Hiraku, and Amy huddled behind a rock, cold and entirely naked. Their discarded and soaked clothing currently hanging on a line nearby. The quest had gone terribly, and now he was a little lost as well. Normally being naked with a girl, would have his little member excited, but right now that wasn’t the case. He was cold and exhausted and utterly lost. He was relieved that they had escaped, but he wasn’t sure about the twins.

 Four hours earlier:

Silverblade shouted out to the party, “Hey! Come check this out! I think I found an opening to the Underground Realm.”

Hikaru rushed over and was quickly followed by Amy who was still favoring her one leg. She looked over the large crack in the ground that he found, and concurred. Hikaru was a bit excited as they had been looking over the town for hours now. At first it had looked like it had been sieged, but searching the ruins of the town had cropped up a few anomalies. The first was the complete, and utter lack of bodies. Sure monsters would have taken the bodies to eat, but they wouldn’t have bothered with the ones that would have been buried under the rubble.

Amy had used a magical item she had purchased from the guild to scan for corpses. It was a common item used by rescue teams to find both survivors and the bodies of those that had died after a disaster struck a town. The spell in it was actually quite easy to learn, but Amy didn’t have the right affinities for it, and therefore couldn’t cast the spell. Something that was kind of ironic since the required affinity was most commonly found in elves, and she was a half-elf.

They were beginning to suspect that something odd happened here, and that someone disguised things to look like a siege after the fact, but none of them could say for certain what had happened. Looking over the opening in the ground they had found their first real lead.

Swiftshot proposed, “Well let’s go down, and see if we can’t learn what happened to the townsfolk. If any answers are to be found they are down there.”

If he had known what they would find, he wouldn’t have agreed, but Hikaru did. Soon they carefully descended into the dark tunnels below. Their path lit by stone torches. While more costly than a normal torch they were cheap enough that most adventuring parties had at least one. The stone torch was basically a stick on it with a light stone affixed where the flaming part of a normal torch would be. Being a magical light source it didn’t produce smoke, and the light level could be controlled or focused with a thought. Very useful when exploring underground.

At first it was quiet as they proceed down the tunnel. It was actually decently large with space enough for both twins to walk side by side in the lead. Silverblade had taken the lead of the formation, with his brother behind him bow at the ready. Amy was a short distance behind him a cold energy emanating from her hands. A sign that she had an ice spell at the ready. As for himself, he had taken up the position of rearguard, and he kept his sword ready with an eye out for threats.

After a while, they were faced with a fork in the tunnel, and footprints on the ground led them to make a left. They made three more turns before the tunnel opened out into a wide chamber. A gentle magical light lit the entire chamber. Plants coated the ground mostly small bushes, and flowers. A handful of buildings were clustered to the one side of the chamber, and in the center was what looked like a temple. Oddly there was no one in sight, and Amy didn’t sense anyone either.

That should have been there first warning that something was up, but they just assumed that this settlement was long abandoned. The overgrowth in the area contributed to that picture. Swiftshot had pointed out the temple, and suggested they check it out. Amy disagreed, and pointed to the prints and disturbed growth on the ground below them. It led a path not towards the temple but towards a side tunnel. The sound of water could be heard rushing in that direction. Possibly an underground river was that way.

Silverblade led the way. Hikaru jumped when he thought he saw movement to the left, but nothing was there. Just overgrown plants, and Amy assured him that she felt no presence in the area. He kept an eye out regardless but didn’t see anything else.

They reached the side tunnel when suddenly the ground rumbled behind them and a pair of odd-looking trolls sprung up behind them. A pair of lumpy rocks they had thought to be boulders were actually disguised boulders. Hikaru shouted a warning, and they rushed into the tunnel. A spell from Amy slammed into one of the trolls. A spike of ice over two meters long penetrated its chest, and punched out the other side. The four-meter tall giant of a creature stumbled on the impact, and pulled the spike out afterwards. The large wound closing in seconds leaving not even a scar, and for a human that would have been fatal. The creature roared, but the tunnel was too small for it to follow.

The short tunnel led them to the banks of an underground river. The ground was covered with damp moss, and soaked with water. An old creaky bridge was a good thirty to forty meters downriver from their position. Standing in front of the bridge was four naked young girls carrying only a spear, and a troll. It was an odd sight, especially the completely vacant expressions in their eyes. Beyond them, more naked young girls and women armed mostly with spears were approaching. All of them had the same dim, and vacant expression on their faces.

Hikaru looked the other direction, and saw another troll, and more naked girls approaching. It was clear that they were surrounded, and then he heard Amy declare, “I don’t understand. I can’t sense any of them.”

He didn’t have time to think of that, and turned to face those coming from the direction of the bridge. One of the girls suddenly tossed a spear, he shouted a warning. They evaded the spear, and Swiftshot let off an arrow. It hit one of the girls in the leg, and she didn’t even flinch. In fact, she didn’t even seem to notice the projectile sticking out of her, and continued forward as if nothing happened. Amy began chanting a spell, and Silverblade said, “We need to reach that bridge.”

Hikaru understood why, as the way back was blocked by those two large trolls, and he had seen more boulders like the ones they were pretending to be. Amy unleashed a powerful ice spell that froze the troll, and the girls nearest it. Hikaru and party rushed towards the bridge. He and Amy reached it first, but the twins were cut off by a rush of bodies. They shouted for him to get Amy across, and as Amy was chanting a spell they started crossing the bridge. Suddenly the ice on the frozen troll cracked, and in a flash of movement, it turned around and smashed one of the supports for the bridge.

Hikaru barely had time to shout before the bridge broke dropping them into the raging river below them. He barely managed to keep his head above water, and reach Amy. She stopped channeling her spell, and was also struggling to keep her head above the raging water. At least until they were slammed into a rock by the raging water, and they blacked out.

He awoke cold and miserable. Next to him, Amy was on her knees coughing up water a dimming glowing rock was their only source of light. His clothes were clinging to him, and Amy’s robes were clinging to her frame to the point that they no longer hid anything. The cloth having turned transparent. She stopped coughing, and after looking around a bit said, “we need to strip out of our wet clothes.” 

She immediately began to strip out of her robes, and Hikaru had to agree. Soaked clothing was dangerous, and he began to remove his armor first, before stripping off the under clothing. They ended up tossing their wet clothes on a nearby boulder, which Amy blasted a couple times with ice magic to be certain was actually a boulder.

They had lost their supplies, and he had lost his sword in the river. Personally, he was glad his armor was leather as he would have drowned if he had been wearing heavy metal armor. Amy told him to search the shore, while she went to work with water magic to pull as much of it out of their clothes as she could. Walking along the shore revealed that they were now in a calm lake, and he could see a glimpse of the night sky through an opening in the ground on the other side of the lake. His search of the shoreline yielded little, but he did find a bag of rations, a stone torch, and a rope. The rations were soaked, and he went back to Amy after he found them.

Amy smiled when she saw the rope and with a little bit of work they were able to string it up and toss their still damp clothes onto it. Using it as a makeshift clothesline to dry their clothes. She grabbed the bag of rations, and the huddle behind a rock for warmth while she used her magic to pull what water she could from the rations.

Despite feeling tired, and exhausted he finally asked, “What was going on back there? Why were those girls fighting with the Trolls?”

Amy glanced down, and said, “I have never seen anything like it, but I have heard of things like this. Just never outside of the demon realm. We are dealing with a Soul Snatcher.”

Hikaru stuttered, “Soul Snatcher?”

She sighed, and said, “Soul Snatchers come in several different breeds, but they rip a person’s soul out of their body. Without a soul, what is left is nothing more than a husk. A husk that can be restored if you can recover the soul in time. Those living husks are often controlled by the Soul Snatcher, and that’s what we were fighting. Its why I couldn’t sense them with my magic. Their lack of a soul made them invisible to me.”

He shuddered partly from still being cold, and partly from the realization of what they had just encountered. He had questions, but he shelved most of them. Instead, he asked, “Think those twins will be alright?”

“I don’t know, but we have other things to worry about,” she said as she handed over the now mostly dry rations. He tried a bit of it, and gave it back to her for a bite. After swallowing a bit, she said, “For now we are both exhausted so its best that we sleep. I’ll finish drying our clothes when my magic replenishes.” He nodded, and said he would keep first watch.

The night passed uneventfully, and in the morning sunlight streamed in from the far side of the lake. Revealing the underground area that they were in. Not far from their position was a stone plaque that he had not noticed during the night. While Amy was drying their clothes he moved over to study it. He had also learned why the night was uneventful as they were on a small bit of land that rested against the cave wall. There was no route off this piece of land. As a result, they were rather stuck here. The stone plaque was carved into a nearby wall, and he studied it carefully.

On either side of the plaque, delicately carved figures of a man and a woman could be seen. The two were remarkably similar but the man looked older by a few years. Both had scaled wings, and talons for feet. They wore little, and the woman had her chest on full display. The scales on her arms, and belly were fully visible as well. Behind him, Amy spoke up, “Those are both depictions of the High God of Creation and Destruction.”

Startled he looked back confused, and before he could ask she answered, “The High God of Creation and Destruction can be either a man or a woman depending on their mood. The temples say they have appeared as both throughout history. Anyway here is your armor. I managed to get it dry enough to wear.”

He thanked her and put it on. Noting that she was already dressed in her mage robes. In the better morning light, he noticed that they had been torn in a couple of places, and he found similar tears in the leather of his armor. He was a bit interested in this god, but it wasn’t important instead he regarded the text on the plaque, and while he couldn’t read it he noticed something interesting. The characters of the text looked similar to Latin characters albeit with a bit of Asian flair, specifically Japanese. It was like someone had blended Latin characters with Japanese ones, and the result wasn’t as strange looking as you would think. He admired the familiar but alien characters for a minute or two before asking Amy if she could read these characters.

She took one look at them, and then she cast a spell. She said, “According to my identity spell that is Ancient Solean, the original language of the Skylords. Unfortunately, I’m not a priestess blessed with the gift of language so I can’t read it.”

He was a little disappointed as he was hoping the plaque would get them off this spit of rock. “In that case, I guess we are going to have to swim,” he replied. She immediately shook her head, “I wouldn’t do that. There is a Kraken in the lake, and I think she is nesting.”

“So, in other words, we are stuck here? I hope this plaque holds some kind of secret to getting us off this spit of land as its rather suspicious,” replied Hikaru. He wasn’t all that familiar with Krakens, and while he was sure they were deepsea creatures he knew sea turtles nested on beaches. Despite making their home in the open ocean, so he guessed it was something similar with the Kraken. Hopefully, it would leave in a few days, and they could swim out. He turned back to the plaque, and she said, “I hope you are right. As I don’t think that Kraken will be leaving any time soon.”

He studied the plaque for a while looking for anything like hidden buttons of the like. Occasionally trying to press on a character or tracing lines on its surface. He even tried looking for a character that seemed out of place. However, there wasn’t such a character on the plaque. Finally, he decided to try prayer. He was in a world of magic after all so that might be the way forward So he knelt down before it prayed for a path off this shelf.