Framework of the Frontier, Sain Artwell [read me a book .TXT] 📗

“…could be a highly advanced form of summoning. Possibility that the Maze is another realm? Remnant of an ancient civilization predating even the Iram…” Ember was making notes.

“Let’s get going.” William placed the Eye back in the antimagic chest before it could fully activate. He and Ember carried it through the door, which, unlike with the golem walking through, seemed to stay open behind them. “Guess the golem can also close them. Let’s keep this one open for now so we can return easily.”

“That would be wise.” Rulu’s bioluminescence chased off some of the nearby shadows, but wasn’t quite enough for William’s eyes, not yet.

He got an idea. “Rulu, can you turn that up?”

“Excuse me?” She shot him an appalled look, like he’d asked her to donate a heart. “Are you suggesting that I act as a lure to whatever may lurk in this dungeon? Can I? Yes. Shall I? Absolutely not. Hm.” Her patterns lost their light, leaving them in darkness.

“Oh, yeah… Good point.”

“Here.” Ember lit a lantern. The warm burn made the pearly lines of the stone glimmer. “Whoever carries the light will be made target either way.”

“Thanks, Ember.” William accepted the lantern, giving their surroundings a once over. “Rulu, since you can see in the dark, how does it look further in?”

Dully colored growths covered the walls and ceiling. Heads of the mushrooms and polyp-like moss reached towards the sun-lit outside. Against the door, they had piled up in mounds. Moving the lantern, William spotted something tiny fleeing it into the eye-socket of a cracked skull embedded in the moss. One of many skulls.

“Fuck.”

““What?”” The two girls turned to look at him, alarmed.

“Nothing, a jump scare.” William took a deep breath, inspecting the overgrown bone-pile They were old. Decades, maybe even centuries? He had no clue how to date bones. Some looked human, others not so much.

Ember cast her Sorcerer’s Eye, taking a closer look. “Nothing to fear. They are not undead, but perhaps they have clues regarding this place.”

They hunched over and began to dig through plants and bones.

Rulu stood some distance ahead, her tail swirling impatiently. “Are we truly pausing at the entrance? There are many more bones ahead, most of which are not overgrown.”

“There could be loot — powerful weapons,” William said.

“Truly now?” Rulu’s tail paused.

Ember nodded. “It’s possible.”

Rulu looked at the piles. Then, after a moment of pondering, eschewed dignity and dug into them.

William and Ember suppressed a shared giggle.

From the door all the way to the first t-crossing, the corpses carried mostly carrion crawlers and broken knick-knacks — pieces of pottery, corroded remains of weapons, and the like. They did find coins of an older Nibirian mintage and one snapped mithril blade, which apparently was worth good gold even as scrap metal. Oh, and one sealed mold crusted jar of possibly prehistoric hard-tack bread.

Ember remained excited long after William and Rulu had lost enthusiasm. “There are skulls of creatures from the old Iram and few I have never seen documented anywhere. These people here were modern adventurers. You can tell by the weapons they had and… Uh-oh.”

She lifted a mangled bronze star.

Mushrooms and mold grew through the late Ranger’s corpse, making it hard to distinguish where it ended and another body began. Theirs had been a large party of maybe ten or so.

William knew he wasn’t the first one to get this job.

“Ranger’s aren’t your personal adventurers,” he muttered, snorting with morbid humor at Lidarein’s words. That sceptre must be quite something. And its guardians seemed to be no joke either. The sight of many dead at an entrance, or an exit, had William worried. “Any idea how they died?” he asked Ember.

She cleaned mushrooms off of a body, tilting her head as she inspected it. “Ribs and armor were punched in. And some of their bones have crumbled into charcoal, as if incinerated. I think it might’ve been the golems.”

“Damn. Must’ve been a whole bunch of them.”

“Or one.” Ember gave him an encouraging smile. “Most people coming here do not wield the kind of magic you do. Powerful wizards tend to stick to Nibir. To have a paladin and an aboleth princess in the same party is…” Ember shook her head. “It’s a little unfair.”

He cracked a grin. “I don’t feel unfairly powerful.”

“And you should not,” Rulu said. “Complacency is the enemy of strength. That is the reason for our delve into these hallways — to find power — unless I have misunderstood.” She quirked a brow.

Ember put the bones down. “Sort of, it’s one of the reasons.”

“Yeah, more of a side quest for me personally. Let’s go on though. Is there any difference between the two directions?” All he saw in the lantern’s flicker were the outlines of oddly angled arches and pillars, which encased the grooved stone of the corridors.

Rulu looked in both directions. “They both bend inward and out of sight.” She paused, eyes widening for a moment. “I noticed a creature on the left and dispatched it.”

“Alright, let’s take left,” William decided.

They found it, a cat sized lobster-thing. It had a long spike in its tail and an almost human-like pale face surrounded by a thick mane of thin foot long black tentacles. William was struck by an eerie disgust of the uncanny to the point of something rising in his throat.

“Thank God it’s dead. What is that thing?” He looked at Ember.

Her face switched between disgust and confusion as she turned it over with her sword. “I’m not too sure honestly.” She licked her teeth with a strange look. “If I had the proper arcane workshop here I would like to study it. Would it be okay if we… paused for a moment?” She pulled out her moleskine, giving William and Rulu a coy smile.

William spoke