Chapter 650: Disaster Class Undead

Elion summoned a small flame of his own, letting it hover near his shoulder as he leaned forward to examine the descent.

Its warm glow mingled with the silvery light of Maya’s spell, drawing wavering shadows across the stone.

Once again, he couldn’t help wondering how she could use every affinity so casually.

Water during the battles, light now, and whatever else the situation happened to require. He glanced at her hand curiously, but she pretended not to notice.

’I’ll ask her later,’ he decided, looking back toward the stairs.

There would hopefully be a better time for questions once they knew what was waiting below.

"Stay close," Maya said, looking back at the others. "And watch your footing."

Elion began the descent; Maya followed behind him, her floating light moving just beyond his flame, while the rest entered one by one.

The stairway was scarcely wide enough for two people to stand shoulder to shoulder, and in several places, the walls leaned inward until even that would have been impossible.

The dark stone pressed close on either side, its once-polished surface veined with hairline fractures and mottled by pale mineral stains.

Their footsteps disturbed a thick layer of dust, revealing shallow hollows worn into the centre of each step.

Countless feet must have passed this way once, though the thought of so many people descending into that suffocating darkness did little to make the passage feel more welcoming.

Elegant carvings ran along the walls beneath the grime, forming an intricate procession of interwoven branches, stars and robed figures.

Much of the detail had eroded, but here and there, Maya’s light caught a delicate hand, a tilted crown, or the graceful outline of a face gazing toward something no longer visible.

The ceiling curved overhead in a low, continuous vault, supported at intervals by ribs of dark stone.

Slender roots had found their way between the joints, hanging like withered cords, while occasional droplets of water glistened at their tips before falling into the silence below.

The deeper they went, the colder the air became.

Elion could smell damp earth beneath the dry bitterness of dust, along with something faintly metallic that he couldn’t quite identify.

Behind him, the quiet rustle of clothing and the scrape of boots seemed unusually loud, each small sound travelling down the passage before returning as a hollow whisper.

"This goes down much farther than I expected," Cole muttered from somewhere behind Maya. His voice carried ahead of them, stretching into the darkness long after he had finished speaking.

No one seemed inclined to answer loudly.

The stairway turned gradually, following a curve that hid whatever lay beneath them. Elion kept his pace steady, occasionally testing a cracked step before allowing his full weight onto it, while his flame drifted forward to illuminate the next bend.

At last, the walls began to draw apart.

The low ceiling lifted beyond the reach of their light, and a broad opening appeared at the foot of the stairs. Beyond it lay a cavern so dark that even Maya’s spell seemed so small against the vast emptiness.

Elion descended the last few steps and placed one foot onto the flat floor.

A sharp hiss sounded to his left.

He turned quickly, raising his sword as a torch mounted on the wall burst into flame. Another ignited farther ahead, then another, until twin rows of fire swept along the cavern’s sides and climbed toward the distant end.

The others stopped behind him, their faces slowly becoming visible beneath the spreading glow.

The sight that emerged from the darkness was eerily beautiful.

The cavern had been shaped into an immense underground hall, its natural walls carved into sweeping alcoves and lofty arches.

Great columns rose toward a ceiling lost in the shadows, their fluted surfaces entwined with sculpted vines, while ornate balconies clung to the upper walls like the remains of suspended gardens.

Yet nearly half of it had collapsed.

One side of the hall lay buried beneath a vast slope of fallen stone, where shattered arches and broken balustrades protruded from the debris.

A magnificent staircase had been severed halfway through its ascent, its remaining steps leading toward empty air, and a cluster of pale statues lay crushed beneath the fragments of a fallen ceiling.

The torches burned with a cold, bluish radiance, illuminating murals that stretched across the surviving walls.

Faded gold and deep azure still clung to the plaster, preserving scenes of cities beneath radiant skies, processions of robed figures and immense trees whose branches seemed to cradle the stars.

In one panel, a woman extended her hands toward a kneeling crowd, though a long fracture had split her face and carried away whatever expression the artist had given her.

Another mural showed a gathering around a throne.

Most of the figures remained intact, their painted garments still rich with delicate patterns, but the person seated at the centre had been obliterated by a jagged wound in the wall. Only one pale hand remained, resting upon an armrest beneath a crown of broken stone.

Writing flowed around the images in graceful bands, its slender characters arranged with almost musical precision.

Some passages had survived perfectly, while others disappeared beneath mineral deposits or ended abruptly where entire sections of the wall had fallen away.

Elion found himself staring despite the unease gathering in his chest.

There was something painfully solemn about the place, as though all the care that had gone into its creation was still visible beneath the destruction.

Even the rubble held fragments of beauty: a carved blossom, the feathered edge of a wing, half a face lying upward in the dust.

At the far end of the cavern stood a raised platform.

A broken stone throne rested upon it beneath the remains of an elaborate arch, one armrest missing and a deep crack running through its high back.

The floor leading toward it had once been laid in intricate patterns, though much of the design was now obscured by dust and fallen fragments.

"Gods..." Maya whispered behind him, her voice unusually amazed.

Elion was about to take another step when he felt a faint vibration beneath his boot.

A thin crack spread across the floor a few paces ahead, cutting through the faded pattern with a dry, snapping sound. Another opened beside it, followed by several more farther into the hall.

’That can’t be anything good.’

"Stay on the stairs," he said hastily, lifting his hand toward the others.

The floor began to move.

A slab of stone rose, then dropped back into place with a heavy clatter.

Something scraped slowly against its underside before a trembling, skeletal hand pushed through the widening gap.

Its fingers grasped at empty air for but a moment.

Then the bones found the surface, dragging an ugly skull above the broken floor, its empty sockets filled with a sickly flicker of green light.

The first slab overturned.

A skeleton hauled itself out of the darkness beneath, pieces of rusted armour hanging from its narrow frame.

Its jaw chittered as it sagged open. The skeleton turned toward them, and the broken sword in its hand scraped across the floor with a shrill metallic rasp.

More stone began to move.

Hands thrust through the cracks all across the hall, some stripped to bare bone, others still wrapped in leathery remnants of flesh.

A corpse in a rotted robe clawed its way free near the wall, while farther ahead, a figure wearing a split helmet forced its shoulders through the floor and rose with a spear clutched against its chest.

"Shit! Undead!" Maya said. "Close together! Don’t spread out!"

Elion backed toward the lowest step as the others drew their weapons, his gaze moving rapidly over the shapes emerging around them.

These creatures were weak compared to the wolves they had just fought, but there were already far too many to ignore, and more were still dragging themselves into the torchlight.

However, that wasn’t even the end of it.

The air above the throne began to twist.

Dust lifted from the platform in a slow spiral, gathering around a wavering shape that seemed hidden in the dark shadows.

The nearest flames bent toward it, their blue light thinning as a long and ragged figure unfolded above the broken seat.

An incorporeal figure emerged, floating several feet above the throne.

A wispy cloak hung around its form in layers of tattered darkness, its frayed edges trailing into nothing before gathering together again.

There were no feet beneath it, only thin streams of vapour drifting over the stone, and through the folds of its garment, Elion could see faint glimpses of the shattered throne behind.

Its head rose slowly.

Within the hollow of its hood hovered the suggestion of a gaunt, translucent face, with sunken eyes burning like pale coals.

One spectral hand tightened around a crooked bone staff, the length of it gleaming with an unnatural light that gathered brightly around its knotted tip.

The figure opened its mouth.

What emerged sounded as though something had tried to scream through lungs that had rotted away long ago.

A long, ghastly wheeze dragged through the cavern, dry and rasping, yet impossibly loud.

It scraped against Elion’s ears and seemed to linger inside his skull, while behind him, the others drew in sharp breaths.

The ghastly figure’s staff flared, and every undead in the hall turned toward the stairs.

The sound had been a command.

Skeletons lurched forward, their weapons rising as rotting corpses stumbled over the broken floor.

The slow scrape of their emergence became a growing clatter of bones and metal, and the first ranks began rushing toward the seven figures crowded near the entrance.

Elion barely looked at them.

His attention remained fixed on the apparition above the throne, his expression darkening as the information from his appraisal flashed before his eyes.

[Undead Skeleton Mage]

[Rank: Disaster Class Undead Monster]

A disaster-class monster.

"Heads up, everyone! We are in for a tough one!" he said, stepping off the stairs and raising his sword as the undead closed in. "That thing above the throne is disaster-class."