Chapter 111

“Jemma, what’s taking so long?” Hodge called out.

She can’t answer, I thought with grim satisfaction as I blended into the shadows of the second storage room. Shifting around just enough that I could lay eyes on Hodge through the doorway, I watched the man stand up from his seat.

Plucking at the aether from my core, I started drawing forth coils of liquid darkness and shaping them by sheer force of will. As always, they squirmed in my grip, unwilling to simply form the shapes that I wanted them to. I kept trying, my hand gripping my sword tightly. Hodge took a couple of steps back from the table and picked up a wooden club in his left hand.

As he turned around, I got a good look at the man for the first time. He wore decent-quality servant’s garb and was built like a pitbull with almost no neck to speak of. The cultist had beady little eyes with his head shaved so only a little stubble decorated his crown. A fabric hat lay on the table beside the cards from their game.

I tensed when Hodge’s eyes passed over me, but he didn’t react. Instead, he gave his club a few test swings, opening his mouth to call out again.

“Jemma, you better not be messing with me or there’ll be hell to pay!”

Hodge was clearly working himself up to go investigate, but the threads of aether still refused to heed my call. Option two was stabbing him in the back as he walked down the hall, but I felt like that was even riskier than what I intended. As though my worries were the sign for Hodge to find his courage, the stocky servant picked up the last candle and started striding towards the doorway.

Come on, come on, come on! I screamed mentally.

Months of attempts finally coalesced, and the threads of aether snapped into the correct shape. The shadows across the back of the man's neck writhed and twisted, crawling up his face. Hodge clearly didn’t have aethersensing as he didn’t react until the shadows thickened, snapping across his eyes.

I didn’t have time to celebrate my first successful cast of Shadowblind as Hodge immediately started thrashing about.

“Fuck! What is it!? Get it off me!” yelled the cultist while swinging his club around him in all directions.

I charged forward under the cover of Muffled Aura and Cloak of Shadows, my aether starting to run painfully low. Using years of footwork training, I searched for an angle to either stab the man or at the very least snuff out the last candle. Either would make my victory certain.

Hodge didn’t completely lose control. It was clear he couldn’t see much and that I was invisible to him, my Cloak of Shadows likely blending in with the darkness blotting out his vision. However, the way he was moving and backing up suggested he could still tell where the wall was. I frowned, realising he was trying to get his back against a wall which would cut off my angle of attack. As I had suspected, he was far faster than me, spinning back and forth to prevent someone coming at him from behind.

Taking a risk, I slapped the floor with the tip of my blade to my right before silently dancing left. The cultist took the bait, spinning to face the noise. The tip of my sword managed to cut the candle in half. As it hit the floor the room was plunged into absolute darkness. A growl filled my throat — I had been aiming for his arm.

With the last source of light gone, I just needed to take my time — my victory was assured. The elation lasted less than a second as I felt aether drift off Hodge’s now empty hand. A flickering flame manifested above his fingers. Tiny and useless for fighting, but more than enough to light candles — a minor Skill.

At the same time, I could feel my own spell starting to unravel. In a few seconds, Hodge would no longer be blinded. My victory was about to turn into defeat. I cursed and took another risk, stepping left again to circle away from Hodge’s club. Then, with my feet set and utterly silent, I performed the Warden’s Lunge.

With his back pressed against the wall and still blind, the cultist had nowhere to go. My sword punched through his chest like paper. The bastard spat up blood, the shadows covering his face fading. Then, before I could disengage, his right arm swung out to backhand me in the chest. With too little energy to activate my Aether Barrier ring all I could manage was activating Controlled Grip, my fingers tightening like a vice around the hilt of my sword.

His arm impacting my chest felt like getting hit with a thick log rather than flesh and bone. I heard something crack as I was lifted off my feet, flying backwards through the air. My sword ripped free of his chest, bound to my hand by my Skill, blood spraying out of Hodge as the bulldog of a man started to collapse. For the barest of seconds, I felt a haze of aether all around me and then the softest of ripples like water across my skin.

Crashing into the ground hurt almost as much as Hodge hitting me. There was a noise nearby, a gentle roar as I tried to get my bearings. Everything had been darkness and flickering shadows a moment ago and now it was like I was lying beneath the sun on a cloudless day.

Laying on my back saved my life because I was looking up when my eyes adjusted to the light. The monstrous hulking form of something black with fangs waited above me, the creature slowly standing up in utter silence. My mind barely had time to process the haze of the Rift entrance, and the monster positioned between me and it. The beast was taking its time, still as quiet as the grave, and I used those precious seconds to take in my surroundings.

The Rift entrance was at least five metres away from me. I recognised the beast, fear making my heart beat faster. A Giant Eyeless Spider — a beast from the second floor of The Echoing Depths. They normally lived in caves and hunted using a combination of sound and tremorsense. My Muffled Aura would prevent the former, but the moment I moved, it would know where I was and I had absolutely no hope of sneaking past it or outrunning it.

Behind me, the roaring continued and I finally realised what it was — water. A waterfall was right next to me. With no better options, I did the only thing I could think of and hurled myself towards the flowing water. My chest screamed in pain at the exertion as I crashed into the cool waters. The ground shook as the huge spider, easily as big as a Horndale bear, smashed into the stone ledge where I had just been.

I didn’t even have a chance to experience fear of how close I had come to death when I was flung out into the open air. Looking down, I tucked my legs and arms close to my body — my hand still gripping my sword like the lifeline it was — while praying I wasn’t about to splatter across some rocks.

The moment I touched water, I started tucking my body into a ball. My feet still touched the bottom of the pool, pain shooting up my leg, but at least I didn’t feel like the impact had broken anything. I shoved off, desperately pushing up and away.

My head broke the surface, spluttering for air only to look up and see that the Giant Eyeless Spider had descended halfway down the cliff face before leaping into the water at the base of the waterfall. The impact sent a wave of water rushing towards me and I stopped moving, letting the current carry me downstream and away from the monster. Lying on my back, I watched the Giant Eyeless Spider climb out of the water and begin ascending the cliff wall.

Like a glistening black horror, its forelegs pushed into soft parts of the stone as it pulled itself back towards the Rift entrance before settling above it just where it had been when I first entered.

I debated swearing out loud, but remembered quickly where I was and shut my mouth. The Echoing Depths were filled with creatures that hunted with or used sound in some form or another. Speaking here was just announcing that there was prey nearby for something to come find.

Why did it have to be an intelligent monster? I demanded mentally. The spider was clearly waiting by the Rift entrance. Whether to ambush those who entered or to prevent anyone from leaving, I couldn’t have said. Either way, it stood between me and my escape.

Worse than that, I was still on the clock. Jemma was definitely dead, and I was almost certain Hodge would be as well, if he wasn’t already. But, Nazim was still asleep, and the other cultists would return in the next few hours. Once they came back, they would find their dead companions. Maybe they wouldn’t sacrifice Nazim right away, but I was betting they would. Then, with no one to blame for the death of the other cultists, they would either pack up shop, trapping me in here, or they would eventually come into the Rift to investigate.

Maybe I would get lucky and they would die to the Giant Eyeless Spider, but I had my doubts. Eventually, they would find me, or I would get caught when they closed the Rift and it ejected me along with them. All of that was assuming that one of the monsters in the Rift didn’t kill me first. Somehow, I had gone from pretty screwed to royally screwed — the only solace that at least I was keeping up with the royal theme of my Cloak of Shadows.

The stream finally grew too shallow to keep carrying me along, as my ass came to rest against the pebbled bed of the waterway. Taking some deep breaths, I finally released Muffled Aura. My aether was almost empty. Thankfully from my readings of the Adventurer’s Compendium, there were basically no monsters that hunted rivers this small. Water Nymphs were a danger, but they needed more water than this and would’ve likely been found near the waterfall itself if there even were any.

As I calmed down, I finally focused on the sensations I was feeling. Aether was everywhere. It was thin, like a gentle mist in the air, but it was there. Without any Skills running, I could feel it slipping into me, my core refilling a fraction faster than usual.

At least there is some good news, I decided.

Twisting a little to take in my surroundings, I bit down on a scream of pain. My chest hurt where Hodge had struck me. Testing the area with my fingers, I decided he had probably cracked a rib or two. My right ankle throbbed as well, but rotating it back and forth, I decided I had just jarred it rather than a sprain. Patting myself down, I found my Skill Seed was still there in my pocket. The stream had washed off most of the slime from my descent into the sewer, and with it gone, I could see all the rips and tears in the clothes I wore.

For weapons, I still had my sword and Jemma’s dagger. Better than nothing, but looking around made me really wish I had brought my hatchet. On one side of the stream were thick trees with a canopy that blotted out the light. Looking up, I could make out the faux sun.

All Rifts were just fragments of the Dungeons they came from, and those same Dungeons created the illusion of a real world. Somewhere in the distance, there would be a wall — the barrier enclosing the Rift. You could look beyond it, seeing more of the same vista, but you could go no further. I had no interest in finding that edge. My only focus was on how to get the hell out of here.

Still sitting in the water, I finally glanced at the corner of my vision and the notifications waiting for me. Perhaps, they would offer a solution to my dilemma, because so far I was feeling like I was probably fucked.