[Beastborne: Tower of Blight] Chapter 58

Besal watched as the vampyr chased down something called a raptor, leaped onto its back, and then bit its massive neck. The thing struggled and made strange noises for a while before finally going limp.

Several others of the same strange creature showed up, but one look from the feasting vampyr and they fled. Even from here, Besal could sense his power rising dramatically. As if he went from Level 1 to Level 30 in just a few seconds.

That sharp of a rise was liable to give anybody pause.

“They are amusing creatures,” the lich said. “Ancient from my understanding, and very bestial, but they are mostly here to stock my larder.”

“How have they survived this long?” Luda asked.

“Self-sufficient ecosystem, my dear.” He spread his hands to take in the room. “I make sure everything is kept balanced with tweaks to the mana signatures. Too many herbivores, and those swift little things feast and begin to cull their number. Then, when there are too few herbivores, the carnivores start to starve. It all balances itself quite handily, with a little help from my spells, of course.”

To say it was a large room would be a grave misuse of the word.

A dozen airplane hangers could have gotten lost inside that jungle. The treetops alone must have been 50 feet tall or more and still the ceiling seemed out of reach.

Mac waved from over his meal, wiping his crimson chin. His speed blurred into a stream of smoke and he appeared right next to the group on the observation deck.

Besal made a mental note that Mac could effectively fly. At least over short distances.

“All good,” Mac reported. “Ready when you all are.”

“I had hoped you would take a little longer,” Aldrich admitted. “No matter.” He turned to the group. “As I have stated, I require my Phial.” He glanced sharply at Mac, who was busy cleaning raptor blood off himself with a small silken handkerchief. “Which are small bottles filled with memories of the knowledge you seek.”

“That… seems like a very poor system,” Besal said bluntly.

“If the goal was to possess the information, perhaps,” Aldrich agreed. “However, my aim was to make sure that no matter what happened, nobody that I did not deem worthy could gain access to them. Even if I were killed, imprisoned, or worse, I could not easily reveal their location. In fact, until I came here, the memory of the Phial itself was hidden from me.”

Mac tucked away the handkerchief and winked. “That’s because you placed a recall charm on this place that would only trigger if the both of us were here at the same time. That way, if I was somehow missing, the information would still be hidden and safe.”

“You must have had great trust in Macon–” Luda began.

“Just ‘Mac’.”

She looked over at him. “My apologies. You must have had great trust in Mac for that spell to work. He could have left or destroyed your home. Anything could have happened. Even those outside of his control. That suggests you trusted him with more than your life. You trusted him to remain loyal, to defend your home, and to be around should you need him, no matter how long it took. Very inspiring.”

Ralst and Besal shared a look. They understood things a little better.

“Nah, it’s not like that. Al just doesn’t want to share. So, he made it as unlikely to get back as possible,” Mac said, casually shoving his hands into his pockets. He was not at all what Besal expected a vampyr to be. Though, he was not sure where his notion came from fractured pop culture references from Hal’s life. In those flashes of Earth, vampyrs were proud and intimidating creatures of the night.

“Mac has the right of it,” Aldrich said, but Besal detected a little tremor in his voice.

The drow and Khaeros shared another look. The lich was lying.

Which was fine by Besal. Clearly, Mac was a useful ally to have around. He was fast, could turn to smoke, and seemed to be rather laid back compared to the stuffy and formal lich.

However, what they both knew likely happened was that the lich had not expected to sleep for so long. And on top of that, he clearly knew that Mac would get turned to ash by forgetting he was vulnerable to the sun.

A pile of ash couldn’t have done much for a thousand years, so he felt reasonably safe that the vampyr would still be there.

What did sound like the lich, was being so full of himself that he thought his own magicks would still be functional hundreds of years later.

Considering the state his home was in, Besal had to agree that the lich had a right to be so cocky. The man knew his spellwork, even if Besal couldn’t have told two different sigils apart.

The air was clean. He had windows that dimmed on command, doors that opened without a sound, and multiple pens of monsters and dinosaurs that they kept around for food because eating people was apparently looked down upon no matter what the lich said.

That was one thing that Besal knew with iron certainty. People, no matter how grateful they were to their rulers, would never willingly allow themselves to be feasted on. Even if they kept all their valuables, it would feel wrong to them.

As little as Besal understood about humans and mortals, he knew that no creature, no matter how big or small, wanted to be treated like prey. Even prey that was very well cared for.

Keeping his thoughts to himself, Besal waited until the lich turned and led them out of the observation deck over the dinosaur’s pen. They were led down a myriad of halls and stairs that seemed to go on forever.

The inner core of the mountain fortress–which was what Besal now thought of it–had some definitive non-Euclidean aspects to it. Doorways opened onto multiple scenes. Stairs ran up and around places that should not have been possible.

It was like looking at one of those optical illusion pictures that Hal used to be fond of. The ones that changed what they showed based on your perspective.

They followed stairs that went onto the ceiling, decorative waterfalls that ran up instead of down, curving arches that had more sides every time Besal counted, and more mind-bending architecture than you could shake a tentacle at.

“If you’re trying to break our minds, please get it over with. I’m bored,” Besal said when he couldn’t handle it enough.

Ralst raised a brow at him. “What do you mean?”

“He has the Sight,” Aldrich said. “This place is built along a nexus of multiple realties. Besal is merely seeing the possibilities of all the other universes crammed into this one localized instant of causality. Nothing to be afraid of.” He looked over his shoulder at Besal, keen interest flickering in his green fiery eyes. “Though an intriguing power that not many possess, even back in my time.”

Besal could guess that if the lich wasn’t leading them, anybody else trying to take these paths would be hopelessly lost. To them, it would look like an endless array of doors, stairs, and hallways.

If Besal knew where to go, he could lead them, but simply seeing the other realities did not mean he could navigate them.

Before long, the lich approached a door and opened it to reveal a warm circular chamber with a hole in the center and nothing else.

It was clearly a chute of some sort, but as Aldrich approached, he did not jump in. Instead, he walked into it as gravity seemed to shift at the last moment. The lich walked down the 10-foot-wide tube drilled straight into the heart of the mountain as if it were flat and level, bringing Ralst along with him.

“This is my favorite part!” Mac said, leaping forward and taking his first step.

With a shrug, Besal went next.

As with the strange architecture elsewhere, he was able to see a dozen different passages split off the one the lich took.

Besal took one step forward and felt the tug of gravity tethering him to the middle passage. Whatever stood for an inner ear in his head adjusted until he instinctively recognized up and down.

Ahead of them a fiery, angry light of mottled orange and red with tiny patches of black bubbled and frothed.

“You have a lava chamber?” Besal asked.

“Magma,” the lich corrected. “But yes. This is one of the least dangerous methods by which we will get the necessary Phial. It requires cooperation and skill that will serve us well should you still wish to embark on your foolish crusade of knowledge.”

“I’m just here to kill Outsiders,” Besal told him. “Not sure I care about anything else, but if Boss Lady wants it, I suppose I’ll go along with it until there’s some eldritch monstrosity for me to gank.”

Mac looked over at him, his dark curls bouncing with every step. “What is an Outsider?”

“You don’t have eldritch creatures? Too many tentacles and eyes? Skin that looks like putrefied oil but feels like being touched by razor blades?”

Mac shook his head. “The Calamity happened before I was born.”

“He is not talking about that, Macon,” Aldrich told him. “He speaks of Elder Gods. They call them Outsiders for some reason now. I suppose it makes sense. They come from outside the Shard. Still, odd the names these people choose to alter.”

“Aside from the fact that Elder Gods sounds like an honorific instead of an abyssal horror from beyond the stars?” Ralst asked.

“The rabble will believe in anything if they think it’ll stop them having to work or think for two seconds at a time,” Aldrich said dismissively. “Now come on, we are almost to the main chamber. Watch your step.”

He disappeared, taking one step out and rolling away from view. Just as he had when he entered the tunnel, gravity shifted once more until up was down, and down was up. Attached by a fine chain at the wrist, Ralst followed.

On the other side, Besal looked up at a sky full of magma. The ceiling of the room, upon which they were now standing, was made of black stone that was worked smooth into a matte finish that gently reflected the light of the magma below/above (depending your point of view).

Aldrich pointed a bone-white finger.

Besal looked at the strange humps of smoothed stone ringed with silvery-green script running all around their base. They stood at least twenty feet higher at their apex.

“There are five in total,” Aldrich told them. “Though only two people are required minimally, having all five will make this go considerably faster. If you would please stand on the raised control nodes.”

“You can just say ‘humps’,” Besal told him as he strode over to the nearest one and stood atop it.

The magma was still nearly a quarter of a mile above/below his head, so the slight proximity didn’t bother him anymore than it otherwise would with a lake full of molten stone bubbling over his head.

Mac took his position on a nearby one as well, while the lich strode to a very different area. He stepped down into a bowl-shaped depression that had been easy to miss until Besal knew where to look for it.

The whole flooring/ceiling was slightly curved so that the depression was hidden unless you were right on top of it.

Ralst joined him.

Aldrich was about to object when the drow smiled at him.

Besal shivered. He hated when she did that.

“One final trap?” she asked too sweetly.

“No, no, nothing like that,” the lich said. “I would not want to vaporize Macon!”

“Thanks, Boss.”

“You could just sweep his ashes up,” Ralst pointed out.

“Not when they’ve been consumed by lava!” he retorted.

“Magma,” Besal corrected loudly.

The lich threw up his arms.

“He can be mouthy at times,” Ralst confirmed sympathetically.

“As I was saying, this is not a trap.” He saw the way the drow was looking at him and hastily added, “Not intentionally, at least. Yes, I could turn it into a trap, but then I would never recover the Phial. Look, I stand here, everybody else stands on their–”

“Humps,” Besal supplied helpfully.

The lich shivered. “–and from here I control the flow of the magma, building up its pressure so that the hidden pillars rise out and reach the ceiling. From there, those who are on their raised control nodes, can touch the sigils that trigger the vault to open. It’s all very simple.”

“Gods save us from men who overcomplicate everything,” Ralst muttered, pinching the bridge of her nose.