A Soldier's Life - 332 - Descent Into Darkness

Chapter 332: Descent Into Darkness

When we returned to the others, we discussed what we had found. “If that is where the manticores come from, we should explore the chasm. The dungeon entrance may be there!” Navek voiced excitedly.

Konstantin cast doubt on his jubilation. “We are on a mountain, thousands of feet up. The ley lines where dungeons are located, are thousands of feet below the surface. It is unlikely to lead to the dungeon, and if it did, the decent would take days and be dangerous.”

Raelia offered, “It could lead to a dungeon entrance.”

Konstantin shook his head slightly, “Dungeons do not let creatures out of their portals, they only release them into the Endless Dark.”

Maveith asked, “Do you think that is what the passage we found in the Shimmering Labyrinth was?”

Raelia answered without thinking, “Maybe, but it was connected to the earth drake room, and the tunnel to the chasm was not large enough for drake.”

I didn’t need to look at Konstantin to know he had pieced it together. “You were in the Shimmering Labyrinth with them?”

“Raelia, meet Konstantin, Konstantin, meet Raelia,” I said irritably. “She was the Bartiradian Ranger guarding the summoner we were chasing. Sebastian’s drake killed her, and I stored her for a rainy day.”

“Almost killed her,” Maveith added unhelpfully. I looked at Konstantin, and it was the first time the man had looked shocked. It quickly faded, though.

Raelia, seeing there was going to be no blowback, didn’t end it there. “I am also the griffin rider that Blaze shot down over Macha. I get around,” she said jovially.

“Blaze told you he shot you down?” I asked, concerned.

“He told me how he shot down a griffin rider in the battle. I didn’t tell him it was me,” she replied calmly. Raelia had lost her griffin, Moonclaw, in the assault on Macha. She loved that griffin more than anything in the world, and sometimes, when I was holding her at night, she would talk about him with fondness while shedding a tear or two.

Konstantin found his tongue, “So, Eryk rescued in Macha?”

“Not exactly,” I interrupted to stem any confusion. “She was casting a fireball at me, and it seemed like a smart move. I then used her fireball at the aqueduct to escape when I fell down the stairs.”

“That’s not how spatial magic works,” Konstantin muttered.

Maveith agreed enthusiastically, “That’s what I told him.”

“What other spells do you have stored in there,” Konstantin said, pointing at me.

“He didn’t store the spell; I was holding the spell forms when he imprisoned me,” Raelia retorted amusingly.

“Ugh, why do you keep saying I imprisoned you!” I said, exasperated. “If I didn’t place you in my space, you would have been killed all three times!”

“You two fight like a married couple,” Navek groused. “What are we going to do about finding the source of the manticores?”

I took one more look at Konstantin to make sure he was okay with Raelia before offering my insights. “I think before we even think about descending, we need to ensure that is where the manticores are coming from. We had a great vantage point above the chasm when we found it. We could camp up there and watch it.”

“It will be cold on the ice shelf,” Raelia muttered.

“You can use my ring,” Maveith offered her.

“We can burrow under the ice and snow to create a shelter and rotate pairs,” Konstantin suggested. After further discussion, we decided to go with Konstantin’s plan. It took half a day to get us all safely up the mountain, and my dimensional space removed the ice and packed snow to create a shelter. The less intense side of my thermal stone kept the space warm. The shelter was nicely hidden and only a brief thirty-yard walk to the ledge that overlooked the chasm.

I was a little concerned when Raelia and Konstantin took one of the watches together. But when they returned, the pair were actually talking amicably. Konstantin even let Raelia study his runic weapons. “It is a Death Hunter’s sword,” she said, holding Konstantin’s favored blade. “It is forged to counter necromancy. Where did you obtain it?”

I tensed, anticipating Konstantin’s reply, “From the corpse of a Ranger. We fought together for a time before she fell in battle.” Raelia looked for more explanation, and I didn’t know the complete story myself. I had thought Konstantin had encountered an elf when he was a Hound and killed the elf and took the blade.

Konstantin continued his story, “I was a Hound and came across an elf hunting in Telhian lands. We crossed blades, and she was my superior, disarming and holding this blade to my throat. She didn’t kill me and instead asked for my aid in hunting a vampire.” Konstantin had everyone’s attention now, and Maveith and Navek paused in going to the lookout.

“What was her name?” Raelia asked softly.

“The Ranger was Kaesula of Rosana. She called the vampire Orrian,” Konstantin replied.

Raelia eyes flickered in recognition, “Kaesula disappeared some twenty years ago. Orrian was her brother and a Death Hunter as well.”

Some shock appeared on Konstantin’s face. I could see him wrestling with memories and deciding how to tell the tale. “She didn’t mention that,” he finally said and quickly finished his story. “We tracked the vampire for twenty days across the Empire and cornered it in a basement during the day. Kaesula hesitated, and the vampire latched onto her neck. It was not aware of my presence, and I killed both of them with her blade while they struggled.”

Everyone was silent, and I was stunned by the story. I was the first one to speak, “You worked with the enemy for three weeks?”

“The Death Hunters do not affiliate themselves with any one nation, though they have one of their academies in Esenhem,” Raelia said softly. “Did you retrieve her legacy blade by any chance?”

“Legacy blade?” Konstantin asked.

“She would have worn it on her hip. Kaesula’s family would want it to pass to her daughter,” Raelia said in a whisper.

“She had a daughter?” Konstantin rasped out, surprised again. “She didn’t strike me as the type.”

“Type?” Raelia snapped. “She was six centuries old and well known among all elven kind. She was one of the most incredible Death Rangers of my time. She killed more banshees and vampires than any other Death Ranger. If the story is true, she even traveled to the Undead Isle to hunt a vampire quarry. She is—was a legend.”

Konstantin seemed to consider Raelia’s words. “I don’t have her legacy blade. If I did recover it, where would I find her daughter?”

“I don’t know where she is. Her daughter, the only one I am aware of, is also a Death Hunter.” Raelia seemed to search for the name in her memory. “Chaenath. But the only way to find her is to go to one of their academies and ask. The academies are not restricted to elves, but with our longer life span, they are the preferred trainees.”

Konstantin nodded and went to rest in one of the ice alcoves. Konstantin had just spilled more of his past in the last few minutes than I had learned from in the last two years. Navek and Maveith went to watch the chasm.

Two days later, I observed a manticore flying into the chasm. It disappeared into the darkness, and we were all perplexed as to why. The following day, two manticores flew out, and Maveith had my spyglass to catch them and study them. He returned excitedly with Navek. “Two manticores left the chasm—a male and a female!”

Navek shared his thoughts, saying, “I believe the male flew down to catch the female when she left the dungeon. Mating season is just beginning, and since there are so few females, it must be known when new manticores are released! It’s proof! We should descend!”

“We still don’t know how deep the chasm is. As Konstantin said, if it goes all the way to the ley line, that could be thousands of feet down. We don’t have enough rope, to scale to such depths—or to climb out.” I rationalized.

“We might not have to climb out,” Konstantin hypothesized. “If we can find the dungeon access, we can exit the dungeon from inside and find where its portal is located.” That made too much sense, and I guessed Konstantin had been thinking about it for some time.

“We have, what, two hundred feet of rope?” I expressed my concerns. “As we slowly climb down, we will be easy targets for the manticores. Not to mention, we don’t know what other horrors lurk in the darkness.” Maveith nodded, likely recalling our encounter in the Shimmering Labyrinth. Although we never saw what was lurking below, it instilled a sense of terror and a flight response in us.

“Baldo could carry me down quickly, and I could scout,” Raelia offered fearlessly. “He is strong enough to fly with me for a few minutes.”

“Definitely not! A single manticore could kill Baldo easily, and you would both fall to your deaths,” I growled at her stupidity. She looked back at me defiantly.

“Whose Baldo?” Navek asked, confused, but we ignored him.

“We should climb down and inspect the chasm closer,” Konstantin offered a compromise. “All we can see from up here is a fissure in the snow.”

That seemed to placate the group and we moved out an hour later to scramble down the cliff and approach the chasm. The only thing I did not like about this plan was we were leaving footprints in the snow. Manticores were not dumb and if they found them, they would be able to trace them back to our shelter.

It was late evening when we arrived at the edge of the chasm. A low howling wind rose from the depths, carrying warm, stale air. Water dripped down into the chasm as we peered over the edge as a group. It was completely dark below. “Looks like it goes all the way to the abyss,” Konstantin muttered.

“There looks to be a staircase on the far side,” Raelia pointed out. Even with my dark vision, it was too far to see what she indicated.

“We should toss some glowstones to illuminate the far side,” Maveith suggested. It would take hours to climb back up the cliff we had just descended and descend to the other side to get a closer look at what Raelia was indicating.

I considered his idea. “It would alert the manticores we were here and may draw attention from below.”

“I think it would give us a good idea of how deep its chasm might be. I just hate losing my glowstone,” Konstantin muttered.

I sighed, and a massive block of blue glowstone appeared next to me on the rocky ledge we were standing on. I think Navek was done being surprised by my displays. “Maveith, you can do the honors. Make a fistful of stones and toss them.” I had asked Maveith to make smaller glowstones for me from the blue, red, yellow, and purple glowstone blocks I had. He had agreed, but we just never got around to it as he had been busy on the voyage and occupied since we arrived in Eternis.

“Never seen a blue glowstone before,” Konstantin said, rubbing his hand across the stone. Raelia had seen the red block on the voyage. Due to their mass, it drained a lot of aether for me to take them out.

“The red glowstone had a slight affinity for fire,” Raelia offered what little she learned from the red variety. “I am guessing the blue has an affinity for water or air.”

“You have a red block this size?” Konstantin asked, amazed.

I waved like it was no big deal, “Purple and yellow, too. I was saving them for a rainy day.”

As Konstantin appraised me, Maveith was already using his shape stone to quickly create a bunch of small blue light stones. We let him work for ten minutes before he announced that he was out of aether. We took a few moments to prepare for a possible attack, and then Maveith threw a handful of blue stones across the chasm. The dots of light crossed the seventy yards to the other side, with only a few landing on ledges, while most of them bounced off the wall and fell into the abyss.

I was focused on watching the stones disappear into the pit as they seemed to fall forever. So far, their light eventually faded from my sight. I took it as a sign that we didn’t have time to descend. Konstantin interrupted my thoughts, saying, “Raelia was right. Those are stairs carved into the opposite wall.”

I looked up, and my eyes pieced together the shadows. Shit, I thought, because I knew Konstantin's next words. “We should go to the other side and see how far they go down.”

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