[TLQ-B2] 11. Guidance (Patreon)

XI

Guidance

Despite her haste, Nerya made sure not to slam her feet. The frostguards on her heels did the same as they hurried through the tunnels.

Jaeger’s gaze swivelled around, and his gauntlets creaked as they tightened around his blade. He turned over his shoulder and kept her gaze.

Nerya exhaled. ‘Don’t look at me.’

After opening a hidden entrance in the prayer room, all of the guards had come face-to-face with the spirit.

Jaeger’s expression had become clouded in an instant.

Something’s off, he’d told her as he passed her up to head into the tunnel. Would he really help us out of goodwill?

‘Of course not’, was the answer. Spirits only ever did services in exchange for payment.

There’s but one condition for my aid, the spirit’s voice reverberated in her mind.

‘It’ll be alright.’ Nerya palmed the glass mirror the Elder gave her. ‘Trust yourself.’

Frost made up the walls of the tunnel. Light beamed from within the ice, somehow, making their torches unncessary.

According to the spirit’s explanation, they were cutting above most of the tough terrain. They’d end up near a bridge that would lead them towards the demon stronghold.

Not that that was their current destination.

Nerya glanced back. The tunnel wasn’t tall, so the Warden’s undead had to bend as it passed through. She remembered well how powerful that undead was. Depending on their enemies’s strength, the Warden could wipe them all out in a single bow.

But the Warden hadn’t answered their calls.

Jaeger didn’t know what was happening. He conjectured that she was sleeping as it was the only option he could think of.

Nerya was forced to accept his reason. She didn’t know the faintest thing about how undead or the Warden worked. The only time Master Circe had mentioned undead was when she followed it up with: Thank the heavens that all the necromancers are dead.

Her master had obviously been wrong. Luckily. Gods knew they needed every undead the Warden could create.

The ice walls slowly transformed into regular rock until there was no more ice left. Because of that, the natural lighting fell away.

“Torches,” Jaeger called.

But he called again a few steps later, when light revealed itself at the end of the tunnel.

Her head tilted. What kind of spell could do that?

“Prepare for combat,” Jaeger said.

Swords were drawn and Nerya clutched the figure hanging from her waist.

They stepped out into a barren plane that extended past the horizon.

“Guess it didn’t lie,” Jaeger muttered.

Nerya nodded and hoisted the mirror. The spirit told her it could facilitate communication, but it’d also point them in the right direction.

The mirror rose from her palm and began to hover north.

‘Barren truly is the right term,’ she thought as they followed behind the mirror.

The earth was the shade of blood which’d been spilled for a few hours. Fissures split the ground like lips that’d never been moisturised, and the emptiness screamed.

Nerya searched for the source of light in this place and found it in a river running far below their feet down a canyon. She’d never seen water like it.

“There’s a bridge—” he pointed north-west but spun to their rear.

Behind them, the entrance to the tunnel—which was a hole coming out of a slight mound in the land—sagged and collapsed. Nothing but flat land remained where the entrance had been before.

“No going back,” one of the frostguards mouthed.

That thought echoed in their minds as they continued towards the bridge in the distance. A faint smell of salt hung over the landscape, which triggered Nerya’s mind with each breath. The thrum in her chest deepened.

Though the place was barren, there were plenty of hills and plateaus. A horde of demons could be hiding behind every mound. If one of them saw them…she shook the decrepit images that followed from her head.

They reached the structure. The bridge connected the sides of the canyon to each other. It was a simple, wooden construction that some effort could break, though it’d take a while.

Nerya’s gaze narrowed. Should they? Destroy the bridge? It’d stop enemies from ambushing them from behind. However, there may not be another way out of this place.

“We’ll leave it.” Jaeger read the expression on her face. “Destroying the bridge will only lose use time and energy.”

She quickly nodded.

Despite her earlier fears, no demons marched over the top of a hill to greet them.

The compass sent them up a steep mound that was hard on their legs, especially due to all the walking they’d already done. Nerya was the first to crest the hill.

She held her breath. The river of strange water had coursed through the canyon and continued to climb its way deeper into the land. In the distance, it merged with a lake many times bigger than her village. Shards of earth so big they were nearly landmasses on their own poked out of the water. They were broken pieces of larger outcroppings jutting from the circumference of the chamber. Together, they formed a network of landmasses which a series of bridges connected.

“Gods be damned,” Jaeger said.

He stole the thoughts from her mind—

An indecipherable whisper lost on the breeze drew gaze to the left of the chamber. There, on an estranged outcropping sitting midway up the walls, stood a castle frozen in time. Literally so, for the entirety of it was entombed in a thick layer of frost. There were signs of the beginning of a bridge, but the structure had been destroyed long ago, leaving no way to reach the stronghold. It was better that way.

A dreadful aura radiated from the entombed fort. Even from this distance, visions of death penetrated her mind. Merely by looking at it.

The surface of the mirror stirred, and the spirit’s face appeared in the glass.

“Fort Nazdroth,” the Elder whispered. “It belonged to the late Dread Empress.” He turned to the Warden’s undead.

“Is that where the demons are headed?” Nerya asked.

She wasn’t sure how they planned on getting there and why they would, but they were demons. Anything could happen.

“No one has entered that place in centuries, child. Your destination is that tunnel.”

The spirit pointed towards their north-west. A bridge at the bottom of their mound crawled fiercely into the sky and connected to a small landing. There, an entrance presumably lead deeper into the mountain.

Nerya studied the bridged more carefully. Wooden pikes jabbed into the earth kept the ropes stable. Which wasn’t enough to stop the bridge from dangling in the wind. She grimaced. Was that really safe? Then again, the water was below them. It’d be a long and potentially hard fall, but they’d survive. What happened after that was up for debate—

The spirit must’ve read her thoughts. “That water is called Warp. You won’t survive falling inside.”

She blinked. “Is it dangerous?”

“In more ways than one.”

As his sentence finished, a patch of the lake shimmered. Nerya peered. The colours on the surface were…moving? For heartbeats, she continued staring at the spot. Then her pupils widened. That wasn’t the lake she was looking at. The realisation adjusted her sight. Only then did she notice the slimy, rubbery hide curving along the surface. How many seconds passed of her staring? Yet the thing was still moving past.

Nerya swallowed.

“Just don’t look down,” Jaeger said with a grimace.

Easier said than done. Their party clung to the ropes as they crossed. Nerya kept her mana thrumming inside her so she was ready to create a platform in a blink.

But their crossing was nothing but an affront on their mental health, and they safely reached the landing.

Some of the guards sagged to their knees and heaved for breath. Nerya barely kept herself upright. In front of them, torches fastened to the walls lit the passage. The tunnel was quite large. The Warden’s undead could walk straight this time.

Jaeger focused on the torches. “Should we expect enemies?”

“I lit those myself before you arrived,” the spirit answered.

Nerya frowned. Wasn’t it a spirit of frost? How could it conjure fire? She pushed the question down. It wasn’t important.

Jaeger called the frostguards to their feet and into formation. Nerya cast a final glance at the castle. Despite her higher elevation, she was still on a lower floor than the fortification.

‘The Dread Empress.’ The spirit hadn’t explained who that was, perhaps assuming that all of them knew already. Was she related to the Warden? She must be, for a whiff of death reached her despite the distance.

“You ready?” Jaeger asked.

Nerya turned away. “Yes.”

Their journey through the tunnel saw them enter another series of passageways, which the Elder guided them through.

“You’re close,” the spirit said.

The tunnels were all the same shape and size, so Nerya’s sense of direction and time was entirely thrown off. What’s more, the tunnel they were in continued for quite a bit.

‘It’s an Elder,’ she chided herself. Its measure for close wouldn’t be the same as hers.

“Should we announce ourselves?” Jaeger said. “I don’t want to surprise a mage.”

He was right. Leah was a mage of considerable prowess. She’d undoubtedly trap her hideout—

A hard object touched the back of her head and made Nerya freeze.

“You don’t need to announce yourselves.”

Nerya could hear the mana thrumming near her skull without straining any of her senses.

“Jaeger, get away from this woman—”

The ice in the voice made her insides shiver.

“—or you’ll get caught up in the spell.”