Chương 17: The Gauntlet

Darkness hung heavy on our shoulders as we climbed up the steps to the fifth floor. Stick and Hollow's torches flickered, nothing more than burning embers. We relied more on my glow-stick of a sword than the actual flames for light by this point. The stairway ended in an expansive, circular room. A lone raised platform in the center, with a series of scratchy, jagged runes carved into the floor, spiraling inwards.

"What's that triangle thing poking out of the top of it?" Patch asked. [Please. It's a gnomon. Doesn't anyone read anymore?] A gnome? [A gnomon. It is the part of a sundial that casts a shadow. Please, don't tell me you didn't know this either.] There was no door in this room. No exit, save for the stairway back down. Despite that, sound traveled through the walls—the typical dungeon ambience I'd grown so accustomed to. A chain rattling. A zombie moaning. A rusty hinge squealing.

I wasn't the only one who noticed. Hollow pressed her ear up against a wall and pursed her lips.

"Is it a puzzle of some sort?" I followed the spiraling runes on the floor to the sundial. Whoever had left these marks had done so with a chisel and a hammer, and way too much time. The shapes were completely nonsensical, following no pattern or depicting anything like human language that I had ever seen. What does it say? [I don't recognize it. Be careful. This room isn't of my design.] We're going to have to have a conversation sooner or later about what you mean by that. [What do you not understand? I am not in control here. The dungeon has re-wilded. It will continue to twist and turn until we take back hold of it.] Patch ran his fingers across the runes, a sparkle of recognition in his eye.

"What is?" I asked. The red glow of my sword gave his puzzled expression a sinister hue. Patch rubbed his chin and met my eyes. He spoke with utter sincerity.

"The text is nonsense, but I think this here is a sundial. But it's all wrong." My heart raced.

"Yes, and?"

"But…well, I don't know if you noticed, but there ain't no sun in here."

"By the gods," two of the others said.

"He's right." My jaw fell. That was it?

"Thanks for your observation, Patch."

"Aye. It is why I have been chosen as one of Grelgo's most senior scouts." He tapped his head.

"I see things that others don't. Saved more than a few lives that way." The gnomon pointed straight ahead to the northern wall. I pointed.

"Can someone check that one out?" Hollow nodded and made her way there, knocking on stone and digging at gaps in the mortar to no avail. Grelgo's men chipped and chiseled at a few other sections, and I sent Explosion and Limpy to club at the walls that no one else was looking at. I raised my sword high above the sundial, hoping that more direct light would reveal something we had missed, but the wash of red only made the runes look sickly. I rounded the dais. An iron torch sat on the floor on its side.

No oiled cloth wrapped around its head. The same style of torch that lined the walls throughout the other floors. I picked it up, feeling its weight in my hand. While I had plucked a soul out of one of these soul torches in the past, I'd yet to bind one to it. By letting the goblins clear most of the dungeon for me, any souls I might have gathered by myself were lost. I only had the lone Common Soul I'd taken from the goblin ambush earlier.

The soul had taken the shape of a particularly scrappy-looking goldfish, and seemed to glare at me as I visualized it. I snatched the soul up with little effort, and focused on the torch.

"Bind." [A soul has been bound to a non-living entity. Oftentimes, the power of the soul will strengthen the object it is bound to. Other times, the object will remember itself, and function with the soul as fuel.] [Ability Manifested] [Bind: Vessel] - Bind a soul to an object. Bright blue soul-flame erupted from the head of the torch at twice the intensity of the other soul-torches I'd interacted with. Heat didn't radiate from it; instead, the fire seemed to billow cool air against my skin.

I jammed my sword into the floor, letting the blue light illuminate the room instead. A long shadow cast from the sundial, reaching out toward the northern wall that Hollow chipped at. The stone rumbled and split, a black opening yawning out in its place. [Smart. Just remember to take that soul back, please. We'll need as much as we can get to charge essence stores.] Hollow poked her head through the crumbled entryway, squinting.

"It's too dark to tell what is out there." I walked around the sundial, casting the shadow across the rest of the room. Each wall crumbled as I passed over it, sending a heavy dust to claw at our throats. When I had gone around the entire sundial, not a single wall in front of us remained. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. How the ceiling still stood above without supports, I had no idea.

"Hollow, catch," I said before tossing her the torch. She caught it and marched forward, pausing mid-stride.

"Traps." We all gathered around her as she lowered the torch to the floor, revealing a raised tile. The rest of the blue light flooded forward, light glimmering off several tripwires and other lifted pressure plates. A cry of pain echoed through the darkness. Chains rattled. I spoke out loud instead of using our internal dialogue, "Karen, is this still unfamiliar to you?" [Yes.]"Everyone, back up. I have a plan." What is the point of having undead minions if you don't use them?

"Limpy, I'm going to need you to go out there." The zombie-goblin frowned at me, shaking its head.

"You'll be fine. You're an expert at taking traps so far." He snapped his jaw at me and groaned, looking out into the abyss beyond.

"Just run as fast as you can. Try to trigger as many as possible."

"Gah," Limpy grunted in defeat. Everyone backed up toward the sundial, and Limpy charged forward. SNAP. CRACK. TWAAAANG. SNAP. CRACK. Tripwires snapped free, pressure plates hissed, and the room erupted in chaos. A fireball blasted down from above, engulfing Limpy in a superheated blaze. Flames caught along a nest of ropes high above. Some snapped, while others acted as fuses, spreading fire in all directions to ignite more traps. Shrapnel burst, a flood of arrows launched in all directions.

I could only stand and watch, jaw wide open. There was a beauty in the destruction that overtook the fear that should be coursing through me. Limpy, undeterred by the fire, sprinted onward, now nothing but a set of sprinting goblin bones. Pride swelled in my chest. With undead at my side, climbing through the tower and avoiding traps would be easy. CRACK! Another tripwire snapped as the zombie-now-skeleton continued his sprint, sending a glaive swinging down from the ceiling.

The glaive crushed into Limpy's ribcage and carried the skeleton all the way into the wall, where its entire body was pulverized into a shower of shattered bone. His soul dispersed into nothing; our connection severed. My heart tugged at the pain of it, and a glimmer of rage ran down my spine. I swallowed it, clenching my fist. I killed him. It was my fault. I had no one to blame but myself.

At the very end of the room, two massive skeletons, twice the size of the giant skeletons below, were chained to the wall, iron collars around their necks. They dual wielded the same giant curved blades, and wore an actual layer of chain mail over their exposed bones. Both pulled against their collars, screaming and drawing their chains taut—stopping them mere feet away from the swinging glaives. A dark shadow moved in the doorway between them. Its yellow eyes reflected off the flames, staring down at me.

Not eyes, but lenses. The figure wore an old plague doctor mask and was dressed in a dark black robe. A chill ran down my spine. It turned, climbing up the stairs to the next floor. Karen, what was that? [I… I'm not sure. I don't like it.] Everyone else stood still, watching the football field-sized loop of destruction play out in front of us. If anyone noticed the man on the other side of the room, they said nothing. One final CRACK!

echoed above us, and two iron chandeliers fell from the ceiling, held on by thick metal chains. Each held dozens, if not hundreds, of candles to illuminate the room. The only thing that stood in our way now were the swinging glaives and ravenous skeletons at the end of the room. Having no more need for it, I harvested the soul from the torch, bringing the Common Soul back into my core and setting the cold piece of iron back on the ground. Stick nodded and poked Hollow.

"Ladies first?" She growled at him.

"Does this mean that Limpy is gone-gone?" Patch asked, frowning.

"I think so." Patch dabbed at a tear running down his cheek.

"He died a hero, then."

"I'll go ahead," I said. After seeing Limpy's unfortunate demise, I couldn't quite bring myself to watch the same thing happen to anyone made of flesh and bone. Dead or not. I strode forward, counting heartbeats to guide my steps. The glaives swung across the room at a lazy cadence, but when you multiplied them by a few dozen, the timing became the hardest part. Sweep. Step. Sweep. Step. Sweep sweep—scream—step.

Despite my telling them to stay, a glance over my shoulder showed Hollow and Patch right on my tail, dodging through the glaives alongside me. I bit my tongue. If they wanted to put their lives on the line, who was I to stop them? The giant skeletons rattled their chains as I neared, intensifying with every step. Dust plummeted from the wall and ceiling around them, and the cracks in the mortar started to show. There would be no fighting them in the trapped field.

Our only hope for a fair fight was to get to them before they broke free. Step. Step. Duck. I let the glaive in front of me sweep past me, and I lunged forward. SNAP.

"Shit!" I shouted. An almost invisible piece of thread lay at my feet. I stumbled back, away from the glaive's backswing as the dungeon groaned. CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! Two new glaives plummeted down on either side of me. My heart raced, and I stumbled backward, falling onto my ass as they slammed into each other, sending sparks and pieces of metal at me. Another swinging blade came from my left, and I rolled out of the way, straining my neck to keep it out of the way of the swing.

I found my feet in a hurried dance, stabilizing and taking a deep breath as the glaives continued to cut around me. A clump of my hair was missing; silver threads now fluttered across the floor.

"That was close!" Stick yelled. I opened my mouth to respond when the chain attached to one of the skeleton's collars broke free. I held my breath as it passed under the sweep of a glaive. I'd been concerned about getting to the skeletons first, but in hindsight, the traps might take care of these giant skeletons just as easily as they took care of Limpy. The skeleton's blade met the glaive as it swooped down, stopping it in its tracks. The echo of steel on steel rattled my bones and pierced my ears.

I backed away, stepping blindly onto a pressure plate and triggering an arrow trap. I dropped to my knees, letting the arrow fly just over my head. The skeleton battered away two more glaives, setting off several more rows of traps as it shortened the distance between us. I scrambled away, scooting to a wall and drawing my sword in time to deflect the first of many swings. The skeleton's dual blades came down like a weed whacker, sending vibrations and numbness down my arm and deep into my spine.

All I could do was hold on for dear life. [I hate that I'm about to say this, but please waste a soul to be rid of this thing. I won't even be mad this time.] Brain blast. Channeling a soul into the torch earlier had worked. What would happen if I channeled it into my sword? There wasn't a lot of time for playing around. I snatched the lone Common Soul in my core, and huffed.

"Bind!" The sword took the soul like a vacuum, and the red runes running down its center bloomed. The Carrion Blade twisted in my hands and raised itself to meet the giant skeleton head-first. The skeleton raised both of its swords, and brought them down like a hammer. The skeleton's blades shattered.