Mel led the group down into the bowels of the plateau. It was amazing to realize that a complex network of tunnels had been right below their feet the entire time.
More than once, Mel made a wrong turn and had to backtrack. With her heightened sense attribute, she was out in front leading them toward the source of the chanting. Mel guessed that usually that would be the role of an Archer. Lightly armored, one of their focus stats being sense, and with [Owl Sight], that class would be great for it.
Unfortunately, [Gaze of the Serpent] trumped anything Archer could bring to the table.
Minute by minute, the sound grew louder until they could pick out individual voices in the chant.
“What’re they saying?” Sabrina whispered, clutching her wand tightly.
“Nothing good,” Mel said. She had no idea what they were saying, but she could feel the malice of their words in her bones. This was dark magic, though she didn’t know how she was so certain.
Monsters never spoke that she knew of. Not with any kind of human language. The chanting had to come from people, but nobody from Earth would know how to unleash dark magic so quickly.
At least, she hoped.
Several tunnels were caved-in or had choking vents of foul gas that forced them to take an alternative route. If they could have gone straight toward the sound of chanting, it would have only taken a few minutes.
By the time they reached a downward slope, they were hot, sweaty, and hardly able to breathe in the cloying underworld stench. It wasn’t just the sulfurous reek, there were other horrid odors mixing in. Rotten meat, open sewer, and something metallic and coppery all mixed together in the humid air.
Alone, the humidity would have made it hard to breathe. With the stomach-emptying stench clinging to every breath they took, it was hard going.
More than once, Mel was tempted to take one of the passages that smelled a little cleaner. She noticed the wistful looks of the others whenever they passed one of those tunnels.
This new aspect better be worth it, Mel thought fiercely, directing her animosity towards the system.
Not that it would care. It was probably an unfeeling, omnipresent entity. Not cruel, but not merciful either.
Wherever the chanting led them, it would have to be in a nightmarish place to rival the dark song. If they were going to find the source of it and earn an aspect each, they weren’t going to find it by following the signs of fresh air.
“It feels like we’re walking inside some living creature’s body,” Nathan hissed. “It’s so damp, and I swear the floor is pulsing with a heartbeat.”
“You’re just imagining things,” Mel told him without turning around. She had felt the same thing, but wasn’t about to admit it.
“Are you gaslighting me right now?”
Mel kept a straight face. “What? No. You’re crazy. You sound crazy right now.”
“You are! You’re gaslighting me! Brina, she’s–”
“Trying to keep our spirits up,” Sabrina cut in.
Mel had no idea how the stench could get any worse, but as the tunnel bent to the right, they were hit in the face by a physical wall of odor so strong that even Mel gagged.
It wasn’t the first time that several people emptied what little remained in their stomachs. After the retching and gagging were over, Mel pressed on.
They didn’t have far to go.
The tunnel opened up into a room of stone walls fitted with large gray blocks of stone and worked with obvious skill. The room looked disused, but there was a hall beyond it and the sound of chanting was louder than ever.
A puddle of warm water gathered in the cracks of the stone floor right below the leaking tunnel. There was nothing of note in the room.
Torches burned and flickered in the hallway, warming the stones to Mel’s eyes. She put up a hand to keep the others in their place, and poked her head into the hallway, then motioned when the coast was clear.
“What is this place?” Nathan asked, his voice barely audible, as if he didn’t want to speak at all.
“How should I know?” Mel whispered back.
The smell was even worse, telling Mel they were on the right track. Thick stone blocks shifted under their feet as a tremor rumbled through the underground complex.
Mel eased up to the wall at the next junction and scouted ahead. Down one passage the torches were dark and in her heat vision she could see a collapse had closed off the hallway about 100 feet away.
Seeing no alternative passages that way, Mel took a right into the next tunnel, keeping her hands free in case she needed to summon her weapon quickly.
The others, clearly not trusting themselves to call their weapons in time, had theirs out and ready to use at a moment’s notice.
An ancient, half-rotted door creaked open down the hallway to admit a small man in a moldering red robe. A robe Mel had hoped she wouldn’t see again.
Taking no chances, Mel rushed forward, grabbed his robes and threw him back into the room he just came from.
She was on him in a second, hands wrapped tight around his throat, her knees pinning his shoulders to the stone floor.
Sabrina gasped and grabbed Mel under her arms. She wasn’t strong enough to pull her off, but with Shane’s help, she was.
“You idiots! He’s Bloodtide!”
The Covenant member looked at Mel with abject terror as she fought and struggled to get out of their grip.
Why didn’t I bind an aspect to strength!?
She managed to use her superior agility to wriggle out of their grasp and slip free, but by then it was too late.
Seeing his death coming so assuredly, and now with time on his side, the Bloodtide zealot muttered hoarsely under his breath. His hands traced a familiar series of red sigils in the air.
Aspect Skill: [Blood Bomb]
“Out!” Mel shouted, reversing her movement and trying to pull the others out of the room. They more readily obeyed that, but it still wasn’t nearly fast enough.
The blast took the rotten door straight off the hinges and painted the far wall like a Jackson Pollock painting of gore and blood.
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You defeat the [Bloodtide Covenant Acolyte (Mundane Rank)].
You gain runes of Mist and Serpent aspect experience.
You gain Battle Points.
(5) [Blood Coins] have been stored in your inventory.
The hallway rumbled and shook from the blast. Heavy blocks of stone and dirt collapsed the path they came from, sealing off any hope of escape.
Nobody survived unscathed, but at least the injuries were relatively minor. Burns and bruises were better than broken bones.
Maddie immediately used [Sacred Path] to get ahead of the worst of it.
Sabrina sat heavily on the ground, her face and body covered in scalding blood. Her skin’s blistering eased with each passing second of [Sacred Path], but the horror did not leave her bright blue eyes.
Mel was up on her feet a few seconds later. She was seething with anger, but realized now wasn’t the best time to berate them.
Still, when she turned to Sabrina, the other girl flinched as if she expected Mel to slap her. Mel took a deep breath and did her best to scrub the anger from her voice. “These are bad people. You see a person in those filthy red robes, you kill them. No questions asked. They won’t hesitate.” She motioned to the blood-splattered wall. “These are the same Bloodtide zealots I told you about.”
“I thought that skill looked familiar…” Nathan said, shellshocked. “He just…blew up.”
“His insides became outsides,” Shane said, staring at nothing.
Mel could see where this was going. She had to head it off before they went too deep. Despite being the smallest person there, she lifted each of her allies to their feet. “Up. Get up . You think that’s all of them? This was just one guy! Those voices we hear? That’s the rest of them. More will be coming any moment. We don’t have the luxury of breaking down now. On your feet!”
They looked unsteady, but the fear and horror were fading from their faces, replaced by grim resolve.
Fighting these zealots wasn’t fair. Mel’s group was filled with average people from Earth. These Bloodtide were already accustomed to life where monsters and magic were commonplace.
Didn’t the Convocation say that two worlds were uplifted? Earth and…what was the other one?
Lormar.
“Remember,” she added, “we’re here for the quest. We need those aspects! And in doing so, we’ll stop these people from hurting anybody else.”
“Falran, what the hells are you doing?!” Called a voice from an adjoining hallway. “It sounds like you were giving birth to the Gnawing Hunger herself. I told you not to have that second helping. Young men always give you such stomach problems.”
A red-robed man turned the corner and halted in his tracks, seeing the half-dozen intruders splattered with what Mel could only guess was Falran.
Before even Mel could respond, an arrow shaft sprouted from the man’s chest. He looked down, shocked, at the spreading darkness of his own blood.
Mel rushed forward, summoning her twinblade. She slashed his neck in one clean stroke, silencing his voice. The hallway couldn’t take another explosion.
Reaching his hands up instinctively to his throat to stem the flow of blood, the zealot gasped and went down with a well-placed kick to the outside of his knee. Mel reversed her grip and speared the man through the shoulder and into the chest to silence him for good.
It was over in just a few seconds.
Mel looked back at Bernard, the only other person who had reacted fast enough. He gave her a grim nod that she returned.
You defeat the [Bloodtide Covenant Brawler (Mundane Rank)].
You gain runes of Mist and Serpent aspect experience.
You gain Battle Points.
(5) [Blood Coins] have been stored in your inventory.
(1) [Blood Ember (Common)] has been stored in your inventory.
The shock at taking part in killing another person shook the others less than the first time. Bernard helped guide them down the hall after Mel.
Mel’s stomach turned at the thought of what that [Blood Ember (Common)] might grant to armaments. Despite that, she wouldn’t refuse something else of use.
For now, fire affinity worked exceptionally well.
“Did you hear what he said?” Nathan whispered in horror.
“Yeah,” Sabrina said softly.
“Are they cannibals or something? How evil can you get?”
Mel looked over her shoulder at them. “I told you people were worse. Monsters don’t get to choose. They simply are . But people? People choose to be like this. They build systems around it to keep it going, to facilitate the horrors. Give me a monster to fight any day.”
“How do you know all this?” Shane asked.
Mel didn’t answer, because she truthfully didn’t know. It was like she lived through something like this before.
With her twinblade in hand, Mel took up a brisk pace down the hall. They passed a few empty rooms. Some had rotting crates and burlap sacks that were filled with holes, but they found no more Bloodtide to fight.
Several rooms looked like they had been slept in, others held entirely different horrors that nobody spoke of. Rooms filled with piles of scarlet bones, bloody handprints, and streaks going across the hallway from a room that was barred from the outside to a dining hall of nightmares.
Mel used the horrible sights to fuel her anger, quickening her pace. When she took a turn down the hall and saw two Bloodtide zealots standing in front of a heavily fortified door, she didn’t even blink.
Tapping into every ounce of speed she could, Mel sprinted down the hall and opened the first zealot from groin to shoulder in one rage-fueled slice.
The other man was faster, but he chose poorly. Instead of attacking Mel when she was vulnerable, he slapped his hand to the iron-studded door. The bloody handprint he left behind pulsed with power and a thick red gel wriggled its way across the door, fully encasing it.
His yellow-toothed grin was permanently fixed on his face when two arrows thudded into his chest, followed by several bursts of magic projectiles, and finally a crushing blow from Shane’s war hammer.
Shane stood there, thunderstruck at what he had just done. The man slumped to the ground.
More runes of experience flowed from the two corpses, and more [Blood Coins], including another grotesque [Blood Ember (Common)].
Extra [Blood Coins] fell to the ground, shining wetly like freshly spilled blood. Shane looked like he was about to be sick. He turned away and heaved, but nothing came out.
Like the rest of them, there was nothing left in his stomach from the tunnels.
Sabrina came up and patted his back, her head turning to look up and down the hallway. She saw the same thing Mel did.
There was no other way forward. They would need to double back and look for another hallway or go through one of the horror rooms to find another way.
Shane wiped his mouth and followed Sabrina and the others when Mel noticed movement by her feet.
The [Blood Coins] that Shane hadn’t picked up were vibrating and sliding across the floor toward the door covered in red energy.
“Wait,” Mel said, holding up a hand, watching with great interest.
One by one, the coins touched the blood-red gel on the door and vanished. The gel took on a decidedly pinker hue.
Mel turned to the group. “Everybody get out your [Blood Coins], I’ve got an idea.”