Chapter 16 #3
The left corridor descended in a series of steps, each one wide enough for the full group to stand on before dropping to the next.
The architecture shifted here. Less ornamental, more functional.
The carvings thinned. The stone grew rougher, darker, the pale material giving way to something gray and dense.
They heard the clicking before they saw anything.
“More scorpions,” Luna said, her voice barely above a breath.
They came from a side passage, eight of them, pouring out in a wave of segmented legs and raised tails. These moved even faster than the first group, their crystals glowing brighter on their backs, their bodies slightly larger.
“Hold formation!” Garrett shouted.
Alsen pulled on his power. Indirect missile. Times twenty.
A swarm of indirect missiles flew from him. The scorpions reacted, changing trajectories, spinning, trying to dodge.
The missiles descended into a burst of explosions.
Three scorpions made it through. Sonja released an arrow, hitting the gem of one. Garrett stepped in to meet one. He smashed it with a shield, throwing it aside. Theron followed up, slashing it midair, shattering the gem.
The last one pounced at Luna. She sidestepped, and as it flew past her, she spun. Her sleeve whirled through the air, leaving a scorpion with a shattered gem to fall. This time, Alsen didn’t even see the dagger.
[SYSTEM MESSAGE: ENEMIES DEFEATED – GEMBOUND SCORPION CONSTRUCTS (8)]
[EXPERIENCE GAINED: 600]
[LEVEL: 12]
“That wasn’t half bad.” Garrett glanced around. No signs of other scorpions. “Alsen, how many more times can you do this?”
He didn’t even feel any chilling pull on himself. The indirect missiles didn’t cost much strength, especially in doses of twenty. “Many.”
Garrett exhaled. “Good. Let’s keep moving.”
The corridor continued deeper. The steps grew steeper, the ceiling lower. The carvings disappeared entirely, replaced by bare stone. They were below the temple now, in whatever natural or excavated space the builders had expanded into.
They moved through two more chambers, both empty, both showing signs of previous habitation. Stone benches. Alcoves that might have held supplies. A basin carved into the floor of one room, dry now but stained with mineral deposits. A dormitory, a workshop, a kitchen. People had lived here.
The final passage opened onto nothing. The room ahead barely opened before the floor ended, a vast chasm beyond. A clean line of cut stone giving way to empty air. He flew the light around.
The chasm’s other edge lay over a hundred feet away.
He found the remains of a bridge there. Stone pillars jutted from the cavern wall at regular intervals, stretching toward the middle of the void.
The first three were intact, their tops flat, each about six feet wide.
The fourth was broken, sheared off at an angle, the jagged remains pointing downward.
Beyond that, more stumps, alternating between intact and destroyed, led toward the far wall where a matching set of pillars emerged.
Between the pillars lay nothing. The bridge that had connected them was gone. Fragments of stone lay visible on the ledge below the nearest pillar, a narrow shelf about thirty feet down, but the bridge itself had been destroyed.
Intentionally, it seemed, as the breaks were too clean, the stone sheared rather than crumbled. Something had cut through the bridge with force. Deep gouges scored the intact pillars, parallel lines carved into the stone, like claw marks from something enormous.
“Well,” Garrett said, looking over the edge. “That’s a problem.”
Theron dropped a loose stone into the darkness below the shelf. They waited. The sound of impact came easily half a minute later.
“A big problem,” Theron revised.
Sonja stepped to the edge, focusing on the pillars. “These look like something really big slashed the bridge apart. The cuts are too symmetrical, too unnatural. From the other side, it seems.”
“Yeah…” Luna said, her voice fading. “We should turn around and leave. Even if we make it across, it’ll be in a way that will make it impossible to run back if we need to be fast.”
“We can’t leave with nothing, Kitten!” Sonja almost shouted.
Alsen leaned past the edge. The first three intact pillars formed a discontinuous path, about six feet across each, with gaps of maybe eight feet between them.
A skilled jumper could make it from pillar to pillar, barely.
But the fourth was shattered, creating a gap of at least twenty feet to the next intact surface.
And the gaps beyond that were worse. “If we have enough rope, then I can fly over this, attach it to the bridge pillar across. We can fasten the other end here.” He pointed at a torn part of the floor, where the rope could be caught.
Luna glared at him. “We really should put whether to continue to a vote.”
“She’s right,” Garrett said. “This dramatically escalates the dangerousness. Not just due to the chasm, but because whatever destroyed the bridge may well be on the other side. I vote for packing up and leaving. It was a fun adventure, we’ve all gotten at least a level from it, but we don’t need to die here. ”
“I’m for continuing,” Sonja said. “There’s bound to be a ton of treasure beyond, and we’ve got more than enough rope. Alsen’s plan will work.”
Luna spared her a glowering side glance.
Yes, she might have been saying it only to get to spend more time with Luna. Even Alsen realized that. But still, he also wanted the treasure. “I’m for going. If we can get across one way, then we can get across the other way too.”
“I’m with Alsen,” said Theron. “We’re too close to turn back.”
Everyone turned toward Marena.
She turned red. “Sorry, I… want to go forward.”
That was fast. Alsen put down his backpack, acting as if there was a chance he had any rope in it. If he had any, it had been because it was in the default package.
“Very well,” Garrett said, lowering his own backpack. “We continue.”
Everyone dug into their backpacks. Theron had fifty feet of rope, as did Sonja and Garrett. Luna and Alsen found twenty feet from the basic package, which sufficed even before Marena found her own forty-foot-long coil of rope.
Theron started tying the ropes together with calm practice. Everyone else awkwardly watched as they suddenly had little to do.
Alsen used the moment to sit down, focusing. Was flying in a cavern going to differ from flying outdoors?
Possibly, and he didn’t want to find out by splattering against the abyss’s far wall.
Theron took twenty minutes to tie the ropes. Sonja checked the knots after him, verifying they were all tied well. He prepared a noose-like loop on both ends.
With one of them, Theron walked to the torn part of the floor and secured the rope there. He pulled on it with all his weight, and it didn’t budge. “Seems stable.” He raised the other end.
Alsen took it, doing his best to ignore Luna’s glare. “I’ll catch it by the pillar on the other end.”
He pulled on his power, formed the motes of condensed air beneath him, and jumped.
The abyss looked a lot larger the moment he propelled himself above it. As if it were trying to eat him, he pushed more into the spell, bursting forward.
He clutched the rope, the abyss passing beneath. Halfway through, he realized he flew too fast. Outside, the winds interfered, so he had to use more power to stabilize. Here, the air didn’t move, offering little resistance.
But trying to brake would risk the fall. He flew over, crashing into the floor on the other side. He tried to roll with it, but didn’t hit the landing at all, tumbling twenty feet.
Pain burst through half of his body. That hurt. He ended up on his back, a few feet from the wall on the other side.
“You alive?” Luna shouted from the other side.
Fuck. Yeah. Somewhat. Probably. With a grunt, he rose, wondering what he had broken. He did still hold the rope, at least. “Mostly.”
“Don’t lose the rope.”
Alsen snorted. Yeah, that too. He walked to the pillar and threw the loop over it. Theron measured the loop at the rope’s end perfectly, so it fit over the pillar. Alsen pushed it down the pillar. The stump looked sturdy, with no major cracks around its base.
Once he got the rope down to the base, he shouted. “Should be secured on my side.”
Theron pulled the rope from the other end, leaning on it with all his weight. The rope stretched over the abyss. “Feels stable.”
“All right,” Luna shouted, so that Alsen could hear. “I’m going last.”
Garrett stepped to the rope. “And I first.”
Theron, Sonja, and Luna all gathered by the rope’s end on their side, pulling on it to keep it stable.
Garrett caught himself on the rope with both his hands and feet, and started pushing himself across. The stretched rope held stable. Alsen wished he could help, but trying to propel Garrett with a spell would only knock off his balance.
Garrett moved slowly and steadily. He didn’t break the position once. It still took him over five minutes to get across. When he reached Alsen’s side, Alsen stood by the pillar, held himself by it with one hand, and used the other to help Garrett stabilize.
Garrett caught it and got off the rope, careful to not pull Alsen off. Alsen held him with ease, though, realizing it was all thanks to the strength from the System. He pulled him to the solid ground.
“Marena next,” Garrett shouted. “Then Theron, then Sonja. It’s not that bad.”
Marena, who had already caught her staff between her backpack and her back, stood by the rope. She was as pale as death.
This was going to be a problem, Alsen realized. Nothing he could do, though.
Marena caught herself by the rope, mirroring how Garrett did it. She started pushing herself forward. Slowly.
She froze ten feet out. Her hands locked on the rope, her legs clamped, and she stopped moving entirely. From across the gap, Alsen could see her body shaking.
“Marena,” Garrett called. “Don’t look down. Just keep moving.”
She didn’t move.