Neil
Standing in front of the door to the office Yallia and I each drank our Night Eye potions, the oddly fruity concoction went down easily and immediately the office went from being illuminated by the flicker of the glow stones to looking like it was illuminated by the noonday sun.
I had really outdone myself with this entire batch of potions, while I hadn’t actually gained a level of potion making, I had managed to refine my recipes well enough that every potion had been better than anything I had made before.
Night Eye Potion
Will grant the ability to see in the dark for 5 hours and 7 minutes.
Stamina Potion
Can allow a person to sprint without being winded as if they are unencumbered for up to 4 hours. Has mild restorative properties that can heal all but the most extreme muscle injuries.
Excellent Healing Potion
Can heal almost all injuries when consumed, can be applied to an injury to allow for greater healing to a specific body part.
The extra Night Eye Potions had been poured into Yallias now empty bottle of Kallaz, the newer and stronger glass bottle should hopefully be more durable than the century old glassware I had been using. The healing potions were in the smaller of my two canteens, being the most important potions, we had they were put in the bottle that would be least likely to break. The larger canteen had been filled with water, should we manage to drink all of that I could always refill it with my water affinity. Finally, the stamina potions were in the old glassware. Given how fragile those flasks had proven to be neither Yallia or myself was happy with it, but we really didn’t have much else to carry them in.
The poison had been placed in two MRE bags, and very tightly tied shut with string and then tied to my belt after we had applied it to some of our spears. While tying the bag shut was annoying and made it difficult to use it was necessary as I had improved the poison considerably, attaching it to my belt was a compromise that would hopefully allow us to access the poison if we needed it in a hurry.
Extremely Dangerous Toxin
This substance is incredibly dangerous. Breathing it in can damage a respiratory system. Applying it to a creature's skin can cause necrosis, and eventual organ failure. Introducing it to a blood stream will cause toxic shock, necrosis of various internal organs and death.
Since even smelling the poison was dangerous we had actually considered not even bringing it, but if we were going to be fighting things that were as dangerous as we thought we would then we needed something with a little more punch to it than my water magic and some metal spears.
As soon as the Night Eye potions took effect we were off. Opening the door and rushing out into the hallway then down the stairs. Taking just a few moments to clear each floor of enemies we push on to the workroom with the stairs heading down as quickly as we can.
Reaching the main floor we entered the room with the final stairwell, pausing to catch our breath we looked down. Due to the shape of the stairwell we can only see about 15 steps that lead to a landing, everything after that is a mystery to us.
Looking at Yallia I make sure she is ready and then say, “Ready?”
She nods at me and we continue.
Quickly running down the steps one at a time I saw that the carved stones in the walls changed into solid unbroken bedrock at the first landing, it looks like this was carved directly into the stone. Barely looking at it I turned and ran down another set of steps. Halfway down the second landing Yallia called out for us to stop. Catching myself I managed to avoid falling face first down a stairwell, but barely. “What?” I snap out, sounding angrier than I had intended to.
“These runes.” She said tracing her fingers over something carved into the side of the stairwell that I hadn’t even noticed. “It’s a spatial warping rune, this stairwell goes down further than it should be able to. We could be hundreds of meters underground now.”
“We’ll that’s one way of getting down to a mine I guess, if we destroyed these runes would we be able to seal off the mine from the rest of the city?”
Yallia looked at me for a moment considering. “Yes, but it would also destroy half the mountain. There should be a way to alter the runes in order to more gently alter then end the spell, but it would take weeks to figure out how.”
“Fair enough, is this going to change anything?”
“Not really, but this kind of magic is not easy to use or set up, I’ve seen it used in Human cities, but I’ve never heard of it being used in a mine before, far too wasteful.”
“Sounds like we’re on the right track then.” I said as we continued down to the next landing, we saw a simple door in the wall with even more runes surrounding it. Taking up positions on either side of it we looked at each other and got ready. Cracking the door open we looked inside and saw what looked to be a cave leading forwards with multiple forks leading from it. There were multiple buttresses set up holding up the ceiling and there were even tracks on the ground with a mine cart in laying on its side half on and half off of the tracks with rusted tools laying all over the ground. Closing the door we continued down.
When discussing our plan we tried to guess what it would be that we were looking for, and while we ultimately decided we couldn’t guess what we would find, we did think that if we were going to find the source of the monsters then likely signs of monsters would be present as well, and that meant destroyed doors at the least.
Going down two more landings we spotted another doorway. This one looked to be more likely what we were looking for. The door had long ago been destroyed and pieces of it still littered the ground. Looking into the tunnel we saw another mine shaft with rough stone walls, buttresses bracing the ceiling and the ground was littered with stone, old tools, and a long black tendril as thick as my leg ran along the ground deep into the depths in front of us.
Looking at the tendril I softly asked. “What?”
DING
ERROR #%$^%
Something unknown, this is not something to be understood by mortals and can barely be understood by OTHER beings. It is however rich in taint and foreign magic.
Well that’s horrifying, don’t even get me started on OTHER beings, was that referring to Gaia? At least we’ve found the source of the taint, or at least something that is connected to the source of the taint, still I had expected something a little, bigger. Looking at the stairwell leading down I saw even more of the tendrils on the stairs below us heading up towards us.
Yallia started forwards and I stopped her with a hand on her shoulder and pointed down. “Let’s check out down there.”
She glanced down the stairwell and then back at me before nodding.
Going down two more landings we quickly saw that the tendrils were leading directly into another doorway. Carefully stepping over the tendrils we looked through the doorway.
Inside wasn’t another rough mineshaft or cave but instead a long hallway made of smooth stone. The floor was flat, and instead of buttresses holding the ceiling there were instead rows and rows of runes. Yallia looked at everything with wide eyed excitement. Running along the ground, walls and even parts of the ceiling the black tendrils led deeper into the facility. At several places the tendrils bulged out and large pustules were in the middle of the tendrils.
Slowly entering the hallway I noticed that my hands were starting to hurt, and with a start I realized I was squeezing my spear as hard as I could. Relaxing my grip, a little I made sure that I was as ready as I could be, but not so tense that I was making myself exhausted. I had taken ten steps into the hallway when we reached the first pustule. It was about the size of a beach ball and it was gently pulsing as if it were breathing.
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The two of us gave the pustule a wide berth as we passed it which was fairly easy at this point. The hallway we walked along was fairly wide, about ten feet, but it was also lined with thick tendrils and pustules every few dozen meters. Not wanting to touch any of them was a little bit difficult. After walking for just a few minutes we reached a large steel door that looked more like the door of a bank vault than anything else, judging from the way it was bent out towards us it also looked like something had smashed its way through it.
Just through the doors we reached an intersection, with a left, right, and a path forward. Looking at the tendrils on the ground I could see that most of them seemed to come from the hallway directly in front of us, which also has the largest collection of pustules, these pustules being even larger, some of them were larger than I was and would make walking through the hallway almost impossible.
Seeing that the right hallway had the fewest tendrils and pustules we wordlessly decide to explore that way first.
Fortunately for us the hallway is not very long and shortly we came to its end. On each side of the hallway we saw a doorway with a smashed and broken door in it. Both of the doors looked to have at one time been incredibly solid, but they were currently bent back as if something had smashed through them like they were made of paper Mache. The room on the left had by far more tendrils inside of it, and I wasn’t sure we would be able to avoid touching any of them if we went in. The room on the right looked to be more of an administrative area. There were the remains of desks, chairs and large numbers of book shelves and another room in the back.
Deciding to explore this first we walked through the main room looking quickly at the remains of the desks. While some papers were still intact none of them looked very important so we bypassed them. The far office however was in much better condition. As we entered Yallia looked at some runes on the walls that I had walked right past.
“What are those?”
“Preservation runes, our camp and the library both have these, they help prevent things from rotting or being destroyed.” She answered.
Taking a closer look at them I felt a little embarrassed, I hadn’t even noticed these and I couldn’t even tell you where they were in our camp.
Entering the office it looked similar to the one in our camp but a little smaller. There was a single desk with a few chairs and some book shelves, all of which had been knocked over and destroyed by several large tendrils. In the corner was the only thing still undisturbed, a large metal safe. Making her way over to it Yallia tried to turn the locking mechanism but she found it rusted with age.
Yallia stepped aside and nodded at me. With a smile I used a small water saw to cut off the hinges and locking mechanism and we carefully pried the door out of its fitting. When the solid metal door landed with a thump on the ground we paused waiting for something to start moving. Far in the distance I thought I heard a skittering sound, but Yallia didn’t give any indication she heard anything. After a few moments we judged it safe and looked inside the safe. There on several small shelves was a small stack of documents, and several notebooks. Grabbing them Yallia flipped through them quickly before giving me a smile and a thumbs up, it was honestly a little strange seeing the normally serious cat-kin smiling at me. Putting the documents in my bag she motioned that we should leave. I pointed to the desk with a raised eyebrow but she waved me off. I guess she figured that anything important would be locked up. Not wanting to waste time by arguing I followed Yallia out the door.
As we slowly made our way out of the office something across the hallway caught my eye. For just a second I could have sworn I saw something shiny, and given how dark everything was that should be impossible. Yallia left the office and started down the hallway but I stopped her with a whisper and indicated the doorway filled with tendrils.
Yallia gestured for me to follow her but I waved her off and pointed at the doorway. She looked unconvinced but nonetheless came back. Looking into the doorway I managed to get a good look at the room.
It looked to be an observation room of some sort with a large window overlooking another room below. Although the windows had long ago been destroyed and tendrils with extremely large pustules filled the room now. Edging into the room I angled myself to get a look through the window to the room below.
It was fairly large, roughly circular with a diameter of almost forty feet and being almost sixty feet tall. Taking up almost the entire room was something hanging from the ceiling on tendrils the size of redwoods that were burrowing into the walls, ceiling and floor of the room. The creature itself was slowly pulsing as if it were a gigantic heart although it wasn’t shaped like a heart at all, it looked more like flat rectangle. The creature was extremely tall and wide, but also surprisingly thin. It was probably 30 feet high, 20 feet wide but only 5 feet thick. From the angle I was standing at I couldn’t really see its middle so I gently leaned into the room as Yallia kept furiously whispering for me to stop.
When I leaned in just enough I managed to see what had caught my eye. In the center of the mass of tendrils was a portal that was blacker than I had ever imagined with dozens of tendrils coming out of it. Despite the portals complete lack of color and there being no light here, the portal seemed to shimmer. I was just getting a good look at the portal when it happened.
DING
By finding and studying a portal you have gained the @#$%^& affinity, find other portals or study this portal with specialized equipment to gain additional affinity.
Looking at the blue box caused a spike of pain to blossom in my head right behind my eyes. Falling to my knees the only reason I didn’t start screaming in pain was because it hurt so badly that I could only make some kind of a pained gurgling sound.
Just as the pain started to lessen to just indescribable, I became aware that Yallia was pulling me out of the room and I was leaning against the wall. Cradling my head in my hands I tried to get my breathing under control.
A few minutes of deep breathing and the pain began to lessen to just a throb behind my eyes that felt like the worst headache I’d ever had. “Gluh.” I managed to squeak out.
“Are you ok?” Yallia whisper asked me.
Nodding yes I tried to stand up, Yallia grabbed my arms and helped pull me to my feet, she tried to pull me down the hallway but I knew what I needed to do.
The second I accepted the quest I thought one specific part of the quest reward would be important, resistance to taint. I had hoped to not spend much time near anything that could create the spider rats, or any of the other monsters I had seen but I knew that was unlikely. That affinity I had just gained just drove the fact home that if I didn’t gain some serious resistance to Taint, I could easily end up like any of the things I had seen down here.
Bringing some mana to my hand I used my water affinity to give it the shape of a water blade. Cutting the string holding the MRE bag to my belt I let the bag fall onto the ground and extended the blade into a water spear.
Stabbing the bag with the spear I used the same water shaping technique that I used to throw a metal spears to pick up the little ball of poison and hold it in the tip of the spear.
Yallia already started to look alarmed at what I was doing and I could see she was saying something but I ignored her focused as I was on what I had set out to do.
Bringing the spear up to my shoulder I formed an atlatl and took aim at the mass of flesh that made up the creature, pulled my arm back and threw the spear as hard as I could. My throw was sloppy, the pain in my skull causing it to be barely on target, fortunately the target is huge.
Even with my week throw the atlatl allowed it to impact the creature with enough force that a good six inches of the spear penetrated into the creature.
All over the creatures body thousands of eyes snapped open, they looked at the quickly disintegrating water spear and then the eyes swiveled as one towards me.
The tendrils began shaking, just a little, but with the tendrils embeded throughout the rock and all through the mountain it was enough to cause the entire complex to begin shaking. I looked at Yallia just in time to see her begin shouting at me.
“RUN YOU IDIOT!” she said as she rushed at me and grabbed my arm pulling me behind her.
I was able to get my feet to follow her and soon I was running through the halls just behind Yallia. Just as we reached the intersection and turned left thousands of eyes all along the tendrils snapped open and began to track us through the halls, at the same time every single pustule started shaking and throbbing as something inside each of the pustules began stirring and trying to tear itself out.
Yallia had run past a pustule as large as I was when something that looked a little similar to a hand shot out of the pustule right in my path. Dropping down as I approached it I slid under the appendage barely avoiding it as it swiped towards me. From my vantage point under it I could see that the hand actually had twice as many fingers and three times as many joints as a hand should, the fingers looked far more like tentacles than anything else.
When I was past the pustule I got up and I had just enough time to wish we had used some of the stamina potions before I started running again. As panicked as I was feeling I was gulping in air as quickly as I could as my feet pounded down the hall after Yallia.
Taking the left slowing down as little as possible I saw that it was a straight shot to the door and the stairwell and Yallia was already halfway there. Pushing myself as hard as I could the bag on my back swayed back and forth with each pump of my legs.
Yallia reached the stairway and grabbed the doorway her momentum throwing her into the wall outside the facility. As she looked back at me I could see her lips moving but I couldn’t hear a thing over the pounding in my ears.
Just I thought I was going to make it in time the two pustules between me and the doorway burst open and two creatures slid out of them. The closer of the pustules had a spider rat burst out of it and from the further what looked like a small childlike Lamia crossed with a praying mantis slithered out of the pustule. It had a short tail, maybe only 4 feet long, its hands had been replaced with sharp looking scythes and its face was a horrible mixture between a child's and an insect. Its eyes were entirely human looking but the rest of its face was entirely insectoid.
Using my magic I threw my metal spear as hard as I could down the hallway. It was a beautiful throw, straight and true, whatever got in its way would have found a four-foot iron spike sticking out of it. Unfortunately, it sailed straight past both of my adversaries and narrowly missed Yallia who had to duck out of the projectiles way.
Swearing loudly as a battle cry I simply put my arms in front of my face and managed to run past the rat spider giving it a solid kick as I went. The Lamia child however was more prepared for me and I had to charge straight over it as it moved itself in my path. I felt a sickening crunch under my feet as I simply charged over the creature and some of its bones snapped under my feet. I was almost past it when I fell hard on my hands and knees as it managed to grab my legs and pull me down. Sprawled on the ground I looked back into eyes that were all too human as I pulled my foot back and kicked it in the face over and over until I could finally squirm free.
The rat spider although injured was closing in on me and I was about to ready some magic when Yallias spear sailed into it, a moment later the monster fell to the ground convulsing.
Getting my feet underneath me I entered the stairwell and immediately tried to run up the stairs as quickly as I could. I made it up three stairs before my legs gave out. Falling onto the stairwell I kept trying to get up for a few moments before realizing that my legs had several cuts on the back of them and I was bleeding pretty badly.
Yallia was right in front of my face yelling something at me before she reached into my backpack, pulled out my small canteen, opened the top and started pouring the potion onto my legs.
After a moment my legs began moving again and with a start I realized that I had never stopped trying to run.
“Are you ok?” Yallia asked me her ears pointing towards me in a way that I was pretty sure was fury.
“Yes, thank you.” I managed to get out before the Praying Mantis Lamia started pulling itself through the doorway with its arms hissing at us.
Yallia was already running up the stairs and as much as I wanted to follow her immediately I also couldn’t leave that thing there alive. What if it did have some memory of what it was?
Forming a quick water bullet I put it through the skull of the mutated Lamia child, brains and blood covered the doorway behind it as the creature immediately fell to the ground dead, blank eyes still staring up at me accusingly. The ding was the only thing that snapped me out of my shock.
Turning from the scene I followed Yallia up the stairs as fast as I could, by the time we made it back to the office we could hear what sounded like a small army of monsters following us.
Throwing open the door Yallia picked up her bags and turned back to me. “We’ll have to take our chances in the jungle with the Lamia. Are you sure you got everything?”
“Yes I am and no we won’t, that did it. The portal is closed and that was the source of the taint. Now let's get the hell out of here.” Before I even finished speaking, we were out the door and heading to the stairs to the surface with a few dozen mutants hot on our heels.
QUEST COMPLETE
For closing the source of the TAINT you have gained more understanding of Mana Manipulation, resistance to TAINT, and increased reputation with the Lamia of the Veil of the Gods.