The thinning they followed spilled and spread into an old, but distinctly frequented path that climbed a huge mound. They were still deep within the wilds, the ancient canopy of wetland trees curtailing the light. First, they came across a dead bear, rotting along the patchy cobblestone, and then, a Magister caravan. The wagon laid upturned and broken, its wooden bowels crushed open and spilling its contents. More bodies were laying about, with a lone survivor, who was feeling the stiffening face of his companion. The sounds of incoming steps alerted the man, a youthful lad really. He lamely jerked his sword from its scabbard. He was hurt, badly.
"Who's there!?"
The looks weren't deceiving, the Magister was young.
They stopped some distance away, judging the situation.
"We are from the Fort," Vermil was first to see potential advantage from deceiving the adolescent soldier, or maybe he was tired of constant bloodshed.
"State your name!" The other shouted back, sending the rogue brainstorming a fake name and rank.
"You dare ask us questions!?" Elane chimed in, feigning as much of superior's indignation as she could. "What happened here, kid?"
The shaking Magister lowered his sword and his shoulders slumped.
"I'm sorry! I'm.. Un-undead. They turned the cart, pulled us out by our hair. We... We lost Farray. Landin and I beat the rest back, but not before one of 'em got me across the eyes."
Elane approached the boy to get a better look at his wounds. Two fresh gashes marked his face, a mess of blood and gunk caked all over his skin. The elf hissed at the mere glance, but her hand still moved to tug aside his bangs.
"Is…is it bad?" His voice was weak and close to breaking.
The elf threw her companions a look to go and check the wagon, while she remained with the man, who now clung onto her for support.
"Your name?" She asked, to distract him.
"Loke, ma'am. How many of you are there…?"
"Enough, you should not worry about this now."
"But the cart? And d-do you have a healer?"
"Not everything at once-" The elf ordered, really pained by forcing him to persevere with such a nasty wound. "State the contents of the caravan, we are checking if everything is intact, the hull was damaged."
"I don't know how it all went so wrong so fast. We came to get the Purging Wands from Braccus' old armoury. Loaded up the last of 'em without any trouble-"
Red Prince's head jerked up from the inert wand he's been inspecting, burning fire into the elf's back. She felt the unspoken resentment well enough, and bit her lip.
"Come here-" She pulled him gently towards the closest crate, and made him sit down.
"You're strong-" The magister's hands curiously shot forward, but Elane backstepped before he could've felt something was wrong.
She looked around, and noticed the path extending into a ruined bridge with ancient, white walls peaking through and above the greenery. Judging by the cart's direction, their location became rather apparent.
"Please, it hurts so bad-" The other whined.
She sought advice on her companion's faces. Vermil seemed keen to spare the lad, while Red Prince's ruling was quite obvious with the sharp line his claw drew over his neck. Fane was a stoic mask of an indignated elf sifting through the splinters, completely oblivious to their dilemma.
"Loke, I need you to listen. I will heal you, if you promise to keep calm after what I am about to tell you-"
The man shifted nervously but Elane walked up to him, pinning him down to the crate, his hands secured well outside the reach of his sword.
"What…?!"
"We are Sourcerers, and we have taken over the Fort. You are outnumbered and badly wounded, but we will do you no harm if you choose to cooperate-"
Loke struggled in the elf's hold, but he was weakened and the elf practically towered over him.
"They all escaped…?" He cried in disbelief. "L-let me go I-...!"
"You're not winning this fight, bud. Let go." Vermil approached the two.
"Don't you understand?" The kid struggled on, his voice raised in desperation." You're so dangerous. It isn't your fault, but you are. If you leave this place, you could bring a Voidwoken on your head at any time."
"I'd choose Void over being turned into a mindless mute any day," the lizard snarked in response, kicking the spent wand from under his feet.
"A mute wha-"
A distant, terrified shrill rang from within the white walls of the fortress.
"The rest! They stayed at the armoury!"
"Voiddammit," Vermil cursed, looking questioningly at the elf.
Elane let go of the man, and, after a moment of hesitation she took out her sword and plunged it into the earth. She scooped the young Magister from his seat onto her back and huffed, since the armor-clad younker still weighed his fair share. One hand supporting Loke's weight, the one plucking the sword back, she took off with a moderate pace, running onto the bridge and further, marble lion statues rushing past. They crossed the gates into the building proper to witness a free-for-all between the remaining Magisters, the Undead and a knight, hacking his way through bones and flesh alike up above. The Reds were unprepared to deal with the undead threat, while the monstrosities slain by the knight fell and did not reassemble.
Fane was the first to join the fray, throwing a fireball into the party interlocked in the middle. Scorched earth was set ablaze and then, out of nowhere, a grenade was flung into the air and the wildfire turned blue, to the undead's doom. Red Prince did not hesitate to spill more magister blood, and jumped into the circle of lazure flames, chopping the cornered Reds and undead alike to his heart's content. An archer atop the stairs, that led to a level above, noticed the intruders, but before he could let out an alarming shout, a flying dagger made an arch dangerously close to his head. He ducked and, not spotting the incoming danger, was kicked down the stone steps by a steel-clad foot. A giant two-hander and gold-tinted armor, Vermil had little doubt of the unforeseen ally's affiliation.
"He's a Paladin!"
"Huh?" Cried confused Loke.
The knight spotted them, but was forced to parry an incoming spell flung by a Magister mage who re-emerged from the gateway in the stone wall. They were fighting among the ruins of a small keep, the only structure fully intact being the statue of a knight erected in the middle of the square. Elane kicked back an undead that approached their group, dangerously wobbling backwards, pulled by Loke's weight.
"It's them, isn't it?" Gloved fingers dug deeper into her shoulders, trembling.
"Sit quiet if you will!" The elf shouted to him. Vermil uncorked his waterskin and poured blessed water onto his knife.
"Keep him safe, we'll take care of this!" He ordered, before jumping behind the recovering skeleton and blunging the blade right between the vertebrae of its neck. With a twist, the bones popped loose and its skull fell off. The remaining bones shook as if in shiver and effectively exploded, when Fane threw another of his fire spells at the shambling silhouette.
Elane jogged parallel to the extinguishing battle, sending one of her sickening incantations at the mage above, evoking a fit of violent coughs that gave the knight the opening he needed.
The remaining Magisters were falling under the barrage of Fane's spells and rogue's cuts, while the Paladin and Prince fought hand in hand with the forcers remaining above. Soon enough, it was over.
Bones and bodies were littering the armoury's courtyard. Their unexpected ally walked down towards the group of escapees, sword resting on his back.
"By Lucian's grace, what a stroke of luck indeed." The knight's voice was youthful, though his face showed that he was a rather mature fighter, with darker complexion, black hair and a mustache contrasting with the lustrous armor.
The Sourcerers looked at him puzzlingly, and the man did not hesitate to shoot a questioning look at the blinded Magister carried by the elven woman.
"I'm Gareth Pryce of the Seekers," he introduced himself.
Everyone let out a collective sigh of relief hearing the familiar title.
"I imagine you've escaped the Fort? Commendable-"
Gareth fell silent, seeing the weariness of their postures, the wear, tear and stains scattering their scavenged garb.
"We're looking for shelter," Elane breathed, getting a better hold on the kid she was carrying.
"Naturally, I just need a second- I arrived here not without a cause."
"Please, I-" Loke weakened with every word.
Vermil moved to touch the man's cheeks, they were sickly hot.
"'Not good, he's got a fever."
"Come, quick!" Gareth walked past the bloodspill and corpses and shed his cape, laying it on a patch of clean grass next to a ruined wall.
Elane scurried to lay down the limp body, kneeling over him.
"He's just a wee child," Gareth noticed in terror.
"He is. I can stop the bleeding but the infection…"
"I can see to that, hurry-"
"Knife!" She cried to Vermil, who rushed to hand his weapon over, earning a confused look from the Seeker.
Without hesitation, she opened her palm with two deep slices, swallowing the pain, and pressed her hand gently over the man's wounds. The blood trickled painfully slowly, but once a sizable puddle spread over the boy's head like a bloody halo, she called out to the red broth, forcing it to rush into the gash to mend it. Significant scarring remained still after all the crimson seeped back into his system, and one of his eyes was the color of cloudy red, but he stopped hemorrhaging. Next, Garreth raised his hands over the boy and a faint light coated his fingers, the spell began dropping onto Loke's face like a morning dew, and Elane was sure she smelled something unmistakably familiar in the air. Source.
"You're a Sourcerer, too?" The rogue asked, taken a bit aback.
"You don't know who Seekers are, do you? I believe explanation will have to wait until we get to the camp-"
The last tears fell from the man's hands, cleansing Magister's skin of filth and pus, and the knight got up. Loke fell into a coma, but his breathing was deep and stable, the fever quelled by the spell.
The Seeker looked across the courtyard and under the level of the stairs; another entrance, a crated gate, led below ground.
"This is the place I haven't yet checked, I assume what I am looking for lies there."
"This is the Braccus' Armoury, is it not?" Fane recalled the map; this was one of the few well-documented places. "What are you looking for here exactly?"
"I'm searching for a weapon capable of killing Shriekers. We have been stranded and those nightmares won't let us pass."
"Shriekers?" Elane's ears twitched.
Gareth pointed to the opposite side of the keep. "You can see one for yourself. A weapon crafted out of a tortured Sourcerer. It's able to kill anything that approaches it."
"Behind the wall?" Fane pried.
"Yes, do come." He took a step in the aforementioned direction, gesturing for the rest to follow.
"I'm done with nightmares for today," Vermil plopped down heavily across the unconscious lad. "You go, I'll keep an eye on him."
Elane stood up from her spot and ran after the rest.
They climbed atop the broken battlements, keeping low to the parapets sheltering them from the west side of the horizon. Their arrival startled a bird who had made a nest among the cobble. It took off with a rapid flutter of its wings but didn't manage to fly more than a fathom before a blood-freezing shriek tore the air with such physical force, they all felt as if the sound tore into them like a battleaxe. Elane glanced through one of the crenels. She couldn't spot details from the distance, but the overall look was telling. A corpse, hanged up like some unholy effigy on a wooden stake, fashioned with the Order's insignia, overlooked the adjacent hill. The dead bird laid motionless in the grass below.
"Can it get us here?" The lizard lowered his voice despite the galvanized corpse being not only a fair distance away, but also turned away from them.
"No, its power seems limited to its sight. Still, better not to test one's lu-"
Gareth fell silent hearing a frantic scribbling. He glanced back to see the other elf, scrunched low and making notes but his head stretching every now and then over the protection offered by the stone walls.
"Pay him no mind, if we're lucky enough he'll try to test this on himself," the prince commented before starting to crawl down, keeping his spikes well within the shadows of the battlements.
To the rogue's surprise, the red lizard cut through the battlefield and sat down on a tuft of grass relatively close to him and the Magister.
"That bad?"
"I have my limits," was the lizard's only answer before he plucked his waterskin free from his belt and took a few, greedy gulps.
The rest descended soon after, but aimed for the underground entrance, accompanying Gareth. The doors, albeit rusty and audibly protesting any move, were unlocked.
They stepped into a crude staircase, the air below ground, putrid and humid, had a ting of something else than mold. The descent continued well until the light from above disappeared, and the stairs became enveloped by complete darkness, soon dispelled by the Seeker's radiant sourcery. A faint sound resonated from the bowels of the earth, echoing unsettlingly on the stone surfaces that encased the party. They stopped to listen, but the distortion made the noise undecipherable. Their trot reasumed warily, hands clasped over weapons with whitening knuckles. Fire cracked in Fane's palm, and he too, appeared unnerved. The eerie wail amplified and cleared the closer they got to the source, and it became apparent it was a voice; a man's voice. Cursing and lamenting profoundly.
The interior of the underground chamber was lit by one, decaying torch discarded in a puddle writhing nauseatingly. Elane quickly and with a wince recognized the puddle as blood, infested with the Void's influence. Her stomach turned and reeled at the memory of maggots crawling right under her skin, but to her horror, three corpses before them slowly disintegrated to just that. Heaps of maggot-ridden gore. There was one survivor among them, not looking much better than the rest though.
"Leave," the half-dead Magister groaned from his spot on the floor, among the puddle of festering blood. "This place is beyond the salvation of the Order, there is nothing for you here."
Fane's eyes scanned the room, and he moved to investigate the odd weapon racks, clearly rotting away here for centuries. Several wands were still stacked atop, showing a tad better state than the wood that held them. Contrary to the ones found in the Fort, those were reeling the energy in, rather than beaming with inner power. But Fane couldn't tell the intricacies of the mechanism, and he once again angrily tugged at his collar.
"What in Lucian's name transpired here?" Gareth stormed up to the decomposing Magister, as close as the edge of rotted puddle allowed him.
"Whatever you do, do not touch the lever. Leave…but before you do…" He looked down to the surrounding carcasses scattered around him. "Finish me too. I do not want to become…this…"
His voice drowned in another fit of wails and groans as he clutched his leg. The armour on the limb hung loosely, as if the flesh beneath dissipated down to the bone.
"I believe we got what we were looking for-" Fane said returning to the group, a handful of wands in his lithe arms.
"We are not leaving them like this, are we?" Elane asked the Seeker, whose expression in the faint light bordered on mortification.
"No, naturally not-"
The scholar tugged the woman's sleeve, and handed her the loot before he began curiously circling the morbid scene.
Gareth raised his sword, his forehead touching the eagle-shaped pommel of his weapon.
"May Lucian guide and comfort you in the Hall-" The Seeker's prayer was utilitarian, but genuine.
"I pledge my heart, o-" Came a susurrant response.
The litany was cut short by one, clean swing of the gold-lined sword, freeing the magister from his suffering.
Elane offered her own words of comfort to Rhalic, as she was taught, but the ominous chill setting in the armory made her shuffle towards the exit.
Fane's sudden gasp made her drop all the wands and reach for her weapon in a lightning-fast reflex, but nothing moved in the dancing shadows nestled in the corners of the chamber.
"What is it!?" She cried out more desperately than she wanted.
"This doorway…is Eternal!"
"Huh?" Gareth turned to the scholar who strolled away and now was halfway drowned in shadows.
The Seeker amplified the light and made it to hover higher. Elane nearly collapsed on the spot from the tension leaving her muscles, and too, moved to investigate.
The opposite wall held a triangular structure built from blue-tinted obsidian. It was blended into a crude and common, in comparison, masonry characteristic for other braccusian buildings. The gateway proper was surprisingly angular, up to a point that no one would spot the possible opening without the Eternal openly pointing it out. Elane dared to step closer, as the stone was etched in unfamiliar, modular square markings that appeared to be an actual alphabet rather than decoration. Her advance was stopped by the scholar's extended arm as he looked up, his face scrunched in focus and concern.
"It cannot be opened?" She inquired, casting a curious side glance at the fellow elf.
"I am afraid of tampering, there is a mechanism you see." His finger shot up towards the upper end of the door, crowned with a triangular cornice-like outcrop. An orb of blackest glass hovered right beneath it.
"Heed the Magister's words and do not touch the lever," Gareth reminded.
Fane scoffed at the pitiful installation to his right, the contraption was Eternal-like, fashioned out of the same elegant stone, but put together without any proficiency.
"The door needs Source to unlock, any other interference will trip the safety mechanism…or so I think," Fane's dark, artificial eyes scanned the markings intently, hungrily even.
"We should leave it be, elf," The Seeker's voice again called for common sense.
Elane was staring at the scholar confoundedly, wondering whether he hadn't got to opening the door yet.
"You can very well leave, your bemoaning will not hinder discovery," The veiled undead snapped at the human warrior with unforeseen ferocity. "You."
His face jerked towards the elf, hand gesturing towards her bare neck.
"I need your assistance, Elane. Not only are you not Source-muted but also the sole person with a functioning brain on this whole isle."
The man's brow furrowed dangerously, and the elf's mixed feelings about the whole ordeal became predominantly negative. Still, she sighed and only shook her head.
"So what now?"
"Your hand, if you will."
She presented said limb to the scholar, curiosity and confidence escaping her posture with the motion. Fane grabbed her arm by the wrist and pressed her palm against the onyx surface. The rest happened in a blink. The inert stone awoke, alive and hungry. She felt her power pulled out by her fingertips through an inexorable vacuum and then twitched in pain as the gashes on her face reopened. Light shot up in perpendicular lines across the panel of the entrance, and the stone surface began to split like prison bars that disappeared into the floor and the upper end of the doorway. The scholar paid little attention to the woman's wounds as he dashed through, and it was Gareth who got to her first, asking her whether she was alright.
The elf was utterly confused, as those were the same cuts inflicted on her by the voidwoken, and nothing physically attacked her at that moment.
"Gilded men of wisdom, huh?" Pryce leered as his hand lit up with another restorative spell.
He was slowly mending the woman's face back while Fane, without blinking, scurried about the inner chamber. He was nearly floored when he spotted what the decrepit little vault housed. A giant pillar of similar onyx stood atop crude mortal stairs. It was evident the thing had been hauled in here, which roused questions. The pillar, just like the doorway, was dormant and in its inactive state resembled a square prism crafted out of rock, standing atop an octagonal, star-like plinth that contained four more, now retracted, triangular pillars.
"Elane, I require your assistance again!"
The man breathed in to respond, but she stopped him with a firm pat on his shoulderguard, after which she, too, entered the room. The surrounding walls were crumbled and let in faint rays of sunlight from outside. The structure in the middle, however, looked immaculate. And ominous.
"What is it?" the elf asked warily, unsure whether she'd wanted to go through the wound-opening experience again.
"A communication tower!" the scholar's voice hiked in excitement. "To put it quite crudely, that is, but I doubt you would understand the fine minutia of its inner workings. It was a matter of transportation in my…in times past."
Elane nodded half-heartedly at the rapid explanation while the Seeker was merely glancing inside, sword in hand.
"If the transmitter works we might be able to get out of here in a blink of an eye," Fane added, cheerfully.
Only then was the mortals' interest piqued.
"Wait, leave? As in; leave Joy?" The woman tilted her head.
"Correct. Where to, I am not certainly sure, but it is a rather plausible possibility. Another tower had to endure somewhere."
"What…What do you need to get it up and running?" Garreth finally stepped in and stopped next to Elane.
"Source, if it is not painfully evident by now."
"How much?"
"Oh merely a spark, I believe Elane's adverse reaction is an outlier, not a regularity. Ou- These machines were rather energy efficient."
"And you say we could leave the island through this…pillar?" The look on Seeker's face was doubtful, but in the history of human desperation stranger things have happened.
"Most probably," the elf answered in a condescending tone.
"Fine."
With a grumble, Gareth strolled past both elves and pressed his palm firmly against the pillar. Soon enough the ravenous stone pulled on his lifeforce as well, but the transfer was overall painless. The slab of stone lit up with an ethereal glow and opened. The smaller triangular supports sprung from the earth, their insides glowing, while the top, now an embossed pyramid, hovered above the stone pillars on a streak of energy alone. The structure looked impossibly light now, even more so that the obsidian top literally floated, against all reason. Fane's excited expression soon dropped, as he saw a disruption in the beam. Something else was being held up by the crackling light. The Eternal approached the pillar cautiously, swapping places with Gareth, who moved back as soon as the structure started to shift and activate. He extracted the item, a strange, out-of-place helmet, from the power line and the mechanism instantly dimmed; the transmitter fell with a terrific clunk below and the supports retreated, their glow now gone.
"What…?" The undead seemed just as confused as the next mortal.
Elane moved closer and glanced at the item in the scholar's trembling hands questioningly, then she looked back at his face. He was undoubtedly furious, an emotion he gave vent to by casting the helmet to the floor so hard he sent it bouncing.
"Fane…what is wrong?" She could pretty much smell his anger in the air.
The scholar stumbled forward, resting his forehead against the cold surface of the obsidian.
"Some moron used a transportation device as a storage space…" he hissed with enough venom to kill a grown-up salamander on the spot. "Something within that idiotic helmet disturbed the transfer…ugh, the mechanism."
The Seeker and the elf looked dumbfounded at each other, then at the discarded helmet, then at each other again.
"And you can't fix it?" The human finally spoke.
If looks could kill, Gareth would've been torn asunder by the scholar's glare.
Elane left the two to their bickering, taking interest in the 'idiotic helmet' Fane plucked out of the pillar. It was a crown-like adornment, with spikes fashioned into a shape reminiscing of a dragon's head. The matte metal was richly decorated with luminescent, glowing crystals and it reeked of Source.
"Huh," the elf mumbled, trying to stomach the nauseating influx of energy surrounding the artifact. "It looks…familiar."
"And is radiating Source like crazy…" Gareth added, scrunching his nose.
The woman was turning the helmet in her hands when it struck her. "The statue on the beach… Could it be Braccus' crown?"
"Lucian's beard, it might be-"
"Give it to me."
Without any courtesy, the undead snatched the crown from Elane's hands. She stared daggers into his back while he was inspecting the item, tugging at his Source collar with ever-growing irritation.
"Bloody hell, with that damned collar on I could not tell a rock from a Source Orb, let alone deduce what broke within the pillar."
"Well, this won't go anywhere if I'm not mistaken. We could take off your collars in camp-"
"Lead us there then!" The elf demanded.
Gareth found a semblance of composure among the storm of the discussion and took Fane's appeals calmly. "I will, however, there is but one detour I need to make before that happens."
"How long-" the veiled Eternal's voice dripped with hate.
"If my memory serves me right, you said you have whole eternity to get out of here," Elane stepped between the quarreling parties, siding with the human. "So what is with the hurry?"
The cold yet singeing glower of the scholar moved onto the woman but she withstood it without as much as a blink.
"Very well, bask in the sun as much as you please."
And with that, he stormed out of the vault.
Gareth pointed after the departing elven man.
"Is he always that finicky?"
"Guess he is just tired. Wait- Fane, helmet!" Elane remembered mid-answer.
The metal thing made a teeth-grinding noise as it fell down from the stairs and rolled into the puddle of gore below. With a hopeless shake of her head, the elf followed, picking up the helmet on her way back.
"Just be careful with this, knowing Braccus' reputation, it's most probably cursed."
"You do not say…."
Unbeknownst to them both, the speck of blood that clung to the metal's surface disappeared with a hungry gulp.