Penitent
Chapter 90: Into the Mountain

They moved carefully down the hill as they approached the small camp. There were no horses but there was a donkey and a few sturdy ponies under a tarp that had been used to create a makeshift stable. They seemed to have not been fed or watered in several days, and Crick took a few moments to take care of them as they searched the rest of the camp. Michael checked the firepit in the center of it, noting that the fire there hadn’t burnt out, but had been intentionally put out with a shovel full of loose dirt. The others looked through the tents and Michael helped Crick while they searched.

Jakub was frowning. “It looks to me like they went into the mountain a few days ago, but haven’t come back.”

Marcus nodded. “Yeah, it seems like they hadn’t expected to be gone for long either.”

They all looked to Lance, who was frowning as he left one of the tents. “I count fifteen. A few had stayed in camp, but must’ve gone looking for the others when they didn’t come back.” He took a breath. “From what I can tell, at least one started heading West, possibly for help.”

“How long ago?” asked Jakub.

“A day, maybe two.”

Jakub sucked some air through his teeth. “So there could be reinforcements any time now.”

Lance nodded as he looked over to the small trail that led to the mountain. “We need to move now. He looked at the others. “Get on your armor, we don’t have time for subtlety and with their numbers we’ll need the advantage. We don't know how many are soldiers.”

They all nodded, and slung their packs onto the ground. They quickly armored up, muttering their tightening spells to lock their armor into place. They’d had a lot of practice, so it only took them a few minutes. Once they were ready they quickly moved up the narrow path toward the mountain, seeing no signs more recent than two days past. After a half hour on the path they reached a cave opening that seemed to lead into the mountain.

Ollie went to the edge of it and ran a hand along it with a frown.

“It’s a near-perfect circle,” he said as he looked back toward them.

Jakub looked at the floor of the cave. “The floor is smooth as well, but has just enough traction to keep boots from slipping,” he looked at Ollie, “magic?”

Ollie shrugged. “None that I’ve ever seen in my limited time. Carving stone like this though? Seems like it would take a tremendous amount of Magicka and a long time. May as well just use tools at this point.”

“Maybe dwarves?” asked Davi.

Michael shook his head. “Dugan described dwarven mountains to me before. They prefer hard edges and like to carve repeating patterns into their walls. This doesn’t match that description.” He shrugged. “That was just one dwarf from one place’s experience though. Anything’s possible.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Lance. “We need to get in and out quickly. No lights. Nighteye spells only, and muffle yourselves as well.”

They nodded, and fell in behind Lance who pushed to be in the front. Michael muffled himself and activated his nighteye spell when it became too dim for him to see. He didn’t need to worry about tripping, the tunnel seemed almost perfectly sculpted.

They walked for a few minutes and started to see more signs of previous visitors. Some sections of the wall had had a pickaxe taken to them, their perfect smoothness tarnished by harsh cracks that left rubble and dust on the ground. As they got deeper they also started to see a number of paths breaking off from the main one that they were on, but Lance kept them moving along the largest first.

Michael heard a whisper in his left ear and what felt like warm breath and whipped suddenly around toward it, but saw nothing.

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They all turned toward him.

“Hear something?” asked Lance.

“I thought I heard a voice.”

“What direction?”

Michael pointed toward a branching path. “I’m not certain it was anything though.”

“If we don’t find anything after a few minutes we’ll turn back.”

He nodded, and they all started to walk down the narrower side path. It wasn’t too much smaller, so they were able to move five men shoulder to shoulder if they’d wanted to, but they stayed spread out, keeping their eyes and ears open as they moved.

Michael thought he heard more whispering, that kind of soft impression of words you get when you're far away from someone speaking softly. He couldn’t tell what the words themselves were, but he could tell that they were words. No one else was reacting to them though. He focused for a moment, trying to divine the space around them, and after a few moments he began to see the softest traces of gold lettering. It would only be for a moment before it would fade away, but he was certain that’s what he was seeing.

“There’s something divine here,” said Michael softly.

“What?” asked Lance.

“I just tried divining and caught the hints of something in this direction.”

“Any idea what it is?” asked Davi.

Michael shook his head. “No. The impression is weak.”

“We’ll give it another minute, then we turn back to the main path. The rock researcher wasn’t here for anything divine, she was searching for mineral resources.”

They moved forward for another few moments, when Lance stopped suddenly.

Michael saw the others stop as well and he moved up to where they were standing. In front of Lance was a corpse. The man hadn’t just been stabbed, or had his brain bashed in by a club, nor was he pincushioned with arrows. He’d been eviscerated. His body had been cut down from the shoulder down to the groin. One half of him leaned right, and the other half left with his head hanging limply from what remained of his shoulder. He’d been wearing a chestplate, but whatever had cut him down seemed to have torn through it as if it was paper. Blood and organs had spilled all across the ground around him. There were no flies on the body, perhaps because of how deeply they were inside the cave, but his blood had dried and the smell of him was tremendous.

Lance drew his sword, and everyone else did the same, with Crick readying his spear.

“We need to find the woman quickly and confirm that she’s alive. I want everyone to stay sharp and be ready for anything.”

“What do you think it could be?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps some kind of creature that they disturbed with their digging.”

“They delved too greedily and too deep,” said Ollie as he looked around grasping his staff.

“Nerd,” muttered Davi, looking behind them as he gripped his bastard sword tightly.

“You recognized it,” replied Ollie with a chuckle, his nerves bleeding through a bit as he spoke.

Jakub was breathing hard as he looked at the corpse, and Michael placed a hand on his shoulder, causing him to jump.

"It's okay. We're going to be alright."

Jakub took a deep breath and nodded.

Michael took a moment to go to the corpse and close the man’s glassy eyes as he laid his body down in a more dignified manner. He whispered a quick prayer for him as he did so, then fell back in with the rest of the group quickly moving through the tunnel. As he moved the whispering grew more clear as did the gold lettering. He started to pick up on certain words here and there. Protection, shielding, safety and many other such words along that same theme. It seemed in stark contrast to how he was feeling. His paranoia making him jump at shadows as he wondered what exactly could carve through a man and his armor with such ease.

The sound of metal striking metal echoed suddenly through the cave.

“Move!” yelled Lance and they all started running as fast as they could toward the noise.

Michael’s eyes started to struggle to see and he dismissed his night eye spell as he realized that there was light coming from up ahead. They all emerged into a massive chamber with a soft blue light illuminating it. At the far end was a massive white statue of a woman balancing a massive shield in front of herself. Her features were beautiful and perfect and her hair had such detail carved into it that Michael thought for a moment that he could make out individual strands of hair, even at a distance.

Closer to them, was a man stabbing wildly with a spear as he screamed in terror. The creature he was facing was easily the size of a horse with a segmented lower half covered in hundreds of legs as sharp as daggers and an upper half that seemed to have the torso of a man, and four arms. Two of the arms ended in fearsome blades like those of a praying mantis, and the others ended in savage claws. The monster's head was almost human in shape, but large enough to match the rest of its size. It had hair that appeared to be to be a thick chitinous mass and four eyes all of different colors. Its skin was like obsidian, black and shining.

Two of its arms snapped forward and took the man’s legs from him, then its clawed hand grabbed him by the arms and its head shot forward tearing the man’s throat from his neck as he ripped his arms from their sockets. It swallowed, and slowly turned to look at them.