Chapter 15: Bones and Blue Crystal
The stillness of the eighth floor was different. The cloying hum of the Echo Sprites was gone, replaced by a damp, moldy silence that clung to the jagged stone. The crystalline formations had given way to rough-hewn rock walls that wept with mineral-laced moisture, and the air smelled of wet earth and old rot.
Azazel's kukri was still out, his eyes scanning the gloom.
"I wonder what monster they'll be on this floor," he murmured, his voice a low ripple in the quiet. The memory of the coordinated Sprites and Stalkers was fresh. He expected another trick, another adaptation.
Reginleif moved beside him, a silent shadow. She shrugged, her daggers held loosely in a ready grip. "It's the eighth floor. Deeper than most farmers go, but not deep enough for true horrors. Probably something common. Goblins, maybe. Or shamblers."
They rounded a corner where the corridor opened into a wider, cavernous space littered with crumbling stone debris and shallow, stagnant puddles. And there, they saw them.
Hollows.
There were six. They stood or shuffled listlessly in the murk, their forms emaciated and draped in tattered, filthy rags that might have once been clothes. Their skin was a sickly grey, stretched tight over visible bone. Their eyes were vacant pits. One clutched the rusted remnant of a broken sword. Another held a notched woodcutter's axe. Two were completely unarmed, their hands ending in cracked, dirty nails.
Azazel's mind immediately pulled the entry from Reginleif's bestiary, read by firelight just the night before: Hollows: Weak enemies. Can be easily dispatched but can surprise adventurers if in large groups. Only lightly armored, often bearing poor-quality arms. Strategy: Block and counter. Beware of ambushes and stunlocks near hazards.
"Well," Azazel muttered, the tension in his shoulders easing slightly. "That's… anticlimactic."
"Told you," Reginleif said, a hint of derision in her voice. "Common trash. They're barely more than walking corpses. Probably the remnants of failed adventurers claimed by the dungeon's miasma."
The Hollows hadn't noticed them yet. They simply swayed, a pathetic and mournful sight.
"Let's clear them quickly and move on," Azazel said, stepping forward. "No need for fancy tactics here."
He approached the nearest Hollow, the one with the broken sword. It turned its head slowly, the movement jerky, like a rusted puppet. A low, guttural moan escaped its lips. It raised its rusted shard of metal in a pathetic, telegraphed arc.
Azazel easily sidestepped the sluggish swing. This is too easy. He brought his kukri around in a sharp, efficient chop aimed at its neck. The Hollow, with a surprising jerk of speed, leaned back. The kukri bit deep into its collarbone instead of its throat. No blood spilled, only a trickle of black, viscous fluid. The thing didn't scream. It just moaned again, grabbing at the blade embedded in its bone with its free hand.
"Annoying," Azazel grunted, yanking his weapon free.
That's when the other five Hollows, triggered by the first's distress, moved. Not with the slow shuffle of moments before, but with a sudden, unnerving synchronicity. They didn't run; they lurched, closing the distance with jarring, fast strides.
"Azazel!" Reginleif warned, but she was already in motion.
The two unarmed Hollows reached him first. They didn't swing punches. They threw their entire bodies at him, arms outstretched to grapple. Azazel smashed the pommel of his kukri into the face of the first, feeling bone crunch, but the second clamped its hands onto his right arm with a cold, iron grip. Its weight pulled him off balance.
The one with the axe took a heavy, overhead swing. Trapped, Azazel could only twist. He called upon his Mythic. "You Shadow." The Hollow holding him had a clear shadow in the dim light. Darkness erupted from it, tangling around its own legs. It stumbled, its grip loosening just enough for Azazel to wrench his arm free and duck. The axe whistled past his ear and slammed into the stone floor with a spray of sparks.
Reginleif was a silver blur at the edge of his vision. She didn't engage the group head-on. She shot past, her dagger flicking out to slice the hamstring of the axe-wielder as it struggled to pull its weapon free. It fell to one knee with a dry rasp. But another Hollow, this one with a crude spear made from a tied-on knife, thrust at her retreating form. She contorted in mid-air, the spear tip grazing her leather armor, and used the thrust's momentum to pivot and drive her other dagger into the spearman's eye socket.
It was not a clean fight. It was messy, clumsy, and brutal. The Hollows were weak individually, but they had no sense of self-preservation, no fear. They pressed forward relentlessly, creating a tangle of grabbing hands and wild, heavy swings. The bestiary was right, Azazel thought, parrying a clumsy sword swipe from a new Hollow and kicking it back into two others. In a group, they overwhelm. They stunlock.
He couldn't rely on fancy shadow-work against so many feeble, overlapping threats. It became a brawl. He used his kukri in short, brutal chops—breaking grasping arms, shattering knees, severing tendons. Black ichor stained the wet stone. Reginleif danced on the periphery, her speed her greatest asset, darting in to deliver precise, fight-ending strikes to necks and skulls when a Hollow was isolated, then vanishing before the others could close on her.
Finally, Azazel stood over the last Hollow—the first one, with the broken sword, now crawling toward him, one arm useless. He ended it with a swift, downward stab through the back of its skull. The thing shuddered and was still.
The damp silence returned, heavier now, smelling of ozone from his Mythic and the peculiar, bitter odor of Hollow ichor.
Both of them were breathing heavily, not from exertion, but from the grating, relentless pressure of the fight. Sweat and grime mixed on Azazel's brow. Reginleif wiped her blades clean on a less-filthy part of a Hollow's rag, her nose wrinkled in disgust.
"Common trash," Azazel echoed her earlier words, his voice rough. "But trash you can slip on and break your neck."
Reginleif nodded, her earlier cockiness gone. "They're simple. But simple doesn't mean safe. A dozen of these in a narrow hall…" She left the grim thought unfinished.
Azazel looked at the scattered, still forms. The bestiary's clinical advice—block and counter—had failed to capture the visceral, claustrophobic reality of their mindless swarm. Another line was written in their unwritten manual: Never underestimate numbers. Even of the weak.
"Come on," he said, sheathing his kukri. The path forward, a downward-sloping tunnel, beckoned from the far side of the chamber. "Let's see what the ninth floor has in store. Hopefully something that actually knows how to die with some dignity."
Without another glance at the fallen Hollows, they moved on, leaving the eighth floor and its lesson in relentless, ugly pressure behind. The descent to the ninth awaited.
____
The descent to the ninth floor was a spiral of slick, uneven stairs carved directly into the bedrock. The damp smell of the eighth floor faded, replaced by a dry, chalky cold that carried the faint, metallic scent of ozone and old magic. The light from Azazel's cube seemed to be swallowed by the deepening dark, barely illuminating the worn steps beneath their feet.
They emerged not into another cavern, but into a vast, geometric crypt. The floor was paved with massive, square flagstones. Rows of stone biers, long emptied of any honorable remains, lined the walls. The air was still and deathly quiet.
"This feels… official," Reginleif whispered, her voice barely disturbing the silence. "Not a natural cave. A tomb."
Azazel nodded, his hand resting on the hilt of his kukri. The emptiness was more unnerving than the Hollows' shuffling. It felt like a held breath.
Then, they heard the skittering. A dry, clattering rasp, like stones being shaken in a clay pot. It came from the darkness between the biers.
From the gloom, six shapes loped into the dim violet light. They were Skeleton Dogs—canine forms of yellowed bone, moving with a jerky, unnatural animation. Empty eye sockets glowed with pinpricks of malevolent blue fire. Their jaws were rows of jagged, bony fangs.
And behind them, rising from behind a central bier, stood two taller figures. Blue Crystal Skeletons. These were not mere bones, but humanoid forms reconstructed with jagged, azure crystals that gleamed with an internal light. They held swords of the same material, and their skulls were encased in crystalline helmets, with twin blue flames burning in the hollows. The air around them crackled faintly with cold energy.
"Well," Azazel said, the tension coiling in his gut. "No poor-quality daggers this time."
The Skeleton Dogs charged first, their clattering gallop horrifically fast. They moved in a loose pack, aiming to flank and hamstring.
"Dogs are mine!" Reginleif called, already moving. She didn't wait for them. She shot forward to meet the charge, becoming a blur of controlled chaos. As the lead dog leapt, she didn't dodge; she dropped into a slide on the smooth flagstones, passing beneath it. Her dagger flashed upward, severing its bony spine mid-air. It collapsed into a clattering heap.
But two more were on her immediately. She used their momentum against them, pivoting and letting one crash into the other. As they tangled, her second dagger found the glowing blue ember in one's skull, extinguishing it. The bones fell lifeless.
Azazel focused on the Crystal Skeletons. One advanced with heavy, deliberate steps, its crystal sword raised. Azazel feinted left, then dashed right, his kukri aiming for the knee joint. The blade sparked against the blue crystal, scoring it but not breaking through. The skeleton was slow but incredibly durable. It backhanded with its free arm, a solid block of crystal. Azazel barely dodged, feeling the whoosh of cold air it displaced.
Can't cut it. Need to break it. He focused on its shadow, cast long and stark by the creature's own inner light. "You Shadow." The darkness coiled around its legs like chains. The skeleton stumbled, its forward march halted. But unlike flesh, the shadow couldn't find purchase to entangle fully; it was like trying to bind stone with rope.
It was, however, distracted. Azazel closed in, switching his grip. He didn't slice. He hammered the pommel of his kukri like a pick into the crystal of its elbow joint. A sharp crack echoed in the crypt. A web of fractures spread through the blue material. The skeleton's sword arm went limp.
A snarl and a flash of silver to his side—Reginleif dispatched the last Skeleton Dog, but the second Crystal Skeleton was now moving to join its partner, flanking Azazel.
"Switch!" Reginleif yelled.
In a move of instinctual trust, Azazel dropped his shadow bind and dove away from the two giants. Reginleif was there in his place. She didn't try to fight the undamaged one. She targeted the crippled one Azazel had just weakened. Its attention was split between its damaged arm and the new threat. Her speed was her weapon. She darted between its legs, her daggers not striking to destroy, but to unbalance, scraping against crystal ankles. It wobbled.
The healthy skeleton swung its massive sword in a wide, decapitating arc at her. Reginleif didn't retreat. She pushed off the damaged skeleton's thigh, launching herself vertically. The sword passed beneath her. As she reached the apex of her jump, directly above the damaged skeleton, she reversed her grip and plunged both daggers downward with all her weight and momentum, aiming not for crystal, but for the gap between its crystal ribs, into the dark space where a spine should be.
There was a sound like shattering glass and a final, silent shudder. The blue light in the skeleton's skull-eyes winked out. It collapsed into a pile of inert blue shards and dusty bone.
The remaining Crystal Skeleton, now alone, turned its blazing gaze on Reginleif, who landed in a crouch amid the debris. It raised its sword for a killing blow.
It never saw Azazel coming from its blind side. With its attention utterly fixed, its shadow was a perfect target. "You Shadow. Hold." This time, he poured more power into the command. The darkness didn't just coil; it solidified into a viscous pool around its feet, anchoring it to the flagstone.
The skeleton strained against the bind, its inner light flaring. Azazel didn't give it time to break free. He sprinted, using a toppled bier as a springboard, and leapt. He drove his kukri not at the crystal body, but at the joint where the crystalline helmet met the crystal neck column. He put his entire weight behind it, using the blade as a wedge.
There was a terrible, high-pitched CRACK. A fissure shot up the helmet. The blue flames in the eyesockets guttered, flickered wildly, and died. The construct teetered for a moment, then fell apart like a dropped chandelier, shattering into a thousand glittering blue fragments.
Silence, deeper than before, reclaimed the crypt. Only the sound of their ragged breath remained.
After a moment, Azazel walked over to the largest pile of blue crystal shards. He picked one up. It was cold to the touch, humming with a faint, residual energy. "These feel… potent. Not like normal monster drops."
Reginleif joined him, examining a shard. "Crystalized dungeon energy. Alchemists and enchanters pay a fortune for stable magical conduits like this. It's why people farm these middle floors." She began gathering the larger, cleaner fragments, stuffing them into a small pouch. "Lighter than gold, worth nearly as much by weight."
Azazel helped, using his cloak as a makeshift sack for the larger pieces from the second skeleton. The mundane yellow bones of the dogs they left behind; they were worthless.
With their improvised sacks heavy with cold, glowing crystal, they looked toward the far end of the crypt. Another archway awaited, leading to a descending staircase shrouded in an even deeper darkness.
"The tenth floor," Azazel said, hefting his crystal-filled cloak over his shoulder. The chill from the blue shards seeped through the fabric. "Let's see how far this 'unwritten manual' goes."
They left the silent crypt of the ninth floor behind, the clatter of bones replaced by the soft chime of crystal shards brushing together, a strange, lucrative melody as they descended into the unknown dark of the tenth.