Stormborn Ascendant 2: A LitRPG Apocalypse Adventure, page 9
“Dipped down the center of the large rocks for maybe five miles,” he panted.
“Hmm,” Tyler said. He made a show out of unfurling another map and cross-checking it with the map he'd pulled from the man's bag of holding — or rather, the one that he'd had Brandon pull from it, since he still wasn't able to use them properly. “It says to me here that that's going to lead into a monster-infested cave.”
Like the ones they’d scavenged from the Stormchasers they’d defeated in their battle with Sarah, it was littered with false info, but it seemed as if the different groups used different lies. Together, the maps gave his System Boon enough info to piece together the real picture. “I believe the real camp is…”
He traced the path on the map back to where he’d estimated they were. Then activated his Analysis, letting his spiritual sense wash over the land and brushing against the ground with his magic tearing primed.
The Ancestors’ Caves were all interconnected by diffuse trails of magic, and throughout the journey he’d tried his best to keep close to one of the two stretching from the Cave of Body to one of its sister caves.
“Next to another cave,” he murmured.
“Nice!” Brandon said. “Well, onto the next question. How many prisoners are there?”
The man paled. Tyler inwardly thanked his Analysis as Brandon began to suffocate him once more. It took less time for the man to tap out, this time. When Brandon released him, he nearly doubled over with the sudden influx of air.
“Over a hundred,” the guy wheezed. “I don’t know what you’re trying, though. I'll be glad to see the looks on your faces when you get met with an Adept.”
“Oh, an Adept. Is that it?” Lisa said cheerfully. “Thanks for the information, bozo.”
The man's eyes widened with fury, and he began to thrash against his restraints once more. “You’re lucky that Reese is still on her trip, you traitors,” he snarled, “or else she would already have gotten you. Reese is going through the entire island looking for the way to unlock the Saint's corpse. You're not going to be able to —"
The man collapsed, unconscious, as Lisa sent a very thin stream of blood magic towards his brain.
“Wow. That's a lot easier to do when they're already incapacitated,” she said. “How much mana did the guy use up trying to escape?”
“I think maybe all of it,” Brandon said.
“Well, hey. Now we know. Maybe I'll get the torture duties next time.”
Tyler internally cringed at how comfortable they’d all gotten with this. But he brushed off the discomfort as they slowly made their way towards the encampment.
Eerily, nothing else came to harass them as they sped along the distorted landscape. The inside of the sandstorm felt like a separate world — a realm of a thousand ghosts, each frozen in time from lost civilizations and memories long-forgotten. All that greeted them were the echoing voices in the wind, pale gray figures that were easily navigated around but that filled their sight with the odd, glitchy flash of rewinding time.
As expected, they came upon the prisoner camp right outside of another Ancestor's Cave. This one was taller and a bit wider than either the one that Tyler had originally found himself in or the Cave of Body. A few magic lanterns hung in the air, their light beginning to fade with the sunset.
As twilight rose, all that remained to illuminate the landscape were the occasional flashes of lightning from the Storm.
The winds had softened as they'd moved closer to the center — especially in the stretches when Tyler had been able to tear apart some large memories that they came upon — but the maps seemed to indicate that they would pick back up if they went further in. There were several things marked on the maps, in fact, including the location of what Tyler assumed to be the final Ancestors’ Cave.
His heart skipped a beat when he realized there was a good chance that the last cave was the original one that he'd found himself in. He wondered if he would still see the scar in the dirt where his tree was once ripped out. Maybe it wasn’t there anymore.
At the thought, he internally sent a Reaman bow towards the tree. Thank you for giving me everything at the beginning of my journey, he thought. And thank you for giving yourself up in order to save me from an untimely end.
The second Ancestors’ Cave was right at the midpoint between the edge of the Storm and its center, a small portion of a large rocky range that stretched across the landscape. The closer they approached, the unnatural shape of the range became clearer — while metals of various magical properties dotted the range, the rocks themselves were cut into sharp, brutal rectangles, as if portions of the land were being mined.
It would make sense, taking advantage of the vast numbers of supposed traitors that had been caught under Chase's spell. They’d probably shown their unhappiness by rebelling once the spell had been broken, giving the Stormchasers the perfect excuse to enslave them.
In fact, as Tyler skirted around the edges of the camp under the cover of their invisibility artifact, he saw more than a few groups of those miners, all supervised by one or two Stormchasers wielding gleaming weapons. They seemed to possess some sort of magical device that would put the prisoners through excruciating pain if they did so much as step a pinky out of line.
But the vast majority of the prisoners were currently being held at the central camp, right outside the cave. These prisoners were the scavengers — the ones forced to go out and retrieve as many magical artifacts from the surrounding area as they could during the daylight. This spot was apparently one of the most prolific parts of the Storm, where the winds were low but both artifacts and memories were especially abundant.
They stood perched atop a clock tower that seemed to be half real and half echo, observing the camp down below. A short muscular man was walking amongst the tents.
“Lights out,” he snapped, and all the camp immediately went silent. The aura of an Adept floated from him in a wave, just a bit stronger than what Sarah had exhibited.
“Mid-Adept, maybe?” Tyler whispered.
“Seems like it,” said Brandon.
“How do we like our chances with this new power?” Lisa said as she clenched her fist.
Tyler grinned. “I feel like it might be easier than we thought.”
7: The Second Camp
Tyler crept through the Stormchasers’ camp like a mouse in the night. Here, the winds were all but gone, the screams in the air reduced to nothing but whispers.
The last rays of the sun had long since set beneath the chain of rocky terrain lining the west of the camp, and now there was nothing left to illuminate the land except for distant lightning and the burn of sickly green torches in the night.
The sand was warm and smooth beneath his feet, but the Flowing Sands lent him a level of grace that kept him from leaving footsteps as he approached the border of the camp under the protection of his cloak of invisibility.
Despite hours of scouting and extensive communication with Brandon, Tyler had hardly spotted any defensive measures around the camp besides the handful of guards lazing around the perimeter. In fact, he’d learned that everything that he’d suspected was a protective measure meant to keep people out had served another purpose — everything here was meant solely to keep the prisoners in.
The more than a hundred Journeymen who had been enslaved after freeing themselves from the mind-altering magic of Chase Fitzgerald were now huddled together in their tents, still and quiet save for the sobs and moans of pain that pierced through the night.
Every new cry of despair deepened the pit of pain in Tyler’s chest, and he had to fight the instinct to go and try and aid these people. If they blew his cover before he got the information he needed, all the rest of the prisoners would go down with them.
He’d learned from his previous encounters that his cloak was hardly foolproof, and the operation was going to be a tad harder to execute than they’d thought.
He’d peeked into a couple where the tent flaps were open and noticed that all the prisoners had a strange ring embedded into their arm, like a piercing but the size of a large coin. They seemed to all hum slightly, and as he passed through the magical connections he could sense that they all seemed to be attached together.
The threads of magic joined together to link with the brazier-topped totems that illuminated the camp — tall, hideous things of carved wood and bone, crackling with some sort of aura that made Tyler give them a wide berth as he continued traveling. He’d attempted to see how easy it would be to tear at the magical connections, but they seemed to slip out of his grasp, just slightly too slippery for him to easily take hold of.
The air smelled like rust and herbs, and as he passed by one tent where a prisoner was retching, he grimaced at just how weak the woman’s aura felt. They’d wondered how a force of just a couple dozen Journeymen and a single Adept could force a group of almost five times their number into imprisonment and indentured servitude. He suspected he had the answer.
As he neared the cave, he saw more and more crates full of miscellaneous items — rusted pieces of gear, or metals that had been mined from the outcropping itself. They ranged from brilliant gold to dull black, but all of them apparently had some sort of value in the eyes of his System Boon.
The closer he got to the center, though, the more the metals seemed to homogenize. Instead of large cratefuls of mixed ores, he saw neat wooden boxes being placed into bags of holding, perfectly sealed and guarded by at least three Journeymen apiece. His Analysis caught a glimpse at one of the open boxes, and his eyebrows rose.
Volcanic shrapnel. Very little magical effect, but extremely, extremely dense.
There was more Resilience packed into one of those arm-length boxes than there was in an entire crate of those regular metals.
What use would a Flesh mage have for that?
Or was it Reese?
He gritted his teeth as he thought about Chase’s old friend. No matter how much time had passed, the memories of that car crash still rose up as unpleasantly as ever.
Once they got some more captured enemies, he’d need to take his time interrogating them about her capabilities. After Lisa had drained their old ones of all their Blood Resonance, they’d decided to leave them tied up in the Storm for efficiency.
He knew that with the Ritual of Bodily Rebirth already done and another potential Ritual on the way he’d likely be evenly matched with a High-Adept, but he couldn’t shake the simultaneous fear and rage that sprung from his heart at the thought of her.
He wasn’t taking any chances. Not with her, not with any other demon from his past that would decide to show up.
But first, he needed to focus on beating the Adept in front of him.
He traversed through his pre-planned route through the camp and out to the other side of it, until he caught a voice murmuring to himself in one of the last tents.
This row of tents was even shoddier than the others — meant for Low-Journeymen, based on the weak auras flickering inside of them. But Tyler had eyes for just one in particular.
There was only a singular aura in this one, and when Tyler peeked inside, he found a familiar face. Rob — from the 21st Branch.
"Gotta get out of here," he heard in a silent whisper. "Gotta get back to her. They can't keep me here forever."
"Rob," Tyler said in as low a voice as he could as he slowly stepped into the tent. He activated a small wind artifact that Brandon had charged up for him, and a minor replication of the Barrier of Wind formed around them.
The middle-aged man's eyes widened and he scrambled backwards for a moment, his hand coming down to his waist. But there were no weapons to be found in the entire tent.
“You a memory?" the man asked with a shiver. He was thinner than Tyler remembered, his face bruised in two different places and his hair long and disheveled. Despite his cultivation theoretically being an order of magnitude stronger than Tyler had ever seen it, his aura flared even weaker than it had when Rob had still been a Novice.
“I’m not a memory.” As gently as he could, Tyler stretched out a hand and touched Rob’s shoulder. “I’m here to get you and everyone else out of here, Rob. I’m so sorry this happened to you.”
Rob blinked for a moment as he felt Tyler’s hand, then looked him in the eye. He shook his head, took in a breath, then nodded.
"There's an Adept guarding us," he said quietly. "He can probably hear us now."
"Lisa and Brandon are with me," Tyler added, jerking a thumb behind him. "I put up a small soundproof barrier."
And the two Wind mages Brandon had pointed out as potential wrenches in the plan had both been… quietly dealt with.
“So you’re all alive. God, that’s the first good news I’ve heard in ages.” Rob sighed. "It's been a rough few months since you came, kid."
Tyler grimaced. "I'm sorry that my actions caused you so much grief. Is your daughter okay?"
"Fuck, man. I don't know where she is. I don't know what they've done to her. All I know is that me and Alberta are out here with the Journeymen, and the whole rest of them are in some other prisoner camp somewhere."
"They imprisoned the entire branch?" Tyler gasped.
"I mean, why wouldn’t they, at that point? They had that whole mind servitude thing going on for months and no one gave a shit," Rob spat.
"I'm sorry," Tyler said, looking down at the ground beneath them. "I can't even imagine what they're doing to you guys over here."
Rob clenched his fists. "The scavenging work is grueling enough as-is. The memories are dangerous. The winds are always screaming like my daughter, and when you get too far in the Storm threatens to pick you up and whisk you away. But you gotta go deeper, because otherwise that stupid torture device they put in your arm will start to go off. And then sometimes, the Flesh mage just likes to come over and start experimenting on people."
Tyler swallowed, anger and grief warring within him in equal measure. What could he possibly say, in the face of all that?
But a moment later Rob seemed to snap from his haze. "But you’re here now. I’m assuming you got a plan. What do you need to know?”
Tyler’s lips pursed, but he was also aware of his time crunch. “How much do you know about where you are?"
"Nothing. All I know is that we were put on some skyship and our eyes and spiritual senses and any other form of perception or communication were blinded, and then the next thing we knew we were in this chaotic maze of a place. All we know is that we're searching for valuable resources. The same scary ass shit that half of us were doing before we got deemed traitors, but now it’s even deadlier and we don't get to keep any of it."
"Right," Tyler said with a nod. "Well, I’m going to free you, and then when all this shit is over maybe we can go and find where your daughter is being kept."
“Fuck, man. I miss her. I can’t stand the thought of her going through this same process. What… what are they even doing all this for?”
"They're looking for the corpse of a Saint."
Rob sucked in a lungful of breath through his teeth. "What can they do with that?"
"I don't know," Tyler said with a shake of his head, "but all those memories are just because the Saint's corpse happens to be here. It’s reacting with the Storm, we think."
"What?”
“It's a long story. This Flesh mage — do you know how good he is in combat?”
"Hah," Rob laughed. "Not that I have many frames of reference, but he doesn’t seem like the combat specialist type. Feel like that one bitch with the hammer might’ve even been physically stronger, but he’s definitely got some tricks up his sleeve. He hasn’t had to fight at all since we’ve gotten here — they’ve got us all under their thumb with these stupid rings. Can't so much as look the wrong way without him putting you in excruciating pain.”
"Gotcha," Tyler said as he reached over to the strange artifact. It didn't hum with much Resilience in the grand scheme of things, but there was magic there and he'd gotten much more proficient since the last time he'd tried to tear magic from an object like this. Compared to the subtlety of Chase's mind magic, this was more than a solid grip.
“Any idea how the magic behind it works? Is it connected with those totems?”
Rob nodded. “Dunno much more than that, but the totems channel the Adept’s magic. They say that they had to bankrupt a good half-dozen branches just to fund these. Guess the President thought it was a good investment, though. Given he couldn’t get another son to mind control everyone.”
The reminder that they’d still have to deal with a Master even if they got through all this raised the hairs on the back of Tyler’s neck, but he forced himself back to the present. One thing at a time.
“Have you seen any instance where one of these have gotten taken off?”
Rob frowned, then a spark of hope began to light up his face. “Yeah, actually. The guy I used to share this tent with. He was a metal mage. Pretended they’d already weakened him way more than he actually was, then on the third day we were here he snapped his ring off and made a run for it. I think he made it, too. Either that, or someone or something besides a Stormchaser ended up doing him in. There’s no way they would’ve caught him and not paraded him around to rub in just how hopeless our situation was. I pray for him every night. He reminded me a bit of you, actually.”
“Huh,” Tyler said.
He sent a brief prayer out for the guy too, then thanked him for the information they’d gained from his risk. For a moment, he took a deep breath, wrapping two fingers around the ring stabbed through Rob’s arm.
It was slippery. Unwieldy. Like he was trying to grab hold onto an eel slithering with the strength of a shark. But he’d come a long way from fiddling with enchanted arrowheads and tiny barriers.
With the chorus of agonized voices around them and the reminders of enemies old and new fresh in his mind, it was easy to find that same mental space he’d occupied against the Bonewelds, and especially against Chase. He pinched at the ring, his mana flooding through his channels like liquid steel, and the magic unraveled with a satisfying snap.
