Unbound

Abyssal Skein is level 89!

Felix squeezed his Void Skill for every ounce of magic stealth it could provide and no longer took the same amount of care as they accelerated up the Coil. Shades came and went, most were avoided and left behind, while others piled onto their path—only to be bludgeoned aside by hammer, chain, spear, axe, and furious light. The dead turned to dust and smoke.

Survivors were devoured.

Their first stumbling block came two miles higher, where between one step and the next a terrible pressure descended on them all. They trembled, the weight almost a physical thing as it attempted to push them to the ground. None of them succumbed.

“We have entered the next segment of the Undermount,” Tzfell announced in a thin whisper. “The Greater Mausoleums await.”

Exploration is level 78!

They rested for a time, allowing for each of them to grow accustomed to the new pressure. It was more of a shock than anything else. Beef, the least Tempered among them, was fine in a few minutes. Vess passed around a few Stamina Potions and shook out the aches that had started building in their legs, and Felix paced.

“Calm down, kid,” Harn said, putting his axes away after an inspection. “You’re makin’ me nervous.”

“I’m nervous,” Felix admitted.

Felix stopped pacing. He laughed. “I appreciate you, Harn.”

The man shrugged, his battered armor moving smoothly despite what looked like a decade of wear and tear on it. “I call it like I see it. But we got a plan. That counts for somethin’.”

“Think it’ll work?”

“Probably not.” Harn stood up. “Don’t mean we shouldn’t try.”

Rested, Felix restored his Abyssal Skein on everyone and they set out once more with new vigor in their steps. Around them, the Necropolis expanded, overwhelming the trees around them until only rare patches of weeds remained between the towering mausoleums. Tombs spread outward, pressing into the very air as they hung precariously over terraced cliffs or climbed vertically beside statues of stolid Dwarven figures.

The monsters changed as well, the Shades replaced by heavily armored Death Knights. Dwarven in proportion but twice the size, they wore suits of rounded armor made of that same, unidentifiable black stone from the Clan Hold. The Knights were Tier IVs but each and every one was planted in silent vigil before specific tombs. They did not stray from the sealed doors, their ivy-coated swords planted firmly in the stone at their feet even when Felix’s party was forced to draw close to them. They were Felix’s favorite.

Less of a favorite were the Grave Trolls. Those gray-furred monsters ran in packs around the Grand Mausoleums, three or four of them at a time, and like their brethren they possessed incredible regeneration. More than once their party was surprised by the Grave Trolls’ speed and stealth, engaged in a battle often before they had time to shout a warning.

Tzfell said they were an evolutionary off-shoot of the River, Forest, and Sun Trolls they had faced previously. Trapped in the Necropolis by Dwarven ancestors, they had adapted and Evolved into a new form better suited to their environment. “It is likely due to their healing abilities. I believe they consume parts of themselves to power it, which requires them to eat more to survive. The eating is compressed into their cores and directly affects their abilities. With mostly shadow and necromantic Mana in their diet, they soon changed.”

“Fascinating,” Vess said.

“Uh-huh.” Felix speared three more of them with swords of forged light. They crumpled to the ground. “At least they’re weak to light Mana.”

Harn chopped off their heads with a blazing swing. “Still hate ‘em.”

The Trolls were a constant, roaming threat, but it was the Tomb Guardians that were the worst. The pinnacle of monstrosities in the Necropolis, they were massive amalgamations of worn, ivory skeletons that had been broken and bound together with intense amounts of necromantic Mana. They reminded Felix of the Shambling Horror, a creature Felix once fought within the Haestus Temple that had gone toe-to-toe with the Deepking. Luckily for them, despite being Tier V monsters, the Tomb Guardians weren’t nearly as strong as the Horror had been.

They did, however, get in the way.

“Keratin Conception!” Beef shouted, seizing the third Guardian in the last half hour. It already had several gaping wounds from Harn’s axes, but the thing remained upsettingly fast. Chitinous legs just barely grasped the bone monster’s limbs, locking it down for a moment. “Seismic Shatter!”

Bedlam met a screeching skeletal face and slammed it into the earth. Its jaws snapped shut so hard they cracked like a gunshot, but the thing still struggled mightily.

“Dawn’s Advent!”

“Bonds of Dominion!”

Golden crescents sliced into the monster’s neck and chest, splintering bone and forcing it to flinch away from Beef’s restraints. Ethereal purple chains followed, each one locking onto a portion of the nightmare beast’s form, until it couldn’t move at all. Evie landed on its back and brought her spiked weapon down hard, twisting it last minute to snake its length around the Guardian’s bony neck.

“Tooth and Claw!” she shouted. The chain bucked in her hands, the new spikes grown along its length spinning independent of the chain itself and chewed through gristle, bone, and magic.

The Tomb Guardian screamed, and its skull was split by a single silver Spear, exposing the malformed blackened-green core. A second Spear shattered it into pieces.

You Have Killed A Tomb Guardian!XP Earned!

Experience trickled out to each of them as the monster faded into dark smoke, and his team took a moment to rest. Felix didn’t care much about the experience—the creature barely made the needle move on his own level. He was far more interested in other things: he ate the remains, letting its significance trickle into his core space.

Good. Need Bigger.

He ignored his Hunger. Not because he didn’t agree—they’d need all the significance they could get—but because of a glossy black feather that fluttered across his field of vision. Felix blinked, disbelieving, but the feather was very real and quite large—like the pinion of a too-big raven. It landed on a flat area of stone just as the last of the Tomb Guardian vanished into Felix’s belly.

“Is that—?” he started to ask, only to be interrupted by a sharp crack. The stone floor split, trembling as a long crevasse opened up across the cliff and rocks tumbled down into a yawning blackness.

“What happened?” Yintarion asked. “Did you break the ground, Autarch?”

“No,” Felix said, frowning. “But someone did.”

A cawing came from within, so faint that Felix questioned whether it had happened at all. No one else seemed to have heard it, except Pit.

That’s the bird lady.

The Raven.

Right. What does she want?

“Looks like a cave-in,” Vess said, leaping over to the edge of it. She peered inside. “Something glimmers within.”

Felix hopped up, balancing on the tumbled edge where the stone had sheared off. Just within the short, dark tunnel was a sculpture. It was similar to many that they had seen across the Undermount, and especially in the upper levels of the Necropolis. A Dwarf in armor with an impressive beard. What struck Felix, however, was this one looked familiar.

“Hey I know that face,” Felix said. “That’s the Rockshaper.”

“A blessed ancestor,” Tzfell confirmed after climbing up herself. She put a hand to her mouth. “I cannot believe we’ve chanced upon this. His tomb was hidden by the ancient kings.”

Felix leaned down and picked up a black feather lodged between stones. “Yeah.”

“Sounds like a place for treasure,” Evie suggested. “I wouldn’t mind takin’ a look.”

“Ooh, loot. I love loot.”

Laur smiled. “You play? I never knew.”

Beef scratched his head. “I–what? Play what?”

“The lute.”

“Uh…I mean, I don’t play for loot exclusively. Like, I enjoyed the other parts of games, but loot is good. Who doesn’t like some good magic items?” Beef shrugged. “Anyway, this isn’t a game, right? But loot could help us. We should check it out.”

Laur’s smile had turned stiff and somewhat confused the longer Beef spoke. It would have been funny to Felix if he hadn’t been so stressed. “We’ll check it out. Tzfell, Pit, Vess, with me. Everyone else, keep an eye out.”

Evie mock saluted. “Aye aye, your kingship.”

The four of them slid down into the hole, traveling only thirty feet downward before the rubble and the natural floor turned level. From there, they saw the full statue of the Rockshaper, at least twenty feet tall and buried up to his knees in debris. One squared hand was curled over his chest as if he were clutching something, while the other pointed into the distance.

Tzfell ran her hands over the statue. “Incredible. The techniques here…this wasn’t carved. It was shaped.”

“Is Stone Shaping a common Skill among Dwarves?”

“Quite rare. Only one or two in a generation might see the talent awaken in them.”

“Huh.” Felix considered his hands. He’d learned the Skill from a big monkey. “So the Rockshaper made this place himself?”

“It is likely, yes.”

“There’s a door!” Pit said from further in.

Felix and Tzfell walked over, finding Pit and Vess standing next to a simple lintel carved into the natural rock wall. Right where the statue pointed.

“I cannot find a handle, but I also cannot detect any sort of traps or hidden catches.” Vess gestured at the rough, uncarved door. It looked like a piece of the wall had been framed. “It seems to be a useless slab of stone.”

“The Rockshaper was known for hiding things in plain sight,” Tzfell said. “Surely we have just missed something.”

“Perhaps.”

Felix reached out and pushed on the wall, but it didn’t budge. Vess gave him a look and he laughed. “What?”

“Do you think we did not think to try pushing?”

“Listen, I dunno—” Felix cut himself off, his hand still on the supposed door. He felt a thrum of…something. “Wait. Wait. This is a lower Tier rock than the rest of the wall. Stone Shaping.”

Felix’s oldest shaping Skill unfurled from his core and struck the rough wall. The door melted away.

Exploration is level 79!

“Whoa.” Pit chirruped. “Big room.”

Felix stepped in first, Manasight flared in case of a trap. He saw nothing of the sort, but instead was inundated by the sheer volume of sigaldry inlaid all around them. It was only a single room but was quite spacious, with high ceilings supported by sturdy stone columns. Shafts of sunlight pierced through high, narrow windows despite being underground, catching swirling dust that was displaced by Felix’s entry. Between the columns there were eight walls, and each was adorned by bas relief sculptures in a variety of minerals and precious ores.

“Not a tomb,” Tzfell said in wonder. “An atelier! His workshop!”

Workbenches and shelves filled the space, covered in dust and acting to define the wide floor into discrete areas. To the left were a collection of polished chisels, hammers, and sculpting picks along with piles of uncut stone. To the right were rows of shiny gemstones, along with a number of rotted rags. The gemstones’ facets caught the enchanted light and refracted it into rainbows across the nearest walls.

The centerpiece of the workshop though was a massive stone platform, upon which rested a man-sized chunk of midnight rock studded with flecks of diamonds. Veilstone, it was called. The same material used so often around the Clan Hold, but this was an unfinished sculpture. It bore chisel marks and the grooves of what looked like fingers, until the rock appeared to be a wave frozen in time. Unfinished, perhaps, but strangely beautiful.

“He was a true artisan, known to utilize sculptor’s and mason’s tools in addition to his prodigious magical Skill.” Tzfell stepped closer to the sculpture, her hand twitching to touch it but never quite crossing the distance. “Even half-done, this is worth ten times its weight in gold.”

Felix walked the room, careful not to touch anything as he traced out the hidden inscriptions with his Manasight. Someone, perhaps the Rockshaper himself, had inscribed complicated arrays around the room and Felix took the time to translate them as best he could. It was in the more angular Dwarven script of course, but he determined a large portion of the array was to mimic sunlight and shine it through the upper windows. Other portions were to preserve his tools—each glyph tied to the racks the chisels and hammers hung upon—but the rest seemed useless. Empty space meant for further additions.

“Well this is a bust. I guess we can take the gems, but they’re just rocks.”

Vess plucked a fist-sized emerald from its stand. When nothing happened, she placed it in her pouch, along with the others. “We can sell them. I know Elderthrone is making a lot of profit, but gemstones trade far easier with some people.”

“Plus they’re shiny,” Pit added. “Pretty.”

Tzfell pursed her lips, but she said nothing as Vess took all the remaining gemstones. When Felix stepped up to the tools, she cleared her throat. “Lord Autarch, I do not see the use these tools have for you. They are not enchanted and are only made of high steel. They would not compare to the implements your own craftsmen possess and…I would ask that you leave them. To honor the Rockshaper’s memory.”

Felix studied the Dwarven Chanter before nodding. “Sure. I don’t need them, but I wanted to see the glyphs behind the racks a little closer.”

He reached up and pushed aside a pair of rasps, only to find one of them stuck fast to the wall. Felix frowned and pushed a little harder. It remained unmoved, and he pushed harder. When a faint groaning came from the rasp, he realized the tool itself was bending rather than shifting position, and he stopped altogether.

He flared his Manasight.

The wall behind that section of tools was layered with inscriptions, some being the preservation array for the metal and wood implements, but the rest was that useless series of placeholder sigils. It spread like creeping vines all over the wall, the columns, and behind the bas relief sculptures in between.

Wait a second. Felix walked to the primary sculpture, following the flow of nonsense sigaldry as it reached a strange…knot was the only word Felix could think to describe it. Not a glyph or array, just a jumble of etched symbols traced with just the lightest touch of active Mana. In fact, it almost resembled—

“Oh. Oh that’s neat,” Felix said. He slipped behind the unfinished sculpture and sounded a nearly identical pattern within himself. “Stone Shaping.”

This time it wasn’t his Will that commanded the stone to move, but another’s. That pattern of sigaldry hidden within resonated with his Skill, and a delicate tracery of magic spread throughout the entire wall in an instant. It melted away to reveal a smaller chamber, almost an alcove, filled with a soft green light.

“How’d you know that was there?” Pit asked. “Wait, is there more behind these walls too?”

“Not that I can figure, but feel free to poke around dude.”

Felix stepped into the alcove. Again, there were no traps or wards, just perfectly polished floors that sprouted organically into a table, shelf, and framed a large, circular window. The window was at head height and easily ten feet in diameter. It was stained glass, cut and leaded between panes to illustrate a high mountain surrounded by storm clouds. The Undermound, Felix surmised. Light shone through, enough to illuminate the space completely…and this time, the light wasn’t fabricated. Felix reached up and found a catch on the side of the window, and he opened it up. The circular frame swung outward into an odd, underground grotto, where very large green crystals gave off a brilliant shine.

“Is that inside the mountain?” Vess asked. She reached up and pressed her hand into the space, but quickly withdrew it. “It’s freezing.”

“I don’t think it’s inside the mountain. It looks like…yes. Look, there,” Tzfell pointed to something just beyond the large crystals. There was a distinct golden pattern inlaid into the far wall, ornate knotwork and a truncated series of Dwarven words. “This is on the Low Road. I am unsure where, but it can be nowhere else.”

“It’s an exit?”

“Yes. It crosses out of the Undermount and back into the Continent, only…I am unsure how. I sense no dissonant tearing as with the portal we used to enter.”

Felix’s Mind spun, adding the new information to the slew of calculations he’d been running constantly. He looked down, and for the first time noticed a thin book nestled between empty shelves on the desk. It was bound in wooden boards and wrapped in leather, it seemed very old but had no title or marking of any kind. Felix flipped it open, finding extremely thin, nearly transparent paper absolutely covered in a small, blocky scrawl. It was clearly in Dwarven script, but he’d already started piecing together some of their language.

“Basic Will…Sculptor…Melding,” he translated. Tzfell gasped.

“That is a handwritten journal,” she peered into his hands. “Written by the Rockshaper himself!”

“Can you read this?” he asked.

The Chanter shook her head. “It is in an older dialect. Given time I could aid you in translating it. But the title here, I can read that. It isn’t whatever you said. These mean ‘Essence of Will: Shaping Unity.’”

“Shaping Unity,” he murmured. He really hoped that meant what he thought it meant. “Is it a Skill Book?”

“No. Those are quite different,” Vess said. “It appears to be a simple journal.”

“I doubt there is anything simple about this book. The Rockshaper is so highly regarded for a reason. He was a genius, and it is from his efforts that the line of kings was ever formed. I have seen your shaping Skills, Lord Autarch, and I cannot stress how helpful this journal might prove to be.”

Felix had to stop himself from clawing the book back and settled for carefully lifting it out of Tzfell’s hands. He shaped a hard leather pouch out of his Garment and settled the journal into it, carefully strapping it down so it couldn’t shift during a fight. He closed the ornate window and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Let’s get back.”

Far happier than when he’d entered, Felix hopped out of the collapsed tunnel with the others just as the mountain shook again. The ground broke just a bit more, rocks tumbling onto the carved face below, as lightning flashed across the sky. Ten bolts, each one brighter and larger than the last, seared into their vision as it slammed down onto the ground in the far distance.

“What is happenin’ down there?” Evie asked.

“I see redcloaks,” Vess said, fury thickening her voice. “How did they get in?”

It was true. The mountain blocked their view of the pleasure palace, but swarming across the grassy hills just beyond they could make out ant-sized figures in white and red. The lightning landed among them, eradicated entire swathes of their army, but more poured from between the trees.

“There’s thousands down there,” Beef whispered. His hands were shaking. Hallow pressed her lumpy rock face against his cheek.

A mammoth bolt of lightning tore from the clouds, slamming into the rear of the army, only to be met by a brilliant golden radiance. Thunder tore across the sky, and the lightning cut off. A figure in brutal armor visibly bigger than all the rest strode from the blackened earth, seemingly unharmed.

Imara.

Felix growled before shaping a layer of stone over the secret tunnel. “Rest is over. Go. Like our lives depend on it.”

He was pretty sure they did.

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