A force of ten soot covered minions hissed at us, animalistic fury filling their cold stony eyes. Cidean made the first sound on our side, a girlish scream as he backpedalled and tripped over a fallen chunk of plaster.
The minions rushed towards him, jagged daggers at the ready to attack. Snowflake dashed straight towards the attackers, her shield low and her steps true. Her feet stepped between fallen pieces of debris, expertly weaving between them until she arrived just in time to slam the shield into the minions.
Lin and I lagged behind, trying to follow the speedy goat girl. I watched my step so I didn’t trip onto the field of rusty metal weapons lying around while Lin flanked to the side.
Cidean hastily threw a poison orb at one of the minions, followed by another spell that threw shards of broken weapons off the floor at them. The initial impact of the spell shattered one of their arms, sounding like he had broken a clay tile. With their outer stone skin broken the weapons plunged into them and broke off. It seemed they were rock all the way through. The after effect of the poison cloud didn’t hinder them at all, and the damaged minions surged ahead to hack at Snowflake.
I reached the fight and delivered a thrust with my longsword, the point aimed at the torso of one of the creatures. I felt no resistance as my blade parted his clay body, shattering it apart and reducing it to a pile of dust.
More minions crawled out of the hole seething with fury. I saw Lex and Grannul engage them, cutting them off from joining our fight. Lex’s arrows flew through the air, scoring hit after hit, but offering little impact to the swing of battle. His arrow heads either glanced off the minions or shattered apart leaving only small cracks in their bodies. But each crack seemed to slow the creatures down.
“Josh, cover Cidean. These foes need blunt force trauma to end,” Snowflake said, hefting her mace.
Her shield slammed the closest one, reducing it to a puff of dust in a single hit. She swept her mace in a wide arc ahead of her, hitting four of them at once, obliterating them completely. Minions surged around her, taking the places of their fallen comrades. Snowflake was only a single fighter and her opponents were too many to track all at once.
I held my sword in two hands and jabbed towards the approaching attackers, keeping them at bay as Cidean fled to cover, grabbing at his waist for a wand. The minions were fast, but my training was paying off as I could react to their attacks quickly. I shifted my feet back to dodge attacks and counter with well aimed slashes that chopped off their limbs. When I saw one jump on top of a mound with a throwing spear I sent off an orb of fire, catching him square in the chest. It dealt a moderate amount of damage, and when it hit the ground I heard it shatter.
The unfortunate part was that my weapon of choice only allowed me to either slash or thrust and I learned quickly that unless I hit their torsos they could still fight. I was fast enough and had enough reach to chop off limbs, but I was starting to get overwhelmed. One of them threw a spear at me and I turned on a dime to slash at it. Of course it was a stupid idea, and a warning notification told me something about lacking skill levels or a talent to even try such a thing. The spear struck me on the side, but glanced off because of my enchanted armour. It harmlessly fell to the ground, joining the other weapons littering the floor.
I kicked the spear out of the way as the creature reached for it and delivered a swift downward cut splitting it down the middle. The two halves hopped back before losing balance and shattered apart on the floor, sending shiny material scattering around it. The other two attacking me backed up for a second, giving me a chance to breathe and survey the situation.
Snowflake was proving that blunt weapons were the way to go. She stood amidst a tide of them, swinging her weapon with impunity and killing them as quickly as they rushed her. Her armour also proved infallible, every time one managed to score a hit on her, all it did was bounce off her armour.
“Summon boulder!”
The shout that came behind me was followed by a massive rock the size of a mini van appeared over the hole, hovering in mid air. The last tide of minions waned, and only a few more were climbing out of the pit. When they saw the rock they quickly reversed direction just as the rock fell, crashing into the keeper pool and sealing off the passage as it crushed the remaining foes.
Lin finally appeared, jabbing her daggers into a pair of stragglers, ending them with a single hit. She made her way towards me as I kept three of them at bay. Her arrival distracted them and I stepped forward to sweep my sword across them cutting them in half. Lin and I then quickly dispatched them as they crawled towards us and tried to bite us.
“Wow, there were a ton of them,” I said, wiping my brow. I kicked at one of the piles of clay dust, and saw embedded in some of the clay pieces were pieces of shiny metal. “It's weird they were so weak.”
“Chaff to distract us perhaps?” Lex asked, tapping one smoking pile with his shortsword. “My brother described these things before, the minions of a keeper. Usually they are as tough as drugged up goblins backed into a corner.”
Snowflake held her glowing weapon high, slowly scanning the room for more danger. Sensing the quick skirmish was over she returned to us and asked everyone if they were unhurt.
Cidean stepped over the wreckage he was hiding behind and struck a triumphant pose. “Well, it seems we are all well equipped for this dungeon.”
I looked at the boulder and strained to listen out for the sounds of minions digging in case any remained. Hearing nothing we turned our attention to what was left behind. Scrap metal weapons, pieces of iron ore and clay dust. Nothing of real value.
We pointed our light sources around the area trying to see what else we could find. There were four massive archways that lead to the north, east, south and west. The ones to the east and west were caved in blocking off access, but the north and south arches could still be navigated, their long hallways stretching off into the mountains. There were more work rooms dotted around the edges of the room we were in, most of them with broken doors. There were signs of fire damage and we didn’t see anything of value left inside the dozen or so rooms.
Lex was the first to speak up. “We got two paths to take, and I for one don’t like being underground for two long, I’m not Grannul. Let’s split the team to cover more ground. This place barely has loot to speak of so let's nab the quest items and get out.”
Lin leaned against the wall, she looked at the fallen bodies and then our team. “How do we divide the group?”
“Do we really want to split the team?” I asked. I kicked one of the rock mounds that were bigger than I was. “Some of these creatures were huge.”
Grannul brought his axe down on one of the large creature corpses, his axe easily splitting it apart. He kicked the fragmented pieces around and from the stains on the ground I could see what it was, charcoal.
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“Fired clay golems and charcoal golems. Intricate magic, but some of the weakest of their type. They can barely even be called golems to be honest, a real golem would have given us a run for our coin,” Cidean said, running his hand through the charcoal dust.
“We found an easy dungeon then. No need to overthink it, just get a fighter, mage and rogue per team. Snowflake you can be with those two weirdos, I’ll keep these two knuckleheads with me,” Grannul said, looking around the group for any protest.
Lin could barely contain her joy. “Sounds fine to me, I love having a heroic type in my group. Especially the ones that are easy on the eyes.”
I could almost swear I saw Snowflake blush through her armour, she hid behind her shield and she was having trouble looking towards Lin. Her other party members were already heading towards the south archway, leaving north to us. Lin linked her arms into ours and marched us towards the northern archway, happy as could be.
“Someone in a good mood,” I said.
“Of course, I get to explore and loot a dungeon with two of my cuties,” Lin said.
“I-I’m glad you feel that way, but shouldn’t we be worried about traps?” Snowflake asked.
Lin sighed and we broke apart, getting some space between us in case of an attack or trap. The stone archway’s corridor was long, stretching as far as our lights could reach. Burned tapestries and unpowered dungeon lights went down the length of the hall. I saw more charcoal corpses and weapons litter the corridor, but some of the weapons were in working condition.
“These shortswords and axes are well made, and the clay minion bodies have more rigidity to them,” Snowflake said, pushing one corpse with her boot. “The charcoal golems look more human too, like a skilled artist made them instead of a child.”
“The golems are more glassy too, look here,” I said, crouching down to touch one. “Ow! Fuck me that’s sharp.”
Blood trickled down my finger and I looked closer at the golem. Snowflake crouched down and took a look at my finger, checking the depth of the cut before bandaging it. She hummed a soothing tune while applying some kind of liquid to the bandage and it seeped into it, touching my wound.
“That should help against any infections. The cut is strange though, like the rock is sharper than a masterwork steel knife,” Snowflake said.
Constitution Check : Critical Success!
All bleeding has stopped.
+5 XP gained.
“I think it's obsidian, volcanic glass. It’s super sharp, but fragile,” I said pointing my light at the sharp rock golems. “It’s polished to a mirror finish. It…reminds me of the black mirror Icharn has for a face. Or so I heard.”
Knowledge Religion : Success!
Worshippers of Icharn sometimes use black mirrors as a representation of the hidden god’s face. It’s believed using such a mirror allows the god to see the individual in front of it. This grants a greater connection to Icharn and can aid in magical divination spells aligned with him.
+3 XP gained.
I showed the girls my pop up and they gave the larger golems in the hallway a wide berth. We continued on until we reached another large room. It was an underground garden, with seats arranged around a low platform, and I think I saw the remnants of what could have been a chair on the platform. It looked like a stage that a speaker could sit on to address a crowd or dignitaries.
Throughout the garden were dead plants, stone that had been melted away and signs of brutal fighting. There was a dense concentration of golem bodies here, and it was hard to make out who was fighting who. I made my way towards the back of the garden, seeing lightning bolt marks covering the walls.
There were more signs of battle here and among the dead underground plants I saw glassy obsidian golems that looked like cat girls. They were incredibly life-like and if I hadn’t seen the sloppier golems, and more progressively refined ones, I would have thought maybe a few cat girls got magically petrified. I didn’t know if that was a real spell, but it felt like it was possible. It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary.
“I think this might be a headquarters for one of the factions. I can see they had less soldiers, but their troops were higher quality, slaying three for each one of their own that fell,” Snowflake said, inspecting the carnage of the gardens.
“Is this normal for keepers?” Lin asked, reading me like an open book. I let her do the talking, being a rogue I would bet she had a better deception skill.
Snowflake shook her head. “I’ve never heard of keepers setting up dungeons so close together, in fact it's like they made one big dungeon together. But keepers fighting one another? That’s normal.”
“Maybe they destroyed each other and left all the good loot for us?” I asked, picking up a fallen shortsword. “This one’s intact.”
A drop of goop ran off the tip of the sword and splattered on the ground. The wet sound was followed by a strange buzzing coming down one of the hallways. We pointed our lights towards it and a crawling mass with too many legs and too many wings came out of it like a black cloud.
“Bloodbugs, run!” Lin shouted, pushing me towards the archway’s massive hall. “They can drink us dry in seconds!”
The insect swarm shot towards our escape and we turned on the spot towards one of the halls inside the garden. Snowflake waved her mace like a beacon and we pushed ourselves to sprint towards her as the bugs were hot on our heels. One of them shot past us and I looked at the flying mosquito-like creature that was covered in thick overlapping plates, had razor sharp scythe arms and a mouth that looked like a steel needle for driving between pieces of armour. It was the most deadly and evil looking bug I had ever seen.
“Produce fire!” I shouted, flicked my hand out to set the bug ablaze.
The insect burned like dry kindling, popping and sending sparks everywhere. The insect struck a dead plant and set it on fire, turning it into a blazing inferno. The insect swarm circled the pillar of fire, and we made our escape down the stone corridor.
The walls here were smoothed, tiled and made with a ton of care. The sandy coloured tiles on the top half of the hall made it feel sunny, brightly lit and warm, while the bottom half was a cool grey colour. The interlocking tiny tiles looked like they had been placed with care and precision, a job that probably took ages to complete even a square foot of work.
However I didn’t take time to appreciate the art on the walls as we hurriedly tried door after door. The doors were slabs of bronze with names engraved on them, and too thick to break down. Worse they were locked and when Lin tried to pick one it shocked her, and sent her flying into the wall.
The swarm of bloodbugs got bored of the fire and I could hear their buzzing approach. We needed to find safety, now. We hurried down the hallway and I ran through a wall of spider webs. I coughed and gagged as I got some in my mouth, but I didn’t care, maybe the webs would slow down the bugs too.
“Open door, on the far right!” Lin shouted, as she started pulling out jars. “I’m going to leave firebomb traps for them. Keep going, I’ll catch up.”
We reached a big room that was two floors, an upper walkway and a lower one with benches. There were dozens of rooms all around us like some kind of apartment complex, and just like Lin said there was a door that was cracked open and light could be seen inside.
Snowflake was hot on my heels as we ran for the door and as we were within reaching distance of it I heard Lin sprint behind us. I threw open the door the rest of the way and charged through with my sword drawn in case of trouble. I made it three steps into the room before I felt something grab my foot.
Perception : Critical Failure!
“Yeah, thanks,” I mumbled before I was hoisted up into the air. I felt webs grab my arms and legs. Before I even knew it I was bundled up in a spider web and suspended in the air. “Well, this is great.”
I heard the sound of skittering legs and I looked up in the dim glow of the room we were in. I saw spider legs as tall as I was making their way down the webs covering the ceiling. My blood ran cold and I swallowed a lump down my throat.
I hoped Lin or Snowflake could save me in time.