A Record of Ash & Ruin: The Grieving Lands

Book 3: Chapter 42: Traps

Reflect carefully upon your memories, for when we gaze upon them at our convenience, they are oft inclined to present themselves in a manner most flattering to our own desires.

- From the Analects on Quassian Discourse.

I gingerly prodded the remains of Gersal with my weapon to make sure things were absolutely safe before I approached for closer inspection. Most of the soft parts of the corpse, the unprotected places, had been eaten, leaving behind a rotted thing best placed in the realms of horror. Time, the damp air, and scavengers had left behind a mystery as to what exactly had authored Gersal’s death.

And where were his companions? Why had they left him here to die alone in the dark? In my mind, it served more as a warning than a mystery. Still, I could not help but to allow my hands to search around for anything of value.

After removing his bevor, I looted his roughly cut ruby necklace, with a tarnished silver chain, from around what remained of his neck. Lucky me, I thought to myself as Larynda silently assisted me with this grisly task, showing no signs of horror or disgust. This led me to believe it was not her first experience looting a corpse. Together, we found some notes and assorted coins of various denominations. I also discovered a red potion which, after confirming with my magic, turned out to be a minor Health potion. I gave Larynda the money and the potion as her share of the loot, while I kept the necklace for myself. It might serve as a useful gift, or could be traded later.

Beside Gersal’s corpse lay a cracked and rusted sword, the blade pitted and the scabbard rotted. More intriguing, however, was the massive shield next to him, which, in the dim light, I had initially mistaken for a trap door. It was a spiked tower shield, constructed from tough wood and reinforced with dark metal bands. I ran my hand over its rough surface, toying with the idea of taking it, but ultimately decided against it, since I already had my own. For a fraction of a moment, I felt something stir in recognition from within, but the sensation was fleeting and soon left me.

Just as I was about to tell the girl that it was time to depart, there was the glooping sound of sludge falling somewhere in darkness beyond the sentinel light of our Zajasite. The sound repeated itself, becoming a promise of something dread. The hackles of my neck rose in response, the primal part of me knowing that danger was close at hand. I had become nigh immune to environmental concerns such as heat or cold, yet I felt a single bead of sweat make its way down the nape of my neck. This could not be fear. Must not be fear. Nonetheless, the next few words came out of my mouth.

“Move back slowly. Something comes,” I commanded somewhere between a hiss and a whisper, hoping that I was able to hide my momentary weakness. “And when I say so, run.”

It was not fear. Most definitely not. I was just being sensible.

Behind me Larynda nodded mutely, eager to leave. With her better eyesight, undoubtedly more so perhaps than even I. Slowly we edged backwards, moving away from whatever horror was amassing beyond.

“We really need to be moving a little faster… there’s a big lumpy thing and it’s getting bigger I tell you… an’ faster,” she suggested worriedly in a whisper.

But this suggestion, rather than spurring me to greater efforts of flight, instead sparked a most contrary feeling. It made me realize my pathetic current reality. The great Gilgamesh, Herald of the Goddess, waltzing about in the sewers on a quest to kill mere rats. It made me irate and rebellious. I had stood before creatures of legend and prevailed, who was I to be afraid of what lay in the dark?

“Whatcha doing?” the little girl behind me hissed as I stopped, standing my ground.

“I would first see what stands before me before turning tail,” I stated with all the bravery of a youth who has been slighted.

“Dun’t know why you can’t see that oozy thing already, probably old like… nah, that’s not the point! We got to get out of here! Please!”

Ignoring her, I cast Identify into the direction ahead of me, willing the magic to find what had caused me to feel anxious, and not give me some useless information on the state of a random stone tile. The voices in turn soothed me, promising me victory with their sibilant whispers. I drew a slight breath, grinning to myself as it gave me the information that I sought.

Quiverings - [Slime lvl.18]

Health: 351/351

Stamina: 41/41

Mana: 2/2

An eager smile played about my lips as I drew my crossbow, placing a fresh iron bolt upon it. It would be interesting to see how this glorified slime, this Quiverings, reacted to fire damage.

I swiftly cocked my weapon and fired an Inferno Bolt at the location of the Quiverings. A flare of light shrieked through the darkness, illuminating an alien yet horrifyingly familiar creature for a fleeting moment. At first, I doubted my eyes, thinking they deceived me. Before us was a wall of living ooze, a quivering, tentacled blob inching towards us. The impact of my bolt on its gelatinous body gouged out a sizable chunk of its Health, hissing as it burrowed its way into its mass.

The monster emitted a primal screech that resonated with its fury. An extraordinary feat, considering it had no mouth. The Quiverings began to vibrate, its amorphous, slimy body rippling. Bright circles of runes emerged, slowly intertwining to form a spell construct that hinted at flow and communion.

“Stay behind me!” I cried out to the half-elven girl as I fired another fiery bolt, determined to interrupt its arcane incantation.

The quarrel of burning iron smacked against the creature, releasing its potential energy, but I had been too slow.

Despite the additional damage inflicted by my fiery bolt, the odd creature completed its spell. Twin lances of dark, watery sludge formed, spinning rapidly before hurtling towards me with alarming speed.

Behind me, I felt Larynda’s presence. The girl, despite having urged me to flee earlier, had obeyed my command and was still firmly stuck by my side. Were I alone, I could easily dodge the magical sludge coming for me, but I had to protect my ward. I had to stand my ground. That was my conclusion as I knelt and summoned my Mimic shield, even as twin balls of dark water mysteriously flew past me on a course to intercept the dark sludge.

In mere moments, threaded vines of organic matter flowed disturbingly from my arm, digging into the stone floor. A wall formed of thick wood, banded iron, and steel spikes that blocked my vision. A mimicry of Gersal’s oversized board, a tower shield.

The Mimic truly lived up to its name.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

I was grinning inanely at this discovery even as the spell smashed against the new form of my shield, a great jarring impact that rattled my bones. I had expected to have been knocked off my feet or pushed back, as the laws of physics dictated before, but instead, I had merely been forced down to one knee. My shield was still firmly rooted to the ground, a strong bulwark against attack, but it blocked my vision.

I needed to see what was happening. Now.

Waves of confusion crashed against my consciousness as I felt something opening. For the first time, a new eye opened and the Mimic saw the world around it, and through it, so did I. Painted in blurred shades of gray, it was a stark picture of the world, no better than my own. No worse, really, even than my own sight, I realized. Almost immediately after, new notifications from the game momentarily clouded this new vision.

Your Entropic Mimic has learned Adaptive Defense (lvl.3)

Your Entropic Mimic has learned Shield Form (lvl.3)

Your Entropic Mimic has learned Absorb (lvl.1)

Your Entropic Mimic has learned Perception (lvl.1)

I saw then that the Quiverings was writhing, its advance slowed as my bolts were still eating into and causing damage.

Disoriented by the extra source of sensory perception, on unsteady feet I rose. The Mimic shield relinquished its grip on the floor with a crack of stone, as its roots withdrew back into itself. It was a cumbersome thing and heavy even with my enhanced Strength.

I started to step slowly back, but Larynda stopped me.

“Behind you!” she wailed emphatically.

I turned to see twin orbs the color of diseased yellow materializing in the darkness, just at the edge of the Zajasite's light. What began as two quickly multiplied to four, then eight, until a multitude stared back with a foreboding hunger. They were the eyes of a verminous horde. The sound of chittering squeaks escalated, gradually overpowering the background noise of flowing effluvia and the lingering echoes of the Quiverings’ primal scream.

Approaching us were creatures the size of wolves, but they bore large incisors and long, sinuous tails, instead of the canines and bushy tails of their very distant lupine cousins. Their bodies, covered in matted fur, carried the grime of the sewers, and their eyes reflected a bold, unwholesome hunger.

As predicted by Larynda, the Sewer Rats of Al-Lazar had found us.

“I did not bring you down here just to sing a few tunes! Use your magic, damn you!” I commanded Larynda, who nodded and drew a piece of paper from her pouch, a magical Seal. She began to chant a spell of her own in a small and panicked voice.

Slimes and bloody rats. Instead of fear, I felt anger and resentment, and oddly, a need to set an example. Me feelings blossomed into a rage that was echoed by the magic within. How dare they set such creatures against me? Entropic Aura beckoned to be released, the perfect spell to deal with the multitude of rodents that had snuck up upon us.

I released the magic from within and let it ride upon the waves of my emotion. As the first circle of gray night spread from me, I felt oddly at peace, as if the universe and everything made sense. As if everything that was meant to be, now, simply was.

The magic pulsed.

The monstrously large rats squealed, squeaked, and hissed in terror as they moved away from me. The Quiverings, unfortunately, was not so easily dissuaded. It continued its alien advance, activating the marked trigger plate and swallowing up Gersal’s remains.

Bladed darts rained from the ceiling down onto the gelatinous, tentacled blob to little effect. Its body seemed to absorb the force of the sharp metal and it suffered damage only in the single digits. Still, it writhed in place, strange appendages striking in random directions as it searched for the source of this new attack. It was, at least for the moment, distracted.

And so I turned my attention to the vermin horde, preparing to cut a path through them with blade and spell.

Just as I was about to cast Drain… no - Greater Drain, to reduce these creatures of flesh and blood to a bundle of zeros, I heard a quiet voice, a mere whisper. Pitted with the promise of the grave, it called to me in protest, and with it a sense of rot and release, of turning and of change played on my senses. Decay demanded attention. Surprisingly, the voices agreed in their sage wisdom. So, hooking my crossbow to my belt, I formed the rarely cast spell, my free hand running through the strange somatic gestures.

The spell of rot and ruin washed over the vermin, the denizens of this terrible place. Almost immediately, pustules grew upon the giant rats as if they had been suddenly overtaken by virulent sickness. This was soon followed by an explosion of vile liquid, leaving behind cancerous weeping sores all over the rodents’ bodies. A sense of wrongness came over me, a stark contrast to my earlier feeling of tranquility. Decay, the spell at least, did not work like this.

The rodents, instead of running away from us in fear and pain, drew ever closer, their number increasing by the second, even as more of their number were overcome by my spreading disease. They formed almost a living mass of their own, crawling over each others’ bodies to reach us.

Then suddenly, I felt a rush of diseased air as Larynda unleashed a spell of raw Chaos. “Nara Sakullu,” she cried out in a tremulous voice that, nonetheless, rang out with notes of destiny. She had summoned the Black Flame.

Black jagged lines of dark flame that absorbed what little light there was, rushed upon wings of night into the giant form of the Quiverings. The slime creature gave out a baleful shriek as it felt the unnatural fire’s caress. I laughed in maniacal glee, glad that I had chosen to take Larynda with me. A weapon that I could command.

The ebon fire burned at the Quiverings, filling the air with hot, newborn steam. Its health dropped suddenly, the unnatural magic of Chaos eating away at it as it was dissolved by the liquid flames.

But the fires did more than just burn, for I saw that they emanated something very ancient, very ancient indeed, that resonated with a part of my soul. Primordial Chaos. Where the flames licked the stone floor and water, growths of vegetation sprouted from the stone and wastewater. Ghost-white, they wilted and died in scant moments, but as suddenly as they died new flames stoked their corpses to birth new life. Where there was death, fungus spawned in the myriad shades of life, only to soon also wilt and rot.

The Quiverings itself was more dramatically affected. After the Quiverings’ Health dropped, it soon rose again. Rise and fall, rise and fall. A curse of change was overtaking it, mutating its form and bending it into new and random shapes. The spell was raw Chaos indeed, as harmful as it was helpful.

Our released unknowable magics mixed, and they created a warped duet that played in constant counterpoint. In this most discordant of songs, a melody of oblivion that resonated and echoed with itself, a harmony of controlled chaos sounded.

I knew in my bones that the Quiverings could not be defeated by my magic or blade now. Larynda’s strange magic had seen to that.

A link was formed in this medley of arcane power, a link between me and the flood of vermin. And with this link came a question, a skittering mental screech repeated by a multitude of individuals. What do you wish of us? They asked, not really words, not even a true question, but more of a demand of their own. The many were seeking purpose.

My next words were ripped from me, ripped as it seemed from the very fabric of my soul. I felt profoundly lessened.

“Be more,” I croaked in a voice that was not all quite mine. Such simple words, but with great and heavy meaning. Larynda looked at me in confused horror.

But this was no one-way street of communication. As did my command fall upon them, so too did their multitude of lives fall upon me. There came impressions of a life of darkness, of swimming through watered blight, and of days fought with tooth and claw. Through our fell link, I knew now, with great intimacy, of their urge to survive and live, and knew, too, of their equal urge to rut and reproduce. Their hunger for all things.

The rats listened. More importantly, they obeyed. Now they would be more in all meanings of the word. My words would become a catalyst for their great change.

As if marking this moment, the game heralded me with a new message. To me, it was just a system notification, but had these low creatures been able to understand and witness them, it might have well become the start of their new gospel.

You have gained 1 Wisdom.

You have gained 1 Luck.

You have learned Entropic Aura (lvl.5)

You have learned Decay (lvl.2)

You have learned Monster Taming (lvl.2)