Chapter Two Hundred And Eighty Eight – 288
Kelgan walked with his spear out, arrayed at the forefront of the column of sleepwalking guards. It felt quite strange, leading the blank-eyed stares of the alchemically-adjusted warriors, but far less strange than the path through which they walked. The ground, stone-like at first blush, glowed like a moon made of the sea. It was firm, unless they thought about it too much. But Kelgan had learned his lesson there. He kept his eyes firmly forward and his Mind thoroughly focused.
That made it far easier to deal with the other things that inhabited the Dark Passage.
Karp signed to him. The Archer was on the inside of their vanguard, one of the safer positions in their company, but his fingers twitched unsteadily at he formed handsign. It was like watching someone stutter.
Thangle signed back, his slight form one of the only ones still riding atop an avum. His handsign was crude, as he'd only ever mastered the basics of the language. The Gnome was an entertainer, once upon a time, not a soldier.
Good advice, Thangle. Kelgan had been about to say the same. While the majority of their company was drugged out of their Minds, there were a handful of them that did not have to drink the potion. Could not, it turned out. When Karp had expressed concern about entering the Passages again, he'd asked to go under. Zara had then informed them all that the potion did not work on those with stronger Willpower.
"Apart from that," she had said. "An ample Will is all that you need to stay safe. That and focus."
Kelgan was a bit relieved when he saw the effects of the potion. Dead-eyed and slack-jawed, the men and women of his company were like Golems. They moved at their command, their steps slowing or quickening as needed, and even held securely to the blindfolded mounts.
How much will they remember, after all this? He had wondered that many times now. Would it all feel like a terrible dream? Or were they conscious now, and simply could not control themselves? He had attempted to ask Zara twice, but the first time he'd been rebuffed and the second he'd felt his focus slip enough to soften the stones beneath him.
He didn't bother worrying again. It was, and all of them had to deal with the consequences. He just had to make sure his people were as safe as he could make them.
Now Zara walked at their head, with the Hand trailing slightly behind and the rest of the awake vanguard leading the blank-eyed horde behind them. There were thirteen of them who had the requisite Willpower to withstand the pressure the creatures in the dark put on them. Said creatures swam around the edge of the path Zara created, kept at bay by her strange power.
The less said about them, the better.
It had been...an unclear amount of time since they had begun this walk. Time faded to meaningless mush between the vault of shadow, and Kelgan was having a hard time differentiating one moment to the next. The things outside the green-blue illumination were growing in number, he could tell that from his peripheral vision. In fact, the longer they advanced, the more he saw, as if his Perception were stretching....
For all his might, he could not avoid thinking of them.
Schools of writhing tentacles moved in fluid groups, swimming in unseen currents. Their mottled grey flesh was hideous enough, even without the fact that tentacles made up all that they were. There was no body, only flashes of iridescent light within their wriggling core, all wrapped in barbed and hooked tendrils. Among them, beyond them, were angular stretches of the Void itself. They moved with a preternatural grace among the thrashing tentacles, visible only when they flew among them and disappearing in the greater dark.
Yet all of these were possible to ignore. Kelgan had seen such terrible things in the Foglands, in the depths of that Labyrinth, that he'd grown acclimated to their horror. It was the glint of fangs and a body of scales that terrified him, things too large to be allowed.
Immense, dread serpents coiled among the horde, ribbed with fins that billowed like the sails of the greatest of Manaships. Spines lifted among the fins, each trailing iridescence as they wound through the terrors, their eyes bright with nothing less than utter madness. It was enough to rattle anyone, to shake them loose of the Passage.
Beside him Karp stumbled. The ground, so firm for Kelgan, began to deform. To sink.
"Steady yourself!" Zara cried out, her voice resonant yet quieter than a whisper. "The Void cannot touch you if you do not let it!"
Kelgan knew the struggle the archer was feeling, and he supported his friend until the phantom road beneath them solidified once more.
"You're alright, Karp. We can do this."
They got up. They kept moving.
It was all they could do.
Thangle watched as the spearman lifted Karp to his feet, their hands blurring in that handsign of theirs. Too fast for him to follow. Relief, however, seemed to sag the archer's frame, as if someone had shouldered a part of his burdens. The same one all those still awake had to bear.
He was an Illusionist. An entertainer! Why was he here, in this dread place?
It was a question Thangle had been asking himself for weeks. Ever since the world had fallen apart.
The answer, of course, was many things. Survival among them. But also the look in that boy's eyes, when he came to save them from the Arcid and Reforged. A lot of the kids around him looked up to the Fiend for his strength and abilities, but Thangle had seen powerful folk plenty of times in his life. Been ruined by them, more often than not. But that kid cared...about everyone.
Maybe an old Gnome could care just a little, too?
Which brought him here, to the Dark Passage forged by a Naiad Sorcerer that scared him more than any noble. He couldn't even use his magic, not properly. He found that on an earlier jaunt, when his augmentation Mana had attracted attention from the things outside the barrier. He shuddered. He'd sat on his hands ever since, marshalling his strength within his core space, but closing himself off from energy around him.
Thangle focused on his core, upon the spinning gyroscope that sat within his father's workshop. It was long gone in the real world, of course, but in his core space it thrived. He'd grown it, detail by detail, over decades as he'd honed his magic and Tempered his Aspects. The bench was scratched, the tools scuffed, but it was solid. Steady. But for how much longer? Closing off his channels meant his Mana was stifled, building atop his whirling device with greater intensity. Thangle circulated the power, pushing it through his channels before returning it into his core. Each time he tried to recollect a bit more of his childhood home, but the pain of his closed channels tore at him with every pass. It had worked well on previous trips, but now he felt the pressure pushing at him in ways that were alarmingly different. It felt like being underwater, almost, like he couldn't get a breath of air. Not unless he wanted to let them in.
And maybe it was paranoia. They had been traveling this new, extended Passage for what felt like days. Far, far longer than any other trip. Zara's power was keeping them secure. Yet Thangle couldn't help but spot the slight stutter as the path manifested. Did the aquamarine flagstones shine just a touch less? Was that sweat on Zara's brow?
He'd felt the ground shudder beneath him a time or two, and that had been enough to push himself away from those lines of thought. Doubt had no place here, not for the living. Focus on the walk, upon their ultimate destination. That was all there was.
Or else.
Thangle wasn't the only one to notice a waning in the Sorcerer's power, however. Darius watched as the Gnome and a few others eyed the witch, forcing themselves again and again to disregard the signs that had started to build. Darius himself kept a close eye on her and her power, noting each time their Passage grew a touch smaller. Ethereal stones of blue-green Mana faded, almost hidden in the natural rolling cadence of the path she forged, but unmistakable to someone with an Adept's senses.
The Sorcerer was faltering.
he asked.
She didn't bother to lie or befuddle him, and for that she had a measure of his respect.
she signed and a smile quirked her thin lips.
Darius wanted to snarl, but had to settle for aggressively thrusting his signs at her.
Zara clenched her jaw, a sudden fire in her eyes. The path flared and something at the corner of his perception veered off into the black.
she all but hissed.
The floor flickered, but held. Something with long fins dragged against the path on Darius' left side, and a shower of green-blue sparks spiraled into the air.
he asked.
Darius asked.
The time stretched on, unnaturally elastic, but Zara marked it as she could. The liminal space held markers for those who looked, if only within the throng of beasts clustered at the border. Their numbers increased by a fifth for every glass in that space, though counting them while keeping her focus upon the working was a challenge that even her Master Tier Mind had difficulty managing. Yet still, she had to check. The path was paramount, but the longer they traversed the dark, the greater the chance of some truly dire creature appearing.
They skirted the Void, after all.
Zara's forehead was slick with sweat, hours after the Hand's irritable concerns were raised. He wasn't wrong, but it didn't matter. None could aid her in this, her order flung about the Continent, and those she had trained were hundreds of miles away. The Song of Harmony was weaker here than almost any other place, which was the true danger of liminal spaces, and it cost her an increasing amount of concentration. Her core felt stretched thin with every line of conjured stone, with each step of the company behind her. Their mindless march was all that saved her, freeing up enough of her power to keep them going.
...neeed...
Zara stopped and her eyes whipped to either side. What was?
...want...
She flared her power, liquid Mana streaming from her Gates before crystallizing into a hardened shell all around them. Behind her, the thirteen guards stopped in confusion. Handsign fluttered down the line, but she ignored it all.
A presence beyond the others. Far beyond. She felt the sharp needles of its Mind and Spirit assault her dome of potency, pressuring it as none of the others had. The beasts are all scattering in terror. What could drive them away?
Zara's Affinity flared, and among the ten thousand strands of connection between her and the world, one of the faintest seemed to resonate. She followed it, where it flowed back out of the dark, before returning to tangle with something impossibly large above them. The vibration spread, highlighting strands that connected many of the guards with the same distant figure, before they too touched on this creature she could not quite see.
Darius grabbed at her shoulder, but he caught only a spike of shaped Mana. He muffled a pained gasp.
she signed.
he signed back. Reed looked at the concerned guards before the drugged company.
Above, the light of her construct finally shone upon the creature. It was mountainous, so great that she feared they only perceived a bare fraction of its size. It was covered in writhing feelers and paddles the color of rust, while ten thousand eyes the hue of algae-filled water fixed on them. It exuded a bloody, spoiled pressure, a Mana that felt entirely too familiar. Their connection, to Zara in particular, flared with an inevitable revelation.
She knew that Mana. She knew it. Felix had told her the story too many times to forget.
But how? How had it found them?
She felt her core quiver as a being surpassing any of them opened a hundred tooth-lined maws.
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