The Thralls lacked skill and physical strength. What made them dangerous was that they had numbers and an unrelenting ferocity. Jeze concluded that the longer they were afflicted with madness, the weaker they became. In contrast, the two mad adventures they encountered earlier were recently afflicted, and they exhibited strength, fearlessness, and skill. The Thralls they fought now only knew to swing their weapons and lacked any resemblance of coordination or defense. But there were a lot of them.
Jeze stabbed a Thrall through the neck and dodged a wild swing from a second that caused the attacker to lose balance and collide with a third. A fourth Thrall rushed in with their weapon poised high, and Jeze chopped off their arm with her battle axe before they could swing. The Thrall looked confused at its missing limb while Jeze deflected with her long knife another Thrall's clumsy thrust and weaved to avoid grasping hands. She spun and planted her battle axe on another's forehead. The one-armed Thrall picked up another weapon with their remaining hand, and before they could attack, Jeze sliced their throat as she ran past.
"Form up!" Dunar roared. The team Leader recognized that they were drifting apart and individually, they could be overwhelmed.
"Hurrah!" The Proven responded.
Helga and Rolfe fought their way closer to each other and near Dunar. Mikal covered Helga's flank and kept his back toward the curved wall of the chamber. Jeze danced and weaved in between the cluttered mass of Thralls, and she arrived by her team's side. With discipline and precision, they eliminated the small horde of Thralls. Twitching bodies littered the hallway and chamber.
"For Glory!" Helga cried.
"Hurrah!" The others responded, and Rolfe banged his shield with his sword.
Mikal knelt and prayed for the souls. Jeze saw tears on the dark-haired man's face. The Healer rose after wiping his eyes.
"May these poor souls find their eternal rest behind the gates of the Frozen All Father," Mikal quietly said.
The others nodded. Jeze came over and squeezed his shoulder.
"Once we establish the Safe Zone. The Guild will send teams of Prospects to collect the fallen for proper burial services," Jeze promised.
Mikal gripped her hand and nodded his gratitude. It was a rare moment the two shared and ended when Ziplcoke began to retch.
"Okay! Enough of the soppiness. Time for you to collect all of the loot! Jeze needs the money to buy me paste!" The Goblin squealed.
"Loot? What can these poor souls have that could be of value to us, huh?" Rolfe asked.
Helga wrinkled her nose as she scanned the bodies and agreed, "Aye, they look worse than beggars."
"Noobs!" Ziplocke squealed and added, "But no worry. You are all fortunate to have Ziplocke here to guide you."
"What is he talking about?" Mikal snapped.
"Their weapons!" Ziplocke shrieked.
Dunar arched an eyebrow. "They are not even proper weapons," the Leader observed.
The assorted armaments from the Thralls consisted of swords with jagged blades and a variety of warped axes and spiked maces and clubs.
"Fools! The weapons are made of Devil's Steel! You can't find that in this realm, and merchants would pay a nice sum to melt down this junk," Ziplocke cried.
"That is a lot for us to carry. I don't think it would be wise to burden us in such a way," Helga observed.
"Once we map out this floor and Jeze repurposes the floor portal, we can sell this location to a scavenger group," Dunar replied.
Jeze heard about that from working with Hannah. Scavenger teams were typically composed of merchants and Prospect level adventurers. Once a floor was fully cleared, meaning it was mapped out and the portals were all linked to Safe Rooms and the outside, then scavenger teams could enter the level and collect piles of loot. Piles such as the one that filled the chamber they were in. The scavengers will buy, at a much-reduced cost, the loot.
"How do we know that they won't cheat us with the price?" Rolfe asked.
"Oh, they will cheat you! It's part of doing business unless you want to carry everything out on your own!" Ziplocke shrieked in reply.
"Let's collect all the weapons and make a pile. We can mark it as ours," Dunar said.
"Oh, ho! Won't another team just steal it?" Helga asked.
Dunar shrugged his broad shoulders. "It's the only option we have. Honor among adventures."
They piled the twisted weapons in the corner of the chamber. Thinking about the Devil's Steel, Jeze realized that Hannah might be interested in this. The metal had properties that were better suited for enchanting and offered better heat resistance.
"I know a merchant. Her name is Hannah, and she will give us a fair price," Jeze announced.
"Good," Dunar replied.
"Do we take the coins from the fallen team?" Rolfe asked.
"No!" Mikal snapped.
The large Protector backed away.
"Leave that for the families," Dunar stated.
They marked "Proven" on the wall beside the pile of weapons and continued on through the dark corridor to the long rectangular chamber Jeze scouted earlier with the red torches.
"They came from those entrances," Jeze said, pointing.
"Not that one?" Dunar asked.
The Leader motioned to the single entrance on the far left end of the chamber. Jeze shook her head, but she was not certain. At the time, she was being chased by a small horde. The Scout entered the room and studied the floors. It was difficult to find tracks on the stone floor, but with careful inspection, she was able to make out the scuff marks and scratches made from the crude weapons the Thralls dragged and carried. The Frozen followed her into the chamber as she inspected the four entrances and confirmed her original observations.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
"I don't see any indication that the Thralls came from that direction," Jeze explained regarding the far exit.
"How do you mean? There is no dust or markings on the floor," Mikal asked.
"Micky! Why are you so difficult? Just trust our scout," Helga snorted.
The Healer huffed and crossed his arms to look away.
Jeze rolled her eyes and explained, "A large number of mad Thralls carrying edged weapons leave scuff marks along the walls and, in some cases, on the floor. From the three entrances I saw them come through, there is numerous evidence and markings along the walls. The fourth one over there has none. But I could go further in to search more if you want."
"No. We follow where they came from. It may lead us to a monster Portal, and it is our duty to shut it down," Dunar said.
"Oh ya? Then we can complete Jeze's mission?" Helga perked up.
Jeze shook her head and answered, "Unfortunately, no. All I can do is deactivate the monster portal. In order for me to turn it into an exit portal, we first need to repurpose a floor portal. The easiest floor portal to repurpose is the one on the first level. Once I do that, then every monster portal can be repurposed moving forward."
"Why is that?" Mikal asked.
Jeze scowled. Why did he always seem to mistrust her? "No one knows for sure. The theory that Seb had was that all the portals are linked to the master portals that lead out of the levels." She had a small pang of sadness at the memory of the dead Guild official.
“So all the others that have traveled before us are trapped with no way out?” Helga asked.
“They can backtrack through the floor portals, but yes. Once they go through the next level they can not leave until they defeat the Floor Guardian,” Jeze answered.
Dunar’s jaw stiffened. “They have no access to supplies. We must get Jeze to the Floor Portal.”
They explored one of the exits the Thralls had entered from. It was a narrow corridor where they found three dead thralls.
"What happened?" Helga wondered.
"Bolt trap," Jeze answered.
"They are useful for triggering traps!" Ziplocke squealed
Protruding from the corpses were the bolts, and along the opposite wall were three holes. Eventually, the narrow corridor led to another block-shaped chamber. After some inspection, the team discovered that all three exits were linked to the same destination. Each corridor had a nasty trap that claimed a group of Thralls. Jeze studied the mechanisms and was impressed with the different triggers. Two were from pressure plates, and the third was a tripwire that caused a scythe blade to slice out from the wall, cutting the victims in half. They paused as Dunar updated his map.
The broad-shouldered man shook his head. "I do not believe we have linked up with what the other adventurers discovered."
"How big is this level?" Rolfe wondered. He was amazed at how far they have traveled and yet they still have not crossed the same corridors as the previous teams.
"Well, at least where we go next is easy to figure out," Helga joked.
There was only one unexplored exit in the room, and it was directly across from them.
"Why do the torches give off different color light? This room is blue, and the other was red, and earlier, we saw green torches," Mikal wondered.
Ziplocke snickered. "There is no reason in the Abyssal plane. Things are just as they are."
Helga gave him a treat, and he snuggled up to the large warrior maiden. Mikal shuddered. Jeze studied the room they were in.
"I think the Imps gathered the Thralls here," she explained. The room was filled with scratches and scuff marks that adorned the floors and walls.
In her mind's eye, she pictured the cluttered shuffling mass of Thralls waiting in this room.
Rolfe wrinkled his nose. "It smells like it," the giant Protector observed.
The room did have an odor from tightly packed bodies that had not been washed in ages.
"Be ready Proven. I suspect the monster portal is nearby," Dunar stated.
Jeze scouted the next passageway and the Proven followed in battle formation. They entered another wide square chamber with the floors and walls made out of sandstone and illuminated with normal colored torches. There were three other exits on each side and the chamber was littered with a dozen bodies of dead Thralls.
"Another adventurer team came through here?" Dunar wondered.
The team searched the chamber. Jeze noticed that the wounds on the Thralls were made by parallel blade slashes.
"Two swords!" Jeze announced.
"What are you talking about?" Mikal snapped.
"These Thralls were killed by a sword fighter that used two swords!" Jeze exclaimed.
"Ah, you think this was your friends?" Helga asked and added, "The guy was kind of cute."
Jeze rolled her eyes, "You have bad taste."
Helga laughed loudly. Her big bosom chest heaved with the effort. "You won't be the first to make that claim. I like the bad boys."
Mikal shook his head and rubbed his head. "Dunar, can you get your team to focus."
Dunar nodded and scolded Helga, "No flirting with adventurers until we get outside,"
Rolfe and Jeze chuckled while Mikal scowled.
"You got it, boss!" Helga replied.
"This is not funny! Jeze could stand to lose a lot of coin! Who will buy my paste!" Ziplocke shrieked.
Again, it was odd that the Goblin and Mikal were in agreement.
"Which way did your friends go?" Dunar asked, and he added, "It would be good to link up with another team so we can compare maps."
Jeze agreed and returned to tracking and was able to find bloodied footprints that led out the far exit. It was strange. She only found one set of tracks. The only explanation that made sense to Jeze was that Rainbow wouldn't leave tracks. The multi-colored haired adventurer was always careful to not be discovered. Swordslayer, on the other hand, didn't care. But what about the other team members? Were they all Scouts? The teenager wondered.
Near the exit Jeze discovered blood splotches along the walls. In her mind she pictured Swordslayer flicking the blood off his blades before sheathing them. For Jeze, this confirmed that her friends did pass through here.
"This way," she told her team and led them down a corridor where they encountered more dead Thralls. Each one killed with the same parallel sword slices.
Ahead, Jeze heard the sounds of fighting, and she hurried down the passageway and ignored the pleas for caution from her teammates. The corridor opened into another long chamber that was illuminated by green flames that created sinister shadows along the dark stone walls and dirt floor. Jeze saw the chamber littered with more dead thralls, and she spotted dead Imps among the bodies. In the center, she saw the familiar armored cuirass of overlapping hardened leather and steel scales. But the color seemed off, and Jeze was not certain if it was due to the strange green flames. Swordslayer stood with his back toward Jeze, holding his two single-edged swords in each hand. Two adventures faced him. One with a spear and the other armed with a sword and shield.
"No, please! The Imps are dead, and their curse lifted!" The one with the sword and shield pleaded.
Jeze watched in horror as Swordslayer attacked anyway, despite the pleas for mercy. The two adventurers were no match for the swordsman, and after a flurry of attacks, the one with the sword and shield fell to the ground with blood squirting from his neck.
"You monster!" The spearman roared and attacked with such fury.
The armored swordsman dodged and parried his opponent's longer reach weapon. With a grace that demonstrated the beauty of the Sanguine Blades style, the sword fighter weaved in and delivered a double parallel slash that ended with the spear fighting collapsing to the ground dead.
"Swordslayer!" Jeze cried.
She knew he had a dark side to him, but she couldn't believe he would kill two innocents. Two fellow adventurers! How could he do such a thing? And where was Rainbow? The Swordfighter spun to face her, and his face was covered with the grinning demon mask. Something was different about him. It was not due to green flames, but the armor was darker. It was black, where Jeze recalled that Swordslayer wore red armor. The eyes were different, and Jeze saw an energy within them. She almost felt an aura.
"Jeze, get back," Dunar called out.
Her team had arrived behind her. In front of Jeze, the sword fighter tilted his head and let out a deep chuckle. This was not Swordslayer but someone else who had studied the Sanguine Blades style.
"Is he afflicted with madness?" Helga asked.
"No, I have read about this," Mikal answered and added, "He has the Bloodlust."
"Who are you? And why did you kill those two?" Jeze demanded.
The man did not answer but lunged forward with incredible speed. Jeze, shocked, stumbled back to retrieve her battle axe and long knife. The swordsman was moving too fast as he spun and chopped downwards with his two blades in a parallel attack. Jeze was not going to be able to defend herself.