Chapter 481: I thought you were dead

“Forgive me, Hunter. I thought you were dead.”

Mason blinked and smelled smoke, opening his eyes properly to see a little patch of lit grass by his face. Night Eyes had apparently also knelt down beside him and started muttering some kind of death prayer.

“You’re not the first.”

Mason groaned and sat up, wincing as he felt the fresh, sensitive flesh on his back and sides. He gave the shaman a once over and saw he’d come out of the experience pretty much untouched. Then he banished Eve’s armor and re-summoned it fresh, holding back his grin at the centaur’s wide eyes.

“If you liked that, you’ll love this.”

He called to Streak, and the wolf howled with glee across the miles, shimmering into view with a snort and a lunge at Mason before it sensed his recent wounds and started sniff-checking him.

“I’m alright.” Mason grabbed and patted the increasingly huge animal’s head, watching his Fang Brothers flare as the wolf’s body shimmered with his Sleeves and Claws and passives. Night Eyes looked frozen in a kind of prey-animal panic, and Mason supposed horse-men wouldn’t be that fond of giant wolves.

“So.” He stood and stared into the darkness, seeing more magical energy that prevented even his enhanced sight. He could see maybe twenty feet before a pitch black wall just blocked him. “We’re inside. Now what?”

Night Eyes hopped up with a clacking of hooves, and an obvious attempt to ignore and get over Streak.

“A good question, Hunter. None of my people have ever come this far and survived.”

“You don’t have…stories? Myths? I assume you wanted to get in here for a reason.”

The centaur’s passive face betrayed his hesitation, and Mason rolled his eyes.

“Keep your secrets. I don’t trust old legends anyway. Come on, Streak.”

He only got about two steps before a phosphorescent light glowed on the walls.

“You have entered a Hall of the Makers,” boomed an increasingly familiar, male, rote voice. “What makes you think you are worthy?”

“Dejavu,” Mason muttered, but a bit of excitement shot through him. The ‘Maker Hall’ in the Devourer’s lair had been where he found his Nature’s Sleeves and picked up his first prestige class.

But he was still a bit…uncomfortable with the Makers in general. Not just because he didn’t understand them, but because he was pretty sure they had something to do with the ‘Doom’. And also because they’d tried to destroy or at least control the Great Tree of the North, nearly destroying its avatar Eve, plunging the whole region into an eternal winter.

So, despite their gifts and uses, it was fair to say they had something of a mixed resume.

“The legends were true,” whispered Night Eyes. “I have found it. I have finally found it.”

Mason took a deep breath and gave the centaur a glance. The ‘Makers’ he’d seen in his druid dreams looked human, or at least humanoid. They’d worn robes and hoods and so they could have been elves or something similar. But they definitely didn’t have horse bodies.

“Your ancestors were ‘Makers’?”

Night Eyes nodded. “Before the Doom. There are drawings still of cities in the mountains. Some shamans see visions of our ancestors walking tunnels beneath the earth like ancient roads. Even walking the planes. All my life I have heard the word Makers whispered in my dreams.”

Mason said nothing, not sure that was case-closing evidence, but not sure it mattered anyway. He walked on and the wall of darkness vanished like smoke, revealing a long, metallic hallway. The floor and walls were scraped and torn with obvious claw marks. They looked deep and far enough apart the creature must have had huge paws. Mason gestured.

“Your bear, I imagine.”

Night Eyes half shrugged and half nodded, and Mason looked down the empty hallway with a sigh. He didn’t see any droppings, or signs of food. It didn’t stink like rot or give off any other mark of a living thing. ‘Ghost bear’ was getting increasingly, and unhappily likely. But he didn’t see much else for it, and walked on.

His footsteps were like gentle whispers next to the centaur’s clomping behind him. Every echoing hoof made him inwardly wince and practically turn around to tell the shaman just to stay where he was. The creature didn’t even seem to notice or care, and Mason supposed creatures like him wouldn’t exactly be used to sneaking.

But he supposed making a racket might at least draw the ‘bear’. Not that luring a predator with your face was the greatest strategy. Especially when you had no idea what the hell it even was.

Streak growled low and Mason stopped to listen, holding a hand up for the centaur. He couldn’t hear anything, but with a place like this he didn’t trust his senses. Through their bond, Streak was feeling something like little hairs raising on his neck—an intuition without an exact sense.

“I know it’s creepy,” Mason soothed. “But there’s no other way.”

He walked on, blinking as a door appeared from nothing on the far end. As a point in the centaur’s favor, it did look about as tall as a man on a horse.

“I’ve never seen anything that looked more like a trap,” Mason said, scanning the walls and floor and roof looking for something, anything. “Can you…look with your magic sight, or whatever?”

Night Eyes nodded and came forward, his serious face locking in concentration. He squinted as if not understanding, muttering some spell before he took a breath.

“That isn’t a door. Or at least…it’s not just a door. It’s something magical. Something…almost alive.”

A living door, eh? Sounded like one of Blake’s constructs, which made sense and sort of calmed Mason’s paranoid nerves. Though not much. This would all be some kind of test, or at least was supposed to be before it all got mangled. But it was entirely possible the ‘spirits’ had somehow destroyed or corrupted the place, and nothing would work as the Makers intended.

Mason still didn’t see much choice but to go forward. He took careful step after step, gesturing for Streak and Night Eyes to keep well back. He was getting a little tired of being a human mine sweeper, but it was also still usually the best tactic.

He tried not to wince in expectation of pain or some other disaster. But moment after tense moment took him straight to the door. The beast’s markings followed him the entire way, hundreds of claw marks raking everything all the way to the construct.

Whatever was down this hallway obviously attracted the thing. But there was no sign that it could get through. The door didn’t have so much as a scratch. After arriving without any disaster, but also seeing no sign of a handle or level or anything else, Mason clenched his jaw and just…knocked.

Affinity check required, intoned a robotic voice. Please activate and touch the panel.

A roughly human-shaped handprint appeared and glowed, and Mason decided he was pretty perfectly suited to solve this particular problem.

“I should do it,” said the centaur behind him. “I have…I am well suited to the task.”

Mason glanced back, not sure what he should do. He didn’t care who did it, but he also really didn’t want to risk the centaur’s life if the door just said ‘haha’ and zapped the shit out of you, which would be pretty classic roboGod.

“Let me try first,” he said. “If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.”

Night Eyes frowned but nodded, and Mason put his hand to the door.

[Apex Predator: Affinity changed to Abyssal. Infernal. Arcane. Elemental.]

[Apex Predator: Nature affinity removed. Abyssal affinity removed. Infernal affinity removed. Arcane affinity removed.]

[Error. /sys_admin override.]

Thank you. You may enter.

The robotic voice chimed in Mason’s ear, then the door hissed and pulled back with an audible crack, throwing off dust and grime as it broke away from the shredded wall. Then it folded and re-shaped to become a surprisingly long staircase leading down. It definitely didn’t look very horse friendly.

“I could carry you again,” Mason said, glancing down the steps. When he looked back at the centaur, Night Eyes didn’t look remotely pleased.

“I will manage.”

Mason shrugged and walked down, still expecting the thing to go smooth and toss him into a pit. Or for a blade to rip out of the wall and cut him open. But just as before, he wandered down without an issue, Streak padding after, then the centaur clattering and holding himself with the wall as he struggled.

A strange torrent of scents hit Mason near the bottom. The first was familiar, natural, old. It was a bit like a great tree, he decided, and he stooped eagerly in the staircase to see what the hell was down below.

He found a zombie-like, humanoid corpse standing on a raised, metallic platform. There were vines, or cords, or cables attached all around it, connected like a spider’s webs to the body, then to the ceiling and walls. It was desiccated and almost skeletal, but still covered in pale skin and with a beard and hair so long they touched the floor.

“Jesus.” Mason inhaled and smelled the life. The rot. He listened hard until he heard the poor bastard breathe.

Then he was rushing forward with a Claw summoned, eyes roaming what looked like a kind of laboratory. He was reminded of the huge elemental who’d held some druid prisoner for hundreds of years. Is that was this was? Another of the ancient druids like Rochmanonoch?

Dust covered desks and tables surrounded the prisoner’s platform, some covered in beakers, others in scientific or possibly torturous tools. There were hundreds of small objects in jars or other containers that belonged in a witch’s lair or a fantasy magic shop. But Mason at least didn’t see any threats.

He reached the platform and stopped to look for traps, inspecting the tiled floor, the walls, the roof. Then he realized that beneath the old man was a kind of vibrant, thicker looking root. It was stuck in the man’s flesh, connected to his leg like an intravenous, another higher up and lodged in his gut. Mason shivered in horror, reminded of the insect lair with creatures feeding off a Great Tree.

“By the gods.”

Night Eyes had apparently managed to get his bulk down the stairs for a look. Streak was closer to him than Mason, basically backed as far away from the druid as he could get and making pathetic mewling sounds. For once, Mason didn’t blame him. It was one of the most disturbing things he’d ever seen, and he’d seen a few.

When the old man’s eyes sprung open, Mason just about shit himself.