Chương 52

A lonely note pierced the blanket of silence, its longing tone bouncing off the sky. The desolate sound reverberated and reflected, then was joined by more hollow cries, hundreds of anguished howls, a cacophony of craving calls all pulling at the moon as it responded, rejoicing in discordant echoed wails. The world, the roots and dirt beneath Fritz's feet quaked, he could feel the sound shaking his whole body from the inside out and ringing in his bones.

All at once t he silver sky was too heavy, he fell to a knee and began to weep tears of anguish that weren't his own. He screamed his own outrage, his own agonies at the crying moon, his own voice adding, blending with the hounds' haunting, despairing chorus. As suddenly as they started the howls cut off, the moon rang out for some moments longer, a desperate peal that quickly droned into nothingness. Fritz was released from the terrible weight and overwhelming sorrow.

Silence and stillness reasserted its dominion, leaving his heart feeling hollow and his throat feeling hoarse. Fritz wiped the tears that weren't his own from his eyes and looked around for Bert and Sid. They had remained stiff and standing, covering their ears with their hands with eyes tightly closed.

"It's over," Fritz said, his words a rasping weedy thing after the moon's scream. His friends didn't heed him so he stood with a slight wobble, soon corrected his feet and walked steadily to his crew's sides. He placed a hand on each of their shoulders and shook them gently as if trying to wake them from a nightmare while keeping a wary eye and a sore ear on their surroundings. Bert was first to unscrunch his face and peer through his surprisingly bloodshot eyes.

Sid's strained gaze didn't look much better as Fritz met it with his own. His eyes must have looked just as bad if not worse as Sid's stern expression was shaded with startlement and worry.

"You okay?" Fritz whispered to her, quickly heading off her own inquiries.

"I'm great, thanks for asking," Bert said quietly, but in the silence of the basin his voice seemed to boom and echo of the root walls. Fritz winced and any chance at a tender moment between him and Sid was completely blown away. He nearly turned to glare at his friend but was halted by Sid's gruffly soft words.

"I'm okay. You?"

"Almost there, the howl hit me hard. Awareness didn't do me any favours there I suspect," Fritz said. Sid nodded and put a hand on his as it still lay upon her shoulder. They stood there for a moment.

"Same plan as last time?" Bert asked striding towards the skeleton by the root wall. Sid pulled her hand away from Fritz's and he let his hand fall from her metal-clad shoulder.

"I'm thinking we skip the scout ahead. I have a bad feeling about getting split up on this floor," Fritz suggested.

"Fair enough, this thing look familiar to you?"' Bert asked prodding the blight hound remains with his foot. Fritz stared at the too-white bones that uncanny worry seeping into his gut again, "Yes, it's the same blight hound I kicked into this basin, remember?" Bert's head snapped up to look at him, "Really? But it's been a week or maybe two at most. This thing has been here... forever," he said sombrely.

"I'm as sure as the Spire stands," Fritz said. Bert shivered, the most outward display of discomfort he had seen from the unflappable man in years.

"We've been gone from here for a long time," Sid said.

"How are the hounds still alive? What did they eat?"

"Maybe other climbers? Or maybe each other," Fritz said disgusted at the thought. Bert stood, shrugged off whatever had been bothering him and said, "Maybe it's just magic." His tone was hopeful but Fritz knew well enough that he didn't believe his own words.

"Makes no sense," Sid grunted.

"Best not to think about things like this. That's what I do and I'm perfectly fine," Fritz boasted.

"Sure," Sid said wearily.

"A sane, gallant, genius, that's me alright," Fritz haughtily espoused.

"I've never once worried about anything, ever, in my life,""Except cats," Bert interjected.

"Excepting cats," Fritz agreed proudly. Sid looked at him blankly, but he could see a faint smile threatening to break over her lips. Bert merely grinned, and motioned to the pale roots, saying "Well, after you, our most sane sneak-thief." Fritz obliged, striding to the pale wall, gripping the dry, chalky roots and climbing up and over the wall's surface. His arm ached as he did so but he was able to push through without much trouble, just pain.

His still numbed hand was about as clumsy as he expected but at least now it worked and he was over the lip in moments. He stared into the forest beyond and reeled at the desolation time had wrought. The once ancient, now dead, trees that had once been gnarled and brown with a canopy of decaying green, lay barren, bleached and bare. It was like a desert of grey populated with innumerable tall, spindly skeletons that stood still as the grave.

Their branches didn't creak and the rustling of leaves had long since ceased to be. The air was eerie and without life, purpose or promise. The lattices of bleached wooden branches were woven together as if they died with their leafless hand-like twigs held together in one last comfort. Under the shading limbs of the trees was a web of deep shadows pierced through with sparse lances of silver light. Fritz had no doubt that within the threads and pools of darkness, the hounds waited; horrible and hungry.

Fritz's legs shook, but only for a moment as he marshalled his Control directing it to douse an y fear he may feel from the sight and the knowledge that they were to be hunted again. He let himself feel for the Stairway, pointing his Door Sense in the direction that he had found it before. He was gratified when at the edge of his mind he felt a tingling affirmation of its location. No need to find a tree to climb this time, he thought to himself reflecting a little on how far they'd come.

Now I can just know where things are, it's like, well, magic. That small observation helped put him at ease, they weren't the same Powerless, leveless people they once were. He knew the floor would still be hard and cruel, but not impossible.

"Not impossible," he repeated aloud.

"What?" Bert asked in a whisper staring in awe at the forest.

"Nothing," Fritz answered in a soft voice. Sid seemed to have heard him talking to himself and gave him a tight smile and a nod.

"No time like the present," Fritz intoned as he took his first stealthy steps under the pale branches and into the shadows where the moon could no longer gaze down on him. The dark was thick in the forest as was the layer of heavy dust that he disturbed with his quiet strides. He kept his senses taut and, remembering the hound's ability to blend into shadows, he made himself ready to act in a split second.

His friends followed from about nine feet away, he could see worry on their faces but they steeled themselves and Fritz led them deeper into the dark. Up ahead one of the shafts of light flickered for a moment and Fritz motioned his crew to stop and to be on alert. There was something there, something getting closer, he couldn't see it, hear it or smell it but some intangible sense warned him that it was there. He also got the distinct impression that it wasn't just one creature stalking them in the gloom.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. Fritz waited, watching for the hounds with his fish blade in one hand and his bone dagger in the other. A tearing, sensation bit into his leg, it didn't exactly hurt, it was like a memory of pain he was yet to feel. It was a strange and startling new feeling but Fritz recognised it for what it was, his Danger Sense warning him of a blight hound's lunging bite.

He dodged, rapidly repositioning his leg and the feeling of fangs faded from his flesh. Less than a second later he heard the snapping of jaws and a hideous growl. The monster had leapt out at him ripping at the air in a frenzy, its jaws missing his leg by mere inches. Fritz swung down with his fish blade but hit nothing but the dusty floor, the frighteningly quick hound had already bounded away back into the shadows and disappeared from his sight.

In the brief moment it had been visible and Fritz had gotten a startling surprise. H orrible changes had been wrought to the creatures if they even were the same be a sts as before. He clenched the hilts of his weapons tighter as he reconciled what he had seen with what he remembered of the monsters. This creature didn't resemble the thin, mangy black hounds of before, no this thing was far more monstrous.

It was bigger for one, reaching up to his sternum in height and it was skeletal, bald and pale save a greasy mane of black matted fur protruding from the back of its long neck and skull-like head. Its bone-white claws and fangs stuck out sharply, larger and sharper and leaking that viscous black tar-venom. It was emaciated, nearly all its muscle gone, he had seen the ridges of its spine cleanly and could count its ribs just as easily, by all rights it shouldn't be able to move in such a state of deprivation.

Yet it did, and it hunted him. Have to be quicker, Fritz scolded himself. As soon as you feel the danger stab at the hound. He watched and waited again, poised to strike as soon as he felt that not-quite-painful sensation. Sweat beaded on his forehead and he worried that the hound might go after his crew instead when the feeling flared, the pre-memory of fangs around and in his calf. Fritz thrust his fish blade forward and into the hound's path as its shadow-meld broke and it lunged towards his leg.

Quicksilver skewered the monster in its hollow eye socket and the hound died quickly, twitching and letting out a hateful whine. Another warning from Danger sense pulsed over Fritz's still thrusting arm. He let go of his stuck fish blade as the creature impaled on it slumped with a muffled thump on the dusty ground. Cloaking his bone dagger in both its curse and Gloom Strike he brought it up under the next hound's head as it bit where his arm had been not even moments before.

Momentum kept the hound hurtling past but it crashed into a skeletal tree showering those below it with white ash-like powder. The flakes fell over and outlined a pack of seven more hounds lurking in the dark by Sid and Bert. Fritz let out a cry of warning and Sid spun quickly to face one of their now apparent ambushers. An arrow soared through its skull and pinned its head to a tree. Bert let loose with his Corrosive Spray catching two of them with the gout of sour, searing liquid.

There was another feeling of impending pain over his shoulders, back and neck and Fritz reflexively activated his ring and leapt to the side. He ducked under the suddenly appearing hound's gnashing jaws but he wasn't quite quick enough to dodge its clawed paw as it raked over his barrier. It dispersed with a hum and the monster's thin forelimb pushed him to the ground with surprising strength, a sharp claw d igging through his scales and into his back. Fritz hit the ground on his belly, winded but not stunned.

He rolled sideways to see the hound loom over him and lunge for his throat. Weaponless, Fritz did what he had to and fought dirty. He c onjured shifting dark over his hand, focusing on wrapping his index and middle fingers with Gloom strike's energies, trying to shape the shadows into a spike of bitter black. The hound's maw descended towards his neck. Fritz struck like a serpent, thrusting his fingers into the deep eye socket as it came down.

There was a disgusting squelch and a pop when he squashed the creature's eye but he didn't stop there, with all his strength he pushed, plunging his fingers deeper and reactivating Gloom Strike. His attacker's jaws reached his neck and he relied on his barrier ring again. T he tar-covered fangs were pushed away from his body by the near-invisible skin as it encompassed hi m. T he hound suddenly sagged on one side and its limbs started twitching and jumping seemingly at random.

Fritz smirked knowing he had finally reached its dumb dog brain with his strike and the extra reach from the barrier. With the last of its strength, it bit down on his neck but succeeded only in breaking the translucent shield. The hound slumped, about to fall over and onto Fritz but he got his legs under the creature's skeletal rib cage and kicked it off. It lay in the dust twitching, whining and dying, he had no weapon to hand to finish the beast off so looked around for his crew or one of his blades.

A hound pounced at Sid's back but struck a wall of wind and was thrown off course and into its monstrous kin. She barely gave it a glance as she bent her bow and loosed another arrow straight through a hound's heart. Bert had a bite wound high on his shoulder, the punctured edges blackened and still bleeding freely. Fritz frowned in worry, It should have scabbed up by now. If the injury hurt Bert he didn't show it as he broke the neck of another of the monsters with a quick, clean kick.

Two more hounds fell to his crew's deadly attacks and Fritz had expected the creatures to flee as most of the pack was dead. But instead, the last three hounds went mad at the scent of blood, ignoring their former prey completely and started snarling, snapping and tearing chunks off each other. They fed upon one another in black hunger, frenzied and furiously gulping down the little meat they could chew off each other's bo dies.

Bones snapped, blood flew and Fritz and his crew didn't have to fight anymore as the hounds continued in the cannibalistic carnage. Fritz's stomach lurched from the horrible sight and worse sounds and he turned away as Bert, with a sick look on his own face, caved in the head of the last living hound.

"What in the Last Spire just happened?" Sid asked, with even her usually pale face looking a little green.

"Hounds were eating each other," Bert said observing the obvious.

"They're starved. So much so that they seem to go into a ravenous rage or perhaps feeding frenzy is the correct term," Fritz said darkly, keeping his eyes fixed on the floor and away from the dead monsters.

"It's foul," Sid stated.

"It is," Fritz agreed, finally going to retrieve his trusty weapons from their respective hound corpses.

"But it gives us a new plan. If we run into the whole lot of them, rile them up into a feeding frenzy while we run for the Stairway."

"Why do they look different?" Bert asked rubbing at his bitten shoulder which seemed to no longer be bleeding with the blackness receding.

"Magic," Fritz and Sid said together, both letting out a tired sigh. Their eyes met and they each gave a smile of shared suffering.

"Oh," Bert said.

"Magic of course."

"Do you want this one or shall I?" Fritz asked Sid.

"Be my guest," Sid replied, drinking down some water. Fritz felt a little parched himself in this dusty grey forest so followed her example, then once he had wet his lips he continued to speak an explanation mostly to Bert's benefit.

"So you know how outside a Spire's protection Epsa is full of dangerous, strange monsters?"

"And Leviathans," Sid added.

"And Titans," Bert commented.

"And their spawn," Fritz agreed.

"Well, the prevailing theory is that the chaotic mana outside a Spire's mana-refinement-demesne changes the animals, if they still even exist out there, and creates monsters or worse. The inside of a Spire is similar, I've heard, magic warps things, making them stronger or giving them Abilities similar to those the S pire s give out."

"Huh," Bert said.

"How do monster companions work? Like those of beast masters and such."

"I'm not entirely sure, never really read much about them. Didn't have much interest in another monster companion when I already have one," Fritz said, gesturing at his friend.

"Oh, ha ha," Bert said unimpressed.

"From what I know I think you need to either have a Companion Ability or an item with the Ability imbued to take them with you into a Spire. Otherwise, monsters can't enter, or leave. As for how the companions get stronger, I don't know either," Sid explained.

"Why the sudden interest?" Fritz asked suspiciously. Bert shrugged, but it looked too much like a practised gesture than the real thing to Fritz.

"No reason, just interesting," Bert said slyly.

"Let's get going. The sooner we're out the sooner we can talk freely," Sid said retrieving the last of her surprisingly still intact arrows from the blight hounds. Quite the improvement on both the arrows she got on the second floor and the conjured ones, Fritz observed. Fritz sighed and used the remains of his arm sling to wipe away the thick dark blood covering his blades, then set out towards the stairway without another word, trusting his crew to follow. They did and with no complaint or chatter.

As they moved under the tall branches Fritz reflected on the fight and tried to ignore the creeping cold feeling spreading from a spot on his back. The Well would probably take care of the claw wound he knew, but he hoped the injury wouldn't slow him down too much. He at least now knew some of the limitations of his new Danger Sense. It was extremely useful but without the proper quickness or reflexes it left a little to be desired as he could still be overwhelmed with either greater speed or numbers.

Still, against sneak attacks or hidden opponents, it was invaluable. Weaving his way through the forest and avoiding the moon's light where he could, they came upon the tree line's abrupt end. Far sooner than he'd guessed they'd reach it. He saw why immediately, the stretch of barren soil had expanded and the bare hill lay in the distance.

Patrolling the plain of grey dirt and dust were many packs of what had once been blight hounds, they circled the hill sniffing at the air and occasionally snapping their long jaws at each other. Whatever had previously prevented the hounds from walking on the bare land had seemed to have disappeared or was perhaps suppressed by the power of the too-near presence of the moon.

"At least they can't hide under the moon's light," Fritz thought out loud.

"Yeah but look at all of them, hundreds by my count," Bert said rubbing at a spot on his arm. Fritz wasn't paying too much attention as he was searching the grey hill for any sign of the great hound, wondering about and dreading to see what changes time and Spire had wrought on its already fearsome form. There by the huge slab of green marble, a terrible darkness lay. Fritz knew somehow that it was waiting. Waiting for intruders, waiting for food, waiting for the moon to fall and watching, waiting for him.

Fritz gulped. And the Hound heard him.