Cenotaph of Bones: Chapter 27 (Patreon)

Chapter 27: Alone

I was by myself for the first time since running away from the rock troll.  While I certainly didn’t want to be alone all the time, it was kind of nice to enjoy the quiet.  As I was moving deeper underground, I cast a wide net of qi threads to look for any hidden traps or passages.  Finding another gas trap by myself would have been a real problem.

The tunnel I had chosen wasn’t at random.  It was the one with the least amount of dust and debris, which I hoped meant it was the most traveled by the undead army.  From what I had seen during my dream walking, we had only seen a fraction of the things down here.

It was also becoming very clear to me why Wrath and Pride had sent me to the north.  If all those creatures had a bite that could infect the living, a plague the likes of which the world has never seen was brewing under these cold, abandoned mountains.  I would have to stop it.

My threads found a six-inch circle divot on the right-hand wall almost an hour into my monotonous journey.  The tunnel I was traveling down had several branches, but most appeared to be untouched.  Considering I knew I had to go deeper to find the death cultivator, I didn’t waste time checking them.  The carved circle was the first item of interest I had seen the whole time.  Something that perfect had to be man-made, so I knelt to inspect it.  It was waist-height, and the center had three equal indentations.  Three very familiar indentations.

It took a few minutes to find the three-clawed adamantine scepter in my belt, since I hadn’t messed with it in a long time.  The oily feeling seemed much worse.  Considering the history of the hunk of metal, it might have been in my head.  It was the device used as a focal point for a mass sacrifice, meant to open the door to a place where the only thing worse than the nox called home.  The devourers.  The vorare.

An entire library from the place I found the scepter was in my belt, and I had never stopped working to translate the forgotten language.  I was far from translating everything, but what I had learned wasn’t good.  While the nox turned everything to darkness, at least there was still something there.  A chance to turn the dark, back to light.  But after the vorare had moved on, there was nothing.  No darkness, no light, just emptiness.  They were the locusts of the universe, leaving nothing in their wake but shrunken husks of lifeless rock.  Why anyone would try to bring them into this world was beyond my understanding.  Some people just wanted to destroy everything, and they were happy to lose themselves to that destruction.

I put the scepter in the keyhole and turned.  There was a faint clicking sound, and a hiss of escaping air came from a section of wall a few feet down the tunnel.  The door was so well-hidden that my threads hadn’t felt its outline.

Surprisingly, it didn’t lead to a stairwell circling down into darkness.  As I pushed open the door, glow stones that lined a short hallway lit up, illuminating a quaint little temple.  There was a small altar, and six narrow stone benches where supplicants could sit.  On the altar, there were two large globes that faintly emitted a pale light.  The entire space was under almost an inch of undisturbed dust, and the corners were overflowing with piles of stacked dry scrolls.  At the lightest touch, they would certainly crumble into nothing.

I couldn’t see the floor because of the thick layer of dust, so I stood off to the side of the door and sent a tornado of wind qi inside.  The cloud that shot into the tunnel was quickly dispersed by more qi strands, and I went back in to inspect it for any traps.

The first thing I noticed was how bright the two globes were on the altar.  I didn’t feel any energy coming from them, but they were certainly familiar.  The two objects reminded me of the crystal used in the weather device the Southern Provincial King had used to control rainfall amounts, in his bid to lord over the food production for the region’s clans and sects.  I made sure it was safe to approach before walking over and inspecting them.

Upon closer inspection, I saw there were three neat grooves on the tops of each.  The glow was coming from a set of swirling runes carved inside the crystal.  I recognized them as a match to the style carved on both my scepter, and the necromancer’s staff.  It was obvious this was what the clawed ends were supposed to hold.

Before popping them on the ends of the oily metal, I double-checked the small temple to make sure I wasn’t missing anything.  The scrolls had turned into dust from the stiff wind like I thought, but they had been hiding small piles of the same ingots I had found at the dark temple.  I stored them with the few I still had remaining in my belt, giving me enough to probably make at least two or three sets of armor.  Or, several more spears of solid adamantine.

I also found a stone tablet behind the altar, covered in the lost language of the vorare worshippers.  The pitted and scarred writing was almost unreadable, but I stored it away as well.  There was a chance I could still learn something when I had a free moment to look it over closely.  A thorough search didn’t uncover anything else, so I finally got ready to place the globes in the grip of the scepter.

With only some minor fumbling, I was able to seat the first crystal properly.  I lifted it off the altar, and felt more than heard a shift in the stone near the base of the rectangular block.  I moved to the other side, just in case there was a trap.  The second globe slid into place, and I lifted it off the altar as well.  This time, there was a definite thunking sound that came from the rear.  I peeked over to see a small tray had popped free near the base.

Instead of opening it myself, I used a strand of earth qi to open the hidden drawer.  My caution was well-founded, as a needle shot out hard enough to embed itself into the arched stone ceiling.  That would have hurt.

A quick inspection of the drawer revealed a twisting three-bladed dagger and a small pouch of worked cores.  This was the real treasure.  Finally, after all this time.  Ever since I had been reincarnated, I had been searching for a quality focusing stone.  Now I had one of every element.  And I do mean, every element.  I had never seen a dark or light qi focusing stone, and now they were in my hands.  I felt like a toddler in a pastry shop.  The clarity of these were extremely high, meaning the cores used in their creation must have been at least Sky quality, possibly Heaven.  Not as good as Celestial, but those were almost never used to make focusing stones.

With these, I could cultivate each element one at a time, instead of having to slowly distill the specific element I needed from the environmental energy I was surrounded by.  Focusing stones turned whatever qi was in the area into the qi they were aspected toward, and allowed for a much larger amount to be absorbed through the meridians.  It was similar to the difference between an irrigation ditch and a raging river.  Both would water your crops, but one would manage to do it much faster.

Before I could try using any of them, I heard a shuffling sound come from the tunnel outside.  I stored the now-complete scepter, focusing stones, and the dagger in my treasury stud on my belt, and quietly moved to peek out to see what was coming.

The tunnel was filled with the undead.  There were so many I couldn’t even see the end of their orderly ranks, due to a bend up ahead.  Finally, I found them.  Well, they had found me, but the end would be the same.

I held back nothing.  My right hand spun out a wrist-thick strand of wood qi, while my left spun out a dozen smaller strands to hold on to the solid adamantine spears I pulled from my belt.  As I closed with the first rank of skeletons, I formed the runes for a popper along the length of the wood qi whip, giving my strikes a powerful boost in energy.  I had to use the energy from my lower core to empower the runes, instead of the ambient energy the pebbles we normally had the runes carved on.  I didn’t care.  I had two full batteries of qi to spare, and I couldn’t risk letting any of these things getting past me.

The first crack of my upgraded whip blasted the leading rank of skeletons into the one behind, slowing their advance.  Then, I began reaping my enemies.  I didn’t bother using the spears with any kind of finesse, instead using them like the needles of the sewing machines found in the upscale districts of the capital.  They were a blur, stabbing forward in a wave that mowed down brittle bones like stalks of dry wheat.

Such an expenditure of qi was quickly draining me, so I started running forward to maximize the damage.  Any time they tried to mount a defense, I cracked my wood qi whip forward, splintering any shields brought to bear against me.  The life energy was anathema to the forces holding them together, and more than one undead backed away from the power.

After destroying over a hundred skeletons, the tunnel was becoming difficult to walk down.  My pace was slowed, and I had to change tactics before I ran out of qi.  I could see around the bend now, and up ahead there were over twenty of the desiccated corpses that carried the disease in their bite.  Behind them, came the real threat.  The beasts.

I swapped a spear for a spiker from storage, and positioned it behind my shoulder.  Three quick cracks from my whip bought me some space, so I used it to angle the spears forward at an angle, like a pikeman ready to receive a cavalry charge.  I jammed the butt of the shaft into the floor deep enough that I didn’t need to hold them, and used the extra strands of qi to create a tube for the spiker to travel along.  There wasn’t much time to make my aim perfect, but with the strength of the runes carved along its length it wasn’t necessary.  Another blast of qi launched it toward the towering enemies in the rear, and a moment later the explosion rocked the tunnel.

The narrow confines meant the force could only go two directions, and I was very glad I had set the spears in place.  A storm of bones and body parts were catapulted my way, and the shafts of metal blocked the worst of it from hitting me.  There was an actual wall that was shoved against the spears.  I used one of the formation plates that emitted lava to burn it down, using the time I was stuck waiting to cultivate what energy I could.  It took a surprisingly long time, but eventually I had a path forward.

I had to kick loose my spears, since the cooled lava had pooled at their bases.  They had shown their usefulness, and I definitely didn’t want to leave them behind.  A quick inspection proved how tough they were as well.  Besides a few discolorations from the heat, the oily metal still looked freshly forged.

Once I made it to the site where the spiker had impacted, I realized my mistake.  From the remains of the undead beasts, I had taken out less than half.  The remaining monsters had been blown the opposite direction, and there was no sign of them.  They had escaped, and there was no telling how far they could have gotten while I was just sitting and waiting for the remains of their compatriots to burn.  I needed to get back to the others, and make sure they were okay.  Because if he didn’t know before, now the necromancer knew exactly where we were.

I made sure to heavily trap the tunnel the whole way back, and closed the entrance to the small temple.  While I didn’t relish the idea, it would make a great place to hide if necessary.  There were no other incidents, and I reached our compound with little issue.  As I approached the walls, I had a sinking feeling in my stomach.  Something was wrong.

“Donny, we have a problem!”  I shouted as I walked through the gate, only slowing once I finally realized what my senses were telling me.  The compound was empty.  A quick look through all the buildings confirmed my fears.  Even the horses were missing, and there wasn’t even a note to tell me where they had gone.  My friends were missing.  I was all alone.