A tunnel damp and dark and full of smoke t Edmund’s entrance. He coughed a single ti, a sharp and abrasive thing, before the last of the fresh seaside air had left his lungs and he re-acclimated to the haze. His vacation was over.
The passage ahead tilted downwards at a treacherous forty degrees, shallow enough to walk yet too steep to do so comfortably. He’d have the high ground against anything that ca at him head on, but retreating back up the incline would prove difficult. Similarly, the slope could theoretically impart a great deal of power into any potential charge he made, but he’d have a hard ti stopping should sothing go wrong.
Edmund wasn’t sure what any of that ant for the monsters he’d encounter. Obviously Liam wouldn’t give him favorable terrain, which ant the incline had to benefit whatever was about to try to kill him.
Imdiately his mind went to invertebrates and insects, in part due to the depth of the slope before him, but primarily because of its shape.
The tunnel was perfectly circular.
It stretched a consistent seven feet in diater, leaving Edmund an uncomfortably narrow section in which he could stand fully upright. Maneuvering a spear would be tricky but doable. Maneuvering a Firestorm less so.
Only the infrequent torches spitting their orange light and plus of smoke decorated the soft dirt and clay, the forr of which glimred upon an odd sheen that coated the earth. Edmund knelt for a better look.
Every few feet, a six-inch-wide ring encircled the tunnel in strangely shiny soil. The rings sat perfectly flush with the rest of the wall, and were indeed nigh unnoticeable without the torchlight reflecting against them. Given the regularity in their spacing, Edmund gathered so idea of their purpose, but his theory warranted testing.
He tapped the pointed tip of his armor-clad right middle finger against the reflective earth. Unlike the soft dirt on which he stood, it didn’t budge. He rapped a knuckle against it. A muffled knocking rang through the air, the shimring soil solid against his skin.
It had to be so sort of resin or chemical binder, Edmund reasoned, sothing that had seeped into the ground and solidified. The third and final act of testing his theory was the simplest.
He stepped on it.
Edmund simultaneously heard and felt it crunch beneath his boot, his focused bodyweight too much for the compound to handle. The ring’s sides both slid down and in towards where he’d broken it. Clumps of rock and earth rained down from above.
Edmund dove forward, catching himself on his hands.
For a mont, nothing happened. He lay there, face re inches from the dirt, wondering if he’d misevaluated the situation. What if the rings were actually a trap, or so sort of complicated alarm system and he’d just alerted the monsters and lied prone for them to freely atta—
The tunnel behind him collapsed.
Edmund scrambled to his feet, turning back to confirm the scope of the cave-in. Sure enough, the ceiling had co down at exactly the spot of the ring he’d broken. A wall of earth now blockaded him from the floor’s entrance, but Edmund didn’t care. He had no intention of leaving.
Fortunately, the rings he’d dived onto hadn’t snapped, implying it took his bodyweight concentrated into a relatively small area to break them. He’d have to avoid stepping on them or hitting them with any errant attacks, but otherwise they shouldn’t prove a problem. With how consistently the reinforcents were spaced, his sigil of the azure journeyman practically tracked them for him.
Comfortably reassured he’d found the floor’s most imdiate dangers, Edmund set off. He kept his shield up and his spear whole as he moved, yet forewent his normal poking and prodding for secret passages. The strategy had yet to actually work, and he dared not interfere with the tunnel’s dubious stability.
He was just wondering if Liam’s rules against digging applied to escaping a cave-in when he first heard them.
A series of faint, inhuman clicks echoed down from the tunnel ahead. They rang deep and fast, in bursts of dozens at a ti interspersed with periods of silence. Edmund stilled.
The clicks grew louder.
He kicked his heels into the ground, compacting the earth as best he could into so semblance of a landing on the steep slope. The incline behind him forced him to hold his spear at a weird angle, but there was nothing for it. As long as it could point towards the monsters, it would do.
They appeared first as outlines in the smoke, four insectoid creatures that resembled army ants but for the bulging sacks of fluid beneath their mouths, and the fact they were each ten feet long. Their chitin shone a dull red, declaring danger as if two-foot-long mandibles dripping venom weren’t enough.
To approach at once down the narrow tunnel, the massive bugs utilized the space’s entirety, running along the floor, walls, and ceiling as they charged Edmund’s position. As they neared, his challenger’s mark burned with sensation.
The ants stopped.
Edmund raised his shield.
Four globules of viscous liquid launched through the air at him. He dodged the first and caught the second on his shield, but one struck his right elbow and another his left ankle.
They didn’t hurt. No acid chewed through his armor. No toxin pushed through his blood.
The substance solidified, locking his elbow and ankle in place.
The ants charged.
Edmund growled a curse and moved to et them, maneuvering his spear with his wrist and shoulder as his elbow kept its angle.
The ants reared back to spit another barrage.
Edmund yelled his Challenge.
Three of the four ants hung back as his newest ability took effect. The fourth ran in.
Edmund jamd his spear at it as best he could without straightening his arm, getting it in the eye but lacking the range to pierce through to its brain. It recoiled.
Edmund stepped in, keeping his spear tip stuck in the ant’s eye, bashing at its mandibles with his shield as he spun. He grabbed his spear with his off hand, holding it in place as he drew his right shoulder back to adjust his petrified arm’s grip.
Venom dripped down his side as the ant’s left mandible cut a score down his crystal cuirass but failed to reach flesh.
At last Edmund completed his follow-through, driving his spear through the beast’s eye and into its brain. The ant collapsed. One down, three to go.
His Challenge expired, its day-long cooldown uselessly ticking away.
The montum of his lunge carried him three more steps down the treacherous slope, driving him closer to his foes and past the point he could easily reclaim his spear. He drew his sword, dropping the spear and watching as it slid down the slope a ways. He’d worry about finding it later.
The good news was that its shorter length made maneuvering Scorpion’s Sting a fair bit easier in the confined space. The bad news was that the mandibles now outranged him. He’d have to charge in aggressively, a tall ask with only one functional ankle.
Edmund half ran half stumbled for the ant to his right, keeping his shield up to defend from attacks above and to his left. It caught the first glob of the hardening resin, but failed to block the second. Monts later, Edmund lost motion in his left shoulder.
The rightward lashed out. On instinct Edmund tried to lower his shield to block, but his shoulder refused to budge.
A pair of mandibles wrapped around Edmund’s midsection. They dragged him in, yanking his weight off his feet and onto his knees, then they began to squeeze.
His cuirass held up admirably, its resistance to crushing damage slowing the ant’s attempt to bite him in two. Edmund swung, but his awkward, constrained motions led the edge of his blade to bounce off the creature’s chitin.
It jerked its head to the side, slamming Edmund into the wall. His sword fell to the floor.
A great and horrible crack rang out as his cuirass finally began to buckle. Pain shot up Edmund’s side as his ribs snapped.
He jerked himself forward, swinging his entire upper body to make up for the lost range of his petrified elbow. His ring finger made it into the joint at the base of the beast’s right mandible.
The ant’s grip slackened as its life force left it. Edmund groaned. He’d have preferred the healing from the gauntlet-piece on his middle finger. The ring finger’s blood bolt was still absurdly over-charged from the leviathan a few floors back.
He coughed. Flecks of blood splattered against the dead ant. The broken rib had pierced his lung.
He couldn’t stop now.
Another globule struck and solidified around his right hand, coating his fragnts of the Dread Gauntlet of Koa’Ilinesh. He could still move his fingers, but until he rid himself of the resin, he’d be draining no more.
But Edmund had no shortage of weapons.
He leapt to the left, ducking his head to slip under the ant on that side. His frozen joints kept him from reaching for the mundane knife at his side, so Edmund simply allowed himself to land hard on his side against the bare dirt. He jamd his left elbow into the ground, forcing his right shoulder up and into the base of the ant’s thorax.
Using the pointed tip of his rockjaw pauldron, Edmund activated Rend.
Yellow hemolymph and viscera rained down on him as the ant split in two, but Edmund didn’t have ti to be disgusted. The ant on the ceiling yet remained, and he was still bleeding into his lungs.
Edmund pushed the ant’s corpse aside and allowed the tunnel’s slope to pull him into a roll. He traveled so dozen paces down the passage, rhythmically slamming his shield into the earth to keep his roll going until it ca ti to do the opposite.
He gathered himself and glanced up to find the final ant still in the process of turning around to chase after him, the tight quarters finally working in Edmund’s favor. Even luckier, once it turned, rather than charging imdiately, it reared back to spit another burst of fluid from the sac beneath its mouth.
World still spinning as he recovered from his roll, Edmund didn’t even bother trying to evade the globule. Instead, he took aim and cast one last spell.
A Magma Fissure cracked open beneath the ant. Red light and shimring heat waves spread through the tunnel at the exposed magma.
The ant clung safely to the ceiling, in no danger or stepping even close to the magma, let alone into it.
Until, bisected by the fissure, three individual rings of resin all gave in at once.
The tunnel collapsed.
The ant fell back-first into the Magma Fissure, screeching and writhing in agony for the paltry monts before a column of earth slamd on top of it. Edmund watched with smug satisfaction as its one exposed leg quivered once and then stilled forever.
Edmund sat up, coughing and sputtering as blood ran down his chin. He could survive a punctured lung, especially if he let unconsciousness take him so the slumbering deep could do its work, but he didn’t trust his regeneration’s ability to properly set his broken rib.
With his forcibly bent right arm, he reached back and unclasped the crystal cuirass that’d saved his life. It refused to separate from the hardened resin at his left shoulder, but he managed to weave his arm under it to reach the skin below.
Edmund grit his teeth. He inhaled sharply, fighting off the coughing fit as he filled his damaged lungs with as much air and smoke as he could manage. Through the skin and muscle of his abdon, Edmund grabbed the broken rib.
He yanked it back, freeing it from its spot in his lungs even as it tore through new flesh.
Ideally, he’d have set it in its proper place. Ideally he’d have wrapped it in bandage or splint or even so of that resin the ants wielded so well.
Ideally, Edmund would’ve remained conscious.
None of that happened. As the pain of shifting around his own broken bone exploded through his midsection, Edmund managed one last desperate, sputtering breath before his head hit the dirt and darkness took him.
Edmund awoke to sore muscles and stiff joints. His throat burned with irritation from the smoke in the air, but that was it. He breathed as freely as he ever did alone.
Muttering a quiet thanks to his sigil of the slumbering deep, Edmund sat up and set about dealing with his next major dilemma.
The resin still bound his hand, elbow, shoulder, and ankle. He tried slamming his coated fingers against the do of his shield, but the force of the impact traveled right through the hardened goop into his hand. Edmund grunted as his fingers throbbed.
The substance had to have so chanism for breaking apart. It’d co from a single sac at the ants’ throats, implying that it wasn’t a mixture with so other compound that triggered the solidification. The fact the sa substance reinforced the tunnel ant water couldn’t dissolve it either—the moisture in the ground would’ve collapsed the supports.
That left exposure to air and loss of heat. If access to air had caused the stuff to solidify, there was nothing Edmund could do about it, but if it’d only stayed liquid in the ants’ bodies because they’d heated it up, he had an easy fix.
Edmund raised his hand to the torch on the wall and watched with glee as the resin dripped off. For a brief mont he considered donning his swelter ring to lt off the rest, before realizing that the reinforcent rings were made of the sa stuff. He preferred not to liquify the things holding the ceiling up.
He repeated the process to free his elbow and shoulder, but had to light one of his own torches to finish off. The dungeon’s torches didn’t freely separate from the wall, and raising his ankle above his head precisely enough to lt the resin without burning himself would’ve been hard enough on stable footing let alone the soft soil and steep slope of the tunnel.
His first step was to fix his cuirass, a task as simple as bleeding on it a bit to fuel its self-repair function. Already it had drank of the blood he’d coughed up, so all it took was a cut along his left arm to return it to perfect condition.
Fortunately, his hyper-magnetic spear had stopped its slide as it hit a bend in the tunnel. Thrax knew how far it could’ve fallen otherwise. Edmund didn’t like the idea of having to clear the entire floor before he could reclaim his main weapon.
Scorpion’s Sting wasn’t so lucky.
The short sword hadn’t slid or rolled or otherwise traveled from the spot Edmund had dropped it, a spot that now sat comfortably beneath a few tons of fallen earth. He sighed and scratched the back of his head as he gazed at the wall or dirt and clay that blocked his retreat. He supposed Liam wouldn’t be too upset if he excavated his lost weapon. It’d take forever, but it seed possible.
Assuming the tunnel didn’t collapse further. Edmund had no idea how much soil sat above him, and digging through the collapsed section seed like an easy way to trigger more cave-ins. He cursed. Unless he wanted to join his sword under a column of earth, Scorpion’s Sting was gone for good.
The poisoned blade had served him well, but Edmund had long learned not to grow too attached to his gear. The dungeon would give him another close range weapon soon enough.
With a sigh, Edmund stretched away the worst of the stiffness and set off once more. He kept his spear drawn and his shield up as he moved, modulating his stride to maintain his footing without stepping on any of the tunnel’s reinforcents. He’d walked for so five minutes before the passage forked. Then it forked again. And again.
The further he delved the more paths presented themselves. They varied in size and direction, ranging from a dozen feet wide to no more than three. Edmund kept out of the tighter tunnels as best he could, unwilling to risk an encounter with an ant in a space where he couldn’t move his arms let alone maneuver a weapon, yet still he found himself crawling prone from ti to ti.
The smoke led him true.
At every junction he followed where it pointed, taking whichever path through which it hung the thickest. He found himself doubling back, taking long circuitous routes through the maze of tunnels, squeezing through holes that barely accommodated the width of his shoulders, yet still he followed. He trusted the smoke far more than any comprehensive search, far more than any system of exploration, far more than his own judgnt.
In all his ti in the Eternal Depths, it was the only thing he’d co to trust.
Six tis as he progressed through the warren did Edmund encounter another group of ants—kryax drones according to the smoke—and six tis he employed the sa technique to deal with them. Break Through got him past the gathered drones, and Magma Fissure collapsed the tunnel behind him. Any that survived the cave-in fell to his spear before they could escape their earthen tomb.
The hours dragged on as Edmund crawled through the labyrinthian hive, a level he grew more and more confident had been designed to be confusing above all else. He wondered if Liam’s intent had been for delvers to get so lost they starved to death. Even without the smoke, Edmund’s rootmother’s sigil eliminated that particular risk.
He’d traversed miles of tunnel by the ti he ca across the level’s next challenge: a vertical shaft.
It ca about slowly, the passage ahead curving more and more downward until it gave way to a sheer drop. Smoke and darkness shrouded its depths, leaving Edmund to wonder just how far a fall it might’ve been. Certainly a lethal one.
He pulled the second of his six torches from his satchel and lit it against the last one the dungeon offered before the dark shaft. Loathe as he was to burn through a limited resource, the stick with oil-soaked cloth on top hadn’t exactly been expensive.
Stabilizing himself against the left wall, Edmund peered down and tossed the crackling torch into the shaft. It fell and it fell and it fell, its flas fading away behind the shadows and smoke before a soft thump finally reached Edmund’s sigil-enhanced ears.
He exhaled, missing, for a mont, the strethian lash he’d left behind on the fifth floor. Perhaps he should’ve asked for a new one back on the burning tree. It would’ve been three hells of a lot more useful than the idol and the sap that both only worked on plants.
Resigned to do it the hard way, Edmund pulled the two pointed segnts of his hyper-magnetic spear from his arms. He tested them on the wall first, slamming one in over a foot deep and trying his weight on it. It slid out. He tried again, angling his strike so downward force would only drive the stake in deeper. It worked like a charm.
He repeated the test a dozen tis before securing enough confidence in the thod to trust it with his life. While a windstep or two would cancel out a single slip-up, he’d have few options for recharging them as he descended, especially if he had to be careful about one wrong step breaking a support and collapsing the tunnel.
Nevertheless, the smoke led him down, so down he’d go.
Hand over hand he made his descent, digging his feet into the clay and soil for what little traction he could get as he drove in and yanked out his makeshift climbing spikes. The air grew dark around him, smoke washing out the light from above and below. Liam had left the shaft itself curiously absent any torches, telling Edmund one of two things.
Either Liam didn’t want him knowing how deep it went, or Liam wanted to hide sothing in the shaft itself.
For the second ti that day, the sigil of the slumbering deep proved its worth. It wasn’t perfect, but the lesser dark vision offered just enough of an outline to see how deep he’d driven each stake and how close he kicked to each reinforcent ring. Only by this limited sight did Edmund notice the strange shift in the smoke two thirds of the way down.
A passage opened up in the side of the shaft. It was flat, perpendicular to Edmund’s descent, unlit, and only four feet in diater. It hid so well in the darkness of the tunnel that without the trails of smoke wafting into it, Edmund would’ve climbed right past it. It even sat opposite him, so any delver who climbed down the side of the shaft that’d once been the floor would’ve had his back to the opening. Wherever it led, Liam didn’t want people finding.
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Wherever it led, the smoke wanted Edmund to go.
Maneuvering along the edge of the vertical shaft was easy enough, though Edmund had to climb down a bit then back up to safely enter the hidden passage. He kept his climbing spikes out in underhanded grips as he crawled on his elbows through the tight space, ready to lash out if necessary. Of course, any ant could block such a strike with its longer-ranged mandibles, but it was better than nothing.
He saw the light before anything else. Orange torchlight flickered through a small opening in the distance, offering so glimr of possibility at the end of the dark and claustrophobic tunnel. He approached it cautiously, wary of alerting whatever may’ve lurked on the other side.
For good reason.
As he reached the tunnel’s end, Edmund carefully peeked his head into view of the room beyond, revealing a scene that left him both sick to his stomach and giddy with excitent.
He’d found the throne room.
The passage opened up high on the wall of a massive cavern. Edmund counted several dozen such openings scattered throughout the vast space, into and out of which ants flowed by the hundreds. The cavern’s floor sat hidden below untold layers of them, a writhing, creeping, crawling sea of kryax drones.
Imdiately Edmund suppressed his instinct to cast a Firestorm. While the mass of what must’ve been thousands of giant ants made for an appealing target, if more than a few survived he’d be a dead man. Indeed, if any of the ants decided to chase him, his odds of survival plumted. There was no way he could traverse the tight passage on his hands and knees as fast as a drone could run it.
That left two options. He could slink away, content that the smoke would keep his presence hidden if he didn’t call attention to himself, or he could take an incredible risk.
At the center of the chamber, atop the highest point of the mound of ants, sat their queen. Edmund didn’t need to read the smoke drifting off her to recognize her importance—her size and position were more than enough.
The kryax queen stretched so thirty feet long, with long, jagged mandibles and stiletto-sharp barbed feet to match. Venom dripped down her mouth, and while she lacked the sack of hardening resin that’d posed such problems for Edmund in the past, she made up for it with the set of translucent wings that stretched down her back.
Besides, the drones atop which she sat had more than enough resin between them to drown an elephant, let alone stop Edmund.
The ants would leave him alone if he eliminated their queen, right? Or would they attack him in a blind rage? It seed like a dangerous risk to take, even assuming he actually could kill the queen. It wasn’t much of an assumption. He knew he could. What mattered was whether or not he should, both in terms of the potential fallout and of what it would cost.
Luck solved the forr problem.
As if by providence, a procession of ants erged from one of the lower, larger tunnels, carrying overhead the corpse of a fallen drone. Before the hive could devour its forr worker, Edmund caught a glimpse of the smoke drifting off the dead insect.
Kryax Drone
One of a vast network of workers in service to a kryax queen. These drones aren’t capable of independent thought, simply following orders and basic instructions from their shared mind. They dig, build, and reinforce their nests with a chemical compound that solidifies upon contact with oxygen.
Edmund blinked. The resin worked on exposure to oxygen? But lting it away had worked.
He shook the thought from his head to focus on what mattered. The drones functioned off a single, shared mind. If he destroyed that mind, theoretically they would stop functioning. It seed like a stretch, but Edmund couldn’t think of any other way. The fairness accords put strict limits on the power of even optional bosses, and if this one required fighting off every single one of the thousands of drones, it would be impossible.
Even getting to the queen without fighting through the drones was a tall order, nigh impossible for any delving group that lacked the particular ace up Edmund’s sleeve.
He raised his hand, marked his target, and fired his Blood Bolt.
The force of the spell launched him up and back into the ceiling of his tunnel as the entire life-force of the leviathan beneath the lake exploded from his armored ring finger. He caught himself on his hands, jerking his head up to watch his attack in action.
Thousands of individual spears of blood wove into a pillar of uncountable needle-points. Empowered by Focus, by The Warmonger, by The Tactician, and by The Target it flew, plowing through the wall of drones that arose to block the attack and striking their queen behind them.
The word ‘kill’ understates the Blood Bolt’s impact. ‘Destroy’ falls short. Indeed, nothing shy of ‘complete obliteration’ fully encapsulates the extent of the damage. One mont there was a queen. The next, there wasn’t.
The hive descended into chaos. So drones froze in place, others wandered aimlessly into the tunnels, others turned to violence, tearing into each other in so primal attempt at reestablishing hierarchy. None seed to pay Edmund any mind.
He shuffled back out of imdiate view of the cavern and envisioned his constellation to check for the sigil he half expected he’d have to turn down. Instead, he found a title.
Hivemaster
Grants lesser tremor sense. Bestows the right to challenge other hivemasters for control of their hives.
Edmund scowled, wondering if that right applied retroactively. Could he take control of this hive now that its queen was dead? He doubted a god could take control of the chaos down there. He noted the title’s description didn’t specify kryax hives.
He blinked away his constellation and moved to continue on when a pair of mandibles peeked over the lip of Edmund’s tunnel. A single drone followed, approaching Edmund far faster than he’d ever be able to retreat. He readied himself for a fight before an idea struck.
“Stop!” he ordered the ant, keeping his tone as assertive as possible.
The drone obeyed.
Edmund let out a breath. The ant visibly exhaled. Edmund scowled and tilted his head to the side. The drone mirrored his movent. “Huh,” he breathed. “With , then. Don’t let any more drones follow.”
The ant nodded its assent, enough for Edmund to trust the thing. Considering it lacked the capacity for independent thought, he sincerely doubted it capable of betrayal.
It ca as a surprise, then, when rather than watching his back as he’d expected, the drone collapsed the tunnel behind them, sealing off their thod of egress from the mayhem of the throne room.
Edmund led the drone all the way back to the shaft, where he drove a spike into the wall and hung over the darkness below to clear a path for the obedient ant. It walked right out of the side passage, standing comfortable on the vertical wall of the shaft.
Edmund raised an eyebrow at it. “Can you give a ride to the bottom?”
It bent its legs and lowered itself to the dirt, signaling to Edmund that he should climb on.
He did.
He’d barely managed to wrap his arms around its neck and legs around its thorax before it took off, skittering down passage at a pace just short of an actual fall. In far, far less ti and effort than it would’ve taken Edmund to climb down on his own, both he and the ant erged into a small room with an open door, an erald chest, and a boyish man with an amused smirk.
“Oh look, you made a friend,” Liam greeted him. “Too bad you can’t take him with you.”
“No,” Edmund muttered as he dismounted the drone. “Instead I’m stuck with you.”
Liam snapped his fingers. “That’s true. You can take to the next floor.”
Edmund ignored him, letting the drone run off to do whatever it was mindless drones did with their ti as he set his sights on the loot chest. “What do the different types of chest actually an?”
“Nothing at all,” Liam answered with surprising honesty. “I’ve found you delvers tend to appreciate your loot more if it cos in a fancy box.”
“Of course you have,” Edmund grumbled. He knelt over the chest and swung open its glimring erald lid to reveal a wooden slingshot and a burlap sack. He scowled. “Fancy box, huh?”
“Works wonders.” Liam smirked.
With a sigh, Edmund picked up the slingshot and eyed the wisps of smoke trailing off it.
Basic Slingshot
The words offered no description, presumably because the bent wood and springy strap had no interesting properties beyond their ability to launch small objects. The burlap sack, basic as it seed, displayed its purpose.
Inside he found fifteen transparent orbs, each about the size of his fist. Tiny air bubbles within them shifted around as he turned the spheres in his hand, implying that their rigid exteriors didn’t extend all the way through. Edmund knew what they were even before the smoky letters drifted into the air.
Kryax Balloon
A glob of kryax resin wrapped in a thin protective film. Will burst and coat anything it strikes at sufficient velocity before solidifying.
Edmund liked the sound of that. He’d have to spend so ti with the slingshot to practice on his aim, but the ability to emulate the drones’ joint-freezing attacks seed useful. A surplus of non-combat uses for the resin—slingshot notwithstanding—ca to mind as well. Quickly and easily binding two things together had a lot of utility.
He emptied the burlap sack into his satchel, leaving the kryax balloons loose for ease of access. The slingshot followed before, on a whim, Edmund rolled up the sack itself and stored it too. Loot was loot.
Before he could mutter another snarky comnt, Edmund shut Liam out and envisioned his constellation. At long last, the ti had co for another base Aspect. Though the list he’d received from the tenth-floor scholar had already narrowed down his options, he took the mont to review the complete list.
Aspects
StrengthAgilityIntelligencePerseveranceSpiritEnduranceBladesElentsShadowsDealsCraftsTalentsLifeOrderUnityDeathChaosSolitudeMadnessWarWrathSerenityPeacercyDivineInfernalEldritch
Already he’d taken the two Aspects directly adjacent to Madness, barring, of course, the much more limited Eldritch. For the ti being, Edmund had his eye on Chaos and Wrath, both of which he felt rather suited him, even if neither resonated above a dull gray with a few flecks of red. Of the two, Wrath seed to make the most—
“Before you get ahead of yourself picking your next Aspect,” Liam interrupted his train of thought, “you might want to ask why I’m here.”
Edmund dismissed his constellation with a groan. “Why are you here?”
“To annoy you.”
Edmund glared at him.
“Oh, also to give you this,” Liam held out an open palm, upon which sat a humanoid wooden figure made of bound twigs.
Edmund scowled at it.
“It’s not a great offer,” Liam said, “but your value is plumting. People think you’re unstable, and don’t want to invest resources in a pact with a suicidal lunatic, especially a suicidal lunatic who’ll probably turn them down.”
“Making the tough sell, aren’t we?”
“You should take it,” Liam insisted. “It’s the best you’re gonna get. It’s the last you’re gonna get. I had to call in a favor just to get you this. The unbound effigy is a friend of mine, and he’s only sent you an offer because I asked him to. Understand?”
“Yeah, you want to sign a pact with your friend. Got it.” Despite his protest, Edmund reached out and touched the idol. There was no harm in reading the offer, even if its circumstances already repulsed him.
The unbound effigy felt… different than the other icons with which Edmund had communed. The world didn’t go silent or disappear entirely or otherwise change at a fundantal level. Edmund simply blinked and he found himself in a clearing surrounded by trees.
Dead leaves crackled beneath his feet. A cloudy sky cast him in shadowless gray. At the center of the clearing, held upright by a stake driven deep into the earth, was the effigy itself, crafted of twigs and branches tied together in the shape of a man with arms outstretched.
It didn’t move. It made no sound. It simply was, seemingly inanimate yet projecting a sense of uncanny significance that belied its basic appearance.
Edmund didn’t approach. He didn’t beseech the mysterious icon. He didn’t pray. “Alright,” he said with no excess of reverence in his tone, “let’s get this over with. What’ve you got for ?”
A sharp wind swept through the clearing, its chill biting at Edmund’s skin as fallen leaves danced to its tune. Monts later, the offer faded into view.
Offer Received - Pact of The Unbound Effigy
Receive access to the Eldritch base Aspect, with abilities tied to the power of The Unbound Effigy and resonance determined by your personal affinity with The Unbound Effigy. In exchange for this portion of his strength, The Unbound Effigy asks no tithe on coin earned, a bi-monthly holy task, and three holy quests at The Unbound Effigy’s discretion.
Edmund almost laughed. Liam hadn’t exaggerated when he’d said the offer wasn’t great. No tithe was nice enough, but the effigy wanted way more holy tasks and multiple year-long quests. A holy task he could handle, but taking a year away from the Eternal Depths to go chase so icon’s bidding would cost him his Obsession bonuses at best and his chance at vengeance at worst.
There was no way Eldritch was so much better than any other base Aspect that it justified putting Obsession at risk. Edmund didn’t waste any ti.
“No.”
The wind swept once more, filling the air with a flurry of dead leaves that seed to wipe the clearing away. When the leaves finally fell, they fell to the floor of the dungeon at Liam’s feet.
Liam let out a sigh. “Don’t say I didn’t try.”
“Try what?” Edmund asked. “Try to trick into signing my soul over to one of your friends?”
“I don’t know, maybe try to keep you alive?” Liam countered. “There’s a reason delvers take pacts.”
“And I’ll happily take one that guarantees it won’t drag away before I get my chance to finish you,” Edmund snapped. “Better yet, I’ll take one if it isn’t brokered by you. Don’t think I didn’t notice the way you phrased that to avoid outright saying you’re trying to keep alive, because we both know you’re not.”
“Fine. If delvers refuse pacts, it hurts my ability to sell shrine placents. It’s in my own best interests that delvers take pacts and that they’re happy with them. So what? It turns out, sotis people want the sa thing.”
“It’s not that simple. It’s never that simple, but guess what? I’m onto you, and I’m not gonna let you manipulate .”
Liam raised an eyebrow. “Are you allergic to happiness or sothing? Why is it that whenever anything remotely good cos your way, you assu it’s so plot to get you killed?”
“Because everything’s a plot with you. That’s all you know. For fuck’s sake, Liam, you didn’t drop with Alia on a sandy beach to be nice, and you certainly didn’t ‘call in a favor’ to help survive. Whatever your ga is, I’m not playing.”
“Yeah, maybe I thought if you were happy for once, you’d stop being so angry all the ti. Silly . But what’s worse, Edmund? Getting tricked into being happy, or pushing everyone and everything away in case it’s so ploy? I’ve noticed you’ve yet to use that ring of yours.”
Edmund froze. He absentmindedly spun the ring of twinned souls around his finger. Liam was right. He hadn’t contacted Alia. He wondered what that ant for approximately three seconds before he realized what’d happened.
“You’re using her against . You set us up, and now you’re using her against .” Edmund shook his head. “You can shove that pact offer up your ass. I’m not interested.” He stepped around the obnoxious avatar.
“You really should reconsider!” Liam called after him. “You’re not going to get any other—”
He was too late. Before Liam could even finish his sentence, Edmund pulled up his constellation, took the Aspect of Wrath, and stepped into the darkness.
HivemasterEdmund Montgory Ahab, The Crimson Hand
Aspects Unlocked: 22
Tier 1 Aspect: Wrath - Red Resonance
Level 1 - Provides access to the Brutalize active ability.
Tier 1 Aspect: War - Gray Resonance
Level 9 - Provides a lesser increase to all damage dealt. Provides a lesser decrease to all damage taken.
Tier 1 Aspect: Elents - Gray Resonance
Level 8 - Provides access to the Firebolt spell.
Tier 1 Aspect: Solitude - Red Resonance
Level 9 - Provides a greater increase to constitution while fighting alone.
Tier 1 Aspect: Perseverance - Gray Resonance
Level 10 - Gain health regeneration. Gain greater health regeneration outside of combat.
Tier 1 Aspect: Madness - Prismatic Resonance
Level 16
Tier 2 Aspect: Fervor (Madness and War) - Gold Resonance
Level 1 - Empowers the effects of Madness and War for each consecutive second spent in battle.
Tier 2 Aspect: Sorcery (Madness and Elents) - Gold Resonance
Level 2 - Provides access to the Smoke Lash spell.
Tier 2 Aspect: Obsession (Madness and Perseverance) - Gold Resonance
Level 4 - Gain strength and agility for each consecutive day spent pursuing your obsession. Gain mana for each consecutive month spent pursuing your obsession.
Tier 2 Aspect: The Recluse (Madness and Solitude) - Gold Resonance
Level 4 - Empower the effects of Madness while alone. Lessen the effects of Madness while accompanied.
Tier 2 Aspect: The Island (Solitude and Perseverance) - Gray Resonance
Level 5 - Grants resistance to over-ti effects while in groups of two or fewer.
Tier 3 Aspect: Focus (Elents and Obsession) - Silver Resonance
Level 2 - Doubles spell damage when attacking a single target.
Tier 3 Aspect: The Challenger (War and The Recluse) - Silver Resonance
Level 1 - Provides access to the Challenge active ability.
Tier 3 Aspect: Artillery (War and Sorcery) - Silver Resonance
Level 1 - Provides access to the Firestorm spell.
Tier 3 Aspect: The Warmonger (War and Obsession) - Silver Resonance
Level 1 - Provides a greater increase to all damage dealt and a greater decrease to all damage taken while engaged in combat you initiated.
Tier 3 Aspect: The Philosopher (Elents and The Recluse) - Silver Resonance
Level 2 - Question the concept of truth.
Tier 3 Aspect: The Rift (Madness and The Island) - Gold Resonance
Level 4 - Provides access to the Rend active ability.
Tier 4 Aspect: The Tactician (War and The Philosopher) - Bronze Resonance
Level 1 - Deal double damage when executing a pre-crafted battle plan.
Tier 4 Aspect: The Target (War and Focus) - Bronze Resonance
Level 1 - Allows the marking of a single enemy as the target. The target takes increased damage from all sources.
Tier 4 Aspect: The Fissure (Elents and The Rift) - Silver Resonance
Level 2 - Provides access to the Magma Fissure spell.
Tier 4 Aspect: Rebellion (War and The Rift) - Gold Resonance
Level 1 - Grants resistance to mind controlling effects. Deal bonus damage to enemies above your level.
Tier 5 Aspect: The Breach (War and The Fissure) - Bronze Resonance
Level 1 - Provides access to the Break Through active ability.
Delver’s Mark of the Challenger
Empowers nearby dungeon monsters. Significantly increases the value of loot chests you open. Slightly increases the resonance of Aspects you unlock.
The Crimson Hand
Grants minor resistance to piercing damage. Bestows ownership of the Dread Gauntlet of Kor’Ilinesh.
Hivemaster
Grants lesser tremor sense. Bestows the right to challenge other hivemasters for control of their hives.
Trailblazer’s Sigil of the Azure Journeyman
The fourth step on the Path of the Azure Fox. Increases agility. Grants two windsteps. Increases positional awareness.
Trailblazer bonus: Sharpens hearing.
Trailblazer’s Sigil of the Rootmother
Non-intelligent Strethian lifeforms will treat you as an ally. Gain the ability to draw water and nutrients from fertile soil.
Trailblazer bonus: draw water and nutrients from all soil.
Sigil of the Slumbering Deep
Gain greater health regeneration. Gain imnse health regeneration while sleeping. Gain water breathing. Gain lesser dark vision. Gain lesser subaquatic sonar.
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