What awaits?
Demons Stalk the Halls
Something Warped lies Beneath Them
Where are the Answers?
Spirit Quest Part III
The Sleeping Monastery Part II
Rakan strike first, pistol blazing as the nearest Kinkou lunges for his throat with warped claws pushing out from beneath the skin of their fingers.
It falters and then is battered back as Irelia's blades begin to spin in a tight concentric circle around them.
Glancing about, he sees doors open in the halls on either side of them, possessed Kinkou slinking into the halls.
"They've got us boxed in," he notes, slashing at one that had slipped through Irelia's barrier.
"We've got an exit," Irelia states, nodding towards the open door to the library.
"That's just a bigger box to get pinned down in." Rakan challenges.
"If you don't know where you are going." Akali notes, tossing several kunai out, the Azakana taking them unflinchingly.
Erath fires as a larger one break free of the crowd, bull-rushing others aside.
His shot catches it in the forehead, lancing into a burning red eye in the center of their forehead.
The figure screams, their mutations dissipating like shattered glass, and the formally possessed Kinkou collapses to the floor, curling into a tight ball.
Erath blinks in shock, looking up at Rakan with a slightly bemused grin.
"Nice shot, eyes on the enemy, kid." Rakan states.
"Aim for the central eye." Irelia states, "Press them back!"
Rakan chucks one of his feathers and then fires it, followed by two pistol shots. His regular magic doesn't seem to have much effect as it lances into a spindly woman with an overly long neck, but his first shot does the trick, his second grazing across the forehead of one with turtle-like features.
Akali lets her kunai and shurikens fly, but even those that find their mark do little but cause the demons to flinch and snarl.
Another shriek echoes around them, and the floorboard buckle upward, pale grasping fingers emerging between the floor boards, scrambling for their ankles.
A looming figure, highlighted with emerald green fire, emerges at the end of the central hall. A wave of force bursts from it as it turns to face them, knocking several Azakana off their feet and battering against Irelia's barrier.
Her blades break their circuit, one almost lancing into Erath's neck, another gracing Rakan's thigh as it buries into the wall behind them.
"Don't like that!" Erath shouts.
"Into the library, now!" Irelia orders.
Clenching her fist, she draws her blades back towards her and then punches outwards, the blades spinning and lancing outward, catching the central eyes of the nearest Azakana, their forms dissipating, leaving behind more fitfully sleeping Kinkou.
Akali slams something at her feet, and a cloud of smoke bursts to life before them.
Irelia slides back, entering the door without turning face, Akali darting after her, Erath gets into a crouch, firing at random as a further deterrent, and Rakan raises a shield as another wave of force races towards them.
The floorboards part further as he leaps through the door frame, emaciated, pale arms grasping frantically for his ankles.
He slams the door behind him, Erath shouldering a bookshelf and bracing against it.
"Right, there are several doors out of here." Akali states.
"We can't leave." Irelia counters, "Not yet."
"Things are already bad out there," Rakan states, pushing a desk to join their makeshift barricade, "We can find the information somewhere else?"
"Where?" Irelia demands, darting from bookshelf to bookshelf, her eyes frantically looking for any clue, "The nearest monastery is on an entirely different island, and who is to say we won't be faced with the exact same thing."
"What are you people after?" Akali asks.
"Quickly!" Erath states as the door is nearly battered open, forcing Rakan to fully put his weight against the door as well.
"Information on the Green Father, Ivern. We need to find out where he is." Irelia states.
Akali cocks her head to the side, "Why?"
"He can fix this." Rakan states, "Stop the Spirit's Ruination."
"That sort of info wouldn't be in here." Akali states, "It would be below."
"With the thing that is trying to shake this place to pieces?" Erath grunts, "Wonderful."
"We need it." Irelia counters.
"Then follow me." Akali states, darting to the back wall, dodging over desks, and sending papers scattering.
Erath nods to Rakan, allowing him to detach and follow after her.
The door is battered once more, and part of the wood cracks.
Irelia casts her hands out, piercing her blades into more of the furniture, and claps her hands together, aiming at the door.
"Move," she orders.
Erath rolls to the side as a set of bookshelves, three desks, and a table clatter into place.
Drawing her blades back, she turns, leaping up after Akali, Erath scrambling up behind her.
Rakan aims his pistol at the quaking barricade as Akali runs her fingers along the spines of the books spread out before her.
"Anytime now." he snarks as the others skid to a halt beside him and raise their weapons.
"Got it." Akali remarks, pressing one of the books inward, the shelves sliding apart to reveal a spiral staircase, faint blue flames illuminating the darkness beyond. Disturbingly, thick webbing that most definitely wasn't silk coated the ceiling.
"What is that?" Erath demands.
"No idea." Akali mutters, eyes narrowing.
"I'll take it over the Azakana out for our blood. Let's move." Rakan states.
Akali darts down the steps first, Erath a step behind, his eyes repeatedly flicking towards the ceiling.
Irelia nods for him to go, and he darts down the steps after her, expecting her only to be a step behind, but as he reaches the curve of the stairs, he looks back and sees her frozen in the doorway.
Hovering above her, clutching her face, was the spectral form of Liana.
Irelia's blades are poised, but as he watches, her arms fall, and they begin to lower.
Darting back up the stairs, golden magic wrapping around his form, he grabs Irelia around the waist and spins her behind him, forming a shield as one of Liana's bladed scarves comes down like a scorpion's tail.
Striking with his blade, he cuts her swiftly across the face, a flair of white light buffeting her back with a scream.
"Go!" he states, wrenching the bookshelves back into place.
"I…I couldn't." Irelia states, shaking her head.
"I know." Rakan states, "And if she is here, then you will likely need to do the same for me. I have a feeling Xayah…can't be far behind."
"Do they know?" Irelia asks, "Does he?"
"I have no idea." Rakan answers, "It might just be they want us."
Irelia falls silent as they race after their compatriots descending deep within the mountain.
Akali looks around furtively, the odd-almost flesh-like webbing hanging from the ceilings.
"Any idea what this is?" Erath asks, carefully walking around a patch on the floor that had tightly wound itself around an urn.
"No, some form of spiritual corruption, I guess." Akali states, shrugging.
"I thought the Kinkou were like experts about that stuff." Erath states, pointing a thumb back at Irelia, "That's what she's been saying."
Akali chuckles darkly, "I wasn't the greatest student."
A deep groan resonates from ahead, almost as if in response.
Akali turns the corner and freezes as a faint pale blue light catches her eyes from a nearby alcove.
Stepping towards it, she finds a mass of webbing, curling around what at first glance appears to be a faint pale flame similar to the torches along the walls but a different color.
"What is it?" Irelia asks.
"I don't…." Akali begins, stopping as very briefly the flame shifts and a face appears, eyes closed, mouth downturned, as if it is locked within a bad dream.
She turns, a pit forming in her stomach as other lights faintly shine from within similar masses of thick webbing across the path before them.
"They're cocoons," she states, shifting to the next one and the one after that, spectral faces locked in fitful sleep meeting her gaze every time.
"My skin is starting to itch." Rakan states, "There is magic in this place, twisted, but not like the Ruination, at least not fully. It's just…not right."
"These cocoons, and the Azakana, are they connected?" Erath demands.
"I think…I think these are my people. We learned how to step into the spirit world, leaving their bodies behind." Akali states, "Something, maybe the same thing that drew the Azakana here, trapped them down here, and the Azakana took over their empty bodies.
"Then let's set them free!" Erath barks, leveling his rifle.
"Don't!" Irelia orders, grabbing his arm, "With the Spirit Ruined, you'd just as likely damn them as save them; this isn't something we are going to be able to smash our way out of."
Akali looks up at the ceiling, realizing that all of the webbing is funneling towards a central location ahead of them, "Or maybe it is."
She darts ahead, leaving the other three in the dust.
"Akali!" Irelia calls, "We're running out of time!"
She ignores her, darting down passages, the others faintly following her. The cocoons become more and more numerous as she goes.
She skids to a stop as she hears breathing and sees a vibrant pale-blue glow bathing the entrance before her.
Cautiously she steps within, drawing her weapons, and freezes, eyes wide at what she sees in the center of the room.
In the center of the room was a blue dome emerging from a familiar blade pined into the floor, but that was not what had captured her attention.
A horrific mass was within the dome, connected to the ceiling by long moving tendrils.
Dozens of Azakana coiled together in a mass of grasping limbs, rolling eyes, and snarling masked faces. Two hands firmly grasped the hilt of the blade, two distinctly human hands, as the corpulent form sat kneeling beside it.
The others join her, shock and disgust crossing their faces as every eye on the horrid thing turns to look at them in unison.
"I rescind my previous statement," Rakan mutters, drawing his pistol.
Akali barely pays attention to him, placing her hand flat against the dome as the being shifts and another face looks up, almost buried within the writhing mass clinging to his back.
"A…ka…li?" Shen asks, his voice little more than a strained whisper, mimicked by the dozens of maws covering the parasite clinging to his form.
"Master?" she whispers, crouching before him.
"You….should…leave." he gasps, wincing as another face emerges from his shoulder, boar-like with barbed tusks.
Footsteps begin to echo all about them, laughter, snarling, and crying filling the eerie silence from moments before.
"Stand ready," Irelia states, blades spinning.
"I really, really hate this place," Erath mutters as the Azakana begin to stalk towards them out of the darkness.
And scene!
Yeah, so this…got weird. Sorry for the shorter chapter.
See you, folks, tomorrow for more Silvermere.
As always, comments, questions, and critiques are appreciated. This has been VerBeeker, signing off!
