"What's so special about the book?" I asked and pressed the swords down, their tips drawing the slightest bit of blood.
"It's a ritual. That's all I know." He tried to move away from my swords but I just pushed them harder against him. "It's just a job. They paid me to steal it from Thanatos and deliver it to them. But you had to go and ruin it, you amateur."
"Half-Celt, there are a lot more of these things coming," Rory shouted.
I could hear the clicking sounds clashing with his hammer.
"Please just let me have a healing potion and I'll leave," Abrathion said, raising his hands defensively.
This man asking for mercy was the same man who'd tried to have me killed. The one who'd sent his lackeys to my apartment and almost killed Louie. He had kidnapped Leo and extorted Viki by imprisoning her wife.
For a brief moment, I thought about what I had read so many times about situations just like this one--that if I killed this man, I wasn't any better than him. That mercy was power.
What spineless nonsense.
I pushed both of my swords down, slicing through Abrathion's throat. His eyes bulged in surprise, a gurgling sound coming from his throat as I twisted my blades. He really thought I was just going to let him go and let the monsters have him. I pulled my swords out and turned to find Louie watching me.
"He was a bad man." I heard his voice in my head. "We had to put him down."
"Alex!" Leo shouted. "We can't hold."
I nodded at Louie, picked up Abrathion's glowing staff, and put it in my inventory as we ran toward our party that was still trying to keep the steady stream of arachnid monsters at bay.
Louie healed Viki, whose HP had dropped dangerously low, and I helped by killing one of the two insects that were attacking her. But the monsters were coming at an increasingly higher rate and both Leo and Louie were running out of MP.
"Take this," Viki said and dropped a thick signet ring in my vest pocket.
"What?" I said, trying to prepare myself for the next monster. "Why?"
"Just go," Yelena told her, struggling to keep her head up while leaning against the wall.
"Never!" Viki screamed and slashed at the monsters with even greater ferocity, moving toward the corridor they were coming from.
"We can't carry on!" Leo shouted. "I'm out of mana."
"Dwarf, get her," Viki said, bashing another monster with her shield. "Louie, cast Fortitude on me."
"Why waste mana on buffs," I said and killed another of the monsters, only for it to be replaced by two more.
"She means to stay," Louie said and I almost let my swords drop in realization.
Louie cast the buff while Rory and I took care of the remaining monsters, who had managed to escape the blockade that Viki had created on one of the corridors.
"Heal me and go!" Viki shouted.
That was when Yelena realized what was happening.
"You will not let me live by my fucking self, Viki. You hear me?" she shouted, but her voice lost its power with each word.
"Dwarf, take her!" Viki screamed as three more of the monsters attacked her.
Rory picked Yelena up while Louie spent the last of his MP on healing Viki.
"My love..." Yelena said, tears rolling down her cheek before she fainted again.
"Go!" Viki screamed as more of the monsters took bites at her. "Save her. Please."
We sprinted down the corridor that would eventually lead us out of the dungeon, watching Viki's HP bar drop as we went.
"Tell her I'm sorry I didn't take her to that lake..." Viki's voice faded as we turned down another corridor, one turn closer to our escape.
We ran as fast as we could. Both Rory and I used most of our potions as we ran and our spellcasters were completely out of mana. Never before had we been so utterly overwhelmed.
There had been no way to save her. She had given her life to save the one she loved.
As much as I didn't like that she had chosen to stay back, I could understand her decision. It was one I'd gladly have taken myself if I was in her position.
Her HP kept dropping in increments. Eventually, her bar was completely empty in my party view.
"You told me this yourself," Louie's said in my mind as we were approaching the exit of the dungeon. "You can't save them all."
"But then you went on and saved the second calf," I replied telepathically.
"So did you," he retorted. "And you killed the monster responsible."
It wasn't enough. I was not enough. Not in a whiny, "I hate my life" way but more in a "get your shit together" way.
We were woefully unprepared for something like this. We needed to become much stronger and hope they'd never reach us.
Or we could get rid of the artifact.
My selfish side urged me to just toss the book in the dungeon and be done with it. But as soon as the thought crossed my mind, a tidal wave of guilt hit me. All these deaths. All this suffering. They weren't caused because of this item but rather because of whatever those demons wanted to achieve with it.
No. If anything, my gut feeling told me that abandoning the artifact would most likely bring greater harm, not just to us but to a great many more. It wasn't like I cared too much about strangers getting hurt, of course. I wasn't having delusions of grandeur, nor did I think this was the "heroic" thing to do. But I was sure those demons would leave no loose threads. And that was exactly what we were to them right now.
They came to the dungeon and killed everyone in their path, all the way to Abrathion. He had outlived his usefulness and so they disposed of him. Knowing what we knew now, there was no way they wouldn't try to track down
