Call of the Abyss [Book 2 Complete]

Elaine sighed as her fire winked out, vanishing with the faintest breeze. Forming runes from magic was difficult, not just due to the intricacy of corralling fire into a defined shape, but also because there was no spell for it. Her basic path to magic had been to expand on System-taught spells. In this way, she always had a foundation to build on.

Constructing runes from magic, by contrast, had no predefined formula for her to follow or modify. She had to write the formula herself, so to speak. Is this what all the best mages did? Did they come up with spells on their own? That would be really hard!

She held up her hands to give it another go, but a kerfuffle drew her attention to the side. The Iron adventurers were sprinting back to Elaine's group, looks of panic on their faces—or at least, that's what she thought it was.

Mr. Pitwyck stood from his log slowly to a crouched ready-stance.

"Gentlemen, what seems to be the problem?" he said cautiously.

"Don't know!" the man in the lead shouted, not seeming to be out of breath, despite sprinting in armor and carrying a shield. "We heard a voice in our heads that told us to come back here and prepare for battle!"

"A voice in your head? Was it Julia?" Mr. Pitwyck questioned, now more confused than cautious.

"It was mine. A swarm of undead approaches from all sides," a deep, rich voice spoke into Elaine's mind.

She—and most of her group—startled at the sudden mental intrusion.

"Who—" Mr. Pitwyck started, but a sudden fog sprang up around the clearing.

The white blanket spread like a wave, rolling over the edge of the forest and enclosing the entire clearing the obelisk resided within. The adventurers reached Elaine's group and took up defensive positions around them, with Mr. Pitwyck raising his hands as if to start casting.

"Do not enter the fog," the same telepathic voice commanded.

Elaine looked up toward the branches of the trees surrounding the clearing, instinctively feeling the source of the voice, and saw two huge, yellow eyes with slit pupils observing them. They made eye contact briefly before the eyes disappeared fully into the fog.

Elaine's body went rigid—her blood frozen in her veins.

What was that?!

She hadn't so much as had the thought before blinding lights began to flash in the fog. The sight was eerie, as there were no shouts of battle, no warcries, nor even shouts of pain. There were flashes of white and yellow, accompanied occasionally by a hot wind or distant crack of thunder, and otherwise—complete silence.

"What is going—" one of the adventurers started to say, but his attention was drawn by a group of undead that burst from the fog, sprinting at the group full-tilt.

There were a great number of them. Elaine didn't have time to count, but the number must be in the double-digits. There was a mix of shambling skeletons and animalistic corpse-things with long claws. The skeletons were one thing, but these other ones were fast!

She struggled to remember the descriptions that Julia had given for the different types of undead, but she was panicked and unable to think straight.

The runners hit the group first, slashing and clawing at the adventurers, who met them steel-to-claw. The irons fought desperately, managing to keep the vicious corpses from penetrating their formation.

Elaine was stricken with fear—the 'blood frozen in her veins' description before seeming inaccurate, as she could feel it pounding in her head. She heard the clangs as claws and teeth deflected off armor and shield, and she could only imagine what those slashes and bites would do to flesh.

"Feel the fear—acknowledge it, experience it—and then let it pass over you. You have work to do, adventurers," Mr. Pitwyck said calmly from Elaine's side. He raised his hands and blasted a bolt of lightning at some of the approaching skeletons.

The bolt cracked where it struck, turning bones to shrapnel, but it didn't seem to do much. He continued shooting lightning at the approaching undead, his bolts doing damage exactly where they struck, but little else.

Some he managed to catch in the head, and they crumbled instantly. Others he caught in the legs, which managed to reduce them to crawling. Most, however, he only managed to damage without impeding their charge. What was a missing bone or two to a skeleton anyway?

Elaine gulped and breathed slowly, attempting to narrow her focus away from the overwhelming situation into what she could do right now. She grabbed a vial from her belt with trembling fingers and, after fumbling with the leather latch for a couple seconds, cocked it back and threw it at the nearest clawed undead.

The impact broke the clay bottle over the thing's ribs, splashing a noxious green liquid that sizzled where it landed. The undead didn't even seem to notice, but the acid wasn't the main purpose of the concoction.

"F-firebolt!" Elaine yelled with a quaking voice, as if attempting to inspire courage within herself.

She launched a ball of fire no bigger than her fist from an outstretched hand. It impacted the undead, doing little more than singeing its skin. However, where it struck the acid, a green flame sparked, burning and spreading like an infection across the creature. It bellowed, as if in pain, and frantically slapped at its torso to extinguish the flames, but they would not be quelled so easily.

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The distraction proved enough, as one of the Irons with a mace managed to clobber it in the head, instantly reducing it to a pile of burning flesh. The stench made Elaine's nose wrinkle, but she grabbed another vial, ignoring it.

Before she could throw it, a sudden commotion from behind them drew her attention. Somehow, the Steels had returned.

Elaine didn't see how they arrived—they just appeared in a tangled mess on the ground.

"What are—how did you get here?" Mr. Pitwyck asked, lightning still crackling at his fingertips.

"I don't fuckin' know, man! The girl fuckin' smashed this powerful undead to pieces, the room started to blow up, and then we were suddenly here," Terrance babbled as a pillar of white shot into the distant sky.

The pillar must be at least a journey away, but it was growing quickly. What was just a thin pole of white mere seconds before quickly became an enormous column that dominated the sky like the towering core of a supercell storm.

It was accompanied by a strange droning that, while not overly loud, made her ears vibrate unpleasantly. It was like a loud noise going off right next to her head, but with the volume mostly removed so that all that was left was the vibrations in her ears and body. She could feel it in her chest—more distressing than the vibration in her ears.

The huge pillar began behaving strangely as Elaine watched, awestruck. It began to…pulse. It would stretch out and then pull back in on itself, with each pulse leaving it smaller than when it started, as if it were being slowly compressed.

Once it reached a size that was only slightly larger than the tree trunks in the area, it plunged down to the ground, where it began to rush through the trees like a flood. It was pure white when it first formed, but as it hit the ground, it had transitioned into a crimson color reminiscent of blood.

The undead that had been charging at their group mere moments before suddenly sprinted for the forest. They ignored the group living, seeming to think only of escaping the coming flood.

"Brace!" Mr. Pitwyck called, running in front of Elaine and her group and spreading his arms out.

He cast a strange bubble of magic that spread out to surround the group, and the adventurers moved to stand in front of it, making their own defensive preparations—which mostly meant hunkering down behind their parties' tanks. To their credit, the tanks did seem to have Skills to reinforce their shields, so it was a solid tactic.

It proved unnecessary, as the wave of red energy washed over them unabated, completely ignoring all their defensive measures. As it passed over her, Elaine was surprised to only feel a light, summer breeze rather than…well, she didn't know what she expected, but it wasn't this.

As the wave moved soundlessly and harmlessly past the group, the forest around them stilled. No birds chirped, no insects droned. Elaine hoped that the sudden silence was due to the animals being frightened rather than killed by whatever that energy was.

She spared a glance behind her to see one of the unfortunate undead that was missing a leg reduced to ash immediately by the wave. Pieces of it flew up into the sky and dispersed with the wind, like embers from a campfire.

She looked forward again as a rustling sounded from the forest right in front of her. Julia emerged from both the fog and the treeline, looking none the worse for wear. As she emerged, the fog began to dissipate, a wisp of it dashed across the field to land on Julia's shoulder. It was the ferret! Did the ferret make the fog? Could the ferret speak?!

"You're alive?" Terrance asked, still standing at the front as the highest ranked tank.

"Yeah, you'd have to work pretty hard to kill me with that specific tactic. Used it myself a couple times in the past," Julia chuckled.

She surveyed the group before looking around the clearing, likely noting the lack of undead.

"Anyone hit? Any undead-inflicted wounds?" she asked seriously.

Three of the Irons raised their hands. Two had small scratches on their arms and faces, but the tank had a hole in the right side of his abdomen. He had a metal chest plate, but he was certainly short of a full set of plate armor—a common story for adventurers below Steel. He had only some kind of padded clothing covering that part of his body, and Elaine guessed a claw had made it straight through.

Julia strode over to him and bent down to inspect the wound before looking the man in the eyes.

"It's deep. You'll die if we don't treat it—the Nashiin's rot has been planted deep within your body. I'm not the best healer, so it'll probably scar pretty badly, but you'll live. You alright with those conditions?" she asked.

The man nodded. Julia held out her hand and a large branch from a nearby tree broke off and came flying to her. She presented it to the man, who looked back at her in confusion.

"This won't be pleasant," she said softly.

He gulped, nodded, and placed the branch between his teeth as Julia gently placed her hand over his wound. Elaine saw a flash of red from beneath her hand right as the man groaned in pain through the branch, but his groans lasted only seconds before Julia withdrew her hand, a raised bump of white flesh was the only sign anything had ever been wrong.

She moved to each of the Irons in turn, repeating the process. The two winced slightly, but it seemed remarkably less painful for them than their tank.

After finishing the last of the healing, Julia turned around and inspected the group—taking stock of the situation, or possibly looking for any unreported injuries. Elaine had heard in school that injuries could go unnoticed immediately after combat due to the bloodlust and adrenaline from the fight.

"Well, let's pack up and head back. That should take care of the majority of the undead. We'll need to send more parties out to comb through the woods and find all their little hidey-holes, but there's no reason that has to be us. I'd call that mission accomplished," Julia said before casually heading back the way they had entered the forest.

"Was that red wave your doing, then, Julia?" Mr. Pitwyck asked, finally lowering his hands.

"Yes, though I didn't create it. Had to change it into something useful before it…well, it was gonna be bad, believe me," she answered over her shoulder.

"What 'bout them people—the victims we were searchin' for?" Terrance asked, sheathing his weapon and following.

Julia held a leather bag out to her side—she must have had that in some kind of dimensional storage! Cool!

"Found this on the Wight's body before it blew up," she said simply.

"The what's body?" Terrance replied.

"The Wight. Big bad undead boss, usually powerful casters, from what I've seen. This one was called 'Khraven', according to the System," she explained, withdrawing the bag back to her storage space and continuing forward. "Pretty safe to assume those poor people are dead—killed to keep this location a secret."

"A named undead…" Terrance whispered from behind, just loud enough for Elaine to hear.

She hadn't heard anything special about undead having a name, but it made sense if she thought about it. She wouldn't know—or care—about a random skeleton's name, but if an undead were powerful enough to make people remember its name…well, that was pretty self-explanatory.

Elaine shouldered her pack and started after Julia, once again taking up her fire rune practice. She couldn't wait to tell all her classmates about her first job! How exciting! And terrifying!