We pushed on, navigating the serpentine twists of the maze for what felt like an eternity. The walls, lined with the pulsing veins of fulgurite, throbbed with the pulse of the temple, renewed by the many lives it had taken this last day and a half.
Shadows danced eerily around us, our footsteps light against the floor as we progressed. The air smelled of ozone now, the air humid with the sense of impending rain. We’d encountered more traps, many and varied, growing more complex and difficult as we progressed. They sparked and sizzled, burning a few hit points here and there. We encountered other electric monsters as well. Imps, minor infernals, and a bird of cloud that breathed lightning. But all we easily vanquished by us at the cost of little exertion and little damage.
Kevinar led us through, catching and disabling most of the traps before they had a chance to fire, and spotting our enemies well before they spotted us.
But as we ventured deeper, the traps grew more cunning, more deadly. Electric arcs that leaped from hidden nodes in the walls sought to fry us where we stood. Pit traps yawned open just before our feet, threatening to swallow us into a crackling abyss. And once, a magma trap that erupted with a roar, spewing molten death upwards in a geyser that surely would have ended us both if Kevinar hadn’t detected it just a second before. The sheer heat of it singed our eyebrows, taking a few more hit points off our life forces.
The labyrinith itself had taken on new life as we moved deeper, grinding as it shifted walls and moved corridors each and every hour. Walls slid away to reveal new paths, while others emerged to block our way. It was as if we were inside the belly of some great beast, its innards rearranging themselves with a mind of their own.
Through it all, though, Kevinar's face was set in a grim determined line, his usual stoicism shining through the difficulty of the maze. It gave me confidence that we could make it through this fierce dungeon of a temple, despite the hunger growing in my stomach.
I did my best to help out, my eyes constantly scanning for the telltale signs of the next trap, my mind racing to understand the maze and predict its next move. But it was unlike any of the puizzles I’d faced in Lords of Chaos, and it thwarted all of my best efforts.
Until, finally, we were caught.
The trap was as sudden as it was vicious. One moment Kevinar was bending down to examine a cracked tile in the center of the room, the next a surging wave of electricity was rising up from all of the surrounding tiles, the cresting waves of it interlocking with each other to envelop Kevinar in a cage of energy. He screamed, his body convulsing involuntarily and his health plummeting as he struggled against the prison of crackling light that held him. The air stank with burnt flesh and singed hair.
I stood, paralyzed for a heartbeat, watching in horror as my companion struggled against the attack.
Let him die, Jeldorain counseled, his attention focused on the dying elven warrior.
I shut him out, my eyes desperately bouncing around the hall. There was almost certainly a solution, but I didn’t have time. Closing my eyes, I did the best thing I could think of. I charged the elf, bursting through the electricity and seizing him in my massive, frosted arms, losing a third of my health and taking a Stunned debuff. Laying there next to Kevinar, unable to move, I felt tremendous relief. The trick of the trap seemed to be that it kept anyone caught in it stunned until they were dead. My strength and momentum had carried us out of harm’s way.
Our strength and momentum, Jeldorain groused.
Behind us the cage still crackled and sizzled, growing wilder and more chaotic. My debuff running down, I grabbed the barely conscious form of Kevinar and sprinted around the corner, an explosion throwing fulgurite shrapnel and flame at the corner around which we had just traveled.
“That was a bad one,” I said to Kevinar. His head lolled, but he managed a weak nod. Jogging ahead, I turned another corner and entered another chamber, this one bereft of any visible enemies. Laying him on the floor, I uncorked a healing potion, pouring the crimson liquid through his cracked and burned lips.
“More,” he gasped, coughing. I took another from my inventory, then another, reversing the scorched, cooked skin back to its supple and youthful self. Kevinar sighed, sitting up and scooching back to put his back to the wall. “Thank you, my friend. That was . . . unexpected.”
I smiled. His strength was returning, though the encounter had obviously taken its toll. There was a vulnerability to him that I had not seen before, a reminder that even dark elves named Kevinar were able to fail.
We shared a look, one that spoke volumes.
“You’re welcome,” I said, pouring a couple of healing potions down my own throat. “Seems like I should have bought more potions!”
He grinned. “I’ve got twenty. I’ll replace your spent ones with mine.” Standing up, he handed over the loot, and after checking his gear, we continued on. This time at a snail’s pace. The traps had shown us their teeth, and we had no intention of being bitten again.
After an hour the labyrinth's serpentine passageways ceased their trap-filled turns, spilling us into the grandeur of an ancient temple room. The transition was startling, from the narrow confines of the maze to the expansive sanctity of this unholy hall. The air here was still, heavy with the memory of incense and the weight of time.
The room stretched vast and wide, its ceiling lost to shadows far above, where faint etchings of constellations could be glimpsed, carved into the stone by hands long turned to dust. Columns lined the space, rising like the trunks of petrified giants, their surfaces etched with the delicate filigree of a forgotten language. Between these pillars, the walls were adorned with tapestries and frescoes, scenes of celestial battles and divine parleys, each thread and stroke a recorded entry of the temple's ancient glory.
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At the far end of the room, an altar stood solemn and solitary, carved from a single block of marble that gleamed as if it drank the light. Upon this altar rested an orb, about the size of a human head, its surface smooth and unblemished. The orb was home to yellow, blue and white electrical arcs that, viewed together, formed an overly large eye. The light of this combination bathed the entire chamber in a sickly and erratic radiance. It buzzed loudly, a sound that reminded me of a beehive in the woods, its insides dripping with honey.
“The Eye of the Stormbringer,” Kevinar whispered. “As an elite level quest, I would have expected many more combats.”
I shook my head, staring at the chamber before us. Between us and our goal stood thirty clay statues of swordsmen, arrayed in the columns and rows of a fighting unit. They were motionless, yet there was a tension in their stillness, a promise of violence held in check by some unseen command. The statues, each one a masterwork of terracotta artistry, bore the armor and weapons of ancient warriors, their postures poised for battle. Their eyes, though unseeing, seemed to follow our every move, and I knew, with a certainty that settled in my bones, that this was a trap. The statues would not remain statues for long.
And the unholy eye on the altar staring at me, unblinking, made me positive that it was just waiting for me to march forward so that it could engulf me on all sides.
Thoughts, I asked Jeldorain, my mind meeting his.
Pick one up and use it to smash all of the others? he suggested. A quick glimpse of what he was thinking filtered through to me, and I saw that his thoughts were focused on the hilarity of killing a construct with another of its kind, so I turned to Kevinar.
“I’m rather positive these statues are going to attack us as soon as it is favorable to do so,” I said.
He pondered them, then nodded. “Good observation. I haven’t seen such an action myself, but I don’t doubt that it exists. Should we smash them now, before they have time to react?”
I looked around the chamber for the possibility that something here might offer an easy win. The light cast by the orb touched everything, throwing long, soft-edged shadows behind the statues that stood sentinel along the room's perimeter. It reflected off the polished stone floor, creating a pathway of light that led straight to the altar, inviting us forward, don’t be shy, and don’t worry about the statues lining the way..
In other words, there was nothing. Heaving a great sigh, Kevinar and I exchanged a glance, then I stepped forward and lay loose with a whirlwind attack, smashing the nearest five statues with my Stormforged Titan-Ax-icearigama. The impacts were met with the sounds of shattering pottery, but the destruction of five awoke the others.
And the statues were surprisingly quick. Kevinar broke one with his two blades, but was rushed by three, throwing him off balance and putting him on the defensive.
All around us the clay swordsmen charged, their movements stiff and jerky, yet bizarrely sped up as if they were hasted ventriloquist dummies with a taste for blood. They were relentless, each blow from their stone swords striking hard and fast. The sound of clashing metal and the shatter of clay filled the air, a cacophony of battle that echoed off the temple walls.
In the heart of the temple room, beneath the glow of the Eye of the Stormbringer, Kevinar and I were now surrounded by the clay sentinels. The air was thick with the scent of cracked clay. I struck them twice, but the results affirmed to me something I’d suspected.
The activated clay warriors were much stronger than when they had been deactivated.
I thought about doing another Whirlwind Attack, but using one at the start had me already down to a reservoir of fifty exertion points. And I had no idea what would happen next. This felt like a boss battle, so likely it had tricks. I growled at the thought that my initial attack might have been a bad idea. But if I could get out of melee, I’d be free to drink some exertion potions. I’d just have to be wise with the attack I had until I had an opportunity to break free.
Kevinar, with his S-class stealth, melted into the shadows cast by the orb's light, his form blurring at the edges until he was nearly invisible. I swung my ax, the blade’s ice and lightning leaving a shimmering arc of electric vapor in its wake. The clay shattered upon impact, the fragments scattering like pebbles across a pond.
CRITICAL HIT! TOTAL ANNIHILATION!
Twenty-three warriors were left, and two managed light rakes against my armor, dipping me down to 90%. Striking again, I smashed one back, sending it stumbling to the floor, but another took its place.
In front of me, Kevinar appeared as if from nowhere, his dual enchanted blades a blur of purple energy. He struck with precision, the purple aura rolling out and into his third strike, dark energy seeping into its clay form and causing it to crumble from within.
We fought back to back, a whirlwind of destruction. I called upon my Whirlwind Attack again, spinning with my ax extended. The strike sliced through their mobbed ranks, reducing four soldiers to rubble. Kevinar, seizing the moment, darted supernaturally fast between soldiers, his blades finding minute cracks in their armor.
As the battle raged, I found myself cornered by a pair of soldiers. I reached into my pouch, withdrawing a healing potion. The liquid was cool and sweet, its magic sealing my wounds from the inside and restoring some of my health. Refreshed, I launched a Disarm attack, snatching a clay sword from a soldier's grip with a flick of my wrist, and watching in amazement as the loss of the weapon caused the golem to crumble into dust.
“The weapons are their weakness!” I exclaimed, the guttural qualities of my demonic voice well rising above the din of battle. I felt Kevinar leap onto my back, his blades already back into his inventory, and with a lithe assassin’s flip, he launched himself onto the shoulders of two of the golems, seizing both weapons simultaneously and ending their lives. A trio of soldiers struck at him, their ghastly herky-jerky movements a horror to behold, but he rolled beneath them, seizing another weapon on his way through.
The clay soldiers were relentless, but they were no match for our combined might and the clever use of our abilities. I utilized my Swing ability, latching onto an overhead beam with a whip of energy, swinging across the room and booting the blades out of the hands of two more clay constructs. Taking just a few more wounds, I used my brute strength to wrest the weapons from the remaining soldiers.
As the last of them fell, I felt a familiar rush as a bright light enveloped me, energy coursing through my veins and restoring all of my spent points. Kevinar nodded in approval, grinning, his eyes and teeth reflecting the light of the orb.
LEVEL UP! Welcome to Level 7!
But the thrill of the moment was short-lived. The ground beneath our feet began to tremble, a deep, resonant vibration that spoke of something large and powerful straining against the confines of the earth, and I knew that the real boss battle was about to begin.