I really, really wished Eternity could have tagged along. By now I was ready to speak to the walls just to add a different kind of noise into the mix, but I didn’t dare open my mouth. Who knew what was listening back?
Where the hell am I going? Terrible choice of words, given the heat. A faint red glow stained the walls farther down, flickering as if from torchlight.
No gods my ass. I couldn’t help the spite, thinking back at that terrifying statue up there. Was I about to meet the creature in whose likeness it had been carved? Or would I find something worse?
I bit the inside of my cheek and re-centred myself. What sort of cuckoo thinking was that?! Pain and the sharp taste of blood brought me right around from the edge of panic, grounding me in the absurdity of the moment. I had gone through a portal to reach a bloody temple that had an endless set of stairs descending to a creature that breathed stupidly loud. All I needed was a double-headed axe, a double-barrelled shotgun, and I’d be living my very own Quake level.
I should at least be excited for that. You don’t go to hell, voluntarily, every other day.
By the time the red glow was more than my imagination I had my feet swimming in their own sauce, my jeans and shirt stuck to my skin, and my hair plastered to my scalp. It was a bloody damn miracle I wasn’t crawling. Thirst stabbed at my throat and every step forward was an effort of will. No matter how much I vented myself with what was left of my Nightwish shirt, the heat remained unbearable.
After some time, more noises joined the breathing. They made the whole experience somehow even worse. Someone or something was digging down at the bottom. The walls vibrated in rhythm to the sound, though it didn’t sound like any kind of pickaxes hitting rock. It was just vibration and the odd percussion noise of a drill trying to crack a particularly tough rock.
Finally, after what felt like forever, the stairs ended at a wide, open doorway. Through it I got the first glimpse of movement up to now, and had to stifle a curse.
There was a mine down there. Not just a mine, but a hellishly hot one, manned by a whole mob of those ant people I’d seen up top. Why the fuck were they even down here?
Okay, think, think.
I’d come down ready to face whatever lurked in the dungeon. I knew for a fact—well, assumed I knew—that other people couldn’t get in. I’d seen it with that guy that got slammed into the portal. So how were so many others here already?
Unless they’re not actually people? If I assumed access was impossible, then the next likely explanation was that these weren’t people. Or, at least, not like the people up top.
The first dungeon had had the bear. That fucking thing sure didn’t get in there through the well mouth. It wouldn’t have been wide enough to fit it. Either someone threw it in as a cub, then experimented madly on it to turn it into the mecha-terror-bear, or it had been generated by the dungeon. Same as the squawkers, the deviant headcrabs, and every other weird mechanical creature up to here.
Were these the same?
I risked another look past the doorway, hiding the torch under my shirt to stifle its light.
What lay beneath the temple was an uneven cavern sprawled on several levels. It was hard to focus on just one detail as there was so much to take in.
Immediately past the door lay a wide, short tunnel that led off to a cliff edge. There were ant people actively digging the tunnel, though that’s a gross misrepresentation of what they actually did.
The ant people chewed on the rock with black mandibles, stopped after some time, looked liked they were crushing the rocks in their mouths, then vomited out what looked like lava. It flowed down the inclined tunnel in tiny rivulets. Bizarre does not begin to cover the sight.
Beyond was the greater cavern. Dozens of similar sights dotted the far wall, with the vague silhouettes of other workers filling hollows in the stone. Streams of molten rock formed a kind of Christmas decoration hung over the scene. It glittered in the foggy dark.
Thick smoke rose through the empty space, moving about in dark clouds, emanated from too many torches to count. And there seemed to be something in the middle of the cavern that actively vomited it up into the air
Breath echoed in the cavern, as slow and measured as I’d been hearing it all the way down. What made it, I had no idea.
Now what?
I couldn’t sneak by the first row of ants. There were four of them, dutifully chewing the wall, each with their back turned to me. But the moment they bent to vomit out the lava, they would see me. At the end of the tunnel, right by the edge, there was a fifth one, much larger than the rest, moving about. It carried a bag slung over one shoulder.
The farthest ant on the right suddenly stopped its chewing, vomited out a splutter of lava, then reached into its own mouth and extracted something glittering. The hulking bag carrier lumbered towards it, picked up what I assumed was a gem and dropped it into the bag.
Well, this strange display solved one conundrum for me: the hulk guy had metallic arms. They whirred as it moved, steam escaping rough-looking pistons.
And I got a better look at the other ant. Its mandibles glowed with the same shine I was coming to associate with glitch artefacts. So, in the end, no real ants at all, just more constructs. That, at least, put my mind at ease. Now… how was I going to deal with four of the things and their big brother up there?
I did have my usual option to blitz the room with [ADRENALINE SURGE]. It would give me the drop on them, and I probably had enough enough activation time to get all five. Far as I’d seen so far, decapitation worked just as well on glitch artefacts as it did on forest wildlife.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Right, then.” A deep breath in. Held. Let out slowly. Gripped the sword tighter. Made sure my shield was strapped properly to my arm.
If there were more than the five, I’d run up back into the stairwell and fight whatever chased me. Easier to fight from the higher ground after all. Hopefully, it didn’t come to that.
“Right.”
[ADRENALINE SURGE] flared in my veins and I rushed out, already swinging. The first head came clean off. I barely felt the jolt in my arm as blade met thin, chitinous throat.
Second wasn’t any different. Third and fourth the same.
I had a couple of seconds left of activation when I rushed the hulking brute. It stood well over two metres tall and it was twice as wide as myself at the shoulders. I would have to leap to properly cut its—
It spun on me with lightning speed. The bag of gems caught me mid-air with such force that I was thrown right back into the tunnel to land painfully on my back, head spinning, all air punched out of me. My ribs felt as if I’d been hit by a truck all over again.
Vibrations on the floor got me right back to my senses in moments. The thing was running for me, stooped to fit into the tunnel, bag held out like a club, ready to swat me again. My surge deactivated. I stumbled up to my feet just in time to dodge a second swing of the bag.
On the return swing the hulk reached out with one of its open, four-fingered hands. It was aimed straight for my throat in a frankly ridiculous reversal of circumstances. I slashed wildly at the reaching hands. Cloudsteel scraped against chrome and sparks flew.
The bag came back around like a bludgeon and this time I caught it on the shield, my whole shoulder braced for the impact. I felt it from my collarbone to my heels. My teeth rattled and gnashed against one another. I felt a molar crack.
But the hulk staggered back too, catching the feedback from the shield’s enchantments.
I wanted to leap at it and slice again but couldn’t muster the strength for it. My head spun and it was hard to decide which of the two figures I was supposed to attack.
“Fuck it.” I picked the left one, pointed the sword forward, and ran.
A tingle in my fingers drew the blade’s tip slightly higher and to the left. It plunged through the ugly thing’s chest, cut neatly through whatever it was made of, and emerged out the other side. I rammed my shoulder into my enemy for good measure, hoping to topple it.
It was like running up against a tree at full tilt. I fell on my ass, shield scraping on the floor, sending echoes screeching all around.
But the monster did topple. It just took a while to do so.
[CONGRATULATIONS]
[YOU HAVE DEFEATED: FURNAR DRONE DEVIANT x4]
[YOU HAVE DEFEATED: FURNAR GATHERER DEVIANT x1]
[YOU HAVE TRAINED: HEARTSEEKER - INITIATE]
I was still panting when I got up and retrieved my sword from the boiling mass of biological waste that all glitch artefacts dissolved into. The smell, at least, wasn’t as bad down here as up there.
And, well, no level up yet. No matter. I could feel I was close, but just needed to push a bit harder.
Learned two very important things in the fight.
First was not to trust blindly to the surge anymore. Being cornered once by the spider was happenstance. Second time, now, was a pattern. Technically, it should’ve been considered coincidence, but I wasn’t willing to wait for the third demonstration. In my line of work, if an error happened once it could be ignored unless catastrophic. If it happened a second time, the whole system needed scrubbing top to bottom until the root cause was found and eliminated.
Yes, that contradicts what I was thinking earlier in the forest. This was not like the forest. This was far worse than the bloody forest.
The second lesson was that defending with the shield fucking hurt! My whole left side felt at once tender and numb, as if the blow had shattered something in me. The pain fluctuated from mild to nausea-inducing, but I was still too hyped up on adrenaline to really feel it. I stuck my fingers through the rents in my shirt and probed at my ribs, where the bag had hit me. Surprisingly, nothing felt broken, but they’d hurt like all hell come the morrow.
However, I was getting slowly better. Like the feeling after a long day working when you soak in a tub and feel your muscles relaxing? That feeling exactly, of muscles suddenly loosening and letting go.
While I waited to see which way my hurts swung me, I dug a bit through the bag that remained on the floor, its contents somehow not scattered among the metal remains of the hulk. The whole bag was full of black gemstones, all of them glittering in the soft light.
[OBSIDIAN SHARD - BASIC QUALITY] was what my inventory marked the piece as. I picked out one of the smaller chunks, slipped it into a pocket, and discarded the rest. It could be worth something or not, but ancient gaming instincts suggested I should at least try and pick up some loot here and there. Who knew, I could even use it as a distraction at some point. Unfortunately, my pockets were not deep enough to carry more.
The rest, I scattered on the floor. If I had to beat a hasty retreat, they would maybe act as a small trap against whatever pursued me. The rocks were sharp enough to split skin, and if they survived whatever mechanism animated the digging ants, they wouldn’t shatter easily. In absence of any other way of protecting myself, this would have to do.
Somehow, I was healing. Now, with the adrenaline washing out of my system, I felt myself healing. Slowly, yes, but it was happening. Where I expected to stoop and barely hold myself up after that blow to the ribs, I realised the pain was fading away. I tried to focus inward, see if there was maybe some skill that did this for me. All I got was an echo of [FIRST AID] collaborating with my constitution. I made a note to check in with Eternity later on.
But it came at the cost of hunger. My stomach growled with all the subtlety of a bear in rut. And here I was with absolutely nothing to munch on.
“Shouldn’t get hurt, got it,” I grumbled as I moved to the end of the tunnel and snuck a peak around the corner.
The only way forward, that didn’t involve a leg-shattering jump into the pit in the centre, was down a narrow shelf of rock to my left. It descended gently along the face of the cliff, meeting various hollows on the way down.
Sure enough, there were more ants ahead, and more of their bigger versions. I’d need to be extremely careful with how I handled the next encounter. If two of those big guys ganged up on me… well, best not to think on the life expectancy of an ice cube in hell.
A look into the wider cavern also revealed the bottom of it. I almost thought the pit would be some dark abyss, bottomless and hungry. But no, there were maybe twenty metres to the bottom. And there was a whole little town down there, with lots of wooden huts stacked one atop another filling the bottom of the cavern. Ants milled about, coming and going from their work.
Even the hulks were moving in and out of the village. The ones coming from the galleries brought in full bags, while the ones leaving seemed to have lost their loads. All of them delivered the obsidian to a single, large building that belched the black smoke up into the air. While I had nothing to go on, I could bet that was where I would find the key I was looking for. Gut feeling. If not, it was the most important-looking place of the bunch.
Well, I only needed to fight about seven more of the big guys, who knew how many ants, and then face whatever corrupted blacksmith worked down there. I licked my lips and thought up some creative cussing for what was about to be a very painful way of ending myself. But it was either that, or go back up and try and face the ants crowding the well mouth.
Movement in the corner of my eye caught my attention. I jumped sideways, almost fell into the pit—because of course I did—and swung my sword at empty air. Thankfully, I didn’t cry out, else I probably would’ve drawn attention. I was getting pretty good at being surprised and not losing my shit at it.
I stared into the wide, white eyes of a black-bodied lizard. It was a bit larger than my arm and hung on the wall, head twisted at an unnatural angle to regard me.
“There’s good eating on one of these.” I couldn’t remember whose line that was or from what movie or book, but my stomach immediately agreed with my imagination. The lizard didn’t look mechanical at all. It just stared at me.
And I stupidly stared at it. My MP bar was only halfway regenerated, but my stomach growls were too loud to ignore.
Was I going to waste MP just to try and grab the lizard?
I did. And the lizard didn’t even know what hit it.