ALL NOVEL Ch. 7 Shaman
7.
The temple was a cool sanctuary from the heat of the outside rift. Deep shadows pooled around the broken walls. Santi slid through them, keeping close to the walls as he pushed further inward. The first time he had been in here, he had been just a single fighter in an eight man team. One of the weaker ones too. Now, he was infinitely weaker than he had been then. And noticeably more alone. Santi tried to control his breathing, the day's exertions and his fear making it difficult to keep from hyperventilating.
The stone passages were covered in a thick layer of dirt and dust, each step kicking up a puff of dirt around his shoes. Every step took him deeper into the ancient temple and the temperature continued to plunge. Santi was forced to take out a glowstick, cracking it and holding it ahead of him as he marched down the hallways.
The memories were thin, eight years had passed since he had explored the temple. The last time had involved fighting the horde of kobolds who had been camped out in the campus and then invading the rift. Other teams had killed the kobolds while his team had plunged into the rift. They had explored the large temple, taking their time to search every corner before realizing there was nothing here. Nothing aside from the two shamans, six warriors, and the chief. The guardian was elsewhere, buried in the bowels of the earth. The temple had been built over the rift guardians nest. He couldn’t risk the kobold elites ambushing him while he fought the rift guardian though.
Santi prayed that his memory had held up as he followed the twist and turns of the temple to where the small balcony would be. When they had first stumbled onto the balcony it had been a surprise. The shaman had died in a flurry of skills and attacks, dead before it could react. Santi didn’t have the advantage of a large group able to throw skills at a single target. He did have the element of surprise though.
Stepping carefully, working slowly not to make more noise than needed, Santi found the balcony. It was on the middle level of the pyramid-shaped temple. A small chamber, lit by the red sun, that led to the wide balcony that could oversee a wide courtyard. Santi gave yet another prayer that the shaman was there. If it wasn’t, then it was likely most of the other kobold elites weren’t where they had been found either. The team had postulated that most of the elites had been found in their own quarters, with only the warriors patrolling the lower corridors.
Santi shucked his pack off, leaving it against the wall with the now dying glowstick. He had plenty more of the glowsticks, having bought enough of the things to start several raves. Darkness was no joke, there was a reason humanity feared it. Without the electrical system, there would be no way to push back at night until people started to level.
Santi hefted the heavy ax, his palms sweaty as he stalked into the room. It was hardly eight feet across and only six feet tall. Moldering wooden furniture had been shoved into corners, half rotten as they slowly decomposed. Santi scanned the room carefully, looking for anything that stood out. He had a lot more experience with rifts now than he had all those years ago. Traps, hidden passages, buried treasure, anything could be in this room. If a shaman was using it as their living quarters, there should be something here.
After a half minute of careful observation, Santi finally noticed something. What looked to be a post, the same discolored wood as everything else. Except, there was no dust on it. After the fight, he’d have to come and check it out. Seeing no traps, Santi edged his way into the ever present red light of the false star. The temperature rose with every step, the cool embrace of the shadows left behind.
Standing in the doorway, Santi peered around the balcony without stepping foot on it. The dark natural stone was covered in a layer of red dust, the delicate rails looking like they were more rust than metal. The shaman lay sprawled out on the far end of the balcony, basking in the warm sunlight. It was hard to tell its height while it was curled into a ball, but Santi thought it was similar in height to the rest of the kobolds. White fur was mixed into its black coat, its muzzle buried under a leg, its small scarred ears twitched around alert for any change.
While weak, kobolds did have incredible senses for being a weaker monster. Santi didn’t think he would be able to sneak up on it without alerting it. Without the room to contain the noise of his shoes crushing the soft dirt, the shaman would be up and ready to fight in moments. It would be a disaster that Santi didn’t think he could survive. If sneaking was out, then he would have to rush it. Speed over stealth, something he had always been partial to.
He moved, his legs exploding with power as he lunged to the side, intent on closing the distance as fast as possible. His maul was already whirling as he covered the ten feet to get to the far side of the balcony. Three strides was all it took. Yellow eyes flew open, the kobold bolting upright, magic swirling around its hands. Too late. The maul chopped into the intersection between neck and shoulder. Blood flowed like a river as the maul cleaved the monster, biting deep into its torso. It howled, a whiny sound filled with agony as its magic fizzled away.
Santi grunted,twisting the maul as he tried to drag it out of the wound. The kobold collapsed, soaked in its own blood as Santi staggered away from its corpse. Surging adrenaline caused his hands to shake as he stared down at the small monster. He had been dreading this, fighting an elite without a class. It had ended so fast, he could scarcely believe it.
The small kobold only had a wrap around its waist, threadbare and lacking any sort of pockets to hold the ingredients it would need. When they had faced the kobold last time, it had been richly dressed with a powerful staff and several guardian spirits that had been difficult to dispel, even after killing the shaman. The shaman had benefited heavily from weeks of raiding parties bringing back supplies. This time, it was poor and underfed, lacking the strength to give him any type of fight. Santi could only hope that would continue to run true for the rest of the elites in the temple.
Retreating back into the small room, glad to be leaving the bright glare of the sun, he went to the clean post. It looked like it had once been a lantern holder or something similar. Thick wood that had been smoothed to the point it was like touching glass, it brushed against the top of the ceiling. Santi traced his fingers over it, looking for anything to give him a hint of what secrets it was holding. The shaman must have been using it fairly frequently if it was clean in a room that was open to the constant dust flying in through the open doorway.
Near the middle, there was a simple groove, one that he could barely wedge his fingernail into. He tugged, careful not to rip his own nail off. The wood parted, opening for him as a small section was pulled out. Santi looked at the plug he had managed to pry out, the wood was light tan and smooth to the touch. The work had been delicate, nearly imperceptible to his weak stats. He put it to the side as he rustled through the contents in the hollow section of the pole.
It took a fair bit of shaking, but finally bits and bobbles fell out. Santi looked at the loot and couldn’t help but smile. Before he had been thrown back in time he would have said it was garbage. Low level ritual spell ingredients, a tightly bound scroll that was probably a stored spell, and a needle thin dagger that looked like it was sized for a child. Now though, as the first days of the apocalypse hit, it was a small treasure trove. He packed it all up, stuffing it into his pack. The dagger he threaded into his belt, on the small of his back. It was a poignard, meant to be worked through thin points in heavy armor and lacked any edge besides the thin point.
Shrugging the pack back on, he cracked open another of the glowsticks and started to head downward. This was the only elite to be found on the upper levels. Kobolds lived underground for the most part and wouldn’t be comfortable higher up. When his team had investigated the upper levels they had found nothing but dirt. He didn’t have time to do a more thorough exploration, he could feel the trickle of time against him. His friends would be fighting and dying back at the dorm, he needed to finish the rift as fast as possible and get back to them.
Pale green light breaching the blanket of darkness ahead of him, he continued down. The coppery stench of blood clinging to him and the ax were all that remained of the shaman. He had to hope that the rest of the elites would die as easily as the shaman. He doubted his luck would last long enough for that though.