Chapter 33 #2
“Watch out!” cried Nessa, then pressed the base of her palm to her temple as she crumpled to one knee.
Harald, heart hammering, searched the depth of the hallway, spun to gaze behind them. Nothing.
“Up!” barked Kársek.
The generalized blue glow had hidden a shaft in the ceiling.
Craning his neck to peer up at it, Harald caught a glimpse of a creature scuttling back up, its alien visage glaring down at them with twin burning purple eyes, its blue body whorled with white swirls, a crown of tentacles sweeping back from its broad brow, which tapered to a mouthless and noseless face like an inverted triangle.
Khazadrok, intoned Kársek, rune hammer raised, and the gigantic Rune appeared only to flood up the shaft and disappear, causing the ceiling to shudder and dust to sift down.
A shriek of pain sounded from far above, but the creature was already lost to the ambient blue gloom and gone.
“Nessa?” Sam crouched beside their delve captain. “What hurts?”
“My… my mind,” gasped Nessa. “It… an attack on my… my Ego stat has dropped by five. I feel…” She closed her eyes, tried to gather herself. “Nauseous. Like vertigo.”
“Here,” said Sam, helping her rise. “Hold on to my arm.”
“Assassin types,” said Vic knowingly from the back. “Nasty. Shall we head back to Alabenthos’ lair, regroup, have a light lunch?”
Harald bit his lower lip, unwilling to tear his gaze from the vertical chute. “Ambushes, then.”
Kársek nodded. “If I’d killed it, the corpse would have fallen into the hall. Perhaps you shouldn’t go easy, after all.”
Harald donned the Crown of the Abyssal Tyrant. His authority flooded the hallway with cruel intent, filling the air and rising into the shaft. The blue air darkened as if a cloud had passed before a sapphire sun.
“You know, that does feel better!” Vic shook out his shoulders. “Here, I’ll add my Aura of Cruelty in case it helps. Nessa? Any relief?”
“Not yet,” said Nessa, eyes near closed, voice thick with emotion. She was leaning heavily on Sam.
“Onwards,” said Harald. “Nessa, drop back. I’ll take point.”
No complaints from the delve captain.
They proceeded down the hall. Harald willed Abyssal Imperium to flower to its utmost, such that shards of void glass appeared ahead of them, wickedly sharp and lazily floating through the air.
Silence. Nessa didn’t recover, but remained hunched over on Sam’s arm, even after absorbing scales. “I’m trying to use Harmonic Resonance to bolster myself,” she said at one point, “but I can’t focus on the power long enough to make a difference.”
They were peering down both sides of an intersection when the Gauntlet Golem stomped its foot at the same time that Kársek let out a chest-deep grunt.
Spinning, Harald saw that a flagstone had levered up just enough to reveal another monstrous visage, blue fleshed with white traceries, hints of the thick tentacles extending behind it like a crown, purple eyes blazing, before the golem’s stomp caused the stone to burst into the shaft, shattering and pulping the creature so that a gout of purple ichor splashed up and everywhere.
“Kársek?” Harald turned to his friend, who was blinking as if dazed. “It get you?”
“I… yes.” The dwarf’s voice was unusually slow. “Feels like… being poleaxed. Blow to the head. Thoughts… muddled.” Kársek shook his head, grimaced. “I… hmm.”
“Damn it.” Harald gazed up and down the hall. It was too narrow for either the Twilight General or the Thunder Lizard. “Let’s move fast and get out of here.”
But Kársek couldn’t do more than stumble along, Sam’s arm now looped through his own as well, her Shield of Valor raised before them.
Her Beacon of Hope helped dispel the burgeoning panic, her Guardian’s Mantle played over both Nessa and Kársek, but if it was healing them of their mental injuries, it was clearly taking time.
“It’s Ego damage,” she told Harald quietly when they paused to drink water. “I can banish darkness, weaken demons, reduce fear and shadow effects—but direct hits to their strength of will and soundness of mind?”
“I hate to say it,” said Vic, screwing tight his water bottle cap. “But it was inevitable that we’d run into something like this. The dungeon tests every raider in every way, in time. There’s a reason brutes don’t just blast their way to the lowest floors.”
“So—what are you saying? This is going to be a war of attrition?” Harald glared about the burning blue room in which they’d temporarily encamped. “We can’t just keep stumbling along. We’ll get picked off one by one.”
“My vote is for you to hunt them down, Harry-boy.” Vic stowed his water bottle. “Seriously. We’ll hold tight here with your golem and Shadowpaw. You get out there and hunt them down like the vermin they are.”
Sam nodded reluctantly. “I agree. If we get in a fight, we’ll have to protect Nessa and Kársek, as is. I can protect them with Starfire Bastion if we remain still. Hallowed Advance just doesn’t last long enough for us to use it the whole way through this level.”
“All right.” Harald flared his fingers on the Scourge’s hilt. “I guess that makes sense.”
“Oh, don’t pretend you’re not thrilled,” said Vic, clucking his tongue in mock annoyance.
“I am thrilled. I love bringing vengeance down upon those who hurt my friends.” Harald grinned. “Hold the fort. I’ll be right back.”
“Be safe,” said Sam, rising to her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek.
“Take this,” said Vic, and tossed him the Solace of Aurelum. “Can’t believe I’m giving that away.”
Harald grinned, caught the golden ball, willed the golem and Shadowpaw to stay, and then willed Form of the Black Throne to exude smoke all around him so that soon he was jogging forth in a cloud of nebulous darkness.
Perhaps the monsters needed to actually see him to use their psychic attack. Either way, it didn’t hurt.
Crown of the Abyssal Tyrant saturated the hallway in his lethal command and displeasure, while Abyssal Imperium warped the very floors, walls, and air to his will.
Void glass appeared around him, and with a final flexion of his Thrones, he ceased restraining the Well of Starless Dominion so that it could reach out with naked, blind hunger to consume all that came within reach.
With his five Thrones empowering him, he felt more like an ambulatory environmental hazard than a raider.
He took each left. Padded along silently, listening intently, trying to detect a tremor of movement within his field of influence, and was growing frustrated when he sensed his incorporeal will, the tenacious cruelty of the Crown, coalesce around a mind as it opened a wall panel behind him.
Void glass slashed the monster as Harald dropped into a crouch and spun, willing the shadowed air to manifest hungry blades around the blue-skinned foe who shrieked and tried to scoot back into the shaft.
Harald lunged, smashed with the Scourge, and shattered the stone panel into geode-like chunks of crystal that crashed and bounced across the floor, revealing the luminous shaft within.
The monster was scuttling away, its purple blood dark and streaked against the glowing floor and walls.
“Mine,” hissed Harald, and unleashed his first pulse of nausea and despair. It washed out before him in a great wave, engulfing the monster who doubled over and convulsed.
Harald leaped into the shaft and began giving chase on all fours, Scourge before him. The ground was slick with blood. The creature tried to retreat, then gave up and turned to glare at him, one eye burst—and pain blazed across Harald’s mind.
It was mitigated greatly by the Crown, but so sharp and piercing was the attack that still it burrowed deep into his sense of self.
With a gasp, Harald willed the darkness to consume the monster once more, and this time the blades that manifested around the monster didn’t cease their assault until it was cut into quivering chunks.
“Gah,” said Harald, putting his palm to his eye. His head throbbed. Summoning his window, he saw that his Ego had dropped by 3. Worse, there was a new Endowment listed.
Endowments: Demon Seed, Mote of Humility, Crown of the Eternal Court, Soul Needle.
Soul Needle?
Harald dropped his hand and snarled. Four Aurora Veils had appeared above the corpse. For a moment he considered. The shaft went on, then seemed to curve upward.
Was this how these monsters got around? A secret network? Were the main hallways a decoy?
“Here I come,” hissed Harald, and surged forward.
He clambered up the shaft, took a left where it hit another, and continued barreling forward on all fours.