Saintess Summons Skeletons

In the face of an enemy much too strong to handle without a plan, Sofia did the best thing that she could come up with, flee. She ran back and let Pareth slow the thing down. It would be lucky if he managed to save himself by teleporting to her. Going by the speed of the monster, there wouldn’t be much left of his skeleton by the time she was far enough.

She was soon comforted in her choice to flee when, through Pareth’s eyes as he struggled to hold out for as long as possible by parrying and dodging, another of the tall zombies appeared from a corner a bit further away.

There’s two of them?!

Sofia kept running, it was best to get as much distance as she could from these things. Pareth succumbed, which was no surprise, and when she had made it back to the large room, she found out that it was currently the necrotic ooze layer.

Necrotic ooze and zombie supposedly on the same layer? I’m sensing some kind of a pattern here. Are the layers themed? Guess I’ll know for sure if I find more wood monsters on the closed room layer. Though it’s kind of hard to tell when it’s changing… I think it’s only when I turn around or go past corners because I’ve never seen the change directly.

But I don’t know what triggers it exactly… It feels random so far.

Sofia found a clean-ish place in the maze to re-summon Pareth in one of the spare Stone Ogre. Luckily thanks to Zerei’s rampage, she had a few spares, but it was still annoying to lose one. Pareth himself didn’t seem too bothered by dying as long as she was safe.

These zombies must be what killed my Paladin scouts last time, I was on the ooze layer too back then.

This time Sofia decided to go in the opposite direction from the zombies, and once again, she found monsters. These were also undead, which she thought confirmed her earlier theory, but they were much less scary. Ghosts.

If Sofia had to say what kind of undead she knew the best, it was obviously skeletons. But if she had to give the second one, it would be ghosts. She had been with Alith enough to know all she needed to know, so she stored her skeletons and just walked in.

With the rune masking her mana emissions, she was as good as invisible to the ethereal beings, no matter how many hundreds of them roamed this part of the maze. There were two types of ghosts that she saw, laborers and knights. They were all drifting around aimlessly, and like Sofia’s graveyard skeletons, they couldn’t actually pass through the walls here.

She was still not out of the ghost riddles corridors when after turning to the right at an intersection, the decor changed. The path ahead was laden with rusty steel spikes protruding from every direction. She turned around, the previous ghost crowds were nowhere to be seen, instead, there were traps. Floor covered in dubious liquids, holes in the walls, spikes everywhere, she thought she could also see some thin wires stretched through the path.

Lovely. I liked the ghosts better.

So, this is some kind of trap-themed layer? I know some nobles like to have a few of them in their residences as protection so it’s not uncommon to find a few when you explore an old ruin worth looting. Or so the guild said.

But come on.

There isn’t even a safe place to step anywhere except where I am right now. This is ridiculous.

All things considered, Sofia was pretty sturdy with both her armor. As a result, most of the traps failed to do anything to her, but some still packed a punch, or were simply annoying to deal with. The thin wires for example, they were quite hard to see, so Sofia touched them multiple times by accident. Whenever that happened, it triggered a bunch of the dumbest, most over-the-top traps Sofia could even imagine.

Her favorite trap was the ‘big boulder’, a few times, a boulder almost as large as the corridor would drop from the ceiling, crushing everything in its path. By going prone in the corner of the corridor, the boulder would harmlessly roll along, but it activated many traps along the way, clearing the path for Sofia to advance. The rest of the time that duty was mostly left to Pareth, who couldn’t care less that he got splashed by corrosive acid or fired a volley of armor-piercing arrows at.

It was a bit laborious, but Sofia kept mapping out this portion of the maze, hoping for it to change soon. At least, this layer was so far free of anything of real danger. After another crossed corner, the layer changed again. This time, nothing, just empty corridors, as far as she could tell, there wasn’t even any of the usual debris and mess.

FI-NA-LY!

So… Undead layer, Wood layer, Trap layer, Empty layer?

I would like it if there wasn’t a fifth and so on, but who am I kidding?

Sofia and Pareth ran through the empty maze, it was well and truly empty, they could not find a single trace of anything, and that made mapping very easy, so they tried going as fast as possible.

There were a few places with unusual architecture Sofia took note of that could host some interesting things in the other layers. For now they were all empty.

She kept going as fast as possible until she had a comprehensive map of what she thought was most of the maze. It was actually smaller than the one with the stone drake, even if not by much. She did not find an exit, by as she turned to explore one of the last paths, she saw something unusual. There was something in a room, far at the other end of the long path. Sofia turned around to check the layer.

Still the empty layer… But it’s not empty there?

She cautiously advanced, Pareth was the one to open the march like always. As she drew closer she could make more details, it was an ugly statue.

A sculpture of a hideous being with large fangs and uneven limbs, she prayed that it wasn’t some kind of gargoyle. As she and Pareth approached, nothing happened. The statue just stood there, looking straight ahead. Close to its chest, it was holding a perfectly smooth black orb.

Not again…

Sofia was ready to bet this orb was crucial to solve the maze. Because of course it would. It felt a bit too familiar for comfort. It’s not going to fly away when I try to grab it, right?

She had Pareth grab the orb, he touched it and nothing happened, then he took it out of the sculpture’s hand.

The statue opened its three lifelike eyes, their iris were deep blue and strangely fascinating to look at. In fact, Sofia couldn’t resist looking at them even if she tried. Some kind of primal instinct forced her to look at them, to stare.

The maze around her changed.

Everything was bathed in a hypnotizing blue-purple shifting hue, the same as the statue’s eyes. It felt kind of like a dream.

Until Sofia looked around.

Actually, like a nightmare…

On the ceiling, on the walls, on the floor, hundreds, no, thousands of eyes, everywhere, staring at her.

Her first reflex was to step on one, it moved along the floor, avoiding her stomp. When pareth tried to attack, it was the same. The countless unblinking eyes only stared and avoided the hits.

With no real option except to move out of that one room, she adventured herself through the eye-filled maze. Seeing as nothing happened after a few turns, this looked like nothing more than a creepier version of the empty layer. She still wasn’t sure if this was a layer in itself of the empty layer having gone through a change. But at least now I have an orb… Yay…

Before she knew it, Sofia was back to the large room, there was something inside.

Not the empty layer, then; this is probably its own thing. But what’s that?

A weird blob of color squirmed in the middle of the room. Sofia couldn’t find a better description, everything was lit in weird deep blue, and that thing was nothing except just that color. If not for it blocking Sofia from seeing the eyes on the other side of the room, she might have not even noticed it being there.

Sofia was still quite a distance away, and stepping back. So far, the monsters in the maze had been pretty strong, there was no need for a confrontation if she could avoid it. Taking her distance, what she was didn’t please her, the thing seemed to be developing appendages all over its surface.

Maws?

It was only when the room’s eyes converged around the thing and started to slide up onto it that Sofia stopped looking and ran.

The monster was an agglomeration of a color, countless eyes and gaping maws with sharp teeth. Sofia looked back as she ran. The thing had bloated and was shoving itself into the corridor. Her eyes and the monsters made contact. The monster screamed and the whole maze shook, like a tidal wave, it burst forward.

As a human, Sofia had never once sprinted as fast as she did this instant.