Chapter 775: More Urgent With Your Warning (Patreon)

Jason and Lorenn were the last to return to the citadel chamber through the soul realm portal. Everyone left inside was staying for the duration. The portal closed and Jason nodded at Clive.

“Sorry you didn’t get to spend long in the rooms I set up for you,” Jason told Lorenn.

“I’m more interested in putting the plan into action than resting, although you look like you could use it.”

“I’m getting better at tapping into my astral gate, although it still takes it out of me, even when I’m working entirely in my soul realm. The astral gate is the thing I used to draw the elemental aspects out of the magic my realm draws in. I didn’t manage to fully replicate the elemental magic out here, sorry.”

“You did better than that,” Lorenn assured him. “What you produced is closer to what the natural array was like before the messengers came. What you failed to replicate was the instability.”

“Oh, uh… good, then?”

Clive was shutting down the active ritual that had kept the portal mostly free of elemental interference for the hours it had taken to evacuate the population. He and his ritualists, Magic Society and the local brighthearts, had managed to keep it functioning the whole time. They channelled magic through their bodies to maintain the portal for hour after hour as people shuffled into Jason’s soul realm, but they were at their limits.

Clive stepped down the ritual in stages rather than let all that elemental energy crash back in. As the ritualists released the power flowing through them one by one, they dropped to the floor for some much-needed rest, not even looking for furniture.

“Brighthearts, thank you,” Clive said to the contingent of local ritualists. “Your stamina carried us through. As for you Magic Society members, you are all embarrassments to your organisation.”

“Hey,” one of them complained. “We gave it our all.”

“Yes, you did wonderfully,” Clive agreed. “You were all excellent; I couldn’t have asked for more. None of you belong in the Magic Society.”

“Uh…”

***

With no way to open the portal without another draining and elaborate ritual, the civilians were now sealed in Jason’s soul realm. Everyone still outside was a combatant, either staying to defend the citadel and the echo array or setting out with the main force. Lorenn mustered the brightheart forces, the largest group, while the Beaufort gathered the cultists. Miriam organised the adventurers, which amounted to stopping anyone from wandering off. That was as much wrangling as adventurers were likely to tolerate, especially high-rank ones.

“I’m still unclear on our contingency plans,” Gary said to Jason. “Do we want the messengers to sabotage the echo array or not?”

“If we can fight our way to the tree and keep the messengers off the echo array, that's the best-case scenario,” Jason explained. “If we can stabilise the natural array without having to rewrite a chunk of reality, leaving it with a dimensional scar in the shape of my head, that’s a good thing. More likely is something going wrong and we need the transformation zone just to make sure all the weird stuff that went wrong is caught up in it. That way, we can deal with it all together.”

“Which is when we pull back and let the messengers think we left the place unguarded?”

“Pretty much.”

“And if they notice us doing that and wonder why we’re leaving all the doors open? Or don’t notice us and wonder why we left all the doors open?”

“Then our defensive team mugs them and does the sabotage themselves. That's why Clive and Farrah have had Ramona from Miriam's team working with them and studying their notes. We can't spare Clive or Farrah but, after Clive, she's the best magic expert we have here.”

“You can spare me, though,” Gary said. “I can be a lot more effective with the defences in place here than as part of the attack force. I asked the Tactical Commander to add me to the group staying.”

“So that’s why you’re asking about the contingencies.”

“Yeah. The briefing told me what they were, but not why. Now that I think about it, it also didn’t mention what happens when we win.”

“That’s because we have no idea. At least we know what happens if we lose.”

“We all die?”

“Yeah. And then I make a break for it, see if I can get back to the surface to warn them before I die two more times.”

“Two more times?”

“It’s all these messengers I’ve been draining. I’ve got two resurrections in the can, so it’ll take three kills to drop me permanently.”

“That must be nice.”

“No, Gary. If it comes to that, the rest of you gone… I think dead might be better.”

Jason sighed.

“Well, that got dark. Who else is hanging back to defend with you?”

“Rufus and his parents, plus some of the brighthearts and half the Magic Society researchers. Not a lot of golds, since we're probably letting the bad guys through anyway.”

Jason nodded.

“I knew Clive was splitting up the researchers. They won’t be great in a fight and Ramona may need help with the echo array. We have to take some of them to help Clive and Farrah, though.”

Jason glanced at Miriam who was looking in his direction.

“Time to go play boss man,” he said. “At this point, I'm pretty much a mascot with Miriam in charge, but I have to at least wander around looking confident.”

“Are you confident?” Gary asked.

“Relative to what’s going on? Yeah. As these situations go, this one’s pretty good. There’s a lot of gold-rankers around, that’s not new, but some of them being on team good guy is. There's a god looking to interfere, but at least it's not a great astral being. The evil army is a bunch of elemental messengers, not vampires and their ghoul minions, so I guess that part's a wash. It could be worse.”

“So you think we’ll win.”

“I think we will, yeah. If I didn’t, I’d be hatching some insane scheme to get us out of here. My real concern is how many people that victory is going to cost us. Fighting our way to the tree is going to bleed us.”

“Good thing I’m staying behind, then. Nice and relaxing for me.”

Jason chuckled.

“You might not want to get too comfy, mate. These things have a way of going pear-shaped.”

***

The main force set out from the citadel chamber through the massive gate. The gate was a tunnel boring through the wall to the next chamber, a wall thick enough to have entire buildings dug into it. At the end of the tunnel was a massive stone slab that had been rolled aside to let the group pass through. Brighthearts made up around two-thirds of the force, all silver and gold-rankers, but also the weakest. These people were new warriors, used to lives of peace, although the last few months had blooded them sharply. Even so, it was the cult and adventurer groups that were the stronger powers.

Flight was accomplished through a variety of devices. The cult had flight tools that seemed unaffected by the elemental magic, along with some vehicles that could accommodate a few others. Once again, familiars and summons did a lot of the work, although some would be precarious should combat impact them. Shade was counted amongst these, serving as vehicle transport for many of the brighthearts.

“I wish I could use my cloud flask for this,” Jason told Emir. “I don’t think a vehicle made of air and water is the best idea down here, though, heavily upgraded or not.”

“Wise,” Emir said.

Only a few of the brighthearts could fly under their own power. Those that could were usually ash types like Lorenn, along with some of the fire types. Those with metal, earth and magma affinities required outside assistance.

The passage across the death chamber took place almost entirely in silence. When they reached the other side unmolested, Lorenn gestured for Miriam, Jason and Beaufort to approach.

“What’s the issue?” Miriam asked.

“Nothing came at us in the entire chamber,” Lorenn said. “Not even a few loose spectres.”

“I take it that’s unusual?” Jason asked.

“It’s unprecedented,” Beaufort said. “I’ve had crossings where some genuine threats came after us, but mostly it’s something fairly weak. What I’ve never seen before is being left entirely alone.”

“Especially with a group this size,” Lorenn added. “There’s a reason I warned everyone before we entered the chamber. That normally attracts trouble which is why it’s a problem for the messengers. They like to travel in hordes.”

“You think something is going on in the dead zone?” Miriam asked.

“Yes,” Lorenn said. “I’m inclined to take small mercies, but I don’t want to dive into messenger territory, only to find an undead horde at our backs.”

“I don't see an alternative to moving forward,” Jason said. “Not unless you want us to dive into the bottom of the death chamber looking for trouble, which is self-defeating as methods to avoid trouble go.”

They looked to their destination, another gate. This was open, the edges cracked and crumbling, roots poking out in various places. The roots were dark brown, almost black, looking more like stone than wood. Beyond the gate was darkness, although Jason could see what looked like an empty chamber beyond.

“We should hasten,” Beaufort said. “The tree will have sensed us by now. Messengers will already be on the way.”

***

Beaufort was proven right as the messengers arrived like a river soon after the group entered the chamber. As they crossed the threshold of the gate, the permeating sense of death was replaced with elemental power, but unlike that of the citadel chamber. This energy was turbulent and volatile, pressing on the mind like half-heard music from a downstairs neighbour. It was enough to annoy but not distract as the force battled their way through.

Battling through the endless supply of elemental messengers was reminiscent of the descent through the shaft. Fortunately, each new batch had failed to learn the lessons of their predecessors and fell to the same tactics. The adventurers and their allies learned with each new battle while the messengers did not. Not only did they lack the intelligence to share experiences and strategies but most of those attacking the adventurers died, without even a chance to share their knowledge.

With new messengers still being churned out by the tree, these messengers could have been as little as a few hours old. Messengers were produced to be battle-ready, only heightening Jason's suspicions that they were artificial in origin. As Clive was convinced that Jason was somehow linked to that origin, he expected to find the answers once he was an astral king. Assuming he got through the current situation alive.

The expedition moved with purpose. They fought through the first chamber, down a tunnel too narrow to allow the messengers to swarm them, then through a second where they were again attacked from all sides. One more tunnel led them to the astral space chamber and respite.

As the expedition had hoped, the messengers refused to enter the chamber. They were even wary of the tunnel leading into it, giving the expedition some breathing room. The root system that poked through every wall was still evident in the hall, but there was no sign of them in the chamber itself. The chamber was small, relative to others they’d seen, although still the size of a gymnasium. With so many people in the expedition, there wasn’t a massive amount of spare room.

The walls and floor were carved in the same style Jason had seen in the citadel room’s pillars, although more elaborately. The chamber had something of a cathedral feel to it, complete with an astral space aperture in place of an altar. Clive and Farrah immediately dragged the researchers in that direction while Miriam organised a defence of the entrance, an opening in one wall around twice the height and width of normal double doors.

Jason moved down the hall at a more sedate pace than Clive who all but cracked a whip over the heads of his ritualists. The wall carvings were frescos depicting what he guessed was the arrival of the brightheart ancestors to the underground realm. Unlike the tunnels, the cravings hadn’t been shattered by countless roots punching through, although there was some crumbling. It looked like there had been a mid-strength earthquake with no one to clean up afterwards.

Beaufort followed behind Jason and they arrived at the aperture, a circular sheet of red, orange and yellow energy that floated in the air. Clive and Farrah were already setting up testing devices as Jason extended his senses towards the portal, finding a seal in place that locked the aperture from the other side.

“You shut the gate behind you,” Jason said.

“We did,” Beaufort confirmed.

“Clive, the portal is sealed from the inside,” Jason said. “Will that interfere with your tests?”

Clive let out a groan as he glared at Beaufort.

“Yes,” he told Jason. “Can you go through and shut it down?”

“Sure,” Jason said, weaving past the Magic Society researchers as they unpacked magical tools and supplies. As non-combatants, they had been put to work as pack mules.

“Asano,” Beaufort called out. “You might want to wait until I… and he’s gone.”

Jason vanished through the portal, ignoring the seal that would have prevented anyone else from getting through. He appeared on the other side and was immediately blasted with fire and impaled multiple times by a series of elaborate mechanical traps.

“Rude,” he croaked as Gordon appeared and used his beams to cut the offending blades from the mechanism, freeing Jason to yank them from his body.

Jason’s regeneration quickly repaired his body as he kicked away the damaged trap device and broke the sealing ritual on the ground around the aperture. Having done so, he took a quick look around before leaving. There wasn’t much to see, just a natural stone tunnel with a red glow coming from around a bend.

The elemental energy was more balanced here, free of the influence of the messenger tree. It was even more placid than in the citadel chamber, closer to what he’d created in his soul realm. It was probably a reflection of the natural array’s original state. He went back through the aperture to inform Clive and Farrah.

“Oh, that’s excellent,” Farrah said. “That will give us the baseline readings we’ve been missing.”

“Go,” Clive said. “I’ll finish setting up here and join you.”

“Is there anything carnivorous in there?” Jason asked Beaufort.

“Probably,” Beaufort said. “It spawned the occasional monster. Bronze and silver-rank, mostly. We never saw a gold, but I wouldn’t rule it out. How did you avoid the trap?”

“I didn’t,” Jason said, pulling back his hood to reveal his blackened and bloody face and charred hair before pulling it back up. “I’m just not worried about anything your kind can do. That said, you could have been a bit more urgent with your warning. Did Admiral Ackbar teach you nothing?”

“No, because I don’t know who that is.”

Jason went and found Valetta, the gold-rank architect studying the walls with a more educated eye than Jason had.

“Can you go into the aperture, please? Someone needs to be on watch in case a monster wanders in on the researchers.”

Valetta nodded and walked towards the aperture.

“Oh, and Valetta?”

She stopped and turned with an enquiring look.

“If a monster does show up, don’t just watch them fight it to see what happens, alright?”

She opened her mouth to fire off a retort but stopped herself, responding with a nod instead. Not long after she had followed Farrah through the portal, Jason and every gold-ranker present all snapped their heads to look in the same direction, as if they could see through the walls.

“What is that?” Miriam asked.

“Death,” Amos Pensinata answered. “A lot of death.”

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