Cenotaph of Bones: Chapter 39 (Patreon)

Chapter 39: Destruction

“Get down!”  A spray of razor-sharp stone shrapnel exploded across the roof as the wagon hit a low-hanging stalactite, the overloaded shields allowing several pieces through that embedded themselves into the wood.  My own armor’s shields were able to keep any from hitting me, but the loud crack from the wood was concerning.  I didn’t know how many impacts like that it could take before it finally gave out.  “Try to stay in the middle!  There aren’t as many things to hit!”

“Easy for you to say!”  Chu’s shout from under me was barely audible over the background noise of the running battle raging around us, but I could picture him staring up at me with a frustrated look on his face through the roof where he knew I was standing, yelling at the top of his lungs as he sprinted to keep from being trampled by the horses that were running right behind him.  “Want to switch so you can steer?”

“Nope!”  I used a simple fireball construct laced with wood qi to blast the clump of undead waiting at an intersection in front of us.  It exploded with a ‘whump’, clearing enough space for us to shoot the gap.  “Too busy at the moment to swap!”

We had been traveling for a full day before we ran into the first of the patrols.  It had consisted of a single beast and thirty skeletons, similar to what we had dealt with when looking for the lost sailors.  Now I realized that was what a regular patrol consisted of, but at the time we hadn’t known what we were dealing with.  Our pace had slowed considerably after the first encounter so we could be better prepared, which we quickly came to regret.  Playing it safe had given the necromancer’s forces time to figure out exactly where we were.  That led to a running battle through twisting tunnels as we tried to break through their screen, while they tried to corner us in a place where their numbers could overwhelm us.  It was a race against time, one we had been fighting for longer than I wanted to think about.  Eventually, they would either succeed, or the horses would run out of energy.  Even their incredible stamina had a limit.

“There!”  Valerie was poking her head up through the hole in the roof, occasionally shooting her bow as targets presented themselves.  “On the right!”

I twisted to see what she was talking about, and I was pleased to see a wider tunnel that angled downward.  We had been looking for something leading down for the last two shift changes.  Ever since the first encounter, the breaks had been coming shorter and shorter.  With Valerie using the hole in the roof to support the two on the roof, that meant only one person could rest at a time.  She was using the least amount of qi, but she hadn’t taken a break at all yet.  The other four of us rotated out as soon as we dropped below half of our capacity to try and cultivate what we could.

Donny and I were both Saints, meaning we could last a little longer than Chu and Jamila, but even we needed the occasional break.  The meridians in my hands were throbbing with overuse, and I winced as I charged another construct to block a side tunnel from some kind of undead squid that was crawling on the ceiling toward us.  The disk of fire and metal qi that snapped into place would turn it into rotten calamari steaks, so I focused back on the path in front of us.

“Hard turn, hold onto your butts!”  Chu’s muffled shout was all the warning we had before the wagon whipped around a particularly large pair of stalagmites.  A chain of metal qi that must have been cast by Chu whipped around the nearest spike of stone, helping the solid wood wheels slide around the turn that led to the tunnel we needed to go toward.  Poor Donny was only hanging on by one hand off the back as we drifted around the turn.  I was worried for a second that the horses might have been injured, but the steady clop of shod hooves on rock continued with only a slight pause.  “By the stars, we’re still in one piece!  Is everyone okay up there?”

“How about we don’t do that again!”  Donny had pulled himself up the roof and shouted down into the wagon.  “I’m going to need a break after that.”

“On my way!”  Jamila squeezed through the hole and Donny slipped away out of sight.  “You guys look tired!”

“Thanks!”  I spun some wood qi through my body to try and clear away the exhaustion that was creeping up on me.  It didn’t do much for my aching meridians, but my thoughts did clear up a bit.  “Hey, does the sulfur smell seem stronger to you?”

“I think so.”  Valerie gave a few deep sniffs, sticking her head up a little farther to try and clear the wind formation range to get a whiff of what it smelled like without their interference.  “It does stink more than it did before.”

“That means we must be getting close!”  I drew on my stores of light qi and fired a tight beam of energy at another side tunnel as we rumbled past.  Something in the darkness screamed in rage and anger, vindicating my choice to shoot blindly into the narrow opening.  “We should slow down, just in case.  The main tunnel has too many obstacles for us to make it at this speed!”

“Okay!”  Valerie ducked out of sight, relaying my instructions to Chu.  She popped back through the hole and gave me a thumbs up.  “We’re slowing down!”

The sound of wood squealing against wood signified the manual brake lever was getting pulled hard, and we gradually dropped from a barely controlled sprint to a slow trot.  The shift in speed gave me a minor case of vertigo for a moment, and I almost tumbled off the front of the wagon.

“Woah there, Jim.  I don’t think you want to test how resilient your armor is that way.”  Jamila stalked back to her own spot at the rear, and immediately tossed out a bevy of formation plates to cover our trail.

Her speed and reflexes were steadily improving, and I was pretty sure she would be the next one to reach Saint.  Chu was right behind her, with Valerie trailing a little.  She usually fought at a distance, reducing her near-death experiences compared to the others.  Those were important for a cultivator forged in battle to have.  It helped strengthen their foundation to know that they were only one battle away from death.  Valerie had a certain kind of determination though, one the others hadn’t quite found for themselves.  It would give her an edge when she needed to push to Sage.

“That’s it!”  Chu’s shout brought my head back around, and I saw what he was talking about.  “This has to be the place Jim saw in his dreams!”  He took a less dramatic turn to lead us into a larger tunnel.

Chu was definitely correct.  The blue-green glow illuminating the maw-like chamber thickly studded with stalactites and stalagmites was exactly what I had seen in the dream I had when our ship was sunk.  A thick stream of dark and metal qi traveled down the center of the path, leading the way toward the dead city where the necromancer made his lair.

“I’m glad we finally found it and everything, but do you think we could speed up again?”  Valerie loosed a pair of glowing arrows behind us, where a flash of light illuminated hundreds of undead shambling after us.  “They are starting to gain on us.”

“If we go any faster, we’ll end up slamming into one of those stone spikes again.”  Donny hopped back up on the roof, his axe in his hands.  He was unconsciously flexing his scarred appendages as he held the weapon out in front of him.  “Someone needs to slow them down.”

“This is the entire reason why we built this shit-box.”  I shuffled back toward the hole so I didn’t have to shout.  The roof was pretty crowded with four of us on it, so I had to hang halfway off the side.  “It was made so we didn’t have to split up.  So sorry, but no glorious self-sacrifice for you.  We already lost Kory from that.  I don’t want to lose my cousin - the man I consider my brother - in the same fashion.”

“Yes, what Jim said.”  Valerie reached up and pulled Donny back down into the wagon with her.  “I’m not willing to lose my betrothed to a bunch of moldy skeletons who forgot to play dead.  You can stay right here, and fight them off with the rest of us.”

“Guys, I’m sure this is important and all, but can you kill stuff while you talk?”  Chu could only hear the rattling approach of the undead, which was getting loud enough to be concerning.  “Either that, or clear us a path!”

“Why don’t we do both?”  Jamila threw a handful of shuriken at the desiccated corpses getting dangerously close to us.  The throwing stars exploded on impact, engulfing the zombies in bright yellow flames.   “Jim and I can fight from back here, while Donny and Valerie knock a path free for the wagon to get through easier.”

“Better than nothing, get to it!”  Chu dumped another ladle of liquid qi in the groove that powered the formation plates, causing the shields to flicker brightly in the dim cavern.

We all jumped into action, with Valerie loosing arrows as fast as she could pull back her bowstring.  Each one hit with a resounding crack, shattering the base of the stalagmites that blocked a straight run to the underground city.  Donny sprinted ahead of us, using his axe to shove the fallen chunks of stone out of the way.

I could tell both of them were burning through their qi at a ridiculous rate, but I knew from my dream that once we made it deep enough, we could use the area where the stalagmites and stalactites were growing together to stage a counter-ambush.  All we had to do was get there.

Jamila and I commenced with the destruction of the undead rushing us from behind.  I could see in the flashes from the explosions that there were much larger undead hanging back, but the hundreds of skeletons, desiccated corpses, and fresh zombies in front of us took up all of our immediate attention.  The more intelligent and bigger ones were probably hoping we would get worn down by all the lesser undead, and they could swoop in and crush us once we were out of qi.  I was excited to disappoint them.

While Jamila kept tossing out our supply of trap plates, I started forming the most intricate braid of threads I had made since being reincarnated.  I wrapped a triple strand of light, wood, and fire qi strands together from each hand until they were over eight feet long, and thicker than my thumb.  Then, I mentally carved a series of runes along the last two feet of each.  They were all meant to enhance the speed of the strands, and the ones at the very end were runes that mimicked my poppers.  I had them ready to use in less than a minute.

“Jamila, could you form a platform a foot off the ground on the back of the wagon for me?”  I hopped down as soon as it formed below us.  “Thank you.”

The whips trailed behind the wagon, their tips bouncing off the ground with small pops as they bounced around.  Without Jamila dropping wind blades, quicksand traps, and spike plates, the undead started to gain ground again.  The faster-moving desiccated corpses and zombies quickly grouped together directly behind us, with the slower skeletons fanning out behind.  I waited until they were literally tripping over my threads of qi before I rolled my wrists, snapping the whips backward and forward in a steady rhythm.  The results were everything I had hoped for.

“Yes!”  Jamila whooped behind me, pumping her fists in excitement.  “Get those rotting bastards!”

The first hits landed high, slicing through skulls and upraised arms like a burning brand through fog.  Every body part hit by the tips of the qi strands exploded outward in a storm of shrapnel that cleaved through the nearby undead with sharp cracks of shattered bone.  I snapped my whips up and out to the sides, hitting the stalactites we passed.  The heavy stones crushed those trailing behind the front line, and created more obstacles for the monsters hiding in the back.  A horizontal swipe from my right-hand whip took out those still in range at the knees, and the reverse swipe from my left-hand whip dug a furrow almost a foot deep through the ground along our trail.  We picked up our speed again, and none of those still standing could keep up with us.

“I think that should work.”  Jamila gave me a hand back up on the roof as I reabsorbed my threads.  Using them had burned through a quarter of my reserves, and I only got a small fraction of it back.  It was still worth it.  “When are you going to show me how to do that?”

“Probably after you reach mid-Sage.  You should have enough practice splitting your focus by then to maintain at least one braid with no problem.”  I shook out my aching hands, and looked back at the horde that was slowly falling behind.  “I will warn you, it isn’t an easy technique to master, and the strain on your meridians can be painful.”

“I bet you two gold I am ready by Low Saint.”  She arched her eyebrow, and held out her hand for me to shake on the bet.

I laughed at her competitive nature, and shook her hand.  “Deal.  I probably just lost two gold.”

“You know it.”  Jamila turned to look in front of us, where Valerie and Donny were still clearing the way for us.  “How much longer until we are clear?”

“Considering I was walking this in my dream instead of riding a speeding Battle Wagon, I would say another five minutes at most.”  I looked back at the undead following us.  “If we can get a few minutes to prepare, I think we can finish off this group before moving on the city.”

“How do you want to stage it?”  Jamila pulled out an almost empty bag that had contained the majority of our formation plates.  “We are running low on everything but alarm plates.  I guess we could -”

“What’s that?”  I cut her off, and pointed behind us.  The dim light emitted by the lichen was hard to see at this distance, but it was slowly disappearing as something approached.  A heartbeat later, my heart felt like it dropped into the pit of my stomach.  “Donny, get back here!”  I shouted at the top of my lungs, using a thread of air qi to enhance my voice by reflex.  “Dark qi wave incoming!”  The all-encompassing wave of darkness was rushing toward us like a tidal wave destined to destroy everything in its path.  Which, traveling at these speeds, is exactly what would happen once we weren’t able to see anymore.  “Chu, stop the wagon now!  Everyone inside!”

I saw Donny staring at us wide-eyed as we thundered downhill, the wagon heading straight for him.  Chu slammed on the brake lever hard, the friction immediately causing the smell of woodsmoke to drift up from the wheels.  Looking back, the last thing I saw was the glowing eyes of the undead following us brighten from a dull purple to a shining violet color as the element that gave the infection they carried life washed over them.  Then, the sound of an axle snapping, and we started skidding sideways, straight for Donny and a row of unbroken stone pillars.  The flood of dark qi washed over us, and all the light that allowed us to see went with it.