15 Broken

By the time Galahad arrived to the altar, the crystal had still been growing slowly around the bag, it was now halfway immersed in the solid substance, he didn't have much time to act. A quick glance at the side let Galahad know the spriggan was still laying unconscious and with small brush fires encasing its body. Only one of its wings was intact and it was bent at a very gross angle.

Galahad did his best to step around black sludge, but some of it got on his boot. He had to quickly untie the boot and remove it because crystals started form around the heel. He felt it drain his body of energy and mana, whatever the substance was, it acted like a parasitic siphon.

He passed by the four-foot tall altar and saw the small object floating a few centimeters from the top of the pedestal. It looked like a normal mana orb, no bigger than the one he picked up from the mother silver rat. The only difference was the color, it was so black that it seemed to absorb all light from its presence.

He could also feel it was blowing cold air at him, like it was the source of the entire frosty environment of the cavern. It felt like it was sucking in all the mana, heat, and every other form of energy out of the air with no sign of ever stopping.

'You're the reason for this madness, I'll destroy you later.' Galahad turned back to his main priority.

He made his way to the bag without losing his other boot; he tore open the bag with the short sword and pried it open. Inside was not Kara though, it was Jeahna the facilitator for Team C and she was not in any condition to move.

Her eyes were open, but they weren't focused on anything. Her hair was matted to the side of her face with a lot of blood and mud, courtesy of the fight she had lost against the Blemmyae.

Both of her arms and legs were swollen with black and blue markings everywhere. It was pretty clear the monster mercilessly squeezed all of her limbs until they shattered, stopping her from trying to escape. It was a gruesome sight to behold, but Galahad seemed to overcome it.

"Do you have your plate?" He asked, but she didn't respond. Her lips only shivered as the crystal grew across her and sucking all the warmth from her body.

Galahad swore at himself as he kept glancing at the battle, he just saw Victor get launched into Mycroft. He didn't have time to waste.

He didn't want to do this, but he slapped Jeahna to try and get a response out of her, but the pain didn't even make her flinch. All she did was drool spit and blood out of her mouth. Her mind was broken beyond fixing.

'At this point, she is gonna feel trapped here, even if we actually her out.' Galahad thought as he tried slamming the hilt of the sword against the crystal.

He could get small chips of the crystal to come off, but the growing rate was far superior. He stopped when the crystal made it past Jeahna's chest.

He sat back in defeat, there was no coming back from this poor woman. He couldn't do anything but watch her finish being immersed. He let out a small prayer to the Nine for her in the back of his mind.

When the crystal was about to finish around her head, her eyes started focusing and fixated themselves onto Galahad. She let loose blood-stained tears and softly mouthed the word "run" over and over again.

He saw the crystal finally complete and it started to sink into the ground. He was about to grab the black orb and activate the return spell, but the way the crystal mass fell was odd to him.

The crystal had sank slowly into the dirt, then dropped immediately down like it was yanked by another force when only half of it remained on the surface.

All that remained was a two foot wide hole he couldn't see the where the bottom was, seeming like it was never ending. The hole was closing a rate just visible enough to notice, but still open enough to let Galahad test something

He pulled his own light crystal out of his pocket, activated the sphere with a quick chant, and dropped it down the hole. The light revealed the ground he knelt on was a few feet thick, but opened to another secret cavern below. When the light hit the floor below, Galahad had to stop himself from screaming at the sight beneath him.

Through the hole, he saw a cavern that was even bigger than the one he currently was in. At the bottom was at least thousands of crystals piled up with so many faces frozen in horror or pain. The faces ranged from adventurers younger than him to some that were reaching double his age, all of them expressed pain and fear. It was an endless mass of terrified faces that Galahad couldn't look away from.

'Twenty years, that's what the spriggan said.' Galahad now started to realize the scale of the situation. He and his team stepped into a very old and sinister plot full of so many lost adventurers and its clear that the losses ran much deeper than they ever knew.

Galahad didn't break his sight from the horrors until Zeriphyle started making a loud call that echoed loudly throughout the cavern and its attached tunnels.

Galahad got up and grabbed the cold, black orb without stopping to see what exactly the monster was doing. He flipped everyone's tether to speed boost so they could easily evade to somewhere out of harm's reach while the return spell need time to activate. That was the final piece of the plan, signalling the chance to run and escape.

"I just need to make sure Rosetta's okay, then I'll go." He told himself, the last thing he wanted to do was leave her in the dungeon because everyone else left without checking on her.

*****

Trista had thrown all ten of her poisoned throwing knives into Zeriphyle's flesh. The effects of the poison were slowing down his ability to attack with even a swing. Trista was holding the headless monster's attention while signaling the last remaining swordsman to check on the other two that laid unconscious.

She managed to still running backwards, out of the monster's ever slowing pace and range. He was starting to wobble back and forth now, while still making the loud, piercing noise and swinging aimlessly. He didn't stop until he started to collapse on knee and exhaling very loudly. He wasn't moving anywhere, anytime soon.

Once the noise stopped, everyone picked up on the new sounds filling their ears. A rumbling noise that increased with each passing second. Trista ignored the increasing volume and went to check on Victor and Mycroft.

When Heath arrived first, he rolled the heavier teammate over, he jumped back on shock. The black blood that spilled from the Blemmyae's first injury was covering Victor's chest and face, then spread onto his brother. It wouldn't seem that odd but the blood was spreading and crystallizing all over his body.

Trista ran up and immediately put two and two together. "Shit, that black blood is the same as the sludge from the altar. We need to get out of here, Heath go tell Rosetta."

The rumbling was getting louder to the point that Trista had to scream her words for Heath to hear.

He turned to go make sure Rosetta was fine but she was coming to them instead. She was running the best she could towards them while yelling with her arms in the air. Neither one of them could hear her because the sound was rattling their teeth. They soon found out why.

Behind her was the source of the rumbling noise. Pouring out of the tunnel like an overflow of water, was dozens of small Blemmyaes. They came flooding in at the sounds Zeriphyle was making with a wild and hungry look in their enormous eyes.

"Heath.... activate their plates now." Trista didn't turn to look as she pulled out the long daggers and stared down the new threat.

*****

Galahad witnessed Zeriphyle kneeling and Rosetta running from the tunnel with screams he couldn't interpret with the rumbling.

Suddenly he felt a force blast him into the air from behind and knock the wind out of his lungs. He did the best he could to tumble without breaking anything, but a snap in his side told him that his impact didn't go smoothly. When he stopped rolling through the dirt and looked up, he started to piece together what had happened with his vision spinning.

Dozens of miniature blemmyaes were coming out of almost every tunnel entrance connecting to the cavern. Swarming to their fallen comrade with a crazed energy in their charge.

Galahad finally gasped a lung full of air and started running back towards his group. "That son of a bitch was calling for backup."

Luckily the backup wasn't anywhere near as powerful as the one Trista was occupied with. They were only five and a half feet tall and they didn't have the weird dark smoke pouring from their shoulders.

The bad news to that was his tether lost the suppression he originally had to focus on and the lines started glowing in the semi dark cavern. Giving off a blue glow to the small blemmyaes' targets.

'Escape now, worry about cavern later.' Galahad reformed the priorities in the back of his head.

What were they supposed to do? This evil plan involving the lives of so many lost adventurers was clearly too big for them to handle. Once the team made it to the surface, they could notify the kingdom's guild and it wouldn't be his problem anymore.

All he could do now was evade the monsters while his return spell activated, running away was the only way to stall for time. Or so he thought.

Galahad pressed a finger from the hand holding the black orb against his Karmic Plate to cast the return spell, but the familiar white light was nowhere to be found. Panic was beginning to reach Galahad's heart once again.

Escaping just became a whole lot more difficult.

"Fuck, guys get out of the cavern, NOW! The spell won't work in here." Galahad shouted across the cavern. 'This place has to be the cause of the mana interference.'

"It's the cavern that's interfering, we need to ge-" Galahad didn't get a chance to finish because the black orb suddenly denoted like a loud grenade inside his palm. The orb erupted in a ball of black fire and dust, shooting Galahad into the air. The force of the point blank range caused him to blackout while still getting projected sideways and out of a cavern tunnel. Out of view and no longer a target because the blemmyae didn't bother with killing what was already dead.

*****

Trista was currently covering the partially immobilized Victor and Mycroft from the swarm of new monsters, while the Heath fought that blemmyaes that blocked the path between Rosetta and them.

They were waiting for Galahad to give them the all clear to leave after rescuing Kara. Once he did that, they could leave this retched cavern with the Plate's return spell.

They heard Galahad shout as they felt their speed started to suddenly increase, indicating the start of the retreat. They came to the same realization about the karmic plates not working as Galahad did and suddenly his voice was cut off mid sentence by an explosion.

The still broken and flaming body of the spriggan was laying on the ground, but when the noise of the explosion rang in the air, it let out a heart-wrenching screech of absolute agony right after. The sound didn't register with the others though, they were too busy watching Galahad's limp body being launched out of the smoke and ragdoll out of a cavern entrance.

All sounds started to drain from everyone's ears, even the monsters stopped to look at the gruesome. Their attention quickly turned back on the group of adventurers that attacked Zeriphyle.

"GALAHAD!" Trista shouted. She ducked under the swinging arm of a blemmyae, not before severing the tendons above the ribs and across the armpit to slow it down.

She quickly dodged and weaved between the enemies with boosted speed, that meant two good things. She still had the upper hand in speed and Galahad's mana tethers were still active, they would have snapped if he was killed by the explosion.

This was good for news for Trista, but not so great news for Heath and Rosetta. Heath tried to keep the monsters at a distance from his brother and Victor, but the onslaught was endlessly and the crystal material had now grown mostly around the two that remained unconscious. It wasn't just the force of the monster's swing, its blood was clearly keeping them unconscious. Rosetta wasn't doing any better with mana depleted spells, she sputtered a small flame whip that lashed itself across the eyes of many blemmyae. She only manages a singular whip that could barely blind a few of the many.

Trista cut through a dozen different monsters before realizing everyone else had been swarmed. No one was leaving the cavern that day, not alive anyway.