Chapter 19

Wil walked slowly along the corridors of the crypt, his Elven armor and soft leather boots nearly silent as he glided across the stone floor. The air felt heavy and stagnant, laced with negative energy that pricked painfully against his skin. He could feel the weight of the ceiling above him, they were deep underground, somewhere remote and well hidden.

He could hear chanting in the distance, rising and falling like the ocean tides. The negative energy rose with it, reaching a matching crescendo before ebbing once more. Secure in his invisibility spell, he crept forward, a feeling of dread pooling in his stomach.

There were dozens of hooded figures, gathered in concentric circles around a stone slab. Rising above them was a symbol, one that he recognized from Aachen. The single eye with black vines wrapping around it.

He had seen it before, alive and horribly close, although even it had been only a pale imitation of the true divinity.

He couldn’t differentiate between those gathered, they all look similar. Aside from their heights, they were indistinguishable. Even his sense of their mana was muddled, there was too much interference, their aura’s mixing, and congealing.

Their chanted prayers were in a language he could not recognize, a horrible sound that was jarring to his ears. The chanting was broken by the screams and cries of captives, chained in the corner of the room. There was a half dozen of them, young men, and women that Wil recognized from the descriptions of the missing.

Wil had found the culprits in the disappearances, and his sister was one of them. Cultists, worshipping a deity from beyond the Aether. His worst fears were realized, what had happened in Aachen could be repeated, here, unless he stopped it.

If he wasn’t alone, and there was nothing to risk, he would attempt to capture them, freeing the prisoners and bringing the cultists to the Imperial Guard for trial. But as it was, if he attempted to capture them, they could escape, causing more trouble.

Worse, fighting with an impediment against this many opponents could result in his death.

‘So be it.’ Wil thought, drawing on his mana just as two of the hooded figures pulled one of the prisoners to her feet. Stripping her ragged clothes off, they forced her to march towards the stone slab in the center of the room.

Letting his invisibility spell drop, Wil drew his sword, covering the white blade with mana.

“Steel Wind Strike!” He yelled, his blade shrieking as it slashed.

A razor-sharp Jetstream of air sliced through the hooded figures, bisecting three of them instantly. The attack continued on, clipping a larger figure in the arm, separating the limb from its body, causing the cultist to spin around and collapse.

The last person had enough time to turn around before the sword attack struck it in the center of its body. The cultists exploded in a spray of blood and flesh, streaking across the ground as the attack faded from existence.

Not finished, Wil teleported into the center of the group, blade already slashing at everyone around him. The Dragon’s Tooth was a weapon that once belonged to a demigod, an Elder Dragon, and it showed. It sliced through flesh and bone without effort, separating limbs and piercing defensive shields with ease.

Wherever the blade passed, it left nothing but the dead and dying, a streak of white as Wil was unrelenting with his attacks.

But he was facing dozens of foes, and even with the element of surprise, they recovered quickly. His attack was interrupted by a streak of fire that shot out of the hands of one of the cultists. It slammed into Wil’s defensive shield, leaving a burning strip of light on the magical barrier.

Spinning, Wil thrust out his left hand, the Magical Ring of Frost sending a blast of freezing air and ice shrapnel in a cone.

The cultist’s own shield lasted for a moment, a dark sphere of mana that completely surrounded him, before it collapsed, and he was knocked backwards into the air. He hit the wall with a sickening ‘crunch’.

Using his distraction, the leader of the Cultists quickly gathered his mana, pointing a withered and pale finger at the young man fighting in front of him. A wave of negative energy swirled around him.

“Harm.” He chanted, and the wave swept forward, crashing against Wil’s golden barrier or mana. It buckled but held, forcing Wil backwards. His feet skidded against the ground, and he stabbed his sword into the rock, gripping it tightly against the strong magical current.

Undeterred, the Cultist forced more mana into the spell, until Wil was buried in an avalanche of black mana. Slowly, gaps appeared in his golden barrier, the almost liquid negative energy seeping into the shield and dripping onto his body. Each drop ate away at his Elven armor, drilling down until it struck his skin.

It was agony, burning fire lanced across his arms and chest as he fought to hold the barricade. Desperate, Wil used the Tier 4 spell ‘Dimension Door’ to blink out of the attack, reappearing on the far side of the room.

Not stopping, Wil pointed at a group of cultists that were rushing towards him with knives and clubs.

“Scatter!” He commanded, his magic responding to the Tier 6 spell. The air quivered around them, and in a blink, they were gone, carried away by Wil’s magic. They instantly reappeared, directly in the wave of the negative energy released by their leader. The group was completely unprepared, their vulnerable flesh began to smoke and blacken from the magic.

Wil didn’t have time to watch, as another cultist pointed her small hand at him. He caught a look at Tabitha’s small, pretty face twisted into a perverse smile, before a massive ‘Fireball’ shot from her hand. It crossed the room in a moment.

Wil wrapped himself in mana, the Golden Dragon Turtle popping into existence just as the streak of fire struck the ground.

There was an incredible explosion, a rush of heat and light the consumed everything in the room. Many of the cultist near Wil were turned to ash in a moment. Incredibly, the prisoners were spared, their location at the far end of the room having saved their lives.

The walls shook and large parts of the ceiling collapsed as the explosion ripped into the stone.

Tabitha watched with wild glee as her brother was buried under the rubble. She had been in shock at his appearance, a brother that she hadn’t seen in a decade, appearing out of thin air at the worst possible moment.

Her shock turned to intense pleasure at the knowledge that she had killed him.

Turning, her eyes found their Leader, his black robes untouched by the dust. Aside from the two of them, and the prisoners, no one remained alive in the room.

“My Child, the ‘One’ is pleased with you. Now that your brother is dead-” He began, before being interrupted. A bone white sword suddenly protruded from his chest, piercing his heart from behind. A spray of blood left specks of red on Tabitha’s white face.

The leader of the cultists slowly toppled forward, dead. Standing behind him was Wil, covered in dust and blood. Tabitha looked at him in shock, her eyes open wide.

“How did you-” she was cut off as Wil dashed forward, slamming the hilt of her sword against the side of her head. The blow knocked her onto the ground, unconscious.

Coughing, Wil wiped flecks of blood from his lips as he straightened. He had barely survived, a last second ‘Misty Step’ after the rubble had fallen had taken him from danger, but Tabitha’s attack had nearly finished him.

Looking around for any survivors, he was relieved to see the Prisoners were still alive.

Releasing them, Wil quickly searched the Crypt for any more survivors, before taking all of them back to the Brookmoor estate with a ‘Teleport’. The array was sealed off, the fireball had collapsed the entrance to the corridor.

Wil planned on consulting with Markus, and turning over their sister, before returning with more of the House Guards to thoroughly search the Crypt.

After what he had witnessed here, he hoped his sister hung for this.