Chapter 23

We found heaps of human bones as we descended further. Removed of all flesh and cartilage, the bones had been tortured with teeth and claw marks. Time, and weather, and monsters, and neglect, had aged them over time. Some fell to pieces as we passed. A skull fractured as I made eye contact with the hollow sockets. A yellowed finger fell from a hand, as though the ghost of its owner tried to say, “this way.”

The dungeon sloped dramatically downward, and our boots were near vertical as we descended to a warmer tunnel. The floor was paved with spilled bone particles and rocks that rolled and crunched beneath us.

Skulls began to pattern the ice veined walls and appeared more numerous as we went on. Piles of skulls were leaned against parts of the wall that were void of skulls.

“It’s like someone’s in the middle of building a catacomb,” Erik said.

“Like they stopped for lunch or something,” I said.

“Maybe it’s us,” Watt said, scanning ahead with his torch as we continued.

“Us?” Arris said.

“Maybe we’re delivering their lunch right now.”

“I don’t get it,” Arris said.

The rest of us chuckled and left Arris to decipher Watt’s cryptic humor on his own.

Skeletons came from the darkness beyond the torchlight and snuffed out our mirth. They were unarmed, but their numbers were alarming. They flooded the tunnel with hundreds of rattling bones and grasping fingers. Some were trampled by their kin in their charge.

Except for Watt, we all cast our mana bars in wide circles.

Arris clad his upper form in the glowing green gel of Oak Beard, Erik fell back to a defensive crouch, and Watt braced himself front and center. Lep and I stood abreast behind everyone. Hand of Flames incinerated a line of skeletons. Bones sizzled and melted from the mage’s spell.

Watt stood his ground and chopped with maddened strikes at the horde. Emotionless skulls fell with severed spines and broken ribs. The skeletons came on with scratching claws and blocky fists. Our warrior was forced back and his health bar was starting to show damage.

Erik struck at the horde between gaps of Watt’s swinging battle axe. His kris blade severed bones and lopped off hands and ribs and skulls and arms. His attacks were a defensive measure, preventing the horde from pushing further.

Fire Spear flew over our heads, propelled by Lep’s throwing grunt. The molten tip of the spear scored through the skeletons like butter. Another row was dealt death and yet more replaced them. As far as the torchlight reached, more skeletons pushed for their turns at battle. They pressed forward through their kin and the sheer pressure forced us back.

“Tosin!” Watt said, bringing his battle axe up, and swinging through more skeletons. “I need you to buy me time.” He sliced a horizontal arc, decapitating seven skeletons in a row. Their heads broke off in a row of popping, splintering bones. “Then I’m going to drop in health. Heal me right away!”

“When?” I said.

“Now!”

“Fist of Wind!”

I slammed the flagstaff to the dungeon floor. 5 points of mana siphoned from my mana bar. The air before my flagstaff suctioned in on itself. Shadows tangled with folds of manifesting wind until the vague shape of a closed fist was formed. Upon completion, I tipped the flagstaff forward and aimed over Watt’s shoulder. The Fist of Wind sailed through the air, unraveling threads of air and shadow, then exploded upon the skeletons. Bone and skeletal debris burst back into the relentlessly pushing horde. Life-steal healed injured allies by 5 points. The gold veins in my flagstaff briefly glowed a sheening of gold.

In the moment of brief freedom, Watt braced himself in a wide stance and the tip of his battle axe struck the ground. He stood still for a moment. He cast his mana bar before him and uttered, “Warline.”

His mana bar stained entirely with dark red. Its texture of chiffon and blue gossamer silk, mutated to form a red network of veins spewing blood. The veins all dumped into thin air, and the blood recycled through other open veins. The cycle was eternally perpetual.

With a mighty roar, Watt shouted, “Depth of Malice!”

His health bar plummeted to half. I lobbed two Pyrrhon’s potions and both broke at the warrior’s feet, returning his health to full.

Watt braced himself in a wide stance and swung his battle axe. Half a dozen skeletons fell over, cleaved in two. An invisible echo of Watt’s strike occurred beyond those skeletons and half a dozen more cleaved in two. Then a third echo of Watt’s first swing, divided another set of skeletons just as cleanly.

Watt slashed once more and two lagging echoes of his attack killed more than a dozen more. With the impressive turn of battle, we marched onwards, on the offensive.

Watt led the way with sweeping strikes. I lunged my flagstaff between him and Arris, to pick off a stray skeleton here and there. Arris crushed them in his green fists. Lep’s Fire Spear sailed further into the tunnel.

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Our pattern of driving through the skeleton hordes continued until we reached a breaking point. The horde thinned out, and the endless rattling of bones eventually fell to silence, as Watt went after the last one. In a show of fun, Watt swung his battle axe from a distance. An echo of his strike slashed out at thin air, then another echo slashed further on, striking the remaining skeleton, and it fell to pieces.

Watt walked on without pause and his chuckles reverberated around us.

“Tosin, try to use spells first,” Lep said. “Before you use potions. Arris can summon a mana totem and we can replenish mana. Save your potions for when you’ve used all your mana and we desperately need more healing.”

“Yea, but my spells don’t heal nearly as much as the potions do.”

“I’m telling you—spells first. Then potions.”

Arris and Erik looked at me with half smiles and nodded their agreements. They were right, of course. Although using my spells required more work and healed a third as much, my potions couldn’t be refilled like mana could. They should indeed be saved for backup.

Skeletons appeared every now and then, wandering alone through the dungeon. Watt got to them first and walked through them, blade edge first.

We stopped at a split of a tunnel.

“Which way?” Watt said.

Both ways looked the same and we opted for the left hand side. As soon as we crossed into the new tunnel, thel wall behind us closed. We turned to see it swing on massive stone hinges. Stone shrieked against stone, until the tunnel we’d come from was sealed off.

Erik spent some time feeling along the wall for mechanisms, for triggers, “for anything that might open it up again in case we need to retreat in a hurry,” he said.

His efforts bore no fruit and we moved on. We came upon wandering skeleton after wandering skeleton for some time. The tunnel became more catacomb-like the further we went. Skulls and femurs were more frequently appearing, shoved into the gaps in the walls. The winding curve of the dungeon was still present, and we came upon rows of coffins.

As we navigated the mess of some stone coffins, but mostly wood coffins, we took down a number of skeletons. Or rather, Watt did. No one else had the chance.

Eventually the coffins started to dwindle in numbers and the skulls along the walls became fewer. All the while we ran into more skeletons. Then coffins started to appear again, just the way they had earlier.

“We’ve been here before,” Lep said.

“Son of Felke,” Arris said. “We’re going in circles aren’t we?”

Erik crouched to etch into a coffin’s lid.

“Guess we’ll see,” he said, rising to step past us and carry on.

Another dozen skeletons and an absence of coffins later, we came upon them once more. Sure enough, we’d circled three times.

An unarmed skeleton lunged from the darkness and met its demise at the chop of Watt’s battle axe bit.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “If we’re turning circles, then where are the skeletons coming from?”

“Son of Felke,” Lep said, “Tosin you figured it out.”

“A trail of bones,” Watt said.

We went on, searching for the next skeleton. Watt sliced it from shoulder to hip and it fell with a breathless rattle.

“Wait,” Erik said.

Watt turned an inquisitive glance to him. “Wait for what?” The warrior picked up the skull, with two fingers shoved in the eye sockets. “You wanna interrogate him? Scuse me Mr. Bones, do you know the way out? Will you show us where you came from?”

“Alright, enough,” Erik said. “I didn’t think we’d talk to him. I just thought maybe—I don’t know.”

We conferred over our options. We could sit and wait for another skeleton to amble into us. We could walk a dozen meters, then wait for one. We could wait to see from which direction the closest one came.

We decided to wait and Arris took the opportunity to cast Elder Azure Mana Totem. The thousand crystal crusted, lean-to totem, emerged from the earth and cast the dungeon tunnel in rich deep blues.

In the time it took to replenish all our mana, three skeletons had ambled into our party from the direction we were headed. Watt led us forward and we stopped once more to wait and see.

“Listen,” Erik said.

We dropped our conversation and heard the scraping of bone walking on stone. A skeleton came into our midst and Watt cleaved the monster in two.

“Ok, now listen,” Erik said.

Our eyebrows rose when we heard the creak of a coffin lid. Watt charged forward and we followed on his heels with adrenaline pumping through our hearts.

“Rahhh!” The warrior shouted, slicing through yet another skeleton.

We waited once more at Erik and Lep’s urging. Coffin’s lay scattered all around us. We leapt to defensive stances when a knocking and scratching sound emitted through one of them. The lid promptly swung open and another skeleton grinned its haunting smile at us as it climbed a narrow staircase.

Watt bashed the skull against the dungeon wall with the head of his battle axe. Bones fractured, and fragments rained to the ground. We peered into the coffin and listened to the bones jangle down the stairs.

“Only one way down,” Watt said and swung a leg over the coffin ledge, then the other, and tumbled in a clatter of metal, chainmail, and spinning torchlight. The torch snuffed out when the ruckus ended.

We all winced together and I said, “You alright?”

I cast open my mana bar and observed the warrior’s health had depleted a minor bit. His reply came up with a groan.

“Yeap. Yeap. Careful there guys. Steps are slippery.”

Arris delved first, and soon two torches lit the deeper dungeon tunnel. It was colder down here and more veins of ice marbled along the tunnel walls. Water dripped from the lick of torch flames.

The tunnel did not curve this time. It stretched on, straight as an arrow until dumping us out at the mouth of an exit. We were met with a subdued brisk wind and a glacial flatland. Snow drifted in slow motion from an overcast grey. Not a single plant existed on this plane, for that’s the only thing it could be called. A short distance away were burial cairns.

“Guys, check it out,” Watt said, and pointed with his toe at the icy ground.

Beneath the frozen veneer were long dead, long past adventurers. We bristled at the discovery.

“Looks like they’ve all been bitten by a giant. Half eaten and spit out,” Erik said.

More adventurers lay in broken, torn, frozen chunks as we moved on. I saw basic weapons, and some bags spilled open of their inventory.

“Must have been low level adventurers,” I said.

“Alright guys,” Watt said and equipped his battle axe before him. “Battle up. We’ve got the Bekbah people to fight.”

Burial cairns came to life in bonfire’s of green and maroon and purple. Except for Watt, we all cast our mana bars wide enough to step through.

“Garden Spider,” Arris said, and from a tumble of gossamer mana, inverted his spider’s form.