But for how long?
His skills had rarely been matched in his temple. But for all his expertise, his talent was better used against foes whose flesh was living, or at least supple. Of the many lessons he'd learned at Xiang, one was fundamental. In a fight, a defender either treated himself as the center and moved his foes around him, or he treated his foes as the center and moved around them. Raidon was a master of the former fighting style. Unfortunately, it was a style unsuited to fighting animated fossilized corpses.
He fell back, kicking, chopping, and evading until he stood only a few paces from Kiril. He yelled, "These creatures attack us without end! Are they truly undead, or is the earth itself forming and spewing them forth, mockeries of life meant to deprive us of ours?"
The ferocious but strangely vacant gaze of the swordswoman, as she methodically destroyed every monstrosity that strayed into her reach, gained some measure of animation. She muttered, "If they're being created as quickly as we can destroy them . . ."
"Then we are doomed if we make a stand here," finished Raidon, sidestepping the bull rush of a towering stone humanoid.
Kiril gritted her teeth and said, "Hear that, bastard? This fight is concluded already—you're just too dim-witted to recognize it." Raidon realized she spoke to her blade. "Ease up on me, and I can get us out of here. Should I die here, you'll be without a wielder. You'll have no vessel for your damned piety. We're close to Stardeep. Have you considered this uprising might be a ploy of the Traitor . . ."
She suddenly pirouetted in a full blazing circle, smashing half a dozen advancing figures to rubble. She continued, ". . . though these . . . undead or stoneborn ... do not have the feel of something left behind by aberrations. They are something different. I doubt they are tethered to the Traitor's will."
"But they are no less a threat. We must flee someplace safer, somewhere we can tend Adrik. And, I tire," confessed Raidon. He didn't have a magic blade to feed him limitless strength, or to mend his bones and stitch his flesh when he miscalculated. The blood flowing from his scalp threatened to obscure vision in his left eye. Several cuts on his arms and chest threatened to spill blood, but were restrained from gushing only through his strict control and focus on his body. If one more stone fist penetrated his guard and smashed him, he might fall.
The animate stone with Raidon's daito embedded in its neck trundled into Kiril, arms wide, undeterred by the length of steel. It knocked her back two paces. Her eyes lost their moment of coherence. She yelled in an oddly resonant voice, "Pretenders at life, feel the Cerulean Fire!" She lopped the arm, upper chest, and head from her attacker as if it were formed of clay, not stone.
The daito clattered free and Raidon retrieved it with an easy motion. He sheathed it immediately. He couldn't risk using it again, and more importantly, he did not want to view any damage upon the weapon from his brash attack.
Abruptly, a colossal hand reached down and plucked Adrik from the ground. Raidon yelled, but the fungus hulk turned and thundered clear of the mushroom grove. It ran toward an opening in a far wall, bowling over several stony attackers who failed to clear its path.
"Kiril, we must follow—that thing has Adrik!" The monk backed quickly toward the retreating fungus hulk. Had they been fooled by the hulk? Did it think the fallen sorcerer was food?
The swordswoman, with an obvious effort of will, also fell into a retreat. She called, "Follow it—the creature forges a path for us, knowingly or not!" Above her, the circling dragonet pealed an ongoing commentary on the battle raging below it.
As soon as Kiril committed to the withdrawal, Raidon turned and accelerated toward the hulk's broad back. Few things could hope to match the monk's unhindered speed. Dodging a few grasping arms, he caught up with the beast that clutched Adrik. He was right behind as it plunged into a wide tunnel.
The spore haze seemed to move with the creature. The light emitted by the haze gave everything an unearthly blue tint, a halo of sorts. By its illumination, Raidon saw the tunnel ahead was clear of stumbling fossils. So far.
The strange creature held the sorcerer securely in one arm, nestled against its chest like a mother might hold a babe. The pose lent Raidon sudden reassurance—for whatever reason, the fungus hulk was protecting Adrik. Intuition told him that as long as the creature lived, Adrik would be safe.
Raidon's shadow suddenly deepened and stretched ahead. Kiril and Angul must have entered the tunnel. He glanced back, saw the elf managing a pace quicker than he would have supposed, though her blade probably fed her speed. That sword, cursed though she proclaimed, was a relic of power unlike Raidon had ever seen.
In their wake, a flood of stone-clasped marauders followed.
* * * * *
Kiril held her sword like a standard. She marched beneath its haughty certainty. Angul burned like a brand, with a cerulean fire unique to it, illuminating the wide, high tunnel down which she coursed. The hard-edged light Angul shed fought with the softer, bioluminescent haze that clung to the fungus hulk, which bloomed along the same tunnel. The enigmatic creature yet gripped the sorcerer in a tender clutch. The beast bled ichor from scores of wounds. It had lost so much internal fluid without impairment Kiril wondered if the ichor was necessary for the creature's survival.
Such certainly wasn't the case for Adrik. A portion of the elf's mind, free of sword-influence, worried about the injured, too-quiet sorcerer. What did the great striding creature want with him? It didn't seem to wish any of them harm; rather, it had fallen in with them as if an old ally. Perhaps it was as concerned about the undead uprising in its quiet tunnels as they were. The horrors rumored to stalk Stardeep's underdungeon had proved all too real. No wonder so few had ever managed to make the trek between Sild?yuir and the dungeon proper.
As she held Angul aloft, she noted on the back of her left hand the ugly burn scar she'd received more than half a decade ago, years after she'd set aside her duties as a Keeper. A too-close encounter with the magma heart of an active volcano. Nothing to do with Traitors, aberrations, ancient gods, undead, or fell sorceries. Seeing that scar pulled her more fully from Angul's mental grip. She took a deep breath. Gliding above, pacing her as it did so effortlessly these days, Xet chimed upon noticing her regard, as if to ask if she were returned to her right mind. She was, but she didn't sheathe the sword.
Behind them moved a cluster of ravenous fossils, and if her vigor evaporated, she'd fall behind into their remorseless clutch.
Then came a sound so hideous Kiril saw Raidon flinch. It was the sound of demons screaming torment, or the tortured cries of a thousand victims bawling out their last breath after days on the rack. It was a sound she hoped never to hear again.
The sound came from ahead. But no path was possible other than the direction of the hellborn screams. They continued their mad dash, and moments later, elf, half-elf, and fungus hulk emerged into a vast cavity.
The roof rose steadily upward and was crowned by a violet flame that stuttered and flared, one moment dim, one moment sun bright.
The light illuminated an army of hundreds, perhaps thousands of hard white figures in the midst of a terrible riot, all trying to crowd into a space beneath the light on narrow streets in the ruins of a blasted city.
Here and there, amidst the white backs and pale eroded heads, she saw the silhouettes of Knights. By the Sign, how had they come here? Many fought alone—isolated clashes surrounded by a sea of undead, each desperately swinging a weapon against a teeming mass that didn't register pain or loss. For each Knight she saw standing, she spied three more being ripped asunder by red-stained undead.
Despite the decimation of what must have been half an Empyrean company or more, the undead seemed more intent on reaching a central pyramid built of their stony brethren, which squirmed and buckled, but held its shape well enough to support a blood red throne of rough-cut crystal.
On one side of the throne a fossil, caped and crowned in violet luminescence, brandished a staff of deadly energy. Was it the Traitor, or some fell working created by the Traitor? No, Angul thought not. But yet. . .
On the other side of the ruby throne appeared a male star elf who wore the trappings of a Keeper! And in this man's hands, a blade whose outline was night's progenitor.
Something in Angul stuttered. It imparted to her, That sword is somehow familiar. . .
Kiril gasped. Angul had never before betrayed even a hint of uncertainty in the entire decade she'd wielded him.
At that moment, the fungus hulk gave voice to what sounded like a despairing moan. It crashed to the ground, turning its body as it buckled, protecting the man it held from its weighty fall. Kiril touched Angul's tip to the creature's lichen-covered carapace.
Dead, pronounced her blade. A sacrifice for a righteous cause. Turn aside now, and go to that Keeper who yet holds faith with the Sign!
Kiril winced. The blade's implication was that she, Kiril, did not hold such faith . . .
I will see us through this press, promised her sword. His fire fumed and grew, new strength rushed into her limbs, and surety of purpose infused her will. The last thing she saw as she plunged into the mob of animate neoliths was the monk bending to cradle Adrik's lolling head.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Stardeep, Underdungeon
Oppressive slumber relinquished its clotted hold, and Adrik opened his eyes. Tunnel walls rushed by on either side, bluish with luminescent haze. The hue seemed somehow familiar . . . such an effort to recall to mind why.
And what held him so snugly in arms overgrown with lichen and trailing tiny rootlets through the dank air?
He tried to voice his question, managing only to croak. The noise was enough to catch the attention of something above him—a great head swiveled forward and down to fix him with its . . . gaze? A lopsided, vegetable-like visage of wavering rhizomes and empty sensory pits. A vacant face, yet somehow, one that communicated intelligence.
Adrik was so far past exhaustion the face held little terror for him. He allowed his head to fall the other way, and saw that below, at the side of the great creature that clutched him, padded his friend from Telflamm, and the elf woman they'd met.
Unaccountably, sadness touched him. There were so many questions he had, like friends whose company he never tired of. But those friends were drifting away now. He sensed his curiosity dispersing to find a host whose life wasn't dripping away with each stuttering, slowing heartbeat.
What surprised him the most was the pain. The numbness began to give way to an agony unlike any he'd before imagined. Except for the pain right before the stern star elf guarding Stardeep's outer gate had healed him. Some lingering nilshai curse was released from the bonds that had temporarily held it. The taint began to bite into him anew.