Valerios
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Chapter 68: Entering With A Bang
🕑 Added 2022-06-13 17:37:00 +0000 UTCThe darkness endlessly zoomed by, the dry earth below giving its place to more dry earth. Traveling the Mists of Death gave the illusion of wandering in a fake world where space had little meaning.
It was awe-inspiring, in a sense. Terrifying, in another.
“It’s been hours!” complained Jerry. “Are we getting there, Laura? Just how large are these Mists?”
“Very,” replied Laura. “I told you, it’s a few dozen miles in diameter. That’s a lot, even for an airship.”
“Mhm.”
“And in any case, you are the one guiding us. How should I know when we’re going to arrive?”
“Yeah, that makes sense, I guess.”
The terrain moved, but it didn’t change, and that created a creepy unease in everyone’s hearts.
“Hmm?” Jerry suddenly perked up. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“That!”
He pointed beyond the railing, into the endless expanse and its swirling dark gusts, and something was different there. There was no dungeon in sight, but there was a pair of pitch-black birds, barely visible in the background. If not for Jerry’s soul sense being constantly active, he would have missed them.
“Birds?” Boney wondered aloud. “Is this the mutated fauna you mentioned, Marcus?”
“Probably,” he responded. “Be careful!”
“Will do. Did you hear that, Master?”
Jerry did not reply, already busy leaning out of the railing and waving the little birds over.
“Of course, Master, ignore everyone’s wisdom. What could possibly go wrong?” Boney grumbled but walked to Jerry’s side nonetheless. “They don’t seem to like us.”
“They’re flying in parallel to our ship, Boney. Sure they do!”
Laura laughed. “These are the birds I mentioned before. Don’t worry, they’re harmless.”
Boney sighed. Jerry exclaimed.
“I have an idea!”
His soul perception focused around the birds, nudging them politely. They turned to regard him. He smiled and beckoned them over. They flew closer.
Axehand walked to Jerry’s side, just in case, but his caution was unnecessary.
The two birds simply flew over and hovered beside Jerry, more curious than aggressive. They seemed quite harmless, and when Laura extended a finger, one of the birds landed on it.
“They’re cute.” She smiled. “And they’re said to bring good luck.”
“Well, that’s exactly what we needed!” Boney clackled, while Jerry asked whether they had a name.
“Not really,” she responded. “Little black birds, I guess.”
The two birds were small, about the size of a closed fist, and their eyes shone a soft red, contrasting their pitch-black bodies and white beaks.
Jerry shook his head. “That’s not right. They must have a name. How about Darkbirds?”
“That’s…awfully imaginative, Master.”
“Whitebeaks?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s taken.”
“Mistwings?”
“How about Hopewings?” asked Laura, petting the top of a bird’s head with her other finger. “It’s a nice name…and they restore hope to those lost in the Mists. Legends say that if you follow them, they will show you a way out.”
Jerry and Boney looked at each other. “Sure,” said the necromancer. “It’s a nice name.”
“If they show the way out,” Boney cupped his bone chin, “we could tie them to the back of our ship and go the opposite way of where they want to fly.”
Laura glared. He cowered.
“If they’re a traveler’s last hope, let’s not hog them.” Jerry smiled. “We have plenty of hope already.”
“Weren’t we hopeless?”
“Of course not!”
Laura raised her finger, gently letting the bird fly off, and the two of them quickly disappeared into the Mists. “Goodbye, little Hopewings,” she said, and her ever-restrained smile seemed to turn genuine for a moment before she caught herself.
Their journey continued, parting wave after wave of death energy. Besides being cold to the touch, it didn’t seem to affect them at all—but of course, if they weren’t taking a double dosage of the wood nettle potion, Marcus and Laura would have already turned into wild undead.
Time seemed to lose its meaning until, a few hours later, something changed. The air seemed to turn chillier, the darkness deeper, and the mutated animals below disappeared, only to be replaced with an increased number of crevices.
Jerry’s eyes snapped open. “We’re close,” he said. “Stop the ship!”
The Billies pulled on the air stoppers, and the ship quickly came to a halt in mid-air. Everyone looked at Jerry, who had his eyes closed again.
“Birb can see it,” he said. “Give me a moment.”
Jerry borrowed Birb’s senses—it had been serving as their scout—and quickly looked over the Prism Dungeon.
“I think we can approach,” he said eventually. “Just go slowly, so we stop as soon as we can see it.”
The airship proceeded slowly, following his instructions to the letter. In the next moment, the darkness on the horizon parted as a building appeared. It was black and shaped like a pyramid, except its sides resembled stairs instead of straight lines; this was a ziggurat.
From their current position, the ziggurat seemed to rise sixty feet off the ground, containing multiple floors occupied by a small army of zombies and skeletons. It was as if a horde had invaded and conquered this place, calling it their home. Now, the undead stood aimlessly on the ziggurat’s floors or wandered around its base, wasting an eternity away.
However, contrary to what one might expect, the ziggurat’s walls shone and reflected the ever-present light, casting random shadows like a beacon of darkness.
Horace squinted. “That’s not stone,” he said. “It’s glass.”
“Glass!?”
“Yes. I don’t know why, but that entire thing is made of glass.”
Everyone stared at him, but he seemed confident; he did take pride in his sight, after all.
“But the dungeon is supposed to protect the fake Prism, right?” asked Marcus. “Why make it out of glass?”
Laura cupped her chin. “Glass has some interesting magical properties, so maybe this is meant to amplify the death energy ripples. That’s the only thing I can think of. The Prism itself is hidden deep in the ground below the ziggurat; that’s why they call this place a dungeon.”
“Can’t we just dig our way to it, then?”
“I can only feel the ripples coming from the ziggurat itself.” Jerry shook his head. “If the fake Prism is hidden below, I can’t sense it. We’ll have to go in the normal way.”
“So we raid it.”
“Yes, but time is of the essence. Aracataron will certainly have eyes around this area, so we must be quick.”
“That doesn’t sound easy.” Jerry tsked. “There have to be hundreds of undead around the ziggurat. Going through them will take time, even if we send in an overcharged Axehand—and that’s if they don’t overwhelm him.”
The axe-handed skeleton grunted in disdain, claiming he would never lose to an army of weaklings.
“I don’t see a faster way…” Laura finally admitted. “We have to go through them, whether we like it or not.”
“But the thing is,” said Marcus, “the clock is not our friend. Even if we get past the horde and discover the entrace to the true dungeon, there have to be more defenses underground, and Aracataron’s army can arrive within the hour. I don’t think we can make it in time.”
Everyone exchanged somber looks.
“Maybe we could just break the ziggurat and run away?” offered Boney, but Horace shook his head.
“They can easily rebuild that. The point is to get rid of the Curse, not temporarily weaken it. We have to get to that Prism.”
They stewed in thought. Laura was the one to finally speak.
“I guess that’s our only option. Let’s destroy the ziggurat to lure Aracataron’s forces in, then try to ambush him, then return for the Prism… I mean, that invites a bunch of complications—because what if they see we ran away and don’t chase us?—but I think it’s the best we can do.”
“Seems so.” Marcus nodded.
“Indeed,” said Boney.
“Very well,” replied Horace, his eyes narrowing.
However, even as everyone voiced their agreement, Jerry hadn’t spoken yet. He kept his eyes glued on the far-off ziggurat, exploring its form for any weakness he could find, and a plan was gradually taking shape in his mind. A smirk surfaced on his lips.
“Oh no,” said Boney. “Master, whatever idea you have, it’s stupid.”
Jerry smiled. “If it works, it ain’t stupid.”
“But will it work?”
“Maybe.”
Boney let out a groan and so did Marcus, both familiar with the ridiculousness of Jerry’s plans. However, Laura and Horace weren’t, so they looked at Jerry with interest.
“What is it, Jerry?”
The necromancer smiled, then summarized his idea. They looked at the ziggurat, then back at Jerry, then at Axehand.
“That’s ridiculous,” claimed Horace.
“But it could work.”
“It could.” He shook his head. “It’s just so… Bah. Fine. We can certainly try.”
“Oh, no!” said Marcus.
“I think it has a chance,” Laura agreed too. “As unreasonable as it sounds, I don’t see why not.”
“Not you too, Laura!”
Axehand grunted in excitement. Jerry smiled widely.
“Very well, then. Let’s do this!”
The airship flew higher, ascending until the ground below could barely be seen, then came to a stop right above the ziggurat.
Everyone stood around Axehand, whose entire skeletal body was red and steaming.
“Are you sure you can do this?” asked Jerry.
The double-skeleton grunted once, more excited than he’d been in a long time. He took a step…and fell into the darkness.
***
Life is not very interesting when you’re a wild zombie.
One zombie stood atop the ziggurat, not quite knowing why, and waited. It didn’t know why it was waiting either. Food. Enemies. Primal instincts that it couldn’t decipher.
Suddenly, a sound reached its ears. A soft whistle, quickly turning louder and piercing. The zombie looked around, seeing nothing. It looked up, and a big, red, skeletal butt fell right on its head with tremendous force, burying the zombie into the thick glass below and instantly destroying both.
Axehand fell on the ziggurat like a massive brick, and the entire structure imploded with a colossal bang. Shards of glass flew everywhere like razors, slicing skeletons and zombies apart while others were buried under tons of glass.
The sight was majesticly apocalyptic.
Half a horde was torn apart or sent flying from the explosion—one skeleton even flew close to the airship—and all that remained was literal tons of broken glass and a furiously confused and butchered horde of undead, running around like headless chickens.
A figure stood up in the center of the mayhem, dusting himself off and letting out a cocky grunt. His form blurred as he dashed, hacking two skeletons in half and decapitating a zombie, destroying them instantly.
As Axehand rampaged on the disoriented horde, arrows rained from the sky, flying fast and true into the throats of undead and felling them by the dozens. Horace had crafted thousands of arrows during his years in the tribe, and he’d brought them all along, unloading quiver after quiver on the poor undead below.
Jerry, who had come up with this plan, was left staring wide-eyed. Such utter destruction was hard to digest!
The airship was descending rapidly, the balloon whistling as the hot air escaped, and by the time they landed, not much remained of the horde, and even less of the ziggurat. A hundred undead might have been tough to deal with in a frontal assault, but like this, they were absolutely massacred.
“Well, that was fast,” commented Jerry. “Good job, Axehand.”
The double-skeleton waited where they landed, having already dealt with all strugglers. He grunted in pride, raising an axe into the air, and all of Jerry’s undead cheered for their champion.
Marcus’s irises trembled. “Death knights are scary…”
“I don’t think even death knights can do that,” replied Laura, shivering. “Axehand is scary… Maybe we stand a chance, after all.”
“Look, everyone!” shouted Jerry, having waded through a field of glass to reach a spot in the ziggurat’s base, where a gaping hole lay on the ground. It had been hidden before, but there was nothing to cover it now. “Axehand already found the entrance.”
Marcus and Laura looked at each other again, both shaking their heads. “If there was a record for raiding this dungeon,” said Marcus, “we’d have definitely broken it.”
“Say that twice.” She chuckled, and the treasure hunter turned towards Jerry. As per the plan, he, the Billies, and Birb would remain outside, and they would use the airship to distract any enemies that arrived early. He had been officially named captain, and the Billies were the airship’s steadfast crew.
“Good luck, everyone!” he shouted, banging a hand on his chest. “We will take care of everything here… You just return victorious!”
“We goddamn will,” replied Horace, eyes burning. He crossed gazes with Axehand, and the two quickly jumped into the hole.
“But there’s a ladder…” Jerry sighed. “Fine. See you, Marcus. Take care of the Billies!”
“I would never let anything happen to my boys.” Marcus nodded seriously.
Jerry nodded back. He, Laura, Headless, Boboar, and Foxy entered the opening, following after Axehand and Horace, while the airship took off and awaited news.
And just like that, they’d entered the Prism Dungeon.
