All things considered, the journey leading up to this fabled temple they had been looking for had been quite a rocky one, at least it could have been if quick actions hadn’t been taken from time to time. So one might even say that, in spite of the evil treants that had attacked them and required a proper burial and ceremony to send them off, and in spite of the magically altered snakes that had attacked them, it had actually been smooth sailing up until this point. After all, nobody had gotten injured or killed, which was a win in his book, it just meant that the members of the expedition had seen quite a few things that they might have been able to do without. It was not every day that one got attacked by corrupted trees, only to find that the insides were filled up with people that had likely been put there as punishment or as some kind of twisted medium for the spell that had made these woodland guardians in the first place.

Having put them into the ground properly made Griswold feel better to some degree, though they were nowhere near safe yet. With the temple standing before them, he could tell that there was something to this place that just was not right. The last time he had felt like this about a structure made by human hands, it was when he found himself within the castle belonging to a tyrant king that systematically poisoned and altered anything within the surrounding area. Killing nature in a wide radius and warping animals such as dogs and crows into horrific, monstrous versions of themselves, the elven knight imagined something similar might well have happened to the snakes he had killed earlier. But one thing was certain though, the treants he had dispatched, the humans inside of them had been long dead as no magic could have sustained them for so long in such a weak and desiccated state without any form of nourishment.

While it might not have been in the best interests of the party he was escorting, there was an overly large part of him that hoped they would find whoever had done all of this further on inside of the temple, even though the chance of this being a possibility were slim to none. That was, unless they had somehow turned themselves into an undead, or were in fact inside of the temple as a regular old corpse. The temple was really old, and the fact that it had gone missing so long ago meant that there more than likely hadn’t been any activity in it, which in turn worked out really well for them. The less obstacles they encountered, the better it would be for all of them. Allowing the group a moment to take a proper break while Griswold walked around the temple, he could feel something watching him, though he could not clearly see what it was. This feeling he got, it did not come from the marshes, it came from within one of the temple’s many entrances, which bugged him.

Heading into the belly of the beast was never something he really feared, and now was no different, as it was not himself he feared for. He feared for the people he had to bring in with him, whom he had to keep alive while they were off doing their work collecting whatever information they might be able to get their hands on. And from what he had seen so far, these people were not exactly known for having the sharpest of senses, as the large snakes coming down from the trees had caught them completely by surprise. Had they worked towards honing their senses, whether they were magical in nature or just instinct, they would have been warned a bit, which in turn also proved that none of these people were anything other than scholars. This meant that he was more or less the only capable fighter around here, and that was what made him fearful for all of the people that were heading into the temple.

For the first hour, things went by pretty smoothly, a lot more smooth than he had initially thought possible. Still, as he wandered the halls to move between where the scholars were hard at work, having to break a bunch of traps that had locked up some that were not being careful enough and lifting some heavy equipment around, he could not shake the feeling that there was some ominous presence here, watching them. When Griswold moved into what appeared to be the central chamber, he could see from a distance that Ilhiana was hard at work trying to figure out some kind of a pedestal with a statue standing on top of it. When he approached, it was as if the presence was not looking for any others to enter into the room as the bones that littered the floor began moving. Half expecting some dangerous monster to erupt from it, he was glad that the things that appeared were just skeletons. And while every monster was unique in a sense, the undead had become something of a specialty of his.

Throughout his time as a magic knight, which was actually a whole lot shorter of a period than many people believed it to be, Griswold had fought so many things, yet there were few things he held as much disdain for as the undead. Not being the kind that believed in an afterlife, he believed that once one died, that would be the end of that story, meaning the book would close. But to curse either one’s own self to a life beyond the grave as some walking cadaver just so one could continue to exist was nothing short of sad and depraved in the eyes of the elven knight. But breaking the natural cycle of things for yourself was one thing, but cursing someone else into such an existence, that was something he had always found hard, if not impossible to forgive. When he first experienced this by the hands of a pair of grave robbers who had disturbed the final resting place of an elven lord and his family, Griswold saw exactly what that did to them.

They did not rise from their graves as spectral versions of themselves, but as warped beings that were filled with hate and a single-minded urge to deal with any intruders they came across until the object that had been stolen from their tomb had been returned to them. At that time, he also saw how one of these spectral elves had not just killed one of the grave robbers, but had stuck their hand into the remains, warping and churning the flesh and bone until it became a ghoul. Hungering for flesh and only possessing very few human traits at this point, Griswold had incinerated it so it would not be able to go out into the world to sate its urges. Just thinking back to that day brought up a lot of bad memories that were connected to it, though it also made him remember the people he had saved, wondering how that little girl was doing these days as so many months had already flown past them.

Evading a piece of rock that got launched at him, it seemed that these undead were quite capable of still utilizing the magic spells they possessed when they were still alive. No longer interested in doing the job they had come here for in the distant past, they used their magic only to protect that which Ilhiana had come for and to add more bodies to the pile. Having no doubt that if they were to all die here, that they would also be cursed to become like these skeletons, Griswold made sure to keep the skeletons as far away from the archaeological party as possible. With Ilhiana making her way towards the statue, he could tell that she was trying to assess how to remove it, and if doing so might cause any of the traps to go off, Griswold was glad that he only had to worry about the fighting. Finding traps or placing them had never quite been his forte, though the latter was something he still wished to learn some day.

Evading a whip made of water, another shot of rock and a bolt of lightning, it was a good thing that he had been working so hard on making himself both faster and more responsive to threats, something he believed would aid him well once he got to face off against Aamon and his allies alongside the members of his Royal Knights team. Channeling his own mana into a barrage of solar bombs that detonated around the skeletons, sending bones and skulls all over the place, it did not take him a very long time to get through the brunt of them. Leaving only a few that did not seem to really register that their allies were being picked off one by one, Griswold came to conclude that this part of them was no longer present. They were just moving bodies, held together by dark magic and in possession of their former magics, but that was really all there was to them. They existed because they had a purpose here, which was to protect the temple and anything inside of it. A sad and lonely existence.

So while he took them out left and right, Ilhiana was hard at work trying to get the statue away from the pedestal it rested on, placing a few markers and a bunch of tiny clamps to keep it from rising once the weight were to be taken off of it. When the floor suddenly started shaking, neither Griswold nor Ilhiana knew whether or not they were the cause of it, though they both realized that they had to move faster if they wanted to bring all of this to a positive ending. Grabbing his sword and running it through the remaining two skeletons in the same blow, which was exactly the kind of combat this sword was intended for, Griswold began to instruct the others that were no longer needed at this point in time to start making their way towards the exit. Believing they might be safe outside after he had checked the premises for potential threats and found them only within the temple, it was not them that he feared for at this point.

Spotting a large, if not massive shadow moving around in the darkness, he saw a pair of glowing red eyes appearing behind the pedestal that held the statue. As Ilhiana finished up her work and noticed the eyes, she grabbed hold of the statue and began making a run for it, the shadow drawing closer up until the point where the light fell over it, showing it to be a massive serpent that had more than likely not eaten in quite some time. Sharing some similarities with the snakes he had killed outside, such as the black scales and the red eyes, this beast was rather gargantuan in comparison, as well as very dead. In various places, one could clearly see the bones of this beast almost protrude from its body, though that did not seem to hinder nor stop it. As he looked upon it, it was quite simple to tell that this beast was entirely evil, and not just because it was risen and turned into an evil being.

This beast was evil long before it was put into the state it was in right now, a persisting evil that would clearly not be stopped by something as simple as death. Just like how Griswold could tell that this beast was malicious in nature, so could he tell that there were vast amounts of mana swirling within the beast’s rotten coils, the same kind of mana he had sensed before when he looked upon the temple and felt something looking back. The same mana that radiated from just about every corner of this place, and the same mana that was responsible for the skeletons he had faced coming back to life. To think that all this time, it wasn’t the people that were to blame for other people being used as a medium for dark magic, that it was not people who made the corrupted vipers outside, but that it was actually this beast that was in charge of all the bad things and events that had transpired here was hard for him to grasp. Usually, the beasts of nature were not like this one bit.

Predatory animals did not hunt out of spite or anger, or to hurt because they liked the idea of inflicting pain, not at all. They did so because it was in their instinct, because they were hungry and had no sense of right or wrong because nature did not need that kind of thing. It was almost mind boggling, so much so that he had almost forgotten that it was his job to protect Ilhiana as she ran towards him with the massive lumbering snake giving chase. As it struck, Griswold moved forward, finding that the two were evenly matched when it came to the speed at which they could move while unaided by magic. Clashing his blade against the mouth of the beast, the force behind the blow disarmed him, sending Feardèanamh flying across the bone strewn floor as one of the long teeth got knocked clean out of the serpent’s maw while chipping another halfway through. As the beast shrieked and hissed, it might have done so out of a base instinct, as the dead no longer felt pain.

Managing to get the creature’s attention focused on himself rather than Ilhiana, who made ample use of this time she had been given to run straight towards the exit and start rounding up everyone both inside and out, Griswold had no other options than to use his magic against the beast as fighting it with his fists or even his sword was more than likely not going to be very effective. Simply put, the creature was too large to just go about hacking and slashing his way around, and with the speed and strength it possessed, it seemed more likely that Griswold would become one of the skeletons protecting the temple than that he would bring the beast itself down this way. So as the beast came at him, Griswold formed a small orb of solar mana on the tip of his finger, waiting for the beast to open its mouth before shooting it in. Instinctively closing its maw, Griswold caused the sphere to do what it did best.

Causing it to expand to what would normally be a sphere of roughly seventy meters in size, the tremendous amounts of magic, as well as the sheer density of the desiccated flesh of the beast kept the blast contained up to the point where it no longer could. Erupting from the portions of its body where bones already protruded, beams of burning mana shot across the room, destabilizing the ceiling and causing parts of it to collapse. Bringing large chunks of stone down upon them, an entire segment of the ceiling became detached and came crashing down on top of the serpent, who may or may not have already been dead when the solar orb erupted inside of its stomach. While he ran and claimed his sword before going for the safety of the outside world, not looking towards getting crushed by rubble, he could still sense a great deal of mana inside of the serpent, which was odd. After all, he had just killed it, hadn’t he?

Already standing outside of the temple by the time Griswold finally made his way over there too, the statue in her hands, Ilhiana took a moment to address the party that had come along to gather the information there was to be gained from inside of the temple. While much of it had been copies of scribblings on the walls that they themselves could not fully understand at this point, Griswold figured the eagerness of the scholars found within the royal capital would undoubtedly figure out the meaning, if there were one to begin with. Hearing a loud shrieking hiss coming from within the temple, it seemed that what Griswold feared to be the case was in fact true, that there was something keeping this creature from ever truly dying, coming back after a short amount of time spent being lifeless. Either that, or it had merely pretended to be dead, which he imagined would just mean laying down and not moving as there was no breathing nor a heartbeat that had to be hidden.

Believing that the creature would most likely stay inside of the temple, Griswold had everyone moving away from the place regardless. Getting everyone to pack up their crap and get ready to move back to the royal capital, it was Ilhiana that came up to him, telling him that the creature was mentioned on the statue she had liberated from the place. Supposedly called Ylvehla, the beast was apparently worshipped there by some cult a long time ago as some sort of dark god. However, watching the amount of bones that were littered across the central chamber, as well as the state the temple itself was in, it made a lot of sense to believe that these cultists had likely been devoured by their own god for some dubious reason. For whatever purpose the creature had been summoned, that was something the scholars were hoping to find out as the statue was apparently some kind of cypher that could be used to decode and figure out whatever language these people used.

As they made their way back to the modern, civilized world in an attempt at leaving the swamp and the temple behind them, Griswold wondered if maybe Ylvehla had been summoned to be used as an undying weapon against the land of clover. After all, a magical zombie serpent of such a size that would just come back to life if it were killed seemed like a very powerful tool in the wrong hands. Deciding to leave things for what they were as they were not being pursued, he’d just focus on doing his job as he escorted everyone back home, where he could claim his money.

3086

[End of Mission Chain]