Cenotaph of Bones: Chapter 19 (Patreon)

Chapter 19: An Army

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I opened my eyes to pure darkness.  There was an instant of panic before I realized I could feel the flow of dark qi brushing over my skin, and I was standing on my feet.  I was dream walking again.

Knowing that the wave of dark qi would pass, I just waited until it moved on.  Once it cleared, I followed it through the tunnels it was flooding as it passed.  Since it obscured everything in front of me, I didn’t realize I had reached the underground city I had seen in my last dream until I almost walked off the edge of the cliff.

When I looked down, I could see the orange glow of a river of lava deep in the depths of the dark canyon.  From this height, it looked like barely a trickle, but it was impossible to gauge its true side and depth.

Looking up, I noticed the walls had changed since the last time I was here.  There had been some recent construction to repair the ancient damage, and it now had a makeshift gate covering the opening.  There was still a large gap to either side of the gate house, so I crossed the narrow stone bridge to see where the wave of dark qi was going.

As I approached, I once again saw a sentry standing in the opening.  The bluish-green light from the lichen and mushrooms was almost non-existent this close to the walls, but it was enough to let me see the guard was certainly no longer alive.  It looked more like a piece of jerky wearing ancient armor than an actual person, but its grip on the spear it was leaning against was firm.  I couldn’t feel any aura coming from it, which was a mixed blessing.  Normally, a death cultivator had to imbue their flesh puppets with a bit of their own power to make them mobile and strong.  That wasn’t the case here, meaning it would probably be weaker than the traditional versions.  It would also make it impossible to feel the zombie approach, as it had roughly the same energy footprint as a rock.  Definitely some bad news.

Moving by the guard was uneventful, beyond it stirring a bit as I walked past.  It might have sensed a disturbance, probably because my presence made the qi in the region shift.  The energy here was almost as dense and still as everywhere else, besides the steady flow of dark and metal qi still traveling in a stream deeper into the city.  Suddenly, the reason for all the stagnant qi took on a more sinister twist.  It must be because there wasn’t anything living down here.  The cave crickets must have been just passing through.

I had lost sight of the wave I had been following, but there was only one place it could go.  The temptation to pick up my pace was strong, so I tamped it down by trying to memorize as many details as I could.  There was no doubt we would be fighting here soon, and any information I could gather now might be the difference between life and death for my friends and I.

It was clear that this place was older than the small village we were staying in.  The buildings were more stylized, with things like steps and paths showing the passage of thousands of feet over centuries of time.  They were also thicker, with more narrow doorways.  It was a hint that this place was first built with defense in mind, meaning it was probably the origin of the underground civilization - the place they had built their beachhead to explore around the area.  Normally, such a place would have been closer to the surface, with the exploration delving deeper into the mountains.  This seemed to be reversed.  Had they originated from within the ground somehow?

I had to stop worrying about the mystery of the town, because I eventually discovered what had drawn in the massive wave of dark qi.  It was the necromancer, and he was holding something very familiar to me.

Getting a good look at Hadad was impossible, due to the heavy hooded robes he was wearing.  Seriously though, could I ever get an enemy that was something besides dark and dreary?  I mean, would it kill these guys to wear something with some color?  Anyway.  The important bit was what he was using.  It was a six-foot staff, with a three-pronged claw on either end.  It was gathering the dark qi into a condensed ball on one end.  The opposite end remained empty.  The silvery metal it was constructed from reflected the dim light with an oily sheen.  It was familiar, because I was looking at the bigger version of the scepter I still carried in my storage belt.  The scepter I had found in a temple meant to be a way to access the power of the only thing worse than the nox.  The devourers.  The vorare.

Before I could get closer, I was pulled backwards.  Not by a wave of light.  This time, I fell back into a wall of pure black.  Just as it washed over me, I caught a glimpse of what was waiting behind the man holding the staff.  Thousands of skeletons, animated corpses, and moldering beasts stood in ranks, awaiting his orders.  And all of them were looking right at me.

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