Chương 233: Chapter 332: Descent Into Darkness

When we rejoined the others, we talked about our findings.

"If that's the source of the manticores, we need to explore the chasm. The dungeon entrance might be there!" Navek said impatiently. Konstantin cast doubt on his eagerness.

"We are on a mountain, thousands of feet up. The ley lines where dungeons are located are thousands of feet below the surface. It is unlikely to lead to the dungeon, and if it did, the descent would take days and be dangerous." Raelia offered, "It could lead to a dungeon entrance." Konstantin shook his head slightly.

"Dungeons do not let creatures out of their portals. They only release them into the Endless Dark." Maveith asked, "Do you think that is what the passage we found in the Shimmering Labyrinth was?" Raelia answered without thinking.

"Maybe, but it was connected to the earth drake room, and the tunnel to the chasm was not large enough for drake." I didn't need to look at Konstantin to know he had pieced it together.

"You were in the Shimmering Labyrinth with them?"

"Raelia, meet Konstantin, Konstantin, meet Raelia," I said irritably.

"She was the Bartiradian Ranger guarding the summoner we were chasing. Sebastian's drake killed her, and I stored her for a rainy day."

"He almost killed her," Maveith added unhelpfully.

"Yeah, yeah, she was only mostly dead," I retorted. I looked at Konstantin, and it was the first time the man had looked shocked. It quickly faded, though. Raelia, seeing there was going to be no blowback, didn't end it there.

"I am also the griffin rider that Blaze shot down over Macha. I get around," she said cheerfully.

"Blaze told you he shot you down?" I asked, concerned.

"He told me how he shot down a griffin rider in the battle. I didn't tell him it was me," she replied calmly. Raelia had lost her griffin, Moonclaw, in the assault on Macha. She loved that griffin more than anything in the world, and sometimes, when I was holding her at night, she would talk about him with fondness while shedding a tear or two. Konstantin found his tongue.

"So, Eryk rescued you in Macha?"

"Not exactly," I interrupted to stem any confusion.

"She was casting a fireball at me, and it seemed like a smart move to put her in a time-out. I then used her fireball at the aqueduct to escape when I fell down the stairs." Maveith chuckled, getting the essence of my joke.

"Time-out, that is a good one, Eryk, because time doesn't pass in your dimensional space."

"You can't store spells in a dimensional space. That's not how spatial magic works," Konstantin muttered. Maveith agreed enthusiastically, "That's what I told him, but he does it anyway."

"What other spells do you have stored in there?" Konstantin said, pointing at me.

"He didn't store the spell; I was holding the spell forms when he imprisoned me," Raelia retorted amusingly. It was good that she could joke about it now.

"Ugh, why do you keep saying I imprisoned you!" I said, exasperated.

"If I didn't place you in my space, you would have been killed all three times!"

"You two fight like a married couple," Navek groused at our banter.

"What are we going to do about finding the source of the manticores?" I took another look at Konstantin to make sure he was okay with Raelia before sharing my insights.

"I think before we even consider descending, we need to confirm where the manticores are coming from. We had a great vantage point above the chasm when we found it. We could camp up there and watch."

"It will be cold on the ice shelf," Raelia muttered.

"You can use my ring," Maveith offered selflessly.

"We can burrow under the ice and snow to create a shelter and rotate watch pairs," Konstantin suggested. After further discussion, we decided to go with Konstantin's plan. It took half a day to get us all safely up the mountain, and my dimensional space removed the ice and packed snow, creating a shelter. The less intense side of my thermal stone kept the space warm. The shelter entrance was well hidden from above, and only a short thirty-yard walk to the ledge overlooking the chasm.

I created a nook to watch the lip of the chasm as well, but sometimes the cold wind blows directly into it, creating intense freezing temperatures. I was a little concerned when Raelia and Konstantin took one of the watches together. But when they returned, the pair were actually talking amicably. Konstantin even let Raelia study his runic weapons.

"It is a Death Hunter's sword," she said, holding Konstantin's favored blade.

"It is forged to counter death essence. Where did you obtain it?" I tensed, anticipating Konstantin's reply. His voice betrayed slight emotion.

"From the corpse of a Death Hunter. We fought together for a time before she fell in battle." Raelia looked for more explanation, and I didn't know the complete story myself. I thought Konstantin had encountered an elf when he was a Hound, killed the elf, and taken the blade. Konstantin continued his story after apparently gathering himself.

"I was a Hound and came across an elf hunting in Telhian lands. She was once a Bartiradian Ranger, but was now a Death Hunter. I didn't know what a Death Hunter was back then. We crossed blades, and she was my superior, disarming and holding this blade to my throat. She didn't kill me and instead asked for my aid in hunting a vampire who killed her partner." Konstantin had everyone's attention now, and Maveith and Navek paused in going to the lookout. Stolen story; please report.

"What was her name?" Raelia asked softly.

"She called herself Kaesula of Rosana. She called the vampire Orrian," Konstantin replied. Raelia's eyes flickered in recognition.

"Kaesula disappeared some twenty years ago. Orrian was her brother, a Necromancer and a Death Hunter as well." Some shock appeared on Konstantin's face. I could see him wrestling with memories and deciding how to tell the tale.

"She didn't mention that," he finally said and quickly finished his story.

"We tracked the vampire for twenty days across the Empire and cornered it in a basement during the day. Kaesula hesitated, and the vampire latched onto her neck. It was not aware of my presence, and I killed both of them with her blade while they struggled." Everyone was silent, and I was stunned by the story. I was the first one to speak.

"You worked with the enemy for three weeks?"

"She might have been a Ranger once, but she joined the Death Hunters. The Death Hunters do not affiliate themselves with any one nation, though they have one of their training citadels in Esenhem," Raelia said softly.

"Did you retrieve her legacy blade by any chance?"

"Legacy blade?" Konstantin asked softly.

"She would have worn it on her hip. Kaesula's family would want it to pass to her daughter," Raelia said in a whisper.

"She had a daughter?" Konstantin rasped out, surprised again.

"She didn't strike me as the type."

"Type?" Raelia snapped.

"She was six centuries old and well-known among all elven kind. She was one of the most incredible Rangers in Bartiradia and was a Death Hunter for centuries after that. In her lore, she killed more banshees and vampires than any other Hunter. If the story is true, she even traveled to the Isle of the Dead to hunt a fleeing vampire. She is—was a legend." Konstantin seemed to consider Raelia's words.

"I don't have her legacy blade. If I did recover it, where would I find her daughter?"

"I don't know where she is. Her daughter, the only one I am aware of, is also a Death Hunter now." Raelia seemed to search for the name in her memory.

"Chaenath. But the only way to find her is to go to one of their citadels and ask. The training is not restricted to elves, but with our longer life span, they are the preferred Hunters. I think the Death Hunter citadel in Nausis takes humans more willingly." Konstantin nodded and went to rest in one of the ice alcoves. Konstantin had just spilled more of his past in the last few minutes than I had learned in the last two years. Navek and Maveith went to watch the chasm.

Two days later, I observed a manticore flying into the chasm. It disappeared into the darkness, and we were all perplexed as to why. The following day, two manticores flew out, and Maveith had my spyglass to catch them and study them. He returned excitedly with Navek.

"Two manticores left the chasm—a male and a female!" Navek shared his thoughts, saying, "I believe the male flew down to catch the female when she left the dungeon. Mating season is just beginning, and since there are so few females, it must be known when new manticores are released! It's proof! We should descend!"

"We still don't know how deep the chasm is. As Konstantin said, if it goes all the way to the ley line, that could be thousands of feet down. We don't have enough rope to scale to such depths—or to climb out." I rationalized.

"We might not have to climb out, just down," Konstantin hypothesized.

"If we can find the dungeon access, we can exit the dungeon from inside and find where its portal is located." That made too much sense, and I guessed Konstantin had been thinking about it for some time.

"We have, what, two hundred feet of rope?" I expressed my concerns.

"As we slowly climb down, we will be easy targets for the manticores. Not to mention, we don't know what other horrors lurk in the darkness." Maveith nodded, likely recalling our encounter in the Shimmering Labyrinth. Although we never saw what was lurking below, it instilled a sense of terror, and we ran before finding out what it was.

"Baldo could carry me down quickly, and I could scout," Raelia offered fearlessly.

"He is strong enough to fly with me for a few minutes."

"Definitely not! A single manticore could target Baldo easily with its quills, and you would both fall to your deaths," I growled at her stupidity. She looked back at me defiantly.

"Who's Baldo?" Navek asked, confused, but we ignored him, preparing a test of wills against each other.

"We should climb down and inspect the chasm more closely," Konstantin offered a compromise.

"All we can see from up here is a fissure in the snow." That placated the group, and we moved out an hour later to scramble down the cliff and approach the chasm. The only thing I did not like about this plan was that we were leaving footprints in the snow. Manticores were not dumb, and if they found them before the weather hid them, they would be able to track them back to our shelter. It was late in the evening when we reached the edge of the chasm.

A low, howling wind rose from the depths, carrying warm, stale air. Water dripped into the chasm as we looked over the edge. It was completely dark below.

"Looks like it goes all the way to the abyss," Konstantin muttered.

"There looks to be a staircase on the far side," Raelia pointed out. Even with my dark vision, it was too far to see where she indicated.

"We should toss some glowstones to illuminate the far side," Maveith suggested. It would take hours to climb back up the cliff we had just descended and descend to the other side to get a closer look at what Raelia was indicating. I considered his idea.

"It would alert the manticores we were here and may draw attention from below."

"I think it would give us a good idea of how deep its chasm might be. I just hate losing my glowstone," Konstantin muttered. I sighed, and a massive block of blue glowstone appeared next to me on the rocky ledge we were standing on. I think Navek was done being surprised by my displays.

"Maveith, you can do the honors. Make a fistful of smaller stones and toss them." I had previously asked Maveith to make smaller glowstones from my blue, red, yellow, and purple glowstone blocks. He had agreed, but we just never got around to it as he had been busy on the voyage and occupied since we arrived in Eternis.

"Never seen a blue glowstone before," Konstantin said, rubbing his hand across the stone and cutting his thumb on the sharp edge. Raelia had seen the red block on the voyage, but this was her first time seeing the blue. Due to their mass, it drained a lot of aether for me to take them out.

"The red glowstone had a slight affinity for fire," Raelia offered what little she learned from the red variety.

"I am guessing the blue has an affinity for water or air."

"You have a red block this size?" Konstantin asked, amazed. I waved like it was no big deal.

"Purple and yellow, too. I was saving them for a rainy day." As Konstantin appraised me, Maveith was already using his shape stone to quickly create a bunch of small blue light stones. We let him work for ten minutes before he announced that he was out of aether. We took a few moments to prepare for a possible attack, and then Maveith threw a handful of blue stones across the chasm.

The dots of light crossed the seventy yards to the other side, with only a few landing on ledges, while most of them bounced off the wall and fell into the abyss. I was focused on watching the stones disappear into the pit as they seemed to fall forever. So far down that their light eventually faded from sight. I took it as a sign that we didn't have time or the equipment to descend. Konstantin interrupted my thoughts, saying, "Raelia was right. Those are stairs carved into the opposite wall."

I looked up, and my eyes pieced the shadows together. Shit, I thought, because I knew Konstantin's next words.

"We should go to the other side and see how far the stairs descend." © Copyrighted 2024-2026 by AlwaysRollsAOne No permission is given to translate, copy, repost, or convert this original work of fiction into audio. If you're seeing this outside of my Patreon, RoyalRoad. com, or Scribblehub. com, it has been stolen without my permission and violates the DMCA. Please remember that this work is my creative effort and is protected by copyright law.

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