Chapter Thirteen: The Lair
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The wayshrine chamber was nothing like the one found on the first floor.
It was hexagonal shaped, and no more than thirty feet across from where the entry corridor began to where the wayshrine was situated in the middle. Each vertices along the wall possessed a sharp, triangular-shaped column that stretched all the way up to the far, vaulted ceiling, giving the sensation of great depth, but also constriction. A single source of light near the ceiling offered pale color to the dark bricks that comprised the chamber, washing everything in a dim glow
As Blychert stepped farther in, he noticed that the wayshrine itself was of a similar white, stone style as those that came before. It perfectly mirrored the pillars that stood guard outside the dungeon entrance, if only but a third of the size. As the party continued to scatter throughout the chamber, the wayshrine’s linework and various hieroglyphs illuminated slowly, as if in greeting, to cut the shadows with bright, teal blue.
Blychert approached the wayshrine carefully, taking quick regard of the empty, throne-like chair that sat directly behind it. His eyes followed the direction in which the chair was facing, until he saw the massive door on the other side of the chamber. It was a heavy, wooden thing, of a deep purple color, affixed with a dark metal ring in its center that looked like a knocker, if only it was built for a giant to make use of.
“This… is the farthest anyone’s been in this dungeon.” Vineta cut the silence. Bly looked across at her, where her softer complexion was illuminated by the light of the wayshrine as she too studied it. She looked up towards the ceiling, and sighed, “So much for the gleaming caves. This might as well be a fortress.”
“—Scared, V.” Bredic snuck up behind her and poked the side of her ribs all of a sudden.
“Damn it, Bredic!” She screeched, her body fully leaving the ground as she jumped backward. Her face turned red, and she grumbled, “Would it kill you to act serious for once?”
Bredic meandered towards the door, where Xander was already standing, but looked back with a devious grin, “Yep. As a matter of fact, it would.”
Bly stifled an amused grin, instead turning towards Vineta to ask, “Is the dungeon in Frostwall like this?”
“You mean, does it change from floor to floor?” She replied curiously, “It does have structural variety, yes. We’ve only ever been to the second floor on one occasion, and…” Vineta paused, a forlorn look sprouting on her face, but she shook her head with a furious groan, “Nothing as drastic as a cave changing into a thing like this. Your dungeon would appear to more impressive than it seems at face value, Trelen. I would never have expected to find something like this at all.”
Bly wasn't sure whether he was supposed to be excited or worried by her admission.
“Vineta, you have a reading on this room?” Xander asked, an impatient tone of voice as he paced around the door.
“Indeed.” She followed up proudly, but her expression sobered a second later. Closing her eyes, she mumbled softly to herself for a moment, before saying, “It’s intense in there, Xander. Whatever kind of boss were dealing with here, it’s not like anything we’ve come up against. We should be cautious.”
“Xander?” Lisel’s voice interjected, and everyone turned to look at her expectingly, “There’s traces of poison here. Spiders, most likely.”
Bredic shrugged, “Dungeon’s full of them. So what?”
“…Wolf spiders are venomous. Not poisonous.” Xander shook his head, his tone highly contemplative. He gave a hard look across to Lisel, “Isn’t that right?”
Lisel offered a nod in reply.
“Great…” Vineta groaned again, “So we’re looking at spiders in there, are we?”
“Not necessarily.” Xander murmured, his hand passing over part of the door for few seconds. He glanced back over his shoulder, “It wouldn’t be out of the question though, given what we know about this dungeon.”
“Wait—hold on.” Bly felt the need to interject. He was mostly fine with everything up until now, but this seemed way too hurried, “We’re not seriously thinking about going in there right now, are we?”
An awkward silence filled the chamber, as everyone looked to everyone else for an answer.
“It wouldn’t hurt to look.” Xander eventually shrugged, “Get a good reading for what we’d be up against... theoretically.”
Bly scoffed, “Is that really smart?”
“Maybe not, but if we're just collecting information, then it's more than reasonable.” Xander insisted, “We don’t even have to step more than a few feet away from the door, if we don’t want to. Well, one of us will have to, to initiate the lair protocols. But you already know that’ll be me, so there's nothing to worry about.”
“This is what we came here to do.” Vineta offered Bly a consoling expression, though her voice was edged by slight uncertainty, “I won’t lie by telling you this sounds easy. We’ve never fought a boss before.”
“And we never will if we don’t start somewhere.” Bredic argued, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m with Xander on this one. Either we do what we came here to do, or we forget about it and go the hell home. I’m itching to fight something big, anyway.”
“But, Bredic—”
“But what?” He raised his voice at Lisel, “All we’ve talked about these last few months is how great this trip was going to be. How we’ll finally get to do some epic shit in a dungeon of reasonable level. Well? Here we are! Nothing stopping us.”
“And what if the boss is something like that rock thrasher?” Lisel asked, “What if magic is no good against it? What then?”
“Yeah, or what happens if Vineta and I have to focus on defensive spells?” Bly suggested, “There’s no way you’ll be able to handle a boss with just your own magic.”
“Hey, don’t get so cocky kid—” Bredic snapped, but he was cut short.
“Guys, please—” Xander shushed the quarrelling, “I already told you, we can back out whenever we want. Lairs aren't trap rooms.” He paused, as everyone collected themselves, “Look, I’ll go all the way inside to initiate, but otherwise we can come straight back out again after we see what we’re up against... if we want. I’m not putting the party at risk for no good reason. We have the wayshrine active now. I can keep its attention on me, whatever it ends up being. Because that’s what I’m good at. Yeah? If I give the signal, we book it. Just like always.”
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Bredic and Vineta both nodded, and Lisel simply shrugged one of her shoulders.
Bly supposed he was okay with that plan. Honestly, he had expected Xander to take a completely different stance, and want to actually fight the damned thing. For what it was worth, at least he still seemed to acknowledge that there were other people here with him, and that they needed to be careful.
“Let’s just… rest for a little while.” Xander added after a long minute’s silence, “Regain some of our strength. I need to prep in the terminal anyway. But after that, we head inside.”
***
A putrid stench filled the air as Xander pushed the door to the boss's lair open.
The slow, creaking hinges echoed, making it clear that whatever chamber lay within was a vast interior. But it was dark, and not even Vineta’s illumination spell offered much help in terms of visibility to any great extent.
A small shiver ran down Blychert’s spine as the soft echo of their footsteps filled out the silence. It was freezing in here, as cold if not colder than the overworld. He had a nervous lump growing in the back of his throat, and a sense of unease in the pit of his stomach. But he had to keep his nerves, for the party’s sake. They were just going to look, but what if it wasn't as easy as Xander made it out to be?
“I’m going to keep going.” Xander murmured, “Linger back here for now. If I give the word, then all of you get out immediately.”
Nobody offered a response. Bly wanted to ask if that wouldn't just isolate him and make it worse for his own escape, but the words didn't come. He wondered if everyone else was just as nervous as he was, but now wasn’t the time to be second guessing themselves.
Xander’s silhouette disappeared into the darkness a moment later, but his footsteps remained; constant, firm, always moving forward. But suddenly, they stopped. Everything went silent, completely devoid of every sound but perhaps the faint echo of a draft of some kind.
That’s when it happened.
Blazing blue flames filled a brazier on the far side of the chamber. A second later, another was filled to the first brazier's right, and then another, and another… in rapid succession blue flames encirled them, giving light to the vast chamber in which they now found themselves.
As Bly's gaze' adjusted, he saw a narrow bridge leadingd across to a wide, hexagonal shaped arena of smooth stone in front of him. There were no barriers along its edge, and instead it seemed to simply fall away into the darkened, unknowning depths of some chasm below. Along its walls, alcoves filled with small, blue-flamed candles began to flicker away, and yet those were nothing compared to the bulbous mass of webbing which clung to everything above them. Though even those seemed to disappear into an unnatural fog of black way up where the ceiling might have been, though Blychert couldn't be certain.
Xander, now situated towards the center of the chamber, turned back and looked at all of them, expressionless but poised. Nodding, he said, “I think that we—”
The ground began to rumble before he could even finish his sentence.
Blychert caught Lisel’s arm and grabbed ahold of the doorframe to stabilize both of them, which was when another sound caught his attention too. Flashing in the periphery of his vision, two shadows leapt down from the unnaturally darkened ceiling. Each one landed in the center of the chamber with heavy a thud, and the unmistakable chittering sound, though much deeper in tone, of the wolf spiders they’d fought many times before this began to fill the entire lair.
Was this the boss? Or, bosses? Bly thought, confused for a moment.
Releasing Lisel, however, Bly staggered forward to the edge of the arena and looked on with equal parts fascination and worry. They were wolf spiders alright, the matted gray coloration and striped white patches confirmed it. But unlike the smaller, dog-sized creatures common in the dungeon, these were the size of wagons by all accounts. But more than that, they were already lashing out in attack.
Suddenly, the shimmer of Xander’s longsword caught Bly’s eye under the blue flames, and within a split-second he was already countering the leggy strikes against him. But there was no way he was going to be able to hold out on his own against two creatures of that size. And so, without a second to reconsider, Bly rushed in.
"Xander!" Bredic's voice bellowed out.
A ray of fire beamed over Bly's head momentarily, hurdling towards the spiders as he dashed forward. It struck clean and exploded in a burst of reddish orange, contrasted sharply by the blueish-green hue that Bly had come to recognize as the aura of Xander’s sword art.
“Surging winds, cast unto earth and let my steps be many. Winds of time, swiften my shadow in boundless pace. Hasten.” The spell left Bylchert’s lips, and within a few steps his alteration magic had taken full effect. If he was going to offer Xander support, he'd need the extra bit of speed on his side.
Stepping forward, Bly dodged a wild spider leg as it shot in his direction, just narrowly skimming the top of his head. He ducked, and easily made it across to the other side. At the same time, he prepped Icicle and took several shots at the spider’s underside. Blue shards of ice peppered it from below, bursting across its thorax.
The spider jerked around, twisting with a guttural chitter as it scrambled to bite at Bly, but Xander was quick to react. He immediately interposed himself between the creature and Blychert.
“Xander, break left!” Vineta’s voice surged across the arena.
Reactionarily, Xander pressed his blade from the leftmost spider’s pedipalp and stepped backward, pushing Bly with him. In the same motion, the ground at the spider’s feet shifted, and a ball of stone was suddenly shaped around its entire body. Just as Bly thought Xander might pull back and urge everyone to leave the chamber, their party leader's eyes widened.
"Burst down the other one. Quickly!" Xander shouted, his voice passionate, "We can do this!"
Bly wasn't sure, but he was willing to give it everything he had.
With one spider temporarily trapped and incapacitated, a combination of spells, arrows, and sword strikes quickly worked to whittle the other one down. As Xander moved across the lair, the singled-out creature left itself open to all kinds of attacks, of which Bly and the others gladly acted upon. Though unlike its smaller counterparts, he noticed that this wolf spider appeared to have both higher physical and magical resistances, as many of their attacks glanced from its body, like they hadn’t even been made at all.
Raising his hand, Blychert prepared himself to cast another ice spell.
“Trelen—” Xander huffed, dodging a piercing attack suddenly, which forced him to come within a few feet of where Bly was standing. Bly paused, looking to Xander, who said, “That's enough. I need you to get back there on focus on support. Vineta’s stone shaping won't last forever, and we need her terrain magic if we're going to get anywhere.”
“I can do more.” Blychert insisted, finally feeling that now was the perfect time to break out his mana surge ability. By the looks of it, they’d need all the damage they could afford. Sure, Vineta had significant crowd controlling magic, and it was probably draining her mana, but that wouldn't matter if they couldn't damage the damned things.
“You’ll do what I tell you.” Xander groaned, as his sword parried a wild maw. He stepped right and began pacing the other way, but turned back to look at Bly, saying “Get back towards the door. I mean it—”
But before Blychert could even argue his case, the sound of cracking stone rushed into the chamber. Vineta’s shaped sphere burst a moment later, sending chunks of stone and dust in every which way.
As the giant wolf spider stumbled out from its rocky prison, it flailed forward. It crashed into the other spider, which skittered off the edge and tumbled over. But Xander, also caught in a pinched spot along the edge of the arena, lifted his sword in an attempt to parry, but he wasn't quick enough. The blade flashed blue-green, as it had so many times before, but the spider's leg hit him hard, and his body was flung from the lair floor. The sword clambered to the stone, while the rest of him went tumbling towards the darkened depths of the chasm below alongside the body of the other wolf spider.
Time seemed to stand still in that moment, and a single thought rushed through Blychert's mind. They should never have come here, should never have been foolish enough to think they could challenge a boss without any preparation. But they had, and so now it felt to Bly to fulfill his promise as a would-be sorcerer. These were not his friends, not like they were to each other. But they were his party companions, and that had to mean something. He was going to fight with them, for them, whether it was in his best interest or not.
"System command."