[Ashborn-B1] 58. Valley of the End (Patreon)

LVIII

Valley of the End

Vyke’s chest expanded, and the frigid air of the Shrine of Eternity drew into his lungs with glee.

‘Rotten.’

Foul. The decrepit odour of the undead hung in this place so venomously that it sunk its fangs into your taste buds.

“Unpleasant, is it not, Lord Vyke?” Neon’s veil clanged softly but ominously, like the thousand curses of a mother whose child had been taken.

“I’ve never enjoyed the smell of cadavers.” Ironic, he knew, given his power. Yet it was true.

Neon smiled underneath her veil. She reached out to touch his arms. His armour kept out even the semblance of her touch.

Unlike that of the seal in his palm. He couldn’t understand the first thing about the markings running along the white slip. But the rune flared in his mind. Drew his steps without needing to even focus his thoughts on it.

“We’re close,” he said.

Neon nodded and addressed to their followers. Wearing their hoods low so their face were shadowed, the two hundred cultists were a legion of spectres from the darkest realms, an army bent on the destruction of anything not counted among their number.

They advanced through the tall, silent halls of the shrine. Trees and animals encased in the ice faded with each step, becoming mere smudges. Those too faded, until nothing but the cold, empty walls remained. Then the hall widened, the floor lowered and evened out.

The entrance to a gigantic underground chamber. Light radiated so fiercely from within it blinded and forced Vyke to shield his eyes as they entered. Pupils narrowed. Sight adjusted. A valley was arrayed in front of them.

Water cascaded in the north. Screaming, humanoid shapes repeatedly broke and submerged beneath the surface. Ghostly hands reached out and tried to grab onto something to no avail. Every being caught in the water’s stream was carried over the edge into an abyss, whose gaping maw loomed underneath the surface of the ice Vyke’s army was standing on.

Vyke turned away from the lost souls. In the west, a giant statue carved into the walls stood vigilant. His hands rested on the pommel of a claymore whose tip pierced the earth. Lion heads adorned his pauldrons, the beasts staring to his left and right. His helmet was the head of a lion, too. It faced away from Vyke towards his east.

And still the boy known as the Vile shivered uncontrollably.

The blade of the claymore was actually a stone tablet covered in markings unintelligible from this distance. More, smaller tablets surrounded the blade.

Neon turned away from the graveyard of slabs. “How sickening.”

Vyke agreed. The entire place reeked of light and holiness. And he could guess why.

The warrior of light was staring at the other statue carved into the valley. This one wore no helmet, giving a clear look at the bony face with obsidian orbs for eyes. A woman lounged in a chair of bones, smiling loftily at the warrior on the other side of the chamber. Skulls adorned the ornate backrest of her seat, matching the sceptre in her hand. At her feet, pillars of frost of all shapes and sizes protruded from the ground. Silhouettes were imprisoned within.

“I suppose it’s obvious who we’ll be dealing with.” The voice wasn’t that of Neon. Yellow, crooked teeth flashed Vyke and Neon a smile as they shuffled towards them. “The pull originates from the woman, yes, Lord Vyke?”

He didn’t glance at his seal. “So it seems. Take some men and inspect the other shrine. I’ll head towards the Arch-Fiend.”

“As you command.” Without pause, Anetta held out her hand and more than half of the cultists with them pulled away from their group in an instant.

“Show off,” Neon snarled.

Vyke chuckled. The head priestess of the cult they’d recruited had a penchant of reminding them who actually commanded the majority of their forces.

“It’s of no concern,” he said. “Come with me.”

They headed east with the remainder of their army. The closer they got, the clearer the images of those trapped inside the frozen pillars became. Vyke had expected more disciples of the previous batch. However, not all of the prisoners were human. Or even humanoid. Wolf-like creatures whose jaws hovered over Vyke’s head. Bipedal, striped, feline things with chests three times as wide as the most muscled human Vyke had ever seen. Entities Vyke struggled to even find a name for.

And they were all undead.

The frozen bodies followed their steps towards the foot of the statue, only their gazes moving like that of a well-crafted painting. Despite the eeriness it should’ve caused, Vyke found the tension in his shoulders easing with each footfall. There was…something in the air. Something that made his core thrum in delight.

Like he was coming home after a century long voyage.

“Do you feel that, Neon?” he asked.

Her veils paused as she focused. “I’m afraid not. What is it you feel?”

He hummed. “…peace.”

Neon’s head tilted, but he had no better explanation for her than that.

He kept a close eye on his insides as they closed the distance, making sure that he wasn’t being cursed or suffering from a mental attack. But no matter from which angle he studied himself, his sense of danger never flared. And so they arrived at the foot of the statue without fail.

The woman’s feet rested on a giant plinth carved from a wholly black material. There was a keyhole in the shape of his seal near the bottom.

‘Should I wait?’ Entering before Anetta returned wasn’t good manners…but then so was showing off her military strength at every moment.

Vyke cast a last look at the members arrayed around him. Aedan nodded, signalling their readiness, then Vyke pushed the seal into the keyhole.

A rectangle some heads taller than an average person depressed and disconnected from the rest of the stone block. It shuffled inwards like a string pulled on it and split down the middle, leaving two halves of a door that swung inwards to reveal a hollow base.

There was a staircase going down.

“I’ll go first,” Neon said.

Normally, Vyke would’ve reached out to stop her. But there was no danger ahead, so his gut was telling him. A point proven when Neon descended the first few steps without anything happening to her. He followed in behind her.

“Not all of you need to come in,” Vyke called over his shoulder. “Only about ten—”

He blinked. Reality struggled to make sense in his mind, so he turned to Neon, who stared as dumbfounded as him at the wall now cutting off their rear.

‘How is that possible?’

The scenario itself wasn’t confusing. An entrance to a tomb or dungeon that suddenly closed was commonplace. A cliché if anything. But this was different. There’d been no slam as the entrance closed. No flare of essence that would give away the activation of an enchantment. It was simply as if the entrance had never existed at all.

“I can’t feel Ada,” Neon whispered, her voice trembling.

The fact pierced through the well of peace bubbling within Vyke. Neon and Ada weren’t linked through a mere technique. They were the same being. What grade of technique or enchantment would it require to cut them off from each other?

As he tried to come up with an answer to that conundrum and find out how nominally screwed they really were, orbs of light flicked to life. A row of torches fastened to the walls that curved down the bend of the spiralling staircase, their flames the blue of souls burning in the Seventh Circle of hell.

Vyke and Neon shared a glance. He reached out for her hand and held it until the trembling stopped. Then he guided them down.

A mere, few breaths passed in their tightened chests before the staircase opened up into a room of white tiles. Red carpet rolled from the staircase into the chamber beyond, where undead of various forms and natures sat on wide benches facing the far wall, their hands clasped and heads lowered. Vyke had expected an altar. Instead he found the woman in the statue above.

The depiction had not done her service.

Her skin was as pale as you’d expect from a corpse that had not seen real light in thousand of years. But she was not bony. Instead, a faint shine covered her cheeks like gloss. Her lips were full but blue. The edges of her face hard but somehow smooth enough they weren’t cutting but pleasant. But most of all, her eyes, which had been a mere obsidian in the statue, not deep enough to show the void they were pulled from, dragged the mind into the bottomless depths beyond the furthest edges of the universe.

“Vyke Vileblood,” she said with a lulling voice. “I’ve been expecting you.”

All at once, the serenity within Vyke returned. With a certainty he couldn’t put into words, he felt it:

He was home.

The party of nearly three hundred men assembled in front of the two paths splitting off from each other in the shrine, their halls far into the distance.

Judith and Garen separated from their side of the army and extended their hands.

“This is where we’ll separate,” Judith said.

Raven and Kayle inclined their heads as they exchanged goodbyes.

“Thank you again for your help back there,” Raven said.

“Consider it nothing,” Garen said in his heavy tone.

“Say hi to Ashe for me, will you?” Judith said. “Should fate allow for it, I’ll see her on the third floor.”

The entirety of the Dawnflame clan would descend to that floor after completing the Dove Shrine, though it wasn’t certain they’d see the other clans afterwards given the properties of the Tomb.

“Will do,” Raven smiled.

Again, he was reminded of the fierce connections the girl had built in such a short time.

‘Thank the Gods she doesn’t care about becoming the heir.’

The armies went their separate ways, Judith taking the biggest share of the contingent with them. The others were either all Dawnflames or from vassals to the Dawnflame clan, with most belonging to Raven’s camp.

Kayle ran beside him, umbrella shielding her from the Tomb’s light. Her smile was easy.

Raven huffed and turned back to the path ahead. The hall was desolate. And long. Ice was a clear surface, and the reflections only made the path seem longer than it may have been. Even dashing for half an hour straight didn’t bring the end any closer in sight.

Raven shot a look over his shoulder. The entrance was now as far away as the exit…he held his breath. ‘Did we make a mistake?’ Up until now, the halls themselves hadn’t been a danger to them, so he assumed they could freely pass. But what if—

A flash ahead of him made him whirl back to the front. Surfacing from the wall as a fish from deep waters was a thirty feet tall ice construct of all hard angles and cumbersome limbs. It touched down in front of them, lording over the entire party. The scariest part was that it didn’t make a sound. Not even the atmosphere parting for it whooshed.

[Frost Golem - lvl. 40]

“Vanguard!” Raven yelled. “Prepare—”

“Behind us!” someone yelled.

Raven spun. To their rear, dozens of golems silently dove from the ice. All at once, they reached for the walls and ground, dislodging blocks of ice big enough to punch a hole through a cloudship.

More shouts drew Raven’s attention to their vanguard again. The path ahead was now filled with the monsters, too.

Black smoke unleashed from his skin. Kayle twirled her umbrella, and a hundred flower petals fluttered into the sky.

“Prepare to attack!” Raven yelled.