Halls of Horror

Artemis retrieved a weapon; she'd taken nothing but a metal pipe. Hannah and I were as well armed and prepared as we got. We stood in front of the doorway, waiting for the horrors to pass. It took some time. Like waiting in front of a road in a busy city, there never seemed to be quite few enough threats to cross safety, and it was less of a question of finding a perfectly safe time to cross, and more a question of running out of patience and trying your luck anyways. A woman with a lion's head had just passed, chasing a man with a bull's head and we looked to the West, where we were supposed to be going, and only saw vague shapes in the mist at distance.

"Good enough," Hannah said and lead the way out. I followed her, and Artemis took up the rear, with Chum hiding between us. Out in the hallway things had changed. There was still the mist at about 300 feet from us, but there were no more closed doors. On either side, at roughly 50 foot intervals, there were open doors swung outwards. Hannah started running.

We dashed past the first door before we could recognize what the creatures in front of us were. I shot a look to the side to see what was there, and strangely the room was overgrown with vines and flowers. It still looked like a classroom, just one covered in foliage.

Over the next fifty feet, we could begin to see the monsters in front of us. These looked like relatively normal boars, which is to say, massive creatures capable of violence, but they had tusks the size of a forearm and bull-horns on their forehead as well. There were maybe three to five of them, we could chance it.

"Let's check the next room, but if it looks bad let's try to go through the piggies," I said. Hannah grunted agreement.

We moved in a jog, we knew there was a lot of ground to cover, and while the two women could probably run fast for a long time because of their attributes, I couldn't make it much farther than I could have back on Earth, which is to say, maybe a city block. The singular point I'd put in willpower would probably help, but not enough to offset the ten-ish attribute points that they had put into their physical attributes and willpower. So, I was slowing them down, but I was intent on being useful.

We were just about to get to the next room when the boars started charging. There were four of them, and while I didn't know if they were supernaturally large compared to natural boars, they were huge, their shoulder coming to my chest easily. I wasn't going to get Baratheon'd here, so I pulled out my spellbook on the invisible wall page and held my staff facing out. I hoped I wouldn't learn if magic items could break if I had to intercept a charge with it, but it'd be better than intercepting it with my soft underbelly.

Hannah moved first and like lightning. She dropped into a fighting stance and was ready for a stab with her greatsword, while I began chanting the spell. There was just enough space between the boars that I might be able to intercept them and- BLAM. I finished my spell, but only gathered what had happened in the five seconds after it. I cast the barrier, cutting off the three rear boar with it, as the lead one charged at Hannah and then there was a sound of wet impact. In the same instant, I was thrown back ten feet, air knocked out of my lungs and blood pouring out of my nose. As I lay on the floor I remembered the description of the spell, particularly the part where it would transfer 10% of the damage to me. It had been easy to ignore with the zombies; each of their claws or punches were only about as strong as a punch thrown by a human, so a tenth of that was nearly nothing, but with these boar even a tenth of the damage from their charge- times three- was enough to leave me sputtering and coughing on the ground.

I was coming to my senses, flailing around for my staff and book, when Artemis pulled me up to a sitting position.

"Drink," she said, and pushed a vial to my mouth. I drank without hesitation, and tasted an odd bitter tincture that nonetheless reminded me of strawberry and elder. My pain seeped away in moments, and I think I felt bones knit- a sensation I was now somehow getting familiar with- as I stood back up and picked up my tools.

"Two seconds," I said, half-guessing. It couldn't be more than that. Hannah had speared the charging boar with the sword, without taking as much as a graze, and the beast was twitching, still trying to get at her as its heart's blood drained out onto the wooden planks of the floor.

Artemis stood and grabbed her cudgel, and I leafed to the icicle spell. It felt like it would do nothing, but maybe I could distract the beasts a little. The barrier snapped off, but at least they had lost the momentum of the charge, and Hannah was now the one taking the initiative by lunging out at the boar with her sword. She came at them with wide swings, frightening the creatures, and it was actually Artemis that killed the second. I cast a few icicles aiming for the tiny eyes of the swine, as we tried to encircle the two remaining creatures.

"Behind us!" Chum shouted, but only I dared look, the fighters were engaged with the beasts and couldn't spare a second of focus. I looked and knew that we had to run. Behind us came a creature that nearly filled out the entire hallway, and it was made of millstones and boulders and rocks. It was humanoid insofar as it had two legs and arms, but its joints were nothing but air, and still it moved towards us in an inevitable advance.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

"We need to get into the room, push them back enough that I can make a wall," I said, and the women started working. With wide swings and threatening yells they pushed the beasts back a foot, two, and I could cast the spell with enough space left over that we could squeeze into the room nearby. As I squeezed in, I nearly choked on smoke, and when I held the nearest table, I pulled back in pain of heat.

The room was on fire. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that there was something off with the flames, since I wasn't immediately burning to death, but the front of my mind was entirely preoccupied with the pain. My nostrils and eyeballs felt the heat the most, drying out and watering all at once; I didn't dare draw in a breath, I was sure I'd burn my lungs, so with the air I still had I called as much ice as I could summon on the most obvious sources of fire. The spell had been gaining levels, and it was definitely more ice now, but it was not enough. As the ice sizzled and evaporated almost immediately, the scorching steam that rose from the burning embers of desks and chairs felt even hotter than the dry heat of the flame.

I held my breath, but I needed to scream, it couldn't be long until I blacked out. Remembering all I knew about fire safety, I dropped to the floor. I found that Hannah and Artemis were already crawling there. The temperature dropped from near-incinerating to way too fucking hot, but I could sort of think now. I was still right next to the door, holding my breath, but the outside was a mess of crashing boulders and squeling pig. I saw a minuscule opening, and I put just my face and mouth outside, and I took a deep breath. I pulled back, as a boulder scraped just the edge of my nose, and it scraped off my skin all the way down to cartilage, which immediately started burning.

Artemis was throwing debris and cloth at the fires, while loud hissing came from Hannah's direction. Right, her ability, the one that was keeping her body cold was working overtime. I thought I heard sizzling from within the armor and immediately stopped thinking about it, as I expended all of my drawn in breath on more and more ice. It started doing something, enough that I dared take a quick breath, and while it was scalding, it wasn't breathing smoke and fire. My next barrage went over Hannah, I managed to throw five or six pint-sized blocks of ice on her, angling them so that the impact wouldn't be too bad, and they no longer melted quite so quickly, and clearly gave her some relief, as she stopped struggling, and gave me a weak thumbs up.

It was time to really practice my icicle spell. It was difficult to really perceive how much the temperature was dropping, as all this new evaporating water was shooting up the humidity. I've been in a sauna where someone throws water on the rocks. One would think that this lowers the temperature, and it does, but it also clears the room of people as everyone rushes out to get away from the boiling hot steam scalding their bodies. But there was literally no other option, and so I struggled through it, until the room was completely fogged over, only slightly above a 100 degrees Fahrenheit and only a few embers glowing through the near impenetrable fog.

I still couldn't take deep breaths, but I had spared a few blocks of ice for each of us to hold on to, which helped a lot. Sweat wouldn't be enough to cool us down in here, and we'd die in a few minutes just from our bodies not being able to self-regulate, but if I let a block of ice held in my hands do the cooling it was simply terribly uncomfortable instead of deadly.

"Movement," Hannah croaked.

And I saw it coming. Two embers, moving in tandem, growing larger and closer. If those were eyes, they were set about seven feet above the ground.

"Behind me," I said, and started casting the barrier. My book was useless as I couldn't see it, and whatever mana or magic juice there was inside me was clearly running low, more than that, my brain felt sprained from visualizing and releasing distinct images so many times in a row, but with my enhanced knowledge attribute I managed to recall the words and visualize the complex sigil of the barrier spell just in time.

It was less a blunt force and more elemental flame that burst against the shield, and I yelped, as my heat-fatigued body was exposed to another 10% of this creatures magical fire attack. The steam was rolling out of the room now, but it was not clearing quickly enough. We had about 15 seconds to form a plan.

"Ice would probably work best, but I cannot use it with the barrier in the way," I said. "I am fucked up bad," Hannah said. "Drink a mana potion, now; Artemis, can you do something?" I said. "Just hit it with a stick; my abilities suck for this," she said. "Alright," I said. I didn't like the idea that I'd come up with at all, "I'll try to use my weaker shield spell to block, but I cannot see shit, can you do anything about that?" "Distract it, I'll try something," Artemis said.

And time was up. I threw an icicle directly at the glowing eyes, and I hit something. It hissed and fell back somewhat. I heard Artemis running towards the front of the classroom, and saw the monster's head turn, so I started casting the spell again. I really wished I could mix it up a bit, but all I had was a hammer, and this monster was real damn nail-shaped. It was also, apparently, not so mindless as I had thought. When it heard me chant it roared and there was a gout of flame. I tried to cast the shield, and it cut the thrown fire in half, blocking what would surely be a deadly conflagration.

The other half hit me in the chest. In my extremely synthetic wizard robes. I couldn't tell you much of what happened next. The plastic based synthetic fabric melted instantly, and as it melted it stuck to my skin and kept bubbling and scorching. I screamed. I don't know when I dropped to the floor, I didn't even notice the burning air in my throat anymore, I just screamed and rolled, clutching at my chest, crying and twitching on the floor. There were sounds of movement, of flashing, slashing steel. It took forever. Time lost all meaning, all I could think was stop now oh please stop, stop now. After that eternity the fighting stopped, and I could not feel the heat anymore, just the pain of the burns.

"Cupboard, dark place, close it," I said, somehow, and my voice came out in desperate gasps. It hurt when they dragged me into the supply cabinet, which had been metal and so mostly unharmed. As the door closed I saw that the room had been cleared of fog and the fires were all out, and that in the middle of this charcoal room there stood a chest stylized in magma and crystal designs. Then the door closed and I started softly crying as I waited for the healing to kick in

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.