Zaros ran a hand along the cut edge with a slight sizzling sound. “Minutes, not hours. But not seconds either.”
“Then we go down anyway,” Khashin decided. “Unless our esteemed [Necromancer] has a different opinion?”
The [Necromancer] in question shook his head. “Not sure what else we could do. Agensyx, can you squirm through this?”
The serpentine familiar slithered forward, raising his head to peer down the open half of the hatch. The crew of resurrected statues made room for him
I can make it work, he determined. Barely.
“Great. Down we all go, then,” he said, and tried to go first. Three hands came up to stop him at the same time.
“Not a chance,” Khashin said. “Not entirely sure what happens to us if you go down, but we’re not risking that.”
The dusk elf, Salvidor, gestured a brief sentence in some form of sign language. Omnilinguist translated, thankfully, but the contents were baffling in and of themselves.
“He said –” the brusant started.
“I heard.” Jay looked at the elf, head tilted in confusion. “You can see that?”
he returned.
“Interesting,” Jay said.
The rest of the group looked as confused as Jay had been, but directed the other way.
“You understand dusk elf signs?” Viketsu asked.
The [Necromancer] nodded. “It’s a trait. Lets me understand all languages.”
The terracotta sinavine whistled. “Full of surprises, this one.”
“The point is,” Khashin broke in, “that you don’t get to go down there first. Too big of a risk. I’m going, Vik’s going, you are staying.”
Having said his piece, Khashin jumped down the open half of the hatch.
The sphinx-like sherian shrugged. “It’s a better plan than you going down first,” he admitted. Then he followed the bigger man.
Jay didn’t hear them land, and as tempted as he was to head over there and jump down anyway, two of the three people who’d blocked him were still standing right next to him.
“So,” Cino started, her voice only barely audible. “What’s your story?”
“Me?”
She didn’t reply, just kept looking at him with those eyes that looked oddly tiny in the sea of ochre material around them.
He really didn’t want to get into the majority of it. “I got found out and thrown in here.”
Cino kept staring. The others that had stayed up here were doing their best to pretend they weren’t listening. Too bad for her, he wasn’t going into more detail than that. Instead, he was going to go do something even more useful.
There were still dozens, maybe hundreds of bodies in here. And every cast was free.
He wandered around, Cino and Salvidor following no matter how many times he asked them not to, and pumped [Resurrection] into as many of the statues as he could. He didn’t have any Divinity left, so they’d end up being pretty normal, but that was worth it. There were already a lot of undead walking around with intelligence. No sense adding more voices to the pile.
None of them had the summary sheets the Divinity-inclusion resurrections had. Clearly that was something reserved for the upper tier. Some of them didn’t even retain their statuary forms, stone encasement breaking to disgorge an animate skeleton. Other plinths were entirely empty.
If there was a pattern behind that, Jay didn’t see it. Maybe it was just that the stonework was too old and couldn’t stand up to the sudden movement, or had crumbled over time before he even got there. Either way, he really looked the part of a [Necromancer] now.
He shuffled all of the unintelligent undead into the [Crypt]. Hopefully it wasn’t too crowded in there for them, but he’d bet they wouldn’t mind.
Alister, what is it actually like in there? he asked.
Spacious for me. But it looks like exactly what the name is: a large tomb. It just doesn’t have walls.
It doesn’t what?
It’s just blackness, the skeletonized parasite said. Floor and ceiling with columns then darkness between.
The same as the room Arus’s giant crystal chandelier had been in. That was interesting. Was that why things had been so quiet in there? A separated space, anchored to one hidden doorway, maybe even based on [Crypt] itself. Very interesting.
Salvidor tugged at Jay’s sleeve.
“Alright.”
The small group returned to the hatch. The rest of the group that had remained above were already gone, leaving just them and Agensyx, who had stayed nearby the hatch itself when he’d wandered off.
Cino made Jay go first. He reached over and grabbed onto the first rung of the ladder that the two melee fighters had avoided using, and began climbing down into the Red Palace.
*
Everyone at the bottom was on edge for no apparent reason. Viketsu was glaring into a corner with unfettered hatred on his face, Khashin had his swordstaff set in a squarely defensive stance in front of the open door ahead of them, and Zaros was brandishing a sword – a sword that hurt Jay’s head to even look at – in the direction of the thinly slitted windows.
This was definitely a Palace too; it had the same layout of a main building plus two wings on either side, similar ornate engravings, and even an identical set of carved columns. But only one wind had windows. The carvings weren’t depictions of glorious, gilt scenes, but of massacres and bones. The columns were obsidian instead of marble.
All in all, it gave off a tangible feeling of dread. That still didn’t explain why everyone was on the verge of freaking out.
“Did I miss something?” Jay asked.
Khashin’s response was grim. “‘Something’ is the right word. You definitely missed something.”
“We should have made sure Cino came down,” Tanom said, pressing his terracotta fingers together one by one. “All I could see was that it was some form of worm. Or maybe a centipede. Long, animalistic, and violent.”
“Shit,” Jay cursed. “From the looks on your faces, I’m guessing you didn’t manage to kill it?”
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“No. No, we did not,” Viketsu said. “Not even sure if we managed to hurt it. It didn’t bleed if we did.”
Cino shuddered. “It doesn’t sound like I wanted any part of being down here if it’s got you lot shaken.”
“Get him inside. Now,” the brusant said, nodding at Jay. “Before it comes back.”
The ochre-overloaded woman made a motion as if to push him toward the door but Khashin interrupted again.
“Not you. You’re the only one that might be able to see it clearly. Tanom, no use for your range here, you’re getting him through the door.”
“I can walk,” Jay protested.
Tanom, suddenly by his side with a cold hand on his shoulder, chimed in. “Can you walk in such a way that you don’t have a shadow? Because that seems to be how it travels.”
Jay’s understanding of the situation shifted. Viketsu wasn’t just staring into a corner, it was the deepest shadow that didn’t sit beneath one of them, thanks to a grotesque carved from the stone over it. Khashin was assuming it could leap out of the shadow of the door itself and had set himself to intercept it. Zaros was… actually, he still wasn’t sure why the runebound was seemingly trying to intimidate the windows.
He shook Tanom’s hand off and powerwalked to the door that was already open. Instead of being the one that he had chosen to enter through for the Gray Palace, this one was the main door, right at the center of the far side. The inside was definitely dark, with an absence of the ambient glow that Jay was now fairly sure was coming from the rock itself, but it looked like there was another door inside.
The immediate connection that popped into his head was to an airlock, a thought so incongruous that it made Jay miss a step. The terracotta Slinger caught him and pushed him forward just the right amount to make him reflexively put that foot down properly for the next step. The push also carried him through the outer door, with Tanom positioning himself in front of it as if to guard it.
It didn’t close behind him. That was a worry slightly lifted, since he’d worried it being open had been some kind of trap. Unfortunately, the inner door wouldn’t budge, so the possibility of it not being what it seemed wasn’t entirely ruled out.
Jay listened to the shouting from outside the door, resisting the urge to peek back out. His crew of undead sounded panicked; apparently the creature – whatever it actually was, worm or centipede – was beyond any of their abilities to track. Cino seemed to be able to warn them when it was popping up but it wasn’t early enough for them to be able to damage the thing.
Every few minutes, someone would bring up the idea that maybe it was just invulnerable, but Khashin shut down that talk quickly every time. He was very insistent that nothing was ever truly invulnerable, at least not for long, and they’d be able to hurt it if they just waited it out.
Tanom shoved off the doorframe to drunkenly propel himself inside the little entryway, hitting one of the walls and slumping to the ground. Sand ran down his torso from a gaping crack just above his collarbones. Was that the sinavine equivalent of blood? Wild.
Jay moved over to help him, or at least to try, but the terracotta man held up a hand and spat a single System-resonance-filled word that Omnilinguist translated as “Adapt.”
The stone he was leaning up against shattered to dust that crossed over his shoulders and filled in the wound, transmuting to a shale-like sheet of stone that stood out from his normal coloration.
“Damn thing’s tough,” he wheezed.
“Clearly,” Jay said.
The damn thing in question took that opportunity to sweep past the entryway and give Jay a clear look at it for the first time. It wasn’t so much that it looked like anything as it looked like the space between things; there were stars visible where it passed, most of them red and glaring like pissed-off eyes, and a faint impression of chitinous exoskeleton at the edges.
“And also horrifying,” he added.
Tanom laughed. “Definitely that too.”
“Those stars are real, though.” [Astral Sense] had told him that much, though he wasn’t sure how they could be real. Magic of some sort, probably, but the vagueness of that just raised more questions.
“Come again?”
“The stars in that thing. They’re real.”
The now-multicolored terracotta man gaped at Jay. “You saw stars?”
“You didn’t?” Jay asked.
“No. No, I didn’t. And neither did anyone else.”
“Are you sure?”
“No one’s mentioned it,” Tanom said. He pushed himself back up and stuck his head out of the door again. “Cino! The kid’s saying he sees stars in the worm. You seeing that?”
“Did he hit his head?” the woman called back.
Tanom turned to Jay with a questioning look and was met with a flat stare. “No, I didn’t hit my head.”
“Well, you never know.” He turned back to the rest of the group. “He says no!”
“I do have [Astral Sense], if that makes a difference,” Jay said.
This time he was the one hit with a flat look. “Yes, that does make a difference.” He turned back and passed the message along.
The rest of the group cursed almost in unison, though the force each of them put behind it was extremely varied. Khashin was the loudest.
“No wonder we can’t hurt it,” the brusant said. “Did he get anything else off of it?”
“They were red stars,” Jay said. “And it had some form of exoskeleton.”
Khashin cursed again when word made it to him about that. “Elder coronal centipede. Unless someone has a way to banish it, there’s nothing we can do. Everyone get through those doors as quickly as you can.”
The crew piled in, the big brusant coming last.
“Why are we just standing here?” he asked. “Wasn’t he supposed to be inside already?”
“The door doesn’t open,” Jay replied.
“It’s a door.”
“A stuck door, maybe.” He shrugged. “If you can break it down, go for it.”
Salvidor pushed past them, first to the back of the group – to close the outer doors – then to the front, shoving the inner door open once he made it there.
“Huh,” Khashin grunted. “Well, there you go.”
“I guess.”
They all filed in.
The mirroring of the Gray and Red Palaces ended on the other side of the doors. There were no statues here, just niches covered by something that could have easily been everyday chicken wire if it hadn’t been covered in spiraling blue lightning. Most of them had bones inside, but a few were flat-out empty. None had living occupants.
The floor was coated in a thin layer of pitch-dark miasmatic mist. It was flowing toward the exit despite the lack of any breeze to carry it along.
“What is it?” Zaros asked.
Jay took a little comfort in the fact that he wasn’t the only one who didn’t know.
“All of us?” Khashin checked.
“That’s not normal. We’re still undead, we should be immune.”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” Jay said. “I figure anything that’s in there is something that wouldn’t be good to let out. At least you guys seemed honored with the whole statuary thing.”
He was hoping his expression didn’t give away just how much of a lie that was. He had definitely intended to pull out [Resurrection] at the first opportunity, if one presented itself. Especially if something managed to take down the group he’d already turned, since he’d probably be in dire straits if that happened.
But at the very least, he wouldn’t do it right in front of them. Not after that warning. There was always room for a little bit of caution. Jay was also curious about what would happen if he were to touch the mist, but that was another thing that would have to wait until they looked away. It wasn’t a high priority; he was pretty sure he knew exactly what it was and what it would do.
If he was right though… if what Arus had meant was that the Red Palace was leaking a physical, condensed version of the Class Curse’s corruption… Well, it would certainly explain why it had been so important to fix. And he’d probably get a massive chunk of information about the Curse and its origins while he was handling it. As long as whoever else was down here wasn’t actively trying to make it worse, it all should be fine.
Right? Was that too much to hope for?
The mist became deeper as they moved further into the Palace. Oddly, the darkness didn’t seem to deepen; it was as dark while low and misty as it was when the fog began to thicken and lift from the floor. The group had to shuffle into a single file line to avoid touching it when it began creeping up the walls like a particularly ominous vine.
At times it was like playing hopscotch where tendrils had spread across their path. It felt like an inevitability that someone would put a foot straight into it, but they made it through until the path widened into a room without that happening.
The room was some form of panopticon, with a central tower and walkway stretching up at the center of a cylinder lined with more of the wire-gated cells they’d been passing the whole way. Prison had been an understatement to what this place was, in Jay’s estimation, and that would have been true if even a single percent of those cells had been filled. Judging from the bones, they had nearly all had occupants at some point.
Jay bumped into the back of Tanom. The line had apparently stopped moving while he was observing the whole scenario. Once he looked up, the reason was immediately visible: there was someone sitting on the dome of the observation column.
Someone with the coronal centipede that had been harassing them at the entryway curling up and over her shoulder, being stroked like a pet.