Loremaster - A Progression Fantasy Adventure, page 24
Confused, Rowan looked for the source of the barrier, only to watch in horror as Fiin fell, her mana clearly spent in the aftermath of the spell she had just cast.
The remaining Frost Blades did not hesitate, Jaro’s axe and Dillo’s sword forcing the nightmarish creature away from Patri, as Stenne moved to heal the heavily wounded axeman. All healing spells Rowan had ever seen were touch-based, and this fact meant that Stenne was now forced back into the fray in order to attend to his ally.
Returning to the ceiling, the Aracocytus hissed, clearly considering its next move. It had lost another leg to Dillo’s sword just now, and its three remaining limbs were visibly shuddering under the exertion of keeping it on the ceiling. But the bloodlust in its nature would not allow it to retreat, and the blood dripping from its jaws made it obvious that this fight was not over yet.
It was Rowan who was the first to sense it, seeing the bone-spider’s plan before it could take action. Two members of the Frost Blades were down, and one of those was currently surrounded by the remaining three. That left the other exposed, and the Aracocytus was not about to pass up a free kill.
It was not altruism that spurred Rowan to action, nor was it heroism. Only pure practicality forced his legs to move, pumping as he sprinted down the tunnel towards the motionless Fiin, desperately hoping he would be in time.
Although the monster was injured now, there was no guarantee it would stay that way after devouring Fiin. Rowan had heard tavern tales of monsters that recovered after drinking human blood, or feasting on human flesh. It was never wise to trust an adventurer’s tale as being one hundred percent true, especially when it was no longer the original adventurer themself that was telling it, but now was not the time for him to hedge his bets.
He did not know if the creature in front of him was one such monster, but he did know one thing. If it was allowed to recover while the Frost Blades were down two members, none of them would leave this tunnel alive.
Legs clicking against the tunnel ceiling, the Aracocytus sped towards Fiin, both Dillo and Jaro realizing the situation far too late. Fifty feet away, Rowan watched with horror as it leapt towards the fallen girl, its remaining limbs encircling her like a cage as it landed, its bony maw unhinging once more as it prepared to taste her flesh.
Realizing that he would not reach her in time, Rowan did the only thing that came to mind: he cast the Ball of Light spell that they had spent the past month mastering in Professor Typh’s class. Unlike in class, Rowan did not seek to merely cast the spell. Instead, he gathered as much mana as he could and forced it inside his ring and into the spell formation, struggling to contain the vast amount of magical energy that he wielded.
He had become far more proficient at this task over the past month, but never before had he attempted it with so much mana. Ten, no… twenty times the normal amount used to cast the spell had been inserted into the formation, and still he forced more in. If he had wanted to, he could have cast it already, but something within his mind whispered that he needed to pour everything into this. Fiin’s life—all of their lives depended on it.
Gritting his teeth, Rowan forced even more mana into the spell formation until he felt his grip on consciousness begin to wane—a sign that he was about to lose control of the mana. Praying that it was enough, he cast the spell.
With a flash of light, Rowan succeeded, a bright ball of violet light appearing in the air in front of him, far brighter than any he had ever cast before. Slightly dizzy from the exertion, Rowan forced himself to stay conscious, maintaining the spell as he thrust it towards the bone-spider in front of him.
The spell did nothing spectacular. The Aracocytus did not rear up, its flesh did not melt from its limbs, nor did it scream in pain as the light seared the foul life from its bony visage. No, the only response Rowan’s flare earned from the nightmarish creature was a quick look, its head snapping sideways to observe the phenomenon before turning back to its prey, the defenseless girl beneath its feet.
That moment was all the other Frost Blades needed. An axe buried itself deeply in the back of the Aracocytus’ neck; Jaro’s face contorted in rage at the monster that had dared to hurt Fiin. Dillo’s sword was swift to follow, severing another leg, and even Stenne attacked, a spell of blinding emerald light chipping splinters of bone from the thing’s skull.
With a shudder, the Aracocytus lurched to the side, swaying briefly before collapsing, apparently dead. Neither Jaro nor Dillo were willing to accept this at face value though, and both brought their weapons down several more times upon the heap of leg and bone that was all that remained of their foe, Jaro with quite a bit more force than Rowan had seen him use before.
As he did, Rowan felt a rush of mana enter his body, far more than he had experienced after killing the Thimp. He could feel the increase in strength, minute as it was, and for a moment, an itchy feeling consumed him, as if ants were gnawing at his insides. Then the feeling subsided.
The fight over, Rowan trotted forward to rendezvous with the others, glancing at the still grinning face of the deceased Aracocytus as Stenne tended to Fiin and Patri.
“A climber?” Stenne was the first to speak, both Dillo and Jaro still silent in the wake of the fight.
Dillo had a grim look on his face as he considered Stenne’s words. “Seems like it. The boss of this floor was supposed to be a Thimp brute, not this thing. It must have made its way up from below somehow.”
“If the academy knew...” Jaro’s voice was low, and Rowan felt a chill as he heard it. The boy was covered in black ichor, and practically quivering with rage. He was clearly aware of just how close they had come to dying and had turned his helplessness into anger.
“The academy has no reason to cull us,” Stenne spoke once more. “Nor do they need to test us. This was just an accident, nothing more.”
“We’ll report this to the academy when we get back,” Dillo affirmed, helping Stenne up as he finished tending to Patri’s wounds. The boy was pale from the loss of blood, but he had regained consciousness, and he smiled as he beheld the still corpse of the creature that had inflicted the wounds he now bore.
“We won then?” Patri asked cheerfully, looking from face to face for an acknowledgment of the fact.
“We did,” Jaro responded after a moment, turning to look at his cousin. “Although, it was a close thing. If the porter hadn’t distracted it for a moment, we’d have lost Fiin.”
Hearing this, Patri grinned, leaning around Jaro to get a good look at Rowan. “Good job, man!” Patri called out, flashing him a thumbs up.
Despite himself, Rowan couldn’t help but smile back. Although the situation had been tense, it was true that he had managed to make a difference, no matter how small in a fight that should have been beyond his level. The fact filled him with pride, and it was with some difficulty that he forced himself not to smile like an idiot. Both Dillo and Jaro still wore dark looks, and Fiin was only just now returning to wakefulness under the gentle ministrations of Stenne. Now was not the time for such displays.
A few minutes later, both Fiin and Patri had climbed to their feet, their wounds healed by Stenne, whose face had gone pale from the exertion. Apparently, healing magic took a lot out of the caster.
With everyone on their feet once more, the party voted on how to continue. Jaro wanted to leave, lest anything even more dangerous had made the chamber ahead its home, but Fiin and Dillo were adamant that they complete the dungeon. Though, Rowan suspected the two’s motives could not be more different.
“An Aracocytus is not a normal monster. The presence of one in the second floor of a Brass-ranked dungeon requires investigation,” Fiin argued.
“The boss room lies ahead. Our loot should remain within,” said Dillo. “We should have at least a day before anything new moves in here. So, plenty of time to claim our rightful loot.”
Unable to argue against his boss and his crush, Jaro had withdrawn his objection, opting instead to sulk quietly next to Stenne as the Frost Blades prepared to advance. Fortunately, they were not about to abandon caution. Small kits were withdrawn from pouches and pockets beneath their armor which were used to patch up the holes left by the Aracocytus’ teeth and claws in the Frost Blades’ protective equipment. Dillo also refused to order the advance until Stenne’s mana was at least partially restored, his eagerness for treasure evidently not enough to override his desire to keep his party alive.
At last, they were prepared, and the Frost Blades set off down the tunnel, passing the corpse of the Aracocytus, whose skull still leered just as creepily at them in death as it had in life.
The final chamber of the second floor was indeed just ahead, a mere hundred feet from where the Aracocytus had ambushed them. A circular room, the walls were decorated with a frieze that ran the length of the chamber, depicting various scenes of animals being worshipped by men and beast alike. A chest lay at the far end of the room, beside an abandoned throne. It was what was in front of the throne, however, that caught their eyes as they entered.
An enormous Thimp, half his skull and a large portion of his chest missing, lay dead on the floor of the room. Blood stained the floor and pillars and even the ceiling for fifteen feet from where he lay, and gouges crisscrossed the stone in every direction. In his right hand, two familiar looking black limbs were clutched—the price the Aracocytus had paid to defeat this king among Thimps.
“Well, there’s the boss,” Stenne observed clinically, earning him an icy glare from Dillo.
“Fiin, you go investigate,” Dillo ordered. “The rest of you, search for treasure and any way out of this room. We need to know where the Aracocytus came from. Porter, you process the Thimp when Fiin’s done.”
Splitting up, the party set to their tasks, Patri accompanying Stenne, and Jaro accompanying Fiin. For his part, Rowan swept the room for hidden loot. Although he could not match Fiin in finding magically hidden goods, he doubted any student in Faebrook could match his ability to find treasure hidden the old-fashioned way. Years of combing dirt and debris for anything shiny had given him an almost sixth sense for spotting unclaimed coin.
Unfortunately for Rowan, the Thimps seemed to believe in hiding treasure through the use of the arcane, and all he found were a pair of engraved silver spoons, both of which he tossed in the sack without a second thought.
It was Stenne that discovered the passageway to the depths below, a crevice in the stone behind the throne. Stairs were hewn in the rock, leading downwards into darkness, and the sense of foreboding that Rowan had felt earlier returned in force upon gazing into the inky blackness below.
“Push the throne against the hole,” Dillo ordered, both Jaro and Patri assisting in blocking up the crevice with the Thimp king’s oversized chair. Even Fiin did not protest, her close brush with death too fresh for any thoughts of archaeological heroism, much to Rowan’s relief.
Twenty long minutes later, they left, Rowan’s sack bulging with the loot from the boss room. The corpse of the Aracocytus was collected by Jaro, forced to carry it by the others in retaliation for the mess he had made of it.
For his part, Rowan did his best not to look at it, though the leering and far too human skull flopping lifelessly over Jaro’s shoulder made that difficult. At last, after what seemed like an eternity behind the dead monstrosity, Rowan emerged from the darkness back into the sunlight, the morning having drawn to a close in the time they had been in the dungeon.
Chapter Fifteen
The guard who had seen them off was horrified upon seeing the corpse of the Aracocytus, and immediately offered to take it and report it to the Adventurer’s Guild, but Dillo declined. The reason he gave the guard was that their teachers at the academy would prefer they brought the body back to them, but Rowan sensed a subtle implication within Dillo’s words: ‘We’re not about to hand this over to you when you might be the one responsible.’
Though the guard had attempted to argue, and even threatened to pull rank as a senior member of the Adventurer’s Guild, Dillo had remained firm. At last, the guard had backed down, allowing them to leave the clearing unscathed as they began the hike back to the academy.
Just as it had been several hours earlier, the walk was silent, though for different reasons than before. In the morning, everyone had been tired due to lack of sleep. Now they were exhausted from their dive into the dungeon and on edge thanks to the corpse still slung over Jaro’s shoulder.
Regardless of the reason, few words were spoken between the Frost Blades on the way back to the academy, and the entire group simply walked in uncomfortable silence. For his part, Rowan had several questions, but it did not seem like any of his temporary companions would be interested in answering them, so he remained silent. He had to report back to Kanna with her share of the loot anyways, so he would just ask her.
When the spires of the academy finally appeared in their vision, the tension seemed to dissipate, the shoulders of the party growing lighter and their expressions becoming livelier. Rowan shared their sentiments. The academy represented safety and expertise—the two things they all coveted after this morning’s adventure. Quickening their step, the group hurried towards Faebrook.
Patri was the happiest to see Faebrook’s gate, the forest thinning up ahead. Stenne’s healing was not at the level where it could fix everything, and Patri’s wounds oozed blood—the Aracocytus’ parting gift to him. His torn jerkin damp and stained with crimson, he was eager to get back to the academy where the more experienced healers could patch him up.
The two guards standing at the entrance to the academy seemed slightly surprised upon seeing the corpse of the Aracocytus but otherwise unconcerned about the state the party was in, allowing them entry without comment. Thankful for the first easy encounter he’d had today, Rowan followed the Frost Blades as they headed not for the dorms but for a part of the castle that he had never visited before.
“I’ll see you guys later.” With that line, Patri split from the group, making for the healer’s ward on the ground floor of the castle.
The others continued on, Rowan tagging along behind. Their destination was a wing of the castle not far from the entrance, past a large pair of double doors beyond which Rowan could hear many people moving and talking.
Up front, Dillo glanced back at Rowan, more specifically at the sack over his shoulder, as well as the corpse held by Jaro. Satisfied that both were present, Dillo pushed the doors open, striding inside as the others followed.
The interior of the hall was set up like a street market. Large stalls lined the walls and center of the room, filled with all manner of weapons, potions, foci, and other useful items for adventurers.
“Best part about dungeoneering on Saturdays?” Dillo asked.
“The broker’s market is already here,” Fiin and Jaro responded, their weary tone indicating to Rowan that this was a favored saying of Dillo’s. Stenne remained silent, not involving himself in Dillo’s shenanigans.
“Exactly,” Dillo said with relish, heedless of the tone of his comrades. “Now then, let’s go make some coin.”
The stall they headed for was at the far end of the hall, bearing a sign emblazoned with the image of a silver hammer. Nor’s Traders was scrawled in argent letters beside it, and a muscled man with a large belly beneath his tunic—presumably Nor, Rowan thought—sat behind the stall counter.
“Nor,” Dillo greeted, Nor’s eyes lighting up as he watched them arrive.
“Dillo! And my favorite group of adventurers! How are you, my friend?”
“Still alive,” Dillo replied. “Though, it was pretty close today.”
“I can see that,” Nor commented, his gaze wandering to the Aracocytus corpse on Jaro’s shoulder. “An Aracocytus. I didn’t think the Frost Blades had been promoted to Silver-rank adventurers, congratulations!”
“We haven’t,” Dillo responded sourly. “This was a climber.”
“And you beat it?” Nor seemed impressed. “That’s no small feat, my friend. My congratulations may have been preemptive, but I’m sure that it was not overly so.”
This brought a smile to the faces of the Frost Blades, even Stenne appearing happier at Nor’s words. To Rowan, it was obvious that the man was a master of buttering people up, and he did his best to study the trader as he spoke.
“Will you be selling the corpse?” Nor inquired, his expression humble, but Rowan could see the glint of greed in his eyes. The man smelled profit, and he was not about to let it escape.
“We will,” Dillo confirmed. “But it will be a delayed sale. We need to let the academy study the corpse first to make sure that it wasn’t a variant.”
“Of course, of course,” Nor said placatingly. “I would be happy to pay you now, and take possession of the body later.”
Dillo seemed relieved to hear this, his shoulders untensing. Clearly, he had not been sure whether or not Nor would accept the offered terms.
With an indulgent smile, Nor, glanced at Rowan. “Did you acquire any other items in your excursion?”
“Of course,” Dillo responded. Turning, he beckoned Rowan to step forward and place the sack on the counter, the bag making a pleasing thud as it landed. As Rowan stepped back, Dillo opened the sack, spilling the contents forth.
With an appraising eye, Nor examined the items before him, occasionally reaching into the pile to separate things or to get a better look at certain items. At last, he nodded and looked back at Dillo.
“Everything here for sale as usual, I assume?”
“All but the magical crystals,” Dillo replied. “Those are promised to our porter for his services today.”
“Must have been a good porter,” Nor commented. “In that case, I’ll pay you twenty-two gold Vlends for the lot.”
“Twenty-two Vlends?” Dillo frowned. “There are over a hundred Thimp horns in here, let alone all the other stuff we found. The horns alone would be worth almost fifteen if we took them to the guild.”
