Chapter 16: The Tearbound Sentinel
The descent to the tenth floor felt different from the start. The chill of the ninth floor's crypt didn't lift; it deepened, becoming a damp, cloying cold that seeped through their armor and into their bones. The air grew heavy with a strange, metallic moisture that smelled of salt and ozone. The rough-hewn tunnels gave way to a vast, circular chamber.
It wasn't a natural cavern. The floor was made of polished, dark stone slabs, worn smooth by time and something else. Scattered across it were pieces of ancient, corroded armor—a battered helm here, a shattered breastplate there—resting in shallow, shimmering pools of clear, glowing liquid that reflected the chamber's dim light with a sorrowful blue hue.
Azazel and Reginleif stepped into the chamber, their footsteps echoing unnaturally in the stagnant air. The hair on the back of Azazel's neck stood up.
"Azazel," Reginleif whispered, her hand tightening on her dagger. Her eyes darted across the scattered relics and the eerie pools. "Something feels off here. Don't you feel anything strange? The air... it's thick. Like grief."
Azazel nodded slowly, his own senses screaming a warning. The atmosphere was oppressive, charged with a melancholic energy that pressed down on his spirit. "Yeah. The tenth floor. I remember the map from the guild... they'd marked a boss here, but it was crossed out. Once you kill the boss on a certain floor in a dungeon, they don't come back, right? That's what you said."
Reginleif kept scanning the shadows between the stone pillars that supported the vaulted ceiling. "No, they don't. It's always been like that. A dungeon's guardian, once slain, is gone for good. Its purpose is fulfilled, or its power is spent. The floor becomes... quiet."
"What happens if there's a certain condition for it to come back?" Azazel asked, his mind racing through game logic—rituals, timed respawns, triggered events.
"Certain condition?" Reginleif frowned, turning to him. "I've never heard of such a—"
She was cut off.
A deep, resonant clang echoed through the chamber, like a massive bell tolling under the earth. The pools of glowing liquid trembled, their surfaces rippling. From the largest pool at the chamber's center, a figure began to rise.
Water and spectral light cascaded from its form as it stood to its full, imposing height. It was the Tearbound Skeleton Knight.
Towering over them, it was a fusion of tragedy and martial might. Its skeleton was clad in plates of ancient, blue-corroded armor, fused in places with jagged, tear-shaped crystals that pulsed with a soft, sorrowful light. In its bony grip was a massive longsword, notched and pitted, from which a viscous, glowing liquid steadily dripped like perpetual tears. Its hollow eye sockets blazed with twin blue flames that seemed to weep faint trails of light. The air around it crackled with cold, damp energy.
It took a single, ground-shaking step forward. Its jaw did not move, but a voice, composed of echoes, clattering bone, and the sound of falling water, filled their minds.
"The tears... are not dry. The duty... is not done."
Azazel breathed, his kukri flashing into his hand. "Our presence, our depth... it woke him up."
The knight moved. It was not the slow, lumbering pace of the Crystal Skeletons. This was the controlled, powerful stride of a veteran warrior. It closed the distance with shocking speed and brought its Tearblade down in a colossal overhead chop.
"Scatter!" Reginleif yelled.
They dove apart. The sword impacted the stone where they'd stood, not with a clang of metal, but with a wet, terrible crunch. Magical liquid splashed from the impact, and where the droplets struck Azazel's arm, a cold, burning pain flared. He looked down to see a wound that wept his own blood mixed with a shimmering blue fluid—the bleeding effect.
The knight pivoted with unnatural grace, targeting Reginleif. She was a darting shadow, but the knight anticipated her agility. It slammed its armored foot down. "Weeping Stomp."
The shockwave was visible—a ripple of force and rising groundwater that exploded outwards. Reginleif was caught at the edge, knocked off her feet and sent skidding through one of the shallow glowing pools. As she scrambled up, her movements were visibly labored, as if the very water clung to her, slowing her dramatically.
The knight raised its free hand, the crystals on its armor glowing brightly. "Sorrow's Bind." Chains of pure, liquid light—spectral tears—shot from the surrounding pools, whipping towards Azazel. He tried to dodge, but one chain snapped around his ankle, cold as the grave and solid as iron, rooting him to the spot.
The Tearbound Knight advanced on the immobilized Azazel, its dripping sword raised for a finishing blow. Reginleif, slowed and too far away, shouted a warning.
Panic and cold fury surged in Azazel. His Darkness Mythic thrashed against this binding of sorrowful light. He couldn't break the chain, not directly. But the pool of water at his feet, stirred by the knight's power, was right there. An idea, desperate and instinctual, burst in his mind.
If his darkness could snare shadows, could it not grasp other things? Could it not leech heat, life, and motion itself?
---
Panic and cold fury surged in Azazel. His Darkness Mythic thrashed against this binding of sorrowful light. The spectral chain was ice-cold, sapping his warmth. In that moment of extremity, his consciousness plunged inward, past the instinctual use of his power, down to the core of his being—the Mythic Seed.
It was a void, a well of potential. But within that void, he didn't find heat or fire. He found an absence. A profound, perfect cold that was the essence of the deepest dark, where no light ever reached and all warmth was leeched away. Darkness itself is cold. The realization was a lightning strike of understanding. The cold wasn't a byproduct; it was a fundamental property.
He focused on that singular, absolute point of cold within the Seed. He gathered the chilling essence, drew it up through his core, and with a final, wrenching effort of will, unleashed it.
"Black Ice!"
The effect was instantaneous. A wave of utter cold, darker than midnight, exploded from him. It didn't freeze the water white. It flash-froze it into a solid, perfectly black, glassy expanse that smoked with vaporous cold. The spectral tear-chain around his ankle shattered like brittle crystal. The effect raced outward, catching the Tearbound Knight's advancing foot.
The knight's stride faltered as a shell of pitch-black ice encased its leg up to the knee, freezing it solid to the floor. The mournful blue light in its eyes flickered in surprise. The Crystal Guard it had begun to summon fizzled, interrupted.
The immobilization would only last seconds. But seconds were everything.
"REGINLEIF, NOW! ITS NECK!" Azazel roared, his voice raw from the strain of the new power.
Reginleif, shaking off the last of the pool's slow, saw her chance. The knight was anchored, its guard down. She pushed her speed to its absolute limit, a silver streak across the black ice. She didn't leap. She ran up the knight's frozen leg, onto its armored torso, using the fused crystals as handholds.
The knight swung a massive, gauntleted fist at her, but it was slow, unbalanced. She ducked under it, planted her feet on its shoulder plate, and with a cry of effort, plunged both of her daggers deep into the seam between its crystalline helmet and its corroded gorget.
There was a sound like a sob given form. The blue fire in its eyes blazed wildly, then dimmed. The glow in its tear-crystals faded to a dull grey. With a final, grinding shudder, the Tearbound Skeleton Knight collapsed backwards. Its frozen leg shattered as it fell, and its body hit the dark stone with a final, echoing crash that rattled the ancient armor scattered around the room.
Silence descended, deeper and more profound than before. The oppressive weight of sorrow lifted, leaving only the chill of the chamber and the smell of ozone.
Azazel sank to one knee, panting. Using Black Ice had felt like draining a part of his own life force. A deep, numbing fatigue settled into his marrow, and a sharp, biting cold radiated up his right arm. He looked down—a thin, brittle shell of his own pitch-black ice encased his fingers and palm in a painful, rigid grip.
Reginleif dropped lightly from the fallen giant, wiping her daggers clean. She saw him cradling the frozen limb, his breath misting in the chamber's residual cold. "Your hand!"
"Side effect," he grunted through clenched teeth. "The cold bit back."
"Hold still." She knelt, examining the black ice with a critical eye. Drawing a thin dagger, she began to tap and pry at the shell with surgeon's care. The black ice cracked and fell away in jagged pieces that dissolved into cold mist before hitting the floor. Feeling returned in a painful, prickling rush, but the hand was his own again, red and aching.
As he flexed his stiff fingers, Reginleif turned her attention to the knight's remains. Among the greyed crystals, she spotted a ruined, water-stained scroll case clutched in its skeletal hand. She pried it free.
"This is it," she said, her voice hushed with awe. "The key to the deeper floors. because no one has re-awakened this guardian in generations."
Azazel pushed himself up, the cold still lingering in his bones. He walked over to stand beside her, looking down at the fallen knight—no longer a monster, but a tragic figure. A guardian bound by endless, unwashable tears. His eyes caught a dull glint among the rubble of the knight's chest plate: a tarnished silver chain. At its end was a small, rectangular tag.
He held up his still-throbbing, reddened hand, the fingers clumsy. "Reginleif. Pick that up for me."
She retrieved it, brushing off centuries of grit. It was an adventurer's identification tag. She read the faded inscription aloud, her voice soft. "Alistair, of the Dawn's Watch. Silver Rank."
"He was one of us," Azazel said quietly. The truth of it settled heavily between them. "He wasn't just waiting for a fight. He was waiting for an end worthy of his duty. For someone strong enough to finally release him."
They collected the scroll and a few of the larger, now-dull crystal shards as proof of their conquest. The tenth floor was truly clear. After a few more minutes of rest, allowing Azazel to work the lingering numbness from his hand, Reginleif's sharp eyes caught a shadowed alcove they'd missed. Within it sat a heavy, iron-bound chest.
It was unlocked. Inside, resting on faded velvet, were two items.
The first was a scroll of fine, new parchment. Azazel carefully unrolled it. The text detailed a complex alchemical recipe for a Laser Stamina Potion, a high-grade concoction said to violently burn away fatigue toxins and restore near-instant vigor. The ingredient list was long and prohibitively expensive.
The second item was a warhammer. It was a brutal, functional weapon of black iron, its head shaped like a massive, clenched fist. It radiated a dull, heavy aura of pure, uncompromising blunt force.
Azazel and Reginleif looked at it, then at each other. A shared, unspoken verdict passed between them in an instant.
"Ugly thing," Reginleif stated flatly.
"Clumsy," Azazel agreed, his sore hand curling in reflexive distaste.
"Absolutely useless to us."
"We're selling it the second we get back to the surface."
With the silver tag, the two scrolls, the crystal shards, and the decidedly unloved warhammer stored in the violet space of Azazel's cube, they turned towards the dark archway that promised the descent to the eleventh floor. The tenth floor's sorrow was spent, its sentinel finally at peace.
Ahead lay only the unknown dark, and the next...