Throne Hunters Book 4, Chapter 19

A sinking feeling filled Harald’s gut at the sight of the snapped disc, and he turned in a slow circle as if expecting some nefarious force to emerge right then and there to assault them.

“But how?” Sam’s distress was clear. “Artifacts are supposed to be indestructible?”

“Unless another’s used to break it,” said Nessa, tone tight. “The stronger will win.”

Anna took a broken half. “Which means someone’s using sufficiently powerful divination magic to shatter a Rare tier. Not surprising, I suppose, given who’s after us.”

“Time to go?” Vic smiled brightly. “Time to go, I reckon.”

“Agreed.” Nessa led the way back to the hallway in which they’d dropped their packs. “One of the best and simplest ways to avoid being tracked down is to just keep moving. If the Disc just broke, that means they’re locating us now, but not necessarily close. That’ll change.”

They shouldered their packs. Harald dismissed his two Abyssal scarecrows and Artifacts.

“Are you going to want this?” asked Sam, holding out a black Diamond Crystal. Wirmas.

“I… no.” He felt a twinge of guilt. For all the hobgoblin’s withering sarcasm and gloating, he’d been instrumental a couple of times in help Harald survive. But there was no getting around how loathsome his presence was. “But let’s not leave it around for someone else to find.”

Sam shrugged and dropped it into her pack.

“Harald, can Shadowpaw find us a way down?” asked Nessa.

Shadowpaw had disappeared early during the big fight; something had knocked him clean out of the battle. But enough time had passed that he could reform, and when he did, he padded around worriedly, sniffing at the ground.

“Sorry about that, boy.” Harald crouched before the huge mastiff and scritched his ruff. “There was nothing we could do but defend ourselves.”

“Oh,” said Vic, snapping his fingers. “Fratricide. Got it.” Shadowpaw and Harald both turned to stare at the blond Rapier Regent, who raised his hands in wounded protest. “What? I’d absolutely be against killing my own brothers, if I had any. Nasty business.”

“We need to get down to the 28th,” said Harald, drawing Shadowpaw’s attention back. “Can you find us a way down?”

The hound seemed to consider then stalked off down the hall.

“Did he understand?” asked Nessa, tone dubious.

“I don’t know.” Harald rose smoothly. “He’s remarkably smart, but he’s at heart still just a huge hound. I hope so?”

Regardless, they didn’t have much option, so as one they hurried after the mastiff. This time round Shadowpaw was more hesitant; he’d stop in large halls to move from exit to exit, sniffing and considering, and then pick a new direction with a certain unease that didn’t induce confidence.

But they didn’t run into any fresh foes.

Either the Fallen Angel was gathering a truly monumental force to throw against them, or she was simply pulling everything back to avoid senseless deaths.

But the longer they followed Shadowpaw, the more Harald became concerned about a Shuddering. This degree of Fallen Angel involvement didn’t bode well, no matter what.

“Good thing you have that skull brooch,” said Sam, walking alongside him. “With the Disc gone, it might just shield you from whatever’s looking for us.”

“Masterwork,” agreed Harald, then shrugged. “But if the divination Artifact is Epic, even Masterwork won’t help.”

Sam nodded, expression helpless.

They stopped after an hour or so to drink water and have a meal. The oppressive silence and shadows were starting to wear on the group. The constant wariness. As a result, they ate in silence, sitting on the edge of an empty fountain, weapons close, still alert.

Kársek stood abruptly, rune hammer appearing in his hands as his wax papered meal spilled to the floor. “In that doorway!”

His words galvanized the party, and Harald felt something akin to relief that something was at last happening. They all leaped to their feet, Artifacts in hand, to watch as a coil of lead-black smoke emerged from the shadows to wend its way through the air toward them.

“That’s nothing from this Level,” said Nessa, tone sharp. “Raiders.”

“What a weirdly slow attack,” said Vic. “I mean, that’s a ridiculous way to give up the element of surprise.”

The smoky tendril was like a mountain path, winding its way here and there as it quested toward them. It moved at the pace of a swiftly striding man, and as one the group retreated before it.

Nothing else emerged from the dark archway.

“An attack?” asked Sam, tone tense, and then before anyone could answer she dropped the Starfire Bastion upon them, causing the air to shimmer as the silvered dome manifested all around.

The smoke continued, uninterrupted, reaching blindly toward them.

“Not demonic, then,” said Harald. “Or darkness based.”

Next her Shield of Valor appeared before the tendril, squarely in its path.

The smoken rope simply attempted to curl around it.

Sam moved the shield to block its attempts however, and for a moment Harald thought the tactic might prove effective, but abruptly the smoke simply overflowed the shield’s edge and spilled toward them all the faster. It had been coiling up against the shield’s face until it couldn’t be contained any faster.

“Would a door stop it?” asked Vic. “That would be hilarious if so.”

“Khazadrok.”

Kársek’s great rune blasted forth, blurring the air and making the ground shiver. It passed clear through the smoky tendril, which instantly decohered, turning into a dissipated miasma that hung in the air like kicked up dust.

But a moment later the rope began to recollect, binding itself together once more and moving toward them.

“It’s slow,” said Nessa. “We should be able to stay ahead of it.”

They’d already backed up against the hall’s far side.

“Let me try,” said Harald, and summoned his Abyssal Grasp. A trio of shadowy tentacles rose up about the smoke and coiled about it like the arms of an octopus. But they found no resistance, and simply flailed at nothing, passing back and forth through the smoke without effect.

“Let’s try something,” said Nessa. “Sam, Anna, with me. Gentlemen, you move away toward that side of the hall.”

They split up, skirting along the wall, but the rope never hesitated. It curved to track Nessa’s group.

“Sam, break away.”

Sam ran back toward Harald’s group, moving quickly enough to avoid the smoky tendril.

Still the rope quested after Nessa and Anna.

“Anna. Run.”

Grim, expression focused, the countess raced toward the center of the room, clambered upon to the fountain, ran lightly along its edge, then leaped over the shadowy rope to move over to join Harald.

Still the rope followed Nessa.

“It’s the Twilight Crown,” called Vic. “Darling, you’re fucked.”

Nessa jogged a circuit of the chamber, and the smoky rope followed, leaving its body along the route it had taken, as if it were tunneling through the air. Clearly it didn’t have the ability to move its hovering corpus.

Nessa leaped its coil where it emerged from the archway and rejoined the others. “I suppose it makes sense.” The Crown gleamed on her brow. “And I guess we have the option of shaking off pursuit by ditching the Crown.”

“Not an option,” said Vic gravely. “We’re not giving those nobles such a potent weapon. I’d rather die.”

“Easy, Vic,” said Sam. “You’re going to scare us with such earnestness.

But Vic’s expression remained intent.

“Do you think it extends all the way back to the Artifact?” asked Anna, stepping into the corridor with everyone else. “Like, miles and miles of it stretching through the dungeon?”

“We’re not going to find out,” said Harald.

“Sam!” An idea filled Harald with bright hope. “Can you target it with your Luminous Interdict?”

“Oh, smart!” said Vic.

Sam bit her lower lip, focused on the approaching smoke, then grimaced. “No. It’s not registering as an enemy.”

“Let’s move,” said Nessa. “Harald, summon Shadowpaw back?”

They quit the chamber and renewed their search with renewed urgency. Now they moved at a slow jog, with Kársek at the rear constantly glancing back to assure them the smoky rope hadn’t increased its pace.

Harald hated it. The sense of being hunted. Could they even rest now? How were they to sleep? What would happen if the rope of smoke touched one of them?

Shadowpaw let out a bark of excitement and broke into a gambol, loping ahead happily into a small, octagonal chamber which held in its center a prized well. Its mouth was open, and fog arose from its throat as if exhaled from the depths, filling the air with a damp, mineral scent.

“At last,” said Sam, Eclipse Edge propped on her shoulder. “I was beginning to think we’d never find it.”

“Took long enough,” groused Vic, moving to the well’s edge and peering inside. “And with a little luck, shifting Level will throw off pursuit.”

“One way to find out.” Harald leaped lightly up onto the well’s lip. “I’ll take point?”

“Could we stop you?” Nessa’s smile was wry. “We’ll be right behind.”

Harald dismissed Shadowpaw after leaning down to give him a congratulatory rub behind the ear, then manifest the Scourge. Its massive, unwieldy size again filled him with awe, the sheer breadth of the ‘blade’ making the hilt look unusually slender. For a moment he considered the glimmering arcs of cobalt blue and green that overlapped in its depths, then, just as he went to say something memorable or inspiring, Kársek let out a curse.

“By Dumrûn’s huge halls, it’s here. Go, Harald!”

Just beyond the halo of their lanterns he saw sinuous movement. Without ado, he simply hopped forward and dropped into the well, falling like a stone into the abyss that lay between floors.

It welcomed him as he dropped into nothingness, inverted him, transported him, and again he felt that eerie sensation of being home, between aspects and elements of reality, and even though it took but a flash of time before he emerged, he found himself thinking in that second: what if the Dungeon isn’t sequential, layer upon layer, but completely disparate, far flung realms connected by wells and portals…?

Harald coalesced on the 28th Level, and all his thoughts narrowed to a point as a monstrous black knight came to life before him, blade and tower shield rising.

He’d appeared in a circular chamber, the floor composed of huge, buckled flagstones of obsidian, some so uneven that their edges were six inches, a foot even, displaced next to their neighbor. Yet mixed in with this chaos underfoot were stretches of dark glass, smooth as silk and revealing a roiling ocean of black waves beneath, no, coiling clouds, a tormented heaven that called to Harald, that resonated with the very fabric of his soul.

The Abyss.

Perdition.

Destruction.

Absolution.

Heavy furniture lay scatted about the large chamber: huge wooden table covered in dust-smothered dinnerware, roped with spiderwebbing; chairs toppled and thrown about; huge closets and wardrobes against the walls; shelving laden with broken antiques and strange, obscure objects. Here and there great lattices of twisted black iron were sunken into the stone, covering huge rectangular gaps that might have been windows and beyond which howled a tormented wind.

The air was bone searingly cold and stank of hot iron and loss.

And the knight.

The angels wept, the knight.

No man could be that large, that broad. He was encased completely in black iron, sheets of metal so thick they were at least an inch, beneath which, in the joints, the interstices, flowed supple black links of heavy chainmail. His pauldron was almost a cauldron, his hugely curved breastplate large enough for a grown man to cower behind. All of it black, but where it caught the light of the streaming torches affixed in rusted sconces about the walls their edges betrayed a toxic, unhealthy green, as if they were made in actuality of an emerald so dark it gradated everywhere to nightmare jet.

His tower shield was a door of iron, and on its great curved face was emblazoned a tower whose top became a clenched fist.

His blade was a giant cleaver that burned with black fire. Six feet long and as broad as Harald’s thigh, it radiated cold and death such that Harald felt a primitive, primordial need to keep away from it.

And its helm. A giant ‘Y’ slit was cut into the brutal visage, but no light or face or eyes were visible in the dark recesses. Twin horns angled up and around from its temples to meet above the crown of its head on either side of a leaden sphere.

Harald didn’t have time to temporize. To consider. The death knight strode with remarkable speed, each huge step shattering the buckled flagstones, its burning blade already swinging around to cut Harald in half.

His instinct was to parry. Surely the Scourge could stop its fell cleaver-sword?

But what if it didn’t?

Dark Vigor gave him wings as the Goldchops flew at the knight. Harald hurled himself back, tripped on the raised edge of a flagstone, fell back into a roll. Hard ridges of rock pressed into his back and instinct bade him fling himself aside as the cleaver came crashing down upon where he’d been, sending splinters of rock flying.

Fucking hell this thing was strong.

But Harald had a few tricks up his sleeve.

Abyssal Grasp stirred to life and coiled about the knight’s legs, latching on immediately siphoning power from the foe into Harald’s soul. But the second it did so Harald intuited a truth: the knight was drawing its power in turn from the abyss outside the walls of the room, from the huge stormclouds below them. Rather than draining its life force to its death, it became instead an endless conduit for Harald.

And the Grasp’s power failed to paralyze it.

Twin Shadow Scarecrows appeared on its flanks and unleashed their mental blasts simultaneously at the hugely armored foe.

Nothing.

Was there no mind within the helm? Was it too powerful to succumb?

Harald came up to his feet, joy quickening in his heart as the knight charged him. Here was a foe he could test himself against, here was something he couldn’t just crush out of hand!

Nessa appeared before the portal to the 27th, eyes widening at the sight of the knight, and faster than thought she whipped the Dawnblade through the air and unleashed her Crescent Arc, sending a blindingly bright slash of white fire at the knight.

Who moved his tower shield out wide to block the assault.

Harald lunged forward with the Scourge and hammered it down upon the opening presented, but the knight, calmly, powerfully, blocked with his cleaver-sword. It was like hitting a cliff face, but the Scourge was no normal blade: it moaned as it sheared through toxic dimensions just before it crashed down upon the parry, and its impact caused chunks to fly free from the enemy’s huge blade, its black fire to momentarily go out.

Nessa flowed forward, her blade rippling out like silk to test the knight’s defenses, and then she let out a bark of satisfaction and the Dawnblade flashed so brightly it became, for one tremulous heartbeat, a living brand of captured lightning in her fist.

Harald immediately sensed the consequence of her action: the knight’s bond to the abyss had been severed, and now his pool of reserves had become finite.

Sam appeared before the portal. “Oh!” she said in the cutest manner possible, and then Starfire Bastion dropped over the chamber, limning the walls silver and causing the knight’s black-emerald armor to take on an ashen hue. She swung the Eclipse Edge, and its Judgement’s Light flowed forth, far more powerful than Nessa’s Crescent Arc.

The knight, still dour and silent, gave ground and swung his huge shield before the new assault. The Edge’s attack lopped off the upper half of the shield and sheared a third of its helm clear away, revealing that the helm was hollow.

But black smoke began to boil forth from within the remainder of the helm, and the knight abruptly turned into a hazy green miasma. It flowed smoothly across the room to reposition itself behind Sam, who turned just in time and summoned Shield of Valor as the knight solidified, huge cracked sword already descending into a swing.

The Shield rang out like a bell as the blade smashed down upon its face.

Vic appeared before the portal, and without a word raised The Point and lunged. Combined with this Piercing Lance and the Artifact’s own power, it tore forth with surgical precision to pierce the lower half of the helm’s ‘Y’ slit and punch out the back of the helm.

The room was growing crowded. Harald sidestepped and slashed a Demonic Edge  at the knight, but it deflected this with its blade even as it staggered back. Sam and Nessa attacked it simultaneously and it collapsed at last with a cacophonous crash onto its back, the pieces of its armor falling apart, the flames on its black blade extinguishing.

“Yay!” said Vic, stepping aside just as Anna appeared. Her eyes widened as she took in the defeated knight, the great room.

“Clearly tougher than the Reavers,” said Nessa, moving warily to where the huge pieces of armor lay.

“But not too tough for us!” grinned Sam, propping her blade on her shoulder. “That was great!”

Kársek appeared last and immediately turned to face the portal.

Everyone keyed into his focus, and the chamber fell silent.

A tentacle of gray smoke emerged from the portal’s hazy center to begin flowing toward Nessa.

“Damn it!” Vic extended The Point through the rope to no avail. “That’s very frustrating.”

“Come on,” said Nessa. “We can’t dally.”

Sam collected the nine Golden Dawns that hovered over the knight’s corpse. Nessa was backing away from the questing rope, glancing down occasionally as she evaded tripping on the rough stones.

“Up or down?” asked Kársek, tugging on his short beard.

To one side an archway betrayed a staircase spiraling upward, the steps curling clockwise to the right. On the room’s far side its twin revealed a descending staircase.

“Down,” said Nessa. “Gives us the fighting advantage because of the way the steps curve around.”

Nobody argued. They hurried to the steps. Harald wanted to take the lead, but Nessa was already descending and out of view. Sam went next, so Harald resolved to hang back and go last. Anna, Vic, then Kársek hurried down, each hustling as the rope got dangerously close.

Harald glared at the threat. There had to be a way to stop it, didn’t there?

He slashed at it once with Chyron’s Scourge, but the blade simply passed through the smoke, so he retreated down the steps behind the others.

The steps revolved three times before opening into a new chamber. Harald had but a moment to wonder how this could be—hadn’t he seen an abyssal ocean through the dark glass embedded in the floor above? But there wasn’t time to figure it out.

This chamber featured a high rib vaulted ceiling supported by intersecting slender buttresses. These flowed down to the walls were they joined to become columns set against the walls. Tall, slender windows were carved into the walls high up, and a giant chandelier hung suspended above them, its several circular layers aflame with huge blazing candles. An altar was set against the far wall, complete with gilt backpiece and painted depictions of some holy scene. The floor was strewn with black rose petals, and two knights came to life from where they’d been standing sentry on either side of the altar.

Big knights. One edged in deep-ocean blue, the other wearing armor so black it appeared the void incarnate, as if where it stood the abyss howled forth.

Both swung their burning cleaver-blades outward so that they clanged against each other in a gesture akin to a warrior’s salute of mutual respect, and then they charged.

The smoky rope was right at his back, curling down the steps.

No time for finesse.

The room was immediately drenched in auras, cruelty and puissance and coordination and morale uplift, and into this ocean of power Harald poured Thronebound Mantle even as he, Nessa, and Sam, and Kársek opened with their ranged attacks, weapons swinging, flashes and arcs of power flying forth as the dwarf intoned with grave lethality his everbound rune of destruction:

“Khazadrok.”

Both knights hazed into smoke just before the attacks hit and streamed forward. Sam and Nessa cut out toward opposite flanks, Anna momentarily freezing up, eyes wide, Kársek grabbing her by the elbow and hauling her away from the smoky tendril that poured itself into the room.

Harald didn’t bother with the Shadow Scarecrows.

Instead he bounced on the balls of his feet, Dark Vigor and the Goldchops and Chyron’s Scourge giving him wings, watching as the twin clouds formed up into their knightly bodies, the blue beside Sam, the black before him, and with a laugh of sheer gladness he caught his foe with Abyssal Grasp and swung the Scourge with all his power, his Strength of 21 making his assault akin to a landslide, the Scourge moaning as it bruised the air, knowing the knight would parry, wanting this time, needing to prove that he could shatter its blade.

The knight instead caught the attack on his raised shield.

The Scourge folded the metal about its huge edge, shattering the arm behind it, and then Vic launched himself forward, a ghostly second beside him, both unleashing The Point at the knight’s helm even as it swayed away.

Anna stepped in close, face pale, and around her hovered huge thorns of daggerlike blades which flew forward to dart and harry the knight.

Who dropped his shield, ruined as it was, and Harald was forced to dismiss the Scourge so that it could slip its heavy encasement.

The tower shield hit the ground and the knight stepped in, backhanded at Vic’s face. The Rapier Regent dropped to his knees as Harald unleashed a Demonic Edge over his head into the knight’s chest, but the foe parried, both hands on the blade’s hilt, the demonic energy shattering as the cleaver’s black fire went out.

The Goldchops hammered into the knight, bouncing off and leaving deep dents. Anna let out a cry of frustration as she skipped to one side, looking for an opportunity to attack. Harald stepped in, swinging the Scourge with enough power to behead a horse, but the knight against stepped aside, surprisingly adroit on the uneven battlefield, even as Vic surged up with Piercing Lance to send his blade sinking deep into a crevasse in the armor’s side.

The knight elbowed Vic in the face, the blow hard enough to crunch bone, and Vic flew back, blood spewing into the air as white healing light encased his head, Sam’s Warden’s Pulse fending off the worst of the damage.

“Khazadrok.”

The black knight crossed his arms before him just before the rune hit and lifted him clear off his sabatons to fling him into the wall, which cratered, shelving shattering, and for a moment the knight looked as if he’d been permanently embedded into the stonework, his form mangled warped.

But he flowed into mist once more, fell free, only for Harald to step forward and swing the Scourge with everything he had, from the hips, a cut born from the abyss itself.

The Scourge moaned, rippled, collected fell energies, and lopped the knight’s helm clear off its huge shoulders so that the rest of it collapsed in a cascade of suddenly loose plates.

Grinning, Harald spun, and saw Sam fighting for her life as she gave ground before the blue tinged knight.

Nessa?

Retreating before the rope of smoke which had clearly been chasing her all this while, for it had left loops and great gentle curvatures in the air, static impediments to her movement around which she had to duck and leap.

“Get out of here!” Harald shouted, running at the other knight. “Nessa! Go! Kársek, with her!”

“What?” Nessa was backing toward the opposite stairwell. “Leave you all?”

The space around the blue knight suddenly warped into a huge sphere of impossible angles and twisted light as the Compressed World detonated at its feet.

Nessa cursed and together with Kársek fled the ever-hungry rope into the stairwell.

“We can’t keep this up!” shouted Sam even as she unleashed a blazing arc from the Eclipse Edge into the warped realities of the Compressed World. “We can’t just fight forever at this speed!”

Harald grinned as he flung a Demonic Edge into the sphere and watched it lop off the knight’s arm. “Want to bet?”

Vic lunged past them both to skewer the knight in the helm, which burst asunder causing the knight to drop. His grin matched Harald’s in ferocious glee. “A wager, my friends! Six more chambers before one of dies.”

Sam gaped at him in horror.

“An eternity of chambers before I let that happen,” laughed Harald, snatching up the Compressed World and lobbing it to Anna as it collapsed back into its bronze spherical self. “Come on!”

And filled with terrible, suicidal joy, he raced toward the exit, slid carefully past the tendril that was already flowing down the stairwell after Nessa, and descended into the darkness.