[Beastborne: Tower of Blight] Chapter 59

Just as the lich had said, the magma rose dangerously close. Perhaps ten or twenty feet at most.

Once the pressure reached a predetermined limit, black pillars rose out of the depths. They kept going until they were roughly seven feet away from Besal.

Enough that he could uncomfortably feel the heat coming off the lava-soaked pillar, but not enough that it would crush him. Though, despite what the lich said, he could easily see how the magma could have been controlled to splash against the ceiling, leaving the Lich’s hidden depression safe from harm.

Or even more simply, he could have used the pillars to crush them. He had the feeling this was all very controlled and slowed down on purpose. Something that the wily lich could change on the fly if he wanted.

After his numerous brushes with death, Besal was no longer afraid of it. He was in no rush to see what that next adventure must be like, but he felt confident there would be something for him.

He had a soul, or something closely approximating one, and he was more than eager to see what he could do with it.

No monster could have a Class like him. If he was just an advanced Monster, then he never would have gotten Starscourge.

Sure, his Class was strangely focused. And it prevented him from taking any others like people might normally have, but the added Experience boost more than made up for that.

He knew what he wanted to be.

Besal had no desires to be a baker, a chef, or blacksmith. His only purpose was to hunt down the aberrant creatures that should never have come to Aldim.

Doing that, he could make this star a safer place.

And maybe, just maybe, he could help build that dream city he had thought up with Hal.

A pulsing series of runes filled the tip of the pillar and Besal pressed the sequence the lich called out. His pillar rumbled and descended. One after the other vanished until they were left with only one more.

Mac, being the lich’s go-to, sped across the distance to the final two pillars.

The magma swirled above their heads like a gigantic toilet flushing. The magma swirled away from them. A central pillar descended, but this one looked different from the rest. Rougher and far, far larger.

It reached down to the hole they came from and sealed it up. Anybody behind them seeking to get through would find a quarter mile of rock between them and their exit.

The roughness that Besal had first spotted turned out to be stairs carved into the pillar’s exterior.

It was the largest set of stairs Besal had ever seen. Considering the spiraling nature of them around the pillar, they had to be nearly a mile long.

“You can’t seriously expect us to climb those,” Ralst told the lich.

“You are welcome to wait here,” the lich told her.

Mac winked at Ralst. “Al doesn’t do anything unless it’s worth doing. I could carry you, if you wanted.”

“Not on your life.”

Ralst marched up to the pillar and took to the stairs grumbling the whole while.

Luda didn’t look forward to the manual labor, but she joined them all the same.

Halfway up the stairway from hell, the gravity shifted and they fell nearly fifty feet before they landed on a wider platform that ringed the pillar.

They descended the rest of the way, with the black curved ceiling high above them, and a massive yawning pit of darkness below.

“As you can see, we have arrived,” Aldrich told them, sweeping his arms wide once they stepped into the large oven of a cavern.

They stood in front of a metallic door, still glowing with heat from being bathed in magma.

Besal felt as small as an ant in front of the metallic contraption, and it gave off so much heat he thought he might melt. Ralst, of course, never showed any signs of being bothered by the temperature.

Luda did, however. She sweated profusely and fanned herself, but even that was a testament to how strong she was.

It had to be several hundreds of degrees in here, and yet she was only sweating. Any normal mortal would have been baked alive.

“Now all that remains is for the door to open, and for me to grab the Phial,” Aldrich told them.

After everything that had happened so far, Besal was expecting more fanfare.

In fact, the main event itself was incredibly disappointing.

The lich stood, spread his arms wide and cast some spell that kicked up the sulfurous winds and unlocked the metallic door. It swung open on hinges the size of bridge pylons without a sound.

Inside, instead of a room that could have housed all of Brightsong as Besal was expecting, was only a set of stairs leading up to a very small obelisk and a velvet pillow that managed to still look brand new.

Ralst began to take the steps, but the lich held her back.

“One last precaution,” he told her, stepping in front of her. “Only I can take the Phial. If anybody else were to touch it, they would die a most grisly fate and I would be alerted to wake from my slumber. It is a final failsafe to make sure that the knowledge does not fall into the wrong hands.”

Folding her arms, Ralst let him go first. Connected by the chain, she followed him at a distance.

The lich took to the stairs with surprising speed considering his normally sedate pace. Besal guessed that he really wanted to know what that Phial contained.

If he was telling the truth, the knowledge would be just as new to him as it was to them.

Inside the Phial, hardly larger than the lich’s finger bone, was a milky-blue liquid that shifted and roiled like miniature storm clouds. He popped off the cork. A faint stench of necromancy filled the air, and Besal realized that he had not been lying about the final failsafe.

Downing the contents of the Phial, the lich began to glow with a ghostly aura that coalesced around his body and eventually faded by the time he returned and the vault shut once more behind him.

“Well?” Ralst asked.

The lich looked more discomfited than Besal had ever seen him.

Mac chuckled. “You did it again, didn’t you?”

“Did what?” Ralst asked.

Aldrich looked at the assembled faces. “In the past I might have been… a touch paranoid.”

“No. Not you? Really?” Ralst’s eyes nearly rolled out of her head as she laid on the sarcasm so thick it nearly crushed the lich.

He cleared his throat nervously. “There is no call for such crassness,” he chided. “But… yes, it would seem my past self thought it was prudent too, er, split the memory up more than I would have thought.”

Besal nearly slapped his helmet in annoyance. “He made more Phials.”

This was the sort of ridiculous thing that happens to Hal, not me!

It was almost as if he could feel Hal’s curse being dragged along after Besal.

Ralst turned to Besal, then back to the lich. “How many more?”

“That’s the hard part,” Aldrich said, holding up his hands. “I don’t know. All I know is the location of the next Phial. However!” His voice jumped an octave or two as Ralst took out a wicked black dagger with a wavy blade. “I have included, along with the memories of where the next Phial is located, a memory of a spell. A translocation spell that will take us directly there.”

“Which, of course, there will be thirty different safeguards to keep that Phial safe,” Ralst sneered. “If this ends up being some sort of wild goose chase, not only will you have doomed the world, but I’ll make sure you suffer every second until this star’s light is snuffed out!”

For the first time since Besal had known the lich, he looked scared.

Not of Ralst, necessarily, but of the possibility that his past self had done this on purpose. Hidden the truth and the knowledge from even his own mind so that it would be too late by the time they learned something valuable.

“I could return to the Fathomways–” Besal began before Ralst made a sharp cutting gesture with her hand.

“We stick together,” she told him. Her gaze took in everybody there. “All of us. From now, we’re a party. You want to go somewhere? We all go.” She motioned to the lich. “Open up the passage. Let’s get out of here.”

Aldrich still looked unnerved, but he waved his hands around and a swirling portal of green light appeared in front of them.

Besal expected the squeezing pressure and the uncomfortable sensation of speed, but what he didn’t expect was the sudden soul-jarring SNAP that felt like he had launched himself at a rubber sheet and then flung back with startling force.

He came out the other side with the others sprawled out on the ground. It was still night. Odd considering how long they spent inside the mountain. He looked at Mac, who stared up at the stars overhead.

Then Besal noticed the landscape.

This was not the Shiverglades.

A desert of beautiful black sand rolled out of view, reflecting the starlight dimly, as if each black grain had been polished.

Towers of ancient design dotted the landscape, but they leaned drunkenly as if they were ready to collapse.

As Besal’s eyes adjusted, he could see how terribly damaged the structures were. Mesas, weathered pillars the size of skyscrapers, and small hills of stardusted black stone dotted the desert.

A distant glow announced the presence of a city.

Besal climbed to the peak of the hill they were standing on top of for a better view. The golden glow of the city at night made it easy to spot. The black sands all around it looked like polished brass.

The city was a perfect circle with a tower at its center so thin and pointed that it looked like a needle he could reach out and grasp.

At such a distance, it must be the tallest building Besal ever saw, even going by the fuzzy memories of Hal’s Earth skyscrapers.

And the city!

Besal had never been one for cities, but this one was gorgeous to him.

It was encircled by a perfectly circular wall, with several districts perched atop hills that had been leveled flat. Temples and palaces gleamed in the starlight, glowing threads of water wound their way throughout the city, and out the other side into the black dunes. Fireworks–or something very similar–flashed a myriad of colors over the city.

It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen that was not trying to kill him. Its size was unreal. The whole of Brightsong’s bowl-shaped valley could have fit in those walls.

Ever since his departure from Hal, Besal had been cooped up in one place or another. As much as he missed the man, he could always feel a faint sensation, like a tug right behind his stomach that would lead him back to Hal.

For the first time, Besal did not feel that. Hal was too far away.

He was no longer in Hal’s shadow. Besal was somewhere Hal had never seen. A place so distant that he likely didn’t know it existed.

Even if he does arrive on these shores, Besal thought with a smile, I’ll have been here first.

“That is a bit of a problem,” Aldrich said, tapping his chin thoughtfully.

“What is it now?” Ralst said.

The lich pointed at the glorious city. “That,” he said, making an annoyed flicking gesture. “That thing was not here when I was around! We should have appeared within that Tower. Clearly, the squatters have erected a magical barrier. We will need to walk the rest of the way.”

Ralst glanced toward the faintly lightening sky to the east. She rummaged around in her inventory, pulling out an ornate and ancient urn. She held it up to Mac. “You might as well get in now and save us all the trouble of doing it later.”