Chapter 54

Nic burrowed his way out nearly a mile from their landing point, the Princess scrouging along behind him in the tunnel on her hands and knees. It was slow, sweaty work, but he didn’t want to risk the idea that his enemy might be keeping one eye on the location they crashed into.

As he pushed up, the desert obligingly cast a handful of sand up into his face; they were in the deep desolation of the wastes. There was nothing for miles but the distant shadow of the walls that surrounded the Dungeon proper.

If he went in the opposite direction, he’d find nothing, maybe forever.

Maybe if he wandered far enough he’d reach the end; maybe there’d be darkness, or maybe he’d simply wander into another Dungeon.

But today, Nic didn’t intend to find out.

As he climbed out of the tunnel and offered the Princess a hand, the sand around them began to rise. It was like it was catching on something, invisible in the air. As the wind cast it about, more and more began to ‘stick’ in place, forming…

Walls.

Doorways.

Windows.

A city was rising around them.

An empty wasteland city. Nic grimaced; he had a pretty good guess why, and that guess only got more certain as hands began to thrust their way up from the streets, clawing their way up. The dead began to rise. They were soldiers of sand, dressed in tall, crested helmets, with round shields and long spears and bodies made of twisting, dissolving-and-reforming grains of sand, like a living static.

Nic kicked one apart at the leg, and swung Peacemaker around to annihilate its head. The rest collapsed down into nothing.

But only for a second.

It began to reform instantly, and Nic scowled.

“What are they?” The princess asked.

“Sand.” Nic replied. He thought that was obvious.

“I’ve never seen sand do that.” She pointed out, glancing around.

The walls rippled.

“Down!” Nic wasted no time, using a light application of the Hand of Ash to throw her aside. An assassin burst through the wall, carrying a long blade of green stone and swimming in a river of sand that flowed above the ground, allowing it to twist bonelessly, swim gracefully; it moved like a shadow.

Nic caught it in a Hand of Ash, flinging it against the walls of the desolate city. It rippled and went through like a stone into water.

“Fuck.”

He grabbed the Princess and pulled her up, stumbling through the city together. More and more sand soldiers were lurching to block their path. Nic caught sight of priests, mummified and brittle, hobbling forward with the help of green stone staffs.

Those fragile creatures would give the sand immortality, reshaping it into warriors again and again.

They stumbled up a flight of steps, and Nic grimaced, realizing his options were limited for as long as the girl was slowing him down; he looked at her.

She was an adult.

She could handle herself.

She wouldn’t - but that was no excuse.

“Hold on for a second.” He said, and vaulted up the walls, sticky hands allowing him to climb to the rooftops. He drew Hollowsong, and raised a talisman arrow to the string. He had barely any left…

These shots would have to count.

One.

The priest’s head exploded. The sand buildings nearby collapsed, a whole portion of the city coming down in a wave of drifting dust and grit, filling the wind as it all crashed and fell.

Two.

Another priest, this one leading a contingent of warriors towards them. His shot pierced through the skull of a sand soldier and exploded as it struck the priest in the chest, caving the mummified flesh inwards. The priest looked down dumbly and began to fall.

The soldiers dissolved as it did.

The assassin was still moving, and the terrain gave it every chance to appear and disappear, flickering through walls and dashing through the empty space between; with every second it was getting closer, closer, appearing only for split seconds…

Nic fired.

The shot caught the assassin in the arm, driving it into the ground in a burning tumble. Nic reached for a fourth arrow and couldn’t find it.

The assassin rose. One arm was a burning stump, but it still held its sword, lurching forward-

“DIE.”

His voice made the city shiver. Walls bent, ceilings fell, the whole world of sand broke apart. The assassin stumbled, and Nic drew his knife from his bag, flinging it through the sky in an end-over-end tumble. The knife smashed into the assassin’s skull.

It fell.

Nic dropped back down the princess, to find her standing in a ring of glass. Soldiers of sand had been burned down to molten, glowing glass, their bodies frozen solid and molten droplets falling away from their lifted weapons.

“Not bad.” He admitted.

“I…” Her voice was fluttering and reedy. “I sort of…”

“They weren’t alive to begin with.” Nic reassured her.

“Somehow, that fails to make me feel better.” She pointed out. But Nic only grabbed her hand and dragged her deeper into the city. “Where are we going?” She demanded.

“Deeper.” Nic said. “We’re finding the heart of this. And then, we rip it out.”

Together, they ran through the living city. It was rising all around them, buildings climbing out of the sand, ancient structures forming from the desert and rising towards their ancient heights. Nic wove left and right, moving down the streets least tangled with the bodies of long-dead soldiers. Where he met them, he crashed through like a heated blade meeting cold butter.

A palace was rising in the distance. Taller and taller, spires rising out of the sands; it emerged into glory above the city.

Nic swerved, changing streets to head straight fort the palace. “It’ll be there…”

The earth surged. An undead creature, a serpent-skeleton with huge tusked protrusions rising from the vertebrae of its spine, erupted through the streets and came rushing towards them. It moved through the sand like a fish through the water.

Nic took on his Warform. His slimy, amphibian skin tore away as new flesh grew from beneath, shredding through the old like a moth discarded its chrysalis-skin. With his new strength he easily swung the Princess onto his back, and dropped to all six limbs, using his arms and his powerful tail to stay ahead of their pursuers.

One against all, this would be relatively easy.

But he was protecting an extra body, and he didn’t trust the Princess not to hold him back if he had to fight an army. Too many bodies in that situation, too many chances something went wrong.

Instead, Nic rushed to meet the corruption of the sand-city at its source.

Soldiers were marching down the steps that led to the great double doors of the palace. They started out as vague shapes of sand, buzzing and fluttering on the wind, barely held together. With each step they marched across, heading down the stairway, they became more real, more solid. By the time they reached the backs of their fellow warriors, assembling into a huge formation, they had such defined shapes you could see the details on their faces.

Some old. Some young. Some scarred by war.

They had been real people, once, Nic realized. This had been a living city.

He met the crowd of soldiers standing below the first step of the palace stairs, and crashed through them with impunity. A shadow leapt from his arm, becoming Redjaw. The beast crashed into them, his slimy flesh repelling their spears. Just behind him was Nic, venting Primordial Mist across the masses, letting it rob the sand of its animating energies and return the soldiers to unfeeling dust.

With the Princess clinging to his back and Redjaw guarding him from the rear as he ascended, Nic had no cause to fear them. His six-handed Warform could catch and break their spears like kindling. His massive fists extended into shadows of ash and annihilated the enemy.

He tore through their line and continued up the steps. Redjaw mowed down the weak, tearing them apart as they struggled back to their feet.

Reaching the great double doors of the palace, Nic slammed all six hands into the barrier. The doors creaked and groaned, slowly creaking open, dust drifting from the heights; beyond was the darkness of the tomb.

A single throne sat in light, descending from the high windows above. It was monumental in size, tall and cut from red stone, and made the small, fragile figure seated within look all the more pathetic.

Slumped on that throne was a corpse. It was mummified, its skin shriveled down to the bone, looking like a toddler in borrowed clothes as it had shrunk away, over hundreds of years, to almost vanish into its own luxurious robes.

Nic advanced forward.

Two enormous statues stepped into his path. They had the carved heads of enormous hawks and bodies made of sandstone, moving obediently to protect their master; in their eye-sockets glowed pieces of that strange, jade-green gemstone that animated the other sand soldiers.

Nic dropped the Princess to the ground. “Redjaw, guard her.” He commanded.

And he lunged for the two statues. As he ran, a massive fist crashed down, curling its fingers around him; he was nearly crushed before he abandoned his Warform to slip away in his smaller, more agile shape, teleporting up through the gaps in the fingers and running along the giant’s wrist.

The second giant swung his hand about, trying to swat Nic flat.

Instead he struck his brother, sending both giants reeling back as Nic teleported once, twice, three times through empty air, bending his curved trajectory to land directly in front of the throne.

The mummified corpse was looking at him. Its hollow eyes saw him, although it could not speak in any voice higher than a whispering gasp. It had reached immortality at the cost of being able to move, to touch the world, to be a part of anything; it had made eternity a prison for itself.

And yet it still tried to crawl away and escape from Nic’s blade.

With a single downwards hack, Nic severed the king of the sand city’s head from his shoulders. The old priest, made terrible and crooked by what he’d stolen from the gods, dissolved into sand and blew away.

Left behind was a pair of organs, turned to stone by time. The organs of the pharaoh, which his faithless attendants stole away to add to their own power…

That was the original event that created the story of this Dungeon, and Nic believed, instinctively, that only by collecting all four missing organs - the heart, lungs, liver, and brain - would he find the true key to ending that story.

All around him, the palace began to shake. Huge drifts of sand rained down from the ceiling. The massive columns holding up the walls began to blow away, dissolving…

It was time to go.