Amazon Apocalypse 6: Chapter 2

I dropped the trio I came with off, then came back to haul Cyra alone. She'd grown herself a little taller again thanks to all the fighting while on crusade, so she needed both arms.

When we arrived at the fortress, Myrina, Reluna, and Mimiko had already vanished.

"Looks like they went exploring early," Cyra said.

"I knew I shouldn't have left them alone..." I muttered, now realizing I should have dropped Cyra off first. I was reasonably sure she would have waited for the rest of us, no matter how tempting exploring an abandoned ruin on a forgotten world was.

And it was quite tempting. From afar, I'd only been mildly curious to explore this ancient rock formation that had once been a fortress. Now that I was setting foot on weather-worn stone and could see the obvious craftsmanship that went into this place, I was a lot more interested as well.

"I think they went that way," Cyra pointed to an open door. It was stone, but had been broken. And broken rather recently. I'd seen Myrina's boot print on enough doors to know the signs.

I stepped through the passageway and over the rubble of the ruined door. It was dark within, but I clicked my fingers and a magical glowing light formed hovering over my shoulder.

I gestured, and it moved ahead of us, intensifying then splitting into smaller light sources, which I scattered around the room.

"Looks like there's a giant hole ahead of us," Cyra pointed.

I moved a few lights down the hole. They promptly vanished into a black abyss.

"Don't tell me they wandered through here in the dark and all fell down there..." I groaned, fearing the worst.

"Maybe we ought to go after them?" Cyra suggested.

I sighed in agreement. "I swear, if they're all wrapped up in the limbs of a giant tentacle monster, I might just leave them down here..."

So I grabbed Cyra and descended down the hole. It went all the way down to sea level, and I expected to find water. But much to my surprise, the hole kept going down with no water to speak of.

"This is strange. We should be underwater by now," I said.

"This is a very deep hole," Cyra agreed as she held tightly to my side with one arm. I had my arms under her legs and back in what was usually called a princess carry. I was certain the stern Amazonian warrior in my arms would never admit it, but I suspected she enjoyed being carried like this, if the flush in her cheeks was anything to go by.

We kept falling for a minute after that. I tucked in my dragon wings and let gravity do its thing in the hopes of getting us to the bottom a little sooner, and that eventually did the trick after another minute.

I repeated my earlier work of magic then and made another ball of light. It illuminated damp ground beneath our feet, but not much else. I brightened the light, revealing more ground. If not for that, I would think we were in an endless lightless abyss.

It took nearly three hundred lights of the usual size to illuminate the underground chamber we found ourselves in. The chamber was almost as massive as the one where we'd found an underground city, and it could easily have fit three football stadiums end to end.

I gave the ground a kick, and loose white stones scattered around us. I'd taken them for pebbles at first, but they were too light for that. And now that I saw the whole chamber, I was pretty sure they weren't stones at all. They were bones.

There were bigger pieces nearby. Here and there among the debris was the occasional intact skull. I leaned over and picked one up. It was missing the lower jaw, but was otherwise intact.

The skull resembled a human's, but with some minor variations. On this, that meant a more robust brow line and a thicker top ridge. I chalked those up as the only differences until I saw Cyra examining a similar skull. This one had barbs jutting out from the sides of its cheekbones.

"Multiple species on this world? Or something else?" I muttered.

"Dunno." Cyra shrugged, tossing the skull aside as she made her way to the far wall. There looked to be an exit in that direction, and other than the sea of bones it was the only notable feature in this room.

I considered the burial ground around us and the strange remains. If there had only been a few dozen variants in skull shape, I would have chalked it up to several species being killed here. But the more I examined the remains, the more I realized every one of them were different. Either this was a single species with a remarkably deep gene pool, or this pit held a clue as to what happened to this world.

"I found a way out," Cyra said. She opened a door to reveal a ladder leading up.

I could have flown us up the way we'd come in, but the ladder looked like it led to somewhere other than where we'd come from. I tossed the skull I was examining aside and followed her.

We were greeted by what had once been a library. Piles of dust in vaguely book-like shapes lined the walls. I grumbled in disappointment. If these people had used something more durable, I'd be able to read what they left behind and make sense of what I was seeing quite easily. Unfortunately, normal books didn't last thousands of years in a damp ancient fortress. Even the wooden furniture had crumpled in on itself.

"Junk. Disappointing, but if Myrina and the others had come through this way, we'd be seeing their footprints." Cyra pointed at the dust-covered floors, which were unblemished.

"They must have taken another turn somewhere. We'll probably run into them if we keep exploring,"

The next room was also filled with the remains of books. As was the one after that. That was when we finally found a staircase leading out, but on the wall next to the door I found something written in stone. Unlike all the paper, this was still clear enough to read.

"Mutation Archives," I read from the door.

I shuffled through my theories of what happened here, threw a few out and added a few new ones. Then we went up the stairs looking for more clues. Cyra seemed a bit disappointed at the lack of treasure, but puzzling through this lost history was getting me increasingly excited. What happened to this world so long ago?

My next clue came in the form of a mural. The colors of the ancient paints had faded, but I could still make out the designs.

"A beast covers the sky. Rain falls from its great wings... or are those eggs?"

As the mural continued, monsters sprouted from the earth, of all different shapes and sizes. The pictures continued, showing powerful humanoid figures battling the monsters. But as they fought, their features shifted and changed, and in the next set of images they became monsters themselves. Or perhaps their children became monsters? It was tough to tell from pictures alone.

The next set of images revealed huge fearsome things the size of cities. They waded between mountains like giants as they trampled the world underfoot.

According to this mural, this world had been visited by a powerful monster that spawned other monsters, then transformed the strongest inhabitants of the world into yet more monsters.

Whatever beast visited this world had to have been a strong one. Definitely an A-Grade, especially if the drawing was to scale. The big beast looked like it could swallow the planet whole.

The drawings stopped shortly after showing depictions of burning cities and crumbling castles. Whoever owned this fortress probably had more important things on their mind that recording current events, given their world was quite literally ending.

"We're getting closer to loot," Cyra said, turning over tables and drawers in the chamber we were in.

I nodded absentmindedly before looking over the door signs nearby. My Forerunner title granted me the ability to read this long-forgot alien script, which was an advantage in navigating these halls that Cyra and my other companions lacked.

"Treasury, feast hall, lounge... aha! The observatory! Let's check that out." I grabbed Cyra by the wrist and pulled her along.

"Wait, what was the first one you said?" Cyra asked.

"The feast hall? We'll check that out later. I bet there are more clues in this observatory."

And so we left in search of the observatory. The walls were filled with more ancient and decayed books, but there were several things of great interest to me.

One side of the observatory was open. We were deep underwater, and there was a force field powered by magic keeping the place from flooding. Despite its age, the magical barrier was still active.

"Look at this, Cyra! See the enchantments laid into the wall here?"

"They look simple compared to yours," Cyra said dryly. Her arms were crossed as she looked around the observatory, clearly unimpressed by the lack of treasure.

"But the mere fact that they're still operational after all this time speaks of a level of reliability I didn't know was possible! The design looks to be self-reinforcing, and the glyphs are actually part of the enchantment. If I ever need a mana barrier that'll last ten thousand years, this is the design I'm basing it off of."

"How long do you think you need?" Cyra asked. She gave one of the piles of dusty books a kick, then stuck her finger through the rotten wood.

"A few minutes. Depends on whether or not there is anything else worth looking at here. Let me know if you can figure out what they were observing," I said as I broke out a pen and paper and started tracing the enchantment patter. I was very thankful these guys made enchantments that were plainly visible. I drew my lines with a burst of light, so the patterns I used were usually indecipherable to most enchanters. These could be copied by just about anyone.

"Uh, Carter, did you see that?" Cyra asked, gesturing to the wall behind me.

"Probably a fish. What, you hungry? Maybe there's a rod somewhere in here. Maybe that's what the ocean view was about." I was so intently focused on copying the enchantment I didn't even turn to look.

That proved to be a mistake when, a moment later, something wet and slimy wrapped around my ankle.

My paper went flying from my hands, and the tentacle dragged me through the enchantment and into the water. I squirmed in surprise, turned, and blinked as my fuzzy vision cleared to reveal a huge tentacled thing wrapping itself around me. It was like the one that Cyra battled on the shore, but this one was far larger.

Tentacle Broodmaker (Level 385)

I let out a muffled scream as soon as I saw the creature's name. Normally, I had enough experience in combat not to panic, but this was a rare exception. It was B-Grade, only slightly lower level than myself. Worse, it was flexing what I was pretty sure was an ovipositor as more tentacles wound around my legs, arms, and waist.

I released what was quite possibly the fastest and most ferocious barrage of magical projectiles I'd ever released. Thanks to being so close, most of them struck the monster in vital areas. But for once, my affliction-focused arsenal of spells that were so great at taking down powerful monsters was of little help to me now. I needed it dead before it got any ideas.

I considered reactivating my Chaos Dragon title. It would be a pain in the rear to turn off again, but transforming into a dragon was increasingly looking like my best option here.

Fortunately, Cyra jumped in before I had to make that decision. She fearlessly plunged into the water and rammed her shoulder into the monster. She wrestled with it, overpowering it with sheer strength and distracting it long enough for me to unwrap myself from its grip and retrieve a sword.

With a blade in hand, I felt much more confident in tackling this thing, even underwater. Between Cyra and me, the fight would have been over in short order on land, but we were fighting in this thing's element, which put the two of us at a disadvantage. I was surprised we were winning as quickly as we were when I realized it wasn't just the two of us.

Reluna's magic chains were restraining the tentacle monster, slowly dragging it through the magical barrier it had pulled me through. Myrina was hacking through tentacles as Reluna grabbed and restrained them, and Mimiko thrust her spear into any target she could find.

Eventually, I hauled myself through the barrier and back into dry air, where I spat out a lungful of water. By the time I recovered the fight was pretty much over with Cyra ramming her sword through the monster's skull.

It was still twitching, so I put the thing down for good with another barrage of spellfire and detonating my corrupting marks.

"You ladies didn't see that, right?" I coughed.

"We arrived just in time! Damn tentacle monsters. They're always after cute wizards. It's what happens in all the stories," Myrina said, hauling me to my feet.

"The first thing Myrina did when you dropped us off was have us scout ahead and make sure there were no giant tentacle monsters waiting to ambush our wizard! Sorry, looks like we missed this one." Reluna shrugged sheepishly.

I pulled a towel out of my bag of holding, frown still on my face as I changed into something clean and dry.

"All the same, let's just pretend that never happened."

+++

<Note>

Obligatory tentacle monster fan service scene done. Unfortunately, sea monsters have bad myopia and grabbed Carter instead of one of the girls.

Anyway, I got some more worldbuilding done and should hopefully be picking up speed a bit more this week.

Probably half a chapter more exploring the ruins, then maybe 1-2 more on this planet doing some colonization stuff, then return to Crownhill to kick off the main plot.