Exalted Champion: Ch 21 (rough draft) (Patreon)

Chapter 21: Oddity of Death

Clean marble transitioned to the roughhewn rock of the dungeon lobby as Rachel, and I descended the stairs to meet the Titans Shield along with Ashley and the rest of the household.

The slave attendant smiled as we passed her counter and I caught sight of Titus and Ashley.

“Prince husband!” Ashley said with a burst of bubbly energy. She was already in her armor, as she threw her arms around me and we kissed.

“Your happy, the invitations go out then?” I guessed it was the upcoming gala that made her so happy.

“Oh, they did.” her sly tone was unmistakable. “Got both of your armors in the changing room.” she added, kissing Rachel. Watching them kiss was never going to get old.

“Thanks Ash. Well, husband, shall we change?” Rachel added. She had a flush on her face from Ashley’s kiss.

“Yeah, lets do it. Titus is the team ready?” I asked.

“We are ready, Exalted prince Grayson.” He said with a formal bow and smile. Chakrika, Lucious, Branwen and Clymiphae all nodded as well.

I changed quickly into my Shavala armor, letting the stat boost settle before stepping out. I was still only using the feather steel sword, but it would be more than enough for now. Humm, I think Rachel and me should forge the sword to night, after the dungeon, now that she has the enchantments all planned out.

Rachel stepped out moments later from her changing room, shifting steel plates settling as her metamorphic armor found its configuration. her armor locked into place, blue light threading the seams.

Ashley smirked. “Now that’s sexy. Let’s kill some monsters.”

"Let's move out," I said, checking my weapons one last time. "Portal to level six.”

The team formed up around me with practiced efficiency. Titus took point with Branwen shadowing his flank, her catkin reflexes making her movements fluid and predatory. Chakrika and Lucius fell into position behind them, with Clymiphae bringing up the rear. Rachel and Ashley stayed close to me, forming our own deadly triangle.

We crossed the dungeon lobby, boots echoing against the polished stone floor. Other adventurers pressed themselves against the walls as we passed, their whispers following in our wake. Their exalted prince was going into the dungeon, something Leonard rarely ever did.

We walked through the static swirl of gray blue light of the portal.

I stumbled out of the portal and down a few steps onto an old stone path on level six. Fuck, that is going to feel weird every time.

“Everyone here?” I asked, turning. The portal was attached to a mausoleum, moss covered and cracked with age. Fog drifted in the air, low light giving an ominous glow to the graveyard world we had stepped into.

Ashley's voice cut through first, "Present and ready.”

Rachel followed, “Here.”

Sasha stepped forward, her four white tails flicking with nervous energy. "Ready, Master Eric." The bell at her collar jingled softly as she checked her bow and short sword.

"Present, Master!" Allie chirped, her single brown tail swishing as she bounced on her heels, the enthusiasm in stark contrast to our grim surroundings.

Brie's voice was calm and measured, her three red-gold tails perfectly still. "At your service, Master Eric." She stood with perfect posture, not a single hair out of place despite the portal transition.

Titus's deep rumble came from my right. "Battle-ready, Exalted Prince." His massive frame seemed even larger in the diffuse light, armor gleaming dully.

"Prepared for combat, my Prince," Luscious said, his voice clipped and professional as he checked his bowstring one final time.

Chariklia's voice floated from where she'd already taken a few steps forward to scout. "Present and vigilant." Her fingers twitched with barely contained magical energy.

"Ready to hunt," Branwen purred, her catkin eyes reflecting what little light filtered through the mist as she crouched, already testing the air for scents.

Clymiphea's voice was the last, melodic even in its brevity. "Here, my Prince." She adjusted her shield and spear.

“Good what can we expect on this level?” I asked as Titus moved up next to me.

Titus answered. “Well, Eric, as you can probably guess it’s the affinity of death. So, it’s the dead on this level, though it is one of the easiest levels in Legion.”

“Easiest?” I did not think zombies and ghouls and rotting flesh and whatever other Lich-ly horrors that might await us would be what I would call easy.

Branwen looped here tail around Titus’s waist and answered, “Oh, by leaps and bounds easier. Seeing as the death affinity is all messed up. It’s why revivals are so messed up.”

“The penalties,” I stated.

“One and the same. Legends say it wasn’t nearly so bad back in the day, even when the empire first arrived. But after the necromantic wars, it just changed… highest I’ve herd of some one having in the death affinity is five I think it was.” Lucious said, pondering out a strange bit of trivia.

“Well, lead on Titus.” I said.

Titus nodded and moved out, his shield raised, Branwen a shadow at his hip. The fog thickened as we moved away from the mausoleum, boots sinking into cold moss, the air full of the scent of wet stone and something sweet and rotten beneath. Every step made the mist swirl, tendrils curling around our ankles like ghost hands testing for weakness.

The graveyard sprawled out, more mausoleums and crumbling statues, cracked angels with blank faces, spires leaning like broken teeth. The whole place had gone feral with time. No birds, no wind, just the hush of the dead waiting.

Boots thudded through moss and fog. The only sound was our breathing and the soft shush of tails or armor. The further we pressed, the heavier the air became. Damp, cold, and coppery, like the inside of an old tomb after the grave robbers had already cleaned it out.

A flicker of motion drew my eye left. A skeleton lurched upright from behind a broken angel’s wing. It was a joke of a monster, bones stained gray and barely clinging together. The death magic in it was an afterthought, a string of weak, fraying light barely holding the skull onto the spine.

Inspect: Name: Lesser Death Skeleton Classification: Undead Threat Level: . . . Error – too weak to classify.

The thing wobbled, jaw opening and closing like it was trying to remember how to scream but couldn’t.

I pointed. “Milly, it’s yours.”

Milly stepped forward. Her hammer swung up, and she hesitated, waiting for a command that didn’t come. I just nodded. That was all she needed.

The skeleton reached for her, fingers like broken twigs. Milly planted her feet and brought the hammer down in a short, brutal arc. The impact crunched through the skull, splitting it like a rotten melon. The bones collapsed instantly, the magic holding them together vanishing in a single, mournful puff.

Milly looked back, tail swishing, eyes wide with disappointment. “Experience gained: 1. That’s it?”

Titus grunted, the sound halfway between a laugh and a cough. “That’s about right, Milly. Don’t worry. Think the big lich boss here is worth, what, ten experience?” He looked back at me with a crooked smile, scarred face bright for a second. “Maybe fifteen if you hit it really hard?”

The rest of the party started chuckling. Milly looked almost betrayed. “So, we’re not going to get any levels here?”

“Not unless you find a way to kill a thousand of those in one swing, and considering there are between four and five dungeon monsters on this enter floor… yeah…” Titus said, deadpan.

We kept moving, boots squelching through moss and whatever else the fog was hiding. If there was a dramatic way to walk through a graveyard, we were absolutely not doing it. The mist was everywhere, and the dead were so lazy they didn’t even bother crawling out of their graves.

A zombie flopped out behind a headstone, one arm half off, jaw already hanging. Lucious did not even break stride as he cleaved the brain in two. Somewhere ahead, I could feel the tug of the floor guardian, a dull itch in my skull, but first came the undead idiots. A zombie shambled out of a toppled crypt, arms out, mouth open, eyes glassy with zero intelligence and even less threat.

“Branwen, you want that one?” I asked, not bothering to slow down.

She shrugged, notching an arrow. “I’ll try not to overexert myself.” She shot the zombie through the eye socket. The thing toppled, hitting the ground with the enthusiasm of a sack of wet flour. “Wow, that was… thrilling,” Branwen muttered, tail flicking as we stepped over the corpse. “My pulse is just racing.”

Ashley laughed as another zombie lurched from behind a monument, jaw hanging by a thread. “Let Milly have the next one. She needs the practice.”

Milly bounded forward, hammer raised. She hit the zombie in the torso, and it just kind of came apart, arms and head rolling away in different directions. Milly looked back, almost apologetic. “Is it supposed to fall apart like that?”

“It’s not doing anything,” Titus said, pushing past the carnage. “That’s the problem.”

We kept marching, through the fog and the stink and the pathetic undead, until the path narrowed and the stones underfoot turned from broken jagged mossy messes to smooth white. resolving from the fog, the curtain of mist was pulled back and new mausoleum was revealed

“It’s not doing anything,” Titus said, pushing past the carnage. “That’s the problem.”

We kept marching, through the fog and the stink and the pathetic undead, until the path narrowed and the stones underfoot turned from broken jagged mossy messes to smooth white. resolving from the fog, the curtain of mist was pulled back, and new mausoleum was revealed.

The mausoleum loomed out of the fog like it had been waiting centuries for someone to appreciate the architectural artistry of ‘giant stone box with extra skulls glued on.’ The door stood twice my height, black iron, and covered in runes that pulsed with just enough death mana to make a necromancer cry tears of joy. There was no lock, no trap, just a single obsidian knocker in the shape of a leering, fanged skull.

I looked at Titus. “Is this one of those ‘knock and let yourself in’ situations, or do we have to recite the secret password?”

He grinned, all teeth. “Tradition’s tradition. Knock and enter, then… well, prepare to be under whelmed.”

Ashley rolled her eyes, but there was a spark behind it. “At least the décor is on theme. I feel underdressed. Rachel, next time we come here, remind me to wear something with more bones.”

Rachel snorted, her armor humming as blue light curled around the seams. “You want to coordinate with the undead, Ashley? We could glue a few skulls to your shield.”

Ashley just grinned, rolling her eyes. “Sure, maybe bedazzle it with bone fragments while we’re at it.”

I shrugged, reached up, and grabbed the obsidian skull knocker. It was cold, heavy, and the sound it made against the mausoleum door was a deep, hollow thunk that vibrated straight into my teeth. I waited for a second, but nothing spectacular happened. No curses, no screaming banshees, not even a puff of ominous black gas. The door just creaked open like it had been waiting centuries for someone with no sense of drama to let themselves in. The door dragged itself open, hinges groaning like an old man with bad knees.

“After you,” I said, gesturing for Titus.

We filed through in a loose wedge, everyone with weapons half drawn and disappointment already brewing in their eyes.

The inside of the mausoleum was… disappointing. The inside of the tomb was almost offensively cliché: row after row of bone-lined alcoves, cobwebs strung like party decorations, just a big box of cracked marble, pillars jammed in at random, and a raised slab at the far end. On the slab sat… well.

The lich. dun-dun-dun. my brain played the tune oh so helpfully. I tried very hard not to laugh.

It was a lich, Or at least, it was trying very hard to be one. It was a mess. Half skeleton, half zombie, all wrapped in a black robe so over-embroidered it looked like someone had lost a bet and then lost control of a sewing machine. There were beads, there was lace, there were even little silver skulls stitched into the sleeves. The thing had one arm and a jaw that didn’t match the skull. It hunched over a staff that was mostly just glued-together bones.

It didn’t even turn around when we came in. It was too busy muttering into a book. I could see the runes on the pages, but they were all upside-down. was it possibly asleep? I had no idea.

“Well, that’s not ominous at all,” Rachel whispered, her voice dry as the dust on the bones.

“Is it even alive?” Branwen asked, tail flicking like she was bored at a tea party.

“Technically, no,” Lucius put in, but he didn’t sound impressed.

Sasha stepped up beside me, bow already drawn. “Should I…?”

I didn’t even get the chance to answer. Sasha loosed an arrow, the shot so smooth I barely saw her move. The arrow whistled across the room, hit the lich right through the temple, and buried itself two inches deep in the skull. The lich’s head snapped sideways, a puff of greenish smoke leaking from the wound. The body made a little hiccup, then just slumped across the dais, one skeletal hand still clutching the book.

For a second, no one said anything. The silence was, frankly, embarrassing.

That was it. Zero fanfare. No death curse, no final monologue, not even a “how dare you trespass” speech. The big bad of the death affinity level had been curb-stomped by Sasha before it even managed to stand up.

“Well,” Ashley said, voice flat. “That was… anticlimactic.”

Chariklia stepped through the haze of disappointment first, her hooves silent on the cracked marble. She glanced once at the pathetic, book-slumped lich, then made a beeline for the back of the dais where a chest sat tucked in a hollow, almost as if the dungeon itself was embarrassed to show it off.

“Loot’s here,” Chariklia announced, popping the latch with professional boredom. “Same as always.” She reached inside and tossed out a handful of black-and-bronze dungeon tags, each stamped with the stylized numeral for seven.

Titus stepped forward, his shield arm lowering. The look on his face had gone from dry amusement to something a little more deadly serious. “Hold up. Before we pop down to seven, just remember the next level is not a joke. the light affinity has no such problems, not like, death, spacetime and summoning.” he gave us each a serious look and we all nodded.

I handed out the tags to Milly, Sasha, Allie, and Brie, then tucked mine into my ring. we all spoke the words, “I want to go to level seven,” and the world twisted as the static gray swirling blue portal tor into realty and dragged us through it.

Even when I’m in the dungeon the portals still give me vertigo, I thought as the world spun and changed.