Chapter 25:
A deluge of undeath
Cassia took point, her spear directed at any potential threats in the darkness enveloping them. Strom and Izuku kept close to her, at the ready to annihilate anything that might threaten her.
It wasn't long before they encountered one of those things. Mummies, which he should have expected to see in the underground burial chambers of an ancient desert tribe, came as a bit of a surprise to him. Five of the ancient undead meandered around the chamber they entered, but none took notice of them. They just wandered about, leaking dust and sand from their creaking joints as they moved.
"Izuku, if you would be so kind." Cassia invited as she backed away.
Izuku stepped forward and slung five, well-aimed, ice bolts at their legs, thoroughly kneecapping them. With the support of their lower bodies gone their frail bodies crashed to the ground and shattered like pottery. A plume of dust and a green vapor erupted from those shattered remains and they all stepped back, covering their mouths.
"So do you reckon the Vizjerei booby trapped their dead before burial, or Radamant did so after reanimating them?" Strom asked.
It was a good question. Honestly? It could be either. Maybe both? If Radamant, the resurrected Horodric mage, was willing to violate his dead brothers now what's to say he and others of his kind wouldn't have done so in life?
"Anyways, those ones need to be fought at a distance." Strom said the obvious as the poisonous plumes faded away like cooling steam.
They continued on, with Izuku remaining at the rear with ice spells at the ready. As they wandered through the maze of passages they dodged sewage seeping down from the ceiling, rat nests the size of elephants and a whole lot of reanimated skeletons.
Each was crimson like dried blood, and Izuku nearly had a heart attack when the first one launched a flaming arrow much like the sister rogues could hurl. Fortunately, no gas explosion resulted and the trio cut them down quickly, but after that Izuku kept the ice nova and ice wall spells at the ready.
"Actually, are you guys okay with me casting ice armor on you?" Izuku asked. "In case there's another explosion and I can't get an ice wall up in time?"
"That is a splendid idea. Please, do." Said Cassia as Strom nodded vigorously.
He raked his hands over their bodies, meticulously coating them in a thick layer of ice and being careful to leave their joints unaffected. It added a few minutes to their mission but if it saved their lives it would be worth every second. He finally did the same to himself and they continued on.
They came upon a large staircase similar to the one that brought them down from the sewers and knew it would lead to the third and final floor of this place. Radamant would be there. Unfortunately, said staircase was barricaded with rubble leaving nothing but the ceiling visible.
"Aden and Quetz must have sealed the way behind them to keep the upper levels and Lut Gholein safe until another team could go down." Cassia said.
Brave they may not have been for fleeing their battle with Radamant when things got too dangerous, but dumb or lazy they certainly were not. Their recognizing their own inability to finish the job not only saved their own lives, but may very well have already saved many more and certainly made their jobs easier.
"What do you think? Can we get away with blasting it all open?" Strom asked.
Izuku considered it.
"Well, I could preemptively surround us in an ice wall and then we can try to firebolt and fissure it all into nothing. But if there is an explosion it might still injure or kill us, or worse, cause a cave in and trap us." Izuku reasoned.
Strom sighed.
"Yeah. I didn't think it would be worth the risk either, but I wanted a second opinion. Alright. Time to put these arms of mine to good use. You two keep me safe." Strom said.
He went to the blockade and put those arms of his to good use. He dragged the solid boulders, pieces of shattered columns and coffins around like a child moving furniture in a living room. He struggled, he grunted, and he even broke a sweat despite the inherent chill the ice armor Izuku had given him but he got it done all the same.
He finally revealed the staircase down to find the ceiling had been deliberately caved in, so as to form a solid mass of stone and brick. Even Strom wasn't dragging that around. So instead of trying, he drew what looked to Izuku like Mjolnir itself, so grand was the hammer, and he got to work smashing the last barrier blocking the stairwell.
One strike turned to two strikes turned to ten. All the while he worked, Cassia stared at him appreciatively, even fanning herself off flirtatiously as if the man could see her. Was there a point to flirting if the person you're flirting with can't see or hear you doing it to them? Was there some enjoyment in one-sided flirting for the flirter? People are weird.
The stone finally gave way to the might of Strom's obviously enchanted hammer cracking it in twain. He lifted it for a final strike, only for the stone to shift, and shift towards him. He backed away quickly in order to avoid being crushed by the tonnes of stone, only to then raise his weapon again as a flood of the crimson red skeletons from before spewed forth from the now clear stairwell.
Izuku lunged towards Strom and released an ice nova, taking extra precaution not to harm or slow down his retreating ally. The skeletons, each of whom seemed to be carrying duel firebolts in their hands, were frozen in place and their fire spells extinguished as Strom scrambled to the side of one of the boulders he had dragged away earlier.
Cassia had run forward to be next to him and together they laid waste to the dozen or so skeletons that had been frozen in place. They tore through the enemies like fragile icicles with both hammer and trident, but dozens more replaced them. And so the horde bashed against them like waves upon a cliff.
Izuku began his drinking game. Cast a few ice nova, take a swig of the watered down mana potion, and repeat. He should have had a shot glass ready. It was so routine, but the horde seemed endless. The stairway was soon blocked again, this time by the pile of bone meal and splinters that remained of their enemies, yet more pushed through. Like moles pushing up dirt, they exploded forth again.
They had laid to waste at least a few hundred by now, if not more, and it was clear to Izuku that Radament wasn't the one to defeat Aden and Greiz, it was the numbers. But Izuku, Strom and Cassia had an advantage that those two had not. Aside from being a three man team, they had the entirety of the enemy forces funneled into a stairwell to annihilate, instead of fighting them in chunks while running around the maze of sewers and catacombs. Three vs hundreds, like the three hundred Spartans versus the thousands of Persians under Xerxes.
Remembering how the western world's Thermopylae had ended, he took the chance to reinforce the barrier with an ice wall along with the side passage ways. This would prevent anything from sneaking around through passages unknown and pincer attacking them.
The battle of attrition had slogged along with each minute feeling like an hour, and they had to retreat not for their own safety, but just to let the enemy have enough space to filter in through the mound of defeated enemies. By the end, their backs were to wall further back and they were left panting and exhausted, but uninjured.
"I grow more Impressed with Aden and Quetz the deeper we go." Strom said between panting breaths.
Izuku and Cassia nodded in complete agreement.
They waded through the mountain of the dead forcibly put back to rest and swam through the powdered remains clogging up the stairwell into the deepest layer of the catacomb sewers. From there, they met no resistance other than some more mummies wandering aimlessly.
Aden and Quetz had kicked the hornets nest, as it were, and drawn all of the enemies they would have faced to the stairwell. Now all that was left was to find Radamant, but all they found was dead ends, living spheres of ooze and rats nests, with the occasional mummy to put out of its misery.
Then he saw something, something quick and very much alive, out of the corner of his eye.
"Wait!" Izuku called out to his companions.
They stopped and looked at him, following his line of sight around a corner in the opposite direction to where they were headed.
"What?" Said Strom.
"Something is there." Izuku said.
And he advanced towards it, under low hanging columns that they wouldn't have made much notice of, but which he saw a new passage. He was able to enter by only lowering his head, but Strom and Cassia had to crawl through.
He recast his light spell to find the small room empty, save for a dead body beside a passage entrance opposite the columns.
Cassia and Strom advanced on the corpse to examine it while Izuku looked suspiciously around the room. He reached out with his mana, in the same way he had used in the past to repurpose other peoples spells to fuel his own, and was left confused.
He couldn't feel any magic in the area, per se, but where he thought he had seen somebody out of the corner of his eye he felt something. Not the mana of a spell being cast recently but the whisper of it, a strange absence as if a spell MIGHT have been cast recently, which was such a strange and new phenomena to him.
"Strom, Cassia." Izuku said.
"Yes?" They said at once.
"Is it possible to cast a spell in such a way as to not release mana, that way it can't be detected afterwards?" He asked.
Their heads both snapped up in fright at his words.
"There are those who specialize in assassinating mages and they learn to do exactly that." Said Strom.
"It takes decades of practice to do so, but yes. Mage assassins specialize in doing exactly that." Cassia said. "If you are feeling what I think you're feeling, my condolences to your mistress for having such a talented apprentice, but also we should tread carefully if not outright retreat. If a Mage Hunter is down here then they may be hunting Radamant as well. Or worse, us, and we would lose such a battle."
"I think that we are still alive should be evidence enough that we are not the target." Strom said.
Were these guys really that deadly?
"Well. Maybe that guy was their target?" Izuku asked.
"No. This corpse is over a week old." Said Cassia. "And if you are feeling even a hint of a masked spell, then we would have missed the caster by moments, minutes at most. Do you still feel it now?"
Izuku reached out again and, sure enough, the feeling was gone.
"No." He said.
"Then we should advance on to find Radamant. We have scoured the rest of this maze, knowing our luck, you were just short enough to spot or feel this area and it leads right to him." Strom said.
Knowing their luck, he was probably right. The dead body was also a good sign, as terrible as that was to say.
The tunnel converged into a tight crawlspace that let out into a torture chamber. Bodies of men, and men alone, were strewn about on stretchers where they had been hacked to pieces and skinned. The location of their missing limbs and body parts was self-evident, as they all formed a single mass in a vaguely humanoid shape.
Radamant the Fallen had fashioned for himself a new Frankenstein's monster of a body from the still living body parts of his victims, and it was falling apart. He groaned and weeped with every step and tears fell from his eyes constantly.
He had yet to notice them enter and he was desperately trying to sew the muscles of his thigh, or somebody's thigh, back together with shaking, mummified hands.
There were other undead in the room, already defeated and destroyed possibly by the fallen mages' own hands. Radamant was alone. Radamant was broken. Radamant was pitiful. They took pity on him.
Already wounded and spiritually defeated by his abysmal state of undeath, the fireball which engulfed him elicited more screaming and crying, while Strom's Maul and Cassia's trident broke him as easily as any other mummies. He was finished with moments, as Izuku froze him solid while the other two rained blows down on him. Cassia shattered his skull with her spear, and Strom shattered his torso. It was done.
They just stood there after that, staring at the monster, the pathetic monster.
"Was he the victim of… something?" Izuku asked.
"Yes." Strom and Cassia said at once.
"What?" Izuku asked.
"That's what we need to find out." Said Cassia. "But that weeping was not over physical pain. I've seen men cry like that, but only from disgust and horror at things they were made to do. I would stake my reputation in saying he was not willingly committing these acts, or entirely in control of his actions."
Izuku nodded, and glanced around the room. Then he sighed.
There were so many bodies, and surely one of them was Atma's husband, and another her son. He did not look forward to collecting the bodies and bringing them home.
"Open a town portal, we are leaving." Said Strom. "We have done our job, others will come and recover the dead and valuables. Let us go."
Izuku was confused at the strange order, as he wasn't above such work and had done it before, but he obeyed.
He withdrew Blood Raven's grimoire and found the page for the town portal spell. He passed his fingers over the runes as if they were braille, and focused on the emotions and sensations which fueled the transportation magic. It took just as long as the last time, but the blueish-white oval appeared.
Strom and Cassia walked through and Izuku stepped forward to do the same, only to wheel around.
There was nobody there… but there was. He was certain of it. The feeling of curious eyes drilling into the back of his head was unmistakable.
He recalled Cassia and Strom's warning of Mage hunters and backed away through the portal as quickly as he could. He closed it behind him, not wanting the potential – and possibly fictional – enemy from following him through. Only afterwards did he remember that only those who are friendly to the caster can pass through a town portal.
Strom and Cassia were cleaning themselves off in a basin set aside with a sign specifically designated for washing fish guts and blood off before going back in town. It seemed like the right thing to use after battling through sewers and catacombs of undead, so he joined them.
He was tempted to share the feeling he'd had before coming through the portal, but he knew it was more paranoia and was stupid of him to wait behind at all. They were already aware of the mage capable of hiding their magic, whoever it was.
"We shall go to the palace and debrief with Jerhyn first, and leave informing others to him." Said Strom as they finished up.
Izuku nodded and they were off. They received a few looks as even after that short wash they looked like they were fresh from battle, but nobody stared at or interrupted them.
They reached the palace and the guards, clearly recognizing them, rushed them through. They were led to the gardens and Jerhyn was waiting there, with Aden and Quetz sitting on cushioned chairs and being tended to by Fara and Drognan.
They all acknowledged the three newcomers as they entered, though Aden and Quetz remained seated. Jerhyn motioned for them to speak.
"Radamant the Fallen is no more." Said Strom.
The entire room breathed a sigh of relief.
"We left the bodies and all the treasures there." Strom added.
"That is fine. You have all done enough. I will send a cleanup crew to recover the dead and eliminate anything you may have missed." Jerhyn said. "Any treasure they find is to be split between you five, in accordance with your negotiations with one another. I trust you all to fairly divvy it all amongst yourselves."
They bowed in gratitude to his confidence.
"Do you have any pertinent details you would like to share?" Asked Drognan.
For some reason, Cassia and Strom turned to him to answer that one. Okay.
"Radamant was broken. Spiritually, I mean. He wept in horror at his own actions and seemed to be trying to rebuild himself using the pieces of his victims, but was failing." Izuku explained. "I think, and my companions agree, that Radamant was not in control of his actions nor willfully malicious."
"Hmm. Then we must ask ourselves, who was?" Said Drognan. "The mystery of the horrors facing the world grow evermore. As does our need for Cain's wisdom and guidance, which he seems so reticent to share."
"With respect, sir, based on the destruction these horrors have wrought, his reticence may be more for our safety than to satisfy his stubbornness." Izuku said out of turn.
Drognan raised his eyebrows at Izuku, clearly shocked that he'd lip off to an elder at all, let alone risk doing so in such a setting. He still nodded, slowly then quickly, at his reasoning.
"Perhaps you are correct. Yes. The knowledge he has which could help us combat this evil can also be used to recreate or reinforce this evil." Drognan reasoned. "We have to trust in him to instruct us, if not reveal everything to us."
"That is an inordinate amount of trust to ask from anybody, and even with his reputation and status I struggle to place such in him." Said Jerhyn. "But for now, we will abide. For now, you are all welcome to remain here to bathe and eat."
Everybody bowed, but Cassia and Strom refused.
"Izuku, stay here and take up his offer. We have an errand to run." Strom told him.
Izuku shrugged. He had been planning to do so anyways, if for no other reason than to avoid any chance of meeting Myr in the bath. And so, he let the nearby harem girl lead him underground to the royal baths, before promptly shooing her away, annoyed at her giggling and insistence on aiding him.
Cassia entered Elzix's inn with Strom close behind her, and like the last time she entered the owner descended upon her with the rage of a mother hen.
"What did I say last time you were here?" Elzix demanded.
She raised her hands in a calming motion.
"I am here on peaceful business with Isendra, with concern for her apprentice that she needs to hear. Strom will keep me in line, although this once I think I may not need it." Cassia consoled.
Elzix glared between the two of them. Then he glared at them some more.
"If I hear so much as a raised voice, you're out." He relented.
Cassia bowed and thanked him.
She and Strom walked across the entrance hall and dining room to the thin hallway that connected to the baths on the right and a cramped staircase on the left. Ascending the latter they had to contort themselves to dodge a small shape rushing past them.
It looked to be a small girl, or possibly a cross-dressing boy, in a far too large dress. She had the distinct shape of a hand print emblazoned on her cheek. Cherry red, like it had been planted there recently.
They ignored this smidgeon of drama and entered the upstairs hallway to find one of the bedroom doors opened. Walking back inside was the object of their ire.
"Isendra." Cassia said.
The bedraggled and night-gowned woman turned to look at who called her and her expression became instantly dour and bored.
Cassia once again raised her hands in peace.
"We have news of your apprentice that we need to discuss." Cassia said. "Strom will do most of the talking."
Isendra sighed but motioned for them to enter her room. They did so, making sure to stand away from her bed and clothing, as well as the rugs, so as not to stink up her living quarters with their smell of filth and battle.
Isendra closed the door behind them and entered, before sniffing and going to open the windows. Cassia did not take offense.
"What has he done to impress everybody now?" Isendra asked.
They both snorted at the borderline hubris of her statement, but Cassia recognized that such hubris was valid. Damned, if that boy wasn't scary.
"A lot, actually, but we came here with concerns." Strom said.
"That he is more at peace in war than when at peace?" Isendra said. "And I'm assuming you took him down to fight Radamant and that said Horodric mummy is gone?"
Wow. Correct on both accounts.
"You are aware of this issue?" Cassia asked.
"I am." Said Isendra.
"And what are you doing about it?" Cassia pressed.
"Everything I can. So far the only thing that works is to feed his mind, or else numb it with work." Isendra told them. "The only time he is happy is when he is learning a new thing, or else tinkering with knowledge. Tearing it apart and putting it back together. I give him as much of it as possible and it keeps him preoccupied. Manual labor also puts him at ease, or else regular martial training."
"Do you have enough of any of those things to keep him occupied for long?" Strom asked.
"Not by myself. But between Cain taking him aside for history, geography, politics and religious study and the wide open world of jobs he can work, especially in a port city with ships in need of sailors, I hope to keep him preoccupied until he naturally matures and heals spiritually from time." Isendra explained.
Ah. She was hoping to let time heal all wounds, and to keep him numb while it does the job. That did seem like a viable strategy, possibly the only one available especially as it ties him to the locale.
If times were different she would demand she end the apprenticeship and leave the boy to an adoptive family, or revamp his apprenticeship to a more academic one. But the needs of the world were such that any warrior, let alone mage, had to be put to the horrible task of fighting these horrors. When said mage was as obviously a prodigy as Izuku Midoriya it would be inexcusable to excuse him from these duties, no matter how much he clearly needed such exemptions.
"It sounds like you need help in this." Said Strom. "I can certainly handle the labor angle. If he ever gets even the slightest bit mopey, send him to me, I'll have him out to do hard work and be beside him for it."
Cassia nodded with stroms words.
"I can help him with any and all weapons training too, save those Strom is more suited to wield. Until such time as our paths split, this is a noble thing to keep us occupied as well." Cassia offered.
"You make it sound like such a task is more healing for us than it is for him." Isendra accused.
"It could be. Children can do that to even the most traumatized warrior." Said Strom. "In fact… I can think of a few people who deserve to be roped in on this. Both as punishment, and as reward."
Isendra raised an eyebrow.
"Well, I would be delighted to hear such suggestions… Just as soon as you both get a bath and change of clothes." Isendra agreed.
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