Chapter 11

Initializing....

Kobold's Night of Ascension Level 6 dungeon.

Morgan Lovecraft Level 3 - Necromancer Strength - 10 Dexterity - 8 Constitution - 10 Intelligence - 12 Wisdom - 14 Charisma – 13 Skills:

Unarmed Combat – 2 Identify – 2 Mana Control – 3 Herbology – 4 Harvesting – 4 Potion Making – 7 0 Unassigned Stat Point(s) 0 Unassigned Skill Point(s) 0 Unassigned Class Skill Point(s) Equipment Without Stats:

Bag of Holding (Medium) Spells:

Level 1 Spells -Cause Wounds - Touch - Causes necrotic damage Death Bolt - Ranged - Orb of necrotic damage Mark of Death - Ranged - Marks a Target and prevents stamina and health regeneration for a short period of time.

Level 2 Spells -None Learned Level 3 Spells -Animate Undead - Animate a body to do your bidding for up to 24 hours mana dependent.

Undead Summoning - Summon an undead spirit. Most common are Specters, Ghostly Skeletons, etc.

Life Steal - Damage caused with this spell active is returned to the caster as healing energy.

Life Siphon - Same as Life Steal but can be used on group members.

Only half as effective.

Death Speak - Perform the ritual and the spirit will speak with you for up to two minutes.

OH, thank goodness. I was back! I took a long breath of the damp air. This wasn't a fetch or gathering dungeon instance, but I could already tell there were ingredients here we could get. I got my stasis bag of holding out, and clipped it on my left side just past my left handed dagger.

"Where'd you get that?" Fel startled me with her question.

"Eyes up front," I told them. "And for the record, it was with the potion starter kit."

We'd come into the dungeon instance where I could see mountains just ahead of me. A long winding path cut into the lichen and moss covered ground. Clouds were so low, they almost seemed to melt into the ground as the path led upwards. I looked behind us, and saw the dungeon exit. It wasn't blocked, so we could bail on this joint if it was beyond what we could handle ourselves.

I was honestly a bit excited, but nervous. I'd never done a dungeon without a martial user of some kind. There was always a tank or dodge tank, always at least one healer or support... and maybe a DPS. The other two or three slots usually were the goblin gatherers, in my experience. Having five mages? I sighed. We had our work cut out for us.

"Do leadership shit," Myra said, pushing my shoulder as I read through everything.

"The trail upwards probably leads to a cavern. Kobolds are small lizard folk who want to be dragons. They're good with traps, and the shamans have some pretty gnarly spells. I don't know what level six is like, but they're not likely to run at us horde-like, unless they have overwhelming numbers. Be wary of ambushes, and if you have any extra abilities that help perception or your senses, use them. I would almost say let's send a scout up, but almost all of us are squishies."

"I mean, who isn't?" Gavin asked me.

"Felicity. By at least double. She's our toughest, and she's also our DPS specialist, with Seery."

"Leaving you and I on support, healing, and damage when we can," Gavin told me.

"And me?" Myra asked.

"You're our guardian angel," I told her. "You're going to haunt the shadows, and keep the rest of us safe. You have massive damage potential, but you'll draw aggro almost every time you backstab. I almost hate to say it, but your illusionary magic would be great for pulling monsters into an ambush, or picking off single targets from the edge of the conflict and then shadow step back."

"Instead of me going stabby stabby in ambush all the time...?"

"Yeah," I said softly.

"Oh, ok. No worries, I just wanted to make sure you understood my abilities and limitations."

I wasn't totally surprised by her statement, but I was shocked at how this all had come together so easily. Perhaps Blackthorne and Old Man Kelly's lectures had paid off?

We moved off the trail, walking parallel quietly. We got about halfway up to where we could see an opening in the rock face a quarter mile ahead of us, when I motioned for everybody to stop. They did, and I made the finger to the lips motion so they wouldn't make any sound. From my bag of holding I made a pile of bones appear at my feet. The man at the cemetery had said it was from a hellhound. Honestly, I doubted that, but it would be the size of a Great Dane.

I held my hand over the bones, and channeled my mana. It took a lot less time than I had expected, and a nearly four-foot-long, three-foot-tall bone canine re-formed before our eyes. It turned my way, an eldritch glow in its eye sockets as it considered me and waited for my command.

"Run to the opening, and then come back here. If you're attacked, run back right way," I told him.

The skull on the dog nodded, then it turned and ran off.

"I thought I was going to be pulling," Myra said.

"Oh, don't think you're not going to get your chance," I told her, "we're not even inside yet. These lizard fucks like to hide out inside caves."

"You've... done these before?" Fel asked softly.

"Yeah. Just not this high of a level. Also, see this gray moss? Grab as much as you can while we wait.

We started gathering that as I let a tendril of my mana out to follow my construct's progress.

"What's the point?" Seery asked, bringing me a chunk as I held open my plant spatial bag.

"It's luna moss. This, wheat, and purified water will make a halfway decent health potion," I told her.

"No shit?" Gavin asked, now moving quicker.

We spent five minutes gathering chunks of the moss, shaking the dirt off as we went along.

"Are you ok today?" I asked Fel.

"I'm not hungover, thanks to that potion you shoved down my throat.

Just wildly embarrassed," she remarked.

"I meant... you seemed off yesterday. Even before the mess that happened at Bamera's shop."

Seery and Myra looked at Gavin, and grabbed his arms, pulling him back to give us some space. I could sense my undead dog returning at an easy pace. It didn't seem to be fleeing.

"This week... it's been nice. For once in my life I have real friends, you know?" she said.

"I do. I feel the same way."

"No, I mean, I was fake or forced friends with Missy. For almost eighteen years. I grew up knowing what I was going to do for the rest of my life. I wasn't indentured before, but there was no way I was going to leave my family and just... leave."

"But isn't that part of growing up?" I asked her.

"Why are you making sense? I'm the older and more mature one here," she said, sticking her tongue out at me.

"How did you get so strong, so fast?" I asked her.

"An instanced dungeon like one of these. It was a level fifteen goblin raid instance. Missy and I were the lowest levels of the group. Her family was trying to help get us power leveled. We got a ton of levels fast, but I got hurt in it."

"And that's why Pippa Girl freaked you out?" I asked her.

She nodded. "It's not logical. I mean, that woman practically oozes warmth and love, but it's something I can't explain."

"No, I actually totally understand it," I told her. "So just the one dungeon run under your belt?"

She nodded.

"Good, let's fix that. Also, I have to figure out my dog's name. He's almost back."

"There's something on his back," Myra said loudly, walking closer to us.

We finished packing my plant bag and waited. There was an old leather satchel the dog had somehow gotten around his neck, and it had rested up between its bony shoulder blades like a backpack.

"Found something?" I asked the dog.

It nodded its head. I walked up and took it off. Inside of it was a fire making kit, what looked like a bundle of bark tinder, a steel knife, and a folded up piece of yellowed parchment. I pulled that out and opened it up slowly, parts of the pages crackling and tearing.

"Careful, man," Gavin said.

Everyone leaned in closer. It was a roughly drawn map.

"Look, the top portion is this slope leading into the crevasse there," Seery said, "then the rest... it almost looks like a line map for the tunnels inside."

I had to agree, but she'd come up with that a lot faster than I had. I'd noticed the sketch of the mountain, walkway, and crevice, but hadn't figured out what the rest of the squiggly lines meant.

"Awesome. Gavin, you good at maps?"

"No?"

"Good, here you go," I said, handing him the map and satchel.

That made his girls chuckle. I turned to my bone dog. "Did you see any kobolds coming or going up the mountain?"

It tilted its skull to the side.

"Did you encounter any enemies?"

It shook its head back and forth.

"Ok. Let's form back up and get some levels," I said, sounding more confident than I actually felt.

FOR SOME REASON, the cave opening from the crevasse was almost as brightly lit as the open air outside. If this was a gathering mission, we'd call a halt and have our goblin teammates investigate what was going on, while our tank guarded and I was ready to support or defend. Here? It seemed pretty much a kill quest. I didn't have time to figure out why the light in here was bright like daylight. It just was.

"Tunnel leading back behind that boulder," Seery said. "I can feel the air currents with my mana."

"Dang, so you can... wait, have you ever tried to use your mana like that to scout?"

"Nooooo....?" She turned my way.

"You're a storm mage, so you can feel air flow."

"Yeah, but not like Fel there."

"She's right. I hadn't been looking for it, but now she mentions it, I can get a sense of where the air pockets and tunnels are."

"Hey chica, can you like, I don't know like... use the vibrations in the air to hear longer distances and stuff?" Gavin asked.

Fel turned to look at me, and I nodded. She was on our front line, and she was going to try something difficult. I'd watch her back, and be ready when she wasn't.

"I... yeah," she said after a moment. "Does the map show the tunnel here going down in a small spiral until it opens up into another cavern?"

"Um... yup," Gavin told her.

"Ok, this is stressing my mana to push the air currents so far but there's something..."

I tapped her shoulder, and she looked up at me.

"You didn't hear anything coming down to the cavern?" I asked her.

"No."

"That's good enough for now, girl. Wow, I did not know air magic was so fucking sexy," Myra said in a loud whisper.

"Let's go. Just because there wasn't anything on the spiral going down doesn't mean it'll stay that way. Eyes peeled."

"I'm never going to get used to how you talk," Fel said from in front of me as she started walking again.

"I've got potions, also," I told the group. "If you need them, call it out. I should have passed them out beforehand but..."

"It's cool. I might take a mana potion or two if you have any," Gavin told me.

As we walked, I passed out two mana potions to everybody but Gavin, to whom I gave five. That left me with precious few for my own purposes.

"Fido, head down the tunnel ahead until you get to the big opening and wait there for us. If you're attacked, run back to us. We're headed that way now."

The bone dog nodded, then took off, the bones making clicking noises on the stone floors.

"Torches ahead," Fel whispered back.

I nodded, I'd seen the glow as we'd entered the tunnel. I could still hear the bone dog walking ahead of us, but I heard the crackle of the torches as we started spiraling down and to the left in a gentle slope. The tunnel itself had a floor worn flat by tools and probably the passage of feet. The walls had obvious tool markings on them, like this had maybe been an old mine.

Or perhaps an old dwarven passageway into the deep dark?

I wouldn't expect that in a dungeon instance, but it could probably mimic one. Was the first opening where we would find it? Or was that just the jumping off point? I'd never run a level 6 dungeon before, though. I was confident in my fighting skills, but I was literally the weakest one here in both terms of physical power and magical strength. Except for Gavin. He just crushed his foes with his ten thousand watt charm, apparently.

The walls of the tunnel were close enough that we could still walk in formation, but it left me shoulder to shoulder with Gavin. We left enough room in front of us to be able to cast over the ladies' heads (which if I'm honest, was the second consideration when I'd picked the two shorter members of our team to be up front) plus... they were the tankiest. A minute more walking, and we found Fido waiting for us.

His bone tail thumped a couple of times, but he just remained.

"Ok, Fido, stick by Gavin here and protect him. We're going to take this slow, guys and gals."

The opening looked like a small forest had been transplanted into the middle of a cave system. There was no opening in the rock ceiling, in fact there were stalactites growing down from it. Crystalline structures within the stalactites sent sparkling light which randomly lit up the cavern floor in front of us.

"Watch my back," Fel said, backing up until her shoulders bumped my chest. I put my hand on her shoulder.

We all felt the air swirl around us, and then even I could hear what she was hearing. There was chanting in a guttural language. It sounded like shuffling feet and I could smell... I'd been to the zoo once as a kid, and the reptile house had had a smell to it that was hard to define. I don't know if it was their scales, or feces... but this had that kind of odor.

"Ahead in the trees," Fel said. "I think there's a clearing in the middle."

I patted her shoulder. "Take a potion," I whispered.

"I didn't use much," she whispered, "my regeneration is insane. Don't worry, I'll monitor my mana use."

I let her go, and we started moving forward slowly. The chanting got louder as we made our way through the tree line. In the weird sparkling dark portions of the forest, we could see a worn path that led to what looked like the ruins of a stone village, overtaken by whatever kind of trees these were, the bushy plants and vines. Only three structures remained standing;

part of the wall, what had to be a guard's platform next to a tumbled down portion of the wall, and three walls of a building to our far right.

We moved closer, and we could feel the vibrations in our boots now. Fel was the first one through the broken down archway, and motioned for us to follow. We did.

"Myra, how far can you shadow step?" I whispered.

"Line of sight mostly, why?"

"Can you do a quick scout ahead for us? Look for any ambush spots?"

"Sure..."

"Just be wary of traps, I've always heard they left traps."

"I'll be careful," she said, turning to give me a gentle push, then took a step— "That always freaks me out a little bit," Gavin admitted.

"This whole chanting and foot stomping is sort of freaking me out a bit," Seery admitted. "I've already got my big AoE in mind in case we need to."

Myra stepped out of a shadow in front of us, "Group of about twenty five kobolds around a stone altar or pedestal. Shaman has some sort of ritual knife, and there's a scale of something on it. It's glowing. The group is in a half a circle around the shaman, repeating the chants and stomping their feet. Many of them have their palms sliced open, and are flinging blood forward."

"Some kind of ritual," Gavin said, rubbing his chin.

"I don't think we want them to finish it," I told them. "Any points of ambush?"

"Nope. Pretty much a tank and spank. Except, we don't have a tank," Myra said with a shrug.

"We don't need one," I told her. "We've got you ladies to protect us.

Let's launch our best AoE spells first, then hit them from range. We'll try to target the shaman first. As bodies drop, I'm going to try to raise them up and use them against them..."

I felt a tug on my cloak, and looked to see Fido was the one who'd done it, and he pointedly looked at the ground to the left of the wall. Bones. Lots of bones. I had completely forgotten the reason I'd gotten up so early. My mind was focused on hitting the kobolds fast before they could finish the ritual. If that scale was a dragon scale... things could be bad.

"Ok, slight change of plan," I said with a grin. "Thanks, Fido."

I started casting with my left hand, and got a mana potion out with my right. About halfway through my casting, the piles of bones started moving, assembling themselves. I drank down my potion and felt the mana shoot through my channels as I pushed the spell harder. When my mana level stabilized, I used my other hand and finished the spell off.

Standing before me were four human sized skeletons. "Ahead of us is a group of kobolds. If you want revenge against those who murdered you and ate your children, go harry them so we can wipe them out."

The skeletons nodded and took off in the direction I pointed.

"Fido, still, protect Gavin."

The skeletal dog nodded, and went back to his spot.

"Let's go," Seery whispered.

We went. The scene was exactly as Myra had told us it would be. The little dragon people were maybe three feet tall, and most of them were unarmed, but some had spears. I hated what I was about to do, but the skeletons were already fixing to cause a ruckus.

"Attack as soon as the skeletons get their attention," I told the ladies in front of me. "Myra, keep the edges clear as we get rushed. Get ready to aim at the shaman."

The shaman must have sensed something at the last moment, because I couldn't hear the skeletons running his way. He turned and maybe happened to catch the movement out of his eye, I don't know. Him stopping the chant suddenly had his followers turning and looking in our direction, just as the three skeletons threw themselves into the crowd. That's when Fel and Seery opened up.

A trio of wind blades flashed away from Fel, and the first two kobolds in the way were just split apart. That was with one blade. The others found their marks, causing guttural roars. Seery's opening salvo was a huge flash of chain lightening which knocked down over half of the cultists, but they were all still moving. I started casting death bolt at the shaman. I had enough mana to usually use it about ten times, but I'd already used a mana potion, so the next one would only be about half as effective for the next hour. I was going to have to be conservative.

Then Myra shadow stepped, and a moment later, blades of darkness crisscrossed the shaman's chest as she stepped back into the shadows and next to us.

"Gavin, heal it," she said, her words emotional.

"Heal wha... holy crap," he said, almost dropping whatever it was.

It was green, and about the size of a baseball. Red blood welled out of a small wound on its chest as it gasped for air.

"It's a baby kobold," he said.

I swiped away all the notifications, and hit the shaman with a second death bolt as Fel sent a trio of wind blades in his direction. A couple of his congregation of cultists tried to get in the way of the blades, but were cut down, the third taking the shaman's head off.

"Heal it!" Myra snarled.

"I'm trying, it's not working," he said.

I pulled a health potion out from a loop in my belt, popped the top off with my right thumb, and poured it over the gasping baby's wound. It started to close as the potion worked its way into it, then I poured some down its throat. It made a gagging, choking sound, coughing a lot of it up, but I had a feeling it kept some in there.

"Ok, slow down everyone," Seery said, "let the skeletons finish everything off."

I looked back up and saw that the skeletons were ignoring all attacks and were literally breaking necks, pulling arms off, or using dead kobolds as clubs to kill other kobolds. I saw the flash of notifications, but still didn't want to deal with them yet.

"Fido, go get me that scale," I told the skeletal dog.

It nodded and left, running towards the altar. "Let's spread out a little bit and start looting. Keep an eye open yet, I didn't get a clear notice. Did anyone else?"

"No," was chorused.

I checked the last of my notifications, and saw that was still true.