Chapter 141 – The Depths of the Vault

For a moment, there was silence. Then, Mirian heard Beatrice behind her asking, “Did she just…?”

Briefly, there was some shouting, but she didn’t care what they said. They’d follow. The only way out was through.

For a moment, the forest was silent too. Then it came to life, vines and branches writhing and twisting into the strange, soulless creatures.

Mirian went with the ‘burn it all down’ strategy.

As the abominations came leaping toward her, she embraced the form of Dusk Waves, simply so her reaction time was better. There were enough of them it was easier to maintain the disintegrating fire ray than to recast it. While she swung it around in an arc, she repeatedly used her wand of greater lightning, enhanced for burning and paralysis. She reasoned if the beasts could move, they had something biological vulnerable to seizing up.

Wherever she saw movement in the brush, she let her fire blast into it. There’s so many of them, she thought. And she still couldn’t see the end of the corridor.

There was a flash of inky shadows, then she saw a claw emerging from the space near her head. It was like it was happening in slow motion—she could see the path it would take. She could see how the sharp bone would angle, and thought she knew about where it would carve a hole in her face. But she couldn’t bring the beam around fast enough.

Then, there was a ripple of force, and a force blade sliced right through the arm.

Mirian rapidly raised a kinetic shield, then looked back.

Beatrice.

Her precision spellwork had just saved her from her own impatience and stupidity.

She’d reflect later—now, she needed to fight.

The others came behind Beatrice, fire spells fanning out. Aelius was using a large-area fire wave spell that did little damage, but caused the vegetation to smolder and seemed to slow it from growing into the monstrosities. Since the abominations lacked souls, direct magic seemed to be especially effective at ripping them apart, but they came in relentless waves. Though the charring effect of fire seemed to slow down the reconstruction of the creatures somewhat, it by no means stopped them. The forest churned like a gale was blowing through.

The group advanced as quickly as they could. For minutes on end, they cast more and more spells. It was like the labyrinthine horde, but less predictable, and more relentless. If they’d brought even a single less arcanist, Mirian was sure they would have been overwhelmed.

Aelius’s sorcerer only cast a single spell, but his force blades were large, powerful, and he didn’t slow. Cediri drank his emergency mana elixir while Beatrice covered for him, then she drank hers.

“There!” Beatrice said. “Through the trees. I can see the door! It’s the door!”

As soon as Mirian saw it, she knew what Beatrice meant.

The door at the end of the hall reminded Mirian of the one down by the Divine Monument, only it didn’t have the same weathered look to it. That, and as they approached, the reliefs and designs on its front subtly shifted, just like the Monument itself did.

That has to be it.

She redoubled her efforts. An abomination appeared above them, its six wings covered in eyes and bone edges on its feathers and she swatted it away with a beam of fire. Two more creatures, like lions only they had no eyes and way more teeth, leapt at the group. Anticipating their dimensional shift, she sent lightning bolts through both.

Aelius began to falter, his waves of fire petering out. His mage stopped casting entirely, closing his spellbook and giving the group a worried look. Mirian’s own mana was nearly exhausted.

Twenty feet, she thought, as Aelius’s sorcerer cut apart the brush blocking their path. She deflected another attack, but the mob of abominations was redoubling its effort. She was sure it wasn’t her imagination—the beasts were growing in number.

Ten feet. Three more flying abominations swooped down, and Mirian barely lanced them with the beam. A lion-like abomination suddenly was leaping through the air behind her. She spun, but felt the claws shear through her flesh. It had taken out a chunk of her shoulder. She cut it apart, then rapidly poured soul energy into the wound to staunch the bleeding and knit back together her flesh, but that stole valuable time and focus from defending against the attack.

Grimald fell to a flier and a leaper attacking him simultaneously. He could only deflect one—then he was bleeding on the ground. With three arcanists and a warrior disabled, their line began to rapidly collapse.

No! she thought, and whirled to look at the door. She could make out glyphs and runes covering it. Like the door of the Vault itself, there was one last puzzle, and they just didn’t have the time.

Beatrice fell next, then Aelius, ripped apart by talons and claws and rows of teeth. Cediri was suddenly surrounded, and his rapid casting of aegis and fire blades wasn’t enough—a tortoise-like abomination with eyes plastered about its shell walked through his spell and bit a hole in his leg.

Mirian roared, beam of fire shearing through the abominations, sending dozens of them smoldering as they collapsed, but there were too many of them, and her aura was nearly gone. She drew Eclipse, stabbing another abomination through the face, then whipped it around to cut through another. She felt a hot lance of pain as another claw raked her thigh, then sharp talons sliced her head. She whirled, cutting, stabbing, then unleashing one last beam of fire—

***

“DAMNIT!” Mirian said, sitting upright in her bed.

“What? Oh no, did we sleep through an alarm? What time is it?” came Lily’s panicked voice.

Mirian sighed. “Nothing.”

If we hadn’t run out of mana… she thought. But her solution of ‘get enough mana elixirs for everyone’ wasn’t going to work. Torrviol simply didn’t have that large a stockpile of the elixirs. She’d solved that problem previously by having the merchants order more elixirs or parts to make them from Cairnmouth, but she didn’t have time to wait around while they did that.

She could go down to Cairnmouth herself, but that would risk passing back through Torrviol after Troytin arrived and alerting him to her operations. Also, the extra days added to the time she needed to spend in Torrviol to ensure Troytin’s plans were disrupted would give her a much later start in Frostland’s Gate. She had to make it through the Vault before the Labyrinth shifted and put an entropic field between her and the entrance, and she needed every day. I have to get things going in Frostland’s Gate, but there’s always a few days of preparations before we actually descend.

She came up with a solution.

Disguising herself as Micael again she joined as Professor Endresen’s apprentice, then used that as an excuse to talk to Professor Seneca. Mirian got them both to collaborate on a project where they tried testing different magichemicals on glyph production, but what she really was after was how to best synthesize her own mana elixirs from myrvite spell organs.

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The process was actually relatively simple, but required a few specialized alchemistry synthesis machines that were delicate enough and complex enough she would have trouble replicating them. Apparently, most of them were manufactured in the tiny Florin Principality, then shipped north to Palendurio where they were sold at a much inflated rate due to the tariffs and guild monopolies involved.

Mirian spent the rest of the cycle studying alchemistry, and practiced making several mana elixirs. She also noted which species of myrvite found in the Frostlands would work best for the elixirs. It turned out, many of them. There was a reason the little outpost town brought in so much wealth.

Studying alchemistry was also useful for making explosives. She found a way to make her little ‘seeds of chaos’ constructs even more explosive.