The Wandering Spire

Rolfe panicked. First, he was on fire. Then, he realized that the fire was in actuality bugs that were crawling all over him. Biting him. It was driving him mad.

“Get off me!” He roared.

Phantom monsters laughed at him. Rolfe tried his best to ignore them since their attacks were harmless. Unfortunately, he also couldn’t harm them. Rolfe tried with his spear, and he tried to grab them, but his attacks passed through them as if they were never there. Never there?

“The Affliction curse!” Rolfe realized.

But the bugs still crawled all over his body and bit him. A figure materialized out of the darkness in front of him as it entered the sphere of pale light. Another phantom? Rolfe couldn’t be bothered.

“Go away!” the Protector cried.

“Rolfe? Is that you?” A deep feminine voice asked.

It was familiar. Who was that? Pieces began to gather within Rolfe’s scattered thoughts. He recalled traveling with others. The Protector wondered where he was as he looked around at the sandstone-colored walls and floor.

“It’s me, Helga,” the newcomer said.

“Helga?” Rolfe’s attention snapped back. The phantoms faded away, and Helga came into sharper focus.

“Don’t give in to the madness. You must focus,” Helga stated.

She also struggled with discerning reality from the Affliction spell. Helga was drawn toward Rolfe’s voice. It had centered her and gave her a focus to battle the curse.

“Madness?” Rolfe asked.

Something about that was familiar. Right, the Rune trap! They were fleeing the Goreraptors. Rolfe recalled that he lost his shield. The phantoms were nearly gone now. The number of bugs dwindled. But was this just another phantom? Rolfe wondered and smacked Helga upside her head. She was real! Rolfe realized just as he felt Helga’s calloused hand slap him so hard that he was nearly knocked off his feet. Helga and Rolfe did not know how to Control the Affliction aspect or the purification ritual. The only way they were able to defeat the madness was to focus on something else. For them, that was fighting.

Rolfe recovered from the slap, dropped his spear, and growled before he rushed forward. The two powerful Frostsworn warriors slammed into each other. Each fought for grips and holds in order to set up a takedown or a throw. Both Helga and Rolfe were expert wrestlers with neither able to maintain the upper hand. If one was thrown off balance, they quickly recovered and countered by throwing the other off balance. By focusing on each other, they were able to defeat the Madness curse.

The two large warriors in heavy armor made a huge ruckus as they battled each other for dominant position. Their powerful frames slammed against the walls as they twisted and turned each other. Their arms pummeled as they searched for ways to throw each other to the ground. Dunar was drawn to the sounds and was surprised to see his teammates fighting when he turned a corner.

“Proven! What are you two doing?” Dunar demanded.

Rolfe looked up and was distracted. Helga took advantage of the opening and ducked under her opponent to lift him into the air. The warrior maiden slammed Rolfe to the ground.

“Hi, Dunar,” Rolfe gasped as the wind was knocked out of him.

Helga spun to pin her teammate and looked up. “Hiya!” She exclaimed.

“Are you two crazy? You are unarmed and making enough noise to draw trouble!” Dunar snapped.

Helga and Rolfe separated and stood up. The two large Frostsworn scratched their heads and glanced around.

“The voices and bugs are gone,” Rolfe observed.

“Ya, same with the dancing paintings,” Helga agreed.

“Gather your weapons!” Dunar barked.

The two jumped into action. Rolfe picked up his spear, and Helga readied her Dane ax.

“That was foolish! You two should know better,” Dunar chastised them.

“But we broke the curse,” Rolfe observed.

“Ya, we did!” Helga exclaimed.

Dunar shushed them. When it was quiet they heard the familiar shuffling sounds of people scrambling toward them. The type of walk that only a mad person would make. A sharp reminder of what could have happened to them if they took the easy way and gave into the Affliction madness.

“Thralls,” Rolfe said. Their ruckus did draw attention to themselves.

Helga grinned widely and exclaimed, “Sounds like a lot of them!”

In the distance, the Thralls came into view from within the faint pale light. They howled and lumbered en masse toward the Proven. Dunar quickly assessed their situation and concluded that they would hold their position.

“Stay shoulder to shoulder. Rolfe in the middle,” the Leader barked.

Rolfe nodded and grumbled, “For Glory!”

“Hurrah!” Helga and Dunar chanted back.

Dozens of Thralls rushed them. These were armored and wore golden tabards with an odd symbol on their chest. The extra protection made the Thralls harder to kill. Rolfe needed to aim his spear thrusts toward the neck or put more muscle behind his attacks in order to penetrate the bronze armor. Helga and Dunar needed to focus their attacks on the joints in order to incapacitate the mad attackers. However, the Thralls would continue to crawl and try to bite them even if they had no limbs.

“Steady, retreat as one,” Dunar ordered.

They slowly moved back and prevented their attackers from surrounding them. Stab, hack, and slash. The Proven kept a steady rhythm. In one fluid motion, Rolfe knocked aside a clumsy mace attack and returned a thrust to the face. The Protector quickly retracted his spear to thrust at another thrall through the throat and killed a third with a powerful stab through the chest plate and heart. Helga and Dunar culled the Thralls to the flanks. The warrior maiden performed powerful swings that were in sync with her opponent’s attacks. Helga stepped back and avoided an axe aimed at her head. She stepped forward to split the Thrall’s head, twisted her hips to catch a sword slash to her shoulder pauldron, and spun back to cut another attacker in half. Dunar deflected a thrust with his sword and countered with a chop of his axe that removed the Thrall’s arm. The Leader would intercept a slash with his axe and returned with a thrust of his sword through the throat. And so forth, the trio kept a tireless pace that only an Adventurer ranked could achieve. After many minutes, the hallway was littered with Thrall corpses, and the Proven were victorious.

“For Glory!” Dunar roared.

“Hurrah!” his teammates chanted back.

“What now?” Rolfe asked.

“I created an accurate map,” Dunar replied.

“Oh, ya?” Helga exclaimed.

The Leader invited them to study the map he had drawn. It was filled with branching corridors and hallways that had evenly spaced square and circular chambers. Despite it’s apparent complexity, there were very few dead ends and it was possible for one to travel in a steady direction from one side to the other.

“You visited all of this?” Rolfe asked.

Dunar shook his head and replied, “I made a guess based on the patterns.” Dunar explained his theory as he pointed to where they started and where he found himself after the Affliction curse. Dunar had visited where they triggered the Rune Trap.

“Oh, ho! Great work! Is it accurate?” Helga chimed.

“These corridors, I guessed correctly and was able to find you. You see, we all branched off down different corridors. I went this way, and you went that way,” Dunar explained while he pointed at his map.

Helga squinted and observed, “We passed through two doors. Each door leads to a large circular chamber and a portal room?”

Dunar nodded and stated, “Very good. The first door we passed led to the chamber where we encountered the cultist. There was also a portal chamber that was deactivated. If you look, follow the corridor we are in,” the Leader pointed at the map.

“Another portal room! That is where the Thralls came from,” Rolfe stated.

“Exactly! And if my theory is correct,” The Leader explained and drew a path with his finger along the map.

“We should find something important in this big chamber?” Helga asked.

“The rest of our team?” Rolfe added.

“I think so,” Dunar responded.

“What are we waiting for? Let’s go, ya?” Helga exclaimed.

“We must be quiet,” Dunar stated.

The two giant warriors nodded, and it became evident that “quiet” was relative. The two lumbered and clanked down the hallway. Dunar cringed at the sound they made. He was more skilled at stealth, probably the second best next to Jeze. Dunar approached every endeavor, from fighting and even stealth, with an artist’s eye for detail. He took the lead and motioned the other two to follow him. They followed his map down the twisting corridors where, if Dunar predicted correctly, up ahead should be a large circular chamber.

“Wait here,” Dunar ordered the other two.

The Leader crept down the corridor, as silent as a mouse, and stuck to the shadows. He turned a corner and saw a wide chamber with a large Demonic statue in its center. With horror, Dunar watched the cultist sacrifice a hapless adventurer before the Fiend. With determination, he vowed to defeat this evil, but he, Helga, and Rolfe were not enough. There were too many cultists in the chamber. But Dunar had an idea! He crept back toward his companions.

“Follow me,” he said and led the two back in the direction they came from.

If Dunar stayed just a little longer, he would have heard the commotion from Mikal’s spear. What he had planned would cause mayhem and could possibly wipe out the remaining cultists.