Backwoods Dungeon

Chapter Forty-Five

Valam Spirit

Rio

This place was different. It was the sort of place I would’ve expected to need to pay to see. An undiscovered wonder. Probably man-made, but it seemed so old that nature had at least half a hand in its current state.

Water poured down the walls in small, unending rivulets. Never more than a trickle, but a thousand trickles kept the pool constantly rippling, the tiniest little bit. It felt almost like we were disturbing the place’s quiet tranquility. I almost didn’t want to step in the water, but it was the only way to get to the small island and see what was on the pedestals.

Theo quickly made his way to the right pedestal. It had that strange grey inscription on the side. He touched it and tutted when nothing happened.

“Right. I was bleeding both times I touched these things,” he said before pulling out a pocket knife and pricking his finger. He reached out and touched the floating design, and the single red drop seeped into the floating gray, multiplying until the entire symbol was the bright red color of Theo’s blood.

“Fucking cool,” Dane breathed. “Wait, are you sure this isn’t some sort of demonic sacrifice or something?”

“I’m not sure of anything anymore, Dane. Demons, different dimensions… fuck if I know. All I’m sure of is that the last time I saw a symbol like this, I could teleport to it once I claimed it,” he said.

“Might make a great way to escape if the police up top are unreasonable when we get back with the hostages,” I said, studiously ignoring the unlikelihood of finding any of them alive.

“That would be great. I really hope they aren’t one-person-only things, though. Can you try to attune it? If I lose access, then you can keep this one. Dane… I’m not sure it’ll work for you until you have a class, but you can try it, too,” he said while wiping the blood off his finger. He’d activated his healing aura because the cut was already gone.

He handed me the knife, and I blanched. Theo hadn’t even hesitated. Was he becoming comfortable with all this? I shuddered as I took the knife and held it to my fingertip. I winced as I sliced it and cursed when I realized I’d gotten a little too zealous.

“Fucking hell, ow!” I shouted before turning to the floating symbol and touching it, the same as Theo had.

A new sensation slotted itself into my mind. A firmness and a surety of a place. I could go here. I could always go here. As long as this place held my blood, I would know it inside and out, and all I would need to return is mana and time.

Mana. Not batteries. There wasn’t any use deluding myself that this was all explainable by logic or science. Supernatural shit was going on, and I needed to roll with it.

“F-freaky,” I murmured before sticking my finger in my mouth.

“Heh, just give it a few seconds. It should be back to normal pretty quick,” he said, gesturing at my hand.

I took the finger out and blinked. I’d seen his healing in action a few times when he’d demonstrated it with the cops and then the feds, but I’d never felt it on myself. He was right. The pain had already dulled to a mild pinch, and the cut was no longer bleeding.

“It’s not enough for big stuff, but it can fix cuts and bruises almost immediately. I think it improves with my level, but it’s still pretty weak. Great for keeping us up and running when we’re taking lots of small hits,” he said. “It shuts off my mana regeneration to run it, though, so I can’t keep it on all the time.”

I tried to pay attention, but I just couldn’t get over the location in my head. It was like I had a tab open with a Google Maps street view of this place permanently lodged in my head, and I could jump to it at any time. I knew I could instinctively.

“Does it really let me teleport?” I asked.

“Tested it more than once,” he confirmed. “Better yet, I didn’t lose access to it!”

“Great! So, if anything goes bad or we get separated, we can just teleport back here!”

“Hate to be that guy, but I don’t think we should spend too much time here. I’d really like to find that kid. Let’s find out what we can and go,” Dane said. I realized that rather than using a knife, he’d scratched open a mosquito bite and held it up to the waypoint. The swirl of red wasn’t there, but the blood did seem to float unnaturally for a few moments before absorbing into the waypoint, the same way mine had.

He lost the responsible-adult vibe almost immediately when his face broke out into a grimace.

“Well. Good news and bad. Something definitely happened,” he said. “I sense the place. It feels like I’ve known it forever, but I can’t do anything with it. Guess I need mana before I can get back here.”

“That tracks,” Theo said. “I have to spend a little mana to get here. The amount gets larger the further from this place I am, so try to always save however much you need to get back here in a pinch.”

Dane shook his head. “I still can’t believe you have fricking mana.”

True to his words earlier, he made his way over to the pedestal on the other side, leaving the strange gravestone for last by unspoken agreement. I followed him and saw that the pedestal was a sort of altar, with a stand that looked like it should’ve held a book. Nothing was there, though.

“Huh. I kind of expected to be able to read it supernaturally or something. Who do you think made this place?” Theo asked, staring at the ancient script carved on the first pedestal’s top as if he might glean some hidden meaning from the words. I certainly wasn’t a linguist, and I doubted Dane had brushed up on his written Latin or whatever this was.

Even if the missing book had been here, I didn’t think we’d get any use out of it.

“No idea,” I said. “The Valam, maybe? Aleredas seemed pretty impressed with them, whoever they were.”

I turned my attention to the gigantic gravestone. Crafted from the stone and glowing with its covering of moss, it was beautiful. There was a single spot in the front where a plaque was artistically placed, and for some reason, the Moss didn’t grow there. Without that spot, I would’ve thought the entire thing was a plant.

“No more legible than anything else here,” Theo commented sadly.

I sighed, reaching out. The thing was so beautiful, and yet it evoked a horrible feeling of sadness. An underworld grotto. A sea of peace in a realm of fire and madness. I touched the plaque, and suddenly, I was somewhere else.

“They fall! They fall!” came a loud shout as I stumbled, suddenly disoriented. “Hurry! Casters fire at will! Paladins, make sure you’re running Holy Fire! I swear if I catch even one of you fucks using Bulwark, I’ll send you to your god myself!”

I turned to see a huge knight with a shield the size of a truck barrelling towards me. I screamed and tried to jump, but the knight passed right through me like I was a ghost, onward to follow the orders of whoever had been shouting.

I was… on a battlefield. It was daylight, and as I looked around I could see hundreds of people. Maybe thousands. I… regretted trying to get a look at what they were fighting.

A behemoth. A colossus, that must’ve been thirty or forty feet tall. It looked like a massive bull but it had the mane of a horse. It’s skin was a dark purple and devilish black light coalesced between those horns before blasting out and… evaporating the men and women it touched.

Despite all this, the human army continued to advance. No matter how big the creature was, it still screamed when squads of paladins sliced, smashed, and whittled away at its legs in pockets around it with their swords, hammers, and maces. I saw rogues dance up the sides of its body with a dexterity that boggled the mind, using dagger strikes as handholds to propel themselves further up the giant monster.

Bolts of lightning, fire, ice, and blades of wind struck the beast from all sides. The humans surrounded it, and for every ten the creature took out with its bucking kicks and black death beam, it took another thousand cuts. Skeletons, too, and undead humans empowered by pale men and women with the casters also assaulted the great beast.

We were in a rocky place. A desert, I thought. Visibility was clear. Whatever was happening, though, didn’t affect me. The fighters, their spells, everything I could see passed through me like I was a hologram.

“Human…” came a sudden voice that made the hairs on my arms stand.

I turned slowly. To my surprise, behind me stood a man. A… normal man. He actually looked like a monk. Not like a Tessa kind of monk, but like an old asthetic. He was bald and wore a robe. There was almost nothing I could use to indicate that this man was anything more than a regular person, save for the eyes.

Jet-black eyes with stars that twinkled within them. He stared straight at me.

“Wh…what. What are you?” I asked.

“Do morecnas Luca ner Valam. Do morec memoras,” he said as he reached out a slow hand. The voice was ethereal. It made no sense to me, but I thought I could pick out kernels as if the language had existed once, long ago. He touched my cheek before I even thought to move.

His expression brightened.

“And you…” he said, his accent suddenly no different from anything I might’ve heard in Missouri. “Oh, humanity. How you have grown! Perhaps… all hope is not lost after all.”

“Wh-what?” I asked, dumbly.

Soldiers were running to their deaths behind me, but slowly and surely the great behemoth was falling. In the distance, I could see more fights with other beasts. Giant demons like the jailers, but massive, the size of skyscrapers.

The being before me chuckled.

“Come walk with me. We have much to discuss, Mrs. Tande,” he said.