Ruthless ~ 19!

~ 19 ~

They were standing at the bottom of a huge tube. Looking up, the only thing Joe could think of was the similarity to missile silos. Jess had already searched this for any way in, but going to the top was the only way to progress. Joe looked at the others and nodded, then mentally told the ritual to stop.

End Ritual of Leaden Boots? Caution: this will end the ritual for all [5] of the people it is impacting! Yes / No.

Joe thought ‘yes’, and the group started to rise through the water swiftly. Once again, he was pleased by his forethought in making sure that all rituals he had a hand in designing would have that mental shut-off feature. It may be paranoia, but his rituals should never be able to be used against him unless he wanted them to be. They slowed about ten feet from the surface of the water, and Joe checked the timer for the poison. He frowned at the fact that there was still ten minutes left. On one hand, he was pleased that they had made good time. On the other, they would need to wait underwater for another ten minutes. 

He shrugged and activated his Aura of Neutrality. The timer on the poison started dropping by two seconds each second. They swam to the top of the water when there was about a minute left, and Alexis directed them all out onto the shore when there was twenty seconds remaining. She went first, and started heaving. Water poured out of her lungs, and everyone went wide-eyed as they realized what she was doing. Their lungs were full of water. In a few seconds, they wouldn’t be able to breathe with that in their lungs anymore.

You have entered the Dungeon: Lessons of The Dark Age.

All of them worked to expel as much water as possible. Even so, when the timer ended, all of them began coughing furiously. They were shaking in fear and pain by the end, and Joe couldn't stop the tears that leaked down his face. They mixed in with all the water on his face, but it was still a hard moment for him. “We were basically just waterboarded with salt water for twenty minutes. That… that sucked so bad.”

“Right…” Jaxon agreed.

“Poison sucks.” Poppy grumbled.

Alexis sat up and glared at all of them. “We made it, didn't we? Yes, a potion of water breathing would have been great, but they are single-use and really hard to make or find!”

Joe held up a hand. “Alexis. You did an amazing job making this and getting everything ready. None of this is on you, it’s my fault for not understanding what would happen when we used it. All of you, my bad. I’ll try to find a way to make it up to you.”

His words calmed the situation instantly, though it was the kind of awkward calm that comes when people wanted to yell and had the wind pulled out of their sails. They all stayed there for a few minutes longer, then stood in clean and dry clothes. Joe’s Aura had been working the entire time, so even their residual soreness from water-filled lungs had vanished a few minutes previously. Then they had simply needed the time to get their head back into the game.

“What’s next?” Bard rumbled out. “We have ah pit of lava that we need ta squat over an’ dip our b-”

“I think,” Joe cut off Bard as quickly as possible, “that there are mainly just monsters and such.”

Bard grumbled to himself, but led the way forward. When they got to the first turn in the tunnel, Joe asked everyone to halt as he activated the anti-personnel ritual he had created with his Coven ahead of time. After he got everything going, they continued forward, moving at a snail’s pace. “The annoying part of all this is that we need to go all the way down, pretty much to the same depth that we entered the place from. If we could have gone through the wall, we would have been there by now!”

“Too bad we don't have any sappers on our team.” Poppy got the group to chuckle at that; they all knew that trying to blast their way into a dungeon was likely a good way for the system to slap them with penalties. “Where were the enemies supposed to be?”

“Oh, they’re all over the place!” Jaxon pointed at the walls, making everyone’s head snap to stare. “You know, deeper in. Jess was excited because almost everything in here is mechanical instead of magical. Apparently, we aren't going to see magically overgrown spiders, but we might see a robotic spider monstrosity!”

“Why doesn't that make me feel better?” Alexis spoke up, frantically going through her poisons to find something that might work on metal enemies. “Why is this the first I’m hearing about this?”

“It’s on the map.” Jaxon shrugged. “She made a legend for us. Look at the silver triangles. ‘Likely mechanical enemy’. She made all of these in record time and barely got time to hand them over, it isn't surprising that she didn't get a chance to explain every little thing.”

“Oh.” Joe looked, and found exactly what Jaxon was talking about. “Yup, there it is. I guess her snakes didn't start any of them up? Either they won't do anything, or maybe they only get hostile when people get near them?”

There was silence for a long moment, the Bard cleared his throat and nodded at the walls. “Looks like Dwarves are ah thing in this world.”

The party looked at the walls as they walked, and realized that this was likely series of the Dwarven history in pictograph form. They walked past dozens of what appeared to be tribal-styles, then found a new style just before the room opened up. On the last image, a Dwarf was standing above the others with a crown on his head. Then the pictures turned into a smear of red that seemed to bleed into the now-open room ahead of them.

“What do you think that all meant?” Joe’s senses were tingling… this was important, he just knew it.

“Well, to me, the walls are letting us know that we are about to fight something.” Poppy spoke in a too-friendly tone that they had started to associate with him being snarky. “Perhaps I am incorrect, and we are going to make some friends ahead. I’m certain all the blood is just a misunderstanding.”

“Oh, thank goodness.” Jaxon sighed with relief.

“He’s being facetious, Jaxon.” Joe stated wearily. They stepped into the room, and a door hidden in the hallway behind them corkscrewed closed with a long hiss of steam. Words started coming from the room in front of them, but the language was so archaic that it was nearly impossible to understand more than a single word.

Tu sequere et vestigia tua maiorum. Win. Probare te digna tua est.

“Pretty sure that whatever tha’ was about, we need ta smash those shiny bois.” Bard hefted his axes as mechanical Dwarves entered the room through doors that had been hidden in the walls. Doors opened behind them as well, and more Dwarves began to pour into the room.

“How are we supposed to…?” Joe trailed off, looking at the dozens of Dwarves that had surrounded them. One detail seemed to jump out at him; Joe stared at the sigils that they all wore, noting that there were five different ones, and all the Dwarves were separated by the sigil they wore. “There! Go stand with that group!”

Joe ran to stand in front of the group that had been wearing the same symbol as the ‘King’ of the pictograph. His team followed, and the room devolved into an all-out brawl. The Dwarves they had sided with didn't attack them, and Joe was glad that he hadn't stayed with the ones that entered behind them; they were wiped out in under a minute.

They found that most of their attacks dealt damage, but were overall fairly ineffective against the mechanical Dwarves. They seemed to ignore direct magical effects like Dark Lightning from Joe, though he could bind them pretty easily with his solidified shadows. Jaxon could be seen punching a metal Dwarf, and a minute later Lefty and Terror were trying to chew through them. 

Bard managed to bust them up with his axes, and Alexis’s crossbow was armor-piercing, so went through the plating easily. Poppy was having a great time, his rapier designed to be extra-effective against armored enemies like this. Though they were mechanical, they still dropped as he would expect a real Dwarf to do when stabbed in the eye. Soon, the four other tribes had lost seventy percent of their forces, and the rest kneeled.

Crude Dwarven Tribesman (Autonomation) X22 defeated! Experience gained: 220.

‘Their’ Dwarves hoisted their axes and hammers into the air to show victory, and all ‘defeated’ Dwarves were dragged away as Joes group was escorted down the tunnel. They came to a fork in the path. Bard rumbled, “Ah’ve been reading the pictures we’re goin’ by. If ah have it right, this whole place is a repeat of history, ah lesson or summat. Ah think that a turn in tha tunnel means a choice that we are supposed to already know.”

“Alright…” Joe looked at the steely Dwarves around them. “What have you figured out so far?”

Bard launched right into it. “This was ah time o’ peace after different Dwarven clans came together under a single King. There was a bloody war, and only the King had the majority of his clan at the end. He ruled with an iron fist. Here… this turn shows us starting to trust and work with the other clans after maybe ah century? This other path is more warlike, staying in charge by military power.”

“The choice I would make is to work together and grow as a single entity.” Joe said without hesitation. “But is that the choice that we need to make here?”

The group dithered back and forth for a few minutes before finally agreeing to take the route of military might. That was what they decided a Dwarf would do. Taking a  left, they walked along the path and carefully watched the pictures and mechanical beings that walked with them. “Bard, would you try to keep us up to date with what’s happening? The map shows that all these routes go to the same place, but new doors keep opening up. I’m pretty sure we’ll be going off-map soon.”

Bard nodded and began a monologue. “The King kept his power, and consolidated everything. The clans grew more skilled, more specialized in the crafts that they chose for themselves. Their weapons became more potent, their cities became more beautiful an’ advanced. But… uh-oh.”

“What?” Poppy nervously questioned.

Pointing at the walls, Bard brought their attention to the fact that the pictures were starting to dissolve into red blood again. “They had no one to admire their cities. There were no one ta’ use their powerful weapons against. The talented warriors that had fought for their King began to resent him. The people that he had conquered began to plot against him… and finally… coup d'etat?”

The wall in front of them spun open just as the wall behind them closed. They were standing at the base of a set of stairs that went up and up… revealing a massive Dwarf in Royal Regalia sitting on a throne. Steam started to hiss, and metal creaked.

The glowing eyes of the King opened.