Chapter 125 - The Easy Path (Patreon)

Come to us, child, came the thunderbird’s intrusive thoughts. The way is clear, and we will be undisturbed. This mental connection is…tiring.

Suddenly, Abby’s mind bloomed with knowledge, and she became acutely aware of the temple’s layout. More importantly, she knew precisely how to reach her ultimate goal, which was the thunderbird roost. But as much as she wanted to take the thunderbirds’ thoughts as truth, she wasn’t so naïve that she would trust them implicitly. So, she settled down upon the steps, watching the blinded gnolls and looking for patterns she could exploit.

In the center of the courtyard in front of the temple was a sizable well, its walls made of stones cut from the mountain and topped by a thatched roof. Stretched between the pillars that supported the ceiling was a crank with a sturdy rope descending into the well, and periodically, one blind, gnollish well attendants would turn the crank and retrieve a bucket of water for one of its waiting brethren. All around them, other gnolls shuffled about, intent upon their own tasks.

Abby watched for a few minutes, and over the course of her observation, she discovered a few simple facts. The gnolls, one and all, were indeed blind. She’d gotten a good glimpse of one of their faces when, without warning, it had turned to her and sniffed the air. She held perfectly still, as if that would hide her scent, and she studied the thing’s scarred and mutilated face. Jagged scars crisscrossed its snout, its fur was patchy, and, most importantly, its eyes were  a milky white.

Self-mutilation, came the thunderbird’s thoughts. They do this to themselves.

Why? Abby thought in return.

They are monsters struggling with their ascent into sapience, was the reply.  It is a difficult journey, and it takes its toll. Come. We have not much time. Already, the village below stirs.

So, the time limit was still present, Abby thought.

Over the next few minutes, Abby marked a likely path through the courtyard and into the temple, where she would have to adjust on the fly if she was to reach the roost at the top of the building. And after coming so far, she had no intentions of turning back now. So, without further hesitation, Abby darted along the path she’d imagined, dodging blind gnolls along the way. Some of them sniffed the air as she passed, but most shuffled along, heedless of their surroundings. After almost an entire, heart-pounding minute, she reached the entrance to the temple, which was guarded by a pair of huge, slightly open, bronze doors, which were both decorated with a beautiful elven woman whose hands were stretched toward the sky in reverence. The doors were masterpieces of artistry, but Abby couldn’t afford to study them. Instead, she slipped inside only to have her breath snatched away from her breast.

If the doors were masterpieces, Abby had no words to describe the interior of the temple. She’d been to the Temple of the Sun. She had seen the Church of Purity. And, back on Earth, she had had the good fortune of traveling across Europe to see the paintings and sculptures of many of the great masters. However, nothing she’d seen before compared to the interior of the mountaintop temple.

As she gaped, Abby realized that it was all the more impressive because it took almost nothing from human workmanship. Anything made by the hands of man was, inherently, influenced by their forebears. No artist became a master without being ushered along by someone else. It was inevitable, then, that there were common themes among any collection of human architecture and art.

But the temple interior laid out before her was like nothing she’d ever seen before, save for the ruins of Tua’ta’Alar. Even that was mitigated by the abandoned city’s advanced state of decay, though. But this mountaintop temple, it was a perfectly preserved relic of a bygone era, created by an extinct race of unparalleled craftsmen. To say that Abby was impressed would’ve been an understatement. In fact, awestruck was a better descriptor, though even that paled before the reality of her sense of wonder.

The temple was roughly circular, with tiered seating like an ancient amphitheater, though all the flourishes were wrong. Relief sculptures depicting a wide variety of fanciful monsters decorated every vertical surface, almost looking like the most intricate scrimshaw Abby had ever seen. Then, she realized that she had seen its like before – on Zeke’s mace, whose haft was covered in similar carvings.

Are these all runes? Abby wondered.

They are, came the thunderbird’s answer. Once, they powered a gate to the realm of the gods, though that was long, long ago. Now, they are mere decorations.

What happened? Abby asked.

Progress, the thunderbird replied. With the extinction of the elves came a new era and a new gate.

Abby immediately thought about Zeke’s eventual goal, to climb to a higher plane and continue to progress so that he could fight in Oberon’s war. The tree goddess Aja had confirmed it as truth, and now, Abby was confronted with yet more evidence that humanity was never intended to flounder in the Radiant Isles.

That is correct, child, said the thunderbird. The way is blocked, now. Humanity has squandered the gifts it has been given only to stagnate and stew in its own self-importance.

How do I fix it? Abby asked, moving into the temple. She cast her eyes skyward to see vaulted ceilings, the stone arches interwoven with a mesh of gold and flowing with what appeared to be liquid ruby. It took her a moment to understand that the red veins were static, but something moved within them.  Energy, she reasoned.

Alone? You cannot, was the thunderbird’s reply. You are weak, yet. It is a task befitting a true champion. A chosen. You have potential, but you are not ready for such a burden. Perhaps one day…

Abby clenched her fists in frustration. Wasn’t she trying to get stronger? That was the entire reason she’d climbed the damnable mountain in the first place. But even then, she wasn’t a chosen, was she? She would never be as powerful as Zeke.

No – she refused to believe that. It might take time, but being a chosen was only a head start, wasn’t it? She could make up the ground through hard work, dedication, and a few lucky encounters. Because she had begun to notice something – as they gained levels, the rate of growth wasn’t constant. Her earliest achievements only granted a few stat points, but the later ones? They had the potential to be exponentially more powerful. So, if she remained by Zeke’s side and gained where he gained, the gap between them would slowly shrink, at least relative to their overall power.

Or that’s what she hoped. The truth of the matter was that it was supposition and conjecture, and it wasn’t based on enough evidence for her to be completely sure. Still, it helped allay some of her fears of being left too far behind to matter.

As she circled the amphitheater, Abby saw a pair of robed kobolds making a decent showing of cleaning the place; how they managed, what with being blind and all, she didn’t know. But the temple was spotless, so she couldn’t really argue with the viability of the arrangement. In any case, while she clutched the gem-like egg in her arms, Abby gradually made her way to her destination on the other side of the circular room, trying all the while not to become distracted by the mesmerizing carvings that seemed to decorate every available surface. It was as if the elves hadn’t been content with the mundanity of a stone wall, so they’d improved upon it, and in any other scenario, it might’ve been too cluttered and busy, but Abby found that everything fit together flawlessly to create an otherworldly atmosphere.

So, it was with some regret that she passed through an arched doorway to find a winding, spiral staircase. Even the steps bore evidence of the elven carving, though it had been worn down to almost nothing – a horrible loss, to be sure, but one Abby didn’t let herself dwell upon. Carefully, she climbed the steps, keeping her senses tuned for any indication that one of the gnolls might be between her and her goal, but as she climbed one step after another, nothing presented itself. Finally, after almost twenty minutes of climbing, she finally came to the stairs’ peek and found herself on a wide plateau, upon which rested a pair of glorious thunderbirds.

In her various visits to the menagerie, Abby had read descriptions and seen drawings of the majestic creatures, so she thought she knew what to expect. Body of a bird, wings of lightning, eyes that danced with a summer storm – but nothing could have prepared her for those descriptions to become reality. Inadvertently, she let out a gasp, which drew a rumble of thunder that might’ve been a chuckle.

“This is our savior?” asked the creature on the left; at the size of a truck, it must’ve had a wingspan that stretched into the triple digits. Its body appeared little different from that of a huge eagle, though its feathers had a slightly blue tinge to them. And then, of course, there were the wings of spiderwebbing lightning that were folded against its torso. “Pathetic.”

A blue tendril of electricity arced into the huge bird, singing its feathers, and the other one said, “Be polite, Duragos. She has endured great peril to help us.”

“Great peril to help herself, you mean to say,” Duragos responded. She is no different from the gnolls, constantly seeking more power.” Belatedly, Abby used [Keen Eye] to inspect him:

Duragos, Watcher of the Eastern Peak – Level 25 (B)

And then she looked at the slightly larger thunderbird and did the same:

Mrwyska, Lady of the Mountains – Level 25 (M)

Abby’s breath caught in her throat. Not only was she facing a boss-tier monster, but it was accompanied by an actual monarch-tier. Any hope that she could face off against them and win seemed absolute folly. If she’d been faced against such odds, her insecurities would’ve been tossed aside, and she’d have run away without so much as a second thought. Her quest for more power be damned.

“We would not have killed you unless you forced us to,” said Mrwyska. “But the point is moot. You have chosen to help us. Please, bring me my egg.”

Abby never once considered disobeying the creature. However, as she beheld the massive bird’s nest, she was faced with something of a problem. For one, the nest itself was constructed of what looked to be metal twigs and branches. For another, it was held together by arcing lightning that Abby suspected would fry her without skipping a beat.

“Uh…is it…um…safe?” she asked.

“Safe enough, human,” Duragos harumphed, giving Abby the impression of an crotchety, old man. Of course, that was mitigated somewhat by the fact that, aside from the other thunderbird, he was almost assuredly the most powerful being she’d ever seen. “The lightning is under our control.”

Abby steeled herself; she’d trusted them so far, and she didn’t think it was time to start questioning things. So, after taking a deep breath, she strode toward the nest. Still, when she reached it, she reached out a tentative hand. It was one thing to trust the thunderbirds, but she wasn’t really the type to throw all caution to the wind. Luckily, when she touched one of the metal branches, all she felt was a slight tingling sensation. In fact, rather than electrocuting her to death, it was kind of refreshing.

Her safety secured, Abby wasted no time in climbing into the nest and placing the egg in the indicated spot. Whether it was the slight current of electricity coursing through her or her proximity to such powerful beings, Abby’s heart felt as if it was beating out of her chest. However, she forced herself to take one calm breath after another as she faced Mrwyska, who seemed the most reasonable of the two creatures.

“I’ve brought your egg,” she declared with as much confidence as she could muster. “Now, you owe me an explanation. Why did you need my help? Are you imprisoned here? And if so, how did the gnolls manage it? What –”

“Just tell her the story,” Duragos said. “Otherwise, she will prattle on with her questions when she should be working to free us.”

Mrwyska let out a sigh that rattled Abby to her very bones before saying, “Very well. Settle down, child. This will take a few minutes, and you are likely tired from your night’s travails.”

Abby obeyed, sitting on the only bit of metal that didn’t seem like it would impale her. Then, she said, “Okay. What’s going on, then?”

“As I said before,” Mrwyska replied. “It all began with a bargain, ill-considered as it was. A gnoll shaman, her name was Crkmanama, came to our perch and offered us a deal. In exchanged for their worship and a steady stream of offerings, we would protect their clan.”

“I wanted to eat her,” Duragos stated. “Mrwyska has always been the more…diplomatic one.”

“Indeed,” Mrwyska stated. “It is my great shame that I agreed, even when my mate had voiced his dissension. For decades, it was a good arrangement. They brought us food, and we fought off the worst of the predators that would have ended the clan before they had a chance to settle the area.”

“They had just fought a war with another gnoll clan,” Duragos interjected, anticipating Abby’s next question. “These were outcasts. Survivors.”

“So they were,” Mrwyska agreed. “When Crkmanama came to us claiming to have found an intact elven temple, we were ecstatic.”

“Why?” asked Abby.

“How much do you know about our kind?” Duragos asked.

“Almost nothing, I’m beginning to see,” Abby admitted.

“Honesty,” Mrwyska said, shaking her beaked head.  Lightning arced through her body. “A noble trait. Powerful creatures such as us are incapable of reproduction. It takes so much energy to simply maintain our forms that there is nothing left to create new life. However, there are places, such as the very temple through which you came to us, where power has been corralled and gathered in such quantities that we become fertile. However, it does not come without a price. The enchantments that run through this mountain are powered by sacrifice. That is the purpose of the temple and the amphitheater below.”

Suddenly, Abby remembered the blood-red rivers flowing through the stone. And the alter at the center of the auditorium.

“Ah, you understand,” Duragos said. “Sometimes, the gnolls find something sentient to sacrifice, but often, they make do with self-mutilation. Hence the blindness. It is enough to power the temple, if only barely.”

“Most of which goes to keep us here,” Mrwyska added. “Thus, your task. The Framework disapproves of such imprisonment.”

“Or it approves of this little one gaining power,” Duragos reasoned. “As if the world needs more powerful humans. Did I ever tell you about the time one of them tried to hunt me? He brought an entire army of –”

“Yes, yes – and you slaughtered them all,” Mrwyska interrupted in a long-suffering tone.

“They were all wearing suits of metal!” Duragos exclaimed, his words accompanied by the sound of rolling thunder. “Such idiots.”

“Of course they were, dear,” Mrwyska said. Then, to Abby, she asked, “Will you help us? I can tell you how; you only have to do as I say.”

“Yes,” Abby said. Aside from the fact that she had a quest to complete, she didn’t much care for the fact that the thunderbirds had been imprisoned in the first place. Perhaps she was biased because they’d treated her with something approaching kindness, and the gnolls had been trying to kill her since the very beginning, but she made her decision without a moment’s hesitation. “I’ll help you.

“Good, good,” said Duragos. “I have been thinking about this for years, and I know just how to ruin this whole operation.”

Abby got the distinct impression that, were he human, Duragos would’ve been rubbing his hand together in anticipation. And given how powerful the thunderbird was, that was a scary thought indeed. Not for the first time since meeting the thunderbirds, Abby found herself grateful that she had chosen their side.