Steamforged Sorcery - Chapter 34 (Patreon)

Once the final rune slammed into place, the rumbling abruptly stopped. The circle in the center of the room shuddered and started to descend into the ground. Angel dragged his companions onto it before it could get too deep.

“Are you sure this is the way in?” Cowl asked doubtfully.

“The catacomb wants us to enter it,” Angel said. “Just trust me. I listened to your calls in the cities and desert, but this is my domain now. If we want to survive, you’ll have to follow my orders.”

“You said entire groups of Seekers could get killed in a Great Catacomb,” Vanessa said, looking up as they descended beneath the floor. They were surrounded by stone on every side, and the faint light from the runes above them slowly started to fade.

“They can,” Angel said. “But you don’t have just any old Seeker on your team. There’s a reason your mom came to me when she wanted to transport you.”

“She was desperate?”

“Ha ha,” Angel said. “You’ll see.”

Bright yellow light lit up the floor as they emerged from the tunnel. They all blinked, their eyes adjusting to the sudden change. The platform beneath their feet rumbled onwards, uncaring.

It shuddered to a stop about a minute later. Angel blinked the tears out of his eyes and let out a slow whistle. The platform had stopped in the center of a large, square room. The ceiling was easily five stories above them. White lines crisscrossed out from where the platform had landed, stopping right in front of their feet.

The walls were made of glittering gold and bronze machinery. Pistons chugged and valves belched steam into the air. A big fan in the ceiling silently sucked all of the smoke upwards, venting it out of the room.

At the far end of the room sat a massive pair of bronze and silver double doors. They nearly reached the top of the great ceiling. Vanessa drew in a sharp breath.

“Wow,” she breathed. “It’s… beautiful. What is all of this? What keeps it running?”

“Old World magic,” Angel replied. “And now for rule number one of catacombs: don’t step on the lines. They’re leylines, and they act like a trigger to activate a catacomb’s defenses. Not all of them involve the lines, but all the lines involve the defenses. Make sense?”

“How can we avoid them?” Vanessa asked. “The floor is totally covered!”

“Sometimes you can’t,” Angel replied. “But there’s no reason to rush in a catacomb. Take things slow. A fast Seeker is a dead Seeker.”

“So, what do we do?” Cowl asked, fiddling with the hilt of the sword at his side. “I can’t say I’ve been in many catacombs, but this one doesn’t look particularly small. How dangerous is it?”

Angel cleared his throat. “Well, it’s still hard to tell. Catacombs can vary a lot in their make and danger. Some fancy ones are actually quite safe, and some plain looking ones are incredibly dangerous.”

“How about a general estimate?”

“Make peace with any gods you believe in,” Angel suggested. “Just to be safe. Now, give me a few moments. I need to map out a plan for this room.”

He sat down on the platform and set his chin in his palm, examining the room with a trained eye. Aside from the doors at the far end and the pattern covering the ground, the room actually looked quite empty.

It was too large to easily place any sort of trap along the walls or ceiling, but there the copious amount of machinery surrounding them was indicative of the room serving some other purpose. Then again, the doors were so large that Angel doubted any human could have opened them on their own.

The pattern covering the floor was very tight. It would have been borderline impossible to walk in between the lines, especially for non-Seekers. He briefly considered having Cowl just fly over and push the door open, but he scrapped the idea almost immediately. There was a good chance the Catacomb would somehow separate the two of them from him and they’d be in an even worse position.

“I’ve figured it out,” Angel said, standing up and brushing the dust off his knees. “We’re going to step on the lines.”

“I thought you said not to do that,” Vanessa said doubtfully.

“I’m amending my statement. Don’t do it on accident,” Angel said. “If we’re ready for the trap to activate, we’ll have a better chance of beating it. The patterns usually don’t have enough energy to activate multiple times, so once we set it off once, we’ll be good.”

“What will it do if we step on it?” Vanessa asked, turning a small dagger over in her hand. Angel doubted that it would have been much use against a monster, but anything was better than nothing.

“Probably summon an ugly. Maybe a few of them,” Angel said, scratching his chin. “This is the first room, so I doubt it’ll be anything too scary.”

“What if it is?” Cowl asked.

“Then we all die in a horrible, painful manner. Monsters use our bones as toothpicks and push our bodies into a mecha-latrine or something,” Angel grumbled. “What do you want me to say?”

“Just making sure,” Cowl said, cracking his neck. He drew his sword and placed the strange disk onto the hilt. The weapon whirred as it expanded into a massive shimmering blade nearly the width of Cowl’s shoulders. “Ready when you are.”

“What should I do?” Vanessa asked, doing her best to look confident.

Given the situation, Angel decided that she was doing better than he would have, had he been in her shoes. “Just don’t get hit.”

“I can do that. I think.”

“Make sure you do,” Angel said. He turned to Cowl and gave the Hunter a small nod. “You ready?”

“Whenever you are.”

Angel popped a canister out of its socket on his shoulder and slid it into the slot in his arm. He flexed his fingers, then gingerly stepped out onto the pattern. The lines beneath his feet lit up with bright white light and a hum filled the room.