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Chapter 66: Entering with a Bang
🕑 Added 2025-01-24 18:36:00 +0000 UTCThe darkness endlessly zoomed past, the dry earth below giving its place to more dry earth. Traveling the Mists of Death gave the illusion of wandering a fake world where space had little meaning.
It was awe-inspiring, in a sense. Terrifying, in another.
"It’s been hours!" Boney complained. "Are we getting there, Laura? Just how large are these Mists?"
"Very," she replied. "I told you, it’s a few hundred miles in diameter. That’s a lot, even for an airship."
"So more than a bone’s throw away."
She face-palmed. “How long have you been thinking about that?”
“The last couple hours. I’m running low on bone puns.”
“I can tell. This one sucked. In any case, Jerry is the one guiding us. How should I know when we’re going to arrive?"
The terrain moved as they traveled, but nothing really changed, which created a creepy unease in everyone’s hearts.
"Hmm?" Jerry suddenly perked up. "What’s that?"
"What’s what?"
"That!"
He pointed beyond the railing, into the endless expanse and its swirling dark gusts. Something was different there. There was no dungeon in sight, but there was a pair of pitch-black birds, barely visible in the background. If not for Jerry’s soul sense being constantly active, he would have missed them.
"Birds?" Boney wondered aloud. "Is this the mutated fauna you mentioned, Marcus?"
"Probably," he responded. "Be careful!"
"Will do. Did you hear that, Master?"
Jerry did not reply, already busy leaning out of the railing and waving the little birds over.
"Of course, Master, ignore everyone’s wisdom. What could possibly go wrong?" Boney grumbled but walked to Jerry’s side, nonetheless. "They don’t seem to like us," he noticed.
"They’re flying alongside our ship, Boney. Sure they do!"
Laura laughed. "These are the birds I mentioned before. Don’t worry, they’re harmless."
Boney sighed. Jerry exclaimed, "I have an idea!"
His soul perception focused around the birds, nudging them politely. They turned to regard him. He smiled and beckoned them over. They flew closer.
Axehand walked to Jerry’s side, just in case, but his caution was unnecessary.
The two birds simply flew over and hovered beside Jerry, more curious than aggressive. They seemed quite harmless, and when Laura extended a finger, one of the birds landed on it.
"They’re cute." She smiled. "And they’re said to bring good luck."
"Well, that’s exactly what we needed!" Boney cluckled, while Jerry asked whether they had a name.
"Not that I know of," she responded. "Little black birds, I guess."
The two birds were small, about the size of a closed fist, and their eyes shone a soft red, contrasting their pitch-black bodies and white beaks.
Jerry shook his head. "That’s not right. They must have a name. How about Darkbirds?"
"That’s…awfully imaginative, Master."
"Whitebeaks?"
"I’m pretty sure that’s taken."
"Mistwings?"
"How about Hopewings?" Laura asked, petting the top of a bird’s head with her other finger. The bird shivered in pleasure. "It’s a nice name…and they restore hope to those lost in the Mists. Legends say that if you follow them, they will show you a way out."
Jerry and Boney looked at each other. "Sure," Jerry said. "It’s a nice name."
Boney cupped his bone chin. "Since they show the way out, we could tie them to the back of our ship and go the opposite way of where they want to fly."
Laura glared. He cowered.
"If they’re a traveler’s last hope, let’s not hog them." Jerry smiled. "We have plenty of hope already."
"Weren’t we hopeless?"
"Never!"
Laura raised her finger, gently letting the bird fly off, and the two of them quickly disappeared into the Mists. "Goodbye, little hopewings," she said, and her ever-restrained smile turned genuine for a moment.
Their journey continued, parting wave after wave of death energy. Besides being cold to the touch, it didn’t seem to affect them at all—but, of course, if they weren’t taking a double dosage of the wood nettle potion, Marcus and Laura would have already turned into wild undead.
Time seemed to lose its meaning.
Another hour later, something finally changed. The air turned chillier, the darkness deeper, and the mutated animals below disappeared, only to be replaced with an increased number of crevices.
Jerry’s eyes snapped open. "We’re close," he said. "Stop the ship!"
The Billies closed the sails, and the ship quickly came to a halt in mid-air. Everyone looked at Jerry, who had his eyes closed again.
"Birb can see it," he said. "Give me a moment."
Jerry borrowed Birb’s senses—it had been serving as their scout—and quickly looked over the Prism Dungeon.
"I think we can approach," he said eventually. "Just go slowly, so we stop as soon as we can see it."
The airship proceeded at a snail’s pace. Finally, the darkness on the horizon parted as a building appeared. It was black and shaped like a pyramid, except its sides resembled stairs instead of straight lines; this was a ziggurat.
From their current position, they could see the ziggurat rising sixty feet off the ground, its multiple floors occupied by a small army of zombies and skeletons. It was as if a horde had invaded and conquered this place, calling it their home. Now, the undead stood aimlessly on the ziggurat’s floors or wandered around its base, wasting an eternity away.
However, contrary to what one might expect, the ziggurat’s walls shone and reflected the ever-present light, casting random shadows like a beacon of darkness.
Horace squinted. "That’s not stone," he said. "It’s glass."
"Glass?"
"Yes. I don’t know why, but that entire thing is made of glass."
Everyone stared at him, but he seemed confident; no one would doubt an archer’s sight.
"The dungeon is supposed to protect the fake Prism, right?" Marcus asked. "Why make it out of glass?"
Laura cupped her chin. "Glass has some interesting magical properties, so maybe this is meant to amplify the death energy ripples. That’s the only reason I can think of. The Prism itself is hidden deep in the ground below the ziggurat; that’s why they call this place a dungeon."
"Can’t we just dig our way to it?"
"I can only feel the ripples coming from the ziggurat itself." Jerry shook his head. "If the fake Prism is hidden below, I can’t sense it. We’ll have to go in the normal way."
"So, we raid it."
"Yes, but time is of the essence. Arakataron will certainly have eyes around this area, so we must be quick," Marcus said.
"That doesn’t sound easy." Jerry tsked. "There have to be hundreds of undead around the ziggurat. Going through them will take time, even if we send in an overcharged Axehand—and that’s if they don’t overwhelm him."
The axe-handed skeleton grunted in disdain, claiming he would never lose to an army of weaklings.
"I don’t see a faster way…" Laura finally admitted. "We have to go through them, whether we like it or not."
"But the thing is," Marcus said, "the clock is not our friend. Even if we get past the horde and discover the entrance to the true dungeon, there must be more defenses underground, and Arakataron’s army might arrive within the hour. I don’t think we can make it in time."
Everyone exchanged somber looks.
"Maybe we could just break the ziggurat and run away?" Boney offered, but Horace shook his head.
"That will warn Arakataron of our presence, as we intended, but it won’t stop the Curse. At most, it will limit its range. The ziggurat is only amplifying the ripples, so destroying it alone will mean little. We have to get to the source.”
“We could do that still,” Marcus said. “Break the ziggurat to call over Arakataron’s death knight army, rush to attack him, then return to destroy the fake Prism.”
“We could,” Boney said, “but since we’re here, we might as well destroy it now. Assuming we find a good plan. If not, we’ll have to default to Marcus’s idea.”
They stewed in thought. Laura was the one to finally speak.
"I guess that’s our only option. Let’s destroy the ziggurat to lure Arakataron’s forces, then try to ambush him, then return for the Prism. I mean, that invites a bunch of complications, because what if they see we ran away and realize our plan? What if this gives more Wizard Order members the time to arrive? But, I think it’s the best we can do. Going in blind is too dangerous."
"Seems so." Marcus nodded.
"Indeed," Boney said.
"Very well," Horace replied, his eyes narrowing.
However, even as everyone voiced their agreement, Jerry hadn’t spoken yet. He kept his eyes glued on the far-off ziggurat, exploring its form for any weakness he could find, and a plan was gradually forming in his mind. A smirk surfaced on his lips.
"Oh no," Boney said. "Master, whatever idea you have, it’s silly."
Jerry smiled. "If it works, it isn’t silly."
"But will it work?"
"Maybe."
Boney groaned and so did Marcus, both familiar with the ridiculousness of Jerry’s plans. However, Laura and Horace weren’t, so they looked at Jerry with interest.
"What is it, Jerry?" Horace said.
The necromancer smiled, then summarized his idea. They looked at the ziggurat, then back at Jerry, then at Axehand.
"That’s ridiculous," Horace said.
"But it could work."
"It could." He shook his head. "It’s just… Fine. We can certainly try."
"Oh, no!" Marcus said.
"I think it has a chance, too," Laura agreed. "As unreasonable as it sounds, I don’t see why not."
"Not you too, Laura!"
Axehand grunted in excitement. Jerry smiled widely.
"Very well, then. Let’s do this!"
The airship flew higher, ascending until the ground below could barely be seen, then came to a stop right above the ziggurat.
Everyone stood around Axehand, whose entire skeletal body was red and steaming.
"Are you sure you can do this?" Jerry asked.
The double-skeleton grunted once, more excited than he’d been in a long time. He took a step and plunged into the darkness.
***
Life is not very interesting when you’re a wild zombie.
One zombie stood atop the ziggurat, not quite knowing why, and waited. It didn’t know what it was waiting for, either. Food. Enemies. Primal instincts it couldn’t decipher.
Suddenly, a sound reached its ears. A soft whistle, quickly turning louder and piercing. Deeper. The zombie looked around, seeing nothing. It looked up, and a big, red, skeletal butt fell right on its head with tremendous force, burying the zombie into the thick glass below and instantly destroying both.
Axehand fell on the ziggurat like a massive brick, and the entire structure imploded with a colossal bang. Shards of glass flew everywhere like razors, slicing skeletons and zombies apart while others were buried under tons of glass.
The sight was mythically apocalyptic.
Half a horde was torn apart or sent flying from the explosion—one skeleton even flew close to the airship—and all that remained was literal tons of broken glass and a furiously confused and butchered horde of undead, running around like headless chickens.
A figure stood up in the center of the mayhem, dusting himself off and releasing a cocky grunt. His form blurred as he dashed, hacking two skeletons in half and decapitating a zombie, destroying them instantly.
As Axehand rampaged on the disoriented horde, arrows rained from the sky, flying fast and true into the throats of undead and felling them by the dozens. Horace had crafted thousands of arrows during his years in the tribe, and he’d brought them all along, unloading quiver after quiver on the poor undead below. Most arrows missed, but some didn’t.
Jerry, who had come up with this plan, was left staring wide-eyed. Such utter destruction was hard to digest!
The airship was descending rapidly, the balloon whistling as the hot air escaped. By the time they landed, not much remained of the horde, and even less of the ziggurat. Hundreds of undead might have been tough to deal with in a frontal assault, but like this, they were massacred.
"Well, that was fast," Jerry said. "Good job, Axehand."
The double-skeleton waited where they landed, having already dealt with all stragglers. He grunted in pride, raising an axe into the air, and all of Jerry’s undead cheered for their champion.
Marcus’s irises trembled. "Death knights are scary…"
"I don’t think most death knights can do that," Laura replied, shivering. "Axehand is scary… Maybe we stand a chance, after all."
"Look, everyone!” Jerry shouted, having waded through a field of glass to reach a spot in the ziggurat’s base, where a gaping hole lay on the ground. It had been hidden before, but there was nothing to cover it now. "Axehand already found the entrance."
Marcus and Laura looked at each other again, both shaking their heads. "If there was a time record for raiding this dungeon," Marcus said, "we’d definitely be on the way to breaking it."
As per the plan, Marcus, the Billies, and Birb would remain outside, and they would use the airship to distract the enemy reinforcements if they arrived early. He’d been officially named captain, and the Billies were the airship’s steadfast crew.
"Good luck, everyone!" he shouted, banging a hand on his chest. "We will take care of everything here… You just return victorious!"
"We will," Horace replied, eyes burning. He crossed gazes with Axehand, and the two quickly jumped into the hole.
"But there’s a ladder…" Jerry sighed. "Fine. See you, Marcus. Take care of the Billies!"
"I would never let anything happen to my boys." Marcus nodded seriously. The Billies became emotional.
Jerry nodded back. He, Laura, Boney, Headless, Boboar, and Foxy entered the opening, following after Axehand and Horace, while the airship took off and awaited news.
