Arcanist In Another World-Chapter 51: Cursed Rift

“A Cursed Rift… And there is a Fiend,” Captain Edric said, fingers of his right hand clenched tight around the sword’s handle. He tapped the jewel in the pommel with his other hand, the darkish lights simmering down, the frequencies of its cries quietening as the Templars stepped slowly by his side. His scowl looked sharp enough to cut through stone when he glanced up at the barricade. “Looks like it doesn’t have Authority.”

Valens shuffled stiffly front to their line, Fireball still burning over his hand, feeling each breath like a whisper of his own, cursing that here of all places he’d become conscious of the damned thing.

“A strange place for a Fiend.” Garran drew his sword as he scoffed at the cold walls, Dain following him in tow. The design of each weapon looked similar, but it didn’t slip past Valens’s notice that Dain’s sword was longer than the others, and wider as well.

“To my experience,” Captain Edric reached forth with the sword and began drawing lines over the giant rocks with its sharp tip, sending a sprinkle of sparks down the ground as the metal scraped a painful cry against the hard stone. “Shadows almost always choose strange places to dwell.”

“What is a Fiend?” Valens had to ask.

“A dweller that has completed its Second Trial,” Garran said. “Which is to say it's over level 200. You better start getting ready.”

“For what?” Valens frowned at him.

“For a show,” Garran smiled wickedly at him. “’Cause if there’s a Fiend, there’s no way it's waiting for us beyond that line all alone.”

Oh, so it's like that Necromancer? Was he a Fiend as well? Guess not… He was human through and through.

“Fancy that,” Valens said, pointing a finger at the seams around the large rocks. “But for some reason, I can’t seem to bring myself to believe that shadows are purposefully keeping away from the town. Those holes look big enough for them to pass through.”

“The Cursed Rifts are different. There is a set inside,” Captain Edric shook his head when he finished with his rough lines. Valens didn’t know what he expected to see, but turned out all that work was for a hexagon roughly placed in the middle of the forefront rock that supported the barricade. “The dwellers can’t breach the set, not unless they have Authority.”

“And what is that, if I may ask?” Valens said.

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“You can think of it as a pass, a permit. Tainted Father’s creatures don’t belong to Haven’s Reach. The very air of our Heaven rejects them. That is, unless they were granted a permit through Rifts or other dark methods. They have to earn that Authority,” Captain Edric said grimly.

“Like that woman,” Garran muttered. “Selin, was it? What she did with that ritual was to open her soul to that shadow. She gave it a space to inhabit, and a permit to invade her soul.”

“You’ve mentioned a set, but I don’t see anything other than a pile of rocks here,” Valens said. If there was a shadow beyond the barricade, or whatever a Weeper really was, then it should’ve already gained that Authority considering the fact that it was here, inside the mountain. “What keeps that creature trapped inside that place?”

Captain Edric and Garran shared a look before the captain shook his head. “I’m not sure yet.”

“So you’ve just assumed there must be a set since the creature hasn’t left that tunnel yet?” Valens nodded. Made sense. The captain had already said shadows couldn’t resist the temptation of a thousand miners living this close proximity if they had a real chance at them.

“Get back.” Captain Edric lowered his sword and gestured at them to clear away from the barricade. There was a lull. A deep silence hung heavy over the cave, the air pregnant with nervous expectation.

Then the Resonance changed. Frequencies of strange origins bloomed into existence when the sharp lines of the hexagon alighted with pure lights, golden lights, humming with an ethereal song that poked at Valens’s intelligent brain. It sparked high over the silence like a distant roar, growing in volume, the ground underneath his feet trembling, the walls around him groaning with inner force.

All three of the Templars raised their heads when the hexagon birthed a sun in the middle of it while Valens had to shade his eyes with an arm. That was the last thing he saw before an explosion blasted across the cave, sending a shower of gravel and burning rocks over their group, bits of stone clanking against their steely plates.

Arms over his head, Valens didn’t know how he lay himself flat over the ground to remain unbattered by the explosion. Instincts screamed at him. Frequencies jammed into a sequence that made little sense. His mind reeled. Breath stuck in his windpipe. Got stuck there like someone had rammed a spear through his throat. He couldn’t see. There were lights everywhere. Lights and a voice--

Someone was crying.

Wailing deep beyond the golden sun.

Screaming away at the Templars in indignation.

The voice was one of sorrow, of desperation and pain, of agony beyond any words could explain. Yet it had a strange cadence when Valens pried into the Resonance. It was as though a culmination of a dozen voices united in one, screaming in different rhythms that mixed into each other, stabbing hard into Valens’s mind, hacking away at his sense of surroundings.

There was light everywhere. Bright, golden lights coated every piece of the cave, forcing Valens to squint, forcing him to rely only on his sound vision to see what was happening a few strides ahead.

He caught a man’s outline to the left. Garran’s body, sword raised high, tingling there over the smooth weapon a set of vibrant frequencies that spoke of a skill. The tip of the weapon… was deep in a shroud, grinding slowly deeper still, tearing a hole through the nothingness that wailed in deafening cries.

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There over his right, Captain Edric’s whole armor was ablaze with sacred lights. Three shadows had converged over him. He ducked under a claw that materialized from out of nowhere, came out swinging the sword with muted focus, caught the creature by the tails of its pitch-black cape, hacked a silent line across its chest that spilled nothing but a few drops of foul acid.

The ground burned and hissed, and another one tried to take the captain by his legs. Pale hands reached from inside the golden hue, already withering away, dark smoke wafting off from where the sacred lights burned painful little holes across its skin, but her nails were sharp and there was something brimming inside of them.

A wide, giant of a sword fell down with monstrous speed. It wasn’t the tip that caught the creature’s hands, but the body of the weapon, squashing those pale fingers flat across the ground, making a bloodless heap of them. Dain then hauled the sword back over his shoulder and made for a wide sweep to give himself some space.

Uh…

Valens forced the Apathy tight over his mind as he floundered back to his feet. Everything hurt around his body, but slowly the sensation was gone, flung to the back of his mind like a distant memory. Fireball’s frequencies gave way to the waves of Inferno that rose from about him in haste, covering him with a circle of angry flames, giving him a chance to blink his eyes for once.

Just then, the bright lights of the golden sun died down, slowly revealing the Templars that stood in the front. All three of them were standing straight, looking as though they had just finished cleaning a number of stubborn spots on the ground rather than having fought a group of wicked creatures.

“Blessed Father,” Captain Edric kissed the tip of his right index finger’s knuckle, brought it up to his forehead, sword already back in its sheath and silent. Garran had an easy smile on his face, which felt like a biting gesture when he glanced back at Valens. Dain, on the other hand, was busy crushing a wriggling limb of shadow under his right heel, his plated foot scraping against the gravel in what oddly resembled a muffled cry.

[Hollow - Level ???]

Valens just managed to take a look at its name before Dain dealt with the remaining part of the creature, which then he followed with a disappointed huff.

“Kill the flames. We’re moving in,” Captain Edric said, then trudged into the now-cleared cave with long strides, Dain following him closely.

“Told you it wouldn’t be alone.” Garran smiled Valens a mean smile before coming over to him. His armored gauntlet nearly crushed into Valens’s shoulder as he looked down at him. “You wanted this. Come on, then. Try to keep up.”

Valens gave him a sharp look. There was a storm of questions in his mind as he and Garran started for the cave. A storm of them swirling around his mind, but there was one that bothered him more than the others.

Why ask me for a light when you can summon a fake sun?

……

Tongues of fire lashed at the shadowy limbs growing out from the side walls, like a host of worms squirming through the cracks in silence, wriggling from on top of each other to take a nib at human flesh. With little teeth, Valens observed, coated with foul-smelling acid that evaporated into dark smoke when Inferno swallowed them.

There were dozens of them on their way, and dozens more over the ceiling, and deep under the ground. The Templars hardly paid any attention to their insistent attempts.

Not like there is any need for them to take caution when all three of them are plated in their godly, bright armors.

Valens himself wasn’t that lucky. His old-fashioned coat got riddled with tiny holes during their little stroll from the entrance, bitten through by acid that hissed against the cloth. That was why, even though the captain preferred a much quieter trudge in this place, Valens kept Inferno active around him.

At least the fires kept him warm, and there was a lot to appreciate about the cave, though he was rather disappointed to find all the manastones he’d seen until now were all emptied out. Consumed, Garran told him, by whatever darkness was brooding in this tunnel.

It didn’t look like man-made. There were enough teeth marks to suggest that something had carved a path through the mountain with what seemed like fangs longer and sharper than anything he’d seen before.

A lot of something. Can’t be a solitary attempt.

Then there was Resonance, or what little frequencies he could get from it. Everything around him, from walls to the ground to the shadowy limbs and the few Hollows the Templars dealt with before the barricade, carried that unmistakable touch of Void. It was as though nothing here could decide whether they should settle in this particular space or exist somewhere in between where dimensions crashed into each other.

Hideous, Valens thought when a pair of shadowy swarms, these ones looking like snakes with three wobbly heads, hissed against the Inferno’s flames, got devoured in seconds, and left behind them a lingering stench of burnt mice.

“Is there any other way to keep away from these creatures? Because they stink when you burn them,” he lamented, rubbing his fingers that ached dully from the effort. “And why don’t I get any notifications when I kill them? Where’s the logic in that?”

“Because they are not real.” Garran gave him a look as though he was stating the obvious. “Just the Fiend’s smoky way of welcoming us. I don’t much care for them.”

“Then why don’t you take that helmet off and get a feeling of their touch?” Valens said. “It feels nice. Like the slimy, and sickly snot running down your nose, but corroding your flesh at the same time.”

“I’ll pass,” Garran said. Valens could see that stupid smile through his vision that stretched his lips wide.

“Fass,” Dain grunted in what sounded like muffled laughter.

“Managing a Cursed Rift is no easy thing,” Captain Edric, as usual, offered actual information rather than useless remarks as he waved a hand toward the manastones that lacked any light over the walls. “It takes an ungodly amount of mana even to open one, let alone keep it active.”

“Sounds like you can’t find a better place than a manastone mine to go for one,” Valens said.

Captain Edric slowed down. “Yes, and no. You would need an actual anchor to keep it stable, and an anchor needs constant care and protection. And you’d be risking your whole operation as well. Mines are not the best places to hide terrible creatures.”

“Then it’s a miracle how those miners managed to escape with their lives, even if this stench made them sick.” Valens took in a breath to feel the foul smell once again. It was an insidious poison, one that wormed its way to a person’s chest cavity, drawn toward that deep place like moths to a flame.

A poison concocted specifically for the core. Strange that other than that, it looks fairly normal.

He had half a mind to let a trickle of them worm their way to his core and see what change it would bring to his Resonance, but decided against it when it meant he could be lending his being away to some shadow for it to play with. Thus, Lifesurge threads squashed them down and flushed them away from his system as easily as dealing with a cut.

Dark things, indeed.

Valens waved the foul smoke wafting off from his pores. The collar of his coat provided little comfort against them, so he managed a Blockage around his face to filter the stench to a more acceptable stink.

And why does it smell like burnt mice? Don’t tell me that these shadows can possess any animal as well.

He shivered at the possibility, but the Apathy pulled his mind back as the Templars strode on. They looked fairly relaxed, with Garran radiating an air of mild boredom about him, yet there was an expectation brimming deep in his stomach, building up as though a volcano about to blow off.

Expectations, Valens thought, tend to disappoint people rather than give the desired outcome, but he couldn’t be sure how it worked with God’s men. The sacred bond between them and their Blessed Father… Perhaps it could make up for the deficiencies of a man who didn’t hack shadows and fight evil as an everyday job.

……..