Rune Seeker

The second Sentineldidn’t fall quickly, but it was definitely faster than the previous ones. The party had worked out a process of first limiting its movement, then its method of attacks, before finally moving on to overwhelming damage.

Funnily enough, it turned out having a stampeding Runeocerostrampling the construct over and over – when it couldn’t move anymore – was a pretty great way to do some damage. And, Hiral had chuckled when he’d gotten a stack of Ever Evolving from it.

With those two encounters down – and one more repeat after them – the group had continued on, finally arriving in a large, circular room. Considering the hallway behind them, and the tunnels leading out, it made a kind of ‘Y’ shape, though it wasn’t any of the tunnels the group was currently looking at. Sure, the chugging machinery – that’s what the instantly-interested researchers had called it – in the space was of passing interest, the party had only taken a brief minute to look for ambushes. Not finding any, it was the blank wall between the top fork of the ‘Y’ that held their attention.

“That’s totally a secret door, isn’t it?” Yanily asked, staring at the wall.

“Definitely,” Seena said.

“Not very secret if we know about it,” Seeyela pointed out.

“Fine, an obviously secret door,” the spearman amended.

“An obvious, secret, locked door,” Hiral added.

“Will your ‘key’ work?” Yanily asked, his eyes going to Hiral’s Rune of Separation.

“It might, but…” Hiral trailed off, looking down the two side-hallways. “There’s probably Mid-Bosses down those.”

Almost like it was his cue, Vorinal came over to the party from where he’d been talking with some of the other researchers. “As you’ve clearly noticed,” the man said. “The heart of the ruins, perhaps a vault of some kind, is likely beyond that wall. To get through it, we’ve traced systems running deeper into each of the tunnels that we believe will help unlock it.”

“How can you know that?” Seena asked the man.

“This isn’t the first of Tomorrow’s facilities we’ve explored in our search for… what we’re searching for,” Vorinal said.

“He sounds like Li’l Ur now,” Yanily chuckled quietly to Hiral, who could only nod.

“While Tomorrow was very protective of her discoveries and research,” Vorinal continued like he hadn’t heard Yanily. “She was also… a braggart.”

“Understatement,” Li’l Ur said.

“All of her facilities can be fully explored and unlocked, if one has the necessary skill. She wanted the world to witness her genius, but only if they were smart enough to unveil it.”

“And you have that skill?” Hiral asked the man.

“We do, as a group, yes,” Vorinal said. “While we may not excel when it comes to dealing with things such as the guardians – as you have – I can promise we will make short work of any puzzles Tomorrow has left.”

“Plus, we get experience and achievements from the Mid-Bosses,” Hiral said to Seena. “Your call.”

“Mid-Bosses,” Seena said without a second’s hesitation. “That’s why we’re here after all. If there isn’t some way to open this up from the dungeon itself, we’ll try your ‘key’.”

“Sounds good,” Hiral said. “So, the only question left is which tunnel?”

“The right one,” Seena said, pointing at that hallway.

“Any particular reason for that?” Hiral asked her.

Seena nodded. “Right was smiling when I looked back at your doubles.”

“But Left never smiles,” Hiral said, looking at his doubles, and that got him a glare from the aforementioned twin. “What, you don’t. Much.”

“Either way, that’s where we’re going,” Seena said. “Vorinal, you all coming with us again?”

“We are,” Vorinal said. “Give me two minutes to gather everybody up.”

“Sure thing,” she said, and the researcher strode off to gather up the curious researchers.

As soon as the man was gone, Yanily shook his head. “Still can’t believe we’re working with them. They’re all going to become Fallen, aren’t they?”

“I think so,” Hiral said. “The number matches.”

“Do you know their names?” Seena asked him.

“Yes and no.” Hiral shrugged. “I know the names of the Fallen, but not which is which. Unless they bust out of one of the towers on Fallen Reach. Which, for the record, I’d rather not have happen. What about you, Gran?”

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“What about me, what?” the vampire asked.

“Do you know which Fallen is which?”

“Yes.”

“Care to share?”

“What would it change?” Gran asked. “They’re all bastards, and we’re in a dungeon. We should all hope we never see their ugly mugs outside.”

“Fair enough,” Seena said, choosing not to push the woman. There was definitely some kind of history there, though it didn’t have to be anything more than Gran knowing a bit of history. The Fallen were responsible for how the world turned out. They brought the Enemy into the world…

Hiral stopped that thought. It wasn’t exactly true, was it? There’d been that one corpse of an Enemy before they’d…

“Everybody good on solar energy?” Seena asked.

“Good here,” Hiral said, and the others sounded off the same.

“Great, let’s go then. The researchers can catch up,” Seena said, then tapped Romin on the shoulder. “No, even I could tell Wallop enjoyed it too much. Awkward.”

Romin nodded at the party leader, then started towards the large hallway on the right, his companion at his side. “See,” he whispered, barely loud enough for Hiral to catch the worlds. “I told you you made it weird. No, she’s not into you. Didn’t you see her with Hiral? Really… you think you can take him? Now I don’t know which part of this you’re more delusional about.”

Hiral could only chuckle at the one-sided conversation, but his RHCs came back off his thighs as the party left the large room. Much like the entry hall they’d come through, this one was about thirty feet wide, but only about fifteen tall. Plenty big enough for the Sentinels, but…

“Hey, Ur,” Hiral said while his sensory domain ballooned out ahead of them. They had about thirty feet before there was a change in scenery to the tunnel – a downward incline. “How big was The Custodian of Tomorrow? No way Heaven’s Punishment would’ve fit in these halls.”

“While The Custodian of Tomorrow’s natural form was that of a dragon,” Li’l Ur said. “One on par with Heaven’s Punishment, she was also a skilled shapeshifter. She often wore the skins of other races – not literally. Usually. There was this one time…”

“Ur,” Seena interrupted. “You’re saying she didn’t walk around here as a dragon?”

“Sorry, Mistress. No, she did not. A dragon’s claws are devastating and powerful when it comes to rending inconvenient limbs from foes…”

“Inconvenient?” Yanily asked Hiral.

“… but they are ill-suited for the delicacy needed for rigorous research,” Li’l Ur continued. “Many of Tomorrow’s laboratories would likely fit each of you better than her true form.”

“Interesting,” Seena said. “So, this heart or vault we’re looking for…”

“Hold up,” Hiral said, even going so far as to tug gently on Romin and Wallop with Attraction to stop them. They’d reached the top of an incline, and looking at it closer, it sloped down at a gentle thirty degrees for about a hundred feet, then leveled out. Another hundred feet, and it was back to a decline. Just from where he stood, he could see the pattern repeated five times.

“Everything okay?” Seena asked him, the tomes floating beside her.

“Hall is too empty,” Hiral said, the lighting on the ceiling – angled to match the floor – choosing that moment to begin flickering. Set in twenty-foot panels of light, each section strobed like a beating heart, completely out of sync with each other, and flooded the long hall with alternating shadows. At the same time, the droning rumble that’d been a constant through the entire dungeon so far increased in intensity. It wasn’t Hiral’s imagination when he felt the ground beneath his feet vibrating.

He was probably the only one who noticed it, though – maybe Left as well – thanks to his high Atn. Even with it, his eyes struggled to pierce the shadows that appeared and vanished along with the pulsing lights. There’s magic in there – it’s not normal darkness.

Which begged the question – why? This wasn’t just the lights failing and making it harder to see. This was Tomorrowwanting them to be unable to see. A chance for more of her constructs to come out of the walls? It wouldn’t be the first time they’d been attacked like that.

Secret doors, then? He’d found those before with his sensory domain. Closing his eyes – they weren’t helping him now anyway – Hiral focused on his domain, pushing it out slowly to gently Reject against the wall. Almost immediately, he found something.

Just a foot beyond where the floor began its decline, there was a space – barely half-an-inch wide – in the floor, almost from wall to wall. Was it the first part of a secret…?

ZZZZzzzz, a spinning blade of serrated edges whipped out of the floor on the right side, then flashed across to the left, before vanishing once again. All in all, it hadn’t even taken a second for it to emerge and disappear.

“You… all saw that, didn’t you?” Yanily asked slowly.

“I saw something,” Seeyela said.

“A trap,” Hiral said, eyes open now. His sensory domain had pictured the item perfectly in his head for him – he’d practically felt the blade saw through his Rejection – but there was something to be said with seeing it with his own eyes. “Don’t move.”

“Wasn’t planning to,” Yanily informed him.

Nodding at the spearman’s good sense, Hiral pushed his domain over the gap in the floor a second time. Predictably, the sawblade emerged and chewed through the same path as before.

“Are you doing something, Hiral?” Seena asked him.

“Yes.” Hiral nodded, a third push with his domain activating the trap for a third time, though this time he felt exactly how he was doing it. “There are pressure plates – very sensitive ones – along the floor around where the blade comes from. Stepping on one would trigger the trap.”

“The nearly-waist-high blade?” Yanily asked. “The one that would hit us right as we were stepping across?”

“Yes?” Hiral said, not sure where the man was going with it.

Yanily reached down and put one hand over his crotch. “Tomorrow is not nice.”

“It’s more likely,” Left spoke up, “the blade would catch the side of your leg mid-step, throwing you to the ground with at least one severed limb. From there, you’d still be on the pressure plate, causing the blade to rise again, with the rest of you now at a much more lethal height.”

“I’m not sure that’s better.”

“I never implied it would be.”

“Can you do anything about the pressure plate?” Seena asked Hiral, fingers rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Or the saw? I guess it’s the real problem.”

“Maybe, but before that,” Hiral flexed his domain down the full hundred feet of the sloping hall. Rejecting against the walls, ceiling, and floor, the effect was instantaneous.

Dozens of traps sprung all at the same time. Sawblades emerged from every surface, cutting at different heights and angles. Some of them swung like pendulums, while others seemed to shoot through the open space to slip perfectly into a slot on the far wall, and still more rose or dropped, then twisted to stay spinning for five seconds before vanishing again.

All in all, there was no clear path through the hallway, with every surface being boobytrapped.

“Maybe we should take the other hall,” Yanily said flatly.