Last time:
He almost turned around and left the cellar to notify Edgaar, but he noticed a metal grate on the floor.
"Hmm?" he sounded aloud.
"Aha!" he declared, as he stood on the grate, and pushed an easy to miss stone button on the wall with the back of his pitchfork.
The grate turned out to be an elevator of sorts, and it began to descend. How it worked, Atlan, the Highland Drake, had no idea.
He looked down, and wanted to strangle Edgaar.
He was about to descend into a crowd of five krug at once.
And one of them was twice as big as any krug he'd ever seen.
Now:
As he started the slow descent, the giant grey krug gave Drake a shock when he began to speak. Krug weren't often able to do that.
"Heheh," it laughed in its deep, gravelly voice. "I Brankar."
"Yeah?" Drake responded in a low tone. Those who knew him well knew that this tone meant he was serious.
The thing laughed again as Drake approached the end of the shaft, before it stated, "I no ask you name."
Drake brought his shield up and grasped his pitchfork firmly, asking slowly, "Why not?"
The grey krug laughed extremely loudly, as it shouted, "You dead! HAHAHA!"
The sub-basement was a square room with a hallway leading nowhere directly behind the grey krug.
There was a brown krug in each of the four corners of the room, but he couldn't outmaneuver them in the first place-they were too fast.
The grey krug-Brankar, if its words were to be believed-was at least a head taller than its brethren, and with a similar amount of extra width. It wielded a small chuck in its right hand, its left gripped firmly into a fist. Given what he knew about krug, he did not want to get hit with that thing.
A 'chuck' was a nickname for a small hand axe-short for 'woodchuck.' It wasn't made to chop down trees, but rather to remove branches, hence its diminutive size. However, from the glean on its edge, Drake knew this one, unlike most 'found' weaponry of the krug, was actually sharp.
Of course, knowing all that wasn't particularly helpful in forming a strategy.
But he also knew something that was helpful:
The old saying.
"Grey krug are slow, brown krug are fast. Armoured krug are strong, clothed krug are mages."
"And they're all stupid!" he shouted the end of the saying as the elevator met the floor.
Sprinting past the confused Brankar, Drake quickly turned around and shoved the pitchfork through the back of its slowly turning neck.
It was hard. The points of the pitchfork seemed to bend as they entered the neck of the krug, and red sprayed everywhere.
Brankar choked on its own blood as Drake quickly wrenched the chuck out of its weakening grip.
With the new weapon, the four remaining brown krug were quickly dispatched.
As the final enemy drew its last breath, Drake stopped to catch his. Looking around, his eyes gravitated to the corpse of Brankar.
Clenched in its fist was a scrap of lambskin that glowed green-a spell! Had this krug been holding onto this spell the whole time it fought?
"What in Azunai's name would a krug like this be doing with a spell, anyway?" Drake wondered out loud as he transferred the eight gold pieces Brankar had into his pack.
"Well, I suppose I'll take it with me, though I don't have a spellbook to put it in. I wonder what it says. Maybe I can sell it in Stonebridge."
Drake mumbled as he surveyed the mess.
Every barrel and crate in the sub-basement had been smashed open, and whatever food had been stored in them was long eaten.
There was a pair of nice leather boots, though, and Drake decided he had earned them.
"Azunai," Drake complained to himself, "I killed a damned monster of a krug that Edgaar really should have warned me about, a pair of boots is the absolute least I've earned."
Walking into the suspiciously empty hallway, Drake stopped in his tracks.
There, behind a disgusting amount of cobwebs, was a doorway on the far wall. He could clearly see the arch in the stone, even though the wall seemed solid.
"A false wall? Maybe the krug are dumb enough not to check that, but Azunai damn you, Edgaar, I'm not letting you live this one down."
Pushing on the stones, Drake felt them move. There really was a room back here.
Pushing harder, the false wall finally collapsed, revealing a room filled with even more horrible cobwebs.
There wasn't much in there besides wine, really, but Drake was not going to let Edgaar slide. He was taking something. Even if that wagon wheel leaning against the wall was the only other thing that wasn't destroyed, by the Defender, he was taking something.
Luckily, he did find something else, although it wasn't any more useful to him than the wine or the wagon wheel.
On a shelf he found another spell, but this one glowed orange instead of green. He briefly wondered what the difference was, but as Drake did not possess the ability to read, he didn't even bother looking at it and simply grumbled as he stuck the scrap of lambskin in his pack with the other one.
Finally, there was nothing left to check but one last storage locker. The rest had all been empty, so Drake did not have his hopes up. Opening it carelessly, his eyes widened in surprise.
"Jackpot!" he exclaimed with almost childlike glee.
Folded up nicely on the floor of the locker was a shirt and skirt of studded leather armor. Actual armor!
Lifting it up, Drake felt his heart sink a tiny bit when he realized it was torn fairly severely in places, but it was still miles ahead of his unfinished leather. Leather which was also ripped fairly badly in places, he reminded himself.
He quickly exchanged his armor for the new, er, old, set he had just found, and went off to exit the basement.
His heart leapt in his chest a tiny bit when the lever next to the elevator seemed not to do anything, but it only took a second before he started ascending once more.
Leaving the cellar with a new weapon and new armor, Drake felt like he had really accomplished something.
Ignoring the urge to crack his knuckles menacingly, Drake opened the door to Edgaar's house.
Looking in, Drake saw the corpses of krug, and suddenly remembered Edgaar's serious wounds. Perhaps he hadn't told him of the talking krug because he simply hadn't made it that far. Edgaar didn't have any reason to send him in unprepared. He would've told him everything he could. He felt guilt slowly creep up his spine as he entered the house.
Closing the door, Drake took off his pack before leaning his back against the sturdy wood as he sighed.
"There was a talking krug in the sub-basement, Edgaar," he bluntly explained. "Damn thing was enormous. If it wasn't grey, it might've split me in half."
Edgaar snapped his head over to Drake, faster than Drake had ever seen him do... anything, really. His perpetually tired voice was flooded with remorse as he exclaimed in shock, "Defender alive! Truly, a talking krug? Had I known that, I would've never sent you down there, Drake. I'm glad you made it out safe and sound."
The balding man looked at his young neighbor more closely, perhaps to make sure he was truly safe and sound, and laughed humorlessly when he noticed the torn leather he was wearing, "I forgot I had that armor down there. Azunai be praised. It never fit me, anyway-it must be providence. The Defender is looking out for you, Drake."
Drake managed a smile. It was a comforting thought. Maybe Azunai really had a hand in protecting him?
"Many thanks for clearing out the krug, my friend."
"It was no trouble, Edgaar," Drake denied. "Turned out to be no trouble, anyway."
Edgaar shook his head in muted shock, "If they're coming after farmers in our own homes, I don't doubt you'll battle many more on your journey to Stonebridge; you'd best be on your way."
"Aye," Drake agreed.
"Watch out for yourself, and don't worry about me; I've enough supplies in the cellar to keep me going until this blows over."
Shifting his new chuck to his left hand, the militant farmer rubbed the back of his scalp nervously, brushing up against his mohawk.
"About that…" Drake mumbled sheepishly. "The krug seemed to have eaten most of your food. There's really only wine left-and that's only because the krug didn't notice your false wall in the sub-basement."
Finally giving the young man a genuine smile, Edgaar laughed and said, "What did you think I meant by supplies?"
Giving a laugh, Drake turned to open the door.
As he left, he said without turning, "Defender watch over you, Edgaar."
Before he closed the door behind him, he heard Edgar say, "May he watch over us all."
Not forgetting what Norrick had told him-to find Gyorn in Stonebridge-Drake trudged on, taking down krug and krug dogs, phraks and skrubbs as he did.
There was more of the same for half a mile, until Drake noticed a clearing on his left. There was a large cave opening not far from the road, and he could already see three brown krug messing with each other.
Deciding he may as well clear out the cave while he was here, Drake moved quietly towards it.
The three krug at the entrance noticed him and started tearing towards him without a sound.
Making quick work of the ugly creatures, the farmer moved into the cave.
The cave was rather roomy, and only a few crates were in the part he could see. Unfortunately, he could also see a rather big problem that was moving towards him rather quickly.
It was another giant krug-and this one was brown. It was quicker than its grey counterpart, but slower than the ordinary brown ones.
"I Klandank," it spoke, with a voice higher in pitch than Brankar's. "You fight!"
It yelled incoherently as it charged Drake, who readied his shield.
The thing was holding a blunt dagger, and hopefully being able to speak didn't teach it how to properly use the stabbing weapon.
Drake wordlessly raised his rusty buckler to block the wayward slash of Klandank.
"And they're all stupid," he muttered, stunned at the accuracy of the saying.
The idiotic krug was wielding a blunt dagger, but instead of stabbing with it, he was hacking down with it like an axe. Drake would have to stand there and let himself be pummeled to death to lose to this thing.
Blocking a third blow, Drake whipped forward and caught Klandank in the side of the neck with his chuck, but the fight wasn't over.
Klandank screamed in pain and threw the dagger to the side, intending to punch the farmer to death.
A shield to the face dazed it, and another blow from the chuck widened its already massive neck wound. Klandank sank to the ground as he lost too much blood to remain conscious.
It was dead within seconds.
Wiping the sweat off his forehead, Drake took a breather. He drank deeply from his waterskin before sighing.
Looking into the rest of the cave provided a new first for the young man.
A misshapen krug wearing clothes was mumbling at him.
Wincing briefly at the hideous neckless atrocity, Drake's thoughts turned to the saying.
"You're a mage, huh? Think you're smarter than me, just because I can't do magic? Maybe I'm not cut out to be a sorcerer, but there's no way I'm dumber than you!"
The only reply was more bizarre mumbling.
Drake thought it might be casting a spell-he'd only ever seen a spell being cast one time, before his parents died, and he didn't remember it very well.
All he knew about magic was that you needed a spellbook and a spell, and apparently he couldn't do it.
Evidently, whatever the mumbling was, it wasn't magic.
Because the next instant, the clothed krug came barreling toward him, arms raised, and started trying to punch him.
Easily avoiding the clumsy blows, Drake plunged his chuck into the place the head and body of the krug met-the place that should have been its neck-and the krug went down.
Finding nothing else in the cave, beyond some farm skrubbs hiding in the back and several empty crates and barrels, Drake headed back into the daylight.
Another few miles and as many hundred krug, and Drake had made it to the wood bridge to Stonebridge.
Sort of.
He could see some of the bridge, but most of it was missing. And what was still there was blackened and smoking.
Seeing one of his neighbors, Drake yelled, "Skartis!"
As he jogged up to the older man, he added, "What happened?"
Skartis shook his head and put his hand on his hip.
"Damnfool krug. I knew they was none too bright, but today, I seen everything."
"What did they do?" Drake asked exhaustedly.
"Take a look fer yerself, Drake. They torched this 'ere bridge, and then set to drivin' a wagon caravan across't while it was still a-burnin'!"
Drake looked over the edge of the cliff, where he could just barely see a wagon and several dead krug.
He sighed and cursed, "Defender, take them."
Skartis shook his head again.
"Now the only way to Stonebridge is thataway," he pointed to the path to his left, "and that means goin' through the old Crypts to the road beyond."
"Of course it does," Drake sighed in exasperation. All he wanted was to get to Stonebridge and find Gyorn, but it couldn't be easy, could it?
Skartis visibly shivered and proclaimed, "You ain't gonna catch me goin' that way."
"Any other day, I'd say the same, Skartis. But I gotta get to Stonebridge, and fast."
Skartis backed away slowly.
"Well, if anyone can get through there, it's you, Drake. You jus' make sure'n keep whatever's in there, in there."
"I'll try, Skartis. Azunai knows I'll try."
The two neighbors wordlessly parted.
"The Crypt of the Sacred Blood, huh?" Drake muttered to himself as he tried to recall what Norrick had told him about it.
Just southwest of Stonebridge lies the Crypt of the Sacred Blood—site of one of the bloodiest battles of the Liberation, and the most honored burial place in all of Ehb.
Interred there alongside the kings and queens of Ehb are the martyrs of Azunai and the heroes, commanders, and grand mages of the 10th Legion, many of whom fell during the last days of the War of Legions.
The site was consecrated with the blood of the 10th Legion soldiers who sacrificed their lives to free Ehb during the Seck Rebellion.
In a single day of battle, nearly a quarter of the Legion's forces died fighting a hardened corps of Seck warriors. Surveying the corpses strewn over the battlefield, Legion Commander Karese Noanni ordered the site cleared and excavated for a crypt.
"By my oath, they shall be remembered and revered, or nothing we do hath a spark of honor in it. From this day forth, all that is achieved shall be purchased with the blood of these valiant hearts."
There is no greater honor than to be laid to rest in this sacred ground, and no greater duty than making a pilgrimage to pay respect to the heroes lying within.
That's what Norrick had said, but an adolescent Atlan did not memorize the information to any meaningful degree.
"If I'm remembering correctly, everybody who's anybody is buried in that place. And I'll bet the krug are in there right now."
Drake had never considered himself extraordinarily patriotic, but he certainly wasn't un-patriotic. The idea of the filthy krug stomping around that sacred place made his blood boil.
On his path to the Crypt, he soon encountered something strange.
The wolves were attacking.
They didn't look hungry, either. Something had them riled up, the the point that they would brazenly attack on a well blazed trail. This was not normal.
After being forced to kill nearly a pack of wolves, Drake made his way to the Life Shrine.
Drake didn't know who or what had made the Life Shrines that dotted the landscape of Aranna, but he sure was glad they did.
Small scrapes began to heal up when he stepped on the stone circle, the red light that came from nowhere seeming to fill him with energy.
Life Shrines could heal small injuries, and restore stamina, but they couldn't save lives. Healers were very well respected for exactly this reason. Health potions drastically increased the body's natural recovery, and life shrines were a step up from that. Magic could heal most injuries, and the stronger the spell, the more deadly the injury it could heal.
If only he could cast magic. If only he was a healer. Then Norrick might've...
Even still, Drake offered up a prayer to Azunai the Defender, along with whoever had made the shrines.
The next thing the farmer came across was a krug encampment, complete with another abomination in clothes. Once again, the thing mumbled excessively before proceeding to ram into him.
Looking around the camp, Drake failed to find any bedrolls or tents, things he would need if the Crypt was as far from Stonebridge as he thought.
What he did find were phraks trapped in wooden cages. How had the krug managed to do this? They must have had help. But why?
Killing the phraks-well, setting the phraks free and then being forced to kill them-Drake stopped thinking about the krug. He was no scholar, after all. He had a strong sword arm, and that was all it took to kill krug.
Following the path up a small hill, he noticed an offshoot he hadn't seen the last time he'd come on a pilgrimage.
A few brown krug were congregating around the statue of an angel.
After Drake killed them, he could have sworn he heard some sort of singing in the back of his head.
"What were they messing with this statue for?" he wondered aloud.
There was a faded plaque on the base of the statue-not that he would've been able to read it anyway.
Brushing his fingers over it, the angel started to swivel on its pedestal.
"Blood!" Drake spat in surprise as he jumped back. With his new vantage point, he noticed that stairs were beginning to appear in the ground, slowly revealing a passageway.
"Defender preserve me," he whispered in awe as the archway was fully revealed.
Looking behind him, he determined there were no krug, and so he walked down into the passageway.
What greeted him were two small gargoyle statues on either side of a hallway.
As he walked past them however, he quickly realized that they were not statues at all, but rather actual gargoyles, who he had woken up, and were now trying to kill him.
"Forgive me!" Drake shouted to no one in particular as he smashed the protectors to pieces. They weren't hard to kill, though one had scratched his cheek pretty bad.
"Maybe I shouldn't keep going?" he questioned, as he rubbed his wound, noting how close he came to losing an eye.
Shaking his head, he reaffirmed, "No, I'm going. I don't care what gargoyles you throw at me, I'm taking a closer look."
The room he was in had more stairs which led down, into a hallway filled with water, about knee level.
He walked down into the flooded hallway, taking note of two stone pipes that seemed to be draining water into the place.
"Now, what are those for?" he wondered. The place didn't seem to be leaking anywhere else, which meant that the two pipes were what were flooding the hallway. "Why would you intentionally flood a hallway?"
It wasn't long before he reached the end of the hallway, which opened up into a room.
Drake cautiously entered what seemed to be the final chamber, but was blindsided by two gargoyles anyway.
As he jumped back to avoid the gargoyles, he noticed that they had fired projectiles at the place he used to be.
He threw up his shield and charged, hoping to end the altercation before it got any worse.
The two gargoyles converged on his previous spot, and threw green shards of something with their tiny arms.
One shard hit Drake's shield and shattered harmlessly, but one slipped past, and buried itself in his right shoulder.
Pain flooded his system, and before he saw what happened, he was staring at the shattered remains of the two green-eyed 'goyles.
Examining his wound, which was suspiciously free of the projectile that caused it, Drake determined it was only a flesh wound, as the leather armor had done its job.
Surveying the room, Drake found no trace of whatever the gargoyles had thrown at him, and so he quickly honed in on the only interesting thing.
A large angel statue sat in the middle of the room-identical to the one that had opened this place. It was illuminated by torches, but somehow the light in the room was not the fiery red glow one might expect. Magic was obviously at play, here.
The plaque of this one was not worn down, but Drake still could not read it.
Shrugging, he rolled his shoulder a few times, and brushed his fingers across it the same way he had the first.
Like the first, it swiveled on its pedestal, but Drake was ready this time.
However, no door seemed to open, as he had expected.
Instead, two platforms opened up to his left and right, and up from under the floor came two horrors.
"Defender's blood!" Drake yelled in shock.
A walking skeleton slowly creaked over to him from either side of the room.
They were slow, much slower than the grey krug, slower even than Brankar, but even so they looked deadly. Something told the Highland Drake that the skeletons' arms were not nearly as slow as their legs.
Taking a step back, Drake calmed himself. They were slow, so he had a chance to examine them.
One had what looked like an old, warped, flanged mace in its hand, which it hefted menacingly as it walked. The other had both hands on a bladed staff, a green handle with two curved blades on either end.
Neither looked particularly friendly, but Drake wanted that mace, bad. Bent though the flanges were, that mace was still the most dangerous weapon Drake had ever had access to.
Taking several deep breaths as he decided on a plan, Drake flew towards the mace-wielding skeleton and chopped at its elbow joint with all he was worth, running past the slow undead as he did.
The skull of the creature clacked in displeasure, but Drake only had eyes for the skeletal arm on the ground. Or, what the arm was holding, at any rate.
"Azunai the bloody Defender be praised, I can't believe that actually worked!" Drake exclaimed as he grabbed his prize off the ground.
He held the mace in his hand, feeling its weight. He readied his shield and his new weapon as the one armed skeleton closed in on him slowly.
With a yell, Drake smashed the weaponless skeleton's head with its former weapon, and the skull shattered into pieces.
As the now-headless skeleton collapsed into a pile of bones, Drake turned to face the staff-wielding skeleton.
Lifting his mace in the air, Drake said, "Come at me, you bag of bones."
The skeleton slowly complied, hobbling over with all the grace of a newborn deer, though its staff was catching the light in a mean way.
"Alright Drake, be careful," Drake prepped himself.
Unfortunately, it wasn't quite as successful as he'd hoped.
Not quite dodging the blades of the staff as the enemy lunged towards him, Drake growled in pain as he swung his new mace, before running to the other side of the room.
He quickly made sure the skeleton was a safe distance a way before he checked his wound. Luckily, it wasn't too deep, as the blade of the staff had probably hit a stud in the leather before cutting through it.
"That was lucky," Drake breathed as sweat started forming on his forehead. "Thank Azunai Edgaar has always been a wide guy."
Lightly banging his mace against his rusty shield, he shook himself loose to prepare for the second round with the skeleton.
This time, Drake used his experience to fully dodge the swipe of the skeleton before crushing its skull to bits.
He shouted as the undead collapsed, sending the staff clattering to the ground.
Holding his side where the staff had grazed him, Drake applied pressure to the still bleeding wound before setting down his newly acquired mace on the angel statue.
Picking up the staff carefully with his free hand, he held out the weapon and felt it out.
He declared to the empty room, "It's really cool, but I'll probably just hurt myself with this thing. I'm not smart enough to use it."
Replacing the mace with the staff, Drake left the… wherever he was. Ruins, maybe?
Turned out, a flanged mace-even a bent one-was much better a caving in krug skulls than a chuck was at cutting them open. What had once taken two or three swipes, if he missed the neck, now took a single swing, maybe two if a brown krug could dodge the first.
By the time Drake reached the graveyard outside the entrance of the Crypt, the wound on his side had more or less stopped bleeding. Perhaps he could have returned to the Life Shrine, but he was worried he was wasting enough time already. Even without Krug, the Crypt was supposed to be a death trap. There was a reason no one was buried within it anymore, and that reason was not a lack of space.
It was lucky that his injuries from the ruin had mostly stopped bleeding, because Drake found himself face to face with another two skeletons, though these ones were considerably less well armed. Still, even a round headed iron mace could deal some serious damage, even if it had seen much better days, and so Drake was careful not to get hit.
After returning the two undead to the grave, Drake once again wondered where they came from, and why they seemed not to target the krug. It wasn't possible the krug had raised them, right? The ruin he could understand, but what were skeletons doing in the forest?
His blood ran cold as he realized the two skeletons he just destroyed might have been royalty buried in or around the Crypt of Sacred Blood. Azunai, if the krug are somehow turning the inhabitants of the Crypt into undead...
He was brought out of his thoughts as a fireball whizzed by his head.
Too spooked to even curse, Drake swung his head toward the direction the spell had come from.
He jumped to the side to avoid a second fireball as he searched for the source, eventually finding a clothed krug. Or a neckless krug, as he'd decided to call them.
"Wow, one that actually uses spells?" he exclaimed unintentionally.
"Well, spell, I guess," he amended, as the neckless krug shot yet another fireball.
Quickly realizing that the magical fire was rather slow, Drake moved around the flaming obstacle, running towards the krug.
The krug, perhaps realizing the futility of the spell, charged at Drake with the same reckless abandon the previous neckless krug had, to similar effect.
One swing of his mace put the krug's left arm out of commission, and a second took out the right. A third swing ended the monstrosity's suffering.
Drake searched for a spellbook, but couldn't find one. He didn't even find a spell. How had the thing been using magic without either? How had Brankar possessed a spell, but not this neckless krug who could actually perform magic?
Shaking his head, Drake suddenly let out a grunt of pleasant surprise, as he fished a small glass vial with a vibrant blue liquid inside out of the krug's primitive satchel.
Sure, it was only half full, but even this much of a mana potion had to be worth something, right?
Putting the treasure in his pack, Drake barely had time to raise his shield when a wolf nearly bowled him over.
Taking care of the wolf problem with a swift kick and a mace to the brain, the farmer quickly had to deal with several similar problems.
One of the wolves actually managed to bite his ankle, but his torn studded leather armor wasn't torn there, and proved sturdy enough to handle the wolf's jaws.
Finally, the area around the Crypt's entrance was clear. After Drake paid respects to those buried in the graveyard outside, he turned to look at the entryway of the Crypt.
"I'll never understand how a battle was supposedly fought here. The Crypt is underneath a damn mountain. How is it even possible?" he asked.
Of course, the only answer he received was several bats flying out of the crypt.
"It is getting quite dark," Drake realized. Bats were nocturnal, meaning if they were leaving the crypt, it was no longer daytime.
Staring at the entrance a while longer, Drake gathered his nerves and said a short prayer.
"Azunai the Defender, please grant me the strength of will to enter this Crypt. And once inside, I humbly ask your protection from whatever lay within."