BT II - Chapter 33 (Patreon)

Two days.  From start to finish, Micah was trapped in the dark, fumbling from cave to cave for two days and two nights.

He had no idea how far his group traveled.  He lost count of the number of times they ended up backtracking.  At some point it just became a pattern.  Wander for an hour in the dark, take a turn that looked correct from the map scribbled in the Ancient Folio only to realize fifteen minutes later that he had been mistaken when the tunnel narrowed to the point that no one could move forward any longer.

Then they would have to back out of the dead-end, making sure to not turn down any one of a number of side-passages along the way.  Really, it was a miracle that they made any progress at all, but Micah could tell that they were moving closer.

Hour by hour, step by step, he could feel a ball of dread growing in the pit of his stomach, spurred on by his Arcana skill.  Micah couldn’t even deactivate the skill at this point.  There was too much raw ritual energy crackling through the air for that.  Even the air had the faint otherworldly scent of Elsewhere.

With every breath, he could feel eldritch energy entering his body.  Every instinct in Micah’s body warned him to turn back.  That he was nothing more than a mouse trying to sneak up on a sleeping lion.

Micah could tell the rest of the party was feeling it as well.  The girls barely slept during the second night, and after the first day Telivern was antsy and pushy.  Even Ravi spent a lot of time slinking in the shadows, sulking with the hair on the back of her neck standing up straight.

That feeling of uneasiness didn’t disappear when they exited the last of the twisting tunnels of the labyrinth and settled their eyes on Dakkora’s tower for the first time.  The main cave was almost unnaturally large.  Micah couldn’t see the top, but he knew that it was somewhere far above them.

The tower itself was glowly a dim purple, a twisting spire of black stone and metal that jutted from the stone floor of the cave.  It extended ten stories into the air, each slightly smaller and more ornate than the last.  Despite the years since the tower had been moved by the gods, it looked like it was still being maintained.  Stained glass images of daemons and creatures from myths filled its windows, gleaming in the dim light as if they were freshly polished.

Around the front of the building was a metal fence, the posts capped in shining silver bulbs that practically crackled with enchantments.  More importantly, a quartet of marble statues stood in front of the only gate, all armed with massive two handed swords forged from a blueish gray metal.

Much like the fence posts, the statues were imbued with enough energy that Micah could practically taste it from the entryway to the cave.  He wasn’t entirely sure whether they would animate or discharge spells at his party, but there was no doubt in his mind that they played an important part in the tower’s defenses.

“Think of the bright side,” Trevor broke the silence, squinting up at the tower.  “Even I can tell that most of those traps are active.  That has to mean we made it here before the Pontiff, otherwise we’d be looking at piles of rubble.”

Micah sighed, looking at the purple light shifting up and down the tower’s surface before he responded to Trevor.

“Not necessarily, you have to remember that the third prince was here once before in the previous timeline.  It’s possible that it learned of some way to circumvent the defenses.  Plus, that monster we encountered just outside the caves came from the prince.  The Pontiff beat us to the labyrinth, and he beat us with enough time to leave a surprise for us.”

“Well fuck,”  Trevor replied cheerfully.  “I didn’t think of that.  Gods above, we could have easily come all of this way just to fall into the Pontiff’s trap.  If he can control the defenses, we’re screwed beyond belief.”

“Let’s hope not,” Drekt interrupted, stepping in between Micah and Trevor as he draped an arm over Trevor’s shoulder.  “Right now I see an obstacle in front of us, and one that we predicted.  We knew the minute we entered the labyrinth that there would be traps.  We suspected that the Pontiff would be here before us.  This doesn’t change much.”

“Agreed,” Micah said with a firm nod.  “This makes things slightly more difficult, but not much.  We have a plan, and we’re going to stick with it.  Assume that the Pontiff has both artifacts.  I fight him one on one and retreat to a fallback point where the two of you are prepared.”

“And we take the scepter and the crown.”  Trevor finished Micah’s train of thought, his voice grim.  “No matter the consequences, we disarm the Pontiff while you use consumables to get yourself back into fighting shape so that you can finish him off.”

“We can handle it Micah,” Drekt said, cutting him off before Micah could ask a follow up question.  “It will be a risk, but less of one than you fighting the Pontiff on your own while he is at full power.  The situation is not ideal, but we must do the best with what we have.”

Micah took a step away from the two of them, slinging his spear over a shoulder before looking back and smiling at his companions.

“Come on guys,” he called out, “enough dawdling.  We have traps to disarm.”

He began his descent toward the tower, sending rocks skittering down the stone floor of the cave.  Behind him, he heard the shuffle and crunch as the rest of their party walked down the slight incline.

“How are we going to disarm the trap anyway?” Leeka asked as the tower grew in front of them.  From a distance it had looked foreboding, but as they got closer, it loomed over Micah.  It was absolutely imposing, the faint crackle of energy he had sensed from the entrance to the cavern had swollen to a tsunami of power and malice.

“The same way you disarm any trap you don’t really understand,” Trevor replied dryly.  “Jab a stick in it and hope you can jump back quickly enough to avoid getting caught in its jaws.”

Micah squinted up at the tower.  The images in the stained glass windows were moving slowly.  It was subtle and hard to see, but there was no doubt in his mind.  All of them were turning from their tableaus to stare at him with expressionless multi-colored eyes.

“A Silver family tradition,” Drekt said, voice deadpan as Micah began casting wind blade.  “Do something stupid, but do it big enough and with enough magic behind it that you can recover from your idiotic decision.  Trevor’s more obvious about it, but it’s a specialty of Micah’s as well.”

A smile appeared on Micah’s face as he unleashed his spell at one of the statues.  There was something to what Drekt was saying, but at the same time, he was tired of overthinking things.  They didn’t have enough information to form an actual plan.  It would be easy to spend the next two hours planning and developing contingencies only to watch all of them fall apart the instant something unforeseen happened.

The wind blade cut into the statue, severing its left arm before cutting deep into the marble of its chest.  Micah broke into a run, casting haste on himself as he sprinted toward the gate, his grin broadening.  There was something freeing about tossing all of his concerns aside and just acting.

The four statues opened their eyes, glaring at Micah through violet orbs.  Behind them, the fence posts spat energy into the sky, creating a web of lightning bolts around the tower that prevented anyone from simply flying past the guardians.

Three of the four statues raised their swords, pointing them at Micah.  The fourth struggled to hold its weapon at all, hampered by its missing arm.  Their swords began to glow with a familiar purple light as energy built up inside them.

Micah went serpentine, zig zagging back and forth faster than the ponderous marble carvings could track.  A blast of violet light gouged a crater out of the rock to his left.

He veered toward the explosion, feet kicking off the cavern floor as Micah sprinted into the heat and shrapnel of the attack.

Even as gravel plinked off of his armor, a pair of detonations erupted to his right, bracketing the spots where Micah would have been if he’d dodged away from the first statue’s attack.

An arrow zipped past Micah as he closed the last dozen or so paces, biting deeply into the chest of one of the statues.  Almost immediately, Micah could sense the enchanted arrow releasing its payload as the marble around it began to flake and grow brittle.

He ducked under a sword slash, not even bothering to cast foresight.  Micah might not know exactly where the statue’s attacks were coming from, but it hardly mattered.  He was significantly faster than them without haste, but with it, the stone figures almost looked like they were moving in slow motion.

Micah activated the enchantments on his spear as he stabbed downward twice, each thrust biting deep into a statue's knee with the airblade that coated his spearhead.  Both times, he felt the tingle of mana leaving his body as he fed the runes coating the weapon’s wooden haft.

The knees exploded.  Micah’s initial attacks weren’t quite enough to destroy them, but each miniature vacuum he left behind was more than sufficient to complete the job.

It tumbled backward, swinging awkwardly at Micah with its greatsword even as he bolted out of range.  Another sword arced toward him, and intercepted it with his spear, purple energy sparking off of his airblade as he directed the attack downward.

The sword buried itself in the rock, violent magic flaring as the blade cut deep into the cavern’s floor.  Micah took advantage of the statue’s trapped weapon to thrust his spear deep into the automaton’s marble chest.

Stone cracked and sprayed, stinging Micah’s face and drawing blood as his spear slammed crossguard deep into his opponent.  He let his mana flow into the spear, planting the seeds of another vacuum sphere as he ripped the weapon free with one smooth movement.

His opponent staggered backward a step, chest collapsing in on itself as the spear’s enchantment hollowed the statue’s torso out.  Its eyes flickered once before the purple light went out entirely, reverting to the expressionless white of marble.  The golem toppled to the ground, shattering as its weakened form slammed into the hard stone floor.

Drekt surged past him, swinging his cleaver to block a sword stroke from a statue while Trevor engaged the enemy with only one arm, peppering it with a flurry of thrusts and slashes as the statue staggered toward him, swiping fruitlessly at the agile man with its remaining limb.

“Aim for their chests!” Micah shouted, stalking toward the legless statue.  “They die if you destroy their chests!  I think that’s where Dakkora hid the enchantments that power them”

His opponent crawled toward him, reaching up with a marble hand to grab for Micah’s ankle.  Almost casually, Micah spun his spear downward, lopping off the golem’s limb at the wrist.

He pushed his haste to the limit, side-stepping the fumbling creation before jamming his spear into the center of its back.  The statue froze, it’s entire body flickering with purple light.

Micah stabbed three more times, each attack sinking crossbar deep into his opponent’s unprotected back, airblade scrambling its insides into gravel.

It froze, dead and unmoving with its hand extended into empty space.

Micah backpedaled a couple of steps, warily eyeing the downed rock silhouette.  It would be just like Dakkora to have one of her guardians play dead or explode post-mortem in order to try and drag its killer into the grave with it.

To his side, the defender Drekt was fighting crumbled, most of its chest reduced to dust by Leeka’s arrow.  The two of them turned to help Trevor only to watch him ram his spear into his statue’s torso.  Without a sword to defend itself, his opponent had suffered at least a dozen deep stabs to its neck and chest as Trevor picked it apart from just behind the reach of its single arm.

The statue went rigid, purple energy pouring out of its wound like blood as Trevor’s final attack ruptured the runes that kept it upright.  It fell forward, forcing Trevor to hop backward as it shattered on the ground in front of him in a flash of purple light.

Micah walked over to Trevor, a grin on his face, and punched the older man lightly on the shoulder.  Above them, the stained glass windows continued to glare down balefully, but Micah did his best to ignore their colorful gaze.

“That was a lot more fun than overthinking things,” Micah said with a chuckle.  “Sometimes you just need to stop worrying and stick your spear into something.  It’s cathartic.”

Leeka jogged up, another disintegration arrow half drawn.  Eris, Esther, Ravi and Telivern followed a couple steps behind the tall orange woman.  Her new pins glittered in her hair, and rather than the exhaustion Micah had seen the last time she tried to use her new bow, there was a look of satisfaction on her face.

“I know,” Trevor replied, giving Micah a saucy wink, “that’s what I keep telling you every time a girl in town starts making eyes at you, but you always come up with some sort of excuse about being too busy with work.”

Micah’s eyes bugged out as he practically choked, but Trevor simply ignored him.

“You know Micah, I had my doubts, but I’m starting to think that this entire plan of yours might work after all.”

Micah rolled his eyes, refusing to look at Trevor’s shit-eating grin before checking his status.

Age 21 [ERROR] / 35

Class/Level Divine Candidate 53

XP 106,575/1,500,000

HP 9120/9120

Class Specialty

Chronomancer, Enchanter

Attributes

Body 57, Agility 57, Mind 115, Spirit 114

Attunement

Moon 105  Sun 70  Night 91

Mana

Moon 9273/9273 Sun 9203/9203 Night  9245/9245

Affinities

Time 10

Tier V - Foresight 19, Time Echos 3, Temporal Transfer 3, Haste 16
Tier VI - Temporal Vortex 14, Temporal Stutter 7, Stasis 6
Tier VII - Time Leash 7, Weave of Fate 5,
Tier VIII - Deja Vu 5

Wood 8

Tier I - Refresh 14, Mending 13, Plant Weave 21
Tier II - Augmented Mending 20, Root Spears 14
Tier III - Heal 13, Paralytic Sting 6, Explosive Thicket 12
Tier IV - Regeneration 14, Healing Wave 6, Poison Fog 15
Tier V - Panacea 6, Coma 6, False Life 3
Tier VI - Binding Vines 11, Infest 4

Air 7

Tier I - Gale 11, Air Knife 24, Air Supply 6
Tier II - Wind Shield 11, Sonic Bolt 18
Tier III - Updraft 5, Pressure Spear 15, Sonic Orb 14
Tier IV - Flight 14, Wind Blade 12
Tier V - Vacuum 5

Blessings

Mythic Blessing of Mursa - Blessed Return, Ageless Folio

Skills

Anatomy  10
Arcana   17
Enchanting  36
Fishing   2
Herbalism  5
Librarian  5
Ritual Magic  36
Spear   40

-Wind Spear 13
-TITS  22

Spellcasting  50

Leeka walked up next to Micah, settling in for a moment as she stared at the crackling web of lightning that encompassed the tower.  The stained glass figures moved, creeping like shadows at dusk inside their window-frames as they crowded forward.

“They’re waiting for us,” she said.  The light from the defensive field flashed and flickered across her face, causing Leeka’s hair pins to glitter in the dark cavern.  “Whatever they are, it’s almost like they want us to come closer.  It reminds me of a predator.”

“You’re right,” Micah agreed.  “I’ve never seen anything like them.  Hells, I’ve never even read about something like those statues or the windows as a theoretical possibility.  Rituals require power to achieve unnatural results.  They operate on borrowed time, and they have limitations.  You can enchant an object to respond to a stimulus, but thinking and responding like a human being?”

He turned to her, mouth set into a grim line.

“That, Leeka, is almost as impossible as creating an enchantment that operates without mana for more than a decade.  But Dakkora was feared for being able to accomplish the impossible, and here we are.”

“What do we do next?” She asked, eyes fixed pensively on the foreboding tower of metal and stone.

“We give them what they want,” Micah replied darkly.  “We go in.”