Chapter 219 - Ancient Activity

It is currently 3:30am, but I got it done! Really liked this chapter too.

The echoes of the monsters fighting amongst themselves carried through the gorge, even over the sound of the roaring river. So far, none had chased beyond the mist, but Hump wasn’t about to take it easy. As a matter of habit, Hump focused on the River and Waves, calming himself. Letting his essence flow through him and push back some of the chill from his spellcasting from before.

With his mind controlled, he readied a spell, his staff gleaming with essence. In his left hand, he released sands from his Osidium ring, letting them spread out on the path ahead, illuminating the woody hill like stars so that Rehk and Tokdaar could more easily find their way. The two horses huffed as they followed, clearly distressed, and Rehk’s constant hurry and tugging didn’t help.

Hump and Celainr rose the riverbank quickly, coming to a patch of muddy ground. It was likely flooded often, and Hump wasn’t about to remain to test their luck any further.

“Did you see anyone following you?” he called to Rehk, searching the shadows of the rocky hills behind them.

“No,” Rehk said breathlessly. She extended the reins of the horses. “Here. Take stinking beasts.”

“Thank you for getting them to us,” Celaine said.

“Why man keep these beasts is no sense. Better to use feet. Beasts only good for food.”

“Don’t listen to her Prancer,” Hump said, brushing him. “Nobodies going to eat you.”

Nishari stuck her head out from inside his cloaks, purple eyes gleaming, triggered either by his tone or the mention of food. Hungry. Hungry.

You’re definitely not going to eat him.” He smiled. Thoughts of the attack were already gone from her, which he supposed was a good thing. “We’ll sort you out some food once we find a safe place.”

She looked at him quizzingly, but Hump’s attention was elsewhere. At least for now, they’d escaped the dungeon mist. He wasn’t yet sure where that left them.

Looking up at the sky, the moon was on its way down. “Another four or five hours till daybreak, I reckon. Worst time for us to be drenched in water and without a shelter. We need to dry off.”

“Not here,” Rehk said. “Water not safe.”

“No where’s safe,” Celaine said nervously. “There are few things more dangerous than travelling the Fallen Lands at night.”

“We don’t need to go far,” Hump said. “Looks like flatter ground that way, and it’s toward the pass. So long as the mist doesn’t seep down, we can probably find somewhere to set up camp. I’ll get my runes up again and we can get another couple of hours sleep.”

Hump shivered as they walked. He was half expecting to see ice form on his clothes before they found somewhere. Hump’s breath misted in the air, and the sound of his blood in his ears was loud as he walked. Celaine instructed him to keep his light dim, so he could hardly see beyond her in front of him. The marshy ground made for bad walking, but it didn’t take too long for them to reach a woodland on the other side. Tall rocky steeps rose on either side of them.

He found himself missing the rest of his party. They wouldn’t have had any trouble in the mist as the five of them. Bud’s Heart of Frostfire would have kept the mist back easily, and Dylan’s Nature’s Spring would have protected Rehk and Tokdaar from its effect. Emilia… she would have just been good at carving things up. He wondered what they were doing. Almost a month had passed, they would be arriving in Blackthorne soon, if not already.

“Wait a second,” Hump said,, his eye catching something strange along on the ground nearby and breaking his trance. He directed his sands over it, illuminating a large block of stone with straight edges that couldn’t have been made naturally.

“Someone’s been here before.” He knelt, brushing off the stone. There were letters carved into the surface that he didn’t recognise. Even if they were Alveronian, only a few of them were still legible, the rest worn smooth by years exposed to the elements.

“Could be a gravestone,” Celaine said. “I don’t recognise the language.”

“Me neither, but I don’t think so. It’s a bit plain for a grave. It must be ancient whatever it is. This area’s been uninhabitable since… well, I don’t know.”

“Why matter?” Rehk asked. “Old stone is old stone.”

“If there were humans here in the past, there was likely a reason,” Hump said. “Could be an old village nearby.”

Celaine cocked her head and hushed them, peering off into the darkness. Hump tried to follow her gaze, but he saw nothing. She held up a finger, indicating for them to stay in place, then crept forward like a ghost, shadows weaving around her. A few tense moments passed in silence before she returned.

“Skeletons,” she whispered.

Hump immediately went on alert. “Where?”

She pointed into the darkness to the right. Hump saw nothing but a few trees, but he heard a slow click-clacking that could have been bony feet.

“They look human,” she continued. “Nothing dangerous. I think our presence must have disturbed them. They came from a cave—might be close enough to a dungeon for their bodies to have been imbued with essence.”

“I don’t sense a dungeon nearby,” Hump said. “Even the marsh one seems too far away now.”

“Old dungeon maybe,” Celaine said. “These skeletons could be hundreds of years old. That’s a long time for someone to have ventured this far and destroyed it.”

She had a point. Still, Hump couldn’t help but feel excited. “Want to check it out?”

Celaine smiled. In the faint light, with her hair wet and clothes clinging to her, Hump found himself staring. Her green eyes shone faintly with essence, a glint of something primal to them. Sometimes it was hard not to notice how gorgeous she was.

“Not serious,” Rehk said. “Danger too much.”

Hump swallowed, turning from Celaine. He pushed those thoughts from his mind. It wasn’t happening, and only an idiot would dwell on it now of all times.

“They’re just skeletons,” he said to Rehk. “If they’ve been undisturbed in a cave for hundreds of years until we came along, it’s probably safe.”

Rehk growled something in gnollish and Tokdaar said something. “Mad humans. All are mad.”

“I thought gnolls enjoyed a fight?” Hump said.

“Enjoy hunt. No meat on skeleton make for bad hunt.”

Hump snorted. “Fair point. Just stay behind me and we’ll be fine.”

They snuck forward together. It wasn’t difficult. The skeletons meandered back and forth with hardly any intent, their bodies sluggish. There was a purple gleam inside their ribcages, faint, but definitely a heartstone. Neither had weapons, and Hump was pretty sure he could break one to pieces with a smash from his staff alone. He left that work to Celaine. Better to handle it quietly and from afar than risk unwanted attention.

Celaine plucked arrows from the shadows, nocking them on her bowstring and loosing them at the creatures, one after the other. Two quick thuds followed one after the other, each piercing the ribcages and knocking the heartstone cores from their chests. The bones struck the ground like clattering stones, and then went still.

Silence lingered. They waited a minute. Two. Nothing disturbed the quiet. Only when they were sure that nothing had heard did they step from their spot in the trees, approaching the cliff. Hump collected both heartstones on the way—they were worthless junk, but that was all he needed to practice his enchanting work. The good stuff would come later. Right now, he just needed to learn to inscribe functional runes.

Even when Celaine pointed it out Hump couldn’t spot the cave entrance in the cliff.

Turned out, it was less of a cave as it was a mine. The opening was a narrow passage with obvious chisel marks on the walls. A murmur echoed up from the deeps.

“Sounds haunted,” Celaine said hesitantly.

“You just don’t like going underground,” Hump said.

She nodded. “Who in their right mind likes that?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Hump said. “Many believe abandoned mines to be haunted—most of the time, they’re not. That sound is usually caused by water.”

“Not sound like water,” Rehk said.

“The drip reverberates through the tunnels over and over again, building to something that sounds like murmurs. Creepy, but nothing to worry about.”

“Good.” Celaine smirked. “Then you won’t mind going first.”

Hump smiled back, suddenly regretting his bravado. “No problem.”

Like this would faze him.

He let his Osidium sands lead the way, spreading them along the roof to light their path as they delved deeper. The mine was steep and narrow enough that Rehk barely fit. Out of the wind, the wet clothes didn’t feel so bad. As they grew deeper, Hump sensed something in the air.

“Do you feel that?” he asked, unable to keep the excitement from his voice. There was one other reason skeletons might spawn naturally in a place like this.

Celaine shook her head. “What?”

“You’ll notice it soon. Expand your senses and reach out with your mind. This is good practice.”

They kept walking, and soon Celaine said, “There’s essence in the cave.”

Hump grinned. “I think we’ve just stumbled upon an old essence stone mine.”

A scraping sound came from ahead of them—another skeleton in the tunnel, this one unable to stand. It was missing its lower body entirely. He kicked in its ribs with a boot, the bones brittle and breaking easily, then plucked its heartstone out from inside. With no essence to hold it together, the bones fell to pieces.

Soon, Hump saw the proof he needed. A multitude of colours illuminated the way ahead.

“Look, Nisha,” Hump said.

Excitement. She was barely keeping herself in her pouch, desperate to run ahead.

Tokdaar let out a curious whine, speeding up, but Rehk grabbed his collar before he could go to far.

Hump entered the room first, a Shield spell ready on his lips, though he didn’t need it. It was a small, domed chamber, not twenty paces wide. The roof was speckled with a dazzling display of unrefined essence stones, glowing in every colour.

“Amazing,” Celaine whispered.

To the right, glistening water ran down the cave wall, collecting in a puddle that shone blue—essence water. There were a few buckets, shovels, picks, and various other pieces of miscellaneous mining equipment around the room. Despite their age, none had rusted. Hump picked up a bucket, realising why as he touched it. After so many years in the essence rich environment, they’d become imbued with essence too.

“This is quite a find,” Hump said.

Celaine wandered the room, peering down a couple of passages leading away from the chamber. “I wonder why they left it. The tunnels don’t go much deeper.”

Hump spotted a chest beneath a storage unit and walked over to it. “Dangerous area. Maybe they were attacked. I doubt these essence stones are worth all that much unless they get really lucky.”

He kicked open the chest, only for the wood to deform. A set of razor sharp teeth appeared, and a monstrous purple tongue lashed out at Hump. Hump screamed, swinging his staff on instinct and channelling Parry Shield. He knocked the tongue aside and levelled his staff toward it. “Blast.”

Essence erupted into the mimic’s mouth, shattering it into a thousand fragments. Essence stones exploded from inside in a dozen different colours, scattering across the ground.

“You okay?” Celaine asked, searching for more threats.

Hump let out a breath, heart racing. “Just about. The miners must have really left in a hurry to leave a chest of essence stones.” He picked one up, peering through the crystal, marvelling at the light gleaming inside. “These are probably a silver or two each.”

Celaine snorted. “Like we need the money now.”

“Let’s take them anyway. I’ll use them to practice enchanting. All the metal scraps will be good too.”

Nisha hopped out of her pouch and started to sniff around the fragments of the mimic, then grabbed a scrap of what at least appeared to be wood. She jumped around, stirring the essence stones on the floor like balls. Tokdaar joined her, and the two raced around the chamber.

Celaine activated her belt of holding, taking out a bunch of wood. “Let’s get a fire going first. I’m freezing.”

“Yeah. I’ve got a cantrip to dry our gear. Doesn’t work while it’s being worn though.”

Celaine raised an eyebrow. “Interesting strategy.”

“Like you can talk, Celaine. You’re looking at peak masculinity right here.”

She laughed.

“Humans strange,” Rehk said, then repeated it in gnollish. Tokdaar chortled a laugh, Nisha perched on his head.

“Thank the gods!” a voice called, echoing through the mine, deep and resonating with magic.

Hump felt essence thicken in the air, sending a chill down his spine. He raised his staff, searching for the source of the voice.

“I didn’t think anyone would ever come back,” it continued. “You have to get me out of here. Hello? Can you hear me?”

“I thought you said it wasn’t haunted,” Celaine hissed, an arrow on her string, the silver light of Power Shot radiating from it. “That doesn’t sound like water dripping.”

“I said they’re mostly not haunted. A wizard always leaves some room for anomalies.”