Dungeon Heart: Halls of Stone, page 20
The memory once again warped, and he found himself in a basement of some sort. Later he found out it was the basement of a hole-in-the-wall bar in the most seedy part of town, the Drunken Rat it was called. A silly name almost, the type that you would imagine came from a drunken sailor’s mouth or from some sort of bet. An excellent front for a criminal organization.
He never found out who the criminals were, or how they had learned about his teacher’s ongoings. But they had made it very clear that he was going to have a real bad time if he did not cooperate with them. He could still remember the sensation of that rusted saber blade against his neck and the loathsome scent of his captor’s bad breath.
It was only thanks to an annoying scoundrel that Ziggurd was saved.
It was kind of ironic really. He, a man that could alter reality to some extent with the supernatural power of mana, was saved by a rogue that pretended to be drunk. The man had caused a scene on the main floor of the bar, a little spat that evolved into a brawl of epic proportions. The brawl encompassed every member of the bar, and turned into a scene of pure, undiluted chaos. Ziggurd would not be able to witness this of course, but once the scene had quieted down, his salvation came.
He heard them before he could see them, the heavy steps of a large man stomping down the wooden stairs that led to the basement. A giant man, larger than any he had ever seen, came into view. Bloodied, but grinning, this giant was the man that Ziggurd would come to know as James, and the first member of Azure Arrow he ever met. In hindsight, he was quite fortunate that Azure Arrow had been on site trying to gather information about a quest.
After this event, it didn’t take long for Ziggurd to quit the academy and dive headfirst into the world of adventuring. He gathered his few belongings, and threw in his lot with the members of Azure Arrow, adding his strength to their own. He had never regretted his decision since. The adventures he had already led, the sense of purpose he had found with them, all of it was so exciting and pure that magical was the only word that he could use to describe it.
And then he opened his eyes.
Ziggurd let out a raspy gasp as he tried to inhale fresh air, only to receive the rusted scent of blood that lingered in the air. He became aware of his face being pressed against something wet and red, his mind trying to understand what was occurring. Dazed but awake, he felt an immobilizing weight resting on his lower body. Moving his head gently with some difficulty, he spotted an oversized dead bear that lay squarely over his legs and part of his back. He had no hope of moving the hulking creature, and he knew it. He could not feel his legs at all.
There was someone talking. A male voice. With effort, Ziggurd moved his head a few centimeters to have a better look at the source, his neck struggling to comply with his demands. With blurry eyes he saw Lerron and the rest leave, and even though he tried to call out to them, his voice was little more than a dry croak that could not reach their ears. All he could do was watch in despair as the doors closed behind the last adventurers, and left him and his team to bleed to death.
Tears welled up in his eyes as hopelessness started to eat away at his heart. How cruel could they be, to leave them half dead for the dungeon to consume their bled corpses after the vitality had left their flesh and bones? Could they not even spare a man to put them out of their misery? And the gods too. How could they let their followers die like this? Unburied in a godless dungeon, rotting below the corpses of animals.
It was almost too cruel to bear.
Seconds slipped by after the heavy wooden doors slammed shut behind Lerron, and then only the moans and laboured breathing of the few creatures that lay dying could be heard. As despair began to overwhelm him, a rattling gasp near him drew his attention to the hulking mass of James, who had collapsed due to an untold number of injuries. His breastplate, which had withstood punishment for years, was now in ruins, dented, scratched, and broken. Upon his head a gash allowed his lifeblood to flow out onto the stone floor. A faint movement to the right of the giant man drew his eyes, and he saw Adder cough out spit and blood as he rolled over to his side, one arm shredded, whether it had been due to claws or fang Ziggurd could not tell.
Mei lay close to him, breathing weakly, but breathing nonetheless. She had a burn mark across her face, probably a misfire from an ally mage, and her arm lay twisted at an impossible angle. But she was alive. Given their positions... James must have been trying to reach them to protect them.
“Looks like...” a feminine voice coughed out to the other side of him. The voice sounded sickeningly wet, as if half drowned, but they all knew who it belonged to. “This day just keeps on... getting better and better.”
“I’d... I’d hate to see what a day going bad looks like then,” Adder said painfully, his breathing labored, his voice weak despite his attempt at humor.
“Well,” Ella said, her voice faltering slightly. Ziggurd couldn’t see her, but he could almost imagine her wincing as the words spilled from her lips. “At least we are going out... with a bang.”
“That we did,” Adder coughed out, a sad smile on his lips.
“No regrets?” Ella said quietly.
“I should have visited the red zone of the capitol one last time,” Adder replied unashamed, causing Ella to laugh painfully.
“Incorrigible up until the end,” Ella said with a twisted grin. “Mei?”
“I think, she and James are out cold,” Ziggurd croaked out at last.
“Zig? Where are you?” Ella’s voice called out to him.
“Below the bear,” he replied. “It seems he fell on my legs”
“Ah. Lucky that he only fell on your lower half,” she said with a chuckle. “At least we can talk... to the end.”
“The end...” Ziggurd echoed quietly as he looked at the staff that was still in his hand, now a full foot shorter than it was before, thanks to a certain bear. He stroked the wood with his thumb, remembering all the times it had helped him survive, and all the hardship it had accompanied him through. He had never fully realized how often this thing had helped him pull through, for both his own sake and that of his team.
“Yeah...” Ella said quietly. “At least, what took us out was this mysterious dungeon and not some common monster. I don’t... think I could face the spirits of my ancestors if a goblin took me out.”
“Perhaps...” Ziggurd replied half-heartedly, thinking about how unfortunate they were to have come to the dungeon at all. Now they would all die here, deep beneath the surface of the Earth. Then their spirits would be released from this mortal coil and be left at the mercy of fate, to be sorted into the afterlife. The afterlife... What a strange thought. His soul’s eternal resting place.
Then a thought occurred to him. The grip on his staff tightened. He made a decision, and the light of resolution began to shine from the depths of his eyes. “But not all of us have to die.”
“What do you—?” Ella began, but before she was even done asking her question, she felt her hair stand on end as Ziggurd began to whisper words of power. His remaining mana came out of him like a flutter of wings, and a hollow voice came rushing from him far different from any that she had heard him use. It was clear that his magic was different from what he usually used. She felt her injuries slowly heal as he chanted, and for the first time, she realized that Ziggurd’s voice sounded beautiful like she had never heard it before. It almost seemed like a bittersweet song in a foreign tongue.
She heard the sound of heavy stone move, and she whirled her head around to see that the golem took a step towards Ziggurd, halberd raised high as if to strike. Panic welled up within her, but she had no strength left in her to stop the situation before her. Tears welled up at the edges of her eyes as she stared helplessly, regret and sadness threatening to break her heart.
The halberd reached its apex, poised to swing down at any second. It would be instant death for the helpless Ziggurd, and she knew it. Ella found her heart beating so hard that she thought that it would jump out of her throat. Seconds slipped by, the tension building, yet Ziggurd never stopped chanting, nor did the halberd fall to end his life.
She could not have said the reason why the golem did not finish off her friend. Her eyes flicked back and forth between the golem and her teammates, trying to understand the situation. That’s when she realized something, something that frightened her for a completely different reason. The source of this new fear was not the golem that stood amongst the dead, but Ziggurd himself.
She had never seen Ziggurd heal more than one person at a time, even if it was superficially. Her wounds stopped bleeding, and she noted that so had James’s. Adder spat out a glob of blood, but his breathing came easier as well. She might have been a novice when it came to understanding magic, but she knew one thing for sure. This magic was not something that could be so easily executed; otherwise, Ziggurd would have had the opportunity to cast it countless times in the past.
Which raised the question: Why could he do this now? And what terrible price must he pay for this?
Ziggurd’s chant reached a tenebrous crescendo as it began to end, and Ella could hear his voice weaken and shake. But even as the strength in his voice waned, she could feel another presence, a great and mysterious presence the likes of which she had never felt, start to manifest in the room. She wanted to yell at Ziggurd, for him to stop; she wanted to leap towards him and make him stop, but the words were stuck in her throat like tar, and her body refused to move. At last, the chant ended, and the mysterious aura filled the entire room, so tangible that she could almost taste it.
“You are no... devil or contracting spirit,” Ziggurd rasped out with apprehension, his voice faint. Though his life energy bled from him, he could feel the presence of what he had called forth, and it was not what he had expected.
“Well of course I am not,” a deep male voice sniffed, looking down at Ziggurd and his companions. The voice, while clear, had an odd quality to it. Ziggurd could not tell if it was speaking directly into his mind or if it was speaking out loud. “And I wasn’t about to let you call one in here. Do you know how much effort I spent building this place? I am sure you know as well as I that devils are hardly peace-loving creatures. It would see this place to ruins. I had to manifest myself like this with haste thanks to you.”
“So... you exist,” Ziggurd rasped out quietly, his voice a mix of wonder and pain. “The dungeon truly is alive.”
“Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?” it replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. The voice was elderly by the sound of it, but the power it held within it showed not a hint of weakness. It also almost sounded offended at the suggestion of the dungeon not being alive. “Interesting magic you pulled there.”
Ziggurd smiled weakly, nodding at... well, he wasn’t sure exactly what it was he was talking to. All he could see was a hazy outline of a pair of deep grey eyes with a green glow. “It’s... forbidden magic. Sacrifices must be made to contact the spirits, devils, and gods... And plenty of life has been spilt today for it. Are you a god?”
“No,” the voice replied bluntly. “But neither am I spirit, technically. I suppose I am something in between.”
“I see.” A shivering cough burst from Ziggurd, and his companions knew that his life was ebbing away. But neither Adder nor Ella could find the strength to call out to him while the weight of the foreign aura bore down on them. “Yours is the power of the dungeon, correct?”
“It is as you say,” the voice affirmed.
“Then I beg you... Let my friends go safely.”
The voice didn’t reply immediately, as if it was studying the dying mage for a moment. “Why should I do that? You and your colleagues invaded my dungeon, no doubt in search of gold to line your pockets until they were fit to burst. Or perhaps you just seek glory and empty honor by conquering a dungeon. Why should I show mercy?”
“I can bargain,” Ziggurd replied, his voice weaker by the minute. There was a hint of desperation in his voice. The spell clearly was draining more than just his mana. “...You can have my soul.”
The words hung limply in the air, weighing down on everyone that heard them. Ella wanted to scream to Ziggurd, to tell him to stop, and Adder wanted to yell angrily at the madness of it all. But in the end, the words froze in their throats. Something made them unable to voice their thoughts.
“...Well, that’s interesting,” the voice uttered with curiosity, the attention focused intensely on Ziggurd as life seemed to seep away from the mage. “You would give your soul to save your comrades?”
“Not just comrades,” Ziggurd croaked out, pain marking his words. “Friends...no, more than that... family. They don’t deserve to die like this.”
Ziggurd looked up to the misty figure, staring directly into those ancient eyes. While the aura had manifested only a pair of eyes, Ziggurd saw the being consider the proposal, weighing it against whatever else he could gain from letting them die. Or perhaps the creature was simply considering what he could do with Ziggurd’s soul.
Please... Ziggurd pleaded in his mind. His heart reached out, praying wholeheartedly to any gods, be they new, old, or forgotten, begging them to let this gamble of his work.
Seconds slipped by, and Ziggurd struggled to keep his eyes open, staring at the ancient grey eyes. He clung to the faint hope that whatever entity guarded the dungeon would grant them mercy. For some reason, his spell drew this entity to him instead of the spirit of protection he had hoped to summon, and now, it was their last hope. The dice were cast, and the bets were made. Everything rested on the entity that governed the dungeon.
“Fine. A contract is made,” the entity replied at last, and Ziggurd drew a sigh of relief as he felt strength suddenly leave him. When did he get this tired?
“The pact is made then,” Ziggurd replied as he released his hold on life.
The entity closed its eyes, and Ziggurd had the impression the entity had given him a nod before the world went dark. In the distance he heard the voices of his companions call out to him in despair, but he only smiled as his world was painted black.
And then, Ziggurd’s light was extinguished from his body.
Chapter 17
<<<>>>
Would you like to accept a soul binding contract with the human [Ziggurd Am’id]?
<<<>>
Smit released a puff of air from his nostrils, inwardly sighing as he agreed to the message. The sorcerer had tugged at his heartstrings more than he cared to admit, and his words had earned him the mercy of the old dwarf. Though he had no ill will towards Azure Arrow, he didn’t have any real reason to save them. Rather, they were by far the most experienced adventurers when it came to his dungeon. Letting them die might be the safest course of action. The simple truth is that he couldn’t let himself do that, because he could understand, to a degree, the feelings Ziggurd harbored for his team. While they were not bound by blood, they were family, just like Smit and his own three children.
Still, he wondered if he had truly taken the best course of action. He had no clue if he could make use of a human soul, nor did he know if he had just incurred the vengeance of the mage’s entire team. However, now the deal was struck and the pact was sealed. Nothing could be done to change it now. Who knew, perhaps something good would come out of this.
Smit silently watched the three nobles and the remnants of their teams attempting to make their way out of his dungeon quietly, an unreadable expression upon his face. He knew that the one called Lerron had done something to make his creatures go wild with bloodlust, causing the chaos that had ensued. The man was more clever than he had expected, and far more cold and calculating too. There was something about that man that Smit did not like, something that caused him to be wary. Had he still been in a body of flesh and blood, Smit would have avoided being involved with him completely. Just by looking at the man’s eyes, Smit’s gut instinct told him that Lerron was the type to ensnare people and manipulate them with words.
“Where...? Wha...?” a disoriented voice sounded in Smit’s head. He looked to his left, towards the smoky ball of glowing blue light. It reminded him a bit of Echo’s spirit before she had a body.
“Ah, there you are,” Smit grunted, stroking his beard slowly. “Seems like you are regaining your senses.”
The aura of the floating soul seemed to radiate confusion, but it was soon replaced by a feeling of anxiety and panic. “What you—! The dungeon? Wha—Wait Ella! The others! How are they?
“Don’t get your metal twisted,” The dwarf grunted, dismissing the worry of Ziggurd’s soul easily. With a movement of the wrist, a projection of the room where Ziggurd’s body and the rest of Azure Arrow still were. The projected image was so crisp and realistic it was as if Smit had ripped open a window in mid-air. “As you can see, they are alive. Still healing by the looks of it, albeit slowly.”
“Thank the gods...” Ziggurd’s voice was relieved, as if a great weight had been lifted off his shoulders. His eyes lingered on the image for a while, examining it. His friends had not been fully healed, unfortunately, but they were in far better shape than before. At least they should be able to defend themselves now. On the other hand, Ziggurd’s body was not looking so great. It looked like he had aged ten years, his hair thinner, his eyes sunken in, his hands bony.
There was nothing to do about that now. He was bound to die anyway, so what did it matter if he looked old in the last seconds of his life? In the end, all that mattered was that his teammates survived.
Once he was satisfied that his team was not in immediate danger, he finally started to think about his current situation. His attention quickly shifted towards the short golem-like being beside him. Even at a glance it was easy to see that he was not your average golem. It was different from every other golem, even the blue one he had met in the past. It moved with amazing fluidity despite having the appearance of a volcano that had tried to become human, to the point that under different circumstances, Ziggurd might have suspected that it was just a short man wearing a disguise. He could not make heads or tails of the creature, and began to wonder if it was a golem at all and not some sort of unknown species of elemental sprite that dwelled deep within the dungeon. “And you are...?”
