Moonlight Relic, Ch 6: Path of Blood (Patreon)

As the bowl spun, the heartbeat resounded throughout the hall, shaking the pillars as new cracks formed everywhere. As the sound echoed, blood filled the bowl and began to pour over the sides. A drop poured over the edge and struck the altar with the force of a boulder, sending shudders and a newly reverberating echo through the hall.

Under the force of that sound, the hall began to warp. The bone totems placed along the altar shattered, turning to yellow dust that swirled upward and disappeared into the side of the bowl. Its size didn’t change, but the pressure increased, shoving Sam back another foot. Behind him, the Ice Sylphs raised their arms in front of their faces, leaning into the force as they were also pushed away. Icy shards surrounded them in a whirlwind, flickering and shattering as they tried to block.

Along the four hundred feet of the hall, the pillars began to shake as the gaps between the stones that led to a dark void grew wider. The spidery, black lines from the bowl floated up from the edge of the bowl, grasping at the air as if they were searching for something. They floated there like veins made of ink drifting on the wind. Then they began to writhe toward Sam.

He could feel something violent and hungry in them as their energy echoed painfully in his veins. Even at a distance, it felt like they were tearing into him. He threw an Essence Shield in front of him, even as he saw a second set of inscriptions rise up from the altar below the bowl. This set flowed down like an army of ants, penetrating the stones that made up the hall.

Whatever was inside the bowl, or whatever type of artifact it was, it wasn’t friendly. There was an entirely different sense of aura radiating from them than he was used to, part of the Path of Blood. The Icebloods must have found this place and performed a ceremony here, placing those totems around the bowl. Either they had activated it or they had been trying to get something from it.

Either way, it was bad news.

The dark veins slowed as they encountered his Essence Shield, flowing out across the surface. Then, their edges turned jagged and they stabbed into it like a thousand tiny roots trying to burrow through. Spikes of pain ran through his meridians and jabbed into his mind like shattered glass.

Sapphire essence burned along his body as he poured it into the shield, but the roots kept digging through. Moment by moment, they were growing larger. There was no Outsider to control this bowl, but whatever it was, it was a high-level artifact, something left behind by a master of the Path of Blood. The Third Evolution aura and the blood aura in the hall all came from it.

The bowl continued to spin as more drops of blood rained down to the altar. Each of them landed like a boulder thrown by a giant, slamming into the altar and leaving cracks behind. Resonant drum beats echoed through the hall in a building crescendo. With each strike, a wave of force crushed down on Sam and the Ice Sylphs, trying to smash them to the ground.

Waves of icy mana poured out of the sylphs and formed layers behind his Essence Shield as they combined their efforts with his, but they shattered and had to be reformed with each droplet of blood that fell.

Mana-based spells are less effective against the blood aura here, the star spoke up. Its points were flickering madly as it assessed the situation. Their Ice affinity is offering them some resistance, but in less than ten minutes at the current rate, all of you will collapse. The good news is that the artifact is not actively using its energy against you. This is purely the effect of its higher-tier aura. The bad news is that it can continue indefinitely.

Sam growled an unintelligible response as he pulled three auras from his storage and combusted them, sending the energy to his Essence Shield. Then, he reached into his belt pouch and pulled out a scroll. He activated it with a touch on the activation rune and tossed it in front of him.

The scroll dissolved into icy flecks like stars, which spun in place. A vortex formed as energy erupted outward, reshaping itself into a shimmering wall of crystalline, white Ice just behind his Essence Shield. He’d made the Scroll of Corrosive Frost a few days ago with the aura of a Hoarfrost Serpent. Hopefully, the hoarfrost from it would have an effect. As soon as it was in place, he dissolved his Essence Shield, pulling it back as he reformed it on the near side.

He staggered for an instant as the assault on his blood and mind disappeared. There was an aching pain where they’d been. With the Essence Shield gone, the dark veins paused, searching around in the air like chaotic tendrils. At the same time, Sam’s hands flickered as he pulled out two more auras and began to infuse them into another scroll. All three of these were Fire aligned. If the first shield failed, he was going to try every element he had on hand to see what worked.

“Move back to the entrance!” he shouted over his shoulder as he tried to follow his own advice. The force from the blood droplets continued to crash down at irregular intervals, making it difficult to keep his balance. The stones beneath his feet were shattering.

His bones and muscles creaked, flexing like spring steel under each impact. It was that tiny bit of give and innate resiliency that kept him from suffering the same fate as the stones.

The dark veins brushed along the frost wall, stroking along its surface as if testing it. A layer of brittle hoarfrost lashed out at them, covering them in a layer of white crystals, and for a moment they paused. Then, the veins twitched, shaking themselves like a dog in the rain, and the hoarfrost blew away, crumbling to dust.

Almost lightly, the veins reached out and stroked along the wall, as if they were testing it. Then they curled into jagged spears that tore through the surface. An instant later, the wall exploded, throwing an eruption of ice across the room.

The same thing happened with a wall of flame that he threw up next, and then barriers of wind and stone. None of his usual efforts were making headway against the aura from the bowl. It made him growl as he backed up with the sylphs. The scrolls had given them a moment to retreat, but they hadn’t stopped the attack.

They were near the entrance now, but the portal that had brought them here was nowhere to be seen. He wasn’t sure when it had disappeared, but it didn’t bode well. Either the bowl had closed it or it had become unstable under the assault.

From the side, a volley of arrows and blades of cutting ice tore down the hall, heading for the bowl. When they struck the aura around it, they shattered into pieces. The dark veins grabbed at the fragments of mana, sweeping them up in a whirlwind that was directed back to the bowl. It was even less effective than his scrolls.

Sam’s mind raced as he tried to figure out a new approach, looking for anything he hadn’t tried yet. Behind him, the sylphs were grim, but their hands never stopped. Whatever happened, they would die on their feet.

There is another presence in this hall, which I am trying to activate. The star’s words rang in his mind. He could feel it constantly analyzing the data. It feels like the Moonlight Relic, but it’s very faint. Perhaps I can make a connection.

It was a thread of hope, but it wasn’t guaranteed, so he pushed it out of his mind as he stared at the blood aura. He’d tried every bit of elemental manipulation he had so far and the scrolls imbued with aura. All that was left were his aura manipulation abilities or something even more experimental, like exploding the artifacts he was wearing. His face hardened.

He was a Battlefield Reclaimer. His entire class focused on aura, manipulating it, and redirecting it. Third Evolution artifact or not, he wasn’t going to let a cursed piece of bone get the better of him. He hadn’t want to touch the aura, but it looked like he had to now.

His energy poured into Shatter Aura as he reached out toward the dark veins. The last time he’d used it, it had been on the Moonlight Relic’s trap and he’d just learned it. He hadn’t practiced much after that, since the World Law’s warning about not damaging Aster Fall was still ringing in his mind. That cold tone was not forgiving, no matter that it had removed Defiant and accepted his existence here, and he didn’t want to get on its bad side again. At the moment, however, the World Law would probably jump for joy if he broke something.

A rippling field of partially transparent energy began to radiate from him with a light blue shade. Like most of his abilities, Shatter Aura didn’t just work. He needed to find a weakness in the blood aura to exploit. When he’d attacked the relic, the trap runes had been old and brittle, and he’d driven energy into them in the right spot to make them shatter.

His eyes scanned across the area, examining the bone bowl, the pillars, and the veins in the air as he searched for what he needed. The veins writhed closer to him, blasting through the remains of the stone wall he’d erected a moment before. Then they stabbed into his Essence Shield and the corrosive ache returned.

He growled as his talons flexed, but this time he didn’t back up. If this aura wanted to destroy him, it was going to get more than it bargained for. The veins stabbing into his shield looked fragile, but they weren’t. They’d destroyed his barriers just by brushing against them. Still, they were thin, and that meant their connection to the bowl might be as well.

Shatter Aura flared around him as he shaped it into a cutting blade, and then crystal flame blasted away from him as he raced forward. He hardened his Essence Shield, trying to trap the veins in it as he closed the distance toward the bowl.

Pulses of energy hammered down, shaking the room around him as they sent him staggering to the left and the right. Halfway there, one caught him in midair between strides and smashed him to the ground, sending cracks of pain through his ribs when he smashed into the stones. The blood aura all around him thickened like tar as it tried to congeal around him.

He drove the translucent blade of Shatter Aura up at the energy, slicing through it as the energy left off a shriek like a wyvern weeping, and then he rolled free. His essence reserves dropped precipitously, pouring into the blade to keep it stable, and he grabbed three more auras from his storage as he jumped forward again.

He was twenty feet from the bone bowl when the entire hall began to tremble and a sound like fracturing ice grabbed his attention, making him spin around. Throughout the hall, there was a faint humming sound as the pillars shook that was growing louder. Behind him, he could see the three Ice Sylphs near the entrance. Their hands were linked and they were surrounded by a current of icy mana like a frozen river as they opened their mouths to sing.

The song wasn’t something held in human lungs, and it didn’t sound like something a living being could even produce. It held a high resonance like breaking crystal, which was coming from Raelia, and a low one too, like shifting glaciers, from Danir. In the middle of that, there was a humming green energy like sprouts coming up in spring as the ice fades away, which was coming from Siwasir. It carried a brilliant sense of life with it.

The sylphs’ faces were tight with strain and their bodies were shaking, but the song continued. All around their feet, a field of ice was swiftly spreading outward across the stones. Where that ice encountered the blood aura, it spread across it, freezing it in place.

Sam stared at the three of them for a moment before he jerked his gaze away and turned back to the bowl. Whatever they were doing, he was sure they wouldn’t be able to keep it up for long. The aura in the hall was retreating, pulling away from the ice before more of it could freeze, and he had to take advantage of the distraction.

His essence dropped to less than a quarter as he focused on Shatter Aura and closed the distance toward the bowl. He was only a few feet from the altar now, separated from it by a circle of runes engraved into the floor, as he shaped the ability into the strongest, sharpest blade he could. Then he targeted the area where the blood veins extended outward from the bowl and brought it down in a rapid slash.

He felt a moment of resistance and then a slight give as he began to cut through the aura, but an instant later he was swallowed up by an explosion that tore outward from the bowl. It was a wave of expanding blood that blasted him off his feet and carried him backward through the hall until he slammed into the far wall more than a hundred feet away.

A wavering scream tore through the wave of blood in a high-pitched, inhuman voice, and then the blood drew back toward the bowl, swirling around in a funnel that condensed until it formed a long-armed, spiky, red figure. It looked something like an Iceblood, but its limbs ended in trailing veins like the inscriptions on the bowl and its face was a red blur with no discernible eyes or mouth.

Blood Elemental. Outsider.

There was no level listed next for it, probably because his Analyze was too low to tell, but he mentally added something over Level 300. There was a thin trail of blood that reached up from the thing’s shoulder and connected to the bowl, which began to rotate around its head.

The elemental turned in place, searching through the room until it faced Sam. There were no words as it studied him, but he felt a pulse of sudden hunger as the veins that made up its hands twitched. It wasn’t happy with him.

As the elemental took a step forward, its spindly leg crashed into the circle of runes around the altar and it let out a high-pitched, warbling shriek as it jerked itself back. Ridges of angry, red spikes rose up all over its body and Its limbs came forward again as it slammed them into the circle, but there was only a splintering crash in the air that resulted in the runes shining more brightly.

The faint silvery light intensified as the runes in the circle became more distinct and a curving shield rose up from them. At that moment, the reason they weren’t all dead yet was suddenly much more clear in Sam’s mind. This hall hadn’t been built by the owner of the bowl. It had been built to contain it.

The Ice Sylphs’ song wove into the structure of the hall and a cool breeze flowed through the room, bringing stillness to the air where the shriek had been. As the circle flickered, the mana was drawn toward it. A layer of light blue ice formed on top of the runes, and then it disappeared as it flowed into them. The runes shone more brightly and one of the runes floated up from the circle, like a crown above the others. It had three sharp peaks like mountains.

Energy signature identified. The Guardian Star’s voice rang out in Sam’s mind. The central rune is registered in the Moonlight Relic’s memory as that of the “Three Peak Sorcerers.” They were allied with the old masters of the Moonlight Relic. In their youth, each of them was a student there. Before the war that broke it, they rose to prominence in their separate fields and founded their own school.

The star sent the rest of the information in a burst to Sam, showing him a fragment of the past. He saw a sprawling city where the relic was now, divided into twelve layers. Schools, shops, and craftsmen were everywhere. The people walking the streets were from many races, some that he didn’t recognize, but there were still plenty of humans.

The view zoomed in on a specific building with three stories that sat on the fifth layer. Engraved into the stone above the door was the same three-peaked symbol.

There is little information on the Three Peak Sorcerers themselves, but spatial manipulation must have been one of their talents. It was a main area of study at the relic. The old masters needed talented recruits for the next relics they planned to build. As a result, dozens of small schools sprang up around it, many of which kept a presence on one of the layers. The Guardian Star fell silent as it assessed the energy in the room, and then it spoke again.

Based on the fluctuation of energy from the runes, this hall was a containment field designed to draw away energy from the Outsider artifact. It had safeguards to eject the artifact into the void outside Aster Fall, but they have failed. The result is the spatial tears along the edges of the structure.

Even as the star spoke, the stones of the floor were crumbling away and the cracks in the pillars were expanding. The dust from them was swirling toward the runes and being absorbed, just like the Ice Sylphs’ mana. Despite that, there was an empty feeling to the runes, as if they were barely functioning. Whatever mana had once supported them, it was swiftly failing. The star’s next words confirmed it.

Time or interference by the Icebloods has corrupted the containment here, allowing the artifact to take partial control. The runes here are activating now due to the heightened threat, but they are on their last legs.

He had been thrown across the room, but the impact had been absorbed by the Amulet of Swirling Winds. The wind barrier it had summoned was fading away, leaving the amulet with only half of its charge.

As he peeled himself off the wall, his attention locked onto the runes in the circle, committing them to memory as fast as he could. He had to help the runes contain the elemental, and to do that, he needed to understand them. Many of them were familiar, although not in exactly the same way as the ones he’d seen.

They weren’t part of the core enchantment, which was in a class entirely its own, but there were other runes scattered throughout the ruins, especially near the places where people had lived. These looked like they were from the same school, but they were focused on combat and protecting the location, not keeping a bath warm.

To his right, the Ice Sylphs were swaying, their song growing thin as their energy was pulled into the runes. It was their help that had allowed the formation to awaken, and Siwasir’s part of the song reminded him that the sylphs had been created by the Goddess of Life. There was still more to their story that he didn’t know.

As soon as his limbs were working again, he pulled another four auras from his storage and combusted them. It sent small frizzles of pain along his meridians, warning him that much more would start to harm him. Most of them were only at the Advanced tier and held 30 points of essence, but he had a few Expert ones that held 40.

It was enough to bring him up to 180 essence, which was three quarters full. It would have to do. The first thing he did was to pull a sheaf of healing scrolls from his pouch and throw them toward the sylphs on a gust of wind. Raelia caught them as they blew toward her, her song never stopping. The scrolls were only at the Expert tier, but the higher the tier, the better the restorative effect. Perhaps they would help.

Then he turned toward the circle of runes and the blood elemental that was trapped inside. The Outsider’s body had warped into a whirlwind of bloody veins that were sprawled across the inside of the circle like a nightmarish spider’s web. The runes were falling dark in places, only to flicker back to life as they absorbed more and more of the material that made up the hall.

All around him, the hall was crumbling as the stones that made it up turned to streams of shimmering dust that were absorbed by the runes. The four hundred feet of pillars already resembled a whirlwind that was slowly pouring toward the center. It wasn’t clear how long they had before it all collapsed. At that point, even if the enchantment managed to eject the artifact into the void, it would take them all with it.