Chapter 30 - Missile man

Victor flew back several metres and threw a knife at the creature, only for it to immediately go through it and lodge itself inside the wall all the way up to the handle. The image laughed with derision.

Looking at it closer, Victor could see that Batrascu wasn’t all there. The thing cackled and still spoke in rhymes under its breath like the real thing, but it lacked the terrifying substance and physical might of the genuine article.

It also didn move from the glass tube it was contained in. It made threats to him, but overall the only thing it really did was look at him menacinlgy. There were four other glass pillars, each with a different figure in it and a name therein.

One of them was a vaguely feminine figure clothed in numerous scraps of cloth, with not a single bit of skin showing. The tube containing it was labelled “SAMNAPACHA HOZUZUSHA - KACHA ABZU MINAMINA”. Said figure gave Victor a headache as whispers of his dreams coming true if he freed it started appearing in his head. Distracting himself from the intrusive thoughts that were running through his head, he looked to the next pillar.

Silk called out from the door.

“What’s over there? Are you still alive?”, she asked.

“It’s some sort of prison thing with these abyss-lord looking illusions. I think it has something to do with the meaty monsters mining out the place”, he responded while inspectinbg the central figure.

This one was covered in runes, and was significantly more ornate than the others. Its label was titled “ANAPACHA ROKUZUSHA - KACHA ABZU OURKUS SHANTUS”. Silk helpfully translated it as “PRIMARY ABYSSAL CONTAINMENT - ABZU LORD KNOWN AS KEEPER OF FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE”.

Inside was a shadowy wraith with two slits for eyes. It looked like a bedsheet spectre made out of pure midnight, and unlike the others made no attempt to either escape or taunt the outsiders. It simply watched with an alien intellect that looked like it concealed plans beyond mortal ken.

Seeing a glint in Victor’s eyes that she didn’t like, she tackled him to the ground as he reached towards the containment, where an outstretched sleeve imprinted on the glass and splattered like evaporating ink.

“What do you think you are doing? Are you trying to get possessed?” she hissed while trying to wrestle him into a headlock.

Victor sounded strained, weakly shivering while still trying to crawl to the central container. “I need to know… what is he trying to tell me? What is it… how does.. It work?” His eyes looked glassy, and his cracked rib made his breath rattle.

“Get ahold of yourself.” Silk then proceeded to slap him in the face, which appeared to clear his head.

Victor, now in his right mind, observed the tube and noticed a small crack in the glass.

“This place is really old. The security measures for whatever those abyss lord lookalikes are must be failing.”

Levi, now entering the threshold, added her take on the situation. “Yeah, no crap this place is old. I just looked at the last journal entry from this place and it looks like the last update was over two thousand years ago.”

Silk nodded grimly. “Let’s just loot this place and leave.”, she said.

Henry cleared his throat nervously. “Ah’m not sayin’ we should just run away, but do yah think that’s the correct choice? This place carries folks who look way out of our weight class, and I think that the stuff we could get out of this place isn’t worth the risk.”

Silk snorted derisively. “If we leave now, then we just risked our lives for nothing. We wouldn’t be able to call ourselves adventurers if we didn’t actually explore. Let’s just do this quickly.”

Henry shrugged and followed along the rest of them, seemingly convinced.

***

As Silk made her argument on how not to flee, something stirred deep in the leftmost tube. The Abyssal lord of Greed and Ruin grinned as he moved his golden fingers, as if puppeteering a marionette, He struggled not to laugh as the crew exited the threshold deeper into this accursed prison. Soon, they would be free. All they had to do was wait just a bit more, and they would be whole once more.

He couldn’t wait to show the crumbling remainders of civilization how the Omnic Empire had fallen.