Runeblade-Chapter 292B3 : Hyythenal, Pt. 1

Twin suns tore at his skin, drawing every scrap of moisture they could from him with their burning heat.

Kaius had long since abandoned wearing his helmet. Without the temperature and weather regulating enchantments of his gambeson and trousers to protect him, the metal of the armour had grown scorching hot. Not enough to truly injure him—not with his Constitution—but more than enough for it to feel like he’d shoved his head in an oven. Even with his pain resistance, the niggling distraction of it was something too dangerous to tolerate.

They’d been crossing the endless sand for hours now, the dunes rising and falling like waves. Much to his distrust, they’d seen nothing but the odd far off building jutting out of the desert, with little sign of any of the depthsborn he’d been expecting to hound them from their first step out of the entry room.

Rather than relax him, it only made him more wary. He knew what was happening. The Depths was trying to woo them into a false sense of security. It wouldn’t work, not against him, not after he’d almost died to a hidden assassin Champion in the dwarven city during his first delve.

Pulling their self-refilling waterskin from his spatial ring, Kaius took another long drink, before he tossed it to Porkchop. In his mana sight, he saw a ghostly and indistinct hand snatch the sack out of the air.

The buildings that were spread across the dunes were spread far and wide, and were often only visible from the peaks of the low rises—rarer than he’d initially thought, too. In their long journey to the far off spire of stone that Kenva had spotted, he’d only managed to spy two more, and one of those was because they’d grown close enough to it for his Champion sense to snap towards it.

He hoped, prayed really, that their destination wouldn’t contain its own champion. This heat was doing his blasted head in—making him uncomfortable and fatigued. He wanted out. At this point he’d take a biome of undead and abominations if it meant getting out of the damn sun and off of the fine sand that seemed dead set on working its way into his socks.

“Stop!” Kenva hissed, her voice low and stressed as her iron hard grip suddenly clamped down on Kaius’s shoulder.

Porkchop skidded to a halt infront of him, heavy paws sinking deep into the ground.

Kaius froze, halting mid stride as his heart leapt into action in his chest. Despite the warning, despite scanning his eyes over their surroundings, he could see no sign of the danger that so clearly had the ranger frazzled.

It unnerved him. Between Truesight, Explorer’s Toolkit, and the precognitive warning of Uncanny Dodge he should have seen something. Yet his skills were as silent and dead as the moonless night.

Moving slow, he raised his blade with his main hand—keeping his offhand free to cast as he readied himself to move at the slightest indication of an approaching threat.

“What is it?” he whispered hoarsely, still searching from left to right.

“Soul signature,” Kenva replied grimly. “A bloody big one. It’s dead still, might even be sleeping. We only just got close enough for me to sense it—maybe thirty long-strides ahead, burried about a stride beneath the surface.” She pointed to a spot just ahead of them.

Kaius trained his eyes on the patch of sand, searching for any indication that a beast lay in wait for them. There was nothing to his visual eyes, and even knowing that something was there, his skills were still dead silent.

It seemed, for all their capability, they were still more than able to be overwhelmed by the abilities of a second tier creature.

Feeling the blood drain from his face as he blanched, Kaius realised that they had been mere seconds from an ambush by a deadly threat—one they would have had no time to react to.

“Is it moving?” Porkchop asked.

“No,” Kenva replied hoarsley as she gripped her bow tight, “It’s just lying there—that’s why I thought it might be asleep.”

“Not sleeping—lying in wait. A creature that strong would have woken far before we got this close. It knows we’re here, might just be too stupid to realise that we’ve figured it out, especially if it is one of those bugs that Ianmus was talking about.” Porkchop replied firmly, his eyes trained directly at the patch of sand as his greatshield slid silently through the air to interpose itself between him and the waiting ambush predator.

Clenching his jaw, Kaius’s mind raced as he tried to think of a way out of their predicament. If it was buried as shallow as Kenva had said, maybe they could strike before it could spring its trap?

He never even considered retreating—while it might have been a dangerous beast, everything they ran into on this layer would be a deadly threat. A solo ambush predator that they had the jump on was about as good of a first engagement as they were going to get.

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“Kenva, Ianmus, do either of you think you’ll be able to hit it under the sand?” he whispered.

Kenva grunted. “I won’t—even with Horizon’s Lance and Arrow of Fury, the sand will bleed far too much energy. I’m not confident it would be enough for the carapace of a beast of its level. Besides, even if I could, I’d need to use my Lance to the extent of skill exhaustion—I'm not sure if that is wise.”

He grunted, accepting her response. Her arrow skill was potent, but he did agree with her. If she abused the skill like when she had killed the second tier guard in the compound, they’d be in a tough spot until she could recover again—they needed its penetrative might this deep in the Depths.

“I should be able to, if I use higher energy light,” Ianmus added. “But it’ll weary me for the following fight—and the beam wont burn through the sand instantly.”

“Do we back off?” Kenva asked. “Ianmus should be able to hit it from further away, right?”

“No!” Porkchop said forcefully. “If we leave, it’ll know that we’ve already discovered it and strike right away.”

Kaius tightened his grip on his blade. He trusted his brother’s instincts; more than any other, he knew the ways of beasts. So they would have to do this here—close enough that they would have less than a second to react if the beast managed to sense them.

“Porkchop, ready to defend. Ianmus—start your channeling.” Kaius said, his voice low and even. “Kenva, I want you to take out one of its tails when it rises, those things looked dangerous—if it is one of the scorpions, at least. Don’t drain yourself dry though, just as much as you can handle and still fight without difficulty.”

His team moved to his orders. Porkchop squared up, his shield rising to cover as much of their group as possible, while one paw hovered to blast back a charge with one of his Shardwalls. Kenva drew an arrow, her eyes trained on the spot where the beast lay hidden—she didn’t channel anything yet, nor did she use her skill that would turn her arrow into an oversized javelin, content to wait until Ianmus was further through his spell.

As mana started to swirl around Ianmus’s staff, a hazy sigil of concentric rings came into view, the centremost one quickly solidifying into a glowing yellow light. Strange, unknown magic that Ianmus seemed to have grown more proficient in with the practice he had gotten during their flight from the compound. free𝑤ebnovel.com

Kaius really needed to ask him about that—the principles of sacred geometry were written all over the construct, almost like rune magic, but not quite. Regardless of what Ianmus had devised, it seemed to empower him significantly, his hypercharged solar ray forming far faster than he had seen in the past.

Settling into a duelist’s stance, Kaius readied himself to cast a Stormlash as soon as their target appeared—as many as he needed to stun the beast. Hopefully with his new artefact, it wouldn’t be more than a couple. Likely, it would be much more, what with the beast’s likely strength.

Blood rushed through his veins to a familiar rising song, and each second they waited felt like an eternity—his hungry anticipation itching deep within his bones.

Finally, the moment arrived.

“Ready,” Ianmus whispered.

Kaius nodded. “Do it.”

Without saying a further word, Ianmus lowered his staff. From the centre of his sigils, a beam of condensed solar retribution snapped into existence, linking him to the patch of sand at their front.

Sand glowed hot and orange in an instant—first turning to glass before it vaporised entirely.

Deep beneath the sand, a high pitched scream of surprise and anguish erupted, setting upon Kaius’s ears like the claws of a cat. In the same moment a colossal shape surged upwards, sand erupting in a great geyser that obscured its form. Ichor sprayed—sizzling in the heat of Ianmus’s beam as the mage tracked the blurred motion upwards.

Everyone moved.

A wall of jade shot forwards, battering the creature backwards before it could land, a javelin of condensed mana cracked as it shot from Kenva’s bow—lancing directly through a flailing tail tipped by a deadly spine—and a thundering lash of lightning sprouted from Kaius’s hand to bind the beast tight in a net of the Stormlord’s creation.

It screamed, twisted and cruel, as it was battered and smashed—a tail flying free as ichor spilled from a smouldering hole in the middle of its thorax.

As it landed back on the sand, Kaius got his first good look at the creature.

It was exactly like he had seen on the carvings of the entrance room, but far larger than he had ever dreaded. A body the size of a cow, with eight segmented legs holding it as high in the air as his own head. Two tails bobbed at its rear—one hanging broken and limp, but not quite fully detached after Kenva’s attack, while the remainder was tipped by a chitin spike almost as long as his blade.

Righting itself immediately, Kaius barely got time to blink before it lurched, its tail snapping forward.

A fleshy sack bulged right behind the sharp point at the stinger's tip, before a crack echoed through the desert as the spike exploded through the air to sail straight over Porkchop. His eyes widened. Kenva twisted and dived as vines exploded from her legs to push off the ground, racing for Ianmus as her Glass Mind read its trajectory in an instant.

Kaius detonated an Expedient Shunt, bursting straight for the mage a moment later.

Even the mage himself, with all of his bolstered Intelligence, reacted immediately—his feet shining with light as he activated Starlit Alacrity and blitzed to the side.

They were all too slow.

As thick as Kaius’s bicep, the flying spine took Ianmus straight through the stomach—blowing an even bigger hole through him as it exited the other side. His spine shattered, legs collapsing beneath him as he tumbled face first and blood erupted from the hole in his stomach.

Deep red soaked into the earth.

Ianmus gargled, staff slipping from his hands as he clutched at the wound—expression as uncomprehending as it was pained.

“No!” Kaius screamed, despair and fury surging within him.

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