BT IV - Chapter 17

He barely got the words out when a gust of wind rushed down the cave toward him, carrying with it a strange scent and the rustle of wings in the air.  Advanced Arcana twinged and Micah could feel something fundamentally wrong darting down the tunnel toward him.

“Get in here,” he roared over his shoulder.  “The monsters know we’re here and they aren’t happy.”

Micah ran forward, using Root Weave as he moved to create a funnel in the cave up ahead so that only two people could pass at a time.  He reached the fortification a second before Trevor, molding the still living wood until the tunnel it formed was almost a pace and a half thick.

If the dungeon’s monsters were huge or overpowering, the dense mesh of roots and wood wouldn’t be enough to stop them entirely, but with any luck it would slow them down, guide their movements so that Trevor and him could take the brunt of the coming monster wave.

The rest of the team filtered in behind him, taking their positions without the need for orders or comment.  Eris and Esther teamed up to stand to Trevor’s side, ready to handle anything that slipped past Micah’s brother while Telivern and Ravi filled the same role for him.  Directly behind the two frontline fighters, Leeka and Drekt stood ready.  Leeka with an arrow nocked, ready to fire it into the fray whenever the spearmen gave her a chance, and Drekt, cleaver casually held in both of his hands, ready to step in the second there was a sign of injury or exhaustion.

Only Sergeant Danill looked out of place.  She had a sword and shield to compliment her light armor, but it was clear she didn’t know where to stand or what to do.  Micah wasn’t sure if she didn’t have experience with dungeons in general or if the specifics of their squad’s combat was what was tripping her up, but he didn’t have time to figure it out.

Wind whooshed past him in a gust that sent Micah’s hair whipping around his ears.  Barely a second later the cave ahead of them was glowing green as hundreds of eyes rounded a corner and charged their wooden fortifications.

They were big bats, were being the operative word.  None of them what a scrap of flesh to their bones, and in the center of their rib cages where they should have been carrying a heart were green crystals, glowing with otherworldly light.  The ritual energy that fueled them turned their empty eye sockets into green torches, burning with angry power that screamed of Elsewhere.

Beyond the teeth clenching wrongness of the dread chorus, Micah could feel them.  Each and every one of the bats was an abomination, an affront to all order and life on Karell.

Micah tossed a Wind Blade into their ranks as the monsters charged.  One of the leading skeletal bats exploded, peppering its companions with shards of bone and crystal, but leaving them otherwise unharmed.

An arrow zipped past his shoulder, close enough that Micah could feel airflow from its passage tugging at him.  It struck one of the creatures, shattering a couple of ribs and wedging itself a hand’s span deep inside the crystal.  Green fire engulfed the monster, burning away the arrow and filling the narrow hallway with a burst of light.

Energy washed over Micah and he stumbled over the words to Haste, barely finishing the spell for Trevor.  Memories flashed over him.  Of days spent in the frigid cold working a trap line.  Of coming back to the outpost to play checkers with Daniels in front of the fire, barely able to feel his fingers despite the flickering light.  Of going to sleep under a fur blanket in a tiny bed only to wake up to the sound of wings in the night.  Of being ripped from his body, twisting in the air and seeing his body resting peacefully with its eyes closed before he was pulled seamlessly through the roof of his cabin without leaving a single mark.

Micah gasped for breath, jerking backward for a second as his brain struggled with the alien memories.  He didn’t even know a man named Daniels.

Then, there wasn’t any more time for doubt or spells.  Questing tendrils of mist darted out from the approaching horde of bats, ignoring the walls of wood that Micah had constructed as they reached out to touch their team.

The ephemeral tentacles weren’t very fast.  If there were only one or two, it would have been easy for everyone present to avoid them, but dodging a clustered mass while they were stuck in a crowded hallway was impossible.

One brushed past him, and Micah felt a gentle tug on his soul, like a newborn grasping his finger and pulling.  Reflexively, his Arcana skill grabbed the tendril and ripped downward.  For a moment there was a feeling of tension as it resisted him, and a flash of light drew Micah’s gaze back to the oncoming horde of bats as one of them exploded into green flames.

Trevor grunted, his amulet, a copy of the same necklace that Micah had forged for every member of the party to protect them in their final fight to uncover Dakkora’s artifacts glowing as it bestowed the benefits of the Arcana skill on him.  It wasn’t enough to enable the man to remotely kill one of the bats the way Micah did, but it protected him from whatever the attack was.

Almost as one, both of their spears whipped forward, pulverizing a pair of the skeletal bats as  puffs of mana from TI- Trevor’s martial art creed blasts of wind that sent their remains flying in every direction.

Another arrow sailed past him, shattering the skull of one of the monsters, but the skeleton barely noticed.  Along with its flesh it had lost the need for a brain.  Still, the attack knocked it off balance, and unless Micha missed his guess it was currently flying blind.

Micah thrust again, destroying another bat.  Even more of the tentacles were slipping through the Root Weave or passing through the cavern walls in order to attack their group, but every one of his companions still wore the protective amulets he had crafted on the-

Esther shrieked.

Before Micah could assess what drew her reaction, Leeka’s shout resolved the mystery.

“Danill!”

He cast Explosive Thicket, letting the roots rip apart the front wave of the bats to buy himself a moment and spun in place.  The sergeant had collapsed.  A pair of translucent tentacles held an oval cocoon of whitesh blue light above her prone body.

“Drekt!” Micah yelled, leaping away from the barricade and toward the downed scout.  “Swap!”

The huge warrior rumbled past him, bringing his cleaver up and preparing for the first of the monsters to try and slip through the funnel.

Micah didn’t have time to worry about the bat’s bodies.  He dropped his spear, reaching out with each of his hands to grab each of the monsters’ pseudopods.  It was like grabbing a live coal.

Red hot pain seared both of his hands as he felt the creatures tugging at his soul.  Flashes of Danill’s memories sought to distract him.  A childhood event here, her induction ceremony into the army there, and even a dinner with her girlfriend.  All of them blurred together in under a second before Micah pushed them aside.

He snared both of the magical tendrils with his Arcana skill, squeezing them until they detonated.  Micah didn’t bother to look back.  Trevor and Drekt were skilled enough warriors to ensure that none of the monsters broke through their defenses.

His hand touched the oval of light and magic.  More memories from the sergeant bubbled to the surface but Micah didn’t pay them any mind.  Instead, he dug his fingers into what could only be the woman’s soul.

Flesh passed easily through the ball of light, but Arcana and Major Arcana activated simultaneously.  Without questioning where the ability came from, Micah gently took hold of the soul and slowly pushed it back into Danill’s still body.

Her chest heaved, but the woman’s eyes didn’t open. Without looking up, Micah clasped both of his hands together, placing them on her sternum before sinking his power and perception deep into her body.

The bound core of her blessing, a ball made from an unknown material and covered in runes that were almost too fine and intricate to comprehend, sat dark and empty.  The woman’s soul lit the surrounding space, but none of that energy actually sat in the seat of her being.

Once again, Micah grabbed hold of her essence, guiding it slowly toward the blessing.  It vibrated, reacting to the woman’s soul.  As he brought it closer, the ball of light seemed to leave his grip, drawn by an unseen power until it merged with the rune inscribed ball.

Then, nothing happened.  He could feel that her spirit was in the right spot, but the sergeant’s body wasn’t moving.  Beside shallow breaths, her eyes were still closed and the runes of her blessing were dull and inert.

He reached out with his mind, tracing the first sigil inscribed on the blessing.  It was hard.  The glyph itself was impossibly complex, inscribed in minute detail by an inhumanly steady hand.  More than that, it felt like he was pushing his mind through mud.  Like he was waist deep in a river and pushing his way upstream.

An unknown force resisted him, buffeting the pinpoint of light that was the center of his perception.  As Micah continued tracing the rune, it only became more difficult.  Intricacies that would flummox Dakkora in her prime developed and multiplied all while the unknown resistance multiplied.

Sweat beaded on his forehead, pouring down Micah’s face and soaking his shirt.  Then, just as he was beginning to wonder if he could finish the impromptu ritual, the first rune burst into flames.

Not the sickly green flame of Elsewhere, but a healthy violet light.  One after another, the other runes sprang to life.  Beneath his hands, the sergeant was wracked by coughs.

She opened her eyes just as Micah removed his hands from her chest.  The sergeant blinked, opening her mouth to ask a question only for Micah to answer before she could speak.

“Just think of it as magical cpr.  The monsters in here aren’t normal.  They aren’t all that strong, but they have the ability to rip your soul from your body if someone hasn’t hardened it.  You should stay back while we finish the rest of the run.  I don’t think that this is actually a dungeon break.”

Shouts and the sound of metal on bone filtered back into his perception, the hyperfocus of his magical operation on the stunned woman beginning to fade.  There were still tentacles of energy pushing through the wooden wall, but at least three quarters of them were gone.  At some point Telivern had taken over for Drekt while Esther and Eris were working together to cover the other half of the wooden funnel.

Micah stood up, hooking a toe under his spear and flicking the weapon into the air where he snatched it with ease.  He eyed the thinning flock of bats, hand darting out to grab another invisible tentacle and blow its owner up with an Arcana overload.

Once he had a better idea of the situation, he began tossing Pressure Spears into the fight, knocking bats out of the air before they could threaten the girls.  Rarely, he’d grab one of their spirit tendrils, destroying one of the monsters, but by and large he let Leeka, Eris and Esther take the lead.

The three of them needed to improve their skills, and now that Micah understood the nature of the dungeon, the threat posed by the monsters diminished.  He was ready to heal any wounds at a moment’s notice, but given the narrow aperture that the bats needed to push their way through, so long as the fighters stayed sharp there wouldn’t be any real risk.

Ten minutes later, the last bat fell to the ground, wriggling and burning as Esther’s spear punched through the gemstone.  Another wave of phantom memories washed over Micah, but over the course of the battle it had happened so many times that it was easy to push the images aside.

“What are they?”  The sergeant asked, arms clasped across her stomach as she looked at the piles of shattered skeletons.  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like them.”

Micah ducked slightly as he walks through the Root Weave funnel, kicking some of the bones aside before reaching down and picking up a shard of crystal.  Its energy was gone, converted into fire and dark green ichor that stained the cavern floor.

“I’ve seen something like them,” he replied.  “The daemon cults running Pereston used them as batteries for souls.  There are worse things a ritual can sacrifice than someone’s life.”

“You mean I was bound for a ritual?” Dannil questioned, the blood draining from her face.  “Crap.  I thought I was having an out of body experience after they knocked me out with a spell.  I didn’t realize that they, you know.”

“Unless I miss my guess,” Micah responded, spear at the ready as he neared the corner that the bats had flown around to attack them, “there’s a dread chorus in here.  It lets them squeeze out the life essence of a blessed like a sponge and empower a forgotten, usually at the price of their sanity.”

“It’s an awful but useful ability,” Leeka chimed in with a shudder.  “They kill an enemy and create a suicidally loyal, rabidly demented, and super-charged cultist.  The perfect tool for creating an army out of thin air.  Even dock hands become as tough to fight as high level monsters.”

Micah rounded the corner.  He was right about the cave not being a dungeon.  There was only one more massive room, hidden from the outside by the curve of the tunnel, and that chamber was clearly not the creation of Ankros or any other god.

The ceiling was covered in roosts for the skeletal bats, pairs of wooden planks with metal rods stuck between them so that the monsters’ talons wouldn’t shred them.  The room itself stretched on for hundreds of paces, past empty cages designed for humans and tables covered with wicked looking sacrificial equipment next to half drawn ritual circles.  Finally, it ended in a large limestone wall, the backdrop for the horrifying bone instruments of the dread chorus and what looked like the biggest brown bear that Micah had ever seen.

“You are only half right,” a deep male voice echoed across the room as the bear turned, revealing the unclothed torso of a muscular man embedded in its furry body where there would ordinarily be a head.  “The rituals make us stronger, they don’t drive us mad.  An ordinary human might think that they rob us of our faculties, but they couldn’t be more wrong.  The Third Prince’s powers clear our minds.  It reveals the cruel truth about this doomed world.”

Micah cocked his head as he continued walking toward the chorus.  The rest of his group filed in behind him as he squinted at the man.  Runic tattoos covered his chest and biceps, and even across the room Micah could feel the ritual energy residing in them.

Halfway across the chamber he stopped.  The man-bear had taking a couple steps away from the chorus.  Not enough to be all that close to Micah but enough to indicate his desire to fight.  Finally, Micah spoke up.

“You’re half-bear.  You’re trying to convince me of your sanity and your righteousness after you fused your torso with a gods bedamned bear.”

“I have stripped away the weakness of my human flesh!”  He shouted back, tattoos flaring to life as they shone with an eerie green light.  “Once I replace my harvesters I will be able to create an entire army for the Prince.  Then your pathetic armies will tremble before our might.  I will present it with the world solely so that the Prince can delight itself by destroying it.”

“Thank you for the correction,” Micah replied, reaching out with his mind to touch the jagged edges of the magic and ritual holding the beartaur together.  “You are completely sane and normal and there is nothing whatsoever strange about mutating your body and ranting about destroying the entire planet.”

The man’s brow furrowed, his lips moved silently for a second as he repeated Micah’s words to himself.  Then, realization dawned and anger flared across his visage as his hands reached into his fur emerging with a fist sized emerald that glowed brightly enough to be a torch.

“You’re mocking me!” He yelled, his voice unbearably loud.  The tattoos on his arms burned as light from the green gem flowed into them.  “I was going to save up the soul batteries for the Prince’s army of forgotten, but I bet it would be just as happy if I destroyed you here and now.

Micah fought back a chuckle at the adjective his mind had chosen for his opponent’s screech.

Heh.  Unbearable.

He waved his hand and channeled his perception through the crown.  Arcana twisted together with his ability to control more traditional magic and the combined force of his will touched the ranting bear-man.  Major Arcana flared to life.

The man stiffened and the light of his tattoos disappeared like a candle in a tempest.  His eyes widened, and his human upper half slid to the side, falling off of the bear torso and plopping to the floor.  A second later, the animal body collapsed.

The human torso burst into green flame.  A moment after, the bear’s body began to rot at an accelerated rate.  In five minutes there would be nothing but a skeleton.

“That’s it?” Trevor asked from behind him, walking up to where Micah stood to observe the aftermath.  “You barely had to do anything.”

“His magic was strong but poorly constructed,” Micah replied with a shrug.  “If you can see how the entire thing is pieced together, it actually isn’t that hard to take it back apart again.  It’s not like fighting a daemon.  Attacking their essence is like eating soup with a fork.  It just flows away before you can damage it.”

Leeka and Drekt joined him while the animals, Esther and Eris stayed behind with the sergeant, protecting the startled woman from any residual monsters.

“I’m glad you ended that quickly,” Leeka said soberly.  “I don’t know if I could bear another five minutes of him ranting about how powerful he was.”

“Wait,” Micah hissed, eyes narrowing.  “You’re doing this on purpose aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Leeka replied innocently.

“I still can’t believe that he tried to fight you bare-chested,” Trevor interjected.  “At a very minimum a set of enchanted armor would have helped a lot.”

“One of these days I’m going to turn both of you into dogs during the middle of a thunderstorm,” Micah said darkly.  “You’ll deserve it.”

Trevor and Leeka both burst into laughter.  Even Drekt managed to crack a smile despite his somber demeanor.  After a moment, Micah relented, joining his friends.

Leeka punched him in the shoulder affectionately, and Micah stuck his tongue out in reply.  Warmth filled his chest.

The world might be in the process of burning down, but he wasn’t alone.  Eris, Esther, Telivern, Ravi, Drekt, Trevor and Leeka were right there beside him.  Years ago, he’d have fallen into a rut, tried to solve all of the problems himself in a fit of self-important melodrama.  Now?

“Come on,” he responded, hitting Leeka playfully on the shoulder with enough force to stagger but not hurt her.  “It’s time to start gathering evidence.  This idiot is what we need to prove our point to the royal family, but I doubt Baron Harris will take our word for it.”