Cenotaph of Bones: Chapter 29 (Patreon)

Chapter 29: Deeper

I had to help Donny to his feet once he made it back to the top.  It only took the two of us a few minutes to carve the necessary designs into the four spikers I had picked, and we were as ready to go as we could be.  Outside, the fighting was reaching a fevered pitch.

“Give me two, and you take the others.  We should try and aim for the support columns.”  Donny smiled as he took the two I handed off to him.  “I wish I could see the look on their faces when they go off.”

“They are already dead, Donny.  I don’t think they’ll care.”  I grinned at him to let Donny know I was mostly joking, and we moved out of the building into the maelstrom.  It had only been a short time inside, but a lot had changed.  The fluttering power surges from Valerie told me she was dangerously low on qi, and Chu wasn’t much better.  Jamila was doing better, but considering the other two were fighting more beasts than skeletons, it made sense.  I moved to the side where the rock trolls were hammering against the crumbling wall.  “You three, get down the ramp!”

“Better make this fast!”  Chu sprinted past me into the building.  “They’ll be all over you in no time!”

I gave him a thumbs up to let him know I had heard, and he disappeared inside.  Jamila helped an exhausted Valerie off the roof, and the two of them were gone.  Donny jumped onto the roof and hurled his two spikers before tossing out some whip traps that laid into the approaching horde with strands of water qi.  It wasn’t as effective as wood qi would have been, but not many of our traps used the kind of energy that would heal you as it hit.

“Okay, your turn!”  Donny hopped down and moved for the doorway.  “Make it fast!”  I took my place on the roof after boosting my legs with a spin of my heart core, and immediately targeted the two farthest pillars on the side that had the weakest structure.  “I’ll see you in the tunnel!”  After he saw me toss my two, he went inside.

The spikers were swiftly gathering energy, and I watched as they got close to detonating before flipping off the roof.  While I was airborne, a chunk of the wall clipped my shoulder, activating my shielding and spinning me through the air.  The rock troll had decided to use the thing blocking it as ammunition.  All around the fort, undead started spilling over the walls into the open ground between the building and the walls.

When Donny’s two spikers went off, it shook the whole area hard enough to knock everything standing in the cavern off its feet.  Everything but the rock troll, of course.  It did manage to throw off its aim, meaning the next chunk of wall meant for me smashed through the opposite side of the fort.  I kipped back on my feet - not easy to do in heavy armor - and pulled out one of the throwing knives I had formed from adamantine.  I wouldn’t be getting this one back after I threw it, which hurt, but I didn’t have any other choice.

Flicking it hard, I sprinted for the open doorway that led inside the building.  There was no time to figure out which rune formation was on the knife I used, but the angry roar of the rock troll told me it had been a good choice.  Right after that, the ground jumped hard enough that I went from sprint to face-first skid through the door.  The explosion from my spikers was too much for the cavern to handle, and the ceiling started to come down.

I knew that the cavern wouldn’t be around much longer because of the stonework around me swiftly crumbling into dust.  I barely made it through the door when a large section of rock smashed down behind me, sealing me inside the room.  The all-too-familiar roar of anger from the rock trolls was cut off abruptly, meaning they must have gotten a good bonk from the falling ceiling.  Using a boost of qi from my heart core, I launched myself down the ramp in front of me.  I tried to snag the block of stone that had covered the opening, doing my best to keep the falling debris from following me down the ramp.

“Jim!”  Chu was waiting for me at the bottom of the ramp.  “I thought you were only going to bring down part of the cavern.”

“I’m not exactly an expert on underground rocks.”  The sharp rumbling from up above us caused dust to fall from the ceiling, and a few fist-sized rocks came tumbling down the ramp.  “At least those rock trolls should be taken care of now.”  We both winced as soon as I said it.  Tempting fate like that was a dumb move.  I moved past the stupid comment and looked around in the dim light.  “Where is everyone else?”

“Well, when the ground started shaking, the horses took off for parts unknown.”  Chu lifted the makeshift torch of a glow stone stuck to the end of a stick over his head.  “Everyone else ran to catch up to them, and they left me here to wait for you.”

“That’s not good.”  I activated the walking stick form of my spirit wood ring, and put a glow stone of my own on the end for more light.  “Everyone is very low on qi, and running into something nasty could mean real trouble.”

“You don’t have to tell me.  That’s why I’m the one waiting here.  Jamila got clipped by a falling rock and I used up almost everything I had left healing her.”  Chu pulled out an alchemy pill meant to increase absorption rate and popped it in his mouth.  “I don’t think I could fight off a mildly upset kitten right now.”

“Well, let’s take it slow.  Try to build up as much of a reserve as you can while we walk.”  I pulled a set of Basic-level cores from storage, one for each of the main six elements.  After a moment of thought, I put the metal core back.  “You can use these, since there is so much metal qi in the area.  Now that you are actively pulling in dark and light qi, you need to make sure you stay balanced between the elements.  Since you have the cores, you are only going to be limited by how much light qi you can absorb.”

“Thanks.”  Chu took them from me, and tucked them up his sleeve so his armor wasn’t in the way.  “That should make things much easier.”

After making sure our light sources were good to go, and the cores in the back of our helmets still had enough charge to power the rivet shields, we headed deeper underground to search for our friends.