Chapter 505 - A Monument to Rot and Death (Patreon)

Talia dove into the hole, narrowly avoiding the storm of blades that had plagued her for the past few hours.  After spending countless days flitting from one memory to the next, she’d finally broken free, only to find herself standing on a windswept plain.  There was no vegetation.  No hills.  Just an endless expanse of featureless, brown terrain.  It wasn’t until she had taken a few steps that she realized why it was so barren. 

The first blade was so surprising that it had nearly decapitated her.  However, because of her monstrous agility and dexterity, she barely managed to avoid what would have been an anticlimactic death.  That first blade – suspended in mid-air and moving so quickly that she could hardly perceive it – was soon followed by a second.  And the second, a third.  Before she knew it, she was inundated by a thousand such blades, which necessitated that she spent the next hours twisting and turning as she fled before their furious onslaught.

But no matter how far she went, they followed. 

She looked down to see a puddle of green blood that had collected beneath her.  Unsurprising.  She’d taken more wounds than she could count, and her already-tattered clothing was barely hanging on by a few scattered threads.  The pale skin beneath was marred by hundreds of nearly surgical wounds she’d gotten from the blades. 

But now she was safe, at least from that threat.  No doubt, she would need to face another before it was all said and done. 

With that in mind, she took a look around.  The hole had only been an inch or so wider than her shoulders, so it was a tight fit.  The same could be said about the tunnel to which it led.  Maybe two feet high and a bit more than half as wide, it was barely big enough for Talia to maneuver.  Thankfully, she’d always been petite.  Otherwise, she never would have fit. 

Briefly, she thought of Zeke or Pudge trying to fit into the tunnel, and she had to suppress a rare fit of amusement.  It never touched her face or elicited any other visible reaction, but it did flutter through her mind.  Progress, she thought.  Or maybe she was just more vulnerable to emotional outbursts after being forced to relive hundreds of memories. 

That was behind her, though.  The way through was forward.

So, without wasting any more time, she started crawling forward.  The walls of the tunnel were bare earth, so every movement brought with it a cascade of dust.  Thankfully, the integrity of the passageway remained intact.

It did narrow, though.

She’d been crawling for a few hundred yards, dragging herself through a few inches at a time, when she realized that she barely had room to raise her head.  A few dozen more feet, and every movement scraped against the sides.  She continued forward, though there was a part of her that wondered if it wouldn’t have been better to take her chances up above. 

One thought of all those blades put an end to that, though.  Even with all her speed, she had been a hair’s breadth from being entirely overwhelmed.  After everything they’d been through since entering the Pillar, it was no great secret why no one had ever managed to conquer the dungeon.  Not only were the vitality levels off the chart, making it almost entirely inaccessible to the undead, but it was the sort of dungeon that liked to separate the challengers.  They weren’t all like that, and the ones that weren’t were highly prized for how much they could augment a force’s leveling process. 

The Pillar would never be good for that.

But Talia wasn’t worried about leveling El’kireth’s warriors.  Instead, she was only focused on conquering the dungeon so she could save Adriel’s life.  All other concerns were secondary.

Even the growing discomfort she felt as she dragged herself through the increasingly narrow tunnel.  Eventually, she reached an intersection.  Though she had no real means of keeping track of her progress, she paused for a moment to try to reason her way through the decision of which way to go.  In the end, she decided to simply continue forward.  There was no information as to the appropriate choice, so one way was as good as any other.

About two-hundred yards later, she found a dead end.

So, she slowly inched her way back to the intersection before picking the right-most branch.  That went on for what felt like a mile before she found another intersection.  She once again chose the right-hand tunnel.  On and on that went, and the only good news was that the tunnel hadn’t narrowed any further.  Still, the walls were so close that she sometimes had to squeeze her way through. 

For hours more she continued on, and even with her emotions muted, every minute made the claustrophobic anxiety dancing within her that much more potent.  She tried to ignore it, but she knew that if she still had to breathe, she’d have been hyperventilating.  Once again, her undead nature won through, and she managed to stave the anxiety off just enough to keep going. 

One tunnel after another, she kept going, and to distract herself from the mindless fear that came from being trapped underground, she cast her mind back to the events that led to the schism in the undead kingdom of El’kireth.  If she’d never joined the Sentries, things might have gone differently.  Or if she had let those murders remain unsolved, as she’d been told to do by her superiors.  Or if she’d made a hundred other slightly different decisions during the investigation. 

On and on it went, and she was forced to realize that she was the catalyst for the kingdom’s civil war.  She hadn’t intended to cause it – and indeed, she wasn’t the instigator – but without her, everything would have skated along under everyone’s noses with them none the wiser.  Perhaps the murders would have continued.  Maybe Adontis’ plan to sow discord within El’kireth would have borne fruit.  Talia wasn’t sure. 

But most of the kingdom would have remained unaffected.

Now, though, everyone was picking sides.  The conflict had spread across the countryside, and there didn’t seem to be an end in sight.  Because both sides thought they were right.  The expansionists believed their entire race would eventually die out unless they spread beyond their current borders, and that was probably accurate enough.  But Talia believed that going on a war of conquest would get them all killed much more quickly.  There had to be a better way. 

She just wasn’t sure anyone wanted to find one.

Those thoughts danced through her mind as she continued to drag herself through the tunnels.  She was so caught up in them that she didn’t even recognize when the passages began to widen.  However, she couldn’t miss it when the tunnel opened into a large chamber. 

But when she saw the residents, she was happy that she didn’t have to breathe.  Because she certainly would have let out a gasp otherwise.  And that would have inevitably gotten their attention.

In the center of the cavern was a great pillar of rock and dirt, though it was no natural formation.  Instead, it had clearly been created by the little creatures skittering across the surface and burrowing their way inside.  At first, Talia didn’t recognize them – though she knew they were insects of some kind – but then, it dawned her. 

Termites.

Not just hundreds.

Not just thousands.

There were hundreds of thousands of the creatures, each about three feet long, skittering across the chamber and ducking into various tunnels or burrows.  Most were equipped with enormous mandibles that they used to tear through the dirt with ease.  It didn’t take a lot of imagination to think of how they would do the same to Talia’s body. 

But her discomfort wasn’t solely based on the danger.  Instead, it was a visceral reaction to the insects.  She wasn’t afraid.  But she didn’t particularly like them, either.  Still, she knew – deep down – that if she wanted to escape the tunnels, reunite with Zeke, and conquer the dungeon, she would need to go through them. 

However, Talia wasn’t willing to engage in an all-out assault.  Not yet, at least.  Instead, she backed away as slowly and quietly as she could.  Termites, she knew, were blind.  So, she hoped that if she didn’t make any noise, they wouldn’t know she was there.  And fortunately, that proved to be the case. 

But after exploring a few more branches, she discovered that each off-shoot ended up in the same place.  The message was clear.  If she wanted to keep going, she needed to traverse the chamber. 

Steeling herself for what she knew would be a difficult time, Talia embraced her various augmenting skills – [Unliving Speed] for extra dexterity and agility and [Inevitability] for when her traversal of the chamber became a fight.  Then, she used [Frigid Claws], [Plague Strike], and [Calcification].

Finally, with her body practically vibrating with unused speed, she opened her mouth and used [Bone Rot], expelling a column of black smoke that quickly spread across the chamber.  Diffusing over such a large area meant that it would lose some of its efficacy, but that was unavoidable. 

The moment she heard the termites start to screech, Talia launched herself through the chamber.  At first, she dodged the enormous insects without issue, but soon enough, it became clear that by trying to avoid them, she was fighting a losing battle.  Never was that more obvious than when she stepped on one.  It didn’t smash into paste as she expected, either.  Instead, its thick exoskeleton remained intact as it bucked, throwing her off balance. 

But with Talia’s high dexterity, she managed to remain upright.  Still, that small mistake was all it took for the termites to catch up.  They swarmed her, nipping at her legs with those giant mandibles.  As she raced for the other side of the chamber, the creatures tore bits and pieces from her already torn body, and when she finally reached the other end, she was distraught to find her way blocked by an enormous pile of the creatures. 

There were thousands of them, all stacked one atop the other and piled hundreds deep.

She saw no alternative.

There was no way out but through. 

No more trying to tiptoe her way to safety.  This was a dungeon, and the only viable way through a dungeon was to kill everything in her path.  The moment that thought passed through her mind, it was as if a switch had been flipped.  She went on the offensive, flaring her abilities as much as she could.  In addition, she embraced her Will as well, imbuing her every movement with the power of rot.

She slashed her claws through a termite, dancing aside as another tried to bite her.  Kicking out, she sent it flying through the air to collide with three others.  She dodged and attacked, and with every forced breath, she sent another cloud of black mist to hang in the air.  Wherever she went, death and decay followed.

But it wasn’t enough.

There were far too many to dodge.

And she wasn’t as durable as someone like Zeke.  With so many of the creatures dogging her every step, her speed was only marginally helpful.  Still, she had no choice but to keep going.  Green blood splattered across the ground, and pain blossomed in her mind.  She ignored it.

Just as she ignored the desperation of her situation.  She pushed aside her increasing weakness as well.  Every wound slowed her down.  Every lost drop of green blood sapped her strength.  And every skill she used diminished her reserves of mana.  Yet, she couldn’t stop. 

She refused to be killed by a group of overgrown bugs.

So, on she went, shunting her human feelings aside and fully embracing her unliving nature.  In the cold embrace of undeath, Talia moved like a machine.  Like her skill’s name implied, she was inevitable – just as death was inevitable.

She slaughtered whole swaths of the termites, and yet, they kept coming.  They leaped upon her back, ripping into her torso before she snatched them free and tore them apart.  They cut through her limbs, right down to the bone.  And more than once, she fell, buried beneath thousands of legs and biting mandibles. 

But she kept getting back up.

Over and over again.  Even when her body was in tatters.  Even when every thought in her mind screamed at her to stay down, to give in, she continued to rise to the challenge. 

And at some point, a notification appeared:

Congratulations!  Through strenuous effort, you have unlocked a hidden skill, [The Dead Will Not Die]. 

Next, came another:

[The Dead Will Not Die] (C) – The true unliving will not die.  Keep fighting well after your body should have given in.  This skill is not upgradeable. 

Talia barely noticed either of the Framework’s messages.  Instead, she continued on, fighting against the termites well after she should have fallen.  Her condition as irrelevant.  So long as she lived – or whatever passed for that among the undead – she would keep fighting at peak condition.

And she used that to her advantage.  Even as her flesh hung off her in ragged strips, she fought like she had in the very beginning, slaughtering hundreds of termites with every passing minute.  Still, there were hundreds of thousands of the creatures, and no matter how quickly she managed to kill them, it would be the work of days.

So she got down to it.

Sinking ever further into herself, she destroyed one termite after another.  Some fell to her claws.  Others, to the mist of decay she summoned with [Bone Rot].  Still others were slain by the sheer amount of Will-empowered decay that hung in the air. 

But regardless of how they died, die they did. 

In the end, Talia lost track of how long she fought.  It may have been days.  It could have been years, for all she noticed.  But by the time she was finished, the chamber had become a monument to rot and death. 

When the last termite fell, Talia stood in the shadow of the great pillar.  Her arms and legs had been stripped down to the bone, and her torso wasn’t much better off.  And surrounded by so much death and decay, she felt more at peace than she ever had before.