Watching the others try to fend of the shades, the boy released a deep sigh, showing his displeasure with how the situation had been handled. From where he was standing, it seemed like they were just lashing out at the creatures without a real plan. The wisest thing would have been to take them out one by one, rather than just smacking about and trying to whittle them all down as a group. At this point, the shades could have just torn them to shreds before they really managed to kill the brunt of them, which honestly seemed like something they would have deserved for their strange approach to a potentially life threatening situation. Expending a good deal of his mana, long blades of crescent wind were released towards the shades that had begun encircling the two mages. Due to their sheer size and the fact that he could conjure up a total of three of them, ripping through the remnants of these shades wasn’t altogether difficult. They had been beaten up considerably after all.

“Remember this, when the time comes for us to get paid, I’m taking the lion’s share for carrying you lot and keeping you alive.”

FLOOR 2 | ROOM 1

Having made sure that the wolf remained down, Gawain was rather content with the knowledge that he didn’t need to kill it, figuring Griswold would have approved of his actions here today. In a way, he did feel somewhat sad for not having gotten a chance to destroy more of the shades that had come to face them alongside the massive canine. But as some of the people in the magic knight squads liked to say, teamwork made the dream work, which was something he himself never understood but just figured to be correct. If he had been forced to go through all of this on his own, it would have been considerably more difficult after all, not to mention more time consuming. On the other hand, if they did find something worth looting at the end, fewer people meant less had to be shared among them.

Leading the way as he had gotten a lot more confident in the fact that nothing in this place was going to be able to hold him down, it seemed that his earlier prayers had been answered in the form of more wraiths. For as they entered into the caverns the wolf had been guarding so viciously, many of the shadowy figures seemed to be moving throughout this space. Preparing to fire a multi-target spell that would sweep several of them from the face of the earth, he held himself at pause, taking note of the way in which these specters moved. Closer inspection revealed that these shades seemed to be entranced by something as if lulled into a mindless state. If all of these things had been actual people at some point, Gawain couldn’t help but wonder what they were all doing down here, as it didn’t exactly fit into the knowledge he thought he had gathered.

All signs pointed to the notion that something had been entombed within this place, because why else would this place head on so far into the earth. Looking around for a way to go, there seemed to be a plethora of passages and manholes that one might take, though none of them really seemed overly inviting. Still, a route had to be chosen, and since he was really the only person he trusted in situations such as this one, he decided to stick to the road that went straight ahead. At this point, if he chose the wrong path forward and took the three of them to their deaths, it was a mistake he could only blame upon himself. The other two had the option to choose a different path of their own after all, as he wasn’t the leader of this expedition. He was just one of the people who seemed most likely to survive through all of the dangers the subterranean system had to throw at them.

The deeper they went, the more the cold seemed to make sense. Noticing that their chosen direction would take them across a bridge seemingly made entirely out of true ice, Gawain no longer had any doubts that this place was not created by some kind of intelligent design. Whether it had been created by humans from long, long ago or by some kind of mythical creatures, demons or spirits, a bridge such as this one simply could not have just formed naturally over time. More importantly, it seemed that the shades in this portion of the space were no longer just lulled into a state of half-slumber, instead seeming to be quite fixated on not allowing any to cross the bridge in either direction. This meant that they were in the way, and that they needed to be destroyed. Unlike the wolf, these things were undead, unnatural remnants of living mortals that had no business in lingering on this plane of existence.

Moving ahead of the group, Gawain began drawing attention to himself by sprinting across the frozen bridge. Pulling the gaze of the undead towards himself, there were those that seemed to instead fix their gaze on the other two mages, though that simply wouldn’t suffice. Forming finger guns as he ran, the boy began firing bolts of compressed air towards the outliers, making sure to stick to those that remained within a certain range of one another. Before they really seemed to realize what had happened, sections of their torso just seemed to vanish as the bolts blew straight through them, destroying them before they even realized what had gone on. This act seemed to ensure the fact that the shades that remained no longer fixed their gaze towards the others but on him instead. So as the boy crossed a big portion of the bridge, it brought the shades that hovered overhead down upon him, though that was all according to plan.

Since the shades themselves did not seem to move incredibly quickly, Gawain altered his pace from a sprint into a stroll before hitting a full stand-still. Looking up at the number of shades that were about to start raining down upon him, he held his hands over his chest, holding it momentarily as the last of the creatures made their way into the range of his spell. Then, with a slight grin on his face, the boy released the spell that would resound through the area, shaking the very foundation of the bridge itself. Though it wasn’t near enough to break the actual bridge, cracks formed along the surface, which was more or less the end of that. The same could not be said about the shades in the room, as the resounding burst evaporated every single one of them in a single blast. While this assault mixed with the energy he had been forced to expand earlier was starting to take quite a bit out of him, part of him was starting to wonder why he hadn’t just gone about it all on his own.

With enough time in between and some well timed breaks, there was no doubt in his mind that he could take down everything this place could throw at him, save for one single exception shrouded in mystery. That one mysterious thing was whatever would be found at the very end of this place. Whether it was some relic as old as time emanating power and exuding control over the dead of the region and making them rise to protect it, was some kind of powerful undead creature that held all of these shades and zombies under its thrall or an ancient necromancer that held this whole underground system within its grasp remained to be seen. If such powerful things were at the center of all of this, there was no doubt in his mind that the best thing for him to do would be to retreat, as such things couldn’t be taken on by someone who possessed such limited knowledge and lacked the firepower to take it all on alone.



WC: 1368
Room Total: 1368
Total WC: -

Wrapped up Room 1's severaly battered shades
Wrapped up floor 2 | Room 1's shades

Posting up the stats and spells once I get home