Chapter 22 #2
The prospect heartened him. That was the level where the gaunt, robed figures rushed him and the Throne Hunters, with more coming with each passing moment.
Harald smiled sadly at the memory of his pressing recklessly ahead of the others with the Goldchops.
How Sam had had to rescue him. Nessa’s fury at his impetuosity.
Now it was just him.
How long had Vic told him Seraphina had lasted?
Three hours?
The Throne Hunters had lasted for a slightly less impressive thirteen minutes.
Harald took a moment to stretch. Then, when he felt ready, he dropped into the black well.
He appeared inside a ruined cathedral, the stone pavers shattered, and with faint, ghostly green light filtering down from above.
Dust hung in the air, and the shadows were a deep emerald green.
Columns supported the ragged ceiling high above, with more columns fading into the distance like a stone forest. Here and there, large mounds of broken stone—or perhaps the remains of walls—broke up the terrain, with the occasional massive rafter having fallen to lie at an oblique angle against a wall.
The air smelled metallic, a subtle, damp tang.
Harald swished the Dawnblade about himself, chest already tight with excitement. There were galleries and adjacent halls beyond the first row of columns. He could scramble forth to find better ground, but that felt unwise.
This was where his Dungeon Portal now stood. An empty arch through which he could flee if he got in over his head.
Not that he expected to. But then again—he didn’t want to retreat to the plaza, did he?
No.
He had to find a well. A way down to the 11th. Had anybody ever done so? Not that he’d heard.
“Damn it,” Harald hissed, as he realized his strategy was all wrong—he wasn’t here to hold his ground and resist waves. Not until he found the way down.
He had to move.
Raising his Aching Depths, he swamped the ruined environs with his bone-chilling aura, and with his five Thrones burning gloriously within his core, he ran forward into the green mist.
Down the center of the broken nave, dodging and leaping over jagged rocks and construction rubble, and out into a hallway flanked by broken buttresses and broad archways leading into other corridors.
The green haze was everywhere, making the world a shifting, unreliable landscape of miasma and half-intuited shapes.
No Crypt Keepers yet.
The well would be in a place of some importance. Not tucked away into a side chamber. A crossroads was the Fallen Angel’s favorite, or at the very least, a grand chamber. So he kept to this broad hall, jogging slowly, chest already a little tight as he kept his wits about him, ready for the first—
There.
A hooded shape had just ducked back into a room.
It had begun.
The broad hall ended in a broken set of double doors, and Harald slipped through to enter another massive chamber. Two-storied, huge archways leading off into the dark on either side, the floor a riot of broken stone.
No running here. He picked his way quickly along the base of the masonry piles, sword at the ready, and sensed, more than saw, a shape rushing at him from the side.
Harald spun, doing his best to keep his footing on the treacherous slope, and saw his first Crypt Keeper.
About chest high, wrapped in a thick hempen robe with a deep cowl, it came at him with talons raised, and ran right into the presence of the abyss.
Which welcomed the Keeper by sapping its vitality immediately, causing it to stumble, and when it righted itself, sway drunkenly.
Harald continued running.
If he stopped to cut the Keepers down, he’d soon be swarmed and trapped in place.
He had to find that damned well.
A trio of Keepers burst from an alcove as he passed it, hissing and staggering as the Aching Depths leached them of all certainty and speed.
Finally, Harald quit the hills of masonry and jogged through another archway. His heart was pounding, sweat running down the slope of his back. Damn his Constitution of 7.
An open space. Huge, topless columns stood spread out about him in the emerald murk. It felt like stepping outside. The ceiling was lost in the haze. At least the footing was sound once more.
Harald jogged on, but now he could see Keepers converging on him. Knots of three and four, from the left and right, and then a large group of five rushing him from directly ahead.
What he wouldn’t do for the Goldchops right now.
But excitement arose within Harald, and he grinned, feeling feral. The five Keepers ran into his aura, swayed away from each other, suddenly inebriated.
Harald cut his way through them.
They hissed and tried to parry, but his black blade cut through fingers and claws, wrists and forearms, and he let the abyss do the rest.
On he ran, through this endless hall of titanic pillars, his footsteps ringing out, and darting between the converging ranks of Keepers who were swarming toward him from all sides.
The well. He had to find it soon, the gaps between the Keepers was narrowing. Soon, he’d have to start cutting his way through, and then he’d grind to a stop, and so far from the portal he’d be doomed, no matter how powerful he’d become—
There.
The center of this vast columned hall. A raised dais of stone, three broad steps around its base, a green stone well jutting up at an angle.