“I don’t know,” Enzo says, glancing at Dante’s wounds with concern. “A few seconds after you went into the dungeon, the wire you gave her snapped and the door started closing. We decided to enter together to help you, but the moment I stepped in, everything around me vanished.”
A sinking feeling fills Emily’s gut as she listens to him, and she doesn’t even hear him and Dante continue to speak afterwards, her focus shifting to the other magical signature she still feels. She turns and sprints past Dante towards the next open door in the chamber walls, staring into the small chamber past it with unsettling calm as she sees Hester lying against the far wall.
Her breathing is laboured as she clutches her stomach, trying to hold in a gaping hole leaking blood, with her armour shattered, shards of it lying on the floor around her in a pool of red. Her face is half burned with her flesh flaking away from the bone beneath, and her eyes are dull as her strength slowly fades.
Emily quickly takes in her state and barely spares her a thought, racing past the gruesome scene the moment she confirms it’s Hester. She reaches the next door and sees Ivor collapsed, lifeless in the centre of the room, the flesh peeled from his bones. Continuing on to the last door on this side, she slides to a halt finding Tom having suffered the same fate.
Her blood runs cold as she turns and rushes back, passing Dante and Enzo calling for her help as they desperately try to stop Hester’s bleeding. Emily doesn’t stop, not even hearing their calls as her legs carry her towards the last open door.
She skids across the stone floor, digging her boot’s spikes in to slow her down and stop her in the open doorway. Her breath catches in her throat, and the world starts to buzz as the air around her ionises. Lying a few metres away from the door in a pool of blood, with her head facing the doorway, is Juliana.
Her face is distorted in an eternal scream, her eyes wide and dull. There are slashes across her cheeks, and her torso is torn to shreds, a mess of gashes, made by blades, and chunks of missing flesh, ripped away by jagged teeth.
Emily meets her lifeless gaze, echoes of broken promises swimming in her mind as arcs of lightning emanate from her, connecting with every nearby surface.
I promised to keep her safe...
She reaches down for The Clock without thinking, the mana around her still raging in response to her own tumultuous emotions. She presses the button, starting time’s backwards march without breaking eye contact with her broken love.
She didn’t even survive long enough for me to try to help her.
An immense feeling of helplessness washes over Emily as she’s thrust backwards in time.
***
Emily blinks as she finds herself back in the tunnels again, following along beside the river. She turns around suddenly, running her gaze over her friends.
They all shiver as they meet her eyes, crackling with cold electricity.
“Emi?” Juliana calls softly as Emily steps towards her.
Emily doesn’t respond, pulling her into a tight hug and burying her face into the crook of her neck. Juliana is surprised, but she quickly wraps her arms around Emily and holds her tight.
“Are you okay?” she asks with concern as she feels the tension in Emily’s shoulders relax under her touch.
“Hmm,” Emily hums in response, drinking in Juliana’s calming floral scent.
Their friends awkwardly wait behind them, unsure how to react to Emily’s sudden outburst.
After a few minutes, Emily relaxes her grip on Juliana, pulling back a little and raising a hand to stroke her cheek.
“I’m fine now,” she says with a tired smile before closing her eyes and taking a deep breath.
I shouldn’t have freaked out that much. I knew for certain that she would be fine after I reset, but I still couldn’t keep myself calm when I saw her.
Instantly the image of Juliana’s mangled body flashes across her mind again, causing an odd feeling of disconnect as she squeezes her again for reassurance.
She releases her breath, opening her eyes which have returned to their usual controlled calm, meeting a look of concern. She leans forward, placing a gentle kiss on Juliana’s lips before separating completely and reaching down for her belt.
She presses the button on The Clock again, rewinding to avoid having to explain her strange actions.
***
Emily returns to a few minutes earlier, falling into the march after a quick glance back at her girlfriend to confirm her safety. She continues the journey in the same manner as the day before, taking the same paths until they set up camp in the evening, an hour off reaching the five-way split.
Emily holds Juliana tighter than usual as she sleeps, not enough to cause her discomfort, but enough to force the image of her corpse out of her mind as she lies awake through the night. In the morning they set off as usual, but when they reach the five-way split, Emily leads the group towards the dungeon straight away.
They arrive at the door, meeting it with just as much excitement as before, with only Emily’s reaction slightly muted. She steps forward silently, placing a hand on the doorframe and stepping back as the words morph and the door opens.
The wording catches her eye, and realisation strikes her.
The trial of the divided. It told us that we’d be split up from the start.
“What’s that?” Hester asks.
“A portal,” Emily answers with confidence, pointing towards the writing. “And by the looks of it, we’ll all be sent to different places.”
Ivor, Dante, and Enzo barely react, but Tom and Juliana bristle with anxiety, and Hester casts a quick glance towards her brother.
“Isn’t that dangerous?” Juliana asks cautiously.
“Very,” Emily says, turning to face her friends with a serious gaze. “I think I should go in alone.”
Her friends’ expressions range from concern to disappointment at her suggestion, with Dante sporting a mix of reluctance and betrayal.
“You want me to sit back while you raid a dungeon alone?” he asks.
“Yes. If this dungeon really separates us then there’s no way I can help you if a third circle threat comes out, and this deep into The Waters there’s a high likelihood one will. It’s not worth risking it by going in together,” Emily explains. “Only you, Enzo, and Ivor have enough experience for me to not feel nervous leaving you alone. I’d rather you stay out here together while I check it out.”
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And even Ivor couldn’t handle all those goblins alone.
Dante’s expression morphs into understanding as he nods seriously.
“I’ll blow up anything that comes close.”
Emily scoffs, taking out the barrier disc and setting it up as her friends reluctantly kill their excitement and settle down. Juliana approaches Emily before she can leave, a frown etched on her features.
“Be careful,” she says, wrapping her arms around Emily’s neck and kissing her.
“Always am,” Emily responds as she pulls away, turning to the dungeon’s entrance.
She steps forward, sinking into the twisting darkness and once again losing any sense of her surroundings. This time, she doesn’t bother moving forward any more, opting to wait for the trial to start.
As expected, after a couple of seconds, a ripple spreads out from her. However, instead of stopping fifteen metres away from her, the ripple keeps going until it reaches a full fifty metres on all sides.
Emily raises a brow at the change, looking around as the ripple of motion rises up, forming towering walls of black stone with thirty portcullises, one every ten metres. The chamber looks identical to before but scaled up, and, as the roof far above finishes forming, Emily stares at the torches ahead, lining the walls, with bated breath.
Is the size related to the number of people who entered? Is that why only one of the gates opened last time?
The torch in front of her bursts to life, a flickering, crimson flame bringing light to the dark chamber. Emily feels a shiver run down her spine as her instincts flare at the unsettling change, so she drops into a combat-ready stance, grabbing the Spitter and preparing several spells.
The torches follow the same pattern as last time, lighting one after the other in a slowly building spiral around her. By the time half of them are lit, the interval between each ignition grows so short that Emily wouldn’t have been able to track them if she was still second circle. After the last torch flickers to life, all of the flames scream a symphony of rage, growing in size and ferocity enough to scorch the walls behind them and bathe the chamber in a blood-tinted hue.
The entire hall starts to shake as all thirty gates slowly rise. An excited grin grows on Emily’s face as four large orbs of lightning crackle to life in the magic circles surrounding her. A single, glistening silver magic circle hovers behind her at the ready, waiting to activate the moment she detects a sufficient threat.
The gates slide home into the roof, revealing thirty bubbling portals. A chorus of clattering footfall reaches Emily’s ears as she sees an armoured hobgoblin step through each entrance, all of them holding weapons ranging from polearms to tower shields. They move away from the portals, their hateful gazes locked on Emily, with vicious snarls curling their lips.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” she calls out with expectation.
As if rising to her challenge, goblins flood out of the portals in neat rows, gathered together in organised squads led by the hobs.
“That's more like it,” Emily says, raising her gun to fire the starting shot.
She charges the Spitter with machina, flicking it into burst and unloading into the first squadron. A hail of bullets flies out, tearing through the squadron’s ranks. Bodies hit the floor, including the hobgoblin leader whose long spear offers no protection against the hail of metal slamming into it.
Emily smoothly reloads as the remaining twenty-nine groups grow, joined by more goblins still leaving the portals, and spread out enough to merge into one, marching forward to close in on her. She sprays bullets into them, receiving return fire from the archers in the group that she dodges with minimal movements, falling into the rhythm of battle. She releases all four arcs, sending one out on each side and letting tendrils of lightning cleave their way through the approaching numbers.
She notices the incoming wave slows as the spells wreak havoc in their ranks, stunning each goblin hit by a single tendril, dropping any hit by a second, and killing any hit by a third.
Their bodies are really weak.
The hobgoblins bark orders in their strange, ancient language that Emily doesn’t understand, and the goblins behind them shift, moving the shield-bearers to the front to block as much of the lightning as possible.
Emily frowns at their coordination, clicking her tongue and picking off some of the goblins blocking her assault, sending bullets into their exposed knees when they protect their vitals with their shields. As she’s methodically knocking down the problematic goblins, she notices one of the sword-wielding hobgoblins tank four tendrils of crackling energy before it collapses to the floor, where she plants a single bullet between its eyes to quickly finish it. Then, almost instantly, the goblins behind it break formation, scrambling forward wildly and running into the oncoming lightning.
Well, that makes this easier.
With a small grin replacing her frown, Emily reloads the Spitter once more and flicks it back into single-fire before quickly rotating, shooting accurately into the exposed eyes and throats of the hobgoblins. The goblins panic at the loss of their leaders, frantically rushing forward and closing the distance with her as expected, allowing the arcs to work to their full potential.
As the first goblin reaches her, Emily decapitates it with a whip of her arm before holstering her gun and bending her active magic circles. The arcs bubble and morph before rocketing out as four bolts, culling the marked goblins on mass. The thick beams of plasma bounce around the hall, surrounding Emily with scorched bodies that melt into the floor as no goblin is left unharmed. Even the few green critters that avoided being marked die as the beams pass towards their neighbours.
There’s barely any resistance. Are they all weak to lightning?
The arc-bolts fizzle out, leaving a dead zone of thirty metres on all sides of Emily with nothing living left behind. The remaining goblins rush forward to fill the gap. But, as Emily raises the Claws to fight them off, they suddenly pause. Emily notices the portals shaking violently as the torches pulse, and a familiar clattering fills the hall as a full squadron of twenty hobgoblins walks through each gate. The groups are a mix of swords and spears, protected by shields at the front and followed closely by five mages each, all holding gnarled wooden staffs.
“Fucking hell that’s a lot,” Emily mutters, turning her head and counting the mages.
The shield bearers slam their heavy shields into the ground after their full squad steps from the portals, and the hall calms for a moment. Then, they roar guttural orders at the scattered goblins who resume their charge at full speed.
Emily casts scattershot and three more arcs while shooting the Claws’ blades with a magical steel thread connecting them to her arms and spinning, slicing through the front row of goblins like butter. She keeps culling them with the Claws for a few seconds as her spells finish casting, then retracts the blades into their housings while grabbing hold of the magical bow before her and tossing the crackling orbs of lightning into the crowd.
I wish I could put my back to a wall right now.
Emily draws back the bow, forming an arrow in place as over a hundred small balls of fire rise above the goblins’ ranks and a few goblin’s arrows hit her armoured chest, trying to break her focus. Ignoring the dull pain of the impact as her armour blocks the shots, she marks fifty of the mages cowering at the back and points the bow to the sky before releasing the string of wind. The arrow cuts through the air, rising to the apex of its flight before bursting into fifty, bullet-sized metal shards and raining down on the hobgoblins.
The arrow fragments reach their targets before the orbs of fire, but they slam into a thin barrier of wind that stops most of them before shattering and letting the others in. Five mages die as the balls of fire fall towards Emily, but with barely a thought the waiting magic circle behind her activates, forming a wall of metal above her that blocks all of them.
“Tsk,” Emily clicks her tongue, drawing the bow back again and watching the mana movement around the hobgoblins to work out which ones are casting the barriers.
She sees two thirds of them are casting fire element spells, and marks fifteen of those who aren’t.
“Good luck blocking this one,” she says with a vicious grin, pointing the scattershot directly up and dismissing her barrier.
An arrow flies up, bursting before it hits the ceiling and scatters fifteen hefty chunks of metal in a blooming pattern. They arc out, falling on the mages, cutting through their barriers with ease and splitting their heads open. She draws the bow again, selecting her marks and releasing two more shots before her blossoming arrows are joined in the air by the hobgoblin mages’ retaliating volley of fire.
Her rain of metal achieves its goal, removing all the barriers above the mages, along with their casters, as Emily sprints forward, rushing into the crowd of goblins and cutting down any blocking her path with a Claw. The balls of fire fall harmlessly on the empty space she has left, small explosions ringing out through the hall as Emily turns the arc closest to her into an arc-bolt and clears the nearby goblins with it.
She draws the bow in the exposed gap and marks fifty more mages before firing. This time the small shards of metal meet no barriers, and all find their targets, cutting down the spellcasters' numbers. She fires a second arrow before the goblins can close the gap to approach her, removing the rest of the mages from the equation completely.
With the main threat gone, Emily dismisses scattershot and turns her arcs into arc-bolts to clear more of the goblins. She sprints through the quickly thinning group towards a squad of hobgoblins, cutting down everything she passes before casting four more arcs to reap the remaining goblins. She arrives in front of the first squad, pulling back her fist and slamming it into a shield, crumpling it inwards and knocking the air out of the hobgoblin braced behind it, sending it tumbling to the floor.
“I hope the rest of you can put up more resistance than that,” she mutters with a manic grin, casting her predatory gaze over the remaining squad before slipping into the centre of their formation through the exposed gap.