Chương 175: Descent

I was the first one to reach the edge of the hole. I led the way with my spear. No other squads had reached it before us. If there was something waiting to ambush us, I'd be the first to know. A waft of dusty air climbed out. I coughed, but kept my eyes fixed on the target. Unlike the upper hall, there was no ambient light. Even the roof projection wasn't enough to penetrate more than a few paces. A spiral staircase had opened in the middle of the plaza, leading down to the next floor.

I took a step down, then said, "Anchor, Sage, you two are looking for traps. If you see anything, shout, and I'll stop."

"Yes, sarge," Anchor replied.

"Understood," Sage replied.

"It's a stairway," I called out to the other squads.

"Stick together." My initial instinct was to spread ourselves out, but that wouldn't do much good. Lieutenant Owl had done his best to beat that instinct out of us when we trained with squad tactics. If we were fighting in a cramped area, where there was a potential for an ambush, the last thing we wanted was to move at even intervals. One of us would go, and then their archers would have a clean shot on the second Dupe as soon as he ran across the opening.

Sure, there were no archers here—it was just a stairway—but these were Labyrinths. They were full to the brim with traps, and I didn't know what kinds of monsters might be lurking in the walls. It was the same principle. As I took another step down the stairs, I said, "Use your buglights, and move quickly." I withdrew one of the vials filled with bioluminescent bugs from my kit bag, then shook it to wake them up. They shone brightly, and the tube directed the light out the front, like a flashlight.

I clipped it onto the side of my helmet. The second instinct that training had beaten out of me was a desire to move into dangerous situations slowly. But that would just give a potential threat a greater chance to hear me coming and plan to attack me. Instead, I took the stairs at a regular walking pace, using my enhanced perception and my buglight to scan the stairs and walls ahead of me. I led the way, shield first, and Brawl followed.

Sage was right behind him, with Morph in his full golem form, carrying her under his arm. He had to hunch to fit under the low, arched ceiling. Lastly, Anchor kept up the rear. Habit's squad was next, and they fit in right behind Anchor. I didn't see how close Yesman was—we'd already rounded the corners, winding down the spiral staircase. Uniform marble bricks lined the wall, and there was almost no grout between them. Moisture dripped from the ceiling, making the steps slippery.

No matter how quiet we tried to keep our steps, sometimes we couldn't stop water from splashing. Our descent lasted nearly a minute. There were no traps.

"Any second, now," I said. How deep did this thing go? Were we about to reach another hallway? Then we reached a round platform. It was a dish of stone, solid, without any gaps for bricks or other connections. The stairway deposited us right on top of it. As soon as I stepped onto it, it rumbled. My stomach lurched. I was about to shout for everyone to back up, but then I swept my head to the side, illuminating the edge of the dish with the beam from my buglight. Ancient winches. No ropes to hold them.

My squad jumped onto the platform. Of course they did. Anchor's eyes widened when he saw the same winches as I had, and Morph chittered with annoyance. Before I could say anything, the dish slipped. The stone ledges holding it up cracked, and it plummeted through a chasm. My squad had made it onto the dish, but Habit and Yesman's squads were left behind. They stood up on the ledge, looking down from above. But I had bigger problems.

Anchor, Brawl, and Sage pressed themselves flat against the plummeting dish, but it wouldn't hold them for long. We weren't spreading out our balance properly, and this dish was already starting to tilt.

"Move to the center!" I yelled. How deep did this chasm go if we hadn't hit the ground yet? The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. We all moved to the center. I kept myself low and widened my stance, trying to balance in the middle of the dish while I looked over the edge. Now that we were in a hall again, we didn't need our buglights to illuminate our surroundings. Ambient gray light poured in from everywhere, lightning up the city below.

It wasn't just ambient light, either. Orange canals snaked through the city streets. Lava. It grew brighter and larger as we fell, and I considered my options. I could grasp the dish with an Art; that would be easy enough. But if I stopped it dead right now, it would be just the same as if we'd slammed straight into the ground. The good news was that this dish was stone, and could probably survive a few seconds inside the lava—long enough for us to jump off.

I used an Art to pull us to the side, angling it and making sure we were directly above a canal, then waited until we were only moments away from the canal. Then I triggered my art three more times. I made sure the source of the well was high above and pulling from directly overhead, so it would only slow the dish instead of cancelling out all our momentum. The dish slowed with each use, gradually slowing to a manageable, survivable speed before we hit the lava.

When we did reach the canal, the impact still sent vibrations jarring through my legs. I stumbled, slipping awfully close to the edge of the dish, as a tidal wave of magma washed over the dish's lip. Specks of lava sloshed toward us. I held up my shield, catching most of it, but a few globs landed on my arm and shoulder. My old armour, though it had served me well in the past, did nothing right now. The magma melted holes in the scale mail and the chainmail below before I could flick it off.

Despite my enhanced Vitality, it still left massive burns on my skin and the muscle below, made worse when it heated up my armour. Still, I was alive. Pain was more manageable with the knowledge that most injuries weren't permanent in the presence of Sage.

"Jump off!" I shouted. Already, the bottom of the dish was glowing orange. The lava was eating through. We sprinted to the edge of the dish, aiming for the canal walls. They were a few feet taller than us, made of pearlescent marble that had to be enchanted with arcane heat resistance. I jumped, latching onto a metal bollard at the edge of the canal and swung myself up, then held out a hand for Brawl. He jumped and caught my wrist, and I pulled him along too.

Anchor sprang the distance on his own, and Morph crawled across, extending vine-y arms like bridges, before pulling himself across and up onto the ledge. Sage crawled across, using him like a jungle gym. When they arrived, Morph returned to his normal form—but on our side of the canal, now. As soon as we reached the edge, the dish sank into the canal, melting away.

"What the hell was that?" Anchor complained.

"Who makes the only access to their underground sanctuary a massive, deadly drop into lava?"

"Something tells me there would've been winches," I replied, recalling the mechanisms at the edge of the dish.

"The ropes just rotted away long ago. It would've been an elevator, but instead, it just fell. Plus, I pulled us aside. I bet there was some kind of docking port directly below the elevator."

"What's an elevator, brother?" Brawl asked.

"That is most certainly a Soulstealer thing," Sage said. As the dish sank beneath the canal's lava, lines of glowing ants marched down the edge of the canal, dipping beneath the red-hot surface and retrieving the materials of the dish.

"Labyrinth Keepers?" Anchor said.

"They're even trying to salvage that."

"They're durable, apparently," I replied.

"If only you could turn them into armour." Brawl squinted.

"Why wouldn't they put the ropes back together?"

"Either they wanted the trap to stay intact," I provided, "or, more likely, they just don't remake wood and other materials like it—like you saw in the upper layers of the Labyrinth." I paused.

"Now, our first problem should be getting back to the surface. We need to figure out an escape route before we can worry about killing monsters down here." The others nodded, and I pointed toward a nearby tower, sprouting out of a large, canal-side warehouse. We ran to the tower. The old doors were gone, but the stairway inside remained, and we scaled it as quickly as we could, spiralling around to the top of the tower. When we arrived, I ran to the railing at the edge of the tower and surveyed the city.

Unlike the upper city, this seemed like a last refuge. The walls were rougher, and it was more of a deep gouge in the earth rather than an intentionally carved dome. Bridges stretched across, the thin marble maintained by Labyrinth Keepers. There was no projection to light up the sky with blue light. The city below was far larger than the one above, though. I didn't know how many people it could host, but the canals divided it up into six sections, each with a plaza of their own—and once again, a central plaza.

"No golems," Anchor said.

"Not that we can see," I countered.

"There shouldn't be any quarter guardians confined to a plaza," Sage told us.

"They were the last barrier to get into the inner sanctums. Down here, it was up to the soldiers of the old empire to defend the city from attackers."

"If there are no golems, sister, then what is that?" Brawl pointed down below the tower. A hulking creature made of marble and glowing orange lava approached the tower, walking on its knuckles. It was the shape of a gorilla, though twice as large, and it had a row of spines down its back, and a pair of ox horns on the sides of its head.

"I'm not entirely sure," Sage replied.

"Something you don't know?" Anchor teased.

"Finally." I would've teased her too, had it not been a dangerous situation. But we needed to focus.

"How strong is it?"

"Silver," Anchor replied, wisening up and getting serious.

"And it seems to have locked on to us…" Its head turned to stare directly at the top of the tower. Then it broke into a sprint and rammed into the base.