Call of the Abyss [Book 2 Complete]

Looking through Trixy's eyes, Julia couldn't tell what exactly the ritual was doing, beyond making the crystal glow and pulse. She inferred that it was likely responsible for the mana storm, but that didn't tell her much either.

The main issue, she realized, was that Trixy didn't have access to her Truesight, which meant she had no advanced means of detecting enemies. Sure, the Barrowlords were standing out in the open very obviously, but the last Barrowlord she'd run into seldom moved alone.

She thought it extremely unlikely that five would be traveling without escort, yet there were no traces of any other forces. No revenants seethed silently in the Barrowlords' shadows, no ghûls salivated at the edges of perception, and no skeletons meandered aimlessly. This was no good. She couldn't scout properly without being able to detect their enemies' formation.

Julia knew she'd have to get close herself, but that would negate all the advantages their current scouting method had. Although, maybe—with the help of her new Skills—she could make it work.

Regardless, she continued watching through Trixy's eyes for the time being.

Other than the obvious outlier—the Barrowlords' ritual—there was scarcely anything out of place. The town was seemingly deserted. No corpses littered the ground, and there were no signs of conflict. The buildings all seemed to be intact and undamaged.

The wall surrounded a large patch of dry land that, were she only looking at it specifically, might not have been out of place in the forest around Rockyknoll—the only difference being that all the residential buildings were up in the trees rather than on the ground. There were grasses and wild plants like clover growing around pens and fences, all absent of animals.

Julia recalled that this particular settlement was supposed to rear a great deal of the elves' khazrat. That would explain the pens and fences, but where were the actual animals? There weren't even corpses around, and the nashiin had largely ignored animals up to this point—or, they did in the swamp at least.

Did they open a gate somewhere and let the khazrat escape? Did they slaughter them and pile the carcasses elsewhere? Did they somehow know how significant the khazrat were for the elves? Why would they bother moving the carcasses, though—unless they would interfere with the ritual somehow? There were so many unknowns.

Trixy swept up to the nearest of the actual dwellings. Julia didn't want to risk alerting anyone by opening doors or windows at the moment, so she was settling with cursory glances through windows. From what she could see, the homes were empty and untouched, as though everyone was simply in bed asleep.

Relaying what she was seeing to the party, Julia also mentioned the limitations of Trixy's sight.

"However, I believe I have a solution," she said as she lifted her hand up and began to weave small mana runes into a script above it.

ᛊᛈᛖᚲ

ᛚᛁᛊᛏᛖᚾ

"Speak" and "listen" appeared respectively atop her hand in a faint, wispy blue.

Julia had received two new Skills with her advancement in the Combat Enchanter Subclass. That the experience she got from using the runes to distract the Felllord catapulted her up past two Skill thresholds spoke to either the efficacy or novelty of what she made with the runes, or the power of the enemy she fooled—potentially both.

One of the Skills she had tested a bit during her homestay in Veshari was Runic Resonance, which seemed to give her a small awareness of her runes regardless of her physical distance from them. She could tell very little—just the approximate amount of mana remaining in them, as well as whether they were still functional. Still, just knowing whether her runes were still active—or even existed—was plenty valuable.

The other Skill she'd acquired was slightly more niche. Runic Overload allowed her to, through her new Runic Awareness of the runes, "overload" any that she'd formed. This functionally just meant that she could somehow funnel a bit of her mana to existing runes remotely and start a cascading reaction that would ruin the runes' structure.

There were different implementations for destroying the runes, but Julia surmised the purpose of the Skill was to both deactivate runes remotely and cause a small implosion as they collapsed. Although niche, it did give her a way to end her runes prematurely or use existing runes to cause a small amount of damage to enemies close to them—even if that wasn't their intended purpose. It was niche, but versatile.

The most curious of these things was being able to funnel mana to runes remotely. How the hell did that work? Julia was determined to figure it out someday, as the implications of sending mana across great distances almost instantly—and seemingly without the mana actually traveling through the intervening space between her and the runes—were enormous.

Regardless, if she could send mana remotely to destabilize the runes, why couldn't she send information between runes as well? Mana carried both will and intent with it, after all.

"Testing," Julia said, her voice coming once from her mouth and again from the "speaking" rune.

"Incredible!" Elulis exclaimed, also being echoed by the rune.

"With this I should be able to go scout while staying in touch with you all. I can't seem to move my runes once created, but they're very simple to make. It won't be any trouble to make a pair of these scripts as I discover things to report. Actually…" she trailed off as the scripts above her hand disappeared.

In their place, a single, longer script swirled into being.

ᛊᛈᛖᚲ ᚨᚾᛞ ᛚᛁᛊᛏᛖᚾ

"There, 'speak and listen' should be a little more efficient," Julia said with satisfaction. She looked up from her work to see wide eyes from the elves as they stared at the runes.

Ithshar, ever the more grounded of the group, snapped her fingers.

"That's enough. We can discuss how this advanced communication will change our warfare with the nashiin later. Julia, be careful. Prioritize your own safety above all else, and do not make a move against the nashiin without discussing it first," she warned. Julia nodded and took off into the sky.

She shifted her body to be translucent rather than fully-invisible. This was her preferred method of stealth when she could get away with it. A translucent body wasn't as effective as being invisible, but considering it cost no mana and was just a property of her existing body, it was a solid trade off—especially at night, under the cloak of darkness.

She glided over to the branch Trixy had perched on initially and gazed down at the ritual below. The Barrowlords were still there, completely motionless as they conducted their fell rites. However, Julia could see what Trixy had not—a great tear in space. It was about the size of two Barrowlords stacked on top of each other as well as standing side-by-side.

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To Julia's Truesight, it looked like a deep, purple haze shifting just above the crystal in the center of the fivefold mark on the ground, like the heat haze off a candle's flame. Julia only knew that it was a tear in space due to the feeling it gave her. She'd used her own Space Magic enough to recognize the manipulation of spatial layers. Though she didn't know its specific purpose, it was easy to surmise as a portal.

Actually, it reminded her a great deal of the rift that the Abyssal creature created all those weeks ago. The only difference was that whatever was on the other end of this portal was not giving off that horrendous sense of wrongness, though the lack of wrongness certainly didn't make it a good thing.

It also explained the mysterious absence of elves and Khazrat. They—or their corpses—were likely being abducted. To what end, was the important question.

Julia examined the area around the ritual, and its purpose became more opaque the more she looked. What was this mana storm? The mana in the storm didn't feel related to the portal at all—there were no spatial traces in the storm—so was it separate? Was the storm a diversionary tactic to draw attention away from the portal? Why would the center of the storm be directly above the ritual if that were the case?

None of this explained the new ghûls, either. Were they…what…a side project? What was happening here?

Another curiosity was that Julia didn't detect any other undead. As far as her Truesight could tell, it really was just the Barrowlords present. Granted, a large portal seemed to suggest that more enemies weren't far, but still. Her Truesight hadn't been wrong yet, but that didn't mean it couldn't be.

She created a script above her palm and whispered what she was seeing as Trixy swished back and curled around her chest.

"I don't know what any of it is, but I'm pretty sure we need to close that portal. Whatever is happening, it would be in our best interest to stop it, and if we can close that portal before any additional forces come through, I think we have a real shot of taking these Barrowlords down," Julia reasoned.

It was not just bravado. If these nashiin thought things were going to go the same way they had in the past, they were going to be sorely disappointed. Julia was massively upgraded in her mana store alone, which was always her most defining limitation. She felt she had no call to be so afraid of the Barrowlords any longer.

"We would need to scale the wall without detection and somehow disrupt the ritual before the fell captains could summon their kin. That is a tall order," Sahveth said in a whisper, carried through Julia's runes.

"Does it matter? Is there any other option? This profane ritual must be stopped at any cost," Elulis growled, mettle in her tone.

"You are both correct. We likely must trade subtlety for quick action. We vault the wall and banish this ritual—as well as its profaners—in one fell swoop," Ithshar said with resolve. Julia couldn't see them, but she could picture the four looking at each other and nodding.

"I believe I can disrupt the ritual as well as distract the Barrowlords so that you might be able to approach both stealthily and quickly. They've been trying to capture me for weeks now. The Barrowlord I defeated with the Thornalûn was quite vocal whenever we encountered each other. Let me try to bait them into talk while you move in to strike. I can do it," Julia claimed.

There was silence from the script for several seconds while Julia prepared to argue further—it was the best option, she was sure. However, when Ithshar spoke next, she was surprised to hear confirmation.

"Do what you can, but take no unnecessary risks, and be careful," she emphasized. Julia nodded, and then affirmed vocally once she realized they couldn't see her before steeling herself.

"Move now!" Ithshar said in a whisper through the script, and Julia terminated all her runes. She could feel the party's coordinates moving her direction. She leaped lightly along the branch until she found a perch directly above the ritual. There she waited until she felt the party reach the wall—it was time.

She drew her sword silently, now a vibrant light purple color like her armor, and shifted her own gravity. She walked around the side of the branch and underneath it, until she was standing upside down on the underside of the branch, looking straight up (or down, depending on the perspective) to the ritual on the ground.

Closing her eyes and taking one last moment to affirm to herself her growth since her last confrontation with a Barrowlord, she concentrated on her desire to consume the ritual and all its components. She channeled mana laden with that intent into her sword, and it began to crackle with red flames and electricity.

The effect on her sword was not like anything she'd ever experienced before. Rather than surrounding the weapon like her Mana Weaving Skill did or using any runes, it was like her mana sank into the blade, becoming part of it and embodying her desire. The flames roiled along the length, lightning crackling and arcing off around it.

Holding the blade straight up above her, she took hold of its coordinates, increased its gravity dramatically, and released it. She shifted her own gravity back to normal immediately after, dropping after the blade—though much slower.

The blade made it to the spatial warp in less than a second and pierced straight down it like a hot knife through butter before impacting the crystal, where it stabbed through to the ground below, sinking into the crystal up to the crossguard. Now that she was close, Julia could see that the crystal was about as large as her head, so the blade piercing through already destroyed a great deal of it, as if she'd stabbed the sword through a small watermelon.

This was not the end, however. The crystal began to glow red and vibrate, hairline fractures appearing along its surface. The vibrating quickly reached a crescendo, and the crystal burst apart in a great gout of blood-red flames and lightning, just as Julia spun and landed—the balls of her feet making hardly a sound as she touched down.

The split haze of the portal faded entirely, and the great storm of swirling mana surrounding the village began to slow—though it still had much momentum. Julia bent down and picked her sword up, resting the blade on her shoulder with the other hand on her hip.

"What a shame. That looked expensive," she said with a cold grin as the Barrowlords—in unison—pulled their swords from the ground. Their faceless, dead stares sent shivers down her spine, but she'd be damned if she would let it show.

"A shame, indeed, but all is not lost. You are among the Lord's most wanted. That we have the opportunity to recruit you will make up for this minor failure, plus interest," the one at the head of the star-shape said, its voice like a dull wind blowing through a graveyard.

The Barrowlords and Julia stared, none advancing, but none retreating. This standoff was the calm before the conflict, Julia knew. However, she was here both to stall and get information, so that conflict would have to wait.

"I met your new ghûls. Nasty little shits, but not too tough. You thinking those are going to change the course of this conflict?" she asked in a mocking tone.

"Obviously not, though I'll not explain any of our Lord's plans to one not yet among us. You may learn his machinations once you have joined us in unlife," the same one said.

It didn't seem interested in revealing plans or monologuing. Julia wracked her brain to think of something to extend the stall. She could feel the party mounting the wall, but they were not yet close enough for comfort.

"Bold of you all to do this alone. That last Barrowlord I killed—you know, the stalker—he seldom went anywhere without an escort of revenants, at least," she said, again trying to provoke them.

The five began to chuckle, and the sound was enough to nearly still the blood in her veins. It sounded like the wet, rasping cough of a horde of dying beasts.

"Amusing," the one in the middle said as it reached under its chestplate and produced a crystal cube—was that stored in the chest where all those meat tendrils were? Yuck.

It tossed the cube behind it and, as it hit the ground, it burst into a glowing white light that would've blinded her had her eyes been normal flesh and blood.

Out of the blinding light came scores of undead: revenants, ghûls, skeletons, and even types she'd not seen before. They flooded out of the now-broken dimensional space—which is what that cube must've been, a dimensional storage artifact of some kind that could hold undead somehow—and filled the area around the Barrowlords with bodies.

Suddenly, Julia was not just facing five Barrowlords but an army of nashiin. There were likely close to a thousand of them, all baying for the blood of the living—and they were surrounding the Barrowlords, who were surrounding Julia.

"...shit," Julia sighed. Why did things always end up like this?