My home was in sight, barely a few centimetres away from my fingers as Sofie grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back a little.
“There is something wrong with the next level … it feels chilling on my skin. I never had this feeling, but … I think it is worthy to take into consideration.” That must have been the part of Irminsul finally acting up at the worst moment possible.
“I’m sure is going to be fine.” Nezar said right away and stepped closer to the mysterious portal right away. “Fascinating…” As the portal was vastly different from all the ones he had seen, he couldn’t help but to eye it a little closer.
“If we would have listened to you, we would have stopped at floor three already.” Schwarz said a bit roughly and walked past me and Sofie and without any regard for safety, he stepped into the portal.
“Well, that settles things …” Ellie said, dragging Louis behind her through the portal as well.
Sofie sighed a bit tired, shrugged in resignation and pushed her hand through the dark portal. As she didn’t scream surprised, she must have judged it as relatively safe and made a step forwards as well.
Looking over to Nezar, I raised my eyebrows until he followed suit and vanished through the portal as well.
“And now onto the hard part.” Hannah muttered, following right after him. While she thought of this adventure as tedious be abuse she had to watch out for Nezar, I certainly didn’t.
Aska hadn’t stepped out of the portal yet, meaning this wasn’t the way for him to enter this world. And so, I was kind of glad that I didn’t invite him over actually and thus stepped with a smile on my lips through the darkness.
A step forwards into a different world was a bit different from the others as I felt as if I was falling for a split second but then, I arrived with an abruptly changed scenery.
The bones beneath my feet crunched nicely as my foot touched the ground and the place was filled with death, making me a bit giggly and Sofie incredibly tense.
What was odd though was that even I couldn’t see anything. I could feel the souls wandering through purgatory a kilometre away, but they didn’t grace me with their beautiful light. That they were so distant immediately struck me as odd, but maybe they have felt my presence through the portal.
What I definitely couldn’t explain though was a muffled sound from Schwarz, right above me.
“Light.” At last, a bright yellow light appeared above our heads, illuminating a scene I couldn’t remember seeing before. Spider webs, as thick as they could get made a cocoon around us with a single spider as tall as I hanging on the ceiling, the captured Schwarz right below it.
“Oh no …” I muttered while the others around me jumped into action right away.
“Fireball!” Louis screamed unnecessarily loud and flung a ball of fire towards the spider which was directly incinerated and let Schwarz fall down. He directly wriggled on the ground like a worm while the fire spread quickly. Having a hint of mercy, I freed Schwarz from his constraints with my sword immediately while Hannah was cutting a way through the webs right away.
After several seconds of Hannah racing against the spreading fire, I could finally see the distant souls through a small gap.
“Huh … teleporting doesn’t work in here.” The necromancer said as calm as ever, grabbing his chin deep in thought.
“Run …” I muttered, finally remembering the monster which tried to trap us. Hannah dashed through the hole first, a small orb of light hovering around her.
“Where?” She asked while we all ran through a hell scape of spiderwebs everywhere. Closing my eyes for a split second, I let my consciousness wander through the vicinity and dashed ahead, avoiding large masses of spiders coming at us from our right.
What I was more concerned with was their mother through. Nobody except I had noticed her yet, as the underside of her belly didn’t look exactly different from the natural darkness of purgatory. But that changed as a spider leg crashed into the vicinity, sending dirt and webs flying everywhere.
“Why did that thing have to grow so much?” I muttered, clearly remembering how she fit into a small cell in the past. “Nezar! Do something.” I shouted, knowing that Hannah’s magic wouldn’t do anything against that thing.
“We should go back!” Louis shouted while Nezar lifted up his hand to fire a whole barrage of different elements at the spider large enough to be considered a small mountain.
“It’s now or never!” I said, still running ahead relatively slowly so that the others wouldn’t get lost. Even Nezar’s magic didn’t do anything as they harmlessly bonces off her carcass. “I have an idea! Hannah, go straight ahead.” I said, and ran off to the left, right where I perceived one of her legs. After running for several minutes with top speed, I finally arrived my destination and grabbed it tightly.
“I know you can hear me …” I said, concentrating on the living soul in that being right away.
“The god of death?” That was why I hated telepathic creatures. They always mixed me and Aska up for whatever reason.
“Close.” I muttered a bit angrily.
“Lucinda. It has been a long time.” The spider said meekly, probably very conscious about the time I stabbed her brother to death.
“Feels like yesterday. Could I ask you to stop attacking us?” I asked nicely, unsheathing my black sword quietly.
“Why should I? These are my hunting grounds.” She asked, suddenly very brave for whatever reason. Maybe it were the two hundred years she was allowed to live freely …
“Because I’m blasting you to pieces after I burned all your children to death?” I said, stabbing my sword into her until the hilt.
“… that is a very convincing argument. Very well.” She said, not exactly bothered by the wound I gave her. Dragging my sword out of her, a swath of disgusting liquid spilled out of it.
“But before you may leave, answer me a question. Who freed you? The barriers imprisoning you were designed to last to all eternity.” I asked, already guessing the answer myself.
“The god of death himself set me free.” Just as I thought. I didn’t think Irminsul was allowed to tell me that, but that someone would visit this place was decided a long time ago. They had planned that this would be a floor in a dungeon from at least hundreds of years ago.
“Just as I thought … have a great day.” Wasn’t it amazing when one could talk to their enemies? Especially when they were so understanding? I certainly thought so. Well, me being who I was certainly played a huge role in that as well, but that was a minor detail in my opinion. Waving at the massive spider and stepping back, I observed how she lifted up her leg and stomped it onto the ground a bit further away.
And then, she walked away relatively fast to please me, which did work fantastically. Smiling a little, I made my way back to the group while avoiding the burning spiderwebs and caught up to them after twenty minutes or so.
“Lucy! I thought we had lost you!” Sofie said, throwing herself into my arms right away.
“As if … I merely poked that demon with my sword and she ran away.” I smiled brightly and patted her back before she released me.
“That’s odd.” Louis said while frowning deeply. He probably feared the spider would come back, even though this wouldn’t be the case.
“I’m not going to complain.” I explained, shrugged and looked around. Finally, we were in the normal part of purgatory where stones littered the ground and no other living being was around.
“So … what now? We have no clue where we should head and honestly, I’m not so sure we can find the way back easily.” Ellie said, looking towards the flames in the distance with worry.
“I can trace all my steps backwards, so don’t worry about that. But finding our destination here is rather troublesome. Lucy? Any idea?”
“Why are you asking her?”
“I have studied all the scriptures he read as well. I think we need to go …” I said, sat down on the ground relaxed and closed my eyelids. For a minute or so, I let my consciousness wander through purgatory until I finally found what I was searching for. On the way there though, we would inevitably meet a few other living beings who escaped their prisons and someone who I didn’t remember at all. “Thirty kilometres this way.” I stated and pointed towards our destination.
“Sixty kilometres total? We have the festival tomorrow!” Ellie complained, but I merely smiled brightly.
“Let’s get going then.” Hannah said and made the first step in this direction. “Sofie, tune down your light. The less demons notice us the better.” Instantly, Sofie dimmed her light considerably and looked away a bit embarrassed.
“I presume most creatures here are a bit scared of the light though.” I mumbled quietly. Those who I needed to worry about would find us anyway and those who didn’t were easily dealt with. But anyways, they kept their lights dimmed and we started to get moving right away, some of us a bit worried about our safety, while Schwarz and Nezar were incredibly eager to move on.
While Nezar crunched on the bones with his feet to attain attain a philosopher’s stone, Schwarz was focused on much simpler things because Nezar told him there was a very powerful sword on the last level.
But even their motivation couldn’t brighten up the atmosphere in this group. They had already seen an unbeatable spider and the darkness must have weighed on their poor souls as well.
“How do you even know where we need to go?” Sofie asked after letting herself fall back a little. She wasn’t doubtful as she gazed I to my eyes, but certainly curious.
“You should feel it as well, don’t you? The heavy atmosphere increasing with every step.” I said right away as I had planned this explanation long ago. And truth to be told, her feelings were more than a placebo effect as I concentrated more and more death inside her, stimulating her gift to the fullest.
And thus, she said nothing but rather returned to the others with even more worry in her heart. But they continued on nonetheless until we arrived at another bone field which was vastly different from the others. First of all, half an hour ago none of these bones were there. I was sure of that. And second of all, these stacked bones went to my knees, meaning it was far thicker than usual. Just barely, I managed to grab Schwarz shoulder and stop him from stepping onto a multitude of very sharp bones which would have liked to hurt him.
“This field is different from the ones we have seen so far. Let’s go around it.” I proposed, but right as I said it, some of the bones rattled loudly as they began to lift up into the air. “Oh no.” I muttered and evaded the first sharpened bone being flung at my chest by hair’s breath.
“Barrier.” Ellie said, erecting a barrier all around us to shield us from the flying spears. “What is that?” She asked, clearly surprised as more and more bones started to fly into the air and formed a wriggling mess fifty metres away.
“A bone terror. A theoretical magical construct which can add any number of bones to its body. But there must be a heart somewhere which we can destroy.” Nezar said, surprising me somewhat with his knowledge.
“I’ll focus on scouting!” Louis shouted as the ball pressed itself against the barrier which luckily held for the time being. “Birds, search for something unusual!” A whole lot of night active flying species manifested around him, each flapping their wings rapidly right away. The less nimble ones were impaled by a few bone spears right away, but some did manage to fly up higher.
“Light.” To support them, Sofie casted a dim light which flew into the sky right away through the bones that started to envelop the barrier completely, trapping us inside in this horrible prison.
“There is a single skull floating in the air.” Louis said after a little while.
“No. That’s too obvious. Search for something with runes on it.” Nezar said, stopping Louis as he was lifting up his hand.
“Guys … we don’t have much time left.” Ellie said while I closed my eyes and felt the concentration of death in the surroundings until I found a massive concentration of it hundred metres away, hiding skilfully in a hole in the ground. Like this, Louis would never find him.
Quietly, I stepped close to Nezar and stood on my toes to whisper my knowledge into his ears.
“I found him. It is a hundred and four metres in this direction on the ground.” He said, watching with worry how the barriers Ellie sat up started to crack slowly.
“Explosion spear.” Louis chanted, a red flaming spear suddenly appearing in Ellie’s hand who knew very well what to do with it. Lifting up her left leg, she used her whole body to propel the near weightless spear forwards until Louis took over the aiming.
It blasted through our bone cage right away and flew through the air for a few metres until it was intercepted by a ball of bones throwing itself in its way.
“Try again.” Nezar commanded, creating a spear in Hannah’s hand who threw it much faster than Ellie did. But even that spear exploded before impact as multiple bone shields stood in its path.
“Phoenix.” Apparently, Louis had another idea though and multiple flaming birds appeared around him, flying through the barrier as fast as they could.
“Not a bad idea.” Nezar commented, creating another spear in Hannah’s hands to draw the attention towards it. Once again, their spear broke though multiple layers of bones until it exploded loudly, making a way for the birds to fly through.
“Guys!” A bone bore itself through the barrier, nearly impaling Ellie if I hadn’t pushed her out of its way at the last second.
“Just a second.” Louis said, concentrating hard to guide the birds towards the magical skull. Listening to the clanking sounds behind us, I turned around quickly and saw a wave of bones rushing towards us, it’s sharp endings all pointed at me. Tilting my head to the side a little, I merely waited for the result while they got closer and closer.
Finally though, I could hear a small explosion in the distance and the bones in front of me fell towards the ground harmlessly. At last, the barrier dissolved completely as Ellie breathed out loudly and a multitude of bones rained on top of our heads.
My home was in sight, barely a few centimetres away from my fingers as Sofie grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back a little.
“There is something wrong with the next level … it feels chilling on my skin. I never had this feeling, but … I think it is worthy to take into consideration.” That must have been the part of Irminsul finally acting up at the worst moment possible.
“I’m sure is going to be fine.” Nezar said right away and stepped closer to the mysterious portal right away. “Fascinating…” As the portal was vastly different from all the ones he had seen, he couldn’t help but to eye it a little closer.
“If we would have listened to you, we would have stopped at floor three already.” Schwarz said a bit roughly and walked past me and Sofie and without any regard for safety, he stepped into the portal.
“Well, that settles things …” Ellie said, dragging Louis behind her through the portal as well.
Sofie sighed a bit tired, shrugged in resignation and pushed her hand through the dark portal. As she didn’t scream surprised, she must have judged it as relatively safe and made a step forwards as well.
Looking over to Nezar, I raised my eyebrows until he followed suit and vanished through the portal as well.
“And now onto the hard part.” Hannah muttered, following right after him. While she thought of this adventure as tedious be abuse she had to watch out for Nezar, I certainly didn’t.
Aska hadn’t stepped out of the portal yet, meaning this wasn’t the way for him to enter this world. And so, I was kind of glad that I didn’t invite him over actually and thus stepped with a smile on my lips through the darkness.
A step forwards into a different world was a bit different from the others as I felt as if I was falling for a split second but then, I arrived with an abruptly changed scenery.
The bones beneath my feet crunched nicely as my foot touched the ground and the place was filled with death, making me a bit giggly and Sofie incredibly tense.
What was odd though was that even I couldn’t see anything. I could feel the souls wandering through purgatory a kilometre away, but they didn’t grace me with their beautiful light. That they were so distant immediately struck me as odd, but maybe they have felt my presence through the portal.
What I definitely couldn’t explain though was a muffled sound from Schwarz, right above me.
“Light.” At last, a bright yellow light appeared above our heads, illuminating a scene I couldn’t remember seeing before. Spider webs, as thick as they could get made a cocoon around us with a single spider as tall as I hanging on the ceiling, the captured Schwarz right below it.
“Oh no …” I muttered while the others around me jumped into action right away.
“Fireball!” Louis screamed unnecessarily loud and flung a ball of fire towards the spider which was directly incinerated and let Schwarz fall down. He directly wriggled on the ground like a worm while the fire spread quickly. Having a hint of mercy, I freed Schwarz from his constraints with my sword immediately while Hannah was cutting a way through the webs right away.
After several seconds of Hannah racing against the spreading fire, I could finally see the distant souls through a small gap.
“Huh … teleporting doesn’t work in here.” The necromancer said as calm as ever, grabbing his chin deep in thought.
“Run …” I muttered, finally remembering the monster which tried to trap us. Hannah dashed through the hole first, a small orb of light hovering around her.
“Where?” She asked while we all ran through a hell scape of spiderwebs everywhere. Closing my eyes for a split second, I let my consciousness wander through the vicinity and dashed ahead, avoiding large masses of spiders coming at us from our right.
What I was more concerned with was their mother through. Nobody except I had noticed her yet, as the underside of her belly didn’t look exactly different from the natural darkness of purgatory. But that changed as a spider leg crashed into the vicinity, sending dirt and webs flying everywhere.
“Why did that thing have to grow so much?” I muttered, clearly remembering how she fit into a small cell in the past. “Nezar! Do something.” I shouted, knowing that Hannah’s magic wouldn’t do anything against that thing.
“We should go back!” Louis shouted while Nezar lifted up his hand to fire a whole barrage of different elements at the spider large enough to be considered a small mountain.
“It’s now or never!” I said, still running ahead relatively slowly so that the others wouldn’t get lost. Even Nezar’s magic didn’t do anything as they harmlessly bonces off her carcass. “I have an idea! Hannah, go straight ahead.” I said, and ran off to the left, right where I perceived one of her legs. After running for several minutes with top speed, I finally arrived my destination and grabbed it tightly.
“I know you can hear me …” I said, concentrating on the living soul in that being right away.
“The god of death?” That was why I hated telepathic creatures. They always mixed me and Aska up for whatever reason.
“Close.” I muttered a bit angrily.
“Lucinda. It has been a long time.” The spider said meekly, probably very conscious about the time I stabbed her brother to death.
“Feels like yesterday. Could I ask you to stop attacking us?” I asked nicely, unsheathing my black sword quietly.
“Why should I? These are my hunting grounds.” She asked, suddenly very brave for whatever reason. Maybe it were the two hundred years she was allowed to live freely …
“Because I’m blasting you to pieces after I burned all your children to death?” I said, stabbing my sword into her until the hilt.
“… that is a very convincing argument. Very well.” She said, not exactly bothered by the wound I gave her. Dragging my sword out of her, a swath of disgusting liquid spilled out of it.
“But before you may leave, answer me a question. Who freed you? The barriers imprisoning you were designed to last to all eternity.” I asked, already guessing the answer myself.
“The god of death himself set me free.” Just as I thought. I didn’t think Irminsul was allowed to tell me that, but that someone would visit this place was decided a long time ago. They had planned that this would be a floor in a dungeon from at least hundreds of years ago.
“Just as I thought … have a great day.” Wasn’t it amazing when one could talk to their enemies? Especially when they were so understanding? I certainly thought so. Well, me being who I was certainly played a huge role in that as well, but that was a minor detail in my opinion. Waving at the massive spider and stepping back, I observed how she lifted up her leg and stomped it onto the ground a bit further away.
And then, she walked away relatively fast to please me, which did work fantastically. Smiling a little, I made my way back to the group while avoiding the burning spiderwebs and caught up to them after twenty minutes or so.
“Lucy! I thought we had lost you!” Sofie said, throwing herself into my arms right away.
“As if … I merely poked that demon with my sword and she ran away.” I smiled brightly and patted her back before she released me.
“That’s odd.” Louis said while frowning deeply. He probably feared the spider would come back, even though this wouldn’t be the case.
“I’m not going to complain.” I explained, shrugged and looked around. Finally, we were in the normal part of purgatory where stones littered the ground and no other living being was around.
“So … what now? We have no clue where we should head and honestly, I’m not so sure we can find the way back easily.” Ellie said, looking towards the flames in the distance with worry.
“I can trace all my steps backwards, so don’t worry about that. But finding our destination here is rather troublesome. Lucy? Any idea?”
“Why are you asking her?”
“I have studied all the scriptures he read as well. I think we need to go …” I said, sat down on the ground relaxed and closed my eyelids. For a minute or so, I let my consciousness wander through purgatory until I finally found what I was searching for. On the way there though, we would inevitably meet a few other living beings who escaped their prisons and someone who I didn’t remember at all. “Thirty kilometres this way.” I stated and pointed towards our destination.
“Sixty kilometres total? We have the festival tomorrow!” Ellie complained, but I merely smiled brightly.
“Let’s get going then.” Hannah said and made the first step in this direction. “Sofie, tune down your light. The less demons notice us the better.” Instantly, Sofie dimmed her light considerably and looked away a bit embarrassed.
“I presume most creatures here are a bit scared of the light though.” I mumbled quietly. Those who I needed to worry about would find us anyway and those who didn’t were easily dealt with. But anyways, they kept their lights dimmed and we started to get moving right away, some of us a bit worried about our safety, while Schwarz and Nezar were incredibly eager to move on.
While Nezar crunched on the bones with his feet to attain attain a philosopher’s stone, Schwarz was focused on much simpler things because Nezar told him there was a very powerful sword on the last level.
But even their motivation couldn’t brighten up the atmosphere in this group. They had already seen an unbeatable spider and the darkness must have weighed on their poor souls as well.
“How do you even know where we need to go?” Sofie asked after letting herself fall back a little. She wasn’t doubtful as she gazed I to my eyes, but certainly curious.
“You should feel it as well, don’t you? The heavy atmosphere increasing with every step.” I said right away as I had planned this explanation long ago. And truth to be told, her feelings were more than a placebo effect as I concentrated more and more death inside her, stimulating her gift to the fullest.
And thus, she said nothing but rather returned to the others with even more worry in her heart. But they continued on nonetheless until we arrived at another bone field which was vastly different from the others. First of all, half an hour ago none of these bones were there. I was sure of that. And second of all, these stacked bones went to my knees, meaning it was far thicker than usual. Just barely, I managed to grab Schwarz shoulder and stop him from stepping onto a multitude of very sharp bones which would have liked to hurt him.
“This field is different from the ones we have seen so far. Let’s go around it.” I proposed, but right as I said it, some of the bones rattled loudly as they began to lift up into the air. “Oh no.” I muttered and evaded the first sharpened bone being flung at my chest by hair’s breath.
“Barrier.” Ellie said, erecting a barrier all around us to shield us from the flying spears. “What is that?” She asked, clearly surprised as more and more bones started to fly into the air and formed a wriggling mess fifty metres away.
“A bone terror. A theoretical magical construct which can add any number of bones to its body. But there must be a heart somewhere which we can destroy.” Nezar said, surprising me somewhat with his knowledge.
“I’ll focus on scouting!” Louis shouted as the ball pressed itself against the barrier which luckily held for the time being. “Birds, search for something unusual!” A whole lot of night active flying species manifested around him, each flapping their wings rapidly right away. The less nimble ones were impaled by a few bone spears right away, but some did manage to fly up higher.
“Light.” To support them, Sofie casted a dim light which flew into the sky right away through the bones that started to envelop the barrier completely, trapping us inside in this horrible prison.
“There is a single skull floating in the air.” Louis said after a little while.
“No. That’s too obvious. Search for something with runes on it.” Nezar said, stopping Louis as he was lifting up his hand.
“Guys … we don’t have much time left.” Ellie said while I closed my eyes and felt the concentration of death in the surroundings until I found a massive concentration of it hundred metres away, hiding skilfully in a hole in the ground. Like this, Louis would never find him.
Quietly, I stepped close to Nezar and stood on my toes to whisper my knowledge into his ears.
“I found him. It is a hundred and four metres in this direction on the ground.” He said, watching with worry how the barriers Ellie sat up started to crack slowly.
“Explosion spear.” Louis chanted, a red flaming spear suddenly appearing in Ellie’s hand who knew very well what to do with it. Lifting up her left leg, she used her whole body to propel the near weightless spear forwards until Louis took over the aiming.
It blasted through our bone cage right away and flew through the air for a few metres until it was intercepted by a ball of bones throwing itself in its way.
“Try again.” Nezar commanded, creating a spear in Hannah’s hand who threw it much faster than Ellie did. But even that spear exploded before impact as multiple bone shields stood in its path.
“Phoenix.” Apparently, Louis had another idea though and multiple flaming birds appeared around him, flying through the barrier as fast as they could.
“Not a bad idea.” Nezar commented, creating another spear in Hannah’s hands to draw the attention towards it. Once again, their spear broke though multiple layers of bones until it exploded loudly, making a way for the birds to fly through.
“Guys!” A bone bore itself through the barrier, nearly impaling Ellie if I hadn’t pushed her out of its way at the last second.
“Just a second.” Louis said, concentrating hard to guide the birds towards the magical skull. Listening to the clanking sounds behind us, I turned around quickly and saw a wave of bones rushing towards us, it’s sharp endings all pointed at me. Tilting my head to the side a little, I merely waited for the result while they got closer and closer.
Finally though, I could hear a small explosion in the distance and the bones in front of me fell towards the ground harmlessly. At last, the barrier dissolved completely as Ellie breathed out loudly and a multitude of bones rained on top of our heads.
