Godsword: A Deckbuilding LitRPG (Goblin Summoner Book 3), page 6
Chapter Five
In an instant the jungle vanished, replaced an imperceptible moment later with the lands beyond the enchanted metal disc. Though it seemed instantaneous it wasn’t the transfer through the leylines of the world taking just a few nanoseconds. It passed by in the spaces between memories, the sensation of existing as pure mana lost to the soft vagaries of the brain. It simply couldn’t cope with the experience, tossing it aside rather than trying to grapple with it.
Gareth unlinked his arms from those of his friends, breathing a sigh of relief that he could. Sarkuran’s quip about being fused together had gotten to him, memories of a horror movie watched at far too young an age coming back to him. A man clambering from a teleporter half fly, twisting and contorting over time into a hideous monster.
He was already worried about what he was becoming. Sarkuran had reached such a high level before that he had morphed into a demon, though the emperor seemed to miss his previous state.
Gareth suspected he was slowly becoming more goblin-like as he levelled up, likely linked directly to his Goblinkin skill. If he started developing a green tinge to his skin, then he would know for certain.
The room around him was familiar. It reminded Gareth of the inside of the temple they had found beneath the Wildermount countryside, the same stark walls and glowing blue crystals providing light. A set of heavy doors waited at the end of the corridor, though they hung off their hinges, clockwork components spilling out onto the floor like mechanical guts. Someone had been here before, though they had forced their way in rather than taking the time to unpick the complex locks. The roots of plants had worked their way through the stone at points, cracking the walls and stretching across the chamber.
“This place is in a right state,” Magda said, stepping down off the platform. “It’s disgraceful really. Shows a real lack of proper reverence.”
“Oh, it does now, does it? And what exactly is the proper level of reverence?” Gareth said with a chuckle. He couldn’t help teasing Magda. Despite the revelation that she was the first goddess, the creator of all of reality, the closest thing to a God with a capital G he could imagine, Gareth couldn’t help it. It was impossible not to look at the short, slightly bossy and easily irritated woman before him and think of her only as she was now. Gareth didn’t know Magdalena, he knew Magda, and she certainly wasn’t all-powerful and all-knowing.
“Of course! At least the Wildermount version was in decent shape. This is depressing.”
“It’s interesting that the doors are open and yet Henig claims not to have seen anyone since starting his watch,” Sarkuran said. “Why break down the doors and not then travel through the teleporter?”
“Maybe whoever opened this place up simply didn’t know that’s what it was? We only discovered it by accident. Or maybe they couldn’t use it for whatever reason.” Gareth ran his hand along the wall, his fingers tracing the roots creeping through the stone. The walls were thick, and it had to have taken centuries for the plants to work their way through. “Who knows? At least whoever did it wasn’t waiting for us.”
“It would appear that it occurred some time ago,” Sarkuran said, pointing to a cluster of roots working their way across one of the golden doors. “It’s entirely possible that whatever is causing the corrupted mana to seep through isn’t even in this chamber, or in whatever lays beyond. We might have to do some exploration in order to find it.”
“Pretty par for the course that,” Gareth said. “Popping through the teleport and pushing a big button marked weird mana off would have been too easy. Ok, let’s stay focused. If this mana is responsible for those ancients and the weird…. stuff controlling them, there could be all sorts of dangerous things in here.”
“Agreed.” Imelda slinked towards the doorway as she spoke. “I’ll take point. No offence but you lot make much more noise than I do.”
There was a collection of muttered agreements amongst the others. There was no denying that Imelda was lighter on her feet than the rest of them. Having her at the front made sense. Wyrmkin had no innate differences to humans, aside from their horns, her abilities coming from sheer experience and skill alone.
“Ok, stay behind me and do what I do,” she said, crouching beneath one of the doors. It had been left leaning against the doorframe, blocking passage onwards and forcing travel under or over it. “Keep as quiet as you can. We don’t know what could be waiting beyond the doors.”
In single file the party slinked below the doorway, squeezing out into the chamber beyond. Back in Wildermount the teleportation temple had been within a cavern, a great gulf spanned by an impressive clockwork bridge. This one was different, there were no giant statues flanking a bridge of glittering gold. Instead, the doors opened into a stone chamber, a vast room that was similar to the corridor’s style, but everything was just slightly off. It was obvious that the teleporter room was part of a bigger facility, one that had been added on sometime after the platform was built. It was simply aping the style, the stone cut by different hands.
“Well, this is a step up from one room in a cave at least,” Magda said, impressed by the room. “A proper temple. I wonder how many wings it has? Oh, I bet there’s a steeple. I’ve always wanted a steeple dedicated to me.”
“Does the tower not count?” Gareth said, crouching down and running his hand across the floor. The tiles felt rough to the touch, another tell-tale sign they were carved by different hands. Everything built by Henig’s people was smooth, the stone polished to perfection.
“Well, that is of course an impressive dedication to me.” Magda brushed her golden hair over her shoulder with a flick of her hand.
“But it’s not a steeple, specifically. I don’t know, I always just liked them.”
“I trust everyone has already realised this is a later construction.
One of dubious quality compared to the other examples we’ve seen.
Either a rushed job or a copy.” Sarkuran had wandered towards the wall nearest the doors and was running his fingers over the delicate
carving work that ran horizontally along the centre of the wall. “Still, this work is more than acceptable, just not as miraculous as we’re used to.”
Magda cracked a smile. “I’m glad it meets your approval.”
“Well of course. A place like this would make an excellent base of operations if we didn’t already control the nexus of the network.
The teleportation platform gives an easy escape, and I’m assuming from the position of the first temple that this is similarly shielded underground. Your followers had the foresight to build the termini in places where they wouldn’t easily be discovered.”
“I don’t know about that,” Gareth said, the words rushing out over his lips in excitement. He had realised something about their descent below the crystal mines in Wildermount that disproved what Sarkuran had just said. The demon king had been so smug as he spoke that Gareth couldn’t wait to correct him. “If you recall the entrance in the mines led into a series of tunnels, that whilst not exactly like this, were similar. I think that these platforms might all have similar structures around them. It makes sense, you want to build up around them to protect them or control the route. I suspect the exact location of each is probably dependant more on the leyline than anything else.”
“Well, I stand corrected,” Sarkuran said in the same tone as a parent who had been undermined by their partner. “Of course, I do have centuries of experience in this kind of thing behind me, and you well…don’t, but you certainly showed me.”
“Come on now, boys,” Imelda said. “You might both be right. Or neither of you. Unless one of you has a spell where you can just hop back in time then it’ll remain a mystery. Even Henig doesn’t know what’s on the other side of the teleporters, so we just have to take it as we find. Right now…”
Imelda stopped talking suddenly, her hand falling to her deck box. The room they were in was illuminated by light creeping in from the doorway, the chamber lacking its own glowing crystal chandeliers.
Its corners were cast in shadow, and the two corridors leading out from it were pits of blackness.
Reaching slowly around into her backpack, Imelda produced her sunstone. It was a simple thing—little more than a rock tied to a stick
—but the magical stone absorbed sunlight and striking it would cause the light to leak out slowly making it useful as a reusable torch.
“There’s something else in here.”
The others copied her, producing their own sunstones. None of them were lit yet, if something was in the room striking the rocks against the ground could easily startle it. They needed to be ready first, so each duellist slowly opened the top of their deck box, their cards adding to the illumination.
“Ready?” Imelda said, nodding to the others.
As one they hit the ground, the sunstones clacking against the tile and unleashing their light.
The room was smaller than it first seemed, the deep shadows in the corners working to obscure its true size. The light danced off the roots of plants bursting through patches of tile whilst piles of rubble were scattered across the floor haphazardly.
Their source was obvious, in the corner of the room was a hulking thing, a mass of rocks bound together with roots that took on a roughly humanoid shape. Water dripped from it, clumps of half-melted snow resting on its shoulders. It looked at the duellists through an eyeless head, a rock shifting back and forth as it took in the new arrivals.
“What is that thing?” Gareth said. His eyes danced to his cards.
He had two Lightning Blasts, a Goblin Solider, a Goblin Den Mother and a Goblin War Banner. It was a decent hand, one he suspected was more than enough to deal with the creature.
“It’s an elemental, I think. Not like one I’ve ever seen.” Imelda shifted her posture, her hand fingers shifting red to choose a card.
“What’s it doing?”
The elemental was pulling itself tight to the wall, trying its best to keep as far away from the duellists as possible. The thing had pulled its arms in tight, almost like it was trying its best to stay as hidden as possible.
“I believe,” Sarkuran said, closing his deck box and stepping forward, “that it’s cowering.”
“Oh, you would know what that looks like, wouldn’t you?” Magda said.
“On occasion, my adversaries have been known to tremble before my might, yes. You’re a goddess, can you honestly say that you haven’t invoked a little fear in your followers on occasion? And don’t deny it, all goods do, even those who purport to be the good ones.”
“Please don’t hurt me!” the elemental said, its voice oddly singsong, like it was being made by the tinkling of bells. The creature held up its rocky hands, shielding its featureless face.
“We won’t!” Magda said, putting away her deck and stepping towards the creature. She could tell it was afraid, its voice had been tinged with genuine fear. “My name is Magda, these are my friends, Gareth, Imelda and Sarkuran. What’s your name?”
“Shalaan, first daughter of Heenan.”
“Well, Shalaan, we’re not here to hurt you. Do you know where we are?”
“The ancient temple? Didn’t you build this place? My father always told me that humans built the temple, carving away at the mother mountain and grinding up my ancestors to use as foundations. You came from the sickening room!”
“The sickening room?” Gareth said. He pointed towards the corridor that held the teleport platform. “You mean in there?”
“Yes. Only humans can stomach it, any of my kin that enter fall deathly ill,” Shalaan said. She was still screening her face, clearly afraid of the humanoids before her.
“We’re not all human,” Imelda said, tapping one of her horns.
“See? Humans don’t have these.”
“I…wouldn’t know. You’re the first humans I’ve met. I didn’t even think you could speak the language of the stones.”
“Well, we didn’t know some elementals could talk at all. And we’re a little different when it comes to understanding people.” Imelda moved towards Shalaan, trying to adopt as non-threatening a pose as possible. “If that room makes you ill, why are you even here?”
“I come here often. This place…it speaks to me. I want to understand it, to understand why someone would carve harmless
stones in such a way, why they would feel the need to burrow into the world. It’s fascinating, don’t you think? I can’t imagine one of my people doing that.”
“I don’t know, dwarfs love to dig and build, and they’re basically what you are. Kind of,” Gareth said, suddenly aware that his words might be considered offensive to the few dwarfs he knew. “They’re made of stone as well,” he clarified, realising that if the elemental couldn’t tell a wyrmkin from a human she likely had never met a dwarf.
“I can’t imagine a people of the stones doing such a thing. But then again, I couldn’t imagine talking with humans until now. I have to ask…what’s in that room?” Shalaan’s rock head bobbed towards the teleportation room.
“Just a way in and out of here.” Gareth didn’t see any point in lying. “We’ve come here because something odd is happening in our lands, and it has to be coming from this place. And I don’t mean the temple, necessarily, it might be coming from around it.”
“Ah, yes. I know of what you speak,” Shalaan said. “I think…I think it would be best to show you.”
***
The temple was a vast structure, Shalaan leading them through easily a dozen rooms. Gareth longed to explore it fully, to delve into its depth in search of treasures and experience. He couldn’t, Shalaan was determined to leave the complex as quickly as possible.
The cold air was the first thing Gareth noticed as he stepped through the open stone doors that served as the temple’s entrance. It was biting, immediately numbing the skin on his face. Snow was swirling about in the air, not from the clouds above but from the wind whipping up the top layer to thick powder and casting it about.
Sarkuran’s assertion that the teleport platform had been hidden underground like the first couldn’t have been more wrong. The party found themselves at the peak of a mountain, a range of similar rocky edifices stretching out before them. Despite being wrong about the temple, Sarkuran was looking unbearably smug as he wrapped his heavy cloak tight around himself to keep out the cold.
The structure itself was set into the stone; the temple mountain cut away so the structure could be built around the platform. It was an impressive feat, one that made the roughness of the temple itself more forgivable. It was hard to imagine that even the master craftsmen amongst Madga’s followers could have used their formidable skill to its fullest in such challenging environments. It also confirmed that it had to have been built by the same people, simply because the only way to bring such vast quantities of worked stone to the peak would have been through the portal.
“It’s way too cold,” Magda said, shuddering as the wind buffeted her.
“Personally, I find it bracing,” Shalaan said, drawing herself up to her maximum height. She was easily a head and a half taller than Gareth. If she had wanted to fight, she could have caused the party significant trouble.
“You don’t have all the same soft squishy parts as we do,” Gareth said. “I’m sure you feel it a lot less. What was it you wanted to show us?”
“That,” the elemental said, gesturing into the distance.
From the peak of the mountain, the party could see far into the distance, across a vast expanse and towards the ocean. The land before them was sick, a sea of purple stretching outwards. A vast city covered most of the land, a single bastion of dull grey stone and tall metal spires that belched black smoke up into the sky. The city was the size of a hundred Wildermounts, a bastion of civilisation in a sea of purple.
Spread across the land around it were glittering lights, the same luminescent glow that the fungus animating the raptors had. Moving amongst these clusters of light were massive humanoid skeletons, black growths weaving their way through their bones. They were studded with golden rods that had been staked into the fungus controlling them. To be visible at this distance they had to be enormous, each easily the height of the Nephilim that had shattered the walls of Wildermount, if not taller. At their feet carts and wagons moved, barely perceptible hordes moving with them.
“What is that place?” Gareth said, stepping dangerously close to a sharp drop.
“I don’t know what it’s called. No human has ever spoken to one of our kind before you. What I do know is those who live there pervert nature, giving life to things that should have died long ago. Death comes for everything eventually, even the stones. If some dark magic is leaking into your lands, it comes from here.” Shalaan’s voice had shifted in tone slightly, losing some of its airiness. “We don’t leave the mother mountain. Not with that evil out there.”
“Great. We’re going to have to take a look, aren’t we?” Imelda said with all the enthusiasm of a bored child. “Giant skeletons wandering about a weird purple country and we’re going to have to go poking about where we don’t belong. If we just disconnected the teleporter from the network that would be problem solved.”
“A wise idea. Just one problem, do you know how to do that?”
Sarkuran said, enjoying tormenting his guardian. “The platform has lasted millennia undamaged, so it seems unlikely you could destroy it, and I’m sure if Henig could have just switched it off, he would. I assume that none of us knows enough about Eternal to find the rune that turns off the platform.”
The hesitant grumbled agreements of Sarkuran’s friends were lost in the wind, the weather around the peak growing worse.
“We should move,” Shalaan said, pointing a rocky finger at some nearby clouds. “A storm is moving in. If I was caught in it, I would be buried beneath the snow, so I imagine it would be worse for you, yes?”
Gareth just shrugged in half-hearted agreement. “I mean, our fingers and toes would fall off, and then we would die. So yeah, bad for us.” He didn’t know if that was true, but it was what every movie featuring a snowstorm had told him. Eventually, someone would find his frozen body when it was most comedically or dramatically appropriate for them to do so.
