They stepped over the threshold of the storehouse doors and the change in the air was immediate and stark. The morning air in the arena had been cold but fresh, moist with the dew of a new day’s beginning. The air that surrounded her as she stepped over that threshold carried a touch of the grave. It sent a shiver up her spine that had nothing to do with the bitter chill in the air.

“We go straight as long as we can,” Alyx said, either unaffected by the dread creeping around them or unwilling to show she was. “The temple of blessings should be down—”

Welcome to the Vaisom Catacombs!

Initializing Limited Quest: Alacrity’s Champion

[Turbulent times come to the Fractured Skies. She of Stunning Brilliance and Striking Inspiration desires a Champion to face them. Descend to the ninth floor and claim Her favor before your competitors.]

Reward: Title (Alacrity’s Champion)

Alyx inhaled sharply, her words forgotten.

“Did you get a quest, too?” Cass asked.

Alyx nodded.

“No,” Marco said.

Yes, said Salos.

“Is that normal?” Cass asked.

“No,” Alyx said. She looked at Marco and asked, “Did you get one when you entered with my mother?”

He shook his head. “There was no quest then. What is it now?”

“See for yourself,” Alyx said, waving her hand, presumably sharing the message with him.

He frowned at the empty space, his eyes following lines of text Cass couldn’t see. “That’s concerning, if true.”

“Why did we get the quest, but not Marco?” Cass asked.

“I have Alacrity’s Blessing from last time,” Marco said. “It looks like the goddess wants new blood to represent her.”

“This changes nothing right now.” Alyx clapped her hands together. “The temple of blessings should be down the main path.”

The interior of the catacombs was much like the doors behind them: dark stone, cold and foreboding. The first room was a wide hall, with lines of empty shelves along the walls and dividing the space. Directly across from the entrance stood another pair of wide doors. On either side, more modest doors lined the walls.

Which means any treasure of worth will be down one of the side paths, Salos added. Not that we want to diverge from the main path this early. That is what most of the treasure hunters will have done in years past. The good stuff will be much deeper.

Alyx pushed open the doors and peered into the dark hallway beyond. Purple flames flickered to life in the sconces along the walls to either side, casting ghastly pools of light around them. They stepped into the hallway, the doors closing behind them. As they walked forward, the next sconces on the wall flickered to light and the ones behind sputtered out. Cass could see nothing beyond the grim light of the fire, like the world ceased existing beyond the light’s reach.

The dark swirled around them, deeper than natural darkness. It had a substance that went beyond a simple absence of light. It hung heavy in the air, dispelled only in shallow pools around the magenta torches burning from the walls.

“Its eerie in here,” Cass muttered.

“Aye,” Marco agreed.

Nine pairs of sconces down the hall, another door met them. It was identical to the previous door, made of unadorned dark stone. This one was open a crack, that same purple light oozing from the opening.

Alyx sidled up to the door, pressing her eye to the crack before opening it and walking through.

The room was another warehouse-like room, though the shelves were limited to the walls. They were just as empty as the entryway’s had been. Again, a large door stood opposite them and several more lined either side.

In the center, instead of more shelves, was a pile of scrap metal. The pieces gleamed like polished ebony under the torchlight, what looked like metal limbs and fractured plates twisting together in senseless masses. Amid the scrap were animal masks. Rodents with wide eyes. Alligators with dark gems along long snouts. Wolves with snarling grimaces.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“What is that?” Cass asked.

“Looks like a group ahead has already disposed of a lot of the catacomb’s defenses,” Marco said. “The monsters here aren’t natural creatures or simple traps. These were all automated with the souls of the unfortunates who died here.”

“The what?” Cass inhaled sharply. She couldn’t have heard him correctly, because it sounded like he’d said, “The souls of the dead?”

Alyx nodded.

“As in ghosts?”

Cass wasn’t scared of ghosts. That would be silly. Irrational. Ghosts weren’t real.

And, if they were real, they couldn’t touch anything, that was the only way they could phase through objects. Which meant they couldn’t touch her. Which meant they couldn’t hurt her.

Which meant it was silly to be afraid of ghosts. So she wasn’t.

But this wasn’t Earth. All sorts of impossible things were possible. Did that include non-tangible monsters hurting her?

The living shadows of the Deep flickered in her memory. They hadn’t been ghosts exactly, but weren’t they similar?

“Ghosts? I suppose, after a fashion,” Alyx said. “They are dead souls bound to golem forms.”

This is well beyond the defenses I was expecting, Salos muttered. Rather, this is bordering on taboo magics. Souls should be allowed to return to the River and flow on. They should not be chained to the catacombs to fulfill the will of the living, not even the will of the gods.

Cass frowned. What defense were you expecting?

Automated golems, Salos said. But controlled by the Averenis’s impressive golem magics. Complex spells determining autonomous movement. They were famous for their golems in my day. To hear they switched to exploring soul crafting is concerning.

Marco knelt beside the pile, shifting through the pile carefully. He tapped one crocodilian mask after another. There were five in easy sight on the pile. “Dreadiron Crocodiles. They shoot beams of lightning. You can tell how powerful the blast’ll be based on the number of the gems it has and the number that are glowing. More means more. This is a lot for this early in the catacombs.”

He shifted more of the pile. Tapping a rodent mask, he muttered, “Gophers. These things, they appear out’a any sold surface and have blades for hands. Best watch your ankles. Fast and plentiful. Not very strong individually, though.

“And Soulbound Wolves,” he said as he pulled a wolf mask from the pile. “There shouldn’t be any this early.”

Alyx’s frown mirrored Marcos.

“What does that mean?” Cass asked.

“The defenses become more significant the deeper one gets. This is the first floor, the first room. Reports from previous years suggested that there should barely be a handful of goffers this early. For there to be this many, this quickly is already concerning. But the wolves shouldn’t appear until the third floor by the soonest.”

“There fast and strong. With their humanoid forms and variable armaments, they are the real soldiers of the catacombs,” Marco added.

“Why are they here, then?” Cass asked.

Alyx shook her head. “I don’t know. Possibly the quest. Possibly because it has been so long since the last Festival.” She looked over her shoulder. “Come on, we don’t have time to linger here. The next group will be on our heels all too soon. Why the Goddess would send stronger than average defenses, this year is her business. It doesn’t change anything for us. We still just have to push through.”

“True enough,” Marco nodded. “Should I lead or bring up the rear?”

“The rear, please,” Alyx said. “Cass, you stay in the middle.”

Cass nodded. That suited her just fine.

“Salos, would you scout our periphery?” Alyx added.

He scowled at her, but leapt off Cass’s shoulder without a word.

“He says that’ll be no trouble,” Cass lied.

Don’t put words in my mouth, he hissed.

Answer when people talk to you, then, Cass retorted.

He didn’t reply, but she could feel the snort of indignation even if she couldn’t see him.

“Smart cat,” Marco commented as Salos slipped into the darkness.

You sure you don’t want to tell him you can talk? Cass asked.

Yes.

“Not as smart as he thinks he is,” Cass sighed as they followed him into the darkness.

The catacombs continued in this way, stretches of dark corridor interrupted by rooms of doors and metallic carnage.

“Should all the monsters be dead already?” Cass asked on the fourth such room.

“While we’re on the main path and close enough to the leader, yes,” Alyx said.

“Oh, you mean the first group that went in?” That made sense now that she thought about it. The group in front would be forced to deal with most of the monsters if they wanted to advance, while the groups behind could simply follow the cleared path behind them. “Is that why the ‘favorite’ goes first?”

Alyx nodded.

“But shouldn’t the groups eventually bunch up, if the front group is constantly stopping to fight?” Cass asked.

“That is the idea,” Alyx said as they entered the next dark hallway.

“I see, so in order to keep first place, they need to handle the monsters faster than the groups behind can catch up.” Everyone wanted the bonus for being first, after all. “Shouldn’t we be running to catch up, then? No. Wait.” Cass paused.

What happened when they caught up?

Her stomach twisted. The group ahead of them wasn’t going to just peacefully let them pass. If and when they caught up, it would be a violent struggle.

Her hands clenched around her staff. This was why Alyx had tried to stop her from coming.

How did one win without killing the group ahead?

“There is a lot of Catacombs between here and floor nine,” Alyx said.

“A lot can happen.”

That didn’t make Cass feel any better. That was just an oblique way of saying their competitors might get themselves killed in the meantime.

“Right now, the main goal is to not let the group behind us catch up,” Alyx continued. “We’ll push for the front in good time.”