Part 3: Invasion

  Chapter 31: Dungeon Hunt

  We arrived two days after leaving the Bastion, exactly as expected. Nothing slowed us on the way. We spent the night in a local inn, and by morning our team had gathered for breakfast before beginning the search on the third day.

  “I wanted to see if you all would be interested in splitting up to find the dungeon, or if we should stick together,” Sirius said. “I’ve been thinking about it since we left. Splitting up could speed things along, but it could also be more dangerous depending on what we run into.”

  “My vote is sticking together today,” Malorn said. “If we come up short, we can split up tomorrow.”

  “As much as I hate to agree with Malorn, I second that,” Milo said around a mouthful of bread. “I want to see how Bryn’s new map thing works during a search. I’m guessing it’ll speed things up quite a bit.”

  I nodded. “I agree. Dusk can search separately anyway. She can tell me if she finds anything, so we’ll still be covering a lot of ground.”

  “Then it’s settled,” Sirius said. “We stick together today. If needed, we split up tomorrow. We’ll leave the horses here and travel on foot. I don’t want to worry about them if we find the dungeon and decide to enter today.”

  We finished breakfast, gathered our gear, and headed out. Based on what we’d been told, the dungeon was most likely east to northeast of the village, so that was where we started.

  As we moved through the forest, I found myself thinking about how much Sirius, Malorn, and Milo had changed over the past year and a half while I endured Talon initiation.

  Sirius had integrated two shards that granted him talent with nature and earth while we were at the Academy of Ascension. Those powers had only grown in strength over time. He used them to conjure spears, shape the battlefield, and hinder enemies all at once. He often fought with two short spears and had reached mastery in multiple spear styles, allowing him to shift seamlessly between close and mid-range combat.

  Vines and stone responded to his movements, entangling foes and reshaping terrain as he fought. Sirius could also summon vines from using aether that he could use to move around the battle field or entangle opponents. He also possessed a natural regeneration from his shard integration. It was nothing like mine, but as long as he wasn’t killed outright, he would eventually recover from nearly anything.

  Malorn and Fern had grown significantly as well. Fern had gained an additional tail and could now fly or hover short distances. He could remain invisible almost indefinitely and create illusions that were nearly impossible to see through. He often turned invisible and created multiple false images of himself, using the confusion to slip in for precise attacks. His saliva carried a paralytic effect that could slow or incapacitate targets depending on their size.

  Malorn was a ranger in every sense of the word. He was unmatched with a bow among anyone our age. Unable to integrate with shards as an elf, he had instead learned to split them and use his natural aetheric affinity to create specialized arrows that mimicked shard affinity effects. That skill alone had earned him a reputation within the Bastion.

  For close combat, he had taken up the flail. He still carried knives and small blades, but his primary weapons were two custom flails he had crafted himself. Runes carved into the handles allowed him to shift their aetheric effects, changing the properties of the weighted, spiked heads mid-fight. He told me Grond had taught him some runic fundamentals, and he had adapted them through trial and error while working on his arrows.

  Watching Malorn fight now was like watching art in motion. Deadly, efficient, and controlled power.

  Milo had become more dangerous and crafty.

  His alchemical and crafting skills had advanced significantly. He still favored his staff and slingshot, but had added hand crossbows to his arsenal with lethal results. He switched between them depending on what alchemical payload he planned to use.

  He wore a custom wrist board embedded with shards that allowed him to control traps and devices remotely instead of relying on wires or proximity triggers. That invention alone had drawn the attention of the master alchemists and craftsmen at the Bastion, and the past year and a half had been spent refining it.

  Our team’s strategy after all of our changes had Sirius and I held on front line. Malorn provided precision fire while Fern disrupted and disoriented. Milo shaped the battlefield with traps, explosives, specially craft alchemical creations, poison, and carefully timed strikes.

  Sirius, Malorn, and I were strong enough to keep enemies occupied, which gave Milo the freedom to end fights or control them entirely after a period of time.

  Dusk we let roam free, allowed to do as she pleased within reason. Most of the time she read the battlefield from beneath us, swimming through stone and soil, waiting for the moment when an enemy exposed themselves or when a single strike would tilt the fight in our favor. If we missed something while fully engaged, she never did. She intervened without hesitation, precise and devastating.

  We had all grown into something dangerous.

  And we were eager to prove it.

  “What’s that?” Milo muttered, squinting into the distance. He pulled a cluster of glass lenses from one of his pouches and layered them together, twisting the frame until they locked. The contraption lengthened with a soft click, creating a magnifying effect far beyond normal sight.

  We all turned to face the direction he was staring.

  “Is that a person… a dead person? Walking around?” he asked, half whisper, half alarm.

  Malorn narrowed his eyes. His vision carried far better than any of ours at that range. After a moment, he shook his head slowly. “I believe it is. But I have never seen or heard of an undead that looks like that.”

  Sirius and I exchanged a glance. The thought came unbidden, and unwelcome. The disappearances and deaths. The reports that had continued to spread across the Empire. What had once been isolated incidents had escalated to the point that King Strider had ordered armed escorts for anyone whose abilities countered parasitical, undeath, or their adjacent affinities.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  The Capital itself had grown nearly barren of aetheric users capable of opposing it. Only recently had several guilds stationed specialists within their embassies, sent by allied nations. Even that felt like a stopgap. The long term outlook was grim.

  “Let’s approach slowly,” Sirius said after a moment. “Once it’s within range of Bryn’s map, we may get additional details.”

  We moved forward with care, boots soft against the forest floor. Another fifty feet and the sensation settled in, my map expanding, the invisible boundary snapping into place at two hundred feet.

  Nothing.

  The creature didn’t show up as hostile or otherwise meaning it was new.

  “I may need to close to a hundred feet,” I said quietly. “If it enters my tremor sense range, I might get more information.”

  They nodded and we continued forward.

  We adjusted our pace, slower now. Every step was done with care. As we advanced, I reached out through the bond and called Dusk back toward us.

  The moment we crossed into range, my heart sank. The first thing that came to mind was Luceran — and the sickly air that always seemed to cling to him like a second skin.

  “I’m not gaining any additional details on the creature,” I said quietly, “but I am sensing the same sickly presence that was always there when Luceran was around.”

  Malorn and Milo turned sharply toward me. They didn’t need further explanation. Years together at the Academy had made that presence unforgettable.

  “Are you talking about all those encounters with him at the Academy?” Sirius asked.

  “Yes. This same presence surrounded him and those who followed him,” I answered.

  “I hate everything about this already,” Milo groaned. “That guy was the worst.”

  “This mission may be more important than we thought,” Malorn said.

  “We still haven’t made any direct connections between the Arroganes and the deaths or disappearances,” Sirius said, his tone hardening, “but it’s common knowledge in noble circles that the Arroganes have experimented with both undeath and parasitical powers. If this creature is connected to a dungeon and carries the same presence as Luceran…”

  He didn’t finish the thought.

  He didn’t need to.

  To be safe, I went forward on my own into close quarters. I trusted my regeneration to fend off whatever may tainted aether or disease may be connected to this monster.

  My team fanned out around me to be able to jump in at a moment’s notice.

  I slowed as I closed the distance.

  At first I thought it was a body tangled in armor. That impression didn’t last. The shape was wrong.

  The torso was thick, swollen in places where muscle should have been clean. Plates of hardened flesh layered across its shoulders and back. They weren’t forged arm plates but almost looked as though they had grown there, fused together by cords of sinew that shifted as the creature moved. The motion was slow and steady. A breathing rhythm, even though I couldn’t find lungs.

  Veins ran across its surface in dark, heavy lines. Some pulsed in time with that rhythm. Others twitched on their own. A dull amber glow moved beneath the skin, brightening when I stepped closer and fading when I stopped.

  The smell reached me next. Rot and iron. Something sweet underneath. Not decay exactly. It felt like a strange aetheric hunger.

  I focused tremor sense.

  The mass was dense. Denser than it should have been. Weight shifted through the body constantly, fibers tightening and loosening beneath the surface. It wasn’t holding a fixed shape. It was adjusting. Tissue knitting together. Reinforcing itself.

  The head turned slightly.

  There were no eyes. The front of the face was smooth, stretched tight over bone. Thin seams ran across it and flexed as it moved. It knew where I was.

  A cluster of tendrils withdrew into its chest and sealed over as I watched. Elsewhere, hardened growths cracked softly and reformed. Plates shifted their overlap. The changes were small, controlled, and constant.

  When it moved, mass redistributed itself with each shift, precise and economical. Nothing about it was wasted. Every motion had purpose.

  It stopped again.

  Strangely still.

  It was waiting.

  I assumed for me. Or the others.

  Then its folding skin peeled back in several places. The flesh split without tearing, layers parting like muscle remembering an old shape. Maggot-like creatures spilled out and dropped to the forest floor.

  The moment they touched the ground, the area around them began to decay. Leaves browned and curled inward. Bark dulled and softened. It wasn’t rot spreading so much as something pulling life away. There was strange growths appearing in wake of their steps.

  They moved instantly. Small bodies darting straight toward me while the larger creature remained where it was, watching.

  I didn’t wait.

  Knives left my hands in rapid volleys. Killing them quickly. Each creature burst on impact; bodies torn apart before they reached striking distance.

  Where they fell, their blood soaked into the soil and the drain spread wider. Dark veins crept through roots and leaf litter. A parasitic fungal growth followed, pale and fibrous, blooming unnaturally fast. As it spread, the sickly presence we had felt earlier surged in intensity and flooded the clearing.

  “We kill it now!” I shouted.

  Without a word, our team unleashed everything we had on the monster.

  It reacted instantaneously.

  The ground shuddered as its mass shifted forward, plates sliding and locking into a tighter formation. Tendrils burst from its sides and slammed into the soil, anchoring it in place as the fungal growth surged outward in response.

  Sirius moved first.

  Stone erupted from the ground in a jagged line between me and the spreading decay, cutting it off mid-crawl. Vines followed, thick and fast, wrapping around the creature’s legs and torso. They burned where they touched it, blackening as the corruption fought back, but Sirius reinforced them with raw aether and held.

  Malorn’s arrows were already in the air.

  They struck in precise succession. One punched through a joint at the shoulder, the aetheric payload detonating and freezing the surrounding tissue in place. Another embedded in the chest and discharged a cutting resonance that tore through layers of flesh from the inside out. The creature staggered, its balance slipping for the first time.

  Milo added to the chaos.

  Small canisters bounced across the ground and detonated in controlled bursts. Fire washed over the fungal growth, not enough to spread, just enough to cauterize and halt its advance. A second device latched onto the creature’s side and released a concentrated alchemical solvent. Plates softened as sinew sizzled and snapped just as I reached melee range.

  The tremor sense painted every shift in its mass before it happened. I slipped between sweeping tendrils and drove a knife into a weakened seam Malorn had opened. The blade sank deep. I twisted and ripped it free, then struck again, higher this time, targeting the dense core I felt anchoring the rest of its form.

  The creature tried to adapt.

  Tissue thickened around the wound. Fibers constricted, attempting to seal me out.

  It didn’t have time.

  Dusk erupted from the ground beneath it.

  Stone exploded upward as she struck, her body phasing through solid earth and tearing into the creature’s underside. The impact lifted it off its anchors. Tendrils snapped. Plates cracked apart under the sudden loss of support.

  Sirius slammed a pair of spears into the ground and pulled.

  The earth answered his call.

  Stone and roots surged upward and closed around the creature’s torso, crushing inward. Malorn switched arrows mid-motion and fired again, this time embedding a destabilizing one directly into the exposed core.

  I didn’t hesitate as I leapt, driving both knives in, and tore downward.

  The core ruptured.

  The creature convulsed once. Then the glow beneath its skin guttered and went out. Its body collapsed in on itself, mass losing cohesion as the internal structure failed all at once.

  Silence followed.

  The fungal growth shuddered. The draining pull weakened immediately. The sickly presence receded, thinning out like smoke caught in a breeze.

  But it didn’t vanish.

  Patches of fungus remained, clinging stubbornly to roots and stone. The ground was scarred where life had been pulled away. I wasn’t what it may take to recover.

  I stepped back and wiped my blades clean.

  As Dawn trotted over to me, I stared at the lingering corruption.

  “What was that thing?”