A Legacy of Blades - An Epic Tower Fantasy

"How many of these thunderclap-traps can we possibly have to go through?" Anilith threw her hands up in exasperation. "Who makes a Dungeon like this, anyway? It's no wonder it's hidden, I'd be embarrassed by this too! I feel like we haven't made any progress going up this mountain; it's gonna take absolutely forever at this rate!"

"On the bright side," Orion interjected, coating her internal storm in silver, "we've gotten a lot better at taking out the groups. It got a lot easier when we started sending Razhik at the caster right away. Plus, you're more than capable of taking out the brutes when you aren't utterly blind."

"Hey, I thought I did a pretty good job back there, all things considered! Maybe if someone actually thought about the timing of their impractical jokes," she turned and jabbed a finger into his chest, "we wouldn't have had that problem. Some of us actually care about our friends here."

"Live long enough, and you'll understand how it feels, bein' here so long. Timelessness ain't all rainbows; has some drawbacks, too. Makes you lose perspective on some things. Besides, we had your back, back there, wouldn't have let anythin' happen to you. And now that you're able to train the newest addition to your arsenal, you tear the things apart!" He spat on the ground. "Seriously, the strength you pull out is beyond frightenin'."

"Still means nothing when the enemies just keep coming. I mean, are we actually just gonna keep fighting an army of goblins, one squad at a time, until we reach the summit?" She shook her head. "I can only imagine that backfiring like it did outside, triggering a horde when we push too far, and other groups are too nearby. It doesn't look like the mountain gets bigger up top."

Razhik, finally taking part in the conversation, jumped in. "Only one way to find out. Onwards!" He was already moving when Anilith grabbed hold of one of his legs.

"Hold up, Razhik! Can we not keep rushing forward?" She relaxed her grip slightly. "You do think, right?"

"Well, of course I do!" Razhik rounded on her, a mischievous gleam in his eye. "This has been kinda fun though, especially once I got used to the tingle-blasters. You two seem to take care of the rest pretty easily once that guy goes down, and there's something energizing about them."

"Alright, well, maybe we can take a second and try to look at this from another angle. It hasn't really gotten more challenging as we've climbed, not that I've noticed, anyway, and we've doubtless made a killing, even if we stopped looting the more basic goblins. Is this place really as simple as just slogging through fight after fight, though?" Anilith tapped her chin with a knuckle, lost in thought.

"Could be it's just a test of strength or resolve or somethin', but that don't sit quite right with me neither. Might be that you're on to somethin' and we're not seein' the whole picture."

"What other ways to get up a mountain are there, though? Seems like climbing would be the way, to me." Anilith paused. "Can't think of how else you'd get to the top."

Razhik perked up at the question. "Oh, that's easy! Caves! Or maybe more caverns, I can never remember the difference. Great places for a nap, too, if you can find one that isn't taken. Best to avoid the ones that are taken. A King should respect territorial boundaries!"

Anilith's gaze snapped over to the creature as he spoke, her eyes blinking rapidly. "Razhik, what exactly is a cave, and why haven't you mentioned them at all?"

His face grew slightly longer, a look of…confusion? "…you don't know what a cave is? What kind of idiot doesn't know what a cave is? Ori, sometimes I'm amazed at the girl you found, other times I'm just amazed at the girl you found. They're like…a mountain's ear!" His expression changed, his face becoming pinched. "No, that's not quite it. The good ones are more like a…well, that wouldn't be a polite picture…Oh! Let's call them a mouth. That links up well enough. So, they're like a mouth, and we all know that leads to a stomach. So, the caverns, I think, anyway, are like the stomach, but this stomach can lead to a whole buncha mouths. Problem is navigating them and going the way you want. Lotta branching mouths in caverns, mountains have a big appetite after all. Hard to know which way to go at a fork, could end up going down to the…less pleasant openings."

"…I'm just going to forget ninety percent of what I just heard…" Anilith began.

"…Usually a good policy with Razh…" Orion added.

"…and focus on the basics. You're saying mountains have holes?" She finished.

"Well, duh. What kind of mountain wouldn't have holes? Seriously, Ori, where did you find this girl?"

Ignoring his questions, she continued, "And these holes could help us get up the mountain without having to fight our way through who knows how many traps."

"I mean, yeah, but I thought we were all having a good…"

"Razh, sometimes I give you too much credit," Orion cut him off. "He's right, though. It's damned troublesome tryin' to navigate a mountain from the inside. Without a map you'd have to have…gods blast it! You'd have to have…"

"…someone who could sense things through the ground, maybe? almost like they could see which way a path might lead?"

"Yeah, somethin' like that would take a lot of the challenge out of it." The wanderer hung his head in his hands for a moment. "Got so focused keepin' an eye out for traps, I never stopped to think if we were even on the right track. Observant my ass."

"Don't beat yourself up, old man," Anilith said, embracing the man with one arm. "We'd probably already be dead twice over if it weren't for you. Plus, there's no saying this is the right path, just something to explore. Who knows, it could just be a colossal waste of time. I'm down to give it a shot if you guys are, though."

"Can't see it being any worse than what we been doin'," Orion said, "Well, I can, but still worth a try."

"I'll take that as a vote of confidence. Razhik?"

Razhik was uncharacteristically quiet after his earlier exuberance and fidgeted where he stood.

"Razh?"

"…well, I suppose we could see what happens. I was just kinda hoping," his voice trailed off into mumbles.

"What was that, Lord Razhik?"

"I was hoping we might play with the tingle-blasters some more," he said, his inflection rising as if asking a question. "Maybe head down from the top if we make it to the summit? Who knows when the next time I might find something like them might be!"

"Well, I suppose it couldn't hurt. Plus, who knows, maybe if we come from the top, we won't have to go through every single trap. Could be taking them out stops the trap entirely." Anilith sprouted a wicked grin. "That would make for some wonderful payback. So, you're in?"

"Yeah, I'm in."

Anilith had never witnessed a sight quite as pathetic as the moping King, his posture slouched so much that even his snakelike body seemed to fall inward on itself.

"Don't worry, bud, we'll make sure you find some fun on the way up." Orion patted Razhik on the side, and his mood seemed to lift, even if just a little.

The maw of the cave opened before them, a yawning pit of black in the twilit hours. As it turned out, even the hidden Dungeon had a day and night cycle, and it didn't feel that different from the Tower's normal rhythm. Staring into the dark pit, Anilith couldn't help but be reminded of the Trial that brought her to this strange place. She found herself pondering what lay at the bottom of that darkness, so far down that light might never touch it?

"Well, we found our cave. Wasn't even that hard, really, almost like it wanted to be found. Maybe there is somethin' to your idea after all, Razhik." Orion patted the creature's side.

"Of course there is," Razhik said smugly, "I told you I'm just called a King in the Mire. Our kingdoms are far more extensive than soft-skins give us credit for. Mountains happen to be a favorite of ours."

Orion stared at his friend. "Razh, your kingdom amounts to a water-ridden, bug-infested plain that would be an affront to any proper King. How you manage to keep up this attitude is somethin' of a wonder."

"You'll just never understand the prerogative of royalty, I suppose." He let out a sigh. "Sad, really. It's not about the worth of the kingdom, it's about ownership. Sure, there are many others out there, and my borders are constantly shifting due to one encroaching beast or another, but still, it's mine." A dark look marred his visage, causing shadows to lengthen unnaturally on his scales. Anilith suspected he was playing it up with a dramatic touch of magic. "I'm gonna have some work to do when I get home."

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Orion simply shook his head. "How you napping for centuries, is any different from leaving for a few months at a time, I'll never understand."

"No, because you aren't a King." Razhk closed his eyes and nodded slowly. "I feel sad for you, I do, but you're always welcome in my kingdom."

"Uh, thanks, but I prefer my boots dry and unsaturated with the offerings of the swamp."

"Suit yourself, guests become a bother far too quickly, anyway." As ill-suited as his physiology was for the task, Razhik somehow managed a mockery of a shrug, betraying how greatly human influence had affected him.

Anilith, pulling her gaze from the cave's mouth, looked between the other two. "Guys, can we just get on with this? I'll leave you right here and test this theory myself, if you two want to hash this out."

Razhik's jaw dropped as he stared at her before shaking his head. "Why didn't you ever mention you could see in the dark? That opens up so many more options for ambushes."

"I can't, Razhik. I have torches and can, you know, the whole seeing through the ground thing."

"Right, soft-skin solutions. Your loss!"

Eyes closed, Anilith pressed one knuckle firmly against her forehead. "I'm going now, whether you two are coming or not."

"Don't get your knickers in a twist, we ain't gonna let you head off into the unknown alone." Orion looked around, taking in the twilight and the fresh mountain air. "Just takin' a last look around at the world above ground. Don't be makin' the mistake of riskin' the long dark of underground travel, before takin' in what you'll be missin'."

"Then let's get a move on, daylight's wasting!"

Razhik cleared his throat. "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the daylight's been wasted for a while now."

Without waiting for a response, he rushed headlong into the cave, the length of his sinuous body disappearing into the darkness, his silent passage reminding Anilith again how happy she was that he was on their side.

Silence had become an ever-present companion in the confines of the darkness, as any sound seemed to echo to infinity. The trio didn't want to risk needless conversation, nor more light than was necessary, fearing they would bring a horde down on their heads. Anilith's nerves would have been shot, were it not for her constant reliance on her Earth-Sense. The cave quickly turned into a more elaborate system of tunnels than Anilith could have imagined.

Already, they had passed through several forking paths, relying on Anilith to find the best way forward, aiming ever skyward. She wasn't sure how anyone would find their way here without her abilities, as they had already had to backtrack multiple times, as a path that seemed to ascend suddenly plunged into the heart of the mountain. A foul smell lingered in these tunnels, and the group had no desire to find the source.

She supposed that may have served as a clue for those less magically inclined, but could only imagine what unpleasant lesson lay at the end of that descent.

One aspect of the tunnel system turned out to be more comforting than any other: a total lack of traps. They'd run across several patrols of goblins by now, always dispatching them as quickly as possible to minimize the clamor. The patrols were almost exclusively melee fighters, and, with Anilith's abilities, these fights thankfully ended swiftly. The goblins struggled to overcome her defenses when they couldn't overwhelm her with numbers as easily.

Aniith's experience with her Earth-Sense grew in leaps and bounds, surrounded as they were by the element. She was nowhere near as proficient with it as she was at reading the wind, but already she was able to pick out more subtle clues than she could when they entered the cave.

She could feel the vibrations caused by boots striking stone, the gentle scuff of leather, and even the small vibrations of bare feet moving along the ground.

The further into the mountain they traveled, the larger the ambushes became. At times, the tunnel opened into vast caverns fed by chasms so large, she couldn't begin to see to where they faded off. They moved quickly through these spaces, not wanting to be hemmed in by enemies that might lurk in the chasms, where even Anilith's Earth-Sense trailed off into blindness.

It was a remarkable sensation, feeling the echoes in the stone painting, even the ceiling far above her. The composition of the mountain varied wildly, the rhythm more alive here than anywhere she'd yet felt. Despite the slow tempo of the Earth, there was a diversity in the music that made it more beautiful, more interwoven than she'd experienced from the surface. It was slow, steady, and anything but simple. In places, the rock glittered and shone to her new sense, giving her a greater appreciation still for her newfound ability. The ceiling appeared to her senses a canopy of earth studded with glinting pockets, seeming, for all the world, a field of stars buried within the rock, immortalized in stone.

She found herself immersed in the song of the land itself, enraptured in a beauty she hadn't known was possible. Stone was far from common in her Moorish homeland, the earth there trending towards a fetid reclamation of life, reclaimed by the marshes and returning to nurture the land. What solid ground she was familiar with, from her time before the Tower, was airy and sodden, often the work of those graced with the gift of pathfinding, as her people called that magic. Next to the various dense materials that surrounded her, the land she knew hardly seemed earth at all. Even the sensations of the surface, dampened as they were by the loose soil, had muted her understanding of what this ability could do. Here, for the first time, she was learning to truly see.

Her ability went far beyond just sensing the Earth, but brought with it comprehension of how vibrations moved through anything solid, painting strange pictures of their battles as understanding blossomed. On the surface, so much of her attention was on simply learning what she sensed from the earth, the vibrations so much weaker there, that she was blind to the larger pattern. Down here, in the body of the mountain, she stood witness to the scale of everything and saw the pattern from the firmest of stone, to the muted tones of Orion's leather boots. She couldn't sense living things as clearly as with the Wind, but with time, and the seemingly endless learning opportunities the goblin ambushes presented, she was beginning to see a different picture. Much of the body was blank, the vibrations too foreign from the stone for her to read, but an undercurrent of commonality ran through them all. In time, she realized what it was she witnessed, seeing the interconnected nature of the framework: bone.

At a certain point, the atmosphere changed, becoming more humid, with a chill bit to the air. Before that point, Anilith hadn't realized how dry the air was, nor how they traveled in a pocket of warmth.

Razhik, just as in the Dungeon, had initially brought up the rear of their party and dismantled the largest attempted ambushes with prejudice. Something changed when they entered this new area, though. His scales took on a deeper luster, seeming to pull the moisture from the air and revitalize the beast. He took to a more aggressive approach, his lightless magic reaching an entirely new depth.

He was silent death, the shadows hiding his approach and his talons rending flesh, absent the ringing of metal. Despite having entered the enemies' homeland, fighting in the confines of the tunnels helped the trio whittle the numbers down slowly. Even in the larger caverns, the group drew their foes to the tunnel's apertures, forcing their enemies to face them in the bottlenecks they provided.

They moved through the bosom of the earth, resting occasionally to keep their strength up, catching moments of sleep in turn, Anilith never relenting on her vigil, her drive to hone her understanding. When they rested, she held her stone and focused on its song. It held within it all the songs she'd beheld in the darkness, mingled together into a somber, sad sonata that spoke of the land witnessing the passing of Ages, always watching, unable to affect any outcomes as it moved through inevitable paces.

Despite the bursts of excitement, Anilith found herself appreciating a time of silent reflection, growing her understanding in ways she hadn't imagined, her burgeoning depth of perception showing her how little she had known, while hinting at how much she still had to learn. As daunting as the task might seem, she found within herself an eagerness fed by the promise of seemingly limitless growth, at least from her current perspective.

The Earth had held unseen depths, depths she felt certain she had only begun to truly understand, and she found herself wondering: what secrets did the Wind hold that she'd blinded herself to, believing herself worthy through the graces of her Master? Anticipation thrummed within her chest, matching the eagerness born of her recent appreciation for the breadth of her ignorance.

The group passed unknown hours…days? Lost to time in the dark embrace of earth, they moved, following a shifting path ever upwards, finding themselves thankful for the supplies they'd loaded into Anilith's ring in preparation. In the absence of words, they formed an understanding that was all at once deeper, less nuanced, and more personal than anything language could provide.

Anilith, unsure of her friends' feelings on the matter, had discovered an unexpected boon from her practice with the Earth. She was better able to understand their intentions when she listened to their rhythms, something she'd been utterly blind to before. That wasn't the only unintended effect of her training, though. By attuning to different stones, she found that she could borrow varying levels of strength from the Earth, and that the weakness that followed corresponded to the solidity of that connection.

On the surface, her understanding had been so limited, she had only the barest of connections with the Earth through the soil, hindered as it was by the air and water in the mix. As she held her stone in her hand, she sought out the deepest resonant sounds, seeking to capture them in the depths of her mind that she might conjure each at will. None of the enemies they found in the long dark provided enough challenge to truly test this ability, and she looked forward to proving herself at the summit.

For all her growth, she still felt frustration in another aspect of her training. No amount of combat helped her hone her Blade Weaving further. Since entering the Tower, she had forged it into a formidable skill, but all the improvements boiled down to control, never expanding upon the ability's capabilities, only increasing her reactions to the flurry of information it could give her. The progress wasn't useless, far from it, but next to the rapid expansion of her Earthen powers, it felt stagnant and wilted, as if it were missing some vital aspect.

Lost as she was in thought, a common enough occurrence in their dark wanderings, she hardly noticed the unique nature of the cavern they'd just entered. A hand on her shoulder brought her out of her reflections, and she looked up to see that Orion had doused their torches and held a finger to his lips as he jerked his head, drawing her attention up.

Behind him, a massive fortification, clearly ruined by some catastrophe in the distant past, glowed with a soft light that was entirely foreign after the darkness and muted torchlight that had filled their days. Anilith realized that she had been moving with her eyes closed more often than open, and her mind reeled for a moment as she beheld the city with both natural and supernatural senses.

A harsh whisper, voice turned grating by the dearth of its usage in the preceding dark, escaped Orion's lips. "Let's get some rest before checkin' that out, eh?"

He led the group back down the tunnel, away from the unknown. Anilith rested, but it was the uneasy rest that comes on the eve of battle. An unexpected test lay before them, and she found herself strangely reluctant, recalling the swaths of death they'd carved in the mountain and the graveyard she wore on her finger.