Cenotaph of Bones: Chapter 28 (Patreon)

Chapter 28: Horses

I checked for any signs of a note being left behind, but there weren't any clues to their whereabouts.  Why they hadn’t left a note or sign telling me where to go is what had me worried.  My four friends were very capable cultivators, but a well-executed ambush could get anyone.  The only thing keeping from worrying too much was the lack of Scout and Cloud.  Wherever they were, it had been important enough for them to take the horses with them.

A cursory inspection of the surrounding area didn’t show me any other clues, beyond the signs of the undead moving through the area.  Whether that had been from before, or recently, I had no way of telling.  I decided to just move out for the nearest tunnel to see if I could find them.

The tunnel closest to the one I had initially chosen was obviously less traveled, and the dusty footprints ended at a tunnel collapse a mile down.  It was clearly an old cave-in, so I turned around and headed back.

After exploring the third tunnel, I saw signs of extensive fighting.  There were piles of bones and dismembered body parts, and the qi in the area seemed less dense.  Considering the clean cuts, my guess was Jamila ran into a patrol of some kind.  It was missing about half of the numbers I had seen, but it still would have been quite a fight for her.  If she had made enough noise, this is where Donny should have run to help.  I would have explored deeper, but a narrow section of tunnel farther down stopped me.  There was no way the horses would have been able to travel through this section.

By the time I made it back to the cavern to check the last tunnel, it had been several hours since I had discovered everyone had gone missing.  I took a quick break to eat some steamed dumplings I had stored in my belt, and double-checked that no one had returned while I was gone.  Finally, I headed into the final tunnel.  There were no signs of fighting, and it was pretty clear from the dusty sections that there hadn’t been anyone in here for a long time.  The hoofprints and a disabled trap further down told me I was on the right track.

I had been walking around long enough for me to completely refill my cores.  A quick internal inspection proved that I was getting even closer to reaching Sage, but I needed some time to dedicate toward compressing the qi in my system hard enough to forcibly expand the walls of my meridians.  The channels used to absorb qi were too narrow, and Sage was an extremely important step forward.

When a cultivator advanced to Sage, their body was remade by qi.  It was an exceedingly painful experience, but the cleansing made it possible to advance farther along the path of power.  It also made it much harder to improve yourself.  There were a few exceptions, like poison cultivation, but they weren’t exactly easy to do no matter your level.  I would have to do that one the hard way later.  For now, I could at least prepare my body for the peak of what was possible before moving to the next step.

The tunnel eventually opened up into another cavern, but this one was far different than the ones we had seen in the past.  It was some kind of transfer station, with over twenty tunnels leading in and out of it.  There were tool marks along the walls, with several man-made support pillars spread around the area that were crumbling with age.  It had probably been a wide spot in one of the tunnels that the former residents had expanded as they found more viable strains of ore in the surrounding area.

In the center of the room, there was a walled fort that was a fraction of the size of the ones we had seen so far.  It was just a single squat flat-roofed building surrounded by wide and sturdy-looking walls, with less than fifty feet between the two.  When this place was active, it probably served as a checkpoint for miners to get their various assignments, or maybe as a place for them to rest between shifts.

The reason for my friends leaving without leaving a note was pretty apparent.  I could barely see it over the far side of the wall opposite from where I came in, but the stars-damned rock troll was here.  Completely surrounding the walls was another horde of undead, with several more beasts mixed in than I had seen in the past.  There was a steady trickle of more skeletons and desiccated corpses stumbling out of the various tunnels, and all of them were converging on the square-shaped fort.

An arrow arched over the wall and exploded against the undead rock trolls, which sent dust shaking down from the ceiling.  It didn’t seem to do much against the monsters, but the shockwave knocked down a large portion of the undead that had crowded near the trolls.

That attack had to have come from Valerie, and if she was wasting qi like that, things must be getting desperate inside the walls.  I needed to reduce some of the pressure on my friends, before it was too late.

I spun out a thick web of metal qi, in order to screen my approach from the undead.  They didn’t notice me until I had almost reached the walls, but by then I was close enough to jump up to the top of the small gatehouse.  It was a mystery as to how the walls were even still standing.  They hadn’t handled the passage of time as well as the other outposts we had found.  Either this section was much older, or the stones used to make it weren’t as stable.  Looking around at the crumbling pillars, I decided it was probably a mixture of both.

“Jim!  Thank the gods!”  Donny was reloading his crossbow while using a strand of qi to hold his tower shield against a weak section of the wall next to me.  “We were afraid you weren’t going to find us in time!”

“Could use some help here!”  Valerie jumped on the roof of the single building, using the extra height to rain flaming arrows down on whatever cluster of enemies she could find.  “They are pushing in from the rear!”  The undead she hit went up like dry kindling, igniting those nearby as they continued to march toward the walls.

“Got it!”  Chu used a strand of life qi to knock the skeletons crawling over the wall back onto the other side.  “Brace!”  A formation plate went flying over the side, followed by an explosion that rained down more dust from the unstable ceiling.

I reformed my net of metal qi into a cone-shaped construct that I launched across the small compound, hitting the combined rock trolls hard enough to knock them away from the wall.  Their stumble backwards took the top section of the wall with them, but Jamila was there a moment later.

“Try not to destroy our only form of protection, please!”  Her sarcasm was clear by her tone, but the quick work she did with earth qi to repair the damaged section showed extreme focus.  “This won’t hold forever.  We need to change things up, before it’s too late.”

“How did you guys even end up down here?”  I had to shout to be heard over the rattling roars of the aggravated rock trolls.  “You were supposed to regroup back at the other outpost!”

“That’s my fault.”  Jamila tossed a handful of poppers over the wall to discourage the mass of skeletons trying to approach.  “I ran into a patrol, and took care of them.  Then that big one came with another group, and I had to regroup with the others.  It just shrugs off our attacks.”

“They followed her down the tunnel, and the rest of us had already gotten back together by then!”  Chu was shouting from the top of the wall, where he was using his mace to smash the skulls of any creatures that came into range.  “The crazy horses ran down this tunnel before Donny could shut the gate, and you can figure out the rest.  Valerie wouldn’t let us just leave them.”

“We aren’t leaving Scout and Cloud!”  The angry shout from the roof put an end to his complaints.  She poked her head over the side, and tossed down another back of poppers to Jamila.  “They are making another run for the gate, push them back!”

They were still holding, but eventually we would run out of the tools and materials to keep them back.  Or the rock trolls would just knock down the walls.

From inside the building, I heard Scout neighing louder than I had ever heard him.  As Donny moved past an empty window, he was grabbed by the ear and yanked inside.  That would teach him to keep his helmet on.

I thought at first the horse was just picking a terrible time to try and kill poor Donny again, but his lack of follow-up shouting meant this was something else.

Instead of helping him, I took his place on the wall.  My instincts told me he would be back shortly.  The forces arrayed against us were amassing along the cavern walls, and it would only be a matter of time until they rushed forward to drown us in a wave of bones and rotting flesh.  Almost every tunnel leading to the cavern was now disgorging the necromancer’s army in seemingly endless waves.  The roar of the rock trolls across the compound from me wasn’t anything to forget about either.

I spun out another dozen threads of metal qi, and used them to whip the carved copper plates across the cavern.  The various attacks activated upon impact, shooting wind blades, earthen spears, and dropping groups of undead into newly-formed pits of quicksand that hardened around them.  It was like skipping stones into the ocean.  The plates caused ripples, but they quickly disappeared into the mass of enemies we were facing.  I needed a plan.

“Guys!  Come quick!”  The shout of Donny interrupted my thoughts.  “You have to see this!”

“You guys go ahead, I’ll hold them while you see what has him so excited.”  Valerie accentuated her point by tossing one of the plates that formed lava into the cluster of skeletons and desiccated corpses approaching the gate.  “Don’t take too long.”

The rest of us dashed inside.  It was immediately apparent why going into the building was so important.  A large trap door hidden in the floor was lifted to the side, and a steep ramp led down into the darkness.  Donny tossed a glow stone down, and it kept going for a long time.  It eventually stopped when it hit the remains of a wheeled cart that had fallen onto its side.  Well, now we knew the purpose of the building.  This was the drop-off point for the ores the miners had unearthed.

“If this is an ore cart shaft, it has to go somewhere important, right?”  Donny was already pulling out more glow stones to attach to the ends of some sticks for makeshift torches.  The dry tunnel had none of the luminescent fungus or lichen to help light the way.

“It doesn’t really matter where it goes.”  Chu pointedly looked out the door, where the flashes of light from Valerie’s qi-infused arrows were slowly picking up speed.  “As long as it takes us out of this death trap.”

“I don’t know, I think we can take them.”  Jamila gave her katanas a twirl to emphasize her point.  “There isn’t anything out there to stop us.”

“No, Chu is right.”  I tossed a wind blade formation plate deeper into the tunnel to stir up the stale air.  “We can’t risk getting bit, and any of our large attacks might collapse this cavern on our heads.  And we still don’t know how many of these things there are.  This could still just be a tiny portion of  the forces headed to this tunnel.”

She gave me a reluctant nod of agreement.  “Okay.  I’ll agree with you, especially about the cavern collapsing.”  I watched her eyes light up.  “But we can use that!  Chu, do you think you and Valerie can hold the walls by yourselves for a bit?”  He gave her a sharp nod, and she turned to Donny and I.  “Can you make some of those big spiker things that go off after a certain amount of time, instead of on impact?”

“I can carve some runes that build up the energy before they activate.”  I pulled one free from my belt.  “It would add a minute or two before exploding.”

Jamila was almost bouncing with excitement.  “That will have to work.  The two of you make as many of them as you can.  I’m going to go over the wall and get their attention.”

Before I could argue, she was gone.  Jamila could really lay on the speed when she wanted.

“What is she planning?”  Chu was readjusting his helmet, making sure there were no openings around his neck.  “Tell me she isn’t planning what I think she is.”

“Drop this cavern on the undead army?  Yeah, pretty sure that’s exactly what she is doing.”  I expanded my senses to try and get a better idea of the condition the ceiling was in.  “I don’t think we should drop the whole thing, but the entire rear portion is pretty unstable.”

“Well, I’ll hold the walls.  You two get those spikers ready.”  He hefted his mace, and walked out the door.  “Don’t take too long.”

“Okay.”  Donny had taken off his gauntlets to get the helm of his armor sealed in place.  As it snapped into position, he held out his hand to me.  “Hand me a couple of them, and we can get those runes carved before -”

The hoof that slammed into the back of his helmeted head launched Donny down the steep tunnel like an arrow loosed from a bow.  I turned to look at Scout, who was clearly watching poor Donny skip down the ramp with an obvious grin.

“Really Scout?  Is now the best time for this?”  I shook my finger at him, already casting a qi whip out of the other hand to grab the prone form of my cousin before he got too far away.

The horse looked at me, and tossed its head as if to say ‘What do I know?  I’m just a horse.’  Maybe I was projecting, but I didn’t think so.

“Don’t give me that.  I appreciate you finding the trap door and everything, but we still have a fight going on.”  I jerked my head toward the ramp.  “Why don’t you and Cloud head down there, and we can catch up in a minute.”  They both obediently walked down, with Scout walking across Donny’s prone form.  The clanking of horseshoe on plate armor woke the poor guy up, and to his credit he held back from retaliating against his nemesis.  “Come on, we need to hurry.”  He looked back at me, and grasped the qi thread I had used to hold him in place to help him up the ramp.

One of these days, that horse was going to be the death of Donny.