Part 6 - Sacrifice

Daphne had battled the arcane. Though thankfully, she had never directly faced a practitioner of magics. She had never narrowly avoided bolts of the Weave as they crackled and hissed past her head. She had seen it: A mad mage on the streets of Ketros, menacing civilians with his terrifying mastery of the arcane. For seeing it, she knew nothing to frighten her so deeply.

What she had faced were wards. Locks, and traps, and eldritch scrawling. All manner of security measures to keep thieves from pilfering precious possessions. She had seen runes intended to maim and imprison, and glyphs meant to paralyse and hypnotize.

She had once nullified a ward that was meant to rearrange all synapses of the person who set it off. An unlucky thief would find that their leg would move when they intended to point their finger, for example. She admired the creativity of it if nothing else.

What Kai had done however, was real slinging. The type of slinging that terrified her. Yet Kai was not her enemy. Instead, she had been impressed when he froze the joints of the animated mannequin. She’d heard of weave like that before. To her, Kai seemed to be a quick study to learn it in the few short years that they had been apart. What he had done to the worm, however, was something different altogether.

The accuracy and force with which he propelled the candlestick was immense. It had happened so quickly and violently, that her eyes hadn’t been able to track the whole event. When they embarked from Illios, Daphne assumed that Kai would have been a liability if they were to ever find themselves in a confrontation. Daphne had learned to defend herself on the streets of Ketros, and the training that Clio underwent at the temple was known to be something truly exceptional.

Kai however, was a sailor – just a sailor – as far as Daphne was aware. Although his body was strong from travelling rigging and waves, there was more to combat than strength. But the Kai that travelled with them now was different. Daphne watched him intently. His breathing was still heavy as he desperately tried to replenish his reserves of the Weave. He limped and his arm shook from time to time. Remnants from the injuries the Spectre had left him with.

They crept down a narrow, earthen corridor that opened into an empty barracks. As they made their way around the bunks, she noticed something else about Kai. The way he moved was slightly different. It wasn’t his limping either. He seemed surer of himself, more grounded.

At the end of each bunk sat a low chest and Daphne was desperate for clues. Under her instruction, they turned the room over. Among the chests they found a handful of talons and tiles, old coins, but still worth their weight. They also found a handful of petty gems, and the pick of the litter, a fine short sword.

“It’s silvered.” Clio turned it over carefully. “Unbelievably useful against certain entities. That spectre for one. I wish we had had it then.”

“You should take it then.” Daphne insisted.

Just as Clio began protesting, Daphne flicked out the ornate dagger she had stolen from a noble in Ketros. It shone almost white – the same silvered hue as the short sword.

Clio nodded with a quick smirk “That would have been useful earlier.” They both sheathed their weapons. “Fool I am again. In the heat of the moment I forgot your tale.”

The three of them followed long, labyrinthian twists and turns. Back past the stairs they had entered from and through the door that had hidden the worm like creature. After a few more twists and turns they were faced with another staircase and followed it down.

Whatever source of lighting the cursed house mustered became dimmer the deeper they delved. Though even in the gloom, Daphne could see that her companions were badly beaten. Kai limped heavier and heavier on his battered leg. She could see the strain in his grimace as he held a dagger in his left hand as it braced his right that held his wand. Both outstretched, ready for any surprise that might leap from the next corner.

Clio’s shield lowered fractionally, which spoke volumes considering the rigorous training her temple invested in her. She also breathed deeply. Her weave didn’t seem to replenish as quickly as Kai’s and whatever she had done while Daphne had been unconscious had taken most of her energy. Whatever reserves she had left she must have been saving for a truly dire situation.

Daphne’s heart still ached. She could feel the pain inside her body. It felt as though Spectre’s claw was still embedded inside her. She didn’t limp like Kai and she wasn’t exhausted like Clio. It was something worse. Every now and then her legs would inexplicably falter beneath her and Daphne knew herself to be a lot weaker than what her muscles and bones were telling her.

The stairs lowered into a wide empty room. The dirt was slick. Though, the light was too dim to tell exactly what it was slick with. Daphne was thankful for that. There was a door on one wall and further along a large patch of rubble where it looked as though the wall had crumbled in on itself.

“Can you hear that?” Kai asked quietly, barely a whisper.

Clio and Daphne listened carefully, and they heard it. Although, ‘felt’ would be a more accurate description. There was an almost inaudible chant that appeared in Daphne’s head though her ears picked up nothing. It was so soft she could almost not make it out. But when Clio said it out loud, she knew they were each hearing the same thing.

“He is ancient, sacrifice all to him.” Like Kai, Clio’s voice was barely audible.

Clio led them after that. Toward the barred door. She was about to reach out for the door handle when Daphne grabbed her arm.

“Let me take it this time.” Said the Tainted, gingerly moving in front of the Dwarf.

Daphne breathed a short sigh. A glistening on the door which she almost ignored turned out to be an arcane ward. It didn’t take her long to figure out that it was full of destructive potential. Daphne examined it carefully. A three-tiered trap that would surely incinerate them all if it were to be triggered. Her tail wrapped nervously around her leg.

Daphne reached into a pocket and extracted the tools of her trade. A small leather wrap that contained all manner of items for picking locks and battling the arcane – so long as her adversary came in the form of a glyph, or ward, or sigil. She spent a long while studying the trap before she thought herself confident enough to attempt to disarm it. Even so, she told Clio and Kai to wait for her up the stairs in case the worst was to happen.

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With steady hands and keen eyes, she went to work. The first tier was easy enough. She managed to break the outer shell by changing the structure of a few of the runes. The second tier was more challenging. She had to actually move some of the runes, switching their positions. Difficult enough in itself, though made even harder by the fact that runes had started to rotate around one another. Her brow was sweating by the time she attempted the switches she needed to make. But with a few deft strokes and a sure hand, she made them.

The last tier was impossible. The runes were moving so fast she could barely keep track of the composition she was facing. Daphne didn’t think of herself as much of a holy woman, but in that moment she prayed. She closed her eyes and asked Nyx, the androgenous God of transience, the moon and all things done in shadow, for guidance.

When she opened her eyes, she didn’t feel different. She didn’t feel guided by an invisible hand. There was no whisper behind her ear promising her a way forward. So instead, she figured it out by herself.

She could no longer see the runes for their spinning, she remembered that there had been three major runes and five minor. From her experience with such things, she assumed the five to be decoys.

Daphne took out three tools, each with a long sharp point and runes of their own etched into the handles. She held them above the spinning runes. She guessed she had to skewer each of the three major runes at the same time and quickly bring them in toward each other at matching speeds and angles.

It was an extremely risky manoeuvre, but she didn’t have time for anything else. The runes were spinning so fast that in a matter of moments they would lose their structure entirely and collied with one another. The result would be the same as if she failed her manoeuvre.

She didn’t wait to track the runes with her eyes, she didn’t wait to time their rotations, she didn’t have the moments it would take. Instead, she relied on speed, experience, and a hefty amount of luck. She speared the ward with all three tools at the same time. In less time than the blink of an eye, she dragged them into each other and prayed they were on a concurrent speed and angle.

It seemed that perhaps Nyx had heard her, though more probably, she was just exceptional at her craft. All the force of an explosion that would decimate the room was contained within the barrier of the ward. To Daphne, it seemed the power of the sun raged within a magically sealed area no larger than the pommel of her dagger. Then suddenly it dissipated. The energy that it had contained was so potent that Daphne could actually see the Weave bleeding off the door in its strangely elusive geometric patterns.

She allowed herself to breathe a deep sigh of relief before she called for Kai and Clio. They gingerly crept back down the worn stone stairs. While Kai examined the collapsed section of wall, Daphne picked the lock on the door. In a matter of seconds, it swung open with a satisfying click.

“Was it difficult?” Clio asked.

“Impossible.” Daphne admitted.

“I asked my goddess to guide you.” Clio said as she laid a hand on Daphne’s shoulder.

“I believe your goddess was absent, darling. This one was all me.”

“I can see another room through this rubble.” Kai mentioned quietly.

They were all speaking softly. Everything any of them said was barely a whisper. It was as though, this deep into the earth, the weight of the house was crushing the sound out of them. Crushing the bravery out of them. Daphne realised she was constantly tensing every muscle in her body to stop herself from shaking.

Clio gave one last suspicious look up the stairs before heading through the recently unlocked door. Daphne could still hear the incessant chanting, scratching at the back of her mind. “He is ancient, sacrifice all to him. He is ancient, sacrifice all to him.”

It seemed the shivers that ran up her spine pulsed in time with the chanting that echoed about her mind. She even felt her heartbeat falter and start again, in time with the chant’s steady rhythm. She had to get out of here fast.

The next room they entered was a prison. Barred cages lined both sides of the room. On the left side there was a small gap between the cages where another door stood. As Daphne followed Clio, she noticed every cage was filled with skeletons. Some cages were packed so tight that they lay over each other in a tangle of bones so that it was impossible to tell where one skeleton ended and the next began.

Daphne didn’t waste time checking the room thoroughly. She spared the door a careful glace to make sure it wasn’t trapped like the last one. Thankfully, it was bare. Daphne gave Clio a nod and the Dwarf pushed the door open.

Clio’s hair tickled Daphne’s rosy nose as a foul wind blew in from the next chamber. The room however, stood silent. It stretched deep and wide before them.

A raised dais stood in the centre of the room. Stairs led up to it on all four sides. A stained alter sat atop it all, sacrificial implements scattered around its base.

The walls were pockmarked with alcoves, each decorated with ghastly relics and implements. The base of the room was flooded with brackish water that sat still. Daphne winced at the stench of foul waste.

“Lovely.” She sighed.

There was a small platform, on which they stood. The stairs that once led down to the chamber’s floor had crumbled away. It looked like a short drop to the ground level. Though, without being able to see through the liquid below, Daphne couldn’t tell for certain.

A quick glance around the room showed the Tainted no other doors. Two of the walls had caved in on themselves. One opposite the other. It turned out Kai was right; he could see through the rubble in the other room into a chamber. This one.

“Looks like this is the end of the line.” Kai sighed. “Unless you can see any more secret doors, Daphne?”

Daphne shook her head.

“I have a feeling we’re going to need to take a closer look at that altar.” Clio said hesitantly.

“Any volunteers?” Daphne asked.

Silence followed.

“I’ll do it.” Kai said at length.

“No. I should do it.” Clio sighed.

No one said anything more, but they all agreed. Of them all, Clio was most savvy to the strange, esoteric horrors the house had thrown at them. She knew how to banish the Spectre. She had also come closest to understanding the way the Weave warped and augmented inside the house. Though Clio still felt completely at a loss toward the whole situation, she was the most likely to garner something from the altar.

Daphne pulled a rope from her pack and with Kai’s help, lowered Clio into the water. The Dwarf was holding her breath and her face contorted in a violent grimace as the liquid slowly engulfed more and more of her. She could feel it’s warmth creeping up her ribs by the time her feet met bottom.

Disgusted, Clio nodded to the other two and waded toward the Altar. Daphne watched her slow determined strides. The Tainted was tense as a bow string. She cursed her foolishness for letting Clio dive forward so quickly.

They hadn’t tested the water, nor had they watched long enough to discern if anything was living in it. After all the foul horrors they had witnessed together in that house, she had lowered Clio into the water with only one thought. Get out of here as quickly as possible.

Clio’s slow steps kept a certain rhythm and once again Daphne’s attention was brought to the chanting inside her head. “He is ancient, sacrifice all to him.” A violent shiver shook up the Tainted’s spine. She and Kai watched Clio as she mounted the stairs. Slowly, Clio climbed out of the viscous fluid that flooded the chamber floor and up. Whatever flooded the room sloughed off her in thick drips.

“He is ancient, sacrifice all to him.” Clio was all the way out of the liquid. Her pace didn’t speed. She kept her slow steady rhythm. Daphne could hear Kai’s breath, keeping the same beat. Daphne wanted to scream “Hurry! Get out of here!” But something stopped her. Something intangible. Something that crawled up the back of her arms and neck and reached into the back of her mind.

Clio had reached the top of the altar. She took her final steps onto the dais and looked over what she found. Daphne watched intently as her mind tried to wrestle free of the incorporeal dread that hypnotized her with its steady rhythm.

Clio was sweating. A bead of perspiration rolled down her forehead and gathered at the tip of her pale nose. Suddenly, Clio’s eyes went wide in realization.

Daphne watched as Clio swatted at her nose a moment too late. Even from the distance that separated them, even in the dim light, Daphne could see the glint of that single bead of sweat as it dropped off the tip of Clio’s nose and plummeted onto the dais. When it hit the stained stone in that silent chamber, its impact was audible. Clio turned to them; her face awash in horror.

“Run!” She screamed.