Chương 16: -16- Guiding Hand

Calder - Still Stone Barrow Calder's eyes met the pleading ghost's as he activated Shepherd of Souls. The air around him shimmered and crackled with golden motes of energy. Where his hand touched the ghost's, he felt a pull, a draw from something powerful, something that was pleased to have one of its lost children shepherded back to its loving embrace. The air rippled even further before splitting open into a tear into the beyond, far greater than the one Calder had created on his own.

Past it was darkness and shadows, but looming almost impossibly close was a blindingly bright source of golden light. Calder instinctually knew what to do; he guided the ghost with one hand, gesturing for him to step through. The golden shimmer was already starting to drift farther away with each passing second. The ghost took a scared step forward, and its form turned into a silver-gold mist as it crossed the border drawn towards the nearby domain.

The mist was absorbed by the god's influence and disappeared from sight. The source of light drifted further away after claiming its wayward soul. Calder braced as the rift tried to close itself and managed to hold it open with surprisingly little effort. Alright… I guess that's all I have to do… Calder looked around; tranquility was spilling into the room, seemingly displaced by the soul he had passed on.

Freezing the floor and walls as it billowed around him, cutting out most of the hints of sunlight streaming from the entrance. He extended both hands and began drawing the tranquility into himself as fast as he could. It was still like grasping for handfuls of water, but his control was getting better. His grasp began slowly rising upwards, and to his relief, this method of gathering the beyond didn't seem to raise his gaze.

A still minute passed as he gathered as much as he could, the rest starting to dissipate into the air, overwhelmed by the ambient mana. [Grasp of the Beyond 49/100] [Gaze of the Beyond 5/100] Calder could feel the tear in reality still wanted to close all he had to do was relax the tiny bit of will he still had keeping the skill active. But that seemed like a wasted opportunity both for grasp and for a moment of experimentation. Nothing ventured… nothing gained.

I also would avoid the risk of summoning any eldritch abominations, but fuck it, I'm going to top off my damn grasp if I can. Calder took a deep breath and stepped towards the tear into the beyond the golden light was fading to subtle distant glow. He looked around and then slowly reached into the beyond itself. His hand felt like it was pushing through deep icy water as it passed into the shadowy realm. His skin crawled as the beyond burned away the traces of ambient mana his hand had carried along with it.

Calder could feel it, the swirling endless eddies of tranquility stretching from his hand into an infinite distance. With a nervous smile, he focused on the sensation and pulled inward with his tranquility shaping as hard as he could. Like an unquenchable avalanche, it crashed into him and then past him, around him, and back into the real world. He held there, still, for nearly a minute, his grasp trickling upwards quickly. The energy was pouring into the roiling mote of darkness faster than ever before.

His gaze trickled upwards as well but more slowly than the last time he had tried something like this. Then suddenly the Gaze of the Beyond jolted from 10 to 50; something had taken notice. The tranquility around Calder's hand seized like a vice grip. He pulled back, trying to free it, but a deep rumbling voice echoed from somewhere in the expanse. Each word burned veins of sickly purple light into existence in the distance.

"Ahhh, a morsel delves where it shouldn't, steals what it can, and gazes… upon… me." The endless horizon split as a single eye began opening, blotting out the twinkling domains and shifting presences with its sheer scale. [Grasp Of The Beyond 89/100] [Gaze of The Beyond 50/100] No, absolutely not Close! Fucking close! Calder pulled as hard as he could the tranquility shifting almost like quicksand around his arm tightening the harder he pulled.

He closed his eyes and desperately tried to wrestle control of it imagining it scattering from his arm. His will met an infinite thing a presence that threatened to drag his mind spiraling into the dark. The massive eye in the distance pulsed slightly, sending lightning strikes of purple energy through the cosmos.

"A wielder… A mortal shaper of the sea... Rare, usefullll." It rumbled, drawing out the last word impossibly. Calder gave one last panicked attempt this time a surge of pure tranquility shot from his arm scattering some of death grip the thing beyond had on him. He continued pushing the beyond away with the little bit of the tranquility that was under his control as he set his feet and heaved pulling so hard his arms threatened to tear from the socket. Finally he felt a shift and tore his way backwards.

He fell heavily to the stone floor of the dungeon, gasping for breath. Ice traced across his body and out to the mouth of the cave in maddening sigils that melted impossibly fast as the thing on the other side slowly started closing its eye. Parting words escaped the closing rift, battering Calder's mind and soul alike.

"When we meet again…I will have an offer…" He crawled across the ground trying to moor himself as small drops of crimson fell from his eyes and ears shattering as they hit the ground. Calder gave up on regaining his balance and just lay on his back in the frosty cave.

"That was fucking horrible." He said quietly to himself. Dectus had watched all of that occur in increasing concern but now that the rift had closed he went from panicked looking to just stressed rubbing his brows in frustration.

"Maybe don't do whatever the fuck that was again yeah? I don't have the slightest clue how your ghost tickling stare into the void nonsense works but I'm going to be pissed if I put in the effort to train you up and your head pops like a ripe melon because you looked at something you shouldn't have." Dectus called upon Make material himself to utter the very unnecessary quip"Yeah.. yeah got it… drawing directly from the sea while part of me is in the sea is a very, very bad idea…"

Calder sat up then staggered to his feet checking over his body to make sure that little misadventure hadn't caused any real harm. Other than a pounding headache and nausea the encounter seemed to have rattled him more than crippled him. I cannot underestimate the things I am meddeling with. My greed almost got me killed there and all I did was dip a damn finger straight into the tap instead of settling for the tranquility that washed out.

Because of that I probably won't be able to safely try and open a small rift to refill my Grasp for days. If I do that now…. It.. is almost certainly waiting. He took a few minutes to gather himself and stretch his sore arms before starting a slow, cautious descent downward, lighting a torch on the way. Dectus swirled in front of him.

"Such a smart change you made letting me be in control of when I talk and stab folks." Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. Calder noticed when he spoke only his upper half flickered into the real world like a ripple rushing out from his head then fading before it reached even halfway down Dectus's body.

"How are you doing that that seems much more efficient.." Dectus shrugged.

"I practiced creepily whispering while you were asleep, not too hard; it's like drawing a pool of water over myself. Instead of dunking my whole body, like when I want to stab some poor fool, I just splash my face, so to speak. Also, I am a talented genius who was remembered throughout the ages." Calder sighed; he didn't really understand the metaphor Dectus had used, but he suspected it didn't matter as long as it meant him talking would be a minimal draw on his very limited grasp of the beyond.

[Grasp of the Beyond 61/100] [Gaze of the Beyond 50/100] He still had quite a bit to work with even after his mad escape from the thing beyond. And he needed to make it count. Dectus didn't need it to fight ghosts or other immaterial things, but Calder sure as hell did. The stone passageway he wound down crunched underfoot in an uneven layer of gravel, the tunnel slowly narrowing to a single cart width. Ahead, the uneven chime of a metal pick on stone rang out.

Calder came around a slight turn and saw a single figure sitting on a stool with a small pickaxe in one hand and a staff leaning against their shoulder while they worked on a tiny piece of ore in the wall. The adventurer looked over at Calder and gave a halfhearted wave. They were in their mid-thirties with an unkempt beard and some rather disheveled-looking wizard robes.

"Hey, can you not do whatever you did up there again? I've been freezing my ass off for the last ten minutes. The figure paused, seeming to regret how harshly that had come across.

"Sorry, my name is Lorel; you must be new… Ahh, well, whatever anti-ghost item you just burned up there, you wasted it. Nothing this far up is really dangerous." Lorel gestured at the stone he was working on and brought his pick down hard on it, knocking the finger-sized chunk from the wall. A wispy energy trailed upwards, looking like a leering skull. Lorel just waved his hand through it, and it dispersed like a thick fog.

"See?" Calder nodded and played along.

"Ahh, wow, thank you. I appreciate it; I'm just new at this. Got any tips?"

"Sure, the stuff around here is so diluted you don't even have to worry about releasing anything dangerous when you mine the darksteel; of course, it also isn't worth much, but..." He shrugged.

"Better than fighting ghosts. If you go down far enough to start seeing undead, though, it's another story; the ore down there has really been steeping in the evil of this place. The deeper you go, the more pure it is, but you know it's also more likely to kill ya." Calder nodded along with the information.

"Thank you very much! Sorry for the... chill." Lorel waved his hand dismissively.

"Good luck. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a lot more little pieces to grab if I'm going to be eating anything decent tonight." He shuffled his stool slightly farther down the wall and started working on another minuscule hunk of dark steel ore. Calder left him in peace and wandered farther into the dungeon. So far it looked more like a halfhearted mine that just had an oppressive aura about it than any dungeon he had imagined. He took Lorel's advice although not in the way he was sure it was intended.

He headed down farther and farther ignoring any small chunks of ore he saw instead searching for signs of undead. The tunnel wound down through a pair of large mineshaft rooms and then to its first branching path, nearly thirty minutes' walk from the surface. A squared-off room with a tiny shack and row of minecarts lay on the right side of the room. Straight ahead, a minecart track disappeared into a dark tunnel.

But on the left side a stone staircase stood out, heading down sharply into what Calder imagined was part of the expansive ruins dotted all across the coastline that the dungeon seemed to originate from. Calder drew his blade and stepped down the well-worn stone stairs. They wound down to another room. Calder skipped it, continuing down another level. At this one, he paused long enough to listen for the sounds of movement that might indicate undead.

He heard a slight dry creaking sound below, but it was from the next level down on the stairs, so with a sigh he continued downward again. At this point, Dectus floated in front of him with a raised eyebrow. Calder shrugged and unsheathed his blade, slowly creeping down the stairs and into a room that blessedly had a slight fungal illumination.

Stalactites hung from the ceiling as he stepped off the stairs; ruddy red fungal growth trailed from the ceiling to the floor, looking like saliva dripping from the fangs of a mighty beast. They glowed with just enough red light to let Calder see the outline of the floor ahead. He stepped in slowly, taking steady, deep breaths. Something ahead was shuffling his way; it stumbled into the eerie red illumination, showing him his first undead. Calder braced as he beheld it and was left, almost disappointed…

It was a corpse, skin tight across bones, with obvious mortal wounds riddling its torso and tattered clothes, and behind it, it dragged an almost uselessly mangled sword.

"Really? Huh…wow, okay, maybe being a damn grave keeper has prepared me for this dungeon more than I would have expected. Stand still, or don't, but I'm going to free you. This is…mild compared to the things I have seen because of my own questionable choices." Much of the tension that had been building in Calder during his descent washed away as the creature practically inched towards him. He pointed his spotter in its direction to get at least a level readout on his foe. [Wretched Corpsewalker Tier-1](lvl 7).

"Just a generic bottom-of-the-barrel zombie, eh?" Calder glanced at Dectus to see where he was angling himself for the fight. To Calder's surprise, he was leaning against a nearby rock.

"Don't look at me like that; you need the damn practice. You fight like a toddler handed a club. I'll intervene if I have to, but if you're going to actually get better, practice and correction are the way to do it. Now try not to fall over." Dectus waved his hand at Calder in a "Get to it" motion. Fucking asshole… He's not wrong but still an asshole. Calder still took the oncoming foe seriously; they were famous for being almost randomly hard to keep dead.

Cutting a head off might kill it or might not; sometimes, according to his grandpa, you had to cut them into literal pieces. The Corpsewalker swung its sword in a wide sideways swing, stumbling forward as it did so. Calder raised his blade to the side and easily blocked the blow, stopping the monster cold in its tracks. Dectus sighed loudly behind him.

"Wrong, parry, step past, bisect. Shouldn't be fucking hard with that slab of steel." The ghost "helpfully" corrected. Calder grumbled and jumped backwards to create space and reset his stance. He held his blade chest-level, tilted slightly forward. This time the Corpsewalker flailed in two overhand slashes. Calder leaned back to avoid the first; the second smoothly slid across his upraised sword and past him. He smiled, stepping past his foe and giving it a shove as he went by.

He spun a full circle, the blade careening around in a cataclysmic arc. It hit the monster midback and cleaved through the brittle bones and nearly through the full torso, sticking slightly in the sternum. Calder frowned and kicked the creature off his blade. It landed in a tangled heap with its top half tilting sideways, holding on by a sliver of bone and rotten muscle.

"Better, but maybe don't fucking spin and show your back to the enemy. If that had been something with an iota of skill, you would have gotten a sword straight up your asshole for that. Calder frowned at Dectus.

"I've seen you spin in fights!" He protested. Dectus raised an eyebrow and pointed at himself.

"Master swordsman." Then pointed at Calder, "Toddler with a club." Calder let out a huff of anger that would have made most foes flee, but the corpse walker simply staggered up to its feet and swung itself towards him again. This time Calder caught the sword arm mid-swing with his left hand and rammed the tip of the great sword straight through its face, lifting it off the ground with the sheer force. Calder looked at Dectus, expecting judgment.

"What, you want a fucking mug of ale? You stuck it in the face with the pointy end; that's kind of the basic goal." Was Dectus's sarcastic encouragement. The damned undead suddenly started struggling in Calder's grasp again even with the blade through its face.

"The hell?" Calder protested before ripping the sword out of its hand by twisting that arm uncomfortably backwards. The creature still struggled with its one arm, trying to reach into his eyes. Calder shoved it off his blade and then whipped it down in an overhead slash that chopped through from the neck to the navel, splitting the monster open down the middle like a spilled bag of grain. It finally stopped moving. Calder huffed, catching his breath as the sounds of more shuffling steps approached the room.

Dectus turned that way, obviously hearing it as well when he popped back in to make a quip.

"Oh good, perfect targets for you, slow and tough enough to weather a hit or four. Now try and take down the laughably unskilled enemies without giving yourself a heart attack." Then, in a less jovial tone, he added.

"Parry, counter reset. Let's see it, oh student of mine."