Chương 19: -19- The Pit

Calder - Still Stone Barrow The tight stone walls pressed in uncomfortably on Calder's shoulders, giving him just enough room to walk straight with his clothes occasionally snagging on bits of the uneven wall. The hallway he had entered had narrowed down into an oppressive pathway obviously meant to confine prisoners and make escaping their escorts a herculean task. The very air here was starting to be tinged with bits of shadow that flickered across his torchlight like a heavy fog.

At first Calder thought it was actually bits of the beyond. But it wasn't nearly cold enough for that, and his tranquility shaping had no effect on it. After an uncomfortably long walk the tunnel ended in a checkpoint of sorts. A square room with an intake counter simply carved from the stone itself. One open doorway led to the left. One led straight ahead and had a metal gate that had been forced open outwards long ago.

Calder shifted nervously at vague shuffling sounds in the distance echoing off the bleak walls in such a way he couldn't tell what direction they were coming from.

"Well, this is creepy…" He muttered to let him hear a noise other than vague horrors.

"And the rest wasn't? Dectus shot back with a light chuckle.

"Come on now, oh great adventurer, scout the room to the left for loot and then delve deeper." Calder gave Dectus a firm frown before following his exact plan; he shifted left slowly, pulling free the unwieldy great sword and stepping into the side room as quietly as he could manage, weapon at the ready. It was an old barracks of sorts, low-slung metal bunks not much more than scrap now, and a single large square table near the middle. He came face-to-face with an undead less than a stride inside the room.

Its head looked up at him, jaw dangling from a single piece of sinew. Its hollow eyes flickered with recognition of a threat, but it was sluggish, as if its body hadn't moved for years. This was even more wretched than the ones he had seen upstairs, unarmed and wearing only scraps of a brown, blood-soaked uniform. Calder's blade crashed down before it could react, cleaving through old brittle bone and splitting it open sideways.

He darted past it to the next undead just behind, trying to keep his momentum and surprise up. He grunted, ripping his blade free from the corpse behind him and whipping it around in a wide ungainly swing. While ungraceful, by the time the blow fell, it was moving fast enough that it sheared through the middle of the undead, cleanly bisecting it in a shower of gore. Another reached over the top of a bunk towards him almost aimlessly, a low moan escaping it.

Calder's whole body was twisted from his last swing, so he stepped back, planted himself, and heaved a monumental kick at the bunk next to it. The bunk skittered across the floor, shattering the creature at the knees and dragging its mangled corpse a few strides away. in a tangle of bent metal and long-dead flesh. The top half reached towards him from its trapped tangle, and Calder dismissively stomped on its skull before squaring up with the last monster in the room.

It looked a bit different from the others he had fought so far. Leaner, slightly more keen eyes, fangs, and claws peeking from too-tight skin. The way its head was tilted in almost predatory interest was deeply unsettling. Oh... alright, don't like that. Whenever a monster looks like it's happy to see you, it's a bad sign. He held off for a moment while the creature stared at him, waiting for him to make the first move.

He subtly used the spotter to tell him what he was dealing with while trying to circle into the clearest part in the center of the room. [Ravenous Ghoul Tier-1](lvl 19). Calder's blanched hands tightened on his blade. Ghouls were unfortunately famous and not in a good way. They tended to be the first real challenge new adventurers and warriors faced in undead hoards. Faster, smarter, and usually capable of using a skill or two to really ruin people's day.

One or two of them mixed in with the rabble fell, many an unprepared warrior. Calder heard the shifting above him too late. A feral creature dropped from the roof straight onto his back. Claws dug into his shoulders, and he felt the hiss of its breath against his neck, the barest scrape of its teeth pressing against his throat. Dectus whirled into action behind him, severing the beast's head from its body before it could really clamp down on his throat. Calder glanced at his savior, eyes wide.

"Thanks."

"Don't thank me yet, you oaf; you have another one." Dectus pointed his blade at the ghoul at the exact moment it flung itself at Calder, using the wall behind itself to springboard unnaturally through the air, claws extended straight outwards. Dectus faded to the immaterial, and Calder scrambled to deal with the incoming foe. He raised his sword tip to interpose it between himself and the ghoul. The ghoul was fast, freakishly fast.

Its claws batted the blade aside, and it landed on Calder's chest, scurrying up him like a spider. claws ripping small chunks out as it climbed. He dropped his sword and managed to get a hand on its ankle. With a roar Calder heaved down and slapped it against the stone floor like he was beating out a rug. The sound was awful, the smell was even worse as the ghoul splattered across the floor. Luckily, they traded any vestige of durability for that uncanny speed apparently. Wincing, he picked up his blade.

Where the ghoul had cut his chest and arms, a creeping numbness was invading his extremities, sapping the strength from his muscles. Calder took a seat to try and let the effect run its course. It got worse before it got better; after about three minutes, he lost the ability to even move his right arm and nearly fell off the bunk. Three minutes after that the feeling started returning across his body. But it was a slow process. Okay, that is very dangerous; those were all surface-level scratches.

The deepest was less than a handspan. If one of those gets a dire slice or bite off in the middle of a big fight, I might well drop like an oversized bag of potatoes in the middle of a hoard. It might be worth it to use grasp of the beyond to neutralize them quickly. Calder turned to his savior.

"Thank you, again. Please prioritize them; that poison or skill works on even my big arse." Dectus nodded begrudgingly.

"Yeah, it's not going to be much of a learning experience if you get scratched a couple times and then just lie there while the undead nibble on your giblets, leaving me stuck down here. But you have to promise me something as my student." He said with uncharacteristic seriousness. Calder rose to his feet, taking a couple short hops and rolling his shoulders to make sure he was good to go again other than some scratches.

"Of course, what do you need from me?" Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"Fucking look up when you go into a new room, you idiot." Don't waste the grasp to punch him. Calder, it's not worth it; just accept the snarky advice and move on. Calder smothered his annoyance and turned to give a somewhat subdued answer, but the shit-eating grin on Dectus's face ruined his attempt at being zen.

"Oh go fuck yourself!" Was what actually came out. Dectus's grin grew even wider.

"Ha, there we go. Got some spice to you even after the fight!" He whirled his sword and pointed forward. Calder grumbled the whole time he gave the room a once-over and dismissed the kill notifications. He could feel his sanctuary filling over the course of this dungeon. By the time he made it out, he might well be near level 15 or even more at this rate. He could risk leveling up here, but that seemed like a great way to get killed even with Dectus guarding him, so he held off for now.

If he found a sealable room, that might well change. There wasn't a damn thing of value in the room to loot, so all Calder accomplished was soiling his poor boots further with ghoul brains before heading out and back down the prisoners' pathway he was following earlier. Calder picked his torch from where it had rolled in his last scuffle and tentatively raised it into the darkness.

The way forward was cloying; the darkness pressed back unnaturally against his flickering light, and with each step forward, the wisps of darkness became more distinct. Shifting from just swirls on the wind into tortured visages so fleeting Calder would have thought it was just his imagination if he hadn't been so inured to horror the last few days that this was almost tame.

He waved a hand through an especially aggressive patch of the shadows that seemed to be trying to wrap around his torch, dispersing it like smoke. Hah... you know I've spent most of my life afraid of someday facing the Kalderan horrors, and here I am pursuing things even worse. Ehh, at least I probably won't flinch the next time I fight one. The thought made him smile when he thought back to the first desperate struggle against a Kalderan mage and his bound abomination; it seemed almost quaint.

Whatever that thing had been was fast and dangerous, surely, but… with his powers it was just another horror to be slain. And he would happily face a half dozen of them over that fucking spider abomination from earlier in the day. But despite Calder's newfound confidence in his ability to at least face the other. The things that didn't belong in his world naturally without fleeing. The endless hallway still frayed at his nerves. The darkness didn't abate, squeezing tight and tighter, always going for his torch.

Now it was accompanied by whispers. Crys and pleas that sounded from discordant voices. With a shudder, Calder pushed forward; this place held something beyond spooky whispers and harmless echoes of the past. A malevolent tinge filled the air as the tunnel ended, the shadows oozing together right in front of Calder. A fist wrapped in motes of the beyond crashed into whatever monstrosity was forming with all the force of a runaway horse.

To Calder, it felt like punching a hollow block of ice that crumbled in on itself, the shadows shattering. He was a bit proud of himself for that one as he got the kill notification. Glancing at Dectus. Dectus rolled his eyes and didn't humor him. [Shade Tier-1](lvl8) [Slain] The shadows that had been plaguing Calder were suddenly gone, but that sense of malevolence as well as the whisper grew only more pronounced.

He found himself stepping out onto a vast stone ring, a single ancient rail all that was between him and plunging down nearly fifty strides. Below lay a rough stone pit. Scattered with simple buildings some of metal others of stone haphazardly put together. They wound unevenly from the center around spires of stone that glowed with a faint white luminescence, casting the entire floor into a ghastly blue and white hue strewn with deep shadows.

It didn't take a genius to realize what he was looking at; it was the ancient floor of a prison. They had just thrown them down there and left them to rot. Calder let out a huff and pointed.

"That's idiotic." Dectus shimmered next to him, leaning on the rail.

"Mayhaps cults weren't as common in these days."

"Anywhere like this, filled with desperate souls, is ripe for some fool to beseech the wrong god or offer enough sacrifices in the name of something foul for him to actually get an answer… It's no wonder the city fell… I wonder what they unleashed. Calder glanced back towards the distant broken gate. Then down at the wide open area below. Even from here he could see flecks of what looked like dark steel strewn across the ground where the shadows swirled. He let out an exasperated sigh.

"I said I wasn't going to go anywhere that the tunnels opened up."

"I won't tell anyone you broke your own good advice because you saw treasure." Dectus said with a wink and then added.

"Although I would advise caution, while I doubt the beast from before resides here… something does; even I can feel it. Or that could just be the metric shit ton of the fancy ore you are here for." Calder didn't disagree with him, and after the trek here he was weighing the pros and cons. Going down would be dangerous, but what wasn't so far? And if he could get all he needed in one fell swoop and get the hell out of this place.

That would almost certainly be safer than exploring more at random with hope, a prayer, and a death wish. From here the only foes he could see were more of the shambling undead. Easily handled with his current skills, but he would be a fool to think that was all that was down there. And… from everything he knew, once he started mining the ore, things would get dicey fast. He checked where he was at on his resources. [Grasp of the Beyond 59/100] [Gaze of the Beyond 46/100] Not bad...

the bit of talking Dectus has done and his brief interventions have barely made a dent. And I may just be imagining it, but it seems like my grasp regenerates slightly faster down here. Could be all the vague evil shifting in the air; heck, maybe the darksteel. Who knows? I'll take it as a win. I'm not topped off, but I'll be damned if I'm going to try and rip open a tear to the beyond right now. That would probably end predictably and tragically. I'd rather that... thing...

at least drifted away some more or got distracted by another foolish mortal. Calder looked around for a way down. There were two obvious ones. One was an utterly treacherous ladder that was made from rusting metal set into the side of the pit walls. The other was an equally treacherous lift of simple design dangling off one of the edges. A crank in the center wound and unwound a chain, dropping the lift down.

Both were blessedly made of metal or else this many years later his options would have been "jump or leave" He placed a foot tentatively onto the lift; its frame groaned loudly, a single rivet shooting off with a twang. He scrunched up his face and, thinking light thoughts, stepped fully onto it. It shuddered, swayed slightly, and was constantly making a very disconcerting screeching sound as metal ever so slowly bent out of place, but it held.

Calder let out a breath and quickly began turning the crank to lower himself into the abyss. Well, alright, adding heights to the list of fears I didn't know I had because screw every part of this. The descent was nerve-wracking; the farther the chain extended down, the farther the already shifty lift swung with each of Calder's movements. Even Dectus looked apprehensive, naturally moving towards an edge as if to leap clear from the deathtrap.

"Get ready, small group of chaff bunching below us." Calder grunted and pulled the crank meant for three men again.

"Any ghouls?" Dectus shrugged. With a last almost painful heave Calder let the crank unspool another half stride and then caught it mid-revolution to keep them just above the reaching hands. He put the lock in place on the crank and then tied a rope off on the most solid piece of metal he could find, tossing it over the edge. Dectus looked at him questioningly.

"If I have to hightail my big ass back here, the last thing I want to have to do is clear out a lift full of undead… Might actually be the final draw that breaks this thing." With that he leaned over the edge of the lift and aimed for the densest patch of undead below. Calder stepped straight off the edge, sword in hand. His heavy boots caught two separate undead, bearing them to the ground with thick crunches.

He rolled roughly free and swept his sword in a wide arc from his knees, shearing through another three at shin height. With a self-satisfied grunt, he stood up and dispatched them with a pair of swift kicks and one downward stab.

"We really need to work on that roll." Dectus said in obvious frustration.

"I mean I practiced…" Calder pointed at where he had just flopped.

"The point is to get BACK on your feet before you start swinging the sword again."

"It worked…" Calder said, almost embarrassed looking back on how ungraceful that all was.

"Toddler. With. A. Stick…" Dectus said in disgust and floated onward.