Spear of Clouds Unfurled 5.2

The constellation shifted slightly as we walked through the endless desert, making obvious the artificial nature of this place. On and on we trudged, fighting past another scorpion and a trio of elementals before finally we arrived at a small, barely visible, perhaps four foot-high pillar that shone in the silver moonlight.

The pillar had eight sides, and was mostly vertical until the last few inches, where it turned sharply inward to a point. The lower sides were blank, but on each of the upper faces were embossed runes like those in the book.

"Mousington?" I asked as we came to a stop in front of it.

"Lord Mousington," he corrected me.

"Right, sorry," I said.

The Grimalkin sniffed at the obelisk, and then raised a tortoiseshell paw. Magic swirled around his fluffy digits, and several ideograms that looked a little bit like cutesy symbols and emojis—all cat themed—appeared.

"What are those?" I asked, pointing at the symbols.

"Meow, this is the wondrous script of Mewlish," said Lord Mousington.

"Eh?" said Nathan.

"The language of the Grimalkins," said Velevir, shaking her head. "Don't bother trying to understand it, its impenetrable."

Lord Mousington sniffed. "Hmph."

"What does it say though?" I said.

"This object is not cursed," said Mousington. "Or trapped."

"And?" I asked.

Mousington shrugged. "We do not know."

Great. Well, at least I wasn't going to get electrocuted for touching it or anything.

I hesitantly reached out and pressed on one of the runes, two flowing squiggles that looked a bit like a stylised gust of wind. Immediately, it lit up blue. I jerked my hand back, and felt the others tense, but nothing happened, and after almost twenty seconds of quiet we started to relax.

The rune continued to glow with solid, unwavering light.

"Maybe touch another one?" said Nathan.

I did as he said, touching the rune next to it, which had two loops. It lit immediately, this time a light purple.

Again, nothing happened.

"Maybe push them all?" said Nathan.

I did so, working my way around the obelisk and touching each of the flowing runes in turn. They lit up in a rainbow of different colours and different hue. For another long moment nothing happened, then there was a decidedly angry buzz, and the light died.

"That doesn't sound good?" said Nathan.

I frowned as I began to sense minds spinning into existence together all around us. I'd felt something similar in the distance before, what I presumed was the dungeon 'replenishing' foes within it. But it had never happened where I was.

"Trap!" I said as surges of magic similar to what I had seen other Outlanders arrive with swirled around us. Five armoured figures, roughly the size of Nathan but with burning red eyes and the icy blue emotions I associated with the Undead of the first floor appeared all around us.

Unlike the zombie and skeletons of the first floor, which had been raggedly equipped, these undead were not only larger, but heavily armed and armoured, with thick brassy plate inlaid with ornate, flowing etched designs. They each wielded a pair of long, wickedly sharp curved swords, and moved with swift, terrible grace.

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't have been extremely worried. Velevir and Nathan were powerful and strong and heavily armoured, and nothing slipped past them under most circumstances. But we were currently surrounded.

Fortunately, I was not the green dungeoneer I had been when I had first arrived on Alaria, and instead of screaming and freaking out as one of the monsters immediately bore down on me, I reached for my power and sent it stumbling with a pulse of fear even as I knocked, drew, and fired an arrow straight at its eye.

While the monster did falter from the sudden burst of terror I slugged it with, it still had the wherewithal to hunch down, and the projectile clanged off its helmet and span away. Terrified or not, it continued to close, and as clangs and crunches and a crackle of thunder sounded behind me I hastily raced to conjure an illusory defence.

My eagle finished a second before the monster reached me, and the blue and gold, partially transparent avian streaked forward and into the monster's face, clawing and pecking and biting, and throwing off the monster's attack.

Although the mana that I had absorbed from my dungeoneering hadn't changed my body physically as much as it had sharpened my magical abilities and boosted my pool of internal power, I was still faster and fleeter than I had ever been as a human, and I darted under a wild swing and rushed past my enemy while it was blinded.

My hand found its armoured back as it slashed wildly at my illusion, and awareness of the zombie's body flooded through my mind. I had never touched an undead long enough to actually experience a mental representation of their body, so it caught me somewhat by surprise.

There was immense, catastrophic damage to the body's systems: organs were withered, in pieces, or just missing, bones were broken and shattered in ways that should have stopped the creature moving—or, at least, have crippled it with incredible pain. But what was more interesting was the arteries and veins and capillaries of raw mana that surged through the monster's body, siphoning power from all around it and spreading through throughout its limbs in a very similar way to a nervous system.

I didn't have much experience using my power on magical things — just when I had tried to unsuccessfully to pick apart a curse that had eventually killed one of my patients back in Guildport. But I wasn't trying to save this thing, I was trying to kill it.

So, before it could finish off my illusory construct I started lashing out with my power, trying to disrupt and rip apart the flow of energy in its body. As the kelp had been, the undead's body was strangely… resistant to my healing power. I wasn't sure if that was because I was using the ability in a way that 'went against' its purpose, or if powerful and magical creatures had some kind of defence. Whatever it was, it made me feel suddenly clumsy, as if instead of a scalpel I was wielding a blunt butter knife.

But a blunt butter knife straight between the seventh cervical vertebra and first thoracic vertebra, just below the neck, would fuck up anyone, and the monster jerked and stumbled as I began to hack at its faux-nervous system. It realised something was very wrong, and abandoned its attempts to destroy my battered and half-collapsed illusion, jerking and wildly swinging at me.

I stayed behind it, moving with its movements and keeping away from of the swinging blades as I mentally slashed at the undead's lower neck again.

It jerked and spasmed at the second blow, falling to one knee, and although it didn't really feel fear in a normal way, I could feel orange confusion radiate from its simple mind.

Then I hit it a third time, severing the cord and, from one moment to the next, the magical nervous system collapsed, and the undead pitched forward into the sand.

I looked up to see that my friends had dealt with the others, and that Velevir had clearly been rushing to my aid. She lowered her hammer, her eyes wide as she stared at the undead which, unlike the others that had rent armour, lightning burns, and shattered weapons, was entirely unmarked.

"What?" I said, taking a few steps to retrieve the arrow I'd fired.

"You're terrifying Charlie, you know that?" said Velevir. "Right?"

I huffed. "Says the woman who can bench press a ton."

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