-
The earlier fight had left Vince slightly rattled. How the fuck had his sword gotten caught? He should have been able to rip through any of these lesser undead like tissue. He glanced over his blade while he let the ruin of the Istien Academy sink in on Qadira. Long ago, during Raiaera's golden age, it had been referred to as the glass star of Eluriand. It had been the home to some of the greatest minds of the land, and some the of the most powerful spell singers had been trained right here. Now, it was mere ruins. Ornate silver arches that once held crystalline panes of glass lied in crumbled heaps, the glass shattered forming a shimmering crystal sea of menacing shards. It's roof had caved in, leaving the support beams and infrastructure to jut out into the sky like an exposed rib-cage of carrion left to rot. The air was filled with a deathly silence, sending shivers down the scholar's spine. In another world, or another lifetime, he would have come here to study as the Hierophant...
The scholar swallowed the lump in his throat and spoke. "Somewhere in here is a cache of research down by Elias T Sylvarious..." the words echoed softly through the ruins. "He had led the charge against Xem'zund during the war of the Tap, and his work could prove a fatal weapon against the remnants of this plague..."
-
Qadira examined the library that stood before her and felt a slight sense of dread. Two days. Two days was the sum total of all of her memories and here she was, getting ready to delve into a dangerous library with undead horrors and who knows whatever else. She weighed her options having this realization.
'Should I really stay with this guy and risk my life beside him?' she thought solemnly. It was true that he was very capable in combat and was unlikely to falter in a way that would get himself killed, but would he be able to continue to protect her? What if they were to come across some untold horror inside this place and he was unable to keep both of them alive. Surely the young man would prioritize his own life before hers, especially considering her life may not even truly be considered living. 'Although, my other options aren't as good' she pressed her fingers to her temples, trying to calculate her chances of survival. The young man was probably unlikely to want to just leave after all this time, meaning she would have to either brave her way to some sort of sanctuary on her own, or wait for him to come out unharmed. People may not be as welcoming to her... condition, as Vince was, and she didn't want to have to take her chances protecting herself waiting on him for who knows how long.
"Alright" she spoke suddenly. During the course of her thinking a few minutes of thinking, the scholar would be inspecting the building and deciding their course of action, she decided to see this thing through to the end. "Although..." she took notice of all the shattered glass, and then her own feet. She hadn't been buried with any form of footwear, and she'd rather not have to remove a bunch of glass from her feet. "Would you mind helping me past all this glass?" she asked with a sort of chuckle
-
The scholar took a moment to notice Qadira’s feet for a moment. He’d been much too busy to notice her situation before. He raised an eyebrow behind his mask and let out a sigh.
“That would be an issue wouldn’t it?” He mused aloud. He debated how to go about doing this, but a group of soft moaning behind them drew the scholar’s attention to a crowd of ten or so undead shambling closer. Without second thought he scooped Qadira up bridal style and made his way across the sea of glass, his boots crunching with every step. Ignoring any complaints from his guest, he entered the shady library with ease.
Once in the shadows, the scholar scanned the interior carefully. Bookcases seemed scattered and shattered, leaving little in terms of the initial library. The odd text lay strewn about, but the scholar didn’t even need to stop and check to see that the books were far from usable. Years of being open to the elements had decimated the first floor of the library.
“Keep an eye out for a trap door, or maybe some stairs leading downwards.” The scholar mused glancing about.
-
Qadira nodded in acknowledgement of the information the scholar had given her. She noticed large portions of the glass had been almost pushed aside as if to make pathways and looked to him so he would set her back down. The warmth of his skin had been pleasant against her own, but there was work to be done.
She scanned the room, exploring inquisitively and surveying some of the books as she went along. She had hoped to pick up some sort of momento for herself while she had been here, and perhaps learn a few things of her own, but all of the books were either too worn or completely torn apart from the elements. She sighed to herself and continued look on through the building, appreciating the architecture as she made her way to the back end. She noticed a staircase that lead higher into the building, and upon closer inspection saw a lot of rubble that seemed to be blocking passage to a staircase that would lead further down.
“Hey Vince?” she called out to him, turning to find him effortlessly lifting a particularly large bookcase that had fallen over. “Oh my” she gasped to herself “How can you even be that strong?” she asked a bit wide eyed. After a moment of distraction she shook her head, she was digressing. “Nevermind that. I found the way down, but there’s a bit of a problem over here.” She gestured towards the rubble near her.
The scholar turned his gaze to where the young woman was pointing and raised an eyebrow as he rubbed his chin. “That does look like a lot of rubble, but I think I can take a crack at it.” He cracked his knuckles and crossed the library, brushing aside glass with his feet to make a path for Qadira to follow. It seemed like the once grandiose center of knowledge had been shattered into a sea of diamond. When the arrived at the foot of the steps, he let out a soft tut before tapping his feet. The rubble was indeed blocking what appeared to be a stairway descending into the lower floors of the school, but it was a particularly large amount of rubble, and he didn’t necessarily have all day to move it.
“Any ideas?” he asked turning to his companion. “I could brute force my way through, but that would take a long time.”
-
”The woman thought for a moment and had a bit of an idea. “What if we had some help?” she said surveying the room once again. “Do you happen to see any particularly strong looking dead guys lying around?” Vince took a look around for a moment, chewing on his lower lip behind his mask.
“As far as I can tell, no…” he paused. “I can kinda see where you’re going, but I doubt any zombie will have enough strength to perform a feat of that magnitude.” he tapped his toes and glanced about for a little longer. “Maybe there’s another stairway? I doubt this is the only one…”
The two scanned around for once more, trying to file every detail away to be used for future reference before Vince piped up.
“The Library is a Star!”
“ A star?” She replied, curious to his meaning.
“A star!” He said once more. “As in it is a geometric shape with five points, which are the five wings of the library.” He paused once more, to try and clue her in. “So if there are five wings, and five entrances, then there must be…”
She shook her head in response “Five ways to go lower in the building. You know I may basically be as old as the two days I have memory of, but that doesn’t mean you should treat me like a kid!” She huffed at him and put her hands on her hips sassily.
“Well excuuuuse me princess.” Vince said rolling his eyes. “I was trying to help you make the discovery for yourself.” he paused and without looking pointed to the right at another pile of rubble. “By my calculation the nearest other staircase should be over there.”
She nodded and walked up behind him. Without warning she jumped up and onto his back, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. “Well! Sounds like that’s the way to go then!” She said chuckling a bit.
“Since when did I become a horse?” Vincent asked as he began walking through the sea of broken glass, each step a cacophony of crunches. When they reached the next staircase they found that both passages were impassable, prompting him to begin progress to the next one.
“You’re super light, did you know that?” Vincent asked over his shoulder. “Like...you weigh almost nothing at all. It’s like you’re not even there.”
She shrugged leaning forward against him without thinking. “Well after seeing the way you lifted that bookcase that’s not surprising to me at all. I mean I’m pretty thin anyways, besides my obvious curves of course” she thought on the matter a bit more “Perhaps it would be better to find me shoes anyways, incase you need your hands to fight?” The scholar thought for a moment on the issue, tutting softly under his breath.
“You have a good point.” He muttered as they reached the third staircase, both piles of impassable rubble. “But I don’t know where we’d even find shoes your size in a literal ghost town such as this.” He started walking to the fourth staircase, still deep in thought. “Perhaps the librarians had a living quarters down below? Or maybe we might luck out and find a felled corpse with your shoe size…”
-
She nodded in agreement with this idea “The corpse will probably be our best bet. I know there’s some pretty die hard fanatics of knowledge, but I can’t see people wanting to live at a library every day. Who knows though, i’ve been surprised by much less likely things” she chuckled and starting poking Vincent’s mask, sort of like a fish in a bowl, out of boredom. “Vince this is taking forever” she muttered.
“I’m sorry but I can’t control the fucking stairs.” He replied chuckling. “We better hope we find a way down soon, or we may have to commit to me digging through the rubble and forcing our way down.” He kicked a bookcase sending it clattering to the ground and scrambled over it, approaching the fourth stairway only to find it blocked once more. “For fuck’s sake.” He growled. “If this next one works, we just wasted our time walking a lap around the library for nothing.”
Qadira shook her head and laughed “At least we had a chance to socialize a little bit during this time. Too much stress isn’t good for you I hear. Although I’m unsure how that would even affect my body” she thought about this for a moment more. “As a matter of fact i’m not sure how a lot of stuff affects my body. I should perform some tests with some undead once we’re done here.”
The scholar rolled his eyes behind his mask and kept going for several moments before stopping. Before him was a rather “pristine” looking clearing. Several fallen bookcases seemed to form a circular barrier, and in the center was a perfectly preserved table. Sitting in a chair, but slumped over the table, was the corpse of a young woman. Beneath each of her dangling arms were crimson stains, which could lead Vincent to one conclusion.
“She slit her wrists to avoid becoming undead…” he muttered shaking his head. Normally that wouldn’t work, for such magics had a way of taking people without infecting them during their life, but it seemed in this case it had worked. He paused for a moment, his eyes scanning over the decayed corpse of a fellow knowledge lover. “She has some nice shoes…”
Qadira rolled her eyes at the comment and gestured towards the table. “Mind setting me down so I can try them on?” She waited for her valiant steed to lead her to the table and loosened her grip so as to sit with her legs dangling above the ground. “I wonder who she was. This seems like a strange place for a woman her age to dawdle about”.
“Elves tend to look younger than they actually are.” Vincent replied stretching. “There were a great deal of magic schools associated with this place a long time ago. She could have been a student, or maybe a member of the nobility seeking asylum in the one place she thought would never fall. I have no clue…”
The necromantress looked to Vince with an idea. “We could always ask, if you think it’s worth the trouble. I don’t want to over exert myself when it comes to my power, considering i’m not a hundred percent sure how it even works” she thought about the possibilities whilst kicking her legs playfully beneath the table. “Either way, I’d appreciate if you could help me with those shoes she’s wearing”
-
The scholar raised an eyebrow at her assumption and simply walked to the corpse, pressing his left thumb and index fingers on her chin and pinched. As he opened her mouth, a stream of dust flowed freely from her jaw.
“I doubt she could tell us with no tongue.” He quipped. “She’s probably been dead for several years, and whatever foul rot has taken this place seems to have advanced the rate of decay here.” He crouched down and began to fiddle with the woman's shoes, eventually prying them free while still leaving the foot attached to the body. Once he had both boots, he rose and handed them off to Qadira. “They sure look like they’ll make a good fit…”
She carefully slipped them onto her feet, trying not to tear apart the old looking material holding the shoe together. It wasn’t much, and it felt a bit loose, but it was enough to let her walk around without having to worry about pieces of glass in her feet. “Thanks” she said scooting off the table and onto her feet. “Well I suppose we should find that staircase?”
“I suppose so…” Vince muttered looking back to where they had been heading. “Stay close though…” With that they were off once more. With both of his hands free, Vince drew a sword from a flash of blue and lead while Qadira followed behind carefully. When the reached the final staircase Vince was surprised to see that both staircases seemed to be in borderline perfect condition. As he stared into the darkness below he felt a strange sense of dread wash over him. He felt goosebumps start to form along his arms, and a cold sweat began to drip down his neck.
“Suddenly...I’m not too sure about this Qadira…”
She raised an eyebrow at his sudden reservations. “What’s the matter? We came all this way and you were so confident before” she replied to him. “Afraid of the dark?” she teased not grasping just how perturbed Vincent was.
“I have seen some shit.” Vince muttered between clenched teeth. “But whatever is down there...is a whole new level of fucked up.” He shivered and took a step forward. “I'm gonna stab it to death.”
-
She chuckled at his choice of words and nodded. “Whatever you say Mr. Hero” she muttered following behind him as he took his first step into the abyss that lay before them. She went step by step into the stairs, following close behind Vincent.
Each step made the temperature drop dramatically. They went from a moderately sauna like temperature to a frigid cold. The light seemed to almost be...supernaturally dimmed. Hissing, Vincent snapped his fingers and in a flash of blue light pulled out a crystal orb. He grabbed Qadira and pulled her closer, pressing her against his chest.
“Close your eyes.” He commanded. When she had done so, he hissed under his breath. “Ignite.” The crystal sparked, and a massive blue flame ignited inside bathing the catacomb with a brilliant blue light. Just as the scholar suspected, it seemed that the darkness was so thick it was an actual presence, an inky black mist swathing all that existed in the depths of this temple of death into a bottomless abyss. “This is worse than I thought…”
Before them lay a barely illuminated hall that seemed to fall off into a pitch black void. Vincent, with sword drawn, stepped forward and gingerly pressed the orb into the woman’s hands. “Carry the light, and whatever you do, don’t drop it.”
The woman took the crystal ball gingerly in her hands, almost afraid to hold it. She could feel the gentle warmth radiate through the glass and into her hands. It issued a sense of ease to her, but wasn’t enough to distract her from the eerie and unsettling setting that surrounded them.
“So” she trailed off, looking around the narrow hall “What’s the plan, because this is starting to get really creepy really quickly” She followed close behind the scholar, hoping nothing would leap from the shadows.
“Well…” Vince half whispered. “This is the part where we hunt down a giant undead monster that is a literal walking library. He’s a behemoth with a veritable shitton of the notes and works of the dark god who created this plague.” The scholar paused and held his hand up to Qadira to shush her and then brought it to his ear to strain his hearing. “I think we might be close...but I can’t tell for the fucking life of me with all this echo…”
-
Qadira strained her ear as well, listening to the silence with all her might. After what felt like an eternity, she heard a sound.
Thump.
Vincent’s pulse quickened as he heard it too. He brought both hands to his blade and dropped into a half crouch, brandishing his blade at the ready over his head. “Whatever happens…” he whispered. “Don’t panic.”
Thump…..
Thump…
Thump..
Thump Thump Thump
The steps began to pick up speed, but Vincent couldn’t tell if it was his heart of whatever was coming at him.
Thum Thump thump thump thump
The scholar’s breathing quickened.
ThumpThumpThumpThumpThumpThumpThumpThumpThumpThump ThumpThumpThumpThumpThumpThumpThumpThumpThumpThump ThumpThumpThumpThumpThumpThumpThumpThump
The apparent footsteps seemed to grow faster and ever louder with every passing second. Vincent’s heart raced to keep tempo when suddenly….
Thump….Thump….Thump.
The footsteps seemed to fade to a stop, or perhaps even disappear alltogether. As if the beast had vanished, or headed in the other direction.
“I...think…” Qadira managed to squeak out of her clenched teeth. “I think it’-”
“MOVE!” Vincent roared tackling the young lich to the ground. A massive claw of flesh and bone smashed through the wall to their right, exactly where Qadira had been standing. The orb flew from her hands and clacked noisily away, into the darkness, leaving the area the two in to fade into darkness. “Fuck.” The scholar spat scooping Qadira into his arms. He looked up to see his foe step into the light, the orb behind him casting a sinister silhouette over. Or, it would have, if it could fit…
The thing before them could only be described as an abomination. Several corpses seened to be crudely stiched, shackled, and sewn together to form some bastardization of an arm. Jutting from the elbow seemed to be a singular figure with glowing red eyes, staring at them. The grotesque appendage turned one hundred and eighty degrees, crunching and snapping as the corpses broke and reform to accommodate the unnatural abominations movement. Five “fingers” seemed to loom towards them, singular bodies jutting from a meaty “hand” each with two arms and crimson red eyes. Each “finger” crooked it’s head at the duo, as if it too was having a hard time seeing in this abyss.
Or maybe it was trying to figure out why one of their sisters was with a member of the living.
Without speak the scholar scrambled to his feet and set Qadira on hers. “RUN.” He bellowed, pointing back at where they had come from. “AND DON’T LOOK BACK. GET TO WHERE THAT WOMAN WAS.” With that he was charging forward, swinging his blade with deadly intent.
-
As the woman was helped to her feet she scrambled trying to find the way from which they came. She quickly replayed the events that had just transpired back in her head and managed to reverse engineer the direction they came from. She hesitated, looking towards the scholar. She felt a tugging in her gut, saying that she should help in some way, but in her mind she knew there was currently nothing she could do. She turned her back to him and ran. She bolted into the darkness, scared she might run into some other unholy abomination, but kept running. Her body screamed a burning pain to her, she obviously wasn’t meant to exert her undead physique quite this much, but she kept on. As she found the stairs she scrambled to climb them, and after a few moments, found herself bathed in the familiar warmth of the library, and the light coming through where glass
once was.
She fell to her hands and knees, instinctively she gasped for air, and it offered some slight respite, but ultimately the toll of being so active was taken on her body. “I hope Vince is okay” she trailed off, looking back at the staircase, and waited for his return…