Chapter 151

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The Tomb of the Damned, The Ninth Floor, The Dungeon

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Huea gently caressed the manacore on the pedestal, staring intently at the soul flittering around within it. An innocent soul. The Creator had grown its body, intending to give it to Cadmus. The soul within that body? Less than an afterthought. Though she'd intended to experiment with it, once Huea was back in her lair, she found she... didn't want to. If she did anything to it, it would be tainted. Its old body had been kept in a coma from birth, and as such, it never experienced life.

It was pure. Untainted. Innocent.

So totally unlike herself. Though Huea supposed she had once been like this soul. All beings were once newly formed, blissfully ignorant of the world and its horrors. Infantile. Unknowing and uncomprehending. It was through comprehension and experience that those innocent layers were ripped away, exposed, and hardened by trauma.

As Hallmark shifted behind her, Huea turned to glance at the Death Knight. "Speak, Minion."

"As requested, I am reminding you that the High Temple's spy has entered the Pyramid," Hallmark said, stiffly. Though he spoke in a monotone, his brooding and defiant image was ruined by the giggling pixie floating about his head. "She and her escort will reach the antechamber in a few minutes."

Huea waved him off and sighed forlornly. She pushed away the whispers of the lingering dead, the barest hint of the thoughts of those bound to her by her magic. It was quite the depressing fate, being a necromancer. Forever cursed to hear the cries and lamentations of those she'd killed and bound, who clawed at the impenetrable fortress of her mind. Huea caressed the manacore one last time before she stepped away, smiling softly as the soul within seemed to follow her hand. Though she knew it couldn't sense her, she still couldn't help but wonder if it found comfort in her, as she found comfort in it.

Huea turned and left her laboratory. Hallmark followed her wordlessly, as he was ordered to.

She passed through another door and emerged into what The Creator would call the Boss Room. At its core, it was a large, rectangular hall, with its roof supported by enormous pillars. Along the long edges were deep pits, the bottoms of which were filled with metal spikes. Along the walls were countless stories preserved in ruinic and pictographs. She'd already read them all, long ago. They were tales of unknown gods and ancient civilisations from a land called Egypt.

Huea sat upon the throne at the closer end of the hall, donning the headdress that rested upon it. She claimed the sceptre on the throne's arm and examined the crystal at its end. Glowing from within with a Fel green light, the manacore was heavily infused with Death mana and close to becoming a Death Core. Once it did so, it would produce death mana all on its own. It was a creation all her own, and one of her greatest. Delicate runes scribed along the potentium handle and around the setting channelled her mana flawlessly. Such significant quantities of mana of the highest tier warped the metal, of course. Where normal potentium was a gleaming, otherworldly, silver, this Death-touched Potentium was a black so encompassing it was like the void.

Huea was jolted from her examination by the stone doors at the other end of the hall, which swung open with an exaggerated grinding noise. The Creator had insisted the noise was necessary, going so far as to add an enchantment to produce the noise when the doors turned out to open soundlessly.

Two beings entered, one walking wearily and bound in rope. The other was Skitters-Across-The-Sand, holding a threatening pincer against the small of her prisoner's back. The woman's head was bowed, and she didn't once look up, even as she almost stumbled over her own feet. It took two minutes for them to cross the hall, and once they approached the base of her throne, Skitters forced the prisoner to her knees.

"Emalie, was it?" Huea asked, rhetorically. "Welcome to the Tomb of the Damned. For your crimes against The Creator and Atlantis, you were sentenced to death. But The Creator and His Voice never shared what form that death would take, did they?"

Huea stood from her throne and slowly descended the steps. The prisoner's head remained bowed, having never once raised it to behold her. Huea stopped before the prisoner and used the tip of her sceptre to force the woman's chin up. The woman was pale, and as she beheld Huea's stained scales and the Fel light of her sceptre, she seemed to pale further. Understanding flashed in her eyes, even as it was replaced with a bone-chilled terror.

"I am a Necromancer," Heua declared, her tone almost bored. "The very necromancer your gods commanded the crusade to kill. You will die, but in death you will serve the same dungeon you futilely attempted to destroy."

"P-please, no!" The woman begged, not even trying to mask the terror in her voice. "Please, just kill me! Anything but that!"

"Do not worry," Huea reassured her, even as she nodded to Skitters to back off. The Scorpan nodded and stepped back. "You will not be the first being to undergo this procedure. I am far more powerful and skilled than I was when I first performed it. Hallmark is just fine, after all. Right, Minion?"

Hallmark stood forward and raised his faceplate. The prisoner trembled as she gazed upon his face. Sightless eyes that saw nonetheless. His pale, waxy skin resembled that of a preserved corpse. The pixie fluttering about his head giggled, then unleashed a wave of Life magic upon him, refreshing his appearance. He looked alive again, though his eyes still lacked a spark. "I am dead, Mistress. I would call that the furthest from 'Fine' I've ever been."

"Oh, don't be such a grump," Huea chastised as he lowered his faceplate.

She turned to her newest subject with a smile full of promise. "Come now, I've felt the need for another Death Knight for a while. It'll be quite the investment to bring you up from Silver to Platinum level, but I believe guarding the very being your gods command you to destroy is perhaps the most fitting punishment for your crimes, is it not?"

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The Creator, Atlantis, The Kalenic Sea

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Giving Emalie to Huea might not be the most ethical decision, but my little Death mage spoke truly. The Crusade was called, and the heroes summoned, due to her very existence. She needed more powerful guards. If they somehow managed to get to the ninth and find the Pyramid... Huea would be long gone. They would encounter the hordes of the death she'd reanimated, and the Death manabeings inhabiting the pyramid, but Huea herself would have long retreated to the Twelveth. I already had plans for a set of Pyramids built along a Nile-expy in the desert there. Yet another point of interest, as well as a more developed and byzantine complex.

I turned my attention away as Emalie was dragged by her future brother-in-chains into the necromancer's laboratory. Other, more critical things required my attention.

The Ninth had already started evacuating, in bits and pieces. All above them had already passed through their gates, and they knew they were next. The only ones who would remain were the Scorpan Royal Guard and King Strikes-The-Air himself, against my original wishes. Even when I'd argued that I could instate a new floor guardian, the stubborn king refused. It was a shock, to be honest. The Scorpan were the most faithful of my children, and I couldn't recall a single other instance of them going against my wishes.

Of course, I let him remain, though. I'd decided long ago to value the choices of my Children, even to their detriment. It would be hypocritical to force him to leave. When Strikes-The-Air declared he would stay, his guards insisted on remaining, too. They would not abandon their king. Truly, they were the most loyal and stubborn of my Children.

With the Children evacuated, it was time to reevaluate the Ninth's defences.

The Desert was already a harsh environment, though I could definitely add a few layers of misdirection. First, I split my Manastream into a dozen tendrils, each disappearing into a grated hole at the centre of a variety of locations. Two small ruins, five illusory oases, one larger ruin, one real oasis and the rest were random valleys between dunes. The only reason Isid had found the canyon so quickly, by her own admission, was that my manastream had given it away. This would prevent that, in the case the Crusaders had someone capable of manasight. It was a fair assumption to make, and the chance wasn't one I was willing to risk.

The monsters here were already potent, though some had gone neglected. The Stymphalian Vultures lacked an evolutionary line beyond age-bracketed ones, something I wanted to change. Thus, I created a prevolution and an Evolution for their line. They were already large, powerful birds, and I felt they worked perfectly as a middle form. Their prevolution was smaller, less powerful, and lacked the metal feathers they could throw. Closer to regular vultures, these Harrowing Vultures would dive at their enemies and use their metal-mana-infused talons to rip through even the toughest armour and turn the flesh beneath it to shreds.

The final evolution of the line, the Sandstorm Vulture, was enormous. Almost as large as Pyry, these brown and white vultures would use their air, earth and metal mana to whip up localised sandstorms, as well as manipulate existing ones. They were also far rarer. There was one Sandstorm Vulture for every hundred Stymphalian Vulture, and a dozen Harrowing Vultures for each of their evolutions. This meant there were only two Sandstorm Vultures at the moment, but that was fine. They were a mated pair, so that would change soon enough.

As for the other monsters on the floor...

The Sunlions and their evolutions were fine as they were, and the various individual monsters in the canyon and throughout the desert were doing well. I even introduced a few more desert-adapted animals I'd gotten from Captain Hart to fill out the environment a bit more.

The final thing I wanted to do for the Ninth was introduce a kind of Antlion. It wasn't hard, in the end, and I wondered why it'd taken me this long to add something like it. After I was done, I moved on to the Tenth to begin its evacuation. I was running out of time.

There were only three weeks left until spring arrived, and the crusade would launch.

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The Guild Hall, Port Laviet, Theona

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First Crusader Haliet walked into the Guildmaster's office and noted its state with barely contained fury. He almost growled as he roughly opened and shut empty drawers and cupboards.

Empty. Frustratingly, Infuriatingly, Empty.

According to the loyal guilders that remained in the hall, barely a day before he'd arrived in the city, Guildmaster Losat had packed up his valuables and quietly boarded a ship. He'd taken his most loyal subordinates, and as he walked out the door, had said, "Good luck, chucklefucks!"

Haliet reigned in his anger and sat down on the chair behind the desk. Once again, one of his targets had slipped through his fingers, leaving barely as he'd begun to close his grip upon them. First, the monsters in Blackwater Bay, and now Beatram Losat, the one who'd endorsed his own granddaughter as the guildmistress responsible for overseeing the dungeon they now sought to destroy.

From their spy's last report, the guildmistress was actively colluding with the dungeon. They mentioned secret meetings between her and 'The Voice,' and that information about the dungeon had been deliberately suppressed. They were going to attempt to collect and send it with their next report.

It'd been days since that report had been due. He could only assume their spy had been caught, but it was no real loss. What they'd gathered already had been critical to forming their strategy. Haliet focused as his fellow Templars filed into the room, glancing between their faces.

Infernal Bliss, The Forgotten. The Champion of Darkness. Perhaps the most mysterious and unknown of their group, Bliss was the unseen hand of the High Temples, only sent when discretion was desired over a message. Though, that his targets had a habit of disappearing from the face of the world as a message all its own. The first to enter the room, the corner he occupied was soon shadowed, and he almost faded from view.

Gregg of the House of Zediker, the Champion of Energy. His eyes were white with the power contained within his body. Special enchantments had needed to be designed for his armour to contain and channel his raw strength without shattering. Powerful, but conversely the most fragile among them.

Pan Theon, the Champion of Life. Pan was drowned in her robes, the extra folds and layers holding dozens upon dozens of enchantments and protections. She held a staff of living wood, which shifted and curled around the dungeon core atop it.

Ranilla, the Champion of Order. He was the largest of them all, and the one wearing the least armour. It would be redundant, for him, he had always insisted. He did not need it.

Artic Bezercer, the Champion of Ice. Artic was the other woman of the group, and the oldest. Pushing two hundred, she looked little over forty, such was the timelessness her intimate connection to Ice granted her.

Legio Fortoo, the Champion of Metal. Clad entirely in the most mana-conductive metal they could find, Legio's armour was like a second skin. It shifted at his whim, forming decorative whorls and swirls across its surface whenever his attention wavered.

Then there was himself: Haliet, the Champion of Light.

There were only seven of them, but each was an army-killer on their own. This was the very first time all of them had been in the same room, and the tension in the air from their restrained power was electric. United and aided by the summoned heroes, the dungeon stood no chance.

"They are not ready," Artic said, cuttingly. She didn't need to say who she spoke of. "They are weak and lacking conviction."

"That is why I asked you all to pick one or two to train," Haliet reiterated. Artic had joined them in the convoy from the High Temple and was the most opinionated woman Haliet had ever met. "You all know the stakes. This is not a request."

Legio huffed, crossing his arms. "None of them has my affinity. It will amount to nothing."

"Then teach them combat," Haliet responded. "Tactics. Conviction, as Artic has complained of."

"Sounds like fun," Ranilla smirked. "I can't wait."

"There is a promising healer among them. I will give her my tutelage," Pan whispered, though her voice carried through the room effortlessly.

"And the rest of you?" Haliet questioned. Gregg, Bliss and Artic shared glances, then each nodded.

"Good. The rest of the army will be gathered in two and a half weeks. Prepare them as much as you can. Once we launch, there will be no more time for training."

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