[Ashborn-B1] 59. The Divine (Patreon)

LIX

The Divine

My chest hurt from how hard my heart slammed.

‘That was one of the elites from before.’

There was no sign of the other two, though. Had they been trapped inside the walls already—

I whirled around at the sound of a shriek. A boy from my clan jumped back from the walls, then pointed at a female ghost wearing our colours. “She just tried to grab me!”

“Pull back from the walls!” Aurille shouted. An order the disciples couldn’t physically complete any sooner.

Deciding we didn’t want to stay here a second longer than needed, we forced out feet to move. The path was still without forks or bends, but now the tall nature of the place made my throat lock up. I even had my chicks swivelling around as I tried to see all around me at once.

My clanmates fared no better. Ren mumbled prayers under his breath: something to do with apologising to his mother. Others didn’t pay any attention to where they walked and bumped into fellow disciples, which would’ve started arguments had the circumstances been any different. A few among us even fired arts at the walls in fright.

To think the army would need to take this path, too…the tunnel was tall, but it wasn’t nearly as wide. They wouldn’t be able to pass without skirting up against the walls.

‘It’ll be a slaughter.’

Especially if the undead followed them inside.

Korin raised his staff. “Ancestral Ward.”

White light beamed from the pagoda forming over his head, swirled, and shaped into five spirits that circled our formation.

“They’ll help protect us in case anything jumps out,” he said.

That brought some firmness back to the footfalls of our company.

“Can you see the end of the tunnel?” Rin asked.

I shook my head on instinct. The face of the disciples near me fell immediately. Some even slowed their pace. They’d seen my chick leave to scout ahead some time ago. If I couldn’t see the end, the end was miles away.

“The light’s too low that far out,” I added. “My connection with my summons weakens the further they travel from me.”

Not exactly true but it was logical enough that the stolen gusto returned to the disciples’s steps.

One of the Korin’s spirit shrieked and launched at the wall, where a ghost hovered so close to the surface their nose almost poked through.

“See?!” the same disciple as before yelled.

The dust settled, revealing nothing but an unmarred spirit and former disciple. Korin recalled his summon with a frown.

All this talk of spirits and ghosts made me open a portal. Flames connected above my shoulder. Clouds billowing out of the gate heralded Skul’s arrival. He was still only a head, but he was…real. The whiskers flowing from the side of his snout were tangible, their brush on my cheeks soft. When he moved, it was no longer the passing of a breeze, but the displacement of a glacier. Physical. Undeniable.

His nostrils flared. The twin blast of fire exiting broke on the floor. Disciples distanced themselves on instinct, putting them closer to the walls. They whirled around, essence curling in their cores, arts on their lips. But the walls were already deserted.

Where Skul glanced, the ghosts fled like field mice caught in a falcon’s sight.

“They’re afraid of him,” Ori said.

The weight of his presence doubled with each disciple realising his worth.

I stroked his snout. “Good boy.” Prideful, but still a good boy.

He shivered, then shot for the walls…he stopped an inch away from them and snapped his jaws.

Had the walls not given them cover, I would’ve likely heard the spirits scream.

We darted through the tunnel with renewed vigour.

“No sign of the others yet,” Rin said.

“It won’t be long,” Aurille said.

Our tunnel extended into a subterranean chamber. There was no real floor. Instead, an abyss yawned underneath the ice. Thick columns jutted out from the deep shadows and formed a path. The structure sloped downwards and connected to a strip of land that turned into another tunnel.

‘They could’ve at least put handhelds.’

The riven flowed through a thin sheet of ice far below us, which added an unnecessary sense of movement to the darkness.

Watching our footing, we kept our essence close at hand. No threats jumped out. Neither did the pillars wobble and endanger our sanity.

Going into the subsequent tunnel had us traversing a steep slope that opened into a chamber about half the size of the theatre room back in Castle Shield.

It was nothing like the inviting ballroom.

Half molten faces stirred. Charred and mutilated bodies tried to stand to no avail. The rotting smell was so bad even the stoic Aurille covered her mouth with her sleeve.

“There’s your sign,” Ren said, looking away from the mess.

I gulped down a clump of bile as I waltzed between the corpses. More than one reached for my legs with stumps for arms. I did my best to stay out of their way. But of course, I was the only one with any qualms.

Saber, who’d taken Skul’s place now that the ghosts were gone, sniffed one of the corpses. Thankfully, he didn’t do more than sniff.

I turned to the centre of the room, where a crystal taller than me and three times as thick lounged. The surface of the gem was cracked and a chunk had been ripped out near the base. Moreover, though there were still sparkles within, the lights were fading quick.

“At least you didn’t meet up and die over nothing,” Rin mouthed. She crossed through the undead without a care, not even bothering to cover her mouth as she did so.

‘She’s crazy.’

Then again, if her description of her hometown was anything to go by, she was used to worse smells.

“There’s never a good reason for combat on this scale,” Korin gnashed through his teeth.

The amount of strain wasn’t one that could be faked either. He was genuinely angry. As was Ori.

Rin shrugged and continued inspecting the crystal.

“Look here,” Aurille said.

We joined her in standing over some corpses cloaked in black. They were the only ones lying completely still.

“Immortals,” Jake whispered. His head followed a trail of the cloaked figures to an entrance at the far end.

“Think anyone made it our of here alive?” Rin said.

“The two drakes, maybe,” I said. If they the ghosts hadn’t taken them. Their party likely came to scout the exit on our side after finishing up here.

I wanted to say they won the battle pretty handily if three elites made it out, but they may have been the sole ones.

“Are we chasing them?” Korin asked.

I hummed. There were more than a few entrances. Going after either the remainders of the Dragonflight or the Black Fangs would come down to a gamble…

An Immortal’s cloak rustled as Saber brushed his curious snout past the corpse.

‘Or maybe not.’

Saber could find them. My hand also reached for the fang still hanging around my neck. I hadn’t thought of it before, but perhaps I could use it to locate Erri. My gaze narrowed. ‘Even she wouldn’t get out of a battle with Gaje unscathed.’

But I didn’t take off my necklace to let Saber catch her scent.

“Right now,” I said, “finding the shrine is our priority.”

Finding a wounded Erri was a great opportunity to get rid of a future pain in my butt. It was also a great opportunity to find myself in an ambush or generally outnumbered by the sheer amount of drakes she had with her. And that was without mentioning Gaje.

Besides, something within me told me Erri would find me regardless of what I chose to do. I just had to make sure I could handle her when that time came.

We left the battlefield behind us and chose an entrance based on the signatures of our locator beacons. The tunnel entrance was a lot smaller than the previous one we’d traversed, but big enough for us to run without bent backs.

‘Summoning Ashwing will be tough.’

Skul would be in trouble, too, if he absorbed enough spirit energy and morphed. That’s why I was glad our tunnel linked to a broader network of pathways, which were many times bigger. The paths carved through the earth like railroads, zigzagging over and parallel to each other.

Rin’s head swivelled. “I don’t think these are man-made.”

“Agreed.” Jake said glanced at me.

I nodded. The memory of the burrowers was one I wouldn’t quickly forget.

“Best not to linger,” I said.

We climbed up a sloping road that flattened out and continued for what felt like miles before finally sloping down again. The descent was steep. Steep enough that we were practically jumping down a cliff. It was a combination of Aurille’s platforms and digging our weapons into the earth that made it possible at all.

I had an easier time, of course.

Ashwing struck the air to break our dive. Her talons dug into the floor and I jumped off her back. “Thanks.”

She dematerialised to make room for Saber.

Ahead of the others, Aurille touched the ground like a feather. Rin came in as a close second. Above her were Jake, Drew and the two monks. Jake hopped from platform to platform like a cat while the monks channelled their pagodas to strengthen their bodies.

As it stood, Drew was coming in last—

The boy leapt from his higher platform spearfirst and slammed into the earth.

Saber’s shroud melted the flying shards of ice before they could pelt my face.

Drew chuckled. “Spearchasers never come in last.”

Jake’s sigh could be heard over the fading echo of the explosion. “You know we agreed on being stealthy, right?”

The spearman scratched his cheek.

Aurille passed me up and continued down the path

“Should we keep going?” I asked.

We’d travelled quite a ways. Right now, we could still turn back and help the army. But any further and we’d fail to make it back in time in case they needed help.

“Tsall is a capable leader,” Aurille said. “We can continue until we find a decent place to rest and defend.”

I supposed it was true that we’d need a position to fortify no matter what.

There was a bit of an arc to the path ahead, which initially made us scared of another steep ascent, but the rise stayed soft. Bright light filtered through the walls for the first time since entering this mountain, revealing a drop in the tunnel.

“That’s grass.” A plane of it, the real thing, not the simile trapped beneath the frost, covered the land, intermingled with six-petalled flowers the colour of the sun. In the centre of the land stood a decorated column carved from a material that shone a dull gold. It touched the ceiling far overhead and contained a glass orb in the middle. Inside that orb, sleeping, roosting, was a fiery, winged shape curled into a ball.

A pulse shocked through my entire body. The energy radiating from the bird-creature was more divine than anything I’d ever laid eyes upon, and I knew then with absolute certainty that I was looking at a living, Divine Beast.

Ren’s jaw opened without his permission. “That’s…that’s a…”

“Don’t soil your paints,” Rin said. “It’s not the only thing in the room.” She pointed to the side.

On the far, two giant, blazing doors rose to dominate the walls. Golden lines on their surface formed the silhouette of a flaming bird in flight.

It was a grandiose spectacle worthy of adoration…but the entity in front of the gates stole all the attention.

At least a quarter of the size of the gate, sitting on a throne of pure frost, was a giant wholly crafted from ice. Its eyes were closed. Combined with its unadorned, blue robe, it appeared like a statue. But a quick identify proved it was anything but.

[Frost Giant King - lvl. 70]