Runeblade

It took them six hours of pushing through isolated rooms of flayed horrors and twisted teratomas before they found another rest stop. Hours of bloody work, hacking apart the twisted flesh of depths-born, getting coated in more gore as they progressively grew more and more exhausted. When they finally stumbled into the room of bunks Kaius slumped as he sheathed his sword.

With leaden arms, he and Porkchop pushed one of the bunks against the door, before making enough space to set up their new dimensional tent. Kaius looked away as he activated the mechanism, seeing no reason to ever tempt fate by staring into an abyss that stared back.

They crawled to the end of the room, finding a nook with a grated drain. This was no hot rain room like they had had in the dwarven manors. Instead a simple enchanted water source was set into the wall, attached to a spigot that released a steady stream of freezing water. Decidedly uncomfortable, but it was pure, clean, and a decent enough way to wash. Unfortunately, it took him the better part of an hour to work out all the little scraps of flesh and gristle that had gotten worked into the scales of his armour.

By that time Porkchop had already dozed off on one of the bunks, waiting for his fur to dry before they retreated to their tent. Feeling hungry, Kaius decided against doing the same. Instead he investigated the galley kitchen with its enchanted cupboards, and its simple stovetop. Despite the sheer luxury and expense of having a bloody stasis enchantment for food preservation, the Depths seemed oddly fond of them.

Much like the last bunk room they had found in this biome, the food was an austere affair. Mostly non-perishable rations. Grains, breads and the like, though there were a few preserves as well. Not quite food worth ransacking, but it served well to stretch the quality stock they had looted from the dwarven estates before they had left the city.

He decided on a simple dish of pickled vegetables, salted meats, and a large helping of rice that he had found in a bin under the bench.

Porkchop woke up towards the end of his cooking, ambling over when he served him a portion. They ate in silence, far too exhausted to make casual conversation. As soon as they were done they retreated to their new tent.

Kaius collapsed onto the large mattress that took up a good quarter of the room of their new abode, groaning as the feather soft bedding cradled him. He was out like a light in seconds.

Waking the next day feeling well rested and refreshed, Kaius looked around only to find that he was alone in the tent. Porkchop had already left. Rubbing at his bleary eyes, he pulled himself to his feet and pushed his way past the flap of heavy canvas that acted as the tent's entrance.

Porkchop lounged on one of the bunks nearby, craning his head to look at him.

"Morning." He said.

"Morning," Kaius replied. "I'll make us some breakfast before we suit up and leave?" He asked, tilting his head towards the kitchen.

"Please." Porkchop responded, clearly still tired as he slumped back down to doze on the bunk. Kaius grinned. His friend was many things, but an ardent enjoyer of mornings he was not.

He walked over to pull open the cupboards in the kitchen, quickly finding a dozen eggs and some cheese that he had spotted the night before. After a few minutes of prep, he had a full dozen egg omelette sizzling in a frying pan on the stove.

He got dressed as he waited, though he only put on his travelling clothes and his sword. The armour could wait until they left. It wasn't exactly the most comfortable attire, even if it was well fitted. By the time he was done, so was the omelette. Slicing it in half and sliding it onto two plates, Kaius left one on a table for himself and walked the other over to Porkchop, setting it down next to his face on the mattress.

The smell got his friend moving, though he didn't even bother to sit up before he craned his neck and started gnawing on the eggs and cheese.

Smiling at Porkchops antics, Kaius returned to his own breakfast and attacked it with gusto. After they finished, he picked through the cupboards one final time. Deciding to take some cheese and fresh bread with them, he wrapped the food in some cloth and stowed it safely in his pack. Thankfully its water repellent enchantments were effective against bloodshed, otherwise most of their stocks would have long since been ruined.

He suited up, buckling on his scalemail and vambraces, and then they left. Returning to the grinding drudgery of pushing through alchemical workshops and putting down shifting abominations of flesh. As nice as it had been to get clean, it took all of one encounter with a pack of twisted teratomas for them to be inundated in gore once more, souring the mood.

Yet despite their recent expedition from the bunk room, it only took them a handful of hours to encounter something new. Something different.

They'd just cleared out a laboratory, gleaming snakes of copper pipes winding themselves into a dense knot of conduits that ran over the ceiling and down the walls to connect into a series of boilers. It was fascinating, and something that Kaius could not make heads or tails of. There'd been a single flayed horror, but with how much practice they had had against those particular foes, it hadn't lasted long. An explosive needle to the knee, and a few minutes of hacking slaughter and it had been done.

There was only one exit to the room, excluding where they had entered from of course - marked on its interior face with a scratched cross like all the others they had explored through.

It was different from the other doors. They came in many styles, some rounded, some squared. Others were reinforced in brass, or with portholes cut at head height. Yet one and all they had been of equivalent size. A standard door, like you might see in an inn or a veritable manor. This one wasn't.

No, it was larger, grander, and stouter. A good three strides taller than he was, and twice as broad as any other he had seen, the door was braced by a grid of iron bars. Thick too, like the kind of door you expected to see in a fort. One that could be barred, to keep things out. Or in, he supposed.

"That's different." He said, nodding towards the object of his attention.

"It is." Porkchop replied. "Champion?"

"Probably." He nodded. It was the most likely thing. Though, it could be some sort of larger complex, similar to the cavern the city was held in or the original glowing grove where they had first made their home. Probably just a Champion, this biome seemed different. Less spread out, and more condensed. The depths-born were tougher too, and far more common than they had seen elsewhere. Not tough enough to represent a real danger, not when they worked together and had spent nearly a full year locked in back to back mortal confrontations.

He hoped it was just a Champion. It meant that Porkchop would get his first Honour, and he wouldn't have to sit out any more fights. Common depths-born didn't quite cut it anymore, and he missed the rush of pitting himself against a superior foe. Of being the ultimate arbiter of his own survival. Plus, nothing was quite as good for skill levelling as a pitched battle.

"You should reinscribe. Just in case." Porkchop reminded him.

He grunted in acknowledgement, taking a seat and removing his vambrace. It was quick work now, after all his practice. Thankfully he had enough free mana that he wouldn't need to wait for anything to regenerate. A convenience of leaving a little buffer, it meant far less downtime after their fights.

The stylus bit into his skin, and he started to write strings of runes over his flesh, twisting around the natural curves of his hand and wrist. A few moments later and his mana rushed into the working, locking in place as it reserved itself for his spell.

He packed away his equipment, refixing his armour before he slung his bag to rest against the wall next to the larger than normal door. If it was going to be a Champion fight, he may as well be ready for it.

He reached for the door, Porkchop giving him a nod to let him know he was ready.

Sword drawn, he turned the latch and pushed the door open. It swung silently on well oiled hinges, revealing a gargantuan hall.

Kaius gaped as he looked at the sheer scale of the room. It must have been hundreds of strides in length, with a ceiling that loomed almost as far overhead. Much like the rest of the biome that they had explored, glass ampoules filled with a glowing amber liquid were suspended from the ceiling, drenching the room in yellowish light. Except these ones were gargantuan. Though it was hard to tell from the distance, each glass orb looked to be bigger than Porkchop, and dozens of them hung from chains as thick as his leg.

Strange stone bays were set into the wall of the hall, a full ten of them lining each flank. They were boxy, maybe fifty strides wide and deep. Each and every one was sealed off from the hall proper by a single sheet of warded glass, engraved runework shining in his mana sight even from such a distance. Each and every one contained some twisted monstrosity, all of greater size and power than the common monsters they had seen in the facility. Most of them were dead, but not all.

Yet despite all that, Kaius's eyes simply slid over the strange menagerie in favour of the main attraction. The far end of the hall ended in a wall of glass, a supersized cousin to the other twenty bays that took up the entire height and width of the hall. Inside was a mockery of a tree. Its trunk made of warped bone, networks sinew wrapping it tight. Veins exploded from ports in the base of the trunk, covering the bottom of the enclosure in a pulsating matt of woven vasculature. The branches were worse, nerve like tendrils wavering at the tip of razor sharp bone spikes, flaring rhythmically as the abominable tree shifted in a non existent wind.

It absolutely burned with internal fire to his mana sight, magic pulsing through it like blood. Enough power to chill him to his core. He tore his eyes away from the beast, searching the enclosure for what he knew he would find.

Behind it, on the far wall sat a familiar runic circle. One that he remembered from scouting the dwarven city, from his fateful entrance at the base of a waterfall. A cousin to the circles that littered the forest and every other land above. An exit. The tree of bone was a Guardian.

He froze. Staring as he pushed Porkchop back, ready to slam the door shut and retreat at a moment's notice. The glass enclosures looked secure, but he really didn't want to trust his life with it. Though, from what he had seen, the Depths mostly liked to clearly sign post its challenges.

"Except when it doesn't" He thought, gnawing on his cheek.

Though, now that the shock of seeing a Guardian had passed, he could see that there were entrances to each of the enclosures. Double sets of thick steel doors linked by a short hallway, providing an entrance or an exit without compromising the security of the room. An airlock system, smart. He'd bet a gold coin that whoever had runed up the glass had also made it impossible to open both doors at the same time.

"Well it's certainly something." He turned back to murmur to Porkchop.

"Let me look then!" Porkchop replied.

Kaius stepped to the side, watching with amusement as his friend stood rooted to the spot. Much like he had been, Porkchop was immediately captivated by the sight of the bone tree Guardian at the far off end of the hall.

"Fancy a tangle with that over the ogre?" He asked. Mostly in jest, the thing looked monstrous. If it was anything like everything else they had seen in the biome, he wanted absolutely no part in it. Who knows if they would even be able to do enough damage to outstrip its Health regeneration?

"Yeah, no thanks." Porkchop replied quickly.

"Thought so," Kaius snorted. "We should probably move on then. Don't want to tempt fate."

He started to turn to head back the way they came, they had plenty of other routes to pick without crossing to the other door on the opposite side of the hall.

"Wait a moment," Porkchop said, catching him with a paw. "What about the other enclosures?"

Kaius followed his friend's eyes to where some sort of variant of a flayed horror prowled back and forth behind the glass, completely unaware of them watching it. It was pretty big, a good stride or two taller than the normal ones, and it did have a second set of arms bursting out of its ribs.

He roamed over the other sealed bays, seeing two more had living specimens. One, some kind of cat thing with tendrils sprouting from its back, the other some kind of bear covered in bone plates that wept pus. Unlikely.

"Doubt it. Three champions and a Guardian in a single room? We'd have to be luckier than sin." Kaius replied, looking at the contained specimens with scepticism.

"Just identify one then you idiot." Porkchop jeered, though Kaius could tell he was just teasing.

"Fine." He said with a roll of his eyes. It would be a waste of time, but a small one.

He focused on the cousin to the flayed horrors.

Subject #38949 'Lover Boy'- Level 26:

Champion, Depths-born, Abomination (Flesh)

"Well, fuck."

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