Chapter 22: Adversarial
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The bitter taste of sageroot and slime condensate lingered on Blychert’s tongue, as he threw the empty healing potion vial aside, otherwise trailing Xander through the winding, narrow tunnels ahead.
He paced a just a few feet behind the swordsman, licking his lips free of latent solution with no great enjoyment. It didn’t do much to alleviate the pain to any great extent. But the injuries he’d sustained against the rock thrasher, and subsequently on his fall, were more or less taken care of to such a degree that he could at least continue on unperturbed. Although, it meant that including the potion Vineta had given him earlier, he was now down to his last two.
Up ahead, the light of Xander’s blade illuminated their surroundings in a shade of deep blue, casting the already strange and unfamiliar pathway in ominous light. Though even more unsettling than that was the fact that everything was so eerily quiet, it was like they weren’t in the dungeon at all, but some random cave beneath the mountains instead.
There were no roaming monsters, there were no new spawns, there was simply… nothing.
“What—floor are we on?” Blychert grimaced, clutching at his side again, as he followed Xander up a steeper section of rock. The descended again on the other side, stepping into a slightly larger chamber upon doing so. Small pools of water scattered throughout the area immediately began to reflect blue light, as the two of them stepped farther inside.
“…I don’t know.” Xander murmured. He paused, seeming to take note of the two other tunnel entrances up ahead of them, on the other side of the chamber, before saying, “I wound up here, same as you. Got turned around on the third floor somewhere, lost my footing, and… here we are.”
“You know something?” Bly felt impelled to reply, as he limped over to a nearby rock. He sat down for a moment, and looked at the swordsman with an angry scowl, “You couldn’t have picked a worse time to pull this off. I mean, what the hell were you even thinking? You know how much danger you’ve put everyone in?”
Xander shot a hard glance at Bly, but it softened almost immediately, “I’m sorry, but… I didn’t ask you to come after me. The second any of them saw that I wasn’t in the party, that should have been obvious.”
Blychert couldn’t help but to gasp at the audacity, saying thereafter, “You’ve got some nerve… does this stupid blade really mean that much to you? That you’d throw your life away trying to get it?”
Xander nodded slowly, opening his mouth to speak, perhaps to defend his ridiculous behavior. But just before he had the chance to do so, a low rumbling coursed through the dungeon. It lasted for nearly ten seconds this time, before slowly dissipating into quiet once more.
“It’s getting worse. We need to keep moving—find a way forward.” Xander said instead, already moving towards one of the other tunnels, “If we can route back up to something familiar, there’s a chance you might be able to find a wayshrine.”
Bly rose to his feet, proceeding after the swordsman, “What about you? I’m not leaving you down here, even though I really should.”
“Well, I’m not leaving.” Xander argued, “Take it or leave it, I don’t care. Besides, none of it matters if we can’t figure out where we are.”
Stifling his frustration with Xander for now, Bly resigned to trying to be helpful, saying, “I don’t think the wayshrines are working. At least, not for getting out. In the terminal, they’re all—weird looking. But look, Alyse is down here somewhere, and the others too. We’d be better off trying to regroup—”
“I don’t think that’ll help.” Xander murmured. He glanced over his shoulder for a moment, looking at Bly strangely, “Hasn’t something’s been off about this dungeon to you?”
“Yeah, look where we are?” Bly glowered, throwing his hands up in frustration, “I’d say something’s off.”
“I’m talking about since before we fought Glemberfang, smart ass.” Xander maintained, “I couldn’t put my finger on it before, but now… I don’t know a lot about how dungeons work, but I know something’s not right. You can feel it; feel that presence, like it’s not supposed to be here. And yet, it’s like it’s drawing me deeper? Don't you feel that too?”
“Pale lady…” Bly murmured ominously, a tingle running down the back of his neck. Shaking his head stubbornly, he added, “Look, I mean… that thing you were talking about? Maybe I might have felt something similar after we killed Glemberfang, but—I was probably just disoriented. And you are too, clearly. What reason do we have to believe that this isn’t just some accident of the dungeon?”
“I’m not disoriented!” Xander snapped. But he reeled himself in quickly, saying in a softer tone of voice, “I know what I saw. And if you saw her too, then you know what I’m talking about. Besides, just look at the volatility numbers. Trelen, that isn’t normal. That’s almost enough to form a full-blown rift out of nothing! Ask anyone in Frostwall, you don’t see things like this—you just don’t. And whatever that thing is? I don’t know, I just get this feeling that it’s been trying to lead me to where I’m trying to get to. So, I just—I have to try, okay?”
Blychert bit his tongue for a moment, and nodded slowly.
“Fine…” He sighed, trying to collect his bearings with the proposed anomaly, “Let’s say there really is some entity like that down here, affecting the dungeon to some degree, how are we going to deal with that if it ends up being a trap? I want to help you, but you're not making it easy. How can even I trust you after everything?”
Xander looked back, offering an expression that was equals parts surprised as it was angered. His eyes narrowed shamefully a moment later, as he said, “You can’t, and… you shouldn’t. Maybe if I’d have been honest from the very start, none of this would have happened. But… I wanted this from the beginning. So, trust me on that, or don’t, it won’t change anything.”
“You really are a stubborn son of a bitch, you know that?” Bly grumbled, wondering what that made him for willing to go along with it, before saying louder, “I don’t trust you, but I won’t leave you here alone. Still, you know the others would want to help—”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Know how to find them?” Xander side eyed him, but shrugged consolingly, “We’ll be fine. Besides, you seem powerful enough; a lot more powerful than you look, if you asked me.”
Bly flushed, completely caught off-guard by the comment “What—now you’re just saying nonsense. You sure you're not delirious?”
“Hey, suit yourself,” Xander brushed it off with a small chuckle, but sobered to say, “All I know is, I’m going after that blade. If you’re coming with me, then let’s go.”
***
Blychert couldn’t be certain how long into their journey that their surroundings started to change, only that it was almost instantaneous when it’d happened.
Narrow, jagged tunnels gave way to tall, smooth halls of dark stone, like that of the second floor wayshrine. There was no light beyond Blychert’s illumination spell, having taken over those duties for Xander, which gave everything around them the impression of a long-forgotten castle. The rumbling and quaking of the dungeon persisted, but at least instead of wandering aimlessly through endless burrows, it felt like they were starting to get somewhere.
As they came upon a junction of corridors, Xander halted.
“Still no data on this floor…” He murmured, closing his sage terminal as he spoke, “Could be the third floor, architecture looks familiar, but this whole damned place is too unstable to say for certain. Still… I think we’re making progress, but we're going to need a route. Any ideas?”
Blychert shook his head, shifting his attention to the three corridors at hand, “…Not really.”
Any one of these hallways could have been better than the other two, and frankly neither of them looked all that agreeable. Despite himself, Bly haphazardly stuffed his hand into his pocket and rubbed the resonance stone a few times. He was suddenly very aware of how alone they were down here, and how nice it would have the others with them. At a time like this, what they wouldn’t do to have someone like Vineta around, or better yet Alyse.
“Divination magic…” Bly murmured, his eyes widening with a slight bit of hope as a sudden idea occurred to him. Quickly, he started forward into the center of the junction.
“Thought of something?” Xander asked.
“Something.” Blychert echoed, a bit unsure of himself, as he added, “Can’t say if it’ll really help that much. Just—give a minute here, would you?”
He only had one divination spell. For some reason, he couldn't help but think about all the fuss Alyse had made about him learning it back then. He’d insisted he wouldn’t need it, and she’d demanded otherwise. Well, she was always good for a last laugh.
“From beast to spirit, show me near, and make your presence known. Detect creature...”
Blychert’s vision flashed. A second later, gray-colored energy scattered across every surface within his line of sight, shooting away from him down each of the corridors for a few moments thereafter. Within a matter of seconds, everything had returned to its previous, darkened appearance.
Nothing. Bly murmured, a small frown creasing his lips. There still weren’t any spawns? Given the activity of the dungeon, it just didn’t seem right—
A single ping of gray energy suddenly flashed in his periphery, and Bly turned his attention down the hallway on his righthand side at once. The light was small, distant, but there was no mistaking it, his spell had picked something up farther down that corridor.
“That way—” Bly pointed, somewhat excitedly, Picked something up, looks like one creature.”
“Friendly?”
“…I don’t know.” He shook his head, “It’s only a basic spell. Could be any number of things.”
As if needing little more convincing than that, Xander stepped past Bly and began walking down the corridor, his sword low by his side, and he said over his shoulder, “Let’s go.”
Blychert followed, maintaining his divination spell as he did. The small tendril of gray light continued to pulse intermittently, but so far hadn’t changed too drastically apart from growing larger as they moved closer. However, all of that changed before long.
A second light, then a third, then a few more… dozens of lights soon filled Blychert’s vision, pulsing at varying elevations all around him for up to as far as his detection spell would reach. It was only a few hundred feet, but there was no mistaking what he was seeing. The dungeon was filled with spawns after all. And yet more importantly, Bly realized suddenly that the direction they were walking down did not just contain one of these one lights, as he had seen before, but now many.
“Xander—” Bly muttered, motioning for the swordsman to stop. As he did, Bly reached him, and whispered worriedly, “I can sense a lot more now—they’re all around us. Especially up ahead.”
“Damn…” Xander murmured back, “Looks like we won’t have much of a surprise element after all.”
“Not if I drop my light spell.” Bly insisted, “I can cast a seeing spell on both of us, and we can get closer—see what we’re up against.”
Xander nodded for him to do so, and Blychert immediately snuffed his light spell. In the ensuing darkness, Bly then murmured another incantation beneath his breath, and the abrupt shades of gray that filled his sight, replacing the complete and utter black, was indication enough that the spell had worked.
"Can you see?" Bly asked.
Xander again nodded wordlessly.
Moving forward slowly, they soon came upon a massive archway, on the other side of which a huge, sprawling chamber was revealed, like a great hall of sorts. Massive columns running in parallel stretched up to a far ceiling, and on either sides of the chamber expansive balconies overlooked the area below. Long rows of destroyed, stone pews ran the length up to the back of the chamber, where a tattered light gray carpet stopped at the base of a circular altar. And on the very far side of the room, a heavy door appeared closed; not dissimilar to those of boss lairs on other floors, Bly thought curiously, though not entirely the same either.
However, it was the sheer volume of creatures moving about the chamber that stole Blychert’s attention the most, and a blip on his sage terminal caused him to look down.
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[SAGE ---> Winter System Notification]
> New spawn type [Vanguard Ice Demon] detected.
> Spawn Type: Elemental
> Threat Level: Intermediate
> Spawn Rank: D
> Spawn Zone: D
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“Vanguard Ice demons…?” Bly murmured, casting his gaze from his sage terminal into the massive chamber in which the spawns roamed.
These creatures were nothing like the serpentine variants on the higher floors. They were bipedal, hulking humanoid shapes of ice, though completely devoid of facial features. Furthermore, long melee weapons and shields made of solid ice were exactly where their hands and forearms ought to have been.
“You see that door on the other side?” Xander whispered after a long while, gesturing for Bly to look, “We haven’t seen anything like that outside the boss chambers. But this isn’t a wayshrine chamber, because these spawns wouldn’t be in here otherwise. I’ve got a good feeling about it.”
“Are you crazy?” Bly furrowed his brow, “There’s like—thirty ice demons in here, all at the same level of a stone golem. We should double back and try another way.”
Xander shook his head, “We go back, and we’re just running into all those spawns you saw, right?”
“Or...” Blychert urged, “We find Alyse, and we find the others.”
Xander scoffed, “Guarantee that? Otherwise, we're just wasting resources.”
“Well—no.” Bly stammered, “We're wasting resources either way, that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
“Doesn’t mean you’re right either.” Xander shifted, pointing in the direction of the great hall, “As far as I’m concerned, that’s where I’m headed. Look, Trelen... I think you should go back. I’ll take it from here.”
“Like hell you will—” Bly scowled, pulling the swordsman back by the arm before he could move in and get himself killed, “Hold still.”
Producing the invisibility scroll from his pack, Bly unfurled it and studied the incantation on the back for a moment. It was going to be mana-intensive, especially for two people. But then, that’s what he was here for.
Glancing up at Xander, he grumbled, “You really want to keeping going this badly?”
Xander nodded, “More than anything.”
“Guh…” Bly groaned, raising his right hand to begin casting, “Fine, but you owe me one.”
At this rate, he was going to owe himself.