varrin drew the true Kazandak and cut through the tent’s side as another pair of Littans closed in on us, their expressions taut as they struggled against Xim’s fear effect, which the cleric was wholly consumed by focusing on.
Before we entered, however, I heard a new type of explosion and turned to see one of the ballistas firing into the forest. The bolt it shot created a large swath of mana-fueled fire that began consuming the vegetation where Shog hid. Between the siege weapon and the small army of Delvers hunting for the c’thon, I decided it was time for Shog to exit the battlefield. I canceled Dimensional Summon, dismissing him back to his home plane. Hopefully, he was still in good enough shape to deal with any of the c’thons hunting him on the other side, but I expected him to have a newly acquired tentacle the next time we saw him. Satisfied that a third of the Littans were now searching for an enemy that didn’t exist, I followed the party into the command tent.
The interior was sparsely furnished, with a large table to one side bearing a map and various papers dominating the space. A large hole descended into the ground, leading to a tunnel lit by glow stone lamps and surrounded by hastily constructed wooden railings. The railings looked designed to keep someone from accidentally stumbling into the pit, rather than keeping anyone out of it.
In the corner was a female Littan lying on a cot, her abdomen covered in bandages and her soul clouded with the same dark lines I’d seen within Tavio. This was the third soul I’d felt when Tavio’s group fought The Operator. Seeing her now, I still wasn’t sure where I’d met her before, but I was certain that we’d crossed paths.
Tavio himself was leaning against the wooden railing, looking at us with an exhausted expression.
We came to a stop as we entered the tent, waiting for the Littan to make a move, but he didn’t. The butt of his spear was planted in the ground, pointy end facing upward. He looked us over, and the murky substance in his soul stirred.
“You look like shit, Tavio,” I said. He smiled and shifted his weight from the railing to his spear.
“That creature fighting General Joaq has some interesting skills,” he said, voice strained. “The wounds it inflicts cannot be healed by anything other than time, it would seem.”
“Wicked damage,” said Varrin. “Rare, but powerful.”
“It is as you say,” said Tavio. “Some sort of passive. It affects all of its attacks. Very frustrating to deal with.”
“Then you’re in no shape to fight,” I said. “Move aside and we’ll be out of your hair. We only want to enter the Delve.”
Tavio nodded but stayed where he was.
“The archway will not activate for any of us,” he said, “but I suspect you have a way in?”
“Yes,” I answered, gambling that honesty would yield a quicker solution than dodging the question.
Tavio held up a hand as a pair of Littans entered the tent behind us. They halted at the gesture, but tightly gripped their weapons and gave us menacing stares.
“Then I have no interest in stopping you,” he said. “But, I want to ask you something before you go.”
Varrin glanced back at the new arrivals, then took a step toward Tavio, looking like he wanted to force the Littan out of our way, but I placed a hand on the big guy’s shoulder.
“What?” I asked.
“Yaretzi,” said Tavio. “What happened to him?”
I considered the question, then made a quick decision, trusting my gut. When Tavio had originally attacked me, he’d seemed curious–in a very aggressive and painful way–but not outright evil. That, on top of the fact that Sam’lia’s divine fire did not mark him as being worthy of judgment, made me think he may have fallen in with a bad crowd.
I packaged up the memories of our fight with Yaretzi, then gently offered them to Tavio with Reveal, the same way I’d done with The Operator. Either Tavio already knew what Yaretzi was, in which case his attitude toward us wouldn’t change, or he hadn’t realized he was working with a psychopath, in which case he might begin to question the people he was allied with. Tavio twitched when I touched his soul, but he grinned soon after.
“I did not think you had spiritual abilities,” he said. “I’d decided you had a Dimensional attunement. Curious.”
He accepted the memories, then stepped to one side as he absorbed them. Varrin jumped over the railing and into the tunnel leading below ground, followed quickly by Nuralie, Xim, and Etja. As I passed by Tavio, I saw a series of complex expressions cross his face while he reviewed what I’d given him. Confusion, sorrow, anger.
“He killed Littan soldiers?” Tavio asked, disbelieving.
“You should choose your party members more carefully,” I said. “Gharifon is trouble as well. Maybe worse.”
I hopped the barrier, then took one last look at the injured woman in the corner. Laying on the ground next to her, beside a set of dark leather armor, was a wide-brimmed hat. A memory of a Littan smoking a pipe sprang to mind, and then I rushed down after my allies, musing over how Tavio really had bad taste in allies. I hoped that the duchess he worked for wasn’t the same, but I wasn’t going to hold my breath.
Tavio stopped the other Littans from pursuing us, and we soon found ourselves in front of the entrance to the Delve.
It was little more than a stone archway that looked like it had been buried underground for centuries, likely longer, and had only recently been excavated. There was no door or tunnel beyond it, no indication that there was a facility of any kind that it led to. On the other side of the arch was just more dirt.
I looked over the arch, briefly examining its plain surface. There were carved symbols in a language I didn’t recognize, and while I suspected it was designed to house a portal, there was no obvious way to activate it.
Before I could ask the party for ideas on how to jumpstart the thing, Etja reached out and ran her fingers along the arch. Reality shimmered before us and a silvery portal appeared.
“New portal color,” said Xim, peering into the swirling magic. “Neat!” She slapped a hand onto its surface, then disappeared.
The rest of us followed suit, and our journey into Deijin’s Descent began.