The young soldier would not stand a chance against a creature that could wield corrupted manna; he would be dead inside of a few seconds, and there would be little to nothing that D’Arden would be able to do to save him.
No, this would have to be his battle, and his battle alone. The steel of Mikel’s sword might be helpful if whatever beast he was going to face might have living creatures that served it, but if the servants were touched by the corruption as well, there would need to be silver edges on that blade at least. It was better if he went in alone with his manna blade that would cut swaths through the enemy, a power that they would not be expecting, and take them fully by surprise.
**
He followed the manna trail through the streets of the low quarter, paying little attention to his route or direction. It was less important that he find his way back again, and more important that he locate the source of whatever it was that was siphoning the power from the nearby font.
After twisting and winding through the streets, taking sharp corners around buildings when the trail of manna went directly through them, and cutting through some abandoned barns, stables and other large buildings, he finally arrived at a door.
There was nothing special about this door; in fact, quite the opposite. The door was decrepit, almost collapsing inward under its own weight. It was rotten through and through, and there was nothing visible through the holes in the wood. It was all dark inside.
He regarded the door skeptically. Why would anything that could wield the power of the manna be hiding within a place such as this? It made little sense to him, but perhaps it was simply trying to hide, to control the power from a secretive place that no one would think to look, buried deep within the poorest section of the city.
It was impossible to deny, though, that this place was where the trail ended. It clearly went inside, and there was no denying that he felt the power growing here, collected beneath his feet. With a small sigh at the thought of once again having to go underground, he pushed open the rotten door and entered.
Immediately the sickly-sweet smell of decaying flesh assaulted his senses. Reeling from the intensity of it, he immediately pulled free his sword from its sheath on his back, and it came free with its characteristic rasp. The light immediately sprang to life, and he was suddenly able to see exactly why the atmosphere within the building was so terrible.
Bodies were piled around him in haphazard heaps, flung atop one another. Some appeared as though they had perhaps been gnawed upon, others, which had obviously lain there for months undisturbed, had already begun rotting away. Some in-between, dead for maybe days or weeks, were swelled up to the point of bursting despite the horrific cold that would normally prevent such a thing from happening. All of the eyes of the corpses – not just some, but every single visible body that he could see – stared vacantly, blankly at whatever their head was turned towards. They were glassy, milky, and still freshly clear, but all of them simply stared, looking in every direction from where they lay, cast aside, upon the piles.
His stomach turned involuntarily, and he nearly dropped his sword as he stumbled backwards, trying to escape the terrible image. The cynical part of his mind, for a moment, thought: At least they’re dead, and not moving.
Then another part of his mind chided him for cursing them like that, expecting the corpses to get up and begin moving at any moment.
They didn’t.
In some ways, the blank-eyed staring was worse, he found as he tried to block his mind against the assault. At least if the corpses were moving he could destroy them, set the manna fire to them and watch them burn away in an instant. This, however, was far more unnerving as he stepped gingerly amongst the lifeless bodies, trying both to respect the dead and make his way past them. He used the light from his blade so that he would not tread on any of the corpses, but still managed to crack a lifeless finger here and there, wincing each and every time.
Evil was not enough to describe this sight. The corpses were dressed in rags, some of them barely covered, others lewdly exposing themselves to the darkened room with no further cares in the world. He gave a small shudder. This, to him, would be what hell was like: utter disrespect for the living, and the life force that he treasured so highly.
Finally he passed beyond the room with the piled corpses. Though the smell of rotten flesh was little better here, he also picked up on the scent of something else. Something animalistic, feral and dangerous was lurking here, below the city. It was not the demon that he sought, but rather – as he’d expected – something less, something dangerous but not all-encompassing. Something that was, perhaps, an enemy that could be faced and destroyed.
The room narrowed to a small corridor that continued further into the dank building. He could hear water dripping in the distance, falling from a fair height in tiny droplets, like a miniature waterfall. As he got further away from the corpses, the rooms began to smell less of corpse and more of mildew and wood rot. All he could see before him was darkness, relying on the azure light from his sword to indicate to him where the walls were and which direction they turned in.
Once again, he found his passage blocked by a door.
This door was more difficult to discern the features of, given the lack of light and the comparably small amount of detail revealed by the light of his manna blade. It appeared to be in somewhat better repair than the door outside, but he feared what might lay beyond it. Danger he was used to, and he was not afraid of a confrontation with a horrific fel beast, but down here in the dark amongst piles of corpses was the last place that he had ever wanted to find himself.
Gritting his teeth, he tried the handle on the door, only to find that it broke off in his hand. He muttered a curse under his breath and pushed gently on the door, but it steadfastly refused to budge even under a fair amount of pressure.
He decided to break it down.
Summoning the manna into himself to aid his body, he gave the door a mighty kick that might have rattled a steel gate. The wood gave under his strength, shattering inward with little more protest than a soggy, squishing sound as he reached the core. Fragments of the wooden door clattered down the stairs that were then revealed before him.
Once again his stealth had been broken. It was almost as if these creatures knew that he was coming long in advance and had prepared for the eventuality, putting up barriers between themselves and him so that they would be properly warned of his entrance.
That was ludicrous, of course.
Cautiously, so as not to step on a soggy piece of wood and end up tumbling headfirst down the flight of stairs, for he knew not how far into the darkness below that they would extend, he began to descend the stairs. After several steps he reached a landing, and found that they continued downward a few feet away.
Halfway down, the steps turned from wood to stone, and still, they continued downward.
When he had touched on several landings and still the stairs continued down, he began to wonder just how far into the earth this cellar went.
Finally, when he came at last to ground once again, he looked around and could find no further stairs continuing downward. He looked up, back the way he had come, and of course there was no light at the top of the stairs to indicate how far he might have descended into the earth. If he’d had to guess he must have been sixty feet below ground level, but he had never heard of such a cellar being dug before, and certainly not in the low quarter of Calessa.
This, then, must be a passage to some kind of ancient ruin, he thought to himself. He wondered if the citizenry of Calessa were even aware of this staircase. It crossed his mind to wonder who had built such a massively deep cleft into the earth, and whether or not he should be concerned about its denizens.
The manna trail had clearly led him down the stairs, down here into the earth, but he had no idea which direction to begin moving in. The darkness was chokingly thick here, closing in around him and making him feel claustrophobic, although there were no walls nearby that he could detect. The thick smell of dust filled his nostrils,
