Haunted Floor B33 (2/2)
One day (more accurately, about 100 years later), Prella is going over some reports, as per her morning ritual, and she reads about several strange incidents from the resident spirit mages. She puts down her orange juice and sits up with interest.
'It's been a long time since Haalfrin was locked up… so it's probably not him…' She looks down with a worried look on her face. 'Besides, his records don't say he has a spell that can make strange spectral… tendrils.'
She looks up and recalls the strange, dragon-like strength he displayed as he ripped floor B33 to shreds. 'Then again, he's had over a century to invent new skills… Plus, I know he has powers written in his Names, and that he's gotten 2 more Names… This may have been a new ability he's gotten, if he's still alive.'
She looks down, then her eyes suddenly open wide in panic. "No. It can't be!" she gasps aloud.
Just to be sure, the warden digs through the similar incident reports on the stack, and she maps out all the locations. 'Hm… All these incidents are happening within a couple floors of B33.'
The mistress of the Pit narrows her eyes and grits her teeth. 'Whatever it is you're planning, I'm not going to let you do it!'
Of course, she gritted her teeth because she's furious at Haalfrin… and for good reason.
Because of him, she had to waste half her family's mana conductive ore – all to build the spatial sealing spell that's keeping him on Floor B33. Now, because of his antics, she's going to have to use more expensive material, like spirit stone, to block off his floor as well.
The Spirit Stone was one of the biggest investments her ancestors had to put into this prison when they first built it, despite not lining it on every cell. For mages they KNOW have been taught spirit magic, the wardens are always sure to put them in cells specially built for them. Specifically, Spirit Stone blocks Spirit Mages from reaching past it.
Put another way, Spirit Threads can travel through any material BUT Spirit Stone. Obviously, she's going to need a lot of the stuff to make a wall, keeping the black tendrils contained.
…But putting a cubic wall of spirit stone around an entire floor?
Prella's wallet feels deep pain just thinking about it.
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A small, brown-skinned girl is making her way through the prison walls with a broomstick in hand.
She's short enough to fit in a large potato sack, and funnily enough, a potato sack is what she's wearing, only with 3 holes cut out in it – one hole for her head and 2 for her arms.
Despite having a darker skin tone than everyone else down here, none of the other servants or guards are paying attention to her.
Silently looking down whenever the humans pass by her, the child keeps sweeping – only stopping to occasionally curse whenever one of the guards walks past a place she just cleaned and has especially dirty boots.
As she's making her usual rounds, she opens her eyes widely, and they briefly glow blue.
In her piercing gaze, she sees the physical world melt away from her vision – only leaving the blurry golden blobs of the living spirits going about on their everyday work. However, she also sees a huge mass of copper-colored blobs of spirits making their way down the hall.
Out of curiosity, the girl holds her broom tightly and breaks from her normal sweeping pattern. 'J-just a quick look.'
…Despite her magical display of Spirit Sight, she's not actually a mage. Her 11 or 12-year-old appearance is genuine, and she still has sincere, childish curiosity.
Oddly enough, she was simply born with the ability to use spirits.
She peeks her head from around the corner and sees some advanced teleportation circles, as well as huge carts on wheels holding Spirit Stone. Since spirit stone exists in the spiritual world too, this is what the child was seeing when she saw the unfamiliar, copper "spirits".
Out of fascination, she watches as the mages bustle about teleporting large blocks of bedrock from below, loading it up on an empty cart, then using Spirit Stone to replace what the just took out.
(This way, they can put down the spirit stone barrier without having to dig down. They already have the math built into their magic formations, so it's a fairly smooth process.)
One of the mages turns and sees the little girl watching, and the sorceress gets an angry look on her face. "Out of the way!" the woman picks the child up by the slave collar around her neck and throws her down the hall.
The child rolls on the ground and crashes painfully into the wall… and she just lays there for a moment. She's certainly angry at being treated like this, but she knows very well by now that it's better to just not be seen by people who are stressed out.
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And so, knowing of the great responsibility "the commander" has placed upon him, Kaalhyme's Will always bullies all the smaller Wills aside and makes sure that Wills who have sworn allegiance to the commander are the ones to pilot the long black arms.
As such, Kaalhyme is going through the thousands of feet of bedrock, as per his usual daily schedule, when one of the Wills up ahead shouts through their link, "Captain! We've got a problem!"
"Report!"
"I see some of the enemy carrying this strange stone that we can't pass through. It looks like they're using teleportation magic to directly insert the strange bricks through the ground. I was watching for a few minutes, and it looks like they're trying to wall us off."
"Tch!" Kaalhyme curses out – a habit he actually picked up from Haalfrin. "The enemy's caught onto us a lot faster than I expected."
Kalastros's Will inserts, "It's actually a wonder it took them so long."
"…" Kaalhyme doesn't retort. Instead, he turns his attention to his other men, and he orders sternly, "All right men! There's been a change of plans!"
All the black, ghostly hands pause on their journey up, and they wait for orders.
Kaalhyme spends a moment to consider what they must do now...
"All right!" Kaalhyme barks to his men. "I'm going down to inform the commander! I'll ask for him to supply us more Death Aura, then I'll ask him what he wants us to do."
"All right," one of his captain's nods his head. "We'll be waiting for you."
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Right now, Haalfrin is in the middle of meditating on his other Names - hoping to get closer to Advancing them.
Just as he's getting into his training, he feels Kaalhyme's Will descend back into his soul. Then then feels the Will pulsing frantically, as if he wants to get his attention.
'What's this about?' Haalfrin wonders.
Haalfrin then reaches out with his Spirit Threads, and he touches the Will. A moment later, images flash through his mind - images of a platoons of guards bringing down huge carts full of weird rocks.
'I've got a bad feeling about this...'
Haalfrin looks down and taps his feet in thought. Suddenly it dawns on him. 'It's Spirit Stone! They're trying to trap my Death Aura tendrils in!' For the first time in a while, fear grips his heart.
"Kaalhyme!" he calls out.
Haalfrin then closes his eyes and transmits a few images to the intelligent Will. They are images of the prison soaked in blood, and weapons flying everywhere. There's then an image of so much Death Aura being created that he can finally reach his tendril up into the sky and reach the surface.
'Kill as many people as you can before they block us off,' these telepathic images seem to say. 'I need enough Aura to reach the surface. Now that they've caught on, there's no point in being sneaky.'
Haalfrin looks down. His sense of bloodlust is so powerful in this moment that the Death Aura within him creates the illusion of venom dripping out of his eyes.
'The guards, servants, civilians, and prisoners... Spare no one.'
Kaalhyme's Will zips away and immediately sets to work carrying out his commander's orders.
Meanwhile, Haalfrin chooses to sit back and let the Will make most of the tactical decisions. 'I'll just have to focus on keeping my bloodlust up. With my Death Aura sharpened with my aggressive feelings, the Wills will be more powerful.'
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As Kaalhyme is floating back up to inform his comrades of their new orders, he can't help but feel excited in his heart.
'I see. I didn't know why the commander was wanting us to collect Aura. I see now that he'll be able to escape if his Aura can reach as high as the surface...'
With them being found out by the human guards, this obviously means that they can't wait for people to die anymore...
...Then... THEY'LL HAVE TO MAKE PEOPLE DIE! With so little time left, they'll need to kill as many people as possible!
THIS MEANS WAAAAAAAARRRR!!!
'No no!' Kaalhyme scolds himself. 'I can't be too infected by the commander's bloodlust. I have to keep a clear head.'
Now that he takes a second to calm himself down, he thinks of all the women and children he's seen up there. 'Does that mean we're going to kill them too? I don't like it.'
Kaalhyme hovers there for a moment - feeling conflicted. 'Well... orders are orders. I don't like it... but it's not my call.'
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All the other Wills sense Haalfrin's excited bloodlust, and his feelings infect them too. Out of instinct, they're all already getting ready to charge up there and start the slaughter.
However, the only reason they don't charge up in chaotic waves is because Kaalhyme stops them all just in time. "Hold it! We can afford to spend a few minutes coming up with a plan!"
Most of these Wills had been with Kaalhyme long enough to trust him by this point, so they all calm down and listen to him studiously.
"Ok, here's what our situation is like..."
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First, the objective is to kill as many people as possible – guards, servants, prisoners… it doesn't matter, so long as the commander can get the Death Aura he needs to reach the surface.
To accomplish the objective, they're going to need a lot of weapons.
They COULD kill the guards on each successive floor and use the local resources to win, but he knows through past experience that this isn't going to work. There's too many mages on each floor for this to be viable.
On the other hand, he knows through their time exploring that there's an armory on Floor 25. The question is, 'How do we get the weapons from there down to the lower floors?'
There's not enough time or resources to burrow a hole between the floors for them to smuggle weapons through. At the same time, they don't control the teleportation portals on each floor.
Kaalhyme turns to Kalastros and asks, "Have you prepared that secret failsafe we've been talking about? How confident are you of doing it right now?"
"I'm quite confident," Kalastros responds. "I've analyzed the teleport circles between the floors, and I know how they work now. Normally, they can only work when they receive a signal from the Warden's tower, which is why all the employees have to get permission before they enter or leave a floor."
Kalastros gets more excited as he continues, "I realized it was too complicated to try hacking the enchantments and wresting control of them away… Their locking mechanisms are too advanced for me. However, I realized that breaking the circles is easier than hijacking them."
"I don't want them broken," Kaalhyme refutes, "I want to use them to transport weapons."
"That's the thing!" Kalastros shouts in triumph, "I know exactly how the teleport circles work… So if I'm careful when I break the circles, I won't break any of the mana stones or materials in the process, and I'll be able to use these to form my own Circle on top of its corpse. We'll own the teleport circles – not them!"
"Aha!" Kaalhyme shouts in glee, "You're brilliant!"
Finally, he has all the pieces he needs for a victory. If he has control over the traffic between the floors, then the enemy will be the caged birds – not them!